Dominick Evans feels he has a “unique perspective” on who I am because he is both disabled and transgendered. He tells me, based on his unique expertise, that I am an “incomprehensible human being”. However, I have friends who, like Dominick, are both disabled and transgendered. When I told these friends about my BIID, they responded with empathy, compassion, understanding, and emotional support. Dominick seems to have a uniquely incomprehensible lack of compassion.

I found a quote from another of Dominick’s blogs. He says: “The vast majority of people still don’t get what being transgendered is. They see some of us as crossdressers. fakers, wannabes, and mentally deranged individuals. They see us as confused. They see us sub-human or “needing to be fixed”". Wow, Dominick! This is incomprehensible. Do you not see these words coming out of your own mouth? What you have said about us says nothing about who we really are, but it speaks reams of your own lack of self-acceptance about being transgendered.

Another quote from Dominick: “Honestly, what man wants a uterus? I don’t and many of the other transgendered men I know don’t either”. Gosh Dominick, this is incomprehensible; you FtMs should be LUCKY to have a uterus capable of bearing children. I didn’t; and it has caused me sadness. Dominick has another claim to uniqueness: a rather interesting level of hypocrisy.

My physical condition necessitates occasional assistance in getting dressed, eating, going to the toilet, etc. According to Dominick I find it “cool” and “glamorous” when I need someone to pull down my underwear for me so that I can go pee. No, Dominick, you are dead wrong. I think it sucks.

Maturity brings self-acceptance, and also acceptance and compassion for those different from ourselves. I have often observed that people who are either disabled or transgendered find that their experience deepens their empathy and compassion for others. I have compassion for Dominick because he is disabled. I have compassion for Dominick because he is transgendered. But most of all, I have compassion for Dominick because he is lacking in compassion; his experiences have not yet taught him the most valuable lessons of all. To be in a state where one does not feel empathy or compassion must surely be miserable. There is nothing in life that has brought me greater joy than to feel love, empathy, and compassion for my fellow human being.

Dominick gives the impression that he is rather young; perhaps too young to remember the not too distant past, when a number of lesbians were calling FtMs “traitors” and MtFs “imposters”. I am a lesbian. I have never considered FtMs to be traitors, but I apologise to Dominick for that epithet anyway. FtMs were never traitors; they were always men. I know many FtMs. All the ones I have met are indeed real men. I wonder if Dominick is man enough to apologise to us.

Thank you Sean for writing this post. Thank you Claire for reposting yours here. You have both covered everything else I would have wanted to say, and more eloquently than I would have done.

You see, these people with BIID should be LUCKY they have working limbs.

Yeah, and transgendered people should be LUCKY that they have fully functioning penises, or fully functioning vaginas, and be perfectly fertile and able to reproduce. *shrug* That seems so…hypocritical?

What you’re missing is that we don’t choose to have BIID any more than you choose to be transgendered. And that our feelings of having something wrong with our body stem from very early childhood. We don’t *want* BIID. I never chose it. I just have it, and have had it ever since I can remember pretending at age 5 that I was “crippled” and that my legs didn’t work. Not only that, but being seen by three mental health professionals I was told that there was nothing that they could do, that this disorder was “too marginal” and that there was no known treatment for it. And speaking to countless others who also have had the same issues since early childhood, and who also never had any luck in dealing with these feelings through therapy or drugs. It just doesn’t. go. away. It doesn’t respond to logical arguments such as “being disabled is painful and difficult.” Reason doesn’t touch it. It’s also not logical to want to hack off your fully functioning penis, and reason doesn’t make *that* desire go away either, right? I mean, it works fine, right? It just doesn’t feel like it belongs, right? That you should be in some other form? Well, my legs work fine and they don’t feel like they belong, either.

The work of Paul McGeoch and V.S. Ramachandran in finding a neurological origin from BIID is showing good indications that this may in fact be the case. I participated in that study, and was told that while they need more participants before they can publish anything, the early data is fairly convincing.

Whether or not providing surgery for people with BIID is good on society or the family are good things to consider, but in the end, these questions have nothing to do with whether or not BIID is a real condition. It might help someone decide whether or not they want to “go through with it”, but BIID is what it is, regardless of these matters, regardless of any costs or whether or not it will actually be accepted by the medical community one day.

Beyond that, mental illness carries it’s own very real cost to society and the family. Check out this TIME article on the costs of mental illness: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1738804,00.html I stipulate that a mentally healthy post-op BIID patient with a physical disability will be more productive for society and the family than a depressive, obsessive pre-op BIID patient is.

BIID is intense. It’s heartwrenching. I’m not really sure what you would have us do? Not only would you deny us the only form of therapy that is known to be effective, but you’d also deny us the validation of the disorder – insertion in the DSM – that may make it possible for us to one day find a cure that does *not* include surgery. Either way, by your method, we’re damned to a life of living in the wrong body, with no hope in sight.

You might want to check out this blog entry that was written by a post-op transsexual who also has BIID: http://transabled.org/thoughts/a-comparison-between-transsexuality-and-transableism.htm If anyone knows where the similarities between GID and BIID start and stop, it’s Marie.

So, Dominick, when you have caught up with your server issues, we’ll be interested to know what you think of our position.

I’ve been dealing with a server crisis for the past 1-2 weeks. I’m moving my entire server from one company to another due to excessive downtime of my websites. It’s taken three days to even get to moving dominickevans.com over.

I just received your comment today, when moving my Dominick Evans site. I checked my mail before changing DNS. I haven’t had the time to look over this post (as I still have at least 10 more sites to transfer), but you might also notice, I haven’t posted on my Dominick Evans blog since July 20. I haven’t even checked my email for the site in 4-5 days.

I apologize if you think my slow response was “chickenshit” but how can I post a comment if I didn’t know it exists? I haven’t had time to check, though I normally approve most comments unless overly derogatory and juvenile and I don’t could differing opinions as that if well written.

I am one of those who posted a comment to Dominick’s blog. How insulting it is to take the time to read someone’s blog, and take the time to comment on it, and then not have the comment posted because the blogger is against free speech and too unsure of his own argument to feel comfortable posting a differing opinion. Bah.

I can testify to BIID making life hell, so far in my life I\’ve flunked 2 different degrees at university partly because of transabled issues and partly because of other problems (including an existing physical disability, I\’d never considered it a disability until now). I owe goodness knows how much money on my student loan and I have nothing to show for it.