Transsexual Brain Differences Shown on Scan

Differences in the brain’s white matter that clash with a person’s genetic sex may hold the key to identifying transsexual people before puberty. Doctors could use this information to make a case for delaying puberty to improve the success of a sex change later.

Medics are keen to find concrete physical evidence to help those children who feel they are trapped in the body of the opposite sex. One key brain region involved is the BSTc, an area of grey matter. But the region is too small to scan in a living person so differences have only been picked up at post-mortem.

Antonio Guillamon‘s team at the National University of Distance Education in Madrid, Spain, think they have found a better way to spot a transsexual brain.

In a study due to be published next month, the team ran MRI scans on the brains of 18 female-to-male transsexual people who’d had no treatment and compared them with those of 24 males and 19 females.

They found significant differences between male and female brains in four regions of white matter – and the female-to-male transsexual people had white matter in these regions that resembled a male brain (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.05.006). “It’s the first time it has been shown that the brains of female-to-male transsexual people are masculinised,” Guillamon says.

In a separate study, the team used the same technique to compare white matter in 18 male-to-female transsexual people with that in 19 males and 19 females. Surprisingly, in each transsexual person’s brain the structure of the white matter in the four regions was halfway between that of the males and females (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.11.007). “Their brains are not completely masculinised and not completely feminised, but they still feel female,” says Guillamon.

 

Click to read the rest of the New Scientist article…

Quote of the Day: Therapy, Living and Discipline

“I do it as a therapy. I do it as something to keep me alive. We all need a little discipline. Exercise is my discipline.”

- Jack LaLanne

Complete Text of Martin Luther King’s Speech

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Reference: http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html

Quote of the Day: 3 Requests

“God makes three requests of his children: Do the best you can, where you are, with what you have, now” - African-American proverb

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Quote of the Day: Silence and Indifference

“We know that silence equals consent when atrocities are committed against innocent men. We know that indifference equals complicity when bigotry, hatred and intolerance are allowed to root.” — Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Gabrielle Giffords and the Meaning of Civility in Living

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

I cannot help but feel devastated by the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords this past weekend in Tucson.  (see the LA Times article ) I’ve pondered whether I should comment on the shooting and the horrible toll it took on the victims, the highly charged rhetoric of our society, and an obviously seriously mentally ill and deranged young man.

The rhetoric and vitriol of the past few years have bothered me for quite some time.  It’s not a sign of a healthy society when one cannot discuss ideas or views without feeling threatened or feeling the need to make a threat.  It’s not a good sign of mental health to ‘amp up’ intolerance and intemperate speech to the point that civility and safety are threatened.  I cannot say whether this young man was influenced by the angry rhetoric of late.  I can certainly say it does not help in any healthy way whatsoever.

Words have power.  Words have consequences.  Whether perjoratives are used (“f*gg*t”, “tr*nny”, “n*gg*r”, “traitor”, “unAmerican”, “Marxist”, “Communist”, “tea bagger”, “wingnut”, “fascist” or more); whether more cloaked language is used (“taking away our freedoms”, “not born in the country”, “uppity”, “Kenyan”, etc); whether groups are wrongfully targeted with hate speech for their views, it is ALL a sign of declining ability to communicate in healthy ways with each other.

It is possible to discuss and disagree.  It is possible to have very strong emotional reactions and still be civil and honest about our feelings without making threats.  It is possible to stop and consider what we’re about to say in a charged atmosphere.  And it is time all of us were doing more to make it possible for people to disagree with each other without feeling threatened that such a disagreement will invite violence or reprisals.

I’ve worked with gender variant individuals (transsexuals, transgendered, intersex, etc) and the fear of violence is one of the greatest fears they have about whether or not to “come out” and be honest to the world and to themselves.  This rhetoric doesn’t help.

We should want people to be honest and truthful with us and themselves.  We should reward that.  We should honor the great challenge people face to be seen for who they are, and to be seen as good people simply trying to get through life in one piece.  But that can only happen if we as a culture really want people to be honest and civil.  It can only happen if we’re ready to swallow our fear and hear, really hear, what the other person has to say.

Fear, not based upon facts, is simply irrational.  And it is irrational states that lead to violence.  It is irrational states that lead to intolerance and hate.  Haven’t we had enough of that?

I know I have.

I’m out in my life; and as a therapist I feel a responsibility to set an example.  And I am not going away because of my fears or those of others.  I strive in this world to live honestly and with civility.  My views are my own and I do not believe I have the right to enforce them on others.  To talk about them and discuss them, yes.  But I will never force you to agree with me.  And I hope you will want the same as well.

Is this not what we should want for everyone?

Peace.

The Puppet by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

If for a moment God would forget that I am a rag doll and give me a scrap of life..

I would value things not for how much they are worth but rather for what they mean.

I would write my hatred on ice and wait for the sun to come out, with a dream of Van Gogh I would paint on the stars a poem by Benedetti, and a song by Serrat would be my serenade to the moon.

With my tears I would water the roses, to feel the pain of their thorns and the incarnated kiss of their petals…

I wouldn’t let a single day go by without saying to people I love, that I love them.

To a child I would give wings, but I would let him learn how to fly by himself.

To the old I would teach that death comes not with old age but with forgetting­.

I have learned that everybody wants to live at the top of the mountain without realizing that true happiness lies in the way we climb the slope.

I have learned that when a newborn first squeezes his father’s finger in his tiny fist, he has caught him forever.

I have learned that a man only has the right to look down on another man when it is to help him to stand up.

The Puppet (excerpt)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

it gets better—–a music video by rebecca drysdale

Quote of the Day: Share Happiness

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” - Buddha