Transgendered dudes and chicks, or should it be chicks and dudes?

However, the question isn't over people who are intersexed or have genetic abnormalities. It's about people who are, undeniably, one physical sex, but desire to be the opposite gender socially and mentally.

Hermaphrodites are obviously a questionable subject. I don't think anyone's said that they don't have the right to choose which gender they want to live as.

I was brining them up to show that "male" and "female" are not pure, black and white definitions.

Is someone who has male genitals and XX chromosomes male or female? Is someone who has female genitals and a male brain male or female? I don't see why the physical makeup of the brain should have less to do with the question than, say, the genetic makeup, especially since sometimes the only phenotypical difference caused by the genetic abnormalities is sterility.

And again (not to mordy, but to everyone),

Trying to explain something to you is a waste of time.
Learn to do more than spout your opinions over and over again if you want to have a debate.

What kind of debate are you even trying to have? That the dictionary says anyone with male genitals is a male? It doesn't, according to the link you provided. Trying to enforce lexical precision? It can't be that, either, because you use "gender" for ever aspect: physical, mental, and societal.

So what are you trying to argue? Why is it so important that you to make it clear that "anyone with male reproductive organs is male"?

True story: A girl growing up never develops breasts, and so is given hormone therapy. As an adult she has a very small vagina and doesn't enjoy sex, but marries someone and they want children. After failed attempts, they go to a fertility clinic where they discover she is male, XY, and has internal testes. Is she male or female?

She would say female. She was raised female, and has a female identity. In Scotland, however, her marriage would be illegal for being same sex.

But hermaphrodites are not the point. Demener says they're the gender they physically are, and with most people that is pretty clear cut. Why the hell are we arguing about this?

GJ agrees, but says insisting on pointing that out is hostile to transsexuals. It should be up to individuals to define themselves. In this essay, someone smart articulates that better than GJ does. In summary of that, gays were considered transsexual because liking males is a female trait, regardless of their protests or actually being bisexual. The scientific community is historically bad about dealing with sex. Take, for example, the couple who brought this whole debate up.

GJ adds their brains are physically the other gender, so they don't fall in the clear cut cases anyways: anyone who is mentally gender disphoric is by definition like a hermaphrodite in they've got masculine or feminine neuron chemical receptors in their brain absorbing the masculine or feminine hormones that both bodies produce naturally, in different amounts. This is a physical difference fairly easy to detect: inject any subject with estrogen/progesterone or testosterone, 15 minutes later take a blood test and check whether the chemical has been altered by the subject's brain. Every human brain reacts with one set or the other.

Now, because I am a bastard who refuses to outright agree with anyone... Not everyone with a brain that absorbs the chemicals associated with the opposite gender is transsexual. True Story above has a brain that responds to testosterone, but is happy as female.

True. If they have the brain chemistry of a male and yet for whatever reason still identify as female and don't feel the need to change, then they're a woman regardless.

Um...I'm kinda-sorta a male-to-female transgirl. I feel like I should say something in this thread, but I really have no idea what I should say.

If anyone has anything they want to ask, I guess ask it and I'll do my best to answer?

Wow, first off, Veemon, I applaud you. That is not something most people would admit in a public forum.

Let's start with the basics as that is what this argument seems to be about at the moment, and we might be able to use this as a catalyst to move on. Do you consider yourself as male or female?

Female. No doubt whatsoever in me brain.

Because some people think that you're supposed to call FTMs women and MTFs men because it's "scientifically correct", well, it's not.

Scientific papers in Nature use the term "sex-inversed XY female" or "XY female" for transsexual women (and thus "sex-inversed XX male" or "XX male" for transsexual men).

...I think I prefer "XY female" and 'XX male" over mtf and ftm.

After all the t stands for 'turned' doesn't it? What turning is there? Isn't it all in the brain?

MTF is an acronym for "male to female", and FTM is the inverse (they're actually meant for those who's completed the transition, but I've seen them used for those who haven't yet). They're not the most idea terms here, but I used them because I've seen transsexuals use the terms themselves and because I thought they'd be familiar or at least understandable in context, and I couldn't think of any other ways to word it without getting all long and awkward.