I attended a very interesting lecture today from a married couple - he is a "transvestite" medical doctor and she is a psychologist and they are both sexologists. Their presentation was about gender identity and why the old polarity of male and female no longer will do. The lecture included the science of how gender develops in the womb and how the sex organs can develop of fail to develop over a period of time and the complexity of the genetic makeup of people who are not female or male in terms of their chromosomes - instead of XX or XY there are people who are XXY.
Androgyny was celebrated in the time of the renaissance - we looked at a slide of Donatellos David and a Michaleangelo statue of a woman which was the physique of a man with breasts attached! And we all know about the image in the Da Vinci painting that has made Dan Browns fortune.
The following poem by anon was quoted -
"Put no question mark to joys that others earn
however weird they seem to be
there always is a lot to learn
and even more to see."
We examined the complexity of the "trans - spectrum" - how people define themselves as "transvestive", "bi-gendered", "trans-sexual" and "unspecified trans".
There is now the possibility that peoples gender can be changed or reinforced by surgery but the plea for our speakers was let surgery follow the soul rather than what the surgeons deem is best and most appropriate for purely surgical reasons.
It is an incredibly complex area and I was pleased to have this opportunity to explore it more deeply in this seminar presentation by international experts.
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