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CQ’s Quotations From the Literature (1991-1993)

CQ’s Quotations From the Literature (1991-1993)

©1991, 1992, 1993, 2013 by Dallas Denny

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

Denny, Dallas. (1991, Spring). CQ’s quotations from the literature. Chrysalis Quarterly, 1(1), p. 4.

Denny, Dallas. (1991, Summer). CQ’s quotations from the literature. Chrysalis Quarterly, 1(2), p. 7.

Denny, Dallas. (1991-1992, Winter). CQ’s quotations from the literature. Chrysalis Quarterly, 1(3), p. 8.

Denny, Dallas. (1992). CQ’s quotations from the literature. Chrysalis Quarterly, 1(4), p. 30.

Denny, Dallas. (1993, Spring). CQ’s quotations from the literature. Chrysalis Quarterly, 1(5), p. 22.

Denny, Dallas. (1993, Fall). CQ’s quotations from the literature. Chrysalis Quarterly, 1(6), p. 47.

 

The first six issues of Chrysalis Quarterly contained a short feature called Quotations from the Literature. In each, I highlighted one or two offensive, stupid, or absurd (and in some cases insightful) passages from articles in textbooks or professional journals.

 

 CQ’s Quotations from the Literature, CQ V. 1, No. 1, Spring, 1991 (PDF)

 CQ’s Quotations from the Literature, CQ V. 1, No. 2, Spring, 1991 (PDF)

 CQ’s Quotations from the Literature, CQ V. 1, No. 3, Winter, 1991-1992 (PDF)

CQ’s Quotations from the Literature, CQ V. 1, No. 4, 1992 (PDF)

CQ’s Quotations from the Literature, CQ V. 1, No. 5, Spring, 1993 (PDF)

CQ’s Quotations from the Literature, CQ V. 1, No. 6, Fall, 1993 (PDF)

 

Quotations From the Literature

By Dallas Denny

 

 V. 1, No. 1, Spring, 1991

 This issue’s stupid quote:

To change a person’s God-given anatomic sex is a repugnant concept.

Donald R. Laub, M.D., and Norman Fisk, M.D. (1974). A rehabilitation program for gender dysphoria syndrome by surgical sex change. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 53, p. 388.

 

This issue’s smartass quote:

Transsexuals… are distinguishable from females at large by their lack of special attraction to the helpless newborn and their imagery in coital fantasies. It is possible, though, that transsexuals will change their conception of the female stereotype to include these features after reading this article, since they are often influenced by reading about their condition.

John Money, Ph.D., & Clay Primrose. (1968). Sexual dimorphism and dissociation in the psychology of male transsexuals. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 147, p. 472.

 

V. 1, No. 2, Summer, 1991

This issue’s intelligent quote:

Transsexuals as a rule worked in conjunction with local medical practitioners in actively monitoring their dosage and maintaining medical supervision. Only one transsexual endeavored to monitor her own program of hormone management. She established her own schedule after much reading on female hormonal cycles without her physician’s knowledge. Her doses were at levels far above and beyond even the maximum dosage regimes represented by two of the twenty centers described in Meyer, Walker, and Suplee of 5-7.5 mg. of conjugated estrogen (n.d.:8). She reached a high of 40 mg. of Premarin and 50 mg. of Provera before beginning reduction at mid-month. Because I knew she was hesitant to reveal her regime to others in the group for fear of negative sanctions, I presented her with information cited in Meyer’s research and other “scare” information on the negative side effects of hormone overdose. In response, she agreed to reduce her dosages to conform to the standard recommendation. Approximately six months after this research was completed, news reached me that she had died of a heart attack. Apparently she had continued this program despite warnings from a number of transsexual friends who had come to know about her extreme hormone regimen, subsequent to my initial warning. It is not unwarranted, given her youthfulness, that the high dosages of hormones were implicated in her death.

Anne Bolin (1988).  In Search of Eve:  Transsexual Rites of Passage, p. 126.  South Hadley, MA:  Bergin & Garvey.

 

V. 1, No. 3. Winter, 1992 (The winter referred to here is 1991-1992)

This issue’s dumbass quote:

With patients over the age of 30, great care must be taken (italics) not to alter nasal contours or size too greatly (close italics), as the older patient may experience a sense of “loss of identity” with associated postoperative crisis.

Milton T. Edgerton. (1974). The surgical treatment of male transsexuals. Clinics in Plastic Surgery, 1(2), 285-323.

(—As if getting it cut off wouldn’t do it–  Ed.)

 

This issue’s politically incorrect quote:

In order for these (guidelines for sex reassignment surgery) to be effective one would have to ensure that sex reassignment surgery was done only by skilled surgeons in highly selected university-based clinics that could provide follow-up. Essentially, this would mean limiting all sex reassignment surgery to a select number of hospitals in the United States. While this raises certain ethical issues, it is clear that current abuse comes from the widespread availability of sex reassignment surgery and not the other way around.

Leslie Lothstein (1982).  Sex reassignment surgery:  Historical, bioethical, and theoretical issues.  American Journal of Psychiatry, 139(4), 417-426.

 

V. 1, No. 4. Winter, 1992

How have we in the medical profession responded to Hamburger’s legitimate plea? Empathically, with compassion and understanding? Hardly. Instead, we have driven these individuals into the hands of unscrupulous men because we hate them and have treated them accordingly, with contempt and disdain.

Baker, H.J. (Lt.). (1969). Transsexualism: Problems in Treatment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 25(10), 118- 124.

 

A peculiar wet feeling was gathering around my legs. I pressed the button again and again to scream for help. Thinking about detaching myself from the bed, I propped myself up on one arm, but then fainted and fell back. When I woke up, some ten or fifteen minutes later, the blood had made its way down the side of the bed to the floor I was weaker, now, and the pain didn’t matter I was bleeding to death… Bending my head, I looked once more at the side of the bed, half-covered with my life’s liquid. I couldn’t help thinking now how ironic it was that I had worked and saved all this time to pay for my own death. I would be my own executioner,

Conn, Canary, (1974). Canary. Los Angeles, CA: Nash Publishing Co., pp, 314-315.

 V. 1, No. 5 1993

Thirty-five Years of Sensitivity in Psychiatric Thinking

Those patients seen by me who wanted to change their genital status were all borderline psychotics who wanted other parts of their bodies altered. They wanted plastic surgery for their faces and noses and entertained other self-destructive fantasies… Do we have to collaborate with the sexual delusions of our patients?Are we not rendering them a sad disservice?

Meerloo, J.A.M. (1967). Change of sex and collaboration with the psychosis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 123(2), 167-168.

 

(The) interrelationship of cultural antinomianism and a psychiatric misplaced emphasis is seen at its grimmest in the practice known as sex reassignment surgery. I happen to know about this because Johns Hopkins was one of the places in the United States where this practice was given its start. It was part of my intention, when I arrived in Baltimore in 1975, to help end it… Moral matters should have some salience here. These include the waste of human resources; the confusions imposed on society where these men/women insist on acceptance…; the encouragement of the illusion of technique,” which assumes that the body is like a suit of clothes to be hemmed and stitched to style; and, finally, the ghastliness of the mutilated anatomy… As physicians, psychiatrists, when they give in to this, abandon the role of protecting patients from their symptoms and become little more than technicians working on behalf of a cultural force.

—McHugh, P.R. (1992), Psychiatric misadventures. American Scholar, 61,497-510.

 

V. 1, No. 6, Fall, 1993

Garfinkel (1967) makes a distinction between the possession of a penis or a vagina as a biological event and the possession of either genital as a cultural event. The cultural genital is the one which is assumed to exist and which, it is believed, should be there. As evidence of “natural sexuality,” the cultural genital is a legitimate possession. Even if the genital is not present in a physical sense, it exists in a cultural sense if the person feels entitled to it and/or is assumed to have it.

Kessler, Suzanne J., & McKenna, Wendy. (1978). Gender: An ethnomethodological Approach. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 153-154.

 

5.1 Prior to the initiation of hormonal sex reassignment:

5.1.2 The patient must demonstrate that the sense of discomfort with the self and the urge to rid the self of the genitalia and the wish to live in the genetically other sex role have existed for at least two years. (emphasis ours)

Walker, Paul, et al. (1990). Standards of Care: The Hormonal and Surgical Sex Reassignment of Gender Dysphoric Persons. Houston, Texas: Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Inc.

 

We believe that the forthcoming version of the Standards of Care should acknowledge “cultural genitals,” thereby removing one of the many external forces which move some transgendered persons toward surgery they neither want nor need. One should not be required to want surgical sex reassignment in order to receive hormonal sex reassignment—Ed.