Dear Cossomby,

So you're a writer?

I should have guessed.

How lucky are we to have you posting on OLO.

Have you every considered doing an article for
OLO?

Foxy, I write non-fiction and educational material, contract reports, these days mostly heritage/historic, though my background is in science. I've also done some editing.

Many years ago I was asked to produce two versions of a report: one technical, the other Plain English. Stuff that, I thought, writing two reports for one fee! I'll write just one, in a way that anyone can understand. I've done that ever since, no matter how complex the subject, and I've had some nice feedback from this approach, for example, when a client said 'Love your report! I've been reading it bed at night!' That is quite a compliment, given that most such contract reports just get quietly shelved.

As for writing something for OLO, I don't think so. You have to have opinions set in concrete to do that.

Cossomby:

I am well aware of what a myth is but a 60 minutes story is not a myth. It is a factual report about the experiences of real people hear and now.

Castration was hardly a choice to change gender and quite often was forced upon victims. It was a very violent act.

“human sexuality and its variants has been a long-standing obsession of humans (for fairly obvious reasons)”

An obsession is not a good approach to anything much less to human sexuality. Why would anyone be interested in the sexual actions of those people in the program unless they had some voyeuristic tendencies? Sex is something you do not something you watch. Everyone knows what sexual feelings are as much as they know what fear or anger is. You do not need others to tell you what you already know nor how you should go about satisfying those feelings. People understood sex long before 60 minutes came along.

A show like that appeals to those who are not sure about their own sexual feelings and what to do with them. They are looking for affirmation about their own attitudes. They do not trust their own feelings and instincts and so they seek reassurance from other sources. If they have uncertainties then there are many more appropriate places to go to than to tabloid journalists.

There is nothing unique in the feelings that these transgender people have. They have the same sexual feelings as the rest of us. How they deal with those feelings may be different but why would anyone be interested in that? Who cares how others deal with their sexual feelings? The only ones that should be relevant to you are your own.

Dear phanto,

I can only speak for myself as to why I watched
this particular 60 Minutes program. I know little
about transgender people (adults and children) and
wanted to broaden my knowledge on the topic. As it
turned out - I still don't quite understand the
causes and the extreme actions taken, especially of
the parent who had both breasts removed in order not
to remain a woman and yet did not want to go through
with surgical procedures any where else. This I did
not understand - because now they were neither one nor
the other.

Phanto. I'm going to disagree with you one last time. History is against you. By obsession, I mean perpetual fascination, by all humans in all societies over a very long time. Sex, sexuality is the basis of all human relations, and so people are and always have been obsessed/fascinated/curious about it, whether it's portrayed through stories of the gods and goddesses, or Hamlet, or real-life TV news and current affairs. It doesn't make any difference whether it's fictional or real, humans are fascinated. We want to know what makes people tick, and we like to hear about what other people do to see if we're normal (even if we don't do such things, even that may make us feel 'normal'). OK. I accept that you personally don't feel this way, and clearly don't understand why others do, but given the data from millennia of human culture right up to an including 60 Minutes, you are in a minority.
Let's leave it at that, or else I might be tempted to turn this topic into an anthropologic, literary and media distance ed course!

Foxy:

Why did you want to broaden your knowledge on this particular topic? Are you contemplating a sex change?

People might be interested if they were considering it but as I said your first point of call would be someone of authority on the subject. We might be interested in a heart transplant operation but that is because we all have hearts. Only a very small percentage would be interested in trans gender surgery since it does not apply to us.

Having an interest in someone else's genitals is the stuff of voyeurism unless you are going to come into contact with those genitals. There is simply nothing to be gained from 'broadening' your knowledge in this regard. There is way too many other things which are reasonable to spend time on.