Intersex

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Intersex baby/child programme

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0139jv4/Me_My_Sex_and_I/

Edited to add the link I meant to put in first time round! Mea culpa.

Comments

Umm.... ?

Did you mean to post a link or something? Otherwise, your post is rather cryptic.

Or forboding...

Maybe it's the announcement of a program to create more intersex babies?

Video Unavailable Outside UK

Thanks for posting the link. It makes much more sense now. One little problem, though:

"Currently BBC iPlayer TV programmes are available to play in the UK only."

I think I saw instructions once on how to spoof a location by using proxies and anonymizers, but it looked complicated, and incomplete, and I not only never tried it, but I didn't even bother saving it. Has anyone conquered this bit of geekiness? If so, please slip me a clue (i.e. complete, detailed instructions!) in a plain, brown envelope. Or pink. Or white. Or decorated with hearts and flowers. Or in an old coffee can.

I'd love to be able to watch BBC video online.

___________________
If a picture is worth 1000 words, this is at least part of my story.

depends on your browser EXACTLY how to do it...

But try to find your browsers proxy settings, in Firefox, this is Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network -> click the Settings button under the Connection heading.

Paste the following IP address into the HTTP Proxy entry area: 46.23.70.180
and this into the port number next to it: 3128

Click the link to the UK-only site.

I've been banned from various internet communities on multiple occasions and they never can keep rid of me. ;P

Abigail Drew.

Abigail Drew.

Oh and...

Do be sure to remember to turn it off after you are done viewing the site... Free/Public Anon proxies tend to dislike when you overuse them and you might find yourself banned from the very tool you're using to avoid a ban.

I've managed to find myself in that boat a few times, but I'm usually pretty quick about finding a new one...

Abigail Drew.

Abigail Drew.

Thank You!

Thank you so much! It worked perfectly for me. I used Internet Explorer 8 and went to Tools/Internet Options/Connections and plugged it into the LAN Settings part. (And, I turned it off when the program finished playing.)

Is there some website that lists these open proxy servers?

there are several.

But I find it's easiest just to do a google search, which will turn up several lists, which you can then go through to find a decent proxy. Remember, you want full anonymous proxies in order to view most of today's region-limited sites. Transparent will get you absolutely no where with anyone. There's another option that I can't remember the name most often used to identify it, but what it essentially does is change the sender id to the proxies address, but leaves your address attached as well. Region-limited sites can pick up that attached address and still block you, and most do. Those proxies usually work OK for direct community bans specific to your IP address, but many are beginning to block this as well.

In short, if you want to avoid any kind of ban, whether region or otherwise, a full anonymous proxy is the best, and only guaranteed, way to go.

Have fun,

Abigail Drew.

Abigail Drew.

Great Program!

What a great program! It covered the subject in great detail, both medically/scientifically and socially. It's a pity a show like this will never get major network airing in the U.S.

___________________
Television like this can change public perceptions.

Intersex

Cant see program.

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine
    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

Stan,

If you will look above, I posted some instruction on how to watch it using Firefox, if you wish for instruction on doing so with another browser, I would be glad to provide instructions if you should only tell me which browser.

It really is an excellent documentary, well worth the effort of going through an anonymous proxy.

Abigail Drew.

Abigail Drew.

British documentaries

Angharad's picture

are probably the best in the world, especially BBC ones. Unfortunately, like everything else these days they are being dumbed down, treating the viewer like a child. The ones that come from the US tend to precis everything about fourteen times during the programme, which means you learn one thing if you're lucky. I presume it's done to facilitate adverts, but it gives the impression that the average 'Merican's attention span is less than that of a randy gnat.

Angharad

Angharad

well...

At least for the male half, I think that's probably true. (the randy gnat)

Seriously though, American television is designed around people with lower attention spans. Those of us who have a decent one tend to actually, you know, read.

Abigail Drew.

Abigail Drew.

Thank you for this

Like Chinese water torture, WE WILL gradually erode the bigotry, hatred and bias that is the binary stereotype.

Education will play an enormous part in this; it only took 55 years for me to be aware that my body was poisoning itself, and that organised religion (not God) perpetuates the myth that gender, gonadal sex and sexuality should conform to a set of rules made up to ensure procreation.

S.

Some actually see us as

Angharad's picture

being locked in the stereotype and the motivation for changing over. They suggest if we weren't, then why bother when you could be truly different by remaining yourself.

If I have reinforced the stereotype, I make no apologies, I'm contented with myself.

Angharad

Angharad

Perhaps we are, in a way...

But I think a large part of being ourselves is the need to change over. Even when I was still fairly safely ensconced in my Andrew fortress, the fortress hated his hairiness and had a quite real need to do whatever it took to keep it controlled, for just one example. I was actually looking at electrolysis as an option even before I came out to myself. Main reason my first idea was an at-home solution, how would I have explained why I wanted all my hair gone by such an expensive procedure when I didn't feel I should be a woman?

I also can't ever imagine being happy if there's not even an iota of a chance I might eventually be able to experience sex as a woman, now that I'm out. I'd only actually do so if I was married first, and then, only to who I was married to. Being a woman when I was born a man doesn't change my core belief in chastity. And even if that never occurs, just the chance that it could would be enough for me. And, though sex as a woman is important to me, love is more important.

Staying physically male isn't really an option. Not for me. Maybe for some, but not for me.

Just as physical sex is a wide net of possible things, emotional/mental gender is, I think, also a wide net of things. Some of us are so far emotionally and mentally female that to do other than transition wouldn't be possible.

We aren't so much enforcing the stereotype as proving it wrong in the most severe of ways: 100% physical sex of one, 100% emotional/mental gender of the other. We're merely trying to get our physical sex to more closely approximate our emotional and mental gender.

Abigail Drew.

Abigail Drew.

Interesting

I have a similar set of thoughts/concepts/worldview. I have always known what I am, and the fact that I grew beefy and hairy was not exactly a source of comfort. I went through the classic 'try to be a real man' sham, but sham is what it was. There's an internal dialogue, a bit like a pantomime tradition. Oh yes you are, oh no you aren't. There is also a school of feminism that treats transwomen as reinforcing the patriarchy, by seeing femininity as a tick-box essay in appearance. Earrings? Tick. Heels? Tick. Long hair? Tick. Many stories in our little world match that framework, and I can see their point, but they miss the essential aspect: I have never fitted my body, end of.
That is a pretty fundamental mismatch, and there are things I always needed to do. So let me fit my shell more firmly to my soul, and then we can discuss politics and other big issues. Once I am sitting comfortably, I can begin.

Tick-box essay in appearance?

I don't see it that way. Just having appropriate curves, losing the body hair and beard, and ditching junior and the twin brothers for something more appropriate are all I really care about. Fairly sure I won't suddenly become some sort of fashionista. Then again, maybe I will. I'm told that when I was extremely young I was a total ham, and then one day that suddenly changed completely and I became completely introverted to such a degree that almost no one could break through my defensive shell.

I now believe that defensive shell was like a moat, or something, around the fortress I'd locked myself into. If no one could cross the moat to get to the fortress, there was no risk of the fortress walls being breached, and I could continue to be Andrew without having to worry about who I was, inside.

If I do suddenly find at some point during transition that my hunger for attention returns and leads me to dress extremely fashionably, what of it? Just because that's what I choose to do doesn't mean that all women need to choose it. I also highly doubt that in the real world very many of us really treat it that way either.

Stories are another thing entirely, in fact, I find I tend not to last very far into the ones that seem to act like tick-boxes of fashion. However, those sorts of stories probably act as a form of wish-fulfillment for some.

As for the sham... It was more than just a sham for me, I'd built it up so strong that even I was convinced it was reality, the only things for the longest time, to say otherwise were the constant cyclic depressions and the deep introversion. Of course, I just convinced myself those were also just part of being me. Making it through the depressions and exploring their causes is what finally allowed me to break my own fortress down from within.

Exactly what allowed me to fight off the depression to finally get free, I don't know. While I thought it was the mild opiate in the Chasteberry, I'm not so sure anymore, it's really not helping me right now with the lead-up to Sunday night, and I'm taking a lot more of it. Perhaps it was just time. Perhaps there was some cosmic intervention. I do know it's not coincidence, since such doesn't exist.

Abigail Drew.

Abigail Drew.

Joy!!!

your reply is everything I could ever hope for, in its celebration of difference. So much I csn't snswer, though. mot at three AM....LATERS!