Man In the Mirror

[KarateCowboy]

The testimonial of Sinclair "Sy" Rogers.

http://www.stonewallrevisited.com/pages/sy_r.html

Sy Rogers is an acclaimed musician and public speaker (www.syrogers.com) who has a lot going for him, but that was not always so. As a young boy he was molested. His mother was soon killed in a car accident, and he was separated from his father.

He lived for several years as a homosexual and even sought gender change surgery, but all the while saw through the facade of gaiety in the crowd at the broken individuals searching for love --the hollowed out remains of spirits fully engrossed in sin. He also realized a hard truth: gender reassignment could only change the package, not the contents.

After years of anguish he remembered the Sunday school teachings of his youth and turned to God. He sought out a relationship with Him, and by actively and ardently practicing His principles was able to find healing in his life. He resisted tempation and realized he was in for long journey, not a short skip and hop.

Today he is a happy father and heterosexual who speaks about sexuality and is also a musician, and when he looks in the mirror he sees a man, and that man is him.

What can we learn from his struggle and victory?

What elements were key to his success?

What were the differences in his feelings and self identity when he embraced a Godly, natural lifestyle as opposed to a sinful, dead one?

 

[KarateCowboy]

staff edited quote removed

As a Christian it is my duty to stand for righteousness, and sexual morality is as pertinent today as ever. We can learn a lot from these stories --things that have never been said before in the past. Sexual sins are some of the most powerful, and much can be learned from the stories of those who were crushed by their own sins, only to find healing in the end. Surely if you keep an open mind you can understand.

 

[Mling]

Childhood trauma is not a good or right basis for SRS. It is a medical treatment for a specific disorder. This is why we have the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care-had he tried to go ahead with it, he most likely would have been refused, or figured out himself that he was not truly transsexual.

 

[Caylin]

Childhood trauma is not a good or right basis for SRS. It is a medical treatment for a specific disorder. This is why we have the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care-had he tried to go ahead with it, he most likely would have been refused, or figured out himself that he was not truly transsexual.

Exactly.

 

[Mling]

Nobody is "condemning" him, or claiming his experience needs to exactly mirror anything. If I claim that eating plums makes my nose grow 3 feet long, you would know I was lying. Plums, plain and simple, cannot do that to a person. Likewise, when a person claims that hormone therapy gave them certain mannerisms, anybody who knows anything about hormone therapy knows that he is lying. HT, plain and simple, does not do that.

 

[Mling]

So are you saying, that if you didn't think it was a sin, you could learn to be gay? I don't think I could, I like women, and it's really that simple.

Yeah, my sister doesn't think it's wrong, and I think she actually does want to be gay. But she likes men. And she finds it really frustrating, but there it is--she's straight.

 

[Caylin]

staff edited quote removed


everything that talks about transition goes out of its way to state, "Hormones do not change your voice. You have to do that yourself." There is not a single reported person in the world that has had MtF hrt change their voice.

 

[Caylin]

Oh I'm happy he realized it wasn't for him, it just seems that there are a few holes. The surgeries for voices didn't exsist in the 70's and they are hit or miss even today. The techniques to change your voice don't exactly get rid of the lower range and it is not that hard to go back to it.

 

[Mary_Magdalene]

*********mod hat on**************

I just cleaned this thread. A few Words for all tonight...which I am sure all have you have read before:


Mark 12:28-34

28 One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, "What commandment is the foremost of all?" 29 Jesus answered, "The foremost is, `HEAR , O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; 30 AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.' 31 "The second is this, YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 it does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.


If you have posted in this thread and your post is gone, I have had to remove it as it violated CF rules on flaming and/or baiting.

Please treat others as you would want to be treated.

***********mod hat off************

 

[KarateCowboy]

I don't see how any one can cut themselves up and believe to be another gender, when every cell in their body disagrees.

On a side note, I've noticed that some people who replied to other threads of this nature have started to ignore the newer ones. I guess that they don't like to see things that might conflict with what they want to believe, so they just ignore it rather than opening their minds and grappling with the issue. So I think it's commendable that you guys are willing to at least discuss this man's story, whether you like what he has to say or not.

 

[Mling]

1:

I don't see how any one can cut themselves up

2:

and believe to be another gender,

3:

when every cell in their body disagrees

Ok, I'm saying this in a fairly, non-angry tone. Anybody who's familiar with my posts knows that I despise the lack of body language and intonation available over the internet, so I sometimes just use these little disclaimers.

Aaaanyway. That much is clear--you do not understand much about this. That's not a slam; nobody knows everything, so everybody is ignorant of something. My weak spots are in the fields of business, economy, stuff like that. This seems to be one of your weak spots.

That is perfectly understandable. TS is just about impossible to understand for somebody who has not personally experienced it. I have had a slight, slight taste of it, from phases I've gone through where I was uncomfortable being female, so I can sort of...take my experiences and extrapolate to get a hint.

All I an really say is, among my TS friends, most of them grew up in decent families (at, least, until they came out as TS, at which point several were disowned), and many understood that they were not really their assigned gender very early in their life. I'm talking, 3 or 4, or even earlier. Earlier than that, of course, they don't have a full understanding of what it means to be "male" or "female," but, even though they have role models of both sexes around, they'll pick up mannerisms traditionally associated with the other sex. One of my friends had to go to speach therapy in kindergarten to "correct" her feminine speach patterns, for example.

Why it happens is complicated and not fully understood, though some disection of people's brains suggests that their physical brains have traits that are generally associated with the sex the person insists they are. Certain parts of the brain have different sizes/configurations in the different sexes, and TS brains tend to show signs of being the sex the person believed him/herself to be. Some experiments with rats strongly suggests that a) exposure to certain hormones during gestation can influence the "masculinity" or "femininity" of the brain and b) that extreme stress during gestation can cause these hormone fluxes. Whether it is the mother or the fetus that needs to experience the stress is not clear, or it could be both, or either.

Backtracking to the first part of the statement--cutting. For the most part, cutting seems to be a way of focusing and channling emotional pain. With the specific friend I was talking about (the post was deleted, for anybody who didn't read it), there was some of that, but, she went a lot further than that. She was expressing violent hatred for her own body (hence, "FREAK" carved in her leg.)

As for "every cell disagree[ing]"--as I mentioned before, the brain syanpses don't seem to disagree at all. Heck, one woman I know has XX chromosomes, also, and has a female ID, and a 100% male body. Her body is actually the odd one out.

 

[wanderingone]

staff edited quote removed

Maybe it's better to ignore them than bother arguing over and over the points that have already been said.

For someone who was sexually abused to have issues with their sexuality is not exciting new information.

The stories you have posted have reflected a significant lack of anything other than the anecdotal evidence of people who don't understand gender and sexuality.

To truly analyze their stories one would need a neutral medical/psychological analysis of the situations.

I've no doubt there are a lot of people in turmoil about their sexual identities, and that a lot of that turmoil is probably caused by misinformation about what it means to be "male" or "female" and what it means to be "gay" or "straight"

I'm sure if someone provided stories of people who thought they were heterosexuals and through therapy found a way to live happily as homosexuals you might claim those people had been brainwashed, trained to be gay or led into temptation by those seek to deceive.

 

[KarateCowboy]

Ok, I'm saying this in a fairly, non-angry tone. Anybody who's familiar with my posts knows that I despise the lack of body language and intonation available over the internet, so I sometimes just use these little disclaimers.

What is there to be angry about?

Aaaanyway. That much is clear--you do not understand much about this. That's not a slam; nobody knows everything, so everybody is ignorant of something. My weak spots are in the fields of business, economy, stuff like that. This seems to be one of your weak spots.

Um, actually, I studied to become a doctor for several years, so I know a little about it.

All I an really say is, among my TS friends, most of them grew up in decent families (at, least, until they came out as TS, at which point several were disowned), and many understood that they were not really their assigned gender very early in their life. I'm talking, 3 or 4, or even earlier. Earlier than that, of course, they don't have a full understanding of what it means to be "male" or "female," but, even though they have role models of both sexes around, they'll pick up mannerisms traditionally associated with the other sex. One of my friends had to go to speach therapy in kindergarten to "correct" her feminine speach patterns, for example.
Why it happens is complicated and not fully understood, though some disection of people's brains suggests that their physical brains have traits that are generally associated with the sex the person insists they are. Certain parts of the brain have different sizes/configurations in the different sexes, and TS brains tend to show signs of being the sex the person believed him/herself to be. Some experiments with rats strongly suggests that a) exposure to certain hormones during gestation can influence the "masculinity" or "femininity" of the brain and b) that extreme stress during gestation can cause these hormone fluxes. Whether it is the mother or the fetus that needs to experience the stress is not clear, or it could be both, or either.

http://www.webmd.com/content/article/60/67145.htm

On the subject of what causes it, you forgot "defects in normal human bonding and child rearing". Surely you can agree on that as part of the cause. Especially given the testimony in the OP.

Backtracking to the first part of the statement--cutting. For the most part, cutting seems to be a way of focusing and channling emotional pain. With the specific friend I was talking about (the post was deleted, for anybody who didn't read it), there was some of that, but, she went a lot further than that. She was expressing violent hatred for her own body (hence, "FREAK" carved in her leg.)

I was referring to 'gender reassignment' surgery. But as for your friend, it sounds like she has deeper issues to take care of.

As for "every cell disagree[ing]"--as I mentioned before, the brain syanpses don't seem to disagree at all. Heck, one woman I know has XX chromosomes, also, and has a female ID, and a 100% male body. Her body is actually the odd one out.

A 100% male body? That's a very ambiguous statement.

I'm sure if someone provided stories of people who thought they were heterosexuals and through therapy found a way to live happily as homosexuals you might claim those people had been brainwashed, trained to be gay or led into temptation by those seek to deceive.

So you agree that sexuality is fluid?

 

[TeddyKGB]

I don't see how any one can cut themselves up and believe to be another gender, when every cell in their body disagrees.

Maybe because cells don't singularly determine sexuality?

 

[KarateCowboy]

Maybe because cells don't singularly determine sexuality?

In a roundabout way they do, but I see your point, which is related to something I believe:

having long hair and cutting off your dingy doesn't make you a girl any more than my wearing a costume on halloween makes me Spiderman. If you're born a guy but feel like a girl, you know how the song goes: "If you wanna be somebody else change your mind."

 

[SimplyMe]

In a roundabout way they do, but I see your point, which is related to something I believe:

having long hair and cutting off your dingy doesn't make you a girl any more than my wearing a costume on halloween makes me Spiderman. If you're born a guy but feel like a girl, you know how the song goes: "If you wanna be somebody else change your mind."

This sounds like the same advice we should give to those with obsessive-compulsive disorder, bi-polar disorder, or even brain cancer. After all, those only exist in the mind as well. Shouldn't "all the cells in their body" be able to correct these problems of the mind? Shouldn't they just be able to "change their mind"?

And before you say that brain cancer is different because it has a physical cause, even if all that cause is in the brain; a study of transsexuals shows that their brains conform to a female pattern instead of a male. So, both brain cancer and transsexuality have physical manifestations in the brain.

As for what makes one male or female, I find it an interesting question. It becomes even more interesting when taken in the context of David Reimer, who after a botched circumcision was raised female, and others like him. If it's the physical parts that make one male or female, what about children born without functional testicals or ovaries, or children born with external male characteristics but internal female. And what sex are intersexuals?

 

[wanderingone]

So you agree that sexuality is fluid?

I believe there's a spectrum of human sexuality. So I'm sure for some people sexuality is fluid if by fluid we mean some people can get sexual pleasure regardless of the gender of their partner. I don't believe people with predominant hetero/homo sexual orientation can "choose" to be the reverse of what they are without experiencing significant difficulties when they actually try to commit to emotionally mature long term/permanent relationships.

 

[quatona]

Today he is a happy father and heterosexual who speaks about sexuality and is also a musician, and when he looks in the mirror he sees a man, and that man is him.

What can we learn from his struggle and victory?

That we should avoid doing like he did, because else people will talk in this cheesy, pathetic style about us and misuse us for their creepy propaganda.

"When he looks in the mirror he sees a man, and that man is him."

"A heterosexual who speaks about sexuality and is also a musician..."

 

[selfinflikted]

Karate,

You should do a little more digging into the ministries of Sy Rogers. His whole organization is wrought with scandal. If I'm not mistaken (I'll have to check my sources again) Sy himself was arrested on sexual molestation charges for having a sexual reltaionship with some of the men he was "helping". Sy is a fraud, a liar, and a cheat. This type of ministry only further proves my own point of view that one can't really change their sexual orientation.

 

[KarateCowboy]

You know, the person who recommended this testimony is actually intersexed. I won't name any names.