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Harry Benjamin Syndrome
is a neurobiological condition
Copyright @ 2007-2011, Queensland University
of Technology Law and Justice & Karen Gurney
"
For
us in Australia, acceptance by both state and federal courts
that transsexualism is a medical condition with a biological
basis
has given us a range of common law rights that our brothers and
sisters in other parts of the world can
only dream about."
- Karen
Gurney. Faculty of Business and Law,
Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria.
A scientific report
(Zhou, Swaab, Gooren & Hoffman, published in “Nature” in the year 1995) demonstrated that in one of the human brain structures that is different between men and women, a totally
female pattern was encountered in six male to female transsexual [*] people. This was not due to cross-sex hormone treatment. These findings show that a biological structure in the brain distinguishes male to female transsexuals from men.
If
brain sex is one of the most significant determinants of gender, then the distinction between intersex and transsexual persons
becomes meaningless... This is because an intersex person appears to be defined as someone with at least one sexual incongruity.
If brain sex can give rise to such an incongruity then, legally... there may be no difference between an intersex person and a transsexual person.
An expanded group of like researchers in Europe also reported in 2000 that:
Regardless
of sexual orientation, men had almost twice as many somatostatin neurons as women. The number of neurons in male-to-female
transsexuals was similar to that of the females.
In contrast, the neuron number of female-to-male transsexuals was
found to be in the male range. The present findings of somatostatin neuronal sex differences in the BSTc (a part of the brain)
and its sex reversal in the transsexual brain clearly support the paradigm that in patients
born with transsexualism, sexual differentiation of the brain and genitals go into opposite directions and point to a
neurobiological basis of Transsexualism (Harry Benjamin Syndrome).
The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), the peak group representing medical and
legal specialists in transsexualism worldwide, in a recent amicus curiae brief submitted to the United States (US) District
Court in West Virginia, explained that:
Transsexualism is
a disorder of sexual differentiation, the process of becoming man or woman, as we conventionally understand
it. Like other people afflicted with errors in the process of sexual differentiation, people with intersex conditions, transsexual
people need to be medically rehabilitated so that they can live normalized lives as men or women.
In fact, transsexualism has long been described as another
form of intersex condition, one in which the sex of the reproductive organs is opposite the sex of the brain.
The early evidence was based purely on informed observations and could either be accepted or dismissed according
to the bias of the receiver but, especially in the last decade, the extent of biological investigations into the brain
has shown that, just as the gonads, the genitals and the chromosomes differentiate as to sex, so does the brain commencing
in the first few weeks of gestation. This has led to the inescapable conclusion that an individual’s sense of their sex is fundamentally determined by their
neurological morphology.
Sex reassignment of transsexuals is a
medical intervention on a sliding scale. It is not essentially different from procedures in other
sex errors of the body. The same interventions including genital surgery are done in other cases of sex errors of the body.
There can be no psycho-medical ground not to treat these people respectfully; we must provide them with reassignment treatment
which meets their needs. In the cases of intersex, and this is particularly true of transsexualism, medical treatment does
not bring resurrection from one's ashes; it is not a cure. It is not a completely new start; it is a rehabilitation process.
Note that transsexualism (ICD-10)
and transgender are not the same. Transsexualism is about correction of the phenotypic sex to accord with
the sex of the brain and a person who has undergone sex affirmation treatment is simply a member of their affirmed sex. Transgenders,
on the other hand, are people who have a psychological identification with, and live intermittently or permanently as members
of the opposite sex, but do not actually take steps to correct their sexual morphology.
Regarding transsexualism, we must create the conditions for successful rehabilitation to the male or female
sex as much in cases of transsexualism as in other cases of intersex subject.
The legal
status of a person following Sex Affirmation
Surgery is now established for most purposes by statute in all the States and internal
Territories of Australia.
The paper encourages a less judgmental view
of transsexualism than has commonly been the case. It does this by making it clear that the
condition is biologically based and that while most of us are formed wholly male or wholly female, a few of us are
not. It introduces readers to some of the significant research results from which the current aetiology is drawn,
and through which the law has increasingly been informed.
Source:
Queensland University of Technology Law and Justice Journal 198
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/QUTLJJ/2007/13.html
[*] The term "transsexual" as is used in this article refers to True Transsexual patients only (Type VI of the Diagnosis Table of Doctor Harry Benjamin) and not to the generalized meaning of the term claimed by the sexual minority group of transgender (gender variant) people.
Both definitions, "transsexual" and "transsexualism" becomes obsolete terms given current scientific knowledge about the aetiology
of this physical disorder, an intersex syndrome neurobiologically based. Thus, persons born with this syndrome are intersex,
being their inborn medical condition Harry Benjamin Syndrome. More information about terminologies. Harry Benjamin Syndrome explained.
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