Thanks for the reply Ibby. I'd like to start by saying I'm not hostile toward you, Pam, or any other trans* people. I also wish to state that I don't know many, though I have had a few casual interactions with a few, probably under a dozen. Lastly, I'm not familiar at all with androgen insensitivity syndrome beyond what you've described here.
So that's a good point to start with.
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Originally Posted by Ibby
Let's take, then, the case of someone with androgen insensitivity syndrome, who is XY but does not produce/react to androgens like Testosterone. They would not, then, have a penis, but would not develop secondary female sexual characteristics. Would this person's vagina be a deformity, or not, in your mind? it is a part of the body that should not normally have developed the way it did.
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From what I can glean from your description here "secondary female sexual characteristics" would mean enlarged breasts, minimal facial hair, relatively wider hips, perhaps some other less dramatically different physical characteristics. When you say "would not develop" some or all or more of the traits above and then ask me if that person's vagina would represent a "physical deformity", my answer is no. There are many people who have a vagina that do not have enlarged breasts, or the other secondary sexual characteristics (adults, of course, not children). Of those people, I would not consider the presence of a vagina in the absence of the other secondary characteristics a physical deformity.
Your last sentence "It is a part of the body that should not normally have developed the way it did." is subjective and presumes a baseline of "normal" that appears to weigh the absence of secondary sexual characteristics more heavily than the presence of "primary" (my term) sexual characteristics, in this case a vagina. I'm not quarreling with *your* interpretation of such a situation, I'm just saying you seem to be emphasizing the secondary and minimizing the primary. That seems backwards.
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Originally Posted by Ibby
Pam's point is that, in trans* people, the fact that their body did not develop the way it should have (or, if you want to reverse it, their brain/mind/identity did not develop the way the body did, or whatever) means that, while it would be normal for their bodies to have developed that way IF they were a man, they aren't (or vice-versa for trans* men), and so it's an abnormal development of the body.
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This point depends entirely on what your definition of "should* is. "My body developed the way it should have." "My body did not develop the way it should have." What is the frame of reference for what "should be" is? I don't have an answer.
Your thought experiment to reverse it is interesting, and when it's reversed, to my mind, it puts the "should be" reference point in the body, and the brain/mind/identity as the aspect of the person that "did not develop as it should have". It is a small step from there to make the conclusion that the judge did in the story discussed earlier to view such a situation as a "mental illness" or "mental deformity" if you'll permit me to meld your term with the judge's.
The term "physical deformity" isn't subject to a person's brain/mind/identity. If you look at two pictures of a child's mouth and one of them shows a cleft palette it is clear which is the physical deformity. If you looked at a thousand or a million such pictures, there would be no question as to which were physically deformed and which were normal. (Yes, there might be some cases that were.... somewhere in between, oooh... is that just a really high cupid's bow or is it actually cleft. sure. But that is not the suggestion Pam, nor you are making "My penis is vanishingly small and that deformity defines my trans*-ness.) Now imagine looking at two pictures of two different penises. How can you tell which is a "physical deformity"? How can you determine from those two pictures which one belongs to the trans* person? I don't think you can, I'm sure I can't.
Such a statement is an improper use of the term "physical deformity". That's my point.