Transexuality:Telling it from inside the weird place.

[Chessie]

Okay, Chaz started at least a semi-silly but altogether interesting thread. Apparently some people have got some questions about why exactly transsexuals are the way we are.

Lemme tell you, it's some confusing shit and I would not wish it on my worst enemy. The attempted suicide rate for transexuals is about 50% trying at least once. The rate of mental illness and coinciding addiction is through the roof.

Weirdly enough, trans-sexuality is not a mental disorder in the way schizophrenia or BPD are mental disorders. I am a stable transsexual. My mind is not being steadily ripped apart by the tides of my particular problem. That doesn't mean I haven't had to make some coping mechanisms for it in roughly the same way a person missing a foot has to make coping mechanisms but I don't require medication or counseling.

Transsexuality is defined as a persistent disassociation from one's born gender modality.

The closest sensation most people will feel in their lives is the sensation of passing by a mirror and recognizing some aspect of their face or body that doesn't entirely match with their memory of themselves. If you take that feeling and multiply it out until it comprises your entire body that is very close.

The first definitions of a person in our culture are pretty heavy and they will weigh on a person if they're incorrect. There are three definitions that come when a person is out of the womb and they are absolutely essential in American society to determining what you 'become' as a person.

You have:
1.Gender.
2.Conformity to physical norms/healthy biology.
3.Parental bonding method.

Those three things are what will define you in your earliest moments and if one of those is fucked up in some way it's going to change your entire life. If all three of those things are neatly in sync with the needs of the child, you will likely have a very healthy, happy baby.

I'm trans, not because I chose to be, but because someone took a look between my legs when I popped out and said "It's a boy. Here's your football helmet, your season tickets to NASCAR, and 'I like boobies and beer' t-shirt."...and they were wrong.

What's between someone's legs only defines whether they have to piss sitting down or standing up, what hormones give them hell during puberty, and how often people in the super-conservative parts of the south glare at them hatefully when they wear skirts in public.

If anything the expectations of other people are where the real issues happen. I don't find that I have problems because of my own body (although this isn't to say I wouldn't change it) but rather because of other people's responses to my body. I am six feet tall, yes. I'm strong. I refused to be weak so I worked out until I am muscular and powerful. Equally, I am feminine.

I shave my legs (because dear god, nothing worse than leg-bushes) and I cry at happy movies. I will go to my girlfriends for comfort before I go to my lover. I read romance novels one day and science fiction the next.

I did decide eventually that I would avoid hormones and the surgeries. I respect and admire the transexuals who go through that but I looked around and eventually, after a while, found that I could wait to see what science delivers me. Who knows? One day a gender-change could be complete, easy, cheap, and done over a weekend like getting a hair-cut.

My room-mate is one who can't wait. Patience isn't in her make-up. Her mind was tormented because her parents did bad things to her about her gender and sexuality. She's happier and far more gregarious nowadays. The external changes became intermal ones for her (whereas I tend to let the external just sort of exist, even when it bothers me an awful lot).

If I were forced, day in and day out, to conform to the male gender I would long since have been dead. If I had to pretend every day, I'd have ended it. The suffering would have become too great. I have a very rebellious streak thankfully and access to the internet and nowadays a support network of people who accept me. I can throw myself into that group and flatly exclude people who refuse to take me as I choose to be.

Transexuals survive well if they are given emotional support. Nearly everyone survives well if they are given emotional support but if you isolate a transexual (and the condition can be VERY isolating) then it leads to suicide or mental sickness. Many trans-people have been invalidated through so much of their lives that NO amount of emotional support will fix the hole inside of them. The surgeries have a purgative effect. It is as though they are being reborn and can give up the violence that pervaded their early lives, cleaning away the feelings of sadness and displacement.

Being trans has been a real trip. A twisted, bizarre trip. I honestly hoped I wasn't trans when I finally began to learn about what a wreck the lives of most transexuals turn into. That was before the internet.

Transexuality is closely associated with the LGB communites mostly because of what it tends to represent. To many men, a transexual male to female is a man. To many women, a transexual male to female is a woman. This means that regardless of their preferred orientation, people still see us as homosexual. We also needed to associate ourselves with a larger community because transexuals are very spread out and there aren't enough of us to ensure our rights without support from a larger group like gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

Anyway, I don't know what you will take away from this. Maybe some understanding. It's a lot to read.

 

[Ria]

Awesome OP *and I am subscribing to this thread.*

[MENTION=2575]Chessie[/MENTION], thanks for sharing your informative thoughts and perspectives. As it's a personal topic of interest to me and my experience with my MtF transgender friend, I found your general take on it, refreshing.

I like how you point out the very real facts regarding how society contributes to the issue of casting shadows of self doubt upon transsexuals regarding their place in the world etc. I think you, like my MtF friend J, have a strong sense of Self, and have had to depend on your coping mechanisms to help you along the way. It sounds as though you have come to a firm place of Self understanding, and that you are comfortable in your own skin. (As a Body Dysmorphic sufferer, I know that is no small feat).

 

[Norton]

Chessie's post is important. And, it's not just because it is informative about transsexuality, something the great majority of people know nothing about, and, indeed, resist knowing about. This post is just one example of information that, added to the current and future mass of accumulated and disseminated information, will slowly but inevitably change minds and attitudes. It's not just the external changes in society, the law, and politics that are, and will continue, to change. It's internal knowledge and acceptance of ourselves that will also result from a broader understanding of the diversity of people. It's easy to be a member of the straight (i.e., non-LGBT) majority. But, as "the unexamined life is not worth living" (Socrates), knowing about ourselves within the greater context of human diversity is something for which all should strive. If there is one thing forced on LGBT people, it is self examination, which they need to do just to survive, figure things out, and be their true selves (without which, happiness is impossible). Most straight people have no such compelling imperatives. So, by learning about the struggles of other people, perhaps more straight people will begin to question themselves, their attitudes, and their place in society. And, they will be more accepting of truth. This kind of learning makes for better people and better citizens.

 

[Ria]

Chessie's post is important. And, it's not just because it is informative about transsexuality, something the great majority of people know nothing about, and, indeed, resist knowing about. This post is just one example of information that, added to the current and future mass of accumulated and disseminated information, will slowly but inevitably change minds and attitudes. It's not just the external changes in society, the law, and politics that are, and will continue, to change. It's internal knowledge and acceptance of ourselves that will also result from a broader understanding of the diversity of people. It's easy to be a member of the straight (i.e., non-LGBT) majority. But, as "the unexamined life is not worth living" (Socrates), knowing about ourselves within the greater context of human diversity is something for which all should strive. If there is one thing forced on LGBT people, it is self examination, which they need to do just to survive, figure things out, and be their true selves (without which, happiness is impossible). Most straight people have no such compelling imperatives. So, by learning about the struggles of other people, perhaps more straight people will begin to question themselves, their attitudes, and their place in society. And, they will be more accepting of truth. This kind of learning makes for better people and better citizens.

Public display of Rep for Norton.

I approve.

 

[uuu]

Chessie is so courageous, and I wish we had more folks like her. I can see why transgenders may be so easily misunderstood.

I'm trans, not because I chose to be, but because someone took a look between my legs when I popped out and said "It's a boy. Here's your football helmet, your season tickets to NASCAR, and 'I like boobies and beer' t-shirt."...and they were wrong.

What's between someone's legs only defines whether they have to piss sitting down or standing up, what hormones give them hell during puberty, and how often people in the super-conservative parts of the south glare at them hatefully when they wear skirts in public.

.....

I shave my legs (because dear god, nothing worse than leg-bushes) and I cry at happy movies. I will go to my girlfriends for comfort before I go to my lover. I read romance novels one day and science fiction the next.

However I think in this post you've used a lot a stereotypes without thinking, which do sometimes aid your point but other time might just make you enemies. I've bolded these, not because I disagree with you, but because I'm trying to help you win. For instance, those in the south who are accepting of trans. people may be offended by the second paragraph, and stop supporting you.

 

[slant]

I don't understand how this is logical. Excuse the hammer of logic coming down, but if people feel that they do not associate with the stereotypes they were born in to, as other posters have said how does it serve to solve the problem if you have a surgery to trick people into thinking you are the opposite sex? Sex is defined by a lot of things, and what is between your legs is not the only factor- for example, intersexed people are hard to define as just male or female and so cold 'this is female' 'this is male' terms don't apply for everyone. That I understand.

But if you are biologically male or female- by DNA- by getting a surgery all you are doing is tricking people. It's not for oneself, even if someone thinks it is because it makes them feel more comfortable. It makes no sense. If the principal is "Gender is stupid, I don't feel like x gender so I'm going to change my physical appearance to better suit how I feel", then you're mainly conforming to societal standards rather than just saying you think gender is stupid and don't support it and if people are going to treat you a certain way because of gender, you think they're stupid too, fuck them.

I have had so many people approach me "Are you trans?" blah blah blah, and I've been mistaken as a man on this forum and other forums before just because of my thoughts and the type of posts I make....when I made one men's right posts someone accused me of making 50% more money than my female co-workers and I LAUGHED so hard.

Know what the confusion is about? People think I'm male. And I know it's possible to have a male brain, female body, brainsex, whatever. But I don't think someone's body is a defining feature and that's exactly why I don't understand why people would get this surgery. If you want to dress female, just dress female, why do you have to go about mutilating yourself in order to fit what society wants from you?

I approve of people doing what they want to do so long as it doesn't hurt others or themselves. I don't view trans as dangerous to self or others so if someone wants to be trans, I support them, and out of my respect for that person I'll even call them the pronouns they want to be called. But that still doesn't change the fact that it's entirely illogical and working BACKWARDS to 'solve' a problem that you're really just causing.

 

[Chessie]

If a person is looking for this condition to be completely logical I'm afraid I can't say it is. In a completely logical world people would operate in an optimal fashion with optimal programming and optimal support towards the optimal good of mankind.

People don't work that way. People are vastly different and the operations of their brains are vastly different. What bothers one person as much as an insect bite will bother another as much as a gushing wound. There is a distinct spectrum where gender identity is concerned and how well a person responds to their own gender sits somewhere on that spectrum.

Slant wears clothes I assume. In our air conditioned, heat exchanged society the reasons for doing so can be a little vague outside of 'it makes other people uncomfortable' if I don't. I don't wear clothes except in public but in public I am required to.

There are threats against my person if I don't. In the bad parts of the south, I would tend to conform more to the male mode because there are dangers if I don't. Trust me. Being labeled a 'faggot' is more dangerous than it sounds in a lot of places.

I use the stereotypes mostly for demonstrative purposes because transexuality is largely about how stereotypes affect us although in a more subtle way. There is a discomfort for me in being called 'he'. Not a big one in that alone, but one that registers in my mind as someone doing something that makes me unhappy.

Having larger stereotypes of male-hood and masculinity applied to me REALLY HURTS. Particularly when these stereotypes don't apply to me, even if they're positive stereo-types in general.

Slant, I assume, has heard the stereo-types about women not being able to drive, or that women are illogical, or that women always need to have masses of clothing. Being a logical person or maybe not a clothing person or possibly a stunt-car driver, hearing that kind of thing isn't nice. It sucks. It's just unpleasant. If it's wrong and you hear it every single day hammered in again and again, over enough time that insect bite becomes a gushing wound.

 

[Emjay]

Norton, I love your post and you said it better than I could. Completely agree with you.

Chessie, thank you. And what you said about gender identity being a spectrum makes total sense.

 

[GaiaGraha]

Thanks so much for sharing.

Slant said pretty much what I was thinking.

Except to act like someone can just NOT conform to society is illogical too. It's nice to say that you can just choose to not fit your gender and not get a surgery, and I personally agree with that (cuttin on yoself aint good!), but I think it is important to point out that conforming is necessary not just for feeling's sake, but for survival. We conform not just so people are nice to us but because we need people in order to survive.

 

[Chessie]

Mmm...It is VERY logical to say that some people are simply incapable of conforming to society.

Honestly, if your society operates by rules which are genuinely psychotic or dangerous or ultimately self destructive then conformity means heading straight down the same self destructive, psychotic paths. To conform in large part to American society is to throw yourself off a cliff. Many people aren't even aware of how they are fighting the systemic insanity.

If a person has no legs, it is very difficult to conform to the societal norm. Certainly a woman in Saudi Arabia has a helluva time conforming. It's either conform or be murdered horribly when someone inflicts nonconformity on you (rapes you, see's you without clothes, see's your ankles...blahdeblahdeblah).

There is no particular joy in conformity and where transsexuals are concerned, conformity may be possible but in the end it means a slow degredation of your psyche in much the same way persons under-cover for law enforcement experience a slow mental collapse. This is well documented (the DSM-IV even lists a condition where a person believes constantly they are pretending to be someone else.) and it is dangerous. People's minds don't operate entirely based on willpower.

If they did, I would have willed this condition away long ago.

 

[slant]

Mmm...It is VERY logical to say that some people are simply incapable of conforming to society.

Honestly, if your society operates by rules which are genuinely psychotic or dangerous or ultimately self destructive then conformity means heading straight down the same self destructive, psychotic paths. To conform in large part to American society is to throw yourself off a cliff. Many people aren't even aware of how they are fighting the systemic insanity.

If a person has no legs, it is very difficult to conform to the societal norm. Certainly a woman in Saudi Arabia has a helluva time conforming. It's either conform or be murdered horribly when someone inflicts nonconformity on you (rapes you, see's you without clothes, see's your ankles...blahdeblahdeblah).

There is no particular joy in conformity and where transsexuals are concerned, conformity may be possible but in the end it means a slow degredation of your psyche in much the same way persons under-cover for law enforcement experience a slow mental collapse. This is well documented (the DSM-IV even lists a condition where a person believes constantly they are pretending to be someone else.) and it is dangerous. People's minds don't operate entirely based on willpower.

If they did, I would have willed this condition away long ago.

I never said for anyone not to be transsexual, and I did recognize in my post that they do it to be more comfortable. But it just raises red flags in me that people who fear their life are conforming so they don't get assaulted which does nothing really to fix the problem. Being a woman it's more acceptable for us to 'cross-dress', but it's not for men, I'm a major men's right activist and I understand the societal pressures for men are much different. If someone wants to identify as trans that's their choice, I support their choice, I just reject the ideology.

 

[Chessie]

I...hmmm...I don't know that transsexuality is an ideology or has much in the way of ideology behind it. Someone has a cold or a hairlip, we don't generally accuse them of having bad ideology for it. Certainly if their personal philosophy includes running about in rain-storms that might contribute but where transexuals are concerned the closest I can compare it with is being born naked into a world with no raincoats or umbrellas and told to walk across Seattle.

 

[Chessie]

By the way, I love Seattle, nothing against it. I just needed a place that rains a lot.

 

[Raccoon Love]

By the way, I love Seattle, nothing against it. I just needed a place that rains a lot.

Seattle is my favorite city here in the US . Thank you for posting this thread btw.

I have yet to meet a transsexual in my life, but I believe they are just people like anyone else.

 

[slant]

I...hmmm...I don't know that transsexuality is an ideology or has much in the way of ideology behind it. Someone has a cold or a hairlip, we don't generally accuse them of having bad ideology for it. Certainly if their personal philosophy includes running about in rain-storms that might contribute but where transexuals are concerned the closest I can compare it with is being born naked into a world with no raincoats or umbrellas and told to walk across Seattle.

I don't think you understand what I am saying here. I don't think transexuality, feeling like one isn't commonly identified with the right gender stereotypes, is a choice. I do think it's natural because of the studies that have been done on brain sex.

But I do think that though it's a natural occurring event, it does not mean that you have to conform and make it clear that gender identifies a person as who they are, because it doesn't, and blurring the gender lines is the only way in my opinion we're ever going to get rid of the friction that trans people feel on a day to day life because people expect opposite of them. If a trans person becomes the opposite sex and fools everyone into thinking they are it doesn't solve the problem, it may solve some problems, but it doesn't solve 'the' problem which is that people feel unable to express whom they are without people reacting badly to them and wanting to harm them, or people ignoring their wishes and just explicitly treating them in ways they don't want to be treated.

You don't get to choose what sex you are born, it's picked for you, and while some people's personalities match up with stereotypes other people's don't and that is how trans became into normal life, it's when your thoughts and who you are is so different it's like you can't even associate with the sex you were born you can't identify with it. But from what I have seen, when I really look at sex, it's so complicated, considering intersexed and the diseases where people can have male dna but because they had weird parts when they were born a surgery was done to make them female and all of that crap, it isn't what is between your legs that defines you and it just isn't the solution from my perspective to take those feelings of isolation and rejection from the society, embrace them, and decide the only way you're going to be able to cope is to live like the opposite sex and be the opposite sex because the other way around is just truly too hard.

I have never met anyone who has told me that they distinctively felt they needed a vagina their whole life and that having a vagina is what makes them them. No. It doesn't work that way. Trans, again, from my perspective, is a lot more to do with stereotypes of the genders than it is having a penis or vagina. So in that way it is an ideology, to go and get a surgery, to go and try to get people to call you the opposite pronoun and whatnot because of the societal pressures and the lack of ability to be looked at and treated how you want to be treated in your current state.

 

[Chessie]

Again I say, you're very right. If logic were the primary drive behind transsexuality, it wouldn't exist.

 

[slant]

o.o

 

[Norton]

I don't understand how this is logical. Excuse the hammer of logic coming down, but if people feel that they do not associate with the stereotypes they were born in to, as other posters have said how does it serve to solve the problem if you have a surgery to trick people into thinking you are the opposite sex?.

Just as there is a logic regarding physical, quantitative, and "objective" reality, there is also a logic of feelings and emotions. For a balanced, holistic view of reality, one should try to develop both kinds of logic.

I don't think the importance of a society's role (i.e., culture) can be discounted by urging people not to conform to a society's expectations. Much as some of us would like to think of ourselves as non-conformists, and maybe some of us are in some ways, each of us conforms extensively to society's expectations every instant of our lives. Culture is inculcated into each person to such an extent that it is virtually impossible to enumerate all the ways in which each of us conforms. It has to be this way for a society to function. If this weren't the case, we'd have no sense of cohesion within society, we'd not be able to communicate effectively, and there'd be no commonly accepted rules of behavior that allow a society operate efficiently, if at all. Indeed, it's funny to see and hear advertising that pushes the illusion of individualism and non-conformity to a mass market that behaves more like sheep than people.

If it is so difficult to resolve the "nature/nurture" hypothesis, then, clearly nurture plays a crucial role in determining who and what we are. That is, you can never deny your culture because it has had as much a part in making you what you are as have your genes. So, to say a male to female transsexual, for example, should feel female but not look female is, in a way, cruel. That's the ultimate denial of another's feelings. Regardless of the motivation, clearly, the need to look female is strong enough for some transsexuals to make the full transformation and endure significant pain and other difficulties.

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it."--Tagore

 

[slant]

Just as there is a logic regarding physical, quantitative, and "objective" reality, there is also a logic of feelings and emotions. For a balanced, holistic view of reality, one should try to develop both kinds of logic.

I don't think the importance of a society's role (i.e., culture) can be discounted by urging people not to conform to a society's expectations. Much as some of us would like to think of ourselves as non-conformists, and maybe some of us are in some ways, each of us conforms extensively to society's expectations every instant of our lives. Culture is inculcated into each person to such an extent that it is virtually impossible to enumerate all the ways in which each of us conforms. It has to be this way for a society to function. If this weren't the case, we'd have no sense of cohesion within society, we'd not be able to communicate effectively, and there'd be no commonly accepted rules of behavior that allow a society operate efficiently, if at all. Indeed, it's funny to see and hear advertising that pushes the illusion of individualism and non-conformity to a mass market that behaves more like sheep than people.

If it is so difficult to resolve the "nature/nurture" hypothesis, then, clearly nurture plays a crucial role in determining who and what we are. That is, you can never deny your culture because it has had as much a part in making you what you are as have your genes. So, to say a male to female transsexual, for example, should feel female but not look female is, in a way, cruel. That's the ultimate denial of another's feelings. Regardless of the motivation, clearly, the need to look female is strong enough for some transsexuals to make the full transformation and endure significant pain and other difficulties.

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it."--Tagore

you can't FEEL female you can only feel like a giant walking vagina which would be weird. that's what i'm trying to tell you. male and female is just dick or vagina it's silly to imply that you can 'feel' male or female at all. male/female is gender which is a social construct so there is no real connection between feeling female= vagina because your vagina doesn't make you want to wear makeup or dress in dresses, you vagina makes you bleed once a month, it's not about the body parts so much as the stereotypes associated with those body parts, or 'gender roles' and it doesn't solve the problem to get a vagina because the vagina isn't what made you want to do those things in the first place, nor is the lack of the vagina what prevented you from doing it previously, it was society

 

[Norton]

One feels male or female within the context of both one's biology and culture, which are inextricably intertwined. You can deny neither. It is helpful to make the analogy where your biology is hardware and your culture (or, social context) is software. It's hard to change your biology and your cultural programming. And, I use the words "male" and "female" both in terms of sex and gender.