BRENDAMAKE.COM - GENDERRAIN - Saving Throw

Saving Throw

By
Brenda Ellen Make

Table of Contents

Legal

Copyright © 1991-2004 by Brenda Ellen Make. All rights reserved. This book, in whole or in part may not be reproduced or distributed in any manner whatsoever, including printing, photocopying, electronic means such as scanning or over the Internet without the author’s explicit hand written permission. No other works may be based on this book including screenplays for television, film, or digital media.

While this book is as honest as I could make it, no main character names were used, and so any resemblance to any real-life person is most-likely a coincidence.

The opinions expressed in this book are not necessarily those of its publisher.

Other legal information is included in the preface of this book. I want the reader to read it.

Version 1.297

Credits

Proofreading:

• Jennifer A.
• Gorden L.
• Maya C.
• Brett S.
• Doug H.
• Toni L.
• Matt P.

Dedications and Thanks

Dedication

Rochelle

Thanks

Grouped but no order...

Jennifer, Miranda, Kim, Dom, Amanda, Perette, Amanda, Steph, Carolyn, Germaine, Tori, Maya, Dave, Tracy, Dean, Joanne, Toni, Leslie, Steven, Papa LF, Kathy, Jennifer Pete, Pete, Corie, Jim, Gina, Keri, Karen, Wes, Judy, Ann, Karen, Kara Anne, Jessie, Harriet, Jessica, Jennifer, Jennifer, Quentin, Jerial, Jamie, Michelle, Jessica, Alicia, Alicia, Tina, Aaron, Wynd, Sarah, Dennis, Melissa, Robin, Franci, Kim, Kristen, Kasi, Kim, Wendy, Lisa, Richie, Mike, Jane, Chris, Amanda, Gerhardt, Ruby, Bea, Joyce, Doris, Hal, Ivan, Kathy, Jack, Rae, John, John, Nancy, Cliff, Pam, Jeff, Eileen, Eileen, Bruce, Mary-Anne, George, Clinton, Kenny, Carol, Frank, Elliot, Kristina, Judy, Armond and Kathleen, Harry, Leia, Robin, Katie, Nancy, Mariette, Lois, Riki, Anna, Kara, Jimmy, Jimmy, Burt, Drew, Ralph, Connie, Jody, Brett, Marla, Doug, Norine, Justine, Tim, Imran, Amy, David, John, Mark, Brandon, Shane, Jose, Eric, Monty, Roman and everyone down South. Ed, Donald, Eileen, Ed, Greg, Abe, Susan, Martin, George, Lisa, Ludwig, Eric, CPE, Revel, Ani, James, Adam, Fred, Henry, Curly, Sandra, Louisa, Robin, Rick, Billy, Ann, Pat, Susanne, Tony, Steven, Stevie, Cory, Vernon, Vivian, Ronnie, Vangelis, Sass, Don, Paul, Jasmine, Tori, Tracy, Jane, Jody, Alan, Jody, Harry, Tim, Johnny and Wynonna, COS, IFGE, ISNA, Twenty, HBIGDA, GenderPac, CFS, Transgen, And... Petie, Tic-Tac, Gatesie, Mika, Pippin and Venoux, Patches, Bear, Lokie, Hopesie, Brenna DeFurry Meatloaf, Moura and Shamus, George, and Samantha.

I probably missed some too.

Preface

The greater part of this book was written for adults, and so, it may be unsuitable for children. If you are not an adult, please don’t read it. This book can wait.

This book was not written for those people who want to live closed-minded, sheltered existences. It was written for the few people who have been there, may be near, or just want the experience.

Introduction

This book is arranged in two main sections: Subjective Rhetoric contains some of my thoughts and feelings about transsexuality and politics. Path is my autobiography.

I have asked a lot of people, for a lot of permission, to write about a lot of things, but not all of what follows. It is my wish that these faceless and nameless people described in this book remain faceless and nameless. I have tried to describe only what I thought might help someone.

Subjective Rhetoric

Politically, transsexual people are just beginning to struggle for our very lives. A good amount of this book deals with gender and transsexual issues, but this book is not as significant as those lives that may be indirectly affected by it. I don’t want to be someone’s gauge used to judge all transsexual people. I will remind the reader: I am not every transsexual individual, and so I will try my best to speak only for one person, me.

As a human being, I have more than one attribute, and so, this book also deals with other things that could indirectly affect other groups of people. I ask for the same consideration I seek for transsexual people be given to these people as well. If the reader gets nothing else from this book, I hope the they keep an open mind about people, and remembered that I represent a count of only one.

Not being a doctor, I offer only observations and opinions. My goal is to provoke the reader into searching for information.

Taste Discrimination

As a transsexual person, I have met others. I have personally met someone who is a: doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, medical transcriptionist, musician, make-up artist, store manager, boat accessory maker, retail clerk, nurse, radio personality, firefighter, pharmacist, police officer, nuclear physicist, teacher, state/city worker, computer programmer, furniture refinisher, artist, architect, telemarketer, military personnel, x-ray technician, graphic designer, building-material warehouse customer service help, unemployed homeless person, electrician, pizza maker, bank clerk.

I could be any race, from any country, any religion. I could do, like, or dislike, anything or anyone. I am just someone that wanted to share some things with you.

In the workplace, I had hoped that people would be judged on their job performance, attendance, integrity, honesty, experience, and capabilities. At my support group, about one person a month, a real live person, was fired just for being transsexual. Maybe they were fired because they look a little different or act a little different. Maybe they were let go because, now they would be the only woman or the only man on staff. Maybe they are fired because they just need to be themselves. Maybe they look or seem gay or lesbian. I don’t think these are appropriate criteria for putting a worker on the unemployment line.

[At one support group meeting I attended, 3 out of thirty people had gotten fired since the previous 2 weeks, during a period of “economic growth.”]

Do we ask people to hide any of life’s other obstacles because they bring out our own insecurities, show us that we are mortal, or show us how diverse people really are?
Do we want to perpetuate this kind of shame?
Do we tell someone with a broken leg or scars, to hide their physical challenges for the distraction that they might cause?
Why should this be any different?
Is just being transsexual a valid reason for forcing someone out of their job?

There are not a lot of transsexual people. Most people may never knowingly meet a transsexual person. Yet, most people may have preconceived notions of what a transsexual person is like. Whether these images are positive or negative, this is the very nature of prejudice.

I think most people have only seen transsexual people on television, often being exploited for one reason or another. I feel the manner in which they are presented is often entertaining rather than educating. I think that most people have not seen what I have seen.

I think that local news coverage on transsexual people is often better on the average than what a talk show produces. The media seems to like to sell the story that people were one person one day and another the next. From what I have seen, transsexual issues and feelings are usually chronic and transition was something that some transsexual people sometimes ran from for years. Once they found they had to do something, transition seems to move fast, yet because of the Benjamin Standards the shortest route is at least a year. This contrasts what the media often portrays, man one day, woman the next—the shock of instant change.

Sometimes, in its quest for stereotypes, the media also does a disservice by portraying transsexual transition to potential candidates as a quick process as well. People may never observe things such as the slow time-lapse process of painful electrolysis that a lot of male-to-females endure. They may never see the growth and acceptance people find within themselves along the way.

[In the arts, I often see transsexual characters portrayed by people who are not transsexual. I don’t think I have ever seen a transsexual person play a transsexual person on television.]

The media once helped inform people, now I guess that has mostly faded. It seems people will pay good money to see a transsexual person deceive their mate by not telling that person, without ever seeing all the tears of a transsexual person or the cries from someone was tossed aside because they believed in honesty within intimacy, because they told. They never hear the long months or even years of lament, because someone doesn’t want to hurt their family or friends by daring to be he or she, daring for the first time just to be themselves, who they are on the inside.

[I had a friend who was HIV positive, and she felt it was more difficult to tell a lover that—than her transsexual status.]

They seem to want to see a transsexual person being sexually exploited, and may never see the ones that live quiet boring lives minding their own business and struggling to keep their jobs and families. How can anyone let themselves be understood as a living, breathing human being within a five minutes segment?

[Who would want to see a boring geekie transsexual person like me, dressed in jeans and sneakers, just trying to survive?]

Transsexual people are diverse, but media coverage of transsexual people, in large, is not.

One week, a long-term college administrator was fired for being transsexual. There was also another teacher attending our meeting that was worried about her job. Week after week, she related how she was forbidden from ever presenting herself as herself. She taught agriculture.

She was the kind of teacher who was so into agriculture that she even had little toy tractors displayed in her home-office. She dressed the part, usually coveralls and a flannel top. They “retired” her because her top buttoned on the “wrong” side.

[Some time ago, a high-school superintendent was arrested. While probably not transsexual, he was persecuted in most of the media and fired from his job because he was cross-dressed on his own time. It bewilders me how could his driving under the influence of alcohol could be forgiven and his crossdressing could not.]

How would you feel if you had to wear clothes of the “opposite” sex?
Who has the right to look at an inanimate object, a garment and decide, this is a men’s—this, or a woman’s—that?
What are social constructions, and what are not?

We went to the school board to speak on her behalf, there were students, faculty, and cameras to record this unjust event. The school board had walked in as one rehearsed unit. There were lawyers there, perhaps to ensure that no one on the school board spoke their mind.

People from the audience spoke profoundly for this teacher, parents, and students. Our support group members tried to reason with them. Newspapers and local cable cameras recorded this sad, obscure, little day in American History.

If the people that had founded this country, if the people that had lost their lives in wars, for the that there could be justice, that there could be freedom, maybe they would have cried.

Students and parents stood up, stating that this was a good teacher. They asked the board to reconsider. Other transsexual people from our group stood before the board, saying very deep touching things. A college history professor pointed out that the board could make a positive change on this day. They threatened to remove one parent because he passionately indicated his disgust and mistrust with the school board.

The board marched out in single choreographed line. When they returned, they “retired” this person just because they were transsexual.

The headlines read, “School Teacher Retirement Accepted, School Board Lambasted”

[My name and quote were in two newspapers. The meeting was on local cable access television. A person can out oneself to help someone, and not be negatively affected by it.]

I have a friend who had legally changed their name to a female one. When she notified her employers, they informed her that, if anyone at work found out that she changed her name, she would be fired. She was soon fired anyway.

For every transsexual person I have met who had problems with discrimination that reached the media, I have witnessed so many more who went without notice. Even if this discrimination is brought to justice and a lawsuit is concluded successfully, often it’s kept quiet. Even when people have won suits, they just wanted to keep working and be productive in their jobs, but a hostile workplace environment prevented it.

How can you survive in modern society without a job or income?

As far as contemporary culture goes, most people only have from the 1950’s on to have made some assessments about transsexual people. Not all that information is anything close to firsthand. Some people sometimes don’t have a clue how to react when meeting a transsexual person. They might be uncomfortable, they may have fear but sometimes it’s still fear and uncertainty, and not yet hate, because I think they haven’t yet been taught to hate. There aren’t very many transsexual people around to judge.

Though, sometimes it is hate...

There is a most hateful book, attacking anyone and anything having to do with transsexual transition. I wanted to read the book to be able to defend against this kind of thing. I read less than half of her book before I decided that I needn’t read any further. It was too easy and just plain to me. I know the clamor of hatred when I hear it. I think that there is sometimes need associated with hate as there is with love. If one pushes against something or someone, and that should disappear, then one falls. My belief is that, the author is simply sexist and their want is to preserve the necessary objects of her prejudice.

There was also a paranoid tone which seemed to suggest that transsexual people were going to undo everything that the women’s rights movement had worked so hard to accomplish. Didn’t she ever conceive that some of us would be fighting alongside other women for equality? I guess I have a lot more faith in women than she does, and as a woman, I do not want her speaking for me.

I think she only saw in life: man and woman. I couldn’t imagine there being any room in her being for an androgynous person. I don’t mind if people read her book, though I mind if they buy it. What I found sad and shocking is that a famous feminist, someone I and other transsexual friend both had looked up to, endorsed this book.

Does my still living offend you?
How politically correct am I?
Or could I be?
I may be a freak?
But, confront me, do you feel my heart?
A living person, I am.
See my eyes leak.

I ate at a nice little bookstore for the open-minded. I gathered some brochures to read while I ate. One of them was for a music festival. I love music, so I looked at it. It upset me in a political sense.

While I enjoy my androgyny, I am more female than male. To most people I meet I am a woman, and legally I am a woman. For some questionable reason as I write this I am forbidden to marry another person with similar female genitalia. I have even lactated, not much, yet I know what it is like to have milk come out of my breasts.

There was a line in the brochure for the event which read something like this,“...for women that were born women.” It was sad because there aren’t many transsexual people in the world, we are explicitly discriminated against. Another line in the brochure stated something to the effect, “...we can make special accommodations for those persons handicapped.”

While I sat in the bookstore and coffee shop, I stopped eating, and put down my utensil. I noticed that by bending the paper just a little, I could make the two conflicting lines in the brochure touch. I smiled at this irony, showed my friends, and continued eating.

I am deeply upset by the violence against transsexual people, people who cross-dress, people who are lesbian, people who are gay, and people who are bisexual. Unfortunately heterosexual people get killed, but I think it is very rare that any get killed only because they are heterosexual people. One incident in particular hits home was a teen that was raped and later killed, I heard someone try to explain it by saying, “...was hanging around with a rough crowd....” My past shined on me and it just hit home further. It could have been me.

[It must have been difficult for my friend who worked at a convenience store. Someone had figured out she was transsexual. She started receiving death threats and at the end of one of her shifts, she came out of work and found all the windows smashed out of her car.]

A Short Story

One morning, a little fuzzy kitten woke up. She stared at a big person while they slept on a bed. That was enough sleeping, she though. She woke up her person by softly tapping on their face with her paw. The person made a noise that sounded like, “What do you want? Let me sleep.” When her person finally woke up, she was so pleased that she started purring.

After she ate some food, Kitten went outside. She heard lots of birds up in the trees. She jumped up onto a nice warm car hood. She wrapped her tail around her feet in a clockwise direction, and she cleaned her face.

After Kitten cleaned her face, she hopped off of the car. She did a big stretch and yawned. She walked into a grassy field. She could feel the dew from the night before.

Near some trees, she came upon this gray thing. The gray thing ate walnuts. It had little round ears and a big bushy tail that followed in its last footsteps.

Well, the kitten had never seen anything quite like this. She walked near the gray thing. She shyly placed her head between her front paws, but then she peeked with one eye. She said, “Hi.”

Kitten stood up, and walked to look at the gray thing. She said “Hey, you don’t have pointy ears like I do...and your tail is different too.”

The gray thing spoke, and said, “That’s because I am a squirrel.”

She sniffed the gray thing once because cats can usually figure out how anything works that way. She thought a minute, and asked, “Do you want to be friends?”

Squirrel told her, “Yes.”

Kitten and Squirrel walked through the field together until they came to a clearing. They saw a plump thing with long ears right next to the hole dug into the ground.

They both came closer. Squirrel said, “What’s with this tail. It’s different than mine.” Kitten said, “You are different than I am, and you are different than Squirrel is too.”

The thing spoke,“You both are different than I am, too.”

Squirrel looked at Kitten, and then back at the thing. Squirrel said, “Yeah, I guess we are all different.”

The thing said, “I am a bunny.”

Squirrel said, “Bunny, hmm....” Squirrel and Kitten nodded. Squirrel asked, “We are playing together today, do you want to come with us?”

Bunny said, “Sure.”

Kitten told her friends, “I know where there are some caterpillars we could play with.” The cat walked, the bunny hopped, and the squirrel jumped away.

They went to a bush near some mossy rocks. They looked around, trying to find some caterpillars. All they found were these things that look like little shells. Kitten pouted, “I wonder where all the caterpillars went to.” She looked and looked, but all she could find were butterflies.

Kitten meowed to her friends to help find the caterpillars, but they just sighed, because they knew that caterpillars can turn into butterflies. Bunny and Squirrel explained to her as they walked.

Kitten, Squirrel, and Bunny came to a gurgling brook. They followed the brook to a quiet pond. Squirrel watched Kitten play with some pollywogs. Some pollywogs had feet, some didn’t, and some even looked like frogs. After Kitten pulled her paw out of the water, the water became very still.

When Kitten, Squirrel, and Bunny looked into the water, they could see their own reflections. They could see that they were all different. But then, Kitten looked to the side at Squirrel’s reflection. She tried to imagine what it was like to be like Squirrel and then she did the same to Bunny. Everyone imagined just for a minute what it was like to be the other.

Kitten purred, “I guess maybe you two aren’t so different on the inside.”

Squirrel said, “Come on, lets go.”

And so, they did. As Kitten left, she looked back at one of the pollywogs that were in the pond. She wondered, even though they were really, really, really, different on the outside, if somehow, they could be like her on the inside.

Kitten called out, “Hey, wait for me!” They all went off to have a good time.

Pollywog smiled and swam off.

Trust

“Ordinary” Discrimination

I have been talked down to by people at times just because my presentation is female. The moment that it happens it is so apparent that it bewilders me. I have found myself so fascinated by this that I even wondered if it was worth the price of admission as far as my transition is concerned. So few people have ever owned this unbiased observation point.

I have met males who had not ever worked alongside with a female, who had no clue how to communicate with females. Almost opposite this, I have worked with a male friend whose previous job had no other males, only females.

As a female who was raised as a male, I seem to expect more respect and freedom than some females are used to. This sometimes this causes problems for me. To some, I probably seem sometimes an aggressive pushy bitch. (Smiling.).

Whether biological, hormonal, instinctual, or through developmental behavior, often females and males seem to communicate differently. There is sometimes miscommunication. There is sometimes discrimination. I am wary especially when it is first introduced, but still more where and when it is accepted and commonplace.

[I read a contemporary article emphasizing the importance of self esteem as one grows—written using he, and not she. Would one have to assume that women are men too, or if one is a woman, self-esteem isn’t necessary?]

While I haven’t devoted a lot of text toward the discrimination of women, I believe the weight and scale of discrimination that can be observed could carry itself far better than any words I could possibly write.

Gauss

There are lesbian, gay, and bi organizations which are becoming inclusive toward transsexual people. I am appreciative, and I thank you.

There are some groups which are not inclusive. While hopefully not the norm, some people in the homosexual community have been taught that it’s politically incorrect to accept transsexual people. Some people believe the existence of transsexual people has a profound effect on the expression of human sexuality. Yet, I believe that a lot of transsexual people are just doing the best that they can just to live their lives.

[I met a person who was living on the butchy area of the lesbian community. She was viewed as being very liberated, but when this person passed some imaginary masculine threshold, they found themselves ostracized and excommunicated.]

There are transsexual people whose identification is heterosexual. To some extent, I could understand how some people could be offended by being asked to welcome these heterosexual people. Though, those heterosexual transsexual people are people and not probably the people who would mean them harm. A person who would want to control, limit, hurt, or end another life just because that person is in a sexual minority—we probably have in common.

[I am transsexual, but part of my identification is bisexual/homosexual. To hear some thing derogatory at a /bi/gay/lesbian group against transsexual people would hurt me as much as to hear something anti-gay/lesbian at a transsexual group.]

I have heard more than a few transsexual people voice that they have felt slighted by some people elsewhere in the Rainbow. Occasionally, I have heard people work to dispel the myths about their sexuality—and describe exactly me. Realistically, I am a lot of people’s stereotypes.

I think that we all as individuals have it in us to either expand the human experience, or degrade it.

Going the Other Way

Most of the words I have wrote have been about male-to-female transsexual transition. The experience of a female-to-male person is better told by one that has experienced it than me. I can only relate what I have seen and heard and this is no substitute.

Female-to-male, F2M transsexual people don’t seem to as much press that male-to-female people do. They seem to get along in society a little easier than we do because some people view becoming male as a promotion, and becoming female a demotion.

The effects of male hormones on a female body seem to work very quickly. People have told me that their period stopped within a month or two, and clitorises can become micro-phalluses. After just months the voice deepens permanently and hair disposition changes, body hair becomes greater, though the hair on the head sometimes thins.

While the secondary physical characteristics seem to come easier; the surgery does not. This contrasts the male-to-female transsexual for whom frame and muscle, once masculinized by male hormones remains at least in part, while the genital surgery is much easier and less expensive. From what I have seen and heard the surgery is getting better.

[I heard one female-to-male person say he would rather spend the money on a car.]

[The transsexual support group that I attend was partially founded by someone who is female-to-male and so while the group mostly male-to-female they are always welcome.]

One of my genetic female girlfriends wished she were born a man. While she thought she should have been born a man, she didn’t want to change. When I first met someone who was transitioning from female to male. It was odd because he wanted to physically become everything I didn’t want to be. I thought, “You want a penis, and hair all over you, and you want to be bigger?” I have used this model to better understand what it is like to be a bystander when I tell them I am transsexual.

While there is this dichotomy of direction, there are a surprising number of things in common. Perhaps, the direction is different but the drive in itself, is the same. Being transsexual, regardless of the direction, is unique and most people don’t understand unless they have had the feelings themselves.

I feel a kinship with people that are female-to-male, I feel I have spent so much effort for years to physically achieve many of the same things they want, but it brought me little peace or happiness. Being male. just didn’t work for me. If that’s your thing then I wish you all the luck in the world.

Two friends and I went hiking, and I had a nice time. Later, we went back to my house for pizza. We sat and talked for a few hours. One of my two friends was a female-to-male person. It may be a cliché but I don’t think anyone could tell that he was ever a genetic female, even his hands looked undeniably male. To me, he is attractive physically as well as a person, and I thought that he made a lot better looking guy than I did. In some ways if I had been made more like him I would have been more comfortable living as a male.

I couldn’t help but notice his build. He was talking about T(estosterone) while I was noticing that his neck was a lot more rounded than mine. I felt some real sadness, and then smiled and pointed out the irony, “I would have to take “T” too, if I wanted to look like you.”

I feel like I am an androgynous-to-male-to-female-to-androgynous person.

A female to male person attends and helps out at our meetings. He always seems to be somewhere doing something political to help not only transsexual people, but also gay, lesbian and, bisexual people. He was at the Rainbow Flag raising at the State Capitol. He was also attended a show of support for GLBT people when it was said that they shouldn’t be treated as equals in the church. It seems every time I turned on the television news, he was there. I have so much respect for him that I actually smiled and bowed before him, and then later I seriously talked with him to underscore that there was truth behind my humorous display.

Balance and Temperament

Ladies and Gentlemen,
A good man,
a good woman,
a good?

I very often hear the terms like transsexual, TS, Gay, Transvestite, Black, Republican, and Jewish without hearing the word “person” after. I can’t understand why or when a person being a person should ever seem redundant. On the way to categorizing and sorting every living thing out, I try to remember that there are very few absolutes. I don’t think people should be trusted to turn adjectives into nouns because when those nouns are placeholders for a human being. I am a person “who,” not a “this” or a “that.” I am more than the name of my biggest problems, more than my biggest achievements—and no more than you.

It can be confusing when someone changes their name during transsexual transition, especially when you have known them for a long time. Yet, whether it is spoken or written, a name is one of the most basic, fundamental, rudimentary forms of respect that you can give anyone. You meet someone, perhaps they say, “Hi my name is Jane/John/Jamie Doe.”

You tell them your name. You have given this person your label, your song, so that you will no longer be, no one in particular to them. You have offered them a way of understanding yourself. You have offered them a way of reminding them that, you are not a thing, that you are a living being, and from this we can choose to build on this, or not.

Don’t you want the same respect you have just shown that person?

If someone changes their name, I can understand the confusion because events were build on this name. Yet, I would ask that one still tries to accept change, in effort to grow—with, and not—apart. If someone accidentally uses the old name, I would hope that the person whom changes their name, would have as much understanding.

Why should this be any more complicated than when one changes their name because they got married?

In some states, a birth certificate is required to prove nationalization for employment. When transsexual people change their identification paperwork, it may show the old name or changed sex designation. This may help create an uncomfortable work environment. At this time, a card which is often required bearing apparent evidence that a person has changed their physical sex may place that person at risk. Owning such a small piece of paper may become such a great liability.

There seems to be no common androgynous pronoun for a person who excludes their sex or if it isn’t really definable using male or female in the American-English language. We can’t call people “it” because that usually only applies to non-living things. How can someone respect someone if they label that person the same as something that doesn’t live, doesn’t have hopes dreams, wishes, feelings? In American English the line between S/he seems to illustrate our continuing belief that one must be one or another.

[Personally I like these better: Sh-he or He-sh.]

Most people are born pretty much the same, having the same number of these and those, yet we are almost all made different. The relationship between females and males has been the popular subject for many books and the material for a lot of comedians. When I hear a term like “the battle of the sexes” it’s strange to me, if we need physical diversity to perpetuate the species, then who are the winners and losers? Some people want to believe that we can find life on other planets, others can’t even get along with what’s here. If I can settle things with myself why can’t everyone else? The battle is over; the bookstores and talk-shows won.

Some people seem to believe that there are only two distinct sexes, with variation between them. Though, because I see a continuum between women and men, when one points to two different places along the continuum, one will see and feel differences. What most people call “Man” and “Woman” aren’t as different as some people would have you believe, yet there are differences because we use “Woman” and “Man” to indicate that difference itself. It is sometimes difficult to say exactly what is a feminine or masculine not only because there are so many stereotypes, but also because there is variance in people. This variance I believe is often overlooked.

Perhaps sex typing will be always be a socially acceptable form of prejudice. Body appearance, names, pronouns, pink and blue, lace or leather, and to use my some variables from my life: cars and dolls and etc, are some of society’s accepted indicators of gender.

[I recall seeing a toy company on television stating that they did introduce gender-neutral toys, but few people bought them. To the best of my knowledge, most babies don’t ask for or buy their own toys.]

[A company sells “girls” and “boys” computers. Each is painted blue or pink and has all the software that a boy or girl should be interested in. Now the craft of maintaining socially constructed boundaries based on sex—can be delegated to a machine.]

The body is commonly thought to be the greatest indicator of a person’s gender. As living things, perhaps it’s natural to deeply react to another person’s body, yet you might find a most feminine person with a most masculine body, you might find a most masculine person in the most feminine body. This is fine, but what if the person wants to change one’s physical characteristics?

I believe in gender, but maybe I see it in a different way then most people do. To me, it’s not pink or blue or even purple. It’s not playing with dolls or toy solders. It’s not being a firefighter, and it’s not being a nurse. It’s not raising a child and it’s not fixing a car.

Why do we have a favorite color, why does this smell or taste good to me but bad to this person?
Why am I right-handed, and another person left-handed?
Why does this tickle this person, but hurt another?
How can we pet a cat or dog most of the time and know what sex it is without looking underneath?
Why are we sometimes wrong?
Why do I get cravings for lemons when I get sick?
Why does someone’s eyes get so big just before they fight or flight?
Why is this ugly and that pretty to me?
Why can’t we agree on even what color blue this is?

I see gender as only the static and absolute, non-sexual relationship and interaction between our self/id/soul thing and our bodies and the relative dynamics that we feel with others.

To me, in an extremely loose way, gender is the non-sexual aspects of someone’s sexuality, loose because we commonly perceive the two upside down.

[I had a friend who is left-handed. When he was little, his mother tied his left hand behind him so he wouldn’t use it and he cried.]

Sometimes it feels like I spent half a lifetime with my very soul tied behind my back, tied by letting my peers tie it, tied by my own body’s hormones. My stubbornness, my continual need and feeling that I wanted my body to be tuned a certain way, is a static aspect of my gender.

One’s body shape and type affects almost everything one does in life, but it’s my belief that we are more than just a body and chemistry. I believe that one cannot choose one’s gender. One can choose one’s gender role or have one arbitrarily assigned by virtue of ones apparent genitalia, whether or not one can have any success or happiness in said role, and whether or not the role is appropriate would remain to be seen.

I think of gender as a broader more encompassing way than most people do, and perhaps include in it common attributes that some people would not.

Being a social creature, I have learned that people built like me may have to push on a door harder than you do to open it, but not as much as a person built like that. Because of the comparison, this is gender’s relative implication. I can change my size by working out too given the confines of my frame, hormone levels and development, and this adds a whole other dimension to it. How does something as simple as opening a door relate to gender? From what I have witnessed and experienced, I believe there are logical limits to what can be done physically and psychologically within hormonal parameters. What if I want exceed those confines, should I be allowed to do it? What would motivate me to change?

[Ending a statement in the form of a question or indicating a statement with some uncertainty is supposed to be a female attribute. People resourcefully find other ways of communicating ideas, such as diplomacy and leading the listener to the answer. I believe the reason that these skills are often more developed in females is simply because that on the average females are physically smaller than males, and use other means for communication.]

To me, gender identity also involves how a person feels about oneself and how a person reacts in one’s environment with everyday life. To complicate matters, how one intentionally presents oneself doesn’t always have anything to do with the person inside. One can sometimes find in a transsexual person who might truly posses a desire to transition, but because they were socialized and imprinted so deeply, they may not have a clue how to operate in society when they get there. Paradoxically some of these same people who perhaps continually get flak from their peers, perhaps snickers from children and adult(?) bystanders, continue to blaze a path for individuality.

To some degree one can package and present the same self in different manners.

Adding even more facets to the picture is that a person’s sexual preference, (if any) does not necessarily have anything to do with a person’s gender, but what in your heart you want with another for—might.

Who a person becomes intimate with may be affected by outside events and situation. A woman may only be with other women because she is afraid of men, perhaps because she has been sexually assaulted. A man may not be with other men because he is afraid of what other people may think. That does not negate that there is a range of attractions rooted off of true attraction.

If someone is “gay” when they are having sex, what are they when they aren’t having sex?

....I think they are still doing things in a manner dictated by their physical and mental wiring. I believe in gender and as an ideal it’s important because; in my heart, it’s just wrong to think about and label people on their sexuality. I think that is sexuality is not at the root anyway.

To me, sexuality is a child process of gender.
To me, sexuality is gender’s doing.
To me, gender is the foundation that true sexuality lies on.

There have been studies done concerning the bed of the hypothalamus, as well as those studies done removing gonads and replacing hormones at different phases of development, and those rats displaying lordosis and mounting behavior and other things like differences in the corpus colossum of the brain. Like the left-hand thing, sooner or later even later I feel this ignorance surrounding transsexual people will fade. I hope this knowledge won’t be used to hurt other people. I would worry if we could make a machine capable of seeing gender or one of its products: sexuality, because I feel the world is not ready for it. I also hope transsexual and androgynous people won’t have to be martyrs and continue to endure suffering and compensate just so there will be peace across what is falsely believed only two distant sexes.

Some of the psychologically oriented books that I have read seem to paint a very harsh picture of transsexual people. It should be obvious to almost anyone, that at one time there was animosity between transsexual people and the psychological / psychiatric professionals. I have read things from otherwise coherent psychological professionals claiming that, transsexual people are all prostitutes, always late, and other things. I learned the legacy that I had been left. The way I saw it...

Transsexuality has existed in many cultures throughout time. There was no hormone replacement then; surgery was only removal and not construction. In this country, before the 1950’s people who wanted to change their sex were often institutionalized, often given shock therapy against their will. It was found to be a mostly chronic condition. In the 1950s an endocrinologist Dr. Harry Benjamin, instead of trying to change who they are, tried giving them hormones. About that time surgery was starting to be performed and things had changed. Sexual reassignment surgery was performed in the United States at John Hopkins Hospital and in 1979 it was stopped there.

They claimed that post-operative transsexual people did not show and increase in salary, education, or adjustment. Some people speculate they stopped because they folded under political and religious pressure, and found criteria to justify it. What I believe is, their sampling was not that random. Though; within the support group I attend, most of the people find their way from referrals from healthcare workers, word-of-mouth, and lately the Internet. I know the distribution of people that come, and larger; those who stay at this support group is not random. Also given the time-frame in which it was performed, I also question the quality of their own surgery itself affecting their data. I have seen SRS improve in just the last eight years since I had it. Why is this relevant to me? Because some people and some textbooks still focus on this event that happened years ago. It also seems that some people want to hold up an example of an institution that stopped doing SRS, and ignore the others that (still do)/started doing it throughout the United States and abroad.

Other gender clinics appeared. The mental health care professional’s position were now gatekeepers regulating physical change. I believe that it’s difficult to put other human beings in a position of affecting another person’s destiny. I had heard of some other healthcare professionals who abused power by taking money from individuals without ever intending or consider helping them reach their goals because they didn’t believe in the transsexual phenomena itself, regardless of the patient’s appropriateness. Sociologically, some of the public wrongfully perceived transsexual transition as a “cure” for homosexuality or cross-dressing. Even some otherwise well-meaning practitioners demanded stereotypical “Stepherd Wife” behavior before they would be helped. If a person went in wearing slacks or jeans, or a suit or a dress, they would be denied. This helped perpetuate the stereotypes of transsexual people, and provide ammunition for people opposed to transsexual transition. Before a certain time, the gay transsexual; the person who would want someone of the sex they were joining was thought not to exist.

Ignorance has no bounds, even in science and the healing arts. I have met a psychiatrist that was forced from her job because she was a transsexual person. They stated that her presence might upset patients.

[I have met two of her (ex)patients who stated that they miss her, and also said that she was a good doctor who was compassionate and truly caring.]

I have also met of another psychiatrist at a well-known teaching hospital who had serious problems from the rest of the staff.

This reminds me that it was not a psychiatrist that tried to heal or see potential in people that would dare break social seals and want a physical answer to a problem that cannot be cured in the mind. Historically, it was an endocrinologist that initialized my liberation. Transsexuality in the physical sense came about, and I am transsexual, because nothing else ever really worked. I owe my very life to endocrinologists who had the backbone to help me.

To this day, I have not seen a single survey on transsexual people that didn’t center on sexual matters. In the quest for data whether someone is trying to help me or hurt me, no one seems to remember that I am human being. One can infer that being transsexual is not a social construction from this, but do transsexual people only exist to have sex?

[As a transsexual person, I feel that psychology wants to get right in my pants without ever getting to know me. No one seems to care that I like music, science, art, making 3d quasi-VR game editing, hiking, exploring scary places like abandoned army bases, raspberry tea, anime, banana milk shakes, raw chocolate chip cookie dough, cats, Indian food, and of course friends, because that would put a human face on me. I am not a work of science but more likely I am a work of art, whether good, bad, realistic or abstract. I am a work in progress. Sometimes the human factor itself must weigh into the equation.]

Your data is alive.

There is a point between when a transsexual person starts learning, and the point where one becomes enlightened. At this point a transsexual person is now aware of the sociological difficulties and perhaps has read a few books, not all of which are very positive. This negativity does reach some people and I feel some transsexual people, having learned this—perpetuate it.

There is a controversy about hormones from natural sources. Estrogen has become a commodity, and there are reports of unfair and cruel treatment of animals. I am hypogonadal. I have not even partially functioning ovaries nor testis to supply me estrogen/testosterone at any level. Obviously I am no doctor, but I still believe that a therapeutic dose of estrogen in a hypogonadal person male—or otherwise would probably need to be higher than a genetic female going through menopause. I have been through very harsh menopause like states more than once when I ceased hormones for surgical reasons. But what concerns me is the long-term effects, like bone mass and cholesterol levels. Can synthetic hormones supply accurate replacement? I don’t know. Once again, as a transsexual, I feel I am right in the middle of a very large battle. There are other drugs for other ailments derived from natural sources, and should I deny myself just because the focus is on hormones. I do have an open mind about synthetics.

I have transitioned long enough ago to remember witnessing a major manufacture of natural estrogens, decimate and eliminate their generic competition. I have a friend who is female-to-male that had to face testosterone shortage.

I am sure there are medical journals with references to transsexual hormonal treatment. While there are enough transsexual people out there, and these medications have been, and will be used for the treatment of transsexual conditions, I am not aware of the any hormonal medications that include standardized indications and dosage for transsexual people at this time.

[When I had it, my Medicaid insurance covered hormonal treatment as far as estrogens are concerned because I am legally female. I also wanted to augment these medications with finasteride because I cannot tolerate aldactone. Finasteride is counter-indicated in genetic female because one might become pregnant, and there is a possibility of hormonally caused birth abnormalities. I was denied assistance with this medication because I am legally female, though it was offered to me that I could change my sex designation in the system and receive it, though that would eliminate coverage for estrogens.]

[I know of one surgical gynecologist who prescribed finasteride for genetic female patients who would unlikely become pregnant because of sterilization or being on the pill.]

I think that testosterone levels dropping very fast over a brief period of time causes some transsexual people to become depressed after surgery. In the male-to-female transsexual person seeking surgery, it seems that, if a lower dose of estrogen is used than necessary to sublimate the effects of male hormones in the body, then the person will lose the chance to really test to see if the chemically altered state is right for them, and then the hormonal trial would lose its effectiveness. A person can have entian an year to really try the effects of hormones on one’s body, or perhaps just one month after surgery.

[I know of a doctor who prescribes relatively low doses of estrogens for preoperative male-to-female transsexual patients. It’s just a theory of mine and I think the best hormone levels are the absolute minimum to get the job done, but I do worry that a lower the dose of estrogens preoperatively might mean a higher chance of post-operative depression.]

Hormones, including those naturally occurring in my own body, are the most powerful drugs I have ever experienced. All of my life, I have felt like I was belittled in the presence of hormones. I have never known another drug that could make or break my entire life. (Crying.)

There was a transsexual person who stated that all female-to-male transsexual people were either just homosexual or sexually attracted to themselves. The fact that there are transsexual people who prefer their own sex after transition would seem to deny this theory in itself.

If a transsexual person thought their original genitals were wretched, hated things, then once changed, I would hope that they would find pleasure in their own body and include themselves it in the storyline of their fantasy life. Is not this an indicator of healing? A transsexual person may feel more conscious of this inclusion of their own living body in their own fantasies. It seems that someone exemplified this inclusion instead of placed in the proper perspective.

Is it a disease to masturbate after transition?

I believe it rare that sexual urges alone would drive a person to transition and the test of time will usually filter that person out who is not appropriate, and perhaps that is the best that can be hoped for.

Even if there are some, some people are not thousands. While it a nice change from the “...every other transsexual is nuts besides me....” phase, it’s the “...I am crazy like every other transsexual....” phase. Only some transsexual people go through phases like these.

Some transsexual people that are just nuts, but being transsexual is not a prerequisite for mental illness unless you listen to those that have read in old books—much, and have spent time in real life—little.

I believe that sexuality is controlled by and is a function of gender, and not the other way around. I don’t believe that gender can be led by sexuality for long. I don’t think most people would go through 120-140 hours of painful electrolysis that some male-to-female transsexual people sometimes do, and possibly lose their entire family and all their friends, as well as the ability to have an orgasm—just for sex. Similarly, I don’t agree with Freud’s beliefs that children have sexual motivations for everything and I find a mind that would equate children and sex in such a manner frightening. Sometimes “sex” is just not sex.

There is even variance in what pronoun a person is referred to in medical, psychological write-ups and legal documents. Some may use he or she with indiscretion. I think there are three issues at play here. The first, as a friend wisely reminded me, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck,” and so everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The second is simple respect, if you identified as a man, wouldn’t you be offended being referred to as a woman? If you identified as a woman wouldn’t you be offended being referred to as a man? Respect costs little, and I hope it enters the equation more often. Third, there will also always be some people that will never honor and will never respect transsexual people because of simple prejudice, and I find that that is just sad. Some psych-healthcare workers will never forgive us for choosing our method of treatment and having some say in our own destiny.

[I have met a person who has accused their psychiatrist even in more modern times of trying to cure transsexuality with shock therapy, then she was found to be XXY. Perhaps the reason or her gender confusion was that, she is not genetically the average man. It seems the psychiatrist covered up the genetic test until he could no longer be sued.]

Some critiques of sexual reassignment surgery claim that it is “mutilation.” Over the years perhaps I have seen some “mutilations”, but some good looking ones that looked very, very natural. From the transsexual person’s perspective; I believe that surgery and transition itself should be thought of as a absolute last resort, though, for the medical profession, I think both should be allowed to continue as an option, because I believe that it will bring many people closer to happiness.

Of the surgeons who I have met who perform transsexual surgery, one has as an objective, and even displayed great pride at keeping as much feeling, sensitivity, as well as function—as possible. He also stated to me that he looks at a patient’s happiness as a whole.

[If I take all my clothes off and stand before a mirror, I can feel and see the xanthomas, the five scars from my lung repairs, and the three from my hand surgery, the dog bite, and the burn that reminds me that two packs of matches aren’t better than one—long before I notice my eight year old muff.]

The penis, being what it is, is sensitive. I do wish I did have that level of sensitivity, but in female form. I feel that, this may not be possible because of nerve ending surface area alone, much less the effects of surgery done by human beings which may never really achieve what can be done by nature.

Transsexual is used to describe one who has changed their primary or secondary physical sex characteristics, unfortunately, this term, once the person has changed their physical sexual characteristics may not apply because it indicates only movement.

To call a transsexual person who hasn’t had surgery “pre-op(erative)”, is to place the expectation that they will have surgery. If we call that person “non-op(erative)”, is to place the expectation that they won’t have surgery. Although these are just words, beyond the words, maybe we should find expressions that are more open-ended.

Gender Dysphoria Syndrome would seem to suggest that I am not happy with my gender status. It may even be an abusive term, as it is projected that the person in question should not want to be whom the person really is inside. Gender Dysphoria Syndrome may also be a misnomer, as most people that have transitioned (from apparent gender role to another) do NOT wish to change their gender, but their primary or secondary sexual configuration and their apparent gender role.

[I.e. I am me, and neither pleased or dismayed with my gender, but, I wanted to change my body.]

I believe there are static aspects of gender which cannot be changed. It should not be projected that the person should change who they are and what they may not be able to. I think that sometimes the flesh bends easier than the self.

[Was it morally wrong for me to repair my collapsed lung or my broken ankle? How is this different?]

There aren’t many transsexual people in the world. What little research that is done seems to be used for ammunition for “The Battle of the Sexes.”

I don’t always rest easy knowing that my life hangs in the balance of what brands of psychology, psychiatry and physiology are fashionable at any given moment.

The way information is presented in DSM IV was under debate. Some people wanted the listing abolished, others didn’t. The listing helps some people, while hurting others. It helps some people receive counseling as it pertains to adjustment and difficulty, and to let them know that what they are going through is real. I feel a dollar will never fall on an illness that doesn’t “exist”, nor one that is possessed by so few people. It also hurts people because it can, and has been used to persecute, discriminate and even break up families and terminate employment. I don’t have answers. The people who write these entries must understand that people’s very lives hang in the balance, and they should choose their words carefully.

In study, I think transsexuality should be separated:

Sex State Dysphoria Syndrome (SSDS)
Primary as it pertains to genitalia.
Secondary as it pertains to body shape and habitus.
Hormonal as it pertains to hormone levels and their affects.

But now which book do we place this in, a psychiatry book or a physical medicine book?
Can we be so sure that the cause of transsexuality isn’t at least partially physical?

I think that it is important to make a distinction between gender and gender role. I dare state that with certainty; it’s difficult to tell what is or isn’t a social construction about being female or male, until the first successful year living across society’s “accepted” gender boundaries and observing one’s body change from season to season—then that’s just the awakening.

I think that: Gender Role Dysphoria Syndrome (GRDS), should be separated the above because it does not directly pertain to the body, is socially driven and psychological in nature.

There are licensed practitioners who still try to “cure” homosexuality. I can cite religious motivations for this behavior. Any reference was removed after DSM-II in the early seventies. Who knows how many people were discriminated against by it? I hope Ani Defranco will forgive me for quoting her, “Every tool is a weapon if you hold it just right.”

To some extent, a woman can be empowered by her beauty, and a man his strength, but when a person is in transition one might not have either. There are few transsexual people and because the condition is difficult for a bystander to identify with, a person will not always acquire the same empathy, identification, and consideration that a person with either physical or emotional challenges will have. On the positive side, that person will not have the same sorrow forced upon them and therefore might become emotionally durable in a larger sense, but, why should we be made to suffer?

At this time, I think one has to have a thick skin to survive as a transsexual person.
At this time, a living transsexual is nothing to be for an insecure person.

Overall, I don’t know if the public pressure and sometimes persecution against being transsexual is a useful diagnostic tool for separating those who may or may not be serious, or just a meaningless shame. At the time this was written, if a transsexual person doesn’t feel some non-personal persecution, then they just aren’t seeing things realistically. The poor perception of transsexual people in society and the media, and their willingness to proceed anyway, is a good indicator that transsexuality is not a social construction.

I don’t know how many people left life behind because they were untreated transsexual people.

[I know would have had a better quality of life if I had transitioned sooner.]

A psychologist specializing in transsexual issues once told me, “We don’t loose very many (transsexual people in transition) but when we do, there is usually a close friend or family member who strongly objects.”

Friends Like Tops

Balance and Temperament (Continued)

Money sometimes is the bottleneck in one’s transition.

[I have a friend who was a pre-op male-to-female transsexual person. Because she stayed at a homeless shelter, she was told that she would have to sleep with the men. While the people who ran the shelter didn’t respect her gender status, the people who occupied the shelter helped her make a cubicle out of blankets so that she could have some privacy...and they could too.]

It’s unjust that insurance industry offers little of no help in matters involving transsexual issues. Many insurance policies exclude anything concerning transsexuality. I have also have seen companies blame common ailments on a persons transsexual status, and flatly deny payment.

Are people often denied health benefits because they have issues that only pertain to either men or women?

My understanding is: the Harry Benjamin Association is a private organization for healthcare workers who work with transsexual people. I think it would be beneficial if there was a transsexual presence—a transsexual congress within the Benjamin Association. There are transsexual members in the Benjamin Association though usually only health-care providers. I do think the voice of the “average” transsexual person would be of value because I want to the focus of the healthcare providers to be on the “average” transsexual unless they are only interested in helping themselves and transsexual healthcare workers. I have heard quite a few healthcare workers complain that data on transsexual people is difficult to obtain. I also know of transsexual people who just want to be heard. I would like to believe that the potential for growth in the Harry Benjamin Association did not pass with him.

As far as the Benjamin Association is concerned, it seems healthcare workers can claim unequivocally whatever results they want, and not be challenged. I think for the people concerned, if reduced to nothing else, the raw data itself should be invited. One of the most positive things I have seen is a webpage which has anonymous surgical results doctor-by-doctor. I feel this type of feedback is invaluable, not only for transsexual people of the present but also for the future. It would have been nice if this was a Benjamin Association sanctioned activity.

How can someone be accountable if the voice of the patient is silenced and there is no official channel for communication?

[I have volunteered for a local branch of the epilepsy foundation, to the smallest degree I was tangible and could affect change in this group and I don’t even have epilepsy. Yet, as a transsexual person, I don’t think I would be welcome at the association of people that are supposed to be helping me.]

The Benjamin guidelines are permissive towards transsexuals, but they are sometimes shallow in focus, as they measure success with money and employment. I think success should be measured in setting realistic goals and reaching them. I think part of the reasons that the guidelines focus on such things is because transsexuality is still controversial, and people in the HBIGDA just wanted people to function well in society, and appear so. I do remember Dr. Harry Benjamin stating something to the effect, “If we follow the letter of the law, we have abandoned all common sense.”

[My goal is, as for myself and any other: I want transsexual people to be happy, really happy or the best possible given the condition.]

I don’t want you spending effort with how things appear, I want you to be happy.

A person can have permanent changes made in one’s body that may affect that person’s life indefinitely. I can get several body piercings done and have half of my body tattooed and still have time for a tummy-tuck, a nose-job and while I am recovering I can overeat quite a bit. When it comes to genitals and hormones we seem much more sentimental though.

What feeds this?

Women sometimes take estrogen replacement therapy.
Men sometimes take testosterone.

Why is more complicated if a “man” wants to take estrogens, or a “woman” wants to take testosterone?

At this time, I think the Benjamin Standards of Care are regrettably necessary because I feel our culture is not capable of understand the transsexual person yet and science doesn’t seem to have all of the answers yet either. I can foresee a point where the conventional wisdom alone could help guide transsexual people as it guides people through most points or changes in life, but not yet. The information is just not out there.

I can’t see “surgery on demand” at this point because there is so much misinformation out there that I think the average person may not even really know what transsexuality is. I think that often people have nothing to base their beliefs from other than what was sold to them as entertainment.

One generalization I dare make is, most transsexual people I have met have felt discomfort since an early age and I think for instance, the average person couldn’t offer the advice of waiting a given period of time before having surgery. As far as the length of time before starting hormones or having surgery, I feel it should vary with the individual.

I would like to see a standard pamphlet and test just designed to make sure that people know the implications they are getting themselves into, physically, emotionally and sociologically. People should know all of the negative, as well and the positive effects of what they are getting themselves into.

Some transsexual people sometimes try to over-compensate in the new role, trying to become more masculine or feminine than one really is. Please try to remember: if one couldn’t get the girl out of the boy, one isn’t going to be able to get the boy out of the girl, and vice-a-versa.

With all the possible loss, I think that some transsexual people will also get a salt left over from transitioning, a different way of seeing people, a knowledge that is sometimes difficult for me to describe because right now, I think the language barely exists. I feel that most people are not very androgynous, and sometimes it is easier to see Woman and Man while not being there.

After time, one should drift or settle to find a equilibrium and balance. I believe that there is some loss for any gain, but ultimately the transition process should be a growing process instead of one of atrophy. You shouldn’t do almost everything that you did before.

Is the desire to change one’s body to become something else a disease?

Not necessarily. If you look for exception in anything, you will find it, but even with all the social pressure against it, it can be a very healing, growing, inspiring thing to witness as long as the change starts from within.

Is that desire purely psychological or purely physical?

No.

I am very comfortable that it’s both because I believe it is the very interaction between the two.

Why are people transsexual?

I don’t know. I understand it simply as a maladaptation between the mind and body, but where that maladaptation resides, I don’t know.

I have met too many transsexual people who were just on the edge of normality as far as their bodies are concerned to just ignore their differences. There would be something a little different here or there. How does one react to a pretty, small “male” person who had undecended testicles, or a genetic female that doesn’t look at all like a “girl” and who is large enough to “pull your arms out of their sockets?” What do say to people if they want to change their bodies to be their idea of themselves? Perhaps if you must change, I could understand. For some transsexual people I have met I would call transsexuality “an intersexed condition not otherwise specified”, for others I wouldn’t. I would consider people at the edge of normality as far as general affect and appearance a higher risk of becoming transsexual from what I have witnessed.

If a transsexual person has transitioned, and functions in society with little problem, I often feel heavy of heart because they probably didn’t function so well before. Personally, while seeing the growing, positive change, I also sometimes mourn for the loss of opportunity to ever have been ordinary.

In transition, I hope a transsexual person can love oneself and thereby be able to love others, try to deal with the past, do whatever it will take to heal, while not loosing sight of the future, all while participating in a great life change, a second adolescence, or a first right one.

Some people have little distance to move at all as they have always lived as their gender dictated and never really functioned as a member their expected gender. Others have considerable distance to cover whether physically or socially and may never even pass for themselves, may never feel comfortable enough to be true to themselves, and may never be hormonally and physically congruent. Whether or not these people should attempt transitioning is beyond my grasp, but hopefully not beyond theirs. While not limited to transsexual people by any means, overall I am surprised and proud that so many can withstand so much adversity and remain so warm, caring and human.

I perceive a person as having gender attributes instead of being one exclusively one gender or another. I feel that, while there is an unlimited variation of adaptation patterns, a great inconsistency of the “glue” that holds one’s self/id/soul thing in our bodies.

I also feel all people having some effeminate (male-femininity) and emasculent (female-masculinity) as well as feminine and masculine characteristics. I also feel, that which spans largely and equally has a unique, tangible quality in itself. Generally, as a music lover, to me, a person’s gender can be felt like a chord. It’s a chord that can be seen, a chord that can be heard, a chord that can be touched.

I haven’t learned the answers, only some questions. While knowing something doesn’t mean the one can change things, I just wanted to share how I model things for myself, because I feel it serves me well. Yet, if I let my subjective, visceral, carnal perception rule me, If I judge people on only this, If I can see no more than the unique perception, the fingerprint that lies between the soul and body—then I have lost.

So I see gender only as that layer of interaction between someone’s “soul thing” and their body. I perceive that layer being stacked upon life’s external interactions over the course of time. I feel to some degree, some of these things can “write” back into the self because I feel we sometime do learn about ourselves through interactions with others, yet some aspects of oneself seem more fixed.

[I have had all of my life not-to-deal or to deal with this problem. I kept those aspects of my life from other people because I thought they wanted me to and I was taught by society to. When I transitioned, those base assumptions were found to be different and now they share in what I have been dealing with all along. I could no longer protect that person from the truth, and they may share my pain. While that doesn’t negate me of responsibility, I thought I was doing them a favor.]

I feel that when a transsexual person transitions, from the observer those changes are pretty deep within the stack of experience and interaction. A friend of family member may base many things this from of these lower, deeper perceptions, but not what is at the foundation. There is sometime a period of mourning for the self that really never was, but more realistically, there was a deeper self than what was shown.

I presented as a male to the best of my abilities for years and some of the things that made-me me, made-me me. I believe an actor cannot act unless one finds that within oneself. I have lost people but maybe they wouldn’t have liked me anyway. Because I was affecting such a low layer, I had to be sure that, this is what I wanted. I also had to be sure that I didn’t want to change the bottom layer, because I can’t.

My identification was not with “men.” To me, I am very close to the, middle though more often with what you would call “women.”

This is my gender identity.

I was not a woman trapped in a man’s body because, for whatever reason I inferred that my body was not completely male anyway. To me, it doesn’t matter why it happened, only that it did.

I am only someone wanted to tune my body to a note more pleasing and less dissonant to me.

For me, I have witnessed, lived, and I believe in this transsexual thing.

Over and Under Partially

I had this friend, right? This person had such an attraction for silky things that whenever this person was in a store they couldn’t help touching anything that was silky or satiny like women’s panties, bras slips, anything that felt good to this person. This person would even go so far as to sleep with these things and touch them all night.

Perhaps you can just imagine what this person looks like...

This person was my friend’s 7-year-old daughter.

Does her daughter need psychological help?
What if she was a boy instead?

Tactile stimulation aside, my friend’s seven year-old daughter probably just wanted to be reminded of her mother, and the silky things reminded her of her. I don’t think that having a fetish is a sign of femininity, but I do feel that, in this society we feel more comfortable with females owning a fetish than males. I also think that, society tends to treat fetishes owned by males as more pathology than females.

I have another friend who has about forty pairs of shoes. This person loves high-heels so much that that they needed to have foot surgery, and then they still wore them. This person is a genetic female as well and probably habitually uses her shoes to match her idea of what attractive is.

And him, whenever he gets a chance he sniffs everyone’s feet and when he sleeps he likes to sleep with his face nestled in his friend’s armpits.

...This is my friend’s cat. Most cats I have met seem to like feet, cardboard, and tile and concrete floors. I don’t know as much about dogs though they seem to like licking people’s faces.

Overall I don’t think that the tactile enjoyment that people feel for some objects, or objectifying a part of another being is unnatural. Of course too much of anything can be bad. Also if one finds discomfort with a fetish or partialism, I think it’s more likely a social problem—than a psychological one.

At the time that I write this, I still see makeovers on television where parents and “friends” attempt to encourage a guest to adhere to normally accepted gender role presentations. I often see family members and “friends” who actually seem very relieved that the person who they are supposed to care about is getting a makeover.

Why should they be so happy?
What are they afraid of?
Why should the person who they are supposed to care about, give up a part of their freedom of expression?

Custom

It was not instinctual thing to have my ears pierced, it was a socially driven action.

There are things that I think are not based in gender. I don’t believe that people have an instinctual need to do a lot of things to their bodies that people do, yet I do think it may be instinctual to be expressive even if it extends to one’s body.

People have been getting tattoos and parts of their body pierced for a very long time.

What if someone wants to do ___________ instead?
Can modifying a human body be art?
What is art?

I believe that affection and intimacy have a basic living function and need. What if a person was more attractive to someone than a person who wasn’t physically altered? Then, was the altering a social construction or a device?

Some people would not be attracted a person with tattoos all over their body, others would not be unless they had them. So is the physical altering for attraction purposes only at face value or is a means of selection?

[I have also seen pictures/text of some genetic males who have their penises partially split underneath. One person who did it claimed that it increased his sexual stimulation more and didn’t affect his urinary stream or sexual performance. There was another that it would seem unlikely that the ordinary ideal of sexual intercourse would be improbable.]

Even people who do body ‘mods often state that it’s advantageous to wait a while and not just do something, anything permanent to your body on a whim. Modifying one’s body can be the ultimate expression of individualism or the ultimate expression of conformity.

I found something that was disturbing to me. It was a personal account by a someone who entirely removed their own male genitalia. When I was in desperation I foolishly risked my very life in such a way, but for the hormonal changes that I believed it would cause. It bothered me, because I can’t understand why anyone would try to do something like that, but without the same goal as I had. They also took pictures as they went. It might have been partially motivated for effect, shock value or attention perhaps.

Some things might be a social construction, some things might be a social deconstruction, but I think more worthy are those things that are done for art, as long as the human canvas does not become the canvas human, and the human clay does not become the clay human.

So where does it all end?
Who is to draw what line where?

Well Centered

Most people were taught that there are only men and women, that there are only two distinct sexes; this is wrong. While most people born are either male (XY) or female (XX), have endocrine systems that behave in a certain manner, and possess genitals of a certain characteristic, to assume that there is no diversity and that things are as simple as plain yes or no, is just ignorance. So if there are more than just men and women (and there are), to have that knowledge and force a continuum of people through a sieve of two makes little sense and is perhaps unjust.

[When a baby is developing, up to a certain point it’s difficult to tell whether the baby is male or female, at this stage a baby’s sex organs are very ambiguous. To some degree, we were almost all women, all men. It’s not my concern whether or not one believes it because the are books are out there.]

There are chromosomal variations such as Turner’s, Klinefelter’s, and others, where cell for cell, what we define as conventional male or female is not so clear. There are also hormonal variations out of the range of ordinary, sometimes just natural, sometimes caused by prenatal medications. Sometimes a penis might have a slit for a urethra, sometimes labia may close.

Are these people broken?
Is their condition a syndrome?
Exactly how big does a clitoris have to be to be a penis?
How much mammary gland is necessary for a breast?
How much tissue is necessary for a surgeon to alter a human being?

Should we change them?
Should we let them decide?
If not why?
If so when?

This may introduce discomfort but I will field it...
Can we be so sure human evolution ends with just Man and Woman?

At one time, doctors surgically altered people who were ambiguous to one sex or another, believing in their heart, that they were doing what was for the best. At one time it was even thought that one could be assigned a sex very early on, and the mind would just magically grow into it and the person would enjoy a blissful happiness.

Intersexed people are just starting to be heard, and I don’t think we can rest too comfortably in early surgical intervention in people too young to give consent. This also gets complicated because what if someone really wanted a baby of this sex or that sex? Does the creation of a new living person weigh more than their parents’ egos. I think as a group other intersexed people should decide their fate, not sexed people. Forgive my cliché but this is a really slippery slope.

It’s my personal belief that, given informed consent someone who has a hormonal, genetic or developmental intersexed condition should be able to have reassignment, like transsexual people do, but as an option—as choice. As in transsexuality, at what age can we be sure that this decision is not motivated by external influences?

Some people buy things or paint baby’s room pink or blue and it’s a pretty good indication that it seems pretty natural to force; gender-specific behavior on their children, perhaps surgery too.

So why am I, an ordinary transsexual person writing about intersexed people? My sex organs were unremarkable and within the range of “normality”, but my body’s secondary sexual characteristics such as size and proportion, I felt not what I thought the average male was. From the start, I looked “queer” because I was made that way. People take me as female now almost explicitly in spite of my toying with presentation, and yet people have always interacted with me like this in some ways. Becoming more feminine brought discomfort because of the familiarity implied.

What am I?
And
What was I?

As a transsexual person, sometimes I look for something to validate my transsexuality, but as a living thing more often I look for the source of my androgyny, my lack of identification with others, and to explain my suffering.

Why me?

Centrifugal

To me, Dr. Benjamin’s scale varied across from surgical desire to non-surgical desire (transient, constructed and fetishistic). It didn’t, however seem to vary with desired/ideal/targeted outcome as far as physical status.

It’s apparent that the usual transsexual transitional process overall is—geared toward and has the expectation that one will within reason complete a transition from female-to-male or from male-to-female. People seem to be more sentimental with traditional female and male bodies and genitalia.

For this reason, I wonder about the proportion of surgeons who would perform surgery, to achieve an intersexed condition. For some female-to-male people not having complete surgery might be an attractive alternative as it is for some male to female people. Once again—we all deal with things in different ways. This is the reason why I am concerned when people stereotype genitalia as gender.

I do see gender as a continuum and so, I also believe in the transintersexual / transintersexed person.

If one believes that it’s wrong to have/perform surgery leading to an intersexed condition (IS-RS?), then aren’t we in some small way saying that an intersexed person’s physical state isn’t valid?

I have also been doing some reading on people who are modern eunuchs. This person had surgery done by someone who usually performs transsexual SRS.

It is fascinating for me because, this adds another entire dimension to both gender and more-so the physical body, not only where(?) on the continuum but: how much?

[It is ironic that person who claimed to have had an intersexed condition was altered as a child.]

Peace

I don’t have all the answers, only enough to get more questions.(Smiling.). The only thing I know for sure is what I don’t know and sometimes that gives me the chance to grow.

I know transsexual people from all walks of life. I have met transsexual people from different countries, different races, different religions, different education levels, different financial situations, different interests, different everything. One generalization I dare make is, transsexual people are—as few—as we are diverse. Our diversity within our community can either hurt us or help us. Many transsexual people have worked hard to make things as good as they are now, but there still is a lot to be done.

Please remember that in addition to transsexual people, there are gay people, lesbian people, bisexual people, people who cross-dress, intersexed people, as well as people who are heterosexual out there too. There are people of different races, beliefs and religions. I am reminded of this because I can find a little of all within me. There are also other groups out there too where their day-to-day lives are in question because they might be different or have a different take on things.

I can only speak with only a single voice, I can only cast one ballot, but sometimes it’s easier to create change from the outside, than from within, so if there is something I can do to I will try to help someone else.

Many people in many minorities have different methods trying to achieve the same goal, freedom. To have any kind of freedom, we must get along with one another better.

I want people to have freedom; this is my rhetoric.

Knowing that there are unprotected transgendered people in the world hurts me. If I could give me anything, I would give me the security of knowing that people like me would be safe, and some more time with all kinds of people.

Every living thing that leaves or is forced from this world leaves a void that will never be filled. Please don’t hate—enjoys life’s diversity. Please open your minds.

In fact, in truth:
People are more diverse than just male or female,
People are more diverse than just heterosexual.

I am sure that I am not the first nor will I be the last to know:

In other parts of American Government, there is a system of checks and balances and things are mostly just. In the matters I will speak they have failed miserably. The argument that the excluded minorities want “special rights” is pure sophistry, because there is great evidence of special discrimination. We are well overdue for an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

A United States Citizen shall have the right to be free from discrimination based on sex and gender.
A United States Citizen shall have the right to express sexual and gender identity as it does not infringe on another persons Constitutional Rights.
No law shall be written, enforced or remain that will infringe those rights.
A United States Citizen shall be free from religious persecution that would threaten or seek to threaten those rights.

Path

There is a place for everything, and this book is my place for openness and truth. I have tried to give an honest accounting of my life, some of which is not that pleasant. I have tried my best to preserve the moment. If I sterilize it, if I compromise my writing, then things get lost, and writing ceases to be an effective art form. It would then lose any ability to be helpful to anyone including me. Some of the following may not be suitable for someone who is bothered by graphic details, someone who is undergoing certain kinds of counseling, or someone who needs it. This book can’t read itself and its cover also closes.

It is not my wish to upset the reader.
It is not my wish to shelter the reader.

Please don’t attempt to recreate anything in this book as there are some very vivid accounts of:

• Gender issues, including genital surgery,
• Human sexuality,
• Substance abuse,
• Street violence,
• Being sexually abused as a child,
• Risky, self-destructive behavior,
• Questioning one’s existence.

....and, I hope, some strong language.

It’s hard for me to listen to my feelings and relate them at the same time. There are so many possible reasons why I could be the way I am that they don’t seem relevant anymore, because I know pretty much what works for me and makes me happy. I could not base my future on what-ifs and speculation. When I tried, I led my life to ruin. It is my belief that who, what and why I am, is more than my environment or experiences. I have no “control” me who had the “perfect life”, but who has the “perfect life,” and what is it anyway?

I started writing this as an initial introduction of sorts when I was going through evaluation for suitability for hormone therapy and surgical approval. I am a more of a theorist than a researcher, so my only obligation is to open my mind. If I’m lucky, in doing so I might open yours too—if it’s not already.

I am trying to be as honest with you as I am with myself, and some truths are not as easy to admit to even oneself...

The Change

When my mother remarried during the late nineteen sixties or early seventies, my mother, my brother, my new stepfather, and I moved to Texas for a brief time. It was there where my stepfather’s heroin addiction surfaced. He and my mother seperated.

A few weeks after returning to Connecticut we received a postcard from our old landlord in Texas. There had been some bad tornadoes near Corpus Christi, and one of them had ripped off my landlord’s roof. The trailer which we had lived in until a few weeks ago now laid in a small pond, upside down, one hundred feet away from its original resting place. My mother’s records and other possessions were still in it. We all probably would have been killed if we had stayed.

[Years later, someone would tell me that people shouldn’t be allowed to divorce. I shared this story, and I added that divorce saved my life.]

Sometimes change is good.

We moved to a small Central Connecticut town. We stayed there for a while, and then we moved to a larger post-industrial city. We lived in the upstairs apartment of a green asphalt-tiled house. Our rent was just okay, but there were pear and peach trees there, a grapevine and even berries growing in the yard. The downstairs neighbors had a gray and white ordinary-looking house cat named Petie. As a cat person, I have really only met two cats that didn’t like me. I am allergic to cats and I don’t really care.

Petie spent a lot of time with us, a lot of it on top of our refrigerator which purred and kept her warm. Petie would eat almost anything, including spaghetti. Petie saved me from having to scrambled eggs, even those with ketchup on them.

Everyone in our family thought Petie was a boy cat, until the first day of spring, when in our closet, the kittens started coming out of her.

Same?

My brother was three years older than me. He lacked a sense of humor, and he seemed to be angry most of the time. Even early on, I seemed to have the ability to unhinge his temper, an unremarkable feat which was easy to accomplish. Being larger, he possessed the ability to punch three of my teeth out at once. I lacked the scruples to resist bloodying his nose in his sleep for it.

I used to play with my next door neighbor. While it is stereotypical, she and I used to play with her dolls. The vinyl doll carrying case looked just like the one they used for the small toy cars. No wonder why I was confused. (Smiling). The reason I am mentioning it is because my brother used to tease me about it. I stopped.

I think he shouldn’t have teased me, but I should have had the backbone to stand up to his teasing.

I don’t put too much weight in boys playing with dolls, or wanting a toy light-bulb oven, or girls playing with toy cars, or some other sexist thing that has been passed from generation to generation. I played with toy cars too, and I helped build real cars, and look how I turned out.

I had a friend who lived next door in a brick three-family house. She was about the same age as I, but she was a little larger physically. Her parents spoke with a heavy Polish accent. We spent a lot of time together.

When I was about six or seven, she took me by the hand, and she led me into the bathroom right in front of her parents. I was uncomfortable because I felt that her parents wanted her to do this. As I watched her parents’ faces, the door closed.

When we got inside, we played show and tell. We carefully watched how each other peed. I remembered thinking, “You don’t have this, but I don’t have....” I thought she was “pretty like a flower,” and I wasn’t. I responded by trying to make her feel bad. I made fun of her because that’s the only way I could handle it—being six or seven.

I didn’t feel I was any different than her before that day, and now I was confused. Perhaps that’s why her parents wanted her to show me. It’s ironic that the very first strong feeling of personal awareness I ever had in my life, was that something was very wrong with me. I was broken from the start.

I know my first name, my last name, where I live, my age, and I know that something is wrong down there.

It was not anything that I ever was told, or that anything implied. No one ever dressed me up in girl’s clothes. I still have a lot of refrigerator art from that period, and I drew myself as I was then—nothing out of the ordinary, no breasts and no wheels for feet. (Smiling). My brother was a boy and my little gang of neighbors and I weren’t. It was as simple as that, but now I felt very different. I guess I was my idea of a girl. Gone were the innocence of such things as making lawn-clipping forts and painting a toy Jeep (and, accidentally, my downstairs neighbor) silver. I wished I had been born a girl, but I wasn’t.

[When I look back to when I was young, I have always used the term “kid” to refer to myself rather than “boy.” It catches my attention when my friends sometimes refer to their children as the “the boys.” That itself may not be interesting, because a lot of people do that. I seem to find it more relevant that their children are little people than that they are either boys or girls. Or is it instead that I am just projecting my own androgyny?]

I liked this boy in the neighborhood as much as the girl downstairs, both to the dismay of my girl-friend next door. I still don’t know if she and I were supposed to be in “puppy love” or not, only that we spent a lot of time together. None of these relationships were really sexual, but I still had feelings for all of them. The fact that one of them was male was probably an indication that I would be bisexual someday.

In school, I hated it whenever the teachers would split people up into two lines: one for boys, and the other for girls. I felt uncomfortable with the whole idea. Why should people be sorted out like this, like objects or things? Teachers questioned me because I enjoyed playing “house” in the neat little log-cabinesque playhouses we had in our kindergarten classroom.

I hope that teachers are less sexist now.

One year, our class won the best-attendance award. The prize was a field trip—to an amusement park. I had a lot of fun there. I went on a roller coaster with some friends. The person who ran the ride segregated another friend and I from our companions because we were both “boys.” I felt weird because I just wanted to go on the ride, and cared little about with whom, until then. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t supposed to sit next to this person. I didn’t seem to separate people into two lines as othe