So, a guy I know recently found out that he’s a woman trapped in a man’s body and wants to undergo surgery to become a woman. He’s currently undergoing hormone therapy which, I presume, is to prepare his body/psyche for this change.
That seems like a drastic step (the surgery that is). I’m curious as to why someone would undergo this sort of transformation. The particulars of his case seem irrelevant for my question, but I can bring them up if it’ll help. I haven’t been able to get in contact with this individual to ask him myself, but I figure that there are enough varied viewpoitns here that I can get a general sense for why someone in general would do it.
Anyone have any experience with this?
Just in case it’s necessary, I have nothing against the LGBTIETC community, just a difficult time wrapping my head around why changing your sex is necessary.
Chairman Pow, I’m assuming that you’re male, based on your name.
So, lets imagine that tomorrow you wake up, stumble to the shower and look down. Your penis is gone. In it’s place is a vagina. You still feel like yourself. You still feel manly, want to do your fav. man things, generally feel like a man. Only your plumbing is wrong. You look wrong. People treat you wrong. Strangers act like you’re a woman, when clearly, you’re a man.
FWIW, many transgendered folks don’t actually get the final surgery for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it’s major surgery, has risks, and can have complications. Many folks will do everything but surgery - hormones, dressing like their true gender, living as their true gender, and just stop short of going under the knife.
All I know for sure is that if I woke up tomorrow and had a penis, broad shoulders, and a hairy chest I would really feel uncomfortable with that and want to do something about it pronto. Most people are lucky enough to have been born with all their parts matching up to their identity. Some folks need some medical help.
Let’s say a group of Evil Doctors, Inc., kidnaps you, drugs you, takes you to their Secret Volcano Hideout. Over several months they give you a first class, A-number 1, complete package, sex change operation. The works, hormone shots, etc.
They then dump you back at your home.
Would you just accept your gender or would you seek out medical help to put your body into alignment with your mental picture of yourself?
Since almost everyone picks the latter, why give grief to people who merely want to make the same choice you would make?
I’m sure one of our transexual posters will be along with better information than I can provide. I do have two close friends and a number of acquaintances who are transexual, so I have a little bit of second-hand information.
Both of my friends, when I first met them, had not yet begun to transition. Both were “in the closet.” Both understood that they were “in the wrong body” but were afraid to share that with anyone. One was wearing a man’s clothes and refering to herself as “he,” though she understood herself to be a woman. The other, a “man in a woman’s body” was leading a double life – “female” in real life, and “male” on the Internet.
Both were profoundly depressed and suicidal, until they started to transition. The first one found it was enough for her to simply wear dresses and makeup, and change her name. The other found that wearing “men’s clothes” wasn’t enough – in fact, it wasn’t about cclothing at all for him. He really did feel that he was in the wrong body, and nothing short of changing it would get him out of his depression.
In both cases it worked. Life isn’t paradise of course, for them or for anyone else, but without the cloud of pretending and playing a role, both of them feel as if a weight’s been lifted off. It really does seem, in both their cases, that their lives didn’t start until they had begun to transition, and I’m happy for both of them.
Using the term “recently found out” was not the best choice of words in this case. It implies an immediacy that inspires hare-brained, “how would you feel if you wake up one day after terrorists kidnapped you and made you into a woman” scenarios. That was an artifact from the initial draft (which was much longer and included some irrelevant details particular to this case) wherein I explain how this guy went to see a psychiatrist who determined that all of this guy’s problems stemmed from his actually being a woman in a man’s body. As I understand, his meetings with the psychiatrist were over the course of months, if not years, so there was no real sense of, “it happened one day.”
Hamish, thanks for the examples, but I don’t think I’m parsing them correctly. From your second paragraph, it appears that both friends are women-by-sex (as opposed to gender), but in the third, I’m running into a problem here:
Oh, I don’t think the OP was being snarky. It’s Friday afternoon, I’m tired, I was out sick yesterday . . . Maybe when I get home tonight I’ll post some thoughts, but right now I don’t have any thoughts except “train . . . home . . . bed . . .”
I think Hamish’s first friend was a male-by-gender; the second a female-by-gender. It’s considered courteous to refer to the transgendered person by the gender they…OK, I’m stumbling over the next word/phrase here. “Believe themselves to be” makes it sound like it’s something they’re making up, and “are” might still mean the gender their body currently looks like…by the gender they are working to become. Hopefully that’s clear.
So the proper thing to do is to refer to your friend in the feminine, unless she isn’t ready for you to do that yet.
For the record, I’m neither transgendered nor do I know anyone off these boards who is, so I could be talking completely outta my ass. Hopefully, someone will correct me.
Also, if they haven’t been lost, there are a few “Ask the transgendered person” type threads around here somewhere.
I have to bring up Steve Martin’s observation that if he had breasts he’d never get anything done because he’d just stay at home playing with them.
I’m trying to understand, but NONE of these folks woke up one morning and found everything different. They have *always *had their parts and have *never *had the other parts except in their imagination. Transgendering operations seem risky, therefore, because what if having boobs and a vagina ain’t what I thought it was? No, this analogy doesn’t work for me. I can see wanting to dodge genetically-imposed gender roles (is that what trannies are up to?) because you are treated in accordance with a gender with which you can’t identify (bad sentence. Sorry!).
I’ll draw some fire for this, but why can it not be assumed that those who would undergo surgery to change their bits to correspond to a different gender be considered schizophrenic? I ask this with the observation that they are unable to reconcile their own mental processes with our common physical reality. How are they any different from a “loony” who believes he is from Venus and must wear a special brain shield to prevent his discovery by The Intergalactic Authorities?
Something to keep in mind… your body is just a shell and the ‘real’ you is what’s inside (call it a soul/mind/etc…).
If someone is physically a man, but mentally a woman, some would assume that because they have sexual feelings towards men that this makes them homosexual. Some would say that if they act like a woman, then that would make them effeminate.
Neither case is right… they’re not gay or effeminate…they’re just mentally and emotionally a woman. The fact that they happen to have a penis is more than an inconvenience…it’s the source of all the stress that they face daily from society, peers and themselves. Going through surgery to help match the body with the mind is (albeit drastic and dangerous) easier than going through decades of psychotherapy and heartache trying to match the mind with the body.
OK, nobody’s allowed to get angry with my post because it was in no way intended to be mean spirited. Having been conveniently matched mentally to my physical hardware I have absolutely no way to even empathize with folks in different circumstances. I’m either dead-on accurate here, or I am beset with ignorance on the issue. If the latter case is true, I would have someone fight that ignorance for me because I have no clue as to it’s depth or nature.
It may help to “wrap your head around it” if you stop thinking of it as “changing your sex.” It’s more like reconstructive surgery to repair a horrible, horrible birth defect. Not life-threatening in any way, but really ugly. For years, you think you’re just an ugly kid; you could look better at the cost of major surgery, but it seems shallow. Then, your doctors discover that the ugliness isn’t “you” at all, and suddenly what seems like your cross to bear becomes a burden imposed from without. Wouldn’t that make you want the knife?
MrBishop addressed this, but I’m going to take a stab at it.
Inigo, the biggest problem with your post is that you assume that physical reality determines someone’s mental state. It doesn’t. Your biological sex does not determine what is in your heart, your mind, your soul; just because you are born with a penis doesn’t mean that your mind is male.
There are cultural expectations of men and women, some detrimental, some beneficial, some neutral. These expectations are imposed on people based on their outward appearance. Simultaneously, their inner state of mind compels them to fulfill some of these expectations. If outwardly, people are asking you to be A, but inside you is screaming to be a B, that causes a lot of conflict and mental anguish. Changing your outside so that people expect you to be a B is a way of resolving the conflict.
Transgenderism as it exists now is a result of assigning gender roles based on biology. The ethereal and intangible human mind transcends biology - it is too highly evolved and complex to be confined by something as arbitrary and ultimately meaningless as gender. Personally, I am grateful to not be ruled by my gonads (ok, except for those 3 days of the month when my girlfriend is ready to kill me).
Well firstly because schizophrenia is wildly different in its symptoms. Gender dysphoria is not accompanied by paranoia, an inability to follow through on goals, etc. It is simply and only the innate mentality that one is a gender not matched by the outward form. One could view both as disorders, in that without treatment both may find it difficult to live in society… perhaps even impossible. However, the treatment for schizophrenia would be a variety of medicines combined with regular visits to a psychiatrist of some sort. The treatment for gender dysphoria is simply bringing the body in line with the mental gender. People make the mistake of thinking that psychology has some baseline of “normal” and treatments are to correct variations from that normality. No. Psychological treatment only seeks to find a solution that will leave a person who may, to a greater degree, be functional and content with the life that surrounds them however this may come about.
There is no way known that can switch the mental gender of a diagnosed transsexual person, so instead the reverse course to reconciliation is followed to whatever degree the patient may need until they feel secure and healthy in their own bodies.
All this is academic to me, since I am not a psychologist or a transgendered person, but it’s what I’ve read. If someone from either side of things spots an error, please please correct me. I’m supposed to be part of a support and education group that includes trans-issues, so I need to know the facts from both aspects.
Let me see if I can take some of the bite out of this for Eve - because, really, it wouldn’t be good if the nice lady’s head exploded. I understand this analogy only because I have a similar one about religion - my theory is if Moses appeared today and said God was talking to him through a burning bush, Moses would find himself incarcerated in a nice safe hospital for his own protection. And NO, I do not wish to hijack this into a religious debate, this is just one of those random thoughts that comes to me sometimes, and I’m only mentioning it because I think Inigo is thinking with the same weird logic I have. So try not to get too agitated, Eve. I don’t think there’s malice aforethought here.
Of course, if I’m wrong and Inigo is being an ass, I will help find a monkey to fling poo at him.
I know very very little about transgenderism, but I can easily imagine how difficult it would be to reconcile the inner and outer selves when they simply do not match. In my “real life” I’ve known one transgendered person reasonably well, and all I know from his experience is that he was born female and ALWAYS felt as though everything about him was wrong, but I never had the courage to ask him to explain it to me more fully.
I think what Inigo and Chairman Pow are asking is “how do very effeminate gays differ from transexual xy’s who want to be women?” (And vice versa for the opposite desire". Presuming that effeminate gayness does not prevent depression, alcoholism or other mental illnesses, there must be effeminate gays suffering from depression. In what essential way to they differ? “Merely” the desire to change sex?
This question can be phrased any number of ways. What do I, a straight male, have in common with a transexual xx who wants to be a male that neither of us has in common with a masculine lesbian? This essential “thing” can not any of those things in which we humans differ individually? Asking a gender happy individual what they would do if someone forcibly changed their gender speciously begs the question.
I don’t know, but presume the answer is feeling comfortable with our sex. I like being a straight guy. I’ve known a few masculine lesbians who liked being masculine women. I assume an ftm is not comfortable being a woman. But is that because the ftm is uncomfortable with being perceived as a masculine lesbian, or what?
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