Hey you guys; I have been meaning to ask this question for a week now and I haven’t gotten around.
But here it is- the majority of transsexuals/tranvestites seem to be males to females. I rarely hear about women changing their sex- though it does happen. It just doesn’t seem as common.
My question is, why is this so? Is there an actual psychological reason? Or are females the “fairer sex” (are we truly superior? :)) I’ve just always wondered why it was predominantly a male to female thing.
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I have a theory, that this society worships the Penis god and since you are not allowed to look at the face of god, you are not supposed to look at penises. You may look directly at a penis only if acting in worhip of said penis. As a society, we greatly value phallic things, because they embody some godlike characteristics. We also tithe to the penis by paying more to penis bearers. We tend to value non penis bearers only if they are sponsered by a penis in some way, as being a wife etc. A non-sponsered non-penis bearer doing the same activities as a sponsered non-penis bearer will be vilified and perhaps punished.
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In light of the penis god teory, it is easy to understand female-to-male transsexuals, they simple are trying to be closer to god. In light of this theory, it is impossible to understand male-to-female transsexuals, therefore male-to-female transexuals make better daytime television. So in turn, we hear more about them.
At the same time male-to-female transsexuals actually posess a penis so they can bring the entire power and resources of the penis god to bear on the problem of how to make woman out of a man. Female-to-male transexuals don’t have this advantage. Having god on your side makes all sorts of things easier.
There are several different reasons why there at least appear to be fewer FTMs than MTFs. [ul][li]The efficacy of the FTM surgery is lower. It is much easier to remove an appendage and replace it with a hole than to create an appendage. Last I heard, surgical techniques are such that an post-op MTF can often achieve results physically indistiguishable from a born female without an internal examination. Nobody will ever be fooled by even the best genital reconstruction techniques available for FTM transsexuals.[/li][li]It is easier for a born female (in most cases) to pass for male without surgery than it is for a born male to pass for female.[/li][li]Women are ignored more often by researchers. The incidence rate of FTM transsexualism is all but unknown to gender researchers, who have until recently put virtually their entire attention on MTF transsexualism. (Feel free to muse on the reasons for this discrepancy.)[/li][li]Gender dysphoria expresses itself in degrees, with the term “transsexualism” reserved by psychologists (and transsexuals themselves) to those who commit to “the whole nine yards” of hormone therapy and surgical reassignment. Not all researchers consider a born female who takes testosterone supplements, but only obtains a mastectomy to be a “transsexual”, reserving the term only for those who obtain (or wish to obtain) hysterectomy and oophrectomy in addition to mastectomy. There seem to be more born females who are “satisfied” only with taking testosterone than born males who was “satisfied” only with estrogens (this may relate to the lack of efficacy or lack of availability of FTM reassignment surgery).[/li][li]FTM surgery costs a lot more than MTF. Considering that virtually no insurance plan or HMO will pay for reassignment costs, and that gender dysphoria tends to impair social functioning, often making holding down good jobs difficult, it is even harder for FTMs to pay for it than MTFs. Add to that that women generally earn less pay. Add to that that the option of prostitution is generally less available (there’s a lot more demand for “she-males” than for bearded women with no tits). Ability to pay may exclude many would-be FTMs from reassignment, causing them to elect to go “non-op” (and thus not categorize as transsexual) or to commit suicide.[/li][li]A man who chooses to chop off his dick and become female poses less of a threat to male dominance than a woman who tries to grow one and become male. (Take that with a very large grain of salt.)[/li][li]It’s often debated whether there really is such a thing as a female-to-male transvestite.[/li][/ul]
Furthermore, it’s not at all clear that there really are fewer FTMs than MTFs.
I wonder if the desire to alter one’s gender has less to do with sexuality and more to do with the social roles occupied by the different genders in our society. (Being from the US, I refer to US culture here.) After all, my physical equipment is not a barrier to my falling in love with anyone. I don’t have to be a man to love a woman or vice versa.
As KellyM suggested, it is certainly easier for a woman to “pass” as a man. It is also easier, on a simpler level, for a woman in our culture to do “manly” things. Girls can identify themselves as “tomboys” and generally be indulged, sometimes even encouraged. Athletic girls are getting more support and encouragement these days. As an adult, a woman can be tough, “one of the guys,” independent, etc. In this role she can receive many of the benefits of being male in our culture.
But a boy who does “girlish” things is unlikely to be supported. Much more commonly, in our culture, he will be labeled a “sissy” and encouraged to “toughen up” and “become a man.”
So I wonder if some MTF transvestites and transexuals desire less to be a woman than to be treated as a woman?
lee, I’ve read your penis god theory before and really enjoyed it. I have some friends who would likely enjoy it as well. Would you mind if I quoted you?
Well. I see there’s nothing for me to add here. I will recommend this website however, which IMO has some good factual info and links to psychological info:
who is an M->F TS doctor who supplies resources for TG and TS women.
I do not mind you quoting my theory, as long as you credit me as well.
Thanks, lee. I will, of course, credit you.
Being female is the “default” condition of people, and probably other mammals. What that means is that in the absence of stimulation by male hormones a mammal will develop as a female, regardless of its genotype. There are people who have Y chromosomes but are female physically and mentally because their bodies either don’t produce male hormones or lack receptors for them (androgen insensitivity).
I would speculate that some men are transgendered because their brains ended up in the default female state because they weren’t stimulated by (or didn’t respond to) male hormones at some crucial stage of development. I would further speculate that men are more likely to be transgendered than women because women are already in the default state.
Something I left out: If females end up thinking they’re male because of an excess of androgens (sheer speculation), they may be less likely to be transgendered than men because that hormone excess is less likely than the hormone deficit or insensitivity that causes men to be transgendered.
Current research, as I seem to recall, suggests that the most likely cause of male-to-female transsexualism is prenatal exposure to feminizing agents (e.g. DDT, other pesticides) at just the right stage of brain development. It’s hard to test this theory, though, at least not in humans. I haven’t run across any speculation as to causation of female-to-male transsexualism. I don’t have a primary reference for this point, though. Word of mouth.
Transsexuals do not generally have atypical sex hormone levels (mine were right in the center of the band before I started hormone replacement), and many nontranssexuals have unusual hormone levels for any of a wide variety of reasons.
XY females that suffer from androgen insensitivity also have totally normal hormone levels, as far as I know. Their cells just don’t respond to the hormones. And by the time someone realizes that they’re transgendered, the hypothetical hormone imbalance may be long past. For some traits (like neural tube closure defects caused by folic acid deficiency) it only takes a transient irregularity during fetal development to cause a lifelong condition.
Anyway, I don’t want to fight about this idea of mine because it would be pretty hard to falsify without an animal model, which would be hard to come by since being transgendered is a subjective condition.
Not wholly subjective, apparently; some studies have reported minor physiological differences in terms of brain structure.