Negative Images

Being transgendered, and especially being transsexual, can raise a host of negative images and feelings. We generate much of this ourselves, as a kind of self-hatred, because we are made to feel that we have failed and betrayed society, our family and friends, and even God. Once they have proclaimed our expression to be a rebellion against Nature, our opponents often no longer feel obliged to examine the facts, let alone their own feelings. Otherwise rational people will behave very irrationally, while, at the same time, claiming that they are thinking logically.

Ever since recorded history, every society has viewed their own culture as being socially and morally correct. While most people view past cultural proclamations of correctness as silly in retrospect, few seem to be able to see the light and rise above the moment, despite the fact that our observed culture is just a snapshot in time. Less than two thousand years ago, the Roman culture was the dominant culture in the world. In Roman culture, men did not wear pants (or leggings) unless forced to in a cold climate, because that was the clothing of a barbarian. Similarly, when we try to depict future culture in science fiction, it is too often just flimsily-disguised current culture.
Our society has too much cultural policing. The worst examples are based on religion, especially on fundamentalist religious teachings, that invoke difficult-to-translate, metaphorical teachings, from long dead cultures, to apply absolute measures that define was is allowed and what is not allowed in our culture. Most tribal societies do not punish people for being obviously different, but we have lost our tribal roots. We have also lost our connection to Nature; since gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons are declared to be unnatural; despite the fact that parallels for human gender orientations and sexual orientations can be found throughout the animal kingdom.

Within the trans-community, there are turf wars over definitions, over who is being good and who is being bad, over who is real and who is not real, and over who deserves privileges and who does does not deserve privileges. There are constant attempts to create absolute, diagrammed groupings, that are only somewhat correct. Then there are pseudo-psychologists who want to explain us, but who do not follow correct scientific methods. They just end up inflicting absurd analyses upon us.
In reality, people do not tend to fit rigidly defined definitions very well. While it is often assumed that our identities are two-dimensional, our identities are actually multi-dimensional. In a two-dimensional model for gender identity, exceptions will abound. In science, exceptions will usually disqualify a theory, but not in social science.
I define myself, approximately, as a married, transsexually-oriented, woman-identified, heterosexual crossdresser, who does not feel like a woman trapped in a man's body, and who is on an alternate transition path. I purposely used that choice of words, since they will make more than a few people wince when used in that combination. I do not like to be assigned to any stereotypical categories, nor do I like to be judged by the amount or type of surgery that I have had.

I support the right of transgendered persons to be the person they want to be, and I support the right of transgendered persons to get any adaptive surgery they need. I would prefer that transgendered persons pick a practical transition path, that minimizes the stress and disruption in their lives, that avoids obsessive behavior, and that meets their needs with the least cost and effort; unfortunately, without meaningful cultural options, people are very much left to their own devices, without a support system, and without many choices. For the most part, our culture, driven by companies and institutions, reluctantly only allows one transition path: full gender reassignment surgery.
I am fortunate to have a very supportive wife, a good therapist, and a knowledgeable medical doctor, all of whom are given some kind of vote for determining my course of action. Simply put, full gender reassignment surgery is not an allowed option for me.

I will say again that I am not opposed to anyone having gender reassignment surgery, so long as they are willing to go through an extensive pre-surgery evaluation process, have a thorough understanding of all the benefits and all the drawbacks, not cheat on the necessary real-life experiences. and are open to compromises that minimize the loss of family and friends. Surgery should not be given moral connotations. I know that there are transgendered persons for which this surgery is overwhelmingly and psychologically necessary, but such persons only represent a small percentage of those who do have the surgery. Also, about 80% of those who might be inclined to have the surgery do not get to do so. Gender reassignment surgery is not trivial or cheap, and there endless repercussions, such as loss of family and friends, loss of employment, ostracism, shunning, and other forms of punishment.
If one is married, I would suggest finding an alternate transition path. While there is no law against staying married, since same-sex marriage laws only apply to weddings, full gender reassignment surgery is a path that few couples have successfully traveled. If a wife truly has equal power in a marriage, it will take extraordinary social and negotiation skills to effect such a transformations within the bounds of the marriage.
In my case, the number one reason for gender reassignment surgery would be convenience, comfort, and legal standing. Too many companies and institutions, such as Boeing, my former employer, have made gender reassignment surgery their only allowed path for alternate gender expression. I know that persons have used orchiectomy alone to achieve total legal status, but there is almost no legal status for any other kind of gender expression, except in a few, scattered municipalities. We need more options for what we might define as legal expression and legal transitioning.

I continually have to stand my ground and declare who I am; there is just too much misinformation circulating in our society. There are endless explanations given by persons, who are not transgendered, but who somehow know what drives us. I would be the first to admit that my childhood not that great, but those experiences did not make me transgendered. I am sure I am wired this way, because there is no other reason why a man who is shy, introverted, and easily embarrassed would want to be a woman, based on some counter-cultural whim, especially since this life choice can hardly be called convenient. I am not escaping from anything by my preference to be a transwoman, certainly not in reference to responsibility and freedom of expression, since my interests and social interactivity as a transwoman are at least equal to, if not greater than those I experience as a man.
Two of the biggest sources of misinformation are Ray Blanchard (autogynephilia), and J. Michael Bailey (The Man Who Would Be Queen.) Bailey even quotes Blanchard, in much the same way that speculators build their case for alien involvement in the Devil's Triangle, by quoting each other. These people do not use scientific methods, and they carefully control their population to insure that they get the results they want. In a way, it is people like myself that they are trying to figure out, but there are no subjects like myself in their study groups. They like to single out the sexuality of trans-persons as part of their explanation, but they do not relate it to sexual practices in the global population.

Read counter opinions:

Those of us who are transgendered tend to lead distressed lives. Some of us have really distressed lives, especially when religion is thrown into the mix. Religion is too often used as a means to disrupt our intuitive self-assessments.
Jerry Leach is a troubled, transsexually-oriented person, with a website called reality resources, who has been disrupted by religion from actually dealing with his issues. He is used as a poster person by those who oppose any rights for transgendered persons. Besides messing his own life up, he tries hard to mess up the lives of others, who might consult him as an amateur psychologist.
There is another excessively confused and distressed person named Josef Kirchner, who has a website called help me reverse my sex-change. Once again, religion is used to make things worse, and another fallacious poster person is promoted. His/her website promotes all sorts of misinformation. The regret rate for fully-transitioning is quite low, without a 50% suicide rate. In actuality, 50% of those transitioning may have thought about or attempted suicide at some time in their life, but the true rate of actual suicides is extremely low. There many examples of persons, like Josef Kirchner, whose identities have been disrupted by outside pressure. Some end up flip-flopping, without direction in their lives. When one looks at the pictures of his (Josef's) woman self, one wonders how this person can ever adapt as a man. Then there are the graphic, ghastly pictures of gender reassignment surgery, meant to show how evil it is. Pictures of surgery do not belong on personal websites. If I were to show the graphic images of my total-knee-replacement surgery, the images would be equally ghastly.

Read counter opinions:

The last entries on this page are the websites of groups that spread hatred and misinformation about transgendered and transsexual persons. Like all of us, they are free to state their opinions on the internet; however, their presence, combined with all the pseudo-scientific studies, creates a an fallacious resource that can rob us of our civil rights, and our right to competent medical and psychiatric care. The Traditional Values Coalition is quite pernicious, going so far to claim that we recruit, and that we, as transwomen, promote same-sex relationships if we stay married to our wives.

Read about how Dr. Marci Bowers has come under attack:

Wednesday, July 8, 2005