Transgender?

Post Reply New Topic

First, I just want to say to Flutter, thank you so much for being so understanding. I am almost moved to tears because I was allowed to talk about my experience and you get where I was coming from. A very large part of me, most of me, feels as if feminists and transgendered people are fighting the same thing: a patriarchal, uptight, culture that tries to tell everyone, including men who don't fit the mold, what's acceptable and what's not. Screw that! SO much suffering.

I guess, mostly, my problem is with that particular person, my ex. He told me that men are better than women and that I should let him make the decisions because the bible says so (he's a pastor's son) and then he reveals that he wants to be a girl? So he's a guy when it's convenient. I guess I just hate my ex.

I have met other transgendered people and had no problem with it.

Soo...to answer Claire333...I don't know how it's possible. He said that in highschool he grew breasts and had to have them surgically removed. He had scars on his nipples. He also had what may have been a scar on the area between his penis and his scrotum. I forget what that spot is called. It was a long raised up line. It was a very sensitive spot. So, we wondered if that was some sort of female genitalia that had been sewn up when he was a baby. However, people with xxy syndrome are supposed to usually have small penises, which he didn't, and fertitlity problems, which he didn't.

So... maybe that's TMI. I don't know what happened. I do know that in Highschool he looked like a girl. He dressed like a girl. He wanted to be a girl. His parents are Southern Baptists and so they were not open minded. He had a hellish experience at school because he had large breasts that he had to tape down.

So, I feel awful for him. But not awful enough to forgive him for what he did to me and my family. No matter what happens, he'll always be an abusive, violent ex-husband who made my life a living hell to me.

Your anger is justified.

His issues don't give him permission to be abusive or to lash out at you. They don't excuse them either.

It sounds like he needs help, I hope he's getting it, and I hope he's not hurting someone else while he works through those issues.

Does this mean that you rescind the no vote?

Thanks for trying to explain. I guess it is the "raised as a girl until they realized he was a boy" that still has me messed up. It seems strange his family would have been against him acting female as a teen, when they allowed him to be female as a child. Maybe they should have 'realized' he was a girl. Again...sorry for your grief. I could never imagine going through that.

You're talking about Kleinfelter's Syndrome.

The typical presentation is tall and youthful with gangly limbs, or a very round body type, small testicles, moobs are very common,

Most people with Kleinfelters are sterile, but it's not impossible for them to be fertile.

The majority of people with kleinfelter's identify as male, and it typically does not present with ambigious genitalia, so it sounds possible that your ex had more then just kleinfelters.

Kleinfelters is present in approximately 1 in 500 males.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleinfelter

(I've done a good deal of research on intersex conditions, when I was questioning my own gender)

That is the crux of the issue. A transwoman who is fully a woman, and an individual woman, is not a problem; a transwoman who wants to cling to some of the priviledges of her former masculinity is a problem, especially if she identifies as lesbian. The answer to your question, then, is 'it depends.' I have been perfectly fine sharing a dressing room with the vast majority of the lesbian women I have known, but I have also seen lesbians make comments that would get them smacked if they had been men and act as though it was ok, just because they were a woman.

Also, transwomen often have a sense of what femininity is that is different from what women-born-women understand it to be: the preoccupation with clothes and makeup, the cattiness, the speaking in falsetto. Or else some victorian impression of the docile, passive 'angel in the house.' It's as though a hetero male's stereotype of a sorority girl or of a catholic virgin was taken and not only internalized, but also broadcast upon the entire gender - and the newly-female transwoman can't understand why they're not fitting in, not being accepted, when they are 'clearly displaying femininity and feminine interests.' For example, I was told once by a transwoman, "Women aren't competitive." Very few women appreciate being depersonalized and cast in to the sea of 'all women' in the way that a lot of men do, and some transwomen still do, with statements like 'women want to nurture,' or 'women don't care about competition.' A common theme you see, for example, are the threads on the dating form that start out, 'women don't like nice guys,' or 'women do like nice guys,' or 'what do women want?'

the answer is that, like men, we are all individuals; we all have different wants and desires. Some of us will be comfortable with transwomen in general, and some of us will not. The fact that we share common genitalia does not hook us up into some female borg hive.

I actually agree with you 100%. I consider myself trans because of body dysphoria, not because of a need to "act more feminine." I'm not planning on emulating a stereotype, I'm always going to be me. Me is something of a genderqueer, I've gotten past doing things because it's what men do, and I'm not going to do things simply because it's what women do. (I'm probably going to have to experiment here and there to see what things I do and don't enjoy.)

My sister is the most competitive person I know. My mom is a total tomboy, so much so that people often mistake her for a lesbian. I don't believe the stereotypes. I'm not competitive, but that just means I don't fit in with with guys who live that stereotype, it doesn't make me a woman.

To be perfectly honest, it's not just transwomen who emulate ridiculous stereotypes, and I have a problem with anyone of any gender or sexual orientation who lives a stereotype because they believe they're supposed to.

Of course, there absolutely are men-born-men and women-born-women who subscribe to the 'all men...' and 'all women...' theories, too. And they're just as obnoxious as a trans person who does the same.

When I wrote that first thing, I think that I didn't actually vote. I'm not sure. I'm not voting no, though.

I know!

I know I know I know. Ugh.


If I start to understand my ex-in-laws, then I'll start to worry about myslef, though. They're nuts. They're so uptight that they think breastfeeding babies is perverted and wrong. So, yeah, they're nuts.

I mean, did he have both kinds, to some extent, and they were going to decide later? And they picked the wrong one? I used to think that that was impossible, because his penis isn't small, and how could that be? I have heard of babies being born with ambiguos genitalia, but it's my understanding that those people are usually 'turned into' girls.


I met someone who said that he/she was both and that person was on social security because he/she couldn't work because he/she chose not to mutilate him/herself and that made dealing with the public difficult. He/she was androgynous and had a girlfriend. That person had the same kind of lanky frame as my ex.

So...I don't know. And when I try to read about it, because I will have to tell my kids someday, I don't find to much that is helpful online.

You know, I have already read the Wikipedia thing. It doesn't seem to fit my ex 100%. I don't know what his condition is.

People comment to me that I probably attracted him because I am not a girly girl. I simply can't make myself be the stereotypical prissy girl. It causes me pain and stress! I took that Bem Gender test about androgyny and I scored exactly in the middle. So, I can relate somewhat to anyone who just can't, for anything, fit the stereotype.

If he has XXY, then he does have Kleinfelters, it may be co-morbid with another condition, which would explain the differences. Every case is individual though.

I'm sorry to take this so off topic, but the reason I thought he was xxy is because he thought so.

Then I read about androgen insensitivity syndrome and that sounds exactly like him.

Possibly Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.

But I'm presuming he had a Penis, so it couldn't have been total AIS.

With AIS, the person has XY chromosomes, but the body doesn't respond to the male androgens, and so it develops in the default female configuration externally, but the person has undescended gonads instead of a uterus and ovaries, or possibly unformed gonadal streak tissue.

Partial AIS is where the body doesn't completely respond to the male androgens, but parts of the body may. This may present in any number of forms, and with the possibility of hermaphroditism.

However, in either case of AIS, gynecomastia is atypical because the estrogen levels do not naturally reach a pubertal level (usually estrogen supplement is required.) In full or partial AIS, the person will be infertile as a female and will not have a period. In partial AIS it is conceivable to be fertile as a male.

The only way to tell would be to have your ex have a karotype taken to determine his chromosonal makeup.

AIS seems unlikely because of the breast development, unless she was given estrogen treatment as an adolescent?

5-alpha-reductase deficiency is a likely candidate. It limits the production of DHT (another male hormone) and can present in numerous apperent external genitalia configurations, but the vagina presented in these cases is not attached to a vagina, and often ends in a small shallow pouch. The clitoris/penis may be viralized, and can present as either a macroclitoris or a micropenis. The urethra may or may not attach to the clitoris/penis. These individuals externally appear female until puberty, at which time testosterone increases do actually virilize them with male secondary sexual charachteristics, a deepening of the voice, hisutism, and the testes may actually descend at puberty. I say this is the most likely candidate, because it would present as female at birth, possibly with a slight oddity to the urethra, and it wouldn't be until puberty that the difference would likely be noticed. (it's hard not to notice testes dropping from your vagina). It is very possible for these XY individuals to be fertile as men, although in some cases underdevelopment of the prostate gland and seminal vesicles can prevent fertility. It still doesn't explain the breast growth.

Is it possible your Ex was of South American descent? Specificaly Papau New Guinea or the Dominican Republic? The condition, while still not common, is much more prevalent in this region.

Sorry, I'm looking at this as an interesting academic study now, so if I cross a boundary, let me know and I'll stop.

Jeffery Eugenides Middlesex was an excellent, albeit fictional, account of someone with 5-ARD. It's a very compelling story.

Gosh, this is fascinating.

No, he wasn't of South American descent. He was white. I wish I could ask his parents, but they would have a heart attack and die. I am going to read about the stuff you suggested.

In someone's autobiography (I can't remember where I read it now), he (a person with partial-AIS) mentioned being given testosterone by a misguided doctor. The result was breast growth, because his body converted it into estrogen. Er, that is, everybody's body makes some estrogen out of testosterone, but since his cells didn't 'recognize' the testosterone very much, there was little opposition to the effects of the estrogen. Anyway, FWIW...

As long as I'm pretending to be a doctor on the internet... the scar sounds like it might've been a repair for "hypospadias," possibly... (? not like I have any medical degrees or anything)

hypospadias? I learned a new word.

Gee, I'm thinking more about his thing now than when we were married. Teehee.