Halvorson wrote:
I wonder if we could find any gay/trans-gender male aspies that would prove Cohen wrong.
i was born male and still am, bodily. for most of my 28 years i have suppressed my desire to be a girl. i dont anymore and have started seeing a therapist to begin the transition to female. the day when i can pass for female and be accepted as such will be the highest point of my life. though i have only recently stopped denying who i am, and only more recently still, started seeing a therapist about it, a moment in my first session with her will stay with me a long time:
i expressed concern to her that my case would be dismissed out of hand because i have aspergers syndrome and my trans feelings would be attributed to nothing more than an aspie fixation. she said that concern was unwarranted and went on to tell me that the center that i go to has seen quite a few transgendered aspies who have gone on to make a full and quite healthy transition. she also implied that gender issues are not only not unusual but are quite common in people with aspergers.
i hope the people who read this (and i've gathered that some/most of you do) that there is a very distinct diference between physical sex (presence of male or female genitals), sexual orientation, and gender identity. i have also seen mention of the gender identity spectrum, which i think i will now be forced to make my own poll of.
as a simple, but not at all diffinative way of testing your own gender identity, think about this mental exercise, and think carefully:
you wake up tomorrow and find that you have the body of the opposite sex, how would that make you feel? (dont think about what you would do, think about how you would FEEL)
if that happened to me, i would feel fantastic in a way that words could not describe; when i asked my roommate the same question (and he is a very masculine man), his immediate answer was that he would want to kill himself.
as a final note, im sure most of you are familiar with aspergian obsessions/fixations; one of mine is sexology. my therapist has said to me on several ocassions that this is an enormous boon in the therapy process because i can phrase my feelings in clinical ways that leave no amiguity as to their meaning. and in furtherance, my interest in sexology was spawned by my desire to be a woman, not the other way around.
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Draax, Evil Genius