Transgender & Transsexual

Post Reply New Topic

The important thing is, do you want to see a woman when you look in the mirror? Do you want to be pretty?

Also, how would you feel about growing breasts?

Another question would be, what do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror? Some feel that they dont recognise their image at all... untill in the transition the face will become known. This however is very personal, and not allways the same story. One thing is sure: only way to be more sure of the gender of choise, is to wear it. First at home, then in public. If you feel you want to have breasts, get the silicon-bra, if you feel you may want some other femininity, try to wear it. I don't mean, that you would have to be stereotypical kind of girl. Ofcourse the hormones then are an abyss, you don't get to try their affects...

Another way that gender incongruens can come about, is as a form of derealization. Derealization is a psychological term, meaning, that this qualia we feel around us, does not feel really real - as ofcourse litterally it's not, it's interpretation of our brains, it's manufactured imagination and so on - rooms, tables and so on are made by someone, and in this sense this world really is virtual... but, in derealization, you can't get the grip on it, it doesn't "feel right". With gender incongruens, you feel your body, as a kind of fake avatar. That it atleast in the serious kind. With me it allways has felt kind of funny, cheerful derealization, the male body I call android is there and in a sense im quite fond of it.... nevertheless I may want to modify it to fit my self-image. The problem of becoming trans in a hormonal sense is that the treatment has complicated implications and will make you sterile, possibly impotent. You may for example give sperm to sperm bank to be used at a later date, but somehow to me that prospect seems odd.

Really interesting thread. Some really informative reply's.

This confusion in terminology is not only exascerbated by linguistic evolution, but also by significant international differences in usage.

In traditional American usage, the term "transsexual", invariably spelled with a double "s", refers to individuals who strongly associate with and desire to permanently live as members of the gender opposite that assigned at birth. In American usage, the term "transsexual" is a permanent state; people considering or having reassignment surgery are classified as "pre-op" or "post-op"; those not considering it are commonly designated as "non-op".

In contrast, European usage of the term "transexual", usually spelt with one "s", refers to the pre-op or non-op status only; consequently, unlike with American usage, the terms "pre-op" and "post-op" are redundant and not commonly used. After reassignment, you are simply a man or a woman. Increasingly, the term is also used to refer to a broader range of people falling under the "transgender umbrella", particularly including people with no particular psychological association with the gender opposite that assigned at birth but, for whatever, reason present – at least occasionally – as the other gender.

This more expansive inclusion in European usage is predominantly used for MTF, whereas the narrower American application of the term is direction-neutral.

I am not sure how the terms are used in other parts of the world.

I'm European. It's just a misspelling, albeit one that, now I look into it, seems to be quite common. Bit like the mythical Alot.

The way I use it, is transgender for the whole thing, from transvestic fetish to full identification. There allways trans is not a good word since it refers to transition. In many cases the sex people are forced in childhood (and later) is indeed internalized to an extent first and then denounced. That is, there is indeed a process of transition, but it may well be allso that the environment is gender-sensitive and there is no such thing. There the trans is relative to the kind of fantasies that are being projected on us, and how we deal with them.

Then it is simply appropriate to talk about XX boys and XY girls, or some such thing depending on what people prefer.

Far too often is the "trans" used as a way to thirdgender people, to somehow not count them as real boys/men, girls/women.

Transsexual - refering to first skin, is simply transition in the sense of actually doing something to your body, be it hormones of plastic surgery. I think this a division that makes sense. It is possible - like in my case - be fully a girl, but still not be sure about the hormones (would not even think of surgery) becouse medically it's complex.

By the way, I think one way to examine ones mind about wheather there is a question with subconsious sex, is to ask how one mirrors characters in films, the people in erotic fotograph. If you see a woman or a man in an image, it may be easy to say do you want to be that character by gender or do you just want them, or both, if any.

I want it noted that the term "gender assigned at birth" is utterly silly, since we can not be assigned a gender that young in age, we do not have brain sofisticated enough for that kind of code at that age. When we are assigned a gender, it is starting at the play age - when we are told we can't have a doll or some such thing - in school, in some rude, some gentle but deep and wide economies of coersion. To make a point, collage of quotes:

No one ever tells him what to do, only what not to do. Boys become boys in large part by not being girls. The one’s who don’t figure this out, are the same ones who get beaten up. Later he will be with women and feel what he’s been robbed off.
A boy is told not to cry, he feels like crying but he is told not to. He is seven years old and he’s told to be a man.

- Smell of Burning Ants, Jay Rosenblatt

A violent act, act of making our own bodies cultural signifiers against our will...

- Judith Butler, Gender Trouble

Far two often as we love a person, we don’t except the person for what he or she affectevely is. We except him or her as long as she or he fit’s the co-ordinates of our fantasy. We wrongly identify him or her, wich is why when we discover that when we were wrong, love can quicly turn into violence. There is nothing more dangerous for lover but to be loved for what she or he is but for fitting the ideal. In this case, love is allways mortifying love.

- Zizek, Perverts Guide to Cinema, City Lights

Like you, we trans women are physically violated and abused for being women too. And there are no words in your second-wave feminist lexicon to adequately describe the way that we, young trans girls forced against our will into boyhood, have been raped by male culture. Every trans woman is a survivor and we have triggers too. And my trigger is pseudo-feminists who hide their prejudices behind “womyn-born-womyn-only” euphemisms.

- Julia Serano, On the Outside Looking in.

In psychology, Stockholm Syndrome is a term used to describe a real paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.

- Wikipedia

I guess that the problem, weather it is when you are a child or when you meet people who want to f**k you without even bothering to ask what you are, you are the type not fitting in to the co-ordinates of other peoples fantasies. The thing is, even if we don't fully believe in it, we may for a long time, depending how much or how pathologically we mirror others and how we are treated, buy into it to some measure.

Not only trans people feel this. There are alot of people who feel gender-neutral, but who are in the state of constant cisvestic dragism, sometimes to the point of pathology like in the eating disorder kind of situations: im really young, cute and feminine, perfect in every way so no one can see me for what I affectively am. So I am indeed safe from any real negativity - wich I can not bare because I would believe it. Very paradoxical states can be created.

This process of assigning gender is ofcourse not simply binary, but oppositional too, that is sexist in a way that it figures genders as "opposite" and rigid. There is surely some amount of tolerance for transgression becouse being perfectly gendered is not possible. The part that exceeds the tolerated transgression is queer, the people who glitch in the fantasy of many. So, in that sense all (or most) transpeople are queer but many queer people are not trans.

What? Where I live everyone is assigned either a male or female gender at birth, and I'm pretty sure that is the case everywhere in the world today, or close to it. It's right on my birth certificate, and probably yours too and that of every single person on this site.

Whether one is mentally developed enough to comprehend that one has been assigned a gender is another thing entirely. But, with very few exceptions, from the moment one is born everyone perceives one as either male or female and acts accordingly. And I do believe one can (and most people do) absorb gender conditioning even before one has a mental concept of gender.

I am Bi-Gender I biologicly feel think and act like both genders so is Eddlie Lizard and David Bowie

You have missed my point. It sounds like you are describing the concept of "gender identity", which typically emerges in early childhood.

I am talking about a different concept. Nearly universally, a gender designation is assigned to you from birth. When you tell someone that you just had a baby, what is typically the first question? That's right – "is it a boy or a girl?" Society so desperately wants an answer to that question that babies who are morphologically intersex, and cannot be readily assigned to one of The Categories on sight, are subjected to (obviously involuntary) "corrective" surgery so that they can be forced into one of the two camps. Your gender role is assigned to you based on morphology. Socialisation in this role starts immediately. Your natural behaviors and personality characteristics will be encouraged or suppressed, often violently, based in large part on whether they are consistent with your assigned designation.

Getting out from under a birth designation inconsistent with your gender identity comes at a tremendous price. Most of us lose family relationships, friends, and often our jobs and even our own children. Not choosing to pay that price leads to its own set of issues.

Are you really telling me that my describing this birth assignment and its consequences, which I and countless others have experienced first hand, is "utterly silly?"

Let's not mix the basic terms here. Sex is a term defining the chromosomal/hormonal/neurological and so on medical condition. A term for perverts and doctors. Perverts we may all be, but there still is something ridiculous with for example my liking of vaginas, as it is biologicall and anonymous. It has not so much to do with weather a person identifies as a girl.
True, there is a primitive coersion mechanism allso in the level of sex, that the people that are intersexed are given plastic surgery before there can be consent, wich ofcourse is totally horrible. In the passport we have a sign signifying "gender" and we are controlled and regulated in many ways on what name we can take and so on, but that is not so simple.
There is allso no one way of defining biological sex: as you know the FTM have male brain structures and MTF have female brainstructures. It is simply cis-neurological-sex.

Now, gender is the meaning that is behind the gendered symbolism we carry. It is in the gendered practises that we do, and so on. It may correlate with powerplay and many other things, and our desire for others may allso be gendered, like for me, I am a creature of femininities. There are gendered fantasies allso in the heads of parents, of what their boys or girls should be like, wich is then projected on them. Gender in some form is a human universal, but certain kind of exeptions to it are that too. It seems that our brains therefor are hardwired for gender, just like many other meanings in the form of language.

I am not saying that gender as a symbolic thing would be simply a construction, but it does not go 1;1 with sex. Now the violent act in assignement is that even our naked bodies are being projected meanings upon, like you have a penis, you play football. This is so incredibly primitive that it sometimes makes me wonder how our spesies made it so far. Allso, gender is not the same as sexuality but they converge in whole alot of ways. Gender identity is simply the way we gaze at our own experimence of gender.

The coersion however is variable. I mean, surely some instances may give us a stamp of gender at birth, but we may not be fully assigned that, our parents and people around us are can be gendernormative or violent to different degrees, or they may be gender sensitive. You may be assigned a gender by people who try to make a pass at you, but you may allso have lovers that do respect you. This is to say, that gender assignement is variable, that is constant, that we feel all the time, and may start at moment of birth but does not stop there, there is no singularity called "society" - though there are different institution and there is no Others except inside our mind. Not everyone gender us the same way, and not everyone gender themselves the same way. This is not to say it's only personal, there are institutional practises, laws and so on keeping up gendering. However in relation to upbringin a stamp in your passport is allmost meaningless.

What im saying is that "usual/dominant gender assignement" would be so much better than "at birth". Or better so "internalized gender assignement" when talking why are we using the word trans, in relation to what does one transition. Some say that for example MtF is utterly silly becouse it is like saying "heterosexual to homosexual" of someone who has allways been homosexual. In many cases it is not, becouse of internalized gender.

Hemetin, the distinct and not always aligned aspects of gender identity, sexuality, and morphology are well understood, and nobody is disagreeing here. (I would say that you are understating the coercion factor, particularly as was experienced by older generations.) A baby is still presented from birth as either a boy or a girl – today with few exceptions; 50 years ago with virtually no exceptions. While there is considerably more latitude in acceptable behaviour within these designations today, changing from one to the other is still a significant event, and the term "transsexual" is still the predominant term for people who do "switch sides" (or desire to do so.)

However, this discussion unnecessarily obfuscates my original post, which was simply a clarification of the use of a particular term from an international perspective. I'm sure everyone understood exactly what I meant in that context.

Im not saying im disagree with you on the topic itself, my comment is just on the semantics... assignement does not stop at birth - it may begin there, but in complex and variable ways - tough to be really exact it often begins in the ultrasoundimages or before when the parents (and others) start to make fantasies for their childs gendering. This process of fantasy, idealization and mortification is really wide:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O2OPG2dEu4&feature=related[/youtube]

or

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bXbIyxnfC4&feature=related[/youtube]

Not that the violence towards trans peope usually happens when someone fist is atracted to them and then realizes that they are trans, or when it becomes known to the public.

There, the plastic surgery of the intersexed is simply the extreme case of this, a place where the usual spiritual coersion really becomes mutilation of infants - being talked about as a solution to the uneasyness of parents, but sometimes even . They talk of mutilation in far away countries or in marginal groups, but not to take to count much this kind of violence is going on in the west. However, I think that one can make two mistakes her: to overemphasis that as singular problem and not the wide assignement.

I think the other problem would be make this a discorse of fear. The violence is really there, but it is not everpresent, there is allso real love in the world. One should not simply be afraid to be left if they come out. Infact, if that happens, you were left a long time ago, actually, you never where loved, but damn well will be if you search for it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEFbdrnkgGY&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLFBDBFB2B51FEF2C2[/youtube]

There are people who can take you as you are. This is to say, you may be assigned a gender at birth in the sense of number in pasport, but not every parent or teacher is evil. Many become able to be sensitive with gender. Many people will be capable of becoming their true self despite of the power of violations they have met.

I am wondering if I'm an XXY male... I read about it today, and some of the symptoms are eerily fitting in regards to myself. I have rather prominent almost-breasts. In fact, some of my family members rather mean-spiritedly have joked that I should get a bra. I also have rather prominent hips, but over the belt line, oddly enough. Should I bother to get a diagnosis?