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Originally Posted by iblade
Reading this thread has come to make me ponder about my misconceptions about transexuals. I was very interested by it and it triggered many positive thoughts on my side.
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I'm happy to hear that.
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I have always considered transexuality as a disorder, and I still do. It is in fact a disorder since there is a difference between the physical body of a person and the representation this person has of him/herself.
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Agreed. Sissy thinks of it as a physical birth defect, like having a cleft pallet. Andrea James compares it to a child who has a port wine stain--a red birthmark covering a large portion of the face. It doesn't inhibit one's physical function, but it can have a profound effect on one's ability to participate fully in society.
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But why would one ever want to go against nature and undertake such an tremendous operation to make very profound changes in one's own body?
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If the gender identity is at odds with the body, who's to say that the body's gender is the correct one, the natural one. Anyone who knew Sissy growing up could see that feminine was her natural state. Changing her body to match her mind was going with what was natural for her.
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I was sometimes feeling very ill at ease during your descriptions, even feeling that continuing reading would become unbearable, just so you understand how uncomfortable I am with this topic. I was thinking "What freak could ever want to do this?" I can understand ssomeone wanting to change sex on a social level, a man wanting to appear like a woman in front of society, and being recognized as such, but why would they want to completely reconstruct their genital parts like that, for what is a very traumatic operation for the body? And all that for what? To be able to have sex? To feel a penis in one's own vagina?
That made me want to think what was behind such a need. And I came to compare my situation with that of your sister, Sissy.
I have had eye cancer at a very small age, and that resulted in deep scars on my face, and my right eye to be taken out.
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Mark 9:47: And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
Mark 947 is the name of the autobiography of Calpernia Addams, a transsexual woman. I've always found Mark 9:43-9:47, which advocates the disposal of bodily parts that one finds offensive as a means of salvation for one's soul to be particularly relevant to transsexuals, who seek to alter their bodies to match what they feel to be their true selves.
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I was picked on as a kid (not that badly), but I have always wanted to be accepted, to be normal. That was my definition of happiness. And what is being happy, if not that? The feeling of oneself being in one's own place, according to the image that you have of yourself. For many people, it might be to raise a famiy, and feeling in one's own place among them. For me, it was to be accepted by my peers.
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For my sister also, and for most transsexuals.
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For your sister, it was to be a woman, and be complete as a woman, as a woman who is fully sexually active. And that means having sex, as a woman. At that very moment, the feeling of being in one's own place, in the universe, the feeling of being in harmony with the universe because we are at our own place, because we feel that we are the way we feel we should be, and we are that way, brings true happiness.
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That's part of it, certainly, but it's a lot more about feeling complete as a person. Sissy is in her fifth year living as a female, and she and we have thought of her as a girl from the moment she adopted the social role.
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And the pursuit of such hapiness cannot be denied to anyone. It is fundamentally human. That is why I cannot judge people who pursue it, and among those people, transexuals.
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I wish there were more with your attitude. You give me hope, thank you for this.
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Having come to this thought, I was wondering what I would do If I ever had to face such a situation. What if the person I love was a transexual who had undergone surgical operation? Even though, one hour ago, the very idea of having sex with a person who had undergone this operation disgusted me to the point of making me want to throw up, I am feeling that now, I would do it without hesitation for the person I love, because I would want to make her happy.
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This made me smile. Thank you.
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Thinking about this made me consider your sister's possible lovelife. Who could accept to have sex with her, in our society?
1) people attracted to transsexuals
2) someone who would truly love her
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Or someone for whom it didn't matter one way or the other.
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I don't think that the people in 1) are the kind of people who your sister wants to be with.
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You're right there, but for a different reason than you'd think. A lot of men who seek out and date transsexual women, particularly pre-ops--a significant portion of them--are gay men who don't want to admit to themselves that they are gay and use transwomen as a stepping stone to accepting what they'd been repressing, then move on to dating men. This actually happened to Sissy just before her final surgery.
Others are just gay men attracted to either transsexuals or very effeminate boys, and because they are men, the MTF's are accepting of this, so long as they get to be the girl in the relationship.
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That is why I think that she should try to find someone who would truly love her. But true love takes time, a very long time.
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As with all of us.
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That is why I was wondering if it was the best solution to tell about her transexuality in such an early state of the relationship (you talked about 2nd date)? Telling it too soon can really have profound effetcs on many people, even if that person could ultimately become deeply in love with your sister. I also think that she would need to find someone who is comfortable enough with his own sexuality, to be able to love her without any complex. This question would be very problematic for a virgin for example.
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Did I? I think I've said that I suggest waiting until she's at the point where physical intimacy is imminent or they are emotionally intimate. I'd agree that a 2nd date is too soon, and I'm pretty sure that she's never told that early. In addition, we're trying to set her up to go full immersion, which means that protecting information regarding her past is very important.
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Maybe I am going too far. I don't think this is my problem at all, but reading your post led me to develop a certain sympathy for you and your sister.
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On the contrary, your post seems quite insightful, and I'm glad you posted. It's given my spirits a lift in a time when I've been in desperate need of it.
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Your posts also made me wonder what the origins of transexuality could be. My opinion is that they are mainly social. Comparing with my case, it was being rejected that made me want to become normal so much, becoming almost an obsession. I beleive that such a mechanism, applied to the very sensitive issue of sexuality, and to the very influenceable mind of a small child, can lead to such very powerful effects on the human psyche, to the point of modifying one's own sexual perception. Maybe there were also events, apart from the rejection of your parents that triggered it? What is your opinion on this?
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Sissy knew she was supposed to be a girl from the time she understood the difference between girls and boys. She was rejected by my parents because she was effeminate and refused their masculine programming. There were traumatic events in her childhood, but they occurred as a result of her being transsexual, and were not the cause of it.
The current prevailing theory is that something goes wrong in the hormone wash that occurs in the 12-13th week of gestation, which triggers the development of sex specific structures in the brain, in the case of a MTF, leading to the development of female structures in the brain. Boy body, girl brain. A friend of mine puts it this way: "She knew from the time she was a young child that she was a girl. She didn't know how this was possible or even that it was possible, but she nevertheless knew it to be true."
I'd like to emphasize that, for most, to quote CSI: "It's not about sex, it's about soul." From the episode Ch-ch-changes. If you ignore the main storyline, there's a lot of good stuff in that episode. The conversation between Grissom and the transwoman in the bar is really good.
Gilda
Not that it's relevant, but there's also a neat cameo by Calpernia Addams (a prominent transsexual actress) and Marci Bowers (a transwoman and prominent SRS surgeon). As Grissom and the doctor are walking through a clinic, there's a shot of a group of transsexuals at a presentation. There are two close up shots of an attractive, pale, dark haired young woman. That's Calpernia Addams. The woman giving the presentation is Marci Bowers.