You’ll find that one is born with the ever lingering knowledge that something is not “right’ about yourself, that you know you are one thing, but the people around you try to force you to be what they want you to be according to your appearance. You would not find anything wrong with the preference of girl’s toys and other trappings rather than the boy ones since you can remember. of course over the years you try to over compensate for your overwhelming “cross gender” feelings with indulging in extreme behavior, such as volunteering for elite units in the military (in the meantime, you look forward to dying in combat…) if your were born “male”, or participating in ultra-feminine behavior such as competing in nomorous beauty pagents if you were born “female” for example.

You expend untold amounts of energy to attempt to overcome your solid natrual gender identity, simply “because this is the the way the world wants you to be”.
Of course there comes the inevitable bouts with suicide, and self mutilation because you just want eliminate the wrong-feeling body or external organs. The outside body does not match what you know yourself to be within.
In certain cases such as mine, I was born with 1 ovary and a partial uterus, along with the male aspect that I had always hated, I was found chromosomally, to have a mosaic make-up of XXY. as well as a slight amount of female body shape. All of this was included with my natrual feminine movements and expression. You can imagine the harrassment and beatings I recieved at the hands of not just my childhood peers but also from my father, bent on “making me a man” including the forced sessions of unwanted testoesterone injections since age 7 -especially when being caught with his straight razor in the middle of initiating some self-corrective surgery to try to transform the unwanted male part to a female one. He broke part of my jaw after I came back home from the hospital.
I’ve never understood the violence perpetuated by men, even though I use to put on a false performance of doing so. I became a very good actor, although I refused to hang around males very much, prefering female company or being alone. I used to secretly “cross-dress” in order to feel more comfortable, and more like myself, as I ‘ve done since the age of 6. Cross-dressing was never a sexual “turn-on”.
The only reason I was not rejected for military service due to my conflicting and varient physical state, was because military enterance processing centers used X-rays at that time, before they finally instituted MRI machines.

It may surprise you to know that I have always identified as a female exclusively attracted to other females. The thought of being intimate with anyone as a “male” has always nauseated me, even as a teenager. Trans-Lesbian identity and presence is another area that the LGB community defintely needs education about.

Even after 26 years of denial of my true identity I still transitioned to be close to be the full women that I need to be.
I’m still the woman that I am, even the long attempt to drown the inner voice of my true self through immeasurable amounts of alcohol and drug use.
Even after suffering 26 years of humiliation, physical violence and denial of my basic human rights by people much like some of the ones on this site, I still survived to be the woman that I am.
Even after striving, working 3 times harder than male soldiers to become an “elite” special operations soldier trained, ready and very willing to die for this country during the War on Terror… I still claimed and acted on the very right that I earned, to be the woman that I am, despite the hurdles thrown up by ignorance and hate.

Having gone, and still going through the hormone regimine now at a very reduced amount, due to having completed my corrective Sex Reassignment Surgery- which is the single most wonderful period in my life other than the commitment ceremony to my female partner. it should be noted that I did not undergo SRS surgery to “sleep” with anyone, I had the surgery to physically be my true self. in fact, I’ve always had a low sex drive since adolescence (even then, I’ve never understood why males had such aggressive sex drives) and have been mainly a romantic type. For years I have pretended to be a male to satisfy everyone around me.

And yes, I look very female physically, thank you. And no, I am not a “drag queen”, I don’t do “drag” It is not a “masqerade”. I rarely put on makeup, and am more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt, so that probably helps dispel the false image of Transwomen grocery shopping in evening gowns and tiaras.

I underwent 15 years of therapy, and not once was the label of “pathological personality” put forth.
I had the surgery because it was not a “choice” for me, it was either have my surgery or die… it was that simple. I was blessed with a compassionate therapist who was elightened enough to recognize my birth defect for what it was: a gender and sex misalignment at birth, and also having the final confirmation of the fact that I was not “a gay male in denial”.

When an individual is born with a physical deformity such as a cleft palate, they have every right to want to correct it, which is not viewed as “mutilation”. In light of this, it should be viewed that gender/sex misaligned individuals should not be punished for wanting to live a happier life after working to integrate their whole being, including their physical sex to their gender.
Even after reading tons of materials about Transpeople, and even having close friends who are Trans, or even living with a Transsexual, no one will ever truly know what we go through.

No amount of “reparative therapy” is going to force a change to what’s been hardwired within a Transsexual person’s brain at birth, evidence speaking to this fact has already been compiled for decades.
And to make the ignorant demand that a person remain what society thinks they should be, would be akin to telling that person to go ahead and just end their life.

Cat

Before I lived with a TG, I had no problems with sexual reassignment surgery. I assumed that the only thing involved were changing one’s name, buying some dresses and getting “the whack”. Takes a year, right? Nope, it can take years and cost tens, even hundreds of thousands after the therapy, hormonal treatments, breast implants, Adam’s Apple shaving, hand sculpting, hair removal, voice coaching, etc. are done.

Ironically, learning about all these efforts TGs must make didn’t lead me to respect TGs more, it convinced me that it’s self-mutilation. In the end, a man making all those efforts will still have a male DNA and won’t have the internal organs of a woman, and vice-versa.

Since TGs insist that “gender is between the ears, not between the legs”, why do they put so much effort and expense into changing themselves physically, including between the legs? Why not address what’s between the ears and learn to accept oneself? It’s what gays and lesbians have fought to do for decades. I agree, gays and lesbians have little commonality with TGs and as such I don’t see the point of their being in the same political efforts.

The left scooped up transsexual as part of LGBT and broadened them into a spectrul of “gender expression,” which medically they are not.

Than perhaps this is where you should focus on changing course so the less-enlightened among us can grasp the concept. Thus far what is being spread appears to require hip waders to go through and I cannot see Middle America wanting to take the trip.

There’s only one Napoleon I; he was born in 1769. If you are he, you are now nearly 240 years old, having faked your death in 1821.

O yea of little faith. How can you limit the ‘Blessed’ Little Corporal so? You say this as if it is fact in one breath, than insist I take on faith that you are female in another, all while denying the ontological ‘reality’ of who I’ve ‘become’. Pity.

Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence.

Indeed, which is precisely the point. You cannot rely upon truisms like this and than rely upon personal experience as being “remarkable evidence”. You’re leaping into logical fallacies by doing so.

About as much evidence as your claim to being gay and not bi or straight, come to think of it…after all, it’s inside your head, and we have only your word for it.

Too true, perhaps I’m just nuts or psycho-sexually stunted. Of course if it’s the former, would I really know I was? Hehehe. Yet really, your argument here is a poor one since regardless of the morality or ‘normality’ of who or what I was attracted to that attraction is a fact just as the belief you hold to be female is.

Re ENDA, I gather you’re saying that *ideally* all protected classes under law would be eliminated

Either that or the legislation so diluted by the addition of just about every class or status one can think of to be essentially meaningless. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad political strategy for conservative opponents to use should ENDA become law.

Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence. And while I have very little current Francophilia, and do not doubt that Nappy may have liked the occasional frommage, I doubt that “surrender monkey” is either a fitting description, or one he would apply to himself.

My own less-remarkable claim that I have discovered my brain (est. 1952) to be female-wired is based on the best evidence as to the wiring of my brain available without dissection: my own experience of it, especially comparing that experience before and after changing my serum hormone levels.

About as much evidence as your claim to being gay and not bi or straight, come to think of it…after all, it’s inside your head, and we have only your word for it. I’m actually willing to believe based on your own assertion that you are gay, even though you might *really* be bi or straight and just be fooling yourself. You’re safe…until we such a time as we find a gay gene, anyway. Then we’ll be able to design an empirical test to flush out the crazies and the phonies.

What matters about genes isn’t what’s encoded in them but how it’s expressed. It doesn’t matter what programs may be on your personal genetic “hard drive” if they’re not run. Genetics are *not* the sole determinant of development of sex characteristics… that expression is hormonally mediated. And sometimes shit happens. Somewhere between 1 in 500 times, or 1 in 10,000 times, depending on whose numbers you beleive.

Re ENDA, I gather you’re saying that *ideally* all protected classes under law would be eliminated, but you’re so anxious to have one of your own that you are willing to slam the door on any other sexual minority gaining the same advantage as you, if you think it might delay you getting yours.

After all, they’re just so *different* from you…why should they have equal protection?

Well, I can insist I am female for at least as long as you can insist I’m not.

Indeed. The problem here though is that you are attempting to shift the burden and are even using anecdotal evidence to support your arguments. Who says that I’m not Napoleon? You? Why I can even create a tale of secret societies worthy of Dan Brown in ‘support’ of what I ‘believe’ to be true. To borrow somewhat from unorthodox theology, I may have been born as “John” but thanks to my tyrannical swagger and outrageous accent became fully Napoleon in later years. It’s a burden, but one I bear with snooty pride. Your attempt to dismiss this as “begging the question” is irrelevant since it matters not whether I am the only one who is Napoleon (as if the ‘Blessed’ Little Corporal could be so limited anyway). Is all of this absurd? Perhaps. Yet you demand I accept what you believe about yourself to be true on faith so it seems that turnabout is fairplay here.

I’m indeed trying to “convince others”, mostly because you and a few other folks here have elected to use this platform to slag and spread misinformation about transexuals.

While you deny the essence of who I am with of all of my cheese-eating surrender monkey glory? Tsk tsk, you have free speech to be sure to convince others of what you please but as long as you are adopting the Protestant mantra of “faith alone” as empirical support for your contention, I do believe I’ll pass.

As for passing legislation, I’m not sure ENDA in any form is really either a good idea or part of the proper role of government. What I definitely do not support is an ENDA that makes *only* sexual orientation a protected class. So I largely agree with #87.

Ideally ALL such classes would be eliminated and in this happy world all crimes would be punished equally. Now since we live in the real world, I’m not willing to wait around for a group that GLBs have little or nothing in common with.

Bi’s odds of finding a soul mate are not better than yours. However, their odds of finding a soul mate *they want to sleep with* are improved…c.f. the quote from “Ellen” about “there’s twice as many rides at Bi-Land”.

Perhaps, it’s not really something I’ve given much thought to. I will say though that I have no problem believing that Bi’s are just as capable of falling in love and being mongamous as the rest of us are.

Apart from financial considerations as an obstacle to completion you cite that others aren´t good surgical candidates for medical reasons.
This creates a gray area. Medical reason could be psychological reasons. They might actually be confused about their psycho-sexual image. As one who was not born in the U.S. and who is not currently living in the U.S. I am familiar with the latin or hispanic culture. Because of ¨machismo¨it is changing slowly but a few years back it was common for a young male who accepted his gayness to grow his hair, buy a dress, and a makeup kit. He believed that he had to compete with women to go to bed with a ¨straight¨man. The suggestion that he have sex with another gay was laughable. You would get responses like, ¨I am not a lesbian.¨ or ¨Honey, I want a man, I don´t want to make tortillas in bed.¨

Some people, for whatever reason, mislabel themselves. Case in point, bisexuals (see my comment #48). As I said latin culture is changing slowly. I access a site called MundoAnuncio, chico busca chicos, (boy looking for boys-despite the title it is not minors, better said young man loooking for young men) you will see an ad by ¨gay, not obvious looking for a gay, not obvious, for a . . .´ You will also see ¨bi guy looking for bi guys for oral and anal sex.¨ Are they really bi? Is it because they haven´t fully accepted their being gay? Or is it a convenience for avoiding being called derisively a ¨culero¨ or ¨maricon¨?

I notice now we’re suddenly talking about “sucessful” transsexuals. I was responding to a claim that there were no historically transsexuals at all, which is just silly.

Being transsexual doesn’t mean you’ve had surgical reassignment; many, many transsexuals might like to have surgical reassignment but can’t afford it, or aren’t good surgical candidates for medical reasons, or are simply terrified of a bad outcome (especially those who believe the ignorant propaganda of the”cutting it off”/”mutilation” crowd).

There’s also a significant number of female-to-male transsexuals who undergo hormonal reassignment (which is extremely effective for female-to-males, by the way) but decide to not attempt surgery, often because the surgical technologies for female-to-male surgery simply aren’t anywhere near so well-developed and successful…it’s just more difficult to do well.

So if you claim that the only “successful” transsexual is one that has has surgical reassignment and is happy with their outcome, well then obviously before the surgery, there couldn’t be success…by that definition.

Personally, back before there was reassignment surgery, I’d say a “successful” transsexual would be one who didn’t commit suicide out of depression and despair. In those days, there was no shortage of those…and we still have them today.

As for the occasional tragic attempts at self-reassignment, that’s just tragic folly; there’s *zero* chance of anything even vaguely like a good outcome, and a decent probability of death. Now *that* would qualify as mutilation, to my mind.

These operations are incredibly delicate and intricate even in the hands of a qualified, skilled surgeon.

So…if I have this right, your theory is: transsexuality suddenly sprung into existence when surgery became available, the only transgendered people before that were by definitions transvestites. Mine is that transsexuality has always existed has started coming out of the closet in our culture as it became known that help was available.

No doubt there have been people who have suffered from a gender identity crisis but did not have the benefit of modern surgery. Some might have even attempted self mutilation with probably the same results as those ¨do it yourself¨ abortions. They died.

That’s not very convincing logic.

#84: I offered historical examples only to refute the delegitimizing claim that transsexuality is some new fad whose demand was created by the possibility of reassignment.

#85: Well, I can insist I am female for at least as long as you can insist I’m not. Here’s you’re not actually offering arguments, you’re just making unsupported assertions and then “begging the question” (in the original petitio principii) sense. My point was that Napoleon is an individual, there’s only one of him, by definition.–claiming that “John can’t be Napoleon” is equivalent to “Maggie can’t be female” is a straw man. There’s more than one woman, I know this from personal experience.

And it’s not at all about “wearing the hats”.

I’m indeed trying to “convince others”, mostly because you and a few other folks here have elected to use this platform to slag and spread misinformation about transexuals.

As for passing legislation, I’m not sure ENDA in any form is really either a good idea or part of the proper role of government. What I definitely do not support is an ENDA that makes *only* sexual orientation a protected class. So I largely agree with #87.

And there’s interesting writing in blogspace questioning whether an orientation-only ENDA can actually even be effective without at least addressing what gender identity *is*…recall my original comment that the *word* homosexuality can’t even have a clear meaning until we agree on what gender is. And at least you and I do not.

I had an long and interesting phonecon over the weekend with a close activist friend who’s been deeply involved in the current kurfluffle that included some stories about Barney Frank …I’d love to get a confirmation or a refutation on these.

First, that when Frank originally became active in politics in Boston, back when he was closeted, one thing that he gained early notoriety for was championing the closing of a local drag club…this was offered as evidence of his longstanding attitudes towards transgendered folks.

A second story was that when Tammy Baldwin was building her whip list of who would or would not support the original bill, her staffers also asked if Frank has polled support for the original bill, and nobody said they’d been contacted by him….suggesting that when he withdrew support for his own bill, it wasn’t because he’d found out it wouldn’t pass, but because inclusive language he didn’t like but had expected would be stripped in committee had somehow survived.

#88: Bi’s odds of finding a soul mate are not better than yours. However, their odds of finding a soul mate *they want to sleep with* are improved…c.f. the quote from “Ellen” about “there’s twice as many rides at Bi-Land”.

Being gay is not just about sex. As you say, bi sexuality is ONLY about sex.

I say no such thing. I’m not bisexual so I cannot draw from personal experience on this, but it stands to reason that it is about more than just sex for them. Bi’s in some ways are fortunate in that their odds of finding a soul mate are far better than mine.

Could gender nonconformity, in the absence of concrete knowledge that an individual is gay, be used by an employer as a loophole in an ENDA without gender identity protection?

Trust me, if an employer wants to get rid of an employee for whatever reason they will find a way. ENDA is useful is tamping down the most overt discrimination and perhaps starting the long haul to bringing about change, but by itself it is meaningless as are all such laws.

Hell, for $300/hr. I’d tell you what you wanted to hear too.

Damn. Yet another profession I should have gone into for the compensation perks…

C’mon John…I’m one hell a lot closer to being female than you are to being Napoleon.

Why? Because you insist you are? You may feel that you are, might even have the surgery to appear as female but you are not at all a female and neither am I Napoleon (though the hat’s he wore are cool).

Furthermore, I can present documented, competent medical and psychological opinion certifying that I’m both female and not crazy, documentation that was accepted by the state of my birth and residence and several Federal departments.

Good for you. If this was only about you or those of like mind that would be one thing, yet it’s not. You are attempting to convince others and have supportive legislation passed to boot. Are you seriously trying to engage in a logical fallacy of appealing to authority? I am not impressed that pressure can be brought to bear upon public officials to change documents or opinions given by professionals. Opinions by themselves are meaningless since each one of us have them and are not science. One would think something far more substantial and empirical could be provided.

Why is it so important to you to insist that genes be the only determinant of gender? It’s just plain not true.

Never said it was. It is the dominate factor but not the only one.

As for #55, I guess we’ll all just have to restrict ourselves to states of being that are easily explainable to your concept of Middle America. (At least that’s apparently an easier standard to meet than things that are both explainable and palatable to you personally.)

Okay, you might convince me as well. Yet in the meantime I am not willing for GLB’s to wait around and put everything on hold for a group that we have little or nothing in common with.

There have always been transgendered people. Only relatively recently has decently effective surgical reassignment been available.

I question the veracity of this claim, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ll accept your premise for the moment but fail to see how this is in any way means that legal protections should be given for men to dress as women in the workplace, use bathrooms or gyms assigned to their desired genders, etc.

Perhaps you should consider letting people decide for themselves what constitutes “mutilation” of their bodies, lest you suddenly find someone has decided for you that your tattoos, your piercings, or your appendectomy are inerrant symptoms of pathology.

I don’t think so because just like you have the right to hold your own opinions and share them with the world, so do I. When you raise it to a matter of legal status than you invite public comment and criticism. The “average Joe” is the person you need to convince if you want these things, not just myself or others who are GLB.