Sex and preference.

(please ensure you have read the previous post first)

So could you do it?.....

Did you manage to answer the question?.....

Where do you hope to be in ten years?....

How did you answer, was it something like?:

“I hope I’ll have come out, and that I’ll have started HRT?”….

Maybe you’re a little more ambitious?

Maybe you said:

“I hope I’ll have come out, I’ll have started HRT (maybe had some FFS or a “boob job”), and that I’ll be living fulltime as a woman”.

So you’ve decided you fit into the first group or category I wrote about and you want mainly social transition, and you’re Transgender?

That’s ok, if that is what you feel you need for your life to be better, then I’m all for that. You have my very best wishes and I hope for your sake that you have an easy time achieving your goal. I would just ask that you please be careful of/with yourself and considerate of others.

We all have to share the world and try and find as much happiness in life as we can and it wouldn’t be fair of you to expect others to give up their personal comfort, security, personal principles (and therefore probably their own happiness) so you can have yours and feel better about yourself. They don’t EXPECT you to sacrifice all of those things for them do they? They don’t DEMAND you BE or FEEL or BELIEVE something that you were upfront and HONEST (as in: telling the ACTUAL truth, rather than what you HOPED or WISHED was the truth) about NOT being do they? (most people I know aren’t that unreasonable, they generally only expect from you the same things you’d expect from them as aperson and in a relationship).

But maybe that isn’t your goal? Maybe that isn’t all you need?

Maybe after reading what little is here so far and all the other stuff you can find out there on the internet and everywhere else (heck! maybe you’ve even already made it that far already?), you’ve decided that those things won’t be enough and that you need to go “all the way”?

Maybe you’ve decided like many that you fit into the second group that I talk about, and that you NEED SRS, and that you know and have finally accepted the horror that IS, and that you were born; transsexual?

You have my most heart felt condolences. YOU have what (for most) is a VERY hard road ahead of you.

Most people end up losing all their money, many lose theirhouse, often people lose their job and have a great deal of difficulty finding new work that pays anywhere near what they once could have earned.

If you happen to have been one of the less fortunate (relatively speaking) who ended up married and possibly even fathered a child or a few children, then it’s probably going to hurt you terribly. I probably don’t have to tell you that most relationships don’t survive a transition. Many end in divorce with the trans person losing a great deal of assets, and ending up responsible for child support for their children, who they love beyond belief but if they’re lucky; will only get limited visitation rights too see.

If they’re unlucky, and their (former) spouse gets angry and (or) the law is strict where they reside, then there’s a very good chance those visitation rights will be supervised. If they’re VERY unlucky and the spouse gets really angry, and has evidence they’re prepared to provide to the courts that might skew things and about how they’ve managed to deal with their issues over the years of being married to make things look like they have some kind of kink or sexual fetish, then they MAY end up paying a great deal of child support for children that they love and would probably never dream of hurting but will also probably NEVER SEE AGIAIN (maybe EVER! if by the time their children are old enough to legally make their own decisions, the spouse has turned them far enough against them).

That is a truly terrible outcome for anyone to ever have to face in order to feel good or comfortable about themselves and their body.

It’s NOT unheard of though, it does happen, and as most trans people are considered by the law and (generally) society to be male until after they’ve had SRS (and in some cases even AFTER they’ve had it) the law and society generally takes a dim view of them.

The law is never on a MANS “side” is it?

How often do you hear about a husband and provider getting custardy of the children and cleaning his wife out?

Why?

Because mostly the wife is viewed as the innocent party and secondly, the wife rarely has any money or assets TO take, she’s not often the head bread winner of the household and more often than not, that is because she spends the bulk of her time looking after and raising the children (which her proven history of being able to do responsibly, will likely be used to help win the custardy battle).

I honestly don’t know what to tell you or how to advise you.There is no RIGHT or best way that will help you, sadly all I can offer is whatI’ve written for the group above that I described as transgender.

Try to be careful and take your time and think EVERYTHING through and if there’s ANY better, easier or POSSIBLE way to avoid all of this; then certainly it would be advisable to give it the best try possible wouldn’t it? Even if that means not having SRS, staying a male and just seeking the treatments set out above to try and make life bearable, or maybe even enjoyable.

If you do things that way, and are careful about how you handle things, you still find a way to take care of the responsibilities you always did before and you are discrete about things, your wife might stay with you. She might find a way (eventually) to understand who you are and she might even be able to go back to loving that person on some level or in some ways. I can’t promise she will, but if you take things slow and try to be considerate, then maybe the worst that might happen is that she doesn’t get angry and you get to see your kids and surely that would make it worth trying wouldn’t it?

Again though; you have the most heartfelt best wishes I can offer, try to remember always that we are ALL people, that we ALL need to live and breathe, that we ALL need to find a way to pay our bills and to take care of the things we are responsible for. (That’s EVERYONE not just you)

Ok, so which was it? Transsexual or Transgender?

It was transsexual right?

Well before you answer, I’d like to talk about transsexualsa little more.

I was born Transsexual.

I was raised the middle son of three children, in a very small and remote community in a part of the world where anything or anyone not considered to fit heteronormative ideals was either treated VERY poorly (regardless of age, sex or any other factors) or if the person that didn’t fit the ideals HAD come of age (as it were) they were often beaten or killed (or at least that’s what most assumed, it’s likely they were just not ever heard from or ABOUT ever again. Not even for a court proceeding).

Put simply, no matter WHAT you were, you were straight and you were the sex you were given at birth if you knew what was good for you and you wanted to survive.

I first realised I wasn’t normal (relative to what I felt was normal for me) when I was 4 years old, at a pre-school day care centre, when I watched my carer take my mother aside when she came to pick me up in the afternoon. I’d been playing with the other girls in a pile of toys and clothes heaped in the corner of the room.

From what I can remember, I didn’t go to day care very often, only every once in a while ( at that time, early on) and that was only when my mother had reason to bring me into our small community for the day. At that time, I guess she had things she needed to get done and she only had so much time around the town to do them, so it was probably easier for her to leave me with someone for the day and collect me on the way home.

Until that day I’d never really worried much about it. I only had my two siblings at home to play with (one was still only a baby so I didn’t play much with it yet and the other was older than me but kinda didn’t seem to fit) and there were heaps of kids at this place, even kids I thought were like me.

I don’t remember earlier in that day, just the afternoon, and that something bad was happening/had happened.

The carer and my mother looked pretty serious in their talk and they were watching me play, it made me worried. I knew from that day that something was wrong, but I didn’t know exactly what was wrong with me and what my problem was until a little later on (and even then I was too young to fully understand).

I remember not long later, my mother bathed us three children together, and that my baby sister had a difference I could SEE, too me and my older brother.

I gradually put things together after that and by the age of about 6 or 7 (best I can place it) I’d asked my mother if there was a way a boy could be turned into a girl. She denies (even to this day) remembering the conversation (and for a long time I was mad at her for that and for not helping me when I was a child) but that’s ok, I understand now the pressures she was under and what she’d have had to do in order to help me and in reality, she did the very best thing she could for me and my siblings.

HOWEVER, she DID give me the RIGHT answer to the question I was asking her, that; (with a different wording that I still remember)essentially yes, they could, and that surgery was involved.

From that day forward, that was what I clung to for hope and survival. In the back of my mind was a plan to fix the problem as soon as I REALLY knew how. I did my very best to get by until that time and not get hurt or killed, I basically tried mostly to make myself pretty invisible to most people in my daily life.

Oh sure, I did things as a boy to get by and to try and cope but that only ever went so far and I never really allowed myself to develop relationships ona personal level with anyone but my family. Everyone has to have a family and at least some form of love, but what is the point in developing friendships and romantic relationships when you can’t base them initially on truth and when you know that the you you’d have to maintain to keep that relationship is only a temporary person/thing anyway?

So when the time came for me to transition, I really had no friends (or very few that I knew on a meaningful level) to worry about losing.

My family on the other hand? They’d been my everything my entire human interaction was based pretty solely on them and even though I’dalways tried to be honest with them, it seems they’d never understood or could see what I was trying to show them, and so they’d grown very attached to the person I’d had to be over the years, to the point where they loved that person and what he represented to them and their own lives VERY much.

Taking him away from them hurt them VERY much, to the point where they rejected me completely and largely refused to have anything to do with me, and FLATOUT refused to help me.

By this time I’m in my early twenties and I have a formal qualification to do a (commonly low paid) menial job in a very male dominated environment in my already narrow minded town.

By my late twenties I was a post-operative transsexual born female, but if you’d asked me; the only part of that description that made adifference to me in my opinion was the FEMALE part, the rest just described my early life and circumstances.

How did I do it?

The most I will tell you is it took me four very long and hard (mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially and lastly physically) years to finish what I would personally think of as transition.

And now we have FINALLY reached the point!

Like ALL transsexuals I’ve ever known, for me there always was A POINT there always was A GOAL to achieve, by which we defined the end of the “transition” phase of our life. HOWEVER, that goal was never the END goal of our lives or solely what we focused on.

If you ask a TRANSSEXUAL person where THEY hope they will bein ten years? I’d lay money on (almost) EVERY SINGLE ONE of them being able to give you an answer that DOESN’T involve “transition” but rather, the life they hope to have AFTER transition.

Most should be able to tell you all about their hopes and dreams becausethey’ve had their entire lifetime up until the point (at which you are asking them), to work out EXACTLY what it is they DO hope and dream for and those hopes and dreams for their life are and always have been what get them through the trauma of life up until they can start it.(in my opinion/experience)

From the moment that they become aware of what their issueis early in childhood, they learn how to handle life and the people in it. They watch and prepare for their new life from that early point and they never (or rarely) develop enough of a life as a male to give them something substantial to lose when they transition.

That’s good and bad for them. Good in the sense that nothing or little to lose means hard decisions aren’t as hard as there is mostly very little personal or emotional investment (however that has the consequence that the few things they ARE invested in, they are HEAVILY invested in and so, are harder to deal with). BAD in the sense that it is hard to verging on impossible to make something or achieve a goal when you have no real means to do so.

What that means is that very often, the price TRANSSEXUAL born women MUST pay to do what they absolutely NEED to do (in order to have ANY life at all that is worth them living) is, one of self-respect and self-degradation, as (most often) the only things of any useable value that they have are their body and the traits about it that personally sicken and disgust them.

Can you imagine that?

Four years exploiting that about yourself which you loath in order to achieve a life that is probably going to be less than what you NEED or had hoped for?

How many “Trans” blogs and people do you read about, who are prepared to do that? Who are prepared to take degradation in order to achieve what they need to?

I laugh when I hear most so called transsexuals complain about being “misgendered”

Most people think that a large part of transition is shedding “male" privilege and to that I would say, although it IS in different ways, most transsexual born women know as much degradation and misogyny as most natal born women (again, although we experience it in different ways), however, unlike natal born women, other women often don’t recognize the ways in which we do, and so we are additionally subjected to misandry to counteract any privilege (benefit) it may be perceived we have. (which is what truly DOES hurt us)

Most transsexuals I know can tell you no matter what point in “transition” that they happen to be at; what they hope for from life in a fair amount of detail and there is a VERY significant thing that almost ALL can ALSO tell you and that is; WHO they hope they will be with in the end.

I read all this crap about sex and sexual preference not being related from transgender people (and I to an extent I agree, for “trans”people), but for a transsexual (as I experience/d it), those things are a large part of what again is THE POINT of transition to them.

For a TRANSSEXUAL (the POINT of transition) is NOT solely changing their body but more importantly; the life they need to live and will be able to live (and the capabilties they need to have) AFTER they have become female (to the most extent possible forthem).

Almost ALL transsexuals I know, know about and understand and have experience many or MOST of the things I’ve written about my life here (unless they happened to be recognised and supported by family early on or when they first exposed themselves).

The first two groups I described would in my opinion BOTH be typically labelled transgender (and NOT transsexual. I never said the the second group WAS just that MOST people think it is) although their motives may seem different, they are just variations of the same thing.

I have NO advice for the last group, aside from: try to be careful and be SMART about how you do what you are going to do, and importantly, be as quiet about it as you can. (but most of them don't need my advice anyway, they will simply do whatever they can and need too)

So let me ask you again:

Which are you?

Where do you fit?

In ten years…..

So many blogs I read, so many forum posts, people write about “gender dysphoria” about “the Trans” (a new one I’ve found the young people use now, that makes it almost sound “cool” huh, like something you name in order to refer to it, a car for instance? “The STANG” or “the VETTE”, or if you’ve got high tastes “the ROLLS’”…. a sign of status, where people can understand a common abbreviation maybe?....)  and how it consumes them, how they desperately NEED F.F.S. how their body is making them “dysphoric”…. Or many other aspects; how their family won’t use the right pronouns etc. (and on it often goes without abate)

I dunno, it comes across to me as though changing their sex (however they each individually define that) is their ONLY goal in life.

You never read much about people talking about THE END of transition….. that’s something they never really talk about.

Does transition have an end?....

What is “transition” exactly?

What do YOU think it is?

Do YOU think there is an end for it?

If so, what would YOU say is the end?

I read a lot of people say they “transitioned” (insert number here) many years ago, and now they are working towards SRS. So I guess some people must define its completion as when you stop living life as your old “societally recognised” sex (which MOST people incorrectly refer to as “gender”) and start to try living your life as your new/preferred or correct (hopefully) “societally recognized” sex (IE the opposite one to which you were before and in these peoples case; still physically ARE).

Some people then; (I guess) see transition as changing how society (and in most cases, they include however many legal aspects that might be convenient to them personally, be that their legal name, and for some; they include how their sex is recognized by the legal system that is applicable to them) is technically supposed to recognise and handle them as individuals.

You see; society (the world and the people in it that we are included in as humans on a whole) has different rules for how to treat Males and females and men and women.

Those rules are there not only for convenience, but (some) are for specific reasons.

An example of a social rule based on sex that is designed for convenience, would be the pronouns we use to refer to someone. It’s easier to relay a person’s physical sex or refer to them by that sex when conversing with a third party (IE to use “him” for males and “her” for females), than it is to have to go into detail every time (and say: “the female person called Renee” or “Bob, the male person”) that just makes sense and makes language and communication easier and less confusing for everyone on whole, it’s a convenience thing.

And then there are rules that are in place for a specific reason.

Rules like those for which bathroom each sex is supposed to use.

Women are typically the female sex , they are smaller and weaker and potentially could be vulnerable to sexual attack when (necessarily) exposing themselves and confining themselves in a small space with (typically) only one escape path. Sexual (or any) attack is a serious concern for females(on a personal level AND as a group) , it can impact on them and their future, their happiness, their success and even their long term survival in life. Males aren’t typically susceptible to quite those same risks and repercussions.

So something society does as a necessity to (hopefully) ensure safety and longevity of individuals and us humans as a species is to simply separate the areas in which, each sex does their “business”. It’s an example of a rule that separates two sexes for a specific MEANINGFUL reason. (even if some people DO try to interpret alternative (fraudulent) meanings into its application to them and how they relate to the rest of society for whatever motive they may personally have).

So SOME people will say that the end of transition is when they stop using one set of social rules and start using the other set (and maybe even get away with it without backlash), and that THAT is what defines their SEX (IE that how they are supposedly societally recognised is what they would have you believe defines their innate sexual identity and that they have changed from one to the opposite).

Typically, the timing at which they make this change also correlates to the degree to which they have managed to change the external appearance of their physical body (and often also the timing of certain methods they undertake to do so). It’s common to hear that people go “fulltime” (living socially) after they have achieved what they feel are sufficient changes as a result of counter sexed hormone therapy, or after they’ve made surgical alterations to their body with breast augmentation of facial feminisation surgery.

In truth, I can claim these very things myself (relatively speaking) but I did not personally consider myself “transitioned” or that my transition was complete.

There’s another group who it seems think differently about the end of transition.

I read some places (and you might also) that people consider the end of their transition to be marked by (most often) the last thing on their list of things they need to complete (which generally includes all of the above, and the final and additional thing to this select/outlined group of people is apparently) Sex Reassignment Surgery (or SRS; just one of many names for what essentially is supposed yield the result of re-arranging the primary sex characteristics to match/resemble/mimic and function as much as possible, the opposite sex).

I guess these are the people you could say view “transition” primarily as a physical exercise, in an effort to be recognised as the opposite sex to that which they were born.

Most people would call this second group transsexual, and would say the first group is not REALLY transsexual, but rather, a group that people commonly refer to as transgender.

What I see from what I read of both groups is generally that there are two different epitaphs, generally two different ultimate goals for the groups, and generally what I also see is that the goal of each group tends to consume each individual’s (relative to which way they are inclined) life.

That end goal is what their life is about when you talk to them. It consumes everything they have. Often their money, their home, their families, even all of their worldly possessions.

Both goals take a varying amount of time and resources to achieve dependant on each individual and how they approach and attempt their goal, and what kind of means they have at the beginning, relative to possessions, education, earning power, personal attitude and a multitude of other factors.

No-one can predict their outcome and how long it will take them to achieve their goal, which is why I’ve titled this post the way I have.

It seems to me that Trans people are always living in and thinking about the here and now. Their focus is always solely on one of these two goals with a little left over to contemplate where they will get money to pay for food, or rent, or the mortgage payment, or their next dose of hormones, or whatever else it is, outside of their primary goal in life (and how they can achieve it), that demands the most of what little attention they can spare at that very moment.

You never seem to hear “trans” people talk about where they will or hope to be in ten years from now….

And from what I can tell, there seems to be two reasons for that.

1.       They don’t know if they’ll have finished their transition.

And

2.      Transition is their only goal, they don’t contemplate what life will be like after they’ve achieved what they’re trying to achieve.

So how could they possibly answer that question? And when you think about it; why would they want too? They might not like whatever answer they come up with.

So now, tell me (or don’t, just think about it for yourself maybe); where do YOU hope to be in ten years from now?

The first step....

I read A LOT!!!!

Or at least I HAVE read a lot.

I’ve been reading A LOT for a few years now.

Y'see, a few years ago, back before I’d become blooded to the “trans” (the hip or “slang” term for transgender) environment/community, both on the Internet and in the real world, I had a really serious problem that I needed to find a way of fixing.

I’d managed to live with this problem for quite some time, because despite early efforts in life, I had found I had no other option than to live with it, but by this time, the problem had gotten to a point where I could no longer deal with it, it was debilitating and preventing me from leading a normal happy life.

So, as most people would, I went in search of a way to resolve the issue.

What was my issue you ask? (I don't know, maybe you didn't but please humor me)

I was born with a female mind and a male body.

Think of all the girls you might know and see every day.

What is it they typically do in their lives?

Is there a rough-ish sort of pattern that the average human female’s life typically tends follow?

What do they want for for themselves on a personal level?

When are they their most contented, and what do they do in order to find that contentment (and PUL-ease! be realistic!), do you think the mom of three, in her forties or fifties, married to a man in a (hopefully), loving relationship, is constantly devastated and unhappy because her body isn’t perfect like it was in her teens or twenties? or because she doesn’t look good in that pencil skirt? Or because she doesn’t feel “sexy” ALL the time?)

Would it be fair to say that a large portion of humans born as the female sex, typically seek romantic and sexual relationships with males?

Are most female born humans capable of bearing children after they reach sexual maturity? And how many would you say (when you look at the female sex on a whole, globally) do and/or desire too?

Not all of them right?.....

No, I agree, but a large percentage of them, wouldn’t you say?

My problem was, that like all the other girls I knew, I wanted those same things.  

To find a man to love me (not necessarily BECAUSE I was female, but! the full understanding of that FACT that I am, was important) and make love to me.

I wanted desperately (and still do) to be a mother.

What a wonder it must be to bring life into the world, a privilege!.... The ways I might be able to love my children.

Feeling I’ll never know that in the way I feel so desperately, that I need to, makes me want to retreat from life, from the world, and NEVER come back.

NONE of that is possible with a penis.

NONE.

So I read A LOT, or I have, in search of what I could do, and I run across all this information on “trans” and “transgender” and “transgenderism”, and how gender and sex is all just a big spectrum and no two people are the same and some women are still female even if they have a penis etc.

But I still can’t do any of the stuff that I need to, with a penis.

No person with a penis (that I have ever known) has ever been able to give birth to a baby, and most males that I know (who penetrate other people who have penises) do so BECAUSE they want someone with (and who’s happy to use) a penis, as a lover, and I was never happy to use mine (to the extent that I never did) and I didn’t want to be recognized for it, or as someone who WANTS it, or wants USE it.

(in fact the thought of being recognized for it, or mistaken for someone who wanted to use it, again, made me want to retreat from life and the world and never come back)

So this whole transgender thing really didn’t seem to help me much.

Some of these “trans” people took female hormones which made their bodies look pretty female when they wore the right clothes and stuff, and some people even found ways to change their voices so they sounded female and I guess those things could be helpful to me when I needed guys to recognise who I am (female) and to do what I wanted guys to do with me….

BUT!

I still needed to have a vagina to really do what I needed and to make it so people could REALLY have a chance of knowing who and what I am, and for some reason, most of them (these trans people) said that that (having a vagina) didn’t matter to them, that they didn’t need one to be who they were, do what they needed to, and have people understand them.

But who knows?

Maybe I didn’t understand  them correctly?

Maybe they did need the same thing I needed? (to be, function, and be understood as, female/someone with a vagina, and so, someone who thinks and feels like and wants like most other people with a vagina).

Maybe I needed to read further and give them a chance?

Look harder?

So I did, and I found places (one mainly) where I could talk to people individually or as a group.

But it wasn’t face to face….

 Where I came from, there weren’t many people and I didn’t ever see anyone I thought might be like me and no-one ever said anything about feeling the same way I did, so how could I find them?

I tried to tell my mother a few times when I was little and she didn’t seem to understand or take me seriously, or take much interest, so I figured (for some reason that I didn’t know or couldn't understand), that people like me weren’t very common.

In fact, when I was little and my mom didn’t get it, I wondered if all “boys” felt like me and  the others just dealt with it? OR, if they didn’t, was I the only “boy” who ever did?

But no, I found this place on the Internet, and there were a lot of people there who said they wanted to change their bodies.

Almost every day there was a new message (or many) on the computer from people from all over the world saying they wanted to change their bodies. So maybe I wasn’t the only one after all?

So I read further and sometimes I wrote back and said what I thought and how I felt, but most of them didn’t agree with me and some even got mad and told me they were going to ban me from sharing how I felt.

So I kept reading the new people’s posts and I noticed something interesting (many things actually, and I’ll probably share a lot of them as this blog progresses).

Most of them; when they were introducing themselves to me and the other people, would tell their story about their life and how they’d felt the same as I had.

Often they’d say they’d felt that way since they were little, or for as long as they could remember (and that was exactly the same way I’d felt) and then, nearly every one of them would make a similar declaration about how they needed to change their lives (like I did) and that they did, or were, or are; taking "the first step" and accepting that they were (or are) trans.

And at that very moment; we parted company.

You see I never ever accepted I was “trans” I've never thought of myself that way (oh, I know now that I was born transsexual and that I've accepted, that's no big deal to me now, I don't let that stop me from living life as the very best female I can be, but that is something that I've come to understand; is completely different to being or accepting you are, anything that you might read or find that relates to "trans") I just needed to be female like the other girls I knew, and none of them were, or ever had to accept that they were “trans” in order to be girls, women or female.

The only thing they they truly needed in order to be those things, was (coincidentally) the exact same thing that I needed.

The right body, INCLUDING a vagina.  

So what is going to be YOUR first step?