What causes transsexuality? How do people know they are transsexual? These are two very different questions...and quite difficult to answer, but I am willing to take them on today.
We humans seem to want either a scientific or religious answer to everything. Especially when it comes to anything involving sex or gender-related behavior, if their is no known scientific cause, then there must be something morally wrong.
Why is that? Scientific curiosity I can understand. But it certainly should be disentangled from moral essentialism.
Do people really think that if there is no known scientific cause to a phenomenon, then it must be the work of...or evidence of...dark forces?
Originally posted at Docudharma
I've got a few links for those who would like to do some studying before entering a discussion of the topics listed above the fold:
Causes of transsexualism: current findings and hypotheses
Come Explore With Us The Diverse Nature of Gender
Explanations of why we (i.e. people, in general) are the way we are have been sought for centuries. I am reminded of a discussion I had three days after I came out. The Chuck who is mentioned was the Chair of the Mathematics Department at the University of Central Arkansas at the time, Charles Seifert.
Who am I
To stand and wonder, to wait
While the wheels of fate
Slowly grind my life away.
Who am I ? |
October 2, 1992
I quote my source, which is me in this case. I was once told to document everything, and this is part of that effort.
Chuck told me that THEY had had a meeting...THEM consisting of him, my dean, the president of the university, the school attorney, and the head of personnel (it would have included the VP for academic affairs, but he was out of town). We immediate thought was: "Why didn't WE have a meeting?" Chuck told me he was to be the conduit for any communication between me and THEM.
He voiced the "concerns" of those at the meeting:
"How does 'he' know?"
Gee, Chuck. How do you know who you are? That seems to be one of the central questions of philosophy for the past couple of millennia.
"If 'he' wears a dress to class, he's out of here." President
Oh, how wonderfully enlightened! Well, Chuck, I don't currently have any dresses appropriate for the classroom and the weather, but I'll let you know when I do.
"Wouldn't immediate medical leave be in order?"
Well, Chuck, I don't have any medical needs as of yet. I'm not even on hormones right now. I'll let you know when I can use it. Besides, couldn't that be interpreted as abandoning my classes and give THEM an excuse to terminate my tenure?
"Why couldn't you just be gay?"
No answer...just a disbelieving stare.
There may be a reason that I am transsexual, a test of some sort. But if there were a test and I failed it, I would be no less transsexual. In the same way, if there really were a "gay gene" and some people didn't have it, but still exhibited same-sex preference, would they be less gay?
I'm not a big believer in the importance of "Why?" when it comes to individual characteristics and identity. If someone chooses to be gay or transgender, I don't think that is a moral failing. I don't think there is anything "icky" about being gay or transgender.
Voicing that has got me in trouble with some of the essentialists in the past.
I don't know why people are transgender or transsexual. Ultimately, nobody really knows. There is conjecture. But as is always the case, one should question the motives of those who make the conjectures. What do they have to gain by making them?
Transsexual people have an internal disagreement with their bodies. We often say things like, "My body doesn't fit me." We may also have disagreements with the roles thrust on those who have bodies like the ones we were born having. Little girls are taught that they will grow up to be like their mommies. Little boys are taught that they will grow up to be like their fathers, if they have one.
That old drunk passed out on the couch? No, thank you.
Transpeople, unlike most people, do not accept the inevitability that little boys will grow up to be men and little girls must grow up to be women. This is what makes us different than you.
No, transfolk reject, often from a very early age...even before we know what chromosomes are, that chromosomes are destiny. In place of that, we learn that we have to hide how we feel in order to avoid becoming bully-fodder.
People who desperately need science to explain everything sometimes point to the 1997 study by Zhou, Hofman, Gooren and Swaab: A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality. (also here: Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus in The Journal for Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.)
Abstract: Transsexuals have the strong feeling, often from childhood onwards, of having been born the wrong sex. The possible psychogenic or biological aetiology of transsexuality has been the subject of debate for many years. Here we show that the volume of the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminals (BSTc), a brain area that is essential for sexual behaviour, is larger in men than in women. A female-sized BSTc was found in male-to-female transsexuals [n=7]. The size of the BSTc was not influenced by sex hormones in adulthood and was independent of sexual orientation. Our study is the first to show a female brain structure in genetically male transsexuals and supports the hypothesis that gender identity develops as a result of an interaction between the developing brain and sex hormones.
The problem with this sort of determinant is that it requires the cutting open of the brain in order to measure the size of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. That sort of requires that the person operated on be dead.
Where the predisposition for transsexualism exists, psycho-social and other factors may subsequently play a role in the outcome, however, there is no evidence that nurturing and socialisation in contradiction to the phenotype can cause transsexualism, nor that nurture which is entirely consistent with the phenotype can prevent it (Diamond, 1996).
--LINK
All I can tell you is that I found some peace when I changed my hormone of choice. Testosterone was destroying me. I found more peace after I had surgery so that my body could stop fighting the hormone change.
Okay...so if we don't know what really causes transsexuality, how do people know they are transsexual? That's also not any easy question to answer.
In short, a person is transsexual if they have, or develop, a long-lasting identification as a member of the opposite sex.
Some people experience this from when they were very young. In others the condition approaches when they are older. But usually, 20-20 hindsight can discover clues from our distant memories.
For me personally, I can recall the time when I shoplifted a copy of an Esquire magazine (I think it was) and read the story of Christine Jorgensen over and over until the magazine fell apart. I feel guilty having done that because of the stealing, but having someone know about how I felt would have been humiliating. I already knew by then that Society™ disapproved.
But now old friends are acting strange,
they shake their heads,
they say I've changed.
Something's lost but something's gained
in living every day. |
Why don't FTMs just be butch lesbians? Why don't MTFs just be femmy gay men?
Trans people aren't just frustrated homosexuals. Cisgender gay people would no more welcome sex reassignment than they would welcome a frontal lobotomy. They're fine with their bodies, by and large, and just happen to be gay. Transpeople, regardless of their sexual orientation, are NOT fine with their bodies, or at least with the heaps and heaps of gender norms that are enforced upon them as a result of their bodies. Their gender identity (their internal sense of self) and/or gender expression (clothes, mannerisms, makeup or lack thereof, hairstyle, etc.) is significantly outside the norm, to a degree that doesn't really fall within even the norm for feminine gay men or masculine gay women.
[Also] not all FTMs are terribly masculine and not all MTFs are terribly feminine. That's another common misconception. Transpeople aren't all striving to be nice, normal, heterosexual, pretend-you're-not-Trans people with 2.3 children and a white picket fence. There are FTM drag queens and MTF butch lesbians, for the same reason that FTMs aren't butch lesbians and MTFs aren't femme gay men or drag queens - butch lesbians are women, and femme gay men and drag queens are men. It just goes to show all the more that gender really is infinite, and WAY more complicated than we have language for. But we're doing our damnedest.
--LINK
I imagine that is much of the reason transfolk struggle for acceptance: anyone could theoretically claim to be trans. That seems to scare people.
It is true that anyone of us could be trans. If you fear that, you are not trans. What makes someone transsexual is that the prospect of changing sex is not at all unpleasant or fear-ridden. In fact, that's what we desire...in the deepest, innermost places of truth inside us. It is not our fault that it doesn't get painted on us in some way that is more easily identifiable.
Don't get me wrong. There is a lot of fear involved with being transsexual. But that fear comes from the way we are treated in the human community. Next week I will try to document some of that.
Art Link
Red NeonOn Gender
extraordinary – weird
unconventional – odd
exceptional – queer
peculiar – strange
gifted – outlandish
outstanding – bizarre
special – eccentric
curious – atypical
unusual – abnormal
Why is "normal"
the objective?
There is
a broad horizon
of possibility
for the human
condition.
Rather than circling
our wagons
to protect and defend
only one or two
or even just a few
acceptable ways
of living,
shouldn't we
begin the exploration
of those other
possibilities?
Why isn't it possible
to expand the definition
of woman
and expand the definition
of man,
while simultaneously allowing
people to claim neither
or both or even
to develop
whole new categories
of gender?
What does
society have
to lose?
What does
society have
to fear?
Once again, I ask:
Why is normality
the objective?
--Robyn Elaine Serven
--November 9, 2005 |
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