TSTS stands for The Suddenly Transsexual Syndrome. It is a condition suffered by certain transgender activists that magically comes about so they can ditch their Transgender Forever mantra and become a transsexual for convenience sake. Now I am sure some of you can guess who I am mentioning here but it is hilarious to be blunt. Not once in her latest post on Pam's House Blend did she utter the word transgender. That in itself is revolutionary. Needless to say I was shocked.
Is this disease catching? First Dysonnance disavowed transgender labeling of herself when she decided to run for the United States House of Representatives and now we have one of the Transgender Forever crowd using transsexual to describe herself. Sorry but using "Queen" for this one would hurt too much so I cannot. Has Autumn Sandeen seen the light? Nope, just working the system.
The first inkling something weird was happening was the title of the post called "What Genital Reconstruction Surgery, and When. It seems that getting a bilateral orchiectomy has been redefined as Genital Reconstructive Surgery when in fact it is nothing of the sort. Having a man's balls removed does not a woman make him but I guess in Sandeen's case it does or according to her she can get her birth certificate changed by claiming it as Genital Reconstructive Surgery in the state of California. Has California changed the requirements for altering a birth certificate? I know there is a new bill but I thought it required a full sex reassignment but then California is political correctness personified. It seems Sandeen is telling everyone she is having GRS. Actually ball subtraction is more accurate.
Sandeen refers to herself as a male-to-female transsexual throughout the post but then adds the caveat that thi is a far as she can go for medical reasons. I am quoting her verbatim in the following text.
For me, I have personal concerns about having a vaginoplasty. For one, a vaginoplasty is an invasive, serious bit of surgery. It took me about two years to fully recover from my gastric bypass in February of 2008, so I'm a bit concerned about how I would experience recovery from a vaginoplasty.
And then there's always that reality of when a trans woman has a vaginoplasty, she's trading her low maintenance genitalia for higher maintenance genitalia. For those who aren't aware, a vaginoplasty requires a considerable amount of maintenance in the first year after surgery in the form of vaginal dilation multiple times a day.
I'm concerned about the higher maintenance aspect of a vaginoplasty due to my bipolar condition; my bipolar condition is the main factor in my decision making process on which surgery I'm opting for.
First gastric bypass is far more dangerous that a vaginoplasty because one is dealing with the intestines and the inherent dangers involved. I would almost accept that excuse until I read the next paragraph.
We are trading low maintenance male genitalia for the high maintenance genitalia of a woman? Sandeen is worried about the maintenance costs. It sounds like she is buying a Ferrari instead of a Honda if she gets a vagina. Personally I consider my vagina a Ferrari because I never thought of maintenance costs or issues or the fact one has to dilate which does lessen over time assuming one actually uses the vagina. Well I have to admit I absolutely never thought I would ever read someone considering themselves transsexual worried about vagina maintenance issues but then I can honestly say Sandeen is certainly different in so many ways.
The next paragraph attempts to offset the excuse in the previous paragraph by claiming her bipolar condition is the main reason she is opting for castration verses SRS. I would suggest Sandeen get her excuses straight but Sandeen has not had much of anything straight including her narrative and this silly post.
First off castration is not GRS or SRS or any other name one can think of for the sex change operation. It is a "ball" job not a GRS or SRS. It seems Sandeen is not comfortable with her body with balls and a dick but perfectly happy with no balls and a dick. Last time I checked that defines a man as a eunuch but in this era of political correctness and Transgender Forever it means "female" to Sandeen. Here I go again getting confused over pronouns for Sandeen. I am bad I guess.
I wonder if Sandeen is going to keep her balls as a keepsake?
There are more excuses than I listed. It would have been just as easy if Sandeen said I like my dick and want to keep it. How does a lesbian actually qualify as a lesbian with a dick?
Link to the full post
My guess is the good doctor Huang in Lake Oswego Oregon likes the transsexual lingo but then I could be wrong.
126 comments:
Well, I'm definitely not planning on ditching what you describe as my "transgender forever mantra."
But that's based on my understanding of the term transgender. I'm one who understands transsexual as the condition of having one's gender and genitalia-at-birth not matching the usual sex and gender dichotomy -- a condition for which one is treated medically -- and transgender as a sociopolitical identity that is concerned with the freedom, justice and ordinary equality of people who don't conform to western society's sex and gender norms.
I don't see either of the identities as being mutually exclusive identities in the way that many of our transsexual peers, apparently including you, do.
It's interesting to me; however, that you feel more qualified than the medical professionals who treat me on a regular basis to diagnose the authenticity of my transsexuality when you're likely not a medical professional yourself. (And, even if you are a medical professional, you've never treated me as a patient.) That seems to be a bit of over-reaching.
And, I imagine your commentary on the authenticity of my transsexuality will no doubt be echoed by many of our transsexual peers who don't like that I identify as both transgender and transsexual. But that's the way life goes sometimes, isn't it?
But fortunately for me, I'm not going to have to make my medical decisions based on the opinions of other transsexual people who don't like me, or don't like my points of view on transgender and transsexual experience. If I did, I'd also have to take into account the opinions of the antitrans radical lesbian feminist activists and the antitrans religious right adherents regarding transgender and transsexual experience in my decision making process. And, of course, I'm not planning to take any of these points of view into account regarding what is appropriate medical treatment for me as a transsexual.
Autumn is trying to buy her way into legitimacy.
This will have a large chance of ending badly for her.
What Autumn isn't considering is post operative depression which in some is fairly bad. While she is taking androgen blockers the blocking effect isn't complete. The lack of those androgens do have a negative impact on brain chemical production.
I wish her the best of luck but the ride after surgery won't be fun.
Sandeen is getting his balls cut off? OMG how appropriate for that nutjob!!!
So instead of being a man in a dress (or was that a Brownie uniform???) he'll be a man in a dress with no balls. A man with no balls is still a man.
@ Autumn.
I have to congratulate you on 2 things.
First, you have succeeded in creating a nationally recognized presence. Your name, notoriety, and positions on matters are unparalleled.
Second, it took a lot of balls to make your recent post. Something you will soon be without.
Do you realize what you have done? The next time ENDA sees daylight the potty politics are apt to focus directly on you. That could be good or very bad. Barney Frank might even subpoena you to torpedo an inclusive ENDA while publicly seeming to be supporting an inclusive one.
Now there is another issue that has me curious. Since you seem so willing to discuss your medical situations there is one thing you have never been forthright about. I doubt you will answer but exactly why were you discharged from the military. You allude to it at times but are never explicit.
@ Elizabeth. You also deserve kudos for having the fortitude to open up this issue. JMHO.
Sandeen, I know you will read this even if you don't reply either directly or indirectly. You search your name almost hourly through google or some other search engine.
I've met some half-witted fools in my time on this earth and I've come across some bigots who fail to see themselves as others see them. I have my own share of people who dislike what I say. I have no doubt that now you are to be a Eunoch you will try to sell that as SRS to the other fools who populate the pages of internet blogs dealing with these issues. I can assure you that no-one is buying your particular brand of snake bite remedy.
What makes you dangerous is you make it near impossible for those who have to live with real transsexuality to maintain credibility. In every way you are to be pitied for you will never know normality.
Cassandraspeaks
Sadly, what Cassandra says here, is that..."you make it near impossible for those who have to live with real transsexuality to maintain credibility."
Thanks to this "meatball", this pathlogically self-centered caricature, those very unfortunate individuals who ARE in fact born with this unfortunate condition are now saddled with the likes of these loud mouthed SELF ADMITTED sociopaths and bi-polar EUNUCHS as their spokesMEN and PUBLIC representatives....WHETHER WE LIE IT OR NOT.
Anne
http://anna-es-asi.blogspot.com/
Anne
Sorry Autumn castration is not genital reconstructive surgery, Get real. The comment above about you being an Enoch is medically accurate.
For the 99th time Men have a penis, Women have a vagina.
By the way;
I see your still into wearing the sissy cloths, If I were you I would get rid of that Youtube video like yesterday.
Hi Deanna,
I retired from the military -- 8 months after my subordinate and my executive officer sexually harassed me.
I spent the first 4 of my last 8 months of my Naval career assigned to the Medical Hold unit at the Navy Medical Center San Diego. (I was being treated for depression related to the sexual harassment experienced near the end of my 20-year Navy career, as well as -- of all things -- surgery for a varicocele.) The last 4 months of my Naval career were spent assigned to the Temporary Personnel Unit on the 32nd Street Naval Base in San Diego, CA.
My retirement was standard; the characterization of my discharge was Honorable.
I hope that answers your question.
Sexual Harrassment!! were they blind deaf and desperate? Was there no-one else they could harrass sexually?
Not Your Friend,
You probably don't want to hear that I pity you. However, it must be a sad life for you now to be so alone, bitter, and angry. You did so much for trans community members in San Diego in the 90's and early 2000's -- it's sad to see who you've developed into as a person now. Frankly, it's heartbreaking.
And Casandraspeaks/Evangelina, I guess your assessment from 2010 about me...
I am indifferent about Sandeen. From where I stand the image is one of a marginally camp transvestite, unkempt grey hair wafting out from under berets, presumably camouflaging baldness. Whatever, I don’t care. The problem is Sandeen’s, not mine. My policy regarding this character has been to never mention the idiot because whatever they get up to is irrelevant to what is the purpose of this my blog.
...I am not going to talk further about this person, my opinion is known well enough, there is little point in such repetition.
.. is no longer true. Apparently you are now no longer indifferent.
By the way, "eunoch" is actually spelled "eunuch." When one insults another, one should probably take the effort to spell the insult correctly -- it reflects back poorly on the insulter if one's insult of another is misspelled.
I hate to tell you this Autumn you have me confused with someone else. You are delusional if you think I would have anything to do with the Tee-Gee community anywhere. I'm not bitter or alone.
Just because I don't have any Tee-Gee friends doesn't make me alone, that is laughable dude. I have 3 TS friends and a dozen or so STRAIGHT friends.
as for the spelling of the word eunuch I am sorry for misspelling it, you see Autumn I never was one, and I didn't have any desire to be one, so please pardon my limited vocabulary. You might reconsider your decision to have real GRS (castration doesn't count although I am sure you will have the GLAAAAD media guide r4evised to make castration a pejorative.) Living a full life as a female is very much worth all the trouble. Besides i never met anyone who would forget to dilate.
One last thing Autumn it would be a good idea to be sure you know who's history goes with which person. I don't know who you think I am but whoever that person is he or she could be very unhappy to find out you are mistaking me for her.
It's not a good idea to accuse someone of something unless you have proof. Saying I had something to do with the Tee-Gee community is a slur on my good name. I don't have anything to do with men in dresses or fetish cloths.
One more thing Autumn, you are a public figure.
You write for a blog that is nationally known and you write for a gay paper in San Diego. If you don't like what people say about you that is just too bad, it goes with the job. Just like Rush Limbaugh what people say about you isn't actionable.
Short of slander or character assassination nothing can be done. Stop whining about other people's opinions of your actions and grow up.
You put yourself in the spotlight not anybody else.
Try to remember that.
@Sandeen
So you were sexually harassed in the Navy. If some one calls you gay that is not sexual harassment that is a possible violation of DADT. If any officer or enlisted sailor asked you they were violating Navy protocol and all you had to do was just say "drop dead" but sexual harassment is something different.
"Sexual harassment occurs when one employee makes continued, unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, to another employee, against his or her wishes."
Are you claiming they touched you in inappropriate ways and asked for sexual favors? Were there sexual advances? Were they BLIND.
Then you claim they violated DADT by asking you if you were gay or because you were trans? It had to be gay because there was little that was feminine about you back then.
I guess you won the trifecta with DADT, sexual harassment, and depression. Add delusional and bi-polar and you win the pick 5 at Hollywood Park.
All of that certainly provides you with good "street" cred in the transgender activist world I guess that counts.
And just for your edification Autumn you should re-read your first comment to me. The excuses you listed for not getting complete SRS are pathetic. Just be honest. You like your dick and prefer to pee standing up. It is a guy thing so be proud of it.
Elizabeth,
I filed a formal complaint regarding my sexual harassment, and the complaint was sustained by the investigating officer as having had occurred. That's why the two who participated in the sexual harassment were punished for sexual harassment, despite how light the punishments for their documented sexual harassment ended up being. Your assessment is based on opinion about me, and not on the documented facts of the situation.
The reason the Servicemember Legal Defense Network (SLDN) -- the organization that gathered the information for the Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) stories for a joint project by the SLDN, the Americans Veterans for Equal Rights (AVER), and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). I wanted to make sure that their stories included ones by transgender veterans who'd been impacted by DADT.
I'm not sure you'd how you'd have any idea of how feminine I appeared to be to people prior to beginning transition in 2003; of how feminine I appeared to my peers while I was serving in the Navy. The assumption that I was gay was the point of my DADT story -- feminine behavior by a person perceived to be male is interpreted as identifying that person as gay, even though I was a pre-transition transsexual. This is literally one of the reasons while T-folk in previous decades fought to add the T to LGBT: Many in broader society -- many on the outside of LGBT community -- often don't perceive much (if any) difference between gay men perceived to be feminine acting, crossdressers, transsexual women, and drag queens. That assessment of gender non-normative people isn't truth; it isn't fair, but it is what it is.
Your definition of sexual harassment is incomplete. In SECNAV INSTRUCTION 5300.26C, the U.S. Navy defined sexual harassment as follows:
a. Submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of a person's job, pay, or
career; or,
b. Submission to or rejection of such conduct by a person
is used as a basis for career or employment decisions affecting that person; or,
c. Such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment. This definition emphasizes that workplace conduct, to be actionable as "abusive work environment" harassment, need not result in concrete psychological harm to the victim, but rather need only be so severe or pervasive that a reasonable person would perceive, and the victim does perceive, the work environment as hostile or offensive. ("Workplace" is an expansive term for military members and may include conduct on or off duty, 24 hours a day.) Any person in a supervisory or command position who uses or condones any form of sexual behavior to control, influence, or affect the career, pay, or job of a military member or civilian employee is engaging in sexual harassment. Similarly, any military member or civilian employee who makes deliberate or repeated unwelcome verbal comments, gestures, or physical contact of a sexual nature in the workplace is also engaging in sexual harassment.
(Cont.: entry 1 of 2)
(part 2 of 2)
Paragraph c. is the key paragraph in how I was sexually harassed. A subordinate of mine was attempting to use the USS Coronado's chain of command to end my Navy career approximately 8-months before my retirement. The ship's Executive Officer (XO) facilitated the subordinate's attempt to have the Navy end my Navy career. A Navy investigation determined that the subordinate engaged in sexual harassment. Also, the behavior by the XO violated the Department of Defense's DADT policy in his attempt to skirt the "Don't Ask" portion of DADT. (And, I certainly didn't tell.)
The behavior of my subordinate and of XO were judged to be sexual harassment by the Navy's criteria. The reason my DADT story is that is posted online is because I provided the project my documentation.
I'm amazed that you make baseless claims about my sexual harassment experience -- apparently based solely on your unfavorable opinion of me. It's as if you are attempting to re-traumatize me with your incredulous opinion statements.
Changing gears a bit, my transsexual experience is real. Even by the old Harry Benjamin's Gender Disorientation Scale (related his book The Transsexual Phenomenon), I fairly closely align with Type Five: True Transsexual (Moderate Intensity):
Gender Feeling: Feminine (trapped in male body)
Dressing Habits and Social Life: Lives and works as woman if possible. Insufficient relief from dressing.
Sex Object Choice and Sex Life: Libido low. Asexual auto-erotic, or passive homosexual activity. May have been married and have children.
Kinsey Scale: 4-6
Conversion Operation: Requested and usually indicated.
Estrogen Medication: Needed as substitute for or preliminary to operation.
Psychotherapy: Rejected. Useless as to cure. Permissive psychological guidance.
Remarks: Operation hoped for and worked for. Often attained.
I've never engaged in any sort of homosexual activity at all, to include passive homosexual activity, and I'm definitely functionally asexual -- yet I'm hardly "auto-erotic" or autogynephilic.
I've already explained the reasons for why I'm choosing an orchi over a vaginoplasty at this point in my life -- that you find my reasons "pathetic," really isn't my problem. That's your issue, Elizabeth, not mine. I've had to obtain the same Harry Benjamin Standards of Care required letters for transsexual surgeries that you needed for your vaginoplasty. I've had the same therapist since March of 2003, Elizabeth, and her opinion regarding my transsexuality matters to me, and your opinion literally has no impact on my diagnosis or treatment.
Your personal hated for me is palpable. One can see it in your many judgments of me, as well as in the tone you're using to express those judgments; as well as by your attack on the validity of my sexual harassment experience. So I'll leave you with this thought from Martin Luther King Jr.:
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a [person]'s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes [a person] to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
I wish you well, Elizabeth.
Perhaps if you had not contributed to the colonization and rape of our identity as women of operative history we would have felt differently.
@Sandeen
So technically it was sexual harassment but based on what? What was said that made it sexual harassment? I cannot take your word for anything based on your lunacy.
You posted a pictures of yourself as a man in a link in a comment and that is not a feminine man. Did you get a bee sting and suddenly feminize? There is little feminine about you even now and that is a simple statement of fact based on the nightmare of being pounded by testosterone for all those years. Your appearance, manner, and speech are decidedly not feminine.
Your writings and actions are how I base my view of you. I do not hate you. I actually pity you. The only reason you are having an "orchi" is so you can fool the state of California into changing your birth certificate.
Your own words paint the true picture of who and what you are. I quote you here:
"I joined the US Navy in 1980 in the midst of a nationwide recession, and lied about my cross-dressing as a teen."
Why did you say cross-dressing and not transsexual? Freudian slip? Didn't know? If you had a decidedly female "gender" you would have said something else. Why not?
Plus, do not equate my differences of opinions over your positions as something that equates to racism. I marched in those civil rights protests and this pales in comparison.
Your problem is you are delusional and actually think you project female which you do not. From your Harpo Marx hairdo to your 7 year old school girl dress worn in the July 10, 2011 video you are a caricature of a woman.
You do not fit Type V because you do not want surgery. No Type V is afraid of SRS but you are. That said Type IV fits you quite well.
The question I have is if you identify as asexual how can you also identify as lesbian and thus be part of lesbian/gay alliances?
You are a walking contradiction.
Sandeen this is the kind of "weaseling" verbose diatribe for which you have become notorious. What you and those like you do is reduce women and womanhood to a perforance level you can attain easily and with little effort on your part. The fact is there is no hate in the statements I make towards you and since Elizabeth is a close friend and we have discussed the comments you have made here I know she harbours no hate. As I have said before I actually pity you and am simply indifferent to you. Being "indifferent" to you from my perspective does not mean I won't make comments abput you when I feel it's warranted. On this latest escapade of yours a comment is warranted.
I say again I have practised as a counselor in this field and from what I have read about your personal life from things you've written and from things I have listened to within the collection of "youtube" films of yours that abound within youtube. You are about as transsexual as my neighbours randy tomcat! as for type V Benjamin scale. Sandeen type V transsexuals simply don't make it through a 20 year naval career as you did. The vast majority of type V seek surgery you don't want sugery. I met and counselled a great many type V transsexuals. You may make type IV IMHO However that isn't the question here, my opinion hardly matters since I am not responsible for your treatment. It's your behaviour, what you say, your attidude and your blatant and outright twisting of truth and your censorship of comments you don't like at PHB I take issue with. That and "outing" someone to their Church congregation I find dispicable in the extreme. So my typographical in "Eunoch" for "Eunuch" is a reflection on me is it? You're still a "eunuch" however you spell it and Americans are hardly in any kind of position to accuse the English of poor spelling!
Cassandraspeaks
Given this person's history and tendency to reinvent her history. If something goes wrong I fully expect we will be blamed.
I had thought that I would avoid entering the debate concerning this article. I hope that I do not regret doing so. I feel personal attacks are unnecessary and offer no real value to any debate other than to make the attacker feel more important than they truly are. They also can cause unmitigated damage to someone if a falsehood is spread.
I have mixed feelings about Ms. Sandeen. I will not take up sides with her. Some of my feelings are generally favorable. And then there are other feelings that would place her in a position of questionable character (at least in my opinion) because of issues she's apparently taken up that directly outed someone in a church they belonged to. But these point to a moral character issue. This is an issue that she is going to have to take up with whom ever she believes in as a deity, if she does have a belief.
The issue of moral character though is by no means a unit of measure in which to gauge someone of their realness of transsexuality. Neither is it legitimate to measure a persons realness based upon their personal endeavors in support of whatever cause they associated themselves with. In her case, that of LGBT issues (with emphasis on the 'T', as in this case it would represent the transgender umbrella model). As the rift which has developed into a shredding of that 'umbrella' where the 'T' is separating into camps of transgender, gender variant, crossdressers, drag queens, etc. vs. transsexuals, and then in that latter subgroup being delineated furthermore between early and late transitioners; the good work and support that Ms. Sandeen has done for this fractured semblance of what once was considered to be a community has been, or is being overlooked and undervalued here. Then to some, her efforts are despised and seen as an egregiously harmful co-opting of a medical condition. A medical condition few if any “normal” people ever really thought about, or considered as a legitimate medical condition. I really believe, were it not for such outspoken personalities with the inclusion as that of Ms. Sandeen and a number of others – whether they are seen as favorable or not - what in roads have been made in media, research, medical access, political recognition, and yes, even public opinion, we as transsexuals would not be seeing the strides made, the recognition developed and the public acceptance level increase as they have been over the course of the last decade.
Short disclaimer here: I do not identify with the above described transgender community as something I belong to or am a part of. However, I know results from some good work benefiting all of us has come about from a portion of it.
To be continued:
Each of us who are transsexual know within ourselves that we are who we are. That one finds out early in life, or later in life is a mixed bag of good and bad. Many of the Early Transitioners (ETs as I call them, LTs if you're Late Transitioners) do not wish to understand why or how LTs can claim any legitimacy for who they are. I am convinced that it's not that you can't understand, it's more that you do not want to understand! For dear life, you cling to Dr. Harry Benjamin's scale of transvestite/transsexual types. As though it is the Holy Grail of transsexuality and the be all, end all for determination as to who is what concerning TS or TV. The man has been dead for twenty-five years! Yes, he did do valuable research into a subject that I think even he felt that he didn't fully understand it's complexity in biologic development. He simply didn't have the tools of research at his disposal in the times he was researching and formulating his 'opinions'! His research is NOT the absolute. He as much said so, himself! The more that actual current and future medical research investigates, and studies the more we will eventually know what the real triggers are, as well as how to diagnose more precisely. As justification for my thoughts here, I am supplying a snippet from Dr. Benjamin's writings in 'The Transsexual Phenomenon':
“If these attempts to define and classify the transvestite and the transsexual appear vague and unsatisfactory, it is because a sharp and scientific separation of the two syndromes is not possible. We have as yet no objective diagnostic methods at our disposal to differentiate between the two. We - often - have to take the statement of an emotionally disturbed individual, whose attitude may change like a mood or who is inclined to tell the doctor what he believes the doctor wants to hear. Furthermore, nature does not abide by rigid systems. The vicissitudes of life and love cause ebbs and flows in the emotions so that fixed boundaries cannot be drawn.
It is true that the request for a conversion operation is typical only for the transsexual and can actually serve as definition. It is also true that the transvestite looks at his sex organ as an organ of pleasure, while the transsexual turns from it in disgust. Yet, even this is not clearly defined in every instance and no two cases are ever alike. An overlapping and blurring of types or groups is certainly frequent.”
Please pay attention to where he said in the first paragraph, “ it is because a sharp and scientific separation of the two syndromes is not possible.” Can it be any clearer? What on Earth ever gave you ETs the authority to decide who is what? Answer, NO ONE! Unless you hold a degree in Psychology or Psychiatry, you are not fit to make any such determination, nor are you reasonably fit to proclaim a denial to and of someone who has been authoritatively diagnosed as who they say they are.
To be continued:
I'd also like to point out here that all too often, some of you ETs like to categorize those of us LTs as Type IV transvestites. From Dr. Benjamin's own charting a Type IV is still considered to be a transsexual, yet one who does not feel the urgency for corrective surgery. So, I feel some of you need to go back and reread your own narratives in 'how to denigrate others' and get it figured out. Are Type IV's TS as Dr. Benjamin says, or are they TV as you say?
Group 1 Type I Pseudo TV
Type II Fetishistic TV
Type III True TV
Group 2 Type IV TS, Nonsurgical
Group 3 Type V TS, Moderate intensity
Type VI TS, High intensity
So, I feel some of you need to go back and reread your own narratives in 'how to denigrate others' and get it figured out. Are Type IV TSs as Dr. Benjamin says, or are they TVs as you say? Reading from Dr. Benjamin's writing, Ms. Sandeen could in fact be a Type V as she says. It's a matter of the blurring effect and overlap of group and types that Dr. Benjamin spoke of.
And, because you may have counseled people in a call center who are struggling with this issue, does not a psychiatrist or psychologist one make.
Today there are many good psychological therapists out there that do a good job of figuring out whether or not a person should move forward in transition or look for another coping mechanism to stay the sex they were born to. And, yes, there are dubious therapists that really do not care and will fill out your letter for prescription request and/or that of surgical need just for the buck. However, those of you ETs placing the blame fully on the individual in question when a wrong diagnosis is made (which is extremely rare); the chastising of the individual, the lambasting tongue lashing received, the bawling out bullying - which seems a coordinated effort on the part of ETs here, and the utter disrespect toward others you perceive as not akin to your league, is disturbing. Intelligent conversation can be made without such vituperation.
My apologies for the formation error in the last part of my comment. Copy and paste issue because of my overly intense length and the limitations of this comment system. LOL
@Dawn
Well another essay from Dawn of the Northwest which begs the question why not post this on your own blog. You seem to be hung up on this ET verses LT problem that is primarily in your own mind.
There are many late transitioners that are obviously transsexual and there are many that are not and it is really that simple. I disagree with Sandeen about a lot of things but she has a right to her opinions as I do to mine.
Most of the late transitioners I find suspect are the ones that transition late, stay married to the wife, believe everyone loves them and accepts them, and immediately know everything about everything involving transsexuality, which does beg the following question. If you know so much why did it take you until your 50's to transition or so late in life to suddenly "believe" you were transsexual?
Simple question but a question none of you have an answer for other than excuses. Why is that? Simple answer again. I will not give it to you but it is how most Women born Transsexual can tell you a mile away.
I did find it humorous that you believe Sandeen has been a "positive" influence in the last 8 years since transition. Sandeen and her ilk have done nothing but destroy what little goodwill transsexuals had. Do you honestly believe people believe and accept some bullshit claim from some old man or someone who waited 20+ years to get a Navy Pension rather than be truthful to what they claim was always who they were??
People understood Kim Petras but they could never understand the 55 year old man with 3 kids and a wife that had a sex change and wanted to stay with his wife while claiming it is not a lesbian relationship. Everything about it reeks.
Suddenly they realized they were transsexual? Bullshit, but then they managed to get the description or diagnosis changed so some 55 year old transvestite need only feel like he is a woman for several years before seeking help. Was never that way but now it is. Nothing like painless transsexualism.
I really do think you should re-read what Harry wrote. I do agree with you that there are blurred lines until one gets to Type VI where there are no blurred lines. Complete psycho-sexual inversion is a finite condition and is irreversible and is a birth condition.
What you should read is where Harry said there is no individual that suffers more than a transsexual because of the psychological pain they endure just being transsexual. Transsexualism does not suddenly happen at 55, well it didn't in the past but it does now and that goes well with Harry's belief that some transvestites need "more" and morph into transsexualism. Harry would have put them through hoops before authorizing surgery. Today everyone knows a therapist that can be bought off for the price of the visits.
No transsexual fears "the Operation" because death is better than keeping that vile thing between her legs. That is what differentiates us from Sandeen who is worried about "maintenance" issues which is hysterical. Do not dilate if you have no need of it.
One can only wonder what the wife would say under truth serum and away from the influence of their suddenly female husband who claims this is not a lesbian relationship. Is it a heterosexual relationship such that you still consider yourself male or is it asexual because the wife actually tired of your dressing and was trapped with no place to go. Regardless if they love you or not they never signed up for any of you and if other women actually accepted you, they do not by the way, you would learn the contempt they hold for the selfish man that would do that to a fellow woman.
But then we look at life as women and you look at life as a man. Big difference.
Well there you go again, Elizabeth. Trying to analyze someone with out knowing enough facts of the person involved. I did not "suddenly" say, think or feel I was transsexual. I knew I was transsexual and denied it all of my life. The only thing is, I didn't know until I was in my forties was what it was called. Again, I had never even heard of such a thing until then.
If you think someone like me is only a transvestite, why is it I never got a 'kick' out of dressing in women's clothing. Why is it, as I was attracted to all things female, there was no sexual component to it? Why is it that while dressed and I looked in a mirror I could see the real Dawn? Same as I do today. Why is it that instead of calm when dressed I instead had dread of returning to my male existence? Why is it that as a male I was full of hate for everyone, anger exhibited upon anyone, disgust at who I was physically? Why is it that in the end I made two attempts at suicide. I think the clinical term for that is depression.
So dream on with all of your BS about the 'big secret' that all real transsexuals "know" and smell out a transvestite a mile away. Because all you have expressed is complete BS, beginning to end. I know who I am. In Dr. Benjamin's analysis regardless of this "type" system he developed, I still come in as a transsexual.
BTW, when did I ever state that I feared 'the operation"? Never did! "Maintenance" is not an issue.
Yes, I feel people like MS. Sandeen that have been at the forefront of the LGBT push HAVE been a huge positive influence, when focused on the political and the medical needs of transsexuals. Where they fail is not those core issues of equality and medical requirements. No, they fail because of their justly perceived perverse sexual proclivities that they refuse to keep out of the public's eye. THAT is what holds them back from being really effective in the political arena. Even though there have been significant gains there. It could have been so much more effective. They also fail because they so forcefully want to remove the normative binary system that society's have worked within for thousands of years.
One last thing Elizabeth. As I explained to you before, my and my wife's personal sexual lives are private and will remain so. I let you in on the secret that I am asexual. That still remains so. If you really want to know how my wife feels, I'd say ask her. I cannot and will not answer for her.
Ohh, yeah! Almost forgot! I resent that you've made me older than I actually am! 55! Dang girlfriend, stop rushing me! Why, it was just last week some nice young man was guessing my age at early forties! LOL
@Dawn,
Try a little reading comprehension. "Operation" fear and "maintenance were about Sandeen.
Dawn you contradicted yourself again. You said Sandeen and others like her had a positive influence when focused on political and medical needs of transsexuals. You then state several sentences later, in same paragraph, they fail politically because of perverse sexual proclivities that they refuse to keep from public eye. Which is it?
Every time you post a comment you make a bigger fool out of yourself. Now you try and claim that into your 40's you never knew what you were? Well, either you make "Dumb and Dumber" look like Einstein or you are a liar or is it convenient amnesia.
You had never heard of transsexualism until your 40's according to your comment? That had to be around 2000. Was that about when you stopped believing in Santa Claus?
Excluding the fact that the only way you did not know what you were was because you never looked which indicates severe lack of intensity it is simple actually.
Your narrative describes the young transsexual and the pain and anguish they feel which is not the narrative of a person in their 40's because those symptoms result in zero chance of reaching that age. Simple fact "girlfriend".
I do not care what you and your wife do in private but if you believe that having a public sex change and then staying with your wife is normative then it might behoove you to rethink your comment about perverse sexual proclivities for Sandeen and company because compared to that they are normal.
I have no way of asking your wife and I think she has gone through enough with someone like you. I am sure she so enjoys being the butt of the jokes in the town gossip circuit.
People and I mean the public look at you and they do not and will never understand you. They equate you with the fools they saw on the Springer show whether you like it or not.
For one who invokes another's need for reading comprehension, you may wish to take the lesson for yourself. I've been on here making comments long enough that either you don't read through someone's comments completely, or you cannot maintain enough mental discipline to grasp the commenter's meaning in their writing. Which in my case, I feel is quite clear in comparison to some I've read here.
The only foolishness on my part dear is staying on here as long as I have in trying to keep a positive view of an issue that you and yours wish to keep negative at every turn!
How dare you call into question what and when I learned of anything! Are you God? Did you hear my prayers as a young teen to "please let me wake up in the morning as a girl"? Because if so, you played one hell of a cruel joke upon me. One in which I went through the greater (for your edification: greater meaning larger and longer, not better) part of my life not getting to the knowledge I needed to understand why I felt that way. So, NO, I actually DID NOT know anything about transsexualism until I was in my forties. I've told you that before. It's not a lie. But, you my dear are welcome to believe whatever your insanely impertinent mind can conjure up!
As for the issue of my relationship with my wife. First, you REALLY would not want to tangle with her on this issue. Just take that as a fact. Second, jokes about her behind her back? Really? That's almost as laughable as your pitiful attempts to make me feel less confident in my myself! I assure you, you are wrong about that. Third, why do you feel the need to keep going to that issue about my and my wife's relationship to and with each other? Unless you have some twisted perverted interest in such things. You showing a consistent pattern. You might want to get that analyzed! Just sayin'!
As for the political and medical gains. DADT repeal, Anti-discrimination laws in 14 States, Presidential executive orders of non-discrimination policy toward Gender Identity, The Veteran's Administration's new policy in treatment of transgender and transsexual people, The AMA's resolution number 122, etc. And, we could go further into the more grass-roots local efforts, such as I have been involved in until of late. All because of effective lobbying efforts by good people in the LGBT groups doing good work. Were the larger group as in 'transgender', and to a large degree the whole LGBT fail is in the public perception of them when they put themselves on public display in sexually provocative ways. Ever see a Pride Parade without the leather and whips? Or the ridiculous dress-up of people in the most slutty costume caricature of female presentation? That's what I'm talking about. Get rid of that negative public image and you can win on all fronts.
I don't see anything of you and your's out there championing for a better level of acceptance for transsexual people. I've seen nothing but bitterness and contempt expressed by you and yours. The only good I've seen expressed are the interventions you make claim of, though have provided no evidence of such. All you have accomplished thus far is to create some division in an already divisive existence of a greatly misunderstood group of at risk people. Congratulations on your success! Enjoy it now 'cause it won't last long.
Elizabeth, I have had enough abuse from you and your 'buddies'. Pretty soon all that you are going to have responding to you will be your choir. Rather dull at that!
I would call into question any supposed gains in civil and medical rights, treatment etc that the Tee-Gees have been a part of or take credit for.
First let me say except for a couple of states any woman who has undergone legitimate genital reconstructive surgery is FEMALE, NOT TRANS-ANYTHING. For all of you Tee-Gee identified people you need to get that into your thick brainwashed heads.
Transsexuals in cooperation with members of the caring and medical professions along with enlightened lawyers and lawmakers established the laws that allow those of us born with specific birth defects to change our legal sex, yes i SAID SEX you drivers license or birth certificate DOESN'T SAY GENDER, get that into your thick brainwashed heads also.
We did it without your help and you people, Tee-Gees and WINOs (Women In Name Only) (pronounced Whine-O) What these groups have done was to tear down the gains made by Transsexuals in the 60-90s.
Since we are already FEMALE we don't need all those GAY LAWS, they are for GAY PEOPLE. Get that into your thick brainwashed heads also.
If you are in some kind of homosexual or lesbian relationship then you your self interest lies with gays and lesbians and you in many instances are apposed to our way of life. By involving yourselves in all this gender nonsense you are further marginalizing yourselves. In the end the gays and lesbians are going to toss the Tee-Gees aside like a used condom when they have their marriage equality. Tee-Gees have no protections under the DADT repeal and that is by design. Nobody wants Tee-Gees in the services, and nobody will make accommodation for them.
"Tee-Gees have no protections under the DADT repeal and that is by design. Nobody wants Tee-Gees in the services, and nobody will make accommodation for them"
I'd look at the example of the Canadian Armed Forces, The British Armed Forces and that of the Australian Armed Forces before rushing to judgment on that one.
It wasn't that long ago that no one in the U.S. believed that DADT would EVER be repealed. So much for that backward thinking, and your's huh? The same as they were wrong then, you are wrong now.
No matter how you cut, manipulate, massage, or deny it either, YOU and everyone who undergoes transition is still and always will be trans something or other, too! Go ahead, ask your neighbor; tell your husband, or your wife if you have the guts to do so.
You know, what you people are really afraid of is anyone finding out that you are "trans". That fear drives your fear, your hatred (and that what it is too) of LTs. We LTs can be completely free to allow others to see that we are transsexual and do not fear the questions about it. That we're real people and can live real lives. That we in fact are more honest in our lives than ANY of you who pretend that stealth is a.) healthy, and b.) satisfying. Otherwise you wouldn't have such disdain for any of us who are open in our lives. You'd never even raise the question of our legitimacy. But, you people are in fact the most despicable representation of what a transsexual isn't.
@Dawn1257
I changed sex fairly late in life for reasons I won't go into here. I'm not stealth, but neither am I "out." Some people in my life know my history. At this point, most probably do not (I've been a lot more sociable since the change). And I don't discuss my history with people who don't know. I'm quite free. I don't live in fear. But no one cares that I was born transsexual, and there's no way I'm going to keep that as an active part of my life. Why would I?
Sorry Dawn;
This isn't Canada, this is the US.
I'm not so sure that the rank and file military really approves of the repeal of DADT.
You saying that we always be trans is just the same as saying we will always be men. I take that as a slur, pawn your Tee-Gee Sandeenista Kool-Aid somewhere else, we are not guzzling it.
Nobody is afraid of any such thing but then again we are not married with children from the before time.
@Ariel
Some post transition women can't let go of their "Man History" because it represents so much of their identity, like 20 years in the Navy. You ever notice all the vets who are non-ops (WINOs)?
There is something going on there I can't put my finger on. Is it gay infiltration of the real TS ranks in order to colonize our ranks in order to force the homosexual agenda on us and use our numbers for their political goals?
@Ariel,
"But no one cares that I was born transsexual, and there's no way I'm going to keep that as an active part of my life. Why would I?"
Ummmm, then why are you here, and on your own blog, Ariel? Seems rather disingenuous, don't you think? The truth is, your just as narcissistic as any other person in the blogging environment we are all participating in. You can't claim the history without mentioning that you are who you are, and the travails it encompasses. Once a transsexual, always a transsexual, even if you're only admitting to the history. The only difference is whether or not you've been corrected.
@ Not Your Friend,
"You ever notice all the vets who are non-ops (WINOs)?
There is something going on there I can't put my finger on. Is it gay infiltration of the real TS ranks in order to colonize our ranks in order to force the homosexual agenda on us and use our numbers for their political goals?"
Yep, it's a secret military operation. We will assimilate you! Sheeesh, get real! I sense a little paranoia.
Paranoia?
I really don't think so.
Just an observation on how the effeminate homosexual men are now calling themselves trans-something.
Go ahead call me a homophobe, you silly person.
I write -- under a pseudonym -- because I am still interested in issues having to do with transsexualism. I also keep an eye out for developments that might have a negative impact on my status as woman and female.
What sort of travails are you thinking of? My life is quite good. I'm grateful. I never take it for granted.
You're right that I could, if I wished, have absolutely nothing to do with anything transsexual. And since I have undergone corrective surgery, it's definitely in my past, not my present. But wouldn't that be selfish of me? Some people seem to find what I write worth reading. If you don't, that's OK.
Well! this really has moved the debate forward hasn't it?
Why is correcting a birth defect and moving on with one's life being dishonest?
I made it my policy a little while ago not to talk about my personal life. What you cannot comprehend is that from my very earliest memory all I ever wanted was to be fully female, not transsexual female. Dawn what you have become with your transition is transsexual and it would seem that is all you will ever be. I don't "live in fear" but I don't have to live with the knowledge that everyone I know is privvy to private medical history either.
I suggest you go read an essay I wrote a year or two ago published in TS Si entitled "The Lies About Not Telling"
I have a question for you Dawn. Why have you made this all about Dawn when the post and subsequent comments was about Autumn Sandeen?
I neglected to sign the above. But then you did know who it was didn't you!
Cassandraspeaks
@Dawn from 11:54 AM
It really always is about Dawn isn't it? Your problem is the symptoms you describe do not fit a 50 something transsexual. They fit the description of a much younger transsexual. The silly thing is you do not realize it. The sad thing is you will never get it because you will always consider yourself trans something.
You brought yourself into this discussion and per usual the discussion ended up being about Dawn. You did not know anything about transsexualism because you knew you were a cross-dresser or transvestite. As for not wanting to tangle with your wife I am confused by that comment. Was she a big supporter of your sex change or has the sex change actually taken place is a better question?
The problem is all yours Dawn. You are a living anachronism only you do not realize it. You are so delusional you think John Q. Public looks at transsexual Dawn and her/his wife and thinks there goes a wonderful representation of a transsexual and what it means to be transsexual!!!
It is the exact opposite but then I doubt you could ever admit that to yourself. It is better to believe everyone accepts you as a woman and a wife/husband or whatever the heck you classify yourself as. I have no idea how many years post-op you are or even if you are as I previously asked.
Do you honestly believe the people in your conservative town, your words, accept you as a woman? You are not a positive example you are a Jerry Springer moment only you do not realize it. Do I wish it were not so? Yes I do, but I get the feeling you enjoy being the town transsexual
DADT was a gay issue within the military and had nothing to do with transsexuals. Just for your edification there are multiple WBT in the military but all became girls before military service. It is not something the military talks about out of respect for the young women that serve who were born transsexual.
Actually, unlike you I have done my share of giving back over the last 40+ years of my life and I did not seek public recognition nor did I seek congratulatory back slaps. Those I have helped were helped privately and quietly and I actually could care less if you believe me since you have no credibility.
Just for your edification again the people you talk about in Pride parades are actually gay not transsexual but they may be part of your transgender umbrella if they are drag queens.
Against my better judgment, and this may well be the last you hear from me here (is that cheers I hear, lol), I am going to reply to you Cassandra even though I told you before I wouldn't. It's that little narcissistic thing we share, you know. But since you asked......
"Why is correcting a birth defect and moving on with one's life being dishonest?"
To be complete in contextual arrangement of my thoughts of which you refer, my meaning was that of being transsexual and living a stealth life post transition. Not about correcting a birth condition.
As you and most others of the ET variety here have framed this rhetoric of 'not wanting to understand' LTs. It would be quite simple to throw the 'I don't understand the ETs' same level of B.S. back at you. Here's just a taste:
I lived a lie for over forty years. I lied to my wife, I lied to my parents, I lied to all of my then friends, brothers, sisters, customers, business associates, etc., etc. The lie I offered to them was the lie that I was male. Since I finally realized my lie I have made this transition to be more honest in who I am. I now live completely guilt free with no inhibition to answer any questions that are asked of me (excepting of course those questions concerning my personal relationship with my wife). I have more confidence in being myself than I ever knew was possible while living in hiding, and lying.
Compare my experience to that of an ET. One whom has made the personal decision to live a stealth life. You still have to lie about yourself. You live that lie everyday. I have read here about the efforts of some of you who claim to have worked so hard to keep that secret from ever surfacing. How trying that must be. It's why you live an anonymous existence on these blogs. You can't show your face, your real name, etc. You have to continue in yet another lie. This one about your past.
I think instead of 'not understanding' people like me who are LTs, you resent us. Because we do not have that baggage of lying any longer. We're free, and you are not!
That's enough from me on that subject.
Cassandra, I didn't make this "about Dawn", Elizabeth did. She did it in her comment after that ridiculously long comment I made. Switching back and forth between her contempt for me, and that of Ms. Sandeen.
Lastly, I didn't "become" anything. I am and always was a transsexual. It's not not something to be ashamed of. It's not something to hide, unless you feel you need to. But, hiding (living stealth) is like giving up. You can't really help, or be effective in making change of "normal" people's stigma of transsexuals from a hiding place.
Dawn, just so you know...I am not "buds" with with Elizabeth despite being about the same age and having undergone our sexual correction around the same time.
You should also now that I take serious umbrage to the point of offense to some of your totally ignorant pontifications. Let me START with this..."DADT repeal, Anti-discrimination laws in 14 States, Presidential executive orders of non-discrimination policy toward Gender Identity", supposedly the resulting from the dedicated efforts of Mr Sandeen, HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH PEOPLE BORN NEUROLIGALLY TRANS-SEXED. NOTHING, ZERO, NADA.
Those laws are of absolutely NO benefit to us and are specifically designed so that boys can wear their ugly dresses and play girl. That's it. I was willing to let that pass as it simply demonstrates how truly ignorant you are of what it means to be BORN transsexual.
However....THIS STATEMENT, "No matter how you cut, manipulate, massage, or deny it either, YOU and everyone who undergoes transition is still and always will be trans something or other, too!"....IS AN INSULT, and I would suggest you think long and hard before you try to lay that particular BRAND of BS on me, "sweetie pie". Because, quite simply...them thar be fightin' words, and unless you want to be called a white nigger, you had better take them back.
In truth it is YOU who is the liar, "I lived a lie for over forty years. I lied to my wife, I lied to my parents, I lied to all of my then friends, brothers, sisters, customers, business associates, etc., etc." ~Dawn
I do not live a lie. I am who I am and I have been for the past forty years. You CHOSE to be a public Tranny, because THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE. HERE is a CLUE. I am NOT. Neither is Elizabeth or Cassandra.
The main reason that I cannot stomach your typically MALE manner of attempting to usurp my actual womanhood is your malodiferous attempts to EQUATE your tranniness, your phony/psuedo"wyman-ness" with the real thing.
And just for YOUR "edifiction" I am 64 and still enjoyng hetero-normal sex on a regular basis.
Anne
Anne
@Dawn
A couple of serious questions.
We don't lie about anything, we don't tell all.
Since when do we have to disclose every bit of our life and history to everyone we meet on the internet or in real life?
Why call us liars, it seems to me you and your ilk have been lying much longer than any of us.
Do you feel you need someone to share your guilt with, someone you can try and knock down to the level to make you feel better about yourself?
Has it ever occurred to you that all we wanted was to live a normal life, is that really so hard to understand?
Why would anybody in their right mind want to be a transsexual? they wouldn't.
Why do people with birth defects work to correct them? Do you think someone who couldn't hear or see from birth who after having that birth defect corrected would identify as being deaf or blind? no they wouldn't that on it's surface would make them appear to be mentally not all there.
The only reasons I can think of that might explain why someone, who is post op would embrace being transsexual would be.
1. They are unable to socialize (learn to act like) as a member of the female half of society.
2. they physically are not proportioned to fit the female form.
3. They don't have a female voice, or can't adopt one.
4. Family pressures won't allow them to lead a normal life as a female.
5. They are unwilling to let go of their male past or can't live without their male privilege.
Dawn it's really not that much about being a LT.
There are some LTs who have successfully assimilated into female society. My theory is the majority of them mentally still embrace their manhood.
@Dawn 1:54 PM
Wow!! SO everyone will always be transsexual even if they have had surgery? How very male of you Dawn. What you fail to realize is that life is perception and people perceive you as a man in a dress and even if I wear faded jeans and my late husbands tee-shirt they see me as a woman because that is what I have always been to them.
Telling the wife must be left up to men like you but then maybe you should have told her before you married her. As for my neighbors and friends I don't ask them if they are gay or transvestites so I guess they can do without knowing I was born a boy.
Every time you comment you make a bigger fool out of yourself. If there was a 5 foot high pile of bullshit in the road you would drive straight into it because it is your natural environment, bullshit that is!
The last paragraph in this post just proves my point about you as clearly as can be. You are a delusional. My point about you is your narrative does not fit and on this point Aria Blue had it 100% dead right. You stole a narrative and used it because it gave you access to therapy and surgery assuming you have had surgery.
I worked for 42 years as a girl and then a women in the real world. I was never questioned once about my sex or gender and have actually set precedents for women and broken a few glass ceilings in my day. The key point you miss is the simplest point of all. All any MTF transsexual really wants is to just be accepted as a girl/woman. We may have been born transsexual but the surgeons knife ended that torment.
The only fear I have about fools like you is the simple worry people will actually believe you are what transsexuals actually are which you are most certainly not.
Actually not one time in my life since I transitioned in late 1969 has anyone ever asked me if I was "trans". I am sure you get that daily.
Why would you want others to see you as transsexual? I would think you would want them to see you as a woman unless that is impossible.
You are a real person and lead a real life? What kind of a life is it walking down the street with everyone pointing at you as the "town transsexual"? That must be very satisfying but maybe that is your turn on.
You are more honest in your life because you are out and satisfied being a transsexual? Now that is truly sad. I was always a girl so when I was given the ability to be the girl I should have been then my life was honest and true. I enjoyed my life as a young girl, as a young woman, and still enjoy life even as a 65 year old woman but unfortunately you will never be a woman because you will always be transsexual.
I actually have no disdain for anyone that is open about being born transsexual. I consider many of them friends and they understand my joy in living a quiet life. My disdain for you is because you are quite simply a typical man who does this late in life and thinks he knows everything about this condition when you never lived any of it despite your protestations otherwise. I am sure it was your ultimate fantasy as a transvestite to be considered a public transsexual. Enjoy it because you are also the public joke.
Actually people like me and others are exactly what transsexuals are. We all just wanted to be girls, as we should have been born, and when we reached that goal we left behind all the trappings of being born transsexual and all the baggage that went with the pain we suffered through and embraced the simple fact we were girls and relished the opportunity to just be ourselves.
You on the other hand will always be what you are which is some form of transgender or "trans" and your life will be less for it but then staying a heterosexual man with a mangina might actually be part of your fetish desires.
@Anne,
Of all those I have spoken to here and other places who are so dead-set in opposition to LTs, Anne, you are by far the one of the most reasonable. I can fully empathize to your umbrage. How does it feel though to be lied about? To be castigated in such a way that diminishes you to virtual nothingness? Because that is exactly how the representation of Elizabeth, Not you friend, Cassandra and others do to people such as myself. It makes you fighting mad, doesn't it? It makes you want blood from the person who dares to bestow upon you irrelevance and shame portraying you as something you are not. Now you know how what you and others who say the absolute nastiest utterances about my situation when they know next to nothing about who I really am or what my goals are, or what I have gone through in my life.
This is what a conversation devolves into when you let your emotion drive good judgment from the topic. I didn't start this attack-a-thon. I simply exuded a very carefully thought out point of view. It was deliberate. It was not name calling, or derogatory. I then entered myself into the fray having even warned you all of letting this get away from us with this line, " Intelligent conversation can be made without such vituperation.", and sat back and waited for the inevitable. It didn't take long.
So, you want an apology? Okay, I apologize to you for having returned to everyone here a little bit of what you all have ganged-up upon me with. Do I really feel that you have lied about your past and continue to do so? No, I do not. You don't deserve to be so dishonored in what you survived as a child. But, neither do I or some others who have lived a lifetime with the same type issues that you did, scared out of their skin that they would be found out and harmed in some manner. Someone who learned early on to toughen up or get beaten up, or maybe worse. Not much of a choice was it?
And, I'm sorry Anne. I really am not interested in your or any other person sex life. It's good that you have one, though. I guess.
@Elizabeth,
The reason I stayed in this town is a testament to my toughness (I know, not a female trait in your book). But I refuse to let people run me off any longer. I dare say, I have likely outlasted a few of your previous opponents in dialogue, no? But, then I haven't looked though all of your blog postings either. The point is I don't back down. I'm done with that. I don't give flying effing crap what others think of me here where I live. Sure they know me and my history. I can't erase their memories. I may be the butt of their jokes behind my back. But, they sure as HELL! respect me when I stand in front of them! And, I am not an imposing figure either. I have a very feminine quality about me. I have a decent figure, or so I'm told. And I DO have a very female voice.
Everything you've uttered against me, Elizabeth, has been complete nonsense. Not any of it is true or even accurate. Your speculations are not even close. In some case, so far off the mark it is quite amusing.
You've shown your weakness. You get very, very defensive when some one calls into question the legitimacy of the actual good work that you so. You go on the attack in a major way to defend what you've done and who you are. I share in your conviction.
Calling me names is not going to alter my point of view. It just shows how desperate a person is to win the argument when in fact they have already lost it.
@ Not your friend,
You said:
"The only reasons I can think of that might explain why someone, who is post op would embrace being transsexual would be."
"1. They are unable to socialize (learn to act like) as a member of the female half of society."
In my case, I socialize far better than I ever did living in a male persona. THAT, is a fact!
"2. they physically are not proportioned to fit the female form."
I should send you a full body picture I guess. For a late middle aged woman, mine isn't too bad!
"3. They don't have a female voice, or can't adopt one."
A lot of my work involves over the phone communication. I haven't been called sir or Mr. in over three years. It's always Miss, she, her, or Ma'am, sorry!
"4. Family pressures won't allow them to lead a normal life as a female."
This one has the most validity, in that my children are still struggling and it's a difficult situation for all of us. As you might imagine. Even my mother is still having some difficulty. But, we're managing.
"5. They are unwilling to let go of their male past or can't live without their male privilege."
Let's see, no more football watching (not that that is exclusively male), no more listening to other men denigrate their wives (I'll never miss that one!). Never joined a country club, so that's out. I do enjoy planting in our landscape, getting my nails done every other week, chatting with the ladies, crying at real corny movies.
The only male part of my life I hang onto, and it's only for a little while longer I hope, is the work I do to make a living (it's really hard on the nails, lol). Seriously though, if things work out it's gonna be ladies business suits from then on!
I want to express my most serious wish here that you all have a wonderful day and a very enjoyable weekend if I don't share any more before then.
@Dawn,
Nonsense? ROFLMAO
You are just so clueless. You think having a sex change and staying with your wife as her husband is not decidedly unusual? Are you still her husband or just her partner or what? You think that is a question nobody should ask but in point of fact it is the very essence of what makes you questionable.
You were not so asexual you could not father children were you? Now you are asexual?
So the only male part of your life you hung onto was your job? Good paying one I bet but again you are being disingenuous. I thought it was your own business if I remember correctly?
You kept your wife didn't you?
As for your list of why you are girly it is so riddled with cliches it is humorous.
The other thing is respect is earned and the way you sounded ("They sure as HELL respect me when I stand in front of them.") is just so male it reeks of testosterone.
I need to ask one question because I am unsure of something. Are you post operative yet? If yes how long?
I was wondering when you would get around to asking that dear Elizabeth. After all, it was your assumptions and statements throughout which claimed me as having had SRS, not mine. As with my private relationship with my wife, I don't talk about it either. Not once have I made a claim one way or the other. My only assertion is that I have been in transition which actually started in earnest a little over 3 years ago.
I'm sure you'll take this as I am still a "man in a dress", "mangina", whatever! Pretty petty, if you ask me. But, what ever way you want to put yourself lower on the rung, go ahead.
You claim what I say exudes "testosterone". That'd be a really neat trick if it could happen. But, it can't, 'cause - and listen closely dear - I don't have any! The last time it was checked it registered .08. That's one of those amusing assertions of yours I was referring to earlier. How much anti-androgen did you have to take? Hhhmmm? I have never taken ANY! I will offer you this as once again I have offered this to you before (and this part I can understand that you cannot understand it, but it is fact). Having grown up being socialized as a male, and yes when testosterone ran my system some rather unpleasant quirks take hold. If you think it shows easily now, you should have seen or heard me before transition! At times it may still come through within my writing. I don't see it, but, I will acquiesce a small amount to you that some things do show that. It's an unfortunate side effect of that prior life long plague that was testosterone. Most old habits have been relatively easy to deal with in retraining and/or unlearning. I will continue to work at it.
Respect is earned. Yep, it certainly is. I am NEVER disrespected in my home town or anywhere else. Not once, let me repeat, not once since my transition began has even one person made a snide, off-hand remark; a gesture of pointing me out, no laughter, no "Hey Dude!", nothing. Do you hear what I am saying to you, Elizabeth? What you want to say to me in your ridiculing tones, is utter B.S. I am treated, respected, and looked at as a lady. Because I look, act, and am a lady. So dream on!
Continued:
Asexuality. Look it up Elizabeth. It doesn't mean you necessarily "won't" have sex completely - ever (although some people will not). It just means that you may not necessarily, particularly want to, or in some cases you might in fact never have it. In my case, sex was never the be all, end all of life. I could take it or leave it. Since the testosterone issue of NOT HAVING ANY, I don't even want to have sex. (Whoops! Caught myself! It was close! I was going to say something snarky. With deference to you, progress!)
Yes, pick me apart Elizabeth. Wow! My job? Seriously? Okay. Yes, my job. Yes, my business. They are one in the same. Shheeesh! It is in the process of transition as well. The work I do involves some very heavy lifting, by hand. Machine work (lathes and such). Since my transition, I don't have the muscle mass I once had. I was strong but not well built, very slender. Now, I am female. Lifting two hundred pound driveshafts for semi-rigs are a bit of a challenge. In fact I can't do it. I have to garner help from the business next door to mine when I get those. Plus, this kind of business is damned hard on my wardrobe, lol.
No, Elizabeth. I did not "keep" my wife. Gawd, please! Please tell me you're not really this trivial? No, we love each other with all our hearts. Do you believe in love? Life long love? I do. So does she.
Lastly. Finally. If you feel I follow some "narrative". Well, so do you. You're a broken record full of narrative, Elizabeth. But, I don't follow your narrative, and I will never follow your or any ones narrative. Not the transgender umbrella narrative. The republican narrative, nor the democrats. Not the LGBT, NCTE, TLC, none! No ones! I don't let other people put talking points in my mouth. What I have said from the beginning to the very end, (and I am feeling that's what this will probably be.I know I've said it before, but this time is different, and it just depends on certain things. I admit it, I am a bit weary of being called a liar, a narrative follower, not fitting the narrative, a man in a dress, having a mangina, etc. etc. etc.), everything I've offered to all of you about myself is the absolute truth. I have been honest, forthcoming, more than reasonably open and as respectful as one could be expected, given the circumstances - which believe me, they have been very trying.
Whoops, Let me pick that last comment apart for you. "Now, I am female? So, you suddenly decide to be female? Yup! just a man-in-a-dress, with a mangina!"
There saved you the trouble!
Have a great weekend everyone. Hope you all are able to have fun!
@Dawn
Are you now making the assertion you had no need for androgen blockers because you had none yet you fathered children? An interesting concept.
When you mentioned you demanded respect that was why I referenced that it reeked of testosterone. That is how men talk and I am sure you were just mad at me and let it slip.
Actually it makes more sense if you are pre-operative or have just recently had surgery. Someone else mentioned in an email they thought you had not yet had surgery so I thought it best to ask because those in transition should be cut more "slack" because we all went through it and it is stressful and we all cope differently.
Just a little clue but my narrative is mine because there was no narrative to follow when I was a kid. Mine and others like me are the ones who set the narrative Harry wrote about.
The comment about your work was not intended as anything insulting because I respect anyone that has started their own business. IMHO there is no such thing as a business only men should own and because it involved lifting is not relevant.
Well Dawn a lot makes sense now. When one is pre-operative one thinks like a transsexual because the goal is out there. After surgery one learns what it means to be a woman because only then are you free and it takes time for EVERYONE. If you think like a transsexual after surgery then you will be lost.
I guess a lot of what you have said makes more sense if you are still pre-operative or newly post. You can keep that to yourself if you feel it is important to keep it secret.
I have to admit I am always amused when people that have less such little time in transition/post yet they think they know everything. You will learn how little you know over the years because most of it comes from life.
I never heard the pain in you until now.
http://lgbtweekly.com/2011/07/28/defining-the-many-women-in-our-global-society/
More ramblings from a delusional man.
Having not yet left on my fun weekend, I thought I'd take a peek at whether you may have responded. I am very happy that I did.
Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank so you very much for the compassionate way that you responded.
If I have in any manner led others here to think or believe that I knew all there is to know about this condition that is transsexualism, I offer to you my humblest of apologies. I came to this blog because of my perceiving a question more than what was a statement about why someone would transition late in life. This I do have personal knowledge and experience in. Yet even that is incomplete, and in an evolving state.
"If you think like a transsexual after surgery then you will be lost."
I am quite sure that this will not be the case. I can and do completely agree with you on that. As I said before, I live openly in my town. That doesn't mean I go out wearing a sign on me saying "here's the local transsexual!" lol. Like I said, the people that knew me before know me know. I cannot and will not hide from them. I will not bow my head in shame in their presence. I have nothing to be ashamed of. But, I do not put it in their faces as a badge of honor either. I know it can make people uncomfortable. Most have taken time to adjust to and with me. I treat them with the same respect that I would hope to expect from them. It seems to work.
I know some other transsexual people who are very vocal about themselves. I am not at all that way.
About the androgen blockers. No, I have had no need for them and I have feminized very well from a moderately low dose of Estradial. Apparently, even much lower than most people who transition. For someone who started E just after my fiftieth birthday, the results have been pretty amazing.
Yes, I did father two children in the normal manner which they occur. I did so in my early twenties. If you ask my wife it was almost done so at gun point. It's one issue that nearly kept us from marrying in the first place. I wasn't interested in having kids. She wanted four or more, I panicked, said no way, one only. Compromise led us to two. As soon as that happened I went in for a vasectomy.
It's still a mystery to the doctors though how I developed such low testosterone and moderate to severe Osteoporosis in my early to mid forties.
SRS. Someday. Sacrifices have to made still. I cannot leave my family in an exposed situation financially. Transitioning has been tough enough for them at this point. They know though that it is my goal. They actually agree that I need to have that operation. As they have sacrificed for me, they know that I have given every other part of my previous life willingly to one day finally feel right. Someday though, someday.
"You will learn how little you know over the years because most of it comes from life."
Truer words have never been spoken. I only strive to live long enough to know and learn of myself and my womanhood.
@ Not your friend.
I followed the link you provided. The last sentence in that article states "I’m trans and proud and happy to be soon having genital reconstruction surgery."
What would a person who has had GRS and now walks around with no testicles but does have a penis be called? Why its simple. A trans-man.
I'm wondering ..... has autumn really thought through all the implications?
Deena
I don't think Autumn uses the same logic the rest of the world does. This is common among the medicated.
As for autumn being a trans-man, maybe someone should ask, the answer might be surprising.
I doubt the Navy will consider her female and Autumn may have trouble obtaining a new BC. Getting a birth certificate that has the sex as female is not a sure thing from the state of California if one is only castrated. Also attempting to do so could be considered to be fraud.
By the way I would encourage people to comment on her cometary, I must warn you that moderation is in place over there.
It would be awful if someone were to drop a dime on Sandeen with the State of California, alerting them to his attempted fraud. On the other hand, since he reportedly wrote a letter to a post-transsexual woman's church with the intention of outing her, I guess it would be justice served.
From what I understand of the process in California, Sandeen must post a motion with the court, meaning that it would be a court action and a matter of public record. It would be a simple matter to alert the court of his attempt to defraud the state by passing his castration as genital reconstruction surgery.
EAP
As one of the commenters on the article pointed out, it would be fraud for Sandeen to say he had GRS and was female.
Of course it is fraud. Sandeen is a fraud. Although he is a prime example of just how P/C and permissive our society has become.
But then what more is to be expecte from a lazy, entiled, "ME, NOW" generation, where pseudo-intellectual sociopaths hold sway. Just visit Toby's thread on Bilerico to find the current debate has devolved into, "there is no man or woman".
Anne
http://anna-es-asi.blogspot.com/
There are going to be a lot of screwed up kids.
Children need balance, the kind of balance that comes from a home with a man and a women as parents.
I have been away for the week, visiting with my mother-in-law and house-boating... a much needed rest.
So, Dawn is in fact pre-op or maybe non-op. As liz say's, it explains a lot. I was particularily fascinated with why dawn would consider ET's that are post transition to be hiding. Sandeen and helms level that accusation all the time, in fact many pre-ops and non-ops do. It is often the hallmark of those that claim transsexuality while not displaying any traits of it.
Stealth is not hiding. Being "honest" about your assigned birth sex and your new found gender expression does not make you a transsexual. Making the mistake that opening the door and revealing all, somehow makes you a woman to those you reveal to, is delusional. It does nothing of the sort. As Liz said, it makes you the town transsexual, the elephant in the room. Must be fun visiting with the ladies at the nail salon .. gag.
They can respect you as a man that walks tall and bends the gender boundry, but that is all. "There goes a guy that has more balls than I do". Is that the respect you want? Why? Does it make you feel good to know that you are the woman that only a true man could be, one that is honest to themself, and to their wife?
And the wife, what about her? Is she respected among other women, being the woman married to the crossdressing guy down the street? My bet is she is shunned, accepts it, goes on her way and tries hard not to show her true feelings.
What torture that must be for her, how sad that you speak of your "respect" and never consider the respect she has lost and endures.
In-transition is not transitioned. Until you cross that line, until you free yourself of all that was before, until you move past being a transsexual, into the realm of being a genetic woman, you're not even close to knowing what it is to be a woman. Dating men, as a woman, where he does not know you as anything other than a woman, being critiqued by his family and friends, is a whole other experience than going to the beauty shop getting your nails done. All the rest is swimming in the shallows, afraid of the deep water.
And Sandeen .. that goes for you too.
Commentary has been made about whether or not it is a nefarious legal matter within the State of California to attempt to have ones birth certificate and/or drivers license altered with a desired sex marker of your choice by virtue of a bi-lateral ocheictomy alone as a form of SRS. I am not a lawyer and I have no intent to play one. Yet, it appears that California is ambiguous about what constitutes SRS/GRS.
I know of a few people who've gone the route that Ms. Sandeen is pursuing and had their birth certificates altered to reflect the opposite sex they viewed themselves as. It seems it comes down to whether or not your doctor can adequately describe his/her meaning of sex change surgery.
So, I doubt seriously if you wish to "drop a dime" on Ms. Sandeen that you'll be effectual in getting any State office interested in prosecuting the case.
I'd like to take a moment to offer that I DO NOT necessarily agree with the way in which one can meet the SRS requirement with just this procedure in the State of California. I think it greatly devalues the very meaning of transsexualism as a medical condition, and it's related cure.
Having said that, I'm familiar to one instance in which a person of whom I know personally and is/was transsexual (whatever way you wish to describe it). She had this bi-lateral Orchiectomy performed as a measure to reduce the need for an anti-androgen and a lower level of estrogen. She also was very limited on funds and has seen no light ahead for ever being able to reach her true need for vaginoplasty. She's divorced, retired and on very limited income.
I suppose on a certain level, this gives credence to the idea that with the right money, a doctor can be found to accommodate the very technical legal description within the law. This is an instant that I could agree that more stringent guidelines within the law should be drafted and enforced. Yet, I am aware that of this person whom I spoke, she is now happy, productive, well thought of in her own community, and is not a part of the transgender 'think' mentality.
I have to wonder though, what her psychological mindset would be if she never had access to this 'option' within our State? Knowing what it was prior to her getting the bi-lateral orcy, it likely would not be too good.
@ Leigh,
At first when I read your comment I said to myself, "Awww $&%#! Here we go again"! Then I read it, re-read it, and re-read it yet once more, all the while trying to be careful to get the tone right, and inflection correct of what your intent was. I'll assume most of what you said was meant as a careful expression of your own personal position, and not necessarily just another exercise at insulting, name calling, and ridicule. I hope I have read it correctly. Although it is at times difficult to discern.
Like others here, you seem to take the issue raised by me about those living a stealth life as being in hiding or lying about themselves with some seriousness. I can understand your doing so. Much the same as I take offence to the claims and chiding as that of being a "man in a dress", having a "mangina", etc. And truly, I do not wish to rehash this stuff. I'm over it. As Elizabeth pointed out and I can understand her thinking on this, it's likely because of me being pre-op. And Leigh, I AM pre-op, not non-op.
Further, I'd like to offer that what you are referring to in my comments really was nothing more than a poorly constructed attempt at playing devils advocate with a parallel to how, you and others here perceive some people such as myself. The LTs, and how the thinking process by others like me can be turned on you in a similar manner as has been my experience here. Even if those thoughts and perceptions are erroneous. I really did not and do not think that you should all be out in the open, letting everyone know that you have a transsexual history. Likewise my comment about the nail salon was purely with a humorous intent at the absurdity to a question being posed and directed at me (so, I guess I'll keep my day job and cancel the tour dates, lol).
Your "bet" about my wife would be completely wrong headed. She is VERY well liked here and admired for standing in there with me through this. You know, I am somewhat baffled by all of the negativity exuded at times. Why does the automatic presumption have to be that of incredulity toward whether someone like me and that person's spouse can continue to live and remain in love with each other? I suppose it's a rarity. However, in our case, it's real. I have no further way to explain it.
Dawn,
It really is none of my business how you or anyone else runs their life. I really don't like this idea of an exclusive club of women of history. I understand the reasons behind it and I support those reasons but I cannot in good consience participate in a witch hunt.
Liz once wrote to me "Again I am confused by you. If you are now a woman then nothing they can say can define you or redefine you but I get the impression you are stuck being transsexual as Aria is."
Yet a year later, it would seem that liz also has an axe to grind particularily when it comes to those who claim transsexual status, and I can only assume that it is for the same reasons I put forward before, that those who are not transsexual are trying to redefine what transsexuality is. This blog has become an inquisition where it would seem everyone, myself included, is fair game to stand trial.
I withdraw my earlier comments entirely and will refrain from commenting further.
I don't going after individuals unless they are actively trying to colonize, pervert, or marginalize the definition of what it is to be TS and women of our birth condition is productive. We know who the usual suspects and their followers are, they need to be questioned and challenged just like them and their homosexual allies do their perceived opponents.
Also what is the obsession with that ghetto T-Central?
@Leigh,
I appreciate your thoughts! I suppose, were this still the seventeenth century, I and others here would have been tied to a barrel and tossed into the river by now, or have every imperfection on my backside shived to garner a confession. But, I didn't come here to stand in a hoax of a trial to be ultimately burned at the stake.
The fact is, I am not a witch they should be looking for. I don't completely disagree with their basic tenets. Where I do have troubles is in the dogma that is so vociferously proclaimed and pronounced against ANYONE who might come here who is actually looking for some guidance and answers. To answer back in the pretense that every single one of us is a potential soldier to the Grand Trans Army, is certainly not conducive to aiding those who might still need aiding.
I would never attempt to redefine myself, you, or any other person who is, or has had a history of transsexuality. I do think, in the same vain as what 'Not your friend' just said, "they need to be questioned and challenged". YES! They do. I have set out here and questioned and challenged them as they have done so to me.
@Leigh
Well I must admit I am surprised you went back to Aria Blue and it was taken out of context based on the argument at hand. Hey at least everyone can comment here and challenge me which is not something allowed with Aria unless you genuflected and bowed in obedience.
I have no inquisition nor do I put anyone on the rack and stretch the information out of them in their last moments of excruciating pain. I comment in a blog and that is it.
What you see as an inquisition is fools reading a post and deciding to make the post about themselves and running to comment and placing themselves on their own personal rack or into their own inquisition chamber and then promptly putting their own feet in their own mouth and beginning the chewing process.
I have opinions and they have changed over time and over the last year or so. I do have issues with pre-operative anything telling me they know everything about being women because I remember my time and I was just trying to survive. Now they are manly experts on all things female.
There is no exclusive club for transsexuals since transsexuals come in all forms and yes even come in non-surgical form. There are a lot of people claiming transsexuality that are not because in the modern world it buys them a lot.
I have put several people on the rack I do suppose in a blog post. One would be the "supposed" transsexual scrabble player and the other is Sandeen. Chloe Prince and Zoe Brain put themselves out there.
Just who else have I put on the rack?
@Elizabeth
What rack? Your opinion versus their’s?
When people do not want to see something, acknowledge something, nor validate something, they get mad at the one who shows them. Even if the evidence is overwhelming, inconvenient or may clash with your empirical knowledge.
From your posts, and you do tend jump back and forth on how civil you are, you are more afraid to validate a late transioiners experience than to validate it. Your very quick to jump on them. How are you actually threatened by them? If not then why do it; placing them on the rack?
Wouldn’t you agree there are more who transition before 18 now then when you did? Can you not see the emotional blindness that those who transition late feel when they emerge? Aren’t the total number of us really dependent on reported cases? How many Gay and Lesbian men and women have to live in denial faking a strait life? Wouldn’t it stand to reason and horizontal equity that TSGS or TSLS should also occur? So what? A demurrer to your argument, so even if your facts are correct you still have no argument. Again so what?
People will hold onto their personal ideology, many had it beaten into them; emotional blindness is created, than to accept their reality--even to the point of hyper masculine behavior in the LT M2F to prove that ideology--this will be an ideal case of TSTS.
@Dawn
The search for the absolute answer is the problem. All I’ve seen in this conversation is ideology versus discourse. Don’t be baited into a debate about ideological sexism; who’s a superior or inferior transsexual is an incorrect distinction to debate. Its like ideological racism, to play the race card you have to deny it. You are valid just the way you are--don’t expect them to validate you. Don’t change your narrative to fit their’s. Your enough just as you are….
@Casandraspeaks/EvengelinaCarters
You routinely claim specialized knowledge or authority in your articles and blog responses and after reading most of what you’ve written I find your “clinical experience” specious and questionable at best. Wake up Dorothy, your engaging in Ad Verecundiam; Although it is possible for the argument from authority to constitute a strong inductive argument, arguments from authority are commonly used in a fallacious manner--especially here. Based on what I’ve read you are not qualified to diagnose anyone and never were. Do you have a Masters Degree in psychology, a Ph.D obtained in the UK or wherever? Sweet Polly purebred likes to think she is a type VI but really a LT?
I wonder how much damage you have caused? Based on what I read you appear to have opinions inconsistent with professional psychological-clinical practice. What say you to this?
She Said
@Anonymous She Said
There are actually more that transition early because information is there. My issues with late transitioners is probably party my lack of understanding and in all honesty it just pisses me off that some man lives and works using his male privilege and when financially secure suddenly decides that Harry needs to be Harriet.
The lack of understanding is primarily because I was young when I did it and I do not understand how adults make it to their 40's and later with all the information available. Many of them are truly transsexual but the high numbers of lesbians, nothing wrong with being lesbian IMHO, defies the norm.
I get sick of reading some sniveling man whining about his wife sticking it to him after he drops a nuclear missile on the family and decides he will transition and have surgery. To avoid the radiation affects people like Zoe Brain and Chloe Prince claim some weird happenstance or medical miracle.
I do not believe some of them and say so and it is based on what they write. Many times they convince me otherwise and I am humbled. Many times they do not. Why should I care?
Every late transitioning MTF, funny how few FTM there are, is in general a public event and they seem to like it. In fact they relish it. In fact they will often criticize people like me that lead a quiet life while they are out there as "prime" examples of what transsexuals are. As if a 6'-4" man in heels is a good example but hey everyone has a fantasy.
I have rarely attacked anyone in a blog post although it has happened. I found Chloe Prince to be a disingenuous lying sack of shit after reading everything she has posted and said so. I found the scrabble player to be slightly less than legit in his fetish clothes. I found Nikki Araguz to be disingenuous because she was still male when she married which makes her legal claims invalid as a woman but she is undeniably transsexual.
I have found that most are more than willing to comment and say silly things like early transitioners are jealous of late transitioners. Just a classic that one.
I do know Cassandra and she did council trans people in London and she actually stuck to the original rules for what defined transsexual but then people like you and others have had them changed so anyone can claim transsexuality.
@Anonymous She Said
I must admit I found your comment curious because it makes absolutely no sense upon a re-read. If I didn't know better I would think Dysonnance coined it because it is typical of the drivel posted there. One does need to get the racism card in there somehow because that plays well as do other cliche lines from idiots like you.
The question I have is why do you not comment on the main part of the post which was Sandeen and her claim castration is SRS/GRS and entitles him to a new birth certificate? Are you going the same route?
@She Said; What ever you think is of me is of marginal interest to me, it will not affect my life currently or my past and the facts of my past. My posts are always signed with the name of my old blog and anyone who has read my essays at TS Si will know that Evangelina Carters is the name I have used consistantly on line for some years. Can that be said of you and your "She Said" I think not. I will certainly not allow myself to be affected by what amounts to a totally anonymous entity.
I do not think it helps anyone to "pat them on the head" and tell them what they would wish to hear. The object of the excersise is surely to make people examine themselves and their actions and the consequences of their actions. There is so much misinformation on blogs and what is left of the so called support forums that it becomes dangerous for anyone uncertain of their own condition. It is so easy to be swept along in the euphoria of what amounts to a fantasy. A great many who currently practise as therapists use the spurious findings of Baily, Zucker Blanchard and more dangerously IMHO John Money.
So, "She Said" you've read what I have written, good, I hope you gained something from it. Whether you agreed with any of it or not is of little consequence. Whether you have doubts about my experience is also of little consequence, especially since I seriously doubt your own self implied qualification to be sceptical of me.
I stand by what I have said.
Cassandraspeaks
As to my disagreement with professional psychological-clinical practice. One of many reasons I ceased work in the field close to 30 years ago.
Cassandraspeaks
@Elizabeth
Way off the mark…. Genetic girl (gg lesbian identified) M.D./Ph.D. student, at a University in California UC, working on my dissertation--a unit in relation to the historical context of this/these tension(s) that exist between the LT and the ETs--the damaging costs and effects of late transition. Thanks for the acronyms. I see what your doing, or attempting to do. Your outcome seems unclear--what common good are you working towards?
I don’t know one LT that I have ever come in contact with that doesn’t wish they could be an ET. Why do you think this is? In any event this is clearly a medical condition whether you are a LT or ET. There is a clear social taxonomy and intellectual materialism present and I strongly recommend looking at the race tensions prejudice between dark and light skinned blacks, round verses European faced Japanese and educated verses less educated worker Hispanics. What’s happening here and in many blogs is very similar.
No relationship to Dysonnance but looked at Google and understand the similarities--she‘s a bit disjointed. She’s very Michel Foucault--have you read him? What specifically do you not understand; about what I wrote to you or Dawn?
I suspected as much about her (CasandraSpeaks/ EvengealinaCarters) certifications as no more than a peer-to-peer counselor. It appears I’ve touched a cord with her hands, based on your hasty defense of her--examine your motivations for mis-gendering me. Most LT’s as she is don’t like their hands.
The reason I didn’t comment on the main post it because it was an obvious baiting of Autumn Sandeen--predictable because this discourse isn‘t allowed in PHB. The real relevance came in the 68 comments afterwards.
If you wish to promote something proactive I suggest you donate to this fund. http://transformingfamily.org/support-us/ This is marked just for the youth--actually the parents are in a peer-to-peer counseling group while Chaz Bono is the babysitter (BTW a LT F2M). All the children are under 18 and going through some form of gender questioning. The Champion Fund is behind this.
NB: In the comment to seller section ad the phrase “Apply funds to Transforming Families”
I would love it if I could get a panel of early transitions ET‘s and LT‘s in the same room to actually do a face to face discussion/debate. The audience would be academics; MD and Ph.D’s, couple politicians and the press.
@CasandraSpeaks/EvengealinaCarters
No more playing in Oz Dorothyà how do you think you would fare if we put your words, cross-examined by LT’s, the press and academics--publicly? Every article/post copied. Every blog response noted.
You sound like an educated bigot justifying it with sophistry and antediluvian rhetoric.
She Said
@Elizabeth
Why did you erase my post--hitting too close to home?
She Said...
@ she said .... My email is deena.lenore@gmail.com
Your remark made it through before it was erased. Interesting. I have participated in et/lt in person discussions with PHD's in psychology. They are very enlightening.
@ whoever you are
It's her blog she can do anything she wishes.
@Elizabeth and CasandraSpeaks/EvengeninaCarters
So lets analyze censorship.
"It's your behaviour, what you say, your attidude and your blatant and outright twisting of truth and your censorship of comments you don't like at PHB I take issue with."
So there is no outright twisting of truth here?
That's what I exposed in my post... The Hard truth is very hard to swallow. When people don't want to see something they get mad at the one who shows them...
There is an attitude that defenestrates truth here that you feel should be promulgated. That "ideology" that I spoke of which shuts down discourse.
She Said...
@She Said
I did not erase your post. It went to spam because it was considered junk which is reasonably accurate considering you are anonymous in California. When I check I release it like I have.
@She Said
My comment was aimed at hopefully getting you to at least explain who and what you are. Now we know. So thank you for that.
Baiting of Autumn Sandeen? It was questioning the lunacy of changing a birth certificate because some fool has themselves castrated and gets an even dumber doctor to write it up such that it meets the California definition of sex change which implies the changing of one's sex characteristics which I gather you believe is validated by a castration. Then the comments about being afraid of maintenance issues and all the rest of the lunacy involving this fool.
Then of course comes the racial and discrimination hints. How is questioning whether some is actually transsexual similar. Is it possible to actually claim someone is not black and should be or round faced and should not be.
You interview a few late transitioners that have memorized the perfect narrative and being naive and young you believe them but you cannot see through the lies and the folly. Suddenly late in life they are suicidal because they are transsexual? Why were they not suicidal when they were young like some of us were? It is a lie based on reading the narratives of those that actually lived it because they no longer get a thrill dressing and the next step is "becoming transsexual".
They did not want to be girls or believe they were girls and when you read their posts it is obvious and it is an obviousness people like you, trained or not, will miss. I do not believe in the transgender bullshit where if Johnny says he is transsexual then Johnny is transsexual. It is not that simple and it never has been.
Just read what some of them say. A "bee sting" made me do it. Sudden feminization made me do it. Suddenly I found out I was 47 XXY but miracle of miracles I fathered 4 kids. All total bullshit yet we are to believe it and accept it. You do not start as a transvestite and "decide" you are transsexual. That decision was taken from your hands the day you were born.
I don't believe you have the slightest clue what it means to be born transsexual. You have read the political correct viewpoint and taken it as gospel and you will be poorer for it. The thing you miss is in general this is not something you can return from after surgery.
Even Dr. Benjamin thought far too many people were having SRS even as early as the late 70's.
Many of these late transitioners destroy the lives of the women they married and then whine like the pathetic little men they are when the wife cleans them out and crucifies them. Poor little man didn't get what he wants. Why not ask Chloe Prince's wife what happened to the family 401K or retirement fund. Dr. Suporn has it and but our "bee sting" girl, she now claims otherwise, has her FFS and a new transbian lover while her wife is left with two kids and a destroyed marriage. It is so typical it is sickening.
Then we have the other late transitioners that trap their wives late in life. Wives that have spent their lives raising a family and supporting the husband with no means of support and suddenly the hubby wants a woman. In some case the wife engendered this by going along with the cross-dressing but a sex change was not in the cards. Then they claim after SRS living with the wife is not a lesbian relationship. I could respect them if it was a lesbian marriage but not these good heterosexual men, oops women, or what is it. I guess they still consider themselves husbands.
Do I have sympathy for the vast majority of transsexuals both young and old? I absolutely do and I would wish none of them harm but it does not mean I will sit around while some pre-op old man tells everyone that has actually traveled the path what bit means to be a woman while still standing up to pee.
The charity site you mentioned seems worthwhile but I support Dr. Spack at Boston Children's hospital because it was a doctor there when i was 12 that pointed my mom to Harry Benjamin. A friend and I also help young transsexuals through the entire process using competent professionals that actually have a clue what a transsexual is. This includes complete financial aid including hormones, surgery, and tuition and one of us is Hispanic and one of us is not, me, and we help and have help kids of c9olor and one of the two we are working with now is black. I thought I would add that so you would not think we were racist.
If you have not figured out why early transitioners today are even more pissed by late transitioners today then maybe you might want to read a little slower and listen a little closer. It kind of goes with most lesbians not liking women with a penis claiming they are lesbians.
Very well said Liz.
I guess we're not in Kansas anymore then!
Cassandraspeaks
@She Said,
Because I have no other method to contact you is the only reason I am posting here.
If you ever do get a panel together, I would be willing to be a part of it. These people DO NOT know what they're talking about concerning LTs. My email is dawn1257@gmail.com. Thank you.
Well put Elizabeth.
@ Dawn and She Said, that would be great! Just what is needed A marginal (at best) transsexual telling "professionals" what transsexuals "really" are like.
cassandraspeaks
Cassandra
That is what we have around here.
You can include Autumn Sandeen in that and Sandeen is the best of a bad lot.
This "She Said" character reminds me of the "experts" running the TG Circus back in the very early 70's. NOBODY had a clue. Even DR. B was thinking in terms of the Kinsey Scale, but the MAJOR difference there was that he approached the issue with an open mind, looking at the available DATA FIRST and then coming up with a PRELIMINARY CONSTRUCT to try to quantify that data.
Unfortunately for all those 1000's of Type IV's, V's and Vi's, his research was eschewed in favor of the Established University Based Grant Driven "Hive Think", which resulted to the TOTALLY OFF-BASE and highly biased 'goofiness' that now drives "Gender Theory".
Anne
http://anna-es-asi.blogspot.com/
arkansas ... and no:)
OK...IAM confused. "SheSaid" made THIS STATEMENT..." Can you not see the emotional blindness that those who transition late feel when they emerge? Aren’t the total number of us really dependent on reported cases?"
FOLLOWED BY THIS STATEMENT..."@Elizabeth
Way off the mark…. Genetic girl (gg lesbian identified) M.D./Ph.D. student, at a University in California UC, working on my dissertation--a unit in relation to the historical context of this/these tension(s) that exist between the LT and the ETs--the damaging costs and effects of late transition."
SO...Is "She Said" a Genetic girl (gg lesbian identified) M.D./Ph.D. student...OR, "one of us"?
I maybe getting goofy in my old age but this "She Said" sounds suspiciously like goofball hingle to me.
Anne
http://anna-es-asi.blogspot.com/
@Anne
I think what She Said is attempting to say about 'emotional blindness’ is that if a child doesn’t have an enlightened witness (an accepting parent or guardian), worse yet an abusive, hyper-religious, non-accepting parent that child grows to adulthood with emotional blindness. (Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware, New York: Noonday/Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998).
It makes sense given that there are those that transition late--faking non-transsexual; suppressing, denying it to the point its consciously forgotten so long as selected external stimuli are avoided.
I’ve noticed this also in the gay/lesbian community--faking strait and denying, even forgetting their true sexual orientation.
@Elizabeth
Do you feel that all who claim to be transsexual have the same self-awareness, capacity and resources you did?
I noticed that one of the charity’s educational functions it to create and cultivate enlightened witnesses in the adults/parents/guardians of the children.
The key to the successful transition of a child is the parent/guardian--the real gate keeper. All the best doctors, psychologists and therapist are useless unless a parent gives the green light.
BlackSwan
@BlackSwan
Resources were not available in my era. There was no help. Only because of Doctor mention Benjamin at Children's in Boston led to my getting help. My family had money but I was denied all access to it because of who and what I was. I was on my own from 171/2 in the summer of 1963 until I reached out to my mother in 1969. I worked and scraped and saved for my surgery. I actually had to wait for a doctor to begin surgeries.
It is the child that pushes the envelope not the parent. Every kid I have known and helped forced their parents into either helping them or they were so rejected they ran away. Parents have more information today so it is better in some ways but not in all ways. The other key thing with young MTF transsexuals is boys since almost all are heterosexual girls, in their minds, and they like boys as most girls do.
Psychologists and therapists are useless even if the parent gives them the so-called green light. The key has always been the intensity of the child and that is what separates all transsexuals that transition young and that is personal courage.
Being born transsexual is actually rather straight forward and the only differences are intensity. You do not become transsexual or decide you are transsexual. It is certainly possible to be confused because it is terrifying to be born this way and confusion and lower intensity lead to later transitioning.
No high intensity transsexual makes it to 40 let alone 50+. Read what some say and to me it becomes questionable but I certainly wish them no harm but I am also not going to willingly say some 50+ year old man is a woman because he transitioned and is living in female attire. One learns to be a woman and it is respect that earns it. They are sort of like 12 year old girls demanding to wear mommies makeup, dress, and heels while claiming they know all things womanly.
They take great offense when called on it but then again in most cases if they leave me alone I will not say a word although there are several bee sting and sudden feminization folk out there that it is hard not to call to task.
@Elizabeth
I'm confused when did you actually transition? When did you first see Harry Bengimin?
Who took you to see doctors?
BlackSwan
@BlackSwan
Actually the first place I’ve seen this written in the literature was an earlier work of Alice Miller, Ph.D (Alice Miller, The Truth Will Set You Free, Over Coming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self. New York: Basic Books, 2001) This is really a very well written piece about the subject of emotional blindness.
In a nut shell: Trauma and abuse causes emotional blindness.
A car accident can make your forget the trauma; your brain shuts off the pain. You don’t remember the facts although you know you were in an accident.
Child abuse and a dysfunction family system may make it so a child forget the abuse according to Miller.
Not transitioning before puberty, or going through the wrong puberty also causes extreme physical trauma.
Would it stand to reason that trauma and violence can render a child, then later adult, emotionally blind to themselves?
She Said...
@Elizabeth
You state here, “Resources were not available in my era. There was no help.”
NO HELP!? You had no enlightened witness to help you at all? You state again here, “I was on my own from 171/2 in the summer of 1963 until I reached out to my mother in 1969.”
Yet you saw Harry Benjamin--much before this time, based on your posted appointment card which you took down recently.
Then you state this directly contradicting yourself… again. “I transitioned that Christmas vacation and started hormones around 3 AM on December 28, 1959” (Elizabeth’s Post, Friday, December 3, 2010, A boy I knew and loved)
Emotional blindness happens when you shut everyone out, “I was so fearful I built a stone wall around myself …” (Elizabeth’s Post, Friday, December 3, 2010, A boy I knew and loved)
Yet your mother and brother were there for you to confide in, “…and the only people let inside those walls were my brother Ray and my mother.”
Your mother was not only an enlightened witness but a proactive helper wasn’t she? A benefactor to your transition, “I did not know at this time that mom was writing to Harry and I was not told about the results of the tests run on me at Children's Hospital in Boston.” (Elizabeth’s Post, Friday, December 3, 2010, A boy I knew and loved)
She Said...
@Elizabeth (Part II)
What did you mean by this statement? “I was a good mushroom because I was totally in the dark and I had enough water to survive.” Who gave you the water to survive?
You should take your mothers advice, “…my mother shocked at how cruel people could be….” How would she feel with the venom and vitriol you lash out at Late Transitioners?
“By the time we returned home in late July mom had decided I needed to meet with Benjamin but again.” You didn’t decide--Your mother decided? Isn’t it also true that your mother pretty much managed your transition health care till you where fully transitioned and out on your own by 17 and ½?
Now your mother had to make a choice didn’t she? “…the early letters between Harry and my mom and he told her she would lose me if I continued down this path to certain suicide. “ Does your mom want a dead son or a living daughter? Obviously influenced by Dr. Benjamin you owe you life to your mother don’t you?
Not only did you have your mother, you brother was there to assist you, defend you. This is a very telling paragraph. “My mom got a up close and personal look at what life was like for me on the flight to London and then at British Customs when a Heathrow Immigration official refused to believe I was her son and there was a very public dispute that left me crying, my brother ray ready to punch a Brit, and my mother shocked at how cruel people could be. She knew I had physical altercations but except for the attempted rape I never ratted out anyone because it would have just been worse.” Your mother let you transition young, approved it--maybe she was skeptical at first, maybe fought you on it--but without a doubt she cared and loved you! Yet you take that legacy and flush it--you are very cruel and invalidating to those that didn’t have the same resources as you. Why is that?
You were able to express yourself and not be a hidden mushroom (very cute example by the way). You got to come out in the sun and shine didn’t you? You got to thrive when others didn’t?
Wasn’t your mother the main reason your still here to complain about those “Late Transitioners” who didn’t have a mother like you did?
Notwithstanding that you have the hubris and gall to proclaim the fallacy of self-sufficiency. “My family had money but I was denied all access to it because of who and what I was.” I think your mother gave you plenty of access to the help you needed. You claim to have NO Help and NO Access when it was your mother who gave you all the help you needed. Wasn’t she your enlightened witness?
She Said...
@Elizabeth (part III)
“It is the child that pushes the envelope not the parent.” Your wrong! Wouldn’t you still be in the dark (little mushroom) had it not been for your mother to advocate for you?
“Psychologists and therapists are useless…” No arguments there. Harry Benjamin concurs. It’s the knowledgeable and competent MD’s that right the Rx. If anyone could use therapy it would be the parents.
“The key has always been the intensity of the child and that is what separates all transsexuals that transition young and that is personal courage.” Your only partly correct. Intensity is irrelevant. You forgot the awareness of the parent to a child’s feelings. How much emotional democracy the child has. Environmental factors of safety and transition related resources. The awareness and acceptance of the parent is the key component not the child’s will. The child’s will can be broken by abuse--that’s a fact.
You conveniently diffuse and abrogate to irrelevance environmental factors such as the condition of the mother during gestation, child abuse, emotional and financial resources and awareness of the child’s parents. There are very few genetic factors “born with” that dictate a child’s transsexualism and intensity. Nature versus nurture arguments--really the argument stems from Human Nature. Nature vs. Nuture; Over simplified, prepackaged, gift wrapped arguments about how a cell deals with something like trauma or an energy crisis--you cannot defenestrate environmental factors and rely on a completely false dichotomy; Nature as deterministic at the very bottom of the causality. On the other end we are social organisms and biology is just for slim molds, humans are above it--complete rubbish. Its impossible to see how biology works outside the context of environment.
It stands to reason that your mother listened correctly to your complaints (your nature) and went out and approve the medical help you needed (your nurturing)--didn‘t she?
As view it being transsexual is like being pregnant--you either are or your not? There are no prescripted arguments--no single narratives. However, unlike pregnancy sexuality is more fluid--wouldn’t it stand to reason that so is gender?
From what I read your logic stems from a simple transference and projection.. You were abused not you want to be the abuser. So you pick on those that you fell lesser than yourself--who are unpassable LT?
Can’t you see that some children are shyer than others?
Can’t you see that some children are more abused than others?
Can’t you see or at the very least emphasize that those M2F’s who transition post male puberty are scared for life?
Environment factors?
I strongly suggest you look up Johanna (“Jo”) L. Olsen, M.D. Attending Division of Adolescent Medicine, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, USC Keck School of Medicine. Email: jolsen@chla.usc.edu Phone 323-361-2153, Fax 323-953-8116. 4650 Sunset Blvd., MS #2, Los Angeles, CA 90027.
She sits on the board of Transforming Families.
She Said...
@Elizabeth
Please excuse the type-0s. I have to get back to class.
She Said...
Jeeeesh! Another academic airheaded know it all!
Just a couple little holes in your "theoretical' conclusions, based on your psycho/social pseudo-gender babble. I offer you this based on the actual FACTS of my life, not theoretical
theorizing based on false assumptions, which is what academics do.
I "transitioned" (and by that I mean I HAD MY MORPHOLOGICAL SEX, SURGICALLY CHANGED), just about the same time as Elizabeth.
Although I do have an advanced degree in Educational Psychology, I am essentially, a simple woman. So I am NOT a big believer in folks who have NOT 'walked the walk", telling those that HAVE, "how" or "what" it is.
So yes, I transitioned young. It really is a matter of semantics as to WHEN that 'transition' "started" or occurred. Nevertheless I DO agree that it is the INDIVIDUAL'S DRIVE TO FIX THEIR PSYCHO-SEXUAL DISCONNECT THAT MATTERS. IT IS THE INDIVIDUAL THAT MAKES IT HAPPEN DESPITE, NOT BECAUSE OF PARENTAL INPUT.
I AM THE PERSON LIVING MY LIFE, NOT MY PARENTS. I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR MY LIFE, MY ACTIONS AND MY OWN PERSONAL HAPPINESS...NOT MT PARENTS. STOP MAKING EXCUSES!
So, YOU and Ms. Miller NOT withstanding, environment is not the cause nor is it an excuse. It is only a factor and it CAN and WILL BE overcome by those that MUST overcome it to SURVIVE.
Do NOT disrespect those of us that DID sUcceed in overcoming all sorts of hardships, by claiming that only the "elite" and the "fortunate" are ABLE.
Have you ever heard this saying...?
"Where there is a WILL, There is a WAY"
Anne
http://anna-es-asi.blogspot.com/
@She Said,
My family version of help was Psychiatrists all over the Boston area including the two most famous for the day. They never attempted to help me and that was what is known as NO HELP.
It was difficult in the 50's to even find mention of the word transsexual. I never heard the word until Benjamin told me on a cold and snowy evening that I was transsexual. At that point in my life I had 6 suicide attempts and all are well documented.
I had to travel outside the US to get help because it was too dangerous for doctors to help a 14 year old in the US. I began to receive help when I was just short of 14 and that helped because I had hope.
I was considered a freak by everyone. You read but you do not understand. I had a stone wall around myself because of issues with boys. A boy broke down those walls and the only emotional need I had was SRS after I found Benjamin.
I got what help I did because I pushed back. I refused to be a boy and by the time I was 13 1/2, before I met Harry, everyone knew I should be a girl or as they said, "he thinks he is a she", or words to that affect.
You know nothing about being transsexual other than what you have read in some college text book or possibly online. My mother was not an enlightened witness. In fact she was a reluctant witness that thankfully thought she needed to try and get me help which only took her 4.5 years and for me almost 6 years. That is what was meant by NO HELP available.
Do you honestly believe a parent guides an early transitioner? Most kids in my era ran away from home and ended up on the streets. We fought for what we wanted or should be because our "intensity" was off the charts as Harry would say. We were Benjamin Type VI and it is rare for a Type VI not to push the issue and I certainly did.
I drove my mother nuts and I was grounded most of my childhood it seemed but when I finally got through to her things changed. I enlightened her along with Harry who spent over a year writing to her to let him meet me.
I was not told about my results from Children's the same as I was not told about my Psychiatric results from every shrink. They all pointed at girl and I was already a handful.
I intend to respond to a lot of your garbage in a post but there is one more thing I need to say. I actually do not understand most late transitioners but that does not mean I hate them. I do take issues with pre-operative transsexuals that think they know everything about being women and I must claim that as a weakness.
You on the other hand have the blissful ignorance of youth and the arrogance of academia. Books tell you nothing of this condition. Just making the claim that intensity is not relevant labels you ignorant of the facts. You sound like some psycho babble fool but guess what as a good young self identified lesbian there are lots of self defined late transitioning self identified lesbians still packing a penis that would love to meet you. Would you date one of them?
@Elizabeth
Your correct about much of academia and book education. I have much to learn about life and an internship waiting for me; progress not perfection. I have plenty of LTs to question and study. The outcome studies for ET's are sparse conjecture and hard to find--virtually non-existent. How do you do an outcome study when you don't have subjects to study?
As for dating not even on my radar with the amount of work I have to do.
She Said...
"I have much to learn about life...progress not perfection....." ~She Said
FINALLY...A glimmer of wisdom! Thank you.
The reason that, "The outcome studies for ET's are sparse conjecture and hard to find--virtually non-existent..." is that we have all simply MOVED ON...into the REAL WORLD of men and women. AND...there were very few of us to begin with.
Prior to '08 or '09, I had not even thought about ANYTHING having to do with my long ago forgotton transition.
It was a chance reading about the Susan Stanton Affair that caused me to get involved because I thought that it was extremely unfair the way she was treated and exploited by the media and the previously unknown(to me) LGB(TG), Hierarchy.
Anne
http://anna-es-asi.blogspot.com/
@She Said
I was being sarcastic about the dating stuff and that was unkind but I have more than few lesbian friends, none know of my past, and to be honest they are infuriated by lesbians with a penis.
Most early transitioners are very private about their lives if possible which is becoming more and more difficult. It is easy to find late transitioners isn't it? They are coming out everywhere. Doesn't that make you wonder?
I knew Harry Benjamin for 20+ years and my mother knew him longer and Harry thought there were 1 Type VI in every 300,000 births or less than a 1000 alive in the US with our 300 million population. Type V was more prevalent but probably 1 in 30,000 based on his work. It might be low.
I suspect Harry was a little high on the Type VI estimate but it was a long time ago but in my experience kids like me are not that common. My friend and I are helping two in Britain right now and they would never agree to be studied. The Dutch have a study but I doubt it would help you.
I will tell you again intensity is the key to the type of transsexual you are dealing with whether your politically correct books, professors, colleagues, or late transitioners want to admit it. That and early transitioners are all heterosexual girls if MTF or boys if FTM. It is the sexual orientation and the attraction to boys as a girl that drives us crazy.
Everyone wants to refute sexual orientation as a driving force in transsexuals and maybe it is in older transitioners but not in kids. I knew I liked boys as a girl quite early and the amount of pain that caused me and kids like me is off the charts. It is what drove many of us to push gender boundaries in society.
The problem with LTs is simple. I believe many of them and sympathize but some ring hollow. The kids like me from my era were the ones who told our stories to Harry and Dr. Person and others and it was our narratives that were copied and learned. Maybe it was out of fear they would be rejected so the enhanced the story but believe me when I tell you those of us that lived it know when a story is fishy.
One does not suddenly become transsexual or is convinced by someone they are transsexual. You either are or you are not. It is nature and not nurture that makes us transsexual.
I have a question? If you cannot find anyone to interview that is or was an ET then how can you possibly make the assumption that LTs are correct in their assessment of us or make a rational set of observations that would pass muster in a thesis review. I know a little about thesis review since I have gone through 3 of them.
It seems to me based off your comments to me you have a preconceived idea and are just trying to prove it whereas the evidence and the data should prove or disprove your thesis. I had one thesis involving certain systems that I proved my assumptions incorrect twice and had to start over or reset my assumptions. Are you willing to do that?
You will have to broaden your field to find ETs. Good luck.
@Elizabeth
"The kids like me from my era were the ones who told our stories to Harry and Dr. Person and others and it was our narratives that were copied and learned."
I'll respond to you in more detail but can you relay some samplings of proof (studies, web links, etc.) that illuminate the italicized quote more clearly. This is very interesting and should create confounding factors.
@Anna and Elizabeth
I have no problems finding LTs and young ETs, but who I am looking for are those that transitioned before 18 (or puberty) M2F & F2M that have at least 10+ years of assimilated life experience.
She Said...
@She Said.
Good Luck. When I was that age, (10 years post-op), "transistion" was the VERY LAST THING that I EVEN thought about.
I was totally immersed in REAL LIFE, marriage, career, etc.
Also.I am curious as to "WHY?" you are so LIMITING your research parameters and "data pool" to only, "those that transitioned before 18 (or puberty) M2F & F2M that have at least 10+ years of assimilated life experience".
Have you considered that prior to the early 1970's, SRS was not readily available in the USA. AND beginning in the mid to late 70's, you begin to see the effects of the "trans-GENDERIST DOGMA"
Kinda "skews" your results, don't you think?
Anne
http://anna-es-asi.blogspot.com/
@Anna
I am looking at as much data as I can get to--compiling now.
@Elizabeth
Just for fun would you date an F2M who still had a vagina claiming to be a strait man? Its only fare since you asked me the same question.
She Said...
@She Said
Just read the narratives of transitioners. Funny how everyone seems to say the same thing isn't it? Funny how what they say does not fit the dynamics of how their lives were lived. They tell a story of intensity and live a life of passivity until they "suddenly" cannot take it any more.
There is tons of information out there, most of it wrong I might add, but lots of so-called experts. It is all there in front of you if you will open your eyes and read it and understand but you have already made up your mind haven't you? Being politically correct and academically corrupt is a way of life today. Maybe you should try thinking for yourself.
I am interested in the comment you have plenty of ETs to interview. How sure are you they are actually transsexual? Things are different today with ETs. Parents hear Johnny say he likes girls cloths and Johnny becomes Joan and transitions at 7. I actually listened to a parent say her 4 year old told her he is a "girl trapped in a boy's body" which is interesting since no 4 year old would know that concept unless a parent told them. Kids do not think that way and besides that is Type V and not Type VI and all early transitioning transsexuals are Type VI.
Kids like me and others I knew like me actually thought we were girls and everyone else was wrong insisting we were boys. That has been lost in translation but is a subtle but important difference. I suggest reading Benjamin's book. I realize it is old but it is correct.
The other thing you need to realize is transitioning early really means starting treatment early. That has always been the key and even today they get it wrong in most places. Kids need to be on hormones plus the blockers very early. Do you know why?
Would I date an FTM? As long as they met the criteria of being tall, I am 5-8, then I would not see an issue with it. I have actually never met an FTM in person so I am sure I would be interested but I was a sexual child and an adult. I enjoyed sex and it was important, which is interesting in itself, so that part could be a problem. Ironically it is easier for FTMs to pass as men but harder, much harder, for them to function as men and hopefully medically that can change.
If you are asking would I date a pre-op FTM the answer is no.
You appear to have a well established story. No arguments there, except "others like you?" How did you know they were just like you?
Before I can begin this baselines need to be established.
Where do you draw the line between LTs and ETs? Is this established at an abitrary age or puberty (females 12-13, males 13-14)?
Given you stated all ETs transition early are there any which transition after puberty?
Are there any type V that are ET?
Are there any type Vl that are LT?
It sounds rediculous to ask such simple questions, however you stated type Vl don't last long.
Sorry writing this on my tablet.
She Said...
@She Said
Before baselines I need a name instead of She Said and a University and an email address that you can send to my email on my profile.
I would be happy to answer questions but not to some unknown person. I might even be willing to talk with you on Skype or even IM with you but credentials first.
You're far more obliging than I would be Elizabeth! After the verbal "threats" I got from this person they'd get no help from me that's for sure.
Cassandraspeaks
Threats?
anne
Casandra's "clinical therapist" credentails were called into question by She Said. Thats the impression I believe Casandra refers to.
Actually that I don't give a flying fig about anonymous; it was a quite different comment SS made I objected too. People are entitled to opinions and at the end of the day that's all they are,opinions, mine included.
Cassandraspeaks
I agree that people's OPINIONS are just that, "opinions". They amount to nothing more nor less. However. when couched in the "authority" of academia they become dangerous in that those who perceive themselves to be "less well educated", ACCEPT those UNSUBSTANTIATED OPINIONS as FACT based on the FALSELY PRESUMED "EXPERTISE" of the self important FOOLS, promulgating those OPINIONS.
John Money comes instantly to mind as one of these unscrupulous "experts". Blanchard, Lawrence, and Zucker make up 3 of the 4 infamous BLZB Gang of FOUR. I think of them as Be-elezeebub. Can't think of the fourth culprit.
I see SS following that familiar pattern of MANIPULATING the data, to "prove" or justify his or her self-justifying, pet theory.
I agree that magnagnimously providing him/her data would be a mistake.
If SS were both scrupulous OR competant, SS would offer a theory and open it to critique
Anne
@Anne,
This was what I was attempting to do with Casandra's so called "clinical" experience. I highly doubt she has any.
@Elizabeth
It will not be necessary at this time to divulge my personal details. I still don’t have the answers to my questions--are they not clear?
She Said...
@She Said
I am not in the habit of supplying information to anonymous unknown people claiming to be PhD students at some mythical University. I am sure your so-called LT buddies can tell you everything about what it means to be a Type VI transsexual from the days when you were what you were and not what you read.
If as you claim you are not ready to divulge your personal details then create a Skype account and we can talk that way. I just need to be sure you are who you say you are and not something other than you claim. Skype is secure and you can make up any name you want.
I do find it interesting that any researcher looking for information would be hesitant to give pertinent information relating to an attempt to acquire information about transsexualism.
Just a little clue for a clues sake. There is only one other type VI either commenting or blogging and you are suspicious of her "clinical" experience. There are a lot of "I want to be Type VI" but they are not for a simple reason. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
AHA! I finally rememebered the name of that fourth culprit in te "gang of four...BAILEY!
Anyway.....@SS. How is questionng Cassandra's clinical experience an attempt to "offer a theory and open it to critique"?
I find SS questionable at best and most likely lacking in both scruples AND competence.
Anne
@She Said....
They are baiting you. Its ill-advised to disclose at this stage of the the study.
@Anne, Elizabeth and Casandra
It appears that the threat is real, as Casandra so states, but its not SS's statements that are threatening it's her questions isn't it?
@Last Anonymous
I am in no way attempting to bait She Said. I have met with John Money twice which was not pleasant. I was a patient of Dr. Person for a while. I was interviewed and studied by the entire Psychiatric department at a large university for over a week before I entered school as a freshman and I have been interviewed by people pointed to me because they were interested in this subject.
In all cases, even the phone sessions, I knew who the individual was and what they were interested in. In fact I actually have all my medical records including the psychiatric ones.
You hide behind your own anonymity so basically you have no say in this. Those questions are not threatening. Why would you think they are?
They are actually good questions but the answers are not coming from me without knowing who is using them and for what study. Of course if you are capable I am sure She Said would love to have your views on her question.
Problem is how do you get hold of She Said. I think an offer to talk over Skype is a reasonable request which would allow She Said to maintain her "anonymity".
I will answer one of her questions just for the heck of it.
There are absolutely no late transitioners that are Type VI. Some may claim it but only because being men they see VI is larger than V and figure it must be better to be a Type VI than a Type V.
Only a man could think that way. I would explain what it means to be a Type VI but I am certain it is beyond the comprehension of everyone that was not Type VI. You will never get it and I am not about to tell you what it is you will never get.
This is a case of who is baiting whom!!
I am in no way baiting SS in fact the whole tenure and attitude of SS has been baiting both me and Elizabeth. I could easily answer all questions posed but I have to point out, what is in it for me?
Answering all of SS's "baits" on a public forum such as this would mean my security and safety be breached. My anonimity and my security and history has been too hard to win and maintain to give it up through the rantings of an anonymous baiter whose own credetials are even more questionable than they themselves allege mine are! I ain't no Dorothy and this ain't Oz!
So get lost, collect you data elsewhere. Every "clinician" and psychiatrist I have ever encountered has an agenda and theory on this subject and not a single one I've personally encountered has a clue as to the truth of this condition that is transsexuality. The attitude displayed by SS is far from encouraging that they would be any different to the others I've encountered, in fact SS is potentially worse. So get lost.
Cassandraspeaks
This has been an interesting exchange, I too find SS's claims to be suspect. Cassandra is quite right a few years ago I met up with a woman who had some theory she cooked up to explain transsexualism. She asked a number of leading questions which I was hesitant to answer. She was a bit put off when I told her in response to a question that I didn't believe in the post modern concept of gender.
I don't talk to researchers anymore, they are seldom after the truth but as Cassandra said to support some agenda. If the facts don't fit the theory, modify the facts is how science is done these days.
@CasandraSpeaks
If I may indulge a bit of levity that may sound a bit like an insult to you--try to take it in stride. I don’t travel half way around the world to meet such a critic, spend the day with you after doing a TV show and view something so beautiful and pristine; Mountains so Blue--To prejudge the author of such criticisms of LT’s (TG’s) and the like as “off her rocker.” I wanted to meet you personally.
Part of my mission in life is to give back as much as I can and use my gift appropriately to help others and offer solutions, so here goes… the irony… How does someone who points a finger of criticism at others (The Irony: your hands; due to you admitted rough from heavy man-like labor from the past) not realize that you have three other ‘rough’ fingers pointing right back at yourself?
Who am I to judge you… I’m as tall as a door jam and that was my curse… not that I have not been blessed. Yes I have and I count those every day. You helped me in ways that I’m not soon to forget. Why can’t you give that of yourself instead of your venom and vitriol?
Its not what you say that defines you love it’s what you do that defines you. Ask yourself is what your saying hurting others? Do you up lift others as you’ve done with me or do you tear them down? What is with your message; actions not contiguous with your words… bigoted. When did you transition love?
Are you enjoying the book I gave you? Unfortunately it reads like Cat On A Hot Tin Roof juxtaposed to Lord [Lady] Of The Flies
Cygnus Atratus
@Black Swan aka Cygnus Atratus
What utter rubbish you pedantic nitwit. Another spineless comment referencing the transgender kumbaya where everyone is the same and we should all believe we are all the same and should fight for our transvestite sisters, they are men by the way, and crossdresser sisters, also men by the way, and our gender variant others who decide on a daily basis what gender, if any, they are which may or may not include it, zir, ze, etc. but we are all the same. Just what do we have in common other than "human"???
Just a little clue Cygnus Atratus LT is not necessarily synonymous with TG and not all, in fact very few, qualify as douche nozzles like you do. Most are just Type V transsexuals trying to survive what they were dealt in life.
The LTs I have issues with are almost always still in transition fools that think they know everything about being both transsexual and about being women and claim, actually demand most often, to be accepted as woman while still packing a penis. Basically if you are pre-op talk about transition but STFU about post operative life because until SRS is over you have not a freaking clue and will not for at least 5-10 years after.
What it is all about is obviously heterosexual men claiming they are women when they are still obviously heterosexual men. Why should any woman let them join the group? Oh that is right out of love!
I do not think you will ever understand this because you are probably one and one thing you learn about men, particularly their little boy within, is they will take their ball and bat and go home rather than play with a girl fairly or in the case of men playing girl they will claim bigotry by both natal women and WBT when not let in the club when still male equipped.
If anyone tries to tell them it will be different after surgery they shout you down as a bigot and hater because you dare "question" the legitimacy of their position. One of the key rules of male privilege is never ever let a women question your position. I have seen it in Corporate America and I see it right here in the blog posts and the comments everywhere.
How dare you question that my wife and I have an unusual relationship after my surgery. We are both women but THIS IS NOT a lesbian relationship. That must mean it is a heterosexual relationship but no it is an a-sexual relationship like it was before surgery.
I would suggest they wait until after surgery because after they stop the anti-androgen pills I have been told things change but then men know everything. All you have to do is ask them. Case in point is you.
I do not claim to know everything but it is funny how they respond to questions. Instead of answering the question the male privilege in them demands they make the questioner the problem and make the question not relevant.
You did have one thing correct in your comment.
"Its not what you say that defines you love it’s what you do that defines you."
Unfortunately you missed the clear point because your actions define you as just another transgender kumbaya loon, oops, I mean Black Swan or is it now Cygnus Atratus?
@Elizabeth. When you attack its like a scud missile fired in the general direction of a perceived enemy. Its going to make a lot of noise and maybe even hit something on occasion.
Black Swan is real and a very compassionate person whom I think you would enjoy IRL although I know that won't happen. In fact she has helped many people and certainly shares your disdain for men who want to play woman whenever they feel like it. But I don't need to even attempt to express anything else because she is perfectly capable of doing it herself.
Best wishes.
Deena
@ Cygnus, If you did but know there are a great many I have helped who feel as you apparently do, if I have helped in anyway I am glad about that. However tell me this how does "enabling" someone to move in the wrong direction and for the wrong reasons help?
We all have physical issues we deal with and you point to one of mine; I have come to terms with them and made my peace but it was not done with platitudes.
I've not yet read the book BTW
Cassandraspeaks
@Deena,
I know exactly who Cygnus Atratus is. I received an email from a friend in California this evening informing me. I knew where her ISP provider was so I admit I did ask some friends in California who it was and alas they know her well but it was a shock to me in truth. By the way she was born transsexual but I disagree with her positions.
I was wrong in my original assessment of her age but the "all we need is love" kumbaya for everyone claiming to be transsexual is a little too much for my taste.
@Elizabeth
I’m not asking for kumbaya or a fireside marsh mellow roasts, just a tad bit more humanity and pinch of humility would be good to hear from you. I never hear you declare how lucky you are. You did endure tougher times than I did, not a tougher life, after years of searching and receiving the wrong examples I finally was given a computer presentation of the surgery with a laser pointer by a doctor. I’m sure back in your day all the doctors had was to pull out a hot dog and pocket knife as an example. Thank goodness times have changed, technology advances, global population has doubled and so have our numbers. Environmental factors have also changed population density adaptations--we are evolving as a species--hopefully before we destroy ourselves.
Point of Clarification, you know my name not who I am--good to meet you. Not that my ego wanted you to know but you did declare I was a “man” exercising “male” privileges who left his “wife and kids” I never had any of them; never any home or hearth for me. It’s a bit refreshing to know you validate me, albeit unnecessary. Now that’s out of the way we can agree to disagree. Clean slate time I hope.
Do I have regrets, sure I do. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t have parents who loved or supported me, more accurately I was beaten in ways that make horror film aficionado’s flinch. Oh there was a few angels here and there who helped a little, but eventually I had to run away to an even worse situation in my teens--too much to go into now--I was too late. Needless to say today I’m very lucky to be alive, and I’m grateful for what I have.
I do recall a horrible accident that happened to me, well actually it was conveyed to me by a childhood friend in gross details, I shouldn’t be alive--my body is very resilient. I don’t remember much of what happened to me before 12 but I was suffering a great deal until I reached this height at 18--it was impossible then to my mind. Memories come back and the jigsaw puzzle falls into place slowly and the anxiety returns again. I don’t recall my narrative much before 12. I do remember some of the things I did, I was one of those different kids that excelled in science--it was my ass if I didn’t. I just knew I was different and the numbers didn’t ad up for me. I don’t recall saying things to myself like “I’m a girl” or “I want to be a girl.” I just didn’t FEEL like a boy. Sorry that’s not much to go on--it was confusing to me. I don’t recall my thoughts much only feelings and things I did and didn’t do. My hands are very soft because I didn’t do hard things with them.
I personally don't believe in a "type" of transsexual. The yard stick itself is a very male device--men measure things don't they?
BlackSwan
@CasandraSpeaks
You illuminated the "type" of TS to me love. Before this I've ever heard of it. It seems very antiquated. Even the primary versus secondary argument is old school. Its more as if did you get the help medically before puberty or not--and deal with it if you didn't. Whether your your type V or VI if your LT your going to have bitter regrets.
Just got back from Japan, filmed another TV show, visited my Sensei and a beautiful Buddhist Temple--very old and traditional not far from Toyko Towers where my hotel was. I've noticed something in my travels that "enabling" others in the wrong direction isn't the argument I don't see it as overly permissive either. I do see advice when someone wants it, yet its only advice. People will always make their own decisions.
The abuse memories seem to be coming back like a vengeance every time I find a small measure of peace. I'm in Montana for a week of RR. I'll be alone with my Aunt and working on my next painting.
One thing I do see is the "'Your identity threatens my identity' game vis-a-vis WBT vs. transgender identity" only exists in English speaking countries. I don't see it anywhere else especially in Buddhist cultures. Why is that? If I'm wrong let me know.
BlackSwan
@Black Swan
Actually a friend of mine from Vegas and California corrected me and I was wrong. It is obvious you have read little of what I have written. I have said many time I was so lucky and was grateful for that.
Well I am not surprised you would not believe in any "type" of transsexual because that is the kumbaya transgender world of today. Now that I actually know who you are I would say the odds are extremely high you would be what I and Harry would call Type VI. Just an initial assessment knowing who you are now.
Sweetie I have had things done to me that would curl your toys and I am betting now that I know who you are that it was not a lot of fun for you. But despite some hindrances you forced your way to your surgery. You could have caved into pressure but you did not.
My surgeon had the bed side manner of nightmares. I was very lucky because he had a plastic surgeon, a neuron-surgeon, and another endocrinologist with him since I was his first so I had wonderful results but many did not. We accepted those possibilities.
You know very little about me because I am not a public figure but you make your assumptions as we all do. You follow the transgender we are all the same line and I do not. I have said a hundred times whatever type of transsexual one is does not make one better or worse than another but I am betting as a Type VI, my estimation, you know all about that kind of pain.
you want more humanity? Is that where I admit some super transvestite decided late in life that he might like to be a girl and "decided" he was transsexual. Kind of does not work that way but I gather some think it does.
@ Black Swan
You said, "One thing I do see is the "'Your identity threatens my identity' game vis-a-vis WBT vs. transgender identity" only exists in English speaking countries. I don't see it anywhere else especially in Buddhist cultures. Why is that? If I'm wrong let me know."
If you were half as smart as you pretend to be you would have looked into Asian Cultures a wee bit deeper before you said such a silly thing...
In most Asian Cultures, female is the lowest order of human and barely even human at that! Women are an unclean possession of necessity which exists solely for breeding purposes but what the heck, they're ok company when no men are around and they also cook and clean pretty good too!
For a male to even consider lowering themselves so far is beyond all comprehension! It's utterly impossible! So It's obvious isn't it? They, the transsexual, the transgender, the whatever.... it doesn't matter one iota what they are called because they are ALL deluded homosexual men! But hey it's their karma they'reworking out not yours, so call em female if it makes them happy... but to actually recognize them as such?
NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!
I suggest that while you are doing your kumbaya all one big happy world dance you go and ask a Thai or a Malaysian woman with history just how far they got in changing their legal records and how happy happy joy joy their lives are there? Remember the translation of kathoe to English is Lady Boy!
Oh and for the record? The poor cursed me thing wears a might thin when you are jet setting round and round and round the world again on that same dime...
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