Healthy people tend to sexualize things. You said ever since adolescence there has been a strong sexual component to this desire. Adolescence is a very sexual time in one's life, also a time when we (M2Fs) may begin to question who we are. Perhaps we are separating from our parents, becoming our own person. Through experiences we have we will try to filter ourselves and sift through our experiences, determine our dislikes our likes, and find out who we are as a person.
The concern regarding sexualization here is determining whether or not the desire to transition is a fetish or who you are inside. Can you live with yourself after transition? Will you be able to have healthy relationships, healthy boundaries, will you be able to function after transition? I suppose the truth of the matter is that the better accepted you are after transition, the easier it will be for you. I think the mistake most who transition make is seeking acceptance in the first place. Don't get me wrong, there are essentially two schools of thought on this or two personality types. The first is gonna do her own thing, rest of the world be damned. She may even thrive on criticism. The second type of personality just wants to be able to integrate socially as female. I am the second type. I'm not into confrontation, educating people or applying for "acceptance". I have found that seeking acceptance is a sure way to avoid having it. I transitioned, it's no one else's business. Either accept me as I am or find someone else to mess with.
I have pondered the current situation, so much information about transition being available to the general public. I wish I had known sooner and had been able to take advantage of transition sooner and no doubt others will benefit from what I missed out on, but I wonder sometimes if some people are transitioning simply because someone else did it or if because there is so much information out there that it just seems like something else to do now? I mean how many punk rockers were there before anyone knew what a punk rocker was?
As humans we like to believe we are a lot more complex than we really are when most of what we consider "complexity" is really just noise, static.. I think you will know in your heart if being a woman is right for you. I suspect that some who transition for whom is is not right for them.. they continually seek out conflict, political and otherwise so as to protest too much and exert who they are in an ongoing effort to find out who they are but when there is no longer any resistance, they will fall flat on their faces. Maybe that is their thing. If you are on a quest to find out who you are, if you are seeking inner peace and harmony and female socialization then achieving some of that will allow you to know in your heart if it is right for you or not.
For myself transition wasn't about transition, it was about sorting out a biological disaster and piecing together something from the ashes. I wanted to experience a little life, love and happiness before my miserably wrong life was finally over. I felt lost before transition, I knew when I hit puberty that things were going wrong. I made sense of it as I went along because no one was there to explain my situation to me. The fact that you are questioning yourself is good.
My advice may be considered obsolete but I would say explore, experience, find out. If it feels right to you give it all of your energy, give it all of your loyalty. Be honest even when it feels like you owe people something else, honest to yourself, honest to what and who you are. You don't owe anyone anything. Your first priority is to get yourself where you need to be because you can't save anyone else until you save yourself and it isn't about saving anyone else, it's about having an incredible and rewarding life. At least that is my thought anyway.
Also done correctly Zazen meditation will give you the answers you need by silencing the noise in your mind.
http://www.mro.org/zmm/teachings/meditation.phpI would also like to add another thought here. I believe that many people transition even when it really isn't who they are and like I mentioned previously, some continue to try to convince themselves that transition is right for them by seeking conflict, they may become an activist or constantly confront non-accepting people as a way to continually protest too much so as to convince themselves that the only thing holding them back from being their true selves are non-accepting people, when really they are just trying to convince themselves they are something they are not. Or maybe they are somewhere in the middle or maybe they have too much noise in their minds and need to practice some Zazen meditation.
But there is another type of transsexual who seeks to convince herself that she did the right thing for all the right reasons and she is the one who is critical of everyone else. She is the one who tries to separate the transgenders from the transsexuals. She focuses her attention on blaming the transgenders for all her problems when really she just needs to either detransition, get over herself or get over transition and get on with being her true self. It seems like a lot of people start transition and never finish when the goal was to be one's true self, not to become a punk rocker, or a transsexual, but to fully become the woman she was on the inside, all-over. Her body, her life, her socialization, her relationships... All the things that make a feminine being a feminine being and channeling all of that into creating one's true life experience by sorting and sifting, discovering who you are, whatever that may be.
I feel like I have stunted my own transition by relying too much on the "community" by thinking and acting and speaking as a transsexual when I need to just be myself. Sorry for such a long post, your post made me reflect on a lot of things.
