So today my dad called. Up until now he has never been that on board with my transition. When I came out to him it was to a less than stellar reception, and I struggled for years to make the point that I just wasn't in a good place mentally and needed to talk about transitioning. It wasn't until my final semester at university that he finally realized just how bad I was getting, and agreed to let me go to an endocrinologist and get on hormones. He still doesn't want to believe that I'm transgender or agree with the hormones, but he help pays for the hormones anyways and goes along with it grudgingly.
Today, I got a call from him. He said he had been doing some research, and he said that he thinks that I'm not transgender after all, that it doesn't fit me, and that instead of I'm autogynephilic. Needless to say, when I got off the phone I was absolutely pissed. Livid. Ready to caught some serious water damage to my pillow.
Instead I sat down and wrote this letter... I don't know if it's 100% true, but I tried to be as true to my feelings, my experience, and my own research as possible. So... I wanted to share with you guys and get your opinion.
QuoteHey Dad,
I did some research on ->-bleeped-<-, and have reached a conclusion. The textbook definition offered for the word is as follows:
->-bleeped-<-
The paraphilic tendency of a biological male to be sexually aroused by the thought of becoming a female, sometimes considered a form of gender identity disorder or transvestic fetishism.
In other words, ->-bleeped-<- deals explicitly with the idea of sexual arousal at the idea or act of becoming female. It deals with sexual arousal of the idea of wearing cross sex clothing, or altering the body through hormonal or surgical means into that of a woman. Having done some research, there are two key flaws with stating that I'm 'autogynephilic'. The first flaw comes from the assumption that a person is either transgender or autogynephilic, while the reality is that in 99% of cases concerning ->-bleeped-<-, the subject is also transgender. In this instance we are defining transgender by the textbook definition:
transgender (comparative more transgender, superlative most transgender)
(narrowly, of a person) Having a gender identity (self-image) which is the opposite of one's physical sex: being physically male but identifying as female, or vice versa. (Comparetranssexual, and the following sense.) [quotations ▼]
(broadly, of a person) Not identifying with culturally conventional gender roles and categories of male or female; having changed gender identity from male to female or female to male, or identifying with elements of both, or having some other gender identity. (Compare transsexual, ->-bleeped-<- and genderqueer.)
In layman's terms, a person who is transgender is anybody who does not have the standard configuration of 'self-image' matching their outward sex. Therefore, ->-bleeped-<- as an alternative to transgender is inherently flawed if for no other reason than the idea of 'becoming a woman', 'no longer being a man' are not ideas that would exist within a cis gendered (opposite of transgender, sex and gender match) mind. So in conclusion, even if I was autogynephilic, I would still be transgender and it would change nothing save for the fact that I get a sexual rise out of it. The only way in which a person could become aroused by ->-bleeped-<- and not be transgender in my opinion, is if they became aroused by the idea of somebody else entirely becoming female, and that is an entirely different paper bag of cats.
The other key issue with accusing me of being autogynephilic is the very key idea that I am getting some form of sexual arousal out of my transition into female. That entire theory falls apart completely just because I'm not doing this for sexual gratification. The idea of becoming a woman has never been a turn on any more for me than for a standard cis gendered person being turned on by simply 'being' themselves... which is to say, not much. It is also extremely flawed as a sexual fetish when put into practice if for no reason than going on Testosterone blockers and Estrogen rather efficiently truncates a person's sex drive... which isn't to say I have no sex drive (i still have some), but over all I get aroused less than when I was hormonally male. If I was transitioning purely for autogynephilic reasons, killing my sex drive would deprive me of a reason to continue on hormones, wouldn't it?
So now that we have removed the idea that I am doing this for the expressed purpose of sexual gratification, that leaves the question: Why am I doing this? I suffer from gender dysphoria (defined as such):
gender dysphoria (plural gender dysphorias)
A profound and persistent unhappiness related to one's physical sex.
Gender dysphoria, or more commonly just shortened to dysphoria, is the sensation that a person experiences when their gender and their sex do not align as they do in a cis gender person. Usually dysphoria manifests in a number of ways that makes it unique to each person experiencing it, and can make it hard to diagnosis in the event of more 'mild' cases (like my own), while much more 'acute' dysphoria can be way more specific. Likewise dysphoria can manifest after puberty, or even later in life. My own particular brand of dysphoria feels like the following:
"Physical pain in the form of a dull persistent aching throughout the body, a manifestation of weight across the shoulders, anxiety, severe depression, in ability to focus at a task at hand, hatred directed at parts of my own body (forehead, hair line, nose, jaw, flat chest, male patterned fat deposits such as those found on the belly, dislike of my narrow hips, feelings of being intensely unclean when body hair manifests, intense itching/burning/unclean sensation associated with any stubble at all manifesting along the jaw or upper lip and the desire to shave until the stubble is completely gone even if it means damaging the skin in the process, the feeling persists even when freshly shaven, panic over hair loss, occasional anxiety attacks, fear of muscle build up becoming too bulky, feeling like hands and feet are immensely too big, general feelings of fatigue and listlessness, severe insomnia, envy of female bodied people, discomfort at the idea of being naked even for the purposes of bathing, thoughts of self-harm, and a persistent feeling of 'running on empty'."
I have experienced all of the above at some point since at least middle school. Some of these sensations listed are rarer than others, but most I experienced on a weekly or daily basis. Now, in the event that these sensations are dysphoria, applying an estrogen and a testosterone blocker would relieve some of the symptoms above. Since going on estrogen, I've experienced relief in the frequency of panic attacks, feelings of listlessness, anxiety, and depression. My insomnia likewise has also gone away almost entirely (it used to take upwards of sometimes two hours to fall asleep and as few as half an hour, now I can be asleep in as few as five minutes so long as I go to bed in my usual sleep cycle). Likewise, the estrogen is also targeting the more physical aspects of my dysphoria, such as hatred of the fat distribution across the body, flat chest, etc. The reduction in body hair has resulted in a lessening of the 'unclean' feeling associated with it. Hair loss has stopped, and hair regrowth has begun on a minor scale which is enough to reduce the dysphoria from the forehead/hairline. More over, I now have a sensation of 'well being' as my default instead of a persistent feeling of 'running on empty', and it also comes with a wider emotional array, and feeling of being better able to express myself and focus on a given task.
Naturally, there are other things that can be done to relieve feelings of dysphoria, but thus far those other methods have been bandaid solutions at best, while hormone therapy has a persistent over all effect. That isn't to say that the dysphoria is gone completely, but I am in a much better place mentally than I was six months ago.
