Maybe it's a little late to jump in, but I shall brave the waters.
The original topic was, the difference between transGENDER and tranSEXUAL. Between Stephanie and Sandi, fine definitions were offered that most seem to agree upon.
Then Stephanie introduced an interesting comment about lifestyle.
Then Al responded unfavorably to the lifestyle comment.
To which Stephanie returned with the statement, "...I was referring to the conditions which are all curable with proper therapy, if the person chooses."
Wow. I took this statement pretty hard. Maybe it's just my crossdressing, genderqueer, I don't fit into a binary system of gender (which I have heard has nothing to do with sex/genitalia), hormones acting up, but I really took that hard.
As I've mentioned numerous times, I do not have a problem being a man. But now I realize I have been phrasing that all wrong. To clarify: I do not have a problem with my male body (my birth sex, my physical form, my genitalia).
However, I do have a problem with the fact that my mental and emotional state, my thinking and feelings do not not correspond entirely with my birth sex. I have a problem with the fact that what brings me peace and contentment, how I approach certain issues and situations, does not match up with the rest of the "men" around me.
I am not your average man, but I was also not born a woman. I don't want to be your average man, and I don't need to be physcially a woman. Yet I suffer from gender confusion or gender dysphoria just the same.
And you want to tell me that I have a mental illness that some basic therapy will "fix."
And I respond, how dare you?
Of all the divisive, self centered, and wreckless things to say.
You want to allude to the fact that crossdressing is a mental illness (my words not Stephanie's), I'll even take that. I'll accept that as a fact for the sake of arguement. And thus as a mental condition crossdressing can be treated with therapy.
Well based on that logic I would further conclude that crossdressers are afflicted with the same mental illness as transexuals. Only transsexuals have a much more severe condition than crossdressers. Transexuals are apparently incapable of dealing with reality and can't even find simple peace in "pretending" to be the opposite sex, they have to actually alter their bodies until they match the mental condition.
Does that sound harsh? Good. Because that is exactly the kind of venom your statement said to me.
Don't worry I have no intention of ending on a negative note, so please read on. I do not mean those statements above literally and they are simply there to illustrate my point.
One thing I'd come to see, or so I thought, after coming to Susan's was a commonality, not a divide between these various labels. I don't fully understand gender dysphoria or GID, but it was the first thing that I learned here that brought real peace and understanding into my life regarding the gender related confusion I have been suffering from my entire life.
While we are discussing definitions, Gender Identity Disorder, as defined on the wiki of this very site is: ... identified by psychologists and medical doctors as a condition where a person who has been assigned one gender (usually at birth on the basis of their sex, but compare intersexual) but identifies as belonging to another gender, or does not conform with the gender role their respective society prescribes to them.
There is not one person on this site other than SO's and horny lurkers who don't fit this description. Transsexuals and Crossdressers alike, everyone I have met on this site, fit this definition.
So by that definition how could one say that a crossdresser is participating in a lifestyle anymore or less than a transsexual? My GID is different than yours and that makes it so inconsequential as to be a lifestyle choice, like waterskiing, politics, or being goth?
Sure, a crossdresser can choose what to wear. But so can a transexual. I thought the issue was one of gender identity not sex. While I have no examples, a person could theoretically transition and choose to dress "endrab" even after transition, right? If it's not about appearance or clothing, but about gender identity and matching the physical sex to the gender identity, then the clothing isn't even a major component for discussion here. The clothing is merely one facet in a much broader more complex issue.
And as Dennis so appropriately pointed out, "...but gays and lesbians have the choice about where to be out (mostly) and where to be in the closet. They're still gay or lesbian all the time, whether others around them know or not. You could analogize that to cross dressing I think."
Choice of when to reveal something does not necessitate having the same choice over whether one needs to make that choice in the first place. As I also mentioned in a previous post, while I do not feel compelled to dress any particular way, masculine or feminine (only stylish
) but there are mornings when I want to wear a pretty skirt and blouse more than I want to put on a dress shirt and slacks. But not being a woman, I don't have that choice, not without making seriously committed decisions regarding the remainder of my day. Yes I can make the choice, but it doesn't change the fact that I have the need within me to express my inward feelings; that somedays I want to outwardly represent the gentle more graceful aspects of my being, while other days I know that I am going to be engaged in more agressive or rough behavior. My clothing, as I would assume yours is Stephanie, is no more than an external represenation of self and mood. Sometimes jeans are okay, and sometimes a chiffon dress makes the most sense. But the style is not the person.
Please remember that social labels are only convenient ways of quickly summing something up. And while they are mostly accurate most of the time, no one label is completely accurate all of the time. And more importantly, with social labels, we usually fall into more than one category at the same time.
Melissa also had an interesting take on the whole thing with her comment regarding crossdressers as , "...people with a "low intensity of transsexualism...""
But that is the funny thing about labels. They aren't always completely accurate, they give a quick summary. I would be more of a crossdresser than a transexual, but in the realm of gender identity, I would have to say that there is most certainly a spectrum, as I can witness for myself, even in the "normal" population. So am I a low-grade transsexual or can I go ahead and call myself a crossdresser without wondering if I should just get therapy?
I don't see this as an all or nothing proposition. We are common people sharing common issues, and I apologize if my tone has been severe.
We all want to be "normal." We all want to be accepted. We all want to be ourselves. We all want to feel whole. We would all love if there were actually science to make it all make sense, a simple test that would tell us, we are real. But that science doesn't actually exist yet. Maybe it never will, maybe we are all mentally ill. But you know what I don't mind either way. But by relegating one end of the GID spectrum to an essence of being and the other to something suitable for proper therapy (if one chooses) does nothing to the reality we all share. We are not exactly what we appear to be.
As umop ap!sdn states a person is what..., "...a person is not what a person does. But I also have to do my best to respect what people consider themselves to be."
And we can only be what we are, or at least do our best. I don't expect to change anyone's mind whose mind is already made up in one post, but I would hope that you would at least seriously consider your statements.
