Transsexuals Need To Balance Their Lives W/ A Connection To Their Birth Sex

[chrysalis]

The title is deliberately misleading, so please, for the love of god, do not think that this is my position. I'm honestly not going to respond to you if you act like I am in any way defending this. OK?

I was reading this article here on closeted cross dressers and saw the following quote.

People need to be very careful with their judgments when discussing and exploring gender boundaries and roles. Just as there is nothing wrong with having a healthy en femme persona for a crossdressing male, there is also nothing wrong with having a healthy sense of masculinity. The preceding theme is true primarily for transgenderists and crossdressers, although even transsexuals need to maintain some sense of masculinity in order to be a whole person.

This was written, apparently, by a Gender Therapist. Although it was written in '98 so I guess there is some leeway to be given. But my big question here is...Really?

This goes against everything I understood about TS. I don't think that even having a concept of masculinity or femininity is necessary for a person to live, but this? Really?

I'd love to hear any opinions.

[jesse]

this article is anoying some sense of masculanity to be a whole person ? what the h... does that mean i have alot of masculanity and i feel anything but whole and somebody correct me if im wrong but a cd and a transgender are two diff things and i really dont like being lumped together. i always assumed that a cross dresser was a male or female who enjoyed the oppisite sex's cloths but were generally happy with their birth sex. that is not me someone help me with this please please i hope i offend no one with my reply but its articles like that i feel that cause the general public to think transgenders are perverts.
jessica

[Eva Marie]

somebody correct me if im wrong but a cd and a transgender are two diff things and i really dont like being lumped together. i always assumed that a cross dresser was a male or female who enjoyed the oppisite sex's cloths but were generally happy with their birth sex. that is not me someone help me with this please please i hope i offend no one with my reply but its articles like that i feel that cause the general public to think transgenders are perverts.
jessica

I recently got a reminder about this (no, not from a moderator), having popped off in another thread without stopping to think first. According to the definitions here (https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,54369.0.html), transgender covers a rather wide spectrum of people, including cds.

"Transgender: an inclusive umbrella term which covers anyone who transcends their birth gender for any reason. This includes but is not limited to Androgynes, Crossdressers, Drag kings, Drag queens, Intersexuals, Transsexuals, and ->-bleeped-<-s."

And, as someone else pointed out, the name of susans is "Susans place, transgender resources".

So like it or not, those are the rules and definitions that we have to live by 

[Miniar]

No matter how much we don't want to associate with another person, there's always a bigger umbrella term somewhere that we all live under.

Either way, I think the idea is an utterly horribly worded attempt at explaining that no woman is 100% "feminine" all the time and no man is 100% "masculine" all the time.
A ying/yang sort of idea.

I may be misinterpreting it ofcourse, but that's what it looks like to me.

Either way, one of the harder things from my perspective is to keep myself from doing things for the sake of "playing the part" of a man, as opposed of not playing a part at all and just being me.
Hubby pokes me occasionally when I'm doing male posturing and reminds me I'm overcompensating instead of just being me and I don't take offense when he does because he's right.

[chrysalis]

correct me if im wrong but a cd and a transgender are two diff things and i really dont like being lumped together. i always assumed that a cross dresser was a male or female who enjoyed the oppisite sex's cloths but were generally happy with their birth sex. that is not me someone help me with this please please i hope i offend no one with my reply but its articles like that i feel that cause the general public to think transgenders are perverts.

Well there are a lot of reasons why people CD, even if they have desire to change their gender. Think of the label as a general guide to the spectrum. There are many shades of Blue and many types of CD.

[wannalivethetruth]

  this doesn't have anything to do with being transexual..... It's totally not based on how we feel. Im sure if we could do that, we would! But... thats impossible when we are who we are on the insides.....

*burns this thread*

[Arch]

even transsexuals need to maintain some sense of masculinity in order to be a whole person.

Nice of him to ignore the entire FTM spectrum...

[Asfsd4214]

Nice of him to ignore the entire FTM spectrum...

Don't knock it. 

[Northern Jane]

Rather a strange concept.

I never was "masculine" - that's what got me in all this trouble in the first place. I couldn't "pass" then and I sure as heck can't now!

Different stroke ....

[Just Kate]

The title is deliberately misleading, so please, for the love of god, do not think that this is my position. I'm honestly not going to respond to you if you act like I am in any way defending this. OK?

I was reading this article here on closeted cross dressers and saw the following quote.

This was written, apparently, by a Gender Therapist. Although it was written in '98 so I guess there is some leeway to be given. But my big question here is...Really?

This goes against everything I understood about TS. I don't think that even having a concept of masculinity or femininity is necessary for a person to live, but this? Really?

I'd love to hear any opinions.

Just reading the quote alone I get the sense the therapist is referring to complete abdication of masculinity by the MTF TS.  We have a tendency to cling to our feminine attributes and deny those attributes that don't justify our femininity - at least many seem to at first.  It seems to me that the therapist is saying that in doing that we aren't being "whole" or as I would say, "honest with ourselves" when we completely remove any and all things masculine with which we at one time identified.

I could be totally off base of course - that is just my guess.

[Dennis]

Don't knock it. 

I agree. I prefer it when I'm ignored by idiots

Dennis

[Arch]

I agree. I prefer it when I'm ignored by idiots

Just don't tell me to get in touch with my "feminine side."

[thestory]

Just don't tell me to get in touch with my "feminine side."

Hear,hear!

[K8]

I would read the quote as an inadequate explanation of the fact that we each of us (FtMs too) have a need to be whole.  So much behavior and who we are has nothing to do with gender, yet sometimes we try to label every bit as either male or female.  (I'll sip my coffee here while I try not to write any expletives.)

I find that after pushing my male self away to grow the female me in a protected environment, I am beginning to let some of the good parts of that old me come back.  Those parts aren't necessarily male, they're just parts of me that developed when I was trying to fit in as male.

I think we are all a mix, mostly of non-gendered elements.  To label each of them as either male or female is, to me, insulting to those of us who have struggled so hard to find our place in a gender-binary world.

JMHO

- Kate

[Autumn]

Before transition I didn't exercise. It would bulk me up and make me more masculine. Now I actually want to work out to help shape my new body.

I kept my hair really long and feminine as a boy, and the more I transition, the less I like it.

I don't feel the need to wear makeup or earrings every day, or even dress the best.

The more complete I feel inside, the less I need to fixate on the outside. Now obviously I'm not going to start living like a man as estrogen takes more control, but I don't have the pressing need to have to do girly things or hold a girly attitude. I honestly never did. I'm not a girly girl, and my role models aren't either. And I'm not attracted to girly girls.


Being 100% masculine or feminine is so entirely fake. And I think a lot of people go through a period where they think they have to be.

[Arch]

Kate, you are very wise.

[GamerJames]

Either way, one of the harder things from my perspective is to keep myself from doing things for the sake of "playing the part" of a man, as opposed of not playing a part at all and just being me.
Hubby pokes me occasionally when I'm doing male posturing and reminds me I'm overcompensating instead of just being me and I don't take offense when he does because he's right.

I completely relate to this. I often catch myself being too stereotypically masculine when I'm feeling insecure, almost like a "pendulum swing" effect. When I notice that I'm doing something, or behaving a certain way simply *because* it's masculine, and not because it's actually who I am or how I feel.

But... that being said, I do think that sometimes it's important for me to "put on" a bit more of a masculine air than is natural for me, because when I'm just being my somewhat "androgynous" self (not that I'm androgyne as in gender identity, but just as in "personality balance" so to speak), it's easy to slip back into my "fake" feminine persona that I've affected for so many years, because it's fairly close to my more authentic "neutral" personality, and plus there's a "head in the sand" comfort level to hiding behind that mask. So when I push my masculinity a bit further than what is natural for me, it at least helps me break away from that safety zone, and try out different personality traits and find out which ones *are* authentic for me, and which ones are just posturing. I find that when I've spent a day pushing myself to that "just a little too far" masculinity, by the end of it, I feel more free from my previous "shell" of a personality, and more close to my true expression of self. If that makes any sense...

Just reading the quote alone I get the sense the therapist is referring to complete abdication of masculinity by the MTF TS.  We have a tendency to cling to our feminine attributes and deny those attributes that don't justify our femininity - at least many seem to at first.  It seems to me that the therapist is saying that in doing that we aren't being "whole" or as I would say, "honest with ourselves" when we completely remove any and all things masculine with which we at one time identified.

I could be totally off base of course - that is just my guess.

I can also agree with this. There are times when I have gone too far the other direction (again, that pendulum swing phenomenon), and have felt like "I can't think like this, enjoy these hobbies, respond in these ways, etc. because they're too girly". So I've cut those things out of my life only to later realize "no, I like those things and they don't need to threaten my maleness". I don't have to live up to anyone's standard of my gender identity but my own, and it doesn't serve me well to give up pretending to be one person (a woman) just to pretend to be someone else instead (a macho man with no feminine traits at all), but it's definitely been a hard lesson to master (and I'm still working on it).

Kate, you are very wise.

I agree, Kate you explain yourself so well!

[K8]

James,
My experience - my own and with other people I've known well - has been that after being something for a while - male, Catholic, whatever - you have to be actively non-whatever for a while before you can relax into the new you. 

So, as you say, you need to force the pendulum to swing the opposite direction for a while before you can actually let it rest at the balance point.  I think this is a normal way of doing it and may be the only way to do it. 

It's like you have to erase part of the blackboard before you can write something new on it.

(Hoo boy, I bet if we set our minds to it we can come up with some creative similes here. )

[And thanks, sweetie.  I always appreciate your thoughts, especially the compliments. ]

- Kate

[placeholdername]

This might sound weird, but there is a difference between masculinity and male-ness.  It's the difference between people who 'need to get in touch with their feminine side' and, well, us .  But pre- and post-transition we all still have both sides, even if we trade male-ness for female-ness or vice versa (or either for neither).

Kate, you are very wise.

I second that.  This is exactly what I think with almost every post of hers that I read.

[Dianna]

Well there are a lot of reasons why people CD, even if they have desire to change their gender. Think of the label as a general guide to the spectrum. There are many shades of Blue and many types of CD.

I have never ever thought of myself as a "crossdresser". That term I put in with ->-bleeped-<-'s.

A person contemplating GRS etc or  already been through same is NOT a CD.   I find it offensive.