Can I ask you ladies a maybe ignorant question?

[Naturally Blonde]

I am curious here, am I reading that if you don't hate your penis you are a transgender....and as long as you hate it you are a genuine transsexual?

That is like saying if a some one only likes to give annal male sex but doesn't like to receive it he is less gay cause he isn't down for the whole package of what being gay is all about.

Being a transsexual is about the feelings you have about yourself on the inside. I am wondering who is inventing these standards to be considered a "genuine" transsexual. I think that it is silly to discount someones identity just because they don't hate their body like the majority.

Saying that you have to hate your penis and never use it since it was a part of your past manhood is like saying you should hate your larger than female hands and never use them since they are the result of the male growth development during adolescence.

am I wrong here...

We are all different and I think the majority of people under the transsexual umbrella have a dislike for their male genitalia. I personally have never liked my penis and never wanted to look at it. You might love yours! but they are not the feelings I have. The 'Transsexual' term more is closely associated with the definitions in most medical journels as someone who doesn't like their male genitalia or male physical appearance. The '->-bleeped-<-' term is more associated with someone who is happy with their male genitalia but likes to dress and be portrayed as a female. Obviously there are grey area's and the two difinitions clearly overlap in a lot of cases.

[SilverShadow]

Agreed, Janessa. I don't like what I have down there, and would love to have "thigs" down there corrected asap. But still, I don't hate my current genitals nearly enough not to use them. Sure, it's seriously frustrating to have anything to do with that junk, but only that: frustrating, nothing more. I should clarify that I'm single. With a partner, well, I have no idea how things would work out.

Some TS do not have 'hate' for their penis, just varying degree's of dislike   

This.

[tekla]

I think what happens when you let a very vocal extremist minority control the press releases is that you wind up with very extreme positions.  "I hate my sex organs" is one of them.  Why does that hate have to be so present in the TG diagnoses.  Can one be TG without the hate - many would really say no.  Why can't it be - as it is for many I think - a preference, a choice and not something simmering in hate and self loathing?

[FairyGirl]

Don't know that you have to "hate" it, but if you're planning to have it turned inside out and stuffed back up inside you sans the little marbles, then it would probably be a good idea to be pretty much over it, don't you think? Otherwise you may be in for a serious reality check when you decide you really need to poke something with it and it ain't there no more. I'm no expert, but that seems logical to me.

[V M]

Yeah, I don't totally hate my body. I would just prefer to have the desired parts is parts 

[Hannah]

For once, I'm afraid I can toe the company line on this one. I want to
cut this body, shock it, drain it's blood, poison it, peel it's skin off and grind it's bones down. If it ends up looking nice after, that's fine but if not it's still better than this. I can not rest or be at peace until it's over.

[Dana_W]

Wow, this thread is turning into a bit of a hornets' nest.

On the "hate my genitalia and can't stand touching it" position, I think it's pretty typical of a lot of m2f transsexuals. It's just not universal. It comes down to how much you think THAT thing defines your gender identity. But not all transsexuals fixate on the same things to define their gender identity  physically.

If the genital body part is like the ultimate symbol of your masculinity to you, then of course you're going to loathe it and want it gone. Thing is... not all m2f transsexuals pick the same parts of their bodies to represent their hated masculinity, no matter what the medical journals say.

For me anything that is visible in public is BY FAR the more hateful and loathsome symbol to me. When I finally decided to transition the thing I most fixated on eradicating was face and body hair. I couldn't STAND the thought of being hairy in a non feminine way any more. And that feeling hasn't subsided one iota since, even though that aspect is pretty darn passable now. Even the thought of being hairy again disgusts me in ways I have a hard time explaining. After that is probably overall body shape. Those are the biggest "masculine attributes I must erase" for me by far.

Since pretty much no one else ever sees my genitalia (you'll have to trust me on this ), it bothers me far less. I mean... I definitely want to have GRS. But that's more like the final "icing on the cake" step to me. I'm not that hung up on it.

Mind you I never use the thing the way a boy is supposed to. But... it's just another part of me I'm planning to change. It doesn't bother me to touch it more than it bothers me that my nose is larger than I would like. I know what I'm planning to do with it surgically when I can afford it, and that is enough to settle my thoughts about it.

But I think it's totally valid for some transsexuals to despise even the thought of the thing and want it gone as fast as possible. I just wish they'd understand not everyone in their situation defines things exactly the same way.

[Alyssa M.]

I just wish they'd understand not everyone in their situation defines things exactly the same way.

This tends to be good advice almost regardless of the context.

[Alyssa M.]

Valerie, are you a lesbian or bi/pansexual? Lots of lesbians like penetrating or being penetrated by their unquestionably female partners. Sometimes that involves a strap-on. Sometimes, that strap-on is permanently attached. In either case, there's no reason to see it as a symbol of anything -- it's just a way to have sex. So what would you say to a woman who wanted to use a strap-on?

In my mind, what distinguishes lesbian sex isn't as much the lack of a penis as the lack of an a priori power differential and the fact that afterwards neither partner rolls over and doesn't want to touch the other for the rest of the night.

[maidenprincess]

I don't hate my part.  I'm not a boy.  If you saw me or heard me you wouldn't think I'm a boy, or a crossdresser.   I find what Valerie said very ignorant and offensive.  I think this categorizing between who is "genuinely" trans or not is a superiority complex.  No group is above or below the other.  I respect tgirls who don't like their part just as much as I respect the ones who do, and if they believe they are transgendered with GID and all that, who am I to say they are wrong or merely just crossdressers?  Get over yourselves.

The extreme polarity some of you chicas see the spectrum of masculinity and femininity is astounding.  A woman is not a prim and proper 1950's housewife.  I see so often some of you honestly believe a man should be expected to never talk about sex with you.  How are these things working out for you?  I'd imagine it's all a lot of unnecessary stress and unattainable ideals.

[Dana_W]

I have always thought that if someone enjoys their penis and using it sexually they were a boy ...or assumes a male role in that aspect, though they may have a feminine side and enjoy crossdressing. I have difficulty understanding it. Doesn't the image of a hard penis strike you as a male symbol? When a TG person I meet asks me out and makes it clear they want sex using their penis, I can't help but think boy. I guess I am putting too much of an emphasis on genitals and sexuality. I do love penises, but not on me.

I apologize for my ignorance and do not wish to offend anyone. I realize there is a wide spectrum and not everyone is the same. I seem stuck in my binary thinking.

It sounds to me more like you're generalizing from a pretty specific sexual mindset to the whole "I'm not horrified by my genitalia" concept. Not really the same thing. There certainly are transgendered people who are not transsexual (To me "transgendered" is a general name for all people who have some part of their identity defined as the opposite sex, while "transsexual" refers to those people who feel like they truly are the opposite sex from their birth body. All transsexuals are also transgendered in my dictionary. But not all transgendered people are transsexual).

On the other hand, I remember being VERY stuck a couple of decades ago by trying to understand my gender dysphoria. I kept reading that the "experts" agreed that a transsexual despised their penis and had an overwhelming desire to have it off. While a crossdresser was horrified by the thought of losing their penis. My dilemma was, I didn't feel EITHER of those things. So what the h*ll was I?!

Coming out of my last and greatest attempt to stay in the closet and stop having "ridiculous" wrong gender thoughts, science appeared to have progressed a lot more. Plus the internet made it a LOT easier to find better information. I now see the crude "penis hatred" criterion as just another awkward and unsophisticated attempt by the cisgendered medical world to try to understand what the heck we trans people are. SOME transsexuals do hate their penis. Others don't. The truth is, the only common thing making a transsexuals alike is their desire to change their physical sex to match the one inside their brains. It gets expressed lots of ways prior to successful transition.

[Alyssa M.]

Diana, that is similar to my experience. I also wrestled with the (obviously false) notion that there weren't any trans lesbians. That bit of heteronormativity made it tough for me to make sense of things. I think it's one of the reasons a lot of gay trans people take longer to transition.

Valerie, I didn't think you were being offensive. Sometimes people just don't understand other people's experiences. As long as you're open to hearing about them, that's fine. Also, sexual hang-ups aren't a really big deal. Sometimes there's something deeper behind them (racism, transphobia, etc.), but if you don't want to have sex with someone, that's justified. I can admit that I share some of your feelings -- I wouldn't want to date another trans woman, regardless of sex, because she would just remind me too much of my own insecurities. And yes, that's kind of transphobic. I'm working on it. But the important thing is that whatever your hangups, you treat people with the respect they deserve.

[Dorothy]

I am curious here, am I reading that if you don't hate your penis you are a transgender....and as long as you hate it you are a genuine transsexual?

That is like saying if a some one only likes to give annal male sex but doesn't like to receive it he is less gay cause he isn't down for the whole package of what being gay is all about.

Being a transsexual is about the feelings you have about yourself on the inside. I am wondering who is inventing these standards to be considered a "genuine" transsexual. I think that it is silly to discount someones identity just because they don't hate their body like the majority.

Saying that you have to hate your penis and never use it since it was a part of your past manhood is like saying you should hate your larger than female hands and never use them since they are the result of the male growth development during adolescence.

am I wrong here...

The person who is "inventing these standards to be considered a 'genuine' transsexual" is Harry Benjamin.  You know a German endocrinologist, widely known for his clinical work with transsexualism??

Sure we can sit here & blur the truth or deny it if we want.  It's easier to do that than accept it.

By Harry Benjaimin own words:

""True transsexuals feel that they belong to the other sex, they want to be and function as members of the opposite sex, not only to appear as such. For them, their sex organs, the primary (testes) as well as the secondary (penis and others) are disgusting deformities that must be changed by the surgeon's knife.
This attitude appears to be the chief differential diagnostic point between the two syndromes (sets of symptoms) - that is, those of transvestism and transsexualism.
The ->-bleeped-<- (TV) usually wants to be left alone. He requests nothing from the medical profession, unless he wants a psychiatrist to try to cure him. The transsexual (TS), however, puts all his faith and future into the hands of the doctor, particularly the surgeon."

http://www.transgenderzone.com/downloads/tphenom.htm

[maidenprincess]

And what one person says means there's no room for dissenting opinion?  Come on now.  We're not invalids if we don't adhere to some standard copied and pasted by some guy who never went through the experience himself as a transgender to understand any kind of variance in our community.

[Dana_W]

The person who is "inventing these standards to be considered a 'genuine' transsexual" is Harry Benjamin.  You know a German endocrinologist, widely known for his clinical work with transsexualism??

Sure we can sit here & blur the truth or deny it if we want.  It's easier to do that than accept it.

Umm... blurring or denying the truth?

Smart and adept as Harry Benjamin might have been, he died in 1986. Groundbreaking for his day, no question. But he wasn't writing Permanent Truths defining the transsexual condition. He was a well meaning non-transsexual trying to understand a (to the cisgendered world) bizarre condition. I seriously doubt his dying words were, "It's all solved now... never question a thing I wrote about transsexuals again."

SOME of what you quoted from Benjamin still matches the experience transsexuals today, including those on this forum, would endorse. As he was developing his theories in a MUCH less open time for transgendered expression, he stands out as a true leader of his day in this area. 

However Benjamin's "->-bleeped-<-/Transsexual" dichotomy hasn't aged all that well. It frankly wasn't his invention in the first place. He was simply trying to improve it from the way it had been understood before his work.

There is a tendency among some transsexuals to try to "conform" to whatever the medical texts say they are SUPPOSED to feel, even if it means being dishonest to themselves. I think this is harmful to those very people. If transition means anything, it means becoming true to yourself. Not just putting on a NEW set of externally imposed expectations that you STILL don't feel.

[Hannah]

It always amazes me how catty these sorts of discussions get. I'm more trans than you! No! I'm more trans than YOU! NOO!

[Alyssa M.]

The person who is "inventing these standards to be considered a 'genuine' transsexual" is Harry Benjamin.  You know a German endocrinologist, widely known for his clinical work with transsexualism??

Oh, sure, a man. 




There's nothing like an ad hominem argument to counter an appeal to authority.

[Tammy Hope]

By Harry Benjaimin own words:

""True transsexuals feel that they belong to the other sex, they want to be and function as members of the opposite sex, not only to appear as such. For them, their sex organs, the primary (testes) as well as the secondary (penis and others) are disgusting deformities that must be changed by the surgeon's knife.
This attitude appears to be the chief differential diagnostic point between the two syndromes (sets of symptoms) - that is, those of transvestism and transsexualism.
The ->-bleeped-<- (TV) usually wants to be left alone. He requests nothing from the medical profession, unless he wants a psychiatrist to try to cure him. The transsexual (TS), however, puts all his faith and future into the hands of the doctor, particularly the surgeon."

So where does one fall when one would go under the knife in a nanosecond if the funds were available and yet has made peice with the offending organ rather than wallow in a psychosis for which there is no remedy (lacking funds)?

I do not like my penis, nor do I loath it. I dislike it, in the same sense that i dislike my body hair, flat chest, large gut, big feet, excess hight, etc.

to the extent that circumstances make it possible to remedy some or all of these, I shall. When one of them is permanently rectified I shall dance a most undignified dance.

But I see no point in obsessive hatred in the meantime. Or rather, I see no need to make such hatred a requirement for admission to the club.

[Brittani A.]

I just cant feel the urge to do so like before as if i had to now its if i ever want to and i have been on hrt for 8 months now without a partner and probably woudn't hurt if i had one but i just dont feel the same anymore and i have felt female all my life but the male part that was hard wired for sex is all but gone oh well at least i dont have to worry about "performing" anymore but i love it nevertheless..Brittani 

[lilacwoman]

ok then...if you have to use it in a relationship or it demands regular attention from yourself if you're single: do you feel elated that it works and the orgasm feels great  - or do you wish it wouldn't work and the orgasm makes you miserable?