Quote from: lilacwoman on August 30, 2010, 01:33:39 AM
so many interesting replies!
which to me breaks us down into four groups:
the ones who never learned to live as original sex and transition very young'
the ones who decide we have to live female regardless - which implies we are classis TS who would and do feel happier transitioned despite setbacks from problems from work, family, public,
the ones who held back because of family rearing but then go full steam ahead,
the ones who detransition because of a need to be male - which includes holding onto the male job with all its money and prestige - these ones are not really TS but are somewhere else on the CD/TV spectrum.
The fourth group I would say are not necessarily non-TS. Some people have horribly high debts or need a lot of money for their families or have maybe a somewhat less intense dysphoria and have other priorities in their lives at that moment.
I'd add a fifth and a sixth group.
The ones who don't transition and don't out themselves to anyone (but maybe a few friends) or only drop hints (I used to date such a person).
The ones who are out at least in their private lives but don't transition physically, no matter what pronouns and names they go by (some of these have been good friends of mine for 10 or 12 years).
@Tippe,thank you very much for your insightful posting. You have a lot of good points here and it was a very interesting read.
Quote from: Tippe on August 28, 2010, 05:50:13 AMNow alot of communication studies show that strict observation will make the applicants exhibit a presentation focus where they are very keen on not saying or doing anything wrong, which obviously hinders dialogue and reflections. When I contacted the clinic for help I actually wanted to discuss my feelings about being transgender, how to handle them and which worries I had about the transition I had begun, but it was soon evident that if I wanted to get anywhere the only way I could do it was by telling the story of being a girl since the get go and hidding any and every doubts. To get anywhere you have to plead for HRT from the start and to be allowed to get them you have to tell that you want GRS in the end. No middle way. This is especially stupid since hormones themselves are readily available in Denmark. So they should know that people, who are not on HRT already when they seek the clinic go to them for other reasons than the HRT itself...
(...)
Worst of all studies show that the two most common reasons for regret are bad surgical outcomes and rejection or other issues with family and friends. For this reason the Danish approach may actually well be responsible for high regretfullness due to lack of surgical experience in the country and lack of possibility of working on family issues and other problems which might arise.Tippe
I agree to what many said, that living full time for quite a while should be a prerequisitive for SRS, and even if you can bypass that, you should still give yourself a moratorium here. I also agree that a set of rules is not a bad idea, but I'd like the Standards of Care to have a few forks with various paths you can pick from (the German Standards of Care are much more "one size fits all" than the Benjamin Standards here and offer less choice, plus Germans love rules so the shrinks here tend to even take the
suggestions from the Standards as a gospel to follow by the word). I once talked to one of the gender therapists who was involved in creating the German Standards, she is half-French half-German (I'm half-French too) and she agreed to this and said she would have expected more flexibility here and was disappointed at most German shrinks' stubborn approach. As the whole German Standards are officially a suggestion, not a rule. I looked at her and said: "Don't expect from Germans that they take official suggestions for what they are - suggestions. Whatever looks remotely like a rule will be treated like a rule." And she laughed and said "you're right".
I also don't like the transsexual scene encourage people to go the "one right path". Very dangerous, that. Plus here, many of them think - I have a GID problem, the authorities have found an official ruleset for that (German Standards) so this is exactly the way to go, from start to end, as authorities are always right. Ouch.
In my case, for example, I did not want to go full-time before passing as male, which was impossible before hormones had their effect. I had been bullied at school as a teen and was extremely afraid how people would react at work and university. Plus both my job and my time at university would have ended one year later, so it seemed somewhat pointless for me to do the big "I look like a girl but call me a boy's name and say "he" instead of "she" thing". Shrink said I had to for getting on hormones though, as I had to get the experience how it feels like being called "he" and a boy's name and being treated as a guy before T.
Now first, I could not pass before T cause of my physical make-up, so I would not be treated like a guy but like a woman who wants to be called by a boy's name - so that would be a real-life experience as a transgendered person being out everywhere, not as a guy. Plus in my private live, I had hung around a lot with other non-transitioning people who were genderqueer or transgendered, we knew of each others' situation. Some wanted gender-congruent pronouns and names used, others were okay with the sex-congruent ones as long as it was clear for others that it was not who they were and they were not expected to fit in the according gender box. So I knew and saw from some of them what happens if you do the "no passing, but my own gender mode" thing and I knew this was no solution for me.
I also hung out with a couple of gay guys who often gave each other female names and pronouns just for fun, so I did not mind how these people called me. So going the path the way my shrink requested would not have been THAT revealing for me to find out whether I was trans or not, it would only have put unnecessary stress on me at work as a "test" to see if I was obstinate enough about transition to cope with that stress. I found that silly.
I also had had dissociative identity disorder (DID) which was mostly cured by then and I wanted to rule out that I was still much more split up than I thought and that my GID was a false positive diagnosis with underlying DID. The path I officially had to follow would not have helped me getting clear here but would rather have masked it. If I still had DID, I could have lived full-time in male mode without feeling it's wrong for me as the fittest personalities for this, confident males, would have taken over and managed all the outside life and blocked off the girls I had - and I would have coped with transrelated mobbing and stress by creating lots of new personalities which you don't want to happen if you're DID. So in my case, it was more useful to live part-time rather than full-time before T just to see if I was the same person in both modes.
So I'm one of the examples why one size does not fit all. And I could have been one example of a detransitioner if my GID had not been genuine but masked by both my DID plus strict adherence to the Standards. Transition consumes lots of energy anyway, but going the strict Standards path would have eaten up much more energy and made me focus too much on the trans stuff and less on other things I had to get done in my life.
Plus I think that this path pushes some people to go through the whole thing. First you "ridiculize" yourself with the "yet no passing but new pronouns and name mode" thing everywhere, then people get somewhat used to it and some of them get your explanation, so then if you go back... that would give you the stigma of being a very unstable person who does not know what they want - wonder how many people go the whole way cause of the fear of getting that stigma, therefore I think that in many cases, it's just counter-productive. Unless your physical make-up is such that you will never pass well.Instead, I wanted a longer moratorium before getting on T, one year instead of a half from start of therapy with the option of waiting even longer before getting on T. We agreed on that, and I clung to it. (I'm in my second Testo moratorium at the moment.) But the shrink absolutely insisted on me being in male mode full-time for 6 months before T cause he closely observed the Standards so I had to lie to him, which was stressful but hey, I just deliberately split up a little bit again so I could manage to do that without being caught lying (it was counterproductive but necessary for T). I also did not feel free to speak about my doubts with him and hid some things away from him though I was open about having residual DID. He was no expert for DID and was convinced that going full-time before T was THE litmus test to find out whether I still had it or not and I would not get T if I did not do this. And I did not want to wake his suspicions about how I would transition by explaining to him that it's not how it works in multiple systems and why not.
But I had the luck to have my non-transitioning transgendered, genderqueer and dissociative friends to talk to about doubts, alternative options etc. which was a great gift for me and worth more than a gender therapy. And I also read some of the "professional" stuff about GID, some of which was esoteric psychoanalytic weird stuff, and some of which made good sense.
I'd suggest to everyone to read up professional stuff and meet non-transitioning transgendered and genderqueer people unless they have the chance to find a shrink who is somewhat more open-minded and does not adhere to the Standards of Care like they're a gospel. And I think it's a good idea to adapt the Standards to yourself so that you can use other loops and moratoriums for yourself if it feels right for you, rather than rushing through the process.@InteraliaWhat you write here is extremely interesting. I'd really love to hear more about the detransitioners you meet, their motivations, how family friends etc. reacted to their detransition and how they cope with it etc. It's very sad the other transsexuals treat them badly.
