Can a heterosexual person

[China_cat]

get some advice from someone who is transgendered? I've been having a discussion with somebody who believes that being transgendered is the same as being a transvestite who just wants to cut off 'perfectly good body parts' (his words, not mine).

I can't get through to him that just as he KNOWS he is male and would still know himself as male even if he was transplanted into a female body, that the transgendered person KNOWS he or she is the opposite of the body they wear and it has nothing to do with the clothing they wear or the gender roles they perform.

Does anybody have anything I can tell this person that might have a hope of getting him to understand? I'd like to hit him with a cluex4.

[Burnsey_Koenig]

1. Transgender resources

I'm not transgender, but these links should give you some help. Good luck talking with your friend, it is a difficult issue to talk about, and many people just don't understand it. Thanks for trying to help my brother and sisters out.

http://aids.about.com/od/transgenderissues/index.htm


http://aids.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=aids&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tgforum.com%2F

and an fyi for your friend:

We always have said that Transsexuals are folks who think they are stuck in the wrong bodies, while transvestites are folks who feel trapped in the wrong clothes.

trans·sex·u·al (trns-sksh-l) KEY

NOUN:

1: One who wishes to be considered by society as a member of the opposite sex.
2: One who has undergone a sex change.



trans·ves·tite (trns-vstt, trnz-) KEY

NOUN:

A person who dresses and acts in a style or manner traditionally associated with the opposite sex.

[China_cat]

2. Thank you for those links.

I'll be doing some studying.

[Eurobabe]

3. I doubt it. First really good philosophy course I took

was Feminist Philosophy, we read a book on the Black Feminist Experience. For the first time it struck me when I read the essays that there is no way I, as a white hetero female would ever be able to completely understand the life experiences, struggles and triumphs of a black woman who is a lesbian. We say we understand, and on some levels we might, but we cannot fully, because of filters we overlay on her story, from our lives. I hope that makes sense. Probably why your friend is clueless about the differences between a transvestite and a transgendered individual.

I was just talking to a friend today about a professor that I had in graduate school, when I first started my program, he was a man albeit quite feminine looking with long hair and he wore some makeup. His clothing was very ambiguous as to his sexual orientation, he was not gay, it was apparent that this "woman" was trapped in a man's body. As the semester progressed he became more feminine and then after I graduated I heard that he had become a woman. I believe he had an operation and legally changed his first name. What is so ironic, and I give her alot of credit - his wife/partner stuck with him, now her and they are still together. Me personally, I guess I just feel that people know intuitively whether they are comfortable in their own bodies, male or female. It must be quite difficult for a person to feel emotionally that they are the opposite of what they are physically. Yes, then I think they have every right to become who they feel themselves to be. Don't know if you read the article a couple weeks ago in the NY Times about transgendered couples and how difficult it was for most of them to accept (in those cases I think they were lesbians that became men) a sex change in their partners.

Don't waste a good 2x4, throw "Flawless" at him, it might give him more insight. (DVD with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert DeNiro) I thought that was a great movie. Hoffman was brilliant in his role as a man who was in the process of becoming a woman.

[China_cat]

4. I don't even begin to understand the feelings

of a transgendered person beyond knowing that knowing you are in the wrong body has to be the ultimate cognitive dissonance...and one that can last forever. Pile the guilt and societal pressures on top of that and I don't see how a person could get out of bed in the morning. Takes a lot more fortitude than I'd be able to muster.

[undergroundpanther]

5. my take

I am transgender I'll give it a shot..This is to your friend's question I am speaking as if it is them I am addressing ok?


Hi,I am a transgender,
I am FtM female to male..Transgender is a condition where the body and mind are mismatched. Ever since I was a kid before there was any apparent gender differences, I saw myself as a guy. I was never into dolls or girl stuff. I always played male characters,I "rescued" my cousin who was female when we'd pretend she was captured by whatever evil character we pretended I was fighting.It never occurred to me I was a girl,until the"womanhood" game was imposed upon me,with buying my first bra,learning to use tampons,or being told to put on a shirt.

As I got older my body changed my mind didn't. My body betrayed me..I grew horrible tumor like things off my chest that made people treat me in ways that made me feel very uncomfortable.It is very uncomfortable. I found I did not match inside to the outside. For someone comfortable in their gender it is VERY HARD to imagine how painful this is for a trans person. Yes gender is partly a SOCIAL game.. A game of lies taken for granted in cultures with gender roles that are defined sharply that harms trans people because we can't fit the role the body says to be,because our minds can't play it.Secondly gender is in the mind.. if the body and mind are not congruent and functioning as a cohesive unit you get cognitive dissonance, anxiety and pain upon seeing the wrongness the don't matching phenomena.

You see for me, sex is ruined,it has been ruined because of the body. I cannot get any real satisfaction unless I use some very deep almost dissociative visualization techniques to escape this body through imagination.I don't like touching that thing,I don't like the chest.I cannot deal with the chest and below parts they are alien repulsive and they are not me,they are dead..It is painful to be transgender your whole mind and body are in conflict,and people everywhere reinforce these alien gender roles socially..It is all based on outer appearances rather than who you say you are and that social thing makes it all worse.


I often feel suicidal because I do not feel at home in this miserable female body when people say ma'am I cringe when males hoot from the street I want to beat the crap out of them or blow my brains out on the sidewalk..Unlike cross dressers who sexually charge dressing up in a fetishistic thing,I do not"get off" at all by dressing up as a male.

What I am seeking by appearing more male,hopefully as male as possible,even surgically is to simply feel comfortable in my own body. I do not have much sexual drive at all in me,because I just want to exist in my body comfortably first. Sex is often unpleasant for me because my biological mind is male..and the parts to have sex in this body are wrong.Sex reminds me off how wrong my inner self is from my outer body.

A cross dresser dresses because they get a sexual thrill out of cross dressing.It's a fetish it enhances their sexuality to play a role and remove the role when the fun is done.They do NOT desire to change their biological body permanently,they dress up for fun..

A trans person dresses to feel comfortable and at ease in their own body and to be at ease with them self and to be seen as who they are..
And when the discomfort of the dysphoria cannot be denied or "patched up"anymore with binders or a "packy" in my case..Transpeople may try to fix it forever with surgery.
I myself desperately want this chest GONE. But I cannot afford it. I bind the damn things down best I can.And Still it hurts to know my body is so wrong. Maybe when I get a double mastectomy I will feel more at ease in this body..The hysterectomy was the biggest step to sanity I ever took.Before the hysterectomy I was in and out of psych wards my PMS was THAT BAD.,My body is in conflict with my mind and itself. How I got the hysterectomy was my period got stuck bleeding than they took the thing out.Lucky me.

If the GYN idiots would have listened to my pleas for a double mastectomy and hysterectomy at age 12(my first GYN visit I asked for these parts to be cut out she said no .I continued to ask GYNS for help changing my sex for YEARS and I was ignored or worse they said wouldn't you want CHILDREN someday!!??!.)If only people would listen,and accept that I know what hurts me,I would have been spared alot of anguish and pain.But in a world where it is assumed trans people are not really suffering,or it's all in their heads it's easy to rationalize controlling others identities and bodies.. based in your own rigid beliefs about gender and the sick cultural conditioning about gender this society does to everyone from BIRTH (pink or blue). Consider yourself lucky you are at home in your own body.

[maddiejoan]

6. I'm also transgendered

m2f -- and I doubt I could put it better than undergroundpanther already has.

transgendered is, however, an umbrella term which includes transvestism withtin.

The difference you are looking for is between transexuals and transvestites.

transvestism itself comes in a whole spectrum from hetero men who just like to wear women's clothing for fetishistic thrills, to those who enjoy completely "passing" if only for an evening as a member of the opposite sex.

transexuals do not consider themselves as trying to be the "opposite sex". I have never to my memory ever believed myself to be male --so living as a woman to me is not living as the "opposite". Rather those years where I lived as male were the years where I was being the opposite sex.

Gender is between the ears not the legs. Transvestites consider themselves to be people who dress as the opposite sex, Transexuals consider there bodies to be at war with their minds (or souls).

To place in a comic book analogy.

Transvestites are Batman. They are really Bruce Wayne and they put on a costume as Batman to fight crime. Thus Batman is the "secret identity"
Transexuals are Superman. They are really Superman and they put on the Clark Kent costume to hide their reality. Clark Kent is thus the "secret identity"

[UncleSepp]

9. I love the Batman/Superman thing!

To me, the transition process is like stopping something, not like starting something. I am taking off the drag, not putting it on. I am just seeing my body express itself as it should, at last.

[Eurobabe]

8. Very powerful story, thanks for sharing...

Like I said, while I empathize, I cannot know truly what you "feel" because of my own experiences as a hetero female, and as you said, I feel lucky that I am at 'home' in my own body. I hope that you can someday soon become who you want to be, you must believe that you can. Hang in there, and peace...I hope I didn't sound stupid in my earlier post.

[mockmonkey]

7. I don't think the somebody

you discussed this with seriously cares to even think about the subject. I think they are unable to empathize with other people which isn't unusual, people are pretty self-involved. I'm legally married to a Female to Male and I help with the weekly Testosterone injections and accompany him to the therapist and Doctor and we just finished up the name change.

I don't think there is any help for the clueless or the religiously impaired. The fact that YOU are able to understand in some way is all that matters.

This guy sounds like the same type of guy that hits on Lesbians. He doesn't get it and never will.