Lea, I think we are actually talking about the same thing from different viewpoints...... Factors such as personality, temperament etc also can create a very different perceptive background.
Lea, I think we are actually talking about the same thing from different viewpoints...... Factors such as personality, temperament etc also can create a very different perceptive background.
"Never forget the many ways there are to be human" (The Transsexual Taboo)
The phenomenon is not well understood even by mental health professionals. I know several who transitioned in their teens or early 20's, and they do often seem cut from a different cloth. Things are changing, though, with greater awareness among young people. I would have remained depressed and may have eventually hurt myself if I didn't transition. The various theories are interesting but do not matter to me at a practical level. It is is a mental health issue - not some lifestyle choice. I finally feel like a normal person - even if I don't appear normal at this stage.
Life is an endless struggle full of frustrations and challenges, but eventually you find a hairstylist you like.
Yes, that is exactly what late onset transsexualism is. The truth is that even if a late onset TS starts to self-reflect on her past she will realize that she did know all along that she was a girl, and repressed it so deeply that she was in a deep state of denial, causing her to think she is actually a man.Originally Posted by Adina
I don't believe in late-onset or early-onset TS. I believe that gender dysphoria is progressive, and progresses at different rates for us. Whether we are able to "man up" well or not, and the age we end up transitioning at is decided by both our core personality and societal pressures.
A core personality that consists of a lot of stereotypically feminine or androgynous personality traits often has a harder time creating a male persona and often transitions earlier.
Examples of stereotypical feminine personality traits include: Examples may include someone who is more sensitive, not athletic, not physically strong, shy around women, is more of a friend than a lover with women, nurturing, emotional.
Examples of stereotypical gender neutral or androgynous traits: objective thinker, nerd, intellectual, computer programmer
A core personality that consists of a lot of stereotypically masculine personality traits often has an easier time constructing a male persona and often transitions later.
Examples of stereotypical masculine traits: physically strong, athletic, outgoing, knows how to hit on women, stoical, more emotionally detached
Our environment also shapes us too. Many of us face more social pressures to "man up" than others. A lot of late-transitioners grew up in the 50s or 60s at a time where showing any sign of femininity, which includes traits that are gender neutral, faced discrimination and mistreatment by family, friends, and society. So a lot of these people put on a strong male persona, joining the military, getting married, having kids, masculine occupations, positions of power and prestige, to hide that they are trans. At some point late in life they could no longer keep up the male persona, and hence transition.
People who grew up after 1980 might have faced significantly less pressure to "man up" than our Baby Boomer counterparts, combined with the internet, the might have figured out they are trans and transition in their 20s.
But it's really a combination of your core personality traits and the degree of societal pressure you face. You might be very stereotypically feminine but faced tremendous pressure to "man up", or be more masculine but faced less pressure to "man up".
I also think the availability of the internet in the last 15 years, and more trans awareness and pushing for trans rights in recent years, is allowing people of all ages to finally transition.
I've finally mastered the art of making salads. My favorite is a delicious Mediterranean salad.
Michelle, your post is suitable for framing. It describes me very well.
Ashley: "I would have remained depressed and may have eventually hurt myself if I didn't transition.". Very good point. I'm wondering myself if or when this continued feeling of depression ever goes away. And at what point one says "enough!".
Thankful for crossdressers.com, great people here have helped me realize who I really am on the inside. (formerly michelle1)
Its not rocket science..nobody becomes a woman..in fact, people that try to "become" women will almost certainly fail. Gender identity is real, and wanting to be a woman does not make it so and a man that becomes a woman will suffer consequences.
It has nothing to do with whether you are masculine or feminine. It has to do with how you coped with it over your life. You can repress it, you can deny it, you can fight it, you can substance abuse it, you can marry and hope that cures it, you can compartmentalize it, but in the end you can't avoid what it does to you to feel like you don't exist..
Then once you can't avoid it, you may not have any money, you may be ashamed, you may be depressed, you may feel your kids, wife or parents would abandon you, etc etc...
all of that adds up people transitioning at later stages of life...as more and more information becomes easily available I expect the average age of transition comes sooner.
I don't think it's any different than becoming a Christian (or another religion) later in life. Or becomming gay or lesbian. We have life experiences that change us. Sometimes in small ways, sometimes in bigger ways.
I worked with a lady who married and had children, then at some point "jumped the fence" and became a lesbian. It happens.
I am pretty sure people don't become gay or start believe in the supernatural if they were not already gay and believing in the supernatural. If you mean that a person was suppressing their sexual orientation and finally stopped pretending, then yes, it's kind of like that. The juxtaposition of the verb "to become" and the word "gay" sounds a little off to me.
Krisi that's ridiculous.
It has ZERO in common with changing religions or deciding to date women instead of men. Changing religions?!?!?! omg
Your statement is a good example of how little nonTS people know about us.
Do people attempt to or complete transitions that are ill advised? Yes of course.. and that's because you cannot "become" a woman and those people end up finding that out the hard way.
The flaw in the OP is what is being termed as "late onset trans-sexuality" is in fact "late transition commencement". I have always been female, with self recognition during early puberty, when my psyche and endocrinological <sp?> systems were no longer were in sync. I have learned so much about my condition, yes it is a MEDICAL CONDITION, but not a disease. Is trans-sexuality a physical life threatening disease? NO. Is it a debilitating condition and possibly fatal psychological situation? MOST DEFINITELY! Can it be corrected with medical intervention? ABSOLUTELY!
I really don't want to bring the CD vs. TG debate into this thread, but a CD does have a choice, a TG doesn't! Just myworth.
Last edited by Donna Joanne; 09-09-2014 at 08:44 AM. Reason: insert omitted word
I can't imagine anything more different, actually.
That's not exactly conclusive evidence that it does, and everyone I've ever talked to seems to indicate otherwise. My aunt only dated women until late in life when she married a man. Same thing, right? Except that as she points out, she has always been bisexual. People just don't want to hear it, because it differs from their own personal experience. I stayed at a B&B this past week where the owner is a lesbian, and she was previously married to a man purely because of social pressure and expectations. It happens.I worked with a lady who married and had children, then at some point "jumped the fence" and became a lesbian. It happens.
~ Kimberly
“To escape criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." - Elbert Hubbard
Hi All!
Donna I also don't want to get into a CD vs. TS debate. I'm just a curious crossdresser, who at some stage (mistakenly) thought I may be TS. Could you just clarify your statement: "...a CD does have a choice, a TG doesn't!..." for academic purposes.
Last edited by Jenny Elwood; 09-09-2014 at 09:28 AM.
Wow, yes! This really struck a chord with me. I think you've nailed it.
I agree...but to a layperson, they can misunderstand this....You don't become a woman because of gender dysphoria, you suffer living the wrong gender more and more...that suffering can be thought of as gender dypshoria.
People that I've met suffering from bad gender dysphoria are desperate to NOT be a woman (speaking mtf)
Donna I don't think a CD has a choice about whether they want to dress or not...
and as Kimberly points out there is no evidence sexuality is a choice either...
I'm gonna be a broken record but the hideous idea that we are turning 40 or 50 and are these unhappy males in midlife crisis that somehow "Decide" that we "Want" to transition is a symptom of a huge challenge we face in having non ts people understand what this thing actually is...its part of why we still face plenty of hatred and poor treatment.. I am not denying that there are people that mistake their unhappiness for transsexuality...hopefully they get the help they need before its too late...
This statement "I worked with a lady who married and had children, then at some point "jumped the fence" and became a lesbian. It happens" is just breathtakingly wrongheaded...
and to relate it to a transsexual is no less wrong than 2+2=11
Last edited by Kaitlyn Michele; 09-09-2014 at 09:27 AM.
The only choice a TG has is whether we TRANSITION or not, we have always been and will always be Transsexual. My question in reverse is- If a CD stops cross-dressing and NEVER dresses or has a desire to dress again, are they still a cross-dresser? I'm not a CD, so I can't say. They same way a CD isn't me and can't either.
I don't want us to digress into a "flame war", but we (CD's and TG's) are not the SAME and NEVER will be. But we can love and respect each other!
Donna I will honour my premise to not get involved in a CD / TS debate. I just wanted clarification to the full picture of your statement.
Thank you.
As I am one of only a few here that transitioned fairly early, age 22, I really cannot understand how many of you could wait so long. For me, it was a driving need, a must, I simply had to transition as soon as possible or die. How did you manage to put off the intense feelings for so long? I understand family obligations, career obligations etc... Was it that you just did not realize it at that time?
Perhaps. I would be interested in your expanding on this.
It is clearly not a lifestyle choice – I agree with that. As to whether it is a mental health issue, that depends on how you mean that. Many TS have comorbid issues such as depression, mood disorders, and other life disrupting syndromes. Those are mental health issues. Treating transsexualism itself as a mental health issue is treacherous. Very few indeed regard "cross" gender phenomena in intersexed people (I.e., cross gender from the perspective of how they were sexed or corrected at birth) to be anything other then a manifestation of an understandable birth defect. Conversely, very few lay people regard transsexuals as anything other than mentally disordered. This is not a theoretical concern. It is something that I have to deal with every day.
While I agree with your stereotypes AS stereotypes, the tie to early vs. late transition is a fallacious meme that goes back to the earliest (and worst) of gatekeeping approaches in the original gender clinics. It also has strong ties to Ray Blanchard's notions of homosexual and non-homosexual transsexualism.
The first was discredited long ago, the issue being that the clinics mistakenly validated their own stereotype assumption because they only selected younger individuals for treatment they judged sufficiently and stereotypically feminine. It's well-established that in response and desperate for treatment, applicants played to the stereotypes to the max. I.e., the stereotypes are false even for what would be regarded today as the most intense, early, and passable trans population.
Blanchard included stereotypical feminine behavior and physical characteristic associated with homosexuality that have also been discredited - but which have also been improperly extended into over-overreaching theories of early vs late onset transsexualism. Blanchard's ideas are widely panned because of the way others have used his ideas and because of his use of stereotypes. In truth, there is more there than credited as aspects of his work extend theories of psycho-sexual inversion in interesting ways. But the association with gay stereotypes is a reflection of cultural bias.
Your characterization of baby boomers and the culture of the times when we were growing up is true enough in the main, but you need to be careful about how that leads down the same path of validating stereotypes. I.e., there are a lot of late (and older) transitioners who happen to be boomers, many of are transitioning late because of some of those factors, but the phenomenon of late transition doesn't provide any support for the idea that meeting a stereotype makes it more likely that transition will occur earlier - even though many late transitioners exhibit pronounced male characteristics. Why? Because those are the result of time - not the reason for late transition. I would have had as gilded a passability path myself at 20 as any 20 year-old today, despite how I have aged under the influence of T. Yet despite growing up in an extraordinarily liberal and permissive household, I almost certainly would have been institutionalized had I brought up gender issues and transition. I had NO pressure to "man up", I'm disinterested in sports, and have developed a mix of characteristics. Moreover, it is extraordinarily hard to differentiate what is native to my personality vs. not. It also begs the question of whether it matters. These ARE stereotypes, after all.
I largely agree with the last statement, but on the basis of transsexualism being depathologized and a degree of social tolerance more than rights. The internet plays a huge role in connecting people and helping them.
"Simple." You bury it under an avalanche of related and consequential psychological issues. This goes to Kathryn's point regarding different personality types.
Last edited by LeaP; 09-09-2014 at 10:43 AM.
Lea
Jorga................fear was my excuse
All I ever wanted was to be a girl. Is that really asking too much?
Jorja,
For me it was the fear of reprisal and people finding out that kept me from doing something about it when I was younger. I have known since I was very young but when I finally mustered up the courage to tell my mother (age 12-13?) she made me feel so bad about it that I swore I would never tell anyone again. I just kept burying my feelings..
I am 40 now, it was not an easy road from 12-13 till now but I tried my best. I thought by getting married and having kids would "cure" me.....nope that did not work.
It was not until I had a meltdown almost 2 years ago that I finally admitted to myself that I could not hide this any longer. I was miserable and on the verge...
Megan
When I look back on it Jorga it makes me feel like crying, I was so miserable and unhappy.
Like others said fear was a huge one, along with not understanding what was really wrong. I just thought I was a sick, perverted, messed up person, that everyone would hate if they found out about me.
I think if there had been more information available it would have been different.
Lea, you say "simple" and I know from my own experience that it wasn't just "simple". From about 5 or 6 years old this is all that was in my mind. I tried everything one can think of to bury it. It just couldn't be done.
Maybe you were more intense than I or maybe it wasn't beat out of you as much or maybe you are braver than I was. I tried everything I could to hide it for so long.
All I ever wanted was to be a girl. Is that really asking too much?
That's why I put simple in quotes. It's difficult for me to sufficiently describe the meltdown I had in adolescence and how that, in turn, affected my course for decades. I was dragged around to a progression of shrinks. I missed - completely missed - 2 full years of high school. I was violent, angry, and withdrawn. Yet during this period I had a steady girlfriend (ages appx 14-20), even as I had a hidden cache of trans material and was episodically crossdressing (which goes back to age 5 or so). So maybe one way of describing it was my intensity directed toward suppression was comparable to yours toward expression.
I can't systematically account for why people go one way or the other any more than I can for why some gay people are openly gay from their earliest years while others come out in later adulthood. Are they any less gay?
Lea
Jorja I'll try to keep this short. I hit the wall in my twenties and tried to self medicate. I ran out of pills and had no idea how to get help without outing myself, this was pre-internet. My ex-wife could tell you how desperate I was, I thought I was going nuts. I had no choice but to try to bury it and continue my life ( my wife got pregnant too). It affected my whole life, I would CD off and on, ended up going to shrinks for decades for depression and anger issues but afraid to tell them I had gender issues. I was a loner, afraid people could see through me, etc. A work injury a few years ago gave me too much time to think and I'm finally trying to deal with it.
Last edited by Marleena; 09-09-2014 at 11:25 AM.
buried it so deep
did everything male that i could to prove i was male..
i told myself it was a fantasy...i accepted the "common wisdom"...i had a peepee therefore i was a boy so although i desperately wished i could live as a woman i felt it was impossible..i plotted my future as a woman constantly...
and jorja the distress was awful ...to feel "wrong" for so long was torture...like Arbon i look back and it just makes me sad
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