Reading Comprehension

[Michelle789]

There have been some interesting questions asked, such as do guitars make you cross-dress? In light of threads like this, as well as a comment made in the latest controversial thread, I have another question for all MTF cross-dressers, transsexuals, and other gender variants including, but not limited to dual gender, bigender, gender fluid, androgynous, etc...

When I was a kid in school, I always did well in writing, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary, or basically what teachers dub as "Language Arts", but I didn't do so well in reading comprehension. I once mentioned this to someone who thought it was really weird that I would do well in Language Arts, but not so well in reading comprehension.

My question for all of you is, did anyone here have the same discrepancy in school? Do you think this discrepancy is a common trait in cross-dressers, transsexuals, and other gender variants? Could the biological causes of gender variance also be responsible for the reading comprehension/language arts disparity, if one does actually exist? The thread about guitars revealed that CDs, TSs, and other gender variants often have great musical talent. Now do we suffer in our reading comprehension abilities?

Of course, please try to comprehend what I just wrote and try to answer as best as you can, because I know we can all write well, and most of us can sing or play a musical instrument well too :battingeyelashes:

[Beverley Sims]

Michelle,
In these days of computers and printers....
I can not comprehend my own handwriting any more. :)

To answer your question, like you I was really "smart" :) and did not suffer the comprehension side of it.

Some posts here I can read many times and I still don't comprehend them.

I actually wait for others to reply to see what interpretation they have on the subject matter.

[Daphne Renee]

I did ok with reading comprehension. Writing has always been my biggest downfall. it wasnt lack of imagination or anything like that.. more of basic fundamentals I guess you could say.

[ossian]

I don't think there is a correspondence. For example, I play a number of instruments well, i'm good at math and have published work. Sorry.

[MissTee]

I was awesome in language arts. Won every language art contest in high school and college. Math killed me and I barely eeked out a passing grade. Weird thing is I became an engineer.

[Marcelle]

Hi Michelle,

Hard to say. I was a horrible student in high school but I think that had more to do with my social life than studies. So I packed it in and joined the military at 17 ... flip flop forward 12 years and a bit of academic upgrading, I attended university through the military and being a bit more mature . . . excelled in both the language arts and sciences both undergrad and post-grad. I can carry a tune in a bucket a play a passable Hotel California on the guitar and I love theatre arts. So not sure if there is a link between what we normally define right/left brain dominance and TG/TS.

Hugs

Isha

[kimdl93]

No. If you look about you here you'll find a very representative cross section of society, all levels of educational attainment and vocation or profession. By inference one could very reasonably conclude that among us there is a similarly wide range of altitudes, but no reason at all to suggest difficulties in reading comprehension or other learning difficulties. Looking at yourself only tells you about you...not about a diverse universe of people.

[Kate Simmons]

I guess you could "read" just about anything into the causes for CDing but I doubt that reading comprehension has any more or less bearing on this propensity than anything else.:battingeyelashes::)

[MarciManseau]

I was always good at language arts, math and reading comprehension. And I bet if you counted the number of people here who play guitars and compared that to the number of users here, you'd find that it's only a small percentage that are gifted enough to be able to play.

[I Am Paula]

Sorry, I didn't understand the question.

I excelled at anything to do with arts, languages, or literature. I spoke four languages fluently by the time I was 18. I hated the sciences. I briefly dated my biology teacher, but that only got me a B+. I hated math too, but I'm very good at practical math (that which we use every day).
Back tracking a bit- When I bought my first guitar, I started wearing panties. When I owned ten guitars, I began to present female. I'm sitting in my office now, completely surrounded by guitars, and in the guest room are thirty or so more, in cases. Now I'm transsexual, and researching where I should have SRS. Connection? I doubt it.

[suchacutie]

Just reversed for me. The comprehension was great but generating the written word was difficult for me for years.

[Marleena]

I Googled it BTW.:)

I know I struggle with it and tend to skim long posts and misinterpret some things although I have my grade 12 and a college education. I never liked writing essays, reading books, etc. It is because my interest is in the tech field. So people can talk circles around me but it's okay. I can fix almost anything electronic or mechanical, read schematics, etc.

I was taught KISS when communicating in a mixed social setting like this board.

I see a lot of intelligent people here that are a cross-section of society. I'm not sure if there have been studies done on us as a group (transgender).

[Krististeph]

I grew up with fairly older siblings and parents, thus I was exposed to more adult conversation and vocabulary early on. They also talked and played with me in adult language.

I remember starting reading in school and the first sentences were scaring me because it felt so unfamiliar, awkward having to puzzle out each word. I was scared that I could not learn this new thing. It took a while, perhaps longer than 80-90% of the others. But once I did start to get it, I saw the connection of the reading to the aforementioned adult language- and then it took off exponentially. Then i started read the books around the house- pictures and captions only at first, but this really made things click.

My first reading comprehension test (fifth grade?) was in the 98% (not sure if it was 15 SD percentile or the 16SD percentile, does anyone know which?).

I think part of it was the complexity of the grammar of adult language had made me try to understand things from more points of view- not just the first entry of the definition. I was used to figuring out variations of meaning.

I had been attracted to female looks since 2nd grade- by 4th grade I was becoming enamored to CD type things.

[Tina_gm]

I wonder if it is reading comprehension or an altered perspective that CDers may have. We pick up on things most men don't. We view and see things a little differently than most men. We tend to be more observant, but we also see things differently too. Sure, some do struggle with comprehension, but I also think that our somewhat altered perspectives and views make a difference as well.

[Aprilrain]

I score very high in reading comprehension. Maybe it's because I bother to actually read the words that are on the page. It seems that most people like to skim, if I try to skim then I miss out on the meaning of the writing, that's just me.

I do not think there is any correlation between any type of intelligence, talent or ability and the urge to CD or transsexualism, though I have met an inordinate amount of engineers at my local CD/TS support group meeting.

[Annaliese]

I am dyslexic, still cant spell, when I put a color film over what I am reading my comprehension go way up.

[Marleena]

I'm fine as long as people don't write an essay type post or write like they're a University professor teaching a class.:)

[Wildaboutheels]

No correlation whatsoever.

But it is a MAN'S VISION that is the simple key to this whole CDing "mystery". More precisely, how his VISION affects him in a most primal way that he has ZERO control over. Everything at these Forums supports this.

It's also WHY there are so few female CDers. Evolution decided long ago that being a SLAVE to her vision was not in most women's best interest.

It's really not complicated at all.

But for whatever it is worth, VERY few people who water here, bother to read other responses and it's very simple to prove.

[Tina_gm]

Interesting observation about there being few women CDers. Most who are in the TG spectrum are TS. Of course, women do actually CD, and by that I do not mean simply because they were pants or a polo shirt with a collar. I mean sometimes they will wear OUR clothes, for fun. They might wear a t-shirt of ours to bed, to stay warm, or to be cute. My wife did a Bordeaux thing a while back and used one of my shirts in a shower pic. We do not view that as CDing, but technically it is. I am not going to go into the double standard issue here, that is not in any way my point. Just the observation that very few women CD for the same reasons men do. If they have gender issues, its more often TS.

[Dianne S]

Not to brag :), but I was a very good student and did well in almost every subject. The only subjects I struggled with were art and woodworking. I cannot draw to save my life and I apparently am unable to cut a straight line even with a power saw.

For what it's worth, my best subject were stereotypically male (math, science, computer science) and I went into engineering as a career. But I love reading and have written a few short stories and have had a non-fiction book published.

[Gillian Gigs]

I think that it has alot to do with how our brains are wired, as in how the different compartments of the brain are connected. I graduated grade 12 with an average language arts level at the grade 9 level. I was a very slow reader, but my comprehension was very high. This hurt me in my first year at university which ended with me quiting because I couldn't keep up. After backing off in time to a college level and doing alot of reading, mostly novels, within 4 years my language arts level had climbed to a second year university level. I had no idea why until I had a daughter who went through the same thing. At a young age she was worse than me, we had to read everything to her and she needed a reader for her tests. In our concerns, we had her tested, she is very smart, but had short comings, especially in the reading department. There is an expression, "you spent the first three years of school learning to read, and the rest of your schooling reading to learn". Her college education revealed some interesting revelations. To put it simply, we were both late bloomers when it came to making some of these brain connections, especially in the area of language arts. She is now a voracious reader, and so am I. I still can't spell, a dictionary is always near me when I am writing anything. Had to check the spelling of voracious! My strong points have always been the sciences, but you still have to be able to read to do well in them.

[rah]

i was dyslexic and reading comprehension was a nightmare
but i don't think it has to do with me crossdressing
cos i started crossdressing when i was around 15 and i used to be alone in home
and before that also, i have 2 elder sisters and there used to be alot of girls (there friends) in our house they sometimes use to dress me as a girl i remember i used to hate it then

[Nadine Spirit]

Currently I am in a mathematics related career, but in school tests my best area was reading comprehension. My worst, spelling. Thank goodness for spell check!

[mikiSJ]

I started to read at age 3 and read the 21 volumes of the World Book my parents bought me in one year when I was 7. BUT, while could correctly spell every word in an essay, the essay itself would not make any sense.

I didn't learn how to write clear and concise essays, or anything, until I got out of the Navy and into college and finally met an English teacher who knew how to teach.

[devida]

I don't know if there are any studies on a disparity in reading comprehension and other language arts, but I know that, for a child or an adult who is not gender normal many languages, especially modern English, are so gendered that on some not too conscious level there could be quite a bit of confusion. Perhaps this was why you had a problem with reading comprehension. Spelling, grammar and vocabulary are not contextual. They don't tell a story in the way that a passage in reading comprehension does. So you could be very good at those areas of language arts but as soon as you started to read you might have encountered elements that were dissonant with your experience, that triggered a kind of gender dysphoria. I know that some of my confusion at school resulted from just not understanding how or why I was supposed to think the way that I was told to think. Of course some of it was the abject fear I felt every day at being trapped in the British Public School Experience (which was private, racist, classist, sadistic and misogynistic). And that didn't have to do with analytic thought, which I was always quite good at, but something else. Was it discomfort with the gendered storyline that starts in very young children's books? Maybe for me and maybe for you.

[Jodi]

I was an undiagnosed dyslexic when I was young. I struggled in undergrad school, but figured out how to compensate for the deficit in grad school. So, beyond undergrad through two more degrees, I did well academically.

Jodi

[Jaymees22]

No. If you look about you here you'll find a very representative cross section of society, all levels of educational attainment and vocation or profession. By inference one could very reasonably conclude that among us there is a similarly wide range of altitudes, but no reason at all to suggest difficulties in reading comprehension or other learning difficulties. Looking at yourself only tells you about you...not about a diverse universe of people.

I think this says it best. The only musical instrument I can play is the radio and I love to wear woman's clothes!

[Sarah Marie]

Wow! Being new to the forum, this thread is interesting. I happen to be a dyslexic guitar player (seriously... I'm not being silly here). I sometimes have to re-read things several timesto work through understanding when reading. Through the years it has gotten much better but it was tough in mid-level grades. No problem with math though.

Rock on!
Sarah

[DonnaT]

My spelling was, and still is, pretty poor. Grammar not much better.

I became an engineer and now have to write legal papers to correspond with the patent office.

Comprehension was good, so that helps with the patent work.

[Jackie7]

Very mild dyslexia here, had no trouble with any school subject except music and foreign languages. Kimdl had it right, you can't generalize from a sample of one and we're like an AA meeting here, every kind of person with crossdressing the only thing in common.

[Babette]

Michelle, your thread has me reflecting on my early school years. I despised the language arts. Reading a classic novel would put me into a coma. However, you could not pry anything related to the the sciences or performing arts away from me. That might explain the results of my college entrance exams. My scores suggested a low probability of passing Freshman College English. That hurt my pride and became the motivation I needed to change.

Through a lot of effort, I actually did very well with multitude of college English classes. I cannot say they were my favorite subjects. Ironically, writing and speech communications have been the foundation of my career. Classic novels still do not excite me. That's OK by me though. Everybody has an interest and mine happens to be something else. Perhaps that is your case as well.

[NicoleScott]

Michelle, my experience was like yours. I was very good at spelling, grammar, writing, diagramming sentences, vocabulary, etc. but had trouble with reading comprehension. And even more trouble with interpretation of poems and stories. I was good at those things because it was just a matter of following rules and committing to memory. Interpretation required a different process that I apparently lacked. In history, for example, I could spit out facts (when was the war of 1812?) but had trouble with "what was the significance of the War of the Roses?"

Salesman walks up a house with a boy sitting on the front porch.
"Where's your mother?" he asks.
"She ain't here."
"Young man, where's your grammar?"
"She ain't here, neither."

As for any connection to CDing, I don't think so.

[PatChick]

Yeah, I remember taking CAT tests in grade school, and doing very well in pretty much everything, except reading comprehension. I was always in 99th percentile in Math, and performed above average in vocabulary, spelling, and everything except that. I remember just reading the questions and then going back and looking for the answers, because I was too bored to read the story. Doubt it has anything to do with dressing though. Not sure how that would make sense.

[Michelle789]

Thank you all for your responses. I wasn't like horrible in reading comprehension, just not as good as I was in everything else. I was straight A student in Language Arts, math, science, and social studies, so being a B/C student in reading comp seemed bad to me. Oh, and I was far worse at phys ed than I was at reading comprehension - I'm lucky I got a C in P.E., I think the only requirement for a C in P.E. was to show up to class. Sadly, I actually know of people who got an F in P.E. but they never showed up to class. I think my reading comprehension problem was probably caused by skimming and not actually reading.

[gautier_nikolai]

I can read and understand 7 languages including English pretty much fluently nowadays and always excelled in foreign languages at school.

However i always got round 50-60 percent in school based exams and was bottom of my class in English class itself which revolved more around comprehension (although still managed to scrape an A in the standardised country-wide UK exams at aged 16).We used to have dreaded exams titled English Comprehensipn at school twice a year and lots of exam practice tests in between.

So maybe that applies to me.However i am not your "typical" CDer since i didn't start showing any interest until the age of 24/25 in CDing and I am homosexual.

In fact i used to wonder why people CDed at all until my mid 20's and didn't understand anything or anyone on the TG spectrum at all.

[CarlaWestin]

For some strange reason, I can write beautifully. I attribute it to writing in my voice. I might not be grammatically correct all the time and I surely lean on spell check but, it seems to come out intelligibly. On the other hand I find reading to be laborious. The material has to really hold my interest which is why I love this forum. My siblings are all edgy-ma-kators and in my opinion, dumber than a bag of hammers. They're always in awe at how baby brother manages to oriate so eloquently.

Interesting, when I read something like a manual or news article, I catch myself reading backwards. I mean word for word backwards. Sometimes I seem to be able to page glance speed read, you know, like take a mental picture of a page and recall information.

And I love wearing lingerie, dresses, makeup, heels................