Closest Approximation, Reasonable Facsimile, ... Something Else? (TS responses only)

[LeaP]

(please excuse MtF OP context. Ideas expressed apply equally to FtM)

Comments in recent threads have me re-thinking the notion of closest approximation - "CA" for brevity in this thread - taken either as a personal goal or even as defining transsexuality.

The most recent thread was about breast development, with many responses noting that many GGs have small breasts and that, therefore, the OP shouldn't be so concerned about lack of development. Extending this logic, however, leads to all kinds of similar phenomena. There are also male-looking women, women with facial hair, bald women, women with baritone voices, prominent Adams Apples, broad shoulders and narrow hips, etc. A response in another thread commented about the problematic nature of passing, speaking from a philosophical standpoint, meaning it focuses too much on stereotypes. We also see frequent disagreements about SRS versus FFS in the CA context.

As a generality, CA appeals to common sense. After all, it's about aligning body and mind ... therefore a female mind requires a female body. The topics above show the difficulty here: it's theoretically possible for a GG to develop that looks exactly like the male "you." I would exclude male genitalia from that, though it is also possible, as that would almost universally be considered an intersex condition or birth defect.

One formulation of CA is that the individual is driven to accomplish as much feminization as possible. Another would insist on SRS as integral to CA, but leave everything else to other considerations. Neither is particularly focused on passing per se. The emphasis is congruence.

Taking a reasonable (or perhaps "sufficient") facsimile approach, however, focuses more on passing than congruence per se. Put differently, congruence is put more into a social than physical context. Passing - integrating - gets more attention here, I think. SRS, FFS, or any given procedure may or may not be included in one's definition, but there is a physical goal, just as with CA.

In the "something else" category falls those who are unconcerned about surgeries and hormones, yet live as women. I note here that this includes those I would absolutely classify as TS, including some who have identified female since early childhood. Additionally, this was pretty much THE "option" historically.

So my questions are these:

Does the advent of HRT and cross-sex surgeries invalidate the "something else" approach, if taken as a choice?

Is there truly a baseline CA drive that is associated with transsexuality, or is this inevitably personal?

What is the relationship between passing and congruence?

[arbon]

Last year I had a conversation with a female friend when I was telling her how I wished I had bigger breast because I am rather flat. She is very flat to and asked why I wanted them because she does fine with what she has. What I told her was well no one will ever question her identity as a woman because she is feminine in every other way. Me though I need all the help I can get to overcome all my masculine features as my identity is often questioned.

I want to be feminine enough that people will accept me having a female identity, and at a deeper level I want to look at myself having those feminine features.

[Angela Campbell]

It is probably very much a personal thing. What is good enough to satisfy me may not satisfy you.

What I wanted was to look and live and be accepted as a woman. The vag has little to do with it to tell the truth. Yes it is one part and I will be complete once it is done.....and it will be done....but that is not what makes me feel better as a person. If I just had SRS and nothing else, it would not satisfy me in much of any way. I would still not have what it is I need to feel like I am me.

It is looking in a mirror and seeing a woman....it is being called maam by strangers, it is the ability to be who I always should have been. In most situations what is in my pants makes little difference. So yes passing is important to me above all else. It is actually not that hard.

So what is it YOU need to reach the point where you think....yes! This is it!

Some need FFS to get there and be comfortable, some just HRT, some need that and SRS, some need none of that. CA = personal opinion

[Rachel Smith]

Congruence for me came when I started HRT when my metobolic hormone sync'd up with my brain and the GD went bye bye.

Passing: For that I would say I am in RF group because I don't have the funds to get to the CA stage. The HRT and anti's have given me breasts that I hope are still growing.

[bas1985]

I had this same question asked by the psychiatrist yesterday in the last appointment before the start of HRT (if they will :) ).

She asked me if I wanted SRS (here is "free"). I told her the truth, that I would like more "congruence" than a vagina, that I am already 41
and, well, if I get the operation but it is useless because my body is not so feminine, so I won't use it sexually maybe it is an useless operation, because I wish first of all the "life" of a woman, being addressed as so in street, by friends, etc... so my desire for SRS is proportional to the effect of the hormones, I would not want in any case be a "man with a vagina", but if I succeed in feminizing myself with hormones, train and have a reasonable female
voice... well, OK, let's do the last step (In Italian I said: "let's put the cherry on the cake"... I don't know if in English it conveys the meaning of "final touch").

She said that I am over-rational and that basically I am stuck in my over rationalization. I have GD, for sure, but that I am not in contact with the feelings, especially childhood feelings of internal impossibility or, maybe, self trans phobia.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

Should congruence be thought of in context with dysphoria?
I've always viewed this as a medical intervention against dysphoria.

As evidenced by this forum and just looking around in my trans life, many people do not suffer every "type" of dysphoria... and so it doesn't mean anything to them to have or not have a penis...
I cannot imagine my life anymore with a penis...it makes no sense...but I was not upset at my penis...I didn't suffer dysphoria around my genitials...it really didn't cause distress...

but I went ahead with SRS because I wanted to... I intuited that it would be a positive thing for me and it was. It surprised me by how much it changed me in a positive way.
Bas...I did put the cherry on top (and yes it was the final touch)...and for me, perhaps that the deal... it felt like closure.

Closure may not be necessary for you or for others..or closure may just be lurking out there years in the future...

There is a practical reality to our lives if we get into our 30's 40's or later as men. And its sad and unfair...but that reality is transition becomes a gauntlet...requiring feats of superhuman will and strength (not to mention money)..

because of that, it shouldn't shock anyone that people cope with it differently and try to get to a satisfactory quality of life..
because its so difficult it doesn't shock me that many people ONLY do it because they have to, running the gauntlet is not a choice, its necessary to survive.....
it makes sense that if GD goes away people don't do every step in the ts bible of transition..

[Kathryn Martin]

I have never suffered from gender dysphoria. I simply never questioned my gender in the way so many describe their experiences. I did not need to therapy to figure out who I was because I knew since very early on what I experienced about my self and how this was equal or similar to girls and women with whom I grew up, became adult etc. I had a lot of depression about the fact that my body denied me the ability to "prove" that what I said I in fact was. There were periods during which I resigned myself to the fact that my body denied basic recognition for whom I was and am. That is why I transitioned and had surgery because it became possible for me to become congruent. I should have done it when I was 18 but those were different times and a very different place.

For this reason closest approximation meant most centrally SRS, everything else was just overcoming the damage done by T. My depression of years and years and years went away like chaff in the wind as soon as I transitioned and had my surgery booked and confirmed.

[KellyJameson]

Transitioning is both personal and public and each affects the other. How others relate to you supports identity so supports and creates your relationship with yourself through confirmation of and immersion into "gender"

Gender identity needs a physical expression to be "real" as "felt" (physically experienced emotion) even though identity also lives in the "conscious intellectual mind" apart from emotion.

Crossdressers "may" create through illusion the social experience of gender as a woman but this will not erase their gender identity if it is already formed as male but may "expand", "stretch" , "bend" their gender identity (redefine what gender is for them) absent the existential crisis woven into the experience of gender dysphoria from being emotionally cut off from their bodies as "gender"

We have an emotional relationship with gender as our identity and an intellectual relationship with gender as our identity and both are necessary to experience gender because gender is both learned/understood (intellectual) and felt physically (emotional)

People do not experience gender dysphoria when they are able to have both the emotional and intellectual experience of their gender because they have a body (as gender) to experience the emotion created by the dance between body and mind.

In my opinion transitioning is a type of "litmus testing" until you experience the reality of "YOUR GENDER" as an "INDIVIDUAL"

No two woman are made "alike"

I feared ending up with large breasts because my "Inner eye" "knew" how my body should look before it "actually did" and I had this mental picture in my head (intellect) since puberty so one aspect of "passing" was the realization of this "mental image"

My mental image relating to my body was very specific in "how it was suppose to look" and this was completely independent of how it should look "to others" and "for others"

I think it is important to see passing in two separate lights. One as the mental image you strive for that must not be defined by or for others that is already in you that you "discover" (felt emotionally as that feeling of being right/normal)

It is extremely deep in the mind and you pull it up from the deepths of the mind and it is "known" because it "feels right and correct" once it is "physically experienced"

We create intellectually with intention what the heart already knows but this cannot be done if you do not know your own heart (emotion) because you will not "recognize so know" the truth of your inner eye (image)

Ignore what others think and keep "testing" until it "feels normal" (right)

Transitioning is a leap of faith that your mind (heart/emotion) knows more than you do (intellect)

Being an intellectual so approaching transitioning intelligently offers certain protections but also creates other "challenges" because much of the experience can only be physically felt emotionally.

Gender is ultimately a physical expression of the brain imposing itself on the body and the world.

It cannot live only in the abstract mind and that is why we become sick with gender dysphoria.

We are not born with a gender identity as that which is learned but with a structure (brain) that can only learn the identity it was predestined to know, learn and become.

[melissaK]

Gender is ultimately a physical expression of the brain imposing itself on the body and the world.

It cannot live only in the abstract mind and that is why we become sick with gender dysphoria.

Kelly, I liked those distillations . . . at least they ring true to my experiences.

And Kathryn, I would take your pre-transition depression as gender dysphoria. Here's an excerpt from one physician commentator in the field:


"During adolescence, when unwanted and permanent secondary sexual characteristics transform the patient’s body into an adult form that is asynchronous with the brain, depression and anxiety are typical reactions."

From Trangenderism Overview By Norman Spack, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Clinical Director, Endocrine Division, Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA. http://www.imatyfa.org/resources/healthcare-practitioners/transgenderism-overview-by-norman-spack-md/

But back to the OP, LeaP, I think passing and congruence are inevitably a personal journey. As I fiddle in the middle of societies gender criteria boundaries trying to live in gender outlaw land, I am the sole arbitor of whether my appearance makes me happy or not. Mind you, I am not saying that my happiness can be a determined by my exercise of "reasoning" or "free will" and that is why this is so complicated and personal. What I "feel" is resistant to reason. "Feelings" are something that comes from subconscious processes, whereas knowledge based beliefs are from conscious reason, and the conscious mind's logic can't readily change the subconscious mind. (A lot of this is born out of PTSD research, but I digress).

Thus, how I think I have to look in order to evoke a "feeling" of happiness with myself is pretty subjective. I pretty much have to change clothes until I am reasonably happy with my appearance. Some days I have a melt down because nothing fits or looks right. For me, I want to create an image that others will see that expresses me. And for me, seeking gender outlaw status, I need others to say "wait a minute, this guy has a lot of girl in him, what's going on here?" And by wanting to be read by others a certain way, I want the same as what some who is GM wants when they want to be read by others as being GG. We both want to "pass" as something other than our birth gender.

And this is where what Kelly said resonated with me - I still very much need the physical expression to get my self image out of my abstract mind and into a physical reality, and to get myself into a state of congruence.

Good OP. There's more to be discussed from what you raised, but I am out of time.

[CharleneT]

Worry less, transition more ;)

[LeaP]

Does the advent of HRT and cross-sex surgeries invalidate the "something else" approach, if taken as a choice?

Is there truly a baseline CA drive that is associated with transsexuality, or is this inevitably personal?

What is the relationship between passing and congruence?

Answering my own questions ...

1) I think the availability of the VERY full range of drugs and procedures, many of which are easily available, does invalidate the something else choice. (And I do mean free-will choice here, as in someone with the means, health, and opportunity who chooses to do essentially nothing.) No need for any kind of alignment between body and mind, whether called congruence or something else, no transsexuality, I think.

2) I'll take a slightly different approach to the topic instead of the SRS versus everything else paradigm. I.e., there is a physical context that is driven by a need for congruence, and a social context that is driven by the need for integration. They can overlap, but don't have to. I think the first is better described by the phrase "closest approximation" and the second by "reasonable facsimile." Different aspects of GD are clearly addressed by each, but the meaning of transsexuality is surely tied up more (not exclusively) in physical congruence need.

Part of the problem is that one's priorities and issues can be tied up more in one than another. So at one extreme you might have a dysphoric intense crossdresser who has a real need to present female and integrate socially - but with no need or desire to align mind and body beyond dressing. And that's fairly common. I suppose you could have a transsexual with NO integration needs, i.e., congruence only, but that seems to be less common. Typically there is a level of need for both.

3) Per my comments above, there is no necessary correlation between congruence and passing! If one accepts the paradigm of the male-appearing female as good enough (based on probability, say), for example, then passing would be of no concern, while other aspects of female physicality - actual habitus - are.

[Marleena]

Congruence for me came when I started HRT when my metobolic hormone sync'd up with my brain and the GD went bye bye.


This was my experience too. If you're a (TS) woman at some point you will have to do something to stop the emotional pain (disconnect).

As far as passing goes it is a personal thing. I would want at least a trach shave and FFS so I don't get read like a book (as a man instead). We all hate being misgendered right? I don't want the negative attention. Right now I'm too broke to do anything but had to get my quality of life back. My situation is less than ideal but I had to do something.

[Kathryn Martin]

I think the first is better described by the phrase "closest approximation" and the second by "reasonable facsimile."

I am not sure that integration is tied to a reasonable facsimile, because it seems to perpetuate the "copy" myth rather than something that is integral to the person in question. If you consider the reality of integration then what it actually means is that the differences dissolve rather then get covered up or more positively, overcome. This process of dissolving is concomitantly a peeling off of the survival layers to reveal something that the environment recognizes for what it is. This is in my experience an incredibly nuanced and tender process and has nothing to do with "acceptance" but rather the absence of a need for acceptance.

[Michelle.M]

Answering my own questions ...

2) I'll take a slightly different approach to the topic instead of the SRS versus everything else paradigm. I.e., there is a physical context that is driven by a need for congruence, and a social context that is driven by the need for integration. They can overlap, but don't have to.

That’s a very astute observation! I think more people would have much less anxiety in their transitions if they thought along these lines.



3) Per my comments above, there is no necessary correlation between congruence and passing!

IMO, there is no correlation at all. Congruence is internal and if you feel congruent then you are, irrespective of outward appearance, and you exude this to others. There are plenty of masculine-looking genetic women who don’t seem to have congruency issues, and there are plenty of crossdressers who pass like crazy and then go back home and shift back into boymode without any interest in having congruency with any sort of internal female identity.


Congruence for me came when I started HRT when my metobolic hormone sync'd up with my brain and the GD went bye bye.

Congruence came for me when I went full time and people started calling me Ma’am and treating me like a woman. In other words, my life (not necessarily my body) began to match up with my soul, and I experienced congruence. All that other stuff (GRS and BA) was merely icing on the cake and had very little to do with that.


Worry less, transition more ;)

I think that’s the most intelligent and insightful thing I’ve read today.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

I agree.

Worry less. Transition more!

That's where the answers for each of us lie.

[KellyJameson]

It is so easy to get lost in the words so I get and to a point agree with the "worry less transition more" comments but I also understand why words are so important because transitioning is fraught with as many risks as not transitioning.

There is a triad that we live within made up of identity in all its forms combined with the personal and the public.

Gender is both personal and public and gender identity requires that our identity is "echoed back at us"

There are two psychological states. One where you need to use others because without them you have no identity and those with Borderline Personality Disorder live in this state so they only exist existentially through others much like children do in the first years of life with all the childs fears but in the brain of an adult.

Borderlines are extremely unstable because of their dependency on others and it is my personal opinion that most if not all transsexuals experience some aspects of this by being over dependent on others for their gender as "identity"

In my opinion it is important to fight against the need to be "echoed" while accepting the inevitability that you "must be echoed" to some degree.

To be a transsexual is to walk the edge of the razor always balanced precariously between "passing to well" and " not passing at all".

Both will keep you in sickness because they tie you to unhealthy psychological dependency on others as your public presentation of you.

Many, possible most Cisgendered women struggle with this same problem but it comes out in Anorexia, Body Dismorphic Disorder, Social Anxiety, Extreme Self Conciousness, ect..

They have their gender identity but what this identity is "built on" causes them grief because they are trying to "live up to impossible standards"

In my opinion it is critical to understand the dangers of our "public need to be echoed" so that you can have a more personal relationship with your "actual self as your gender"

My experience with gender dysphoria has always been more personal than public so I experienced my body as "the other" and this made me more reliant on "other people" to give me what my body "was not and could not"

The more physical changes I made the less I needed to "use others" to echo back to me what my body could not.

[Inna]

One is as much a social mask as the other!

To have innate feelings of being more like a girl then a boy is an abstract formed by native to birth brain. Everything then, within unfolding life is absorbed by this female brain, however, the discourse of such view of life and image of mans body reflected in every social circumstance provide for Gender Dysphoria.

From medical definition of a TS person, it is their utmost desire to convert the otherwise male body to female sexual characteristic. Sexual characteristic means basically everything one can see, from genitals, facial features, to the curves of their body.
Do observe, there are very mannish looking women out there, tall, butch, muscular, etc. however, none of them come through as MALE, they do register as manly women, a huge difference in gender marker recognition.

Passing is often used in context, but truly it is very wrong of a description of a need for TS woman to be seen and reacted upon as a innate Female.

Lastly, the concept of transition, the term which I my self have big problem with, is to become free of illness of TS and to become visually and intrinsically a Woman!!!!
Not TG, not TS, but genuine, in presentation, spirit, and manner!

[Marleena]

In the "something else" category falls those who are unconcerned about surgeries and hormones, yet live as women. I note here that this includes those I would absolutely classify as TS, including some who have identified female since early childhood. Additionally, this was pretty much THE "option" historically.

So my questions are these:

Does the advent of HRT and cross-sex surgeries invalidate the "something else" approach, if taken as a choice?

Is there truly a baseline CA drive that is associated with transsexuality, or is this inevitably personal?



Lea I didn't answer this one earlier. This question can be a minefield to answer. I certainly don't know enough to answer this question properly but it leads me to more questions and thoughts. Only the individual can decide usually with a gender therapist what is going on with them. Either you're a TS woman or you're not, right? Do all (TS) have to transition as proof? Is the need for SRS the only real proof one is TS? Should we decide here who is TS or not?

I think it is a personal choice to do just enough to get a better quality of life based on one's own situation. If you are TS I think it's great to have chemical and surgical options to improve that quality of life. I find myself caring less who is or is not actually TS.

[LeaP]

Congruence is internal and if you feel congruent then you are, irrespective of outward appearance, and you exude this to others. ... Congruence came for me when I went full time and people started calling me Maam ... I experienced congruence. All that other stuff (GRS and BA) was merely icing on the cake and had very little to do with that.

I like the differentiation between experiencing congruence vs making physical changes. Your phrasing borders on minimizing the need for physical congruence - I don't know if you really intended that. The projecting of the inner experience seems key, and Inna touches on this as well.




There are two psychological states. One where you need to use others because without them you have no identity and those with Borderline Personality Disorder live in this state so they only exist existentially through others much like children do in the first years of life with all the childs fears but in the brain of an adult.

Borderlines are extremely unstable because of their dependency on others and it is my personal opinion that most if not all transsexuals experience some aspects of this by being over dependent on others for their gender as "identity"

In my opinion it is important to fight against the need to be "echoed" while accepting the inevitability that you "must be echoed" to some degree.

...

The more physical changes I made the less I needed to "use others" to echo back to me what my body could not.

Brilliant, Kelly. All of it. I've excerpted the above as the core concept.


Passing is often used in context, but truly it is very wrong of a description of a need for TS woman to be seen and reacted upon as a innate Female.

I believe this completely. In fact, I think that most TS view the concept of passing like this more so than meaning strictly typical female appearance. An issue on the forum is that people are often not clear about what they mean by passing.


... This question can be a minefield to answer. I certainly don't know enough to answer this question properly but it leads me to more questions and thoughts. Only the individual can decide usually with a gender therapist what is going on with them. Either you're a TS woman or you're not, right? Do all (TS) have to transition as proof? Is the need for SRS the only real proof one is TS? Should we decide here who is TS or not?

... I find myself caring less who is or is not actually TS.

It is a minefield, and I appreciate that none of the responses have been from a position of offense. As to your questions, yes to either TS or not. Not every TS must transition, and you don't need to prove anything to anyone, though I will say that transition is a public validation. I don't have an answer as to the SRS question.

Should we decide here? Well, no, not specifically HERE in this forum, but TS among themselves? I think yes for many reasons, but that would be another thread. I don't think TS would or should be the only people who participate in making that determination, but I do think they are arguably the most important.

[Michelle.M]

I like the differentiation between experiencing congruence vs making physical changes. Your phrasing borders on minimizing the need for physical congruence - I don't know if you really intended that. The projecting of the inner experience seems key, and Inna touches on this as well..

Well, yes and no. No amount of physical changes will directly bring congruence, they will only bring passability, which in turn can cause people to treat you like a woman, which aids congruence. But no matter how good you look, if your internal mechanisms are not being realigned to allow you to claim your own previously unfulfilled womanhood then you’re not attaining congruence. This is why genetic women who don’t look very feminine at all seem to be plenty congruent.

I once knew a trans woman who had begun her transition a little while before I did. She looked quite passable, but everywhere we went she saw people reading her (whether they really were or not). Every few minutes she’d lean over and whisper “We just got read!” I’m not exaggerating - it was every three or four minutes! Drove me crazy, and this became very tiresome very quickly. Reflecting on this I came to the conclusion that she got read so much because she was hyper-vigilant about it, much like the budding adolescent who walks around the mall with her arms tightly crossed against her chest because she doesn’t want anyone to look at her and then complains that everyone was looking at her.

My trans friend was like that. Passability was not an issue, but her lack of congruence was, and she exuded that fish-out-of-water vibe everywhere she went.

In my opinion, we often put too much emphasis on the aspects of transition that don’t necessarily yield the greatest return for our efforts. As CharleneT so eloquently said, “Worry less, transition more”. Make the physical changes that make you feel comfortable and then carry on.