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Thread: Head, Heart or Other?

  1. #1
    Member Janice Ashton's Avatar
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    Head, Heart or Other?

    Not sure if this question has been raised before? Most likely it has:

    Having spent most of my life (now a senior) trying to deal with the question, who am I? Combined with so many years dealing with my Gender Dysphoria until finally I reached the point of my GRS surgery in September 2017 and life became so much better for me, I still have an unanswered question in my mind which I am seeking an answer?

    Therefore, I thought I would ask others how they feel in themselves about the question I am finding difficult to answer, indeed if there is a definitive answer, or is it a combination of answers. Perhaps you might like to offer your thoughts;

    For people who have gender identity issues that raise many questions and feelings from within us? Where are those questions raised from? Are they from our head or as many of us know we have feelings, so are the questions from the heart? Or is it a combination of both? Most people with gender issues know these questions are there, but where do they come from? Head, Heart, Other, Cognitive thoughts? I cannot find a definitive answer to this, perhaps there isn’t one or perhaps I shouldn’t question myself about it, but ultimately it remains a question.

    Any thoughts on your part?

  2. #2
    Call me Pam pamela7's Avatar
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    Hi Janice,

    Most of us have a collective of personal aspects distributed in space in and around the body, and also in time, relating to significant moments. Each of these aspects can be responding or answering to the questions. You can readily map where each 'i,me,you,myself" is, and start to know your own system. e.g. those "itchy feet" know something. :-)
    Happy to help.

    xx Pam
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJFyz73MRcg
    I used to believe this, now I'm in the company of many tiggers. A tigger does not wonder why she is a tigger, she just is a tigger.

    thanks to krististeph: tigger = TG'er .. T-I-GG-er

  3. #3
    Member Janice Ashton's Avatar
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    Thanks Pam;

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    Member Sara Olivia's Avatar
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    Hi Janice,

    I think it has a lot to do with perspective. What I mean by that is that from a scientific perspective it has to do with prenatal hormones and a lack of, or the wrong hormones, at critical stages of that development. This has resulted in certain regions of our brains physically developing more like the brains of the gender that we embrace. Hence you could say that gender identity is a result of brain structure and thus comes from our head.
    If the perspective is more from a religious point of view then the feelings originate more from having a female soul stuck in a male body or vice versa. At least that is how I would see it.

    Personally while I do believe in the science I would like to think that there is more to my conscience than a bunch of chemical interactions and neuronal electrical discharges. I'd like to believe that we all have souls and that is where these feelings come from. I sincerely believe that my soul has always been that of a woman yet somehow ended up in the wrong physical body.

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    Super Moderator Jeri Ann's Avatar
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    Janice, I'm not real smart and so I can't determine which questions you are referring to. The questions may differ from one person to the next. I think the cause of the questions is not within us but from the cultures that we find ourselves in. Society as a whole will not accept that transsexualism is a medical condition. As long as our cultures believe there is something wrong with being trans, there will be questions, I guess. I personally have stopped the questioning and simply moved on with my life.

  6. #6
    Transgender Person Pat's Avatar
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    Not to be flip, but the heart is not an organ of consciousness (though, granted, you will not be conscious long without one.) So "heart" and "head" are necessarily metaphorical in your question. If I make assumptions about that metaphor we'll probably fail to have a meeting of the minds since our metaphors probably won't match.

    If the question is really more "nature vs nurture" then I can say that they are finding DNA markers in trans people that are not in cis people, they're finding brain structures that match our reported gender better than they match the sex we were born with, they are finding trans people react to pheromones in accordance with their reported gender rather than how their sex would indicate. A couple of scientists even claim that they have identified a "transgender brain" (https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...sgender-brain/ ) -- all of which argues that it is probably more nature than nurture. After all, if being trans was a learned behavior, none of those things would be there.

    If you accept that there is a biological basis to being transgender, then the question becomes how does biology influence social behavior? After all, aren't social behaviors made up? There's no biological reason for boys to like blue and girls to like pink -- they're just told that that's what they should like. The current leading theory is that our behavior conditioning mechanisms make us feel good when we conform to the gender role we feel is natural to us. (And conversely, if we continue to perform in a role we feel is not natural to us, stress builds up.) That would explain why two identical pairs of jeans, one labeled "male" and one labeled "female" provoke different reactions from us when we put them on.

    Is that anywhere near what you're asking?
    I am not a woman; I don't want to be a woman; I don't want to be mistaken for a woman.
    I am not a man; I don't want to be a man; I don't want to be mistaken for a man.
    I am a transgender person. And I'm still figuring out what that means.

  7. #7
    Super Moderator Jeri Ann's Avatar
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    Since ancient times the word heart has been used to mean things other than the organ that pumps blood. I don't even have to look to assure you that any dictionary would have many definitions for the word. It might mean courage, sympathy, generosity, even your whole being as in "with all your heart". The word heart appears in the Bible 830 times. Only six of those times does it refer to the organ that pumps blood. I don't think that anyone here thought that Janice thought that a heart, as in blood pumping muscle, generated questions.

  8. #8
    Transgender Person Pat's Avatar
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    Jeri Ann -- We may be in violent agreement. As you note:
    Quote Originally Posted by Jeri Ann View Post
    I don't even have to look to assure you that any dictionary would have many definitions for the word. It might mean courage, sympathy, generosity, even your whole being as in "with all your heart".
    In other words, the word "heart" was being used as a metaphor. And as a metaphor it has a bunch of different meanings which could leave us talking at cross purposes if she meant one and I interpreted it as another. So let's get the metaphors out of the way (I know they're poetic and lovely and I use metaphor a lot myself) and use less ambiguous terms. I wasn't trying to be obtuse or upset anyone.
    I am not a woman; I don't want to be a woman; I don't want to be mistaken for a woman.
    I am not a man; I don't want to be a man; I don't want to be mistaken for a man.
    I am a transgender person. And I'm still figuring out what that means.

  9. #9
    Member Janice Ashton's Avatar
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    Hi everyone,

    Lots of very interesting answers and views all of which are most likely relevant in the whole question. So thank you Sara, Jeri and Pat for your in depth answers.
    I would just like to clarify one point, when I mention "Heart" I am not referring to it as the physical organ as is and the service it provides, I was using this to purvey it as the in depth feeling I think most of us feel, an emotional feeling from within. This in turn tends to activate thoughts in my brain which in turn strangely enough questions my feelings. If that makes sense? Again, some very different answers thank you all;

  10. #10
    happy to be her Sarah Doepner's Avatar
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    I tend to think our situation is best explained by the old "three leg stool", rather than a two factor explaination. One is the physical or science based explanations underlying the development of a transgender identity, or the "head" part of the original question. Second is the society we live in as it establishes the context where we grow up, where we are supported or damned or something in between. The third would be our own emotional response to the first two and becomes the "heart" aspect of the equation.

    All three have push/pull as they relate to the others. How much validity you place in the science vs. a societal explanation for how you came to be transgender has an impact on your emotional state of play. Having a strong personal understanding our how you feel can overcome the other two at times, but all three seem to be part of our understanding. I see a lot of people who place more value on the social expectations in the form of family, faith or culture and it overrules both science and their emotions. I'm not sure where the best balance point is, but it's likely different for each of us.
    Sarah
    Being transgender isn't a lifestyle choice. How you deal with it is.

  11. #11
    Senior Member KellyJameson's Avatar
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    The need for identity is so ubiquitous that it does not appear as a need unless it is unfulfilled. Just like oxygen you do not notice its absence until you are deprived of it and depending on how this deprivation takes place, you may suffer the consequences before realizing the danger.

    http://changingminds.org/explanation...s/identity.htm

    http://mepeace.org/forum/topics/661876:Topic:41931

    Understand the significance of identity and it makes things much clearer IMO
    Last edited by KellyJameson; 02-18-2018 at 09:22 PM.
    The Psychology of Conformity
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARGczzoPASo

    Mars brain, Venus brain: John Gray at TEDxBend
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuM7ZS7nodk

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    Well said, Kelly.
    Lea

  13. #13
    Super Moderator Jeri Ann's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by KellyJameson View Post
    Understand the significance of identity and it makes things much clearer IMO
    This is it! We are deeply driven by our sense of identity! Unfortunately so many people can only find a sense of identity in what they do for a living or how much they own, etc. Very few people, it seems, know who and what they authentically are.

    Within the trans community there is often conflict between what we feel we are and what our culture expects us to be. All of my life I knew I was transsexual. I can't remember when or where I first became aware of the term but I remember looking the subject up in the card catalog at college in 1969. I experienced this conflict all of my life. My culture believed that being trans was perverse or deviant. I knew in my heart (I know, a metaphor. But let's not have another Language lesson.) that I was not perverse or deviant.

    However, our cultures can be influential enough to provide plenty of guilt and shame. I was extremely conflicted for most of my life. While pretending to be the best "guy" that I could, I was secretly seeking opportunities to express my true self and, occasionally contemplating ways to remove my own junk and survive the ordeal.

    Turning the corner on this struggle came as a result of my learning that the American Medical Association embraced transsexualism as a medical condition in 2008. Even though the American Psychiatric Association had not revised its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which still included "Gender Identity Disorder", considering transsexualism to be a disorder was falling from favor for that profession. The newest edition, The DSM 5, refers to Gender Dysphoria, as a condition, not a disorder.

    Unfortunately I didn't become aware of this change in thinking/diagnosis until a few years ago. Even more unfortunate is the fact that most cultures still don't know and are slow to change when they do. However, knowing beyond a shadow of doubt that I didn't have a disorder, that I was conclusively not deviant or perverse, gave me a measure of peace and freed me to embrace a real and authentic identity. Tragically, I have had to abandon the culture that still condemns me, and still contains all of my loved ones, in order to embrace that identity.

    BTW, The Texas Transgender Antidiscrimination Summit will be held at the University of Houston this summer. The organization is seeking donations for funding this effort. For those who have had enough talking about discrimination, and want to do something tangible, Google the TTAS or message me and I will give you the contacts through which you can make a difference. Together we can make a difference.

    Oh, good links Kelly. Abraham Maslow takes me back to my Educational Psychology class in my undergraduate work. No, Abraham didn't teach the class, Ken Briggs did.
    Last edited by Jeri Ann; 02-20-2018 at 07:15 PM.

  14. #14
    Member Janice Ashton's Avatar
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    Hello again all,

    Since raising this question (in a basic way it must be said), I have to admit I am finding the replies extremely interesting, so thank you Sarah, Kelly and Jeri Ann for the latest contributions. Jeri Ann I particularly liked you last post very informative as are others as well.

  15. #15
    Gold Member Kaitlyn Michele's Avatar
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    very interesting thoughts.... it kind of can be summed up as "just be"....and our hierarchy of needs is what it means to be...we fulfill our needs.

    transition only if you NEED to....ive heard that so many times its a cliche!!!...but I often say that cliches are about when its so true you have no other way to communicate it..
    I am real

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    Janice,
    I feel the questions stem from the inner conflict .
    I see myself as a male with a female overlay, parts of the brain are dealing with issues in different ways , my gender counsellor suggested my female side was intent on taking over . Part of my brain is telling me these thoughts are wrong you're a man, the female trait is applying pressure saying you need to do this. I guess it's explaining GD, so we face the dilemma of which part of our brain is right , how does it want me to live my life ? This is the part that is so difficult to explain to other people that don't have this trait , why do we need to wear clothes of the opposite sex ? Why can it make so much difference ? They are just clothes , pieces of material !
    To me they are the window to the World of how you feel inside , I feel like this inside so I need an outer appearance to match it .

    They all come from the head but I also had that gut feeling for most of my life that something wasn't right , so is that another physical manifestation ?

  17. #17
    Member Janice Ashton's Avatar
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    Thank you Teresa for your thoughts and comments;

    I think a lot of us who know the feelings and angst we go through trying to find ourselves and who we really are have similar thoughts to those you have presented. Each of us are different but most of us all follow a similar track that we struggle to understand. I can only talk for myself here, but in my case going the full distance so to speak has more than answered my inner questions and feelings. I am so much more relaxed with myself now and I am finding life so much better. So I guess the help I have received along with the route I have taken was the right thing to do? Leaving me in a much better place than I was before.
    Thanks again for your comments.

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    Hi, Janice! A good question and one I think about from time to time.

    My answer would in one sense be that being transgender is not based on feelings. Not too long ago on a forum (which is not a trans forum per se but where trans issues come up from time to time), two cisgender women basically said, "What does it feel like to be a woman? It doesn't feel like anything at all. It's just what I am."

    I'd go along with that because if someone were to ask me what it feels like to be trans, I'd answer, it doesn't feel like anything at all. It's just what I am. Now our enemies will often say, "You're not a woman just because you say you feel like a woman." But I don't say that I feel like a woman. I don't know what it feels like to be a woman. Cisgender women themselves don't know.

    This is not to say that feelings don't come into the equation at all. E.g., one of the ciswomen above said that getting ready to have sex with her partner made her feel very much like a woman. I.e., in certain circumstances what you are will arouse feelings in you.

    In that respect we all know what it feels like not to be able to live our lives as we need to. When we come out and start living our lives authentically, our feelings change totally. I myself was in the closet well into my 50's. So when I started living female, it was quite a change and I experienced the usual feelings--awkwardness, uncertainty, and so on. Now that I've been out more than five years, living female seems perfectly natural. I get dressed in the morning, go out, interact with other people, etc., without giving much thought to what I'm doing.

    So there certainly are feelings that will arise in connection with being trans, but I would say that they're secondary. It's not feelings that make us trans. It's being trans that will give rise to feelings. So how do we know we're trans? For me, it's simply something I know. I knew from an early age that I was "different"--though given my background it took me quite some time to work out what that difference was. It's like the question, how could David Reimer have known he was/was supposed to be male? He just knew. His gender identity was male. He simply knew that and wanted to live accordingly.

    I'd say that gender identity is a very, very deep part of us. It's in the head, in the sense that it's something we "know". It's like our hands and feet and all the rest. It's simply a part of us. And it might be true to say that we don't know how we know.

    I think this fact causes us some problems vis-a-vis our enemies. They often want "proof", especially scientific proof, that we are what we say we are. This answer, "It's just what I am," doesn't satisfy them. Their basic response to that is, "Well, you're just messed up. Otherwise you wouldn't have the feelings and desires that you have." The difficulty for us is that we're being required to explain something that can't be explained.

    But as I've pointed out, cis people can't explain why they are what they are. "It doesn't feel like anything at all. It's just what I am." People will accept that answer from a cisgender person, but not from a transgender person.

    So, this is something I think about, but I don't worry about it. I know what I am, and the people I live among accept what I am. They've seen too much evidence to try and deny I'm trans. If all the rest want to worry about it, that's up to them.

  19. #19
    Member Janice Ashton's Avatar
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    Hello Foxglove,

    Some very interesting points you have offered in reply to the question and a lot I can connect with. As I read through the thread I knew my thoughts were of a similar nature as I noticed I was nodding at points you raised and agreeing with what you say.
    There has been some very good answers to this post by people who know what it's like being and living as Trans and although we are all travelling in the same direction in one way or another, we can say, each have many similarities of which we agree, or disagree on certain points, but as you say we cannot realistically quantify any substance or provide proof to say why we are? like we are. Fascinating stuff, and as said it's just a case of, "I am who I am"! and for me 'Live and let live';

    Thanks for your comments

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    Foxglove,
    You an interesting point , about what is in our heads.

    A while ago someone raised a question in M/F section, I can't remember what it was but required an answer from a male perspective. I answered by saying I don't know what a true male perspective is because I can only answer from the way I'm wired, that is as a TG . It has to have some bias between male and female but exactly where I can't answer .

    So we can truly say we don't know what it's like to be a total male or a total female . If you like we aren't cis gender male or female but cis TG somewhere in the middle .

    Putting that one over is possibly asking too much !

    To answer Janice's question that is what is in our heads . To some it's possibly weird to me I'm thinking more that I'm lucky to have that extra dimension , if you can learn to embrace it .
    Last edited by Teresa; 03-05-2018 at 06:59 AM.

  21. #21
    Gold Member Kaitlyn Michele's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Foxglove View Post
    It's not feelings that make us trans. It's being trans that will give rise to feelings. So how do we know we're trans? For me, it's simply something I know. .
    Excellent!
    I am real

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