Badtranny, I know that you plan to fully transition but in your opinion do you think it's possible to live as a fem guy indefinitely? I just wondering if that could possibly be an option for those who do not seek a full transition with SRS.Originally Posted by Badtranny
“What would we be if we were normal? I can't even picture it.” – Sookie Stackhouse
Oh yes doll, it's absolutely possible. If I had a brain in my head I would do that myself!
The problem for me, is that while I'm enjoying the journey (I always do) being a fem guy or gender queer is not really who I am. Though it would be much easier if I were.
I know I'm not Melissa, but I will nonetheless volunteer my opinion.
I do think that some people may be able to live as a fem guy without going the whole way through transition. If they suffer from gender dysphoria, provided that it does not become so acute that they can no longer take functioning as a man, then they may well be able to manage the dysphoria by living as you describe.
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Galileo said "You cannot teach a man anything" and they accuse ME of being sexist :facepalm:
Never ascribe to malice that which can be easily explained by sheer stupidity
Jenn, if you don't mind my asking, what was the difference in the mindsets, in your experience, and why did you decide to stop living as a woman full time?
Tell me about gender dysphoria. I gather there are some here who look at it as being black/white, meaning people who are gender dysphoric are TSs who need to transition, and CDs don't have any gender dysphoria at all.
I take it you see it as a scale? CDs can also have less intense gender dysphoria? Or with a CD like my SO (who considers herself to be dualgender), would there be any gender dysphoria at all?
I see GID as being on a scale as well but I haven't defined it properly for myself I guess. I take it that gender dysphoria is an unhappiness with one's birth gender. Yet, there are people here who quite enjoy presenting in their birth and femme genders, and for them the femme presentation is not sexual and it is a lot more than just wearing the clothes.
Last edited by ReineD; 08-22-2011 at 01:47 PM. Reason: Added Rianna's comment
Reine
Its really hard to say. Have I thought about whether I'm a transexual...of course. Each of us probably at least asks ourselves that question at some point. Certainly, for most of my life there has been a part of me that longed to be a woman. But I can't say that I've ever seriously considered transitioning in any way.
I do agree with the idea that there is no black and white definition of transexual, however. I each of us occupies a unique place along a spectrum of characteristics. And I also think that each of us evolves in our understanding of self over time. I'm not the same person I was 20 years ago...and by any objective standard, I have moved further towards the transexual end of the spectrum. Where will I be in 5 years - I simply don't know.
Jaycee, i knew beyond a shadow of doubt that i wanted female hormones in my body but i was scared about surgeries, not that i haven't always wanted girl parts but i was scared of surgery to the point where i thought i would be OK with being non op. like anything one does not know until one tries! I think hormones can be diagnostic though i wouldn't get in the habit of going back and forth! 6 months or less isn't going to really change anything physically but would give you an idea about weather you liked the mental and emotional changes. like Misty said i want people to gender me female. i did have to be in a place where desperation trumped fear of loss before i was willing to do anything about it. Truth is i haven't lost anything that wasn't a sham anyway but if you are that unsure of yourself it will show and people will subconsciously react to your self doubt.
Well I can tell you this for a fact, I rarely mow my own lawn, and I NEVER paint my own bedroom or any other room. I pay other people to do those things. From the time I was eight years old until I finished eleventh grade it was my chore to mow the yard. And we had a decent size lawn. So I hate that. Then my father got me a job one summer painting buildings. The last time I had someone paint the interior of my house the smell of the paint just brings back memories of being out in the hot sun painting. So I hate that.
So, I can tell you this. When I become a TS, you can know for sure that if any guy is going to get in my panties, he is going to either pay someone to cut my grass or get out and do it himself. Not only that but he's gonna pay for me to get my eyebrows done, my fingernails done and my pedicure. Otherwise he can carry his sorry, good for nothing, jive, raggedy, punk a**! I ain't no Navaho, I'm a Nawlinsho!
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This is only my take on the subject and I don't have any scientific evidence to back it up but here goes:
The word Dysphoria is defined by Websters to mean dissatisfaction or morbid restlessness. To me Gender Dysphoria is more than simply being unhappy with one's assigned gender it is more about knowing that your gender and your natal sex do not match.
I believe that gender dysphoria is what differentiates someone who is transsexual from other transgender folk, but that some people can learn to live with the dysphoria for very long periods of time.
My own experience is that I managed to function for over 4 decades despite knowing that my birth sex did not match my gender. Unlike some members of our community, it did however prevent me from entering into any meaningful relationship with a significant other - I didn't know how to be the man in the couple and I have never been attracted to men. Was I TS during that period? Definitely. Did I allow myself to want to transition? Some of the time. Did I lie to myself about the need to transition? Most of the time.
Based (partly) on this experience, I can imagine a TS who manages to cope with the dysphoria without needing to transition for a very large part of their life. In my not so humble opinion (after all what politician can truly claim humility?) it is only when the dysphoria becomes extremely acute that people like myself find ourselves faced with the stark choice between transition and suicide.
I think that what I am saying is that although some TS folk can get by with just cross-dressing, most CD'ers are not suffering from Gender Dysphoria, but truly know themselves to be men who have a feminine side or who simply like the clothing / get a thrill from the clothing.
I would not expect someone who knows themself to be dual gender to suffer from Gender Dysphoria as I understand it.
We transsexuals are sometimes accused of seeing things in almost the same black & white terms as the cis folk, but to me Transgender is a reality and a spectrum which encompasses dual gender, transsexual and other forms of gender variance.
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This above all: To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any
Galileo said "You cannot teach a man anything" and they accuse ME of being sexist :facepalm:
Never ascribe to malice that which can be easily explained by sheer stupidity
What would you call it if:
You have no attachment to being male; it's just "there"
Not upset at not being born/growing up female
Is it one of those try it and see type things?
Sometimes I wonder about spending a lot or most of the time en femme but it's hard when you look in the mirror and see a male looking back.
I keep questioning being trans but I have no feelings toward srs, I have no attachment to the little guy but don't care enough to get him changed over.
I definitely did grow up "different" though, something was always off seeing as I had to actively copy and learn male traits since I felt they did not come naturally.
One time I remember a group of girls insulting my by basically saying "he acts, talks like us" or something similar.
So confused.
Some of my earliest memories are those of wanting to be a girl. Dressing as one was the farthest thing from my mind. If it wasn't for a set of circumstances that happened when I was eleven I don't think I would ever had become a CDer.
Thanks for your insight, Rianna!
This is wonderful for those who can afford it, and I'm sure that the women who do all this manual work would hire someone to do it for them if they had high paying jobs too. Unfortunately, this is not the standard of living for the average woman in our society, especially if she is a single mom.
And then there are the millions of married women who are settled in a marriage with average income and who, together with their husbands, do see themselves in more of an egalitarian relationship. Or, they want the bedroom painted, their husband is not available to do this or he is unwilling, so they do it themselves.
Well, I wish you all the best in finding such a prince charming. lol. I'm sure they do exist but unfortunately, nowadays they are far and few between, especially after the average woman is past her prime childbearing years. And then honestly it would be a feat to keep her guy as 'interested' in 'taking care of the little lady' after the marriage has settled past the first flush of passion stage, that is, IF they have the kind of money to keep such standards of living. The average woman plucks her own eyebrows, does her own nails, and shaves her own legs.So, I can tell you this. When I become a TS, you can know for sure that if any guy is going to get in my panties, he is going to either pay someone to cut my grass or get out and do it himself. Not only that but he's gonna pay for me to get my eyebrows done, my fingernails done and my pedicure. Otherwise he can carry his sorry, good for nothing, jive, raggedy, punk a**! I ain't no Navaho, I'm a Nawlinsho!
Reine
To answer the OP's question outright, the answer is "No".
I believe that my dressing up as a female was something I did as an experiment
to help me understand who I really was because of my gender identity disorder.
I think that many crossdressers wrestle with this one when we were younger. Did my crosdressing make me think I am a transexual? It did come up in my mind from time to time as I was growing up. As an adult, I have no such thoughts. I'm happy being me, it's just there's this little part of my mind that has different and very specific "needs". I couldn't live as a woman forever. I don't have MANY of the same desires or needs as a woman. Only a few, just not enough to tip the scale.
Thanks for wishing me success with my new life!! I will be sure to tell everyone that I could not have done it without you! LOL!! Well anyone can mow the yard, that doesn't take money, just a lawn mower and some gas. So yeah, if he couldn't even do that, well it's hit the road buster!!Well, I wish you all the best in finding such a prince charming. lol. I'm sure they do exist but unfortunately, nowadays they are far and few between, especially after the average woman is past her prime childbearing years. And then honestly it would be a feat to keep her guy as 'interested' in 'taking care of the little lady' after the marriage has settled past the first flush of passion stage, that is, IF they have the kind of money to keep such standards of living. The average woman plucks her own eyebrows, does her own nails, and shaves her own legs.
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I think I can say that CD'ing raised my consciousness so I realized eventually that I was TS. Before that the reality was repressed so I was not conscious of it, though occasionally it would break through into my conscious in odd ways that I would not recognize. In such a state of repression, you can think you are just CD when you really could manage transition to TS.
Those professionals giving you a diagnosis, since most who come to them are really fixed on being TS and wanting to transition, and since therapists are used to this kind of patient, can miss the sublty of the thinking of those whose transsexuality is still buried in the unconscious. The latter type of patient is very hard to deal with, a lot more time-consuming and more difficult to do justice to.
Last edited by Beth-Lock; 08-24-2011 at 05:46 AM.
[QUOTE=ReineD;2577137]Jenn, if you don't mind my asking, what was the difference in the mindsets, in your experience, and why did you decide to stop living as a woman full time?
Gosh...its LOTS of things...but overall I would have to say its a softer way of looking at things. Or looking at things in whole and not just a see - shoot - eat - attitude. Its a guy services the car then goes to a movie - comes in, showers (maybe), finds something that smells ok in the clothes pile or maybe clean in the closet if its a date, and heads out - 15 minutes tops. A girl services a car - she also cleans the air cleaner top while standing there...and the top of the grill...then comes in to clean up...showers...spends 5-10 minutes on the outfit, dresses, heads to movie...45 mins to hour minimum (if with makeup). Not that there is a problem with either scenario, just one has more focus on the end as opposed to seeing the process/total picture. Speaking of which, here is a good example...do you look at a painting as a whole then see the details, or see the details then view the whole painting first? One is masculine, the other feminine. Theres lots of things to the mindset.
On the other, I loved my wife so much that when she asked me to go back to being a "guy" I did it. It took a long time (almost longer than going the other way) as for almost a year I continued to dress as a woman for work then "crossdress" as a guy at home. Towards the end when I wasn't making real strides at getting back to male I cut my hair to a bob thinking that would make it easier to transition back but it just made it harder. I had a haircut that wasn't very fem for work so I over-compensated with "frilly" at work and when I got home the hair...crap..what do you do with it... Then an old employer called wanting me to relocate back to Colorado. He didn't care who came (her or him) but who ever showed up had to be one or the other which made the complete switch to male kinda easier but not. Since I had been on T blockers since near the start of puberty, I now looked more like a girl who had started t shots as opposed to guy... anyway...sorry to ramble - its a long story
Jenn
JMO; I know you were asking someone else, but here's how I see it. Yes, you can look at it as a scale. Some of us, usually those who are TS, feel very uncomfortable in our male (or female in the case of FtM folks) self to the point of not being to focus on anything else at all unless we are somehow able to express that we feel female (or for FtM, male). For others, it may be something as simple as an underlying feeling that something's just not quite right, but we don't know what (until we figure it out, of course). And of course some people feel fine no matter how they present themselves (to the world as well as to themselves). However, it is much easier for a FtM to express male attire/behavior in subtle ways without being considered out of place. Guys displaying any female traits or clothes are pretty much automatically noticed by everyone .Reined wrote: Tell me about gender dysphoria. I gather there are some here who look at it as being black/white, meaning people who are gender dysphoric are TSs who need to transition, and CDs don't have any gender dysphoria at all.
I take it you see it as a scale? CDs can also have less intense gender dysphoria? Or with a CD like my SO (who considers herself to be dualgender), would there be any gender dysphoria at all?
I see GID as being on a scale as well but I haven't defined it properly for myself I guess. I take it that gender dysphoria is an unhappiness with one's birth gender. Yet, there are people here who quite enjoy presenting in their birth and femme genders, and for them the femme presentation is not sexual and it is a lot more than just wearing the clothes. Jenn, if you don't mind my asking, what was the difference in the mindsets, in your experience, and why did you decide to stop living as a woman full time?
Some causes of crossdressing you've probably never even considered: My TG biography at:http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/...=1#post1490560
There's an addendum at post # 82 on that thread, too. It's about a ten minute read.
Why don't we understand our desire to dress, behave and feel like a girl? Because from childhood, boys are told that the worst possible thing we can be, is a sissy. This feeling is so ingrained into our psyche, that we will suppress any thoughts that connect us to being or wanting to be feminine, even to the point of creating separate personalities to assign those female feelings into.
I've been thinking about this a bit as well particularly the "scale" issue.
I'm tempted to try and analyse this as best I can with my scientific training.
By definition a "scale" is a linear measurement with a start and end point. It can be continuous (e.g. a number scale from 0-1) where there are an infinite number of points along the scale or it can be discreet where there are a set number of points (e.g. the integers between 0 and 10).
So the problem I have with describing TG, CD or GID as a "scale" is three fold.
Firstly I don't think that we have a defined and agreed end points on the scale. If we are going to say that "male" is one end and "female" is the other then how are we going to define those points. Do we define them physically (i.e. testis, penis, breasts, vagina, uterus)? What defines maleness. What defines femaleness.
The second issue I have is related to the definition of end points in that I think there are way too many variables to include them all on one "scale". In the above case we don't have one scale we have multiple ordinal scales (i.e. testis / no testis. Penis / no penis. Uterus / no uterus). Similarly with say using hormone levels on our scale we end up with multiple scales for testosterone, oestrogen, progesterone, GnRH, LH and the list goes on.
The third issue I have is that of perception and what could be loosely called measurement bias. That is that our perceptions and those of society influence what regard as typically "male" and typically "female". You can find examples of this at a superficial level in cultural differences and history (e.g. matriarchal societies where many activities and behaviours we consider typically male are exhibited by socially accepted genetic females) or on a deeper philosophical level where everything we perceive and measure, no matter how "objective" is influenced by the measurer (any quantum physicists can go to town on that one!). What this means is that whatever scale we come up with is going to be so influenced by society and those who develop the scale that there is a significant chance that it will be meaningless when applied to individual cases.
The upshot of the above is that I believe persuing a TG "scale" is meaningless. To get a measurable and definable scale you would have to put so many conditions and narrow the definition of "TG" that it would be useless.
Adina
To Jay Cee , the original poster:
The question of being transsexual.
To me the answer is no.
I have wrestled with the question many times, and I have come to the conclusion that I could never be happy in one gender, so therfore I feel that I'm both. This works for me.
In honesty, maybe there is no such thing as gender. i don't really need it.
maybe it works for some....not me though.
I think what's NATURALLY inside you will lead you to think you are a TS. In my very humble opinion cross dressing can, in certain situations, help make you aware of what's inside. But at the end of the day, it's what's inside that counts.
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I don't believe it lead me to think I am Transsexual.
I have always wished I was a woman and for me I believe that to be the fundamental difference between a CD and a TS. While I wish for it a TS feels she is and needs to correct a physical state to match the inner image.
Years ago there was a scale introduced I believe by Harry Benjamin where 1 was a fetishist attracted to just the clothes for sexual reasons and 10 was a TS who feels she is female and needs to change her appearance to match that feeling.
For me I realize that I am more a 7 or so. While I have a need to express my femininity I don't feel I was "born in the wrong body". It's not about the clothes for me, though it was when I began at age 7 and until I was in my 20's. Now it is simply what I wear to help express my femininity and have others see that part of me.
I don't wear women's clothes, I wear MY clothes !
What's funny to me is when i was suppressing my urges to crossdress it lead me to believe that i was trans. After i broke down and bought my own clothes those thoughts went away.
On that scale, I would have to assign myself a 2 or 3.
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