Quote Originally Posted by Kathryn Martin View Post
In this day and age everyone calls themselves transsexual because it provides an otherwise currently unavailable legitimacy. If more effort and creativity was expended on describing the phenomena of gender variance and gender queer/fluid, people would recognize that transsexualism is an extremely rare condition because it involves a gender/sex conflict which occurs rarely. Because of the legitimacy issue too many believe that in order to create a believable and credible narrative they must desire hormones and even SRS and then often excuse themselves from it for all sorts of reasons, such as medical and financial etc. to avoid the consequences of something they really do not want or need. We have been over this. The result is regretters, people that should never have had surgery and remain men in surgically altered bodies thinking of de-transitioning or ending up lonely social pariahs.
I could not agree with you more!!

I don't know how we would go about this in our society, getting people to understand that gender is not binary. How do we convince (what we now mostly call) CDers that they are not, in fact female, when they feel happiest expressing femininity? I've discovered that the concept of non-binary is difficult for most people to understand ... certainly it is for most cis-genders, but I suspect for some transsexuals as well who haven't really thought about it, since it is not something that is visible in the people around us.

I haven't spent a great deal of time reading about the changing definitions in the DSM, as regards gender variants who are not transsexual so I confess I don't know how helpful or not helpful is the current definitions for the gender non-conforming (non transsexuals). I haven't even combed through the WPATH SOC to see how they define the non TSs (gender non-conforming) and what they recommend in terms of treatment. Admittedly, there isn't a great deal of physical treatment required if a birth-male does not need to alter his body through HRT or GRS. What is required, is to change society's attitudes to the point where people are more tolerant of gender variance. I don't know how possible this is.

As a cisperson, I personally find it much easier to understand transmen and transwomen than someone who experiences a lesser degree of gender dysphoria, even though I am fully supportive and I take their word for it that they are not fully happy in their birth genders as society defines it.