How do you "become" a woman?

[LeaP]

...You don't convert to female or gay because of some change in world views. It's not a conversion.

...

This is an interesting one. I sometimes wonder what suppression and repression really are. It's nothing of substance really it's a process or a mechanism but not in and of itself of value. Remember when I said about myself that I became the instrument of my own subjugation. I have no idea why we use these mechanisms to shovel untruth about ourselves into our own pocket. The interesting thing is that these are social mechanism, I reject the idea, that they are psychological. It is the fear of the freak when she stands in front of the mirror and someone might walk by behind and see what she sees.

Krisi's comment might be phrased in an unfortunate manner, but hers is essentially another version (albeit a more positive one) of the mental disorder or mid-life crisis explanation. It substitutes a decision or conversion experience for the irresistible motivational aspects of the others. Another, less savory version of the decision approach is the depraved, fetish manipulator who transitions to deceive men. All of them presume taking on a non-native identity. Doubtless the version that is selected depends on what naturally appeals to the observer. Someone intimately familiar with the religious conversion experience could easily project that onto transition motivation.

Kathryn, I have little doubt that fear and social motivations are important triggers, no matter whether considered as explicit, external fears or internalized mores, but I can tell you of my own hard experience that suppression and compartmentalization are real psychological phenomena. Many things can corrupt the mind. Violation of norms and expectations are among the most powerful. What starts out as – or is at least rooted in - social mechanics becomes a coping mechanism becomes corruption. This is seen in endless behavioral, adjustment, criminal, social and psychological variations.

... Which is why it is so interesting to pose Krisi's little statement against your comments on suppression or Jorja's wondering statement. Minimally, all of them call identity into question, if not outright challenge it's reality. Krisi's is obvious. Jorja asks in good faith, but the question's foundation is common among young transitioners. To wit, how can what is real and strong be held back for so long. I.e., maybe it's not real or wasn't intense?

Yours is more subtle and turns the approaches above on their heads. It invalidates a psychological coping mechanism in order to preserve the reality of the identity! It's as if you are expressing a concern that suppressing and compartmentalizing identity invalidates it somehow. There have been hints in this thread already as to where some people might take that, including the notions of dual and mixed identity. I know you reject that for transsexed people, though you accept for the gender variant. So your response is instead to question the reality of the coping mechanism to preserve the primacy of one identity.

But it is not necessary to do so. I can tell you with 100% certainty, out of my own experience that it is possible to do something, dismiss it, and not remember it. To box things up as "me" and "not me", real and unreal, permanent versus transitory. To build up these behaviors to where they are entirely unconscious. And that when you do, they are no different than any other aspect of your personality. Fully real and fully functioning in your day-to-day life. Moreover, that it is possible to accept the existence a false persona that has real world consequences, hence it's own reality as part of your identity in some ways, while maintaining that there is a core or foundational identity that is primary and which, when freed, can wipe the other away almost as if it never existed.

Surely this is why, in the end, what you do is more important than what you think when it comes to identity. Although it is true that the sense of what you are is inborn and cannot be changed, it is also true that every manifestation of its existence, whether good or bad, cis or not, normal or twisted, or something else, is a real part of you. Put another way, that means my "false" persona was a necessary – and real – manifestation of female identity for me. Not that it was female in itself in any conventional sense, of course, but that it came out of the combination of a female identity, male physical circumstances, and my psychological makeup. The "man" is just as real, in a way, as the woman. But that does not mean I have a mixed gender identity.