The recent resumption of the Anti-choice terrorists war on women has had me thinking about how to talk about a somewhat related, gender specific, issue that like the right of a woman to control her own body raises emotions to the point no one listens. The entire HBS/Classic transsexuals vs. the transgenders.
Unlike the Anti-Choice vs. the Pro Choice I do not feel there is a deliberate intent to cause major harm, but the outcome is going to result in it regardless as an unintended consequence. To begin, for those born with the now understood medically neurological condition known as classic transsexuality, eventual body correction is essential to any quality of life and indeed, in most cases, eventually life itself. This used to be widely understood and even embraced. It is the reason the HBIGDA (now WPATH) organization even existed. It was the sole reason for setting up gender clinics and the original purpose of having gender therapists to begin with.
After almost two decades of the “transgender umbrella” this is no longer true and that fact, by itself, poses a very real, very immediate threat to those who were born with the condition. Some of us have complained loudly and longly about the erasure from view of classic transsexuality. We’ve been called every name in the book for doing so but the reason most of us continue has nothing to do with claiming to be “more woman than thou”, greater levels of legitimacy, hatred of crossdressers and drag queens or any of the other myriad reasons (most of which are highly insulting). It boils down to one thing, this erasure will eventually cost the lives of those born with the condition who follow us. It already has made the mechanics of transition vastly more difficult legally. Eventually it will result in greatly reduced access to medical care for needed treatment. This is the trans equivalent of a return to coathanger abortions.
The results are already apparent with the scandal in Australia that is shutting down it’s major gender clinic. When you remove the distinction between those who are some sort of gender variant and those who are neurologically intersexed, the professionals, long accustom to the screams of transphobia aimed at anyone who actually puts brakes on any demand for surgery or hormones, stop all effective gatekeeping and the number of surgical regretors rises. And this is absolutely needless because with those who actually are neurologically intersexed, satisfaction with even mediocre surgical results is almost 100% but with those who aren’t as many as 70% have post surgical regrets. Those figures are direct from psychiatrists knowledgeable about the subject.
Most of us on the other side are often amazed at the number of transgender people who slide through the system because most of us have zero trouble telling who is one of us and who isn’t with even a brief face to face meeting. When I started my own journey I met mostly around 90% self proclaimed transsexuals who vibed that way to me. My own original therapist used to arrange for me to meet her new gender clients and tell her who I thought was and wasn’t the “real deal” and relied on that. Now professionally that was inappropriate and I’ll be the first to admit that but in retrospect it made sense too.
In the past six or seven years the bulk of the self-proclaimed transsexuals I’ve encountered do not vibe neurologically intersexed. Many of them are openly very very sexual fetishist in nature consuming vast amounts of she-male porn and owning wardrobes that are primarily fetishistic in nature. And they have zero problem getting through the system. If you cannot see the problem here I am at a loss to explain it. Those who remain non-ops will not have a problem but those who seek surgery are odds on likely to be regretors and every new regretor fuels the Blanchard/Bailey/McHugh machine to eventually make surgery and maybe even hormones impossible to get.
This is my problem with the transgender movement. Every time one of them loudly proclaims themselves a transsexual who does not need surgery the legitimacy of surgery as a needed treatment for actual classic transsexuals takes a hit. Every time transgender is equated in the public mind with classic transsexuality, every time the simple truth of “woman trapped in a man’s body” is ridiculed by transgenders the eventual public non-acceptance of the need for surgery is harmed, the understanding needed to keep it available for those it is a matter of eventual life or death will die.
We aren’t fighting transgenders for legitimacy as women. Let them be whoever they wish, live as they want, most of us do not care one way or the other or even supportive of your rights in this regard. But know this, we are literally fighting for the lives of those like us who follow us. Transgenders, we aren’t like you. Why is that so difficult to understand? Why do you consider it so threatening? You are literally killing our future sisters with this. You and yours don’t require surgery, we get it. Ours do as a matter of eventual life and death.
Different means ‘not the same” there is no implied hierarchy you do not place there in your own mind….. but when you threaten the lives of our future sisters with your actions expect us to continue to fight you as much as required.
June 4, 2009 at 9:26 am
“My own original therapist used to arrange for me to meet her new gender clients and tell her who I thought was and wasn’t the “real deal” and relied on that. Now professionally that was inappropriate and I’ll be the first to admit that but in retrospect it made sense too.”
Dr. Laub asked me about certain people while I was with the NTCU and afterward too.
One of the people he asked me about is a BFF, sister who is or was a very flamboyantly feminine sister.
He was more used to bay area hippie/college girl types and sex workers from SF.
He asked me if I thought she was really transsexual or an over the top dizzy queen.
My answer was, “She is Southern.” I then explained that while she wasn’t typical in the North or Cali she was of a type of woman found in the south.
She got her SRS and has been married for some 30 years. And I went to the Rose Festival Museum in Tyler Texas where they display the costumes made and worn in the pageants. I was extremely astute in my observation.
June 4, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Spot on…nice piece.
June 5, 2009 at 5:24 am
> Every time one of them loudly proclaims themselves a transsexual who does not need surgery the legitimacy of surgery as a needed treatment for actual classic transsexuals takes a hit.
While that is true, it is only a problem because a gatekeepin system is action. Look at the Katoe in Thailand. The overwhelming parts are TVs and TGs – but that opens insteads of closes the way for TS.
Thats why I’m having so much problems with the strict distiction from the political side.
Give the people TV, TG, TS, IS the power ower their body and they have the responability too.
June 15, 2009 at 2:11 am
I have to disagree. What you suggest would hasten the end of treatment. Yes, for a short period, things might seem better, but our society does not assign responsibility to individuals. All this would result in would the same situation that is being exploited in Australia. People who are not good candidates would obtain SRS, quickly regret it, and the courts would be flooded with lawsuits. Those who oppose the proper treatment of transsexuals would all start expressing their concern, and would easily persuade the authorities to restrict, or even eliminate treatment to protect people from themselves.
At worst, people planning to seek treatment in places like Thailand, which would be the only alternative, might well be held against their will, “for their own protection.”
June 7, 2009 at 2:28 am
Having met quite a few of these new-age ‘transsexuals’ myself I agree 100% with what you say about the current situation. The TG-think has spread to crossdressers too, people who aren’t ‘full time’.
In a certain west-coast city, members of the major crossdressing organization there actually get quite a bit of plastic surgery trying to outdo each other. Some of it is quite disfiguring. I’m not sure when this became popular, but I feel sorry for these people and their wives and kids.
This outlandish behavior at the expense of those around you, including strangers who you make part of your game without their consent, is going to have a huge backlash. It’s bad enough when someone transitions with a wife and kids, they have such a difficult time of things and the family suffers in many cases.
Now these transitioners are going to have the additional burden of proving that they aren’t just confused crossdressers because after all crossdressers get surgery too you know. With lower surgery being denigrated as just cosmetic (and much worse of course) by vocal TG’s, people are not going to see any lines at all when they are done.
Like you say, this all plays into the hands of the creepy sexologists who have taken this issue for their own. The TG types pushing an agenda don’t give a crap about anyone else though, certainly not those freaks who are born differently. No malicious intent in this? Selfishness to the exclusion of common decency is malice enough.
June 15, 2009 at 2:19 am
I don’t know if you are referring to San Francisco, but that sounds about right. Several years ago, not long after I first arrived, I found out that a surgeon, who I had never heard of, was doing a presentation on SRS at the LGBT Community Center. I walked into a room full of middle aged men in dresses, most with badly receding hairlines. The presentation was sponsored by TGSF, which started out as a group called ETVC, which stood for Educational TV Channel. Somewhere along the way, some of the crossdressers decided they were “really” transsexuals, and they broadened their membership.
I would up being about the only one actually asking questions. I think for most, it was just a bit of fantasy indulgence to come and listen to someone talk about something they knew they would never have.
Oh, and I later found out that, at the time, the surgeon had never performed SRS on his own. He had only assisted with a few procedures. I suspect any serious group would have done a better job of screening their speaker.
June 15, 2009 at 2:06 am
I am not completely sure that the things are as benign as you suggest. I remember reading a piece by Dallas Denny in which the “transgender model” was presented. This is the same person who was, for several years, the editor of Transgender Tapestry. Denny, who has had surgery, spent a good deal of the article pushing the idea that people should simply live in the “gender” that they prefered and forego SRS. Denny very much downplayed the need for surgery. I know a number of the other self-appointed leaders of the “transgender community” are closely associated with Denny, including Monica Helms.
I met Denny some years ago through the Montgomery Foundation in Atlanta. Even though the term was not widely known at the time, Denny was a classic autogynephile. This was someone who “graduated” from Tri Ess, and who had been rejected by the gender clinic at Vanderbilt. Ultimately, Denny was largely responsible for the Montgomery Foundation falling apart.
August 5, 2009 at 2:34 pm
I knew Dallas through the Montgomery Foundation. I’m not a big fan, but I know she went to Tri-Ess only to try to find other transsexuals. I knew a Jennifer Susan, too. She’s one to be calling names.
August 5, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Well, first off, that was not why Dallas went to Tri-Ess. Dallas was involved with Tri-Ess before coming to Montgomery, and you would not have known me by that name, as I never used that name while I was at Montgomery. But, I do know a certain cyber-stalker…who has a habit of showing up occasionally to harass me.
August 5, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Get ready for more names.