When I was six I discovered what was involved in sex-change operations, and decided they weren't really sex-change, but cosmetic surgeries designed to make you appear as the other sex, which wasn't what I wanted at all.
I might not have been six, by the way, though I remember it as six. I was probably closer to ten. There was time involved between hearing these could be done and figuring out what all happened/could be done. You see, this was pre-history, we didn't have the internet, we didn't even have a library system where I grew up, and tracking down the right (or very wrong) books took time. I found information a bit at a time, in history books, in old medical manuals, and in the occasional throw away paragraph in a novel.
I very much doubt I could have tracked all that information down by six, particularly considering that at four or so I mostly read -- haltingly and painfully -- comic books.
Though my sources of information at the time were unreliable and hard to track down; though my knowledge of biology has increased exponentially, though medical science has advanced a lot since the middle of the last century (though not as much as we like to pretend, when it comes to hormones and such) I stand by the conclusion I reached when I first finished my research.
You are born into a body you can't change. The best you can do is pretend to change it. For some people at some times that might be the best solution, but it's bought at a very high price, or a series of them, not all of them obvious, particularly for the young. And -- mostly for political reasons of divide and conquer -- the whole issue has been weaponized so that the truth is obscured from the people making the decisions, so they have to make them in the dark and in confusion.
Because of my history, I've meant for a long time to talk about it. I haven't done it, because it is a difficult, fraught -- and yeah -- weaponized subject.
So, let's grapple with it anyway, shall we?
First, on the above, please note that the notion that I was all wrong and should have been a boy was not arrived at by contact with anyone who told me that. And that my parents were entirely unaware of my struggles. For all I know, they still are.
So while the trans thing -- particularly the belief that you can somehow automagically change your body -- is indeed a social contagion, saying "My son/daughter was a perfectly contented boy/girl" is not proof of anything. When you feel something is that wrong, on that fundamental a level, you don't tell your parents. Or at least some of us don't. And that was before the weaponization. Mostly? I was terrified my parents would laugh at me. And even more terrified they wouldn't. Because if they said they always thought I was wrong, that was worse.
For those wondering, yeah, I had the stigmata. Smart kid, very lonely, in a society that highly favored -- and gave more freedom -- to boys, (in a way Americans can't even really process much less understand) and with mom having preferred me to be a boy. On top of which, I was convinced I was ugly, which was a problem for a girl, but not for a boy.
Having realized that there was no way to actually change didn't completely quell the matter. I continued feeling wrong, like a terrible mistake had been made. It just meant it couldn't be changed and therefore I must make the best of it. But up until about fourteen, while combing my hair in front of the mirror, I had wishful thoughts that I'd not be a half-bad looking boy. I also felt I looked wrong, walked wrong, couldn't fit in with groups of girls/women, and was generally off in some indescribable way.
Realizing at about 16 or 17 that I very much liked boys and that it was stupid to be a boy while chasing boys (Not that I chased. What I did was more debate them into the ground in the hope they'd like that (it worked, once)) helped some, but let's be bluntly honest, I still feel -- often -- divorced from my body. Not in terms of I should be a boy. Older and more experienced me realizes the problem is more basic that than, but in terms of I forget I have a body, or that the body has a sex. Honestly, its getting worse as I get older, can't get pregnant, and the whole cyclic dance of womanhood is done. As the body malfunctions more, it's easier to retreat into a life of the mind. This led to the famous panel in which I was a moderator, and faced with a panel of all women (on women in sf, I think?) I announced that everyone but me was female. I wasn't thinking I was male. I'd forgotten I had a body at all.
You can add in there on my risk factors on the spectrum, maybe. I don't read as being such and it's hard to tell for sure. I grew up in an hyper-connected and social environment that masked the fact I was a raging introvert. Masking being on the spectrum is not out of the question, and I have a bunch of the secondary sensory issues.
Some degree of generalized discomfort with your body seems to contribute to the idea that you should change, and that will solve everything.
In fact, and again, from the beginning, it solves nothing. It just gifts you with a completely different set of problems.
So let me lay out those problems.
As it exists right now, the whole you can transition is a pretty lie. You can't. And while medical professionals are very fond of saying that we will for sure solve that and make it possible to fully become the other in the next ten or twenty years, that's not even a gross exaggeration, that's a piece of insanity.
What we're dealing with is not cosmetics, or hormones. It's the basic components of the human genome, which dictate whether you are male or female. Or intersex, but that's honestly more of a defect. That is woven into you at a level that cannot be altered or changed sort of regrowing you an entire other body. Consider we can't even clone people in the normal way without running into issues with premature aging.
Might there be a way to change people at that level? Or to somehow defeat chromosomes and make them do different things? Maybe. There is one -- note ONE -- case of an xy developing as a normal woman and becoming a mother. IF the report wasn't vitiated, which given the time and place it might have been. If that's real, we might be able to change people, but even then it will probably have to be done before birth and we're talking true science fiction. Look, guys, cold fusion is on the menu well before that. At best it can be done with a "genius breakthrough" but that is left to chance and random reshuffling of genes and life experience. Which sure, could happen in the next... 50 years. Or 500. Or never.
Almost for sure, though, given the current state of science, it won't happen before we're all dust in the dust. And those people lying to the young and telling young men they'll be fully functional women, able to bear live young should be hanged, cut down while still living and have their entrails burned before their eyes.
What we can do, better than in the mid-20th century which relied on crude surgery, is more sophisticated plastic surgery to make things appear to be other things. And we can pump you full of hormones for a -- relatively -- more credible transition.
It will surprise no one I've retained an interest in reading about the field. The problem is two-fold. One: You will never fully pass. To date, I've met exactly one person who passes, and even then my back brain kept trying to reset. I'll get into why that happens, and why its a problem, later. Two: hormones have a price. Hormones have an horrific price. If you take the hormones necessary to change your appearance and behavior, youIt will surprise no one I've retained an interest in reading about the field. The problem is two-fold. One: You will never fully pass. To date, I've met exactly one person who passes, and even then my back brain kept trying to reset. I'll get into why that happens, and why its a problem, later. Two: hormones have a price. Hormones have an horrific price. If you take the hormones necessary to change your appearance and behavior, you're very likely to get cancer early. Like forties early. But atop of it, the dosage is hard, so you're also likely to have a whole slew of issues of hormones too high and too low, including brittle bones and things malfunctioning in ways most women don't experience till menopause -- and that's regardless of the way in which you change.
If you're a young woman transitioning to male and there's the slightest possibility you'll ever want to have children -- permit me to tell you that at even 20 you might not know. Heck, at 30 you might not know how much you want them -- be aware transitioning hormones might make it impossible.
There are other prices, more subtle, and here we have to get into why transitioners rarely pass and almost never pass completely: the part of the human brain that tells male from female is very old, and not very easy to hack. You see, I figure in our long evolution as apes and hominins and hominids telling male from female was absolutely necessary to any child. Because males will kill you, females might not. I figure its coded in the part of our brain, way back, that infants to go through a phase they are scared of everyone but mom. And more or less for the same reasons.
This means no matter how good a job anyone does at passing, other people will see through it. And at best they'll behave oddly. I think this is part of the reason so many trans people are convinced everyone hates them. Because there is oddness in every interaction and if you were Odd or on the spectrum or something to begin with, you already interpret awkwardness towards you as hatred.
This is also, and for real what is driving trans to supporting younger and younger transitions. Because if you transition as a child, you probably CAN pass as the other sex. While this is true, there is the problem of no one before puberty having any idea of the true costs and penalties of transitioning. And also of giving a disproportionate vote to parents, some of whom will be insane. But that is the main reason driving the child transitioning movement. It's in a sense baked in.
It's also in a sense futile. You can't change completely even if you do it to toddlers. They will not be functional adults of the other sex, even if they pass better. Which means you're robbing them of a fully functional future. But even without that they'll never fully be the other. You are what you are due to hormone baths in utero, long before you were aware there was a you.
There are other costs, social ones, beyond the fact you'll look odd to others.
Look, I changed my name at citizenship. First, middle and last. I hated my name pretty much since I was aware of having a name. Worse, my parents didn't even like it, it was imposed on them through family circumstances. So I changed it to a name I'd often used as a pen name.
My parents still haven't fully forgiven me. And it makes it awkward, not just for them but for me to tell stories of childhood, etc.
I do know people who have transitioned and who have good relationships with their parents. They're very rare. Normally transitioning means severing relationships with all family: parents, children, extended family. And often with your entire group of friends up till them. Sure you can say it shouldn't be that way. But it is. And as one of the friends in one of those cases, it happens even if you don't mean to. There is a natural awkwardness of not knowing how to relate to someone who frankly is no longer your friend but is also not a stranger. The effort required to remain friends becomes very high. It's easier to drift away.
Now, sure, if only everyone decided.... but never in the history of ever has that ever happened. In human history there is no such thing as everyone doing something all at once, without dissidents or protest. Even things easier than this.
So, true change is impossible. Does this mean people shouldn't be allowed to live as the other sex, or even take hormones if they are full adults who so decide? (I honestly think that it should be held until the brain stops developing at 26 or whatever. Our legal age being 18 is ridiculously high for some things and biologically low for others.)
Meh. You do you. If you honestly think it makes you feel better to present a credible pretense of being the other sex, who am I to interfere? There are certainly worse hobbies. If you find peace and contentment in it, good for you.
If you were someone I cared for I'd strenuously and loudly plead that you not take hormones and not have surgery (except perhaps for softening the face and hair removal -- that being honestly your choice. I think it might be weird if you decide to go back to male -- if you're a male hoping to pass as a female) for a good long while, if ever. There are no risks, other than social to being a male who passes as female or a female who passes as male. And while the passing won't be as full as with hormones, etc, it will be far less risky for you.
Look, hormones affect everything including your thinking. Women transitioning to male are not equipped either by raising or by the rest of our -- already hormone shaped -- nervous system to cope with testosterone influx and its associated mental and emotional effects. There is a reason most of the trans-killers have been female to male transitioners.
Which brings us to the other thing: part of the reason I imagined I was really a male, as a young female, was that I imagined males as cool and collected. They didn't have to go through the cyclical thing and have their moods affected. Would you believe I was in my thirties before a male told me otherwise? Being a male is to be at that point where you'd gladly shiv your best friend for looking at you funny that some of us women achieve on the first day of our period, but forever. And you have to learn to control it, if you hope to live a normal life.
I'm sure there are things. I don't know. I'm not a male. No matter what I thought as a kid, I'm not even an unusual female. I'm an unusual human, mostly due to auto-immune, etc. oh, and to what I'm sure you too have been told is Thinking Too Much.
Am I a stereotypical woman?
Oh, please. No one is. I have friends who are all social oriented and like fashion and all the girly things (I tend to be friends with them in small doses, because we are so different) and even they aren't stereotypical females. The stereotypes ARE social constructs.
Sex is real. It comes with certain inclinations and interests because our brains were shaped differently during gestation. But all statements made about men and women are made about the aggregate. I.e. statistically women are more people-oriented and men more thing-oriented. Some of us.... fail at that. And that's okay. It doesn't affect the aggregate if one or many individuals are different.
My most stereotypical female characteristic is an inability to reason spatially, but that seems to be a brain-damage thing, so it's hard to tell. Oh, and I have an unclean love for pretty shoes. Though frankly, my hips have negated my wearing them, so that's not immediately visible. Other than that... I'm passionately interested in economics, world affairs, space exploration, etc. etc.
It also turns out I like cats and infants (And some -- usually very odd -- children.)
Now that I'm on the other end of life from pre-teen and all the worry about being pretty...
No one is pretty as they age. Some people manage to do it with dignity to a point at least. Last time I saw dad, he looked like he'd not so much aged as hardened in place, turning into some material stronger than mere human flesh. But having seen others age.... the ugly will come. If you live long enough, or die of a bad enough disease, you too will be ugly at the end. Male, female or otherwise.
And as you age too, you stop caring if you're acting male or female or if what you do will be thought of as x or y. For women, at least, there is a great empowering that comes over you at about forty, particularly if you have had kids. It seems to be when you decide you're going to be yourself, no matter what.
That is the thing to aim for. So.... you're weird, and you don't feel as if your body fits. Big whoop. Welcome to the human race. Here is your accordion. Yes, I know you'd prefer a piano, but you have an accordion. Make the best of it you can.
My body has disappointed me in so many ways if I start to list them I'll forget something. Take the tendency to gain weight because of autoimmune attacks. The autoimmune itself, and the sudden illnesses that trace to that and which rob me of months or years. And then there's the things that seemed white-hot important as a kid, such as my inability to coordinate enough for most sports. (Who am I kidding, I tripped over my feet while standing still until 18.) Or the fact my fine motor coordination was enough of a disaster my handwriting was incomprehensible.
It turns out I didn't want a career as a professional cyclist. Or if I did, I never even started, so who cares? In what I do every day, my issues don't matter much. (And the fine motor coordination got better with time and practice.)
Turns out for what I wanted to do and be, my body was okay. I mean, I still would like another three or four kids. And I won't lie to anyone and say being pregnant or nursing were my favorite things. Very Strange is the best I can say for them. But I got the boys. And the boys are totally worth it. And while I thought I was ugly and strange, my husband seems to like me, and that too is completely worth it.
Even if you could change your body to the other sex, for most people it is likely to be the least of the things you'd like to change about yourself.
At least at this point, if given the opportunity, I'd turn it down in exchange for a normal metabolism, or naturally curly hair, and I'd turn it down double quick in exchange for getting rid of the auto immune.
It's not that I'm any less of an atypical woman. I've just learned that being typical male or female or whatever is a construct of mass media and narrative. No one is typical. And even if I'm more atypical than most, so what?
Now some people -- I'm looking at you -- will read this and say all this is my coping with being gender queer or whatever the current designation is.
Perhaps. I mean if gender queer means an extremely atypical woman, you're probably right. But so what? Would my quality of life have been improved by pumping myself full of hormones that themselves altered my thinking? Having surgery to pass as the other? Or even by pasting a label on myself and marching up and down demanding that everyone respect mah identity? Why?
To satisfy a bunch of strangers who sneer at me for not being true to myself in the way they specify? Why would I care?
In everyday life what a bunch of strangers think about me makes not a whit of difference. And my family and friends are used to my weirdness such as it is. Plus, I've maximized the advantages of my unfeminine ability to get stuff done and not worry if it's pretty and to ignore the opinions of the group, or the back-biting and gossip of women-associations. I've also back-engineered the advantages of being a woman, the same way most of us have had to back-engineer social interaction because it's not there naturally. I've learned how to be cute little thing, or these days, hapless confused grandma, when it gets me immediate help from bystanders. (Yes, I know, terribly unfeminist of me. But you see, one of the many things I've learned is that I don't owe anything to any cause anyone thinks I should enlist in simply by being born female, or Mediterranean, or whatever.) I can tell you men don't get to do that (except in highly specialized situations.) They have their own advantages, and I enjoin them to use them to the full.
If you absolutely must change, I'm not judging you. Only wait till you've lived long enough to know yourself. And don't mess yourself up more than you need to physically or physiologically. But you know, if you're an adult, it's your lookout and there are worse things you could do to yourself.
For me? In the end, I've come to believe Terry Pratchett was right. Success comes when you learn to be yourself as hard as you can.
And your SELF is both body and soul, and those weird quirks of personality that really annoy you.
Minimize your downsides. Lean into your advantages, and make the best of what you are and what you can be.
All those beautiful happy people who look like they were just born that way? Have you considered you only think that because you're not them?
It never occurred to me, back when, but it turns out everyone of those effortlessly perfect people I met are so. And some are far bigger messes than I am even.
Being human is difficult. I think everyone struggles with it.
The good news is humans were born to struggle.
I wish you joy in the battle, even if the battle is against your own body. And I hope the solution you find allows you to be yourself as hard as you can.
I'm happy as I am. Mind and body.
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