Why Change Genders?

A few years ago, one survey form was answered by a family member of someone who had been born intersexed / transgendered. That survey form included the following short question.

I want to understand why someone would do this. Why a male would want to be a female.

The writer of that comment was involved in a very personal situation. However, the same comment could have been made about an intersexed / transgendered individual was was transitioning (changing) from female-to-male. Approximately half of all gender changes are from female-to-male.

Neither transition is easy (read that comment as accepted) within most societies. The presumption by most people is that gender is only male (XY chromosomes) or female (XX chromosomes), and that doctors know this fact at birth. No so! A tiny percentage of all births are XXY or XYY chromosomes.

What happens then? Typically doctors assign a gender to those intersexed / transgendered babies based upon what those doctors believe are the apparent physical characteristics. However, gender is something much more elusive than physical characteristics. See the stories of Kira, Diane, or Sallie for experiences of three intersexed individuals.

That belief is being openly questioned and show to be in error. A new book, ``As Nature Made Him'' written by Canadian journalist John Colapinto, tells of a botched circumcision and the resulting insistence by the doctors to change the apparent gender of the baby to female. As reported in the book (see Medical Error), the expressed feelings of that child, physically changed in an operation by doctors after birth, was:

``I was raised as a girl. I was not comfortable with the situation. That was not the true me,'' Reimer said.

Those same words are repeatedly expressed by all intersexed / transgendered individuals. The essence of the individual, the part of one's soul that is our gender, knows that the identification of gender at birth by the medical profession and by society is wrong.

In 1998, I was speaking with a woman at a local church Allison and I were attending. The woman told me about a young neighbor who had recently had a baby. She said the doctors had been unable to identify a specific gender (the baby is intersexed). The doctors had told her neighbors to pick a gender for the baby. Unfortunately, picking a gender for the baby ignores what may be the baby's true gender.

The existance of intersexed and transgendered individuals is usually not acknowledged by society in general. Even the relativity of gender is little known or understood by the general population. Not all people (male-to-females or female-to-male) are intersexed, or even show definitive physical characteristics of both genders. However, medical research has shown that there is an unseen difference within those who are gender dysphoric.

Other medical research has been suppressed. A medical doctor with whom I'm acquainted, who is also an associate with the Stanford Gender Clinic, submitted her research last fall to an American medical publication. That publication refused to publish the doctor's research, stating that --

the subject matter might be considered too controversial.

However, the above is a part of the WHY CHANGE that the survey writer did not understand they were asking. Instead, that writer was asking something of the order of --

Why do they have to change? This change isn't as I see them. I'm loosing them.

My answer is that you are not loosing your [brother, sister, cousin, father, mother], you are seeing more now of who they really are then you have seen before. This relative is finally opening up to themselves and beginning to understand who they are and what they have attempted to keep hidden from even themselves. They do not love you less. Given the chance they will be able to more clearly express their love and peace with themselves, the world, and their extended family now that they have begun opening up to themselves.

Dr. Brown, in her book True Selves, speaks of the absolute necessity of transitioning once the transgendered opens and admits to themselves what they've attempted to keep hidden. She is quoted in an interview as saying --

Brown has even had clients in their 60s. "They're willing to go through all this just so they won't be buried in the wrong body," Brown says.

For additional thoughts on why, I recommend reading Jackie's page.

A Postscript - A Bit of Help

Since writing the above, I've learned of a new web site directed toward helping family and friends of transsexual. If you are interested, please visit Trans-itions - Support for Family and Friends of TS. I've also learned of a mailing list for spouses of transsexuals. You can reach that group at Spouse Mailing List. There is also a newly discovered web page for family of transsexuals, titled When You Love the One You're With. There is also the Straight Spouse Network, a national organization with both Internet and group contacts. They have a list of individual groups, by state.

Second Postscript

I recently discovered an article titled My Transsexual Father by Stephen Gunther in the Australian Humanities Review. A postscript to the article describes Stephen Gunther as a psychotherapist in private practice in Lismore, Australia.

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Revised: 10 Feb 2008 20:47:22 -0800.