NEED HELP, Gender warrior friends!

[lunatickle]

Hey folks, if you know what "Harry Benjamin Standards of Care (HBSOC)" means, I need your help. I'm writing a paper that's due wednesday morning (yikes!) about the SOC and and it's discontents. PLEASE PLEASE answer a few questions or give a sentence or two about anything SOC related, I can really use the quotes. It's an academic paper for social

Comments

[corivax]

I am a biological female, and I feel like a female body is deeply wrong for me, somehow. It's like a horror movie, where the entire universe is subtly distorted, right before the Really Bad Things start happening. Though I don't exapect any Really Bad Things to happen, it's just that kind of all-pervasive wrongness. I have no idea why this is: I've never known any real trauma or prejudice that might explain a desire to not be female.

However, I don't feel drawn towards the idea of being male. I want to be not-female, and I think hormone therapy would help me, but I don't think under HBSOC you can get hormone therapy without a clear, honest desire to be male, and I don't really have that. Only a burning need not to be female.

And the rest of my life is happy enough, and I have had a lot of practice gritting my teeth and ignoring my gender issues (as a teen, I was very self-destructive about them and I have a lot of scars, but I've mellowed some with age), but it's still frustrating.

1)Do you have criticisms about the HBSOC? Is there anything worthwhile about them? Is unregulated access to hormonal or surgical treatment a good alternative, or would you suggest something else?

I don't think there are very many people in my exact circumstance, so I don't know if that really counts as a criticism, so much as frustration that here, as in all medical field, there are still people who fall between the cracks.

I'm afraid I don't really know enough on the issue to guess whether deregulating is better for everyone.

2)Did you personally experience SOC requirements and how did they affect your transition?

They're preventing it.

3) What do these words mean to you transsexual, transgender, genderqueer? Do you use one of these to describe yourself? If not, what words do you use for your gender identity?

The definitions I'm used to are:

• transsexual: Someone whose internal gender identity doesn't match the biogender assigned to them at birth.
  
• transgender: A much broader term - someone with some cross-gender characteristics. So, trassexuals count, but so do drag queens. :)
  
• genderqueer: I've never figured out exactly what is meant by this, but it seems to include nearly everyone in the universe. :)

I guess I'm not a real trassexual. I think I'm transgender, though. I also regularly think of myself as asexual and/or genderless - I often use "it" to refer to myself, when I'm around people unlikely to be disturbed or pissed off by this. :)

4) How do you describe gender? as a continuum, a sphere, a binary, a pyramid, a process, something else?

I've never myself figured that anyone else's gender matters much, and I've never found omuch of a difference between male and female. People can call themselves whatever they want, and it's fine by me. :)

[corivax]

thank you for your tremendous post, I can certainly use your perspective. cheers!

[corivax]

Reading back over it, eeeeee. Sorry for all the typos!