Explaining this - part two

[hundun]

Part Two: Your Bodily Identity Interacts with your Developmental Experience

Here I take a less general approach. I will try to use my own more transsexual/body-related experiences to walk you through this.

People have told me "I can't really imagine being in that situation of wanting to change my sex."

I think that most people can. It's just that

Comments

[donnaidh_sidhe]

Thank you.

[hundun]

Anytime. Thanks for reading.

Happy to answer questions and find resources too.

[brunisols]

Hmmm interesting, I tried to do the visualization part of it, and actually think about growing up as a boy as honestly as I could and my reaction kind of surprises me. Kind of along the lines of "Oh, that would be different (not really in a better or worse kind of way though), interesting, how could I make the most of this? A challenge, how can I be good at this?" I would probably have found puberty pretty awkward as a boy, but I found it pretty awkward as a girl too. If someone told me they were going to make me become a boy now, I would be rather intensely opposed to it, but I think that is largely because I have put so much effort into figuring out how to be a girl in a way that I am comfortable with, it would feel like some horrible setback. Anyways, I'm not trying to dismiss anyone else's experience of how unpleasant and awefull that would be, I think a lot of people would react quite differently to me indeed. And of course it is impossible to make it feel real enough to accurately judge how you'd really respond. I was just

[hundun]

Cool. People respond in all kinds of different ways. Thanks for walking through it. I was hoping to meet up with you in person anyways.

Think about less the social end of things as the physiological. Would you consider taking male hormones now, knowing that they'd produce body-changing effects? At first they'd be temporary and you would still look female (so it wouldn't be a setback), but later it would be largely irreversable and more male-appearing/feeling. You could still identify. however you wanted. Would you go ahead? At what point would you stop?

Another question is (paraphrased from Serano): how much money would someone have to pay you to get you to live as the other sex for the rest of your life?

I'm not looking for a particular set of answers. It's more something to chaw over. You can run it past your friends too.

[hundun]

Also relevent: if one works with the model that gender/body identity has rough parallels in the spectrum model of sexual orientation, it follows that some people are more indifferent to their own gender identity or sexed body than are others.

[innerlife_]

A good point which resonates with me. I don't seem to feel near as acutely bodily dysphoric as many other trans people seem to. But I still have a preference that was eventually strong enough to spur me to action.

[chicazul]

The interesting thing is that the more I think about this, the more convinced I am that my innermost gender identity is null. Anything I do that is "girly" (wearing skirts or makeup, chatting with other girls, realizing that I still have breasts) feels like an act, and I'm always worried that someone will catch on that I'm just faking it. At the same time, I have only a vague curiosity about being male; mostly curiosity about whether I could fake that too.

I bend easily to other people's expectations of me--I'm willing to bet that had I been born a boy, I would have cheerfully accepted that designation. Shame there's no way to know for sure.

[hundun]

So how would you feel about taking male hormones, or otherwise moving your body outside of the female realm?

[chicazul]

It would be neat to experience, but at this point I wouldn't want permanent changes. I'm finally starting to feel like I've figured out the girl thing. Plus, given current medical technology, taking male hormones would not make me male, it would just make me a less attractive female. The chances of getting a male body that functions as well as my female one is so slim that I would need an awfully good reason to want to switch

[chicazul]

Did I just post that anonymously? I think I did. Whoops.