Towards Trans Sanity
by Cathryn Platine
It is way past time some of the cherished myths of the world
of transgender were examined a bit more closely. One of the all time
favourites is the “gender continuum” that supposedly has the
fetishistic crossdresser at one end and the classic transsexual at
the other. It is a tempting idea, especially for those seeking
validation some point along the way but does the research support it?
In a word, absolutely not and yes at the same time.
Transsexuals have been pointing out the Danish BSTc study ever since it first appeared but unnoticed was the various other studies, mostly also done in Europe due to the political correctness censorship, within the US, that supports the data. One such study was started in California about twelve years ago but the findings were never released......only the tantalizing mention that the differences were so clear that “the janitor could see them across the room”. This study used brain scan mapping of known differences between the sexes in processing information. This study was done and completed without fanfare yet again in Greece. We pretty much understand the developmental windows that affect the developing pre-natal brain for both sexual identity and the gender hardwiring of the brain, they occur in close proximity. We know that although the Danish BSTc study initially had a small sample, the study has continued and the initial findings found valid. It is very unpopular to point out cognizant differences between the sexes, but they are quite real. So what does all this mean in regards to a gender continuum? It means that apples have been being compared to oranges to put it bluntly.
First we have to accept that autogynophilia is a real
condition, one that mimics transsexuality not explains it. Blanchard
blew it only in trying to cast a very wide net in an attempt to
explain all the people who presented themselves to the Clark for
sexual reassignment surgery. Bailey, well let's face it Bailey is a
clown who should have been laughed out of the psych community a long
time ago. Neither would have gotten much traction if not for the
extreme reaction to Bailey's comic attempt at a book with it's
deliberately inflammatory title and premise. It is a real condition
and one that in fact is the end point of the so called “gender
continuum”. This really should be self evident and would be if so
many people were not so highly invested defending their own life
choices. The answers have been staring everyone in the face for years
but no one has seemed capable of standing back far enough to see this
clearly. Part of the problem has been the traditional “transsexual
narrative” passed on from transsexual to transsexual from the time
of the publication of Harry Benjamin's book and part of it from the
book itself with it's “range” chart that Benjamin himself mostly
went on to completely ignore the rest of that work. Dr. Benjamin was
a pioneer in the field, actually hit upon the right answer
intuitively back then but was tempted into a continuum idea himself
because he failed to see the essential differences. Like everyone
else following him, he was trying to develop a sort of “Unified
Field Theory of Trans” and the problem was, there are two separate
and distinct causalities at work
Both the psychological
model of trans and the biological model are correct, they just are
two separate entities describing two separate conditions and no one
wants to see this. Perhaps when the Danish BSTc study gains a greater
sampling of brains a midpoint range will be discovered but for now,
given the data available, the neurology appears to be pretty much
either/or and not a range. The brain scan studies seem to support
this as well. The ever so tempting gender continuum theory makes
perfect sense with the psychological model but no one wanted to
separate the autogynophiacs from the neurologically intersexed
because of the uproar that causes if it is even suggested. The recent
movement by some women of transsexual history to redefine
transsexuality in it's classic sense as Harry Benjamin Syndrome is an
excellent example. HBS women are being ruthlessly attacked just for
having and using the term and the fact that it is a new term not yet
in the medical lexicon is used to dismiss the idea entirely. It took
almost twenty years from the time the term transsexual was first
coined before it appeared in medical literature other than Dr.
Benjamin's work and it was largely because Dr. Benjamin used it that
it became a medical term. Autogynophilia was out and out dismissed by
most of the trans community when Blanchard proposed it and it took
Anne Lawrence's defense and embracing the theory as useful to herself
before it was acknowledged at all and I fully expect a similar
reaction my own proposal that a large number of those presenting
themselves for SRS today are actually AG rather than transsexual.
The standard transsexual narrative was the core of the problem and the source of the blindness here. Some elements were accurate, some too narrowly defined and some missing completely leading the researchers to believe they could not be part of the story and even served as contra-indications of “classic” transsexuality. Lesbian attraction was one that was particularly missed because the common mistake of mixing gender identity and sexual orientation. A “classic” transsexual was supposed to be only attracted to men and in the early days of the gender clinics admitting even a single sexual encounter with a woman was basis to disqualify. The same was true with masturbation, admit to it and you were out. This, of course, was pure sexist thinking on the part of the researchers themselves rather than any reflection of reality but because it became part of the revealed myth of transsexuality it took years before either was seen as the fraud they are. The fact was almost everyone presenting to the clinics for SRS had read most of the literature on the subject and gave the expected responses as part of what came to be called among transsexual women, hoop jumping (from the idea of trained dogs jumping through hoops on command) to get what they needed desperately from the medical profession, hormones and surgery. The very system was designed so that the so called professionals would never have actual access to the real information because they already had set up gatekeeping standards. Once you jumped the hoops and cleared the gates, you had zero incentive to tell them the truth. Instead you did what they suggested and melted away into the world. The really interesting thing is that some of those who jumped the hoops schooled those going through them and actual truth was passed from transsexual to transsexual but having no voice in our own treatments, the professionals never heard any of it. They were ignored as subjects rather than people and as women by men in classic patriarchal fashion. A double whammy of silencing.
Let's examine the traditional transsexual narrative and separate out the truth from the fiction. First is the early onset of knowledge. The age range is given as between three to five years old and this is almost universal among those who fit the neurological transsexual model. A later onset of knowledge from an age range of nine to thirteen holds almost universally among the autogynophilia crowd. This is absolutely what you should expect if one condition is biological and the other psychological. The points of confusion possible simply the fact that the onset of puberty becomes a crisis point for the neurological transsexual because their own body is betraying them by becoming something they feel they are not. They are more likely to try to reach out for help at this point while the psychological model group is crossdressing in secret and terrified of being found out. This is getting much easier to see now that a certain threshold of public knowledge about transsexuality has been reached and information is now readily available to children seeking answers via the internet.
The next area to examine is loathing of genitals. The narrative insists on this and following from it assumes absolutely no sexual use of them. Anyone who has been on both sides of testosterone can tell you how bloody powerful that stuff is in it's effect on libido and so this is an absurd assumption that came about because the initial clients of Dr. Benjamin simply would not talk about it and probably were never asked. At the time of Dr. Benjamin's work, homosexuality was still considered a psychological disorder and completely unacceptable within greater society. For those transsexual women oriented towards men (straight) transition at a younger age was preferable to trying a homosexual life instead and those who had experienced it learned quickly that “it just wasn't right” with someone who saw you as male. Blanchard picked up on this and postulated that early transitioners must therefore be 'super' homosexuals, a ridiculous idea that should have been obvious since like most men, homosexual men are highly invested in their penises as essential to their identities. Confusing the issue even more was that those transsexuals with a lesbian or bisexual orientation could find appropriate sexual partners and often did marry as expected of men in the society of the times. Since you supposedly could not be a lesbian transsexual, they did not find themselves reflected in the available literature and many assumed they therefore could not actually be “transsexual”. With the availability of the internet and it's unsurprising use as a contact tool by transsexuals (it was largely made possible by transsexuals and the among the very first “chat” usages were transsexual specific) the truth about lesbian transsexuals became better known.
There was a veritable flood of late transitioners at this point as they entered male menopause and experienced what came to be known at the time as GID crisis (gender identity disorder). Having experienced this myself, I became interested in reasons for this and postulated that if transsexuality was neurologically based, a female brain finally experiencing reduced testosterone would crave not testosterone but estrogen instead. Male pattern hormones are cyclical just as female hormones are, it's just a yearly rather than a monthly cycle. The low point of testosterone in males falls in the spring so I suspected that the combination of this low point with male menopause would trigger GID crisis. When I took a sample of roughly a hundred transsexual women who had suffered GID crisis, the distribution fell on a perfect bell curve with the centre at May, exactly the opposite for those in the southern hemisphere, or their spring. GID crisis is debilitating as anyone who has experienced it can tell you. Your life literally starts falling apart and your prior ability to function becomes extremely impaired. It responds almost immediately to estrogen restoring function, mental clarity and a previously unexperienced calm.... but the drive to then correct your body becomes overwhelming and finish the job.
So what we have is a perfect storm of skewed data that has been used trying to understand transsexuality ever since. To recap, the initial women presenting for treatment were mostly heterosexual but had contacts via the gay and lesbian communities. They became the definition of the condition and they were encouraged to disappear after treatment. The standard transsexual narrative developed from their experiences locking out lesbian and bisexual oriented transsexuals. The entire field was controlled by professional men who imposed their own standards of what a woman should or should not be. With increased awareness and communication with the growth of the internet transsexuals finally gained a voice among themselves and the late transitioners now had information that they too could be themselves. This totally skewed the proportions of heterosexual early transitioners to lesbian late transitioners giving a false set of data used by Blanchard who was trying to understand transsexuality in terms of sexual orientation. Others arrived at equally flawed theories of “primary” and “secondary” transsexuals based on this distribution. AGs learned they could also get surgery and started presenting for it along with the late transitioners.
Now for some review few will like. Everyone is aware of the fetishistic crossdressers. Almost as soon as the internet became more available, they popped out of the woodwork in droves and quickly overran any trans chat area. They were understandably excited that something they had been ashamed of and kept completely hidden could now be discussed in the anonymous environment of the internet. AGs and transsexuals alike quickly divorced themselves from them for different reasons. The AGs saw their past in them, the transsexuals just plain confused that these people would compare themselves to them. Fetishist became a dirty word in trans circles. Mentioning it became taboo. Everyone within the newly empowered communities started defining everyone else in terms of their own lived experiences and those experiences were all over the map suddenly. Add to this a new group of researchers trying to make sense out of this expanding universe of transness. The system originally, flawed as it might have been, designed for getting transsexuals from one side to the other of the gender divide started to fall apart as it tried desperately to deal with an influx of wildly different conditions within the theoretical boundaries of a group it was no longer actually serving. This is where we find ourselves today.
The key to understanding this mess came with Bailey believe it or not. As bad as his book was, it reintroduced the idea of autogynophilia and provoked a cyber war between those who understood themselves within that context and were honest enough to admit it and those who knew they absolutely did not fit within that model thus bringing the two groups into sharp contrast. As to why the reaction was so severe, you must first understand something basic about neurological model transsexuals. Imagine the entire world tells you that you are something you know deep inside you are not and this happens in childhood where you have almost no control over your environment. This continues your entire life until you finally cannot stand it anymore and either transition or kill yourself in total frustration. Just to keep your own sense of self you must become immune to all the signals from the outside to the contrary. This guarantees you will develop a sense of will and a stubbornness the rest of the world will never understand just to survive. You finally become a real, actualized human being, usually at an enormous personal cost in lost relationships, economics and property and someone comes along and suddenly challenges your entire method of understanding yourself won at such a high cost. Basically tells you once again you are something you know, in your heart of hearts, is absolutely wrong and does so from a position of authority. This is essentially what Bailey did by insisting all transsexual women fell within his model. Small wonder several women of transsexual history went overboard to destroy Bailey's credibility.
It is becoming popular among non neurological “transsexuals” to dismiss all causalities as pointless. “Accept us as we are” is the battlecry of this group who ironically have the least investment in medical model treatments beyond hormones which now can easily be obtained outside medical circles. Lacking the dysphoric imperative to fully correct their bodies, they are more than willing to sacrifice that vital treatment for those who suffer it. Those who understand dysphoric imperative by virtue of having lived through it are appalled at this. Over and over they tell transpeople “we are NOT like you” but gender politics, envy and internalized shame translate that into “we are better than you, more real, more transsexual” no matter how carefully it is said. They respond with the gender continuum, which for them is quite real and fits quite well but because transsexuality is an understood medical condition, they cling to defining themselves within that model when they are clearly outside it. The Harry Benjamin Syndrome or HBS term was coined specifically to abandon “transsexual” which has become all but meaningless by appropriation and replace it with a term that sets a different condition apart from the “gender continuum” altogether.
Next will be the cries “prove it!” It actually isn't that hard. Neurological transsexuality or HBS has an early onset of self knowledge, age three to five typically. It apparently is also often accompanied with a myriad of other indications of intersexuality. Behavioural patterns fall within the gender norms of the central nervous system some of which can actually be observed even shortly after birth. There is an absolute self knowledge of belonging to the gender of the central nervous system that does not go away. Sexual response falls within the central nervous system's gendered norms even prior to hormonal treatments. If left untreated into late adulthood it eventually results in a GID crisis which is life threatening. Post transitional adjustment is almost always a non issue regardless of physical appearances. The response to hormonal therapy is almost immediate in terms of erasing the bulk of the dsyphoria. The preoperative body sexually responds differently from the AGs on hormones as would be expected with a female neurology on the proper hormones. The differences in informational processing can be measured along gender normative lines. This difference can be seen and demonstrated using brain scans and it is possible to test for it with less intrusive ways as well. The need to correct the body to the maximum amount possible eventually becomes overwhelming.
None of this would be true if HBS or classic transsexuality was an end point of a gender variant continuum, it is a totally unrelated condition that merely appears similar because of the willful blurring of the distinctions by those not having the condition and those professionals who refuse to face the facts staring them in the face. It's way past time that the voices of those with HBS be finally heard when they are clearly saying “we don't fit your models” and ignore those without the condition claiming otherwise on their own behalf. The facts are in, let's restore some sanity and dignity to this mess.
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