Objectivism and Transsexual Identity (part1) we are not language constructs.

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Just a quick post after a brief chat with Katie at genderqueer.co.uk about gender / trans labels. I thought it would be useful to look at transsexualism as being something emerging out of issues of gender identity whilst transgender being a function of behavioural gender roles. note* I use the phrase trans to describe the entire spectrum and transsexual and transgender in alignment.

I thought after this chat it would be beneficial, if only for me, to look at the fine line that exists  between externally ‘real’ concepts and equally subjectively ‘real’ inner realities.  Both have their part to play in much of the difficulties surrounding trans identity, from the perspective of the observer and also the person being observed. In the first part I want to look at the objective external reality, in the second part the inner subjective self and in the third part bring the two together.

One of the first mistakes some trans people make, I state this as a truism, is to argue against the fact that there are objectively real binary genders.  They say that male and female are language constructs and are more about assigned roles than actual real difference. I would hope to elucidate briefly how the brain works and forms concepts without the need for any language and hence show that male and female are objective realities as opposed to mere labels constructed from language.  I think epistemological language games remove us from really useful discussion about gender, that would lead to better psychological outcomes and a more fulfilling idea of a real true self.

I use objectivism as a way of explaining how we are born with the innate hard coded ability to form concepts. These concepts are necessarily free from language they are part of our gene code and essential for our survival. I am not strictly seeing this from a Jungian archetype perspective but rather from Rand’s ideas on concept formation.

When Rand speaks of concepts she talks of the innate ability for us to distinguish one thing from another thing. To classify things based upon similarities and equally classify other things from that, based upon their differences. We are born with the understanding for example that object x is close to us whilst object y is  further away. We don’t need language for this or any units of measurements we simply understand that concept without thinking. It is the objective reality of the world we are born into. Equally from this we grasp the concept of size and shape so again we can distinguish the appearance of object x and object y. Rand looked at this as concepts being formed due to our inbuilt mathematical sense of the world we find ourselves in. If we saw one table we would have the inbuilt understanding to see it as being different from a chair, in terms of attributes such as shape. This is fundamental to how our brain works and learns.

Objectivism indicates we are born with the ability to form concepts without language and to be able to differentiate and create classes, sub classes and types of things. We can see similarities and we can see differences. Male and female are not only fundamentally biologically different there common external presentation is different. This differences may be subtle in some cases (not when unclothed)but the brain has a highly tuned ability to detect minute differences and classify patterns accordingly. We are far more capable of doing this than even the best computers. This external difference is what manifests itself to the observers brain as conceptual awareness of a female class as opposed to a male class. This is unavoidable as this is how our brains are wired to understand the world in which we find ourselves. Heidegger talks of being in the world and it is a core part of our being in the world that we form concepts.

We cannot create a path that takes us away from the reality of how we are as human beings or deny the way our brains actually work in order that we learn. To seek to deny what is true takes us back to Descatres saying how do I know a devil is not deceiving me and the world is actually real at all.  It seems in our secular age we have looked to science to find answers where once we looked to belief. It seems out of time to be debating ideas of true binary genders as a non physical reality when evidentially that is clearly not the case. We are not born with language but rather the ability to conceptualise without it. This is based further upon the brain’s innate ability to differentiate mathematically, without needing a measurement. The brain knows there is a size difference, a shape difference without needing language or the direct ability to understand mathematics.

Whilst many would say this is writing about the extreme end of gender politics as some trans people may view things. I personally feel it very important to begin with acknowledgement of fundamental real objective difference. This then will enable me to fully explore transsexualism as opposed to transgender as the foundations will be firmly in place. I would then seek to build the subjective and environmental walls upon and around this core in part 2.

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The loneliness of the long distance gender dysphoric part 3

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Part 3

There was now a distinct difference between body types as I got to my mid teens. I looked increasingly different physically from girls around my own age and I started to feel the pain of that. How I describe the sensation of looking at another body and recognising that body as the external shell to my own interior world is almost impossible. My brain was saying over and over when I looked at girls of my own age, I am the same as you yet I am physically different. How did I know I was the same? I just felt that was the case. I cannot explain it any more deeply than that.  I just felt this body I had was wrong in the sense that it didn’t match the brain I had. It actually makes you feel claustrophobic if you think too much about it and if you don’t quickly turn your mind to something else. There was a real sense of definite panic or a wishing to flee from the thoughts.

I remember too at this age as sex was starting to play a part in teenage years, one would be exposed to pornography at school that other boys brought in. Of course it was always heterosexual pornography and I looked at it as everyone did. The one thing I remember in my attitude to it was not the arousal but a feeling of jealousy or rather the good fortune of the women in those roles having male attention. I always viewed pornography with the notion that I wanted to be the girl. I never perceived it from a male perspective in that I saw the women as objects of desire. I always thought that their role in the images suited my own personal psyche.  This of course could be attributed to my sexual attraction to men but I never imagined myself as a man with another man, only as the female with another man. I understood the representation of her heterosexual female pleasure and related to that alone. I didn’t look like her but I thought I felt how she did. These of course are only projections but I was experiencing sensations that I was a heterosexual female and not a homosexual male. It always felt like that even from this very very early time. I couldn’t put that into words then, but I was feeling something which wasn’t desire but rather understanding. I was aroused more by the idea of presenting as female to please a male sexually as opposed to any idea of pleasing myself. The idea of being penetrated seemed to my brain the most erotic thing but the idea of penetrating seemed odd to me or rather I had this penis but had no desire to replicate with girls or guys anything in the pictures.

I clearly remember those sensations and thoughts with regard to sexual penetration. I had this penis yet I looked at images and it felt strange to think of using it in the way the pictures described. It isn’t that I automatically thought I wanted a vagina and that I hated my own sex organs and there was this eureka moment of understanding. I still didn’t have a clue as to what my thoughts meant or if indeed anyone else felt that too. I doubted that but having no one to speak to and just playing the role one was expected to play I quickly learnt to override any feelings of that nature and slot in with the way everyone else thought or expressed themselves. I wasn’t about to discuss I dressed at home as a female and imagined myself with a male lover and not having a penis and so forth. That would have been insane to talk to 15 year old boys who one went to school with in that way. It would be impossible to talk  to anyone about that for decades. I even couldn’t talk to myself about that without feeling unwell and upset.

I looked facially quite feminine and my hair was long and I used to dye it lots of differing colours. I was dyeing my hair from about 15 onwards which other boys at school were not doing. I never saw this as strange and it kind of fitted in with a punk ethic but it was more for me a way of feminising without overtly making a statement I think. I hid behind this alternative fashion period which luckily emerged in the 80’s and I used it to somehow be a little bit more female than other boys whilst having a wider cultural excuse.  I was the one boy dyeing his hair and wearing eye liner at that age. At the time not significant but looking back there were 98% of other boys not doing that. Was I being drawn to the androgyny of the new romantic / punk era as a place to play with gender presentation, was it just fashion, was it my chance to push myself to look more female. Whatever the actual reasons I was doing something that other boys in the main were not. I was spending time on my hair, I was in stores looking at make up, I was looking at female magazines and also desperately wanting a boyfriend. Again at the time I didn’t feel I was transsexual as I had no concept of that word. I had all of the thoughts and feelings I have written about but I kept constantly ignoring myself and my thoughts.

I look back and think I was ignoring so many signs about myself and ignoring the real person or rather what my thoughts were. I was simply not aware that you could make any choices and as such I carried on and fell into life as I was supposed to live it or rather how everyone I knew or read about or saw on television was living it. The other person was forever isolated and lived in shadow, always listening for fear of discovery. It was not healthy and obviously led to my being prescribed anti depressants from about the age of 18 which to this day I still take.

Continued Part 4

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Roll up for the transsexual circus tickets 5 bucks

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The sex market is without doubt the greatest generator of traffic on the Internet and also the greatest revenue generator on the Internet. The Internet drowns us, we are up to our necks in its pervasive influence.  Sex drives staggering volumes of traffic, millions upon millions  of searches for pornography occur each day and tens of thousands every single minute.  One of the abilities of the Internet is to take niche areas where the content generators themselves are small in number and spread that handful of unique difference to the voracious bored appetites of millions of consumers of pornography. How does this relate to the community of people who are gender dysphoric.  This is a wide but flat community. It consists of small numbers of people who have had surgery and they are appearance wise half male and half female. They do not go through with a full sex change as this would be commercial suicide, because who would pay to access images of a woman who used to be a man who is now fully a female. She would look totally female and the consumers of porn would find no value in this and therefore would not part with any money to see it. The producers aren’t interested and the trans woman would be just a trans woman. She is not a fetish. You can have sex with a real woman, she probably looks better. Some people might be interested in our vaginoplasty but once they see it move on, hey who cares.

The fetish is the half and half , the man who keeps his penis whilst having the face and breasts of a woman. This is a huge fetish online. She males as the derogatory term used, attracts staggering online searches and interest. You could pay for any surgery you imagine quite quickly if you became part of this industry. If you kept your penis and decided to run your own online buisness, your own offline business indeed anything at all to do with providing food for the appetite of those who see us as objects of sexual fantasy. We have been fetishised and we are worth money to pornographers. We have a value and it is hard cash. People will pay to see us. like the bearded lady at the circus or the Siamese twins. We are part of the roll up roll up merry go round of wider culture.

Guys want to date us if we keep our cocks. They want to spoil us as long as we look female on the outside and a boy in our pants. We have it made financially as long as we sell ourselves to further the fetish we are.   We are the fringes of society, we are the people who people look at and feel they can ask any question they want of us. Are you a guy or a girl, have you got a pussy or a cock, who do you have sex with gay guys or straight guys. We are seen as not requiring privacy but people who are sexual objects to be discussed and questioned about why, who, how and what.

We are non people we are like the woman who has giant tits, the guy with the huge cock, the girl who does gang bangs. In other words we are sexual objects for a world who wants to see inside our pants. They do not see us, they do not want to see us. Look good, get your surgery and make the price back everyone wins don’t they? To present yourself to this market will cost you £50,000 + so its a business investment. Who can afford £50,000 to have cosmetic surgery possibly 1% of people with gender dysphroia.  So where do they go after surgery back to a world who sees us as freaks, objects  of fetishism or one of harassment in the work place and career prospects harmed and questionable. To walk out of a gender clinic and be told live for 2 years as a woman, that is dress as one and wear a wig whilst you look like a man. Where are our real options, who wants us. We are in desperate pain we want to be women, we want to feel wanted and accepted but now we have huge bills to pay in order to look the way we feel we should have been born. It isn’t a sob story that is what it means to many gender dysphorics,  look at t he suicide rates for people who cannot change have no alternatives but to wait for an NHS system who also has a 2 year agenda of ridicule.  I myself have waited 2 years for 2 appointments is that treatment I don’t think it is. Who is there to help?

The guy in the dark alley with a handful of cash saying I can solve your problems honey. He has plenty of buyers for you waiting. Waiting to see your tits and cock and if facially your surgeon has done a good job and the surgeons who did your hair and the surgeons who did your breasts also did a good job then you might make the cost of it all back by selling yourself as the object of expected male desire you have now become.   The fetish you now are in the world’s biggest marketplace.

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Why must Gender Dysphorics know all the answers?

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I wrote in a previous post about the costs involved in trying to make oneself the person one believes themselves to be. I would use the word ‘knows’ themselves to be, but even the most ‘celebrated’ transsexuals in the world often have their doubts and some have even come out fervently against how they were advised. How many people out there know anything definite, how many people do we hear say I did my best at the time. Well people with gender dysphoria are no exception they do their best at the time to understand what is happening to them and they hopefully take a course of action that is right for them. Having gender dysphoria doesn’t unfortunately give you a super power to see into the future.  It doesn’t imbue you with this unquenchable insight, a burning fire in the land of knowing. We are exactly the same as everyone else, we have our failings and we have our doubts, we make mistakes, and we sit and ponder forever are we doing the right thing.

When anyone takes a major life decision, I am convinced that at that particular moment in time time they did it believing it to be for the best. They do it for a better future and in the hope they are taking the correct path.  No one sets out to make their life more difficult or problematic.  Of course our decisions may be ruled by flawed human emotions and by particular psychologies based upon our own unique life experiences and the subsequent world view this generates. Others with their own unique world view shaped by their experience  may of course say well I would do it differently. These are the things that give rise to debates and discussions, places where we open our minds up to other viewpoints and we take what we think is best and that add value and make sense to ‘us’. We ultimately are the guardians of our own standards and our own decisions but these are formed not be trying to ‘know’ a certain answer but by trying to listen to ourselves honestly and by listening to others who we feel have the intelligence and sincere motivation to honestly contribute.

If you speak to anyone who has gender dsyphoria they will tell you of the disruption it creates in their lives. They will tell you of numerous difficulties that lead them to look for a solution to ease a burden they are not sure why they have.  It is not something that goes away, it is not something that one can forget about and it is not something that helps with any particular aspect of living unless perhaps one talks of increased empathy and feminine understanding of the world, which I am not saying is not a blessing. The world could do with much more empathy in it. What I am saying is we have this, that is the only difference to the neutral reader that doesn’t have this. Of course our lives may be different in lots of other ways but in the topic under discussion if you aren’t gender dysphoric then let’s say that is our difference. It would be hard for me to explain to you how this feels and it would be as equally hard for you to understand. I would tell you I don’t know, I am not sure and that at other times I have never been more sure of anything, but I would expect you to empathise with that in some other sphere of your own life. You might say well you either are or you aren’t and I would say of course I am sure I am gender dysphoric, what I am saying is I am not sure what to do about it.  You might then say sure I see you have big decisions ahead of you. Hopefully in that small paragraph I have expressed the minutest thing but also a great thing, namely that as gender dysphorics our lack of knowing is not about what we are but about what we do about what we are.

The variety of things gender dysphorics do about what they are is as varied as each of the individuals that experience it. They do what they do in honest hope that their particular choice improves the quality of their lives. This is sadly often overlooked particular in the transgender community where you either are this or your not this and if you don’t fit my world view of gender dysphoria then you are not truly this or truly that. What a shame this has found roots in gender dysphoric ‘communities’. It is as helpful as burning bibles when people are trying to heal and be understood.

In closing the treatment pathway for gender dysphorics is also about forcing the position of ‘know’ upon us. It says that if you are gender dsyphoric this is the treatment pathway for you, which is funded and how it works. This is terribly flawed and forces vulnerable people into pathways which can lead to poor outcomes as the path to finance is already set based upon a particular range of criteria. The patient walks in and is expected to know and their knowing must fit this pathway. If it doesn’t fit this pathway are you truly gender dysphoric, will you receive emotional counselling and support, do you have to exhibit certain behaviour patterns, will you be denied financial support. All of this continually challenges our own thinking are we right, we have to be right. They tell us we have to know the answer, they even provide us with handy hints to help us find the answer that will access the funding. The answer may be theirs but not ours. The answer may arise from desperate necessity not to go back to the isolation of these feelings. I am in a gender hospital this is where I should be I can’t walk away from this back to the internal silence of my feelings.  I would caution that here most vividly, we see the ‘know’, we as gender dysphorics face for treatment in the UK. If there is one thing psychiatry could do to improve patient outcomes it would be to listen to the individual story, don’t present us with the pathway to ‘cure’ first. Listen to us and together we will ‘know’ how difficult life and how we feel about ourselves is and how fluctuation and uncertainty are far more truly human than the blind certainty we are continually asked to provide.

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NHS Gender Clinic & The American Way

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The time is fast approaching when I attend Charing Cross Gender clinic for the 2nd time. The gap between the 2 appointments has been roughly 1 year.  This is an appointment with the lead psychiatrist there.  I would quickly add at this juncture the day homosexuality was removed from the list of recognised mental illnesses, gender dysphoria was added. So I see a mental health specialist as medicine has to categorise, and as there are no clinical tests for gender dysphoria, and science hasn’t developed an answer as to why someone born with the physical attributes of one gender struggles for a lifetime in believing they belong to an opposite  or other gender. Have I digressed? probably sorry. Remember you are not a celebrity get to the point Anabelle.

This appointment will be to accept me on to a program, that will involve my having to adhere to a specific set of rules and procedures in order that I may qualify for possible GRS at some point further down the line. If  I am accepted I will I imagine have to begin the real life 2 year experience where I live as a woman on a day to day basis. This means I have to wear the uniform ascribed by society as being female for two years. During this 2 years I may also begin hormone treatments to feminise me via oestrogen therapy.  I should also imagine I will have to take part in regular counselling and therapy sessions and go for regular testing during this process.  What is wrong with this many may ask, as it seems a perfectly reasonable path to have to undergo, in order that you prove to the NHS that you deserve taxpayers funding for your operation. Now what does GRS consist of, well it will give me an artificial vagina or one created from the penis that once was. I will have to dilate this space (vagina) for the rest of my life to keep this wound from closing over. So I get my vagina paid for by the taxpayer.

The real question however is the 2 years leading up to the vagina construction. The NHS does not pay for breast augmentation, it does not pay for hair transplantation, it does not pay for facial feminisation surgery, voice coaching, or anything else for that matter that would enable a genetic male to actually realistically hope to exist in society for 2 years leading up to the creation of their artificial vagina. So I am left in the world for another 2 years looking externally the same as I did when I first knocked upon my doctors door 18 months ago.  The only difference will be that I now have to wear a costume for 2 years in order to get my free vagina. In this costume I have to work, live, encounter, engage and occupy the world with others. I will in effect be to others a man in a dress or a skirt or hot pants depending upon the weather.

To myself I am female my body is wrong not the clothes I wear. I realise I look male and I realise that to follow the path laid out before me by the NHS will lead to 2 years of the most horrific difficulty, so what do I do? I want to access the things that are available such as therapy and counselling seeing as I am changing my ascribed gender but I will most certainly refuse to take part in a program that forces me to be a bloke in a dress for 2 years,  so the American way looms large cowboy or should that be girl?

I have budgeted about £25,000, yes quite a sum, to have my Facial feminisation surgery and to have breast augmentation in America hopefully in Boston with Dr Spiegel. I may further have some body implants that curve me more rather than going for hormones and have budgeted a maximum spend of £35,000 over the next two years to also include hair transplant and laser hair removal. I could do this all within the next 6 months if I wished and be home in time for the spring, facing the world with more confidence about who I actually am.  I would hope that when I go to Charing Cross they will see the sense in my choosing this path and allow me sensibly to continue on the elements of their program which will also benefit me, and at the end of the 2 year period have my free vagina courtesy of the British tax payer, what a blooming cheek Elsie. Will keep myself and any other poor soul who happens to stumble upon my blog in the giant cosmos that is the Internet, duly posted.

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