This is a different kind of post, especially for me. I’m asking that you pass this post to your congressional and state representatives, as well as other influential people you know and the leadership in organizations you belong to. I hope in this post to portray a fair and apolitical view of the facts about transgender people and the falsehoods that are often told.
I am not an expert, but I have a solid background in science, as well as having done my own research in respected sources such as PubMed. I am not informed by the opinions such as those of politicians which too often represent only a small part of the truth, worse yet outright lies and misrepresentation.
I am a trans woman and transitioned about ten years ago and so have a degree of first hand experience. Some of that has seemed typical from other’s accounts and some not.
I cannot possibly cover every topic of interest, but I hope to address what I’ve perceived as the concerns about transgender individuals. If you are motivated to want more questions answered then please post them in the contacts and I will try and give informed answers or refer you to sources I consider to be driven by facts.
I do encourage you, my reader, to seek out other sources of information on the topic. By no means trust my opinion alone.
What is a transgender person?
This is the source of a great deal of confusion. A transgender person is one who has the strong conviction that the physical sexual attributes of their body do not match their self perceived sex. This is not a vague feeling. It can be a very overwhelming source of mental pain and without treatment often causes transgender individuals to develop other psychological problems. While being transgender is not itself a mental disorder, it often leads other conditions such as depression, suicidality, substance abuse, bullying and more.
Some things which are not indicators of being transgender. There are a number of psychiatric issues that people think trans people engage in:
- Drag performers are just what they sound like. They are performers, usually gay men although there are also drag kings where women dress as men.
- Cross dressers are men who identity as men but dress as women for the sexual excitement it brings. They used to be called transvestites which is now considered a pejorative term. Cross dressing is done both in private and public. In my personal opinion cross dressers almost never pass as women.
- Pedophilia is a psychiatric condition where a person is sexually excited by sexual contact with young people or media depicting young people in sexual situations.. Some just seek out visual materials, and some actually seek out direct contact. Everyone agrees that they are a serious problem.
- Voyeurs are men who try to gain illicit access to see naked women, generally without their victim’s knowledge
So what is a trans person? They identify as members of the opposite sex from the one they are physically, So a trans woman is born with male reproductive and secondary sexual characteristics. Mentally they have a strong conviction that their sexual characteristics are wrong. Some studies have shown that trans women have brains more similar to cis women and trans men to cis men. But do note that we have nothing like a genetic test or measurement that can tell us a person is transgender.
Treatment
The course of treatment for transgender people is determined by https://wpath.org/. This organization which started out as the Harry Benjamin society https://www.britannica.com/biography/Harry-Benjamin dictates issues such as when a transition is indicated and criteria for helping to make the decision..
Using myself as an example, I actually went about as fast as one can possibly go. I went from starting therapy to gender reassignment surgery in just a few years. More often that would have take more like five years. As you can see, this is not a particularly fast process.
People ask about detransitioning and regrets. It’s important to understand that issues around relationships and family, losses of employment and friends and other issues surrounding the changes that ensue are more than a small part of regrets. In addition this surgery, like all surgeries can have complications, some of which are difficult to deal with. This can lead to regretting the surgery but not the desire to have the surgery.
Let’s first say that of the children who identify as transgender, only a small percentage will persist as transgender post puberty. This, along with emotional and mental maturity are part of the reason that no permanent changes are done to children as part of transgender treatment. No surgery, no hormones.
One practice thought to be harmless has been the use of puberty blockers, I would say that there is now some real doubt about the relative benefit in holding off changes from puberty by using the blockers and the negative effects.
Misrepresentations
There are a number of sources of misrepresentations and outright lies about transgender treatment, alleged practices, and rumored facts. These stories are not solely from President Trump but he seems to have a real tendency to latch on to false claims and not ever to correct himself when proof is provided of the errors of his statements.
I have no idea why he has dedicated himself to lying on this subject, but unfortunately he has. He alleges that your child could leave for school in the morning as a boy and arrive home as a girl. Without parental consent.
I’ve actually had two surgeries. My initial reassignment surgery and a corrective surgery. In both cases I was required to obtain letters from two therapists as well as a doctor’s approval before a surgery would be approved. The insurance company insists on this. Wpath insists on this as well as a matter of dictating proper procedure. No insurance company is going to pay for reassignment surgery without it being approved.
I needed to wait three months to have the surgery, actually a very fast schedule as some people wait a couple of years to get a particular surgeon. Hardly a one day affair. After surgery I was in the hospital with a vancomycin drip and a supply of morphine for pain control for several days. After leaving the hospital I moved to a hotel room where my surgeon could continue to guide me on necessary measures to take post surgery. My sister and brother in law also helped me in the first week.
It took two months for me to actually return to work. Reassignment surgery is major surgery and is very debilitating.
Trump continues his one day surgery despite people correcting him. It’s very much like the stories he tells of Hattian immigrants eating people’s pets.
Two Sexes
Another ill advised policy decision is the just two sexes pronouncement. There are a large number of genetic and developmental conditions that result in genetic males resembling females at birth and females resembling males at birth. None of these are related to people being transgender. They also include conditions like intersex, chromosomal abnormalities, abnormalities of hormone creation like complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, The real list is much longer and doesn’t deserve a full description here, but there are, of course, classes in med school, biochemistry and such that would make it clear. I would rather recommend you talk to a doctor you know about relevant birth defects to get a more humanistic feeling for it.
Misconceptions
There are a few things people assert that just ain’t so despite what they think.
“I can always tell if it’s a transwoman”
You can’t. I’ve been living as a woman for ten years now and nobody migenders me except on the phone. I’ve never been harrassed in the ladies room. I don’t attract stares. You can’t tell. You can often tell with cross dressers, but transwomen wear normal clothing and act normally. Cross dressers often dress unusually, in attire that’s inappropriate socially and without the skills acquired through daily application of cosmetics and constant acquisition of those few movements that are actually different between men and women..
“The vagina they get is just a knife cut” or something to that effect. The construction of a vagina is an involved process, but the results are quite like the real thing. I actually researched articles on the cytology of the neovagina and found that the conclusion was that after about a year the lining of the neo vagina and a natal vagina are basically the same. If you want to know more I can point you toward the techniques which were first used for women who were born missing a vagina.
Finally
I hope my meager attempts at informing you have helped clarify why this is a medical and not a moral issue. Why trans people should receive fair and unbiased treatment from the state and federal governments and why people need to rely on reason and not emotion when determining policy in these matters.
My Gifted Life 