Those transgenderist males -- males living full time as women, but not undergoing genital surgery, often remain emotionally attracted to women, but they have obviously narrowed the field in which they might find an interested partner.
Those who make the change and have sex reassignment are surgery- TRANSSEXUALS or POST-OPERATIONAL-TRANSSEXUALS, usually seem to want a marital partner of the same sex to which they were originally attracted. It's very confusing to try to apply the terms "heterosexual" and "homosexual" to people in the transgenderist or transsexual categories.
Most transgendered people don't really know what it feels like to be gay; they are heterosexual. And most gay people find it very difficult to understand why anyone would want to crossdress except to attract members of their same sex. Lesbians, on the other hand, are often baffled by any man who would ever want to become a woman. When a heterosexual male tells a gay man that he knows exactly how he feels, it's like a man telling a woman he knows exactly how she felt during childbirth. None-the-less, such a person can be sympathetic, supportive, and friendly. And we all need friends who have those qualities even if they don't "understand" exactly how we feel.
The major truth that comes out of all this is the fact that none of us had a choice. None of us was given a chance to vote or elect to be a person with female sex organs and a man's brain. Almost no male transvestites would wish his innate emotional structure off onto anyone, and most wish it hadn't ever happened to them.
Regardless, they still cannot help wanting to be female, or as close as they can get to it, either part, or all the time. This is not a question of logic; it is simply WHO THEY ARE. It is not a disease. It can't be cured or treated and made to change. You cannot "cure" something that is an unusual, but natural part of the wiring of one's brain. Both Psychologists and Psychiatrists recognize this. If they treat someone for causes related to gender variation, they don't treat the variation; they treat the problems caused by the persons' perception of what their gender variation is doing to them, or to their families; or for social isolation, or for depression.
What transvestites and transsexuals and gay people can control, is how they respond to this other part of them which they need to express. They often take great risks for an occasional opportunity to assume the role of the other sex or to be intimate with someone of the same sex. But faced with oblivion, most will postpone it, repress it, or just do without. There are times when that is the best choice, just like sexual abstinence is often the best choice.
When I was in the Navy, I never did crossdress. This was partly because the urge for me was not great at that time. But I do know Air Force and Army personnel who do crossdress at great personal risk when on leave or liberty.
When I was in college and living first at home and then in a fraternity house, I did not crossdress. But I nearly always wished I might wear some tokens of the womanhood that was always within me.
During my marriage, when I was somewhere around 40, my urge to crossdress became so strong that I felt I had to explore it; to find out if it meant I was gay, or transsexual, or what. I started crossdressing when I was at home with my wife some of the time.
I felt I needed counselling, and got it. The first time helped me extract myself from a very desolate marriage. The second time helped me to accept the fact that I am a transvestite, although I didn't want to accept that.
I felt I needed to meet other people who felt as I do; not to have sexual encounters, but to exchange information and emotions-to find others who would make me feel that I was not alone. Through these associations I found information, acceptance of myself as a crossdresser, and that it's better to be who I am, even though I live among many people who may not think so. And then I found adventure, humor, friendship, a place to utilize my writing skills, and acquaintance with a wide range of people I'd never otherwise have had a chance to meet.
Little did I know, that this is probably the most common pattern of development among male TRANSVESTITES. We all had early experiences in crossdressing, and desires we didn't dare talk about with anyone. But the time of action, when we are ready to pay the price to explore our "curse", is usually between 40 and 50 years old. It's kind of like male pattern baldness; the body clock was set before we were born, but the bomb usually doesn't go off until mid-life.
Many TRANSVESTITES know they are different at an early age, but they don't HOW different, and they don't know HOW MUCH different. They very often feel that they may be gay because they recognize that some of their responses are female. They are usually not only attracted to girls; they would rather be one, at least some of the time. They may feel a kindred spirit toward homosexual people without having an actual physical attraction to people of their own sex.
Most TRANSSEXUALS know they are in the wrong body from their first encounters with sex-differentiated thoughts--at the age of five or six. No body needs to tell them they are not really what their birth certificate says. They can't change their brain structure, but science has made it possible for them to change their bodies to match their brains.
So where does this align the transsexuals, transgenderists, and transvestites with the Gay and Lesbian community?
All of us, whether gay, lesbian OR transgendered, know we are different from most of the population in our gender; that we are statistically unusual. That doesn't mean we are made wrong--just that we have some qualities that are different from others in the general population. So have basket-ball players, red heads, left-handers, short people, people who are outstandingly beautiful, successful trial attorneys, people with perfect teeth, and women who look good in miniskirts.
All of us need to know that "what is different for the population as a whole is natural for us." It is not "wrong" to be different. WE were made this way. We have nearly all suffered the pain of rejection from a part, if not all, of our families. We nearly all suffer long periods of social isolation, often accompanied by depression. We all know that our gender difference is not a mental illness.
However, we must be aware that because of our differences, and societal attitudes toward those differences, we can easily fall prey to treatable mental illnesses. And the price of coming out is,among all of us, often very high and very frightening. Who we are is not contagious. Nor is the sex of our brain -- our gender -- changeable by social contact, education, emotional guilt trips, or regression therapy. How ever the cards were first dealt to us determines the way we want to play the game of life.
Suicide rates are still several times higher among gay, lesbian, and transgendered students than among the student population in general. Among transsexuals, they have been estimated by one physician to be as high as 35% from the beginning of treatment to the three years after sex reassignment surgery.
It is only my opinion, but I think some of the most severe depression in the ADULT transgendered and gay communities occurs among people who have put their sexuality ahead of their need to prepare to make a good living, to learn how to be a part of the whole of society--not just the gender community. They become like people who can speak only French, trying to live comfortably in Oklahoma City. Certainly among those who feel they are transsexuals, and at the age of 18 make "sex-change" the end goal in their lives, they are setting themselves up for failure and oblivion. All the support groups and hormones in the world will not make a successful person of one whose only real motivations are centered around his or her becoming a member of the opposite sex or of the transgendered or gay communities.
You people are at an age of decision: do you strive to begin and end your life within the confines of the homosexual or transgendered communities, or do you work as hard as you can to be somebody important and worthwhile in a world which is mostly composed of heterosexuals? If it is to be the latter, you must come to grips with the fact that your sexuality or gender is only one aspect of many which are important in our lives. This is the time to prepare for success in all these areas, to learn to accept ourselves as different but not less worthy, and forge ahead in all parts of our lives. Above all, to get the best educational foundation we can at this time in our lives when it is being made available to us.
As we look at one another with friendship and compassion, we recognize that everybody in the world is a little bit different. We realize that none of us can afford reject people whose gender is different from ours, whether heterosexual, gay, bi, or trans. The fact that we seek different goals should not drive us apart. A merchant's desire for success doesn't alienate him from a research chemist or a commercial fisherman, whose goals and interests are certainly different from his.
In the last ten to 15 years, the entire gender community has made great strides toward gaining public understanding and acceptance. Many cities, many employers, and one state, have adopted laws against discrimination "on the basis of sex, homosexuality, or gender orientation". Twenty years ago there were hardly any support groups for transgendered people; now there is at least one such group in nearly every large city of the U.S. Five years ago people were kicked out of the armed services if found to be gay. We have made progress there, but still have a long way to go. May God help the Marine who is caught in a dress.
The Internet has facilitated communication among gays, lesbians, crossdressers, transgenderists, and transsexuals. It has made it possible for homosexual and transgendered people to organize a huge march on Washington. It enabled an organized "Lobby Day" for transgendered people last month, when over 100 transgendered people went to Washington D.C. to talk with the staffs of their congresspeople.
We ARE gaining. We all are being accepted in places where we never were before, and by people who would have avoided us or impeded our progress ten years ago. People are gradually becoming educated about the facts of gender variations. We all share in the need to carry that education forward, but we must do it according to our best judgment and at times when we do not put in jeopardy more than we are willing or able to risk.
If I have any message for all of you it is that each of us has a share of responsibility to help the straight community understand that we are not their enemies; that we are, in most of our lives, guided by the same motivations and principles that they are. That our values are similar to their values, and that we care about them, just as we hope they will care about us.