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Something has been jabbering away at the back of my mind for some time and I'd like to share it with the Lurker Psych people here. Am I being paranoid, I don't think so, because what better way to study people of our ilk than in one of our sanctuaries?
The initial 3 or 4 years after transition were pure unmitigated hell, because of the loss of my old life, especially my family. However, the last few years have been much better; the pain having finally dulled to a manageable level.
Recently I have really begun to think about what it is to be a Twoman, and I only refer to myself that way because I was not born with a Uterous. On a site called www.psychforums.com; a UK site, I think, one of their forum members said loosely, that that being MtF transgendered is a delusional state. That was back in December, I think and my initial response was with guarded disagreement, that it was genetic. He also said that people like me, with substantial abuse in our background were prone to being involved in BDSM. In truth, I am deeply drawn to it but my own moral imperatives have prevented much activity on my part.
There will be more to this blog as I think the matter through. There is one thought. Who gets to define what delusional is? For me, if the Moral Police would just ride a rocket into the Sun it would be much easier. I wonder if it had been ok to express myself with any clothes that I liked, and assume the social role that I liked, would the SRS even have been nessessary?
Perhaps our seriously bent society makes the rational seem insane?
Much peace
Khadijah
Comments
Giving power to the enemy
I have always wondered why people give so much power and attribute so much authority to idiots who post stuff on the internet.
One of the problems of the age in which we live is that all opinions have equal weight. The eighteen year old skin head who says that the Holocaust never happened has the same standing as the eighty-five year old survivor who has made a life-time of studying the event.
That situation is alarming enough. But when we give strangers authority over our emotional lives, all sorts of havoc is unleashed.
So someone on a web site says, 'blah blah...' That is no reason to accept their point of view. For all you know this guy is blowing smoke.
But what do I know? I'm just some idiot posting stuff on the internet.
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
I'm with you, Gwen
I've wondered for a long time just who is in the asylum and who's running it (apologies to events in your past, dear, I wasn't implying anything personal).
This world just seems to me to be getting crazier and crazier, and I have to wonder if it's me or them. Perhaps it's the onset of age (or sense).
In fact I have been wondering just how much of my own version of our common problem is real and how much is delusion. I can't claim to be AIS or it's many variations - leastways not any I've found so far. There is however absolutely no doubt in my mind that I am not now nor have ever been a male, whatever my body may indicate to the contrary.
It's a problem and I have asked my GP to find me someone medical I can talk to to try and satisfy myself that I am, actually, not looney. Personally I don't think I am but, then again, how much is wishful thinking and how much is real?
Who gets to define what real is?
"being MtF transgendered is a delusional state." There's only one appropriate response to that statement: BOLLOCKS!
Penny
Much happier in the role of a woman
Yes, well, as a man, I was shy, defensive, and verbally aggressive if provoked. As a Woman, I am happy, friendly, loving, playfully ditzy, caring, mostly submissive and generally obedient. However, the angry Lioness is there for stupid interlopers, and that part was just recently discovered, and quite surprising. LOL
Khadijah
For one thing...
The "individual" who claimed that it was a delusional state is delusional and ignoring the large body of evidence to the contrary. (Okay, this individual's not alone, but then neither are people that believe the earth is flat.)
Irrespective of genetics - where this is also mounting evidence to support it not being delusional...
There is a LARGE body of evidence that the body develops physically and mentally - differently - in utero. The physical sex develops in one trimester, while the mind in a different one. In the majority of people - both develop the same way (malish mind malish body, etc.) However in a portion of the body, the hormones in the uterus are different - causing the brain to develop one way while the body develops another.
MRIs of the brain show show M2F brains very closely resemble the brains of genetic women (who are not TS), and F2M closely resemble the brains of males. The list goes on.
Delusional, I think not.
As to the comment that M2F transsexuals are more likely to become involved in BDSM. My guess is that - maybe - it may be slightly more likely than the general public - but not out of the desire/need to be in a BDSM situation, but because they may feel the need to be "force fem'd" due to something in their background that makes them think it's wrong or whatever - that they need for their pleasure to be "not their fault". I'd not bet anything I valued on this hypothesis! I have no direct experience (nor am I interested in any) or any research upon which to base the theory.
I have seen some stuff indicating that those from an abusive background are more likely to participate in one in the future than those who have not. But, it's far from universal!
So, the forum poster is likely either a troll (posting like that just to get reactions like yours), is a fanatic and "BELIEVES" it can't be natural, or just hasn't a clue.
Good luck.
Anne
Annette, I agree with you.
Henryhall did not upset me so much as it made me evaluate what he thought. I think he is perhaps a research Psych person, and has no patient load, since he has no "bedside manner". There was a tribe in Southern Iraq called the Manda, who handled things by simply allowing the child to live as man or woman as they chose. There was no jumping around though, once you decided that was it. They are Christian. When Saddam took over he persecuted them so much that they are now dispersed all over the world.
Getting back to the subject, I often wonder if the cause of lots of "mental illness" is the presure that our Judeo/christian ethic puts on us to conform to the fantasy ideal of a proper role. There is zero chance that I could return to being an Electrician now that I changed. The men would really KILL me. Still, my knowlege about Electrical work was not in my nuts in spite of the fact that some think so. I can be just as determined and skilled as I ever was but in our society Men won't allow that, and after working for 40+ years, I feel that I did my part.
If I am thinking of the right person, I think that you are fortunate enough to have a wife and children who can see the real you. My family are a bunch of red necks and will never get it, I think. In 50 years, perhaps the person occupying the role of a woman will not have to posess a Uterous.
Much peace
Khadijah
One thing
One thing most of those people miss - who believe that a uterus is required - is that there ARE women (XX chromosomes and all) that are sterile, that are missing one or both ovaries, etc. How about those who have had hysterectomies?
No... These people just don't want to understand or to think about anything that might rock their fragile belief in what IS.
Anne
P.S. Thank you. Yes, wife & kids are very supportive.
All reality
occurs within the mind of the perceiver, so who's to say what's real and what's delusional. Like the dickheads who shout, "Show us your ovaries," there will always be those who are deluded enough to consider things only exist in black and white and that gender is in that category. Having said that, some who hold that sort of view are often either tg or gay.
I do wonder if the pendulum is swinging back towards the right after twenty or thirty years of liberal/left progress. If it is moving towards more conservative values, then who knows what may happen. Certainly, in politics things are headed that way, and given the belligerence of the right, bigotry with violence is quite possible. I hope I'm wrong but with the increase in nationalism, religious intolerance and general greed plus the decreasing availability of water, food and energy, we seem to be building towards another major war or environmental catastrophe or both.
Angharad
Angharad
So if I reading this
So if I reading this correctly, the fact a female does not have a uterus means she is not a female? I can really believe how that would go over with all the women who have had to have total hysterectomies because of various medical conditions. The reverse analogy to this stupidly on the past of the MAN/MEN who makes that kind of statement is if they have their/his testicles removed, he is no longer a man. To paraphrase what a great life commentator, (Forrest Gump) once said "Stupid is as Stupid does". So based on all this, I guess I had better inform my oldest daughter, who had to have a total hysterectomy at age 23 (that or die) that she is not a woman; and if my wife was still alive, she would not be considered one either. (again a live or die medical removeal issue). Why does someone making comments to others in an inane manner to simply try and belittle them or force them to live according that ignorant person's standards make me so mad? Grrrrrr!
Khadijah, I am so very sorry that you were or have been, along with any other women, T or otherwise, been belittled like this. Jan
Janice, I am feeling pretty thick skinned about this joker.
Still, it has allowed me to sit back and calmly look at what he said. I actually know a shrink who think that, but when I look at his life, I wonder how he thinks that his point of view has any value? It has gradually come to me that it is not we who are delusional. After all, who but God can say? And the last time I looked none of them can walk through a puddle without getting wet.
I think some of us T folk have a propensity for anger and outrage, and be assured I have my own hot button issues. I am pretty much imune to spit balls like this. But, having been in the clutches of the Mental Health community when I was at my weakest, just after my divorce, you quickly learn to be compliant and smile a lot, even if tears are running down your face. It may be of some comfort to you to know that at no time did the Police mistreat me. Even the time when six swat team members had their guns pointed at me, never did I feel in danger, though at the time I was sort of wishing that one of them would shoot me.
Eventually, I got over the loss of my family, even though a part of me is now dead. Well, you know how that feels. I convinced them that I was a very good girl and they let me stop taking all the dope. 2010 was the first year that I really felt that my brain had recovered. Still, everytime I go into the VA clinic they ask me all these questions about my well being. I finally tell them, that I am not a danger to myself or anyone else and after 4 years of intense training and counsel, I am cured.
Much peace
Khadijah
Not being TS/TG
I'm going to say this. If any of these idiots had one bit of brains more than Spongebob squarepants or had even met a T-Girl and had honestly spent time getting to know them they'd just be able to see the woman in there with just looking in her eyes. I know every T-girl I've every met in person you can see the girl there in the eyes, right under the surface. These guys are so full of it.
Bailey Summers
After reading about that...
...I can only think that the best response, other than, as you said, some introspection to see if one believes that oneself (and the implications arising therefrom), is to just quote Bugs Bunny: "What a maroon!" And laugh a bit. It's got me giggling still. ^__^
A big step for me in growing up (something, I think, we tend to have issues with as our normal process therein is at least partially disrupted by the shear of internal and external expectations that catch up on our gender/sexual-morphotype mismatches) was realizing that just because a given person was an "expert" in a field, it did not, in fact, mean that they had any real knowledge of that field, nor any significant connection to any sort of external, objective reality. In fact, I'd say that most people latch onto some subjective experience and thereafter interpret the rest of their experience from the frame of that one experience. Hmmm... Sounds familiar, even. Anyway, that sort of understanding of the way people operate is the core situation in Plato's Allegory of the Cave: generally speaking, people just don't perceive the world from an objective stance, and usually let their subjective reality interfere with their perception of an external world to such a degree that such perceptions bear little resemblance to that external world. So-called experts are no less vulnerable to this effect, if they fail even once to base their professional opinions in the most objective, carefully tested data, and even then they often make mistakes. If this individual has no clinical data, and no specific research (which would have to be obtained clinically, and would have to account for psyche-external physical data like the mentioned MRI imaging studies), then his opinion carries no real professional weight, just the ability of the person to abuse his status as an expert to give his opinion undue, fallacious gravitas and a motivation to, if his scruples are weak enough, falsify that opinion deliberately in just that way, though he might hide the fact of his doing so from himself, justifying his doing so as somehow serving a greater purpose. I've seen it time and again in all sorts of fields, from a scout leader who didn't like one of the scouts (me) telling him that he was reading the map wrong, and leading the troop over the side of a cliff (only minor injuries, thank goodness, and no thanks to him), to a former "friend" who decided that, despite evidence to the contrary, one by one his friends were conspiring against him, and so alienating us one after the other (don't know what ever happened to him; he got so toxic that eventually, I just couldn't manage to keep trying to keep him anchored and to get professional help; I still feel bad about that, but not too bad: he really did a number on us...), to professors who I watched sabotage each other's professional standing, just because they were convinced that they were right, and the other was wrong, when, standing back a bit, they were really just arguing different ends of the same continuum of data (which would have been easy enough to demonstrate, but I wasn't in a position to do so, nor did I have, at that point, the ear of anyone who was).
tl;dr: people do dumb things. They will believe anything, if the outcome seems to them either desirable, or sufficiently undesirable that their pessimistic side kicks in. They screw things up with the best of hellward-paving intentions. They get emotionally involved, and let those passions overcome their reason, blinding them to options and alternatives. Status is no guard against this, even status that supposedly is tied to not succumbing to it.
So, cry or laugh at the stupidity, I choose to laugh!
That's all, folks!
-Liz
Successor to the LToC
-Liz
Successor to the LToC
Formerly known as "momonoimoto"
Oh!
Except when I "decide" to get right pissing mad at them. That's cathartic, sometimes. ^^;
-Liz
Successor to the LToC
-Liz
Successor to the LToC
Formerly known as "momonoimoto"