Oh my God .. What have I said time and time again about opinions ?? Please Kitten just follow your own heart and let others go their own ways, as what as good for you isn't always good for others and vice-versa... Granted others have screwed up their own lives , but that doesn't mean because they did that you will.
Others offer advice meaning well but let's face it honestly, what works for you wont always work for others . Its best to leave well enough alone as we all have screwed our own lives up enough... People all make mistakes, that's why they put erasers on pencils....We all screw up so let others make their own error, don't force ours on them
'nuff said

And this might not even apply to the person within the blog, either, but my experience with the stories I've heard of individuals who detransitioned -- several of them as horror stories from my mom -- concerned individuals who initiated their transitions not because they felt they truly were girls/women, but because they felt they were supposed to be them, which are two completely different things; the former, an internalized directive, while the latter is an externalized directive based on stimuli from the world around them.

Just because it looks like a goose, walks like a goose, and acts like a goose, don't mean it ain't a gander.

Basing one's decision concerning one's gender and sex on external stimuli is a dangerous and faulty choice to make. There are plenty of feminine men, and masculine women, out in the world who are completely comfortable both with their external presentation and their internal feelings concerning who they are. Too often the stories I've heard of people who were unhappy with themselves after transition concerned those who made the choice NOT based on how they felt about their person, but on how others told them they were or should be.

"Well, I'm no good at sports, I like to cook and enjoy taking care of children. Everyone else says I'm a woman, not a man. Maybe they're right?"

"I'm taller and broader-shouldered than all the women around me. My breasts never grew large, I have a deeper voice than they do, and I just don't like dresses. Everyone says I'm more of a man than a woman, I guess they're right."

These lines of reasoning, as often as they are used in TG fiction to serve as indicators of a character's realization of who they are, in real life are nothing more than indicators of a non-binary gender scale that offers much more flexibility in presentation and personal experience than people seem to think.

Similar ideas likely do go through the heads of those who are gender-variant to the degree that transitioning is a viable choice, but there will be a distinct difference in how the thoughts will likely present themselves.

"I love children. There is nothing in the world I can imagine being more wonderful than the feeling of holding my baby in my arms after birth. I would so love being a mother. Too bad I can't, since I'm a man."

"I'm so tired of everyone expecting me to be this person I'm not. I can't stand all this girly stuff they want to force down my throat, and shaving my legs is a pain. I wish I could just be like the other guys and be comfortable."

While there are similarities between these lines of thought to the ones presented earlier, there is also one major difference, and that is the emphasis on gender incongruity being internalized as opposed to externalized.

Being internalized emphasizes the desire for change being a part of the person's personality and mental makeup itself, rather than simply a response to stressors and input from the world around them. As such, it is less prone to being malleable based on a change of stimuli. While the external stimuli are important, and play a major role in the mental health of those who face an internal gender incongruity, they can also lead to unhealthy fixations in those whose internal gender is better aligned with their physical body than their gender presentation might lead others to believe.

People being generally malleable and fickle at the same time, this leads to a lot of problems, especially with the massive amounts of gender bias still present in our modern society.

"Women have things so easy. No having to do X, Y, and Z, and being allowed to do Q, R, and S."

"Men have it all. They can T, U, and V, while as a woman I'm only allowed W. That is totally unfair."

These attitudes, when combined with external stimuli, can lead to externalized gender-incongruity issues taking the form of a more pronounced fixation in an individual that can potentially override their base gender, at least for a short time, and is in my opinion part of what causes such issues as the "de-transitioning" of certain individuals, essentially making transsexuals of those who otherwise could have found other routes to alleviating their gender issues given the time and effort to more fully understand the basis of those gender issues they present.

Of course, this argument falls in the face of the fact that a fixation often leads to a deeper understanding of that which is needed to carry it through to its conclusion, and as such those who would need such looking-into are likely the best suited to bypassing said standards of research and monitoring to convince others of their own sincerity.

It is a difficult situation, and one I am not entirely comfortable having to contend with.

Melanie E.

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