Jump to content

The Cause


KayleeSaeihr

Recommended Posts

KayleeSaeihr

A psychology student friend of mine seems stuck on the fact that I should try to find the cause of my gender issues. And that the cause will help determine the course of action. He's seemingly sceptical that about my feelings being actually gender identity issues, I think. He thinks I'd be much better off with psychotherapy than transitioning...

But finding the cause would be nigh impossible, there could be so many factors, my autism, my asexuality, my sisters, my lack of social ability, actual gender issues, depression?... It would be too difficult to pin point the actual cause.

But I'm curious if anyone else grappled with the 'cause' issue? And how that turned out?

Link to post
Share on other sites

For me, the cause is simple.

Society has chosen - for some weird reason - to group us into males and females based on the fact that we have a few differently shaped bodyparts which are of very little consequence to 99% of everything we do in life.

As for those who wish to actively change their body to fit their gender.. that's more tricky.

But still, why would there be a cause other then 'I just happen to have a gender that doesn't fit the body I just happen to have'?

Link to post
Share on other sites
Elliott Ford

I recently had a conversation with a gay male friend of mine. He's just come out after several years of knowing that he's gay but pretending to be / trying to convince himself that he is straight. He was asking me if i ever wondered about The Cause of my trans-ness (i know that's not a real word but it sounds nicer than transsexualism) as he did about his homosexuality, looking for something "to blame".

I told him that i had a vague intellectual interest in the causes of trans-ness in general and how that might or might not be applicable to me but otherwise, no, i really don't care. This rather shocked him but i pointed out that the "cause" or "reason" behind my trans-ness doesn't matter because knowing it or not knowing doesn't affect the fact that i have to live with the effects.

Personally, i have a quasi-religious belief that the only way for me to become the person i am now / the person i need to be in the future was for me to spend my childhood and adolescence thinking that i was a girl.

I gave myself the middle name Peredur for this reason. Peredur (romanticised as Percival in later versions of the story) was one of the knights of King Arthur in the orginal tales. he was raised as a girl and was subsequently one of Arthur's most sensible and sensitive knights because of it, defending women, children and the disabled against the jibes of the other knights. He is one who eventually finds the Holy Grail. If Peredur had been raised the same way as the others, he would have been as bad as them but his female upbringing made him a better man. I'm not saying that i'm like that but he is a bit of a hero of mine.. :)

Back on topic, the reasoning behind working out why you are having gender issues is to work out whether you are trans (and therefore unlikely to change your mind if you go through with transition) or there is another problem causing these feelings (a problem that might go away and cause you to change your mind after or during transition). It's just to try to make sure that transitioning is something that you actually want / need.

I can take it as read that i'm a boy with a female-assigned body. i know that, it's how i feel and nobody can ever convince me that i feel otherwise. What i want to know is - where did i get the idea that this was a Bad Thing? I've more-or-less known that i'm Not-A-Girl since i was 10 years old but my family never, ever told me that i had to be a girl, never forced gendered behaviour on me or anything like that.. Yet i still felt obliged to "be a girl" and didn't tell anyone i felt different to other girls until i was nineteen.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I have grappled with the cause issue. I used to think it was from having been raised by a single mother, but even after having a stepfather who functions as my dad for all intents and purposes, I'm still this way. He thinks Asperger's Syndrome is somehow a causal factor--but he thinks this about everything eccentric about me. For a while, I did, too, until I met some other people with Asperger's.

The more I investigate the matter, the more I think it's something a person is born with, just like a biological sex. I think having a female brain in a male body is a localized form of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome--that is, the brain does not receive any masculinizing hormones, but the rest of the body does. (Most women with AIS have completely female gender identities.) I think the case of David Reimer shows that gender identity has some innate component. It seems that most of us are somehow programmed to pick up socialization cues from one gender or the other.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Min Farshaw

Well, I think David Reimer provides very strong evidence that we have an innate "body-identity," but gender roles beyond that are far more fluid based on society, etc. I knew for the longest time that something was "wrong" with me, but I've never exactly been hyper-feminine or anything.

As much as I feel that nature is mostly responsible, I do sometimes dwell on elements more closely related to nurture. During my childhood, my sister was always the "good" one that didn't disappoint, and my dad never tried to hide the fact that he was much closer to her than me, e.g. bringing her hugely expensive presents home from trips, and bringing me a pen or something, lol. At school there was a similar situation, where teachers seemed to treat girls with a little more trust to be responsible, whereas boys were more likely to be seen as troublemakers. I do wonder sometimes if things like this created a subconscious belief that girls are better than boys, and that affected who I would become later on.

Whatever the cause though, this is who I am, and despite the hardships it can bring I don't think I'd be willing to take some kind of magic pill to make it all go away... So I guess the cause question is more academic to me than anything else.

Link to post
Share on other sites
oneofthesun
A psychology student friend of mine seems stuck on the fact that I should try to find the cause of my gender issues. And that the cause will help determine the course of action. He's seemingly sceptical that about my feelings being actually gender identity issues, I think. He thinks I'd be much better off with psychotherapy than transitioning...

At the risk of sounding like a psychologist myself, I believe when people do this they are projecting. THEY are uncomfortable with someone they know being transgendered, and so they convince themselves you're not really that way and would feel better if you stopped believing it.

As for causes, I honestly believe that I had a twin in the womb and we combined to become one person (or put another way, I ate them lol). I know for a fact that it happened with my mom's sister, and my mom had an episode during pregnancy that seemed very much like a miscarriage. Everyone was surprised she was still pregnant afterwards.

But that's neither here nor there. Knowing the cause won't necessarily "solve" anything, if there is something that needs solving. Tell your friend that scientists have been studying this for a long time and they're nowhere near determining the cause of gender identity issues.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...