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Being Transgender is incidental to the way a person is born.

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2014 12:15 am
by erica123
Being Transgender is incidental to the way a person is born. Being Cisgender is incidental to the way a person is born. Each person has a gender (what your mind is giving you as your sense of self), a sex (how chromosomes have settled to create that which is physical) and an orientation (which helps us to know whom we are attracted to). Though much of society would like these things to align with each other in a certain way there is no correct alignment. A person’s alignment of these things is again, incidental to that person’s birth.

For an individual that is Transgender, a byproduct of that is called gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is a feeling of disconnect between what the person knows to be their gender (sense of self) and their sex (the physical body) OR caused by being denied natural self-expression at an early age and then turmoil at the onset of puberty due to the physical changes. The degree of dysphoria differs from person to person and so also what is needed to manage it. But if left unmanaged the damage caused to the person continues to increase and so too the amount of healing that needs to be done in order to restore the sense of self to a healthy state.

Repression of a Transgender person’s gender (their sense of self) is natural when it is made clear at some point that their alignment of gender and sex do not match the societal norm. It is a very normal social behavior to want to fit in and so what is natural in the person’s nature is suppressed and hidden away in an attempt to do so. This suppression is like the person fighting to swim upstream when the mind naturally wants to flow gently down stream. This upstream fight normally starts at a young age and the degree to which the person swims against their nature depends largely on the idea of what is correct for the gender the social environment perceives them to be, the degree in which societal norms are being forced upon the child and what the child perceives as necessary to please others in order to fit into the surrounding society they live in.

(part one)

Re: Being Transgender is incidental to the way a person is b

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 4:31 am
by Dantor
(part two)


The amount of repression necessary to hide the true nature normally increases as the person gets older since the societal differences between what is seen as the only two accepted alignments of sex and gender grow wider. To find acceptance within the societal construct the person has to swim even harder upstream to fight against, and in doing so, hide the true gender. With the onset of puberty the turmoil often grows to an unbearable level, the individual commonly perceives these physical changes in a very negative light and it is not uncommon for severe depression to set in, up to and including suicidal ideations, which in some cases is acted upon. Sadly in some cases effectively.

It is very common for the Transgender person to see the situation as being hopeless and becomes determined to deny that the true gender exists at all. In doing so, particularly in trans females (genetic males) but also trans males, it is not uncommon for the individual to seek out activities they perceive as falling at the extreme opposite end of societies expectation of the gender they are fighting to run from. Within all these years of swimming upstream and fighting against nature something has to give which in many cases is either a crushing of the spirit or a boiling point is reached where the person can no longer fight against the true nature.

Regardless of the point within this process that the person starts to come to terms with the reality of it the best first step is therapy when they have acknowledged to themselves and/or someone else (some sort of coming out) they need help. Seeking therapy is the start to the healing of the damage caused to the psyche within all the swimming upstream and against the person’s natural tendencies. The goal is to manage the gender dysphoria and bring it to a level where a desired quality of life can then start to happen. What is needed to bring the gender dysphoria to that level has to be determined by the individual through the guidance of therapy and isn’t predetermined. Hormone replacement therapy and/or different surgeries are options but do not need to be seen as the only options.

The healing cannot take place in a vacuum. A support structure outside the individual and aside from therapy needs to be established in order for the person to gain validation for the feelings that are now coming out. To this point the person has felt as if they were wrong in being who they are and that support structure is vital to establishing within them the sense that this is not the case.

Erica Elizabeth Ravenwood, 8-24-2014