Are you a man or a woman?

Someone says to a transgender person "but you were born a man!" and my head wants to explode. No one is born a man or a woman, but instead male or female with the added non-negligible array of intersex conditions and ambiguous genitalia which leaves us unable to instantly pick a binary designation at birth. All this because nature abhors uniformity. 

Guest post by Joanna Santos

It turns out the perfect binary never truly existed but the idea was created and maintained to suppress any natural human gradations found everywhere else in biological processes. 

If we base ourselves exclusively on science this perfect binary isn't real. It was a cultural artifact where religious leaders and the ruling class could have the predictability they needed, and for most people it worked if imperfectly. 

Tolerance or intolerance?

Many native cultures have tolerated and even embraced those who exhibited gender variance. Others, more steeped in orthodoxy, fought it vigorously as it contradicted dogma that couldn't contain flexibility. 

People in those latter cultures with the most need to transition, were obliged as much as possible into stealth. Even variations of expression were discouraged to the point of physical arrest and incarceration well into the 20th century. 

Trauma and self realization among older transgender people

Older transgender people can suffer from trauma and suppressed anger issues stemming from needing to hide and face rejection from family, friends and society as a whole. The roots of this trauma can sometimes date back to very early in childhood. 

Guest Post by Joanna Santos

Having grown up under a rigid binary where their identity was forced underground often meant dealing with internalized transphobia while trying to adapt within the framework of a society that didn't suit them. 

This trauma can be insidious and is often forced into hiding under layers of life distractions which can mask it. The underlying turmoil can then surface with a vengeance later on in life which is often referred to as the "cracking of our egg". Even someone who may have achieved a certain level of early self-acceptance still faced huge challenges attaining a peaceful and harmonious existence. 

Dealing with this underlying trauma can be delayed but not indefinitely and once major life distractions fall away with age there is no place to hide from it. 

Avoidance and reflection

We human beings have immense talent for deflecting and avoiding hard questions dealing with their psychological obstacles. We use methods which can work for a time such as plunging into career, focus on raising children. Sometimes we aid the subterfuge by indulging substance abuse habits, overeating, or some other method of distraction. 

Metacognition is the exercise of thinking about our thinking. It is about focusing on our beliefs and placing them under a microscope to check their veracity. We examine preconceived notions about our own natures to hopefully reveal some inner truth which may have been masked via our early indoctrination. 

Gender Euphoria and Gender Dysphoria: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Exploring the gender variance and how it is expressed through gender euphoria and gender dysphoria

Guest post by Joanna Santos

Gender euphoria is the feeling of alignment and joy when we are in congruence with the aspects of gender and its expression we most want to reinforce. It can happen when either masculine or feminine traits are amplified and experienced most fully leading to harmony. This feeling can bring us closer to identity particularly when we might be otherwise forced to suppress in everyday life. 

Conversely, gender dysphoria is the experience of being denied harmony which can lead to anxiety and incongruence sometimes to the point of rejecting traits of the physical body. 

Most people have experienced some version of euphoria but the most virulent versions of dysphoria seem to be reserved for a tiny fraction of the gender variant population and most often requires therapy and medical treatment. 

Does gender dysphoria have a biological basis?

If you ask most experts in the field what causes someone to become transgender (as in experiencing gender dysphoria or being gender incongruent), they will tell you that this most likely caused by a combination of biological, cultural, social and personal factors. Most of them will agree that there is a significant biological component.

This is important, because it means that it is hard to dismiss gender incongruence as something imaginary caused by political and cultural pressure from sinister people promoting some kind of "gender ideology". All serious scientists in the field acknowledge that the identities of trans people are real and tangible and the great majority believe there are biological factors influencing the development of gender incongruence.

That does not mean that our concepts of gender are not influenced by culture. They most certainly are, as seen in the anti-trans insistence on gender being reduced to "biological sex", another concept that is as vague and ambiguous as the term "gender".

"Biological sex", as it is used by anti-trans activist, is a political and cultural construct that goes against everything we know about gender variance and intersex conditions, both in humans and in other animals. 

In intersex people chromosomes, gonads, genitalia and hormones do not match in wide variety of combinations, and in trans people a persistent and intense experience of a gendered self does not mach the gender assigned at birth. Dismissing this as "illusions" or "irrelevant variations" does not cut it.

What science says about the biological component

Research indicates significant biological factors influencing gender identity and dysphoria, particularly in brain structure and function. ​

Norwegian doctors/gatekeepers stop transgender kids from getting the treatment they need

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten covers the challenges faced by transgender youth in Norway regarding access to gender-affirming medical treatment in a new article.

Photo of Stina's shoes from Aftenposten.
Photo: Charlotte Førde Skomsøy

It focuses on the case of "Stina," a 13-year-old who was denied puberty blockers by Rikshospitalet, Norway’s national medical institution for gender treatment. Instead, she sought treatment at the Health Station for Gender and Sexuality (Helsestasjon for kjønn og seksualitet, HKS) in Oslo, which granted her access to the medication.

Cis-normative gatekeepers

The article confirms what many trans people have argued for a long time: Public institutions for transgender health often become gatekeepers serving a cis-normative society.

Although the doctors see themselves as progressive and supportive, their internalized transphobia make them set up strict rules for who qualifies as a "real trans person".

Norwegian trans people will tell you that as far as Rikshospitalet is concerned, it helps to live up to the gender stereotypes of accepted femininity and masculinity if you want hormones and surgery.

This is ethically problematic, as these doctors - all of them cis people - have put themselves up as both judges and prisoners, claiming the power to decide whether a trans person should be living their lives as themselves or not.

Joanna's conclusion: Transgender people are who they are because nature made them possible.

Today we know very well that being trans isn't a sexually fueled mental illness, however we still need to understand how the nature of wanting to be the other sex encompasses elements of sexual energy. 

Guest post by Joanna Santos

Since all of the trans people I know trace their gender feelings to before puberty, it would be far too simplistic to try and reduce feelings of gender incongruence to sexual dysfunction. 

Blanchard reducing gender identity to misdirected sexuality

However the now infamous Ray Blanchard did his best to do so and by the late 1980's was simply dismissing testaments of early childhood gender dysphoria by his patients as lying (hardly a scientific method) so they could fit a narrative aimed at transition. 

He eventually concocted a theory that attributed that desire as either a misdirected sex drive or wanting to attract heterosexual men as partners (in the case of patients attracted to men). He called the made up disease that supposedly drove those of his patients who were attracted to women "autogynephilia."

At this point let us simply state that some forms of gender variance exist primarily for the achieving of sexual arousal, which only adds confusion to the mix. 

How trauma may affect the lives of LGBTQ+ people and what they can do about it

This post will look at how psychological distress may play out among queer and transgender people and give you an introduction to the concepts of trauma, PTSD and Complex PTSD (CPTSD) in an LGBTQ+ setting. I will point to some steps you could take to help yourself or a friend suffering from trauma related issues. 

By Sally Molay

If the headline above caught your attention, you might know someone who struggles with the effects of trauma. Or maybe you suspect that you yourself carry unresolved trauma and the time is right to look into that. In either case, welcome to this primer and good luck in your important work!

Please note: I am not a doctor or a psychologist. This is not medical advice. I am a queer person and a trans ally. I suffer from complex trauma from childhood emotional abuse. I am also a survivor of sexual assault. I have been fortunate enough to heal and learn through years of therapy. I am also a trained instructor of iRest, a research-based relaxation and meditation technique for healing trauma.

I would like to underline that being trans is not a mental illness. Having a sexual orientation different from the straight one is not a psychological disorder. The current medical manuals explicitly state that being trans is not a mental illness.  However, the ways a cis/hetero-normative world treat queer people can often cause trauma. Moreover, queer and trans people are people like other people, and as such they can face emotional challenges that are not directly linked to their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Which topics are covered?

This is a lengthy post. If this feels daunting, I have included this little menu that you can use to jump to the parts you want to investigate: 

• What to do if you are in distress right now
• Why write about trauma in an LGBTQ+ context?
• What is a trauma? 
• Flight, fight, freeze, fawn
• PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)
• Complex PTSD
• Somatization (bodily expressions of trauma)
• The window of tolerance
• How to get help
• How to help yourself
• Resources

What is crossdreaming?

What is crossdreaming? A crossdreamer is someone who, to a larger or smaller extent, is driven towards imagining and expressing themselves as another gender.

The narratives about what makes gender variant and transgender people who they are, have often been colored by the thinking of transphobic people. These negative  narratives are also retold because queer and trans people have to respond to such invalidating theories and rhetoric. 

But what if we for once leave the bigots behind and talk about crossdreaming from an independent and positive standpoint?

As I see it gender variance normally reflects some kind of mismatch between a person's assigned gender and experienced gender.  This is often referred to as gender incongruence.

But we have to keep in mind that such incongruence comes in different colors and intensities. Some end up identifying completely with "the other gender" (relative to the one assigned to them by society at birth), while others simple feel the need to express sides of themselves that others try to deny them, because this is not what "real boys" and "real girls" should feel or do. 

Why are trans people trans? Part 2 ( A Look at Well Known Narratives)

In part 1 of this article I explained why we need to look into what makes transgender people trans. In this part I discuss some of the most influential theories and explain why I think one of them is better than all the others.

The theories attempting to explain trans identities

 I will focus on the four of the most dominant scientific models found during the last 150 years or so:

1. The Rainbow Model
2. The Body Trap Model
3. The Psychodynamic Model
4. The Two Type Inversion Model

There is also a wide research field addressing gender roles and gender identities in the social sciences and the humanities. Gender studies have, for instance, contributed greatly to our understanding of gender variance. 

But that tradition is most often based on a given acceptance of transgender identities, and is more interested in explaining the way social systems lead to oppression based on gender. It rarely considers the interplay between biology, culture and psychology, which I suspect is the primary concern of Tailcalled, who invited me to this discussion, so I will not describe it here. 

That sort of thinking has greatly influenced my reading of the science of gender and transgender identities, though.

The Rainbow Model

The dominant model for explaining transgender identities these days is what I will call the Rainbow Model. It is a non-reductionistic model, in the sense that it does not reduce sex and gender to a simplistic biological sex binary or one single factor of origin.

Modern research has uncovered a mind-boggling complexity as regards  the development of biological sex, both as applies to the development of the body (both prenatally and after birth) and the formation of a conscious gender identity.

Why are Trans People Trans?

What makes trans people trans? A lot of theories have been presented, and few of them survive the test of time. Currently the dominant model is what I have called the Rainbow Model, where a transgender identity is seen as the end product of a complex interplay of factors, some of them biological. In this three parter, I look at several approaches to explaining what makes trans people trans.

Tailcalled, who has been taken active part in the "autogynhephilia" debate over at reddit, has invited me to an online debate about what makes trans people trans. I can do that. We have agreed that we will both publish a blog post giving some pointers as to how see the "etiology" (cause) of transgender identities, as starting points for our discussion.

This is my blog post. Tailcalled's one can be found here.

So the question is: What makes trans people trans?

Sounds easy, doesn't it? All we have to do is to find some relevant scientific papers and take it from there. But it is not that easy. Not that I am dismissing the role of science in such a debate. I have been writing about this kind of research since 2009. 

The problem is that science is not a kind of platform where you can look at transgender lives with purely objective and disinterested eyes. Scientists are as human as the rest of us, and their preconceptions and prejudices directs their research questions and the way they conceptualize what makes trans people trans. 

Even the terms we use are fluid and ambiguous, because they have to be as we move through a cultural shift where traditional ideas about sexuality and gender are being questioned along a wide front. That is, as I see it, a very good thing, but it makes it harder for people to discuss this topic, as people from different communities have different life experiences and understand the relevant words in different ways.

Are all transgender people gender dysphoric?

No, the headline is not another variant of the “you cannot be trans if you are not gender dysphoric” meme, often used by transmedicalists and transgender separatists who think they more trans than other trans people.

The headline rather refers to our understanding of the term “gender dysphoric”.

Could it be that the “you have to be dysphoric to be trans” statement is based on a misunderstanding of the term “gender dysphoric”?

Over at CDL Carah Maisie (who is herself a transgender woman) makes this argument on the basis of an analysis of the DSM-5 “gender dysphoria” diagnosis. Her argument is inspired by an article written by Jocelyn Badgley.

The DSM-5 manual and its criteria for being gender dysphoric

The DSM-5 is the current edition of the American psychiatric manual. “Gender dypsphoria” is not seen as a mental illness in the manual, but it is included all the same to ensure that trans people get access to health services and proper insurance.

Carah and Jocelyn list the various criteria that indicate gender dysphoria in the DSM-5, and some of them do indeed refer to a mind/body misalignment:

• A strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics
• A strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of another gender

But these are not the only criteria. Others refer to social and societal dysphoria:

• A strong desire to be of another gender
• A strong desire to be treated as another gender

What is Gender Dysphoria?

Photo by Patrick Miko 

Gender dysphoria refers to the distress that may accompany a mismatch between one's experienced gender and one's assigned gender.

Lisa Mullin, a transgender woman, explores the nature of gender dysphoria or that deep sense of discomfort and suffering that may come from living in a body and a social role that does not match your inner sense of self.

Experiencing Gender Dysphoria

By Special Guest Writer Lisa Mullin

It is incredibly hard to explain to others what gender dysphoria actually feels like. The concepts can be so alien to an ordinary cis (non-transgender) person that it would be easier to explain quantum theory….

It is hard enough for trans adults to understand and explain but even more difficult for parents trying to understand their child and work out whether they are transgender or not.

But here is my attempt.

Is see this as having three dimensions that vary for every trans person:

(1) Physical

(2) Behavioural

(3) Visual

Each can be broken down further.

Physical Aspects of Gender Dysphoria

This is the simplest and the easiest for others to understand. Basically you miss bits you should have and don’t like bits you do have. They just feel ‘wrong’ to you.

It never goes away, though you can distract yourself from it, even suppress the feelings for periods of time. It can become very intense at puberty when, especially for trans boys, things like breasts start growing.

Here's a personal example: I didn’t want my penis as a kid, even tried to cut it off (stopped real fast when it hurt though, I barely broke the skin).

I missed having a vagina (even though I didn’t know what that was) and kept feeling between my legs as a young (6-10) kid to see if it was there and if it had grown in yet (as I expected).

The sadness I felt when I was older and knew it would not happen was intense.

Behavioural Aspects of Gender Dysphoria

This is complicated because it covers a range of things. Body movements, hand movements, voice, games played, types of friends, toy preferences and so many others.

What the DSM-5 says about terms like transgender, transsexual and gender dysphoria

The recent edition of the American psychiatric manual, the DSM-5 distinguishes clearly between the broader umbrella term transgender and the much narrower term transsexual. The text gives, in fact, a pretty good summary of the dominant model of gender variance. It is time transgender people get a chance to read it.

In the transgender debate words like "transgender", "transsexual" and "gender dysphoria" are used often without there being any clear, common understanding of what the terms really mean.

Photo: Janka Dharmasena

Unfortunately sex and gender is one of the most controversial topics around. We need love to thrive and be happy, and any real or perceived threat against the possibility of finding real love and affirmation as a sexual being can therefore be life threatening.

Because of this people seem to be willing to do anything to be included in the category of "normal", to the point of excluding other  people from the transgender community, often by attempting to  take full control over the meaning of essential words.

The purification of the term transgender

This especially applies to so-called transsexual separatists. Some of them redefine the word "transgender" to mean any gender variant person who is not like them ("classic transsexuals" and the HBS tribe). Transgender people can therefore not be "real transsexual women", as they see it.

Lately we have also seen separatists who want to appropriate the word "transgender", in effect redefining it to mean the same as the word "transsexual" (the truscum tribe). The end result is the same: The expulsion of all transgender people who do not adhere to their idea of what it means to be a real woman or a real man.