I would very much like to follow your investigation as this sort of research is intensly interesting to me. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have, if you think it might help your effort.

To be more specific as to what i am trying to prove in my investigation, which is actually an art piece, is that one’s physical sex does not determine their identity or who they are as a person. My topic is gender issues and basically what i am trying to prove is that just because one is born a certain sex and seen by the world as a certain sex, it does not necessarily mean that they are that gender on the ‘inside’.
I am also trying to show in my piece the hardships one may go through in their journey to achieving their ‘true gender’ on the outside in order to be content.

I apologize if i have offended anyone, or you brett, i am not always the best in articulating my concepts.

Any more information or feelings on the subject, again would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Brett.

Could you please be a bit more specific about what you want? Are you asking Mind Hacks or the people who have commented (or lurked) or all of us?

Also, I think it is safe to say the such people as you are interested in studying are not wanting to “change their gender identity” – we already know and are comfortable with our gender identity. What we (transsexuals) are interested in changing is aspects of our bodies to make our sex more congruent with our gender. Depending on where we already are along the sex and gender continua and our particular life-circumstances ,we may take greater or lesser transitionary steps.

To clarify my comment above, I am a male-to-female transsexual who has chosen to remain in male form out of love for my wife and my marriage vows to her and God.

As a female soul, clothed in the form of a male, transition to female-form and identity was my first choice, but I have accepted God’s challenge to live content in this blended-form. My task now is to remain committed to this challenge, accepting it as a gift, learning to express my femininity in the context of a male body: I want this to be a winsome and comely expression, unique to me, with the force of feminine beauty, grace and sensibility, yet not unbecoming of the male form, nor denying the masculine parts of my soul. God has promised to make me beautiful, graceful and congruent, certainly in eternity, but also (I believe) here in my life on earth as well.

For me this means that I live openly transgendered, expressing myself on the feminine-side of androgynous. I am naturally graceful (like a dancer) in my movements and mannerisms, and I am gentle and soft-spoken. I typically cross-dress, but I’m never in “drag” – I don’t attempt to pass as a woman, only as myself. You would often see me in capris with a fitted shirt or blouse, sandals, very long hair in a French plait or in a bun with hair sticks, pearl stud earrings, female glasses a bracelet or anklet or necklace. My breasts are already at stage2 to 3 on the Tanner scale due to my hormonal makeup from puberty on. All of this is qualitatively and noticeably different than a “man expressing his feminine side;” I am not a ‘man’ at all, rather I am a female person “driving” a male body!

Anyway, if you know of any TG/TS studies, I’ve been interested in some time in participating in one or more of them, especially fMRI ones.

Take Care Chloe!

However, in contrast to Paul McHugh’s logic -
- I have had no surgeries and I do not intend to have any.
- I am attracted to women, but I can be sexually aroused by either gender if blind-folded and with my smell senses shut down.
- I like the function of my primary sex organ. Its structure is relevant merely as a question of fit with that of my sex partner.
- I love babies, I wish I could give birth, but I recognize my biological limitation and dependence on a genetic woman to bear my child, and I preserved my sperm before starting hormones.

While many genetic women have no intention of giving birth or having children, I do. This flies in the face of Paul McHugh’s biggest assumption that somehow to be “truly” female, one must like babies.

My gender problem included a strong sense that my male secondary sex characteristics did not belong to my body. They were somehow foreign. I “knew” that by age 3 or 4, but could not articulate this until much later. These characteristics were especially painful after puberty as male.

In addition to my secondary sex characteristics, I had a strong sense by age 3 or 4 that growing up as a man, as manifested in the men around me, was somehow wrong for me. However, I did not speak up due to fear and social taboos.

While I enjoy wearing human-made articles of clothing meant for women, I find no need to wear only those articles. Clothes are facades for social interactions. They are just clothes! If clothes entirely define you, you have serious self-esteem issue and you need to evaluate your priorities in life.

I do not know what it means to be “a woman” or “a man”. I only know what it feels like to be me. I never felt like a “woman trapped in a man’s body”, because I have no idea what it feels like to be someone else. I do not know how to compare with another person.

I felt no different in my mind after taking cross-gender hormones. I was exactly the same person before as I am now.

I had no gender-specific socially stereotypical inhibitions previously and I do not have them now. I cry as often as I used to when I lived as a boy/man. I was as non-dogmatic before as I am now. I have exactly the same profession now as before. The only thing social gender transition could and has accomplished for me is to make me feel more comfortable with myself and in the world around me.

Cross-gender hormones only made my secondary sex characteristics more tolerable for me and they helped me not live as a man.

So there! Everyone is different. The visceral opposition to transgenderism comes from dogma. While there could be certain mental disorders associated with transgenderism, blanket generalizations are unwarranted.

Transgenderism cannot be purely sociological or sexual as it appears in other creatures for various purposes (ever heard about the gender bending cuttlefish?) and in humans long before sexual maturity. There is a biological aspect to transgenderism, which in a closed-minded society with fixed binary genders screams to be let out. Whether that biological aspect is in the brain or elsewhere is the research being conducted as indicated in the original article above.

The issue at hand here is not gender though. The issue is the antiquated belief that there are two genders and nothing in between, while in reality, everyone falls somewhere in between. Gender as we know it is a social construct which entails division of labor in society, separation between strength and nurturing, separation between hunters and gatherers.

Homo habilis, homo erectus and homo sapiens probably found incremental benefits from such division of labor. However, in the era of washing machines, dish washers, cars, and modern technology, the value of such division of labor has declined.

While heels, the color pink, and several other concepts we associate with femininity today were once associated with masculinity. Gender, as we often refer to it, is a social construct meant to serve a social purpose. It helps identify a mate.

There is also a gender, a part of your identity, which is not necessarily binary. It is only part of your identity, not whole. Everyone has it. And one part of growing up is finding out whether your internal gender identity fits closer to the masculine or the feminine or neither social gender.

Poetically, I am a predominately female soul clothed in a male form. Bluntly, I am a male-to-female transsexual who has chosen to remain in male form out of love for my spouse and my vows to her and God.

Though I do not attempt to “pass” as a woman, I am indeed a feminine person. What surprises people is that I am feminine yet I am not effeminate. My present form will not allow me to express myself to the full degree that I would like, but within my limitations, I live as a transgendered person: a “blend,” if you will.

I am feminine in the way I think, in the way I communicate, in my values and interests (and yes, I wish that I could carry a child in pregnancy).

My sexuality is a bit odd in that I regard myself as asexual, neither attracted to males or females (my wife being the sole, and I believe supernatural, exception).

At the same time, I must continue to live in the role of a ‘man’ and husband (which does not thrill me, but I do it because of my commitments). Despite this, I am not a ‘man.’ BUT, I am not a ‘woman’ either.

Anyway, I would caution anyone who assumes that because a transsexual seems to be a caricature, that they are in fact not what they believe. No doubt, there are masculine aspects to these transwomen, just as there are feminine aspects to transmen. Most trans people in the west have been strongly socialized in the gender of their birth-assigned-sex with HUGE negative sanctions for *ANY* expression of gender variance. A more accurate picture might be seen by considering trans people in cultures where they are (at least nominally) accepted.