An anonymous account of the causes of late-onset transsexualism

1. Introduction

Today, I’d like to tell you a story.

I didn’t meet my father til’ I was 25. I grew up my whole life without a father, therefore, and told myself I didn’t want one.

When I thought of fathers I always had this fucked up idea of them from the Breakfast Club. There was basically two types of dad…

1. Brian’s Dad: some boring, pointless middle-aged dude who said shit like, “Gee son…how’d you like to go fishing today?”

Or…

2. Bender’s Dad: some abusive bastard who would give you a carton of cigarettes for Christmas and say, “Smoke up Johnny.”

So if you’d asked me when I was in my teens or twenties if I wanted a Dad, I would have sworn an oath that I didn’t want one. And I was certain that was how I truly felt. And it was…

…in my conscious mind.

But there’s this little thing called the sub-conscious; or as I like to call it: the whispering inside. It turned out that my conscious mind was saying one thing about having a father but my subconscious was saying another. And how did I find this out?

Well, I met my Dad.

2. Meeting my Dad

It was no big deal.

I met him. He was cool. We chatted. I liked him. We parted. And planned to meet a week later. And I walked away from the meeting exactly the same person I was before… and while it was cool to meet a dad… I hadn’t changed my mind about ever wanting one. In my conscious mind.

However, what was happening below the surface was that from the moment I walked away from the meeting, strange things started happening.

First of all, I was experiencing flashbacks to the conversation… replaying things he said, over and over again, and I thought of stories he told me of his youth and I pictured them in my head with cinematic clarity. Then, I found myself telling everyone and everyone who would listen about the encounter, and was constantly constantly turning the conversation round to the subject of fathers with anyone I could: friends, taxi drivers, shop assistants etc. I was literally… on another planet… but still telling myself it was no big deal…

“Phuh… fathers… whatever.”

Until 72 hours later it happened: the big bang.

I can’t remember what the trigger was; well, that’s a lie… I can… (but its a little too personal to bring up.) Basically, I broke down… I was literally on the floor… in what can only be described as a state of primeval, raw emotion. It was raw because there was no language… there was no… “Oh it’s so great to now have a father…” there was no… “I was robbed all those years with no father”… there was no sadness no happiness. Only tears. Seismic tears that came from the center of my being.

 

3. So, what the fucks this got to do with my transgender philosophy?

Everything… or perhaps nothing… I’ll let you decide.

You see, I’ve had many years to think of that event and I’ve come up with a theory as to its significance. It is purely speculative… and, like the idea of the subconcious for example, not something that belongs in the realm of physical science.

What it is this…

I believe that there are words which pertain to things in the world around us… and that there are physical structures in the brain that correspond to those words. Not structures like neo cortex but… neural connections.

I believe that one such arrangement of neurons pertains to ‘father’ and another to ‘mother’. I believe that my whole life that neural connection for ‘father’ had never fired… and that the 72 hours after meeting my father was the period in which the brain began to assimilate this information until finally the neurones pertaining to father ‘fired’ and boom… I was down on the floor like a mother fucker. I was in pieces…. as the blank, empty neural space was filled in.

Similarly, I think there’s an arrangement of neurons which pertains to self identified gender. At some point, two, three, four years old, you self identify as a gender and a specific arrangement of neurons fires and connects.

Boy… I am a boy.

And… while there is no available technology to identify it… this gender related neural structure exists.

But now you have to pay attention because I’m going to complicate things here. This is not – I repeat not – the neural structure I refer to as ‘gender core’ in my unified transgender theory.

The gender core is a hypothetical neural structure which exists in all animals that have genders. It is congenital – ie… present from birth – and makes sure that a female pig executes the behaviour of a female pig.. ie… have young, raise young etc… and that a male pig executes the behaviour of males of most species… rolling around in the mud looking for females to hump.

So… do you get it… I’m proposing two neural structures related to gender. One is congenital and controlled by biology… it’s animal, let’s say… the other is neuro linguistic and controlled by social and environmental factors.

Now, last week… myself and my colleague, Electra… made a pretty bold claim abot transgender people. We said tthat all these groups we think of as different… transexuals, transgender, early onset, late onset, crossdreamers, quackaphiliacs etc… etc… are all transgender in the following sense; all of them are born with a biological gender core contrary to that which their genitals suggests.

So, let’s think of a classic crossdreamer profile.. 5 year old boy arrives in the family kitchen wearing a dress. At that moment he is being powered by his biological, mismatched gender core… but then what happens… parents tell him he’s a boy, teachers tells him he’s a boy, he has willy of a boy, ipso facto logicus… he believes he’s a boy… and will carry on believing so until it all falls apart at anything between 18 and 80. But, by the way, he doesn’t need to go through the whole dress thing… simply by being socialise and raised as a male it’s enough for him to defy his gender core and identify as a boy.

Now, let’s pause for a moment, though, and ask.. why do some boys not listen to their parents? If they have mismatched gender cores… why do the Jazz Jennings of this world refuse to be socialized as a boy. Well, maybe they just have a strong will, maybe, there’re degrees of transgenderism… light to full on. Or maybe we could think of Mister Blanchard at this moment. As we know, sexuality has nothing to do with gender identification… but maybe, in the case of transgender kids who like boys, maybe it helps the self identification process. Think about it… the transgender kid identifies as female.. plus they like boys… just as mum does and their sisters and most of society… this might help to consolidate the identification and ensure that despite the contradicting voice of parents and teachers – they deny socialization and enter immediately into total identification.

Now, please, our Canadian friends… just because sexuality might help in the self identification process does not mean there are two types of transsexual. And anyway, the same acceleration could happen with boys who like girls if society – starting with their parents – wasn’t so bent on forcing a gender on them. I’m quite sure, that if we continue on the progressive curve we have embarked upon in recent times… so called late onset transsexualism will become less common.

Anyway, where I’m going with all this is an explanation for those gender identity crisis that can hit a person at almost any age…. late onset transsexualism. It is, if you step back a moment, quite a fascinating phenomena… Sorry, to always mention Barry the builder as our example… but, you know, a burly construction worker helps to drive the image home. So, there he is, Barry the builder, 52 years old, beer belly, three kids, wife… suddenly decides he’s a woman. Wow. I mean, people can decide many things about themselves mid life… I’m a christian, I’m a fan of ballroom dancing, I’m a self obsessed cunt… but to decide you are the opposite gender… what the fuck is going on with that? And the amazing thing is how common it is. If even happens to gold medal winning athletes who epitomise manliness, it leads me to question who else did it happen to in history. Is this the secret reason Julius Ceaser was murdered on the senate floor… did he announce he was transitioning to Julia Ceaser, and they just killed him on the spot… hmmm…

Anyway, the phenomena ceases to be a mystery, though, when we think of the dual components of gender identity. Biological – the gender core – social… gender self-identitifcation. Barry the builder was born with a misaligned gender core… he was seemingly successfully socialised as a male… perhaps there was always one symptom, one clue of his gender variance… that he would project into a female body in his sexual fantasies… or perhaps not (anyone interested in gender arousal as a symptom of underlying transgender psychology should visit our website… transecend movement.com) but then, one day, in his 52 years of life, the house of cards comes falling down and his gender identification shifts to that of his gender core. Barry now sees himself as female.

So we know… why it happens, but what are the triggers?… Why does Barry… no, fuck Barry, let’s go back to Julius caesar… why did Julius caesar, at the peak of his career, with a vast empire at his fingertips… suddenly decide he was Julia?

In my opinion, and obviously it is an opinion cos nobody knows, the primary mechanism is the removal of internal shame. Julius may have been one of the lads when he was decapitating Gauls and bedding Egyptian porn stars…. shit, sorry I said that… i really like Cleopatra… you know she could speak five languages and was forced to marry her 11 year old brother. That is one honeymoon video I wouldn’t wanna watch. Imagine that… your parents invite you to a formal dinner to present you to the partner in your arranged marriage… imagine… you’re nervous with excitement… is it going to be that handsome prince from the lower Nile, is it going to be the brother of the Babylonian king… no… it’s your brother. On the plus side it would cut the cost of the wedding reception… you’ve both got the same family after all.

Anyway, Julius may have been one of the lads but he… but he always knew there was something there… and he was embarrassed about it. He was ashamed of it.

Shame, my friends. Without wanting to state the obvious, shame is a fucking powerful psychological mechanism. Shame could bury a winning lottery ticket. The way I think of shame it’s like… a hammer… boom boom boom… it can take feelings and pound them until they go running into the shadows.

So, it’s when Caesar loses his shame that he realises that not only does he identify as female… but doing so feels, right and beautiful.

But of course, that’s not an answer… what causes him to lose his shame at being female.

Well, the reason Caesar denied his gender core, was that society told him he was male. His subsequent shame at the female within was created by society labelling such femininity in a man as wrong and shameful… so he obediently developed shame.

Now, how does anyone remove shame bestowed upon them by society? Well, the simple answer is by rebelling against society. That doesn’t mean a personal crusade against societal norms… but just the slow realisation as one gets older that certain things are bullshit. In other words, Caesar removes that shame once he gains the necessary life experience and maturity to question it. And he doesn’t have to be all zen about it; instead of the acquisition of some kind of wisdom… it could just be anger at society. If Julius looks back at his life and realises that it has been nothing more than a testosterone induced orgy of decapitating Gauls and conquering the world, and that he was pushed down that path by pressure to be ‘a man’ … he may wonder why he should go on listening to society when it hasn’t done so much for him.

Late onset transsexualism occurs, therefore, as a natural part of the maturing process; more concretely – the ability of individuals to define themselves on their own terms instead of societies. This means they’re able to suddenly vocalise in their conscious mind a desire they’ve always had – to be female – but instead of shame… it just feels incredibly right.

 

If my transgender experience began with a sexual experience… is my female identity a creation of my sexuality?

 

 

This question is annoyingly persistent in the crossdreaming community, and it is a morbid, obsessive question which lingers in the transgender mentality, causing doubt and shame. It is so important we resolve this question that I am going to deal with it in detail and write down the different ways in which it is formulated. It goes like this…

1) Is the cross gender identity I’m developing now, motivated – deep down – by my sex drive?

2) While my female identity may be extremely nuanced, and based around a whole set of aesthetic and personal tastes that aren’t sexual – is it really just a sophisticated form of being horny – an outgrowth of my sexual urge to be a woman?

3) To put it bluntly, in a way which all of us would consider crude, offensive and wrong, but one that occurs to me in moments of doubt: am I just a pervert?

4) Is the deeper cross gender identity experienced by some femephiliacs just the result of their femephiliac sexuality?

5) Is the new me just some bizarre creation of my sexuality?

6) Is my sexual taste just a manifestation of my deeper female self, or is my deeper female self a derivative of my sexual taste.

This question is of existential importance to some crossdreamers because it seems to be the key to whether their cross gender identity is valid or not. They believe that if, deep down, it all has a sexual root, that would somehow invalidate their cross gender aspirations. It would be ‘just sex’ and therefore not real. If their cross gender identity and aspirations are not sexual, however, then that would make them valid and real.

Personally, I would dispute the validity of the question. It is prudish – old school – like sex is dirty and something to be ashamed of; and it is also simplistic in its understanding of sexuality and its relationship to the wider self. However, as the question is important to many in the community I will answer it.

First, let’s place the two – apparently irreconcilable – dimensions of crossdreaming, side by side. We have

1. The sexual: when the individual is engaging in sexual behaviour based on cross gender fantasies.
2. The deeper female self: all female behaviours, ideas, tastes, which are not sexual.

And now I want you to choose the correct answer to the million dollar question. Whether his deeper female self is…

a) The prime cause of his female identity with the sexual part just being one manifestation of that deeper self.
b) A derivative of the dominant psychological force at work here: his sexual desire to be a female.

Did you answer A or B? Well, it doesn’t matter because you’re wrong either way. I tricked you. The answer is…

C) Neither of the above.

Really, how the fuck would you prove A or B? The question is absurd because we know so little about the interplay of genetics, neuroscience and social conditioning at work. The real options would have to have be a,b,c,d,e and go on for several alphabets because there are many unknown variables involved. So, unless you work in some secret laboratory in Serne where a team of crack geneticists, neuroscientists and developmental psychologists are working on the problem, don’t start telling me, or more importantly – yourself, that you know the answer.

Therefore, because we don’t know, you cannot…

…Separate the sexual from the deeper female self, or vice versa.
…Create a convenient causal relationship between the two.
…Grant one a priori status. Sex drive says, “I got there first so I must be the boss.”

So, let’s try to escape the narrow polarisation of A versus B, and let me ask you a question: Who built the pyramids… the replaceable and expendable grunts who carried all the blocks of stone? Or the team of genius’s who, in a world without calculators or engineering degrees, designed them?

A smart Alec might reply… “the grunts built it… you didn’t ask who designed it?” and that would be valid, but we all know that if the geniuses hadn’t designed it then it would have been impossible to build. Similarly, the psyche of the crossdreamer in which he has both a sexual urge to be a woman, an emotional urge, and an aesthetic urge – are all part of the female identity which he develops, and you can’t separate them with amateur psychology or dogmatic ideas about gender that you want to force on the world. It’s like… a Macdonalds happy meal comes with nuggets, fries and a toy. It’s a package. In fact, the question about the sexual drive creating the psychological drive is like looking at your happy meal, picking up the nuggets and asking if they caused the fries… or did the toy make the nuggets and the fries? None of them made each other, they all came together and we cannot say with scientific certainty how it happened.

Now, I would like you to consider your reaction to what I’ve said. I think my answer will be unsatisfactory because we have a natural tendency to monocausal explanations. Tell the truth, we humans are… pretty fucking dumb. The idea that the sex came first so that must be the cause of all else is exactly the sort of idea we love. It’s sequential, tidy, logical. But unfortunately… crossdreaming is a mental and genetic and social phenomena, and not some simple, mechanical apparatus that can be explained with ease. Similarly, the argument from quantity is powerfully enticing … whatever there is the most of must be the dominant force: “Because the majority of my crossdreaming thoughts are sexual then it must all be sexual.” I would reply, “Well, of course, their mostly sexual… humans think about sex constantly… what do you expect most of the crossdreaming to be about… quantum mechanics?”

The first argument – the sequential – in no way addresses the nuances of sexuality and its wider effect on behaviour, nor powerful psychological forces such as repression. It is quite plausible to me that the infant mind immediately represses his contrary gender identity, but this force is only powerful enough to partially repress it… it cannot override a powerful human instinct like the sex drive and thus the sexual aspect of crossdreaming remains in the conscious mind while the gender identity gets buried.

To be honest, I’m not totally convinced by that theory, but try to prove or disprove it. My previous point is worth repeating: we are not even in the infancy of understanding the complex interplay of genetics, experience, neuroscience and social conditioning that gives rise to so much of human psychology. To say that the female identity of a late onset transsexual is just sex is only one notch of sophistication up from saying that the world doesn’t fall because it’s being held up by atlas, or that the sun moves across the sky dragged in a chariot by the sky god.

To show the complexity of the situation, think of some of the scientific data we do have, rather than unprovable psychological mechanisms. We know from numerous case studies that once a transsexual takes hormones their sex drive falls off the cliff (due to the absence of testosterone). This should mean, therefore, if their crossdreaming is sexually motivated that they should lose interest in transitioning. But they rarely do. Although they are no longer aroused by crossing gender it still feels right and natural and an arrival at their true self. Conversely, for those in the ‘it’s all a deeper psychological drive’ camp, consider the type of sexual fantasy this individual has from a very early age… surely, if he was in some deeper sense – female – the sexual behaviour would be that of a female and he would fantasise about men, as women do. However, the substance of his fantasy – even if it includes men – is always about being a woman, and that is the source of the erotic impulse.

So unfortunately for those who want a simple explanation, the deeper female self and the sexual self are not locked into a convenient causal relationship where we can say one causes the other. I believe they come in the same package. And I say ‘believe’ because – I repeat – at this moment no one can be completely – or even slightly – certain.

To conclude, if you are currently involved in the debate… is my female self, deep down, just a creation of my sex drive… the answer is… I don’t know, and no one will know until both you and your female identity are long dead, so stop being drawn to the wrong question and start asking the right questions.

Start Session 3… NOW

What is a late-onset transsexual? Definitions, and the difference between early and late.

What is a late onset transsexual?

Originally late onset transsexualism was associated with middle aged and older transsexuals. However, it is better thought of as… any case of adult transsexualism in which the desire to be, or belief of belonging to another gender, was not apparent to the individual early in their life. They came to the idea late – anything from 18 to 80 – as opposed to the early onset transsexual who knows consciously from their earliest years that they were – ‘born in the wrong body.’

But how is it possible for a person not to know that they are transsexual until late in life?

There are two answers depending on the type of transsexual.

  • If an early onset transsexual is subject to rigorous suppression then he or she can be in denial for many years. Thus, they come late because repressive mechanisms have told them they are not, or cannot be, transsexual.
  • If they are a late onset transsexual then the answer is complex. Very complex. Late onset transsexualism takes time – in some cases decades – to emerge. And we will spend the rest of today’s session trying to understand why.

Introduction

First of all, what is a transsexual?

A transsexual is a person who, unlike the part time fantasist or femephiliac, not only has a powerful compulsion to permanently become a gender different than the one they were born into, but begins to take positive steps to achieve this.

In my opinion, the first question we should ask ourselves is not ‘why does this happen?’ But… ‘why does this not happen more often?’ Think about it: women and men often have great admiration for one another’s gender… so why don’t more men want to be women and more women want to be men? After all, people are constantly changing things about themselves: people decide to become actors, they decide to have radicle surgeries; they decide to move to Paris… it seems logical that some of them will want to be another gender… and not due to any psychological problem… but just because they want to.

Well, whether it seems logical or not, it doesn’t happen. This is because one’s gender is a key part of one’s sexuality and one’s identity. Changing it is not something that either occurs to, or seems remotely desirable, to most people. Try telling a man he will have to trade his penis for a surgically created vagina and he won’t respond well;  the most obvious consequence for him is that he will not be able to have sex in the way he likes, and will not be able to father children… his whole organism will rebel at this.

However, there is one type of person for whom – even if such a trade was not desirable – it wouldn’t be such an alien concept as it would to others. This person is the femephiliac – a person whose sexuality is based round being female. Now, if we think how often a person engages in sexual activity – either physical (sex, masturbation etc.) or mental (fantasies, clocking someone attractive on the street etc…) then we can safely say that a femephiliac spends a significant amount of his time in some kind of cross gender mental space. He has both his sexual life as a female in his femephiliac fantasies and (to varying degrees depending on his nature) a deeper female self of which that sexuality forms a part.

We see, therefore, that femephilia offers the individual a unique cross gender experience and that this experience is played out – day in day out. Of course, this does not mean that person will at some point seek to change their gender but it cannot be denied that in some sense, it makes them more open to the possibility of gender change, and certainly more open than a person who does not have the femephiliac experience.

If we acknowledge that femephilia does make a person more open to the idea of gender change then it’s logical that the degree of openness will not be fixed – it will vary from individual to individual, depending on the intensity of the femephilia and his sense of his deeper female self. If a person is extremely femephiliac then they will likely be more open to gender change than someone who is slightly femephiliac. (It is valid I believe to talk about degrees of femephilia. Very few people have just one sexual taste. They usually have a particular type of sex that appeals to them most, and lesser interests in others. For example, a person maybe primarily interested in straight sex but not mind a bit of bondage now and again, and I would posit that there are men who have differing degrees of femephilia and that this degree affects how open they are to gender change.)

An example of a more intense form of femephilia is seen in men whose principle fantasy is to possess a vagina. Studies have shown that transsexuals with vaginal femephilia are more likely to seek gender reassignment surgery than other types of femephiliac. We can suppose therefore that the degree of femephilia and the sense of a deeper female self make the individual more open to the idea of gender change.

Okay, so they are more open to gender change… how does this progress to transsexuality? 

Start Session 9 and continue exploring your Deeper Female Self…

What are the causes of late onset transsexualism?

Let’s summmarise our explanation of late onset transsexualism thus far…

  1. Most humans have an intrinsic block to the idea of changing genders.
  2. Early onset transsexuals, however, for reasons we don’t understand, have no block against gender change. In fact, there is no gender change – they believe from a very early age that they belong to the other gender.
  3. Late onset transsexuals with a history of femephilia do have a block against gender change. They are raised with the sanctity of their cisgender and are soon socialised into accepting it. However – their femephilia and their deeper female self mean that the block to gender change is not solid. It has the potential to be weakened and removed at any point in adulthood.

So, resistance to gender change will never wane with a non-transsexual person – there is a permanent portcullis slammed shut against the idea. The femephiliac, however, has a deeper female self which means that certain life events – both psychological and biological – can raise the portcullis little by little until his deeper female self enters the psyche, transforming from a barely audible whisper to the principle voice in his head.

This implies that all femephiliacs are transsexuals waiting to happen. But of course, that’s not true. The great majority don’t happen… and this is due to three factors: their femephilia is not intense enough to lower the guards…and/or they have been successfully socially conditioned to never consider gender change… and /or they simply have a great life and change is not something they need or want.

So, what are the triggers for late onset transsexualism?

Things that might cause gender change resistance to collapse – or that can make gender change more attractive could be…

  1. Trauma: something happens to them as a male which repels them from wanting to be male.
  2. Testosterone decline: when testosterone declines sufficiently to take the edge of their overt masculinity.
  3. Failure or deep personal crisis: the belief that the person they are has in some way completely failed… therefore creating fertile ground for the creation of a new persona.
  4. Stagnation: a person believes their life is utterly devoid of interest and excitement and being reborn with a female identity becomes the desired solution.
  5. Change in role: divorced, single, some kind of change which means they no longer have to play the male role.
  6. Attraction to men: some femephiliacs don’t just fantasise about faceless men. They do – to differing degrees – find men attractive – and this would further weaken the barriers to transsexualism.
  7. Extremely liberal upbringing: if the crossdreamer was raised in an environment that was free from repression and extremely open, it is likely he would not have been successfully conditioned against gender change.
  8. Increasing independence from social conditioning: as an individual gets older they often become more independent and begin to shape their own world view rather than that shaped by parents and peers and prevailing ideas. The individual can think objectively and starts to question their identity, sexuality and how they view the world. In this new world view there may be a release of repression.

We see, therefore, that late onset transsexualism is like an equation.

Femephiliac sexuality + crossdreamer sensibility + life event triggers + biological triggers.

The point I would like to end with is ‘life-triggers.’ Logic would say that if the transsexualism was triggered by life events… then couldn’t other life events affect it in the other direction? Can’t we lower the portcullis against gender change once more, switching the individual back to a good old fashioned crossdreamer?

This does not seem to be the case.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that once that genie is out of the bottle and the individual both identifies as a woman and wants to change his sex… there is no going back. I don’t mean he will definitely do it, I mean that it will remain a persistent desire for the rest of his life. In other words… it’s not just a passing phase or desire that recedes with time.

For some, it is a desire so powerful they suffer from major trauma if they do not realise it, while for others it is more like a dull ache which they can live with, but that colours their life with sadness. In the rest of our seminar we will explore this desire in detail: How to manage it, how to view it, and how to live with it, starting with the question which all transsexuals ask.

Should I transition?

Start Session 10 and continue exploring your Deeper Female Self…

Is the late onset transsexual suffering from an obsession with being female?

 

Is the late onset transsexual simply suffering from an obsession with being female? And if she is, how can she cut it from her life?

  • Steve Jobs was obsessed with creating the world’s best home computer. That was good for him and good for the world.
  • Adolf Hitler was obsessed with killing Jews. That was bad for the Jews, the world, and Hitler himself.

As we see from the above examples, obsession (an idea or thought that continually occupies a person’s mind) can be good or bad. It all depends on the consequences for the thinker and the larger world.

That gender change becomes an obsession for the late onset transsexual is undoubtable… ask one and she will tell you that it is constantly on her mind. The question is whether such dominance of her thinking is a good thing or a bad thing. This is an important question because there comes a point where you are investing so much time on the subject you start to wonder if a) you’re going mad and b), on a more practical level, if this isn’t just taking up too much time that could be better spent on other things.

The answer will depend on the individual involved and your beliefs as to the causes and treatment of transsexualism. Clearly, if you think you are a woman trapped in a man’s body then you will see it as only right that escaping the trap becomes an obsession.

Instead of re-entering that debate, I prefer – when judging if it is a useful obsession or not – to focus on the practical: is it even possible, and if it is… will it make you happy?

I have an equation to solve the riddle. Choose a, b or c.

  1. If gender change is not possible in your case = an unhealthy obsession
  2. If gender change is possible + you will be much happier as the other gender than you are now + the relevant healthcare workers give you the green light = a healthy obsession
  3. If gender change is possible + you will not be much happier as the other gender than you are now = an unhealthy obsession

Whether gender change will make you happy or not is a subject I deal with in another essay. As you know, I think that in some cases it does not make the individual happier but they will not admit that because they have gone to a point of no return. Or, they may be a bit happier but with the right counselling and philosophy they could have achieved more happiness as a man. Whatever equation you do choose, though, it is vital you choose one. Even if you have to take a week off work to think through the whole issue it’s worth it, because you can lose weeks and months and years of your life thinking the same thoughts day in day out. The rest of this session, however, is for sufferers of gender dysphoria who have opted for a and b – an unhealthy obsession that they want to eliminate.

Eliminating the obsession

Unfortunately, as the name suggests – obsession – it’s not so easy to deal with. In fact rule number one is probably… you can’t eliminate obsessions… rather, you chip away at them, learn to live with them and once you do that …they recede into the background.

Here are some points to remember.

  • 1. Suppression of your thoughts doesn’t work. In fact… “Don’t think about x” seems to be a guaranteed way of thinking about x. What you can control though is your reaction to them; be more Zen-like and accepting of the obsession… don’t start getting angry or frustrated.
  • 2. As long as a part of you still believes that transition is viable… the obsession will have extra power. You must definitively bin the idea and to do that you must understand just how unviable the whole project is. (Read my essay on should I transition?

To properly debunk an idea – in this case ‘transition’ – it is not sufficient to think about it on the way to work, or while you’re washing the dishes. Thinking for ten minutes here and ten minutes there always leads to the same repetitive thoughts i.e. no progress. You must clear your schedule for a couple of hours, sit with a pen and paper and analyse transition point by point; you will soon see why it is not viable.

Not only is it not viable, however, but once you start researching case studies of transition you start to realize something scary. That…

  1. Transitioning doesn’t necessarily end the obsession.
  2. Your whole life can revolve around becoming a woman rather than being a woman.

Allow me to expand on point 3. Some time ago, I made friends with a transsexual on Tinder. We started communicating and she told me by Whatsapp at least three times that she was in ‘transition.’ We then went for a coffee and she told me again she was in transition. As someone who spends a lot of time personally and professionally talking about trans issues I was neither surprised nor particularly interested. In fact, what had interested me in the first place was that she had a degree in philosophy. The problem was, though, every time I started to talk about something else, the conversation always seemed to come back to her being trans and being in transition. I went away thinking… Jesus, does this chick have nothing in else in her life?

Now, if you’re changing gender it is obviously going to dominate your life, but I have a strong feeling that for many transsexuals it becomes the sole narrative of their life. If they are women trapped in men’s bodies then they should escape and start living as women… but it seems that many spend their whole lives on the escape part because they are still obsessed with the process of becoming. And of course, in some cases, it’s never enough. Transition is followed by SRS which is followed by facial feminisation which is followed by a boob job which is followed by a hair transplant which is followed by more surgeries and more treatments – especially with the femephiliac for whom beauty is so important.

It’s like there is a certain type of transsexual who, as soon as she reaches one milestone to femininity, the next one immediately pops up. Understanding that what you are obsessing about – transition – doesn’t necessarily remove the obsession, is an important step to abandoning the whole idea of gender change.

At the end of the day, nobody doubts your sincere desire to be a woman, but you have to ask yourself if you want that so much that you are willing to let it become the dominant narrative of your life. Don’t you want life to be about more than that? Don’t you have more to offer? If so, then you must see that transition, while enticing, is a bad idea. Essentially, it’s a trap.

Now let’s continue our list of points to consider in dealing with this obsession.

  • 4. When you try to banish completely the idea of both gender change and cross gender behaviour it is a form of suppression that can backfire. Don’t rule out transition but replace it with something more viable. Throw the female seeker a bone and resolve to spend weekends as a woman, or to have some plastic surgery, or to remove your body hair, or to have a relationship with a man as a woman. Give your psyche some kind of cross gender goal rather than offering it nothing.
  • 5. The devil makes work for an idle mind. If you are going through a period in your life where you have too much time to think… then get busy. Similarly, it cannot be underestimated the effect of boredom with your job or your spouse or your life in general. When life goes stagnant the psyche looks for ways to brighten things up and there’s one option which can suddenly seem like the best idea on earth to a femephiliac: have a guess what it is!
  • 6. If you think there are probably a whole lot of other issues you should be thinking about instead of gender issues, then it’s almost certainly the case. Make a list of the most important questions and problems in your life right now. Every time you find yourself crossdreaming when you don’t want to be, start analysing a problem you consider much more important… start listing solutions, brainstorming ideas etc. Seriously… this works; take that niggling, stubborn, obsessive energy and put it to work on personal and professional problems… you’ll be amazed what you can solve and how you completely stop thinking about gender issues.

 

  • 7. Understand there’s an erotic element to it and just as you used to spend your whole time checking out girls and thinking about sexual things, this has become your new erotic high. The difference between then and now is that whereas before it was a constant flow of different stimuli, now it’s different stimuli bringing you back to the same erotic thought: you becoming a woman.

Think of it as being in a new relationship and you are currently infatuated with your lover. You see, because femephilia is often autofemephilia it’s possible to get seriously involved with the idealised female self; she can make you giddy and passionate. However, as with all such feelings, that initial passion will start to fade… just give it time.

Conclusion

To conclude, there is no doubt that crossdreaming can soon become an obsession; however, many things that are important to us are obsessions; only you can decide if crossdreaming and gender change is a healthy or an unhealthy thing to continually think about.

If you do go for the latter, though, then you must be prepared to employ a multi-methodological strategy to weaken the obsession, which includes… accepting it’s an obsession and not getting so bothered about it, diverting your thoughts to important challenges you face, and ensuring optimum mental health. All of this can be achieved by incorporating your deeper female self and channeling your energy into a gender change project that is not only viable, but will make you and the people you love, happier: next session link – fusion!

Should the autogynephiliac transition?

Editor’s note: if you’re looking for a more trans-positive article then search do our Transition Test. If you’re looking for a more trans-skeptic article then keep on reading this page.

 

Step 1 of the Fusion Program: Accept that ‘transition’ is simply not realistic or desirable in the case of an autogynephiliac

Disclaimer: There are different degrees of gender dysphoria. Some men experience gender dysphoria and a strong female identity, but they can continue living as men; however, some men experience gender dysphoria so intensely that living as a man is just not an option… they must transition.

This essay is absolutely not for the second type of sufferer who is deeply transsexual and must transition. In fact, I would urge you not to read this because it is directed towards men who, for one reason or another, cannot or don’t want to, transition, and therefore it is biased towards accepting a life without transition.

I want you to know that if you must transition then you have my 100% support and I wish you all the best.

 

Should I transition?

When it’s time to decide whether I should do something or not, I have a very simple criteria: will it make me happy?

It’s amazing how this simple rule cuts through all the bullshit which life presents at every turn. Ideology, cliché, dogma, convention – all the factors which normally influence our decision making are cancelled out in a second when you ask that one simple question: will it make me happy?

As you already know, the area of sexuality, gender and mental health is one of the prime hunting grounds for bullshit, and that’s why the happy rule is perfect for the tricky question of ‘should I transition?’. It’s the sort of question that people get immediately passionate about – but for all the wrong reasons. It’s a spring board they use to bombard us with their ideas about gender identity, but what they forget is that in the end it’s a question about a human life, human choice, and there should only be one way for the person to decide if they should transition or not: will it make them happy?

Now, of course, things are a little more complicated than that. There are three caveats that you have to attach to the happy rule.

  • Is what makes me happy going to make other people unhappy?
  • Although it will make me happy, is there a much easier way to achieve the same happiness?
  • There are degrees of happiness. Something may make you happy, but how happy?

So, in the case of number 1… an extreme example is: it would make me happy to have sex with Shakira… however, when I jumped on top of her at a party – ready to gain my happiness, it might make her unhappy. In the case of number 2, something may make you happy but it may involve far too much energy to attain it or there may be a simpler way to attain the same thing. Number 3 is related to number 2, and useful when there are multiple options… we must choose the one which leads to the maximum happiness.

In the case of transitioning we can see that the three caveats are very important for autogynephiliacs Firstly, you are not an island… most of us have family and friends and you must think how your transition would affect their happiness; secondly, we must also bear in mind that although the final result might make us happy, there is a significant amount of time, money, effort and pain involved in arriving to the end point which may detract from that happiness. Finally, although it may make us happy we must ask… how happy? Very, slightly, extremely?

Okay, so, armed with the happy rule and its three caveats, I have thought for a very long time about transition, and I have arrived at this conclusion: if happiness is our criteria for deciding if you should transition or not, then a man with moderate gender dysphoria will not be happier if he transitions. Therefore, he should not transition.

Now I suppose you want to know why.

Well, before we examine the arguments for and against, I would first like to discount one seemingly important source of evidence: people who have already transitioned.

It seems entirely logical that if you want to know whether to do something or not… ask someone who’s already done it. However, in this case we cannot trust the source because it is tainted by the law of no return. You see, sometimes in life there are decisions which are irreversible or have consequences that are so huge, the person who took it will almost always tell themselves it was the right decision; they can’t change what they did and it would be potentially cataclysmic for their psyche to start telling themselves it was the wrong decision. For example, think of a transwoman who has gone all the way.

She has…

  • Announced and presented herself as transgender to her family, friends and colleagues.
  • Taken hormones which have created permanent changes in her body – most notably breasts.
  • Had her penis and testicles removed.

Do you really think that after doing all that she’s going to suddenly say, “yeah, you know what… now I’ve had time to think about it… I don’t think it was the right thing to do.” Excuse, the double entendre, but it takes balls to be that honest and the human is just not that honest. Although there are a few cases of such extraordinary honesty – Thirdwaytrans, for example, this is far from the norm. Most people will tell themselves – even to the point of delusion if necessary – that it was the right thing to do, and I think it’s perfectly understandable why.

So, while there are clearly people who’ve transitioned and are much happier as a result, the simple fact is that we cannot rely on them to objectively report on whether it was the best path to take… they are just too emotionally invested.

Now that we’ve established that… I will explain some of the reasons why I believe that transition is not the best path in cases of moderate gender dysphoria.

  1. The science of sex change is simply not advanced enough, and it is unlikely you will look like a woman. You will end up looking like a transwoman, and not what you want to look like – a cis woman. Because most people are decent they will treat you like a woman, out of respect, but this will be due to their liberal sensibility overriding their instinct.

Now, of course, when I say this the first thing I get is a long list of beautiful, convincing  transwomen. However, the exception does not prove the rule. If I was foolish enough to say that Colombian women were ugly… you would say… “No, they’re not… look at Shakira.” But Shakira is one woman…. The population of Colombian women is approximately twenty million. Similarly, a few beautiful, convincing transwomen does not mean that transition always creates beautiful, convincing transwomen.

What convinced me of the limitations of transition are the eyes. It’s a scientific fact that women’s eyes are larger in relation to the skull than men’s; also, the eyebrows tend to be elevated slightly and whereas in men there is a horizontal strip of bone above the eyebrows the same bone in women is often below the eyebrows and significantly less prominent. While a transsexual could have expensive and complicated surgery to do something with the bone above the brow (have it shaved down taking care not to collapse the cavity of the frontal sinus) and to raise the eyebrows, there is absolutely nothing that can be done about the size of the eyes. This is a nightmare for the MtF because not only is the size of the eyes in relation to the face an important indicator of femininity, it is also one of the most important dimensions of beauty. You can sometimes find men with big eyes but then their face tends to be very big and masculine as well. What distinguishes the woman is her cute face and smaller chin, and smaller everything, except for beautiful, big eyes. Start looking at men on the train and you will see how much smaller and beadier are their eyes and how the brow – especially as they get older – droops over the orbit of the eye. This striking difference between men and women cannot be changed and makes it more difficult for the male to female transsexual to pass, and be beautiful.

The eyes are just one example of the limits of transition. Here are other anatomical features that present serious difficulties.

Hair: almost all men are receding to some degree. Would you seriously wear a wig the rest of your life?

Chin: men tend to have square chins – women round and pointed.

Body shape: hormones can only redistribute some fat. The female body shape is skeletal and not just based on the position of fat. For example…

  • Female ribcage is smaller and shallower.
  • Pelvis – wider and lower.
  • Thigh bone is proportionally longer in the female, creating a shorter upper body relative to total height.
  • Shoulders of a woman tend to be in line with hips, a man’s extends well past

Hands: this brings to mind Ricky Gervais’s joke that he can always tell a transsexual in the supermarket. She looks all feminine and then she reaches for a loaf and can grab it with one hand. Men have bigger hands.

Feet: Longer and wider.

Voice and Adam’s apple: women don’t have a bulge in their throat and their voices are higher. Can you imagine the stress of trying to speak at a higher pitch… and the embarrassment when you get stressed or angry and the pitch drops?

The problem is that while some of these differences might seem minute, our facial recognition software is programmed to notice just these minute differences because they are how we identify one person from another. We do pick up on them.

Unfortunately, therefore, I am simply not convinced that most transwomen look like women. I have really tried hard to believe but I simply can’t, and for every one that pulls it off it seems there are ninety nine that don’t. Even the most beautiful transsexuals can soon, when they start aging, start to look more male, and when we see photos of them they are almost always heavily made up… I doubt they are so convincing first thing in the morning.

As a society based on both equality and compassion we should not focus on these details when dealing with transsexuals who need to transition, but when thinking about your future as a transsexual… you need to think about them… a lot. Generally, transsexuals with femephilia place a lot of emphasis on appearance and when they think of transition they create an ideal vision of how they will look: desirable, sexy, beautiful. They need to know that in most cases this vision is a distortion.

Therefore, my first argument against transition is that – at this point in time (maybe techniques will improve in the future) – it does not work well; if it was a product you’d probably take it back after a few days. The reason why so few do take it back is because either…

1) It is deeply necessary to their mental health they transition (an early onset or deep transsexual,) and they have no choice.

2) They have already come out and now they’re going to look stupid if they say it was a mistake.

3) They continue to believe that they are, or will be, beautiful. This is basically a delusion.

As I said at the beginning… this is all about happiness. If you are not bothered by the unsatisfactory results above, or you are fortunate enough to be in the small percentage of convincing transwomen, then go for it. However, you might want to consider my next transition sticking point: transition destroys your sex life because it is a form of chemical castration

If you have seen the film The Imitation Game then you will know that a court order forced Alan Turing to accept injections of oestrogen (as a means of curbing his homosexual behaviour.) The reason this was done, and is still done today to sex offenders in different parts of the world, is that it massively reduces or even extinguishes the libido. This treatment which they are forced to take is what you are voluntarily taking if you choose transition.

If you are a Calvinist Christian then you may welcome this loss of lust and physical satisfaction for you dwell in a world of the spiritual. If you are a normal person, though, you will surely mourn the loss of libido… but probably not consciously because, again, that would mean admitting that you may have made the wrong decision.

Long term, your libido should… and the key word here is ‘should’ return, but it will certainly be a different, dare I say ‘weaker’ type of libido. Transwomen compensate for this by saying that it’s more about emotions now that they are on the female side; well, of course it is, because it can’t be about much else if you don’t have a clitoris or solid penile stimulation. You see, you will have taken away the power of the male orgasm but without gaining the power of the female. I don’t want to overstate that because, by all accounts, you can have a reasonable sex life… but you will never experience the powerful climax a woman feels so, for me, it continues in the vein of a generally unsatisfactory experience. It’s ok – but far from ideal.

I think once more we arrive at the same point. If it really is vital for your mental health you transition – which is of course the case with some sufferers of gender dysphoria – then this trade-off is worth it. If you can manage to keep your gender dysphoria in check, though, it is harder to justify the trade-off. A surprising amount of our vital energy comes from the libido and to lose it is a significant loss.

Table of transition versus non transition

Obviously, I could spend many more words, pages and chapters going through each aspect of transition point by point, but I think I’ve said enough. Let’s conclude the debate more concisely with a table of transition versus non transition and ten questions you should ask yourself if you are considering transition. Please note that we always look at the worst case scenario in the transition table for reasons discussed in the disclaimer.

No transition Post transition worst case Post transition best case
Sex life Has a fully functioning, healthy sexual organ and a healthy sex drive. Admittedly, it’s the wrong organ but he finds better partners to exercise his deepest fantasies. A shallow vagina and a low sex drive – with difficulty in achieving orgasm. Plus genito-urinary complications post-surgery. Although she experiences a prolonged loss of libido, her sex drive does eventually return. She relearns sex and has an enjoyable sex life in the role she should always have had.
Money The same as before. Can spend on fashion (including female fashion), holidays, therapy, house, whatever. Professional prospects affected due to discrimination. Expensive surgeries in a bid to look more female plus a lot of medical attention, and expensive hormones required for the rest of her life. Principle treatments are paid for by social security or insurance. She doesn’t have further surgeries and can easily afford hormones. Her professional prospects are not affected as her company has a strict anti-discrimination policy.
Attractiveness A reasonably attractive man. If he lost weight, changed his wardrobe and had a little surgery, could be even more attractive. Women and gay/bisexual men his own age find him attractive therefore the chances of finding an understanding partner who accepts his female side in the bedroom, are high. Possibility of not looking like a woman, but a transwoman. Her hands are large, her brow is pronounced, and her hair is thinning at temples. Feels bad to say it but there are few people – men or women – who will find her attractive. The laws of biology are simply not in her favour. Can easily pass as a woman and is considered attractive.
Self-confidence High. After therapy, he learns to accept that gender is all in the mind… he still wishes he could be female but realises that transition just won’t have sufficiently satisfactory results. He invests time in reinventing himself, finds new friends, new job, new means of creative expression. Constant insecurity about ‘passing’ from the point of view of appearance and passing in terms of voice. All it takes is one incident where someone identifies her as a transsexual and she is deeply depressed. Hormones and transition fill that void she had always felt as a man. She feels reborn and becomes more confident and engaged with the world. Occasionally someone identifies her as a transwoman but she does not care… life is too good to be bothered about that.
Friends and family and colleagues No change. Causes severe disruption with her children and spouse. Her parents are accepting in principle but ask her not to come dressed as a woman when she visits. Some colleagues are supportive but others are not and her boss is embarrassed to present her at meetings. While friends are supportive via e-mail, it is simply too hard for them to accept her as a woman, and they slowly lose touch. She ends up in a trans bubble with a small social network solely consisting of other transsexuals. Friends, family and colleagues rally round and not only support her transition but actively help her and are constantly in contact. She loses one or two friends but they weren’t worth keeping anyway.
Relationship with feminine side He presents as a woman (ie. Dresses as and behaves like) in the privacy of his home and with certain people. He explores new sexual avenues with a new sexual partner, which he enjoys immensely. But when he wants to he can simply return to his male self. Sometimes wishes there could be some respite as – even when going to the local shop for bread – has to think about her appearance and either put makeup on and wig, or have everyone clearly see she is transsexual. But there is no respite because although she doesn’t look female she has modified her body enough not to look male anymore. There is no respite from being female and why should she want it? She has adapted perfectly to her new life.

 

Ten questions you might want to consider with respect to transition. No, sorry, change that to… questions that you must consider.Do you want to be a woman – day in day out, 365 days a year, the rest of your life? (And don’t forget that means one day you will be an old woman.)

  • Would it be important for you to be beautiful and sexy if you were a woman? If you did not even look like a woman after transitioning – but like a transsexual in a dress – would you still transition?
  • Have you ever taken steps to objectively evaluate how you would look as a woman? (ie. asked someone else who is not trans to look at photos of you as a woman and give their opinion, rather than look at yourself in the mirror, or ask a trans friend).
  • Are you willing to present yourself as a transwoman to friends, neighbours, colleagues, parents, children, siblings and cousins?
  • Are you willing to lose your sex drive?
  • Are you willing to have your genitalia removed and converted into an artificial vagina?
  • Are you willing to suffer possible discrimination, strange looks and the occasional titter or insult thrown by a stranger?
  • Are you prepared to invest hundreds of hours in learning to speak, dress, make up, walk like a woman, plus hundreds of hours more with doctor, psychiatrists, counsellors and surgeons?
  • Are there some days where your urge to be a woman lessens? Why does this happen on those days?
  • If your life had worked out better as a man do you think you would still feel the same need to change gender?
  • Are you willing to work on the way you think, live and feel, instead of on your body?

So, Step 1 is Accept that ‘transition’ is simply not realistic or desirable in your case. Now, move on to Step 2.

Scientists prove autogynephilia is correct. Now what?

On the 28th of June, 2019, The Daily Mail reveals that new research into the genetics of sexuality prove conclusively that the transgender condition in older transsexuals is linked to their sexuality. Here is an extract from the article.

Researchers discover transgender women have fetish!

Since discovering the genes responsible for human sexuality, the research group at Melbourne University who made the discovery continue to explore its ramifications. One of the most startling is that so called ‘transgender women’ can no longer claim they are trapped in the wrong body. Turns out they are simply men who have a fetish!

While this shocking revelation may seem to contradict current psychiatric thinking, Daily Mail reporters have discovered that respected sexologists such as Doctor Ray Blanchard of the Toronto Institute posited such a fetish as far back as 1983. Prime Minister, Nigel Farage, said that this was just another example of the cosmopolitan elites not listening to ordinary, hard working people and ‘ramming their politically correct agenda down everyone’s throats.’

Mister Farage, who was inspecting troops on the Belgian front, said that once the war against the EU was won, he would ask parliament to repeal all the Blair governments legislation giving transgender people the right to…

Deep into the thought experiment.

Today, I would like to engage in a thought experiment called The Dawkins Paradox.

This is not an abstract way to pass ten minutes, but – given the emergence of the far right across the globe – a useful exercise in self defense where we imagine a future in which the sexual origins of transgender identity are either proven (or fabricated) by scientists.

Either way, let’s imagine the idea gains universal acceptance and leads to a backlash against transgender people. We need to push back, but we can’t dispute the scientific evidence. We have to fight from the corner that indeed…the desire to transition is linked to sexuality.

What would we say?

Max Moriss’s fascinating essay on autogynephilia.

That’s the context by which I introduce you to the most fascinating essay I have ever read on autogynephilia – “Why Blanchard Didn’t Go Far Enough!” by Max Morris – whom I have been corresponding with over the past few months.

My friends will recognize immediately why I’m interested in this essay, because it is based entirely on Darwinism. However, unlike my work – which always rests on female essence and transgender theory – Max Morris believes that Blanchard and Lawrence have constructed a far more plausible narrative of late onset transsexualism. In fact, he thinks the main problem with their work is… that they didn’t go far enough!

Morris argues that Blanchard and Lawrence were lazy. They had an agenda – to prove that transsexualism was an outgrowth of autogynephilia – and as soon as they established a link between the two, their work was done. Even though Lawrence went on to argue for an emotional motive for transition (‘pairbonding’ and self directed love,) she insisted that everything emanated from the sexual urge to be a woman.

This is wrong scientifically and linguistically…you just need to look at sexuality in terms of biology.

Blanchard’s sexology posits sex as a prime cause for deeper life goals such as pair bonding (romantic love). Therefore, if you have a sexual orientation to X, and you do X…your motive is sexual (or is an outgrowth of sexuality). But this is like saying a woman gets married to a man for sexual reasons (which is patently absurd.) Morris reminds us that human sexuality is not an end in itself…human sexuality and all forms of mating exist to pass on DNA.

A true causal description of transition goes like this.

Humans, like all animals, are programmed to reproduce.
To achieve this, nature has programmed us with several drives.

1. To be conscious about our appearance so as to attract a mate.
2. To find a mate and to have sex.
3. To then pair bond in order to raise young together.
4. To set up a home for the young to live in.
5. The desire to nuture, protect and care for the resulting young.

All of these drives are hardwired into the human brain and our behavioural programming. As we all know, we can trick that programming and invent the pill and not have kids etc. but we still have the drive for sex, pair-bonding (i.e. love) and setting up home.

What Blanchard and Lawrence do in their later work is to admit the desire to transition is not a result of number 2 (to find a mate and have sex) – but the result of 3 and 4 (pair-bonding and nest-building with the woman they want to become). However, in order to hold onto autogynephilia, they claim that pair-bonding and nestbuilding occur in transgender woman as a result of sexuality.

It does not. This is causally incorrect. None of the drives 1 to 5 stem from each other but all result from the prime drive of living organisms: to reproduce.

If you disagree that this is the programming priority for the human brain and all living things, I urge you to read (or reread – now that you’re older,) The Selfish Gene. The absolute genius of this book is not Darwinism but its ramifications for psychology. It demonstrates with incontrovertible evidence that living organisms behave the way they do in order to facilitate reproduction. Please please read it! (there’s a great audio version on pirate bay if you’re hard up!)

The real strength of Max’s work.

The brilliant part of this essay is still to come, however. Having demonstrated (far more convincingly than my blog post) that the desire to transition is reproductive, Morris then deconstructs reproductive programming to show how the desire for love (pair-bonding) and a home (nest-building) and other consequences of reproductive programming are such profound psychological needs that we can not consider them reproductive prerogatives but ontological ones. In other words, they are deeply connected with our life goals, our happiness and sense of purpose.

Therefore, the correct way to think about the need for transition is not sexual or reproductive – but psychological.

This has many consequences for how we think about transgender people. It shows how stopping transgender women from transitioning is a violation of their civil right to happiness. If they are programmed to pair-bond in transition – and you don’t let them – it’s like denying a woman the right to live with a man. She will inevitably become depressed.

All I can say is read the essay. Even if you disagree with it, it’s worth the read simply for the pronouncement that crossdreamers have…

…a metamorphic orientation. Heterosexuals want to acquire someone…we want to become someone.

He also makes some interesting speculations as to why nature may have intended to create transgender people. In other words…we’re not an accident or error!

The conclusion of the thought experiment.

The great thing about this essay is that it anticipates a future where autogynephilia is seemingly proven right. I say ‘seemingly’ because what Max shows is that it ends up proving the opposite of what the transphobe intended. This is what I call ‘The Dawkins Paradox’.

…Proving a link with sexuality in the desire to transition means that, paradoxically, you not only prove that the transgender condition is not sexual but that it is a contravention of human rights to stop someone transitioning. The transphobe shoots himself in the foot.

xx

How should (‘some’) transgender individuals identify?

 

Step 2b of the Fusion Program: Identify in a healthy, realistic direction, and understand that gender change for you should be mostly psychological not physical.

(Sorry, a more accurate title for this article would be… How should a transgender person with moderate gender dysphoria and a femephiliac sexuality identify? As ever, readers should remember that our advice is not suited to early onset transexuals or suffererers of severe gender dysphoria.)

It’s time for a thought experiment. Yes, another one!

I would like you to imagine a different world in which the previously mentioned four year old boy suddenly and unexpectedly presents himself to his family, in a dress. I want you to imagine that the parents are absolutely delighted and immediately call the child’s grandparents and various friends to inform them what’s happened.

And you might well ask… “Why the fuck would they do that?”

Because they know that they’re child was consummate.

‘Consumate’ means, amongst other things, ‘whole’. It is my clumsy, temporary term for that hideous one we promised we wouldn’t mention (transgender). In the future, society has chosen the word ‘consummate’ due to a belief that children with gender variance are more complete than other children. Why? Because they traverse genders. This gives them, especially in adulthood, a perspective which cisgendered people don’t have. It is not that they see things from both the male and the female perspective – because these are just social constructs from the twenty-first century – but they see things differently. It is this difference which gives them an edge in creative projects and people management and it is commonly believed they make good leaders. In order to encourage the developments of these abilities, psychologists recommend to parents of the consummate that they shouldn’t interfere with or try to influence their cross gender behaviour. Curiously, and no one understands why, there is no way of saying in which direction a consummate child will go… some are quite happy to remain in their cisgender, others are visibly androgynous, while some transition towards the other gender.

*

So, what did you think of our vision of the future?

Wacky, beautiful, crazy?

The reason I shared this vision is to make you understand the importance of perception, and to get you thinking out of the box about gender identity and where you want to go with it. In fact, I don’t want you thinking out of the box… I want you to take the box to Cape Canaveral, insert it into a space shuttle, and launch it to somewhere in the region of Alpha Centauri… that’s how out of the box I want you to think. You see, what I’m going to ask is that you bring the future of our thought experiment to the present. I want you to see gender variance not as a disorder…

…but as a gift.

I want you to stop thinking about words like the one we said we wouldn’t mention, and start thinking about words like… consummate, whole, complete.

First, though, I suppose you want me to explain exactly what I mean: a gift.

Well, some people have a gift for negotiating or public speaking. Some people are born with great footballing ability, or are musical, or are good with numbers. Children that are born consummate also have a gift, and if you reply “and what the fuck does it do for them other than make them wear a dress?” I will say… ‘I like your wicked sense of humour’.

I will also say two things for the moment (the rest you must wait until the next steps in our program.)

It is not a gift like Santa brings. It isn’t just left on your doorstep ready to use. It is the same as all gifts. A child may be born with a great musical talent but until you put him in front of an instrument you will never know that talent. The same with football and the same with numbers. Thus, a child who is consummate must come to understand what he is, and he must learn to cultivate and use his gift.

However, there is one difference with this gift compared to that of footballing skill or music or public speaking or any other gift. If the consummate individual doesn’t learn to recognise and use it… it will implode. That implosion is what lies at the root of some cases of gender dysphoria, and it all begins when the individual identifies as a woman instead of what he is: consummate.

When you identify incorrectly you take a gift that is meant to enrich your life – your skills, your creativity and your relationships –  and channel it into a project based on external gender. What’s really happening, though, is internal: you have not assimilated your deeper female self and the result is that pathology enters your being. It could be depression or addiction or failure or boredom or gender dysphoria or a hundred and one other symptoms, but it is caused by emptiness inside. Quite literally 50% of you is missing.

The fifty percent that needs to be incorporated has nothing to do with presenting as a woman; it is about personal growth and rethinking what you have to offer the world. You shouldn’t be thinking of adding hormones and clothes and mannerisms, but adding the deeper female self to your behaviour and lifestyle and emotions. It’s not about changing your body, it’s about changing your life.

Let’s summarise…

  1. You are consummate… both male and female. (Accepting the male is hard for some I know but this is due to a socially conditioned notion of what ‘male’ is.)
  2. Your goal is a psychological transformation towards the feminine and not a physical one.
  3. However, your glamourpuss will always keep you interested in the cosmetic and external aspects of womanhood and that’s fine. Enjoy it.
  4. You must radically change your life by assimilating your deeper female self… not trying to change your external gender.

Once you assimilate those four points above you will identify in a way that is healthy and useful and viable: FUSION. This is unlike transition which, as well as achieving poor results, puts the individual at loggerheads with numerous biological and social and economic obstacles. I cannot stress enough how important identity is… it is a power source of the psyche (why do you think transsexuals and crossdreamers spend so much time quibbling over terminology and obsessively debating all aspects of their condition? They are searching for identity.) It is deeply important to the human being.

Therefore, as it’s so important, the fact you have moved towards a much more realistic and healthy self-identification, means you have already gone a long way to achieving fusion.

The late-onset transsexual, transphobia, and passing…

Trans-gender media features a small handful of male to female transsexuals who succsesfully pass as cis-women. A classic example of this is Geena Rocero – who worked as a high flying fashion model for more than a decade. These noble women have chosen to out themselves as transgender and they should receive all the respect that such action deserves.

However, the experience that these women have had – both in their trajectory as transsexuals and in their coming out – is markedly different to that of the comunal garden late onset transsexual. The reason is the same reason why some women are immediately courted and favoured over others: beauty. Whether a human is transsexual or not… if he or she is flawlessly beautiful at the moment of presenting themselves to the world… acceptance is forthcoming.

I recently saw a perfect example of this on a British chat show when an eighteen year old male to female transsexual came on set. The crowd applauded for a long time and I’m quite sure that the reason was because she was extremely pretty. Had the show’s guest been an ugly late onset transsexual I’m quite sure the applause wouldn’t have been so enthusiastic.

The difference in passability is, of course, because the early onset transsexual has managed to fend off many of the inconvenient secondary sexual characteristics, by taking hormones early in life. Also, youth is an obvious factor… as men grow older certain parts of their anatomy continue growing, their hair falls out and their skin grows coarser.

The overtly male body is of course the central problem for a late onset MtF transsexual when coming out, and the basis of much transphobia. It is a ‘visual discord.’ Some simply don’t look like women and the problem is that there is something deeply held in the human mind which notices it: – our facial recognition software.

There is an entire part of the human brain dedicated excatly to the register of minute differences between faces, and when a man has makeup on or is trying to pass as a woman, it sets of a system alarm that allows us to easily recognise it. If that’s not bad enough for the trans-woman – the mind lateches on to it. If you see what you percieve as a man dressed as a woman it does not pass seamlessly through your mind like water on a duck’s back… it jarrs… it does not compute.

In some cases the transsexual is blissfully unaware of this visual discord. While transsexuals are aware of transsphobia, some have a problem of self perception in their transsexual psychology: they see themselves as more feminine than they are. With the cards stacked against them –– the transsexual latches on to the tiniest feminine detail of their appearance and inflates its importance, thinking that this feature somehow makes up for the others. Small details – like eyebrows – or even major parts of the anatomy – like a great pair of legs – have a talismanic effect on their mind making them belief that they are not so masculine.

To me it’s clear, the reality of transition and coming out for a late onset transsexual has little in common with that of their high profile, younger peers, just as their coming out has few paralleles with that other sectors of the LGBT community – lesbians, gays and bisexuals.

When a gay comes out nothing really changes. The gay announces to his family he’s gay and that’s it. When the transsexual comes out all hell breaks loose: they’re changing their name, their body, they start dressing as their identified gender. While the gay ‘comes out’ of the closet… the transsexual ‘bursts out’ with a 20 megaton bomb, grabbing a dress and high heels from the closet just for good measure.

So, yes… these beautiful transgender spokespersons like Geena Rocero are game changers and valiant souls, but let’s face it… it’s pretty easy for a man in the street to accept them. The true test for transphobia are those transgender people who do not pass at all. When the man in the street stops staring, or muttering comments to his friend, and in fact – thinks nothing of it – that is when society will have started to truly accept transgender people.

Late onset transsexual? Why you should never identify as a woman

Step 2a of the Fusion Program: : Identify in a healthy, realistic direction, and understand that gender change for you should be mostly psychological not physical.

When a man with a femephiliac sexuality starts down the road to transsexualism, it is a consequence of his deeper female self. She is reminding him in an abrupt and arresting tone – just as a spouse or girlfriend might – that this relationship is not just about sex. When this happens it can be viewed as a call to action by the deeper female self. The big question, though, is… what action is she demanding?

The deeper female self is demanding  expression and assimilation. This can happen at any time but I suspect that the deeper female self is a little bit like a guardian angel and appears when we need her: when there is something missing in our lives or we are leading a life that is inauthentic or boring; a life in which, without her, we are half a person.

However, and this is important, the feminine side you need to assimilate and express is purely psychological and behavioural. It has nothing to do with modifying your body or dressing like a woman or identifying as a woman.

Which leads to a pertinent question. “If it’s all psychological then why doesn’t the female self say so… why does the man believe that his journey must involve a female body, clothes and identity?”

The answer, my friends, is our old friend… Glamourpuss.

I hesitate to call the glamourpuss your ‘superficial female self’ (in contrast to the deeper) but the fact is that the only thing that interests her are sex, clothes and make up etc. She is largely a femephiliac creation and her voice is already prominent in your psyche. Furthermore, she is bossy, domineering and jealous, and she immediately begins to manipulate your shift in gender identity to her own ends. The question is… how?

If you did not start this programme in the correct order then you may have missed the first session. In it we talked about why women’s clothing is important to many femephiliacs. It is not so much the clothing itself, but that the infant sees it as the most visible sign of femininity in his environment, and femininity is what he is erotically attracted to. The erotic attachment gets placed onto clothing. In other cases it can be anatomical and the infant associates femininity with the vagina, and wants to have a vagina more than women’s clothing.

The point is that although the femephiliac will later assimilate many indicators of femininity, it is these first visual cues that define ‘being a woman’ in his sub-conscious. This definition is far more powerful than any rational ideas about women he learns as an adult. Thus, when the deeper female self emerges and demands he assimilate her, the man (powered by Glamourpuss) thinks – either consciously or unconsciously – that this means permanent union with the visible signs of womanhood that he – believes – define a woman.

We can see therefore, that Glamourpuss hijacks a call to action by the deeper female self and the individual becomes confused. It is at this point that the man will go online to investigate transsexualism, crossdreaming and transgender themes. Unlike on previous occasions, however, it won’t be to look for porn… it will be to understand what’s happening to him, and to find a solution. It is this confusion and a constant steam of online narratives that creates fertile ground for the glamourpuss to muscle her way in. In her unquenchable desire for the feminine, she starts to float the tantalising concept that you should become a full time 24-7 woman. That you should transition.

I firmly believe that the idea is planted by the glamourpuss and not the deeper female self. You see, your deeper female self is female, and far too sensible to get carried away with the stupid idea you should become a woman. The glamourpuss, taking advantage of your internal move towards the female, drives you towards the external aspects of the female she craves –  body, clothes, behaviour – and the intoxicating idea that you can have these permanently.

Never underestimate her power. The glamourpuss literally has you by the balls because it is with her that your sexuality – one of the most powerful sources of psychic energy – lies. She uses this power to offer a compelling interpretation for the gender crisis that has seized you… she tells you that you are realising a truth you always supressed: that you are a woman… and that you must transition.

Transition, my friends, is an appropriate treatment for a certain type of transsexual and certain types of gender crisis. Let me repeat that because I don’t want this essay to be used by anti-transitioners, right wingers or any other transphobic: transition is an appropriate treatment for a certain type of transsexual. But for some types of gender crisis, it is not only inappropriate… it is crazy. Now, don’t get me wrong, I admire the grandeur of the endeavour… it is a manifestation of that pioneering spirit which moves scientists and thinkers and explorers forward… the refusal to accept limits… but in this case a refusal to accept the laws of nature is not one of those great pioneering moments… just a bad lifestyle choice that will leave the individual unhappy (though, she won’t be able to admit that because she will have taken actions that she can’t go back on.)

I have dealt elsewhere with the argument against transition in some cases of gender dysphoria. Today, my focus is not on the negatives of ‘transition,’ however, it is on the positives of ‘fusion’ – which, as the name suggests, is about integrating the deeper female self without going loco in Acapulco and mounting the psychological equivalent of the Rio carnival. To develop the theme of fusion, though, I need to deal with one of the psychological props that leads people away from fusion: identifying as female.

A word or two about identity

Our identity is fluid. Some days we are awash with patriotism and we feel like an Englishman or a Catalan. Other days we love our work and we see how being an entrepreneur is an integral part of our identity. Similarly, as the events of life flow and ebb around us we will have different thoughts, emotions and aspirations… and these will change how we see ourselves and what we identify with.

Identity is, therefore, something you construct as you move through life, and it helps to both guide the decisions you make (I’m a born entrepreneur… I shouldn’t accept this job in a corporation) and give you a sense of pride and satisfaction with who you are (ahh… a pint of Beamish… this is what every Irishman needs after a hard day.) However, the examples above are positive ones… where the identity constructed aids the individual; the unfortunate fact is that we can also create identities that guide us to the wrong decisions – an extreme but telling example would be “I’m good for nothing… being a hooker is the best I can do…” or “I’m going to blow up this building with everyone in it… that is what a true follower of my religion must do and I am a true follower.”

A certain percentage of crossdreamers will, at some point in adulthood, start identifying as female. Do you think this is a positive way to identify – like our first set of examples – or do you think it is closer to the second set?

Here’s my opinion…

Do !!!!!!not!!!!!! identify as a woman; not only will it send you down the wrong path but it will cause you triple the pain when you realise that you can never be one. You can love women, you can identify with them, you can empathise with them, you can copy them… but don’t start telling yourself you are one. Identity is a like a processor in a computer – it is of deep importance to all the processes that occur within the mainframe and if it’s faulty the whole system is corrupted. The examples above – of a prostitute, of a suicide bomber – show how identity can be like dynamite; it’s powerful stuff… so when you start identifying as a woman, it’s not something to take lightly.

In order to stop identifying as a woman, though, you need to realise why you have absolutely no business doing such a thing. I understand why you do it… as do most of the people reading this… but it’s wrong. You are not in any way, shape or form a woman… and here’s why.

  • Women have vaginas and you have a penis.
  • Women’s brains are wired differently to men’s.
  • Women can give birth and you can’t.
  • Women menstruate once a month for approximately thirty years.
  • Women have numerous anatomical differences to men in everything from hairline, to size of eyes in relation to the skull, to ribcage, to size of hands, feet and ears and chin, and many more.
  • Women have a whole lifetime of experience of being women and you have none. Your whole experience – even if you didn’t like it or relate to it – is of being a man.

So please, tell me what it is that makes you think you can identify as a woman? I can tell you the answer: nothing! Yes, I understand that you feel like one and that you want to be one – you and all the other readers –  but feeling like one and wanting to be one are entirely different from being one. And please don’t tell me that you are a transwoman either… this is a term we reserve for a different type of transsexual.

Now, having established that you aren’t a woman, I will explain why it’s bad for you to identify as one.

Let’s think about an aspiring footballer called Mary-Lou who’s desperate to be in the school team. She loves football, she plays football, she dreams of football, football is her life, and having just read the autobiography of Lionel Messi she really identifies with the story of his childhood. In her mind she is a young Messi, she is the best in the school, she will be captain of the school team, she is going to be signed by a top team and go pro.

But there’s just one problem…

…She’s crap.

I mean… not totally crap… but not good, and a little below average.

Every week she hates training because the coach is always paying attention to the other players at practice. Every week when Mary Lou is not picked for the team she cries. Every week she runs back home to her house, shouts at her parents and is moody. She just can’t believe that the coach would refuse to put the new Messi in the school team. How can he ignore such talent… such footballing genius?

I think you know where I am going here. The problem is that Mary Lou has set her sights too high and while she continues to identify as the young Messi, not only is her identifying delusional, she will continue to feel incredible pain at her not being selected for the team. Mary Lou can only be at peace when she starts to identify correctly as a lover of football but someone who just doesn’t have what it takes. As soon as she does that everything changes… she enjoys practice, she cheers the team on, and she’s at peace.

Thus it is with your relationship to the female: as long as you identify in a way that is factually incorrect and impossible, your identification is inappropriate; it is therefore pathological and will cause you pain in some way. Believing you are a woman will just make you angry at the universe for putting you in the wrong body, you will feel frustrated at life for robbing you of what’s yours, you will stamp your feet like a child and demand your womanhood be returned to you. In short, you will not be at peace.

It’s at this point where you should be asking the question: well, fuck-face, if I can’t identify as a woman, or a transwoman… or any type of woman… what should I identify as… A MAN! That just ain’t gonna happen. Yuk!

As I have already stated above, you must self-identify in an appropriate way. If you don’t, there will be consequences for the psyche. Therefore, I don’t think you should identify as a man because it’s clearly not correct: you were born with a deeper female self, the most visible manifestation so far, being your femephiliac sexuality. If now, later in life, that deeper self is demanding expression then you have to listen to it and trying to stamp it out by identifying as a man is only going to cause conflict. Nature, via genetics, has bestowed on you the drive towards behaving like and venerating womankind… I don’t think nature then expects you to scratch your balls, stroke your beard and get on with self-identifying as Barry the builder, a regular dude. So let’s repeat the question… what should you identify as?

If we take on board that you should identify with what you really are then we should look at the facts. You have a man’s body, you have a deeper female self, your sexuality is based on projecting yourself as female, while at the same time there is a part of your mind that will always be male (sorry, but that’s true… even if you cut your balls off and live as a woman for a thousand years there will always be a part of your psyche that is male.) To me then it is clear: here we have a mix of female and male which means that you are intrinsically…

…transgendered!

That is how you should identify because that is what nature made you, and we all know you must be true to yourself to achieve good mental health and live in peace. You are transgendered, my friend, and the sooner you accept it the better, because you will find it much easier to accept that the best path for you is not transition… it is fusion.

Now, I understand that this may not come as good news to some. But that is probably because the word itself ‘transgendered’ is a little ugly. When I think of ‘transgendered’ I imagine some race of fucking aliens arriving in space ships; the space ship opens and they come down the ramp and the leader says, “greetings Earthlings, we are the transgendered.’ A shiver of fear passes through the human race, watching live on TV. ‘Transgendered’ sounds like a disorder and that is its principal point of repulsion… it smacks of something you would find in the handbook of psychiatry under illnesses of the self and identity. It even sounds far worse than ‘transsexual.’ Transsexual sounds familiar and – forgive my pornographic sensibility – but if I think of transsexual I can at least conjure up some beautiful, exotic transwoman. I think of transgendered and I’m back to Star-trek.

So I can understand why you’re not popping the champagne bottles and posting to all your friends the fact you’re transgendered. Well, don’t worry, you don’t have to, because that is the last time we will use the word. Like E-V-E-R. Furthermore, now that we have identified correctly, we will take the next step towards fusion: we will explore the possibility that whatever the name is for what you are… it is not a curse, but a blessing.

“How can that be?” You ask. “How could this constant desire and compulsion to be a woman be a blessing?”

Well, if there’s one thing I hope you’ve learnt from our time together, it’s the difficulty of proving scientifically anything concerning the origins and the development of crossdreaming. What exists, therefore, are simply group narratives which serve different group’s agenda as they attempt to dominate the conversation around cross gender behaviour. All these narratives – whether they are – a woman trapped in a man’s body – or a man trapped in a man’s body – have no scientific basis. This means that, like myths worked for the ancients, they are simply human-made narratives that help us to understand a phenomenon (transsexualism) that we can’t explain with hard science.

Therefore, if everyone is creating their own narrative, we should create a new one, and not just for petulant motives. It is high time that we began to change the way we think and talk about gender variance because despite our liberal times, the current discourse is still tainted in the minds of everyone – doctors, counsellors, members of the public, and even transsexuals themselves – by the idea that gender variance is a disorder.

It is not.

So what is it then?

Well, to discover that, my friend, we will have to travel to a future society. Next chapter please.