Don't get yourself twisted up in political bull sh-t. The way the term transgender came into existence was from Virginia Prince, originator of the Society for the Second Self, or Tri-Ess. She understood that most of her sisters were cross dressers rather than the usual psychiatric view of transvestites, and were about 90% heterosexual, not homosexual as the psychs insisted Transvestites were. So transgender was coined to sound better than transvestite, to give more dignity to the act. Her push was for het. cds. to focus on a believable presentation, and to be able to feel and see their "hobby" as an expression of a feminine side. So long as her wife lived, Virginia was a part time cd, but in her later years lived as a woman full time.

We come then to glb activism and the HRC. They wanted to subsume all that wore the clothing of the opposite "sex" into their group to help raise money and write letters in an attempt to bring more activist pressure to bear for gay rights. Most who are glb just do not have a clue about any of the people they would subsume under their "T". They equated drag artists or drag queens and homosexuals that like to wear womens clothes to have gay encounters as the same as a flavor of gay. The TS and het cds were just Gays in denial in that world view. The T in GLBT proved to be an easily lost or cast off tail, when for some unfathomable reason, religious zealots and politicians are freaked out by those of our ilk who insist on presenting female. So we were easily compromised out of bills proposed by glb and supporters in order to get more votes. HRC really got a black eye over that a few years back on the first version of ENDA, and oddly enough, wealthy white gay men are the ones who have the most trouble with the small numbers of TS in particular that they insist are subsumed under the TG umbrella.

Because most het cds are exactly that, heterosexual, and TS have a mind body mismatch that is mostly curable with a medical procedure, not so much a sexual orientation problem, I really doubt that we belong in that T portion of the GLBT. Drag artists, gender queer, and on and on maybe do. But the term transgender has been co-opted from its original definition, and it never pertained to those of us who were TS, nor did it pertain to DQ, GQ or other sexual orientation variant. Being gay, lesbian or bisexual is considered a lifestyle and sexual orientation.

Being TS is having a self identity mismatch that apparently results from genetic and hormonal imbalances during foetal development through extra lengths added to some sex determining genes (the AR gene on the female chomosome for one) and removed from others on the male chromosome string, but that research remains in it's infancy as of last year, but may thus be a type of intersex condition (also known now as a disorder of sexual development). The result is the mental self identification of one gender in the physical body of the other, in a binary sense. It is not a life style, and often enough is sufficient to cause one to end their life prematurely as the conflict becomes too great. Most of that conflict comes from a society that is largely non-accepting, and not too different from gay men in their lack of comprehension, mixing it all up in the religous righteous' need to have people to look down upon and judge to be lacking and sinful.

Being a het cder is kinda similar except that the individual's mind/body mismatch is not as severe and can be satisfied with occasional episodes of crossdressing and finding some acceptance at some level. Yeah 'Drea, maybe a kind of cousin if not more direct. There used to be a joke, "What is the difference between and cder and a TS? About 5 years", but with the net and consideration of options, that is not necessarily so now. There are a lot of TS who pass through a CDer phase in their search for their own selves, though.

For that reason I do not consider myself TG in the activist sense, and I actually feel a bit of disgust with those who want to put us there rather than trying to know and understand the difference. Those are interested in money and votes and political power. In that way, they are no different from any other political action group.

It should be pointed out that being gay or lesbian may also be a disorder of sexual development, based on genetic and population studies in several areas of the world. One set of genes with mutations that seem to be sex linked recessive (passed by the mother) can become dominant in the presence of a set passed into the male line by a mother who carries the recessive. A different genetic group is found among lesbians, and is a different group compared to gay men. There are also brain studies via fPET scans that show that lesbian brains react to non sexual stimuli in a manner like straight male brains and show similar asymmetry and volume differences in discrete areas dealing with sexual response. The same occurs for gay men, who have the same locations reacting as female brains to the stimulation.

The brains of both M2F and F2Ms most closely resemble the brains of the straight female and males they identify with in details, volume, symmetry and BSTc neuron numbers, and that is before hormone treatment. So for a TS to say they feel like they have a brain of the gender opposite their physical gender, may be more true than not.

CaroL

Although it is convenient for people to use an entire alphabet soup of often mutually exclusive acronyms e.g. CD, TS, TG, bi-spirit; they by no means adequately describe the full range of feelings / experiences of any one person.

Humans have a tendancy to prefer dealing with discrete information - if it's binary, so much the better. Unfortunately, for complex biological / biochemical / spiritual matters, the data itself is continuous and multi-factoral.

What do I mean? Let's take gender identity alone - i.e. what gender a person 'feels' inside. Instead of generic terms such as "Male", "Female", and "Androgynous", imagine a linear scale ranging from ultra masculine at one end to ultra feminine at the other. But rather than, say, blue fading to neutral to red, imagine the arechetypical temperature gauge, where the two extremes are overlapping triangles. But - and here's the crucial bit - people generally don't occupy a fixed spot. They almost certainly have a range of spots within the scale. But not all spots are equal, as there's also issues of frequency / duration. An occasional crossdresser may prefer to spend most of their time hovering around the masculine end of the scale, but will on occasions embrace the more feminine end.

Now you've got that concept, let's think of the other factors that are involved in issues of gender. These include:

Genotype
Phenotype
Gender identity
Gender presentation
Gender associated behaviour

As with the commentary above, people will occupy multiple points on each of these scales. So imagine the scales as radiating in different directions from a central point - people will probably occupy a fairly amorphous 'cloud' of points somewhere in the space between the various axes. Of course, over time, the positioning of the cloud is probably subject to change.

Then we get onto partner choice. Rather than the binary M / F, imagine a cloud of attributes as described above - except that it's possible people's "partner" cloud will occupy a greater area (i.e. a more diverse set of points) than their own.

Is that complex / comprehensive enough? :)

Okay, so exactly what do you call those who wish a complete gender change...?

The Vaginally Challenged?

roflmao

Yes, the weird author with the boob fetish.