What Leads to Transition? part 1
People come to the realisation that they are transgender at varying ages, from under 5 to well into middle age. People don't always act on that realisation at the time or try to rationalise or justify it away.
for many years the view was that people must have profound Physical Dysphoria (usually focused on the genital area) to be a 'transsexual' and until maybe 15 years ago that was the narrative, that if you were aware of it, you understood the nature of being trans the whole ' born in the wrong body trope' ...
Currently however that understanding is not held in a great deal of esteem by clinicians working in the field of Gender Medicine. to some extent for cost/ coding / payment by results reasons clinicians are tied to the definition of 'transsexualism' in the ICD 10
ICD-10 F64
Where that discomfort or sense of inappropriateness is not physically focused, or the physical focus is not intense it can lead to many years of 'something is wrong' and tens, hundreds or even thousands of 'missed clues'
I never had those moments that we saw Maxine have in Butterfly,
I never self harmed as a child, I never directly said 'this is all wrong, i'm a girl'... but equally I was never sure of 'i'm a boy' and of course the survival instinct kicks in...
You can play things over and over in your head, looking for the missed clues, the repression and masking, the learned behaviours ...
What happened happened, what didn't happen didn't happen ...
If i were a 10 , 11 or 12 year old now would I come out as trans? I don't know, probably I would ... maybe Maxine's Story in Butterfly or seeing Jackie Green's interview on Really Jackie's interview ...
Would I have come out when I was 10 /11/12 in the late 1980s? I don't know? would I have been taken seriously...? after all I didn't cut myself, I never overdosed, but I was never happy and content in the body I had, I knew it was something wrong but couldn't quite put my finger on it... I wished it wasn't hairy, I wished I had breasts so on and so on ... so I repressed it I put on an act ... a growth spurt took me from one of the shortest in the class to up there in the middle of the height of the boys and one of the taller against the girls ...
My mum wouldn't be saying this - Transgender: a mother’s story ... and remember Jackie is 15? years younger than I am.
but does that mean I wasn't trans then? No it does not, I've been told by my family and friends there were so many clues that were not really thought too much of at the time... I was that somewhat effeminate, small, delicate child easily upset, stressed and upset by rough and tumble, completely disinterested in ball games...
I built up a mask ... still pretty poor effort ... labelled 'gay' at school - but how can i be gay? I fancy girls ... (the answer is obvious now ... how can I be gay and fancy girls ... durr I'm a lesbian) excluded , bullied never really found my place or my tribe ... I in fact didn't find my 'tribe' until August 2017 ...
School rolled round into sixth form (and a change of schools due to the bullying i was still getting - and that was out of the frying pan into the fire - because i was still the effeminate strange creature far happier talking musical theatre and the like with girls rather than football, rugby and beer with the boys)
So i got some reasonable A levels and wanting to carry on what had become a bit of a family tradition - my paternal Grandfather an engineer's toolmaker, one of my paternal uncles a coachbuilder and my own Dad a professional Engineer - I went off to Newcastle University to Study Marine Technology i had an interesting year and bit there, fell out with the degree level maths, but did some self discovery, few more pieces of the jigsaw collected... removing body hair, buying and wearing female coded clothing in private... the pink dog of dysphoria was there, but the mask was still there and the black dog of depression visited me because of my struggles with work ... So i ended up withdrawing from that degree and returning home.
Continued in part 2
for many years the view was that people must have profound Physical Dysphoria (usually focused on the genital area) to be a 'transsexual' and until maybe 15 years ago that was the narrative, that if you were aware of it, you understood the nature of being trans the whole ' born in the wrong body trope' ...
Currently however that understanding is not held in a great deal of esteem by clinicians working in the field of Gender Medicine. to some extent for cost/ coding / payment by results reasons clinicians are tied to the definition of 'transsexualism' in the ICD 10
Gender identity disorders
F64.0Transsexualism
- A desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort with, or inappropriateness of, one's anatomic sex, and a wish to have surgery and hormonal treatment to make one's body as congruent as possible with one's preferred sex.
ICD-10 F64
Where that discomfort or sense of inappropriateness is not physically focused, or the physical focus is not intense it can lead to many years of 'something is wrong' and tens, hundreds or even thousands of 'missed clues'
I never had those moments that we saw Maxine have in Butterfly,
I never self harmed as a child, I never directly said 'this is all wrong, i'm a girl'... but equally I was never sure of 'i'm a boy' and of course the survival instinct kicks in...
You can play things over and over in your head, looking for the missed clues, the repression and masking, the learned behaviours ...
What happened happened, what didn't happen didn't happen ...
If i were a 10 , 11 or 12 year old now would I come out as trans? I don't know, probably I would ... maybe Maxine's Story in Butterfly or seeing Jackie Green's interview on Really Jackie's interview ...
Would I have come out when I was 10 /11/12 in the late 1980s? I don't know? would I have been taken seriously...? after all I didn't cut myself, I never overdosed, but I was never happy and content in the body I had, I knew it was something wrong but couldn't quite put my finger on it... I wished it wasn't hairy, I wished I had breasts so on and so on ... so I repressed it I put on an act ... a growth spurt took me from one of the shortest in the class to up there in the middle of the height of the boys and one of the taller against the girls ...
My mum wouldn't be saying this - Transgender: a mother’s story ... and remember Jackie is 15? years younger than I am.
but does that mean I wasn't trans then? No it does not, I've been told by my family and friends there were so many clues that were not really thought too much of at the time... I was that somewhat effeminate, small, delicate child easily upset, stressed and upset by rough and tumble, completely disinterested in ball games...
I built up a mask ... still pretty poor effort ... labelled 'gay' at school - but how can i be gay? I fancy girls ... (the answer is obvious now ... how can I be gay and fancy girls ... durr I'm a lesbian) excluded , bullied never really found my place or my tribe ... I in fact didn't find my 'tribe' until August 2017 ...
School rolled round into sixth form (and a change of schools due to the bullying i was still getting - and that was out of the frying pan into the fire - because i was still the effeminate strange creature far happier talking musical theatre and the like with girls rather than football, rugby and beer with the boys)
So i got some reasonable A levels and wanting to carry on what had become a bit of a family tradition - my paternal Grandfather an engineer's toolmaker, one of my paternal uncles a coachbuilder and my own Dad a professional Engineer - I went off to Newcastle University to Study Marine Technology i had an interesting year and bit there, fell out with the degree level maths, but did some self discovery, few more pieces of the jigsaw collected... removing body hair, buying and wearing female coded clothing in private... the pink dog of dysphoria was there, but the mask was still there and the black dog of depression visited me because of my struggles with work ... So i ended up withdrawing from that degree and returning home.
Continued in part 2
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