The following article is well written and interesting. With due respect, I would like to point out several points from the perspective of a Transgender person and activist.
You might want to check your resources. After checking with Justin Tanis, he denies ever saying, "Many people suffer from being transgender....". Knowing his work with NCTE pretty well, reading his books and doubting he would say this, I checked with him.
Trans folks do not suffer because our gender identity does not conform to society's preconceived notion of two genders. We suffer from bigotry, bias, discrimination and misinformation not because of who we are but because of the way others perceive us.
This brings me to the next point.
Please try to be more careful when quoting anyone from organizations that claim to be experts. As both of us know, the written word is very powerful. For example, quoting an organization like the American Family Association lends some credence to their very subjective, transphobic and homophobic point of view.
Professional journalists make the same error when they quote such organizations that do not speak from fact but from their distorted, extreme, religious perspectives. Readers often take these unsubstantiated opinions as fact thus creating more harm than good. As a thought, you may want to be clearer that these are unsubstantiated opinions.
Again, great job! Keep educating the general public about those of us who live in marginalized segments of society.
BORN IN THE WRONG BODY
Friday, March 19, 2010 By Katarina Thompson
When growing up, your parents typically buy you toys that are associated with your gender. Normally if you’re a girl you would yearn to have a beautiful Barbie doll, and if you’re a boy, you would smile with joy when given a ball to play with. But imagine a three year old boy who has no interest in balls, cars, or action heroes. All he wants to do is play dress up and put on his mother's makeup. Or imagine a young girl who wants nothing more than to play outside with other boys, and wants to dress exactly like a boy and wants the typical "boy haircut". These children are not old enough to realize that they are not doing typical “boy” or “girl” things, but they are old enough to know that they were born in the wrong body.
Imagine being born in the “wrong body." Envision being born with a vagina instead of a penis. Imagine being born with a penis instead of a vagina. When your three or four, you don’t know how to tell anyone, or even know what to do with yourself, all you know is that your not supposed to have the genetalia you have been born with. Imagine growing up you not feeling comfortable in the skin you're in. "Many people suffer from being transgender but no one knows exactly how many transgender people there are in the United States", according to Justin Tanis with the National Center for Transgender Equality. “Transgender people clearly exist in our society, but we don’t even have reliable statistics.” These children are transgender.
Transgender is the state of one's "gender identity" (self-identification as woman, man, neither or both) not matching one's "assigned sex" (identification by others as male or female based on physical/genetic sex). "Transgender" does not imply any specific form of sexual orientation; transgender people may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, or asexual; some may consider conventional sexual orientation labels inadequate or inapplicable to them
A transgender individual may have characteristics that are normally associated with a particular gender, identify elsewhere on the traditional gender continuum, or exist outside of it as "other," "agender," " genderqueer," or "third gender". Transgender people may also identify as bigender or along several places on either the traditional transgender continuum, or the more encompassing continuums which have been developed in response to the significantly more detailed studies done in recent years.
Many people may not understand why an individual desires to be the gender opposite of what they are biologically. Little do they know this desire and yearn is more; it is a medically diagnosed birth defect. Contrary to many peoples thoughts it is not a mental disease. Numerous doctors have found that it is a hormone malfunction that happens in the utero.
Transgender is a label…a word. However, Wikipedia gives a fine definition of the word. More over, it does not touch on the lives of the people who are categorized as transgender. Basically transgender is an umbrella term including everyone from cross-dressers and female impersonators, to transsexuals who change their sex from, according to the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition. There are many types of transgender. "What is a transgender?" is not an easy question to answer.
While gay men and women have gained much broader acceptance in the past 20 years, transgender identity still seems foreign to many Americans. Transgender people face rejection from their families, their churches and just all around society, which can all be uncomfortable with the idea that someone would want to change their bodies or even their clothes to look like the opposite sex.
Suzane Olivia told The Patriot News that as a boy living in rural northern Pennsylvania, "she" would sneak out of the house once everyone was sleeping and walk two miles to church alone in the dark. “I’d pray at the railing that God would change me into a woman. Nothing changed; that was the real distressing thing,” said Oliva. Now, at age 54, she can sometimes dress as a woman, but only at night and only away from the eyes of family and co-workers.
Among transgender people, “I think most of us have the same story,” said Jeanine. Some transgenders, like Oliva, live with a foot in each world, dressing like men at work, then socializing in the clothes and appearance that feel much more natural to them. Others take hormones to raise their voices and develop breasts. For some, the road leads to extreme surgery, so their bodies permanently match the way they feel inside.
Transgender people aren’t perverts, Jeanine stated , during an interview with Patriot News they’re people struggling with their gender identity. Some view it differently.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, used by mental health professionals to diagnose patients, labels transgenderism as a psychological disorder. And Diane Gramley believes people who are confused about their gender need help.
Gramley is president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, a organization promoting conservative Christian values. The AFA opposes what it describes as the homosexual lifestyle, and rejects the idea of transgender identity. “To embrace or to affirm that lifestyle or their confusion does not help them. The only compassionate thing would be to provide counseling for them,” she said. “Counsel this individual that you were born a female or a male, and this is what you were intended to be. To change that, you’re not going to be able to live the life you were meant to live, and it’s going to impact everyone, especially the children.”
The American Psychological Association takes a more flexible position: “A psychological condition is considered a mental disorder only if it causes distress or disability. Many transgender people do not experience their transgender feelings and traits to be distressing or disabling, which implies that being transgender does not constitute a mental disorder per se.”
Numerous transgenders go through life living as someone they are not rather than doing something about it. While others take medical procedures in order to change their gentetalia. Many people don’t understand the confusion and hurt these people go through mentally and physically on a daily basis. This group of people is trying to set themselves apart as a whole, they are not gay, they are not transvestites, and they are not confused, they are simply transgender. They do not need the kind of help psychologist provide, they need help in the form of love that only people they love can provide. It's time for America as a whole to open their eyes to transgender individuals, just as they have for others.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
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