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Views:

y do we do this? There
are people that say we do
this because it is fun or

we like to play dress-up. I pooh-
pooh their ignorance.

I lcnow girls who are fight-
ing to keep relationships years in the

' making, debating whether to go back

to a life sure to lead to death simply
to stay with their partners. I know of
girls that have given up everything
they have to make their transition a
success.

I know of girls that have
said goodbye to all they lmow, all
friends and family, for a chance at
freedom, safety, life. I have heard of
girls selling their very bodies
because they have nothing lefi to get
by with. I know of many who cry
themselves to sleep every night
because they struggle every day with
the prejudice, injustice, and cruelty
that forces them to live two lives,
one real, one false, to live a crazi-
ness that wears at the soul, beating
down the essence of life that keeps
them going each day.

So why do we do what we
do? -It is who we are. We are simply
living. It is not something we are
doing; it is like breathing. As much
as breathing is something we do, so
is transitioning something a trans-
sexual does. It is what must be done
to live. For many it is something that
happens late in life, for the lucky, it
happens earlier. For all who survive,
it is something that happens because
they reach a point in their life where
they must change what they are
doing or stop being. This is about.
life, about being true to ourselves
and embracing the person in side of
us that we have repressed for years.

So much of the world
focuses on the physical transition
and the change that is monitored and
dictated by the Harry Benjamin
Standards of Care. Perhaps less
emphasis would be placed on all of
this if trassexuality were taken out of
DSM-IV [manual of psychiatric
diagnoses] and treated as the med-
ical condition that it is. Perhaps peo-
ple would recognize the men and
women that are crying out to be
seen; the same men and women that
are undertaking huge, life altering,
medical procedures to be recognized
for the people that they already are.

That is the key that society
is missing. We are the men and
women we acknowledge ourselves
to be before Sexual Reassignment

 

Surgery, not after. This focus on con-
forming to a standard that controls a
set of physical changes removes the
focus from living. Transitioning is
about living. It is a stage of life for a
transsexual. Unfortunately all of
society, non-trans, heterosexual,
homosexual, and trans, have placed
such stigma on the transsexual com-
munity, and gender as a whole, that
embracing the correct gender. I
becomes a process as opposed to a
natural evolution.

Unlike boys and girls that
have no gender conflict, transsexuals
are not allowed to grow up to
embrace the gender that is natural
for them. Their life path is altered

 

Why Do we 1'ransition?

www.gendertalk.com, transgender
people are more likely to be stabbed

or beaten to death then other murder ,

victims. This indicates increased
anger and violence in the crime. In
the years leading up to 2003 the
murder rate for transgendered people
went from 19 in 2000 and 2001 to
30 in 2002 with a total of 294 deaths
between 1970 and 2003. These num-
bers are coming from those names
collected by the Remember Our
Dead web project as reported on
www.gender.com and are most likely
not a complete count.

Very few states have gen-
der.identity listed as a protected
class under employment rights.
Health benefits are at risk for gender
identity disclosures, along with edu-
cational benefits and other rights
most people take for granted. With
all of this, these reasons are only
indicators of why we do not simply
live but rather endure years of a life

that does not match who we really

are. The answer to that question is in
a mirror. We love that person in the
mirror, be it ourselves, our mother,
our father, sister, brother, or best
friend. We love the people we grow
up with and are petrified that they

I know of many who cry

‘themselves to sleep every

night because they struggle
every day with the prejudice,
injustice, and cruelty that

forces them to live two lives.

into a gender development that soci-
ety dictates to them. Only later does
the transsexual get to learn what it
means to accept, embrace and
become the gender that they associ-
ate with. This process is not a con-
structed physical process. It is also
not a process that the Standards of
Care addresses. This is a life process
that happens naturally inside of the
TS person, often in a very lonely
space and time.

So if we are simply living
and this is a life process that has
been altered by the constructs of
society, why don’t we change the
path? According to an article on

will be the one that might support
the bill to withhold health benefits
from the transgendered, or that they
might be the one to label us freaks
and walk out of our lives. For that
reason, we conform until we can
conform no longer.

It is with that same love
that a TS person moves forward into
the next chapter in their life. So
many of the diflicult, caring “com-
ing—out” letters that I have read carry
with them words of love and kind-
ness. They try so eloquently to
express to the person they are writ-
ing how much they love them.

When we start to transition, it  I