The Meaning of Trans

One Inside View

This post began as a reply to a comment on a post in another blog. This version is revised and expanded.

I can’t accurately define for you the meaning of “trans”, because it means different things to different people, and I think that is intentional. To me, it is a blurring of the ideas of transsexual and transgender, intentionally ambiguous. I also use it as a short form for transsexual, also intentionally ambiguous.

"Transsexual" was at one time a medical diagnosis, a psychiatric one, based upon stated symptoms. Present day, I have no clear idea of how it is being used. Because the diagnosis was determined from what the patient said, many different underlying situations could have led to it, and that is one reason that hormone & surgery gatekeepers were so important. (More about them later.) But still, it was not as broadly defined as the word "transgender", which could mean just about anything.

What I know about transsexualism is from my personal experience, not from the WPATH of 20 years ago or from people that have studied the condition. Very early in life, when I was just coming to understand that there were girls and boys, and noticing that they were somehow different, I saw the girls as similar to me and the boys as something rather different, a difference that would widen over time. There was no sexual aspect to it at that age. I don't know my age then, but I was at least walking and talking.

I must have said something to my mother about it, and it can't have gone well. I blocked most of the memory. After that I went “into the closet”. In that state, I eventually developed some fairly severe mental problems that I have never shared about with anyone and am not planning to. But I will mention that they existed, because it's not a good way to treat a child, forcing him or her into silence, and I want to make that point. I did recover, rather late in life. Not everyone in such a situation lives long enough to do that. Some take their own lives. I came close.

I am not advocating that parents encourage or allow a child to transition. That strikes me as a very bad idea, one that I find confusing to even think about. What would that have done to me? I shudder to think. All I wanted to do was talk about it, but even that was too much to ask. When I finally did come out and talk about it, at age 53, long after my parents were gone, it was a tremendous release. I hate keeping secrets that aren’t for someone else’s privacy or protection.

Prior to puberty I had a plan to "change sides" when I grew up and left home. It wasn't much of a plan — that was the entire plan. I was an only child and I did not know anything about "anatomical differences". At puberty, the boys went one way, the girls went another, and I liked going for walks instead, uninterested in what they were doing. I would eventually work out that I am asexual, perhaps something to do with brain damage at birth combined with endocrine dysfunction, and the resulting partially-failed puberty. (See Puberty Blockers.) Such things can change a person, as can hiding.

Also at the onset of puberty I learned about the “anatomical differences”. I won't go into detail, but let's just say it was an unusual way to find out. My parents told me nothing. That was the start of 28 years of severe depression and gender dysphoria,¹ as my plan fell apart, not to be revived until I was 55 and contemplating the cancer risk posed by the endocrine disorder. The severe depression had ended at age 40 when I returned, for a time, to the religious practice in which I was raised.

Part of my story is typical of transsexuals, and part of it -- the brain damage, the endocrine disorder, the asexuality, and the eventual cancer, among other things -- is most assuredly not. I associate the term with early childhood discovery of reversed gender identity, and no change throughout life. The medical industry has been more "flexible" with the definition, presumably in order to expand its customer base. The actual standard was that it was necessary to satisfy the gatekeepers, important for malpractice insurance coverage I assume. Now, as of 2022, the gatekeepers are gone.

The gatekeepers were part of the WPATH protocol for transition. Mine were a PhD psychologist, an MMFC counselor, and an MD (mine was also a DO). The MD required letters from the psychologist and counselor before prescribing hormones. I took estradiol at low dose. It was not really necessary but I wanted to see if it helped with my autism (it possibly did), but that’s another story. There was also a testosterone blocker, but that didn’t do much because mine was already largely blocked, thanks to the endocrine disorder.

The surgeon, Dr. Toby Meltzer, required letters from all three gatekeepers. Not everyone elects to have surgery, but I did. As I have described elsewhere, I learned about the endocrine disorder at age 54, researched it, and concluded that I was at high risk for testicular cancer, something that my doctors did not recognize at all (they were wrong). The cancer risk was the deciding factor in whether or not to transition and have surgery. Unfortunately, I took too long to decide.

Transition was a long process — four years for me, three of them tentative — culminating in a "Real Life Experience" year that was largely redundant in my case, but important generally because of the subjective nature of the diagnosis. It included all of transition except for surgery and legal change of sex, and it was meant as an opportunity to allow backing out without any major irreversible effects. For me, it was a time for cancer diagnosis and treatment which, as I said, is unusual. Following that, a surgical cancellation opening allowed me to shorten the year to 10 months. A year or two later the surgeon told me about another case that he had since encountered involving cancer.

Now, the gatekeepers are no more and all caution has been thrown to the wind. "Irreversible" has become "profitable" (more surgery, cancer treatment after taking the carcinogenic pharmaceuticals, etc.). My guess is that suicide rates are up, not down, but who's counting.

I don’t know what happens to people like me now, with or without the unusual circumstances. I doubt that it is good. I no longer have contact with any of them, but I suspect that the supportive local communities like the one I had are being destroyed or are gone, replaced with some kind of madness.

I spent five years in our local trans community. I received the support that I had never had before, and no one tried to recruit me to anything, or push me into anything. The people identified as transgender, cross-dresser, transsexual, gender confused, or whatever. Things could get pretty weird. I did not clearly understand what I was at first, but I was free to explore. Being in the community enabled me to work that part out in about six months, and by then I understood that I was indeed unusual. It didn’t matter to the community. Deciding what to do about it was more difficult.

I received and I gave back. I helped run two different support groups at different times. I mentored a few that were already seeking to transition and needed help. I attended meetings and social events, and I listened, individually, to the different stories of those sitting alone, because they needed someone to listen, not condemn. There was much suffering in certain parts of this community, among the transsexuals.

I haven’t decided yet, but I may write more about the sources of that suffering. I know it well, but I have put that particular kind behind me, and yes, that was possible through transition. My situation proves awkward at times, and I have written about that in pieces, some here, some there. I’ll think about it.

I will say this much: this is largely why I spent half my life as a deist, and avoiding churches. I’m not a deist anymore — I am very much a theist — and I don’t avoid churches any longer. I belong to one, a conservative one, my third in a row now thanks to 2020. And I am not in the closet. As I said, awkward.

---

Related:

• Puberty Blockers

• Testimony

1. The severe kind resolved after that, but it continued on in a milder form.