What is the difference? (Warning - another transgender thread)

[Flippetydip]

I am prepared to get totally flamed for this but it is a genuine, and not meant to be goady question. I know there is a huge amount of transgender posts on here at the moment (hence the title so people have the choice not to read) but my question is:

If I can self ID as a man (or woman if I'm a man) can I self ID as a person of another race? I seem to recall a huge hoo-ha back along over some woman in the States who identified as black but was originally white and was absolutely pilloried. Genuinely, what is the difference?

@Iminthecclubnow you are labouring under a misunderstanding. Trans people aren't claiming to have changed their biological sex, or that they are able to. They are claiming that biological sex is not what determines gender. Transwomen have the biological attributes we define as male. The argument being made is that having male biological attributes doesn't mean your gender has to be male.

So do they want to use female spaces that are segregated by sex?

I don't really believe in 'gender' as such. Only biological sex can be divided into male and female. Surely everything else is just personality?

Can I just say Jaycee thank you for your posts on this thread. It's really useful hearing the views of trans people who don't just say 'trans women are women and if you don't agree you are a bigot'.

Sorry that should say why do they want to use female spaces segregated by sex.

Terfinater, I do see what you are saying, of course. But it is hard to see where such stereotypes come into play. This sense of wrongness about self starts so young and bubbles under the surface so early that you are too young to fully appreciate what it means, but you get the gist.

I never had any set roles or ideas about friends, interests, play. Nor was I put under any pressure to develop any of these in one direction or another. In many ways that helped because it meant that nothing really pushed me to make immediate decisions and I was a bit arty - loving to ride off on my bike or go for long walks and then go home and write about it.

So it was very internalised. Today many trans kids seem to know they are who they are from very young and declare it to their parents. I think this is partly a confidence of the age we live in. And that certainty may or may not be as acute as it appears given the familiarity with the whole idea of being trans that is out there now.

Back then nobody understood or knew about these things so my teacher in primary school just saw oddities in the way I wrote and shared them with my mum who worked at the school. But everybody assumed it would be a phase that would pass as I got older and life and hormones took hold.

I, of course, had no idea that there were trans people or anything could be done and I just kept feeling more and more at odds with what was going on and it took a few years to really figure out what the basis of this nagging sense of wrongness within.

At which point I started sharing it with friends and then my parents on one horrendous day in the mid 60s. The first doctor was adamant it was just a phase and refused to believe if it was it had been going on for years. Everyone just wanted to side step the problem. My brother was roped in to 'help bring me out' and I, after coming close to jumping off a bridge one day, being saved by chance, saw no other way out but to try to do as everyone wanted.

That was the first time stereotypes of any sort really appeared in my life as I was persuaded to train to be a football referee - I had no desire to play so this was a compromise by me. My brother set me up with a girl at a party and we just got chatting in a nice friendly way and only when it suddenly dawned on me that she had been primed to 'woo' me did I do a runner and went missing.

There were lots of little moments like that which gradually escalated until the day I discovered that there were others like me and in rare cases they were getting medical help to change. I was still at school and it was over 50 years ago but it was a revelation. I knew immediately that this was the only way forward.

So began several years of doctors, tests, hospital stays and psychiatric assessments and so on, which for me were always just a means to an inevitable end.

There really was no one thing that made me know - it was a gradual dawning. Nor was it about interests or stereotypes as I was not restricted. And it was not without effort to try to do what everyone wanted and just accept who I was because I did that top no avail at a time when I had no idea there even was a way to transition. Short of magic spells that is - which believe me I tried with a friend who said she knew some fairy spells if we collected the right flowers.

It was a long painful journey to this point of transition that I can see now was inevitable from my first inklings at age 3 or 4 and for most of which seemed utterly impossible and not a realistic choice as being trans is perceived today.

They tried everything to persuade me out of this and were about to do electro convulsive therapy when a gender specialist arrived by chance from New Zealand, ran tests over a few days and persuaded the psychiatrist treating me that he should accept my transition.

That was the best day of my life 45 years ago and not for one second since have I ever felt that it was the wrong thing to do.

I know the limitations. I understand the sacrifices and the concerns of those of you on this thread. And I was incredibly lucky to have such an amazing supportive family for those days.

The how and why of what caused this to happen I understand no better than any of you. But I do know that had I not taken this course I very likely would not be here today. The stress and trauma this brings is like a volcano that is always about to erupt and you are desperately trying to cap.

Transition worked almost like magic. It stopped whatever was wrong dead. I don't know how or why but it did.

Sorry to sidetrack, I am actually really wanting to ask your opinion on something to do with your work but it will out the both of us. Could I pm you about this?

I never had any set roles or ideas about friends, interests, play. Nor was I put under any pressure to develop any of these in one direction or another

I'm really confused because surely in order to feel that something is wrong, a person must have an idea of what is right?

Riverside - being a woman is surely obviously more than about just biology, just as being a man is.

A little puzzled this needs explanation. It is about who you are and your personality and how you interact with human beings and the way you live your life.

It is about being a person.

Do you see what you did there Jaycee?

It is about being a person.

So why, exactly, does anyone need to change 'gender' to be a person?

Terfinater, by all means PM me.

As for the comment as to how in order to feel that something is wrong you need to know first what is right.

Yes, indeed, that would seem to make perfect sense.

It is one reason why I suspect the cause of all of this dissonance might be physical not psychological.

It feels like that - like when you have a sense of something wrong in your tummy maybe. And you try to ignore it and hope it will go away. But it nags at you and gets worse and at first you cannot say exactly what is wrong or where but in the end it becomes impossible to deny so you go and see a doctor.

That's how it was but not in any part of the body you can pinpoint other than your mind.

I think they thought at first it might be a brain tumour with me but they did not have the easy ways to test then. But it was later something they had to eliminate when I spent time in hospital being assessed in the early 70s.

I don't know the explanation for all of this, of course. Nobody does. But it has to be possible that something happens at some point in early life or gestation that creates this mismatch between mind and body and you just feel it in some way without there being anything specific to trigger it.

Because that's how it feels - a sense of mind one thing, body the other. Not literally I suppose and the difficulty putting this into words is the cause of all the 'born in the wrong body' guff that is really just an attempt to describe the indescribable and so doomed to be unhelpful.

I just don't recognise any starting point in psychological or social terms that would suggest why I would develop this sense of wrongness through social or family dynamics so early on in life. And it is pretty clear that others describe similar things too.

Not impossible, obviously, that there is some developmental cause that occurs very early on and you forget as we forget many memories prior to the age of 3. But there is no obvious trigger afterwards I guess is what I am saying .

They used to think in the very early days that trans was a consequence of imprinting from a dominant mother and a weak father. I don't think that theory would go down well on here, but it was rejected fairly quickly as once a few cases had been documented there was no clear evidence to support it.

There have been many attempts to propose causes but most of them are guesswork. If those of us going through it day after day, year after year cannot point to a cause then I suspect doctors will struggle unless they make some breakthrough that links this all together.

However, there appear to be two types of trans person.

Those who seem to have had this as part of them from very early life and usually find it impossible not to transition as soon as they can. Most of us in that group are hetero in the perspective of the trans woman (as in we are attracted to men).

Then those for whom it comes on or develops later in life and they do not transition until their 40s, 50s or 60s. Indeed I know of one case in their 80s. Often with family and after years of cross dressing. These trans women are homosexual in their perspective as they have married women and not uncommonly remain together or, if not, hardly ever change sexual preference.

Maybe it is just a difference of degree rather than separate causes. But this split might support two different causes.

I can only tell it like I experienced it, allowing, of course, for the inevitable way in which memory rewrites things from childhood ,

Luckily, as I loved writing, I documented many of these things at the time and in 1974 got asked to give a book of these thoughts telling my story just for doctors at the local hospitals. So they had some insight into what was then for most of them a problem they had never confronted.

Fairenuff - I understand why you ask such questions and why you think my answers are not helpful.

I could happily make up some nonsense to make it seem like there was a clear reason. But I am not going to do that as its not what happened.

I can only tell you what it felt like and leave it up to you (or really more properly the doctors) to impute meaning.

I went through days on end of questioning like this with psychiatrists and psychologists. They all were just as eager to be told how and why. But it is what it is I am afraid.

I really think it is just something nobody will ever get unless they experience it.

A bit like saying to you - what's it like having only one leg. Does it feel odd? And you say I cannot tell you because I have two legs. I can guess or make up stuff but cannot describe what I have not experienced.

In reverse its a bit like that. I cannot describe and so relate to the sense of oneness that 99.9% of humanity clearly has on this matter.

And I know that does not satisfy your thirst for understanding. But it is what it was like for me, at least.

Maybe someone else will have a better answer? Trans man Stephen Whittle was on the other thread (about why no trans men). As in the eyes of many on here he will still BE a woman despite having transitioned and lived as a man for decades - maybe he can offer insights on why he did not feel like a woman when he should have done.

I did ask him earlier.

I'm glad you were able to transition and be happy Jaycee. Reading your posts, I don't think I could ever agree with someone that feels it is wrong or shouldn't happen.

Jaycee you say that there was no expectations on you regarding stereotypes but also say the following.

You say your teacher noticed something different and spoke to your mother about it. Your parents thought it was a phase and took you to a doctor. You were encouraged to take up masculine hobbies and attempts were made to get you interested in girls.

I knew that I was not gay (though had no problem with those who were as I knew one or two) but also that I only wanted to date boys

I find this statement really troubling and I suspect this is very significant. You mention your parents were religious.You sadly grew up in a time where it was a crime to be gay.

Do you think that If all the above things didn't happen, that if you had been told it was ok to not like girls, ok to not like rugby, that it was absolutely ok to be yourself, that things would have been different?

I think she is herself. She went through years of assessment, treatment and surgery to become herself. Decades before most people even knew it was possible to transition.

Being transgendered is a real thing. Whether we understand it or not, it is real. Jaycee is a genuine example. To suggest that every transwoman is a repressed homosexual or an autogynephile (as is often suggested) is far, far too simplistic and does not adequately explain the lives of a lot of transwomen.

No, Terfinator. It was nothing to do with being gay. By the time I was thinking relationships at all this was the later sixties and it was not that repressive and my parents being religious was not a barrier either.

The church was very liberal - as noted by the way in which in 1978 when I got engaged after transition and we could not marry the minister was very happy to do a blessing ceremony long before trans marriage was legalised in 2004.

Plus, one of my cousins was gay back then, and in fact my niece is getting married to her girlfriend this Christmas. So our family have long been okay with this and so was I.

Being gay would have been far easier and more acceptable in general at that time anyway - and certainly in my family - than the total unknown of gender transition.

You have to understand that there is a fundamental difference between sexual preference and gender identity. They are not related.

There are gay trans people and straight and they hardly ever alter that preference after transition. If it was as flexible as I suspect you are trying to suggest - commuting being gay into gender dysphoria - then I would expect to see more flexibility with trans people today swapping and changing before and after transition.

And as being gay right now is certainly more acceptable than being trans then you would imagine that there would not still be the same kind of numbers of transsexuals emerging as there was back then in the very different climate.

The wider acceptance of being gay in the 21 st century would surely have impacted the number of trans people today compared with yesterday if this were a common cause. That does not seem to be happening.

It was also something that was explored quite extensively in the psychotherapy sessions I had whilst an in patient prior to transition. So it obviously occurred to doctors then too.

That was the early 70s when it was not illegal. And it never went anywhere.

I chose not to have a relationship with a man until I had transitioned - remember - fully aware that post transition I would not be legally female and so would still in the eyes of the world be having a gay relationship anyway. So it does not seem to have been self protective.

Ironically the concept of being thought gay by family and friends bothered my long term partner much more than me and was a reason why he would not let me explain to his parents whilst we were living with them saving up to buy a house together.

He was scared that they would regard me being trans as really being gay. So in effect the exact opposite of what you are suggesting.

As for the teacher in primary school (I was 8 or 9) noticing something that my mother was told - it was that I was writing my stories from a female pov. And they often had a theme about magical transformation. I was too young then to be writing about gay themes even in disguise like this.

My parents consulted a doctor and the doctor told them such things were a phase and once I reached puberty it would go away. They were guessing as nobody in 1961 knew anything about trans matters - certainly not a local GP.

The attempts to push me into doing male things and my brother to get me interested in girls was later after I had first told them about believing I should really be a girl. They were encouraged to do this by another doctor.

When these efforts failed I was sent to the same GP and publicly humiliated by him in front of a waiting room full of people with him screaming so they all heard that I was a 'bull' and that I was being 'absurd' and pretty much many other things said in threads like these on here - 'no doctor can ever make you a girl'. And 'go away and grow up'. He gave me some nerve pills and sent me packing as the rest of his patients laughed.

He obviously did this thinking it would bring me to my senses but it actually drove me to standing on a bridge and falling off, backwards not forwards, by sheer chance as a passer by turned up just at the wrong/right moment and pulled me back.

I never told my parents that - only the doctors I wound up seeing when they finally understood that this GP was not helping me.

As soon as I started on the road to transition and had hope I was fine and never considered that kind of stupid act again. It was still as long road but I was finally being listened to and that was all I ever asked.

When we reached the point of the doctors talking to my parents as to how they viewed the possibility of my transition, they told him how unhappy I had been for years and one of them said (my mum I think) - 'I'd rather have a live daughter than a dead son'.

That was why I never told them how close they had come to that.

As for if I had been told it was okay not to like rugby, ironically I played that at school and also was quite successful as a referee and reached a high grade where I ran the line at a football league ground.

I left because a girl was not then allowed to do this and I told the authorities that was wrong and they told me they would not back me to go to the next level unless I had psychiatric counselling.

So it was not these acts or doing male things that were the problem. Doing them was not awful and I got good at that part and enjoyed it but I never felt like a man doing it.

It was not the magic wand that the doctor and my parents hoped and to a degree I guess I must have hoped too by throwing myself into it.

I do see where you are coming from and why you are suggesting what you are and would happily confirm your thinking if it made sense of what I went through.

But I can't. Because it doesn't.

Most of my friends who think differently from me about trans issues, imagine that we are talking about someone just like Jaycee. For many years it seemed that males who wanted to transition were pretty much experiencing dysphoria in the way that Jaycee describes. They very much wanted surgery, and they took hormones to appear more feminine. If that was still the case, e.g. the "100 or so cases a year", the males who wanted to live in a feminine presentation, and have male partners, then I think I would be far more sympathetic. The huge problem is that the fact that there are now many differing types of males id-ing as trans, and many of them pose a direct threat to women. This is being ignored politically. There are now large numbers of heterosexual men, men who would have been called transvestites, men with fetishes, men who simply want access to vulnerable sitting-duck women, all sorts of different men, who want access to women's spaces /and to be considered actual women. A quick glance through twitter shows that many of these men, and their allies, have a deep-rooted hatred of women, a jealousy, a loathing. Do i want someone like this flashing his penis at my teenage daughter? Of course I don't. Do I want a convicted rapist to be called a "woman", ignoring the pain that must cause his victims? Nope. Do i want a power-drunk bullying teenage boy like Lily Madigan to force my daughters to share changing rooms and loos at school with him, or a tent on a camping trip, even when they are trying to deal with periods starting, and wanting privacy? No. No, and no. I will fight with everything i have to stop this madness. I have been a victim of male violence, I do not want to use women's loos when I'm out somewhere, and to be suddenly faced with some hefty six foot male with a sexual fetish, who hates women and feels entitled to use violence against anyone (a "TERF") who might question his "right" to be there . A few months ago I was looking at a thread on Twitter re trans issues, and clicked on the profile of the trans male arguing with the feminist I follow. His profile header was an actual video of him, his penis out, bobbing up and down on some large pole like thing that was stuck up his rear . . HE is supposed to be someone I want in an enclosed space with my thirteen year old daughter!!???!!. This porn sick man?? And don't get me started on the men calling themselves lesbians, and trying to bully actual lesbians into having sex with them. Uggh. Sex offenders, fetishists, misogynists, all demanding to be "women" and to be called "she" and to be in refuges, prisons, changing rooms at TopShop etc etc with girls and women. All this is also highly detrimental for someone like you Jaycee, the likes of whom women have accommodated with kindness for decades. The public have someone like Jaycee in mind when they say they are pro trans rights, they don't have "Lianne" Huntley. Now we can see that the laws being proposed apply to any man at all who wants to get into the female estate. We don't like it, we don't want it. It is a terrible , terrible step for women.

I did put in paragraphs, and they have all disappeared! Sorry dear reader.

Gender and race are both social constructs so, yes, saying that you self-identify as a different gender is comparable to saying that you identify as a different race.

Gender
Just a stereotype —e.g. men are 'competitive, decisive, logical'; women are 'meek, emotional, nurturing'. In actual fact, there's more variation among biological males and among biological females than there is between them. (see Professor Cordelia Fine's books). If science discovered significant differences between a male brain and a female brain it would be headline news. Men have always assumed their brains were superior and would shout about it.

Race
It's a less well known fact that race is just an idea created by society too. Think about it: society groups people by physical traits like, say, the colour of their skin, but ... so what? You could equally group people by the slant of their cheekbones or the colour of their eyes or the length of their hair. It's a socially constructed division -- there's nothing more to it than this. We are not different species, we are all people. Race only means something because of attitudes in society.

That's how I understand it anyway, I'm ready to be corrected if I'm mistaken. I saw a geneticist on TV news say that race is an absurd concept to a geneticist, but of course racism still exists because of how people act. Hence, it's a social construct.

What about sexuality? Some people say that sexual orientation is inate and not a choice. Some would say it's a social construct. Some would say your sexuality can be influenced by your environment, the media etc.

I'm a straight woman. I've been attracted to women in the sense that I find them attractive people but never wanted to have sex with a woman. Never wanted to touch another womans vagina in a sexual way. Never. Doesn't appeal at all. Could never imagine falling in love with a woman if we even take sex out of the equation. I just wouldn't, doesn't appeal at all. Not my thing.

I've always known this. Never doubted it. I couldn't say why I feel I'm straight or how it feels, I just know that I am (similar to what a lot of trans people say about knowing they're trans).

Is that part of me or have I been influenced by society? My Mum had lesbian relationships so I was around a lot of lesbians so wasn't uncomfortable with it or feared it. Just knew it wasn't me.

No-one cares if I feel like I know, to the deepest part of me that I am straight. No-one asks me to explain how it feels or suggests that I'm straight because of external influences rather than my own sense of self. Yet it's disregarded if a trans person feels so strongly about a part of their own personhood.

My best friend is a gay man. Always knew he was gay. Never dated a woman, never would. Knew he was gay from a young age. Still is in his 40s. Always will be. No-one else in his family is gay.

Did we not really just know our sexuality?

I agree that sexuality is innate. I know what it feels like to fancy a man. On the other hand, gender is different. What does it 'feel like' to be a woman? From my experience, nothing beyond external factors --
matching the pics in the biology text book (close enough!) and how society treats me. Nothing innate about gender.

Sirvix - I completely understand why you feel as you do and agree with pretty much all of it. I am certainly not alone in terms of transgender people who disagree with the planned changes.

But when I and others have expressed this we often get shouted down too and told by some activists to join your TERF mates or some other such silliness.

Emotions are running high on both sides from those who desperately want or do not want these changes to go through. Understandably.

I am confident that wise heads will prevail and that sensible tweaks can possibly be worked out without altering fundamentally the safeguards built into the 2004 act that by and large has worked well.

I think the mood amongst politicians has shifted in that direction and that ultimately they will not push this too far.

I have noticed that it is often the older trans women who feel as I do. Perhaps it is because we have lived much of our lives from a female perspective and so have had experiences that , whilst obviously not identical to born women, have more similarities to those who are either young gender activists who are just starting out and wanting to change our perception of identity and what being transgender means.

Or who are trans women who transitioned after decades living as men, perhaps as husbands and fathers, so inevitably see things from a different base of life experience.

Either way it saddens me that so many seem to see this only from one side. A selfish side. An I'm alright Jill perspective.

This does apply on both sides of the argument but, of course, it is undeniable that the vast majority of people and women are not trans and yet the tiny few who are seem to be trying to alter definitions, language and reality for everyone else.

There has to be a sensible middle ground here where we stop shouting at one another and start listening and talking instead.

In many ways there is a common goal, if indeed those who say they are women want to be the women of tomorrow and not just live as a version of the men of the past.

Then surely they should try to see what that means in the longer term and not just from their own narrow perspective.

They need to think of all the women around them who are impacted by what to them is a singular issue that probably looks one sided.

As a woman empathy and understanding of those around are a good thing to develop because you will get called upon to put others first a lot. It is the nature of life.

You who will also face the consequences of anything you do. It is not easy as in reality we probably all just want to live our lives without fear or prejudice and in harmony with others.

Bring trans is a very one eyed journey through life but it carries with it impacts on many others from family to friends and those you do not personally know who might be effected by changes made in your name that you never understood would cross their path too.

Getting over this rather me-go centric view on life that being trans instills takes courage and willingness to see the bigger picture. But it will be something you need to acquire if you are to be happy in a post transition world.

Because that world will not only contain you and if you are now 'cured' and 'no longer trans' - as surely is the purpose of transition - so you now regard yourself as a normal member of society - then that carries its own responsibility.

You have to look beyond your own small universe to the lives of others - as those others will now contain you. too, and next time around the changes the coming generations wish to bring forth might just come back and bite you on the bum.

It makes no sense to me. Even when a trans person explains it, I don't understand what they mean. I don't understand how they know what it is to be female when I, a biological female, don't know what it means beyond my biological attributes: periods, vagina, pregnancy etc

I thought we had moved beyond boys having to be rough and tough and girls having to be delicate and demure. Thebtabs debate seems to be about pushing everyone into pigeon holes and obsessing over gender. Why?

Can't you be biologically male, call yourself a man and still like things typically associated with women?

Judder - what does it 'feel like' to fancy a man? I do fancy men but is it a feeling, an impulse or part of us?.

I know I am sexually attracted to men. It feels part of me. I know I can become aroused when thinking about sex with certain men or feel comforted and content and happy when I think about emotional romantic relationships with them.

I know it feels 'wrong' when I think about having sex with a woman or being in a romantic relationship with a woman. Not wrong in me thinking it is wrong for other people but wrong for me. I feel it deeply in the core of my being.

So why do you think sexuality is inate but not gender? My sexuality is felt very deeply; as is my cultural heritage so why not gender?

Why can't a personal sense of gender be the same as sexuality which you think is inate?. That's the nearest I think I can get to the feeling of being transgender because to me - I know I'm a woman but I don't know what 'feeling' like a woman is and never felt it was an option not to be a woman. But I certainly felt it was an option not to be heterosexual if I so wished but just 'knew' that wasn't me.

Ninja - it is not about liking things typically associated with women. If it was you would be right.

It is far more subtle than that and like an itch inside you that you cannot scratch that screams out that your body is wrong.

Or it was for me. Just an inner knowing of incompatibility that grew and grew whatever you were interested or played with or liked. I was not put under any restrictions about such things, so I can be reasonably sure it was not about that.

It did rear its head once now I recall at country dancing class at primary school. We were doing a Scottish dance and I was expected to pick up a toy gun and I wanted the plaid skirt instead.

I remember that because it was one of the few times I was put under such restriction so was a point where I possibly realised for the first time there even were gender divisions as to what you were supposed to want or do.

Fallenfortom - Yes, several times over the past few days on threads on here I seem to have frustrated a few posters because they ask that question - how did I know that I should be a woman/wanted to be? (It was the former when it was instinctive at about 3 or 4 and the latter once by about 8 I understood the difference and the realities of gender).

I have tried to explain with all sorts of analogies but it keeps being brought back to this idea that I must have known the differences to want the one I wasn;t, or some such.

But it really wasn't like that. It was an inner sense of dissonance that was just there from first memories and that crystallised slowly as my life unfolded and I cam to understand that it was my inner self telling me one thing and the universe around me perceiving another.

I can only presume that as 99.9% of the world have no such dissonance and are just aligned and in tune with their body and mind as far as sense of who you are is concerned that the vast majority cannot understand the tiny minority who know these are two things because we experience the mismatch.

As when there is no mismatch there is nothing to notice so nothing to experience.

I can understand why some people don't want to accept this is possible because they seem to have a reason to need to think that an internal concept of gender can only be acquired via experience or upbringing.

I think those factors probably do play a part and are by far the biggest factor in most people's lives. But when you are trans you just get to see that there is something else that in your case plays an otherwise tiny or unnoticed role in your self bit for you is one great big weight tied around your soul.

I get that Jaycee. I think my 'knowing' of my heterosexuality is the closest I can get to the feeling of people with gender dysphoria. I can't put it into words the 'knowing' and society fortunately never required me to.

I 'know' I'm straight. Always knew it and can't imagine that changing. I find the idea of having sex with a woman quite repulsive even though I think women's bodies are probably more ascetically pleasing than mens. And I don't think lesbians are repulsive or the female body repulsive in any way. I have many lesbian friends (my Mum had lesbian relationships before becoming celibate) but for me personally it does make me feel a bit revolted.

Probably in the same way that lesbians think about sex with a penis or some vegetarians think about eating meat.

If I had to feel that way every day about my own gender and body then I would undoubtedly try to transition. If I Iived in a predominately lesbian society that told me ' well you can't 'feel' straight, you're a lesbian and that's it, you can't ever change it and even if you try and have hormones or surgery, you're still a lesbian pretending to be straight' I can't imagine how that would feel.

fugitive what if someone did feel, deep within themselves, that they were black despite being born in a white body to white parents? How do I know they are lying about their feelings?

I, kind of, see your point. But how would RD know what being black 'felt' like? I say this as a black women.

On a societal level, I guess I could try & explain badly,but that would be my experience only.

But, on a personal level, I'm not sure I could. Am I making any sense?

I can only real guess, and it is that, no more, that there is some kind of innate sense of sex or gender or whatever you want to call it that is somehow marked in your body. Or more correctly your brain.

Any time I say this people start jumping about over no male brain/ female brain but that's not what I am saying.

Our bodies are driven by DNA, chromosomes, hormones and so on. They are a cocktail in there. Including firing the neurones in the brain.

We are still learning surprising things about all of these such as that not all organs have the exact same cell make up as others in the same body. So it is possible to have sex variations in different organs regardless of the overall sex that creates reproductive organs.

I don't pretend to understand this stuff as it is fairly new research but it might, for instance, be why some who have organ transplants claim to inherit more than just the organ from the donor. If the distribution of genetic data is more diffuse than we thought then perhaps data can even be transferred from one person to another with the organ.

In any case it is possible there is some reason of this sort as to why a trans person - whilst having a body defined in the normal way as being male or female from the overall chromosome and DNA make up that create sex organs might possibly have some parts of their cell make up where the balance is different.

And if those areas happen to be ones that create brain states or the sense of I or self then perhaps it is possible to be biologically one sex whilst having a mind that thinks otherwise.

This is not a suggested theory - just an example of how maybe based on the way we are still making discoveries about the wonderful complexity of the body there could be an actual cause for the dissonance we all seem to be describing.

We obviously are not making it up because too many are independently saying the same thing and in such fuzzy ways that it never convinces anyone else. I think we would make something else up if we really wanted to convince because we know what we say simply doesn't.

But it is how it is so that's all we can report.