Fun experiment for you. Go out and get a facial tattoo. Now try to get work. That's still easier than finding honest work when you're transsexual. Don't believe me? I can think of an even more decisive experiment...
I had some inclinations that way as a teenager, and I am SO glad I wasn't living in San Francisco or some other place that would encourage me to "be me".
From what I understand, the suicide attempt rate is about fifty percent in that population before transition, so I'd say we're doing a pretty good job of intolerance already.
Perhaps you mean if culture were more supportive of those lifestyles, in adulthood? The best time to experiment is as a teenager - we should encourage that, explore now so your adult decisions are made without hesitation. Not allowing experimentation is how we end up with so much teen suicide, where teens are experiencing confusion and oppression.
If a little social pressure was all it took to get you to ignore your "inclinations" I doubt you're on the same spectrum of inclination that the OP finds herself. You also probably shouldn't think that other people with the same inclinations would be as easily influenced by the mere lack of support for the "lifestyle".. which again implies choice rather than certainty.
But ignoring that, there was definitely something going on with me. In elementary school for history dress up day, I wanted to be Betsy Ross. In college, I always hated dealing with chest-thumping groups of males, and I preferred female friends. Halloween was my favorite holiday for obvious reasons. Trans inclination was something long enough and strong enough that an "open-minded" parent or community could have pushed me that way.
But over time the importance of those inclinations seemed to fade. I'm a reasonably happy, reasonably successful mostly-straight male. And my success in the workplace and success in family relationships is more important to me than playing with my gender identity. Given what I have heard from trans people, I am pretty sure that I am better off than I would be in a less traditional lifestyle.
If you're happy as a male, you don't suffer from gender dysphoria and you don't have a strong urge to cross dress and don't think in your head "Im a girl" then you're probably not trans unless you've done a superhuman effort in repressing it.
http://tgmeds.org.uk/diffa.html
Maybe people think it's a "lifestyle" because they only notice the transsexual people that dress and act in such a way as to socially signal that they have an atypical gender identity. The majority of transsexual people try to hide their changing bodies as they get hormonal therapy till they can successfully blend in ("pass") as a cis gendered woman/man.
You might not think it's right to describe my feelings about my gender as a treatable medical condition, but I'm one of the ones actually undergoing this treatment right now, and benefiting greatly from it. I think it's very descriptive and appropriate to refer to transsexualism as a treatable medical condition.
We're born, we suffer and sometimes die, we sometimes get medical interventions using drugs and surgery and this usually results in substantial, sustained improvements in our happiness and functioning. That's pretty much the definition of a medical condition.
Reductionism sure is useful when properly applied, as any engineer knows.
Transsexuality is a treatable medical condition. Someone's gender identity as woman, man, genderqueer, etc is, of course, not completely reducible to neurology or biology and has very significant social, historical, and subjective aspects.
Specifically, for myself: I'm a transsexual - i.e. I have a fairly rare neurological developmental condition that I'm undergoing treatment for.
But, much more importantly, I'm a woman - and that's something much harder to define, something indescribably precious and wonderful, yet taken for granted and commonly denigrated.
Ethically, I don't think there is any choice except to be supportive of these people's "lifestyles", which I again put in quotes because the word makes it sound like a whimsical decision, when in fact to the person making the decision it is very much necessary.
Also, we'd become less supportive of minority religions according to that rationale - and ignore racial discrimination as an impossible problem.
A lot of trans people would suffer, and require medical treatment, even in a perfectly accepting society.
But it isn't. Mental illness, depression and suicide are disproportionately high among transsexsuals, both pre and post op. Even in societies where they are fully accepted. It is not unreasonable to think that the differences that have been found in their brains predispose them to certain mental illnesses. You can't just blame it on society.
Have you considered that your inclinations may have nothing to do with the people who have those "lifestyles"?
Doesn't make much sense, does it now?
Now it's way later and I'm kind of at the end of my rope with long-term clinical depression. I'm pretty sure that within the next few years it's going to come down to a choice between killing myself and transitioning. Only now, my transition options are way worse and I picked up some dependents along the way who are going to be incredibly hurt either way.
Maybe I can keep it going like this somehow until I reach the natural end of my miserable life, and for the sake of the people depending on me, I will keep trying. But every year it gets harder and harder to make myself get out of bed and face life hiding inside the shell of a person I'm pretending to be.
So, in my considered opinion, no, I don't think anyone would be better off if there were more people like me.
For some people, "The Surgery", (sometimes called Sexual Reassignment Surgery, but many people prefer the term Gender Confirmation Surgery, or just "bottom surgery", as opposed to breast implants which are "top surgery"), is the main thing, but for an awful lot of people, it isn't -- even though most non-trans folk seem to think of it that way. For a lot of trans people, living day to day life as their real gender is the important thing, and they're not so hung up on what's between their legs. For some people, hormones help them feel like they're "supposed to", and that's the main thing. For others, they hate their chest, and top surgery is most important. While others may think that Facial Feminization Surgery (FFS) is the most crucial -- not least because for many trans women, FFS is the difference between passing and not passing, which makes an enormous practical difference in day-to-day life and often even in terms of personal safety.
For me, I've read a lot about this, including many personal accounts, and heard a number of first hand stories from a group I've started attending. I honestly don't know how things will work out for me if/when I start transitioning. I've heard enough horror stories to go into the process with the appropriate level of fear and caution.
But at some point when your life becomes one big well of depression that doesn't respond to medication and you start to lose your ability to function in day-to-day life, there's really nothing left to do but start trying to explore the remaining options. So, I'm not transitioning, but I'm looking into it and trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to do.
I have no stake in this discussion, and if anything, am generally opposed to the topic/lifestyle/whatever. But I have empathy for anyone going through such depression that they ultimately take their own lives. When the primary end goal for many is SRS/GCS, and when the data suggests that leads to higher suicide rates, I find it deplorable that anyone would try to suppress that information.
Some might even say that is good example of cocksure, willful ignorance.
"The overall mortality for sex-reassigned persons was higher during follow-up (aHR 2.8; 95% CI 1.8–4.3) than for controls of the same birth sex, particularly death from suicide."
So trans people are at an increased risk of suicide compared to cis people of the gender the trans person transitioned into.
The original claim was that trans people are at increased risk of suicide post-op relative to pre-op transsexuals!
You're "generally opposed" to a medical intervention that has dramatically improved the lives of many thousands of people over the last 50+ years? You're "generally opposed" to something that I know for a fact has dramatically improved my own life?
Go fuck yourself. I'm not wrong, you misrepresented the study and you're a bigot.
I have heard lots of studies on trans folk kicked around, but some of these things have inherent methodological problems. In particular, I think we're all aware that the gold standard for medical efficacy studies is double blind studies, and it's pretty obvious that a double blind study on SRS is impossible, right? Worse yet, in this study they're not even comparing SRS patients with other trans folk who didn't have an operation, they're comparing them with the general population of people of their original assigned birth sex.[1] We already know that trans people have an enormously high suicide rate already, so this comparison tells us absolutely nothing about a before/after comparison, never mind what we really want to know: what happens to the same population if they do/don't get surgery.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21364939/ -- You didn't cite a study, but hopefully this was the right one?
Stop acting like a child just because reality doesn't fit your preconcieved notions of how things should be.
Is there no scenario where the younger you could have explored your sexuality in a supportive environment and not have experienced these trauma - without necessarily going all the way and having surgery done. So, in your words, no pretending, but keeping the shell.
I make no claims to understand what it means to be transsexual, I am just trying to understand the dynamics involved.
There are lesbian trans women, and straight trans women, and gay cis men and all kinds of permutations.
I didn't fit all those rules, so I wondered if I was supposed to be a cross dresser. The thing was, the clothes didn't really do much for me from a sex standpoint. As I explored my sexuality, I gradually figured out that I was bisexual and that I was submissive, but sorting out sex things like that didn't really change anything about feeling like I was supposed to be female or feeling depressed because it seemed like I was living the wrong life.
Having said that, there is still a lot of ground between keeping everything completely under wraps and having surgery. But for most of my life, I didn't feel comfortable exploring it. I've spent most of my life completely despising my body, so looking at intermediate alternatives meant I had to dwell on that, which was extremely painful. It was easier to spend all my spare time coding or whatever -- and trying really hard not to think about what was wrong -- especially since I wasn't really sure I had any palatable alternatives anyway.
At this point, I'm not at all passable, so it's hard for me to take an intermediate step like trying to go out and experience the world as a woman part time to see how it goes. Nevertheless, as I mentioned in another response, there are lots of steps I can take if I decide to that don't require committing to any irreversible surgery. I just have to figure out what makes sense for me.
Dani wrote after undergoing sex reassignment surgery: "Don't do it! That's my advice. This is the most awful, most expensive, most painful, most disruptive thing you could ever do. Don't do it unless there is no other alternative. You may think your life is tough but unless it's a choice between suicide and a sex-change it will only get worse. And the costs keep coming. You lose control over most aspects of your life, become a second class citizen and all so you can wear women's clothes and feel cuter than you do now. Don't do it is all I've got to say... That's advice I wish someone had given me."
Her full essay is on a memorial site, though Google says it's malware-infected, so take precautions: http://www.anticlockwise.com/dani/personal/changes/dont.htm
I wonder if the outcome (and her recommendations) would have been different if she were going through this today.
A final Dani quote: "No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer.'"
Having said that, at some point you have to size up the risks each way. Everyone gets to make their own decision about their own life. And ironically, your last quote, to me, counsels exactly the opposite choice from your first. Hating my gender presentation makes me just want to hide away from life with my computer.
I spent my first twenty-four years avoiding myself, and although the seven that have since passed have been riddled with hellfire, I can't explain to you how enormously worth it it was.
And guess what, I used to think and say the same things about myself that I now hear you say. But I'm not going to go there. I wish you peace and happiness and as much self-awareness as you can bear.
Of course it would be bad if people cheered their kids into transitioning when they aren't actually trans - but I doubt this really happens, even in the most liberal and open minded San Francisco neighborhoods. Medical professionals constantly try and second guess trans people to make sure they are serious - and this is even more intense when the patient is underage.
Secondly, taking cross-gender hormones is itself an excellent diagnostic test to see if someone is a transsexual. If the patient feels better, then it's a strong sign they will benefit from transition. If they feel worse then it's indicative that they are not trans. The effects of both estrogen and testosterone are fairly minor for the first few months and readily reversible. Doctors are starting to become more willing to give patients a "trial" on hormones without absurd levels of gatekeeping like in decades past.
It's not like some poor, confused boy is going to put on his sister's panties one day and bam the parents call up their doctor and instantly transform the boy into a trans girl. Transition is a long series of many small decisions (medical, legal, social, sartorial and personal) combined with tons of introspection. It's not an overnight process that someone could realistically be pushed into by naive, overly tolerant parents, or anyone else for that matter.
Perhaps I did miss the point due to the false analogy.
The purpose of the face tattoo thought experiment is to help you understand what a trans person has to deal with in practice.