The "Sex Change" Dichotomy

Or, “some girls have penises, and some guys don't.”

Upon talking to a non-op TS female friend of mine (who shall remain nameless), she told me of her initial experiences in transitioning, and the pressure she faced to get Sex/Gender Reassignment Surgery (SRS/GRS). When she began, her initial intention were to get GRS within two years. But eventually, she realized that all of the pressure she was feeling internally to transition her primary sex characteristics were coming from external sources. She was not doing it for herself, but rather for the sex/gender binary of the outside world, which seemed to consumer her. In the end, she decided that GRS was not in her interests, and proceeded to be non-op after an orchidectomy (removal of testes).

This story is very similar to myself, although I was much, much less directed in it. Ever since I began my coming out process a year ago, I felt as though that “physically transitioning” was the only way I could be “complete.” Upon telling my friends, and outsiders I was willingly educating (such as my speeches), I got the same phrase repeated to me upon saying that GRS wasn't very likely for me:

“Why would you only go half-way?”

That notion of being “incomplete,” “half-finished” and so on sort of struck a chord with me. I had been an “incomplete person” for so long and the feeling of being “incomplete” even after transition struck me hard. I never wanted to be incomplete again. And so, I considered the nuclear option of GRS, to make myself “complete.”

Semi-frequently, the media will do a story on how a transsexual or transgendered person “made a mistake” and went back to living in their “original gender,” even after SRS. There are many reasons for their decision. Sometimes it can be a case of a multitude of issues manifesting themselves as gender identity issues. But, what they don't report is this constant pressure to push the transition just a little bit further in terms of physical effects almost constantly, beyond their own sense of identity or body dysphoria. Especially when you consider the transgender spectrum of gender identity, in terms of Queer or alternated self-identities that either manipulate or disregard gender. (And whether either is based on “cold, hard science” is irrelevant to me.)

There is a lot of pressure, especially from the traditional and reactionary medical fields (those who will “treat” people like us, anyhow) for a person to “completely” transition. SRS/GRS are marketed as the only real way to express transsexuality. After all, in many places, it is the only way to get an M changed to F, or an F changed to M. The wrong gender label on ID can be dangerous and an auto-outing of oneself in many situations, such as dealings with the police especially if one passes well. That's not even getting into the sexual orientation aspect of it, where the main bigheads at the APA (Dr. Kenneth Zucker and Dr. Ray Blanchard) won't even consider you “really transgendered” unless you are a MtF who is stereotypically female and interested in men and getting GRS. Non-op transgendered lesbian woman? Sorry, you're just a confused straight man. (Of course, straight MtF women are simply “homosexual male transsexuals,” according to them as well.)

With transgender and queer theory, we separate gender identity and biological sex almost all the time. The basis of Queer theory, which admittedly many transgendered people cannot identify with, is that gender is a social construct, and that gender should not be linked to physical sex; so too should “gender” be recognized as inauthentic and worked around as much as possible. Of course, this doesn't work in the case of transgendered people who identify with the binary. But, the main tenet of queer theory, that mental gender and physical sex are not intrinsically linked, is an important aspect of transgendered identity.

Of course, this doesn't mean that there aren't transpeople who refuse to identify as trans, and only as men/women.

In order to understand this sex/gender dichotomy, you must go back to the day you were born, named, and had an “M/F” (or I) placed on your birth certificate. If you were biologically female and had female anatomy, you are placed in the female gender role, and from that day on you continue your life as a female, with the entirety of the world treating you like a “little baby girl,” “little girl,” “preteen girl,” “teenage girl,” “young woman,” and so on. Every stage of you is defined socially based on your physical sex. And so, when your entire life is based on that sex-gender identification, and you choose to reject it, the outside social world cannot reconcile that. Nearly every person in the world has been raised through this sex-gender system: thus, you have women who identify as a woman because of their reproductive system, and of course male culture which is focused almost exclusively on the implied power of the phallus/penis.

This is not to disregard the identities of cisgendered people as illegitimate. Surely if their gender identity did not fit them, then they would not embrace it so readily. But it applies to both trans and cis people: sex-gender identification and socialization affects everyone, and many people define themselves as man/woman based on their anatomy. It is a carefully constructed social role, which many people fit into very well. “I have a penis/vagina, obviously I am a man/woman, and should behave in a masculine/feminine way.” Society then prescribes masculinity/femininity to people ad nauseum, and it quickly becomes a mould for every person on the planet.

This goes back to my original point, that trans people usually have a hard time overcoming this dichotomy. If a young trans girl is treated like a boy because of her penis, she begins to think, “Oh, I guess I'm a boy, then.” It becomes internalized quite quickly, that to “be a girl,” you must have that female reproductive system. Same goes for a young trans boy, who is delegitimized and objectified by male culture as a sex object useful only for his looks and reproductive organs.

I personally rejected this dichotomy after much personal self-discovery. I would be lying if I didn't say a little part of me didn't continue to desire GRS because it would make me a “real” girl, all very much tied to external sources beyond my personal identity. Again, I feel no body dysphoria personally that makes me desire GRS, but the constant assertion that without GRS I'm “half way,” “incomplete,” “not really a transsexual,” “just a straight man who likes to crossdress,” etc., all becomes internalized. With the female form so played-up in society, it becomes idolized to extreme amounts by both cisgendered and transgendered women.

To put it very crudely, there is the idolization of the “empty crotch.”
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Even growing up, I have never really hated my penis, not even during this transition. It's just a sexual organ to me, nothing more and nothing less. It became confusing to me because of the above-mentioned dichotomy, that I did not desire a female reproductive system yet still saw myself as a woman.

And so I end with that phrase that I mentioned at the beginning: “Some girls have penises, and some guys don't.”