Gender choice?

[Casey Kieran]

So often I hear people say things like "he wants to be a she" and I find that very irritating because I never felt like it was a choice. In fact, that statement is upside down in my case. I actually *wanted* to be male. Since childhood I just wanted to feel like I was in the correct body and I wanted to be what everybody else expected and assumed me to be - a boy. I tried to be a boy and then a man. It didn't work and my efforts only seemed to make the emotional pain worse.

I'm wondering if everybody innately knows their gender or if there are people who actually make some sort of conscious decision that they want to be the opposite gender for some reason?

Thanks in advance for your comments.

[E.]

I think that's what a lot of people who are not in the situation miss. The point that has failed to get across in the eyes of the masses.
That it's not a Want, and maybe, really, not even a need.
Rain falls towards the earth under the gentle pressure of gravity.
And you are who you are.

Me personally... well, it's so simple that it becomes difficult to explain.
I guess I'll just say... I'm the both-and-neither sort- with masculine parts and feminin parts, but I am less a Man or Woman as I am just a Person..

I have a lot of experience with intense gender identity problems through my mate, though. o-o

This thread is making for a facinating read. Thank you to all contributors. <3

[Phoenix]

Hi Everyone. Phoenix here.

I got approved for surgery by the Assessors last week.

It didn't feel like I imagined It would...

At first I had to adjust to the scenario...two women assessors, one who was very warm...
I was on a nice leather couch (or faux leather) and I wasn't on a cold metal chair in a stark white room interrogated under glaring lights with a pitcher of water and a drinking glass sitting infront of me.

This isn't quite related to this thread...


I expected a really different experience. She just wanted me to tell my story...which I've been going over and over in my head for about the past four years at least....preparing to defend myself against the Assessors.

It ended in an hour.

I felt angry earlier this week, like their goal is to make me "normal", whereas my goal is to be authentic and this seems like a way to travel there...
I want a crown for getting this far. It's an accomplishment in and of itself!

Phoenix

[Kerrianne]

Hi, I'm new here, so I just have to say something stupid, get it over with, and then I'll feel at home. :D

I don't think anyone chooses their gender.
An aspect of it is chosen for most of us when the doctors look between our legs and declare "it's a boy" or "it's a girl" depending on what they see there.
We know how wrong that can be.
But it's still what happens and for most people, who identify internally (spiritually, emotionally, mentally, all of these?) the same as what has been assigned, everything is going to more or less stay in tune with that early declaration and they'll think little of it.
For people whose internal gender identity is at odds with their biological gender classification, well, we all know how life goes for us.
I believe our gender identity is primarily entrenched from the start. There may be shifts and swings along the way, and some people are very much more fluid in their identity than others, but even that fluidity I think is preset prior to birth.
How you live up to the potential of your innate gender is different for everyone.

For myself, it wasn't so much a gender shift in my life (other than a social one I guess) as much as coming back into harmony with my gender identity I always had. I liken it to tuning a guitar by using harmonics. You keep adjusting until you know you are in tune with the original harmonic. Well, if you want to play life in tune you do. I was pretty badly out of tune at times in my life. Discordant.

That's why I prefer to use the term FTF for Female to Female for myself, but I know that just confuses everyone, lol. But it is more accurate than MTF. I was never male, except for being assigned and raised as male.
Some may say that does in fact make me male, or male enough to warrant the MTF term, but I know it's not that simple, and I know I have never truly been or felt male in my life. For a long period I didn't recognize I felt female (ok, I did when I was really young, but that got suppressed pretty effeciently before I hit pre-teens), but I did know I wasn't male. I just left it at misfit wierdo from another planet just pretending so people will like me.

When I strayed near enough to my true pitch it pulled me in inexorably, and here I am, almost in tune. Certainly in the right key now anyway.

What has been my choice about all of this? I've thought about that a lot. Well meaning people use that word sometimes "I'm so glad you are happy with your choices." etc, and I'm never quite sure what they mean by that.But I guess I do choose if I want to be in harmony, and I do choose how to go about doing that, I make a lot of choices along the way. But in the end, I am always guided by that original tone I am seeking harmony with and that original tone I did not choose. It was there before I was born, for whatever reason.

Did any of that make sense, lol?
Maybe I should have just condensed it to read:
Original choice? = No
Choices about what to do about that? = yes (even if some choices are decidely unpalatable)

[Casey Kieran]

Hi Kerrianne,

Thanks for your comments and yes, they make a lot of sense. The harmony you speak of is so important in life as many of us know from experiencing lives 'out of tune' with who we truly are.

"How you live up to the potential of your innate gender is different for everyone" - this, of course, is true but I think that it is made much more difficult by a society that misunderstands us. It is one thing for me to identify with my innate gender but when others identify me differently, that's when it becomes awkward. For me it has crimped my ability to live in society. I was an outgoing person by nature but I have withdrawn. Living up to my potential is easy when the world in which I live affords me little.

Welcome to the group and thank you for your comments.

Cheers,
Casey