Making A Man Of Me

I have tried to make a man out of myself all through out my lifetime, but in 1999, I gave up. In high school, I use to hang out with the gear heads and that didn’t work. In college, I took up skeet shooting, fishing and backpacking (Left - Hiking up Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks State Park, New York. Thanksgiving weekend, 1974). I grew a beard and became a hippie. After college, I took up hang gliding (Right - a friend showing me how to use my hang glider, 1978). I dated girls, thinking having a girlfriend would make me a man. However, nothing worked, there was always that nagging feeling that I just didn’t fit in. That I was a square peg in a round hole.

My father was a masculine figure in my life and he loved working with his hands, and he was a positive roll model. My brother played little league baseball and high school football, I on the other hand did not like team sports and I was a member of the science club in high school. In other words, we were a typical middleclass suburban family.

There are a number of doctors who believe that Gender Identity Disorder can be cured, such as Dr Zucker, however, they are in the minority. The majority of researchers believe that GID is caused by something pre-natal. There have been many articles about the difference in brain structure between normal brains and brains from transsexuals. In an article in Neuro-Science entitled “Central Nervous System Dimorphisms Related to Reproductive Behaviors” they say that…

“This same group has also reported a dimorphism that may be related to gender identity. In comparing male-to-female transgendered individuals to heterosexual males, they found that another hypothalamic structure, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, is smaller in transgendered males, being closer in size to that of females.”

While the actual cause of this difference is not known, researchers are looking into several possible causes. In a blog by A. E. Brain entitled “Brain Gender Identity - a presentation by Dr Sidney Ecker, MD FACS” Zoe reports on a paper that was presented by Dr. Ecker and in that report the Abstract states in part…

“Transgenders are atypical and “think” as the opposite gender. Certain areas of the brain have been shown to be sexually dimorphic. They are different in structure and numbers of neurons in males versus females. Protein Receptors for the sex hormones in different areas of the brain (limbic and anterior hypothalamic) must be present in sufficient numbers to receive those powerful hormones. There are androgen receptors (AR), Estrogen Receptors (ER), and Progesterone receptors (PRs). ARs or ERs are predominant at different times in different parts of the human brain. Hormone receptor genes have been identified in humans, which are responsible for sexually dimorphic brain differentiation in the hypothalamus. The groundwork in brain gender identity is gene-directed and takes place by forming male and female hormone receptors in the brain before the gonads and hormones can influence them. Multiple genes acting in concert determine our sexual identity.”

Dr. Zucker believes that you can cured GID in the case of a male to female transsexual child by butching up a child, by taking away all things feminine and forcing the child to do masculine thing only. Conservative columnist Leo Shishmanian writes in a column called “Life, the 60's, transgender tots, and parental abdication” that…

“Dr. Money “pioneered” new definitions of “gender roles” based on his belief that gender was not innate but could be assigned to a child before age 3. In other words, your DNA, [SRS - I deleted the original graphic description and substituted SRS] and hormones (to name a few things) don’t have to determine your sex. If Dr. Money got to you early enough in your childhood, he could help you choose your sex. Not surprisingly, Dr. Money also was a strong advocate of sex change operations while working at Johns Hopkins University.

To prove his theory, Dr. Money experimented in 1967 on a set of young twin boys, one of whom had had a botched circumcision... With the parents’ consent, Dr. Money removed the boy’s [genital - I deleted the original graphic description and substituted genital] and put him on an aggressive hormone regimen so he could be raised as a girl. The result? An epic tragedy that ultimately led to the boy unsuccessfully reversing Dr. Mengele—sorry—Dr. Money’s plans several years later, the boy’s suicide in 2004, and his twin brother’s drug overdose in 2003. Ruined lives, broken relationships, a devastated family and generational lines lost.”

I say the exact opposite, that this does prove that gender is inborn. Dr. Money tried to force a gender on the boy and he knew that something was wrong, that resulted in life long incongruity that ended in his suicide. Dr. William G. Reiner, a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma and Johns Hopkins and a leading specialist in the treatment of children with the intersexual condition said in the New York Times article “Declaring With Clarity, When Gender Is Ambiguous” by Claudia Dreifus that…

Q. How do you know what constitutes gender identity?
A. As part of a research study, I've personally seen and assessed 400 children with major anomalies of the genitals. Of those, approximately 100 might be called "intersex." Our findings have been many and complex. The most important is that about 60 percent of the genetic male children raised as female have retransitioned into males.

We also found that of this group there were some genetically male children, who despite genital anomalies were raised as males, and they continued to declare themselves as male.

Q. What conclusions can you draw about the eventual sexual identity of an intersex child?
A. That you can castrate a male at birth, create a female genital structure, raise the child as a girl, and in a majority of the cases, they'll still recognize themselves as male. Now many of the children I've seen are still young. I don't know what will happen as they get older.

Nature is not in black or white, male or female, but every color in between. I wrote this poem when I was considering transitioning,

Colors

It is neither black nor white, but it all the shades of gray.
It is neither day nor night, but it is twilight.
It is neither hot nor cold, but a pleasant warmth.
It is neither truth nor a lie, but half- truths and white lies.

We are neither male nor female, but all that lies in between.
We are neither red nor blue, but like the colors of a rainbow.
We are like a bridge that spans male and female.
We are like the spices added to a meal that gives it variety and flavor.