Do we have a choice in our lifestyles?

[Anonymous]

the whole issue of “choice”.
Is everyone that is diagnosed as TS an equal amount of whatever makes them TS? Is it determined by a spectrum, say the gender spectrum, the more you feel to be a gender of the opposite to your body does that mean you suffer more? Where do you draw the line, at what point do you stop and say you can’t do this any more, this being living in a body that doesn’t feel like your own.
I can understand how people can see it as a lifestyle choice, especially when they don’t know anything about it both on a physiological and mental level.

I consider it to be one of, if not the biggest misconceptions regarding transition.

I feel as though one can make a decision to change, to transition, to realign their body with their mind.. to think of it as choice is to say it’s ok for one to suffer. To live a life that is not true to themselves is ok?
But on the other hand it can often be a decision that can make your life just as differcult, trading one problem for another.

Personally I wanted everything to just be ok. I wanted to just get on with life, and deny that I was a freak. But I reached a point where I couldn’t live as a guy, it wasn’t me.. I decided I’d rather die that live as him, and that decision was made. Until my ex contacted my mother and I broke down and came out to my mum. I was aware of the process but I also really didn’t want to be that person that got pointed at in the street.
I’m way too introverted and sensitive to go through that, and it’s a struggle to now do things I once took for granted ..like simple food shopping.

I’ve heard people say it’s like a second form of GID, the time between genders can be harder than the old gender.
Was it a choice between living and dying? Or a decision to be myself? Is is a choice to be yourself?
To stay your old self and not transition is that a soul death? Is it subjective because of that spectrum of how much is the individual suffering?

Like you said a lot of the time it’s because of circumstance, in that sense if it is a choice then someone else decided for them? Society?
We are all responsible for our own actions? If we let someone else stop us from being ourselves we are to blame?
Can it be seen to be a selfish act to transition if it affects those around you? Catch 22?

When ever I see a post or question like “how do I know if I should transition?”, or “Do I have GID?”. I bite my tongue because I know my view is not common. In my head I say to myself. “are you male or female….deep down, because only you can answer this, only you can feel it. You may not know what either should really feel like but after some time and thought you should just know”. “if you still don’t know then it’s a no”.
How much do you have to suffer before you make that “choice”, and if you don’t then is the pain you feel considered a normal amount, the kind everyone goes through.

[Anonymous]

Hi.

There was no choice for this kid as im both any way. & thats the wireing hard wired , some do have or make a choice some of us are programed its there from birth.
i can say i choose to wear male or female clothes make up what ever shoes , because i like them . to live as a male or female that to me is a no brainer , i cant choose how my brain is wired, thats put in motion at conception & a few weeks later is if you like acted on with all the things that will take place over those weeks of cause we dont know that at birth after a few years yes it starts coming out ,

The D r got it wrong what he saw was not all there is to me he did not know about how my brain was wired , may be just as well , not .
Now if he saw me he would wonder. oh your not a boy. a girl . well nether really. both.

How i think is, both ways at the same time not male to day & female to morrow , no its all the time, that is not a choice.
I never suffered any of the g i d it was , i knew 12 years ago i was going to live the rest of my life as a women i did my time the other way . & i accepted my self then 50 years ago & iv accepted my self 12 years ago. & now just the same,

May be when i was young i did not see any difference between male & female & now for my self im much the same. still in the middle . & that s just me. no one else , just who i am.

…noeleena…

[Anonymous]

interesting subject… this is how i see it: in summary i do not see my tg lifestyle as a matter of choice…

think of people with various disabilities or ailments as well as the symptoms that come with them… for example – with a cold you get a sneeze, with say cerebral palsy you get movement difficulties, and the list goes on… people do not choose to have disabilities. they are simply born with it…

i see my transgenderism as a ‘disability’ that i did not choose to have. i just happened to be born with this condition… initial symptoms of this ‘disability’ includes feeling depressed and even suicidal at worst of times about my anatomical maleness, which then naturally leads to a ‘secondary symptom’ of desperately wanting to address the mind/body conflict by living a transgendered lifestyle – on the premise, of course, that my transgendered lifetyle (the symptom) does not cause deliberate grievous harm in society.

just my thoughts… xx

[Anonymous]

This is a tricky one to answer because everything I write will potentially be able to be interpreted in several ways depending on the reader. Therefore I will just make a few points that have previously occured to me from time to time.

A choice? It doesn’t strike me as logical that you would choose to do something which will alienate you from more people than if you were a serial axe murderer. That said I believe there is an element of choice; you choose how you react to this condition. This has been touched on before, you can choose to sit on the volcano and risk being blown apart; or you can come down from the volcano and risk being swamped in the lava flow of opprobrium and mis-understanding.

Male or female? I’d love to be able to put my hand on my heart and say that I am a woman in a man’s body; or even that I was meant to be a woman but I got the wrong body. Without boring you with the whys and wherefores it strikes me that I was meant to be a man but the brain stayed on the female default setting, in much the same way (effect but not necessarily cause) as the body does in those with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.

I don’t feel at all like a victim of my inheritance. I feel more like an Amish person driving their buggy down an eight lane freeway-a brief diversion for the rest of the traffic and not really doing any harm.

[Anonymous]

This makes me wonder if there is a difference between not choosing how you were born and whether you choose to do something about it at some point in life. I guess the latter is how I viewed the original question, yet I still managed to get side tracked with the former.
Also is the former a strong enough point that overrides the latter?

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your considered replies, I do understand the feeling that one can no longer go on pretending that one is a different ” person” inside to the one that is portrayed publicly and then set about the task of displaying the inner and outer self in a more matched way.
I suppose what I am trying to nut out is how we really know who we REALLY are as opposed to who we think we are. Feelings are very real to us but as my counselling teacher used to say feelings are not facts.
Do we in fact have a “real self” ? Personality,is at it’s base, an act we perform to the world in an effort to portray how we want others to see us. To act without consideration is seen as a mental illness, we all play a role whether we do it consciously or not , we all do it.
I do not question that we do one thing or another but using words such as ” wanted” or “decision ” imply making a choice. It is the legitimacy of making that choice that I am trying to defend.
We say” I was born this way” but how can we really know that this is true. Our consciousness does not extend to this degree of knowledge. Like a religious conviction , one can say that they have a faith that it is so but then others who do not have that same faith cannot ” see” the same ” truth”
I know what I feel as do you all , and I act, pretty much, in accordance with those feelings. That is a valid choice for me. I guess that any person , say a very macho “real” man , has no more validity to his claim that he is a man , based only on his convictions and feelings about himself, than any of us who display a more feminine side. It is just that his display is more acceptable in Society, at present than ours but things are changing!
Whether we are less acceptable than a serial killer is open to debate .
Many gay men are very feminine in their presentation and yet do not have the desire to change their gender . Quentin Crisp was , I believe, to all intents and purposes, a woman though he said that he had no desire to be seen as one, he was content to be” an effeminate homosexual” so I think that femininity is not the real issue here, it is the desire to present as a woman that is the thing .
Whatever the reason for doing so, I think it is a valid desire ( dare I say choice?) , more a variation on the human condition rather than some kind of disability. After all to have a disability, one has to be compared to some standard of perfection in order to ascertain what degree of disability is present and where do we start to look for this perfect model, I am yet to find one example.

[Anonymous]

How do I feel about living a trans. life as a choice? Great, that’s the only word to use. My thoughts and feelings did happen naturally through my life but I still had to make a choice to let those feelings take their natural course. I am happy with my choice too, I don’t have any other problems facing me than any other people do, to be honest also, I would have my issues whether or not I went down this road that I’m on.

I also think and feel that a choice like this doesn’t just apply to people who are transitioning either. Everyone on this site has made a choice of some sort towards a trans. life of sorts. There is something inside all of us here, it does affect some in ways that others don’t get affected and so on, henceforth our different journeys whether they be part or full time. We have all made a choice to let that happen regardless of the results.

I think that I got the answer right, i.e. read the question properly!
Peta A.

[Anonymous]

Hi Christina

Initially, I thought you were asking why we choose to state we have no choice BUT to live our lives transgender when you thought it was a matter of choice to do so. Then you throw a number of other scenarios into the blend and then ask why we didn’t choose those paths as an alternative to going down the transgender path?

We do have choices. We can choose to live in a manner which appeals to our state of mind, feels comfortable to live in and causes the least amount of inner conflict. Or not.

The people we meet here and lot’s of other websites which cater to a specific personal choice, are members of a particular section of society who have found others with similar dispositions.

If I am reading you correctly (not easy I might add, what seems simple on the surface is really a very complex question), you are making the assumption that we choose to be victims of our condition rather than be in control by admitting it is a choice we make?

Is it a choice if we come from a history of identifying with the opposite gender from an early age? We make a choice to try to override this compulsion, but at what cost to ourselves? What cost to our families? We make a choice to be good men, have girlfriends, get married, have children, work hard, build a home, raise a family and for what? To get to the other end and find that the choice we should have made when we were young would have been to live as the person we thought we could be. Does that fit the idea of being a victim if we chose the correct option according to society or does that mean we were in control because we decided to override our inital feelings and desires?

I am not proud of the fact I have left a trail of destruction (so to speak) because I thought I was choosing to do the “right thing”. Right for who? My parents, who are still proud of me? My ex – who wonders why it took me so long? My kids- who refuse to accept me but try to give the appearance of being accepting?

Now I choose to live as a transgendered woman. I am accepted at work in this guise. I deal with the public every day and have not yet had one bad experience. Most of my friends are from before I transitioned and most accept me for who I am and are happy for me now that I am happy too. I am at peace within myself because I now feel I am NOT living a lie. I dress, act and live as a woman, yet I am not. And I finally feel that the outside matches the inside so therefore I am not propagating a lie. I chose for years to fight it, experiencing depression, failed suicide attempts, misery and an inability to focus on any single task for an extended period of time. I do not pretend or assume that I am perceived to be a natural born woman. I am the best woman I can be with what I have. I gave up the claim to being born this way a long time ago. Society dictated that because of the fact I was born male, I should behave in a manner contrary to how I would have chosen to behave. Choosing to live with societies dictates actually caused me to become a victim of the expectations of the masses and suffer great personal distress.

So, yes, I now choose to live as a TG woman. I am acutely aware that my mental processes are similar, yet very different, to natural women and still very dissimilar to that of males who are happy to be that way. I am proud to be TG and freely explain to anyone who asks me nicely and has genuine interest. But, do I think I had a choice based on my genetic predisposition – no. I would have preferred that my male life would have been a “smoother ride”. I certainly have few regrets. Life doesn’t come with a rewind button. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without my experiences.

As you point out, a gay person can live a fairly normal life, or choose to live the more flamboyant lifestyle that gay people are sterotyped into. That’s their choice. However, can they choose their sexuality? We also have similar choices. Do we behave as the classic trannies a la Priscilla, or do we try to fit into societies extectations of what would be expected of a true female? That’s the real choice.

Is that close to what you wanted?

Yes and no in equal doses. LOL

Huggs

Portia

[Anonymous]

I was born in the wrong body ! It has taken me 50 yrs too finally transition .It wasnt a choice .. it is putting things right finally !!!Everyone friends family and work have said they have never seen me soo calm and happy within myself . I have found that all the fears that society will reject who i am are unfounded and If someone asks imm very forth comming with who i am and wat imm trying too acheive !!
Ella-Kristine

[Anonymous]

It is neither a choice nor is it a lifestyle. You might choose to live a sort of life but in effect you never get a chance to choose one, even hetero. Take for instance you are encouraged to grow up heterosexual and all that goes with it. You get used to it and go about life content that this is your way of things. Same goes for Trans/ Intersex/ Gender Diverse, you may discover things and be leading a life that is “normal” until you discover its all been a lie.

Now in order to live for yourself and not what others have foist upon you all these years, you attempt to live as you see yourself to be. Its others that think its a lifestyle choice, when its beyond you to have choice. One does not opt to live the life of a trans person, it is who you are and from there on out its a “choice” as to how you go about doing it.

What We don’t have choice about is acceptance and understanding, the lack of support mechanisms and the lack of recognition for whom we are in a binary system that expects much, and if we don’t or can’t fulfill their ideals, it crushes us into boxes where-upon it labels us with inappropriateness or even demonises us and points fingers! In the worst cases, people kill us out of fear or retribution. Just take a look at the list every year from around the world of Trans people murdered because of whom they are.

Other people may call it a life-style choice but I certainly do Not, its as insulting as calling me a Gay Guy or a Drag Queen or a Fag.

Life-style is a stupid thing to try to call it. Lifestyle is having the freedom to choose between living for example in an apartment block or a suburban bungalow. Trans / Intersex/ Gender Diverse is neither of those nor as simplistic. It Is NOT a choice, full stop with an exclamation mark!

[Anonymous]

wow what a topic and by the replys it is a hot one.

I spent the first half of my life with others telling me who I was. As a kid I kept getting the crap bashed out of me because I acted differently, but no one really understood why. Just a little girl trapped in a guys body. Did I have a choice, no, did I understand, no. I did not come with an instruction manual telling me how I should feel and how others felt inside, instead other just said to toughen up and get a life.

By my late teens to my 20’s I Toughten up, it did not seem right but after been push around, thats the way I become. No choice again, as I had no idea what the problem was. Things got pretty rough and I mean bad, then oneday I worked it was not me, the first choice I made, the first time I stood up and said no, I was not this person I had become.

I still had not idea but was dumb enough to have others tell me I am a boy, I tryed the marrage and white picket fence thing, thinking that I had not met the right person, but it was not to be, then I started to figure things out.

The choice to start working things out was also a choice, or was it, it just become the next step. After trying to live as a male and dress quickly did not seem right, so wanting to transition was the next step, this took a long time to understand, but day by day the hate of beng a male kept pushing me closer to my female side.

I got to the stage where as I male people mistaked me for a female, and when someone did call me sir I was getting upset. Once again no real choice, so I transitioned.

My whole life seemed to push me in the direction of transition and it did not matter how much I stood up and tried, there was no longer the fight left. I dont think I had a choice in the long run, the only choices I had was to fight it, but the choice to become a girl was made for me when I was born.

xxx

Kelly Jones

[Anonymous]

Hi to all…..

For me, while there was certainly an element of chioice and decision involved, it could hardly be classified as a ‘choice’.
During 2008, I fell into terrible debilitating depression. I could barely get out of bed.
What suprised me was how much it affected my body as I had no energy or strength.
All this happened at a time that was very positive for my outward life. I had a beautiful young girlfriend (together for 3 1/2 years) and my son
had come up from Victoria to stay with me ( finally after four years). I was also involved in making very creative and interesting projects for which I got paid.
But all this was on the outside and it veilled a very unhappy transgendered person on the inside.
As a carer for my elderly Mum and having my son to look after, how could I ignore my situation ?
So, for me it was certainly not really a ‘choice’ as such.

Monique

[Anonymous]

You can trust me to be contrary 😉

I didn’t “always know that I was a woman”. I didn’t always feel like “a woman trapped in a man’s body.”

I was kind of uncomforable with being a man since childhood, but it wasn’t constant and I have no evidence or memory of whether even that feeling existed before I was five or six.

I could pick and choose the many moments when I’d fantasised about being a girl, and try to downplay the many other times when I played with my toy guns and GI Joes and Transformers and Voltron and generally didn’t seem to mind being a boy. In that way I could construct a traditional trans narrative of always knowing, always being girly, and if I were less self-aware I could use that story to convince myself that the girliness was the real me all along and the boyishness was a facade hiding my true self.

And the other thing is, sometimes there are little boys who play with barbies who don’t want to be women when they’re adults. They could forget, they could be ashamed of it and pretend it never happened, they could simply not see it as significant to the narrative of their life as a non-transgender heterosexual man, or tellingly, they could include it in the narrative of their life as a gay man as evidence that they were “always gay”.

So yeah, I don’t have much faith in the truth of any story I could tell that would tell me exactly what I want to hear about myself.

But even without absolute faith in the notion that I was born a woman inside (and what does “woman” even mean, when you get right down to it?) I have still chosen to transition, because I do not enjoy being a man now, I do enjoy being kind of womanish, and I have come to firmly believe that in the future I would be happier as a woman than I would be living the rest of my life as a man.

[Anonymous]

Againt hanks for the replies. Reading them I can clarify to myself what I am trying to see and say, it is that we may have no choice in feeling that we are different and transgender but we do have a choice in expressing that inner life and in living our lives as transgender person.
Portia, I am not saying that people choose to be victims, more that denying a choice can be interpreted as saying that we are victims. Many wise psychologists as well as philosophers say that we live our lives in some degree of relationship with life’s actions, we are not hapless pawns in some Universal game but that we also interact and cause some of the influences that affect us. Simply put we can bring shit down on ourselves if we choose certain paths in life, never fly in a plane and you will never die in a plane crash! Give out good vibes and the same will come back to you etc.
My reference to gay people was merely to point out that feeling feminine and presenting as feminine does not lead automatically to a gender dissonance and a transgender lifestyle.
Abbey , I disagree that we do not have a lifestyle, everyone has a lifestyle whether it is chosen or not.
I also believe that one of the things that most humans share and that is a gross mistake is the belief that we have control of our lives. Yes we can tinker round the edges with control, I will eat this , I will watch or read this etc. However, there are major factors at play in our lives that we not only don’t control but often have no idea that they exist. For instance the Earth’s distance to the sun, our gravity rate , the air pressure on Earth, any faults in our genetic makeup or faults and weaknesses in our anatomy , all have more control on our lives than whether welike to think. Given that, it amazes me how much fear we invest in trying to control things, it is the biggest fear people have when they talk to a counsellor . We never did have control so get on and live our lives. Relinquishing the myth of control is the major tenet of most religions.
It just seems to me that accepting that we are like we are and choosing to express that reality by living the outer life closer to the inner life that we feel (known as congruity) is a mentally and spiritually healthier and more dignified state to be in than one that implies victimhood.

[Anonymous]

Is it something we choose, or, as I feel, acceptance of who I am, and then giving myself permission to be myself