Psych Lit wrote:

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Psych Lit wrote:

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nesea wrote:

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Are there studies on transgendered individuals that were unhappy AFTER the switch? Wonder what percentage still feel unsettled or uneasy or .. whatever it is that feels off? <~ me

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I came across this article that addresses my question ...

It is rare for people to undergo a gender transition and then want to reverse it, especially when surgery is involved, experts say.

the one study on transexual post operative results that i did find had to do with men and the study found that most who had the surgery were glad that they had done so. i was not able to find a study asking this same question of ftm transexuals tho the best info i found was from an article in studies of gender and sexuality. the article "the middle men" is by griffin hansbury. the journal article is a pdf file and ive saved it so if anyone wants to read it email me and ill send it to you. interesting and informative  article tho im trying to not think about hansburys past claim that testosterone has made him a math whiz:) it would seem that there is a world of difference between mtf and ftms and a world of difference within the ftm community itself.

-- Edited by Psych Lit on Saturday 13th of June 2009 12:47:11 AM

 

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I saw a recent picture (which is not the one going around) and, Chaz is twice larger the size since that pic. I hope the avoidence of whatever bad emotionally is not other than living in the wrong body. If in fact that is the cause of the obesity. And, if it is not..........it appears to be a pending crisis. One would think, even though relatively young, that this type of therapy that involves hormones and, radical surgeries that can comprimise long term health alone, would not be considered on someone so large. I'm just saying I hope the weight is being addressed. There is definate sadness there with the weight be it symptom of the gender problems or not. Which for unknown reasons, I don't believe they have anything to do with each other. Gator.

nesea wrote:

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Are there studies on transgendered individuals that were unhappy AFTER the switch? Wonder what percentage still feel unsettled or uneasy or .. whatever it is that feels off? <~ me

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I came across this article that addresses my question ...

It is rare for people to undergo a gender transition and then want to reverse it, especially when surgery is involved, experts say.

Born in male body, Jenny knew early that she was a girl - CNN.com

im signed into the work library and ive accessed multi journal databases thru one search and ive found exactly one piece of research dedicated to satisfaction or happiness following trans surgery and that one is a mtf research project. im not finding one bit of research on ftm and post surgery. i see a lot of anecdotal stuff if i do a lit review but not one research based conclusion.  that troubles me. ill keep looking tho there HAS to be more.

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Are there studies on transgendered individuals that were unhappy AFTER the switch? Wonder what percentage still feel unsettled or uneasy or .. whatever it is that feels off? <~ me

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I came across this article that addresses my question ...

Born in male body, Jenny knew early that she was a girl

Females seeking to transition into males may elect to have their breasts removed via surgery. With testosterone, they will grow hair on their face and chest after about two years. Read one man's female-to-male advice to Chaz Bono

A higher percentage of males transitioning to females will go forward with genital surgery than females going to males, Alter said. Surgical methods for creating a penis -- which range from making one out of the clitoris to using the skin from the forearms -- are "not perfect," and many patients are happy with just chest surgery, he said.

Genital surgeries for creating female genitalia are better, he said. Alter's method is to make a clitoris out of the head of the penis, and make space for a vagina.

Facing the rest of the world

It is rare for people to undergo a gender transition and then want to reverse it, especially when surgery is involved, experts say.

Born in male body, Jenny knew early that she was a girl - CNN.com

I'm with you here. I think, can't quote. But seems to me if Chastity were so inclined to "naturally" or from within feel this a compelling missing link in her life it would have been addressed, certainly before this age. Especially given the fact she presumably has the cash and support to go through with the transgendering. I don't, from a totally out of the loop outsider, think this could possibly be something, as with some famous before her, that is a natural and lifelong need. If it's a passing fancy I really feel badly for herm.

Terri

if one opts for the surgery often the reasoning is that this is an attempt to make the outside mesh with the inside and yet if one walks thru life up til that point in the corporeal state of being of the gender one is trying to shed, arent all experiences then from that gendered perspective or from the perspective of ones expression of gender place along that continuum and not from the perspective of the opposing gender one is trying to achieve? so then how does this meshing occur since one has not experienced the other gender in full beforehand? and what if the surgery is done and this hoped for meshing doesnt happen? then what? i know that this is part of why the rules regarding surgery are so strict, one must go thru life for a prescribed period of time as someone of the other gender and one must take the hormones for a period of time beforehand but again the presenting mix is what is responded to and in turn what one responds from. its very confusing to think about.

here is someone who represents the "other" voice in my head on this topic and i tend to bounce between the two in thinking about this. reading down toward the bottom to the litany of problems s/he answers the questions posited at the beginning of the article as to why there is a desire to study gender and transexuality.  its the life problems and the pain that need addressing not the gender questions imo. and when i bounce back to the other mindedness thats where this sticks for me.  it seems to presuppose that gender is binary we are either one or the other when in my mind gender appears along a spectrum and the surgical solutions then appear (for the most part tho not always) to be more of an internal reaction to external pressures rather than a making whole if that makes any sense



Source: Lambda Book Report, Apr97
Section: On Publishing
OUT OF THE BINARY ZOO
It is hard to know where to begin with the flow of "transgender studies" books which continue to cascade upon us from academe. I confess I have not found one I could review yet. The earliest ones were usually about 16 people in rehab somewhere. The psychiatrists who wrote them inspected our "fetishes," "fixations" and "gender confusions," producing carefully distanced narratives couched in the obscure and analytic language of cathexis, dysfunction and derangement. We were "patients."
Then there was the advent of feminist theorists, who--while carefully erasing our own authentic voices, and without soiling the pages with the messy complexities of our lived experience--appropriated us as illustrations for their latest theory or insight. We had become "examples."
Now upon us is the "transgender studies" anthology, a ticket to an academic grant and a book. These come to us from earnest anthropologists and sociologists, who study us just exactly as if we were some isolated and inexplicable tribe from the lowlands of Mango-Mango. Their gaze is fixed on such issues as our native dress, social organization, kinship structures, and relationship with the local medical gender shamans. They employ the objective and nuanced language of ethnography. We have become "natives."
As a reviewer one is told to review the book the author did write, not the one they didn't. And yet, a sense of discomfort, and even of outrage, obtains. For why, with all the bans and gender theory flooding from the presses, is it all so stunningly irrelevant to trans-lives?
The answer is that academics, shrinks, and feminist theorists have travelled through our lives and problems like tourists on a junket. Picnicking on our identities like flies at a free lunch, they have selected the tastiest tidbits with which to illustrate a theory or plot a standard deviation. They pursue Science; what they produce by mining our lives is not addressed to us but exploits us as the Phenomenon Du Jour, "trans under glass," or perhaps only "gender a la mode."
Even more outrageous is that my gender performance is assumed to be contestable, a "problem" which might be solved. The academician's own performance of gender is never at issue, nor that of the "real" men and women who form the standard to which mine is compared, so that by "othering" me they are rendered natural. How nice to be normal.
I carry on me a slip of paper from an impromptu poll conduted at Camp Trans, "the educational event across the road from the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival," to remind me what is really at stake in the struggle over translives. Out of 12 of us who were trans-identified, 5 were incest survivors, 6 had been raped, all 12 had been physically abused or beaten, and 4 had been shot or stabbed.
Since then I've stood in quiet vigils for one gender hate-crime after another: Brandon Teena, Debbie Forte, Chanel Pickett, Christian Paige, and Tyra Hunter. GenderPAC takes desperate calls each week from people who have lost their children, their livelihood, or both, simply because they are genderqueer, genderdifferent, or gendervulnerable.
No one asks about the crushing loneliness of so many translives. Or about sexual dysfunction. Or about holding down two minimum wage jobs so we can enjoy the benefits of a surgical procedure that theorists and academics are casually debating for free. No one writes about the transteens who are contracting HIV from sharing needles to shoot street hormones. Or about how it is that so many of us are survivors of incest and abuse. Or about the special challenges faced by genderqueers of color. No one studies the humiliation and struggle we face simply to survive when we can lose our lives, our Jobs, or our safety at any moment.
You won't find any of this in the next book on bans or gender studies because the real challenges of our lives aren't "relevant" to anyone's theory. Far easier to colonize us as a topic of study than the gender regime itself, as if one could analyze a ghetto in complete isolation without first examining the structures which create and maintain it.
I intend to wage a struggle for my life, to fight for my political survival. Until these authors wade down here into the deep end of the pool and deal with the real problems I face, until they are as willing to posit their own performance of gender as just as queer as mine, then they are just another part of the very system I seek to overturn.
To them I say: you tell me that I "transgress the gender system;" let me assure you that it is indisputably the case that it is the gender system which trangresses all over me. Even here in the Binary Zoo, we are more complex than your theories, more creative than your dogma, and more stubborn and rude and resourceful than your politics.
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by Riki Anne Wilchins
Riki Anne Wilchins is lesbian or bisexual, transexual or transgender; man or woman living in Greenwich Village or New York City. Her hobbies include the Transexual Menace, the Lesbian Avengers, attacking false binaries or any other political system which oppresses her or just really pisses her off: Her new book, Read My Lips! is due from Firebrand in September.
Copyright of Lambda Book Report is the property of Lambda Literary Foundation and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
Source: Lambda Book Report

I remember this little girl bopping out on stage during the Sonny & Cher show.  I had no idea she was considering gender change.