My first meeting as Rachael was this morning.
When called upon, John said, “Rachael, do you have anything?”
YES!
Is “glowing” a reasonable self-description?
How about glee mixed with excitement mixed with “WAHOO!!”
Wow. Who thunk validation could mean so much to a person?
Living with Gender Dysphoria is a slow and painful death.
It is pain because mind and body are constantly at war.
Again and again we are cut by unwanted thoughts that break into our consciousness.
We end up trapped, spiraling ever deeper into depression and hopelessness. This continues until we subdue it and force it to the back of our minds. The more cuts we have the longer that process takes.
For years it consumes more and more of our thoughts. Eventually our strength gives out and we can do nothing to push it away. And it continues cutting, relentlessly cutting us deeper and deeper while we scream in pain. This can last for MONTHS. 24-7. In this state we can never hold a train of thought for more than 10-15 minutes. We can’t even pray for very long without being distracted.
Then something goes _pop._ The mountain of emotions we’ve been pushing away for years rolls over us, crushing the mind into a point of white hot pain. Eventually the mind shatters. I pray you never know such terror as feeling yourself going insane.
We hide who we are. We hide the screaming pain, the insanity, the emptiness and isolation. We hide because everyone is taught that it is shameful to “want” to be the opposite sex. Many taunts and insults involve comparisons to the opposite sex. That means we are living insults. What wants that anchor tied to them?
Wednesday (10/28) was bad. Very bad.
Louis bird squawked and screamed and made loud noises over and over and over and over and over and over and… you get the idea.
I lost it. I knocked over his cage, lifted it up and screamed at him for a few minutes. What a release! Then I cried on Becca. That was a better release.
Perhaps a bit of stress?
With dad having cancer that’s possibly spread…
With my own need for injections I cannot give myself…
With work moving so slowly in a contracting economy, I worry about job security…
With Becca’s pain leaving her unable to stand for more than a minute…
With the nightly chore of cooking and alternating nights cleaning up…
With bills to be paid…
With a need to save $$$ for a home down payment…
With an upstairs neighbor that blares music for our neighbors 100 yards away to hear clearly…
With an inability get to sleep before 2:00am and sleep more than 6 hours a night…
With a car that has a sticking U-join in the front-right axle… (new axle… joy.)
With laundry piling up… okay, that’s not a chore I handle much. Becca injures herself repeatedly to keep us in clean clothing. (Thank you, love!)
And having lived in this apartment for 2 years now when we need a house…
It’s possible, just possible, I have a bit too much stress.
Oh, let’s not forget I’m transitioning at work… Jeff (HR) was supposed to speak with Reza (my boss) on Monday. I don’t think that happened – Reza was largely unavailable. Once that’s done I’ll be Rachael at work.
And I spoke to my therapist about a legal name change…
These steps are absolutely necessary yet each step terrifies me. What if it all goes wrong? What if I go down this path only to discover I’m no better off?
And what more can my family do? They console me and do their best to help relieve stress. They help as much as they can. Yeah, James could do a little more, but I hesitate to push him too much. He may look 16 but he’s still only 12 years old.
And there are bright spots in my life.
My boobs are the largest they’ve ever been – nearly filling a B-cup!
Becca is losing weight more rapidly meaning her surgery will be sooner than later.
I’m seriously considering FFS… it’s unbelievably scary yet intensely desirable, even necessary.
And then SRS will happen some time in the future. How nice it’ll be to sit and not have to move any part of me to pee; to have my underwear fit me correctly; to wear a bathing suit and not have to worry about showing a bulge. Having a female body feels correct and every step I’ve made has helped. At last I can be a whole person. At last I can be Rachael all the time.
But every change I make comes at a price, both to my pocket book and to my family. It’s to much too fast… and yet not enough moving far too slowly.
I can definitely say my breasts are growing. ❤
43.5″ across the armpits, 47″ across my breasts, 43.5″ below. According to charts I should be a C-cup. In reality I don’t quite fill a C-cup. But it’s hard to find a 44-B or even 42-B for under $30 – and I don’t really want to spend more than $15. At some point I’ll have to try ordering a better bra.
Still, it’s not enough. My breasts are still far too small. (Yeah, I know I’m only a few months into real development.) Seeing women walking around still feels like a slap to my ugly face.
I want to change it all. New name, new hair style, new face, new tummy, new nether regions. Oh, and finish my electrolysis.
But I have to consider Becca and James. Changing my name legally isn’t a huge change. Electrolysis would help. But FFS is another story. Until Becca has her operation I’m the only person able to cook so I can’t be down for a week or more. When it happens and I’m healed how will Becca respond? Hopefully my face will be very feminine but will she want to kiss me like she does now? I fear a loss of intimacy.
Oddly enough, SRS will probably have the smallest effects on those around me. It’s a part of my body nobody sees. I’m certainly not fond of it.
It’s distracting me all the time. I don’t know what to do.
Rachael 💋
“I am… Successful, Beautifully Created, Smart, Capable, and Focused”
– sign above my computer.
2020 is the year from hell… and the year I started my dream job… and the year I come out at work and don’t get fired. (Well, I’ll know more tomorrow.)
Dad has bladder cancer. Daddy? Why am I not shaken-up? Maybe I’ve pushed it down and it’s coming out in other ways. Or maybe I figure I have 10 more years before he really kicks the bucket. There’s no reason to feel his loss now.
Tom (Becca’s favorite cousin) died the day after we heard dad’s biopsy results. This hit her hard. She’s still reeling from the news.
Elevated hormones are driving my emotions up and down like crazy. I’m deeply depressed in the morning and feeling alright by mid-afternoon… most days.
My gender dysphoria is reaching a full boil. Thankfully it’s helped by my breast growth (come on, girls!) but it seems like I’ll die looking like I do today, neither a man nor a woman. Forever a freak show.
I still see myself as a man. There’s the real problem. This fat, barrel-chested boy just isn’t girly enough. That’s 1 reason I’m coming out at work. I need to be taking more steps to be Rachael all the time. But I have to wait for Becca to have her hip surgery before having any of my own. When I’m laid-up after surgery she needs to be able to make meals.
To top it off, I spent nearly every possible moment working on API test software this weekend. I couldn’t even get it to compile! I stayed up all night last night trying everything and then some to no avail.
Unsurprisingly I had a presentation today (9/28) that was a massive disaster in front of 2 company directors. Ouch!
I do so wish I grew up a girl in a girl’s body. Yeah, menstruation is literally a pain and pregnancy can be a challenge. Still, to be a mommy… I’d give almost anything to have that. I’d probably be a school teacher, too. I’m good with teaching and good with children. That’s a vastly different life with vastly different problems.
How much more can go wrong you ask?
Let’s not tempt fate.
My list of things to do to complete my transition and live every moment of every day as Rachael:
Another option to consider is body sculpting: removing fat from my belly and injecting it into my hips and buttocks. Maybe… I’m not convinced the fat won’t redistribute itself, leaving me looking lumpy.
Or hip / buttocks inserts similar to breast enlargement.
Gender dysphoria is caused by a simple and (nearly) inescapable conflict. It’s knowing your body and your mind don’t match. This conflict is ever present, like a spike in the mind. Over and over the conflict forces itself into conscious thought, unbidden and unwanted. This creates a downward spiral of thoughts and emotions that is impossible to prevent and difficult to stop.
This intrusion into conscious thought occurs dozens of times a day initially, increasing in frequency as the months and years pass. After roughly 6 years of this, the conflict forces itself into conscious awareness upwards of 400 times a day. Can you image that? The next 2 years are spent in a daze, nearly every waking moment stuck in a spiral of hellish emotions and thoughts. Simple work is difficult at best. 15 minutes of focus is heaven.
With effort over several minutes the conflict is pushed to the back of the mind and temporarily forgotten. When that fails, the conflict is appeased by seeing the success of others – real or imaginary. Fulfilling the conflict can take hours. Eventually the cycle of thoughts are purged from consciousness until the tiniest reminder brings it crashing back.
The cycle of thoughts that spiral inward and plague the mind drag it ever deeper into hell. Depression spikes. Attitudes rapidly degrade, hurting loved ones.
Something inside breaks and all but the body is crushed by the mountain of thoughts and emotions that have been pushed to the back of the mind for years. The terror and pain are indescribable. A part of the mind is violently ripped away and dies.
Then the mountain passes and everything resets. The cycle returns to a few dozen “attacks” per day.
Only now the mind is less than it was. Worse yet, each 8-year cycle is more intense and does more damage, leading deeper into hell, taking ever more from the mind.
Transitioning aligns the appearance of the body to the shape expected by the mind. This stops the conflict and ends the dysphoria. DNA IS NOT INVOLVED.
The mind is FREE. The heart feels more deeply. Love actually has meaning. The soul rejoiced. At long last, real PEACE and JOY exist for more than a fleeting moment.
No more pretending. No more acting. I am able to be ME, authentic, real, unpracticed…
I endured this 8-year cycle 4 times, each worse than the previous. The last occurred when I was 46. (I managed to hold it in for 11 years – a record!) For the last 2 months before the fall I could hear and feel my soul screaming as it was ripped apart, caught between body and mind, the distance too great to bridge. Every minute of every day my mind was filled with screams and waves of pain.
When I broke I was so amazingly overwhelmed that I collapsed, feeling my consciousness shatter, liquefy and leak out my ear into a puddle on the floor. I lost consciousness for 40 minutes. You cannot imagine the terror that swept through every cell in my body as I touched insanity. I was dead, gone, beyond reach but God brought me back… mostly.
When I awoke I discovered ALL of my coping mechanisms and ALL the walls holding back the conflict were gone, broken, useless. The conflict was permanently etched into every conscious thought, every waking moment for the rest of my life. That 8-year cycle was reduced to 2 years at most. Fragile as I was at the time, I knew I’d be dead inside 6 weeks if I didn’t do something.
My choices became clear: transition or die. I wanted to die. Hell is a vacation compared to this! But I have a wife with failing health and a young son. They would be left destitute without my support. With all her pain and problems, my wife wouldn’t live long.
So I chose life for my wife and child. In 6 weeks I was transitioning. Just starting was enough to reduce the conflict to just 1-2 times PER WEEK. It was GLORIOUS! It felt like I had spent my entire life in a cold, dark cave. Transitioning drew me out of the cave to find myself in a meadow on a warm spring day.
My mind was FREE. My heart could feel more deeply than ever in my life. My soul rejoiced. I finally knew real PEACE and JOY.
I was able to be ME, authentic, real, unpracticed…
And it lasted just over 1 year.
Choosing life has consequences.
Every Christian in my life turned against me and stripped me of everything including my faith. I was left with a car, some clothes and a job.
But I was FREE!
Eventually I was reunited with my family and found my faith again. Love conquers all!
I came out at work to applause then alienation. I was given tasks and denied any help and when I completed a task, my work was ripped apart and I was told to redo it. At the first opportunity I was fired for poor performance and offered a 6 month severance to keep my mouth shut.
I took it. (What choice did I have?)
I spent all 6 months looking for a job as Rachael. I barely managed a handful of callbacks and 1 interview. Desperate for work, I changed my name on my resume (nothing else) and was working full time in 6 weeks – my dream job no less!
Going back to being “Bob” HURT. Society forced me back into my torment. But this time I had some support and I continued my hormone replacement.
Now my 2 years are up. My dysphoria is back to intolerable levels, raging in my head. And now I’m doing more, planning on bigger changes.
So many think they understand, think they know what’s best for me and those like me.
They don’t see the scars left by the hurtful words so there’s no damage.
They don’t hear the screaming in our head so it’s not real.
They don’t feel the pain we feel day after day after day so it doesn’t hurt.
They don’t know how the conflict erupts within us at any time so it’s indoctrination.
The pain isn’t physical but it’s just as real. Worse, it can’t be turned off. We can’t take a magic pill and feel relief for even a minute.
We don’t belong in women’s groups because we aren’t accepted as women.
We don’t belong in men’s groups because we don’t identify with men.
That leaves us in isolation where all we have is our pain on the inside and the hurt every time we hear our gender spoken.
Ever hear of “Solar Freakin’ Roadways”? They’ve made several MILLION in funding. And their idea sucks.
Here’s a better idea: using existing solar panels, build structures over freeways covered by solar panels. This has major advantages:
More to come…
By Ryan Anderson
Jan 22, 2018
By Rachael Platt
May 05, 2019
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Twenty-eight years ago, the release of “When Harry Met Sally” highlighted one big debate: whether men and women could really be just friends.
That question may still be up in the air, but now we are being forced to confront a more fundamental debate: whether men can really become women.
The fundamental debate has nothing to do with asking if we can do the impossible (modify DNA).
The fundamental questions are
America is in the midst of what has been called a “transgender moment.” In the space of a year, transgender issues went from something that most Americans had never heard of to a cause claiming the mantle of civil rights.
Nobody ever heard of us. And so nobody ever knew what to do with us.
Is the pursuit of civil rights ignoble?
We are the social lepers. No matter what we do we are punished. Is it too much to ask for society to cut it out and stop kicking us?
But can a boy truly be “trapped” in a girl’s body? Biologically, no. Psychologically yes.
Can modern medicine really “reassign” sex? From a chromosomal perspective, no. From a figurative perspective, plastic surgery can perform miracles.
Is sex something “assigned” in the first place? Yes. The sperm that enters the egg assigns the child’s sex. When the doctor calls out the sex of the baby at birth that is figuratively called “assigning sex.”
What’s the loving response to a friend or child experiencing a gender-identity conflict? That’s really going to depend on the friend or child. This is a very complex question since it will involve the person’s state of mind.
What should our law say on these issues? Equal Opportunity. No discrimination. That’s it.
These shouldn’t be difficult questions.
If they were equal in complexity I would agree.
Just a few years before “When Harry Met Sally” hit theaters, Dr. Paul McHugh thought he had convinced the vast majority of medical professionals not to go along with bold claims about sex and gender being proffered by some of his colleagues. And as chair of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, McHugh put a stop to sex reassignment surgery at Hopkins.
A tragic moment in 1979.
Once the elite Johns Hopkins did this, many medical centers across the nation followed suit.
Burying gender dysphoria for 36 years.
If more people knew about it hundreds of children like me would have been saved years of isolation, depression and suicide ideation. As a result of McHugh’s work the only thing we heard was “hide or be punished and humiliated.” And you now see the results: 40% suicide rate.
But in recent years we have seen a resurgence of these drastic procedures—not in light of new scientific evidence, mind you, but as a result of a growing ideological movement. Such is our transgender moment.
Imagine that. Bury a mental condition and it comes back anyway.
The evidence of results is in the number of successfully treated patients. That is, people who report their dysphoria has significantly improved.
The people increasingly in the spotlight of this moment are children.
In the past 10 years, dozens of pediatric gender clinics have sprung up throughout the United States. In 2007, Boston Children’s Hospital “became the first major program in the United States to focus on transgender children and adolescents,” as their own website brags.
Again, given the size of the transgender population, why is this bad?
A decade later, over 45 gender clinics had opened their doors to our nation’s children—telling parents that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones may be the only way to prevent teen suicides.
With a 100% success rate over 10 years. (Nobody can expect that to continue.)
Children are not coached into this. They aren’t told who they are or what they must do.
Unfortunately there are many factors that affect suicide ideation. Having a crushing mental condition lifted helps. It doesn’t cure depression.
Never mind that according to the best studies—the ones that even transgender activists themselves cite—80 to 95 percent of children with gender dysphoria will come to identify with and embrace their bodily sex.
Do never mind it. Those 80-95 percent of children lack characteristics of transgender children. Through decades of observation professionals know what those characteristics are: persistent, insistent and consistent claim of being the opposite sex.
Never mind that 41 percent of people who identify as transgender will attempt suicide at some point in their lives, compared to 4.6 percent of the general population.
That has nothing to do with making a correct diagnosis. Nor does it say anything about the effectiveness of treatment. That number DOES change based on family responses.
Never mind that people who have had transition surgery are nineteen times more likely than average to die by suicide. Than the general population.
The study also says:
The authors concluded […] that the evidence base for sex reassignment “is of very low quality due to the serious methodological limitations of included studies.”
And…
This study design sheds new light on transsexual persons’ health after sex reassignment. It does not, however, address whether sex reassignment is an effective treatment or not.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885
These statistics should stop us in our tracks. Clearly, we must work to find ways to effectively prevent these suicides and address the underlying causes. We certainly shouldn’t be encouraging children to “transition.”
This is called conflating facts.
Furthermore, encouraged or not, children are being correctly diagnosed and correctly treated.
As Walt Heyer shows, any child forced into transitioning will come to regret it. Yet nearly all the regret to date is from self diagnosis.
Many psychologists and psychiatrists think of gender dysphoria as similar to other dysphorias, or forms of discomfort with one’s body, such as anorexia.
They all involve a discomfort with the body. After that the comparison breaks down.
The feelings of discomfort can lead to mistaken beliefs about oneself or about reality, and then to actions in accordance with those false beliefs.
It can lead all sorts of things. That doesn’t mean it’s likely.
A person’s awareness of self develops around the age of 3. This awareness of self isn’t chosen. It isn’t a belief. Nor is it a delusion. How it emerges is unknown. That it can emerge opposite to the sex of the body is unknown.
That the awareness of self does emerge as the opposite sex, though infrequent, is fact.
The most helpful therapies focus not on achieving the impossible—changing bodies to conform to thoughts and feelings—but on helping people accept and even embrace the truth about their bodies and reality.
The most helpful therapies accomplish enough change to make gender dysphoria manageable, if not cured. The Swedish study that provided the “19x the suicide rate” statistic also states, “Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, [alleviates] gender dysphoria“.
Helping a mental condition through manipulation of hormones is not a unique treatment as a host of mental conditions (e.g. headaches, depression, etc) are handled though modification of hormones. When the diagnosis is correct the treatment for gender dysphoria works 98% of the time.
Evidence of “conversion therapy” effectiveness doesn’t exist. There are no standards or controls around this methodology, just a general, “we’ll talk you out of it.”
In many places conversion therapy centers were shutdown for extremely abusive practices. This has resulted it’s being legally banned.
Ryan would call conversion therapy “helpful.”
Operating in the background is a sound understanding of physical and mental health—proper function of one’s body and mind—and a sound understanding of medicine as a practice aimed at restoring health, not simply satisfying the desires of patients.
If patients aren’t satisfied with the results, what exactly are you doing?
For human beings to flourish, they need to feel comfortable in their own bodies, readily identify with their sex, and believe that they are who they actually are.
How is this achieved?
WHO you are is not defined by your body. Someone born without arms doesn’t have a lesser identity than a body-builder.
In my new book, “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment,” I argue that McHugh got it right. The best biology, psychology, and philosophy all support an understanding of sex as a bodily reality, and of gender as a social manifestation of bodily sex. Biology isn’t bigotry.
You’re assuming the nature of identity is socially driven and thus can easily be changed through social interaction. That’s a HUGE claim with no evidence to support it.
That’s not bigotry, but neither is it honesty!
In my book I offer a balanced approach to the policy issues, a nuanced vision of human embodiment, and a sober and honest survey of the human costs of getting human nature wrong.
Debating regret is grand. It’s important to remember that medicine is run by people and people make mistakes. Thus those that regret will always exist in every treatment. That doesn’t change the reality for MILLIONS of transgender people.
Your type shutdown gender dysphoria in 1979. All the statistics since show the terrible consequences – suicide rate at 40%, abuse and murder rates at insane levels, discrimination leaving 15% unemployed and 40% underemployed, poverty… And you think this is the proper way to handle things?
Despite activists’ best efforts to put up a unified front, Harry cannot become Sally. Activists’ desperate insistence to the contrary suggests that the transgender moment is fleeting.
First, treating gender dysphoria isn’t about becoming someone else. That someone else has always existed. It’s about being authentic and showing people the real person inside, not the mask called “the body.”
Second, nobody is attempting to resequence DNA. Modifying the 23rd chromosome will only help at conception – years before a diagnosis can be made. After birth hormones direct body shape, not DNA. Thus modifying hormone levels achieves the desired goal of correcting the body shape.
