[Kaunisenkeli]

It is tragic. When the prof in my Psychology of Gender class this past summer showed the videos about David Reimer in class, there wasn't a dry eye in the room by the end. That put me at ease enough to speak out a week later about my experiences as a transsexual (something I did again in my biology class this semester... I think that started something).

Yeah, I started by editing in the links about children being raised without gender until they can tell people who they are. I think it's neat that there are parents who really want to know their kids instead of following the societal pressure to assign them into boxes from the very start. My editing just got out of control and the story of David Reimer just found its way in.

I would say, from my own perspective, that I never had a choice about transitioning physically from male to female. If I had any choice at all, it was "Do I try to live? Or do I keep trying to die?". There was never a choice about who I was and am. Pain was my life before transition. I was trying to be someone I knew I wasn't, and that caused me so many problems. Since starting to transition I've found myself able to focus on classes for the first time in my life (and my GPA is up quite a bit as a result), I quit drinking (I quit harder drugs long before, but I tried many of them once upon a time), and I actually have a positive outlook on life for the first time ever (in high school I was certain that I would be dead before 30, but this coming February I'll be turning 32).

As far as biology goes, though, there is something interesting going on prior to birth. An area of the brain thought to deal with gender identity (often referred to simply as gender) develops a full month before a fetus' genitalia differentiate. What happens in this month to cause a difference between gender identity and physical sex? We don't really know yet. This is the best hypothesis available right now concerning transsexualism.