Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (76 page)

One of the most common misunderstandings about transgenderism is that the difference between the TV and the TS is one of degree: that the erotic passion for cross-dressing is a diluted form of transsexualism. But while complete feminization is a not-uncommon fantasy among transvestites, few transvestites pursue a sex change.

The TV is also apt to have periods, sometimes extended, when he can live comfortably, successfully, and uniquely in his male persona. While the most common TV fantasy is to
pass
(to be a man who can fool others into believing he’s a woman), the majority of male-to-female TVs lead prosperous, conventional lives as husbands, fathers, and community leaders.

Those who cannot accept their cross-dressing inclinations (or who have censorious partners) may go through phases during which they destroy their alternate wardrobes.

The urge to cross-dress may become compulsive, particularly when the TV cannot find meaningful outlets, such as support groups, or compassionate partners. He usually finds that the need to cross-dress escalates when it is repressed. Compulsive cross-dressing can threaten the security of marriages or other long-term relationships.

A majority of TVs are probably solitary cross-dressers who conceal their interests from even their spouses for fear of rejection and disapproval. But repressing their needs usually only contributes to the TV’s dilemma, since the impulse to cross-dress is usually most acute during periods of high stress.

While both the
transvestite
and the transsexual may wear feminine clothing and affect feminine behavior, their motives differ radically. Clothing and corollary feminine touches are intrinsic to a TV’s pleasure; the cross-dressing alone brings intense gratification. TVs may even express a different, more sexual, personality when cross-dressed.

A TS is less likely to project a different persona when cross-dressed, as he or she
already
feels like a person of the biologically opposite sex. For the TS, wearing the attire of the opposite gender is an incomplete experience when the body beneath the clothing does not match the internal reality.

Although distinctions between transvestite and transsexual have been recognized only very recently, the theme of complete gender change always has been popular in Western culture. Its place as a fundamental archetype of human behavior is suggested by the classical Greek myth of the Theban seer Tiresius, who was transformed into a woman for seven years. Sometime after his masculinity was restored, Zeus and Hera quarreled over which gender has a more profound enjoyment of sex and consulted Tiresius, who testified that women experience “nine or 10 times more pleasure.”
²

Perhaps the most infamous case of sex change in Western antiquity was the Emperor Nero, who, remorseful for having killed his pregnant wife, ordered the castration of a young man who resembled the deceased, dressed the eunuch in women’s clothes, and formally married his unusual bride with splendid ceremony. Similar historical antecedents are numerous. They are also ambiguous and cannot be clearly differentiated from accounts of voluntary or self-inflicted castration.

The term
drag
, meanwhile, finds its ominous origin in antiquity:

Several ancient civilizations made a practice of creating, and cross-dressing eunuchs for social, sexual and ritual purposes. An indeterminate percentage of these eunuchs were probably the early equivalents of transsexuals. Procedures to develop opposite-sex secondary sexual characteristics, meanwhile, were unavailable until the 19th Century. One of the first postoperative transsexuals in the modern sense was Herman Karl, who began life as Sophia Hedwig. Her 1882 hormonal treatments gave her a beard, while surgery provided a crude penis.

Transsexuals were once dismissed as homosexuals (male or female) who simply had gone mad. Only in 1949 did Dr. David O. Cauldwell first define it as a syndrome (
psychopathia transsexualis)
distinct from homosexuality. Contemporaneously, cosmetic surgeons and endocrinologists in Denmark under the direction of Dr. Christian Hamburger began to develop sex-change techniques. Their work received huge publicity in 1952, when George Jorgensen left Long Island, New York, for Denmark and returned to the United States as Christine Jorgensen. The first full-length study of transsexuals was
The Transsexual Phenomenon
, published in 1966 by Dr. Harry Benjamin, an endocrinologist who began to study the subject after meeting Ms. Jorgensen.

Most known transsexuals are of the male-to-female variety, although a number of support groups, counselors, and surgeons specialize in female-to-male support. Transsexuals confront a truly mind-boggling array of social and medical challenges. After the TS has identified the nature of his problems and begins to seek recourse, he faces an arduous screening and counseling process followed by the expense, risk, and discomfort of several surgeries. Female-to-male surgical procedures are particularly daunting. The transsexual’s willingness to make enormous emotional, physical, and financial sacrifices to achieve this goal is a telling measure of the urgency of his plight.

Only a small percentage of transsexuals undergpes surgery. Some compromise: They get hormonal treatments and cross-dress. Also, a small number of postop patients ultimately regret their decisions.

The life changes involved in altering one’s identity from one sex to the other extend from lengthy bureaucratic processes to emotional disclosures to family, friends, and employers. Extensive counseling, including the real-life test, are required before doctors will recommend surgery. Medically, a male-to-female transsexual typically undergoes extensive cosmetic surgery to redefine the jaw and other facial features, as well as paring down of the Adam’s apple; electrolysis to remove hair on body and face; hormonal injections to stimulate growth of breasts and to promote a softer, rounder body; breast implants; and castration, followed by construction of a canal similar to a vagina. Once surgery is complete, many male-to-female transsexuals find that they have retained orgasmic capacity.

A female-to-male transsexual typically undergoes cosmetic surgeries, hormonal treatments, breast reduction or removal, hysterectomy, the closing off of the vagina, and diversion of the urethra. Modern technology has not yet engineered a satisfactory artificial penis.

One option in place of a penis is an open-ended tube formed from skin grafts and fitted with a miniature hydraulic pump to simulate erection. Orgasmic capacity is unlikely. Transsexuals of both genders are sterile after surgery.

A TS views his sexuality according to the gender he believes he possesses rather than the body he has. There seem to be roughly as many straight as gay transsexuals, although until surgery is complete, transsexuals themselves may feel confused as to their orientation. A preop male-to-female transsexual may perceive himself as a straight woman and form relationships with straight men, feeling that these relationships are heterosexual, even though an outsider would see them as two men together. Or a preop female-to-male transsexual (such as Kelly T., quoted above) may perceive herself as a man
and form a homosexual relationship, even though, biologically, Kelly would seem to be a woman dating a man.

Because transsexualism causes significant bewilderment among transsexuals and their partners, many people wait until they have completed surgery before forming permanent relationships. Once the transformation is complete, transsexuals often choose to blend quickly into the mainstream and generally lead very private, conventional lives with their partners of choice.

Despite the social pressure for women and men to conform to allegedly natural models of behavior, the models for masculinity and femininity have always been moving targets. The ideal woman in the 1950s was an ever-cheerful, whimsical, doting helpmate and mother; the 1990s ideal is an ambitious careerist who looks like a model and cooks like a chef—and who does not necessarily have a husband. Similarly, the former image of the model man as the sole wage earner, an invulnerable, infallible, nearly emotionless king of his castle has surrendered to economic realities and unavoidable truths, such as his needs for tenderness and understanding. Do femininity and masculinity really conform to rigid models, or is there more to gender than meets the eye?

Transgenderists, and especially transvestites, seem to possess aspects of both genders. Many do not meet the standard definitions of male or female but instead have the capability to affiliate strongly with both genders.