Ok so to begin! Transgender is a term that refers to people who have gender identity crisis and wish to change gender. It's most common as a male to female move and that is because of the simple way that the body grows in the womb. See all the little children originally develop as females and everything changes from there. The mummy produces hormones and these develop the babies genitalia. These new genitalia produce extra hormones and this sets off the development of the baby. In a male to female (MTF) transgender what happens here is the genitals and the body change from the influx of the testosterone but this hormone never quite reaches the brain. So you end up with a male body and a female brain.
This is usually noticeable at a young age to a small or large degree depending on the child (not all girls and girly girls and not all boy are all rough and tumble). The child itself usually knows even if it doesn't particularly know it yet (know what I mean?). However if left untreated the child (or teenager, or adult by this stage) will start to get depressed. Whether they know it or not yet life will begin to get worse and worse until typically it gets to a stage where it leads to suicide. Fun Fact #1: This large suicide rate led to the discovery of the difference in brains, you can't cut a brain open and look at it unless the individual is dead!
Now if the individual decides to seek help you have good system if you live in America or England, and an absolutely crappy system if you live Australia (my home of choice). Now lets look at America first! Part one: talk to therapists to determine your situation. Part two: Take hormones for a year or two at the most before.. Part three: Change your name and sex legally and live as the gender you wish to for year. Part four: Genital surgery! Ok fair enough, there is a possibility that the part three to four section can lead to be beaten up for 'tricking' people but you should be done in three years or so. Not too shabby.
Australia time! Part one: talk to therapists to determine your situation, around four or five of them for a year or two. Part two: Take anti-man drugs for at least six months before being given estrogen. Part three: continue to talk to therapists and whatnot while you slowly see effects of the hormones. Part four: Finally talk to the big bad therapist how gives you the go ahead if he thinks your ready. Part five: Yay! Genital surgery finally. Part six: Now, and only now you can change your official documentation to show what you have felt for what feels like hundreds of years. My biggest problem with this situation is that you don't have any official sign that your transgendered until after the end point. At the moment my legal name is Fae Olive Daunt, but my gender on the piece of card doesn't match =(
There are three types of transitioning transgenders: Hiding, out and stealth. Hiding is simply not telling anyone what or who you are and hiding either as the wrong gender, or hiding the transition itself. This has the smallest amount of danger from outside people but is the most depressing =( Out is when the individual is happy to tell those around him / her that they are and may not mind that they are a blend of genders. This tends to be the most confusing to other people and can be stressful (prepare for the staring from EVERYONE around you). Stealth is most possibly the most dangerous of transition, most traditional trans death stories (and there are a lot) lead from men (or women) believing they have been 'tricked' by the trans individual and getting angry. However a lot of people believe that being a transgendered individual is completely wrong and if they cannot get over this, stealth is the only option.
As I discovered today, as a transgendered MTF individual you have a higher chance of smoking pot (24% of all trans tested smoked pot in the last week) and doing crack (30% of all trans tested did crack within the last week >.<). You have an exactly equal chance to get raped as a female in college. You have a decently high chance of domestic abuse and your chance of being murdered is HUGE. You have a higher chance of believing you will die young but strangely enough a chance to live longer than average. Statistics are fun! ^^
So that's where the transgendered community sits, hopefully I'v enlightened someone (although I think at most two people read these posts =) ). Thank you for reading my random post on the tgirl situation! And finally thanks to the wonderful women in particular who spent the day going through statistics with me (data and numbers are fun!).
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