Why Did I Wait So Long to Have Top Surgery??
You learned from my previous post that I am just weeks away from my 60th birthday.
Why did I wait so long to do this?? Why did I bother after living this way for so long? Both really good questions that I promise to answer.
But first, in order to gain some understanding, let's discuss sex and gender. We are all pretty familiar with the male and female sex. These designations are based on your body; genitals, reproductive organs, secondary sex characteristics, etc., not to mention procreation. (many conservatives are still hung up on that). Most people believe that this designation is binary - but it is not. There are approximately 14 different and aberrant X and Y (and literally all combinations and numbers of each) perturbations of sex chromosome configurations (also called GONOSOMES). The most well-known are:
Why did I wait so long to do this?? Why did I bother after living this way for so long? Both really good questions that I promise to answer.
But first, in order to gain some understanding, let's discuss sex and gender. We are all pretty familiar with the male and female sex. These designations are based on your body; genitals, reproductive organs, secondary sex characteristics, etc., not to mention procreation. (many conservatives are still hung up on that). Most people believe that this designation is binary - but it is not. There are approximately 14 different and aberrant X and Y (and literally all combinations and numbers of each) perturbations of sex chromosome configurations (also called GONOSOMES). The most well-known are:
- 45, X, also known as Turner syndrome and
- 47, XXY, also known as Klinefelter syndrome
But most humans are pretty clearly male or female based on the possession of normal sex chromosomes and body characteristics. The "sex-binary" as it were.
So then, let's talk about gender. Many people don't know that there exists a difference between sex and gender. "Boys will be boys" and all that. Or maybe like the Kinks say: "Boys will be girls and girls will be boys...". That's more like it, at least in my experience. More people are now learning about gender and gender-identity because it is more and more apparent that this is an issue that affects many people.
So then we come to my issue; the "gender-binary". When I was learning that I was perhaps something other than a butchy lesbian; maybe there was more to this gender discomfort that I felt. I wasn't just gay/lesbian (a women who was romantically and sexually attracted to other women), maybe I wasn't gay at all, but a person who loved women. But at the time that I was learning about all of this, there were only two gender identities, Cis, and Trans. One either identified with the gender that was apparent at birth (Cisgender), or one identified as the opposite gender (Transgender). There is a lot more to gender than the trans/cis binary. There seems to be, as in many other things such as sexual preference, a continuum that exists. This is what I like to call gender-variance; there are many other names like gender-queer, gender-free, genderless, etc. So more about me and TOP SURGERY- next post.
So then we come to my issue; the "gender-binary". When I was learning that I was perhaps something other than a butchy lesbian; maybe there was more to this gender discomfort that I felt. I wasn't just gay/lesbian (a women who was romantically and sexually attracted to other women), maybe I wasn't gay at all, but a person who loved women. But at the time that I was learning about all of this, there were only two gender identities, Cis, and Trans. One either identified with the gender that was apparent at birth (Cisgender), or one identified as the opposite gender (Transgender). There is a lot more to gender than the trans/cis binary. There seems to be, as in many other things such as sexual preference, a continuum that exists. This is what I like to call gender-variance; there are many other names like gender-queer, gender-free, genderless, etc. So more about me and TOP SURGERY- next post.
I love your posts. Thank you for sharing and helping us learn.
ReplyDeleteI too love your posts and am so proud of you for being so true to yourself, so brave for sharing and I agree with Laura for teaching us and helping us learn .
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