Little Beginnings - Discovering Gender Dysphoria at age 3-4 through the Gender Trap

Do you ever wish that you could remember your very first thought as a baby? I wish.

However, I cannot remember what my first thoughts were. The earliest I can remember from my childhood are a few random things ... the structure of the building where I lived, the windows in our apartment, the train tracks that I could see in the distance from the windows, the layout of furniture at home, the rough stone tiles at home that hurt when I fell down at home, ... and that sky-blue dress with a silver belt that the girl next door wore.

I think I was about 3 years old then. My baby-sitter, a 14-15 year old girl, used to live with us. Her parents were poor and they had let her stay with my family in exchange for educating her. My parents were not rich with money, but they have always been rich in their heart with compassion and in their brains with knowledge. My parents bought books for my baby-sitter, which she and I would sit and learn together. She would make sure that I was not hungry and not angry, to the extent possible. She was like an elder sister to me. I was an extremely talkative little child. Perhaps I learned to communicate well by talking with her and listening to her ideas.

We played lots of little games, with words, and numbers, and puzzles, and plastic bricks. We also played creative imaginary role-play games, non-sexual of course. I loved playing the role of a doctor. I was often sick, with painful tonsils, and my visits to the doctors' offices introduced me to the perforated prescription booklets. I wanted to be a doctor, not because I had any intention of curing patients or making money, but rather because I wanted to get my hands on perforated booklets. I remember using a needle to drive holes into the pages in a book, in order to make linear perforations to tear away pages.

While the role-playing was a creative activity, I observed that other children had brothers or sisters of their own. As an only child, I felt lonely. I recognized that although my baby-sitter was like a sister, she was not my real sister. Besides, she was too old. I wanted to have someone my age around home. I would role-play with an imaginary brother, not sister, playing some game or sport. I am not sure if this has anything to do with my gender identity, but my choice of a baby brother over a baby sister demonstrates that I was not necessarily interested in only stereotypical feminine activities. I wanted a baby brother so that I could indulge in more non-feminine games and sports too.

My baby-sitter took very good care of me, but she never agreed to buy me clothes like the girl next door wore. It felt unfair and unjust. I was angry and upset. I had also begun to recognize the social segregation between boys and girls. Boys were supposed to do a certain set of things, while girls were supposed to do a certain other set of things. I preferred many of the things that girls were supposed to do, but I also liked a few things that boys were supposed to do. I guess I wanted the option to choose the specific activities I wanted to do. I needed options more granular than choosing between being a boy or a girl. I soon began to recognize that I did not even have the option to choose between being a boy or a girl. The choice had already been made for me, by someone else. I was supposed to grow up as a boy, whether I liked it or not. Not only did I have no option, but the gender-specific rules also seemed unnecessarily stringent.

My baby-sitter probably told my parents about my persistent request for the sky-blue dress with a silver belt. Or perhaps she did not explain in so much detail, but she may have told my parents that I had been demanding new clothes. Or maybe she said nothing, but my parents overheard me asking for those clothes. Or it could be just that my parents wanted to buy me good clothes, perhaps because I was growing up fast. My parents took me out and bought me new clothes. However, those clothes were not the ones that girls my age wore. The clothes were short-trousers and shirts that made me look like a very smart boy.

My parents used to bring cash home for our monthly expenses. We are talking about a time two decades before ATMs were prevalent in that part of the world. Bank branches were few and far between. Besides, the only vehicle my family owned was one bicycle. With cash at home, my parents used it to teach me arithmetic. I learned that my parents had to live with this limited amount of money each month.

In addition, my dad used to tell me about his goal of constructing a large house for his parents in his home-town (more like home-remote-village), about a thousand miles away from where we lived. My dad always asked the leading question, "don't you want to build a good house in our home-town?" We were living in public housing and my parents were building a home for my dad's parents in his home-town. Why? Of course, I did not have the vocabulary to express my surprise at this lack of logic. I do not think that I ever answered his leading question with a positive response, but he mistook my silence for my agreement. I seemed to be reluctantly but silently agreeing with whatever my parents wanted to do.

We did not have enough money to spend on luxury items, but my parents always bought me the best food. Or I should say, they always bought me what they thought was best and what I thought was the best. Sweet limes were my favorite. I would gobble up many sweet limes when these seasonal fruits were available. My neighbors noticed excessive peels of sweet limes in our garbage and wondered how we managed to generate so many peels. Pastries and cakes were my other favorites. My parents bought them for me often. I also enjoyed lots of healthy foods. In fact, I would have enjoyed even more fruits and vegetables as a child (I say so because when I demanded greater variety of food during my adolescent years, I enjoyed most of that variety). However, during my early childhood, my mom would only cook whatever my dad liked to eat, which was a narrow and fixed set of dishes cooked in only a fixed set of ways. During early childhood, my parents took me with them when we bought all of these items - fruits, vegetables, fish, cakes, pastries, etc. We had only a limited amount of cash for the entire month. Spending too much would leave us with no money, and no money meant no food. I began to recognize the need to be thrifty.

My parents also instilled in me the value of keeping a promise. Of course, I was not capable of making promises after thorough evaluation at the age of 4, but my parents influenced me into making promises about things that they wanted me to do. And I kept each one of my promises.

When my parents took me out to buy clothes, the clothing store-keepers unhesitatingly brought shirts and short-pants for me from various shelves in their store. It seemed instinctive for them to bring me those clothes. Never once did they bring me anything meant for girls. My parents browsed through the inventory that the store-keeper presented to us and picked shirts and trousers that suited me well. Never once did my parents seem to ask the store-keeper for clothes meant for girls.

It seemed strange that I was the only one who thought that I should be wearing clothes meant for girls. The entire world around me seemed to be on the other side. I felt lonely. I felt like I was the only one who thought this way. I did not know what to say at that point. I did not feel confident enough to say that I wanted clothes for girls, especially not when we were standing in the store in front of strangers. What if the store-keepers and other customers and my parents were all correct, and I was wrong? After all, it seemed that all adults in the world around me were right in everything they did every day of their lives. Only children seemed to be making mistakes, because only children were being punished from my perspective of the world around me. I stood there reluctant and hesitant to say exactly what I wanted, unhappy that I was not getting what I wanted, and shy about saying anything embarrassing, while my parents paid cash for the clothes they had bought for me.

Once we got back home from the clothing stores, my parents, especially my dad, had a habit of proclaiming that the items we had bought were of good quality and that the price we paid was justified. Although this was his psychological defense mechanism to avoid buyer's remorse because he was ashamed of returning items to stores, I assumed as a little child that he had bought the most precious items for me that money could buy. The concept of returning items did not exist in my mind.

In addition, with the knowledge of how little money we had left with us after each purchase and after spending on building the house for my dad's parents, I was reluctant to tell my parents that what they just bought for me was not what I wanted. I recognized the sacrifice they had just made for me because now they had lesser money remaining for everything else we needed. I could not break their heart.

And so began my vicious cycle of not communicating my distress about my gender to my parents. I had to live with whatever clothes they had bought for me, even if those clothes were meant for boys. The more distress I hid from them, the more I had to hide from them. For if I had told them the second time when they bought me clothes that I wanted clothes meant for girls, they would have asked me why I did not tell them so the first time they bought me clothes. Besides, I assumed that it was perhaps wrong to ask for clothes meant for girls because I seemed to be the only on in my world who seemed to think that I was actually a girl.

Although I have discussed so much about clothes in this blog post so far, clothes are not the sole focus of my gender issue. However, clothes mark the starting point of my gender repression. The more I hid from my parents about my distress with they clothes they were buying for me, the more I had to hide from them my distress about my gender. I felt the social pressure to be consistent in everything I presented about myself to the world around me, perhaps because my parents had taught me to keep my (coerced) promises. This need to be consistent began to get me stuck.

I was stuck, both with being involuntarily forced into a gender that felt foreign to me and with the vicious cycle of incrementally pretending that I was okay with that gender so that I could be socially consistent.

Soon, I was in kindergarten. People began to know me as a person, even if only as the son (not daughter) of Mr and Mrs ___. People began to associate words such as boy, young man, he, his, him, etc when they referred to me. Very soon, I was in too deep into this incorrect gender. I felt overwhelmed by the need to correct everyone. It was becoming too late to get out of the gender trap.

Adults place little children into gender traps. The gender trap consists of the assigned gender and the trappings (no pun intended) of the assigned gender. Once a little child is viewed by adults in his/her surroundings through the prism of the assigned gender, the child often finds it too overwhelming to discover, accept and express his/her own unique gender identity. I found myself in this trap, not knowing how to articulate this feeling and not knowing how to get out of it.

Hence I began to live in distress with myself since age 3-4. I also began to recognize that I would grow up to be someone who looked like my dad. The evidence of this prospect of growing up to be like my dad came from all the strangers and acquaintances who often noted that my features resembled those of my dad. I disliked such comparisons and projections into the future about my appearance. I did not want to grow up to look like my dad. My mind said that looking like him would be wrong for my body.

My dad's features were not the right features for me. I felt that I was not supposed to have those features. I was not supposed to have hair on my arms and on my chest like he did (I shaved the body hair that grew on me until the body hair become unruly around age 12-13). I felt that I was not supposed to grow facial hair and shave with a razor (I only used an electric razor when I started shaving a decade later). I felt that I was not supposed to be dark skinned the way my dad was (my mom used this to fool me into drinking milk by telling me that I would become fairer if I would drink white milk). Although I had begun to accept the fact that it was inevitable, I wanted to do everything that I could do to avoid looking like my dad.

Before I finish, I must note that I do not dislike my dad. I love my dad. He has a good heart and a sharp mind. He cares about me more than he cares for himself. Of course, he has lots of failings too, but I will ignore them here as they are not serious enough to dislike him. I did not want to be like him because he is male and because I did not see myself as male. I did not want to develop the same masculine features and behavioral traits as he has. My issue with looking like my dad is not about him, it is about the gender incongruence that I felt inside me.

Terminology

While terminology and labels and categories do not define who I am, they help improve clarity of communication.

Before we go further, we must define terminology. Terminology helps us create operational definitions. Definitions help reduce ambiguity. So, without further delay, let us begin -

Gender refers to the roles, behavior, activities and attributes that a particular society considers appropriate for men and women.

Both nature and nurture, to varying degrees, contribute to one's gender.

I distinguish between sex and gender. Sex, to me, implies a biological reproductive role as the producer of the sperm, egg, both, neither, or none of the above. Sex is also the term used for the sexual act, either for pleasure or for reproduction. The sex (biological reproductive role) of a person matters during the act of reproductive sex.

In contrast with sex, the gender of a person is evident and expressed at all times (except in some cases when one's core gender is repressed). Gender of a person exists even when the person is not engaged in the sexual act. In fact, in human society, gender forms a very important aspect of life, with social roles, legal matters, interpersonal privileges, etc.

Gender identity is the gender(s), or lack thereof, a person self-identifies as.

The core gender identity of a person, in my view, is predominantly innate. It cannot be changed after birth. However, the person's gender expression could be influenced by nurture, experiences, limitations, and inclinations.

The gender identity of each individual is supposedly formed prior to birth. At the start of pregnancy, all fetuses have a female brain (not exactly, but close enough for the purpose of this discussion). If the fetus has XY chromosomes, the brain gradually changes its structure from a female brain to a male brain, in most cases. These innate structures in the brain appear to determine an individual's gender identity after birth.

Transgender is a non-medical term used to refer to a person whose gender identity does not conform unambiguously to the gender they were assigned, usually based on their genitals at birth.

A transgender individual is not necessarily homosexual. Most transgender individuals are heterosexual from the perspective of their genetic gender. A transgender individual can be sexually attracted to any gender or to none, the same way as the rest of the human population can.

A transgender person who is genetically female and who identifies as male is often referred to as an female-to-male or FTM transgender person, or as a transman. Likewise, a transgender person who is genetically male and who identifies as female is often referred to as an MTF transgender person, or as a transwoman.

When you refer to a transgender person, it is considered civil to use the pronouns and gender-specific words based on the person's self-identified gender. If in doubt, ask, because a person's self-identified gender may not be easily guessed.

Gender dysphoria is a medial term to explain discontent that transgender individuals feel with the gender assigned to them based on the type of genitals they were born with.

Gender dysphoria is the term applied to the gender-related discontent among individuals with unambiguous genital and chromosome structures. These individuals are healthy, mentally and physically.

Gender dysphoria does not imply infertility or impotence. It is not a mental disorder (although individuals with gender dysphoria may develop other mental disorders due to abuse from society). Gender dysphoria is a natural human condition.

Gender dysphoria is not the term for intersex individuals (ie. people with chromosomal variations XXY, XYY, etc, or genital ambiguity, or androgen insensitivity syndrome). While intersex individuals do not have any choice with their situation, gender dysphoric individuals have a choice between difficult options - live in distress in their assigned gender, or undergo gender transition to live in their self-identified gender, or some combination of both.

While gender dysphoria is often blamed for the distress a transgender individual feels, societal non-acceptance appears to form a significant part of the distress that the transgender individual deals with. If society were more accepting of gender non-conformance and gender variance, individuals with gender dysphoria could more easily live in their self-identified gender and thereby reduce, if not eliminate, their gender distress.

Gender dysphoric individuals are estimated to have the highest suicide rate - about 31% (compared to about 0.003% for the rest of the population) - primarily due to the effects of social ostracism.

Gender Identity Disorder is the professional diagnosis that psychologists and psychiatrists use to describe the condition of individuals who experience significant gender dysphoria.

Not all transgender individuals would be diagnosed with GID.

Transsexual is the medical terminology used to refer to individuals with significant GID.

The term transsexual appears in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM obtained the term from Harry Benjamin's 1966 book "The Transsexual Phenomenon".

Harry Benjamin used the term transsexual to define 3 out of his 6 categories of GID. His categorization of transsexuals (non-surgical, moderate intensity, and high intensity) was based on the intensity of their gender dysphoria and the sexual orientation. It was the first such classification which helped understand the concept of gender dysphoria.

The misplaced assumption of a close relationship between intensity of GID and sexual orientation resulted in the terminology - transsexual. Although it is known today that an individual with severe GID can be sexually attracted to men, or women, or both, or neither, the terminology still continues to be used due to medical usage, common misunderstanding about GID, and unchanged social conventions.

Through common usage, the term transsexual has evolved. Different people have defined this term based on their understanding of transsexualism. Due to the medical nature of the original term, I do not give credence to the non-medical definitions available online.

In addition, I do not use the term transsexual to define myself due to the implicit association with sexuality and sexual orientation. Although I see sexual pleasure as a positive, the incorrect association of transsexualism with sexuality appears to trivialize in the minds of common people the gender dysphoria I have felt in my life. The people who associate my gender dysphoria with sexuality tend to incorrectly view me as a willing subject for sexual objectification and sexual exploitation.

The term transgender has evolved into an umbrella term for all kinds of gender variance, while the term transsexual refers to a subset of the transgender group.

Sexual orientation is a pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, both genders, neither gender, or another gender.

A transsexual person may have any sexual orientation (same is true for all transgender and all cisgender people). It is inappropriate to assume the sexual orientation of any person. It is especially inappropriate to assume the sexual orientation of a transsexual person, merely based on their decision to undergo gender transition.

Transsexual individuals undergo gender transition to reduce the distress they feel with their own bodies, not due to their sexual orientation (although in some transsexual individuals gender distress and sexual orientation may coincidentally be addressed through the same gender transition process).

Cisgender is a term used to refer to individuals who are comfortable with living in the gender that they were assigned at birth.

The term cisgender is used to contrast with transgender, just as heterosexual is used to contrast with homosexual. The term heterosexual appears to have helped the gay rights movement by creating a better way to distinguish between homosexuals and the rest of the population. It seemed to reduce the misconception that homosexuals were somehow unnatural or abnormal. The use of the word heterosexual helped by depicting homosexuality as just one type of sexuality, heterosexuality being another type. It remains to be seen how much the word cisgender helps with the transgender rights movement.

Passing, in the context of gender identity, refers to a person's ability to be accepted or regarded as a member of the sex or gender with which they identify, or with which they physically present.

Passing is a very important aspect of the lives of transgender individuals, even more important than Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS), because passing as a member of their self-identified gender not only helps ease their gender distress, but also helps them live a fulfilling life without social scorn and violence.

However, passing is a process that involves not only the transgender individual, but also the observer.

Each one of us human beings have this sub-conscious mental reflex of determining the gender of everyone we see. Every day of our lives, when we see another human being, within a split second we conclude that somebody is male or female, without checking their chromosomes, genitals, gender identity, birth certificate, passport, etc. How do we do it? We reach the conclusion about a person's gender via a quick observation of his/her most prominent secondary sex characteristics (eg. visible hair patterns on the face and scalp, skin texture, bone structures, height, body fat distribution, voice pitch, voice resonance, etc) and their presentation (name, mannerisms, language constructs, expressions, clothing, etc).

The best a transgender individual can do to pass is to adopt as many secondary sex characteristics and presentation styles as possible that are traditionally associated with members of their self-identified gender. Correction of primary sex characteristics (eg. genitals) through SRS often becomes less urgent to a transgender individual when he/she cannot pass well in their self-identified gender.

Sex reassignment surgery is a term used for the set of surgical procedures by which the physical appearance and function of a person's existing primary sexual characteristics are altered to resemble that of the other sex.

Current medical technology cannot create functioning reproductive organs of the opposite genetic sex. Hence, sterility is a necessary consequence of SRS. However, cryogenic preservation of sperms or eggs can be done prior to starting along the path to SRS, if the individual intends to have genetic offspring in the future with a partner of the opposite genetic sex.

SRS is also known as Genital Reconstruction Surgery. Contrary to popular belief, SRS/GRS does not involve chopping away anything. The SRS/GRS procedures involve transforming the existing tissue of the existing primary sex organ into the desired sex organ in both shape and functionality. Note that sex organs are not the same as reproductive organs, although the two are linked.

A transsexual person may or may not choose to undergo SRS/GRS, for varying reasons - money, fear of surgery, age, health concerns, sexual function, spouse's preferences, lack of necessity, etc. One cannot be classified as transsexual or non-transsexual merely based on their status with or desire for SRS/GRS.

Gender transition is the process of social and/or medical transition from one gender to another.

Medically-assisted gender transition may involve hormone therapy, surgeries (eg. mastectomy among FTM, facial feminization surgery among MTF, SRS/GRS, etc), and cosmetic treatments (eg. for hair growth or hair removal).

The social transition involves living as a member of the self-identified gender, usually accompanied with a name-change and/or gender-change on official documents.

SRS/GRS is not necessarily the desired end-point of gender transition for all transsexuals because each individual is different. Gender transition implies doing as much as would be necessary to minimize or eliminate the gender dysphoria of the concerned individual.

It is discriminatory to use SRS/GRS as a checkpoint before granting name-change or gender-change requests of transsexual individuals, who are usually already struggling with their own bodies and with social ostracism.

Cross-dressing implies wearing clothing and accessories commonly associated with the "other" gender in the specific culture.

Genetic women often cross-dress, when they wear anything that resembles mens-wear. In Scotland, men wear skirts called kilts. Cross-dressing is a harmless activity. In some cases, people cross-dress as a fetish for sexual arousal. Not all cross-dressers are transgender.

Some cross-dressers are transgender. Most cross-dressers who are transgender identify with their birth-assigned gender and they merely indulge in cross-dressing as an outlet or vacation from their regular lives. Most cross-dressers do not feel the persistent need to continue in their cross-dressed role play.

Some transgender cross-dressers are transsexual and wish to live in their self-identified gender role regularly, but they do not go ahead with their gender transition process due to limitations of money, health, marriage, family obligations, societal rules, appearance, religion, etc, or due to fear, or due to lack of information.

At early stages, many transsexuals start off with cross-dressing which is a low-cost easily-reversible temporary gender-change. It helps them judge how good or bad they would feel if they were to live in their desired gender role full-time.

Having covered most of the commonly used terms here, I can now continue my musings in posts ...