Musings from my everyday life...

There has been an explosion in the number of kids and parents seeking counseling for transgender issues recently. As the reality of this condition continues to sink into the public psyche as something real and tangible, people who suffer gender dysphoria are speaking out in larger numbers. This is hardly surprising because in the past going to your parents would have meant being taken to a priest or counselor and told you were mentally ill.

Those of us who grew up during those years have first hand experience.

Now with the diagnostic community and legions of transgender people serving as protectors and advocates for others seeking answers, there is a growing support network that is being established.

While it may appear to the uninitiated that there is an epidemic afoot what we are actually seeing is the reality that always lay beneath the surface but dare not emerge. The people with the most to lose were those in established families with strong religious principles who saw this as a…

When Magnus Hirschfeld was treating his first patients, he started noticing the same thing that Harry Benjamin eventually saw years later; namely that these gender variant people were sometimes blurring a line between what he was then coining as transvestism and the later identified transsexualism.

Today we understand gender dysphoria to be a kind of continuum and don’t make the clear cut distinctions because we can’t. Part of the reason the hard line existed was because advocates like Virginia Prince who insisted that crossdressing was a heterosexual practice of men who had no intention of transitioning. Ironically, she pursued full time living later in life as did some other members of her entourage. Prince also liked to think that all crossdressers were heterosexual but clearly some were homosexual, bisexual or asexual and some were clearly transsexual.

Over the last third of the twentieth century, we began to develop a better understanding of how gender identity and sexual orient…

As I write this entry I am sitting having a coffee dressed like a woman. It is a Sunday morning and at 8 AM I will be attending mass as Joanna and having a coffee with my friend Janet who does not even have Internet or own a computer.

It is an odd feeling to think that it's father's day today and that I am able to live in this odd way. It is a lifestyle that I never envisioned needing to adopt. But here I am.

My seventeen year old daughter is off with a group of friends camping and my son won't be up for many hours. At fifteen years of age he can sleep far more than I and is showing no signs of being the early bird I have always been.

They are both at an age where their attention focuses inward as they try to establish an identity for themselves in this very strange world of ours. I won't be offended if they forget to text or call as they will begin to come out of their teen angst in a few short years.

So I say happy father's day to all those transitioned and not w…

I was reading through Jack Molay’s blog yesterday and came upon this entry on his entry titled “The Autogynephilia Theory Again...” which was published in July of 2014:

“The trans activist and philosopher Julia Serano refers to a subconscious sex which has been repressed throughout a misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic upbringing. Dr. Jaimie Veale argues that many crossdreamers start out as introvert people pleasers, who are willing to do anything to gain the respect and love of family, friends and peers -- to the point of completely obliterating their gender variance. This is a reaction similar to the total denial found among some gays and lesbians. The sex drive is strong, though, and it pushes its way through into dreams and fantasies.

The difference between crossdreamers and non-crossdreaming transgender, or between "late onset" and "early onset" transsexuals, is therefore not primarily about sexual orientation, but about personality traits and temperament.

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