et tu, DES?

Like many of us, I have agonized off and on over the years about why I am this way.  Society's conventional wisdom is that it issinful -- whether they use the theological term or not -- that it is perverted, and that it's something we choose to do.  So pervasive are these beliefs that we ourselves become convinced of them, and keep it all hidden, often from our closest loved ones.  All of which leads to a huge wad of shame, closed up lives, and increasingly dysfunctional relationships. 

 Of course, theories abound about the origin of trans, from the psychological -- dominant mother, nebbishy father, etc. -- to the physical, such hormonal anomalies in the womb.  In recent years, there has been increasing evidence that Diethylstylbesterol (DES), administered prenatally to millions of women over a period of three decades, may play a role.  Approved in 1941 for a variety of gynecological conditions, it's use was expanded in 1947 to women with a prior history of miscarriage.  In the early 1970s, it was linked to a rare form of cancer in women who were exposed prenatally, and was discontinued.  In that time, between the late 40s and early 70s, five to 10 million women are estimated to have been exposed to it, either prenatally or during their pregnancies.

Random Bits and Whistles

If you're somehow convinced that we mtf tg types have come a long way, baby, I offer up one Oscar De La Hoya.  Being caught "prancing around in women's underwear" is the reportorial gift that just keeps on giving.  Here's the latest article, from somebody named Johnny Benz at an adenoidal site called Doghouseboxing.com: "Oscar De La Hoya in new Cross Dressing and Drugs scandal."


Question: which of those two activities -- crossdressing or drugs -- is actually illegal?  And which one is first -- and thus, more prominent -- in the title of Benz's piece? Jesus H. Christ, people, it's 2011 ... who gives a flying f*** what kind of panties he wears?  I hope they're cute ...


As I write this, Silence of the Lambs is playing on MGM HD.  You know, the one about the "transsexual" serial killer named Buffalo Bill, who kills his victims, skins them, and makes "people suits" out of them.  And even though we're told he's not a "true transsexual," it is surely a distinction that is lost on most casual viewers.

Meanwhile, according to Gina Damron of the Detroit Free Press, "The mother of a transgender teen found dismembered in Detroit said she is mourning her child's death and waiting for answers as police continue their investigation."  Her daughter Shelly's body was found burnt and dismembered beside I-94 on October 23rd of this year, but lay anonymously in the morgue until last Thursday.

And do it goes.

Gender Testing for Fun and Profit

I don't remember much about my childhood, a fact that has kept my therapists rapt with interest over the years.  What I do remember are individual incidences of dressing as a girl, from the proverbial trying on of Mama's slips and pantyhose to full-on dressing up, like the time I went trick-or-treating dressed as a little girl for Halloween.  That episode is the earliest I recall -- it had to have been before I was eight, and it may have been as early as four or five.  Questions of nature versus nurture aside, I was exploring my feminine side long before I those annoying black hairs started to grow on my, ah ... legs.

Increasingly over the past few years, I've wondered just where I am on the transgendered spectrum.  I'm not  a "classic," early-onset transsexual: I have not felt from my earliest days as if I were a female trapped in a male's body, I have not hated my penis and longed for a vagina, nor have I experienced a significant amount of discomfort due to my male body. (Other than wishing my very masculine body proportions were just a bit  more a feminine ... oh well, that's what padding is for.)