Perceptions and Defaults

[sethgray]

I came across a link the other day to a series of stories about a female-to-male transsexual who liked men. I don't know why, but that whole concept blew my mind. A gay male transsexual. It was one of those things that hadn't quite occurred to me before. Is it because of some lingering threads of my formerly religious brainwashing? I mean, a transsexual is one who is born in the wrong body. So to make things "right" he/she transforms to the other sex's body. It's an effort to put things the way they should be. Do I still retain so much backlogged religion that I parse "the way things should be" as automatically girl-on-boy?

It's a depressing thought, and I'm afraid of what truth it might contain. Religion is a culture, and like all culture it makes up parts of you no matter how much you might want otherwise. I say things like "there is no right, only what we like" all the time, but there are still little secret parts of me that don't quite believe it. Will it always be that way?

I severely hope not. But how does one completely wash the unwanted aspects of a "former" culture away? One can't. Even by immersing oneself in a new culture, there will still be those perceptions and defaults that remain of the former.

Comments

[8rayray8.livejournal.com]

Awww. I think it's different too, but I was raised in the same religion as you were, so I can't say. The best you can do is suppress it.

[jupiterrhode.livejournal.com]

I don't want to "suppress it." I've spent way too much of my life suppressing things instead of dealing with them. I just don't know how to deal with this thing.

I know how to BS. I went to college.

[charisstoma.livejournal.com]

I think one has to ask, 'what is it that this person is feeling will be helped by changing sex'. Their identity as a male, is it limited to the physical body attributes or is it the effects of the hormones that will alter their emotions or is it both. The reasons for wanting to change genders seems separate from gender sexual response, though I'm thinking most would incorporate it with their whole gender identity, but not all.
Then again, I'm not a psychologist (just beat/encouraged one periodically to finish his Master's thesis).

God didn't make us to be cookies from a package. He wants us to be interesting. How we deal with that 'interesting' is up to us. Our comfort zones change as we experience more of life (hopefully) though as you imply, our past exposure to a particular culture or persons can affect where our comfort zone's starting point is.

Re: I know how to BS. I went to college.

[jupiterrhode.livejournal.com]

Once I started thinking about it, I realized there was no reason why it couldn't be true. Just that I had never thought about it before.