—ARNO KARLEN1
Although distinctions between transvestite and transsexual have been recognized only very recently, the theme of complete gender change always has been popular in Western culture. Its place as a fundamental archetype of human behavior is suggested by the classical Greek myth of the Theban seer Tiresius, who was transformed into a woman for seven years. Sometime after his masculinity was restored, Zeus and Hera quarreled over which gender has a more profound enjoyment of sex and consulted Tiresius, who testified that women experience “nine or 10 times more pleasure.”2
Perhaps the most infamous case of sex change in Western antiquity was the Emperor Nero, who, remorseful for having killed his pregnant wife, ordered the castration of a young man who resembled the deceased, dressed the eunuch in women’s clothes, and formally married his unusual bride with splendid ceremony. Similar historical antecedents are numerous. They are also ambiguous and cannot be clearly differentiated from accounts of voluntary or self-inflicted castration.
The term drag, meanwhile, finds its ominous origin in antiquity:
The ancient Greeks … used castration only to punish rapists, and the offender was called a spao, meaning “to draw out” or “drag,” a description of how the testes were removed from the scrotum. Despised in Greek society and denied employment, such men are said to have masqueraded as women—the origin of the slang expression “drag” for a man in woman’s attire.
—CHARLES PANATI3
Several ancient civilizations made a practice of creating, and cross-dressing eunuchs for social, sexual and ritual purposes. An indeterminate percentage of these eunuchs were probably the early equivalents of transsexuals. Procedures to develop opposite-sex secondary sexual characteristics, meanwhile, were unavailable until the 19th Century. One of the first postoperative transsexuals in the modern sense was Herman Karl, who began life as Sophia Hedwig. Her 1882 hormonal treatments gave her a beard, while surgery provided a crude penis.
Transsexuals were once dismissed as homosexuals (male or female) who simply had gone mad. Only in 1949 did Dr. David O. Cauldwell first define it as a syndrome (psychopathia transsexualis) distinct from homosexuality. Contemporaneously, cosmetic surgeons and endocrinologists in Denmark under the direction of Dr. Christian Hamburger began to develop sex-change techniques. Their work received huge publicity in 1952, when George Jorgensen left Long Island, New York, for Denmark and returned to the United States as Christine Jorgensen. The first full-length study of transsexuals was The Transsexual Phenomenon, published in 1966 by Dr. Harry Benjamin, an endocrinologist who began to study the subject after meeting Ms. Jorgensen.
Most known transsexuals are of the male-to-female variety, although a number of support groups, counselors, and surgeons specialize in female-to-male support. Transsexuals confront a truly mind-boggling array of social and medical challenges. After the TS has identified the nature of his problems and begins to seek recourse, he faces an arduous screening and counseling process followed by the expense, risk, and discomfort of several surgeries. Female-to-male surgical procedures are particularly daunting. The transsexual’s willingness to make enormous emotional, physical, and financial sacrifices to achieve this goal is a telling measure of the urgency of his plight.
Only a small percentage of transsexuals undergpes surgery. Some compromise: They get hormonal treatments and cross-dress. Also, a small number of postop patients ultimately regret their decisions.
[The surgery is] scary because there’s quite a bit to lose, and the operation is not reversible. I’ve heard that a lot of postoperative transsexuals don’t get everything that they wanted out of their operation. It’s no quick fix: Life still has many problems. [So] you risk having a different body with the same problems.
—CHRISTINA
The life changes involved in altering one’s identity from one sex to the other extend from lengthy bureaucratic processes to emotional disclosures to family, friends, and employers. Extensive counseling, including the real-life test, are required before doctors will recommend surgery. Medically, a male-to-female transsexual typically undergoes extensive cosmetic surgery to redefine the jaw and other facial features, as well as paring down of the Adam’s apple; electrolysis to remove hair on body and face; hormonal injections to stimulate growth of breasts and to promote a softer, rounder body; breast implants; and castration, followed by construction of a canal similar to a vagina. Once surgery is complete, many male-to-female transsexuals find that they have retained orgasmic capacity.
A female-to-male transsexual typically undergoes cosmetic surgeries, hormonal treatments, breast reduction or removal, hysterectomy, the closing off of the vagina, and diversion of the urethra. Modern technology has not yet engineered a satisfactory artificial penis.
If you have the female-to-male surgery and get a constructed penis, they take out all the internals, the uterus and ovaries, and they close up the vagina, and they reroute the urethra, which can cause problems later. There’s a lot of reconstruction. The male-to-female stuff is peanuts by comparison. Female-to-male is also more expensive than the male-to-female. I was quoted a cost [of] around $60,000. There are other things I can think of to buy with $60,000 than a dick that doesn’t work.
—KELLY T.
One option in place of a penis is an open-ended tube formed from skin grafts and fitted with a miniature hydraulic pump to simulate erection. Orgasmic capacity is unlikely. Transsexuals of both genders are sterile after surgery.
A TS views his sexuality according to the gender he believes he possesses rather than the body he has. There seem to be roughly as many straight as gay transsexuals, although until surgery is complete, transsexuals themselves may feel confused as to their orientation. A preop male-to-female transsexual may perceive himself as a straight woman and form relationships with straight men, feeling that these relationships are heterosexual, even though an outsider would see them as two men together. Or a preop female-to-male transsexual (such as Kelly T., quoted above) may perceive herself as a man and form a homosexual relationship, even though, biologically, Kelly would seem to be a woman dating a man.
The transsexual can be either heterosexual or homosexual, where such definitions are based on gender identity, not genital anatomy. Some transsexuals may be asexual before genital surgery because of the dichotomy between their perceived gender and their anatomy. There are few reports of bisexual transsexuals.
—ROGER E. PEO
Because transsexualism causes significant bewilderment among transsexuals and their partners, many people wait until they have completed surgery before forming permanent relationships. Once the transformation is complete, transsexuals often choose to blend quickly into the mainstream and generally lead very private, conventional lives with their partners of choice.
WHY ARE THEY LIKE THIS?
Despite the social pressure for women and men to conform to allegedly natural models of behavior, the models for masculinity and femininity have always been moving targets. The ideal woman in the 1950s was an ever-cheerful, whimsical, doting helpmate and mother; the 1990s ideal is an ambitious careerist who looks like a model and cooks like a chef—and who does not necessarily have a husband. Similarly, the former image of the model man as the sole wage earner, an invulnerable, infallible, nearly emotionless king of his castle has surrendered to economic realities and unavoidable truths, such as his needs for tenderness and understanding. Do femininity and masculinity really conform to rigid models, or is there more to gender than meets the eye?
The stuff between our legs is a biological condition that has some bearing on, but doesn’t completely define, who we are. One’s sex is in the crotch, but gender identity takes place in the mind. I think we’re human beings first, with both masculine and feminine energies and tendencies.
—M. CYBELE
Transgenderists, and especially transvestites, seem to possess aspects of both genders. Many do not meet the standard definitions of male or female but instead have the capability to
affiliate strongly with both genders.
I find that women’s clothing is designed to be alluring and to accentuate those parts of myself that are sexy and attractive. Cross-dressing to me is actually a bit more than sensual pleasure in the clothes themselves. I have a lot of androgynous qualities. My sexuality is not divisible into male and female. When I cross-dress, feminine aspects of myself emerge into the spotlight. It’s almost, but not entirely, a different identity.
—ROBIN YOUNG
There are, more or less, two clinical theories on transgenderism: Either it is created, or it is inborn. These same two schools contest the roles of nature and nurture in other matters of psychology, biology, and human destiny. Perhaps the answer eventually will be found through holistic investigation, which considers factors both environmental and biological.
Many researchers hold that gender is learned in early childhood. It may derive from traumatic experience or may result from the circumstances of one’s relationship with a parent. In the case of transsexuals, for example, Dr. Robert Stoller has suggested that in childhood they develop an irregularly close, perhaps inseparable, identification with the opposite-sex parent. But there are significant flaws in the theory that gender identity (or any sexual orientation) is solely a matter of nurture.
I … had the opportunity to check on other therapists’ results, and the general impression, based on statistics and accumulated experience, is that deconditioning does not work, whatever the specific technique. If variant sexual behaviors cannot be removed by deconditioning, they are unlikely to have arisen by conditioning.
—VACLAV PINKAVA4
Others advance the theory that a transsexual’s gender bias is determined in utero when a kind of “chemical accident” occurs. Similar theories concern the presence or absence of chromosomes. Genetic research has opened new areas of inquiry to support speculation that there is a physiological basis for at least some aspects of transsexualism. But these theories tend to see human behavior as the unique result of a mechanical-biological process. To reduce human beings—or any complex organisms—to their chemical properties seems oversimplistic.
While transvestism has given rise to vast quantities of research and theorizing, scientists have not established its origins, either. The impulse to cross-dress usually begins in youth and becomes a permanent feature of a TV’s erotic personality.
Often [the transvestite’s] need surfaces at an early age. However, he quickly learns that his feelings are socially unacceptable, so he hides this behavior from most people.
—ROGER E. PEO
A majority of TVs recall experimenting with their opposite-sex parents’ clothing sometime during early puberty; some also recall episodes in childhood.
My first memories of cross-dressing were when I was [about] two [years old]. I wandered into a closet and was looking up into some of my mother’s petticoats, which were in vogue in the ’50s. I was quite entranced. I remember it very vividly. I had some other memories when I was six or seven. I used to sing a little ditty to myself over and over and over again as I was lying in bed waiting to go to sleep: “All dressed up in a petticoat. ”
—CHERYL HAGGERTY
Why a child is disposed toward transvestism remains a mystery. The absence of a medical explanation for transvestism may add additional pressures to the cross-dresser.
There seems to be more social acceptance of transsexuals than cross-dressers. In part, I think this is because there is a medical intervention that lends an air of credibility to [transsexualism]. Also, the average transsexual, when “complete,” blends into society in the chosen gender role.
—ROGER E. PEO
WHAT DO THEY DO?
Although transsexualism is extremely complex, the typical reason why a TS wishes to live as a member of the opposite sex is fairly simple: The TS does not feel comfortable in the body of his or her birth. For the TS, gender exploration is not a question of choice but an imperative. The TS is a bit like the fairy-tale prince trapped in a frog’s body, waiting for the magical moment of physical transformation. The internal reality already exists. The cliché “a man trapped inside a woman’s body” remains the single most direct description of this phenomenon. The TS tries to live as authentically as possible in accordance with his or her gender identity. A TS’s erotic life most often resembles that of the sexually conventional person, with the caveat that the TS may not yet have the biological equipment to match her or his psychic reality.
Kelly has charge of my sexuality completely. I’m not interested in sex as a female in any way now.
—KELLY T.
Some transsexuals gravitate to the D&S communities, where they may pursue any combination of the interests discussed throughout this book. Although a significant percentage of TVs is interested in some type of alternative sexuality, few practice it. But because acceptance for transgenderists is much higher among D&Sers than among the sexually conventional, some vanilla TVs and TS’s have found a home in the D&S communities.
I don’t have any involvement in D&S outside of being dressed. [But] I like to get together with other folks who are on the more fetishistic fringe of things, including D&S. I also like to get together with other TVs who are interested in outlandishly ultra-exotic feminine activity.
—CHERYL HAGGERTY
Since TVs usually comprise both masculine and feminine personae, cross-dressing fulfills a profound personal need to explore the “other” side of the TV’s personality.
The TVs that I know [who] aren’t involved in S&M cross-dress because they like the clothing. They like the dresses. It feels like they’re putting on a whole different persona.
—TRUDI
Cross-dressers often pursue a flawless verisimilitude, for which perfecting the dress, makeup, speech, and gestures of the opposite sex is critical. For male-to-female TVs the clothing and attitudes are typically as relaxing as they are erotic. Some male-to-female TVs’ greatest pleasure is to be treated as the sister, girlfriend, or lover of a beautiful woman who will take them shopping, dress in similar outfits, and indulge in playful experiments with makeup, wigs, and other feminine accessories.
I call these men “she,” dress them as girls or women; teach them how to walk, stand, sit, and gesture. I correct their mannerisms, and may treat them in a strict but affectionate manner, like a combination of big sister and drama coach.
—M. CYBELE
TVs frequently re-create through dress the type of opposite-sex person they find most attractive, embodying the characteristics they associate with the opposite sex.
There’s a certain satisfaction to being able to create [an] illusion. Not that I would ever really be able to pass in public, but I do a pretty good job. There’s a satisfaction in [what] I guess you could call a job well done.
—DEIRDRE
Becoming an opposite-sex person—whether for an hour, a day, or a week—means permitting oneself to express otherwise contained aspects of one’s personality.
Cross-dressers want to pamper themselves, take a bubble bath and not be called sissy, or to put makeup on [and] look soft and feminine. It allows them to be the passive person. [In] my age group, men are supposed to be the strong ones and not allowed this side of themselves. When they’re dressed as females, they can be submissive and soft and teasing.
—GYPSY
Even while cross-dressed, heterosexual TVs usually prefer heterosexual encounters. Many male-to-female TVs, for example, will roleplay as lesbians with female partners. Some, however, have the potential for a bisexual experience when dressed. Several of our interviewees described themselves as “trisexual,” to denote their ability to pretend that they are heterosexual women engaged in sexual acts with heterosexual men. (A full discussion of the types of D&S erotic activities that TVs enjoy is presented in the next chapter.)
INTERVIEWS
DR. ROGER E. PEO
To understand transgendered persons (transvestites, cross-dressers, and transsexuals), it is necessary to define some
terms:
Gender Identity: a person’s internal sense of being a man or a woman.
Gender Role: a person’s behaviors that define him or her to society as a man or woman.
Sex: the physical state of being male or female. There are many different aspects, e.g., genital, chromosomal, hormonal, and reproductive. Not all of these match in everybody.
Sexual-Partner Choice: this is a person’s choice of the same or other sex for personal interactions.
It is critical to understand that it is possible to find any combination of the four categories listed above. With these simplified definitions, it is possible to describe various forms of transgender behavior. I am excluding all persons who have a measurable or identifiable biological problem, such as hermaphrodites and those who suffer from chromosomal or hormonal abnormalities.
Transvestism is primarily found in males. Clinically, a transvestite is a man who likes to wear clothing socially reserved for women. It has been estimated that 0.1 percent to 1 percent of the male population has this behavior to some degree, but there are no observable physical or hormonal irregularities that could account for this behavior. The average male cross-dresser is heterosexual and presents a masculine gender role except when he is cross-dressed. His gender identity is mostly to exclusively masculine; however, when cross-dressed, he may say he “feels female.” In the beginning cross-dressing often has a strongly erotic component. Later the erotic feelings may diminish and cross-dressing becomes a way to temporarily escape from the masculine role. The thought is, If I am dressed as a woman, then I no longer have my masculine responsibilities.
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