How do you convince someone that being transgender isn't a choice

[KymmieL]

Looking at @Heather Shay latest LGBTQ+ blessing or a curse thread.  Got me thinking ( yeah, I know its bad for me) I think that my wife believes I have a choice being transgender. I remember her telling me once to work a program. She is in AA. Unlike alcoholism which can be a debilitating condition (for lack of a better word.) and be deadly not to quit. Transgenderism can be just the opposite. Can be deadly to quit.  

 

So, how do you convince someone that being transgender isn't a choice? If one can? LOL

 

Kymmie

 

these are my opinions and views.

[Ashley0616]

Without depression can get to the point where suicidal thoughts and possible attempts come into play. We would be forced to be something we aren't. We simply wouldn't be heard and it is beneficial to wear the clothes we want to wear and be on HRT. There are many issues that we would face without it all. Just being forced to be something your not should be good enough excuse. It's not like you think your a dog or something. 

[LittleSam]

I suppose I would put it as, we can't choose our feelings or thoughts. We can chose to transition, but if we don't transition because of fear of others  or upsetting others , this can have damaging consequences, as Ashley0616 said. For me personally, I have been on an emotional rollercoaster and still on it. I clearly had alot of repressed feelings and it crept into my relationship with my wife. There's no way I would choose to be trans, because the thought of her leaving me is dreadful. I am trans, I've come to that realisation and I do have a choice to transition and go on hormone therapy. However If I don't pursue my goals, our relationship would go back to being more friendship again and I would be having moodswings and feeling low with sensory issues around intimacy. Since I've come out as non binary and worn masc clothing, I can be intimate in our relationship and it has benefitted us both. However she is freaked out about her lesbian identity and how she is going to move forward if I look more masc. I have to remind her that being isn't a choice, and she does get it now, and she really does love me, and really wants it to work.

[VickySGV]

Being an Alcoholic myself, and an adherent of AA principals, she has got a few things going against her doubts right from the  Big Book, "No person likes to admit they are different from any other (in regard to not being able to use alcohol)".  She is different from others herself and has to admit it or she will be in TROUBLE if she goes back to thinking she can be drinking like other folks.  You are different from other people and you must accept that difference as greatly as she does just to stay alive and healthy.  (I have been an AA meeting speaker on just that single issue more than once.) 

 

Another point that she is having to face is being "Rigorously Honest" about her own character and feelings about life, and having to be conscious about them on a daily basis.  You are also being honest about what you are going through as well and facing your feelings toward life and who you are. 

 

Is she going to the meetings just to STAY DRY and possibly out of jail or the morgue, or is she going to the meetings to RECOVER and find the much better life and person that she will be by recognizing what lead to her addiction to alcohol and wanting follow proven steps to change her whole life for her and others she knows and loves.  The steps you take as Trans also lead to your being a better and more caring person.

 

To an outsider who has not been touched by either GD or Alcoholism it may seem that both are defects in character, but one interesting development from back in the 1960's during the Hippy Era was one by the San Francisco Free (Health) Clinic which studied, and showed distinct differences in a segment of the brain between Addicts and non-addicts using the then EEG technology of the day.  I went to a "Recovery Day Camp" for two weeks when I started a medically supervised Alcohol recovery program at my HMO where they showed us this type of thing.  My counselor there pointed out that it was as much or more a physical difference than anything to do with morality.  Fast forward, in the last decade, MRI technology has discovered that Trans people's brains are also different from Cis peoples with ours being close to the patterns of Cis people of our perceived gender. 

 

To put it simply, you two have more similarities in what is going on in your lives than might be thought, and is certainly NOT something by which either of you can claim a superiority of personal character.  If she is basing her comments on being "the more normal one" of you then she needs to be more aware of herself and less judgmental of you.  You are both working PROGRAMS that are different, but both have the vision of being wonderful functioning people who are delightfully different from "other people". 

 

[KatieSC]

Kymmie,

 

I would point out to your wife that there have been millions of us who transgender since the beginning of world. There is nothing voluntary about it. While some of us can manage the dissonance we feel between what our soul is telling us and how we appear, it is all a matter of degrees. 

 

A fair number of Christian folks will frequently talk about the soul at funerals, and often talk about the spirit living on after the body, or shell as some call it, is put into the ground. A soul makes us who we are. Why is it so hard to believe that a female soul wound up in an otherwise male body. 

 

Another issue is that we know that there are all sorts of influences from hormones during a pregnancy. There has been the theory of DES exposure contributing to being transgender. In addition, exposure to higher levels of estrogen have been theorized to play a role during fetal development. Then there are cases of androgen insensitivity, as well as aromatase disorders. 

 

There are a lot of ways we wind up being transgender. Given the large number of us exist, with many similar stories, I find that it unconscionable to believe that this is voluntary. The common misconception is that we are tired of living as one gender or the other, and we want to just switch. How awfully wrong all of that is. It is not easy being transgender. Remind your wife that for a significant number of transgender folks who cannot find a way to cope, they will attempt to kill themselves. The statistics do not lie. 

[KymmieL]

@VickySGV I am grateful that my wife got sober over 38 yrs ago. So, She is an old timer. She attends an as bill sees it meeting every Monday.  And is the GSR for that group. I thank you for providing me with some information.

 

Kymmie

 

[VickySGV]

8 minutes ago, KymmieL said:

 I thank you for providing me with some information.

 

 

I would have close to what your wife has in time, except for my HP telling me it was time to Transition and become my best self, and then me reacting  like a full blown Alcoholic and telling my HP to go to %$%$.  So there was a three year split between 13 years and my current 15+ years, I know what the power of Al C. O'hol is the rough way.  You can let your spouse know that I am glad for her and both of you.  But that illustrates the power of GD as well.  (Under the rose bush, I think my HP actually has had a good laugh about it now that I am back. )