| Interviews with pre-operative, male-to-female transsexuals during their gender transition revealed a number of truths about their lives, their lived experience, the formation of gender identity, their profound similarities to nontranssexual wymyn, and just how negatively biased against their lived experience are physicians, psychologists, anthropologists, sexologists, sociologists, and subsequently the general public. This study breaks ranks with the existing negative bias against transpeople by assuming that what the participants say about their lives is the truth.;Like every girl, the participants knew they were girls between the ages of three and six.;Despite sometimes violent opposition to their assertions of their self-identification as girls, participants never changed their self-identity and self-knowledge, but changed gender expression, i.e., how they dressed, moved, talked, and behaved, in order to survive childhood.;During their gender transition, they practiced dressing, walking, talking, and behaving "like wymyn." They experienced marginalization, exclusion, objectification, and other oppressive states derived from sexism. Coincidentally, non-transsexual wymyn also practice dressing, walking, talking, and behaving "like wymyn." They also experience marginalization, exclusion, objectification, and other oppressive states derived from sexism.;The medical and psychological treatments that are part of the gender transition process are controlled by medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and sexologists. Also, sociologists and anthropologists study and theorize how gender is formed and expressed, and how transsexual people fit into or are excluded from the mainstream culture. Even though the participants in this study have known their entire lives they were wymyn and even though they consistently report this to the aforementioned professionals and scholars, and in fact must report this to receive access to the medical and psychological treatments and processes from those professionals, they are referred to as men or male in their medical charts, in academic papers, and in scholarly discussions.;At no point did any of the participants report that their motivation to change gender was to "transgress gender," as some anthropologists or gender theorists claim. The author recognizes that she, like other academics and the medical professionals actively colonize the lives of people like the participants in this study for their own purposes. |
