Transgender or transsexual?

I was flicking through the TV channels when I caught sight of this pretty little eight-year-old American girl. Her hair was long. She had bangs and she was saying, “I will be the person I want to be.” She looked really charming but for one problem — she really was a little boy. And what she was essentially saying was, if I feel like a girl and I look like a girl then I will fully become one inside and out. Outside, she can become a little girl by having surgery cut off what defines her as a boy, and inside, well, she is naturally a little girl already so there is little inside work required

There is now one more new word that we must try to understand: transgender. It is the word used to describe these little creatures who do not see themselves as gay or lesbian but who genuinely feel themselves to be members of the opposite sex. Homosexual men and women are people who are attracted to the same gender but who do not feel a need for a transforming operation to be satisfied. They are happy enough with what they have. Transgenders need an operation to become happy with what they are.

I know it’s a bit hard to understand but the most visible example is Chaz Bono, the daughter/son of Sonny and Cher. Chaz relates that when she was a little girl, she felt like a little boy but couldn’t really tell her parents about it. So she talked to the person who bought or chose costumes for her. She always told them, “Please, I want to wear pants.”

Chaz was born a little girl who believed she was a boy.  She then thought she was a lesbian so she had relationships with other women but something in her knew she really wanted to become a boy. Finally, she had an operation that seemed to have successfully turned her into a man. What happened next? Her girlfriend who had stayed with him for maybe a little more than a year after the operation broke off with him.  Why? I think because the girlfriend was a genuine lesbian who loved other women and Chaz, though originally another woman, had turned into a man and that was not at all satisfactory to his girl.

Actually I know several cases of transgenders, men who changed sex or gender through operations and became very happy women afterwards. All of them got married and stayed married until they died. They became very happy women who then married real men. I don’t know if they told the men that they were surgically produced women but the important thing is that they stayed married and kept the ‘til-death-do-us-part promise.

I think with this introduction of new words, we have to acknowledge that the world is changing. Today there are more homosexuals (generally used to refer to gay men) and lesbians. Today more and more of them are out of the closet. Today also there are more transgenders and transsexuals. I think those two words may mean the same thing. These are boys and girls who from birth believe themselves to belong to the opposite sex. Then they grow up saving for the sex-change operation and after they get it, marry their opposite sex and live happily ever after.

Think about it. Transgenders may be the beginning of the end of the world’s population surges. Under these circumstances a transgender girl who turns into a boy may eventually have the right body but he cannot have children. I don’t think science has found a way for this type of sex operation to produce the liquids required for procreation. And neither can the boy who changes into a girl have babies.

But then again everything is a question of time. Maybe in another 50 years the sexual operations will take in organ donations and the boys turned into girls can inherit an accident victim’s uterus and ovaries and conceive children and maybe the girls who turn into boys can inherit somebody’s prostate and make sperm.

Around 25 years ago I used to say that humans were divided incorrectly. We should not be so simply classified as men and women. We had to be divided first into homosexuals and heterosexuals. Under homosexuals you would have gays  and lesbians then H-men and H-women for those who don’t look gay or lesbian but who enjoy gay or lesbian relationships. Under heterosexuals you would have men and women. Nobody bought it but I was proud of myself for thinking it. It proves I am a visionary, I laughingly teased. You might say I am wrong today but the time will come when you have to say I am right. Usually the time span for visionaries is five years. This one is 25 years and still no one has agreed with me.  Maybe one day they will.

Unfortunately I will be dead by then as I don’t foresee that happening too soon. Medical science needs a lot of time to make discoveries of the type I speak of so boys converted into girls and vice versa are able to procreate. But it will happen one day sooner — maybe in 50 years — rather than later — maybe in 100 years.

Until then good luck to the little eight-year-old who said, “I will be the person that I want to be.” That takes courage but I am certain you’ll make it anyway. –Barbara C. Gonzalez (The Philippine Star)