December 05, 2009

The essay 'I am a transsexual'

As I read through the paper from Harry Benjamin I find different essays buried inside. I will pull them out and put them here. One of the interesting ideas I find is that so very little has changed, and that this information is out there is recorded and yet we still struggle against society and the medical community. Our plight is improving and maybe in another 100 yrs our will not suffer the way we have. I can only hope. Any way here is an essay title 'I am a transsexual' author unknown.


Each day I live a lie. Mine is a life of deceit, for I am forced to wear a mask, to be an actor on a stage not of my own choice. I cannot do . . . cannot act as I would like or as I feel.
Yet, I am not evil. I am not criminal.
I desire, in fact, to be good in the highest sense. I long to give, to help, to protect, to learn, to create, perhaps above all, to love. . . and to be loved.
I look about me and see all that I cannot be and cannot do. My heart cries with a pain like no other, for my deepest desires - to me, my most natural wishes - cannot be fulfilled. I am forced to be and act that which I am not.
I see other women. I see them with children and am reminded that I cannot bear children, cannot give them life. Children are to have and hold, to cherish and caress, to nourish and nurture. Without them, I shall always be incomplete. To be a mother, nurse, or teacher, to be close with children - all this is denied me.
Oh, to be and to live as other women do! To do the things they do, to go to the places they go - these are vital to me. I wish to dress as they do - to wear the clothes, the jewelry, the cosmetics, all the things they wear - these are symbols of their femininity, their womanhood, their very essence.
Would that I were as other women are! Yet I am not a woman either in body or in the life they lead. I am a woman in my soul, in my fantasy. In the deep recesses of my being, I am like them. Inside me, I am one of them. How can I be more in their likeness?
That is what I want, yearn for, seek more than anything. Now I live only incompletely. I am in a prison - the prison of my body, the prison of a society which does not understand.
Until I can become more like other women - if I ever can - I must live a lie, day after day. Physically I am a man; mentally and emotionally I am a woman.
I am a transsexual.


thanks again for reading.

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