He? She? It?

Title: He? She? It?

Topic:  Rites of Passage

Relation:

Rites of passage are defined in the Cultural Anthro as “rituals that mark a person’s passage from one identity or status to another.” (Robbins, Chapter 6, page 139)  At a recent party, a girl in the bathroom remarked to me about one of my friends that dresses like a girl even though he was born a male. She thought he presented himself in that way as flaunting it in people’s face. That along with a recent article in Cosmopolitan Magazine about a famous musician who is a transgender prompted my interest in learning more about people who are labeled “transsexuals.” If there are rites of passage or stages they go through to transform into the opposite sex, focusing on the (less obvious) mental stages one goes through.  This post is going to be about transsexuals in the Western world since there is still a lot of stigma surrounding them and they are less accepted then in Eastern cultures.

Sources:

1.     Article, Witnessing and Mirroring, A Fourteen Stage Model of Transsexual Identity Formation, by Aaron H. Devor, PhD.  http://web.uvic.ca/~ahdevor/14StagesBLOCK.pdf

2.     Article, My First Year as a Woman, by Laura Jane Grace. Featured in Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Description:

            In Dr. Devor’s article he outlines fourteen stages that transsexuals go through, he bases his stages on his fifteen years of studying them.  I got sucked into the world of YouTube watching videos of transsexuals talking about what they go through including a nine year old boy who always felt like he was suppose to be a girl. In all those videos I saw similarities of what their experiences have been, their struggles and discoveries. The first stage in Dr. Devor’s article is Abiding Anxiety, which is characterized by unfocused gender and sex discomfort.  The boy when he was three would throw horrible tantrums and fits and could not be comforted. The doctors had no idea what the cause of it was until his mom started putting together the clues and realized that her son was a transgender.

            Another stage, the third, is Discovery of Transsexualism or Transgenderism where the person learns that transsexualism exists. Laura Jane Grace in Cosmopolitan, when she was thirteen found an encyclopedia entry about Renee Richards, a transgender tennis pro in the ‘70’s. She read and reread that tiny article and after that would “devour” any information she found on people like her.

            I think the biggest stage is the Acceptance of Transsexual or Transgender Identity where the individual establishes their identity and tell others about that very personal detail about them. The scariest part for Laura was telling her wife that while born a male, she wanted to transition to becoming a woman. She was fearful that her wife would not love her anymore after her confession and divorce her. Luckily her wife supported her wholeheartedly and still loved her.

Final Commentary/ Analysis:

            We have come a long way in regards to be accepting of others who are different of them and recognizing they deserve the same rights as us. However we still have a ways to go before people become more accepting and less discrimination towards transsexuals.