Understanding the challenge of being a transsexual

GASEBALWE SERETSE
Staff Writer | Wednesday February 3, 2010 00:00

Her parents noticed this and causally talked about it but it was not of major concern to them, after all there were many girls who were tom-boys in the neighbourhood so they thought she was just like them. They always laughed off the fact that she liked behaving like a boy. She would play football with the boys and even go to the extent of naming herself after male footballers. Her parents thought that was normal since football was dominated by males whom many young people looked up to. The girl did not like to dress up like other girls and preferred wearing boys clothes.

When Jane reached puberty, a lot of changes happened to her body that she was not comfortable with. She did not like the fact that her breasts were growing bigger and she also started menstruating. The desperate girl started covering her breasts in shame. Before they developed, she looked liked the boys that she interacted with and all that was changing. The boys began to hate playing with her since they thought she should find friends among other girls. As if that was not enough, she began developing feelings towards other girls. She tried hard to hide these feelings since she did not want to be scorned by the others. The poor girl confided in one of the teachers at her junior secondary school who instead of protecting her started spreading rumours about her.

This made her become more withdrawn from other students as they started mocking her about her sexuality. Jane considered her days at junior secondary school a living hell because she was always sad and isolated, so she was ecstatic when she moved to senior secondary school. At senior school, she was able to meet a lot of new people and one of them was Martha* and the two girls became close. Martha was an open person who was always ready to listen to her friend.

Although she was attracted to boys, she did not judge her friend. She explained to Jane that being a lesbian did not make her a lesser human being although as a Christian she knew that the bible was against homosexuality.

Jane regained her confidence and started hanging out with boys like she used to do when she was younger.

Luckily for her at her school girls were allowed to wear trousers and it was easy for her to fit in.

The more time she spent with the boys the more she began to feel like one of them. One day she confided in Martha that she believed that she was a boy trapped in a girl's body. Martha was shocked at first and asked her friend to reconsider but as always she was ready to listen to her friend and give support.

Martha advised Jane to tell her parents as she believed that the problem was too big for the two of them to handle alone. Jane was reluctant to do that because although she knew that her parents had raised her with love, they were conservative. So she decided to wait until she finished her tertiary education because she knew that if they rejected her, she would be able to find a job and support herself.

As she had feared, her parents rejected her and threw her out of their home after she told them she felt as if she was a boy trapped in a girl's body. Her parents who were both Christians said that she was an abomination and   a disgrace to the family.

Fortunately Jane was able to find a good job and live a happy life with the support of the gay community and her friend Martha.

However many of her gay friends started to distance themselves from her when she insisted that she felt as if she was not a lesbian but a man trapped in a woman's body, she was a transsexual.  This did not stop Jane from becoming open about her transsexuality and that she intended to undergo sex reassignment therapy that would end up with her having an operation that would give her a penis.

According to Wikipedia, transsexualism is a condition in which an individual identifies with a physical sex that is different from their biological one.  A medical diagnosis can be made if a person experiences discomfort as a result of a desire to be a member of the opposite sex or if a person experiences impaired functioning or distress as a result of that gender identification.

Wikipedia further says that there is no solid consensus on the cause of transsexuality and that psychological and biological causes for transsexualism have been proposed. A few studies, based on small samples, suggest that transsexualism might be associated with a difference in the human brain called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc).  According to Wikipedia another study found out that the BST of male-to-female and cigendered women were similar.

In developed countries, after going through some assessment, it is easy for a person to go for sex reassignment therapy while in most developing countries, Botswana included, it might prove to be a tough challenge for one to do so.

It has been discovered that post-operative transsexuals, prior to 1991, reveal a rate of serious regrets of less than 1% for transsexual men and less than 2% for transsexual women while studies published after 1991 have reported a decrease in the rates for both, likely due to improved psychological and surgical treatments and increasing acceptance from society. With globalisation, it has become possible for people to find somewhere to undergo therapy however discrimination and negative attitudes based on religious beliefs and cultural values still prevail in many communities.

As Jane's story illustrates, many people struggle to accept transsexuals and they find themselves discriminated against, even among the gay community.*Not real name