Ray Rivas, January 2019

Essay on Trans Self-Acceptance and Surgery

Gender dysphoria was once considered the enemy of liberated trans expression. Now it’s become the common identity of the trans community. Originally we fought to get Gender Identity Disorder/Sexual Identity Disorder out of the DSM.

Identifying with the pathology of G.I.D. is ANTI TRANS LIB! We will not identify with a pathology that necessitates sex change operations as a cure for G.I.D. We will not be “fixed” by a transphobic medical community! We refuse to be mutilated in order to “fit in” to a bipolar gender society. Society will conform to our liberated and authentic transgender selves, not in contrast to our natural bodies and sex. There is no schism between our genders and our bodies. We ARE our bodies that express any gender types, which come naturally.

There is NO cisgendered person. (We should be) identifying our bodies as our authentic selves regardless of what gender we reflect. In fact, the combination of our authentic bodies and authentic gender make us who we ARE. Male women and female men are not oxymorons. Not schisms. We are not trapped in our bodies, we ARE our bodies.

“Trapped in the wrong body” dysphoria assumes bodies have souls. This is a philosophical and religious idea. Objective arguments must be made and considered. Religion must be thrown out of the argument. Not everyone believes in “souls.” We ARE our bodies expressing our personalities and our gender.

Be your authentic selves. Don’t buy into gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria was invented to suppress and “fix” transgender bodies, encouraging (us) to mutilate our authentic natural bodies, our TRUE SELVES just to fit into society. Cis identity is NOT the goal of trans liberation. Cis does not exist. AUTHENTICITY is the goal of trans liberation — NOT fitting into society but society fitting in with us. We will not mutilate our authentic bodies to conform to society’s ideal of “cis” bodies/identity — society will conform to us and our authentic selves. Our sex and gender are not related, not one the effect of the other. Our sex does not dictate our gender personality, the basis of transgender identities and liberation, not creating a schism for our bodies and genders, embarrassing the female man or the male woman.

These are our true selves. One does not need to co-opt the other to be normal. You are normal the way you are. Trans liberation is about society acknowledging the male woman and female man as natural expressions of true selves, separate but equal to so-called cisgendered individuals.

Male women are a specific kind of woman, a woman who defies and reconsiders what it means to be a woman/feminist. We do not have to mutilate in order to be allowed to be a woman. We are women — distinct from female women. Male women have their own specific social identities. Male women need not co-opt or assume the social identity of female women. We have our own histories; we grew up developing ourselves and were socialized different form female women. We have our own specific experiences with gender/body oppression distinct from female women. We need to assert our true womanhood and femininity, our versions of what it means to be a woman. We do not have the same gender oppression female women have, or histories. It is insulting to appropriate the experience of female women and doing so also suppresses our true authentic selves — our gender in harmony with our natural sexual bodies.

Assert that gender and sex are not related. Assert your right to be an authentic person — to be the gender you are naturally, regardless of what sex type you are. Males, females, and intersex have the right to express any type of gender identity that has come naturally to them — the gender they grew up developing and socializing.

Self-mutilation is the result of growing up in a culture which tells us that our bodies are against our identities, and encourages us to seek extreme mutilation as our cure. Transgender people may express this in cutting/self-harm and degradation. We do not need a cure, and self-mutilation is not a cure. Accept who you are. Accept your sex and you will not need a harmful “cure.” In fact, that is the only possible cure for G.I.D. — accepting your sex and gender in harmony as one expression of the AUTHENTIC SELF.

Transsexuality is a myth invented to mutilate and suppress transgender bodies/identities, to sexually maim and make impotent/barren transgender “defective” males, females, and intersexuals. They do not want us to procreate and influence successive/future generations, liberating our bodies and our genders from the prison we’ve forced them in. THEY forced us/them into these prisons.