GENDER ROLE TRANSITION & INSIDIOUS SEX/GENDER DISCONTINUITY

I just got through reading Dr.Anne Vitale's 2003 paper on "Gender Role Transition: The Gender Variant Phenomenon".  In it she discusses things that are absolutely dead-on parallels to my life. She explains that we have "Gender Expression Deprivation Anxiety", and that what "Group 3" has is a most "INSIDIOUS SEX AND GENDER DISCONTINUITY". I recognize myself squarely in group 3 (G3). Here is the address for the paper I highly recommend everyone who had any desire to understand what transgender or transsexual individuals go through       http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm      Highlight this address and go to the site and read the paper, I strongly urge you, if you ever want to understand where I am coming from. I definitely need to bring this paper with me to my Bishop, and have my wife read it when I come out to her.

Virtually everything about this paper's description of me, a member of G3, is spot on. The desires to transition are and always have been and always will increase, and will NEVER wane. It is imparative that I seek "SEX AND GENDER CONTINUITY RESOLUTION", for any hope of a healthy life.

The case descritions could be describing my life. I knew I was a girl at age 4. I didn't know about sex differences until age 6, when my brother was born, because I had innie genitalia, seemingly the same as my sister's. I played dress-up and hopscotch with the girls and avoided the boys entirely. Thankfully I was never beat up spanked or ridiculed for that. I tried to hide my truth (I differ somewhat in that I don't believe I want to or always have had the DESIRE TO BECOME a woman, I believe I am and have always felt I AM A GIRL/WOMAN) and tried to figure the best ways to overcome and hide my true nature. I varied from some G3 by playing sports, especially hockey, and being in ROTC and becoming a soldier. I became solitary, and studious, a bibliophile and geeky. I wanted to date, but didn't know how to go about it. I didn't want sexual relations with a girl, I WANTED TO BE THE GIRL, I WANTED TO BE HER. I hoarded every copy of every girls magazine that was ever published. My Porn was making books of the pictures and articles of teen girls I wanted to be and be like (not have sex with).  Recently, I found a book on finding your true identity, that asks you to make collages of pictures found in magazines as how you see yourself. OMG, I found myself looking through many of those same magazines......I'm a 17 year old girl, for crying out loud. I did that from February to May of this year, and I came out as Transgender and Transsexual to myself and others in June. Coincidence? No Way, it was a major factor, that Journal. "THE ILLUSTRATED DISCOVERY JOURNAL" by Sarah Ban Breathnach.

My sister at 14 years old committing suicide (a victim of bullicide), 20 years ago, when I was 29, and an older student (Senior) at Oregon State University, wreaked havok on my life and my closeted transsexualism. I had been studying Political Psychology and International Relations, as well as taking Women's studies, hoping and praying I would somehow become a girl (there really were no men in any of those classes....the guy in the actual rose-pink colored glasses really was a girl). I most definitely did not do as some G3 women, become a sexist, a homophobe or a transphobe. I was always a strident, and liberal/socialist feminist and total all-out ally to the LGBT community. But it took me 49 years to recognize that I was a full on member of that community. I joined NOW when I was 25, and was very active in the organization while living in Oregon. I was Vice Chair of Benton County Democrats, Vice Chair of Benton County Chapter of NOW, Chair of College Dems and Class President, while interning for Governor Barbara Roberts and State Sen. Frank Roberts and John Kitzhaber. I had high rank in the State Party and was perceived as a rising star. THEN THE SKY FELL! Amy, my favorite sister, like a daughter to me, was gone. I was Dysphoric and untreated, DEPRIVED OF EXPRESSING MY TRUE IDENTITY AND NOW MY CLOSEST SIBLING WAS BULLIED TO DEATH!  I still have not healed and recovered from that. I have not met with any success in living a life as a man trying to make a living in a capitalistic society. I have utterly failed at that in any measure of the word.

We moved to Ohio in 1995 to be close to my wife's family, who quickly disowned me and ostracized me, because they perceived me not successful enough as a capitalistic man. Well excuse me for being neither! Maybe my whole married life has been a lie. I told her that I was a cross-dresser (ostensibly saying I was transgender) on our honeymoon. I need to give her the opportunity to accept or reject me once and for all. That is only fair. More on this later.

Humbly Yours,  Leah