The third floor in the XXI century
At the beginning of 2013, the first public unisex toilet for people "undecided about their gender" opened in the center of Berlin. The German media ironically dubbed the event the "absurdity of the year", and sexual minorities decided at first that it was a curtsey in their direction. As a result, both those and others got excited with conclusions.
At the beginning of 2013, the first public unisex toilet for people "undecided about their gender" opened in the center of Berlin. The German media ironically dubbed the event the "absurdity of the year", and sexual minorities decided at first that it was a curtsey in their direction. As a result, both those and others got excited with conclusions.
The right to choose … gender
Neither women's nor men's public toilet was intended for people who are born with signs of both sexes or with difficult to determine sex, that is, for hermaphrodites (or, as it is now fashionable to call them, intersex people), as well as for transsexuals who are not sure which door open in case of need: "M" or "F". And therefore, this original building is more of a reason for the joy of the German Society for Transidentity and Intersexuality (DGTI) and those whose interests it represents.
Moreover, the unisex toilet has become just a trial balloon: on November 1, 2013, a law comes into force in Germany, abolishing the obligatory indication of gender in the birth certificate, thus officially recognizing the phenomenon of the "third sex", as some countries have already done. … But if, say, in Australia in the birth certificate of an intersex person in the column “gender” they write “other”, then the same German baby will simply have a blank in this column.
The initiators of this law proceed from the fact that a person has the right to choose his own gender. And in a way, they are right. In the 1980s, there was a significant case in the United States. The long-awaited son Eric was born in the Hilton family. The parents' joy was overshadowed only by the fact that the boy had an underdeveloped sexual organ. Smart doctors solved the problem without bothering too much. They convinced their parents that they had a baby … a girl, and the underdeveloped organ is just a natural anomaly. For several years (!) Examinations and operations went on … The girl Ann grew and became prettier day by day. And when she turned eighteen, she went to the same clinic and demanded to make her the guy she felt.
However, this is rather an incident and an exception. Usually, such operations are performed in an older age, when almost every hermaphrodite (intersex person) has a very clear inner awareness of his gender. Depending on the target gender, with the help of doctors, psychologists, the nature of the corrective operation is determined, the degree of complexity of which depends on the congenital anatomical and genetic characteristics of the intersex person. But there are also many pitfalls and confusion here.
The main sign of gender is the brain?
Everything is much more complicated when a child is born physically absolutely normal, without any defects in the genitals, but his inner voice asserts that nature "made a mistake with the choice of the body" and he is not at all what others see. For example, imagine a full-fledged boy who, from childhood, say from the age of four, feels like a girl. Rather, she identifies herself as a girl, a girl who, by some cruel and unjust accident, was born in a male body. It is these anomalies that supply transsexuals to humanity - people who actively do not want to come to terms with the sex given to them by nature.
Last year's scandal at the Miss Universe - Canada pageant once again drew public attention to the question of what should be considered paramount in determining sex: external sexual characteristics present in a child at birth, or something else? Let me remind you in brief that one of the contestants, 23-year-old Jenna Talakova, was suspended from participation in the finals for the reason that she became a woman only … four years ago. The regulations of the competition allegedly stated that only those who were "born girls" could participate. And although no one from the organizing committee doubted the current sex of the skin-visual Jenna, she was nevertheless disqualified because of this discrepancy. It is interesting that tens of thousands of people spoke out in defense of the slender blonde beauty. As Jenna herself told,she felt like a girl at the age of four - this fact was used by her supporters, arguing that not the genitals are decisive in matters of gender, but the brain, self-awareness.
Indeed, both in the case of hermaphrodites and in the case of transsexuals, the main determinant of their fate is internal sexual self-identification. What a person feels himself to be, so in the end he will become, with the appropriate amount of perseverance and with the availability of funds. It turns out that the Germans have adopted the correct law - let everyone decide for himself, whether he is a boy or a girl …
"Inter" or "trance": what kind of "sexists" nature makes more often?
Intersex people are originally referred to as "third sex". People of the third sex are born steadily in all countries. However, officially (legally) their existence is recognized by no more than a dozen countries: Australia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, now Germany. Russian lawmakers have not yet "got their hands on" people of the third sex.
Meanwhile, the percentage of such people is on average estimated at up to 0.1% of the total population. For the most part, their life is terrible, especially if their appearance is strikingly different from that indicated in the passport. Just imagine what a hermaphrodite girl registered as a boy feels when he (or rather, her) is drafted into the army … However, in the army it is especially hard not only for intersex people, but also for other representatives of the third sex - the already mentioned transsexuals who feel like women, despite for all their male characteristics. When they get into the army, they are more often than others subjected to violence, mobbing and other troubles; however, most of them, by hook or by crook, manage to avoid the soldier's fate - feeling like girls, they disgust rudeness, violence, physical overload, lack of comfort and other attributes of army life …
According to sociologists, one in ten thousand people are born "of the wrong sex"; eight out of ten such “special” citizens are men who perceive themselves to be women. Most of them are convinced that nature "made a mistake" in placing their female soul in a male body. But is it? Of course, nature makes mistakes, but these are more likely the same intersex people who have both female and male sex characteristics at the same time.
The number of natural anomalies is always counted in units, maximum tens. Statistics usually allocate for them no more than hundredths, or even thousandths of a percent. However, if we compare transsexuals with hermaphrodites, it turns out that the first in the world are several times larger. For example, in a number of countries: in Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba, and even in neighboring Belarus (!), Sex reassignment surgery is formally free for local citizens. Usually no more than 2-3 thousand operations are performed per year, and therefore most of those who wish have to wait for this opportunity for a long time. So, in Brazil, for example, there are about 300 thousand people in the queue for gender reassignment every year, most of whom (about 75%) are men. Thus, more than two-thirds of the third sex is transsexual.
By conservative estimates, there are at least 300 thousand real and potential trances in Russia. Most of them also live in a queue: they save money and live with waiting, content for the time being with transvestism and communication with "comrades in misfortune" on various forums, blogs and chats. For example, here is a typical correspondence on the website of a large plastic surgery clinic:
Hello, please tell me, in a month I will turn 18, am I already starting to see a psychiatrist? And in general terms, how much will it cost? From M. to J. Marina.
Hello! I am a citizen of Belarus, in our country it is theoretically possible to change your gender, but it is very difficult to do this because of bureaucratic delays. Is it possible, given that the borders have been removed, to undergo an examination with you and proceed to the necessary preparatory stages? I don't want to waste time in vain. Thanks in advance for your reply. Kostya.
It’s hard to live when you’re not you, but the longer you drag, the harder it’s. I live in Omsk and do not know who to contact. Where should I start in order to eventually change the gender and is it possible to start without leaving the city for a long time? Help, please, tell me who to look for, who, maybe, to call, so that everything gets off the ground. I beg you! Vanya (Vera).
I feel like I am a woman in a male form, how much does the operation cost? I really want it. Vadik.
Gender reassignment surgery in Thailand costs 7-10 thousand dollars, and the state can pay 50%, so it's useless to do it here … Vitya.
Comrades doctors, do you do gender reassignment surgery? And how much will it cost, all taken together ?! I am from Russia, how long will it take for me to make documents and where and with which psychiatrist should I see? How do I tell the psychiatrist about this topic, how do I start a conversation? FROM.
Good day. I see there are many like me, I am 25 years old, I also want to change sex from female to male. Who has the same story, write to the mail, at least we'll talk …
How to become a transsexual
Among the most popular searches on the Internet are “how to become a star”, “how to become successful and rich,” “how to become happy,” and even “how to become a vampire” (apparently, to live forever). But there are also such eccentrics who are looking for how to become a transsexual, not realizing that behind every story of the transformation of a "worm into a butterfly" is, if not a tragedy, then at least years of struggle - with oneself, with the prejudice of society, with the environment … Even when the decision accepted and the bridges burned, there are still many trials ahead for the real trance: the search for appropriate medical organizations, fundraising for the operation (which is only nominally free), as well as money for hormone therapy and rehabilitation; complex process of resocialization and other problems.
This request does not make sense, if only because it is impossible to become a transsexual "of your own accord", even if you formally achieve this status and change your sex through an operation. Intersex people who decide to go under the knife in order to change their natural sex have innate physical problems. And who would want to cut his body and destiny to shreds for the sake of a momentary whim? With rare exceptions, the decision to change sex for those who decide to undergo surgery is a tortured and often forced decision. Living in a body that you feel is a stranger is unbearable. Although, of course, incidents do happen.
The most famous at the moment in the history of world media is the case of Sam Hashimi, a businessman from the UAE, which became public in 2004. Several major upheavals occurred one after another in Sam's life. The collapse of the business, the divorce from his wife and the separation from two children for some reason led him to the idea that being a woman is much more profitable and easier. He performed the operation, since there was enough money for it, and became a luxurious designer Samantha, at whose feet men fell in bundles. However, after spending seven years in a woman's body, Sam realized that he had made a terrible mistake and that he was actually a man. And the second time he went under the knife.
Now he is a writer, his name is Charles Kane. He wrote the autobiography Once Upon a Time in Baghdad, became engaged to a young madman and disappeared from the attention of the world's media, perhaps finally starting to live his own life.
Crazy, obsessed or?..
The story of Sam-Samantha-Charles makes you want to twirl your finger at the temple, they say, some kind of crazy. Transsexualism, by the way, for many years has been included in the International Classification of Diseases, compiled by the World Health Organization, as a mental-behavioral disorder. In early 2010, France was the first in the world to exclude him from the official list of diseases.
Three years earlier, the Russian parliament adopted the Federal Law "On Acts of Civil Status", in which it also mentioned gender reassignment. He mentioned it only in passing, while, for example, a whole impressive article is devoted to changing the name in the law. Among other numerous reasons for making changes to the civil status records, it is written: "A document of the established form on gender reassignment issued by a medical organization has been submitted." This is the only case when Russian legislation mentions the legal status of people of the third sex.
But the third sex is not a product of modernity. Both inter- and transsexuals have existed for tens of centuries. This is clearly illustrated by the history of the Hijra caste that exists in India and Bangladesh.
In fact, this is a caste that unites men who want to appear as women. And only about two percent of them are hermaphrodites, the rest are transvestites, transsexuals. Disguised boys and hermaphrodites, according to folk stories, always accompanied the troops of the sepoy soldiers. Their sexual services flourished during the period of the Mughal empire, they fell in love, they wrote about them, they dedicated poems to them, looked after them … In Hinduism, the theme of power, the divine energy of a being that combines male and female, is very significant. Androgyny, a combination of masculine and feminine characteristics, is the most important element in the Shakti direction of Hinduism, in Tantrism.
A huge number of young trances run away from home every year to join the ranks of the caste. It is possible to become a hijra only after castration, which is carried out according to the same ritual as centuries ago. Those who underwent the ceremony at a young age retain delicate voices and feminine bodies, which helps them to succeed in the traditional craft of the caste - performing at weddings and in the houses where the boy is born, singing and dancing.
The most amazing thing is that Hijra is one of the lowest, most despised castes. But even that does not stop transsexuals eager to reincarnate as a woman. Many of them come to the caste from rich families, realizing that the way back is cut off forever, that they will never be able to see their relatives and will be forced to live in poverty until their deaths … However, the sect gives them what they cannot get anywhere else, - the opportunity to be yourself, turning into a woman. And if you dig deeper - getting rid of the fear stuck in the subconscious, which does not allow to live in peace. It is this fear that drives them to where they can become someone else; someone who is no longer in mortal danger …
Just think: about one and a half million hijras wander around India and Bangladesh. This is not a bunch of obsessed or crazy people, this is a huge community! The life and history of this caste is shrouded in mystery, people despise them and shun, like everything strange and incomprehensible … But they have their reasons. The same as millions of other trances. As the head of one of the Hijra family said, "our natural instinct urges us to be women." What is this instinct that makes people maim themselves and run to the ends of the world away from their homes and dearest people?
Cases of self-castration of transsexuals, although rare, were encountered in modern Europe and America … For example, in the book "Transsexual Journey", written by the "veteran" of the first sex reassignment operations A. Brevard, it is described in detail how the heroine cut off with her own hand what prevented fulfilling her dream of becoming a girl. Thank God, now such cases occur less and less. Still, self-castration is "not our method", today transsexuals have the best plastic surgery clinics, equipped according to the highest class. As they say, there would be money.
Unnatural instinct
In the 1950s, the famous American endocrinologist Harry Benjamin was the first to refuse to consider transsexuality as a mental illness. He formulated the trance thirst for a total "image change" as an innate sense of belonging to the opposite sex - a feeling of unknown etiology. Another revolutionary achievement of Dr. Benjamin was the fact that he finally parted the concepts of "gender identity" and "sexual orientation". Unfortunately, some ordinary people still throw everything into "one pot", everything that seems incomprehensible, unnatural, and strange to them. For them, "transsexuals" sounds almost the same as "homosexuals", "fagots", "perverts", etc.
The reason for such confusion and confusion in the minds of citizens is forgivable, because not even all scientists and practitioners have been able to understand the essence of transsexuality. Over the past few decades, medicine has made a real breakthrough: today's vaginoplasty technique has reached a level that was never even dreamed of by surgeons who performed the first sex reassignment operations. Permission for surgery in the same States is issued only to those trans women who have passed the stage of "real life experience", that is, have lived for some time in society in the format of a woman, with female documents and in a female image. And only the etiology of transsexuality, that is, the true roots of transsexual behavior are still not felt by either psychiatrists or endocrinologists …
Meanwhile, the etiology has been deciphered. With the help of the knowledge that Yuri Burlan's system-vector psychology provides, it became possible to fill in the gaps in understanding the deep causes of human behavior that does not fit into the usual framework.
The basis of the personality of any transvestite and transsexual is the visual vector, which makes him sensitive and vulnerable, suffering and (sometimes) compassionate, impressionable and fearful, and in general - a very emotional person, sometimes even excessively. And if the visual vector is in conjunction with the skin, then the newborn boy is in the "risk group." Children's fears and neuroses, aggravated by the lack of strong emotional ties with parents or the lack of moral support on their part, can bring to the surface the most terrible fear of every skin-visual boy - the fear of death.
The fear of death is inherent in each of us. It is simply an integral part of the self-preservation instinct. However, skin-visual boys have a very special fear of death. They feel it stronger, sharper, deeper, brighter than people with other vectors. This fear is not caused by the fear of slow extinction, aging, disease, as in most of us - oh no! everything is much worse.
The past won't let go
It so happened historically that dermal-visual boys almost never survived either to illness or to old age. Being the weakest and most vulnerable links of the nascent human formation, they have become the bargaining chip of civilization. When human tribes were semi-savage, dermal-visual boys rarely survived. Initially born frail and sickly, they died in infancy. And if they did survive, they did not live long, without having a specific role in primitive society, for they were not suitable for physical labor and hunting.
When fellow tribesmen, flickering heels, ran away from wild animals that suddenly attacked the camp, the most useless skin-visual boy was literally thrown into the mouths of predators in order to distract them from the persecution of the tribe. When hungry men of the tribe made a fire, beating out a spark or extracting it by friction, the skin-visual boys often turned into a roast, which was destined to roast over this fire. Cannibalism was common among our ancestors, for the hunt was not always successful, but we wanted to eat. The best food in this case was a tender and weak, like a girl, a skin-visual boy. Which, if not allowed to die in infancy, it was only in order to be kept as NZ for a hungry rainy day …
A lot of terrible things were imprinted in the unconscious of millions of dermal-visual victims before the times that we call "civilized" came. In addition to the horrors associated with repeated from generation to generation cases of sudden and cruel death, in the unconscious of dermal-visual boys, it was also firmly imprinted that girls with the same qualities as theirs, in most cases, managed to avoid such a bitter fate. Moreover, the skin-visual girls had their own role in the human flock, and they often became friends of the leader, falling under his protection. This is the essence of the skin-visual female, capable of attracting the protection of the strong with the power of her pheromones and female magnetism …
Transsexuals, trying to describe their motivation for gender reassignment, often talk about envy of women: “And I want such a dress, such shoes, such a breast”, “I want to be beautiful like her”, “I dreamed to be looked at with admiration”, "Since childhood, I envied girls, how beautiful they are," etc. This envy is essentially caused by only one desire - the desire to survive at any cost. If, having become a girl, you can save your life and avoid a terrible death in the mouth of a beast or a cannibal, then you must become her. The fear of death, deep in the subconscious, is the very “natural instinct” that “rushes to be women,” as the Hijras say. He's in a hurry, because you can't sit and wait until death comes in the face of a predator or a fellow man-eating, you have to hurry, hide, mimic, quickly turn into a girl who is not touched …
What is hidden in the subconscious is difficult to resist. Especially not knowing what fears are hidden in this depth, where they came from there and whether it is possible to neutralize them. However, if you pull them out into the light and look them in the eyes, everything becomes not so simple. Even people of the third sex, who are confident that they were born in the "wrong body", have new life scenarios.
The whole truth about the real causes of transsexualism is available today at trainings on systemic vector psychology by Yuri Burlan. Those who are not indifferent to their lives invest in understanding themselves and their motivation, and only then - in hormones and plastic. In any case, before reshaping your body, it would be good to first understand your soul.
… Meanwhile, Germany is in a fever. There are rumors in Berlin that an entire area of the city will be set aside for unisex toilets. They say that instead of the usual “M” and “F” (or rather, the German “Damen” and “Herren”), something new will appear at these “special establishments”, for example, “uni”. The Progressive Pirate Party of the Federal Republic of Germany prepared a request, which, apparently, by analogy with "marriages for all" in France, has already been nicknamed "toilets for everyone." The request requires some of the public toilets in Germany (including school ones!) To be officially renamed "unisex toilets" …
Europe, fearful of accusations of intolerance more than fire, is ready to take really absurd measures, just to appear tolerant in an attempt to please everyone, including people of the third sex and their sympathizers. Or maybe it would be much more useful to study system-vector psychology and use it for the social adaptation of people who “have not decided on their gender”?
