Body Consciousness

I was struck the thought, which isn't rare but none to date have been really new, or news for that matter, that we all have a consciousness about our body, from really very little to the extreme, which isn't the vast majority of transpeople who want to be and live as the other sex and gender, with the exception of course of some like Amanda Lepore. But then she's extreme like many women who have undergone extensive and numerous cosmetic surgeries to change their body, face, and whatever else they don't like about themselves to be better accepted or beautiful.

What struck me was the consciousness of transpeople that makes their experience unique and separate from everyone else's experience. We all have some physical aspect of ourself we don't like, even hate, and wouldn't mind changing it. I'm no exception there as I was frequently reminded of what I wasn't when I was young. Being self-conscious about my body then would be an understatement. And it hasn't changed as I've aged, only the body getting older.

But what differentiates transpeople is the one thing about themselves no else experiences and can't understand why they want to change it. Simply their gentalia. It's what Jennifer Boylan described on the Oprah show once about the sex reassignment surgery all transwomen go through to become physicall (as medically possible) and legally female. All states require it to change your birth certificate, minus only two states to date which don't, Tennessee and Ohio.

Anyway, Jennifer Boylan explained why transwomen want a vagina to become as whole for themselves as women and female as possible, and to rid their body of the last vestage of maleness. When Oprah questioned why, Jennfer replied, "What would you do if you were born a boy with a penis?"

As you can imagine, Oprah said, "I'd cut it off!" All the explanation in the world about why won't match that one question, to translate their body consciousness to someone else in a way they can begin to understand. And that is the crux of the issue, if you can understand being born and living with your identity in the body of the opposite sex, then you know what's it like to be a transperson.

That's the defining part because the vast majority of men and women take their gentalia for granted. It's simply their innate sense of themselves and their body. They match. They may worry about other features but very rarely that, although some men and women have cosmetic surgery there too, but to fix or enhance the existing gentalia, not to change sex, but they don't know the feeling of hating being another sex.

And that's only that which makes transpeople different. Everything else is the same and why in the end we're all the same in just wanting to be comfortable in our own skin and with our own body. All they want is to be like everyone else where the body and mind are innately the same. That's not hard to understand, just being human and being yourself.