Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Menace to Sorority

A recent story of this name in a local Washington D.C. e-paper is about a controversy engendered by a self-declared female-to-male (FTM) person who joined a college sorority.

This story inspired me to think of something else. I would have loved to have been in a sorority but when I attended college I was male-bodied. As female as I might have felt that would have been awkward, and not just for the sorority sisters. But maybe that’s me. Maybe someone else who feels female inside but is still male-bodied would not feel out-of-place. But the other girls might feel uncomfortable.

What if the male-bodied but female-self-identifying applicant wasn’t entirely “male bodied” anymore. What if the person presented well as female – face, clothes, mannerisms, voice – what then? Would it depend on whether or not the person still had male genitalia, or would everyone say it’s ok so long as she’d had sex reassignment surgery (SRS, aka gender reaffirming (or just plain “affirming”) surgery – GRS/GAS), meaning she now had a vagina. Think about it because it’s coming. The number of young male-to-female (MTF) transsexuals having surgery shortly after they turm eighteen is growing rapidly.

A German MTF transsexual just had surgery at age sixteen. When she was twelve she’d already been been rigorously screened by medical doctors and psychologists who diagnosed her definitively as a MTF transsexual. They okayed her hormone treatment to block pubertal testosterone so she never went through male puberty and her body never turned male. She’s a very pretty and totally feminine girl. She’s also just the first of many.

Young postoperative transsexual women are already starting college. Most of them are stealth – no one knows. No one would know. Their documentation has been changed to reflect their female status and there’s no discernible clue that they’ve ever been anything but female. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were already several who’ve done it. Nor would I be surprised if one or more sorority sisters would know and was at ease with it because these ts women are sooo female. Women know these things. I know. I’m a post-op MTF transsexual woman.

But maybe one of these pre-op girls would not be so cloaked in secrecy. What will happen then? Expect her to make the six o’clock news when she applies to join a sorority and is outed.

But a pretty post-op is an easy case. What if she isn’t pretty? What if she doesn’t have all the feminine graces? Another way to express that is to say she doesn’t “vibe” a female very well. What then? Would it be all about looks? Tougher case?

Actually, this has already happened - on Tyra Banks’ “America’s Next Top Model.” Remember Isis King?

Stay tuned… film at 11:00.

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