Can castration cause one to become transgendered?

[Hash (imported)]

I'm not sure if I was transgendered before I was castrated or if my castration caused me to change so that I now have more female characteristics. Perhaps the question is, "Is being transgendered what pushed you to become castrated without realizing that you were transgendered?" I really don't know, but as for myself, I think I had transgendered tendencies for a while, I think those tendencies are what pushed me to get castrated. I had an unstoppable urge to do it and did. Soon I'll be facing my new female urologist again. After my recent cystosomy, she gleefully told me she could put things back together, (my urehtra) but that's the last thing I want. I think I'll tell her that I have many transgender characteristics, markers, tendencies and that I would actually prefer to not even have a penis. Not sure what she'll say, I bet she's not quite 30 years old yet. Next Thursday is my appointment, wish me luck.

[mobbkopf (imported)]

Hi there,

not sure I understand you right. So you say that although you identify as a heterosexual male (sorry, had to check your profile you now, since you had your castration, "feel", think etc. more feminine? Since you mention cystosomy, was your castration due to cancer then (again sorry; didn't want to wade through all your posts)? If so, how did/do you feel about your castration in general? Did/do you receive psychological treatment about it?

As for me, I actually do have experience with sexual orientation change due to a severe case of hypothyroidism (went along with other side effects like carpal canal syndrome) - besides a greatly reduced sex drive, during this time I identified as 100% gay (interested in men only; no interest in any fetish etc. at all). Before and afterwards I'm a pretty perverted bisexual (however much more "into" women submissive with several fetishes (love to crossdress, feet and high heels etc.)

My theory is that due to the greatly reduced sex drive all those fetishes etc. just disappeared and I was able to fully focus on the more attractive sex (No offence intended, just joking)

Wrote a blog entry about it back then - obviously noone else ever felt or experienced something similar, so I'm actually not sure as to what to think about it. Maybe it helps you.

Patrick

[transward (imported)]

I'm not sure if I was transgendered before I was castrated or if my castration caused me to change so that I now have more female characteristics. Perhaps the question is, "Is being transgendered what pushed you to become castrated without realizing that you were transgendered?" I really don't know, but as for myself, I think I had transgendered tendencies for a while, I think those tendencies are what pushed me to get castrated. I had an unstoppable urge to do it and did. Soon I'll be facing my new female urologist again. After my recent cystosomy, she gleefully told me she could put things back together, (my urehtra) but that's the last thing I want. I think I'll tell her that I have many transgender characteristics, markers, tendencies and that I would actually prefer to not even have a penis. Not sure what she'll say, I bet she's not quite 30 years old yet. Next Thursday is my appointment, wish me luck.

I don't think that an accidental castration would cause an otherwise normal straight man to become transgendered. But for those who are trans it is often used as justification for what they want to do. In running trans support groups for years I have frequently heard this idea: "I'll arrange to have an "accident" and lose my balls, then let myself be convinced that it would be better to become a woman than commit suicide. (or become gay.)" Seems to be a common idea for trans folk who, for religious or other reasons, are unable to confront their parents and friends and need some excuse to do what they are going to do.

That said, we have such strong ideas about masculinity, and our genitals, so many beliefs about how men behave, that even if the hormone levels stayed the same, because of the Placebo Effect, the castration would cause much less masculine behavior (however you define it) and a shift to a more feminine personality. Our language reflects this: "that takes balls.," "he really got fucked." "man up." Or the bully threatening to castrate, "I'll turn you into a girl." Even trans women who intend to become "stone butch dykes," after SRS often report their personality drifting towards a more fem position, often including curiosity or more about sex w/ men. How much of this is expectations and the placebo effect, and how much is the effects of hormone changes, I would not care to speculate.

Transward

[janekane (imported)]

I'm not sure if I was transgendered before I was castrated or if my castration caused me to change so that I now have more female characteristics. Perhaps the question is, "Is being transgendered what pushed you to become castrated without realizing that you were transgendered?" I really don't know, but as for myself, I think I had transgendered tendencies for a while, I think those tendencies are what pushed me to get castrated. I had an unstoppable urge to do it and did. Soon I'll be facing my new female urologist again. After my recent cystosomy, she gleefully told me she could put things back together, (my urehtra) but that's the last thing I want. I think I'll tell her that I have many transgender characteristics, markers, tendencies and that I would actually prefer to not even have a penis. Not sure what she'll say, I bet she's not quite 30 years old yet. Next Thursday is my appointment, wish me luck.

For me to attempt answering the question, "Can castration cause one to become transgendered?", please forgive me for having made an intense study of biology, and human sexual biology, using college and higher level resources, starting very early during third grade, when I was eight.

Please ignore what does not make sense or is not worth bothering about, in this post; perhaps it is a tad PhD-ese...

My view? For some people, "Yes," and for other people, "No."

For me, the only person about whom I am the most authoritative person on Earth, the answer is simple. Being transgendered is something I was vividly aware of long before I was born. For me, "the quickening" (as in, "the baby has started kicking") was about exploring my physical body and its capabilities, something that has continued ever since. As I explored my body and its surroundings in utero, I was not aware that my touchable environment was me; amniotic fluid is largely a cellular filtrate, filtered by the kidneys of the fetus, and the placenta is fetal, not maternal, tissue. That was not apparent to me before I was born, and not apparent for many years after I was born.

However, when my hands got around to exploring my genital region, what I found I experienced as foreign to me, my penis, and especially my scrotum, after my testicles descended, seemed like a (to paraphrase a notion of "The Telephone Company" (remember the movie, "The President's Analyst"?)) "foreign attachment." Something my brain/mind told me was not supposed to be there.

In the days of "The Telephone Company," when it was usually impossible for anyone other than "The Telephone Company" to own a telephone, a little rubber thing that allowed using a telephone with both hands available for doing something other than holding a telephone handset, the little rubber thing was deemed a foreign attachment in violation with the state tariffs that regulated telephones; to safely use a telephone while not holding the handset in a hand was, in effect, unlawful. What about the person born with only one arm who has to write down something during a telephone call? Well, along came the Carterphone decision, and foreign attachments were allowed once The Telephone Company turned over ownership of telephones to the telephone users.

I worked in hospitals and and observed, while helping as a supposed medical technologist during surgical procedures, that surgery can be dangerous and even life-threatening when something goes seriously amiss. So, I am likely to seek, and get, surgery only when not getting it scores as more dangerous than not getting it in my weltanschauung. "weltanschauung?" read on... more about weltanschauung later...

Many, many things and events have come to my attention, during the past 74 or so years, that my brain and mind tell me would be better were they, in some not-yet-real future, to not be as they are.

When I was eight, my family moved to Wisconsin, where the house in which we lived was two stories, with the only bathroom upstairs. While we had lived in a two story house in California, immediately prior to moving to Wisconsin, that house, as was so for every house we had previously lived in since I was born, had a main floor bathroom. With no first floor bathroom available, my parents put a small metal cup in the bathroom in our Wisconsin house, so people could conveniently get a drink of water in the bathroom. My mother had studied nursing after high school graduation and prior to studying education in college and at university, and the arrangement with that cup was, whoever used it was to wash it so the next person to use the cup would be using a clean cup.

That cup was about 1-3/4 inches in diameter and in height. Soon after we moved to Wisconsin, I had done my bathroom duty, and was thirsty. After getting a drink of water, I put the cup over my genitals and recognized that my body "looked right" if it was as though penis, testicles and protruding scrotum were not there.

Yes, I did wash the cup before putting it on the shelf for the next person's use...

In my "weltanschauung" (a German word for which I am unaware of any English word that is a truly accurate translation, but, to me, is sort-of a word for a person's sense of the person's total world-view-transcending existential experience), whatever happens as it happens is inescapably both necessary and sufficient, this being so because whatever actually happens is what actually happens and whatever does not actually happen does not actually happen and what does not exist is a, pardon my English, "bloody basis" for a life of attempted thriving.

Do I understand what it is like to be bothered by "foreign attachments"? Vividly, methinks.

In my weltanschauung, being of transgendered nature is as normal as is anything else, but that may because I find the whole of life to be normal. Anyone here familiar with the so-called "bell curve" of statistical analysis? It is sometimes called, "the normal curve," and some folks near the middle of the bell curve regard only the middle of the bell curve to be "normal," and people like me who may be a few standard deviations from the mean of the bell curve may be deemed to be "abnormal" for not being in the middle part of the curve.

Who decides what is abnormal, who decides what is abnormal for me as an individual person? If I decide, I will decide that my whole life, in every aspect and every detail, is perfectly normal for me. Anyone get the joke? "Normal" and "abnormal" are conventionally defined in terms of the characteristics of a group comprised of individual people. While the properties of a group can be derived from adding up the properties of the members of the group, the properties of any individual member of the group cannot be derived accurately from the properties of the group. Okay?

Alas, "normal" and "abnormal" in conventional, as described in, e.g., Seligman, Walker & Rosenhan, "Abnormal Psychology: Fourth Edition." Norton, 2001, are group norms and not individual norms. I am an individual person, no matter how many "personalities and/or subpersonalities" the traumatic abuses of my encounter with the group norms of the aspects of human society in which my life has been surrounded have led me to devise as the only way I could find to stay alive.

I did study probability and statistics as part of my formal education, however, I put more effort into studying Bayesian probability and statistics than I did in frequentist probability and statistics. Why? Because I have consistently observed that frequentist statistical and probability methods are atrociously biased against history and historical learning. Yes, having to estimate priors is prone to bias, but rejecting priors is stunningly moreso biased against the life process of learning.

I harbor the view that it is wise for people, including people who function as scientists, to be skeptical of beliefs and observations...

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/fmrisalmon/

I have learned one lesson that, for me is a decent candidate for the most tragic and most tragically important, lesson of my whole life. If I am not true to myself, I cannot be true to anyone else.

If I am willing to be hurt by other people in ways that deny the normalcy of my actual life, surely I would be willing to hurt other people for not replicating my actual life. A greater insanely tragic atrocity I have never been able to imagine.

In situations that resemble your upcoming urologist encounter, I have chosen, first and foremost, to be true to myself.

Rather than wishing for you, "luck," my wish for you is authentic decency and kindness.

[Hash (imported)]

janekane,

Great post and thorough thinking, thanks for the wish for decency and kindness. I do have a lot more to think about myself and even with my new urologist, I want her to understand me and not allow any predispostions to interfere with her care of me. Whether she'll listen and do for me what I believe I need is up in the air, I just don't know. I don't know if I say that since my castration I've developed transgendered characteristics, if that will help or hinder. We will see. I know she said that everything looks good and that she could put me back together as a functional male, meaning that she'll reverse my reroute, but of course that's not what I want. I want my penis glans stitched back together and my reroute made permanent. Hopefully that's what she'll do. I kind of think she'll be somewhat dismayed when I tell her this, maybe she suggest a shrink, if she does I just might get up and walk out. Hash

[janekane (imported)]

janekane,

Great post and thorough thinking, thanks for the wish for decency and kindness. I do have a lot more to think about myself and even with my new urologist, I want her to understand me and not allow any predispostions to interfere with her care of me. Whether she'll listen and do for me what I believe I need is up in the air, I just don't know. I don't know if I say that since my castration I've developed transgendered characteristics, if that will help or hinder. We will see. I know she said that everything looks good and that she could put me back together as a functional male, meaning that she'll reverse my reroute, but of course that's not what I want. I want my penis glans stitched back together and my reroute made permanent. Hopefully that's what she'll do. I kind of think she'll be somewhat dismayed when I tell her this, maybe she suggest a shrink, if she does I just might get up and walk out. Hash

I did the "shrink" thing, some psychologists and psychiatrists actually believe in social and cultural norms. But no "shrink" could successfully perform a "mind-shrink" on me. There are psychiatrists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other "counselors" (both professional and amateur) who do understand something of the immense expanse of normal human sexuality. I found some.

There still are physicians and surgeons whose mental model of "normal" excludes much of what is actually normal and decent. They can be very dangerous. Like castrating a boy who had functional testicles and genital anomalies that led a surgeon to attempt to convert the boy into a girl to satisfy the delusions of the surgeon.

Physicians and surgeons who impose their deceptive understanding of human biology on patients can do formidable harm.

Why allow a urologist to make decisions for you? If your urologist disrespects you and your inner quality of life, finding another urologist would seem to me to be wise.

However, if your urologist can actually listen to you, as the person you really are, then a strong, and truthful, stand holding that you understand your life and needs better than the urologist may help you get your needs well met.

How to I know this? By living it. When one physician "did not get it," I sought, and found, one who "did get it."

[Hash (imported)]

How to I know this? By living it. When one physician "did not get it," I sought, and found, one who "did get it."

Thanks janekane, yes, I know this and am hoping that this young urologist is compassionate and sympathetic. Appointment is May 9th. Hash

[hazbalz (imported)]

Next Thursday is my appointment, wish me luck.

Good luck, Hash! I think I learn more from your and janekane's posts than anywhere. If memory serves me right, your new urologist is with the VA, correct?

[smoothie36 (imported)]

Well, it is a start. You can move to more Fem if you wish, but can't go backward.

[littletits (imported)]

No, Castration does not cause one to be transgender.I was castrated by accident and was a well adjusted Eunuch for over five years. I am now fully transgendered and enjoy being a woman. After my initial surgery (castration) I was left permanently impotent because of damage to my penis. I was put on bi-weekly Testosrerone injections. That almost sent me crazy with all the desires of a man and none of the ability to get relief. I stopped and adjusted and settled into the life of an assexual eunuch with absoletly no libido and would have continued until I ran into oestoporosis. I could not contemplate going back on T. I started on Estrogen and immediately liked the mental and physical effects. I began to develop breasts. They erupted very quickly and within three months I really needed a B cup bra and I could not hide them even under baggy clothes. I decided to go the full distance, went on full HRT, breasts went to a D cup the same as my sister and mother. I had trans surgery in Thailand and am enjoyong my life now. I can now orgasm for the first time since i was castrated. It is different to what I remember but is very enjoyable. Had I had a better experience with Testosterone I would never have taken Estrogen but I certainly have no regrets. I am still attracted to women only as,while I was a man ,I was totally straight. As a Eunuch I had no sexuality but my orientation was straight. Nothing changed in that department. I am now in a relationship with a natal woman. Castration did not cause me to become a woman but bone problems put that option to me and I took it.