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By Kelly Cristine Barbosa Cherulli
Psychologist
There are those who hold that the body they own does not belong to them. With regard to sexuality it means holding the chiefly feeling of being born in a biological body incompatible to your emotional sex. These people are called transsexuals, thus they live up the so-called sexual identity disorder.
Biologically, the sex, as in sexual organs, gets genetically determined. Every human being bears his genetic constitution ultimately consisted of 23 pairs of chromosomes, being 22 that determine hereditary characteristics-hair color, eyes, skin complexion, height, etc- and 1 pair that determines whether male XY or female XX.
Alongside our growth-process the backdrop it’s been played against and emotional factors play key role in order to establish the so-called sexual identity.
The psychoanalysis argues that sexual identity gets established post resolution of the Oedipus complex. In which phase the boy identifies himself with the father-male figure and the girl with the mother-female figure to do so by mimicking their social roles so as to be accepted and fit within patterns of a given society.
With the transsexual it’s different. Even though he might be able to identify himself with his father or her mother, so that he can play his role in society, he will dwell a conflict within forever. That is so because the one born under the male sex perceives himself belonging to the female sex- the reciprocative is also truly.
In case of men who lived up such conflict, many got as far as abominating their own penis, relying on all means necessary to concealing it or even wished it extirpated. Those men and women who resolve to assume their transgenderism resort to hormones-years in a row and surgeries aiming to acquire the ultimate female or male figure.
Some might stretch it as far as sex reassignment surgery- a surgery in which sexual organs get substituted/replaced by some look-alike of the opposite sex. A man in case gets the penis excised and a vagina-replacement designed by the surgeon. As for the woman the surgery becomes a lot more complicated, since it implies in “construction” of a penis with other body grafts, often times with the employment of penial prosthesis, in that more often than not further surgery is required for a re-touch or two. That is the last stage of transformation and whoever decides to undergo it goes through a whole process of clinical evaluation that encompasses the medical, psychological and psychiatric part, once that surgery is irreversible.
Certain changes may render most of us gob smacked. Who can’t remember that beauty Caroline Cossey, a.k.a. “Tulla” one of the bond girls in “007 for your eyes only”, 1980. Born as Barry Cossey she did got on to get sex reassigned at her 15/16th thereabouts.
Be as it may the transgender endures bias of all kinds and legal difficulties in various countries. The surgery is allowed in some and prohibited in other countries. Document forgery –name and/sex bears another difficulty. The lack of specific legislation in most countries stands perhaps for the prime concern confronted by those in concerning their rights as individuals and citizens, who just like anybody else, pay their dues and feel entitled to achieve happiness. |
