User talk:HeatherTascal

I am a Christian Transgender female, I am not Gay. In describing myself, I fear that I will touch on a very significant controversy within the Gay and Transgender communities and inadvertently contribute to a public debate that at times, can be quite ugly and violent. First, and for most, I am a woman! With all do respect, I am not gay. I am a traditional, and conservative 49-year-old post-operative transgender female. In fact, I usually just describe myself as a Christian woman. I completed graduate school in New England and did my Ph.D. work at very conservative nationally known universities. After completing graduate school, I worked for the United States military and then moved to the deep rural south, in which I taught undergraduate school at a historically black Christian college in South Carolina. Yes, I am conservative, traditional, and Christian. In all truth, I have had very little contact or experience with the gay community. I have desperately little knowledge and understanding of the generally accepted and diverse values of the gay community. Gay individuals are no better, or worse than me, they are just different, and I seek to respect this difference, as I hope they and others will respect me, as being different. But, as a “transgender” female, this difference is very important to me, because the whole purpose of my profoundly dangerous, surgically invasive, controversial, expensive, traumatizing, socially isolating, career destroying, transition, was simply to be a woman, and not to be gay. As a female, I desire to simply be a loving and productive Christian woman. I wish to love and very much want to be loved, as a woman. This is the purpose of my transition. I am not gay. I am sadden by those who, as a result of ignorance, hate, or benevolence, attempt to define me as gay, or a part of the gay community and social movement. What this conveys to me is that my very costly transition has profoundly failed, and I am in danger of losing everything I have valued and worked to achieve in life. I am concerned, and even alarmed, by the currently acceptable acronym LGBT that most social support and advocacy organizations for gay and transgender people use. This just perpetuates public ignorance about transgender and gay existence. Those that support the use of this LGBT acronym claim it is used by social service organizations that are serving the needs of gay and transgender communities that are very much the same. But, in all truth, my needs as a post-operative transgender person, could not, in most cases, be any more different than the needs of the majority of gay individuals. Simply by examination of the life changing events and the purpose of them in my life, one must conclude they are unique to the transgender community and have little, or no relevance to the gay community. The exaustive and life threatening, four to six year medical, surgical, psychiatric transition process with all of its medical implications are profoundly and unequally transgender issues. The questions that occur, when the surgery and medical procedure goes wrong, are profoundly and uniquely transgender issues. The cost and the financing of the medical, surgical, psychiatric procedures that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars are profoundly and uniquely transgender issues. Issues of the medical-surgical process failing to allow a transgender person to live successfully in stealth is profoundly and uniquely transgender issue. The issues that have been mentioned above are just the very being of those issues that serve to clearly distinguish the needs of the transgender community from the needs of the gay community. The legal procedures and their implications after the medical-surgical transition are also unique to the transgender community and have little, or no relevance to the gay community. The most important of these legal issues is that transgender people are still medically and legally defined as mentally ill. This designation for the gay community was dropped in America decades ago. This can have profoundly serious consequences for transgender people, which are no longer a concern to the gay community. Then there is the legal name and gender change procedure that is unique to transgender people that can differ from state to state, in the United States, and can be very difficult and complicated. There can be numerous legal steps in the name change process to change the name and gender information on a birth certificated, passport, a court order, social security card, driver’s license, college transcripts and diplomas, which are not relevant to the gay community. These are not gay issues. Post-operative transgender people are not gay. Transgender is about gender and gender identity. Homosexuality is about sexuality and sexual preference. These are related, but are also very different issues. The focus of the male to female transgender experiences is to value delicate and feminine qualities of a person. The focus of the gay male experience is quite different, and some would say; quite opposite of the transgender MtoF experience. This difference in focus can be the cause of great misunderstanding and contempt between these two very different groups. I am not gay. I am simply a Chritian woman.

Sincerely, Heather Tascal