[Note: LenaD has a related diary entitled The road not taken on the same subject as this diary, but with a somewhat different take. ~~Autumn~~]
Some days I hate my job at Pam's House Blend, and this is definitely one of those days. I really need to explain what the Real Life Experience [(RLE) -- also referred to as the Real Life Test (RLT)] is and why some transsexuals detransition...And, this is because the person I met as Christine Daniels is apparently detransitioning (also called retransitioning) to Mike Penner.
Basically, I need to separate the personal from the professional when discussing how detransitioning fits into transsexual experience -- a sometime component of transitioning sexes -- and yet on the very personal level I wish it weren't at the impetus of someone I've known and care deeply about that's leading me to discuss the subject.
But life is what it is.
So, the first thing that needs to be explained is exactly what a real life experience is, and where detransitioning fits into the real life experience.
[Below the fold: excerpts from the Harry Benjamin Standards Of Care on the "Real Life Experience"; comments by a gender therapist on detransitioning; and some reasons why transitioners sometimes detransition.]
Page 17 of the Harry Benjamin Standards Of Care For Gender Identity Disorders says this about the RLE (emphasis added):
The act of fully adopting a new or evolving gender role or gender presentation in everyday life is known as the real-life experience. The real-life experience is essential to the transition to the gender role that is congruent with the patient's gender identity. Since changing one's gender presentation has immediate profound personal and social consequences, the decision to do so should be preceded by an awareness of what the familial, vocational, interpersonal, educational, economic, and legal consequences are likely to be. Professionals have a responsibility to discuss these predictable consequences with their patients. Change of gender role and presentation can be an important factor in employment discrimination, divorce, marital problems, and the restriction or loss of visitation rights with children. These represent external reality issues that must be confronted for success in the new gender presentation. These consequences may be quite different from what the patient imagined prior to undertaking the real-life experiences. However, not all changes are negative.Parameters of the Real-Life Experience. When clinicians assess the quality of a person's real life experience in the desired gender, the following abilities are reviewed:
1. To maintain full or part-time employment;
2. To function as a student;
3. To function in community-based volunteer activity;
4. To undertake some combination of items 1-3;
5. To acquire a (legal) gender-identity-appropriate first name;
6. To provide documentation that persons other than the therapist know that the patient
functions in the desired gender role.Real-Life Experience versus Real-Life Test. Although professionals may recommend living in the desired gender, the decision as to when and how to begin the real-life experience remains the person's responsibility. Some begin the real-life experience and decide that this often imagined life direction is not in their best interest. Professionals sometimes construe the real-life experience as the real-life test of the ultimate diagnosis. If patients prosper in the preferred gender, they are confirmed as "transsexual," but if they decided against continuing, they "must not have been." This reasoning is a confusion of the forces that enable successful adaptation with the presence of a gender identity disorder. The real-life experience tests the person's resolve, the capacity to function in the preferred gender, and the adequacy of social, economic, and psychological supports. It assists both the patient and the mental health professional in their judgments about how to proceed. Diagnosis, although always open for reconsideration, precedes a recommendation for patients to embark on the real-life experience. When the patient is successful in the real-life experience, both the mental health professional and the patient gain confidence about undertaking further steps.
So, what's supposed to happen when a transitioner has a unsuccessful RLE is that the transitioner detransitions.
I had an appointment with my own therapist, Patricia Wojdowski, L.C.S.W., on Wednesday. While at the appointment, I asked her some questions regarding detransitioning, and asked if I could post her responses at Pam's House Blend.
I actually was kind of surprised at Patricia's answers. Basically, in her long practice with trans clients (she's been involved with studying and treating transsexuals and other gender variant people since the mid-seventies), the single commonality for all of her detransitioning clients has been that external pressures were the impetus. All of her clients who have detransitioned still considered themselves as having a gender identity that didn't match their natal sex, but external pressures -- issues such as inability to find employment, biases and discrimination in the workplace, an inability to find appropriate housing, conflict with friends and/or family, etc. -- are why the RLE is evaluated by the client as unsuccessful, and the client decides to detransition.
I know there are other reasons than the ones my therapist cites. Sometimes the reason is relating to faith, where one becomes an "ex-transsexual" or "ex-transgender" (the trans equivalents to "ex-gay"). Sometimes it's because the person really isn't a transsexual, and an unsuccessful RLE catches them before they experience transsexual regret. Since my therapist doesn't practice conversion (or reparative) therapy, she wouldn't see those who are detransitioning for reasons of faith. But, it is interesting that in all the years of her practice, she's never seen a transsexual who has detransitioned due to because the detransitioner has figured out that he or she really wasn't transsexual -- all of her detransitioners have detransitioned due to external pressures.
So, back to our impetus -- is Mike Penner detransitioning from Christine Daniels because he's under external pressures, or is it because he figured out during his RLE that his gender identity really wasn't female? Honestly, I have a guess, but I have no real idea.
The bottom line is that when a person begins a transsexual transition -- especially a very public transition -- one trades one set of problems related to having a hidden, real or perceived gender identity that's in conflict with one's natal sex for a completely new and different set of problems. That new set of problems often include difficulties related to housing, employment, and public accommodation --basically just dealing with others' biases and discrimination -- family issues related to one's spouse/ex-spouse and children, as well as having one's peers, friends and family still seeing you as either still a member of your natal sex instead of your target sex, or as a member of some "third gender" rather than as your target sex.
Detransitioning may relieve most of the transitioning stress, but at least in the case of male-to-female transitioners who detransition, one can't go fully back to one's previous life. Prior to transitioning, most are fairly closeted about having cross-gender identity and expression issues. When detransitioning, one's peers, friends, and family -- and in Mike's case, the sports community audience he writes at the Los Angeles Times for -- know there are at a minimum gender expression issues. In other words, since in broad society most can't tell the difference between a male-to-female transsexual, a drag queen, a crossdresser, and an effeminate gay man, a detransitioner going back to a male expression of public gender is going to be perceived as if he were gay because of the time spent living as female; basically the detransitioner won't fully regain his heterosexual privilege.
Transitioning is hard; detransitioning is hard. My warmest thoughts are with Mike -- I wish him the absolute best.
~~~~~
Further reading:
* Transsexual regret
* A Warning For Those Considering MtF SRS
* Can One Be A Transgender Christian?
~~~~~
Related:
* Christine Daniels Retransitioning Back To Mike Penner
* LA Times' Penner: "I am a transsexual sportswriter."
* Check out LA Times sportwriter Christine Daniels' transition blog (Autumn note: The blog is gone.)
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"This is Bishop Rene H. Gracida, reminding all Catholics that they must vote in this election with an informed conscience. A Catholic cannot be said to have voted in this election with a good conscience if they have voted for a pro-abortion candidate. Barack Hussein Obama is a pro-abortion candidate."Randall Terry -- yes, the Operation Rescue Randall Terry --
Randall A. Terry is an American political and conservative religious activist and musician. He founded the pro-life organization Operation Rescue in 1987 and led the group for its first 10 years. He has been arrested more than 40 times for his anti-abortion activities that contributed to about 100,000 arrests of pro-life activists in front of abortion clients in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2003, Randall Terry founded the Society for Truth and Justice and he conducted a program called Operation Witness. Terry was the spokesman for the Schindler family in the Terri Schiavo case.has a letter calling to the bishops to oppose Obama. Read a portion of it below the fold.
You should read the whole letter, but here's a taste of the womb control advocacy:
Which American Bishops Should Speak Out?
Due to the speed of modern communications -- newsprint, radio, TV, and now the Internet -- these errors and dissent have saturated every diocese in America.In that light, every bishop in America should seize this opportunity to clarify Catholic teaching and guard the faithful, above all using the words of Evangelium Vitae.
Your Excellencies, please understand, I am not suggesting that you tell the faithful who to vote for. Nor am I asking you to endorse a party. That would clearly be an illegitimate use of clerical authority. (Catholic voters have many options.)
However, would it not be more painful to the hearts of Jesus and Mary if you do not teach – loudly and clearly – that the theological and moral reasoning that justifies voting for Obama is grave error masquerading as Catholic moral teaching ?
For those who say that a bishop “cannot name names” (such as the name "Obama"), they should study 3000 years of history and theology of the people of God. The Church and her leaders have publicly named heretics, malefactors, and tyrants by name for millennia. Moses, Nathan, Elijah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Justin Martyr, Catherine of Siena, John Fisher, Thomas More, and a host of Prophets, Saints, and Martyrs bear witness to this.
Our allegiance as Catholic Christians, and the allegiance of Catholic Bishops, is to the Holy See, not the Internal Revenue Service.Since Catholic priests, nuns, and laity have stated that voting for Obama is in accord with "Catholic moral teaching" and your teachings as bishops in particular, and since the Holy Father charged American bishops to defend “Catholic moral teaching” as it pertains abortion in America, the hour has come to speak clearly, courageously, and publicly. These grave errors against the Catholic Faith and Morals have ominous life and death ramifications.
More babies will be murdered if these errors are not corrected.
Please bishops! I beg you in the Name of our Lord and our Blessed Mother! Defend the Truth! Defend Life! Correct the error that “Catholic morality” in this situation can justify voting for Obama!
You have the authority of the Apostles; please use it.
You have the charge from a Successor of St. Peter; please follow it.
The beauty of the divinely inspired words of John Paul II is that they are clear; everyone can understand what he said.
Catholic priests, nuns, and laity who are calling for Obama's election have created a stage and a spotlight in which duty demands that you correct these errors. The situation at this moment in history provides no one with a moral option to simply sit on the sidelines. The faithful are waiting to hear what you say, to see if these men and women are dissenting and deceiving, or if they are accurately portraying Church teaching – your teaching.
So that means it's down to fear-mongering at this point, using Joe Biden's words to suggest Barack Obama couldn't handle an international crisis (as if McCain, who has supported Bush's disastrous Iraq policy, can?).
ARLINGTON, VA -- Today, McCain-Palin 2008 released its latest television ad, entitled "Ladies and Gentlemen." The ad highlights Joe Biden -- Barack Obama's own running-mate -- guaranteeing an international crisis if Barack Obama is elected. Because of Barack Obama's inexperience, Joe Biden has guaranteed the American people that the world will test Barack Obama within the first six months of being elected. If Barack Obama's vote against the surge and response to the Russia-Georgia crisis are any indication, Americans can't afford to see if he passes the test or not. The ad will be televised in key states.
ANNCR: Listen to Joe Biden. Talking about what electing Barack Obama will mean.
JOE BIDEN: Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama. The world is looking. We're going to have an international crisis ... to test the mettle of this guy. I guarantee you it's gonna happen.
ANNCR: It doesn't have to happen.
Vote McCain.
JOHN MCCAIN: I'm John McCain and I approve this message.
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