Exploring The Science of Transsexuality
Through Knowledge, Justice…
If you would be popular, tell people what they want to hear.
If you would help them, tell people the truth.
This blog is on the science, history, and politics of transsexuality and transgender sexuality, including aspects of sexual orientation. The blog also explores autobiographical themes where appropriate. There are many myths and misunderstandings about transsexuality and transgender people. Our scientific understanding of the transsexual phenomena has increased and dramatically improved over the past seventy-five years, yet much of what is available in popular literature is misinformation and disinformation.  Much of what the public, from all aspects of the ideological spectrum, including transsexuals and transgender people themselves, believe about the etiology and epidemiology of transsexuality is based on wishful thinking on one hand and deliberate distortions on the other.  Worse, many cherry-pick among the scientific papers, choosing those that, in isolation, appear to support a given thesis.  Many people have read misinformation and disinformation regarding the science, history, and politics, denying, decrying, and even weaponizing the science, often in emotionally inflammatory language (including vicious attacks on the characters of scientists and educators), that makes its rounds in the echo chamber of the web and social media.  Indeed, there are fora that will instantly ban any who discuss this science and politics in any truthful way.  This blog is an attempt to correct this situation.
Learning an unpleasant truth is better than believing a comforting lie – Don’t let the “tribe” tell you what to think – Trust only evidence, not vehemence –Data, not denial
All information found in this blog is supported by peer reviewed science and referenced (cited) in essay posts covering a given topic found on this site. Unlike some recent “reports” generated by conspiracy theorists and political hacks, none of this material, nor the citations are AI hallucinations. These essays were hand written with no algorithms. Many topics are interwoven with other topics, as they are interlocking issues.  Please explore the entire site for a full explanation of each topic.
There are over three hundred and fifty essays on this site. I recommend that one read the first several entries in the FAQ as an introduction and jumping off point via the links provided. One can find a bibliography for this blog if you wish to quickly find papers of interest. You may wish to review the Glossary if a word is unfamiliar.
Remember as you read this site; Transsexuals are good people, worthy of our respect, and even of our admiration. Nothing in this material is meant to imply otherwise. If you are a transsexual: You have value as a human being. You have the right to be respected, valued, and even celebrated as the gender to which you identify and aspire regardless of etiology.
More Evidence That 2D:4D Correlates w/ Sexual Orientation
For the past two decades I have been following and writing about the 2D:4D digit ratio. At first, the data was suggestive, but not conclusive. We have reached the point that it can be concluded that it does indeed correlate with sexual orientation, as this recent study now shows:
Reference:
Schultheiss, O.C., Gebhardt, D., Meier, E. et al. Deconstructing Kinsey’s Scale: Digit Ratio Correlates Negatively with Gynephilia and Positively with Androphilia in Both Sexes. Hum Nat (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-026-09518-z
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A Year As a Widow
It’s a few days shy of one year since my husband, Jeffrey Elliott, died at home on hospice care. I now understand in a deep way why the tradition of a year of mourning existed. It has taken that long for me to recover some sense of balance. While I still miss him deeply, and likely always will. I no longer wake up wondering why he isn’t in bed with me. I no longer wake up with my face wet with tears, though I still get weepy when I think of him. Some things happened this past year I had not expected.
I had lost my appetite for a while. I lost weight, a LOT of weight. No, I’m in no danger of wasting away, but clothes that I thought I would never wear again because they were too small, are now too big.. I’ve regained my appetite and food tastes good again. I’ve been craving meat a lot, likely to make up for the loss of muscle. I’m trying hard not to regain the weight. My strength has returned and I can now do house and garden chores again. The garden is looking a lot better. But as well as losing weight, I lost a lot of my hair to a strange phenomena caused by the combination of grief and rapid weight loss, telegen effluvium:
My hair is growing back in.. but some of it is now silver for the first time in my life, another gift from the extreme stress of loss:
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-stress-causes-gray-hair
I look a lot older than I did a year ago, some of it from the loss of fat in my face, some from the shorter thinner hair, some of it from my skin looking more sallow and wan. I no longer have to ask for the senior discounts!
Funny thing, but through all of this, my libido remained. I day dream about Jeffrey a lot… and even dream of him. I’m sad that I will never be with him again. But I have my memories of him that I will always cherish, three decades of them.
Further Reading:
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Barney Frank is Dead…
…I won’t be crying.
Frank may have been the first gay rights activist in Congress… but he was ALWAYS a transphobic villain. He represented the “cut the trans from LGB community” crowd. He actively worked against our rights both in the past and recently from his death bed.
I won’t be crying.
External Reading:
https://www.ms.now/opinion/barney-frank-congress-gay-rights-trans
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On The Euphemism Treadmill
Over the decades, the terms used to describe and self-ID autogynephilic men who wear women’s clothing, both in private, erotic sessions and in social settings for a short time such as a “girls night out” with other such men, has been on a euphemism treadmill,
Noun
- (lexicography) The process by which euphemisms fall into disuse and are replaced by new ones, as the old ones become socially unacceptable over time.
At one time, the term “transvestite” was a perfectly acceptable term to describe such men. It was often abbreviated to just TV within the greater “trans” community. At the time “transsexual” was also a perfectly acceptable term to describe those that were truly gender dysphoric and gender atypical since birth. But there was a vexing problem in that many in the community fully recognized that most “late transitioners” had started out as transvestites but now identified as transsexual. The medical and scientific community solved this by coining various terms, most notably, “true transsexual” and “pseudo-transsexual”. You can well imagine how those being labeled “pseudo” (as in, not truly transsexual, but “wannabe transsexual”… yes, that term was tossed around quite frequently… surprisingly, mostly by other autogynephilic males in denial who were dissing others of their own tribe). Thus, the first step on the euphemism treadmill for the transsexual types was to relabel the two types of “transsexuals” as “primary transsexual” and “secondary transsexual”, later, the second step, where we find ourselves today, now labeled “early onset” and “late onset”.
But many in the transvestite category chafed at being called such, as it had become associated (accurately) with wearing women’s clothing for sexual arousal and masturbation. So, the first step on the treadmill for them was to coin the term “cross-dresser” to replace “transvestite”. The second step on the treadmill was the coining of the term “transgender”. This new term also served to allow those who were on a progressive arc from secretively wearing women’s underwear for erotic purposes, to wit, a “transvestite”, to being socially “out” as a “cross-dresser”, to slowly progressing to full time living as a woman without getting hormones and surgery to be a “transgenderist”, perhaps to be followed by seeking medical feminization as a “transsexual”. By this time, one could find newsletters, then online discussion forums, that listed that they were for the full spectrum of such autogynephilic males “TV/CD/TG/TS”, the progression fully acknowledged in a single phrase.
In the 1990s, the term “transgender” was proposed as a global, inclusive umbrella term and given that the single largest category of socially active males were using it already, it gained wider traction. The term “transvestite” and then a bit later, “cross-dresser” fell out of favor and indeed became verboten. But language serves a purpose and they needed a term to label themselves, so, taking another step on the euphemism treadmill, they coined the term “transfeminine”. (Thus ‘transfeminine’ = ‘transvestite’.)
Finally, we have the introduction of the “non-binary” person, predominately young, feminine, heterosexual girls and women falsely claiming to be “trans” and then “non-binary” to join what they falsely perceive to be the Cool Kids Club. Their introduction around 2010 lead to the counter intuitive development of calling all but the term “transgender” to be pejorative… especially the term “transsexual”. Why? Because that term is specifically for gender dysphoric people seeking medical intervention, which the “non-binary”, being in fact, “cis” in every sense of that term, recognized that continued use of the term “transsexual” as the central defining term of what it meant to be “trans” by definition, said that they were NOT members of that perceived Cool Kids Club. To enforce this pejoration, they coined the slurs, “TransMeds” (short for ‘transsexual medicalists’) and “TruScum” (short for ‘true transsexual scum’).
Thus, we come to today, where transsexuals are forbidden to call ourselves that because it offends “non-binary” people, not because we ourselves stepped onto the euphemism treadmill… we didn’t.
Further Reading:
We Can’t Celebrate Our History If We Are Erased From It
Proof That “Non-Binary” Are “Cis”, NOT “Trans”
Are Heterosexual Cross-Dressers and Non-Homosexual Transsexuals On The Same Spectrum?
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Proof That “Non-Binary” Are “Cis”, NOT “Trans”
‘
The other day, I remarked on a social media platform that the “non-binary” identity is a social fad found primarily in young people, mostly girls and young women, and we have solid data that shows that it is already fading. In response, a young, obviously heterosexual and feminine young woman with “they/them” pronouns listed on her bio replied, “Fuck off!”. She made no other effort to rebut my assertion or my statistical citations with data to demonstrate and prove it. Just, “Fuck off!”. I will take that response as demonstrating two interesting data points. First, it suggested that I am more right than wrong, since if I was wrong, it would not have engendered such an angry response. The second in that it affirmed by example that we have data that shows that those with a “non-binary” self-concept / identity are eight times (8X) more likely to be bullies than the general youth population.
But, occasionally, I get a response that is more reasoned and polite. The most common is the claim that “non-binary” is merely a synonym for “trans”… and even point to “non-binary” identified individuals that are gender dysphoric and seeking or have obtained medical gender affirming care. While it is entirely possible for someone who would better be described as transsexual, prior to the “non-binary” fad having demonized the term, falsely claiming it is “outdated” and a “slur”. (hint: Its not, save to them.), it has been my observation that the vast majority of people who self-ID as “non-binary” are neither gender dysphoric nor gender atypical. That is to say, in the common vernacular, that they are in fact “cis”. But anecdotes are not evidence. We need data. This we now have.
In a 2024 paper from Fisher, et al., they surveyed both “binary” and “non-binary” “gender diverse” (oh how I loath that term) in Italy. You can read the paper for yourself, and as always, I recommend that you do. The data is useful. The conclusions the authors draw from it are dreadful and harmful to the transsexual population.
The study started in December 2019 and closed in December 2021 (total duration: 24 months). My readers may note that this was near the peak of the fad of claiming “non-binary” and falsely claiming to be “trans”. Of the 19,572 people surveyed, they found 624 transsexuals (“binary identified”) and 877 “non-binary” people of which 619 were female (~71%). Not surprisingly, most of the “non-binary” were in the youngest cohort. This last is an important point. If “non-binary” was a ‘real’ gendered thing, arising from natural development as opposed to social factors, there should be no age stratification like this. But is well known that young people, especially young women, are more likely to be influenced by peers.
The really key data though is that of the gender dysphoria prevalence difference between the “binary” and “non-binary” groups,
“While most binary TGD participants (75.2%) declared a persistent need in the previous six months to make external anatomy more congruent with gender identity, almost two-thirds of nonbinary participants (65.8%) reported that they never or only sometimes had felt such necessity. While almost all (93.6%) binary TGD people who answered the questionnaire had felt the need to legally change their name and gender marker at some point, over two-thirds (70.6%) of nonbinary TGD participants never felt such necessity (p < 0.001)… While the great majority of binary TGD participants (95.2%; birth recorded female: 95.1%; birth recorded male: 95.3%) had past, present, or future planned gender-affirming hormone treatment, over 60% of nonbinary TGD declared no such use (p < 0.001). “
The data clearly shows that the vast majority of self-labeled “non-binary” people surveyed were not in the least bit gender dysphoric, neither somatically nor socially. As I said, they are best described as “cis”… not “trans”.
Further Reading:
Data on the fad of “non-binary” rising and then falling
Transgender Bullies; Who Are They?
The Silent Transsexual (“non-binary” people silencing and erasing transsexual identity)
Reference:
Fisher, A.D., Marconi, M., Castellini, G. et al. Estimate and needs of the transgender adult population: the SPoT study. J Endocrinol Invest 47, 1373–1383 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40618-023-02251-9
Herrmann, L., Barkmann, C., Bindt, C. et al. Binary and Non-binary Gender Identities, Internalizing Problems, and Treatment Wishes Among Adolescents Referred to a Gender Identity Clinic in Germany. Arch Sex Behav 53, 91–106 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02674-8
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What The Ugly Kansas Hatefest Tells Us About Us
There is no way to sugar coat this. Much of the English speaking nations are passing laws and policies designed to directly hurt transsexuals. Oh, and please, stop saying it is about “transgender”. It isn’t. The laws don’t target the teenaged girls falsely claiming to be “trans” or “non-binary”, dying their hair purple and pink. These laws don’ t target the closeted cross-dresser. These laws directly target gender dysphoric TRANSSEXUALS.
The recent law taking away driver licenses and state IDs from transsexuals has had one side effect, giving us another demographic data point update. The number of transsexuals in the state of Kansas has been published at only ~1,700. This in a state with ~3 million total population. A little math tells that transsexuals are LESS THAN 0.06% of the population. Totally debunking the wild claims that there are over 1% and roughly confirming the data from the Social Security Administration and the US Census of 2010.
Further Reading:
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Transsexuals Misrepresenting Their Past
For the past 50 years, since I first met other transsexuals as the only teenager at the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Clinic’s “Grooming Seminar”, an event I didn’t need and should never have been required to attend, I have been observing and listening to autogynephilic (AGP) transwomen attempt to explain away their gender typical boyhoods, their years of living as heterosexual masculine married men with children, their obvious masculine mannerisms and life choices. At first, it confused and disturbed me as a naĂŻve teenager, who had grown up being bullied, abused, and even rejected by family, for being a “homo” and “prissy” (my mother’s transphobic description of me). At that very first event I was surrounded by transwomen wearing inappropriate clothing (out of fashion cocktail dresses early on a Saturday morning!), too much clumsily applied make-up, speaking in deep, gravely voices, and making rude, sexually explicit, jealous comments about my appearance, shocked and confused upon learning that I was actively dating men. Up to that point, my only model of what a transsexual is, was myself. But Stanford had told me that I would be meeting my peers; but if these were transsexuals, then what the actual fuck was I (?), because these people were nothing like me!
Because of my desperate economic situation and naiveté, I was exposed to a sexual predator who offered housing. She would NOT be the last such predator that I chanced upon in the transsexual community in those desperate early years of intermittent homelessness and food insecurity. She was NOT the last who attempted to use the prospect of being on the street to coerce me to have sex with them. I was even non-consensually drugged by such in a failed attempt to make me sexually compliant.
Essay on transsexual sexual predator taking advantage of me as a teenager.
From life experiences and training as a foster/adoptive parent years later as to what sexual grooming looks like, I look back at that experience and blame Stanford’s clinic for negligently exposing that naĂŻve teenager (me) to what they KNEW was an inappropriate environment and known sexually inappropriate adults. It’s why I strongly disapprove of support groups that combine “early onset” youth and such late transitioning transwomen.
Autogynephilic transsexuals are prone to misrepresent their sexuality, downplaying their interest in women, denying their interest in other transsexuals. Some, like my first exposure do so to lull unsuspecting “early onset” / “homosexual transsexuals” (HSTS) into lowering their guard; some because they wish to seem more like “early onset” to be “true transsexuals”.
Essay on transsexuals misrepresenting their sexual orientation.
For decades, I’ve also heard and read, seemingly with growing frequency, the oft claim, “I’ve known I was trans since I was XXX years old but society kept me from transitioning until I was YYY years old.” where XXX was some age before puberty and YYY was in full adulthood, often well after the age of 30. These statements are two lies in one.
The first lie is the age of self-knowledge / “age of gender dysphoria onset”. Claiming an age before puberty is a claim to be “early onset” which research has shown to be a key correlate of being HSTS. So making this claim is in the same vein as misrepresenting their sexual orientation. They know that using the phase “known I was trans” is a clever dodge because they know that relatives can refute a false claim of having been gender atypical. It’s not possible to directly refute a claim of private knowledge. However, its still a lie that can be shown by more closely interrogating it.
For example, one transwoman claimed that she knew she was trans and was also gender atypical because she didn’t like to wear a boy’s suit and tie to church. I rolled my eyes at that one! My brother, a very boyish, masculine child, didn’t either. Like most young boys, they chafe at the restrictions that wearing their Sunday Best imposes. They would much rather be wearing grubbies so that they can go outside to play in the dirt and grass, to rough-house with the other boys, play “kill the pill”, “king of the hill”, and even throw dirt “bombs” while playing “army”. This same transwoman then completes the trope by blaming “church” for not allowing her to transition until her late fifties!
The second part is the lie that “society” kept them from transitioning until well into full adulthood, after years of dating women, marriage, and siring children… whilc often enjoying a masculine career such as the military or being a male athlete. Which brings me to our next example of a late transitioning transsexual, Caitlyn, nee Bruce, Jenner, who played football and later in 1976 competed in the Olympics as a very fit muscular man. (This, the same year that I first encountered other transsexuals as described above… a teenager who had begun transition in high school). She married women three different times and sired six children. But after she began transition in 2015, she had the unmitigated gall to complain to a group of LGBT teens that she was a victim of a transphobic society that kept her from transitioning earlier (40 years after I did). You can well imagine my personal indignation to such an obvious lie, given her history of male privilege / advantage / entitlement.
Essay on autogynephilic transsexual privilege / advantage / entitlement.
This second part of the trope, the second lie, is a feeble attempt to explain away the obvious mismatch between the claim that they “knew” that they were “trans” as pre-pubertal kids, were in fact, “early onset”, yet followed the classic career arc of most AGP transsexuals by transitioning so late into full adulthood. The one that gets blamed varies, but is often kept purposely vague: family, church, “society”. They never expand upon how this extortion was executed.
Was it a family member that aimed a loaded rifle threatening to shoot them? Was it that they were repeatedly sent to conversion therapy as a child/teen? Were they told that they wouldn’t be supported in their plan to go to a four year college if they dared to ever present as a woman? Were they disowned by their family to become homeless, but promised to be taken back if they detransed?
(My readers will recognize that the above issues happened to me, yet I still began transition in high school in the early to mid 1970s.)
This trope is amplified by well meaning but clueless “allies” when they repeat the silly aphorism that every transsexual was once a transkid. No they FUCKING weren’t. These late transitioning transwomen were NOT “transkids”. Yes, the were kids. But there was never any pre-destination that they would later transition and identify as transwomen. There was very little reason to believe that they were any different than most little boys. The other meme that such clueless allies repeat is that transfolk in the past didn’t have the words, the language to express their identity, etc. YES WE DID! Actual MTF transkids said it loud and clear, “I am a girl!” Even today, most transkids younger than ten have rarely heard the term “trans” or know what it means. But they know who they are and have always and continue to have, the words that express who they are and how they wish to live their lives. Further, their very behavior bespeaks who they are and parents and teachers can clearly see it; And while they may be in denial, they know what it means.
Interestingly, these false tropes are often accompanied with the complaint that their family, especially parents, report that they didn’t “see the signs” that they were “trans” and then do expand on what those signs were, typically “signs” that aren’t signs of actually being “early onset”. My favorite is the sign of having always chosen to use female avatars in online multiplayer video games. Ummm…. no, that was when you were already a teenager AND it’s a sign of autogynephilic desire, not actual gender atypicality. The next is their having dressed up in feminine clothes… ummm… no, wearing a french kitten maid’s outfit or your favorite female anime character for cosplay is also a sign of autogynephilia, not gender atypically.
I’ve grown weary of hearing this trope, often offered when no one asked. I’m now calling it out. I invite you to do the same.
Addendum: I am starting a new list of excuses, misrepresentations, and self-justifications:
I just read a new “whopper” of a misrepresentation. A late transitioner who had transitioned after marriage and siring children claimed it was because she was so womanly, had such a maternal instinct, that she put off transition until she had had kids.
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Peter “Douchbag” Deusberg is Dead
Long time homophobic HIV/AIDS denialist whose deliberate disinformation and demonization of gay men lead to the death of millions… is himself finally dead at age 89.
Further External Reading:
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Looking back
This past year has been traumatic. For me. For the transsexual population.
I watched as my husband was in and out of the hospital and finally died at home under hospice care this past June.
We all watched as the governments of the US, the UK, and Canada attacked the transsexual community over and over again, attempting to make our lives miserable. Cruelty is the point.
But interestingly, as I have worked through the grief of losing Jeff while simultaneously reeling back from the seemingly unending loss of our rights and medical care access, I’ve also been looking back over my life, putting it all into perspective. If you haven’t already, you may wish to read my short bio in my ‘about’ page: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/about/ However, a quick recap. I began social and medical transition in my teens beginning in the mid-1970s. Yes, that’s 50 some years ago. So let me take you back to those years.
For my younger readers, it may be a very odd place to imagine; no smartphones, no internet, and nearly no information about gender dysphoria / transsexuality. Most homes had only one landline and if one had siblings, there was always competition for the phone. Oh… and your friends from school might live in another billing zone, even if only a few miles away, so parents limited your time on the phone to save money. Lengthy, long distance calls to friends away at college? Forget it! Thus, it was common to write letters to friends, in cursive. It took days for messages to go out and get a reply.
The only US state where it was legal to be gay was Illinois… Yes, there was Stonewall a few years earlier… but in reality, that had almost no effect on day to day life in the Silicon Valley suburb where I grew up. Gay/Straight Alliance at school? Forget it! The American Psychiatric Association had only delisted homosexuality as a mental illness at the end of 1973, too late to keep me from having been sent to conversion therapy that summer by my mother for being “one of those people”. It wasn’t the first time I had been sent to such therapy. I had been sent to another therapist at age ten for being a “sissy boy”.
I started formally “coming out” at age 15, the spring of 1973, to a few select friends, both boys and girls. One girl cut me off completely because of it. She wouldn’t be the last. But by and large, most of my friends were accepting and NOT surprised. Dennis certainly wasn’t when I came out to him that spring dressed head to toe in a cute outfit I had borrowed from Cassie. I had hoped that he would accept me as his girlfriend… that was not to be. A few months later, I met Kevin… the boy I was to have a serious crush on the rest of my high school years. I hid it from him, knowing he would never accept me either.
It was my hope and efforts to find a loving boyfriend and eventually a true husband that the rest of this essay will cover. After all, I had to kiss a lot of frogs before I found my prince in Jeff, to become the love of my life, my legal husband for 26 years, 28 years my lover. But then, I REALLY like kissing men.
By the fall of 1974, the beginning of my senior year, I had “come out” to even more of my friends, classmates, and trusted adults. The previous summer, I had had a full time job as a nanny taking care of two boys, aged four and ten. Amusingly, the advertisement I had responded to the previous spring had been looking for a girl…. they got me instead. They had figured out during our interviews that I was not “straight”, of course. During the course of that summer I was gifted by the family, a small feminine wardrobe and later a letter of recommendation using my new name and gender. I carefully hid some of the clothes in my bedroom, but the bulk of it I stored at a couple of female friends’ houses.
You can read more about my experience taking care of children here: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2024/06/09/baby-dolls-and-barbie-dolls/
My friend Lynn’s mother was very understanding and supportive. Their house was just a couple blocks from school. So, while I had to present as a “boy” at school, afterschool I would stop by Lynn’s house to change and put on my make-up. From there, I would go out shopping or just hang out at the mall. Kids from school would of course see me there. Some surprised, most not. One of my friends told me that a boy from her crowd said, after having seen me there, that I had “great legs”.
You can well imagine how upset my homophobic/transphobic family was about all this. In November, I had a 20 minute crying jag/conversation with my mother begging her to help me transition so that I could go to college as a girl. She was NOT supportive and her first question, said in a hateful tone, “have you had sex with boys yet”? In the end, she made it clear that the family would NOT support me if I transitioned. They would only support my ambition of going to college if I promised to never present as a girl. This I refused…. so in the end, I wasn’t able to accept the admission I had received from a California State college. I cried so hard when that happened.
In early January, after a very ugly confrontation with my mother, in which she dumped me on my father, he suggested that I should seek counseling from an expert. Of course, he was in essence, demanding that I be sent to conversion therapy, yet again. But this time, I was ready. Though my assiduous research at the public library, I had found the contact information for the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Program and their psychiatrist, Dr. Norman Fisk, the man who had coined the term. The previous fall, I had called them but had been told that since I was legally a minor, I had to have my parents permission to be in the program. My parents thought that the program was about conversion therapy, so my father agreed to make the arrangements. It did not go as they expected, as I have written about before, elsewhere.
After that, I brought my small wardrobe back home and hung it proudly in my closet, throwing or giving away most of my “boy” wardrobe, daring my mother with a glare to do something about it. My mother accused me of having stolen the money to buy the clothes, as clearly I could not have afforded them. I continued to present as a boy at school to keep the peace, but I made it clear I was headed towards full social and medical transition the moment I turned 18 and graduated the same week.
When that day came, I was informed that I was no longer welcome in my mother’s house and my father refused to allow me to move in with him. (My parents were divorced.) It took me a few weeks to gather supplies and to find a place… but I moved out that summer. I got my driver license and other ID changed to my new name and gender with no problems, due in part to documentation from Stanford that said I was “predominately female” and the fact that I could pass as female even before starting HRT. Life was about to become “uncertain”. But this essay is about looking for a boyfriend/husband… focusing primarily upon the four boys/young men that I had known in high school prior to full time transition, as I believe their examples answer questions about some of the men that date transsexuals and about me in particular.
In a previous essay, I wrote about my sexual debut the following fall: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2024/06/15/i-wantonly-committed-a-felony/
At the beginning of the fall term of 1975 at Los Altos High, a group of students, members of the Los Altos Science Fiction & Fantasy Association (LASFA) were having a club meeting to discuss an 8mm fanfilm project to create a silent short homage to Star Trek. Although there were almost as many girls in the club, not enough girls had signed up to play roles in the scripted film. The club was the largest and most successful club on campus. I had been a member. While other clubs were subsidized by the school, LASFA was not, as it had always made money on it’s club projects, most especially the annual fanzine, a collection of short Sci-Fi stories written by members. The ’74//75 edition included one of my stories, published under my new name. (Yes, I’ve been an avid writer all of my life. Check out my two Sci-Fi novels. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MD91VN6?binding=paperback&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tpbk )
Side note: The club’s faculty supervisor, Mrs. Church, was one of the teachers who supported me and helped with issues regarding my transition and getting my school records changed. I also suspect that she was the one who approached Coach Bottom to find a way to get me out of boy’s PE: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/its-just-not-fair/
Since not enough girls had signed up, it was suggested that they could have boys play some of the female roles. One of the members piped up, “We could put a wig on YYYY to play Yeoman Rand…” at which Dan, an old friend of mine spluttered, having mistaken the “YYYY” name to refer to me since it was similar sounding to “XXXX” that was an androgynous nickname I had been called in Jr. and High School. Jordan Brown, then a sophomore, looked at Dan and drolly remarked, “I rather get the impression that XXXX wouldn’t need a wig.” Dan then acknowledged to the club that yes, I was transsexual and was now living as a girl in another county. Jordan asked for my postal address from Dan, who got it from my friend Barby, who he was dating.
(Story of my unfortunate beginnings with Barby: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2024/04/22/excerpt-from-my-memoire-a-life-in-transition/)
Jordan had, obviously, been a freshman when I was a senior. He was not in my inner circle of friends, but was often in the group of kids that gathered in the same spot each day during lunch. And of course, he would have seen me during LASFA club meetings. Thus, he would have seen and heard me every school day for the whole year. It’s also possible that he had seen me at the mall or out with friends elsewhere, when I was dolled up pretty in my new wardrobe. Jordan was, like most of the kids in our crowd and in LASFA, exceedingly bright. As he had been accelerated, skipping a grade in elementary school, he was also very young for a freshman, 13 years old.
Jordan wrote a letter to me in which he openly admitted that he had had a crush on me since the previous year. Think about that for a moment. Here was a straight 13 year old boy with a serious crush on a 17 year old transgirl in transition, and willing to admit it to her. What followed was a sweet correspondence between us. There was no other way since at 14, he couldn’t drive and I didn’t own a car, or even have a phone at first. For Christmas, he sent a box of assorted chocolates. (I’m a chocoholic.) Let me make this VERY CLEAR because there are transphobes and even envious transsexuals, Jordan and I were NEVER “intimate”. My interest was always in men roughly my age and older. But, over the next couple years, we did see each other, hang out, go out on “dates” like bowling, etc. We would sometimes introduce ourselves, “My name is Candice Brown” then he would say, “My name is Jordan Brown”. Then we would look at each other as if it was the first time, then turn back to our new acquaintance and say in perfect unison, “No relation.”
Fast forward to 1997. Jordan and his new wife visited me to catch up, not having seen each other for a while. During our visit, he made it clear to me that he had shared with his wife that I was transsexual and that I had been his first girlfriend. Think about THAT for a moment. Here was a straight man, proudly proclaiming to his wife that he had had a crush on me, a transsexual, as a teenager. She joked, referring to me, “Of course, you were as attractive then as you are now.” After having surprised me with her very warmly accepting attitude, it was my turn to surprise her by asking, “When are you due?” It was too early to be showing, her tummy still flat. Her mouth dropped, “How did you know? We haven’t even told anyone yet!”. “I can tell. It’s obvious to me; you are glowing!”
Rewind back to ’69-’71 at Cupertino Jr. High. My circle of friends is expanding to include boys for the first time in my life. I had always thought that “boys were stupid” until then. Among my new circle were two brothers, Greg and Jeff (not my future husband, of course…. Jeff was a VERY common name in my age cohort). Jeff was shy around girls, Greg was not. But Greg could also be a jerk. In one particular incident he started saying some cutting, unkind words, about my friend Carrie, a friend of mine since 3rd grade, loud enough for Carrie to overhear. To shut him up, I stamped on his foot to get his attention and glared at him. “What?” he replied, as though he was innocent of any wrong doing.
When their parents divorced in ’71, the 50/50 split of child custody was to split Jeff and Greg. Jeff with their father, Greg with their mother. Thus, Greg transferred from Homestead to Los Altos High to live in his mother’s new house. So, when I did the same in ’72/’73 school year, Greg was already there. Over the next few years, Jeff would often visit his mother and Greg… and me both on the Los Altos campus and drop by our family home… often bringing Kevin, his best friend, with him (did I mention that I had a crush on Kevin?).
When I first got to Los Altos High, Greg was dating Cassie. But, true to form, he was being a jerk. Cassie asked me to help understand him. That’s how we became friends. Take a moment to think about this. Can you imaging a girl asking a straight boy for dating advice? Seriously? There’s a reason I came out to her earlier than to others. Greg later dated several other girls in my circle, including Beep.
Fast forward to February 1976. I’m staying at my father’s apartment for a few days, just off the Stanford Campus, as he was gone on a biz trip. He allowed me to use his apartment so that I could attend a gathering at the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Clinic, the very first time I had ever met any other “transsexuals”. It was a VERY confusing moment. I guess my father still thought that perhaps they would try to “cure” me. I put out the word to my crowd that I was in town and would be welcoming visitors. I even hosted a gathering one evening. The next day, Greg dropped by.
He was very solicitous and charming… and yes, we did become “intimate”, more fool I. I should have known better because later, he said things that were cutting and unkind. Nice to know that he treated me just like all the other girls he dated.
Again, think about this for a moment. Here was a straight boy/young man who had known me for years, who found me sexually attractive and even put me in the same sexist category of people to be used and abused as natal female girls. The ironic thing about it all was that my mother had accused Jeff, Greg’s brother, of being my lover in high school and wouldn’t let me close my bedroom door when he visited. She didn’t know that I had in fact made a pass at Jeff our Senior year, but he had rebuffed me… lots of tears that night.
Because I was a VERY naĂŻve ‘straight’ teenaged transgirl about to lose yet another housing situation, I foolishly accepted an invitation to room with one of the post-op transwomen I met at that first Stanford Seminar. I’ve written about that mistake and the consequences before: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do/
During the time I roomed at Karen’s, I met and dated a couple young men I met at school and at a club. Karen was very jealous. I mistook her behavior for envy of my success at dating men. Little did I realize the truth. I held a party at her apartment, inviting friends, but old and new, in the hopes that she would find a man she liked and liked her back (foolish hope given that she looked like a football jock in a frock). But at that party, one young man, a guest of one of the girls in my crowd, I had known for years, Don, and I hit it off.
Don was my brother’s best friend. He was tall, dark, and handsome as the old saying goes. He was a frequent guest at my mother’s house, often for dinner. He had often traipsed through my bedroom, as it was the quickest way to the backyard, my bedroom having a sliding glass door. He and my brother had rebuilt a motorcycle in our garage. I had helped him and my brother, along with a number of his other buddies, make an 8mm silent “Western”, as the camera operator. I had teased and laughed at them as they took pot shots at a dove in the backyard with our family .22 rifle, and missed over and over. They mocked me back, snickering, intimating that the femmie fag couldn’t handle a gun. I hit it with my first shot. Through it all, Don never taunted me, never made fun of me, never made any homophobic or transphobic remarks or insults, was always kind and friendly, unlike my brother and his other friends.
Don had recently broken up with his long time girlfriend Linda. I never learned why. We ended up talking through the whole night, retiring to his car so as not to disturb Karen. By the end of the night, we were making out. (I did mention that I love kissing men, right?) After that night, he would take me out on dates. First, he helped me recover my bicycle from where Curly, my old roommie, had moved to in the Santa Cruz mountains, on “wommyn’s land”. Don had to stay with the car as men weren’t allowed, but I was. Another time we took a long romantic walk at a park, holding hands. He introduced me to his parents. His mother seemed to like me a lot. He was everything I had ever hoped for in a boyfriend. And yes, we were occasionally “intimate”.
But then the world came crashing down on us both.
Someone had told my brother about Don and I. He told my mother. She told Don’s father that that cute girl his son was dating was “really a boy”. Both of my parents showed up one night at Karen’s apartment to read me the ‘riot act’. I had to sit and listen to their homophobic ranting for several hours. My mother also took the opportunity to get in a few transphobic digs into me, sliding that knife between the ribs and twisting it, making gratuitous and false remarks about my appearance and taste. (Read more about my mother’s nasty transphobia here: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2024/03/12/family-memories/)
I was used to this type of abuse. Don wasn’t. It destroyed him.
His homophobic father forbade him from seeing or even talking to me on the phone. I cried while on the phone to his mother as she told me this. As a teenager, he still lived with his parents of course. My mother forbade him from coming to her house. My brother cut off their friendship. I would occasionally see Don with his other friends at old haunts and through other mutual friends, but he was always cold and distant. We never got a chance to talk about any of it. I still blame my mother for what happened.
Time heals. A few months later, I’m now 19 years old and another old high school friend, Bob, pays a call at my apartment that I shared with Stella, who was likely the only other teenager in the Stanford program.
Bob was other classmate / friend who had been a member of LASFA. At school, he had occasionally caught me alone and engaged me in long intellectual conversations. A few times he even cajoled me into playing chess against him. This was always a drubbing for me as I was not a chess player while he was. He habitually carried a travel chess set. Since he always won, I asked him once why he wanted to play against me. He answered that I improved his end game because as the pieces dwindled, my raw intellect made up for my utter lack of chess knowledge. I was hard to beat at the end he said.
In school, Bob had had long lanky hair to his waist. He wore geeky thick black frame glasses and even on warm days he wore a dark woolen naval pea coat. But on this fine early summer day, he arrived with his sandy brown hair professionally styled into a classic ’70s lion’s mane to his shoulders. His geeky glasses replaced with sleek gold frames. And no pea coat to hide his athletically toned muscles. He had transformed from a nerd to a ’70s teen heart throb!
During the course of our conversation as we sat on my studio apartment’s couch/beds, Bob made a terrible pun with me being transsexual as part of the punch line. In retaliation I started a tickle fight. Turned out that he was very ticklish. To defend himself he wrestled me to the floor, pinning both of my wrists above my head. Then he realized that he was on top of me, face to face, with my arms pinned. There was a long moment as we looked into each other’s eyes, then he kissed me. I returned the kiss with growing passion. (Did I mention that I REALLY REALLY like kissing men?)
We saw a lot of each other that magical summer. And yes, we were “intimate”. But all good things must end. He went off to college on the east coast, to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that fall to study engineering. I wrote letters to him often, scenting them with my perfume to remind him of being with me. I couldn’t afford to do it often, or for very long, but I called him long distance a couple times. One time, I got one of his roommates who seemed to want to hang onto the call while Bob was in the shower. This roommate related that everyone was envious of him since he had a girlfriend at home and none of the others did. He told me that Bob had said I was very pretty…. and was even smarter than he was! This roommate also told me that Bob would occasionally open the drawer on his desk where he kept my letters just to get a waft of my perfume.
During Xmas break, Bob returned home and it was just like it was the previous summer save for a couple items.
First, the LASFA crowd had a reunion at our favorite pizza joint. I had arrived first. When Bob arrived after nearly everyone else, Jan and I (another close friend from our days at school and beyond) made room for him between us. Bob kissed me very passionately on the lips, out in the open, for all of our friends to see.
Bob’s family invited me to a family dinner. As I had gotten a job as a secretary at a Silicon Valley firm but was still going to classes at a local community college part-time, his folks asked me all about my educational and career plans. I didn’t have any at that point, really. Both of Bob’s parents were Silicon Valley engineers. In fact, his mother was rather senior at her firm and she was then the president of the local chapter of the Society of Women Engineers. She pressed hard to convince me that I should study to become an engineer too. For Xmas, Bob had commissioned his father, whose hobby was making silver wire jewelry, to make me a delicate, feminine, silver choker for me. (I still have it, almost 50 years later.)
There was just one fly in the ointment for me. Bob was dating other girls. He made it clear that he and I were not exclusive. I could live with that, if I had to, and I did. For the next five years or so, he and I dated on and off while he dated other women, including just about every one of the young women in our mutual circle, Jan, Liz, Barby, Robyne, etc. Because of the non-exclusive nature of our relationship, my friend Pat, who I had met when Joy and she become lovers, called him my “boy toy”. Joy was far less friendly to him, largely for the same reason as Karen had been to my earlier boyfriends. He was the only man I was “intimate” with both pre- and post-op. In the end, he married Jan. They have two kids, girls.
Bob, Jan and I remain friends. Bob even attended Jeff’s and my wedding.
Looking back, the question that these four boys/young men answered is why would straight men, not gay, not bisexual, not “chasers”, have been attracted to me having known me in school where I had been required to present as a boy? It’s really two questions, why any straight men would with any transsexual woman and why me? I believe that Dr. Richard Green answered that in his 1974 book on transsexuals,
“The men who fall in love with and perhaps marry women who are themselves former males, by and large, have known their partners only as women. Their prior sexual experiences have been only with females. They consider themselves heterosexual and their relationships heterosexual. To varying degrees they are consciously and unconsciously aware of the biologic status of their partners, but it would be simplistic and would furthermore blur generally accepted definitions to call these men homosexual. Rather they are men who respond to the considerable femininity of male-to-female transsexuals, ignoring the dissonant cues of masculinity.”
“Respond to the considerable femininity,” even though I had nominally been presenting as a boy in school…
The point is that sexual orientation does NOT focus exclusively upon genitalia. One’s sexual ideal also includes people’s whole bodies, their form, their personalities, their mannerisms, their “energy” (for lack of a better word for it). Gay men are attracted to masculinity, in both face, body, and manner. Just look at their distaste for “femmes”, their nasty jokes about “and then he opened his mouth and a purse fell out.” Straight men are attracted to femininity… and not just the presence of a vagina. While looks are important, so are personality and manner… I had all of that even before HRT and SRS. What had made me a target for homophobic bullies also made me attractive to these straight young men.
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Six Months A Widow
It’s been six months since my husband Jeff Elliott died. I’m still waking up with tears running down my face. My bed feels strangely cold and empty. I’m no longer racked with sobs as I was when we made the fateful decision to take him out of the hospital, to bring him home to hospice care, when he begged me take him home instead of leaving him every night… both of us knowing he was dying… and those first awful weeks after he died when friends and neighbors checked up on me daily. Six months now… and the house feels too quiet and even alien to me without him. Food tastes flat and flavorless. I have to force myself to eat most days and I’ve lost weight. I feel tired and can’t seem to get anything done around the house or the garden.
Jeff was in and out of the hospital the last year of his life, as his body and mind slowly failed him. In the hospital, I sat by his bedside every day, from early to dark, holding his hand as we spoke of things that interested him. He looked so frail, with needles and tubes and bags of medications pumped into veins. At home, I took care of all of his needs, rarely leaving the house. He often asked me to lay beside him on the bed to keep him company. He was embarrassed as he needed help with nearly everything, including personal hygiene to feeding him. He was a very proud and private man and felt sad that I had to do so much for him. But I chided him that I was his wife and I loved him. He would say in return, as he had for decades, “My beautiful wife”. He was mostly bed ridden that final year.
From his side of our bed, he could see a photo of me hanging on the wall taken when I was much younger. He told me it was important to him and it was how he always thought of me when I wasn’t there with him.
The last time he was in the hospital, he asked me why I had brought him there. Why hadn’t I just let him die at home? He was in the intensive care unit, where they were struggling to keep him alive. He begged me to take him home instead. Jeff was having trouble with his short term memory but not his long term. He was often confused and didn’t know why he was there, especially at night. He would beg me not to go home in the evenings so he wouldn’t be alone there. The doctors, including his primary care doc, and I talked together. Social workers came in to access the situation and to talk to me. I had been hoping that I could take Jeff home after we stabilized him, but I was told that was no longer possible. I bawled and sobbed just outside his room so he wouldn’t see me doing it. (I’m crying now as I type this…. as I remember it all and… “process” it yet again.)
My close friend Patricia was with me for support, as the final decision was made to take Jeff home, as he had begged me, so that he could die at home. (If you have read my bio, you may recall that Patricia had been a friend since college days and had been one of my friends who had dragged me to an HIV testing clinic back in the day.) There was a key conference in which the doctor and two social workers were talking to him about his impeding death. Jeff was told that it would be very soon and when asked if that surprised him, he said that it did. He had trouble processing new information and often forgot what was told to him just hours before. They talked to him about our house and where he wanted to be, surrounded by his books (we have 11,000 volumes) and which were his favorites. Most of the books are out in a library in the detached carriage house he converted and restored, but his favorite books were in a room next to our bedroom. One of the social workers remarked to the others that his long term memory and understanding were good and Jeff, understanding that he was having cognitive trouble, made it clear that I could make any decisions for him. She put her hand on his shoulder and said, “You have a wonderful wife.” His face lit up in happiest and youthful boyish smile of pride and love and replied nodding, “Yes, I know!” I was holding his hand, but had turned my face so that he couldn’t see me crying.
Patricia and a friend of Jeff’s, David, helped me clear out the room and the hospice people delivered a hospital bed. The room became a hospital room… save for bookshelves on three walls. The hospice folks sent nurses and others to help me care for Jeff the final two weeks of his life. He and I watched old movies together, holding hands. I fed him yoghurt with fresh strawberries, one morning, which he really enjoyed, taking one spoonful from me at a time like a baby, as he couldn’t feed himself. A few hours later, he closed his eyes and I asked him if I should stop the video. He said, “No, I’m still listening.” He fell asleep. It was the last time he ever spoke to me. Elizabeth arrived that night. The next morning we bathed him with a washcloth to make him more comfortable, though he was in a coma. A nurse came by and stayed for a few hours until Jeff died.
Elizabeth stayed a couple days until my friend Magdalena arrived a couple days after Jeff died to stay with me a couple weeks. (You may recall that she was my Matron of Honor).
I was asked a few weeks ago by an acquaintance of Jeff’s if I would be dating again. It felt not only too soon to ask, but silly. While I had been actively dating men since I was a teenager… it had taken two decades before I met Jeff and we fell in love. We were together for three decades. He was clearly the love of my life and no one could ever replace him, nor would I want anyone to. One of the things that I did soon after Jeff died was to buy a study silver necklace and thread Jeff’s wedding ring onto it as a pendent. I’ve been wearing it day and night since.
I love you Jeffrey… and always will.
Further Reading:
In Loving Memory of Jeffrey Kent Elliott (1953-2025)
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On the Science of Changing Sex 
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