Fairfax, VA, USA. Out on the Hadar savanna with Lucy and her family, [N1] high up in the mountains of Europe with cousin Neandertal, or along the African coastline feasting on shell fish with early homo, how is one transgendered?

We are bipedal, we are upright, we of the keen brain and grasping hands but sans clothes, sans society, sans everything but our tools and our bodies, what would it mean to be transgendered when all we have is family?

Probability suggests that an exceedingly small percentage of hominids would be born transsexual.

In any event, in the beginning, before sufficiently advanced technology exists, there would be little a man or woman born transsexual could do about it. In a minimal and basic societal structure, the innermost thoughts of an intersexed brain would best be kept secret.

No one would believe you anyway.

Lisa Jain Thompson

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But a person born transgender does not need surgery or hormones. One does not require modern science and cutting edge research to be transgender.

One merely is.

Transgender is a declaration of self, a statement that one is different from their brothers and sisters. The form of the self-proclamation is quite simple

I am transgender

and identical in form to the attestation of Bill Compton on the HBO series True Blood [N2]

I am vampire

but without the visible fangs Bill presents for verification.

How does one’s transgender identity exhibit itself in the family lives of early humans? When one is on the hunt, how is one transgender? When one is nursing an infant at your breasts, how would one transgender?

The man or woman born transsexual faces a physical reality that can only be fully resolved with modern technology and medicine. A man or woman born transgender needs neither technology nor medicine to be transgender, they only require societal approval of their transgender lives.

Which begs the question. When clothing is minimal and the societal structure sparse to non-existent, what does being transgender mean?

In a non-technological, pre-scientific society, a male body is strong, prone to action and death by violence. A female body produces babies, cares for them, and dies earlier than the male after delivering relatively constant, minimally spaced births.

Men and women who publicize themselves as transgender are satisfied with the physical sex of their bodies. Not only do they prefer their birth genitals to those of the other sex, transgender women and men categorically believe that sex reassignment surgery is not needed to live their transgender lives.

Fine and well. I’m all for keeping down the cost of health care in the United States.

In a rudimentary society, a man or woman born transsexual knows she or he is transsexual but can do nothing about it. A woman born transsexual cannot rid herself of her unwanted penis, grow breasts, or remove her excess body hair; a man born transsexual cannot remove her breasts, stop her menses, or sew up her vagina. Until a society has developed sufficient technology and a culture exists that is conducive to sex reassignment surgery, a man or woman born transsexual must accept their birth condition and make do best they can — there is no other choice available except death.

A transgender man or woman, however, does not need surgery or a well developed technology to be transgender. They simple are transgender.

This takes us back to our original question: without the trappings of modern society, without the flash of changing fashion and the ever presence of the media, before the great cathedrals have been built and the cities of the world constructed, what does it mean to be transgender?

If one accepts their physical bodies as correct and proper (at least as much as any human body is), how does one transgender in a culture that has few societal constructs other than the ones that directly evolve from physical realities of the bodies its people inhabit?

I can explain what it would feel like to be born transsexual in such a cultural situation. I am certain that men and women born transsexual walked the rift valley in Africa and made camps along the rivers — it is a high statistical probability reinforced by the scientific study of transsexuality.

I also am certain that those same men and women born transsexual struggle to find the words to explain their situation. I suspect that they too prayed to whatever gods ruled their lives that when they woke up the next morning, their bodies would be changed to the sex they should be. But without divine intervention, there was nothing they could do to become whole.

Even now, in the first decade of the twenty-first century of the Common Era, the medicine and science does not yet exist that allows a woman born transsexual to become pregnant and deliver via natural childbirth. That possibility is still tantalizing decades away. It is a current reality that women born transsexual must accept for now.

In the same society, transgender men and women walk and play, they hunt and eat beside the other members of their tribe, raise and feed their children. They are born, they live, they die transgender but I struggle to define what that might mean.

If I were to go back in time to watch Lucy and her family leave their footprint in the Hadar, how would I know which one of them might be transgender? What should I look for?

Can anyone tell me the characteristics of a five million year old transgender? I really want to know.

Does anyone know?

Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson is a Co-Founder & Principal of TS-Si. She also serves as a Contributing Editor and columnist for the TS-Si website. She maintains another site, StarPoet.com, for her poetry and literary works.

Ms. Thompson's signed articles contain her own opinions and do not necessarily convey an official position of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. Lisa welcomes your comments. Use the form below or email via her TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.

The TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. Sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.


TS-Si is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.

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..., You identify a problem I have wrestled with (figura

22 August 2009     

You identify a problem I have wrestled with (figuratively speaking) these many years. Lets start with this question. How does one be a transvestite in cultures that do not have gender coded clothing? Lets take a hypothetical (Though there are still some, unsullied by western colonization) society. They may wear minimal covering of the genitalia, or maybe not. Lets assume they do. If a male gets up in the morning and puts on his wife's loincloth is he transvesting? By any analysis transvestism is only possible in a culture provided gender coded clothing exists, and our hypothetical husband can only transvest if loincloths are, in some way, formally gender coded. The same analysis is applicable to transgender. No formal structure of culturally accepted gender coded behavior: ergo, no transgender, mainly because, like transvestism, there is nothing to trans. Transsexualism would surely manifest itself informally and if our hypothetical culture had begun to develop a spiritual construct they might conceptualize a transsexed child as possesing a mismatched female spirit - but they could only do that if there was some innate comprehension of role difference between gestators and inseminators. Even were our hypothetical culture able to recognize and spiritually explain a transsexed child, it still seems most unlikely that a mature adult male (who had not been thus identified in childhood) would be accepted as a female merely by donning his wife's loincloth. More likely the local shaman (read psychologist)would be given the job of driving out the evil spirit! I do hope this helps your dilemma somewhat, Lisa Jaine.

Joanne

By the way .............................., Remember the

23 August 2009     

Remember the carefully sanitized transgender narrative - where any mention of of sexual element invokes howls of protest and accusations of misrepresentation ... Well try: Click Here.
Joanne

..., One must remember that some early societies did rec

23 August 2009     

One must remember that some early societies did recognise transsexualism, calling it "two spirited" and other appropriate names. These people were also often recognised as Shamans or seers. I know that the transvestites would love to claim this title, but the "shoes" don't fit them. As pointed out they are happy with their genitalia and just like to play "dress-up" or "let's pretend". On a Yahoo group, someone had a posting that claimed a study of drugs given for Parkinson's sometimes resulted in "compusive" behaviors such as gambling, spending sprees and CROSSDRESSING and it was found that it increased (decreased?) one of the Dopamine levels. If that's true, then crossdressers could be cured with the appropriate drug treatment while the only cure for HBS Transsexualism is HRT and SRS. I'll check the aforementioned site and if there is a study reference, I'll publish it here.

pamela

Lucy, The girl friend, a hominid, lived more than 3.2 mi

23 August 2009     

The girl friend, a hominid, lived more than 3.2 million years ago and preceded the age of humans. The discovery of Lucy was important for a lot of reasons, not least because it cemented evidence that her bipedalism preceded the increase in brain size characteristic of human evolution. It is interesting to speculate whether the old girl came from a tribe (or troop) that had some capacity for spiritual or psychological insight. Certainly, some later - and comparatively recent - societies have recognized the presence of individuals who were genuinely caught in some sort of passage. No society I know of applies "two-spirited" to those engaged in impersonation or deceit.

Sharon S. Gaughan

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