I am a male-to-female transsexual currently undergoing hormone treatment.

I have been on ethinyl oestradiol tablets and oestradiol gel for 6 months now and they are beginning to have the desired effect.  However, very strangely, my desire - or need - to dress has diminished.  I have thought about this a lot and would like your opinion on my conclusions:

I think that the fact that I am NOW becoming the female that I have always desired, means that I no longer have the same need to express my feminimity by the only way previous available to me - that is dressing as feminine as I could.

Could losing some of my desire to outwardly DRESS as a woman mean that I may NOT really be a transsexual?  I really do feel so happy and relaxed with the HRT and the effects it's having, I think that the hormones must be right for me. Even so, the loss of needing to dress makes me wonder.

Think about the difference -which is very, very great- between the transvestite, and the transsexual.

A transvestite is -almost without exception- a male who develops, just around puberty, a fetishistic sexual obsession with dressing and appearing as the -opposite- sex. This behavior causes the transvestite strong sexual feelings and sexual pleasure. Transvestites have no desire to actually become the opposite sex, because the thrill comes from the conflict between being male, yet appearing female. If a transvestite undergoes sex reassignment, it would destroy them as surely as it would any normal male, because -except for the sexual kink involving dressing up as a woman- they are otherwise exceedingly normal males.

The transsexual very, very commonly knows that they are the wrong physical sex before puberty. Where transvestism is learned, transsexuality is inborn. Transsexuals -which occur equally in MTF and FTM flavors- may begin dressing as the opposite sex, to feel better. When puberty kicks in, they may even share in some of the transvestites pleasure in dressing up, because sex in general becomes very powerful at puberty. However, for the transsexual, dressing up is not ever the true issue. Transsexuality has NOTHING to do with clothing, make-up, or jewelry. Transsexuality is about gender identity.

For the MTF transsexual, when the sex drive diminishes, alters, it pretty much tends to separate the boys from the girls. A lowered sex drive would tend make a transvestite feel odd and out of balance. Dressing up would have less of an attraction, and the sexual attraction of dressing up is what defines the transvestite. All the fun would start to go away.

Yet for the true transsexual, the lowering of sex drive is most often extremely welcomed. It becomes a point of comfort and salvation. The same loss of any sexual obsession with clothing occurs, but the transsexual does not care. Dressing up was never the real point. Instead, the transsexual simply feels better, and the loss of male hormone effects is a relief, if anything.

So, in summary, female hormones would generally feel uncomfortable to a transvestite, and remove most of their pleasure in their obsession, if taken in sufficient dosages to equal that of a transsexual. It can be a useful lesson for the questioning person.

However, for the transsexual, that same loss of male sex drive, and any obsession, leads to a feeling of peace and balance. Nothing feels lost, instead, everything feels gained.

Understanding that, you can answer your question yourself. By your statements, it would seem you already have.

I have a simple question, for which there may not be a simple answer. Is it possible to be truely and fully transsexual, but also have a fetish for feminie attire? Afterall, motivations for human sexual stimulation vary widely, and they do not always relate, in a classic sense, to a persons gender identity. Your thought's on this...

There is no Black nor White in Nature's Demesne, only shades of grey, and the ever present human longing for an Absolute.

Anything is possible. Of course there could be the odd transsexual with a fetish...after all, some nontranssexual women, albeit few compared to males, have strong sexual fetishes, and being a MTF transsexual is just being a woman-brain,  trapped in a body mutated to male. Anything that would apply to a nontranssexual woman would apply to a transsexual one, at least in terms of behavior and mentation.

The strong differences that separate the transvestite from the transsexual remain, in that even with such fetishes, for the transsexual, there is horror, and pain, and unending torment, that comes from a matter of identity, a matter of having the wrong body, the wrong life. The transvestite has no desire to change the flesh, at least not the genitals, not for real, and for the transsexual it is life or death itself to correct the misery.

Fetishes for clothing or not, this is what ultimately separates the transvestite from the transsexual......whether or not it is deemed of dire need to correct the body and the life, permanently, forever. As long as the individual would face even death itself for the opportunity to live as the sex they know themselves to truly be, then nothing else, really, is of consequence.

We use the fetish issue to help separate confused, obsessed transvestites from making a decision that could lead to their ruin and even death. It is an overwhelming statistical likelihood that a transsexual will not have such a fetish, or will not have such a fetish consume them. It is the definition of transvestism that clothing and appearance is the core of it. For the transsexual, identity is the core of the definition. Sometimes, however, the unfortunate transvestite confuses the situation, and sometimes the confused transsexual fails to understand the difference.

In volunteer training, the issue arose of the differences between being transgendered, transsexual, and transidentified.  We would like to become clear on the specific definitions for these terms, and which would generally be the most appropriate for us to use with Centre clients, if any.  Thank you for your help!

Although this is covered several times on my site, I will do quick definition set, with a few further definitions (to help make things clear) in order to help out!

Transsexual:

A transsexual is a person who was born with a rare (roughly 1 in 80,000) birth defect in which the sex of the brain (neurological sex) is in opposition to the sex of the body (physical sex). This situation, (which also can occur in other animals besides man) creates severe suffering and affects behavior and sometimes even (in very slight degrees) appearance and physical development. because the brain is one sex, and the body another, the individual suffers in a host of ways, including a conflict between their internal kinesthetic sense (the 'body map' within the brain), conflict with the way sex hormones affect them overall, and of course their position within society as a whole. Depending on location and culture, as many as 50% of all transsexuals die before their 30th year, usually by their own hand, due to this suffering. Transsexuality can be cured by altering the body to fit the brain that owns it. This is done through hormones, which make up some 80% of the transformative process, and may be completed with surgery to reconstruct the sexual organs (Sexual Reassignment Surgery, or SRS). To qualify for surgery, a patient must have the recommendations of two psychiatric professionals, one an MD, and also have successfully lived for at least one full year entirely in the chosen gender role (the 'Real Life Test). These requirements are known as the Benjamin Foundation Requirements. Transsexuality is marked by several key indicators:
 
1. The patient has a deep misery with regard to their body and their sex, and consider that their internal gender is in opposition to their physical sex.

2. The onset for transsexuality is almost always before puberty, indeed from earliest memory, though the transsexual may spend a lifetime trying to dismiss, ignore, or fight dealing with the issue.

3. The transsexual is focused on gender, internal identity, and not only on appearance. The need to be what is the seeming opposite sex is actually a need to correct a mistake of nature, and a misery, and has little or nothing to do with sexuality per se.

Transsexuals may be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or even asexual, since the issue is one of identity and body construction, not sex. Transsexuals are equally divided between the MTF or 'Male-To-Female', and FTM, or 'Female-To-Male' varieties, though because of the nature of our society, the MTF type get almost all of the attention, and the FTM types are almost entirely ignored.

Transvestite:

A transvestite is an individual, almost always a heterosexual male (only 2% of transvestites are gay males, and the number of female transvestites is too small to be determined), who -at puberty, or just after- develops a powerful sexual fetish, or fascination, with the act of dressing up and appearing as the opposite sex. This is done purely for sexual pleasure, and the transvestite has no interest in  actually changing their physical sex. Indeed, most of the sexual fascination is focused on the knowledge that underneath the feminine clothing, the transvestite is still male. It has been estimated that roughly 30% of all males indulge in some degree of transvestism at some point in their lives. Transvestism is a sexual kink.

Transgendered:

'Transgender' is an artificial term, recently (within the last 10 years) coined essentially for political reasons. 'Transgenderism' was originally an attempt to create some sort of political unity among those who society at large lumps together (such as transvestites and transsexuals, she-males, some 'butch', male-identified lesbians, and the intersexed as well) with the intent of gaining civil rights in the same fashion as that of the gay and lesbian efforts. However, over time, the term has been somewhat promoted to act as a general purpose, all inclusive word for any individual that in any way transgresses expected gender norms. 'Transgender' is by itself a null term, since gender is an innate quality of neurology, set before birth, during gestation. Gender cannot be altered once it has been set in the brain. Many individuals claim credit for inventing the word, so it is unknown who is actually the originator. Currently, transgenderism, transgender, and transgendered are all used loosely to describe any person who dose not fit ordinary definitions of gender, though the term is seldom used by knowledgeable professionals.

Transidentified:

Another artificial term, 'transidentified' is a 'politically correct' label for any person who considers themselves to have gender issues of any sort, or sexual issues that might relate to gender. It is often applied to, or taken by, individuals who do not entirely define as being transsexual, but who feel unresolved issues with their gender that affect their lives and identity.

Intersexed:

The intersexed individual is a person born with an obvious, physical manifestation of the same errors in prenatal development that lead to transsexuality. The intersexed person may have malformed genitalia, genitals that are indeterminate or mixed, or may be clearly hermaphroditic (in the rarest cases). Intersexuality of some sort occurs in roughly 2% of all births, and has no sexual bias. Indeed, because the physical sex appears mixed or indeterminate, it is often impossible to tell the sex of the infant. It has been customary, until very recently, for doctors to arbitrarily decide the sex of such an intersexed infant, and surgically enforce that judgement. This was done under the belief that human beings are blank slates at birth and that there was no such thing as innate, neurological gender. This has been shown to be false, of course, but the belief still remains. in both the past, and in the present, many such individuals have come forward to complain that the doctors guessed wrongly, and to demand that their sex be corrected. This has caused much debate and consternation within the medical community over the years, and due to recent discoveries about neurological sex, changes in treatment of intersexed infants are beginning to be accepted.