Is TG a Conscious Choice?
We often hear detractors of transgendered people, say that transgenderism and crossdressing is a “lifestyle” choice. They believe that we consciously decide to crossdress to present ourselves in the “wrong” gender role. In a previous article, I pointed out that they are assuming that our assigned sex at birth determines how we are to behave. In this article, I will address whether we actually make a conscious choice to violate gender roles — or for that matter whether we make conscious choices at all.
Many of us feel that we have free will to make conscious decisions. We think that we have a “little person” inside our heads that evaluates all the information available about a choice and decides what to do. We can hear him/her verbalize a decision. Some believe that this “little person” is an ethereal soul that makes decisions for us. Some religious leaders have taught that free will must exist; otherwise a person could not truly be responsible for his/her sins. Some believe that we are bound by the decisions of our souls.
As a transgendered scientist I have researched and thought about this issue and have come to the conclusion that the only correct position to take is that we do not have conscious free will. We do not make conscious decisions about anything including transgender behavior. If that sounds a little radical, let me present the evidence.
Our brains and nervous systems are composed of little “widgets” or mechanisms that we inherited from our forebears. We have conscious control over none of these widgets and that is a sometimes a good thing. For example, there is a widget in the lower part of the brain that creates motion sickness when what we see contradicts what we feel in our inner ear equilibrium system. Boy, would we like to control that widget! The fact is that it just operates by itself and we have no conscious control over its inputs, outputs or logic. There is also an intricate little widget at the base of the brain that acts as a clock to tell the other widgets what body time it is. This widget actually winds and unwinds a DNA molecule; each cycle keeps time like an hourglass. It would be inefficient for a “consciousness widget” to be aware of the workings of all these other widgets. To do the wiring and make the connections our brains would have to be several times their actual size.
We think we see a continuous visual world where things do not jump around and where motion of objects is smooth. This is an illusion. Our eyeballs actually move many times a second. It stops, takes a picture, and moves on. There is a widget that creates the continuous visual world from these snapshots. This widget also creates the illusions of movement that we see in movies which, as we know, are really single snapshots, similarly strung together.
Decisions….
When faced with a choice, we think we consciously identify alternatives, weigh evidence and make a conscious choice. But the scientific evidence shows that we make decisions long before we are consciously aware of them — at least several seconds for simple decisions like determining which of two objects is heavier. For more important decisions, the delay may be even longer. The evidence indicates that the widgets actually have a voting procedure which makes the decision subconsciously and then announces the decision as the voice we hear in our heads as conscious thought.
As for the ethereal soul “little person,” if it exists, it would need an interface, like a USB connector or computer cord that links the ethereal to the body. Despite many years of looking, we have not found such an interface. That does not mean that we should reject spiritual experiences but it means that they are probably generated by some subconscious widgets.
So how does all this science stuff apply to transgenderism? It is pretty clear that we have gender behavior predispositions which we get from our genes and our prenatal environment (see Born That Way article.) One’s gender predisposition may clash with one’s culturally-assigned gender category because the gender categories are developed by cultures without regard to biology. The clash is felt by many of those subconscious widgets. Sometimes they decide to knuckle under to culture and sometimes they decide to rebel and to decide to follow a different gender category. You eventually become aware of their decisions but you have no control over them.
So the next time that you think about crossdressing, try to remember what you felt just before that thought. Whenever you crossdress, think about how you felt prior to the decision to violate your culturally-assigned gender behavior category. What you felt was all those widgets lining up to vote on their decision for you. Some were afraid because of possible rejection or danger and some were excited about freedom and adventure. And, yes, some were probably sexually aroused at least when you started your transgender career.
For me, the decision to crossdress appeared every six weeks or so. If I did not crossdress more frequently than six weeks, those little widgets would keep pushing to do it. One even provided a mantra it must have learned when I was a child “You have to wear little girl’s clothes.” It could not say anything else. It would speak up more frequently as the six weeks elapsed, like a more frequent drumbeat.
It may be hard to explain free will and widgets to some of those detractors of transgendered people. Some of them may understand but continue their hate-mongering for fun and profit. But as long as you have this article, you will know why TG is not a conscious lifestyle choice.
Category: Transgender Body & Soul
About the Author (Author Profile)
Dana Jennett Bevan holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and a Bachelors degree from Dartmouth College both in experimental psychology. She is the author of The Transsexual Scientist which combines biology with autobiography as she came to learn about transgenderism throughout her life. Her second book The Psychobiology of Transsexualism and Transgenderism is a comprehensive analysis of TSTG research and was published in 2014 by Praeger under the pen name Thomas E. Bevan. Her third book Being Transgender was released by Praeger in November 2016. She can be reached at [email protected].Subscribe
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Karen01,
Valerie used the rig to measure radiated muscle potentials and brain activity coming from the body, not ethereal signals being communicated to the brain. The radiated activity came from muscles that radiate electromagnetic energy when flexed and the brain which radiates from neurons. Muscle potentials are higher frequency from EEG and in the last two years they have discovered new information in EEG at higher frequencies
The rig was in the non-ethereal domain. There is no suggestion of an ethereal/non-ethereal interface.
I don’t think my comment fundamentally changes what is written above but I think that there may be some interest in the most advanced mind science I’ve seen in my studies. It is from interviews I heard in the late ’90’s by Dr. Valerie Hunt, UCLA, and one her two books written for the general public, called Infinite Mind-Infinate Energy.
Using technology developed from computerized “Chaos” theory and with the help from both Max Planck Institute, Leipzig and NASA, she would hook a subject up such that the patterns reflecting the electro magnetic field around the head and upper body could be visualized. Looking at the screen, only the general thinking of the person could be realized but, the timing of the the thought and the timing of the brain and the chemistry could be proven. She proved that, when a person thinks, the electro magnetic “Mind Field” registers that thought 1st in time. After that the brain registers and, as is well known, the chemistry follows last.
So, my point is that the connection between a physical, mental and “ethereal” body was proven to exist several decades ago. Of course, like most of the best science, it is kept secret (see: disclosureproject.org) or is ignored by money driven scientific education institutions.
It could certainly be argued to that “to crossdress or not” at any given moment is a concious choice, and I wouldn’t disagree with that. It is, after all, only an issue of which style of clothes one feels like wearing, and women make precisely that choice every day based on how they feel, and on the challenges (meterological, circumstantial, personal, etc.) which they expect the day will generate. I appreciate that most men feel that “western” culture denies them the right to wear a dress if they so desire, but that doesn’t mean that the wish (or the need) to do so is lessened or invalidated in any way.
However, “whether or not to crossdress” at any particular instant is totally different from “being a crossdresser”, which in my experience is a more-or-less permanent state going way back to before I can clearly remember actual events. Of course, I hardly crossdressed at all when I was young, but the desire was always there – in other words, a crossdresser is always a crossdresser, regardless of what he’s wearing at any particular moment. The motivation behind crossdressing is a powerful one, and many men risk a great deal by indulging – why would they do that if it were choice? It may be nature, nurture, or both … but most crossdressers have no say in the matter. That to me says that “being a crossdresser” isn’t a choice. Well, that, and remembering what happened on the numerous occasions that I tried to stop …
Maybe the word “choice” is too coarse to be of much use? Perhaps there should be “degrees of choice”? For example, could it be that my being a crossdresser is merely a subconcious desire which, even though I appear to have no control over it, is nevertheless still a choice by some technical definition? Hmmm. One can play with semantics, but practically speaking, an overwhelming subconcious desire isn’t a choice in everyday parlance.
An interesting line of research in my view would be focussed on why I should claim to “be a crossdresser” while the man next door doesn’t. Answering this should throw more light on exactly what “choice” means in this context.