Transitions: Transgender people can struggle to find their identities

By DIANA FISHLOCK, The Patriot-News

From the time he could crawl, Jack Bowser was totally into being a boy. “I always wanted the boys’ toys, was always outside doing sports or outside with my dad. I always wanted to wear the boys’ clothes, suits, everything,” said the 45-year-old Ephrata man.

Bowser was all boy, except for the fact that he was born a girl.

In the last few years, Bowser has taken hormones and had surgeries to become a man, so his body matches the way he felt inside. He says he’s happier than he ever was as a woman. But he has no relationship with his parents. When he last spoke to his mother 3½ years ago, he realized she would never accept him.

Transgender people like Bowser feel they were born in the wrong bodies. They’ve always felt they should wear different clothes, have different names and be more comfortable in their own skin.

Transgender is an umbrella term, including everyone from cross-dressers and female impersonators to transsexuals who change their sex from male to female, or female to male, according to the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition.

While gay men and women have gained much broader acceptance in the past 20 years, transgender identity still seems foreign to many Americans. Transgender people face rejection from their families, their churches and society, which can all be uncomfortable with the idea that someone would want to change their bodies or even their clothes to look like the opposite sex.

“Anything that deviates from a social norm creates a kind of dissonance within observers,” said Warren Throckmorton, associate professor of psychology at Grove City College.

Observers aren’t sure how to act or what to say or what it means for them, he said. “It brings up questions for social behavior that are not frequently confronted.”

No reliable statistics

No one knows exactly how many transgender people there are in the United States, according to Justin Tanis with the National Center for Transgender Equality.

“Transgender people clearly exist in our society, but we don’t even have reliable statistics,” said Tanis, who is a transgender man.

As many as 2 to 3 percent of biological males engage in cross-dressing, at least occasionally, according to the American Psychological Association. It estimates 1 in 10,000 biological men are transsexuals and 1 in 30,000 biological females.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, used by mental health professionals to diagnose patients, labels transgenderism as a psychological disorder. And Diane Gramley believes people who are confused about their gender need help.

Gramley is president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, a organization promoting conservative Christian values. The AFA opposes what it describes as the homosexual lifestyle, and rejects the idea of transgender identity.

“To embrace or to affirm that lifestyle or their confusion does not help them. The only compassionate thing would be to provide counseling for them,” she said.

“Counsel this individual that you were born a female or a male, and this is what you were intended to be. To change that, you’re not going to be able to live the life you were meant to live, and it’s going to impact everyone, especially the children.”

The American Psychological Association takes a more flexible position: “A psychological condition is considered a mental disorder only if it causes distress or disability. Many transgender people do not experience their transgender feelings and traits to be distressing or disabling, which implies that being transgender does not constitute a mental disorder per se.”