Myth 10: Female transsexualism is not a psychological disorder but an alternative life style.

Given current cultural paradigms, female transsexualism cannot be viewed simply as an alternative life style. Women who identify as transsexuals experience an urgent, compulsive, unrelenting wish to rid themselves of their breasts and inner female organs. They are obsessed with wearing men's clothing, enacting a male role, and being socially accepted as men.

Myth 8: All gender clinics offer equivalent psychological care to the female transsexual, including following strict standards of care.

As a result of media presentations it has appeared as if the almost forty gender clinics throughout the western hemisphere have been established along similar lines to serve the needs of the female transsexual.

Myth 6: All female transsexualism can be explained by appeal to a unitary theory: theories as diverse as psychoanalysis, object relations theory, behaviorism, learning theory, information systems, and family systems theory.

With apparent disregard for clinical experience, and ignoring the diversity of female gender pathology (erroneously labeling a number of different disorders as female transsexualism) , investigators have offered various unitary hypotheses to explain female transsexualism.

The view that all female transsexuals are psychotic is false. However, while only a small percentage of female transsexuals (between 5 per cent and 15 per cent) are overtly psychotic or schizophrenic, this is significantly larger than that found in the general population. The majority of female transsexuals are not delusional about their gender identities.

Myth 2: Female transsexualism is a new phenomenon having no historical antecedents and being the product of media exploitation of fads regarding interest in anything sexual.

The data are compelling. Female transsexualism is, as one researcher suggested, "un mal ancien"; a disorder which has its roots in ancient civilization; is mentioned in the Bible (Deuteronomy 22:5);

Because most female transsexuals were self diagnosed, they often presented their transsexualism as a kind of fait accompli, a condition which had a truth of its own. The situation was complicated by the fact that female transsexuals often appeared more knowledgeable about their condition (and at the same time more blind to it) than most of their counselors.

Until 1980 the American Psychiatric Association did not even include transsexual ism as a clinical condition worthy of study. When transsexualism was finally included as a disorder there was no attempt to separate male from female transsexualism. Consequently, there were no guidelines for evaluating, diagnosing, and treating female transsexualism as a distinct clinical entity.

While there are some individuals who envy and revere the woman who wishes to change sex (perceiving the female transsexual as liberated from traditional stereotypical sex roles), there are others who simply view the female transsexual as psychotic. For a few individuals, however, there is a mystique surrounding the transsexual which has even led one grant foundation to fund an exotic research project to investigate a possible relationship between transsexual ism and the transmigration of souls after death!

The patient should not be encouraged in hasty attempts at intercourse. They increase his chances of failure and in the long run make his task more difficult. Naturally, should he make an attempt, even though ill advised and irrespective of success or failure, he should be praised.

The sexual undertones of social encounters with women, however, generate a steady flow of heterosexual anxiety. From time to time, therefore, in order to alleviate his distress, the homosexual patient may sporadically flee from women and act out homosexually with men.