Facts Versus Fantasy

"Autumn" Sandeen has announced that he is having "genital reconstruction surgery."  Except, well, he isn't.  Not even close.  He is lying, at the very least to himself, and really to anyone foolish enough to believe his bizarre fantasy.  You see, what Mr. Sandeen is having is, not "genital reconstruction surgery" but instead, is simply an orchidectomy.  He is not becoming a complete female.  He is becoming an eunuch, a castrated male.  

He starts off his little trip down fantasy lane with:

There are women of color and there are disabled women; there are lesbians and there are women of faith; there are mothers and there are servicewomen; there are women veterans and bisexual women -- and that's hardly an exhaustive list of the subcategories of women. Women's experience intersects with multiple labels and multiple identities; each woman's experience is complex, and not solely described within the confines of the "female" and "woman" found within western society's binary sex and gender norms.

I guess what he is trying to say is "There are women with penises."  Because that is what he believes he is, and what he believes he will be after his imaginary "Genital Reconstruction Surgery."  Many years ago, one of the first books I read on issues of transsexualism and transvestitism was Robert Stoller's Sex and Gender: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity.  It has been a number of years since I looked at this book, but one of the things I remember from it was Stoller talking about how transvestites have fantasies about being a woman with a penis.  At the time, this seemed to me to be a quite absurd idea.  Stoller based this, in part, on a review of pornography of the variety that features images of what, at first, appears to be a quite attractive woman...until you notice the penis that is exposed. 


Over the years, I rejected Stoller's ideas as just another example of the silliness of Freudian analysis which often seems to seek absurd causes for various mental illness and condition that seem absurd.  Another of Stoller's claims, which is quite silly, is that all transvestites were dressed as girls by their mothers or other females as a child.  While this may be true in some cases, I doubt it is true in all cases.  This plays into the kind of "forced femininity" fantasies that some transvestites show.


While much of Stoller's ideas seem a bit absurd, I have begun to realize there is some accuracy in the concept of men having fantasies of being "women with penises."  You see this in those who plot to get their birth certificates changed to declare themselves to be "legally" female while remaining physically male.  And you see this in someone like Mr. Sandeen claiming to be having "genital reconstruction surgery" when all he is really doing is getting castrated and becoming a eunuch.


Now, don't get me wrong.  I am not remotely suggesting that Mr. Sandeen should have sex reassignment surgery.  That would be a tragic mistake.  Clearly, he is not a woman, and losing his penis would be emotionally traumatic.  What I am suggesting is that Mr. Sandeen start facing reality.  Calling himself a woman just because he likes to play dress up is dishonest at best, or at worst delusional.  Calling castration "genital reconstruction surgery" is an insult to real transsexuals who have worked and suffered to get the real thing.  And claiming to be a woman with a penis is just silly.