Description
The "feminine essence" idea predates modern psychological studies, and was supported by some early sexologists such as Harry Benjamin ("the father of transsexualism"), who revived the idea of Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs that a person might have a "female soul trapped in a male body."
Modern researchers classify the common story told by transwomen about themselves as a psychological narrative, and therefore refer to this idea as the "feminine essence narrative". In his book The Man Who Would Be Queen, sexologist J. Michael Bailey gives these statements as a prototypical example of the feminine essence narrative: "Since I can remember, I have always felt as if I were a member of the other sex. I have felt like a freak with this body and detest my penis. I must get sex reassignment surgery (a "sex change operation") in order to match my external body with my internal mind."
Read more about this topic: Feminine Essence Concept Of Transsexuality
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“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)