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
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
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