I think you're right, in a way, that doctors need psychiatric reports about people in certain situations. But perhaps the problem sometimes lies in the fact that doctors, along with most of society, don't always understand that some people consider themselves to be of a third gender, neither male or female.
There is a tendency, in the medical world, to assume that everyone should fit into what we call the 'binary system' (meaning male or female, two genders).
There are some people who are transgendered (t/g), they are born into what they feel to be the wrong body. For a very long time, this wasn't accepted as a medical diagnosis and people who were t/g were, for the most, either shunned or thought to have all sorts of peculiar psychiatric problems. Then, following a lot of research, it was finally realised that some people really ARE in the wrong body. Thus it was that the concept of gender reassignment (commonly referred to as an 'SRS' - sexual reassignment surgery) was born. I happen to know the person who had the very first gender reassignment in the UK, he began life in a male body and had a gender reassignment to bring him into line with what he felt in his head. He then lived very successfully as a female (in fact, she was, for a time, a female fashion model). But then I also have a friend who had an SRS from male to female. He was not properly assessed (for whatever reason) and was desparately unhappy afterwards. He now swings between both genders. He is lucky, he has a partner who has been with him throughout the entire thing and really doesn't mind which gender he prefers to be (I refer to him as male because, at the moment, he presents himself as male).
The problem for people who feel 'third gendered' is that they don't feel they fit into any gender stereotype (I'm certainly not trying to speak on behalf of Roger here, I'm talking more generally), BUT society more or less insists that we must ALL conform to either male or female.
Once you let go of the two-gendered system, then things change quite dramatically.
For me, for example, it's not about what society expects of me or about societal expectations of masculinity or femininity, it's about what I feel I am. And THAT doesn't fit into any of the currently existing categories.
I'm not a freak, I'm not even a freak-of-nature, I'm quite a nice person most of the time!
But society will always deem me as 'odd'. Speaking personally, I think that this is society's fault and not mine.But people such as you offer the chance for some of us to try to explain things and that's a great opportunity.
I'm glad you're here.
Great board, packed with lots of info on XXYness.
