Recovery: setting boundaries

Here are some suggestions for boundaries that we can set as tools for achieving sobriety:-

• Don’t wear women’s clothes or cosmetics
  
• Don’t buy women’s clothes, or window-shop for them
  
• Don’t shave or remove hair from arms, legs or armpits (unless these are normal male behaviours in your culture)
  
• Don’t take female hormones
  
• Don’t have treatment for beard removal
  
• Don’t use transgender fantasies to masturbate, to suppress feelings or to avoid dealing with problems
  
• Don’t enter transgender fantasies while being sexual with a partner
  
• Don’t surf the Internet for material to stimulate transgender fantasies
  
• Don’t buy or keep transgender pornography
  
• Don’t keep catalogues of women’s clothing
  
• Don’t use a femme name, for example as an e-mail address
  
• Don’t attend transgender social gatherings en femme, or avoid them altogether

Questions for self-diagnosis

These questions are meant to help you think about your situation. There is nothing scientific about them – they are simply drawn from aspects of my own experience which I feel are significant. There is no scoring system. Some of them raise the issue of sexual orientation – you can read an explanation of my thoughts on this here.

How many of the following statements do you identify with?

• The first time I can remember having sexual feelings as a child is when I first had a transsexual fantasy.


• I frequently masturbate whilst having transgender fantasies.


• I use sexual fantasy as a refuge from the problems of real life.


• The woman I am in my fantasies is the kind of woman I find sexually attractive, and bears no relation to my own age, size, appearance etc.


• I fantasize compulsively about particular female anatomical characteristics (breasts, vagina, etc.) or biological functions (menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding etc.).


• My sexual fantasies of being a woman involve sado-masochistic or fetishistic elements.


• In my fantasies I may be sexual with men, but they are “faceless” – I don’t fantasize about specific male individuals.


• I regularly engage in sexual behaviours which I want to stop because I feel they are not ways in which a woman would typically behave, but I am unable to stop them.


• I use pornography, but tell myself that I am different from normal male pornography users because I identify with the women portrayed.


• I spend a lot of time looking at TS websites and using them to fuel my fantasies of becoming a beautiful woman.


• I have had one or more long-term sexual relationships with women.


• I have had no sexual experiences with men.


• I wear women’s clothes in private, but rarely or never go out in public en femme – I am too nervous.


• I worry a lot about not being young and attractive enough as a woman.


• I don’t enjoy social gatherings of transgendered people – I just feel awkward and out of place.


• I have, or have had, typically male leisure interests.


• I work in a male-dominated occupation.


• I turn particularly strongly to transsexual fantasies and behaviours at times of great emotional stress.


• When I fantasize about being a woman I become less inclined to mix with other people and just want to isolate myself.


• “I want to be a woman” describes my feelings more honestly than “I am a woman”.

Finally, one to sum up all the rest:

• I use my fantasy of being a woman like an alcoholic uses a drink.