It shouldn't be surprising if gender variance is discovered to be process rather than a diverse collection of biological imperfections. After all, if we pair a black horse with a white horse the resultant offspring can be black with dormant white characteristics, or white with dormant black characteristics, or any shading in between including pinto, each with dormant characteristics. Yet, even our scientific and medical communities seem to have a blind spot when it comes to sex. The categories of male and female are viewed as exempt from the laws of genetics, even though there are countless anomalies that put the lie to this misconception. There are males who have various feminine features; female hips, breasts, a feminine voice, never grow a beard, soft skin, desire other males, and some even dress as women, just as there are females with masculine characteristics and inclinations. Many of these qualities are present in every higher species and not peculiar only to humankind.

These genetic propensities, much as bootstrap programs in a computer, set the stage for human development within our various bipolar communities. Sorting oneself out is a difficult process even when we have nothing extraordinarily different about ourselves. Just to become a man, or a woman, in our world is becoming increasingly an ordeal. The crystalline delineation between the sexes doesn't reflect the reality of the human condition and, it seems, the fewer people who manage to force themselves into the parts, the more distinct we attempt to construct the lines. We should be stepping back and examining the premises upon which society has been built, not erecting walls and cementing ourselves behind them.

Sectioning human beings into two categories presents difficulties for those without striking differentiation, but the complications for those with such differentiation also creates problems. Not only "Who Am I?" but "What Am I?" Most attempts to answer this latter question have led to societal deception and self-deception. As an example let us once more examine "transsexuality." Is it a condition or a process? Is it distinct from other gender variations or a phase which can, when conditions predict, be reached by any gender variant? Current hypothesis has it that transsexuals are born transsexual. Those who manage to reach and obtain surgery are considered, if not females trapped in male bodies, certainly a mistake of nature, a much more compelling mistake than other males who present as women. Accordingly transsexuals who want surgery and hormones have a vested interest in embracing definitions of their condition by the medical community, definition which label them as birth defects or mistakes of nature. In truth, all gallae are viewed as mistakes of nature. They fall outside the naive world view presently available in our gender dysphoric society and, make no mistake about it, our society is gender dysphoric.

How do we deal with our differences? Humans are pack animals, much akin to wolves. Each of us has an independent nature, but we also want to run with the pack. How can we accommodate our own requirements with the requirements of the pack? Young males (and young females) with bright creative minds are experimental and no where is this more obvious than in issues concerning gender and sexuality. Creative minds recognize more potentialities within themselves. If parts of their physiology or mental perspective doesn't reflect that of their peer group, they discern the difference. Difference, in our uncultivated society. is seen as defective. Our society is uncultivated because, for the most part, children are expected to become men and women without adults participating in any major way. Some parents do act as role models, but even then they provide only two models, man and woman. The insecurities that some children have, their fears and anxieties, are rarely if ever noticed and when they are noticed are thought to be a phase the child will grow out of. Some children do grow out of such phases, most do not.

Males tend to discover their feelings of sexuality earlier than females. It is often suggested that this is because the male sexual apparatus is out in the open where it can be bumped, touched, and handled. Whether this is the entire answer or not, it is certainly true that young males generally masturbate at a younger age than females. It is also true that young boys who are "pals" sometimes masturbate each other and may even perform other sexual services for each other. "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours," becomes "I'll do you, if you do me." Of course adults never discuss such things for fear of embarrassment and for fear of putting thoughts in their children's heads. In short, our uncultivated populace hasn't the foggiest notion of how to help children deal with feelings, urges, and inclinations that are a normal part of growing up. Most adults feel guilty and have unresolved issues over their own childhood behavior and, as parents, are unprepared to deal with their children's blossoming sexuality, a sexuality that begins virtually at birth.

Some males who play sexual games with each other move on and leave it behind, some do not. Although a strong argument can be made for genetic propensity as causative in homosexuality, the reality appears to be that the human animal is simply a sexual animal. Males, unfettered by rules and encouraged by their peers, will do anything that feels good and almost everything feels good. This suggests that homosexuality, as it exists in society today, isn't a sexual issue. It is a gender issue. Healthy males enjoy sex, end quote. Males who want to be close to other males are expressing much deeper needs than mere sexual gratification.

As if to emphasize this point, there are other young males who are solitary masturbators. They express their creativity with various objects from toilet roll cylinders, vacuum hoses, washrags, towels, and women's silky underwear, to an almost endless list of items and methodology. All of these children enjoy fantasizing and their fantasies are often far reaching with ramifications that predict future sexual behavior.

A bootstrap program in a computer is the basic program that allows a computer to accept other programs. When we are young our bootstrap program is our sexuality and our emotional perspectives. Everything else develops slowly, but absolutely, from how we interface our bootstrap programming with our creativity, our environment, and our growing self-knowledge. Thus, if we are mostly male with dormant feminine characteristics we experience things leading to manhood, and mostly female children become women. Role models for men and women are in abundance and, relatively speaking, it easy to find someone to emulate. However, if your sexual identity or sexual gender are not crystal clear, there are almost no role models.

In the absence of gender variant role models, gender variant children are led to believe that they must pick one of two and that nothing else is available. Gender blends are virtually ignored, thought to be defective, and approved of only to the extent they can make themselves invisible. Which is why transsexuals are encouraged to attempt to merge imperceptibly into the mainstream. Transsexuals are virtually required to view themselves as women trapped in male bodies. Yet, the majority talking about their earliest feelings recall a time when they considered themselves homosexual, fetishistic, transvestite, or transgendered. Upon arrival, deciding they are transsexual, earlier views are dismissed, not as stages of development in a process, but as mistakes in analysis of their condition. They confabulate a conviction of always having been transsexual. They had only thought they were gay, transvestite, or transgendered. That the incidence of males presenting as women is a single process operating differently depending on an array of diverse variables is not considered.

What is the process and how does it work?

The mind operates on similar principles to Newton's laws of physics. A mind moving in a given direction tends to remain in motion unless operated on by an opposite and equal force. Moreover, a mind in motion tends to "accelerate" in the direction of motion, protecting itself from opposing forces. The majority of gallae reveal this when relating how the need to dress escalates as time passes. The urge becomes stronger and the need to present as women becomes intense, irresistible. However, their are societal pressures brought to bear that discourage gallae from forward motion. With few exceptions males who present as women, in their early phases, go through periods of purging. They destroy their feminine wardrobe and attempt to resist dressing and presenting as women.

Transsexuals too, go through periods of purging and episodic behavior, as they evolve through the different stages. The transsexual need to express femininity is thought to be simply more profound than that of her sisters. Is it more profound? To become a post-operative transsexual requires accumulation of a portfolio of bona fides and an accumulation of a large amount of money. There are she-males, female impersonators, crossdressers, transvestites, transgendered, and gay males who express the desire for surgical and chemical modification of their bodies. There are a lot of factors that may preclude males from obtaining these procedures. They first must be willing to jump through the hoops of the medical establishment, either convincing, possibly deceiving, that establishment, themselves, or both. They must accumulate a portfolio of credentials including one or two years of living as a woman (or lying about same), recommendations from one or two psychiatrists, two to six months of counseling in an accepted gender clinic, and, last but not least, fifteen to twenty thousand dollars.

If a male who presents as a woman manages to accumulate these necessities they will be allowed surgical modification and, no matter what their expression might have been, they become post-op transsexual. Failure to accumulate these bona fides indicates that the person wasn't motivated enough to be a transsexual and therefore is something other than a transsexual. Objectively it is an obvious marriage of circular reasoning with self-fulfilling delusion, not solely of the transsexual, but of the medical establishment as well. This is one of the cruelest things done to males who present as women who, for whatever reason, can not obtain surgery.

Self-knowledge and experience is opening the world to all of us. Many of us are discovering ourselves and the depth of our emotional needs at earlier and earlier ages. As gender variants learn what and who they are it opens doors to a better understanding of all people. As gender variants in a bipolar society we have a vested interest in self-discovery and in the process we can not help but learn a thing or two about human behavior and the journey that we all must take to develop from childhood to adulthood. No one is in a better position or has more of a vested interest in lifting the illusions and embracing reality. What we learn from exploring gender and sexual variation may be the key to understanding the human condition.