Warrior Princess - On Using Hypermasculinity to Kill Off Your Feminine Side

Kristin Beck, before and after

A new fascinating book covers the life of Kristin, born Chris, Beck, an American Navy Seal who ended up transitioning.

The book,  Warrior Princess A U.S. Navy Seal's Journey to Coming Out Transgender, should be of interest also to non-transsexual male to female crossdreamers. It gives a clear example of what has been called "hypermasculinity": attempts at suppressing a feminine side by getting involved in stereotypical male interests.

I have no way of definitely knowing whether Kristin Beck is or has been a crossdreamer (in the sense of having experienced sexual fantasies of being a woman pre-op), but she was definitely a crossdresser while  male bodied.

She was also married with a woman, so I guess we can say she had a lot in common with many of the readers of this blog, whether they are transsexual or not.




Hypermasculinization

She is not the first MTF transgender to have joined the military to toughen up and become "a real man". Military male bodied persons are twice as likely to be transgender as civilians.  Still,  I do not think there are many crossdreamers out there who have joined special ops like the Navy SEALs in order to support a fragile male identity.

The fact that many gynephilic (woman-loving) male to female transgender often chose stereotypical male occupations has been used to "prove" that they are not real women. (This implicitly means that female firefighters and fighter pilots are not real women, either, but let us put that aside for a moment.)

Family members and friends may also push them into traditional masculine occupations in order to have them "cured" of their crossdreaming.

This is an old tactic, often used for  homosexual men (and women). The idea is that if you force them into accepting activities "appropriate to their sex" they will rediscover "their true selves", or -- if not -- they will be conditioned to accept their fate.

This does not work for the gay and it does not work for crossdreamers, but as long as people can make themselves believe that this is a question of will and character, and not the result of an inborn trait, I guess both family members and crossdreamers will continue trying.