GenderBendy

Up side update

A friend e-mailed me the other day to ask if I was OK. She was feeling motherly concern based on a couple of my recent blog posts (this one and this one), which, reading  back, I can understand. I was doing hard emotional work when I wrote both of them, and they are dark. I don’t want to minimize those posts; but on the other hand, I’m doing fine overall, and it occurs to me that if I want this blog to reflect my total transition experience, then I’m overdue for an up side update. As a matter of fact, many parts of transition are going well.

Parenting: Transition is a narcissistic process, and from time to time I have become so engrossed in myself that my parenting has faltered. Most recently this took the form of pointing both my emotional neediness and my stress about money at my children in ways which were unfair to them. In effect I was asking them for the kind of support one might expect from an adult friend or partner rather than from one’s teenagers. Sensible and empowered as they are (I do have amazing offspring) they called me on it. At their request we went together to a short course of family therapy, and talked a bunch of stuff out. End results: I’m feeling better and stronger about my parenting than I have for a long time (and, I trust, doing a better job at it); I also got to say some things I think they needed to hear; and in our little household the tension-level has gone way down and the fun-level has gone way up. Yay for all three of us! :-)

Hormones: It has been about a year now since I got up to full doses in my hormone regimen, and I am totally digging the physical changes. I’m already happy with my new breasts; even if they don’t grow any more than the modest amount they have so far, I have indefinitely tabled the idea of surgical enhancement. My face also looks much more feminine, mostly perhaps because I’ve lost about twenty pounds, but there could be skin changes and fat-distribution changes too. (Likewise with my neck, shoulders, arms, legs.) Some days at least I think maybe I’ll never have to get facial surgery, and considering how desperate the need for that has sometimes felt, that’s big. I can’t quite say I’ve tabled it indefinitely, but at least for a couple of years I have, and that eases the money worry. And, one other hormone plus: back hair completely gone. That makes me smile every time I think of it. :-)

Surgery plans: I have pretty much settled on a surgeon and a date for Sexual Reassignment Surgery (Dr. Brassard in Montreal, summer of 2012), and have a working plan for how to pay for it (retirement savings, which I recently discovered I have more of than I thought). The Montreal SRS experience sounds about as wonderful as it could be: Dr. B is by all accounts as good as any other SRS surgeon working, and for a day before and several days after your procedure you stay in a residence with other patients, nursing care, full meals...and all for the same price as other surgeons who send you off on your own after a couple days in the hospital. One of the things I was dreading most about SRS was a week spent recovering in some anonymous hotel room, which seems to be the dominant model here in the States. A week of pampering and peer support for no extra dollars? Yes please!

Performance/writing: As noted in previous posts, I recently realized a lifelong ambition and performed a piece in a show. (Gushy post here.)  I want to see what it’s like to perform for a straight audience next, rather than a room full of twenty-something lesbians, so I’m going to check out the comedy open mic at the Slainte winebar here in Portland. One visit to get the vibe, and then work up a routine and step up to the mic. Oooh, butterflies. I’ve got the bug bad...performing is *such* a rush, and I turn out not to suck at it, so, onward.

Meanwhile, after several false starts, I have figured out a way to write long-form about my trans experience. Success as a writer is my earliest, most intense, and most enduring ambition in life, so when a project is going well I feel a deep sense of fulfilment and happiness which nothing else can give me. It’s going slowly, but it’s going...joy!

Feminine life: the daily experience of living as woman in the world has lost the gee-whiz factor which leads to blog posts, but it continues to be deeply satisfying. I’m not sure how, but I’ve managed to reduce my anxiety about presentation (dress, carriage, mannerisms, and especially voice) almost to zero and just focus on enjoying every moment. I still get such pleasure from such simple things; a nice new pair of earrings, walking down Congress Street in a skirt, an unforced and natural “ma’am” at the grocery store.

So, in sum, yeah, I have money troubles, and sometimes my self-esteem plummets, and sometimes I feel desperately lonely, and I have no idea at this point even what sort of partner I want, let alone might ever find...but overall things are going well. The curious burden of being trans is also the source of most of the pleasure and sense of forward motion in my life, and it is *never* boring.

Next time the rollercoaster dips down into one of those low tunnels, remind me to come back and re-read this post.

Little empress of self-castigation

I’ve been doing a lot of self-parenting recently. Most of it would be boring to read, because it’s basically just me holding myself while I cry...shh, Honey, I’m here, it’s OK, I’ve got you, and so on; but some of it is perhaps more revealing of a facet of transition.

- You don’t have to hide in the dark all the time any more, Sweetie. It’s OK, you’re allowed to live.

- (no answer)

- Honey, look at me. I’m here, and I will always be here with you. So hear me now: you are allowed to be happy. You deserve to live.

- (a tenuous whisper) Really?

- Yes, Sweetie, really.

- No I don’t.

- Yes, you do. You really truly do. You deserve to live. You deserve to be in the world, just like everyone else.

- But...

- But what, Dearest?

- (no answer)

- Honey, listen to me. I know you are afraid...and being really alive is scary...but it feels wonderful, too, and I know you can do it. You are stronger than you think you are.

- (no answer)

- (tenderly) And also, my darling Dearest, you know that you can’t live, you can’t really live in the world without hurting other people at least a little bit...

- (suddenly agitated, wailing) Oh, but I did! I hurt Mommy and I hurt Daddy and I, I, I wanted to hurt my little brother, and it was bad, it was very very bad, and I don’t deserve to live! I’m a bad girl!

- No Honey. No. Hush, my Darling, hush. Listen to me. Listen. Maybe you did hurt them a little bit...that happens, people hurt each other when they are really alive, they can’t help it...but only a little, way less than you think you did, and they loved you, and you love them, and it’s OK. You. Are. Not. A. Bad. Girl. You are a GOOD girl. You are.

- No, I’m not, I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not...

- Honey. Look at me. Look at me. You are a good girl. You are a good girl.

- (no answer)

- Sweetie, you can say it. Let me hear you say it. “I am a good girl.”

- (long silence)

- You can do it, Sweetie. I’m here, I will always be here, I love you. You can do it.

- (barely audible) I am a good girl.

- Yes. Yes, you are.

- I am a good girl. I deserve to live. Oh, really?

- Yes, really truly, my Dearest. Shh, Honey, I’m here, it’s OK, I’ve got you...

...and, I indulge in a private maternal eye-roll at the little empress of self-castigation I also turn out to be...

 

Loathing and revulsion

It turns out my trans-narrative is darker than I’ve been telling it.

My stock explanation of why it has taken me so long to express my gender-truth has been that somewhere around age five I made a fateful decision to try to please my parents and the world by being the best possible male I could be. I have also surmised that I made this choice after showing my nascent femininity to my mother and having it made clear to me that whatever I was doing was for girls and that I was a boy. Mind you, I don’t remember either such a decision or such a scene with my mother, but this story has felt psychologically and emotionally true. Things to note about this version: it rejects the idea that I was abused; and it assumes at least some self-awareness on my part.

The new version still rejects the abuse theory, but it involves less self-awareness and more emotional turmoil. My source is a packet of notebooks which I have carried around with me since college. Into these journals, during my sophomore year, at the suggestion of a counselor, I released a burden of repressed emotion unexpressed up to that time; and recently, for the first time since writing them, I have been reading them again.

I can’t go into details. It is still too raw, and besides, there’s enough material for a book. In general, the journals alternate between defensive intellectualizing and the spewing of pent up rage, grief, hatred and self-hatred, guilt...and unexpressed love. I can still feel echoes of some of these feelings - being angry at my parents for divorcing, at my father for dying; feeling like I had somehow failed the world and myself and feeling so sorry for that; and also realizing for the first time through writing it how much I loved my family. (One good thing which came out of that therapy was my telling my mother that I loved her. It took months to build up enough courage to do it. I’m so glad, now, that I did.)

There is one thread in those notebooks, though, which I had forgotten. As I wrote them I kept returning to the idea that there was something inside me which I couldn’t access or express; and this thing, whatever it was, felt so black and evil that every time I approached it I recoiled, full of loathing and revulsion. I wrote my gender truth more than once: “I’m mostly female; don’t tell a soul, nobody knows” - but I couldn’t feel the force of truth in these statements. I couldn’t connect them to the awful hidden thing.

So here is my new theory of why and how I repressed my femininity for so long. In my first few years, like all children, I was whirled along in a tornado of elemental emotions: jealousy toward my little brother; sexual attraction to my father (that Freudian chestnut); hatred of my rival for his affections, my mother (likewise); terror in the face of her anger; hunger for love; fear and guilt around these other feelings...and so on.  I was a wild passionate vulnerable girl, completely unsocialized - and so, of course, my parents did what parents do: they taught me and and corrected me, and I also taught and corrected myself, to control my deepest emotional impulses.

And here is the key part of this new theory: this teaching was gendered. I learned to survive the maelstrom specifically by being a *good boy.* Then this socialized maleness became my bulwark against the unabated storm inside me, and in later years, the harder that storm raged, the more I clung to the safety of my identity as a rational intellectual man.

All those years I hated, feared, and felt disgusted by my turbulent ungoverned girl-soul. What a wretched way to live.  Exhausting too. Fucking eternal vigilance. I’m doing OK, you know...better than OK...but sometimes I do feel so sad and bone-weary. Fuck. :-(

Unprofound whinging (sorry)

I’ve been planning to write about the hearing last week, and I will soon, but at the moment I just need to whinge. Apologies...I know it's boring...please don't feel obliged to read another word.

If this is a medical condition, as I begin to think it is...if I was truly just born with the wrong body...that’s not fair. Everybody else gets to live a normal gendered life, and I get stuck with a fucking penis. And a beard and 6 feet tall and booming deep voice. I’m female, goddamn it! I’m not supposed to look or sound like this. It’s not fair.

And it took me so long to figure this out. I just turned 49 years old. I’m getting old. I’m going to die. I get another twenty years if I’m lucky, 30 years with some incredible good fortune...and none of that as a girl. None of that as a twenty-something woman. None of that as a thirty-something woman. I’m already well along through middle age. Except for my perky teeny-bopper breasts. *Eyeroll*. I am this awful mishmash of old and new. My self is inharmonious. Discordant. FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Love seems impossible. I’m going to die alone.

Yeah? Everyone dies alone. It’s a solo gig.

Ah, a flicker of defiance.

I’m here. I’m living this moment...this sucky missing my kids got a cold sore feeling emotionally drained yucky situation waiting for me at work tomorrow don’t know what to do with my miserable pathetic self moment. And how much of that has to do directly with gender? Some...but not all that much. This moment would suck just the same if I was a woman-born-woman. Ha! So there.

I am ordinary in my suffering. That’s a comfort.

Sexless

Male sexuality shut down by hormones; female sexuality stymied as yet by genital incongruity. Still lugging the vestigial appendage around. Useless thing.

So, I am temporarily a sexless being. It is an instructive state.

Lesson one: The extension of the jaded palette principle.

I discovered the jaded palette principle many years ago when I decided to stop eating processed food. At first I missed my Smarties; but then, as my taste buds readjusted, an apple, formerly bland, became deliciously sweet. I discovered what pleasures I had been missing on account of having my flavor knob turned up to 11 all the time. Now candy tastes...well, it just doesn’t seem like food...it's vile...and apples are divine.

The sexual extension goes like this: of course orgasms are intense...but if you haven’t had any for several months, and there is no prospect of any in your near future, happily other things step in to take their place. For example, as I write this I am eating a pizza I made for myself. It has on it portobello mushrooms, summer squash, anchovies (not too many - just enough for that sexy salty zing), fresh oregano, and goat cheese...and when I took the first ravenous bite my knees buckled, my eyes rolled, and I sagged against the fridge. I've always enjoyed eating good food, but not *that* much. It was as molten a moment, in its way, as any orgasm I can remember having...and, honey, I’ve had some good ones.

It’ll be nice to have sex back someday...but in the meantime I’m doing OK without it, thanks.

Lesson two: Tenderness is the thing.

The stereotype is true, at least for me: when I was a man, I thought with my testicles. I saw, I wanted to fuck. Now, testosterone suppressed, I feel how unimportant fucking is. Tenderness is what matters to me now, not getting my (no longer functional) rocks off.

Actually, that was true then too, but the rocks business obsured the point. I think back to my last few romances: when my partner held me, that was what pierced my soul. Sex is fine, healthy, fun...I can do it...and it gives me pleasure to pleasure my partner...but really I don’t care that much about it. Just so long as some other time, before or after, connected to it or not, you’ll hold me.

And, it seems I am a heterosexual woman after all. I say so because, even unsexed as a I am at the moment, there is one person, and he is a male person, a man, who, if he asked me out to dinner...with beating heart I would say yes.

From ecstatic to blasé in two years - First Event 2011

On Saturday I dropped in for the day at First Event, one of the major trans-gatherings that happens each year in the U.S.; it takes place each January at a Marriott in Peabody, MA, an hour’s drive south of my house. 

The First Event two years ago was the first time I ever wore women’s clothes in public, just a few months post-revelation, and it was an epiphany - one of the most intense experiences of my life. The second one, last year, was not quite as big a deal, but still, in those undercover days, a rare and exciting chance to go deep femme for *two whole days*. [Posts from last year here: getting ready (including a descrip of the first year), first day report, second day report]. This year I wasn’t even going to go until I mentioned it to my friend Jamie-Lynn and she agreed to come.

The day did yield a number of interesting moments:

Shopping for earrings in the marketplace, which was mostly focused on the needs of M to F crossdressers, I found myself passing by rack after rack because everything was just too over-the-top glam. I finally found a pair I liked at a little consignment table...quirky silver danglies featuring a variegated blue-and-grey stone bead. It was only when I got home that I realized they were clip-ons. (I still like them.)

In a panel of facial feminization surgeons, the frighteningly egotistical Dr. Z bustled in late and then hijacked the session to attack the work of Dr. O, considered by many to be the preeminent FFS surgeon in the world. He had slides of what he said were some of Dr. O’s patients (closeups of naked skull, the forehead skin clamped back), and was explaining how the work was fundamentally flawed. Dr. O was not there, but his devoted assistant Mira was...Mira who, in a session last year, told us reverentially that Dr. O is a Michelangelo. She stood up and interrupted Dr. Z’s tirade. He overrode her. She muscled in again. I left at that point - I hate that sort of conflict - but Jamie stayed, and told me after she interrupted to ask a question, which apparently derailed the battle...good for her!

I also had an interesting encounter with Jennifer, who was in the audience with me in a session. She asked a question, and her voice work was superb...a gentle, natural-sounding, and attractive womanly tone...so I began to observe her. She was about my age, height, and build, and had not, so far as I could tell, had facial surgery, but she snapped strongly femme. Her hair was soft and full and attractively styled; if it was a wig, it was a more natural-looking one than most around us. Her clothes were elegant and understated. She had a woman’s mobile face and quick soft smile, and she held her body folded softly in on itself, arms and legs crossed, spine pliable, head lowered diffidently. Her eyes also had a tendency to flit down.

I approached her after the session and introduced myself. The first thing she said was “I’m sorry.” I was impressed by how feminine that was, and at the same time my inner feminist wanted to lecture her: “Honey, don’t apologize for yourself!” She shared voicework hints with me with which I am experimenting today: put your hand on your chest as you speak and make sure there is no buzz in the chest-cavity at all; visualize your voice as floating in the air out in front of your nose; and record and listen to yourself (yeah, yeah...I know that’s key, but I hate doing it.) My overall impression was of a person whose femininity is just shining out of her, completely unmannered and unselfconscious. She was inspiring.

And, there was the panel of trans youth with their parents. There were two trans girls and three trans boys there, ranging in age from 12 to 22 or so. It was the little 12-year-old trans girl who captured my attention. She had a child’s version of Jennifer’s natural femininity...to all appearances a pretty young girl in a baby-blue girl’s top, her long brown hair held back with hairpins just behind her ears. She was sitting next to her mom and paying close attention to all that was said, completely at ease, smiling often.

As we heard each family’s story in turn, I felt tears start to come. I had to leave for a while. It was the love and support of the parents on the panel which reached me the most. I so ache sometimes for my mother’s love...for her to know me and love me as a girl...and I can never have that. I could have been like that little girl, supported by her parents, planning an early and complete transition. I could have had forty more years of life as a girl and woman. It’s not the first time I’ve mourned these losses, and I don’t suppose it will be the last.

Jamie sat with me and gave me hugs...she was great. And it was fun sharing the conference with her...telling her backstories, pointing out VIP’s, listening to her network with the activists at tables in the marketplace, and just gabbing in the car on the way down and back. In the short time I’ve know her, she has become a dear friend.

So that was First Event 2011. The main insight from the day: I have come a loooooong way in a fairly short time. From ecstatic to blasé in two years...how ‘bout that.

A new normal

I put on a man shirt today. That’s unusual...I’ve been going through a long phase where I’ve wanted all my clothes to be feminine all the time, even the ones (underwear, socks) which people can’t see. But I was going out to shovel snow, and I wanted something warm which actually fitted, so I pulled out the soft heavy dark-blue cotton pullover with the zipper V-neck which I used to think looked somewhat feminine on me. It was so nice to have the shoulder-seams sit right, and the sleeves come all the way down to the bumps at the base of my palms with no tugging. Then I looked in the mirror and saw a female person wearing a man’s shirt.

What a sweet moment: my face, my hair, my body, and more importantly, how I was holding myself and the look in my eyes, all struck me as markedly more womanly than the last time I was able to objectively see such things. I work hard every day on femininity, trying new ideas, reinforcing old ones, laboring to internalize new habits in dress, movement, gesture, expression, speech, and affect...but for long stretches I can’t feel any change. Underneath, though, slowly and inexorably, I am changing, and today I got to perceive it. Yes.

I have felt intensely different for a couple of years now; different both from the man I used to be, and from the great majority of all you conventionally-gendered people in the world. The emotional upheaval of the name-change and going full-time recede into history, and now, all of a sudden, I feel a new kind of normal. It’s the normal of a person changing from a man to a woman who has gotten over all the gee-whiz, and who, while metamorphosis continues, just wants to create and work and nurture her kids and enjoy her friends and plan for the future and open more to the possibility of finding love...in short, to live her life. This is me now: an ordinary woman becoming.

Doesn’t matter that people are still unthinkingly reverting to “he”. Doesn’t matter that so many things about me are still so masculine...my face, my build, my voice...my glasses, for crying out loud. The world’s slowest magic trick is working. Behold, I will wave my magic wand and change from a man into a woman! Heeeeeeeh....[five years go by]....eeeeeey presto! Tada! :-)

Exegesis 2011

Happy New Year in Paris! (Midnight is a relative concept.)
What is it to be a woman?
To feel the being of others.
Such a simple thing.
And when a woman is alone?
Then gender doesn’t matter.
New year, new life, same as the old...
Or no, not quite.
Change has direction, Darling.
I love you.
It doesn’t matter who you are;
I love you.
It doesn’t matter who I am;
I love you.
It doesn’t matter what happens next;
I love you.
Now is now is now is now now now now now now now now now..........

Goodbye, David

Goodbye, David. You were a good man. The best I could make. And it was fun being you in many ways, but....you were wrong. You were not real. You were a construct. To be harsh for a moment: you were a lie.

A lie undertaken for the best of reasons, but still a lie. The best of reasons? Love, naturally. I wanted to be you to please my mother. To show her that I loved her. I wanted to be you so I could love my children the only way it seemed I was allowed. I wanted to be you so I could love myself, and live. That was a mistake. You were a mistake.

Well. So, then, what I need to do is learn from you.

What can I learn?

What a good man is. Because, except for not being real, you were a good man. Steadfast, long-suffering...a paragon of strength, constancy, and forbearance.

As for not being real...at the time, was I not?

David, grandson of Mabel and Jack and Kinch and Elizabeth. David, son of Don and Susan. David, husband of Amber for sixteen and a half years. David, brother of Sus and Brian. David, father of Madeleine and Samuel. David...Dave...Dee...all gone now. I’m Elizabeth now.

I mourn the passing of a worthy former self.

And then?

And then, time to play....

Mr. Prince? Hello?

Who I might actually be looking for in a partner is a good man.

I appreciate a good man. A steady, strong, humorous, intelligent man. I have very little sexual feeling at the moment, thanks to the hormones, but that person still sounds delicious to me.

A few times over the years I have felt sudden intense attractions to men, and there was more than a touch of sexy to that...but in essence it was an emotional surrender. A precipitous opening of the heart. A complete yielding tenderness. I suppose what I am saying is, I have fallen in love with men before.

I am open to that happening again. Pfft, who am I kidding...I would love for that to happen again. But I’m wary. Oh, so wary. Because....well, look at me. I’m an awkward strange sort of woman, to the say the least. I still have a penis, for crying out loud!  Among numerous other issues.

Here is what I simply don’t know: is there a man in the world I could love who could also love me?

Gee, I bet nobody ever asked that question before... :p

Actually, I know exactly who I want: my old self. Makes sense, right?  After all, I was trying to be the best possible man I could be. How’s that for narcissistic?

Well, make that my old self...less inhibited.