Gender Confirmation and Reconciliation October 5, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, dysphoria, estrangement, gender, hormones, society, transgender, transition, transsexual, work.8 comments
Sunday, October 5th 5:57 am
Good morning everyone! It is a cool four degrees Celsius outside here this morning at my apartment. The differences between my apartment and my wife’s place are too numerous to mention but suffice to say, one is a cozy little wilderness nook, the other is a high-rise eyrie that gives an osprey eye’s view of the Ottawa River, from the clock-tower of the Parliament Buildings in East to the majestic Gatineau Hills in the North and Aylmer to the West. The sounds are different too, insects, birds and silence compared to traffic and the occasional movement of people far below. Each location is unique but each is inspirational in its’ own exceptional ways.
One thing that I was thinking about this week as I get closer and closer to the day that I go full-time (still about six to eight months off but I am sure that it will fly by in an instant) and as I continue to live a schizophrenic dual existence, was the best way to explain to others what I have gone through and what I am going through in the process of transition.
It isn’t an easy subject to approach as it is full of emotion and primal instinct. I think the main reason it isn’t easy for most people to understand is that people don’t usually think about their gender – ever and when they do it often involves sex. Most people know they have more in common with one gender than the other and know that gender is a central factor in who they are attracted to. Comfort and attraction aren’t things that can be explained rationally, they are emotional and instinctual – just like gender.
This is the nub of the problem for most people in understanding transgender people. They can’t get over the attraction aspect of gender. The terminology used to describe how I will eventually resolve my gender dysphoria, a sex change, doesn’t help the situation very much either. So is it any wonder that when I tell people that I am transitioning they immediately fixate on my genitals? Every guy I tell can’t even stomach the thought of ‘cutting them off’ – both straights and gays. Most women don’t see the sense in it either, though, for the most part, they don’t seem as fixated on the sex part as most men are. Their reaction is sometimes ‘Why would you trade something that functions perfectly well for something that might not?’ or ‘I can’t understand why it matters so much to you.’.
Each of those reactions are perfectly understandable for someone who has never questioned their gender. The only way I can describe my relationship to my body is that I always knew my parts weren’t right and that I never developed a close relationship to my genitals so I won’t particularly miss them when they are gone. Right now my genitals get in the way of the clothes I want to wear and make me uncomfortable – thankfully the hormones have reduced them to a more manageable size and response. At the same time other parts of my body are adjusting to a more feminine form and my curves are slowly developing.
For the first time in my life I am beginning to feel comfortable in my body.
Perhaps the best way to explain why I decided to take female hormones and why I eventually will correct my genitalia through surgery is to explain that my physical transition isn’t a ‘change’ at all. It is the last step in the long process of reconciliation that I have been going through ever since a doctor incorrectly determined my gender was male. It began with confusion, led to denial, developed into depression, then acceptance, affirmation, and finally confirmation of my essential feminine nature.
There are three aspects to every being – a body, a mind and a soul. My transition just reconciles my body with my mind and soul.
I was born with the soul of a woman – I can’t empirically prove that, but my instincts right from the earliest time I can remember were feminine. I wanted to play with baby dolls, I dressed in my mom’s clothes whenever I could, I knew that I would have breasts one day and I played with girls doing girlish things (playing house, dress-up, etc…) until I was told I couldn’t anymore. This led to confusion because every instinct I had told me I was female and society said I wasn’t allowed to be.
My mind has always been female too, I never understood why I wasn’t allowed to dress like a girl and, until I found out differently, I always thought that all girls had the same genitalia that I had. I wasn’t an idiot but I hoped fervently that I would grow breasts at puberty like the other girls and was very uncomfortable with what actually happened. This led to denial. I decided that my mind must be wrong – society said that I was male so I tried to be the most male person I could be.
Everything I tried – body building, joining the military, doing risky things, drinking heavily and getting married couldn’t change an instinctual feeling and mental understanding that I was female. Even though I was doing very male things in public, I was buying and wearing female clothing, playing female avatars in computer games and learning about transsexuals on the internet. I periodically got disgusted with myself, purged every piece of clothing, every game and every bookmark and resolved that I was stronger than my soul and mind – and tried even harder to be male. This led to isolation and depression.
My wife suggested that I seek counselling for my depression and I sought out a gender therapist because I knew that was what I was running away from. My counsellor agreed that I was transsexual and I gave myself permission to accept my authentic self.
My counsellor suggested that I begin taking anti-androgens (spironolactone) to see if that would make me happier. I took the spironolactone for a whole year and affirmed to her that lower testosterone levels gave me a sense of peace and ease with myself that I had been missing ever since the onset of puberty.
The year on spironolactone gave me peace but something was still missing. My mind was no longer being antagonized by the testosterone but my body still felt wrong so I asked her if I could begin taking estrogen to see if that would help. Since I began taking estrogen in small doses a year ago this month and larger doses beginning in April this year, I have noticed an increased sense of serenity and comfort as my body slowly changes becomes what my soul and my mind always expected it to be.
The estrogen nourishes my mind and body while the testosterone slowly poisoned them. I know now that without the estrogen my depression and my estrangement from the world would have kept getting worse and I would have eventually lost my wife, my job and my will to live. Instead, my wife and I have a better relationship than ever (except for the fact that she isn’t a lesbian and I am not quite sure what I am yet… so our marriage will likely end), my job performance has increased because I am more engaged with life now and I am more productive in my personal life than I ever have been – I don’t drink, I don’t play escapist computer games (maybe one day I will again but my motivation will be much different). These positive results from hormone therapy are all the confirmation I need to know that transitioning was the right choice for me.
My soul and my mind have always been female but my body was physically male so society expected me to act male. It was tearing me apart. I reacted to this physical disconnect by building an emotional and social wall between my essential femininity and the rest of the world. A wall that I am only now, with the help of counselling, anti-androgens and female hormones, beginning to dismantle.
The surgery I will have is just the last step in a long process of reconciliation that will correct a doctor’s mistaken evaluation of my gender at birth.
So you see, it isn’t all about sex.
It is about the reconciliation of my body with my mind and my soul.
So for all the people who don’t understand why transsexual people transition perhaps seeing beyond the physical will help.
It is about body, mind and soul being in sync with each other. An engine with all the right parts being fed the right fuel.
A male engine (body, mind and soul) wouldn’t run too well on estrogen but a female engine does.
Perfectly.
Transition isn’t changing sex, it is gender reconciliation.
It isn’t sex change surgery, it is gender confirmation surgery.
Love,
Marybeth
PS As I finished up this piece I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between Catholic confirmation and gender confirmation. Just think of all the pain and suffering that would be alleviated for transsexuals if, at the same time you are asked to confirm yourself as Catholic (ie. just before puberty), you are also asked to confirm your gender? I knew I was a girl way before puberty, my life might not have been easier if I transitioned way back then but it certainly would have been much more honest and fewer people would have been hurt (ie. my beautiful and long suffering wife).
Summer Planning and New Beginnings June 29, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, dysphoria, family, hormones, transgender, transsexual.1 comment so far
Sunday June 29th 6:15 am
Good morning everyone! It is dripping wet out here this morning after some pretty fierce thunderstorms ripped through the area last night. Luckily when I woke up we still had power or I wouldn’t be able to write this with the warm comfort of my weekend coffee latte to fend off the heavy dampness surrounding me. The sun is bravely trying to peak through the clouds in the East, a cacophony of creatures is celebrating the fresh rainfall and every so often a fresh breeze shakes the droplets of rain still resting on the leaves cascading waterfall-like down to the ground below. All in all a truly inspirational morning!
In Canada summer begins with the long weekend celebrating Canada day on July 1st (unfortunately it looks like my American friends will have to wait until next weekend to begin theirs this year…). With the beginning of summer, I will be spending this weekend reflecting and preparing for my new beginning this fall when I transition to full-time. To be honest I think the entire summer will be spent in that effort but since I have four days away from work, I intend to spend some serious time planning what my next steps will be.
I remember last year at this time quite vividly since it was during this same weekend that I told my wife about my decision to begin estrogen therapy to help alleviate my dysphoria. I had agonized over the decision for the better part of a year since I knew what her probable reaction would be. She told me that if that was my intention then I should find somewhere else to live. I rushed to find and furnish an apartment and, except for the odd occasion, it has sat empty the whole year, serving mainly as a salve to her conscience since she knows that if my transition does get to be too much for her, I have some place to go when she kicks me out.
I started on low levels of premarin at the beginning of October but didn’t really begin intensive hormone therapy until April this year when I began my estradiol valerate injections. The changes, as I’ve chronicled in this journal, have become noticeable, especially since I started the injections. I now find it difficult to ‘pass’ as a man unless I bind my breasts – something that I haven’t done yet and hope not to have to ever endure the indignity of.
When I explained to my wife my intention to begin taking estrogen, I told her that it was an experiment to see if the experience of calm that I felt when taking spironolactone for over a year would be enhanced by adding estrogen to the mix. At the time I felt that there was a 50/50 chance that the difference would be noticeable and that I would soon be back to just taking the spironolactone alone – after all if the difference wasn’t noticeable who wants to go through the difficulty of a complete transition? Was I ever wrong about that prediction!! At the low levels I was taking before April the difference was there but once I had started the estradiol injections the difference was through the roof! A recent increase to the amounts of estradiol and androcur and the reintroduction of spironolactone to my regime has helped make me feel myself for the first time since puberty. It is as some transpeople have described it, like the removing the ‘snow’ from the picture when tuning in old television sets. I see, hear, smell and feel things much more clearly, more intimately than I did before. I feel better being myself and others feel better being around me. I wasn’t necessarily a bad person before, but I am a much better, more genuine person now. I increasingly don’t have anything to hide (except at work and people there are noticing the changes despite my not openly admitting to them) and I feel good about being myself – it shows.
Which leaves my wife to ask ‘What next for us?’. I honestly don’t know – a great deal depends on her reaction to us being treated as two women when we go places now as a couple. As I have written earlier, in the winter, spring and fall I could wear coats to cover my ‘girls’ and I would more or less pass as a rather effeminate man. During the summer I can’t wear coats and my now more feminine face, breasts and long hair definitely say ‘woman’, even when I wear more masculine clothes. My wife will either accept that as being ‘fine’ or will say ‘enough is enough’ – at which point I will begin moving to my apartment and we will start leading separate public lives. She is relatively comfortable with me in private so long as I don’t cross the ‘dress or skirt’ line that she has established (though I haven’t actually tested that one yet). I do wear relatively tight shirts and tank tops which my breasts clearly ‘tent’ out, I don’t hide my changes around her or even my painted toe-nails (pink!), so there is some margin of tolerance in her, at least in the privacy of our home. We haven’t been out together in public since she returned so I don’t know how it will work out in those situations.
My plan now is to stay and help out around her house as long as I can and hope that she can overcome her aversion to my transition to full time. Above all else we still love each other intensely and though my transition and her reaction to it has strained that bond somewhat, we continue to enjoy our time together. Ironically, as I’ve mentioned before, our marriage / friendship has improved greatly since I started counselling, started taking the spironolactone two years ago and began estrogen last October. I am a much happier person and that impacts all of my relationships.
All that to say that I have much to think about over the course of this summer. My name change will come through in October or November which means I will transition to full-time at work around the same time. My wife’s health is still an issue so that may affect our relationship as well. Part of me realizes that it would be much easier to be separate from my wife while I adjust to living full-time as a woman but most of me can’t imagine living without her.
My wife reminded my yesterday of a wise thing that her elderly friend in Montreal said about marriage – ‘Find someone whose faults you can accept’. We are, each of us, not perfect and marriage tests us in ways we cannot imagine until we experience them. I have found that I have become accustomed to my wife’s ‘quirks’, I just hope that she will find the charity and love to accept mine.
Love,
Marybeth Allison
Painful Lessons and a Wondrous Revelation May 31, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, dysphoria, family, reflection, resolve, society, transsexual, work.4 comments
Saturday, May 31st 10:04 am
Good morning everyone! It is a rainy thunderstorming day here in the Gatineau hills of Quebec so I am pleasantly ensconced in my favourite armchair with a hot cup of Mexican hot chocolate to warm and (hopefully) inspire me.
I was up early this morning but I wasn’t in the mood to write for some reason so I delayed my turn at the keyboard until after breakfast and after my wife left for a meeting in town. Let’s see what I can come up with…
It was a relatively eventful week life-wise and transition-wise as well. I happily managed to get over my poison ivy by Thursday night and just as I was sitting down to celebrate with a piping hot cup of peppermint tea, I promptly spilled it onto my left thigh causing first and second degree burns to a relatively large expanse of my upper left thigh. I cursed and cried for about a half-hour while I ran water over it prior to my wife arriving home from a dinner with friends and driving me to the emergency room. It didn’t turn out to be as bad as it looked and is now healing quite well. That said it does seem to be another setback of sorts as I will have to wait a few weeks before I can start my exercise routine again. I guess I will have just have to starve myself to lose the weight I need to before I transition at work this fall!
As I screamed and cried on Thursday night at the seeming unfairness of my misfortune I gradually came to realize that I really needed to get on with my transition and get even more serious about moving forward with it. I realized that my poison ivy adventure and then my close encounter with boiling hot tea were physical manifestations of the mental anguish that I am going through as I find yet another (really good!) reason to delay living full-time by another month or so. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this recent delaying behaviour was just a continuation of the same behaviour that I have exhibited my whole life.
The reasons I have come up with not to transition have at various times included:
(…by the way, you can play along and see if you can tally the same number of self-defeating behaviours that I have exhibited at various times in my life…)
In my teens I didn’t transition because I thought that all trans-whatevers were freaks and I didn’t want to admit I was a freak. So I went to military college and almost went crazy trying to fit in. It turned out that despite my best efforts I didn’t fool them and eight years later the army and I mutually decided to end our association.
In my twenties I postponed my transition because I wanted to get a good education so I went back to school and earned my MBA. Then I thought, it is a tough job market out there, I really should land a solid job before I transition. By the time I accomplished that I was already twenty-nine years old.
When I was thirty I met a good friend that I had dated while doing my MBA. We hit it off again like we had never broken up. Even though it had been almost three years since we had seen each other last, it seemed like it had just been that previous evening – I had fallen in love. Love seemed like a good reason to get married and since I was getting married I didn’t need to transition, love conquers all – right? I found out the hard way that while it is conceivable that love might conquer all, I don’t think the poet that conceived that line was transgendered, otherwise he/she would have added the transsexual clause. We are still together and the last ten years have been amazing but we have recently and painfully come to the mutual understanding that as soon I go full-time I will be living by myself in my apartment – end of story.
In my forties (ie. for the last month) despite my unequivocal understanding that the only way I can live sanely is to live authentically as a woman, I have kept finding ‘really good reasons’ to delay going full-time. They have included ensuring a secure position at work before I come out, staying with my wife for as long as I can, getting scalp advancement surgery to hide my receding hairline and on and on and on … I have used these justifications to procrastinate doing the things that I know I must do before I go full-time – coming out to my boss at work being chief among them.
The epiphany that I reached after I calmed down a bit from the burn on my thigh was that there will always be something that is ‘not quite right’ and that I will never ‘quite’ be ready to go full-time.
‘If you dwell upon limitations you will meet them’
-from the Tao Te Ching (I think…)
I realized that my health (mental, physical and spiritual) is that most important thing that I have – everything else I can accommodate. My skills are the most important thing at work, my love for my wife is the most important thing in my marriage and my authenticity is the most important thing in my gender presentation. Once I go full-time everything will either fall into place or it wasn’t very solid to begin with.
How do I know this? I know this because of an experience I had yesterday that catalysed a number of seemingly disparate incidents over the past few years into an understanding of how being authentically myself, being honestly female, is so fundamentally empowering and fulfilling for me. It turned a mundane (and quite painful!) event into an extraordinary experience.
I have gone to the same dermatologist for my laser electrolysis for the past three years and over that time I have become quite friendly with many of the staff. Yesterday was my ninth laser electrolysis session with them and, as my skin had softened quite a bit since my last session due to my increased estrogen dose, I told them that I was transitioning. They weren’t surprised in the least. My dermatologist actually smiled widely, congratulated me and asked if she should change my records to reflect my new gender! The staff were all very interested in my revelation. One of the nurses told me that her friend had transitioned from female to male and that he was much happier now, and in her view, made much more sense as a man than he ever had as a woman. Another complimented me on my hair! It was the first time that I had come out to relative strangers and, while I admit I was afraid of what their reactions might be (after all the laser is scary instrument of extreme pain!!), it felt really empowering once I told them. After that I felt more comfortable, more at ease, and the laser session went very smoothly. Needless to say I was very very happy for the rest of the day despite the pain and the swelling!!!
It then occurred to me that every time that I have been allowed, and allowed myself, to be authentic with other people I have always felt a kind ‘pressure’ come off a bit. This usually happens when I am with my parents – especially my mom (who both know about my transition and accept me), my brother and cousins (who know and accept me), my therapist (who knows and accepts (and encourages) me), my trans friends (who know and accept me), etc… When I leave these situations I feel ‘the pressure’ come back. I even feel more comfortable when I am around people who know about me but don’t necessarily accept me, like my wife. Every one of the situations I described is a ‘safe’ situation so I guess I just expected that being honest with them would feel good and it did. What really blew me away was how good it felt when I revealed myself in a potentially ‘unsafe’ situation. I suppose I would have felt relief that my ‘secret’ was out but the icing on the case was that I was accepted – and even supported!! It felt like I was walking on air!! I felt no ‘pressure’ at all.
How can I describe the ‘pressure’ to someone who isn’t transgendered? It is like a kind of constraining sieve that every thought, every word, every action and every feeling has to go through before it can be released into the world. Now I understand that everyone has to censor these things to some degree so that we can live together in a ‘civilized’ society, but imagine how it feels to censor the natural tendencies of your gender. I learned at a very early age that my instinctual body language, thoughts, words, actions, reactions and feelings might be thought to be ‘unusual’ coming from a ‘boy’ and could even be dangerous depending on the situation, so I began to filter everything according to what I believed was ‘acceptable’ for a male. That is how I would describe ‘the pressure’. I have to spend so much of my energy monitoring and filtering everything that I have stayed away from people and relationships for the most part because it is so exhausting! You can only imagine the relief I feel when people perceive and accept me as female. Every filter comes off (except for the ‘civil society’ filter of course!) and I experience a sense of freedom and empowerment that I haven’t known since I was a little girl – since before I learned that I couldn’t be what I felt inside.
That’s how I know that when I go full-time everything will either fall into place or it wasn’t very solid to begin with. The ‘pressure’ will be gone. I won’t have to expend so much energy censoring myself anymore. I will finally be able to devote all my energy to being myself, being a good daughter, being a supportive partner (if she’ll let me stay), being a true friend, being a productive employee and being an upstanding citizen. If the sole justification for me being in any of those relationships was that I was good at pretending to be male, then I will be happy that the association and the pretense is finally over.
I guess I always knew how much better I felt when I was able to be authentically myself in ‘safe’ situations, I just never realized how good it might feel to be myself everywhere I go – even if it is just to get my electrolysis done! And now I can’t wait to go full-time as soon as possible so that I don’t have to experience that feeling in ‘instalments’.
Once again I will state my extreme envy for all those non-gender dysphoric people out there who never questioned their gender and were able to fully express themselves from day one.
<Green-Eyed Glare of Envy!!!>
When I got poison ivy and then burned myself I never thought that these two annoying and somewhat painful events would lead me to the conclusion that the sooner I transition the better. When I went to my laser electrolysis appointment yesterday (an experience I don’t look forward too believe me…) I never imagined how good I would feel after revealing to them that I was transitioning.
I wish that it didn’t take the pain of those three events to make me realize the very real mental and physical consequences of remaining in the illusory safety of my male facade. I now realize that the limitations I manufactured for myself to stay ‘safe’ only served to prolong my suffering.
I know that I can no longer sacrifice my health just so I can ‘fit in’.
‘And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom’
- Anaïs Nin
The painful lessons of the past month have led me to the wondrous, but in retrospect somewhat obvious, revelation that I need to be what I know I am inside to be healthy – mentally, physically and spiritually.
‘What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.’
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
I have to overcome my fears and my self defeating limitations, I know that if I don’t go full time I won’t really be living.
‘Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.’
- Anaïs Nin
I just need to be honestly, authentically, .me. !!!
Love,
Marybeth Allison
ps If you made it this far thank-you, I was kind of long-winded today but it felt right somehow.
Dilemmas and Hard ‘Choices’ May 3, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, dysphoria, love, separation, transsexual, uncertainty.4 comments
Friday, May 2nd 10:48 pm
Good evening everyone! It is late on a Friday night and I am finally finding the time to set down my thoughts of the past two weeks.
I really don’t know where to begin.
Life happened.
I was very busy at work, I saw my therapist, I had a really good coffee/tea with a trans friend of mine, my older brother whom I hadn’t seen since Christmas and my two cousins whom I hadn’t seen in many, many years visited my wife and I, I had lunch with some work-related friends who haven’t seen me for a year or more and I had a really empowering trans-discussion group meeting. So many things, so many issues, so many emotions…so much!
After a little over seven months on hormones my body has changed perceptibly if you know what to look for (and even if you don’t I guess…). I look decidedly less male but my receding hairline prevents anyone from jumping over to the feminine pronouns immediately, no matter how much my chest and soft feminine facial feature proclaim it these days.
My therapist says that I am ready to go full-time.
My brother couldn’t believe the physical changes I have gone through since Christmas.
My cousins were cool about my transition and one said that he had never seen me so happy and peaceful as I am now.
My work friends looked at me strangely (one of the friends I had lunch with is female and she studied my face for a while wondering whether she should say something or not…) but accepted me since I was smiling more and wasn’t so distant as before.
The new people I met at the trans discussion group were really cool and I left the meeting thinking – I am ready.
And I am ready.
Except…
My wife needs me and she won’t tolerate me living with her once I go full-time.
And (vanity strikes) my receding hairline makes me hesitate a bit too.
The second one is relatively minor (though passing is very important to me once I go full time) but the first one tears my heart in two. My wife has had so many disappointments in her life and it looks like now she can add me to the list. I feel so bad about how this has turned out. She is sick and she needs someone to look after her and keep her sane but it looks like she won’t let me be that person for her.
For my sanity I need to transition fully, being in-between is increasingly painful.
Losing her would be very painful.
If I transition I lose, if I stay with her I lose.
I lose.
I am so happy when I am with her and I am so happy when I am Marybeth Allison in the world.
By not transitioning I am delaying the inevitable and prolonging the pain.
By leaving my wife I am losing my true love and my best friend.
I am ready. I need to transition. I like being happy and when I am happy my wife is happy - just not when I dress and act appropriately for my gender.
“Be a man and have faith in God” she constantly implores.
But I have faith in God. I have prayed my whole life. I have watched for the signs.
The overwhelming crux of my life has been my dysphoria. With transition I am finally becoming whole. Every part of my being is discovering its voice and singing a harmony that is heartbreakingly beautiful to ears that have been deaf. My mind, my soul and my body – singing together in perfect harmony.
If that isn’t a sign then perhaps I am destined to be deaf and blind.
But to transition I will have to betray and abandon the love of my life.
It is a dilemma that will tear me apart whichever option I ‘choose’ so I will leave it unanswered for now and hope for the best – though, perhaps, a whisper of the resolution can be found in this famous verse:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
-William Shakespeare
Love,
Marybeth Allison
Fuddle Duddle! December 30, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, dysphoria, society.1 comment so far
Sunday, December 30, 2007 5:18 AM
Good Morning Everyone! It is cool, peaceful and serene as I write here from my station at my parent’s place in British Columbia. I am at the end of my first week visiting my family and it has been wonderful! Things are more in the open than they have ever been and, though they may not understand what I am going through, they seem to be willing to support me.
My thoughts this morning center on the futility of trying achieve happiness and success based on the standards of others. It seems to me that the more I tried to meet the expectations of others the more frustrated and unhappy I became. Seeking the advice and guidance of others is smart but it takes wisdom to discern what counsel is appropriate for yourself and your own situation.
Oh Fuddle Duddle!
Pierre Eliot Trudeau (a former Prime Minister of Canada) famously uttered those words in response to an opposition member’s question in the Canadian House of Commons. Whether he judged the question to be irrelevant, irreverent or just plain ill-informed, those words stand out for me as one of the most appropriate responses to deliberate provocation I have ever heard from a public figure. A fitting rejoinder to those who would try to raise their star, political or otherwise, through the use of deliberately inflammatory words or actions to provoke a reaction from their target. A particular course of action may be right, wrong or in-between so it should be evaluated on its merits or faults not ridiculed for the sake of ego or personal preference.
I think that each of us, deep down, wants to be ‘used for purpose greater than our own’ and we struggle on how we might achieve that purpose. As George Bernard Shaw so eloquently put it:
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
Many people look to society for their purpose – seeking answers and directions from their employers, their friends and their families. Perhaps they don’t feel that they are qualified or worthy enough to be able to, paraphrasing Shaw, recognize their own mighty purpose. It seems little wonder that they might not be satisfied with the answers they receive from others and may perhaps end up being the little clods Shaw refers to.
Some people believe they recognize their great purpose and set about achieving that purpose rationally, deciding which courses to take, setting goals and laying out a logical step-by-step process to achieving them. They think that they can plan their futures in a logical way then everything will fall into place and success/happiness will naturally follow.
Others look to God or some other source for inspiration and purpose. They pray fervently for a sign that will show them what has been planned for them by their Creator. They work hard to be as virtuous as possible and hope that through their faith, inspiration will come and success/happiness will naturally follow.
My own experience has been a combination of all three approaches at different times in my life. My gender dysphoria initially gave me a sort of hopelessness. I looked to society and found that ‘they’ hate ‘my kind’ so I felt I should therefore hate myself – I thought I was as useless as they had judged me. That didn’t make me happy so I resolved rationally that I would not be what deep down I knew I was. I chose my courses, charted my path and achieved a kind of empty success. All the while rejecting my ‘true self’ – burying her as deep as I could. When I realized how empty my ’success’ felt, I turned to God for answers. I prayed fervently for Him to show me his will. Catholic doctrine told me that transgender people were sinners so I buried her even deeper. I became more angry, more frustrated and more and more disconsolate.
I had to reject all three strategies because they didn’t work for me. I had to admit that I was transgender and that I had to do something about it if I wanted to be happy and successful in life. I tried conforming to society’s will and hating myself (Could society be wrong about me?). I tried following pure rationality – a woman’s brain in a man’s body – that doesn’t make any sense (Could reason fail?) and I tried pure faith – God made me male I must follow God’s will (Could the Church be wrong?). Oh Fuddle Duddle to all of them!!
I know that society thinks I am a freak, I know that it doesn’t make any sense and I know that I am going to hell. And yet I must transition to make myself whole. To find my purpose in life I must follow my intuition and do what I know is right for me. To be happy and successful I can’t let myself continually be goaded into actions or reactions that make me unhappy or depressed.
I have spent too many years searching for my purpose at the incitement of others – ‘freak’, ‘fool’, ’sinner’. I can’t afford to wait for society to learn to accept me, for science rationalize me or for the Church to open their hearts to me. I need to strike out on my own without the sanction, agreement or blessings of others to be happy and successful in life. I must find my own mighty purpose on my own terms or risk becoming the selfish little clod Shaw warns about.
Come to think about it – isn’t that what all of the truly successful people in history have done anyways? Didn’t Martin Luther King fight against society’s view that African Americans weren’t full citizens? Didn’t Copernicus challenge the established rationality of scientific community on the nature of the heavens? Didn’t Saint Francis risk excommunication when he established an order dedicated to poverty and helping those less fortunate?
Maybe I am not in such bad company after all?!!
OH FUDDLE DUDDLE!!!
Love,
Marybeth
Remarkable? November 18, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, dysphoria, gender, hormones.add a comment
Sunday, November 18, 2007 17:39:12
Good evening everyone! It is a little later than I usually scribble down these epistles but I really couldn?t think of anything that I wanted to write about – a condition I’ll call ranter’s block.
Nothing to rant or rail about. Nothing unfair or unjust to explain or complain about. Just life. It happens.
I was busy this week with a number of things – primarily work during the week (as usual) but also, I confess, a computer game (The Witcher) which took up all of my Saturday (much to the annoyance of my wife – though these days she just loves it when I do ‘typically male things’ like that – though girls do game!). I still don’t know how I completed even a tenth of the games that I have in my game library (mostly PC but also PS2, XBox, DS and PSP) – wasted days and wasted nights – time intensive is an understatement.
Doing things like computer gaming, working late at the office and focusing on projects were the principle ways I made it to the ripe old age I am now without transitioning. If it was time intensive and it took my mind off the discomfort I had with my gender then I was in with both feet. I knew that if I ever had too much free time then the gremlin(ette?) that was my dysphoria would come knocking and I would be down at the mall buying something feminine, rummaging through my closet for something more comfortable to wear (when my wife was away of course) or on the internet living vicariously through the lives of others. My dysphoria became most intense during vacations when my usual distractions weren?t there to soothe the beast.
My life was simple: Avoid -> Express -> Purge -> Deny (Repeat)
Notice that self-actualize isn’t in the cycle above?
I was living my life by imitating the way that the men I respected (family, friends, role models, etc) were living theirs, hoping that ‘normalcy’ would naturally follow. I was hiding a huge part of who I was but I thought I had my dysphria under control – despite the endless cycle described above. The truth was I was getting more and more frustrated and depressed because I was so ashamed of a fundamental part of who I was and am.
So why didn’t I think I really had anything to write in my journal today? I guess it was because this week I didn’t really think about my dysphoria very much. My hair is down to my shoulders, the hormones are slowing working their magic and I do get stared at (people can?t seem to decide whether I am freak or just really cool I guess) but I am more comfortable with myself than I have ever been. I am not hiding anything – I am just being me and I guess, this last week at least, it felt quite unremarkable.
I think I am finally getting a taste of what it will be like after I fully transition. It isn’t that I don’t want to have a remarkable life, it is just that I want it to be authentically remarkable not a parody.
Being able to check the right box for gender is just one step closer to self-actualization for me. It is a small step but it allows me to be and express myself as fully as I am able.
My life before I decided to transition was spent being as busy as possible so that I didn’t notice how unhappy I was and no one would question my credibility as a man. I made many choices which, though some turned out to be useful experiences, I wouldn’t have made had I not been trying so hard to fool myself and others.
The choices I make now are beginning to be more authentic. I won’t say that I am not influenced by others but at least I am acting out of self-assurance and not out of fear. I may still decide to work late at the office, have a beer or play computer games but at least I will be doing them sincerely and not out of avoidance.
That shouldn’t be remarkable but it sure seems that way to me.
Love,
Marybeth.
Language and Understanding November 10, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, dysphoria, gender, hormones, society, transgender, transsexual.add a comment
Saturday, November 10, 2007 06:25:55
Good morning everyone! Happy Remembrance Day (Veteran’s Day to my American friends) tomorrow (November 11th)!!
My thoughts today center around language.
Language can be used for good or ill. It can enlighten or confuse. It can set you free or it can confine you.
It is in the nature of mankind to be curious, to question and perchance to explain the many mysteries of existence. Languages help us to share and to learn from others the multitude of amazing possibilities that flourish in creation.
Different languages are able to express some concepts better than others. The Inuit (Eskimos for you savages!) are said to have fifty different words for snow because understanding their weather is life or death in the Arctic. French is a ‘romantic’ language and thus better at describing complex feelings than English tends to be. The French ‘esprit de corps’ expresses a combination of teamwork, patriotism, trust, faith – a swirl of emotion that is difficult to express in anything but an ultimately inadequate combination of English words. You hear the word and, if you are familiar with it, you ‘just know’ what is meant by it.
If you have read the twisting and turnings of my journal then you probably know where I am going with this line of thought.
How does a transgendered person explain their transgender nature to either themselves or to their families, friends, co-workers, fellow citizens, legislators, judges and leaders when the words we have literally fail us?
How can we explain something we ‘just know’?
Is there language out there that readily communicates the essential conundrum of feeling out of place in your own body?
I have tried my ‘durndest’ to get across these complex feelings inside me in as an expressive and understandable way as I can but I am always at a loss. I either come off sounding like a perverted freak, an evil sinner or some wayward fool. I incite either disgust, derision or pity. It isn’t my intent to titillate, tempt, or entertain.
I only want to inform and perhaps, to educate, but the words don?t seem to be there.
My frustration is that English isn’t able to describe my reality without entering the multiple minefields of sex, religion or psychosis. I am either transsexual, transgender or have gender dysphoria.
To lay it out more plainly – I am either sexually deviant (transsexual), questioning almighty God’s judgement (transgender) or am mentally ill (gender dysphoria aka DSM-IV).
Try this multiple choice quiz:
Hi my name is Marybeth.
1. I am
a) a sexual deviant
b) a sinner
c) a psychotic
d) all of the above.
2. I would like
a) to work for you
b) to be your friend
c) not to be beaten up because ‘people like me’ disgust you
d) a and b but will settle for c.
Lovely.
Hi, my name is Marybeth, because my mother experienced a hormone imbalance while I was still in her womb, I was born with the incorrect genitals. The hormonal imbalance wasn’t diagnosed conclusively until just last year following two years of evaluation by a highly trainded therapist. She concluded that the psychological distress I was experiencing (primarily depression and intense frustration) was due to too many years of exposure to the antagonistic hormones produced by my genitals. A psychiatrist corroborated her conclusion. An endocrinologist with many years of experience dealing with victims of ‘antagonistic hormone syndrome’, following his own evaluation, prescribed me anti-androgens to suppress the hormones being produced by my incompatible genitals and estrogen, a hormone that is sympathetic to the physiology of my cerebral matter.
Did you get all that?
Hi, my name is Marybeth and I exist – whatever way I describe it and whichever way you choose to understand it.
Love,
Marybeth
Experience, Understanding and Belief October 21, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, dysphoria, gender, society, transgender, transsexual.add a comment
Sunday, October 21, 2007 07:14:24
It is a beautiful technicolour morning in the Gatineau hills where my wife lives. A vast array of colours lit by the first courageous rays of sun. Orange yellows against the fresh, light blue sky. It has also finally cooled down a touch – the unseasonably warm temperatures of the past few days have given way to a more refreshing eight degrees celsius. Just right for sitting outside with a coffee and a computer without the annoying buzz of mosquitos and black flies to rein in the imagination to a sometimes painful reality.
I have titled this entry rather grandiously as ‘experience, understanding and belief’. How we experience our gender congruence or our gender dysphoria, come to understand it and reconcile those revelations with our beliefs and the beliefs of those around us has a huge impact in our lives. For transsexuals there is more immediacy since the condition is usually self-diagnosed and, in the Western world the taboo against transgressing gender is uncompromising. We can choose to deal with our own gender and the gender expression of others either negatively through denial, violence, the self-reverential judging of others and numerous other crimes or positively through acceptance, honesty and a greater appreciation for the wonderful diversity of creation.
What prompted me to approach the topic this morning was two-fold – a conversation with my therapist about the Bailey/Dreger controversy and a column in the Globe and Mail by Deidre McCloskey (entitled ‘Free to be she – or he’ : The Globe and Mail October 20, 2007 p. D23 – link to .pdf: http://deirdremccloskey.org/docs/globe.pdf) that tackled the issue through a thoughtful selection of books she recommends for others to learn about gender expression.
In my conversation with my therapist I remarked that I didn’t understand why Bailey was taken seriously at all since his contention that transsexuals (he only seems to be concerned with male to female transsexuals for some reason) are either effeminate homosexual men (who want to attract men more effectively?) or fetishistic men so enamoured with the idea of women that they mould themselves into that (sexualized?) image (at least that is how I understand autogynephelia) doesn’t fit with my personal experience or understanding at all.
In her column, Ms. McCloskey suggests that those who want a better understanding of gender expression need to look beyond the Bailey theory and ‘locker-room’ stereotypes to arrive at a more measured appreciation. I couldn’t agree more but something about Ms. McCloskey’s piece made me uncomfortable. For her, gender expression comes down to choice. To illustrate her point, she likens cross-dressers to people who occasionally vacation in Venice and transsexuals to people who decide to immigrate to Venice. I expect that this is reflective of her own experience exploring femininity, finding herself more comfortable with femininity than masculinity and eventually becoming a Venetian herself. She seems to believe that gender expression is fundamentally about choice.
The reason I was uncomfortable with her piece was that, though it was closer to my understanding of gender dysphoria, it didn’t really fit with my own experience. While I agree with the premise that our personal choices are really no one else’s business – ie. ‘If I want to live in Venice full-time why should my neighbour try to stop me or ridicule me for my choice?’. But my own personal experience gender dysphoria is that while it is – eventually – about choice, for me it was the last available choice – ie. ‘Sorry Beth, I know that your house is burning down around you and, since all the other houses your tried to live in burned down too, the only ‘choice’ you have left is a one-way ticket to Venice’. It was a kind-of-a-choice-but-not-really, at least that is how it seemed to me.
This is what I am trying to get at with the idea of ‘experience, understanding and belief’. I don’t really think that anyone is totally wrong or totally right with their theories of gender dysphoria or gender expression. We are all individuals with a wide range of experiences, understandings and beliefs. We each see one part of the proverbial elephant in a dark room and think we know what it is. Gender is such a big, complex concept / behaviour / reality that it not really surprising that many different people understand it in as many different ways. (For those in the ‘dark’ about the proverbial elephant, it essentially boils down to different people touching one part of an elephant in a dark room and ‘knowing’ that it is a rope (the tail), a hose (the trunk), a tree (the leg), a spear (the tusk), etc…) – for more info go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Men_and_an_Elephant
Our beliefs about gender come down to our experiences and how we understand it in our own personal contexts. What Mr. Bailey describes and Ms. Dreger defends is perhaps descriptive of some people’s experience and understanding of their gender. It doesn’t strike a chord with me but that doesn’t mean that it is necessarily totally wrong. Similarly I have found less of a choice aspect in my own transsexuality than it seems Ms. McCloskey found in hers. My point is that we are all entitled to our own beliefs and understandings of our personal experiences with gender congruence and/or gender dysphoria because it is a complex puzzle that isn’t completely understood yet.
It seems to me that Ms. McCloskey is on the right track when she suggests that we shouldn’t try to force our beliefs and understandings on others. If I need to move to Venice permanently because my house is burning down then my neighbors shouldn’t be able to stop me because they don’t think my house is burning ‘enough’. And I shouldn’t be forced to change my decision to move to Venice and just, for example, build an addition to my existing (burning) house or rebuild on the ashes because that is how (the experts agree) my situation can best be resolved.
Maybe one day we will see the whole ‘elephant’ but until then we just need to be free to be able to make the choices we think are the best for ourselves based on our own individual experiences, understandings and beliefs.
Or is wanting to live my life as honestly and as fully as possible too much to ask?
Love,
M.
(My apologies if I have misrepresented Ms. McCloskey’s article – you can download the .pdf at her site: http://deirdremccloskey.org/docs/globe.pdf)
Appearances and Changes October 8, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, dysphoria, transsexual.1 comment so far
Monday, October 8, 2007 07:07:47
Autumn is a time of change – of beauty in the passing of the old and the sacrifices made for the future. A time of celebration and hope, one generation giving its’ final breath to a bounty of seed-bearing fruit.
We seem to understand the changes in the seasons and how, without them, there wouldn’t be the Spring yet we blindly ignore the importance of the seasons in our own lives, wishing for ourselves an eternal springtime. We so value youth and its’ twin altars of fertility and virility that we discount the importance of the maturity that comes with middle age and the sagacity of old age. We say that we value knowledge and wisdom yet we continually want to live as children.
We celebrate the changes in nature and give thanks for its bounty but we are morbidly afraid of it in our own lives.
Why talk of this in a journal ostensibly about my transition? I bring it up because I believe that it is at the heart of society’s attitude towards gender.
People tend to like constancy in their own lives because they are all too aware of the double-edged nature of change. Something is given but something is also taken away. We live in hope of good changes and in fear of bad changes so many take the conservative route of – my life is good right now so I have to do everything I can to keep it that way. In other words, I am on top right now and I want it to stay that way. So long as the status quo is maintained you don’t have to deal with any threats to your position or your piece of mind. In short, many lead the lives of spoiled children who want their own way every time.
Before you take offensive or exception please understand that I don’t mean all people, all the time. I mean some of us, in our most fearful moments.
So how does this relate to gender dysphoria and gender transgression in general? Well, gender tends to be learned and understood in the same way and at a similar time in our lives to when we find out about things like – ice is cold, fire is hot, water is wet, etc… To many it is a solid, well-understood and defining part of their existence. Remember the let-down and frustration you felt when you finally learned that there (spoiler alert!) wasn’t really a Santa Claus, an Easter Bunny or a Tooth Fairy? Gender is the same way – a vagina means female and a penis means male. Gender is felt by most people (ie. those not afflicted with gender dysphoria – an aversion to or unease with their physical gender) to be one of the most fundamental things about them. It governs what line-up (queue for those non-North Americans) they get into, what bathroom they use and their behaviour to others in society. They act and react to others based on what they perceive the gender of others to be.
Our family relationships, friendships, colleagues, neighbours and fellow humans treat us as they perceive us. To challenge their perception by suggesting that someone in a male body is actually female puts into question one of their most basic understandings of the world around them and thus, their place in it. They can’t imagine a world where there is no Santa Claus.
For example, we have a fundamental understanding that trees have green leaves but we know that when they loose their leaves in the fall they aren’t dead and they don’t stop being trees. In the autumn we watch the maples, oaks and other leaf-bearing trees around us seemingly wither and die. We know intellectually that they aren’t actually dead and but it still takes a little faith to believe that they will grow fresh leaves and become vibrant once again next spring. We aren’t trees (most of us aren’t anyway…) so we can accept that they change their appearance and we aren’t really perturbed about it.
As a transsexual I have a female brain but because of (to the best of our knowledge so far) a hormonal imbalance in my mother’s womb, I was born with a male body. Since brain sex trumps physical sex I need to change my physical body to resemble a female one – only then will I be happy. I need to change so that I can continue living. Only about one person in fifty-thousand ever acknowledges that they are transsexual so accepting that people with gender dysphoria (transsexuals) need to change our bodies in order to survive shouldn’t threaten everyone else who isn’t.
I too marvel every autumn when the trees change the colour of their leaves from green to wonderful combinations of yellows, oranges and reds. I don’t understand why they need to change the colour of their leaves but I have faith that they they are doing it for the right reasons so I don’t rush out to ‘save them from themselves’. I don’t feel threatened by their unilateral decision to change the hue of my world every fall. I accept it and celebrate it – it is truly wondrous and beautiful.
I don’t totally understand why I need to change my physical sex I just know I need to in order to live. Is it too much to ask the rest of society to just give me the benefit of the doubt and accept me in the same way they accept changes to the leaves of the maples and oaks in their backyards in autumn?
Don’t worry, accepting me doesn’t mean that you will turn into a tree.
Love,
Beth
PS As a bonus for reading this far I will leave you with a riddle I made up for my nieces.
Q: What is jealous when the days are getting longer, angry when they are getting shorter and asleep when they are the shortest of all?
Hint – I refer to them in the entry above…..
A: The leaves of a tree.
PPS – I could have been really mean and leafed(!) you the week to stew over it…
Sleepwalking September 23, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, dysphoria, transgender, transsexual.1 comment so far
Sunday, September 23, 2007 16:47
Limbo is that wonderful place between heaven and hell. The only problem with limbo is that you never know whether your final destination is heaven or hell…
I titled this entry ‘Sleepwalking’ because that is what I feel like I have been doing for the past eight years (my marriage). I have been living from year to year without much thought to the long-term except in very general terms like my pension and vague ideas about where I wanted to retire to. Seven out of the last eight years were desperation and denial. This last year has been about acceptance and, perhaps, about rebirth. During this year I have had many occasions to unearth, as an archaeologist might, how I spent my time.
It is all too obvious that I was searching desperately for some other answer to the ‘the meaning of my life’ – trying to find what was missing in my life. I hatched various schemes for ‘finding myself’ when I knew all to well what I would find if I allowed myself to be honest. When it became clear that this game, perhaps, didn’t have multiple possible endings, I tried other games (computer games, careerism, alcohol, etc…) that might, hoping my accomplishments, my self-actualization in those games could make up for the seeming impossibility of actualization in my real life.
It is easy to look at the last few years and wonder where I was trying to go with my life. I focused on problems of others and looked for easy fixes. I hoped that I would find enough meaning in those things that I could avoid the certain pain and loss that would be part and parcel of dealing with what I suspected was the real problem.
It is easy to look at those years as wasted time. I can’t though. I think I needed to try all those things to be sure. Just as trying spironolactone over the past year has given me a glimpse of possible resolution, I needed to get married and love someone deeply to understand that the disconjunction I feel is real.
The missing piece to my ‘puzzle’ is and has always been my gender – that space cannot be filled with any other ‘piece’ – no matter how prized. I desperately hoped that true love would fill it. I desperately hoped that a good job would fill it. I desperately searched for anything else that might fill that space and it appears that what I am left with is this – I am and always have been a girl.
So it seems that I am in limbo now…
The suspense is killing me.
Love,
Marybeth.
Accommodation and Accommodations September 1, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in dysphoria, separation, transgender.4 comments
Saturday, September 1, 2007 04:46
Hello everyone! I am taking the opportunity this early morning to write you from the comfort of my perch outside my wife’s house under soft glow of gentle moonlight.
I thought that this morning I would write about accommodation – both flavours. In my last post (I apologize for the lack of a post last week perhaps this entry will go some way towards explaining my neglect even if doesn’t manage to atone for it), I wrote about the difficulty I am having getting used to the idea of being in a marriage with very separate residences. To me the reality of having a home separate from my wife’s felt like the shattering of the bedrock my marriage. This was the most obvious sign of my marriage disappearing.
Given that I have my own place now you may be wondering why I am continuing to correspond with you from my wife’s house. It is a valid questions given the amount of words I have dedicated in this blog to whining about the fact that I am separating from my wife (being kicked out is actually more descriptive). The answer to that question lies in the fact that my wife seems quite lenient towards when our actual separation should start and, as you may have surmised, I am quite reticent to leave.
My marriage is transforming in front of my eyes. As I try and maintain a ‘glass half full’ approach to life, I could attribute this change to a realization on the part of my wife of how much she loves me and how she doesn’t want to lose me no matter what physical changes I might undergo. My ‘glass half empty’ self might look at the same situation and note that my wife’s hip has deteriorated a bit more or that she is scheduled for a surgery in the fall and therefore attribute her change of heart to a more visceral need on her part for assistance. My ‘inner Canadian’ would look at note the merits of both points of view and suggestion that perhaps latter begat the former or even that, having seen that I do intend to, perhaps, ‘call her bluff’, and transition even if it means losing her, she is finally realizing what she might lose too.
I am struggling with what to do about my marriage and my reconciliation right now. On the one hand I have a place of my own and I should be staying there more and more so that I can feel free to be myself. On the other hand, I love my wife deeply and I don’t like to see her suffer – she really needs my help prior to, during, and after her operation. I feel smothered by her constant need for attention and her extreme disapproval at any too obvious expression of femininity from me. I feel self-conscious if I am writing in this journal when she is hovering near by so I usually stop – that is why most of my entries are initially drafted very early in the morning (it is also why I didn’t manage an entry last week – she had just returned from a two-week visit with her sister and her demands on my time didn’t allow for a reasonable block of time to write). So my dilemma is, in the immortal words of ‘The Clash’ – ‘Should I stay or should I go now?’ ( http://www.lyricsfreak.com/c/clash/should+i+stay+or+should+i+go_20031789.html )
If I am feeling positive I muse that perhaps my marriage isn’t really over – it is just going through a period of adjustment. If I am feeling depressed or cynical I conclude that my marriage really is over and I am just a momentary convenience.
When I admitted that I needed to deal with my gender dysphoria I knew that there were many risks involved but judged that benefits of transition outweighed them all. I knew that my wife would probably react the way she has despite the many adjustments I have made to my lifestyle to help her through her illness but the almost clinical way that she just told me to leave and the ‘gifts’ she has given me for my apartment (she bought me a set of dishes and pots and pans) still tore my heart out. I didn’t feel an ounce of regret from her as she pronounced her decision and then helped me out the door and it hurt. It seems that she is doing her best right now to hang on to the parts of me that she likes, perhaps taking advantage of the guilt I feel for leaving her under these circumstances. She wants me to help her through her operation and, of course, I can’t refuse. She will accommodate my strange changes (so long as I keep them as unobtrusive as possible) so that she can benefit from my assistance during this difficult time for her but (I know) as soon as she recovers – I am yesterday’s news.
In my marriage I done my best to fulfill my vows and so far, I have spent a great deal of time dealing with the one about ‘…in sickness and in health…’. I thought that a demonstration of my commitment to my vows would engender a reciprocation from my wife if a similar situation should arise but it appears that I didn’t note the ‘asterisk – *’ beside our vows. It seems that a partner changing genders is essentially a ‘get out of marriage free’ card. I knew I should have read the vows more carefully!!!
The question remains though – ‘If one partner accommodates the other but the other doesn’t reciprocate or just reciprocates selectively, does that constitute a marriage at all?’
It seems to me that a marriage that doesn’t have equality of accommodation at its’ foundation eventually leads to separate accommodations.
And perhaps that is the answer to the dilemma I posed at the beginning of this entry. Both sides of the argument have merit but without reciprocity the marriage is gone. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still help each other selectively. Because I value my friendship with my ‘wife’ I will help her through this difficult time but I won’t sacrifice my transition to do so. I will honour her feelings about my gender change so I won’t make it too obvious when she is around but I won’t postpone it any longer either.
We both deserve our health.
Love,
Beth
Medically Necessary? July 27, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in dysphoria, society, transgender, transsexual.6 comments
Friday, July 27, 2007 04:40
I was reading the story about the transwoman who is suing the IRS to be able to write-off her surgery expenses and I became increasingly dismayed by the arrogance and insensitivity exhibited by the IRS team in their attempts to write off the life saving surgery of Ms O’Donnabhain as something akin to a tummy tuck. (For an excellent summary of this issue see Rebecca Auge’s ‘Gender and Life’s Paths’ blog (http://rebeccaaugephd.blogspot.com/), among her entries for Thursday, July 26th 2007 – she references three really interesting articles.)
I don’t want to spend a lot of time going over ground that reporters and bloggers like myself have spent a great deal of ink and screen space writing about. There is much to this case that exposes the very worst of the ‘holier than thous’ and their crusades against all those who they don’t agree with. But beyond that, the mere fact that this case can be argued the way it has been underlines a reality that all trans-people have to face every day.
No one, other than another trans-person, can ever understand the pain we go through. No one can understand the lengths we will and have gone through to simply ‘fit in’. Our non-trans therapists, surgeons and partners may come the closest to understanding and they are often our greatest allies but to those that find us disgusting they are simply our ‘enablers’. The risks they take take to help us, heal us or simply associate with us cannot be underestimated or taken for granted. The IRS team has repeatedly tried to discredit the credibility of the expert witnesses while apparently relying on an article written by the conservative Catholic ideologue Pat McHugh in a magazine called ‘First Things First’ an organ of the Christian Right (see Autumn Sandeen’s post at http://transadvocate.com/autumnsandeen/archives/779) for the basis of their refusal to allow the deduction.
I am writing about this because I feel strongly about it but also because it strikes close to home for me (and for perhaps many other transpeople). The arguments used by the IRS team could have been written by me. They asked the expert witnesses and Ms. O’Donnabhain herself whether she was, perhaps, autogynephilic, or a fetishistic transvestite. How many transsexuals facing the complete upheaval of their lives hasn’t wished that their condition was something that they could just deal with on weekends or as a hobby? Sure being a transvestite carries a great deal of censure in society but at least you don’t have to transition. Even autogynephilia (if you do take it seriously as an explanation for some transgender behaviour) seems to me that you just have to set aside some time (a sabbatical perhaps?) to fully explore the ‘female’ you that you ‘desire’ (as I understand the theory anyways – if anyone is offended by this representation of autogynephilia I apologize I realize it is simplistic). I would love to not have to deal with losing my wife, jeopardizing my career, or risk becoming estranged from my family and friends. At one point in my life I hoped these were explanations for my situation.
The IRS team then suggested that perhaps the surgery wasn’t really necessary because she had put off transitioning many times to accommodate the needs of her family and to avoid persecution at work. This also struck a cord with me. For these same reasons I have waited, perhaps longer than I should have, to transition. As I wrote above, I actively looked for any theory (even the ‘crackpot’ ones – ie. Did I really want ‘colonize’ feminism by becoming a woman as Janice Raymond suggested?) to explain my situation so that I could avoid transitioning. This is where non-transpeople and those who aren’t intimately associated with transpeople really don’t get it. Or at least they pretend they don’t. Many (if not most) transsexuals do everything they can to avoid transition – it is the last resort. Many transpeople would rather die than transition – as evidenced by our society leading suicide rate of somewhere between twenty and thirty percent.
I say pretend because I can think of quite a few cases where ‘normal’ people avoid treatment for medically necessary conditions. Have you ever limped around for a few days (or weeks) only to finally go to a doctor and find that you twisted, sprained or even broken your ankle or toe? Have you ever had a sensitive tooth that needs to be looked at by a dentist? Have you ever lived through the aches and pains of the flu (and subjected everyone in your home and office to possible infection) just because you were too stubborn to think you needed medical help? All of these examples (and these are just the ones that come to mind immediately – I am sure there are hundreds more) require medical attention, but if you (and others) can live with the inconvenience of you not dealing with them, you can (usually) survive relatively well for an extended period of time. Some, like the tooth infection or the flu you can refuse to deal with until you die from them.
The common flu is the example that I think comes closest to being an analogy for the dilemma of a transsexual.
You get a cough and you think that you might have a cold so you eat more food (feed a cold?) and hope that you get better – after all colds eventually go away on their own dont they?
I feel like a girl and I like girl things but I have a boy’s body, does that mean I am a transvestite? Is this just a phase?
You get muscle aches and you think yesterdays workout was too strenuous (even though you don’t remember working out) so you resolve to stretch more before and after any physical activity.
I am so much more comfortable in women’s clothing and being feminine – that can’t be possible – I have to throw all the clothes out and act like a man!
You then get a fever so you finally add up all the symptoms and realize that you have the flu.
All the research I have done seems to indicate that people with the same life experiences and the feelings I have are transsexuals. Maybe I am transsexual? Yikes!
But it doesn’t seem that bad, you can deal with it – you resolve to get some rest and not eat very much (starve a flu?).
I must not be trying hard enough to be a man! If I do as many manly things as I can then these feelings will disappear!
Initially you continue going about your business as usual, people at work avoid you because you cough all the time and are more irritable than normal. At home your wife misses you because you are sleeping all the time or simply avoids because you are cranky all the time.
Oh sure I drink a bit and yes, computer games are quite addictive, work is frustrating and I am really unhappy right now but I am sure that if I just change jobs or get a different hobby I will be much happier! (and I am sorry for getting angry and yelling at you dear…)
Eventually your boss suggests that you shouldn’t come in to work until your flu disappears and your wife suggests that if you don’t go to the doctor and get yourself fixed she will begin considering her options.
My wife suggested that I see a therapist to deal with my depression, anger and frustration. After two years of therapy both my therapist and a psychologist agreed that I am transsexual and suggested that I begin hormone therapy and consider transition.
So you finally go to the doctor, get some antibiotics and a week or two later you are as good as new or, if you have really been stubborn, you spend a few weeks in the hospital getting your lungs pumped out. In the end you are feeling much better and wondering why you waited so long to get your flu looked after.
I have been on spironolactone, an anti-androgen, for one year now and already I am less depressed and much happier overall. I can only imagine how much more at peace I will be with the addition of female hormones and, if finances allow, surgery.
After all it was medically necessary and it was only your stubborness and ego that got in the way of making your life (and the lives of everyone who had to deal with the sick you) better.
Exactly.
Love,
Beth
Crazy? July 15, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, dysphoria, estrangement, society, transsexual.add a comment
Sunday, July 15, 2007 05:15
Good morning! It is a coolish 14 degrees outside today but the most remarkable thing is the symphony of birdsong around me. Individual songs, starting and stopping indiscriminately, loud and soft, insistent and passive, some recognizable, some not – indescribably soothing, wondrous nature.
I am not really sure what I want to write about this morning – after having written on the ‘big’ topics for the last six months I am very aware that I may be starting to get a bit repetitive in terms of the subjects I am dwelling on in my writing. If I am I think it is because I dwell on these same topics in my daily life too. Although it is debatable whether transsexuality should be listed in the forthcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-V) as a psychosis as it is in the current manual the DSM-IV, I don’t think it is debatable that having to deal with being transsexual in a society that doesn’t accept it is enough to make you crazy.
Why might it make you crazy? Try going pre-school and getting to play dress-up, naturally being drawn to the pretty dresses – “Don’t be foolish you should know better – boys wear the suit and ties!”. Try being over at your best friend’s house (who happens to be a girl) when you are in grade one and being told that playing house is inappropriate for a boy and then having her mother forbid you from playing with her ever again – “There is something wrong with that boy”. Try dreaming up excuses for not going on family outings just to have the house (and your mother’s dresser) all to yourself – “He must be shy”. I could go on with many, many more examples but suffice to say, expressing myself honestly and openly wasn’t encouraged.
I think that it is generally agreed that expression of gender is a quite powerful impulse. Gender is a large part of who we are (it is usually the second question – name, sex, date of birth, etc…) and it manifests itself both consciously and unconsciously. The conscious part is not too difficult to deal with – to be a man just objectify women, do really dangerous things, violence is a positive, be aggressive, drink excessively and swear often. To handle the unconscious urges is much more difficult. To satisfy the ‘need’ – to try to control it – to hide it, I took some pretty ‘crazy’ risks. I was in the military for eight years – cross dressing at military college takes careful planning and was almost more dangerous than any of the training exercises I participated in – I risked getting very seriously beaten up and potentially kicked out of the military. I could fill a book with more examples from my life of the risky things I have done to satiate or deny both my conscious and unconscious desires to express my instinctive femininity.
The little I know about psychology informs me that repression is a bad thing because it often leads to unhealthy compensating behaviours. For me this included acting out of character (I was the last person anyone thought would join the military), escapism (drinking, computer games), excessive risk taking (I had to prove I was more manly than they were), secrecy (the definition of being in the closet), lying (what, me a crossdresser? That’s crazy talk…) and social estrangement (no I don’t really feel like going out tonight I think I will just stay at home). Again I could go on with many more examples. Eventually this compensating behaviour just wasn’t enough for me and I was frustrated and depressed all the time. My wife asked me what my problem was and I just said it was work and she assumed it was the stress of having a chronically ill wife. I think I knew the truth but I couldn’t tell her and I couldn’t admit that I was failing to contain these ‘freakish’ impulses of mine – so I had another beer and played more computer games.
Society has told me that my nature is abhorrent to them and I have struggled to meet their expectations for their ‘comfort’. Until about a year ago (I am 39 now) I tried as hard as I could to suppress a pretty major part of myself. In the process I have engaged in what many might consider to be ‘psychotic’ or ‘abberant’ behaviour so by that definition I guess I am (or was) crazy. But what I might be equally diagnosed with is simply ‘delusional thinking’ for thinking that I could, by force of will alone, oppose such a primary impulse as my own gender. I engage in the those behaviours less and less now as I become more comfortable with who I am and what comes next so I am much happier and more certifiably ‘sane’. The irony is that because of the DSM-IV I have actually been officially diagnosed with a psychiatric condition (one of the requirements to be put on hormones) so I am officially more ‘psychotic’ now than I was when I as acting out of character, escapist, secretive, etc… . Maybe one day there will be a therapy that can address the unconscious – that can change intrinsic impulses to more societally acceptable ones. On that day society will finally be free of all those behaviours that make ‘us’ uncomfortable – homosexuality, transsexuality, sex in general, artistic expression, scientific curiosity and all those heretical thoughts and inventions that ‘just don’t sit well with most folk’.
It seems clear to me that both the expectations of society and the effects of testosterone ‘poisoning’ on my brain contributed to making me seem a little crazy so I accept the diagnosis. I tried fitting in but it just made me more and more unhappy. I am happier now but I am a certified psychotic so I guess that proves that you really do need to be insane to be sane in the world these days.
We look at and experience the diversity of nature with wonder and fascination – ‘A multicoloured bird, what do mean they aren’t all brown?’ ‘That one eats worms and that one dives from high in the sky to – go underwater – and catch a trout!’ – so why do we enforce such a strict dichotomy on our own species? Surely to have ‘conquered’ the planet we had to have been more imaginative and more adaptable than every other species? So why are we so ashamed of our own diversity? Whatever the verdict is on transsexuality, whether it is or is not a psychiatric condition, isn’t an insistence on behavioural homogeneity an evolutionary dead end?
I don’t think that I am crazy, I just need to be allowed to be who I am – not just who or what others are ‘comfortable’ with. I am finally becoming comfortable in my own skin – I don’t think that is ‘crazy’.
Love,
Beth
Redefinitions July 1, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, dysphoria, hormones, love, separation, transgender, transsexual, work.1 comment so far
Sunday, July 1, 2007 03:58
Happy Canada Day! Happy Birthday Canada! (and a (prelated?) Happy Independence Day to my American friends too!)
It is a beautiful morning, the sky is clear and the world basks in the light of a brilliant full moon in the crisp seven degree (Celsius) air. The coolness of the morning seems appropriate for a celebration of mortality, wisdom and the inevitable triumph of truth over illusion.
In Canada the first day in July is designated Canada day (formerly Dominion Day) to commemorate the first day of the Confederation – way back in 1867. This is not to imply that Canada simply jumped into being on that day. It has been a much longer process involving relatively independent colonies and territories agreeing to give up sole propriety of significant parts of their jurisdiction for a greater purpose. In the 140 years since that day Canada has grown and been redefined many times both geographically and socially.
The reason I mention Canada day this morning is two-fold. First, I am and will hopefully remain, a proud Canadian (in God I trust – not political parties). Having seen this country from coast to coast (Pacific to Atlantic – I know I am short one coast – the Arctic – but I’m working on it…) it is a truly wondrous place. Second, and more pertinent to this journal, is that today for me marks a redefining of my life, both geographically and, over the coming year, socially as well. As I have written earlier in this journal, my battle to ‘fit in’ is over, I had hoped that taking spironolactone would ease my dysphoria sufficiently that I wouldn’t have to accede to the next stage in the treatment for my condition – estrogen therapy. The reason today is special is that last week my wife of eight years and I have agreed to separate, she is not willing to live with a woman and I am not willing to forgo further treatment just to ‘fit in’.
I want to expand a bit further on the subject of fitting in today because it underlies so much of the struggle that I and many other pre-transition women go through. Prior to the information revolution of the internet (both the truth and the lies) many of us in earlier generations couldn’t conceive of actually being able to live ‘normal’ lives as fully transitioned women. I charitably include myself in this group (I am 39 right now) because although there were BBSes, AOL, Compuserve, GEnie, gopher, etc… before the advent of the Mosaic browser and what we now recognize as the internet, the issues I was dealing with were portrayed (for the most part) as ‘sexualized fetishes’ and since I identified as asexual, I found I couldn’t relate to much of it. I say charitably because I know that if I had dug a little deeper I might have found more relevant information and knowledgeable people that could have helped me deal with this earlier if I only had the courage ask. The reason I didn’t dig deeper was that transsexuality for me was like the door with the shining light behind it in all those 70’s and 80’s horror films. Even though it was the most obvious and, for some strange reason so compelling, I wanted to try every other door before I tried that one. I was seriously scared of what §might be lurking behind that door and even though I am more accepting of my fate – I am still very apprehensive about what happens next.
But is it really a demonstration of lack of courage to want to do try everything you can think of to have a ‘normal’ life? For me it took a great deal of will to deal with my ‘demons’ – my ‘unnatural’ desire to dress and behave in a feminine way. For as long as I can remember I have identified more with girls and women more than I have with boys and men. I had to observe and learn the behaviours that were expected from me as a ‘boy’, femininity came naturally to me then and even now despite thirty-nine years of masculinity ‘programming’ and twenty-four years of testosterone poisoning (I was a late bloomer puberty-wise I guess). I joined the military, I drank excessively, I took stupid risks – I can honestly say I think I gave it my best shot. But the willpower it has taken to maintain a facade of masculinity and the collateral damage that concomitant lack of attention caused in other aspects of my life has forced to admit that I am not strong enough suppress my essentially feminine nature any longer. I will not be able to lead a normal life, keep my head down and just ‘fit in’ – I must transition.
One consequence of my lack of courage earlier in life and my lack of willpower later on is that I have to leave the one person I love absolutely – my wife. If I had had the courage earlier perhaps we might have met under more authentic circumstances (I am sure we would have hit it off) or we might never have even met. Either way, I am without my anchor as I head off into uncertain waters. Even with all the human resource safeguards of current employer I am not protected from the slights and whispers of colleagues. I pray that the strength I recoup from not having to maintain the facade of masculinity will be enough to meet and overcome these new challenges and opportunities.
Whether I have the strength or not is really a moot point anyway because I don’t have any other option – I never ‘really’ did. Implicit to my hope that I could ‘fit in’ to society as a male was the notion that I could, through force of will alone, behave contrary to as fundamental reality as my own gender indefinitely. It was an impossibility.
So on this 170th birthday of the Confederation of the Dominion of Canada, I too am confronted with an awareness of my own mortality, my own successes and failures, my strengths and weaknesses, my own challenges and opportunities.
Happy Birthday Canada! Bonne fête!
Love,
Beth
Anonymity and Disclosure June 24, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, dysphoria, society, transsexual.add a comment
Sunday, June 24, 2007 05:34
Hello everyone! It is a crisp ten degrees out this morning so I am able, for a little while at least, to write from the comfort and view of the front porch. Once the bugs find me, I will be forced to retreat to the tent but until then I have a comfortable seat and a beautiful view.
I decided to write a bit about anonymity and disclosure today. It seems appropriate as I am in a period of my life where it is increasingly obvious that I am not what I pretend to be. Longer hair, polished nails, decreasing beard, as hairless a body as possible and, with estrogen likely beginning in September, some even more obvious changes will make the charade of maintaining my male persona more apparent. In my journey towards more public disclosure of this formerly secret shame, I am beginning to realize that it may a good idea to be more open about my transition. This is especially applicable for those people in my life who are more curious and those whose reactions are more unpredictable. I hope that more information about who I am, the struggles I have gone through, and the challenges I am facing might lead them to a bit more informed conclusion about my ‘deviance’ and perhaps avoid a situation where they might jump to inaccurate conclusions that are potentially hurtful to me.
As I have progressed in my journey of reconciliation I have pushed the limits of ‘acceptability’ in my appearance and deportment. For as long as I possibly could I maintained as standard a male image as possible but over a period of many years I gradually began wearing exclusively women’s underwear, socks, hose and occasionally a camisole under my male clothes at work and under women’s sweats, t-shirts and shorts at home. I then slowly replaced most of my male work clothes with androgynous female blouses, slacks and shoes as well. I am sure that some of my colleagues at work notice consciously and others are aware unconsciously of my ‘subversions’. My presentation is at the moment very androgynous and though I know that it makes some people uncomfortable I am hoping that it somehow makes them more prepared for the upcoming disclosures about my transition.
My one wish is that when I do announce that ‘I will be out of the office for a month but when I do return it will be as Marybeth’, no one, colleagues, family or friends, will overly surprised by it. I would prefer comments like ‘I am glad you got that sorted out I was a little unsure to be honest’ or ‘I always knew you were more a woman than a man’. That is what I hope to gain with a proactive gradual approach and with any luck that is more or less what will happen (fingers, toes and eyes crossed!).
Denial, acceptance and transition is a very personal process of discovery and, hopefully, reconciliation. My instinct throughout my life has been to hide my difference. Like a vampire, Marybeth only came out at night or in dark rooms with the blinds closed. The thing I feared most was that someone might discover that I wasn’t ‘normal’. I have always wanted to fit in and be as anonymous as possible, but in a process as personal yet as public as a change in gender it seems that ultimately more transparency and exposure of personal details, is safer than secrecy and stealth. Anything that can help those who know me understand my struggle more accurately and honestly will help me transition more smoothly.
For years I have been worried that someone might find out that I was transgender and then start whispering behind my back. Perhaps this was irrational but when I was less willing to accept my gender deviance it was important that they not find out what was behind the curtain as I was concerned how it might affect my career. Now that I have committed to reconciliation, I am not so worried about that any more – they will find out eventually anyway. I just hope that when they do find out that they have a positive understanding of what gender dysphoria is. I hope they find this site or a one of the numerous other personal accounts of trans-women out there.
Over the past month or so, I have been corresponding with Liz, a transgender woman like myself who is going through similar challenges – trying to reconcile her current life and beliefs (marriage, family, work and faith) with the reality of the treatment for gender dysphoria (feminization through hormone therapy and eventually living as a woman full time). Liz has a blog and she thought that our correspondence on these issues might be of interest and possibly even educational to those who struggle as we do or to those who might want to better understand someone they know so she has posted parts of our correspondence at her website: http://pattiedelish.blogspot.com/2007/06/ongoing-conversation.html. It was very cathartic for me to see our discussion up on her site because it accurately depicts the challenges we are dealing with and that many other trans-women face as well.
For those of you who read this blog, whether you are dealing with gender dysphoria yourself or have a family member, a friend, a colleague or an acquaintance who is, please read what I and others have written and realize that we are are real people dealing with a condition that isn’t of our choosing. This isn’t a game, a hobby or a fetish for us. For many of us it is as much a question of life and death as a diagnosis of cancer would be.
I think that the more people know about who I am and what I am struggling with, the more people will be forced to acknowledge I am not just some deviant that they can conveniently label a freak and ridicule. I am someone who understands she is broken and just wants to be whole.
Love,
Marybeth
