Deception and Reality November 10, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, gender, past, present, reality, society, transgender, transition, transsexual.1 comment so far
Monday, November 10th 6:17 am
Good morning everyone! It is a cool two degrees Celsius outside my apartment today but I am not outside this morning. I am cozy inside sitting on my favourite chair, sipping a wonderfully full-bodied French press coffee, munching on snack of pumpkin seeds and pistachios and breathing in the invigorating fragrance of peppermint, rosemary and basil that is wafting over from the scented candle I lit before I started writing. Let’s hope that much inspiration is gained from this combination of sensual pleasures!
What an interesting week I have had! I was on a business trip to Minneapolis for most of it and, yes, I saw ‘the statue’. The statue being that of Mary Tyler Moore. That show was so inspirational and so funny – I understood the funny as a kid but now I think I understand just how inspirational her character was to so many people. I especially liked the theme song ‘Love Is All Around’ and, having Googled the lyrics I think I understand why – here is an appropriate excerpt:
‘…You’re gonna make it after all…
How will you make it on your own?
This world is awfully big, girl this time you’re all alone
But it’s time you started living
It’s time you let someone else do some giving
Love is all around, no need to waste it…’
I don’t think I need to explain how appropriate that is for my life right now…
So the trip to Minneapolis went well, my colleagues were pleasant and the food that a city previously unknown to me offered was outstanding. It was a business trip that I wasn’t really thrilled about taking given the fact that my spouse and I are in the midst of separation but it is one that I am glad I took, if only to be reminded of Ms. Moore (I think it may be time to start watching the old episodes to see if they were as good as I remember).
I am taking the day off today, and with any luck, I’ll manage to take the entire week off too (it depends on how busy it gets at work…). Remembrance Day is tomorrow, the day that most Canadian’s set aside to remember our veterans and war dead and it is also, coincidentally, the tenth year anniversary of my being in Ottawa in service to the Empire. I also have a number of important appointments this week so it just made sense to take the time off to give them, my separation and my transition, the attention they deserve. Hopefully the combination of reflection, endeavour and relaxation will combine to make this week a productive one for me!
I am finding that transition is a curious mix of exhilaration and melancholy. It is truly exhilarating to drop any pretensions to just be myself but it is sad that so many people seemed to like me the way I was before.
Maybe this is the way that truly great actors feel about the roles they have played? Is Dustin Hoffman more like ‘Tootsie’ or ‘Rainman’ in real life or is he completely unlike any of the numerous characters he has played over the years? If a fan asked Mr. Hoffman a question would they be disappointed by who answers?
I am not implying that transsexuals are consummate actors worthy of Oscars but I will say that fear and societal/peer pressures can push you into being someone that others might be comfortable with but you are not. I think that this leads to one of the most disturbing troubles some people have with knowing or meeting a transsexual – the bogeyman of ‘deception’. When a man finds out that his girlfriend is transsexual he might feel upset (or worse) that he didn’t know or couldn’t figure out that she was previously a ‘he’. Friends, family, co-workers and service providers may feel that transsexuals are ‘just making fools of them’ either before transition when they were happy knowing ‘him’ or after transition when they find out that the very pleasant she used to be a ‘he’.
No matter what we do, transsexuals can’t really avoid this destructive predicament. We are who we are before transition and after. No one else stops to explain their genital history to everyone they meet so why should transsexuals?
I think it is safe to say that we were most genuinely ourselves prior to being aware of the many expectations of those around us. In my case I stopped being genuinely myself at around age five or six when I was told I couldn’t play with my best friend, a girl, in grade one (see ‘Fresh Air and Friends’ for a more detailed version of that story) . After that experience I reluctantly began hiding pieces of myself that I am only beginning to uncover now, at age forty.
So how can a transsexual answer the question ‘Who were you before you decided to transition, because I liked or even loved that person?’?
Wow, what a tough question.
I could be trite and just say that I am the same person I always have been only my packaging has changed, but I think that would be missing the whole point of transition.
I am not the same person now that I was when I was still wearing my male costume.
But the reality is that everyone changes over time, some more dramatically some less.
‘The only person who behaves sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew every time he sees me. All the rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.’
- George Bernard Shaw
So, you see, it isn’t only transsexuals who change. I agree that the changes that transsexuals go through are so much more extensive than what most other people go through in their lifetimes, but, how much more shocking is it for someone you knew as an accountant to dramatically change careers to become a wilderness guide or a yoga instructor, yet some people do. Some change is as simple as becoming a blonde for the first time and other changes can be as dramatic as dropping that six figure high-powered executive lifestyle to have children and raise a family.
Do all the accountants old friends like the newly-born wilderness guide or yoga instructor? Does her boyfriend like the blonde version of her or is he somewhat uncomfortable? Do the former high achiever’s old colleagues beat a path to her nursery room door?
Some do I suspect, though I am sure that some of the friends and acquaintances of the old accountant, the former brunette or the bygone executive just move on to associate with others whose interests most match their own. I think that is just human nature. ‘I guess I never really knew you’, they might say.
But that begs the question of how much we really know about any of the people we think we do.
What deep dark secrets or trivial facts do our dear friends, family and acquaintances choose not to share with us?
What deep dark secrets or trivial facts do we choose to keep from them?
When a transsexual chooses to genuinely live as themselves it really is a public revelation because, not to put to fine a point about it, our society is really hung up about sex and gender (though come to think about it we are just about as hung up about lawyers and accountants too…ie. You want to be a what?!).
I will readily admit that the changes a transsexual goes through are dramatic and really, if the changes weren’t so dramatic then it wouldn’t be worth going through all the pain and loss that seems part and parcel of the transsexual path.
To get back to the earlier question though, ‘Was I faking it being a man?’ – did the people who knew me, liked me or even loved me when I was pretending to be ‘him’ get scammed by a well executed con-game?
No, you didn’t.
Why not?
For the simple reason that the best con is one where the person doing the ‘conning’ doesn’t believe he is deceiving anyone.
‘He’ knew ‘he’ was different but ‘he’ had convinced ‘himself’ that ‘he’ wasn’t any different than anyone else out there who didn’t like their current circumstances.
‘He’ did what ‘he’ thought everyone wanted ‘him’ to do. Face reality in the body God gave ‘him’. Transsexuals, ‘he’ had learned were freaks and misfits.
So ‘he’ adapted.
I was hidden away, ashamed to be.
But I do believe I was always present even when ‘he’ was engaged in ‘his’ most ‘masculine’ of undertakings.
I was ‘his’ conscience when the going got tough and the compromises were getting too perilous.
Transsexuality isn’t like changing careers, changing your hair colour or even changing your lifestyle. It is much more fundamental than that.
It isn’t a choice because no one can choose who they are.
Those who try, as I did, to submerge their most fundamental self, can only do so by ultimately destroying themselves, as I almost succeeded in doing through my out of control escapism (ie. computer games) and abuse of alcohol.
Transition has truly set me free and given me the peace and happiness that I decided to give up when I was six years old because I thought I had to, to fit in.
I tried to be what I thought others expected me to be so I don’t think I was deceiving anyone then or now.
I was as much a victim of the con as you were.
I don’t want to be a victim anymore.
I am Marybeth.
Like a good actor I have always been Marybeth, ‘he’ was hiding my true self from others to protect me from harm.
But like any good actor I think that no matter how hard ‘he’ tried, I still shone through, my essence, my genuine self, my soul, shone brightly through ‘his’ armour.
So to those who liked or loved ‘him’, I want to think you that you knew ‘him’ well enough to see, like and love me too.
The truth always shines through.
Love,
Marybeth
ps. The reason I am not writing outside today is that I was bitten by a bug near the ankles on both my legs in a hotel room in Minneapolis and my skin reacted in much the same way as it does to poison ivy so I can’t really wear the heavy tights I like to when it is this cold outside. The apartment was cozy and warm but nothing beats being outside for true inspiration! Thank you for reading this far.
Fresh Air and Friends October 19, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in family, gender, hormones, society, transgender, transsexual.4 comments
Sunday, October 19th 6:17 am
Good morning everyone! It is a cool but relatively windless one degree Celsius outside on the balcony at my apartment this morning. Before I drove over here from my wife’s place I had to scrape ice from the windshield of the car – a portent of the winter to come.
I think I am ready for the winter this year. I can’t quite believe I wrote that with all the shovelling I had to do to dig out of last years near-record snowfall but the fact is that I do like winter. I don’t even really mind the shovelling when it comes right down to it. I think the reason is that it is a season that encourages one to reflect. The frenetic energy of summer is replaced by the need to stay bundled up, warm and cozy in a coat or huddled in front of the fireplace with a hot drink. People come together in the winter seeking each other’s warmth and company. Friends, family and acquaintances alike, all forced inside to escape the hard edge of winter to share drink, a thought – their lives. And when they are gone, and you are alone again, your mind turns once again to your own life and the wonder of it as your thoughts begin anticipating the spring to come. Yes, I do like winter.
I am sitting in the easy chair that I dragged out onto the balcony, secured beneath a blanket and typing through fingerless gloves. I am occassionally sipping on some of the full strength french press coffee I just made and breathing in the fresh clean air.
Fresh clean air.
Every summer I forget about that cold invigorating air and every fall I can’t believe I could ever forget something so exquisitely satisfying.
It is funny, transition is like that too. I am feeling feelings now that I haven’t remembered since childhood, when my identity was taken away from me. They are wonderful feelings that I can’t believe I ever gave up, just so I could fit in.
There were times this week that I was just spontaneously happy, smiling and in a good mood. When people asked me why I was so happy, I couldn’t pinpoint anything in particular – I just was.
One of the best things to happen this week is that I realized I have found a genuine friendship. Why is that special? Because I haven’t had a ‘true’ friend since I was in elementary school. I have never been able to unself-consciously share every part of experience with someone since then.
My first and only ‘true’ friend was a girl named Allison and we shared everything that kindergarten and first-graders could share. We were inseparable. Inseparable until her mother informed us that we couldn’t be friends anymore because girls don’t play with boys the way we were playing together. If I remember correctly I think what triggered that reaction was the fact that we were playing dress-up – two ladies at tea with their friends. We each had a dress on (her mother had given Allison some of her old clothes to play with) and we were enjoying tea with the imaginary friends we had invited over. My memory isn’t perfect but I think her mother walked in, saw what we were doing and ordered me to clean myself up and leave. The next day at school, Allison told me that we couldn’t be friends anymore. A two year friendship gone in an instant. Two years is a third of a lifetime for the six-year old I was at the time. I have never forgotten Allison and each time I return to my home town I look at the house she used to live in and remember her again.
That was the first time I realized that I was different from all the other girls for some reason. It was the first time that I realized that there were some things I was ‘allowed’ to express and some things that were ‘discouraged’.
That was the moment that I started hiding.
I created a little hole, deep inside of myself where I put all those ‘undesirable’ parts of myself – those instincts, emotions, ideas and dreams that weren’t allowed.
That was the moment that I started trying to learn all those behaviours that were ‘expected’ of little boys.
And like a little drag king I performed and over-acted every one of them in a virtuoso performance of a lifetime.
They expected little boys to be tough, I set out to prove I was the toughest. I still remember being known for being able to jump off anything, any height. I trained for this by jumping off the roof our shed at home. I would sit on the edge of the roof working up courage and then pushing myself off into the eight or nine feet of air to the hard ground below. I remember people daring me at school to jump off of increasingly dangerous heights and I would do it.
I did it to prove to them I was a boy.
I was told that boys were supposed to tease and chase after the girls to pull their hair, so I did.
I was tried (and often succeed) to outboy every boy that I knew.
And every feminine instinct I had was put in the hole inside of me.
When I wasn’t at school, I just retreated into books. When my parents and my brothers weren’t around I ‘played dress-up’ in my mother’s closet. When computers and video-games came out I immersed myself in them, running even further from myself.
This isn’t say that I didn’t have any friends. I did, but there weren’t ever ‘true’ friends because I only shared my ‘drag king’ personality with them. When, once, I told my ‘best’ friend at the time that one day I wanted to be a girl. He got this really screwed up, confused look on his face and basically said that was the craziest thing he had ever heard. So I laughed it off like it was joke, and cried inside as I realized that I would never, never be able to share this secret, this most essential part of myself, with anyone, ever.
I played more and more computer games, focused on school, tried to emulate all the other boys, dressed in private and when I learned of the wonders of alcohol, I drank.
Most interesting was when, after puberty, it became ‘O.K.’ to have girl friends again. I had a few really close friendships that ultimately ended because they realized that I wasn’t interested in them sexually. There were two or three girls that I developed really deep friendships with in my teens. We talked on the phone for hours, when we saw each other we would talk and talk and talk. We talked about everything teenage girls talk about and it was pure bliss, except that I was a girl pretending to be a boy and there were certain things I couldn’t share and there were certain expectations that they had which I had no idea (beyond having been exposed to the occasional porn) of how to fulfill.
I was instinctually a girl, not a boy. One girl who was attracted to me for my body and initiated an intimate relationship with me said that I kissed like a girl. Everything was mechanical, not intuitive.
I also remember the girl friends of the male friends I had who instinctively saw me as ‘competition’.
I know that some of you might think, well, you got married, there must have been something? Isn’t your wife a ‘true’ friend too.
No.
The only ‘true’ friends I have had are the ones in which I haven’t had to pretend I was someone else to be with them.
The first was Allison before I found out what everyone expected me to be. The second is my new friend Adrian, whom I met while I was at my hormone doctor. She met me as Marybeth, knows me as Marybeth and treats me as Marybeth. We share everything two close girl friends do. We talk about everything, our hopes, our dreams, our pasts, our transsexuality – we share our lives.
My wife is a very good friend and I do love her intensely but she isn’t a ‘true’ friend. She has expectations and rules. She expects my male persona when she sees me, she sees my male persona when she sees me. She doesn’t see Marybeth. She doesn’t acknowledge Marybeth.
She doesn’t see .me. .
She doesn’t want to know .me. .
So we aren’t ‘true’ friends.
We probably never will be.
I love her and she loves ‘him’, not me.
And that makes me so, so, sad…
So why am I spontaneously happy these days?
It is because, for the second time in my life, there is someone that I can share everything with.
She helps make Marybeth real.
As I transition I am slowly digging out all those parts of myself that I had buried and forgotten about so long ago.
The estrogen and anti-androgens help.
A ‘true’ friend is essential.
Transition is like that.
You experience things that you have forgotten and when you do, you are reminded of how exquisitely satisfying they are.
Like a breath of fresh cool air in autumn.
You think, how could I have ever forgotten that?
And, how could I ever have wanted to?
Is ‘fitting in’ really that important?
Love,
Marybeth
p.s. For those of you playing the home game, yes, I did choose Allison as my middle name in memory of my first ‘true’ friend.
Becoming Whole October 12, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, estrangement, gender, love, peace, society, transgender, transsexual, work.10 comments
Sunday, October 12th 6:56 am
Good morning everyone!!
Happy Thanksgiving eh!!!
(It’s Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend!)
It is a cool eight degrees Celsius outside on the balcony at my apartment this morning. It is a little later than I started last week so the sun is already beginning to peek over the horizon in the East and the city is brightening up once again! It is really, really beautiful, out here. From where I sit I can see the tops of the trees that line the parkway below, those that guard the river bank to the north and those that cluster on the Gatineau Hills in the distance. The trees, always a miracle to behold, are especially so this time of year. The National Capital Commission calls it ‘the Fall Rhapsody’ – an apt name for many brilliant and somber hues of yellow, orange and red, interspersed by fresh greens of the coniferous trees. What inspiration!!
There was a really good response to my blog entry last week – Gender Affirmation and Confirmation. I think this response underlines a need for better language and more accessible explanations of the whole transgender experience. For the those of us so afflicted/blessed, it is something that takes much of lives to get our heads around, so it’s no wonder that it takes others a little while to as well (which is why I think most people don’t bother).
I would say that the time it takes or has taken for me to get my head around my essential feminine nature is one of my greatest frustrations about the whole transsexual experience. North American society doesn’t make it easy for anyone to come to terms with transsexuality, their own or anyone else’s. We have (or had?) such strictly defined gender roles that are based solely on the outward physical appearance of each individual that it takes a great effort to question or to <gasp> ‘buck the system’.
When I think of all the efforts that I have made to ‘just fit in’ and then, seeing that I never really would fit in, all the efforts that I made to run away from myself and hide, I cry.
My life is so full of activity now, I have energy from sun-up to sun-down. Yesterday, I cleaned my wife’s entire house from top to bottom, did all the laundry, put fresh sheets on my bed, processed some fresh vegetables and still had time to fit in a one hour electrolysis appointment downtown. And, as I’ve written before, that level of activity isn’t unusual for me these days. Before I started taking anti-androgens and hormones a typical Saturday might have involved getting up, having a coffee while I played a computer game, eating breakfast (optional), playing a computer game, eating lunch (optional), having a few beers while I played a computer game, having supper (optional), having a few more beers while I played a computer game and then going to bed (optional). Repeat on Sunday. Now, I won’t lie and say that that happened every weekend but it happened often enough to make my wife consider whether I loved my computer games and beer more than I loved her. I did get some pretty good things accomplished during those years but they were the exception and not the rule.
I realize now what my counsellor meant when she said I was probably operating at about 50% of my potential and that the closer I got to going full-time, the closer I would get to achieving my full potential.
I think I looked at her like she was crazy when she said that. How could that be possible? I was coping, I hadn’t been fired, divorced or had a heart attack. I was ‘doing all right’, right?
What I didn’t realize was that while I was doing O.K. at work, I could have been doing much better (I understand that now). What I didn’t realize was that there is more to a marriage that just sharing the same roof, bed and the occasional meal (I understand that now). What I didn’t realize was that my ‘lifestyle’ wasn’t healthy in the least and that, had I continued, I would certainly have had serious health problems (I understand that now too).
What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t coping at all – I wasn’t even really living. I was expending so much effort trying to ignore and submerge my femininity that I only had enough energy left at the end of the each day (or week) for superficial ‘living’ – for escape. I hated such an essential part of myself – my gender, that I was depressed and it was getting worse. It has only been by accepting my femininity and living as much as possible as a woman that I have been able to recover the energy that I used to spend hiding my femininity or running away from myself.
Now, I cry when it hurts.
I giggle when it is funny.
I smile when I am happy.
I will comfort you if you are down.
I love myself so now I can love you too.
I am no longer fighting myself.
My mind has accepted that even though society seems to think all male-bodied people must be male gendered, it isn’t true for me.
My mind has accepted that even though I might not end up the most feminine looking woman on the planet, it is what is inside that counts.
My mind has accepted that testosterone wasn’t really very good for it and that estrogen makes everything make much, much clearer – from antagonism to peace.
There is no conflict anymore, only peace and love!
I don’t need to spend all my energy running away from myself and trying ‘to be a man’ for the benefit of society but my own ruin. I can use that energy to make my own life and the lives of others better.
I didn’t believe my counsellor when she said I was spending fifty percent of my energy trying to fit-in or hide from myself but now I can see that she was right.
I was.
But I’m not anymore.
I am using that energy to take care of all those things that I neglected before, my wife, my work and my health – my Life.
I am no longer worried what ‘society’ thinks about transsexuals or people ‘like’ me.
What ‘they’ don’t realize is that I wasn’t a whole person before.
I was just a shadow of what I could be.
I am now becoming whole – mind, body and soul.
So watch out world, this girl is going to make a difference!
The sun has now truly risen and a new day has begun, the colours of the trees shine like rubies, opals, topazes and emeralds in the fresh morning light – a treasure chest wide open for whole world to see!
It feels good to be fully present.
It feels good to be me!!
Finally!
Good morning and happy Thanksgiving (…eh!)!!
Love,
Marybeth
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).
I am Marybeth September 14, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, gender, reflection, society, transgender, transsexual.add a comment
Sunday, September 14th, 4:55 am
Good morning everyone!
It is dark, wet and rainy outside here under the bug tent at my wife’s place this morning. I have my mug of hot mocha and a bag of trail mix here to keep me company as I listen to the rain, to the wind in the trees and to the frogs and the crickets which are adding their voices to this morning symphony.
The darkness this morning is almost total. Except for the slight glow of my Macbook Pro’s monitor (and the wonderfully illuminated keyboard for my less than touch typing perfect fingers) there is no light only sound.
When I close the computer, it is only me and the music of a summer rain. It is easy to imagine that I am the only witness to this wonderfully magical miracle of creation.
It is so mundane, so casual that it is hard to think of a morning rain as anything other than the minor inconvenience it might be if you were planning to go for a walk or do some gardening, yet it is so much much more than that.
It is creation.
It is life.
For some, from darkness and rain came life and that is still true today.
In a few hours the sun will come up and reveal what the night and the rains have wrought.
A glorious morning after a nourishing night.
A new day, full of new opportunities and challenges.
Life.
As I sit here in the dark typing away it is easy to imagine that my world ends just beyond the edge of the glow from my monitor – terra incognito. My mind tells me this isn’t true but my eyes cannot yet verify that conjecture.
But I know that when morning comes all will be revealed.
As surely as the rain will end so will the night.
When the rain does end and when the day does come it won’t happen all at once. The rain will gradually slow down and stop as the rain clouds move along or finally empty themselves of excess moisture. The earth will inexorably turn itself so that the Gatineau hills are once again exposed to the sun and a new day will dawn.
The real world doesn’t operate at the flick of a switch.
Neither does life.
As I type, the wind is blowing some rain onto my hands through the screen of the bug tent and I am reminded that just because I can’t see what is out there it nonetheless affects me.
Change is inevitable, the rain will end, the night will end and something new and different will take their places.
The forest won’t be the same after the rain. Most everything will be where it was before but parts of it will be fundamentally changed. A withered sprout might have found renewed hope. A weak branch may have been torn from its’ purchase by the wind. The forest is the same, but different.
When the sun rises to illuminate the world, dark shadows will become crickets, frogs, trees and flowers.
Transition is a lot like the weather and the movement of night into the day.
Transitioning doesn’t happen at the flick of the switch, the body doesn’t change in an instant. It happens gradually almost imperceptibly everyday of your life. Mental anguish becomes peaceful contemplation. Hard angles become soft curves (or vice versa). The world becomes right again.
These were hard lessons to learn for me. I had thought that once I began transitioning, all I would have to do was wait a requisite amount of time and then I would be ready to live as the woman I am.
Over this past week I have finally reached the understanding that there is no ‘part-time’ there is only ‘full time’.
I am Marybeth but then, I have always been Marybeth.
I am not Marybeth only in the evenings and on weekends, I am Marybeth all the time.
I was Marybeth before I started hormones and now.
I am Marybeth when I am wearing a man’s suit and tie and when I am wearing a nice blouse, skirt and make-up.
The essential person doesn’t change, only the costume.
This was a hard lesson for me to fully comprehend though in retrospect it is so very obvious.
I apologize for my simplemindedness. But for the longest time I really thought that I needed to be, in transition parlance, ‘full-time’, before I was fully Marybeth.
I finally understand that I am Marybeth.
I always have been Marybeth, now and forever.
During the night.
During the day.
When it rains.
When it is sunny.
In the spring, summer, fall and winter.
From the moment I was born I was Marybeth.
Transition is a construct to let other people understand the fundamental condition of someone born transsexual.
Transition allows a transsexual person to express themselves more fully and realize their potential entirely.
It is like taking your mittens off so that you can type.
The night becomes day and a whole world opens up to your senses.
What you could only hear before you can now see.
I was there the whole time.
I just didn’t magically appear with the sunlight.
I am Marybeth.
I have always been Marybeth.
The hormones are making it easier for you to see me.
The scalp advancement and the hair replacement will let me shine even brighter.
The right clothes, the right hairstyle and the right make-up will complete the picture.
But I have always been Marybeth.
I am just glad that you can see me now.
Good morning!
Love,
Marybeth
Renegotiating My Existence May 11, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, differences, gender, hormones, reflection, society, transgender, transsexual.2 comments
Sunday, May 11th 6:23 am
Good morning everyone! It is another cool spring morning here in the Gatineau hills where my wife lives. I am outside on the back deck under the bug net because yes, the bugs are back. The black flies, the mosquitos and the no-see-ums have returned for another frenzied season of feeding on the unwary. Every time I get upset at the bugs though I just quiet my mind and listen to the lyrical birdsong and remember that they need something to eat too!!
Even though I wrote my weekly entry yesterday I can’t forget that my post of two weeks ago was, well, weak. An apology about a busy two weeks and that was it – so this post is a do-over or make-up entry so that I can keep my uninterrupted weekly blogging streak alive (weekly (or more) since November 2006!!). Hopefully this post won’t be require a do-over as well…
One of the things that has struck me the most over my seven months on hormones has been how I have begun to renegotiate my relationships and my interactions with the world. The hormones have affected my appearance of course, giving me an ambiguous more female than male presentation, but perhaps most significantly they have also altered my attitudes and expectations.
I find that I am more patient, less aggressive, more at peace (a recurring theme I know…) and in general a happier less volatile person than I was before. I realize that these attributes may be seen as stereotypes but I am just reporting how I feel I have changed since I entered e-world (‘e’strogen-world). In daily interactions people seem to be more willing to help me and I am more willing to be helped – even to seek it out if I am having some difficulty – and that would never have happened before! I am also finding that I have the patience to engage in activities that would have seemed to mundane or boring before – such as my current preoccupation with gardening that I have recently discovered.
I think that what is happening is that the more female hormonally I become the more comfortable socially I am becoming. I used to be so awkward socially, for example I would never have willingly initiated a conversation with a stranger but now it seems I am able – truly amazing considering the ambiguity I present (small stature, receding hairline, relatively broad shoulder, small breasts, gym bag (purse) over my shoulder and androgynous but female clothing). It is just so wonderful that I am finally becoming me!
As euphoric as I often feel about my transition I cannot ignore the fact that despite society seemingly becoming more open and accepting of trans-people in general, there is also an under-current of intolerance that makes me wary of becoming too open and trusting of people. The news over the past few months has been peppered with stories of how far society in general yet needs to come in respecting the rights of those whose motivations they too blithely attribute to weakness, perversion or sin.
It all comes down to the basic fact that if you are not trans, if you have not taken adequate time to educate yourself about trans-people or spent time with a transperson, have a special theory theory you want preach or have closed your mind to anything outside of your ‘preferred view’ of the world then you won’t listen to or accept that trans people have a condition that only requires one thing from you – respect for our experience and decisions regarding our lives.
I don’t want to generalize too much but I think I can safely say that every transperson I have met has agonized over every second of their decision to cross-dress, take hormones, or to transition. I think I can safely say that most transpeople are willing to take huge risks to satisfy a yearning that they have gone to great lengths to rationalize or escape but in the end can’t. I think I can safely say that many transpeople don’t truly understand why they are the way they are but they have accepted themselves because it doesn’t go away and hating yourself is no way to go through life. I think I can safely say that all we really want is for society in general to accept our struggles and our decisions and to let us live our lives in peace the best way we know how to.
I realize that makes many people in society a little uncomfortable. Transpeople are born questioning the one thing that most people take for granted from day one – their gender. However there are some people who don’t, can’t and won’t understand transpeople and justify their prejudices with theories based on pseudo-science and religion. The unfortunate part is that the purveyors of these opinions affect the perceptions of those people who might be ‘on the fence’ regarding transpeople and willing to be open minded about our plight. The consistent theme throughout their works is that they don’t listen to the experiences and testimonies of transpeople (see Julia Serano’s excellent book ‘Whipping Girl’ for a more detailed discussion of this topic). I will overly simplify a few of the more popular ones for your convenience.
Some theorists think that transpeople are weak-willed individuals looking to hormones for an easy solution to their many deep-seated psychological problems. Dr. Zucker and others believe that we were all born men or women so we should just put up and shut up. It is safe to say that Zucker’s reparative therapy techniques have damaged the lives of many transpeople.
Other thinkers simply equate a transperson’s desire to experience the opposite sex or to change their sex to a motivation to fulfill sexual fantasies. They feel that there can be no other explanation other than transpeople are just perverts looking for a scientific justification for their carnal desires. Blanchard, Bailey and Dreger have called this theory autogynephilia and made their careers type-casting transsexuals as perverts and trans behaviour as a ‘lifestyle choice’. Their recommended solution which I will call ‘lifestyle conditioning’ offers comfort to some people but, in my opinion, just delays the inevitable for others.
Finally there are those who reject transpeople because in their religious education they were taught that God created Adam and Eve not Adam (but conceivably Eve) and Eve (but potentially Adam). People in this camp say that a transperson’s desire to experience the opposite sex or to change their sex conflicts with God’s will. Transpeople were born male or female and we should stay that way – all the time. A decision to stray from God’s will represents our succumbing to the temptations of the devil and thus it is a sin. The solution for adherents to this theory is something called restorative therapy where they suggest that our lack of faith is what has caused us to stray from God and we need to pray more to find our way back to God. Quite apart from the blatant arrogance of their presumption that they know God’s will and thus judge transpeople this way, restorative therapy has also caused much grief to many transpeople.
I think what I am trying to get at here with these examples from a personal point of view is that despite the clear evidence in the eyes and experience of those who know me as to the difference that accepting and dealing with my gender dysphoria has made to my life, there are still many who would reject my hard won experience out of hand. The fact that I am much happier and more at peace than I have ever been in my life doesn’t seem to mean a thing to them because in their view I am obviously a weak-willed, perverted sinner (or any combination of those). Another motivation is that American Psychiatric Association (the APA) is in the process of rewriting their Diagnostic Service Manual (the DSM) which will effectively redefine the treatment of my condition. A panel they appointed to review the current version, the DSM-IV, for the new version, the DSM-V, includes Doctors Zucker (Reparative Therapy) and Zucker (Autogynephilia) so will likely include some of the prejudices that I just described. Other blogs especially A.E. Brain (http://aebrain.blogspot.com/) and Dented Blue Mercedes (http://dentedbluemercedes.wordpress.com/) get into this debate more fully than I ever could.
I think the real solution to this predominantly Western misunderstanding of gender, of an adherence to ‘gender orthodoxy’, is that we need to accept and recognize the importance of mind and spirit in the determination of gender behaviour. My body is male, but increasingly female, hormonally I am female, my mind has always insisted I am female and spiritually I know I am female. The only aspect of mind, body and spirit we can verify conclusively (without a post mortem autoposy or expensive CAT scan) is the body. We have to take the word of the transperson that they have always felt in their minds they are, to some degree, the opposite sex. Most scientists reject spirit out of hand but I am sure that those of us transpeople who have delved into spirituality to some extent know implicitly that our souls are representative of our true gender as well.
Nature has such wide diversity that it seems obvious we must look beyond physical markers and be skeptical of any attempts to restrict or regulate gender expression in any way – to do so would be to limit the human experience and understanding. We are only beginning to know how our physical body works (and there many huge gaps in our knowledge here), we are many decades away from understanding how our minds work and spiritually we can learn much more than we acknowledge from traditions far older than the Western faiths but we often choose to ignore them in favour of the strict dichotomy favoured by the Judaic, Christian and Islamic traditions. We need to keep our minds open to new understanding and experience or we are doomed to stagnation.
Society simply needs to acknowledge and respect the lives and experiences of transpeople throughout the ages to understand the transgender condition – not just write off a whole segment of society off as weak-willed, perverts and sinners.
I know that it has taken far more fortitude, sincerity and faith to accept myself as transsexual than it ever did to conform to society’s expectations and pretend I was male.
I know that I am a woman and no amount of reparative, Blanchard inspired ‘lifestyle conditioning’ or restorative therapy will change that.
I am woman in mind and spirit – my body just needs to catch up.
Don’t reject me because you don’t understand why.
I don’t either.
Love,
Marybeth Allison
Transcending Race and Gender February 12, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, gender, resolve, society, transgender, transsexual.2 comments
Sunday, February 10, 2008 04:11 AM
Good morning everyone! It is a mild minus 1 degree Celsius outside this morning but, in truth, I am inside despite the relatively warm temperature. Why? The humidity is very high, 99% high. When the humidity gets that high, the cold seeps into every crack and chills you to the bone – hence, I am happily sipping my ginseng tea (with honey!) inside.
Earlier this week I read a really interesting article in Salon.com by Gary Kamiya entitled ‘Biracial, but not like me’ link (http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/02/05/obama_race/). The article discussed how biracial people come to terms with their dual heritage. The author, of Caucasian and Japanese parentage, compares how he came to understand his biracial identity with Barack Obama’s experience as described in Senator Obama’s book ‘Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance’.
The article attracted my attention because biracial people are not really white and not really Japanese (in Kamiya’s case) and not really white and not really African (in Obama’s case). To address the duality some biracial people ‘pick’ one heritage and work hard at trying to ‘fit in’ – others just try to ignore it altogether by becoming ‘colour blind’. The problem is that no matter what your heritage is, people will make judgements – ie. ‘you look more black than white’ or ‘you are way to white for this crowd’. To some people, unless you look like they do – you aren’t like they are, so they exclude you membership in their ‘club’.
Kamiya relates how Obama came to the realization that he could never be fully accepted as ‘white’ nor fully accepted as ‘black’. He was too black for the white ‘club’ and too white for the black ‘club’. Despite not being fully accepted by either race, he worked hard to understand the experiences of both races, especially the experiences of African Americans. In his journeys he came to see that he was the progeny of both races and, in that sense, his identity transcended race.
While the analogy between race and gender is not perfect, it can provide some interesting insights into the transgender experience. Transgender people too share two heritages, their physical gender and their mental gender. Both genders are heavily laden with society’s expectations and prejudices, both positive and negative. The expectations and prejudices mean that until we get a sense of ourselves and we either receive society’s permission or we overcome our fear of being cast out by society, we try to fit in as best we can (the closet anyone?).
It took great courage for Obama to risk rejection by both the white community and the black community by declaring himself beyond the expectations and prejudices of society. It took strength for him to acknowledge the very white heritage of his mother and the very African heritage of his father. He acknowledged them both and accepted that those separate and distinct histories were part of who he was. By coming to terms with his identity in this way, he no longer had to excuse himself for being too black in a white crowd or too white in a black crowd. It freed him to be himself with no apologies.
As transsexuals transition we are tempted to turn our backs the heritage of the physical gender we were born into. We are tempted to burn old photographs of the young boys or young girls we once were but no matter we do, we cannot erase those experiences – they are what made us who we are. Our experiences, our depressions, our frustrations, our longings, our successes, our accomplishments, our relationships, all add up to who we are today – regardless of the fact that our physical gender has finally been reconciled with our mental and spiritual gender.
This is not to say that I don’t feel cheated out of a normal girlhood. This is not to say that puberty wasn’t painfully disappointing for me. This isn’t to say that there hasn’t been a single day in my life that I haven’t wished that my body wouldn’t just ‘fix itself’. It is only to acknowledge that I was born and raised as a male.
Soon I will be physically female, finally, but today I am bi-gendered, male physically (though the hormones are working hard to change that!) and female mentally and spiritually. Once my body is reconciled to my mind and spirit I will no longer be as obviously bi-gendered (I fervently hope – though somewhat large feet, hands and a receding hairline might make it a little too obvious for my comfort…) but I will never lose my male heritage as much as I look forward to building my female present and future.
It takes courage to defy society’s attempts to classify you for their convenience and condemn you with their prejudice. It takes courage to stand-up and defy their expectations when it is so much easier to cower and apologize. It takes leaders to blaze the trail so that sympathetic souls like me can find inspiration and hope their examples. Barack Obama, Christine Jorgensen, Jan Morris and so many others who don’t make the headlines – maybe especially them… – are people who refused to be compromised and lessened by the weight of bigotry and prejudice. If I can demonstrate even a thimbleful of their conviction and resolve I think I should be in pretty good shape for my transition.
Am I male or female?
Yes.
Love,
Mary Beth
Soul and Body February 3, 2008
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, dissonance, fate, gender, society, transsexual.1 comment so far
Sunday, February 3, 2008 05:48
Good morning everyone! It is a nice minus 5 degrees Celsius outside here this morning at my wife’s place, so outside I am, enjoying fresh air and a warm drink (tea with honey!). It is quiet and dark, me alone with my thoughts, a computer and a feeling of camaraderie with all those who might read this entry once complete.
Female to male transsexuals say that they have the mind of a woman but the body of a man, and I agree with that description but I think it is equally true that we also have the soul of a woman. I think that it is the combination of a female mind and a feminine soul that ultimately determines our fates.
Scientists have shown that in the womb it is the brain that develops first and the body that develops second. So imagine, if you are inclined to, all those souls in the ether searching for their chance at reincarnation. Masculine and feminine souls patiently waiting for the perfect match.
One feminine soul must have been hovering nearby when I was conceived. She must have recognized the sympathetic energies that had coalesced into the newly formed fetus with the compatible mind and joined to become one with the baby soon to be born. Hormonal changes in the womb caused an imbalance, male genitals were formed, and I was born.
My soul informed me that I was female, the essence of my being instinctively acted and reacted in a feminine way. I knew that when I grew up I would be a woman like my mother. I related to the world as a girl would in every way until I was told that I shouldn’t act that way. Until I was corrected by those who cared for me and shown the correct way to behave. I was punished for acting like a girl and rewarded for acting like a boy. And so I began a lifetime journey of rejecting my soul. My soul was in conflict with my body and with society for all those years – is it any wonder that, as time went on, I became more and more frustrated and depressed?
My feminine soul, my subconscious, instinctively indicated one course of action which my manufactured male persona, my ego, had to constantly assess for social acceptability and reject those instincts that were too feminine. Instead of acting spontaneously to the outside world, my ego had to step in and monitor every action – like a simultaneous translation, it translated my feminine perceptions into a learned/imitation male response. It was like taking a picture with a digital camera – there was always a perceptible delay between when I pressed the button and when the action was taken.
Why was I so depressed and frustrated? Why was I more comfortable alone? Why did I seek out the solitary escape of computer games and the mind-numbing effects of alcohol? It was because I was spending so much of my time and energy fighting against my feminine instincts – second guessing everything (it looks like a tree but is it really?). My soul told me one thing, society expected another.
Happiness and peace are what results when soul and the body, the subconscious and the conscious, the id and the ego are in agreement. In non-transitioned transsexuals each aspect is pulling in opposite directions and this naturally leads to discomfort, frustration and depression. For transsexuals, the mind and the soul have always been in agreement, it is the body and the expectations of society that are out of sync.
I know that now that I have begun the process of transition, I feel a happiness and peace I haven’t known since I was a little girl. For the first time in my life my soul, my mind and my body are becoming reconciled and it is a truly joyous feeling!
How do I know I am a woman?
My soul tells me so.
Love,
Marybeth
Living Authentically and Why Multiculturalism and Gender Fluidity are Important December 23, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, appearance, family, gender, transsexual.add a comment
Sunday, December 23, 2007 4:18 AM
Good morning everyone! Another missive from Marybeth written from the coffee-comforted (this time with a bit of cocoa added!) front porch of my wife’s house Gatineau, Qc. Global warming must be enjoying herself (I’ll let you figure it for yourself why I decided to give global warming a feminine gender…), today’s morning temperature is a warm 2 degrees celsius. It is supposed to go up to 9 degrees celsius later today with rain in the forecast. For the information of those not blessed to be within listening distance of this tranquil burgh, last week we had about 60 cm of the white stuff (about two feet when all was said and done). I sure hope she’s getting a chuckle out of all this mayhem she’s causing – you just never know what to expect from day to day.
Although it has nothing to do with global warming, my impending visit to my family this holiday season may be similarly unpredictable. I have already told my Mom to tell my dad to expect that I will have a bit longer hair than he maybe used to seeing me with, oh and one other thing, I have developed a real thing for baggy shirts too, not quite sure why that is…. It will be amusing to say the least.
My parents have a hot tub and, well, hmmm… I guess I will have to decide that I don’t want to have my shoulders in the cool air so I will need to wear a t-shirt in the tub – either that or I don’t use the tub at all, or only in the early morning before everyone else gets up. Transition is full of little joys and challenges like this. I am bringing my one piece women’s suit just in case but I hardly think that my parents and brothers will be that accepting. Once I am fully transitioned then there will be fewer of these types of quandaries – but until then I will continue to get those double-takes and ‘WTF?’ stares that I am growing so fond of from people.
I am really looking forward to seeing everyone again – living in Ottawa while the rest of my family lives in British Columbia means that I can’t take the time to see them as often as I would like to. It didn’t used to bother me so much but it does now. One of the real joys of my transition is that I feel the walls that I have built up around me collapsing as my real self expands beyond the now confining battlements erected by a scared and confused little kid. For the first time I am experiencing the world without that interference. I feel a little afraid but more and more confident in myself. It is a different kind of confidence too, not a confidence of competence – I have always had that, more a confidence of self. Kudos to Jean Vanier (founder of L’Arche and author of ‘Becoming Human’, as well as many other excellent books), it really does make a difference loving yourself as I am just beginning to experience. I feel I can connect with people on a different level than before. It is as if I was living my life in the third-person before and now I am beginning to experience life first hand.
And so I go back to B.C. a changed (and changing) person physically, mentally and spiritually. I am apprehensive but excited – I like that feeling!! It feels profound and sincere. For the first time in my life I am starting understand what authenticity feels like. I am getting to the point that I can look in the mirror and smile a genuine smile to myself. Wow!
I also wanted to add something to my writing from last week. I don’t think that I made a strong enough case for why society should embrace gender fluidity in the same way as some countries have embraced cultural fluidity. I guess I thought that the benefits were obvious enough that they didn’t need to be mentioned but, since they are so compelling, I will address the ways that I think both cultural fluidity and gender fluidity benefit society. It really boils down to answering the question of ‘What is in it for me?’.
I often wonder what a non-multicultural Canada would look like. Given that immigration is what Canada is based on, how far back in time would you have to go to arrive at the instant in time when Canada wasn’t an amalgam of many cultures? Aboriginal times? The first European settlement on the North American continent? Which settlement – the Norse, Saint Brendan’s, the Spanish, the French, or the English? If we are not absolutist in the sense of only accommodating ‘truly’ Canadian (ie. aboriginal) culture then isn’t it really just an arbitrary demarcation based on when any individual culture landed in Canada (or the entire North American continent for that matter)?
The point I am trying to make is just that Canada has always been multicultural. People living in Canada brought the cultures of their inheritance and added it to what was here already and everyone has benefited. I can’t imagine my pancakes without maple syrup, the opportunity of ending my day without a single malt scotch, denying myself the occasional bowl of pho (Vietnamese soup) or tourtiere, wine, chow mein, quesadillas, borscht, perogies, fusion cuisine, ad infinitum…. How ever people came to live in Canada whether it was being born into one of the continental tribes (aboriginals), fleeing a revolution (English loyalists), being brought over to work on a seigneurie (French habitants), being hired to build the transcontinental railway (Chinese), fleeing famine (Irish), fleeing religious persecution (Russian doukabours, German Mennonites), being offered land to farm (Polish, Ukrainian) etc…., they are all Canadians and their traditions have infused Canada without which Canada would be unrecognizable.
I often try to imagine a human civilization without gender fluidity (multigenderism?). I can?t even begin to count the number of science fiction, fantasy and general fiction books that have been written trying to imagine just such a situation. Men in one camp and women in another and never the twain shall meet – except for cheap sex, procreation and to fight off the occasional foreign invasion. One clearly demarcated group of jobs for one men and another set for the women. Women as baby factories. Mixing will not be tolerated! The scenario makes for some very entertaining and though-provoking reading.
It seems obvious that, due to preference and physical aptitude, men and women do gravitate to sometimes distinct activities (ie. reading Harlequin romances or going to (and enjoying) Die Hard movies) or occupations (ie. being a heavy machine gunner or being a nurse) but both men and women have been known to enjoy even those extremes I’ve mentioned (yes, some men do read Harlequins…). Some men enjoy typically feminine pursuits and some women enjoy typically masculine endeavours. Some men cry. Some women are violent. To try to separate the two is to set up an artificiality that is unsustainable and ultimately damaging to both individuals and society. It makes us less human than we might be.
So why accept gender fluidity? Humanity would be unrecognizable without it. It would be as phony as how those many novels that have been written imagining such a circumstance portray it. If it makes some people feel more manly or more womanly to believe that gender fluidity doesn’t exist then, to put it bluntly, ‘that sounds like a personal problem to me‘. Why should they be allowed to force their gender insecurity on the rest of society? Why should people even be insecure about their gender anyway? The artificial dichotomy that has been enforced in North American society has created neurosis / mental distress out of the nothing.
Whether it is multiculturalism or multigenderism – cultural fluidity and gender fluidity add such a depth to our individual and collective experience that our civilization would be literally barren without the interaction of the two.
Transsexuals as a rule are exceptions to the rule as, in times past, were transculturals (like the Metis – the offspring of an English or French father and an Aboriginal mother (usually) who were comfortable and conversant in both cultures – though the famous Dr. Charles Eastman of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee fame was born of an aboriginal father and an English mother) but we are both catalysts and bridges between solitudes. We can understand, interpret and synthesize common things in ways that one gender or one culture in isolation cannot.
We are the true alchemists, the third way, the escape hatch. We should be welcomed and celebrated not shunned and ridiculed.
Happy Holidays!!
Love,
Marybeth
ps. this entry is extra long so hopefully this will make up for the week I missed (December 9th)
Journeys and Acceptance December 17, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, androgyny, gender, society, transgender.add a comment
Monday, December 17, 2007 10:44 AM
I am reading through a book called ‘Imperium’ by Richard Kapuscinski (http://www.amazon.com/Imperium-Ryszard-Kapuscinski/dp/067974780X). He was a fearless Polish travel writer that made a name for himself as a journalist in Communist Poland. He travelled to some of the most inaccessible and dangerous parts of the world and wrote about them in an acceptable yet subversive way for the Polish State press. His sometimes pointed criticisms of dictatorships or oppressive foreign regimes could be read as criticisms of the ruling Polish government of the day. The book is very interesting, my only regret is that I don’t read Polish and have to therefore make do with the translation – the English hints at what must be some amazing narratives in the original Polish.
In the first chapter of the book, Kapuscinski relates the story of his journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Harbin, China to Moscow, USSR in 1958. He describes his experience of being singled out as a foreigner and therefore implicitly distrusted and avoided by his fellow travellers. He tells of the stilted conversations that he had with the Soviet citizens that he shared the long journey with. The railway employees he spoke with treated him like a spy and his fellow passengers did not want to be associated with him, lest they become suspect as well. A lonely way to travel.
A lonely way to live.
As I was reading his recounting of that trip I couldn’t help but find parallels between it and my own journey through life. Transgender people seem to be the permanent travelers of life. Never fully comfortable in one gender, we transition and are often never fully accepted when we ‘arrive’ there. Some of us are lucky and have features that soften or harden into a reasonable similacrum of our mental gender but many of us are left with male or female characteristics that cause ‘the natives’ to regard us in the same way as a black immigrant to Japan would be by ethnic Japanese people. Officially we are citizens but it may take people a while to accept us, if they ever do.
When we physically arrive in our gender homeland we often overcompensate by trying too hard to fit in, in an echo of the lengths we went to try accommodate our minds and actions to our previously inappropriate physical gender. In cultural terms we try to ‘out-Japanese’ the Japanese which can lead sometimes lead to unintended offense because it may seem like parody rather than the earnestness which it is. But in a society which tends to see gender in terms of blacks and whites, not grays, for some people there doesn’t seem to be much of a choice.
In some countries (like Canada) the society supports the notion of multiculturalism which is (roughly) the acceptance and integration of many different peoples and their customs into the cultural fabric of the nation. The acknowledgement and acceptance of a kind of cultural ‘fluidity’.
In North American society we seem to be so caught up in the archetypes of male (John Wayne?) and female (Marilyn Monroe?) that we can’t seem to accept anything less than those impossible ideals. What we seem to forget is that both John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe were actors and played their ‘roles’ to the hilt. Our society seems to view anything in-between or varying significantly from the extremes were are taught to admire as nothing less than traitorous to our gender. In the immortal words of President George II of the United States – ‘…either your are with us or you are with the terrorists…’. Transsexuals are the gender foreigners – the terrorists of gender solitudes. Will there ever come a time when transsexuals are as fully accepted in society as is the Hindu Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers with their turbans and kirpans (the ceremonial sword) are in culturally fluid Canada?
I hope so because I find it really discouraging to think that after feeling like a spy in the male ‘country’, transitioning through ‘the border lands’ of androgyny, that I will ‘emigrate’ to being an outsider in the female ‘nation’. It is really no wonder that those who can go ’stealth’ – choosing to assimilate rather than wearing their turban and kirpan with pride – often do so without hesitation.
Perhaps one day gender fluidity will be as acceptable in North American society as cultural fluidity seems to be in the multicultural Canadian society (and I know that multiculturalism in Canada is far from perfect). Until then, though I can sympathize with those who are able to go stealth after a lifetime of being lonely and never being fully accepted, I think that those who are fortunate enough to be able to choose stealth owe something to those who are not so blessed. Our community needs to band together and help each other because recent events have shown that all outsiders don’t necessarily help each other (ie. the non-trans inclusive ENDA).
Those of us who are gender fluid need to work together to prove to North American society that just because we don’t conform to those mythical gender archetypes we aren’t anymore a spy or a terrorist than the RCMP officer with his turban and kirpan is – we are hardworking more or less average citizens of this great human experiment – just like they are.
Love,
Marybeth
Endnote: Thanks to Helma Seidl of Making a Difference Counselling in Ottawa, ON (http://www.making-a-difference.ca/helma.htm) for the notion of ?gender fluidity?.
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)
My Apartment – My Wife’s House August 19, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, gender, separation, transgender, transsexual.3 comments
Sunday, August 19, 2007 13:53
Hi everyone!
This has been an extremely difficult entry for me to write. With so many stressful things going on in my life I find it difficult to concentrate on any one topic long enough to write something coherent. That said, I have decided to treat this entry like I would when trying to unravel a jumbled length of rope – I will just start somewhere and hope for the best!
My wife has been away the past week so I took a few days off work to give myself a five day long weekend. I had intended to use the time to pack my things and move into my new apartment but ultimately it seems that I just managed to plan what I needed to buy for the apartment and send in the order – Ikea and on-line ordering are a wonderful combination!
I ended up getting side-tracked a bit because I couldn’t find a bookcase to my liking anywhere so I decided to design and build one myself (nothing fancy I assure you). I then decided I had to replace a step around my wife’s house (my apartment – my wife’s house – that concept may take some getting used to). Anyways, I went overboard with that job and ended up building what amounts to an addition to the front deck – a three day job instead of just the one-hour repair it should have been.
I knew when I decided that I needed to transition, that it would there would be many challenges and a great deal of changes. Transition is by definition life changing. It challenges all of your expectations and assumptions about your life and your relationships. I have quite a bit of sympathy for my wife, my family, my work, my friends, etc… After all, a pretty basic assumption of theirs about me has just been put in question. But, not to complain too much, the person who is transitioning is at the epicentre of everyone else’s feelings of betrayal and loss. That is quite a bit of guilt (and feelings of responsibility, shame, etc…) to focus on one person at any time, it is even worse when that person isn’t very happy about the whole situation either. For me it just adds to the intensity of my apprehension and lessens my resolve to do something that I ‘know’ is right for me. Trying to justify my decision to everyone all the time is really stressful.
Q: How do you know that you are a boy or a girl?
A: You just know.
I get the feeling these days that I am standing on the edge of a precipice, looking forward to either a glorious new fulfilling life or of a complete disaster (my wife assures me it will be a disaster…). The only thing that keeps me from turning back is the knowledge of the big black hole behind me. In my weaker moments I am sometimes tempted by the ‘comfort’ and familiarity of that pit. It may be a life built on a false premise but I am proud of what I built and I want to hold on to as much of it as I can. I am hesitant to give it all up for the promise of authenticity. What if authenticity is overrated?
One thing I know for sure is that I experience moments of great joy when I can express myself and be myself just the way I want to be whether it is wearing a dress and make-up or just jeans and a t-shirt – long hair or short hair. It is those feelings that propel me onward.
Add to that that my wife has said that after she recovers from her illness she would like to have a healthy sex life (we have none currently and haven’t for the entire duration of her illness – to save you the bother of reading past entries, that is about seven years – essentially our whole marriage). With all the spironolactone I have been taking I am essentially a eunuch – a happy eunuch but a eunuch just the same. At this point stopping the spironolactone is not an option – I don’t like the person I remember being (and neither does she come to think of it) so I doubt I would be able to be the sexual partner she anticipates needing – so it seems that the idea that I could easily go back to the ‘safety’ of my old life isn’t really valid.
Which brings me around to why I didn’t pack and move during this past week when I should have. After all, I have made my decision – my gamble – for a chance at authenticity, for the hope of maybe finally feeling comfortable with myself and my wife has made hers.
I didn’t pack because I am not quite ready to believe it is over.
My apartment.
Her house.
Separate lives.
I pray that this is the right thing to do.
Love,
Beth
Truths and Consequences July 22, 2007
Posted by Marybeth in acceptance, gender, resolve, transgender, transsexual.1 comment so far
Sunday, July 22, 2007 05:01
It is a peaceful Sunday morning out here on the back deck. I woke up early to do my writing and when I arrived outside, it was so nice that I just had to ask my wife to join me! So she is here enjoying the beautiful birdsong and the morning melodies, patiently awaiting the sunrise. Good morning!
I thought I would write about something central to the whole ‘gender journey’ for me – the discovering and acknowledgement of truths and the acceptance of consequences.
Discovering who we are is a lifelong journey. As babies we reach out to touch, taste and experiment with everything within reach. We have a pressing need, an instinct, that motivates us to explore and learn about the world and how we fit in it. In the process we discover that we react well to some things, not so well to other things and are indifferent to a bunch of other things. We begin to understand ourselves, our environment and our place in the world.
We start off with the basics like our names, learning whether something is dangerous or not and understanding the relationships in our families. As we are learning those things we are taught more complex things like how some actions are appropriate in one circumstance but not in another and other actions are just not appropriate at all. As we grow we experiment to discover our preferences and test the things we learn about ourselves to see how they fit into the context of what society believes is acceptable and the expectations of those we respect.
When I first tried beer I thought it was disgusting but my friends told me that it would grow on me so I tired other types of beer and eventually discovered one or two that I liked. I now believe that the diverse range of tastes and types of beer are a gustatory goldmine but I know that beer isn’t to everyone’s taste and that is fine with me. In another instance in my teens, I was offered a cigarette, I choked when I tried it and since I knew it was bad for my lungs anyway, I have never finished it nor have I tried another one since. The peer group I hung around with in high school accepted this and didn’t force me to conform to their preferences. Another time in high school a group of very close friends that I had known since primary school began listening, exclusively, to extreme heavy metal music, wearing dark clothes and over time becoming the very stereotype of the 80’s ‘headbangers’. I tried to like it but couldn’t find any redeeming qualities to their newfound tastes and lifestyle so, despite having known them for most of my life, I left the group and began looking for others with preferences more similar to mine.
The discovery, experimentation, rejection and acceptance of personal qualities and preferences is one of the truly wonderful adventures in life. We take risks, travel to exotic locations, meet new people and try new things because we want to experience all that life has to offer and in doing so we ‘discover’ ourselves. Usually the results of our experimentation and realizations are slightly beneficial or neutral and don’t cause much unwelcome disruption in our lives. I found that I didn’t really like cigarettes and no one really hassled me about it. I initially didn’t like beer but then find one or two that I liked and a whole world of tastes opened up for me (many people have a similar experience with wine). Some people are repulsed at the thought of eating raw oysters but once they risk trying one or two they can’t imagine a world without the fresh taste of sweet oysters. More rarely trying something and not liking it or trying something and liking it causes a great disruption in your life. I had to find a new group of friends when the ones that I had grown up with decided that they liked going down to the basement, turning the lights off and listening to ‘Megadeth’ at a volume of ‘11’ (perhaps this explains why I found the film ‘This is Spinal Tap’ so entertaining). Finding out that you like working with the disadvantaged may cause you to quit your job as a corporate shill and join an overseas aid organization or start an inner city assistance program.
What I am trying to say is that the journey of self realization has consequences. Some expressions of taste or preference society accepts either wholeheartedly, with reluctance or not at all. My school friends adoption of heavy metal may have begun as a teenage rebellion that grew into a love of the music and the lifestyle. Expressing some preferences is often positive and rewarding – being regarded as a wine connaisseur can open doors and raise your ‘status’ among your peers and attract the notice of your superiors at social events.
Given that you are reading this, you know what example I have been leading up to and you are probably wondering why it took me so long to get to it – so here it is – discovering as a child or even later in life that your gender isn’t consistent with your physical characteristics is an amazing discovery and the ‘gender journey’ can be a very rewarding one but it is not without very real and sometimes very harsh consequences.
Gender is one of those things that most people ‘discover’ about themselves at a very young age, they proclaim it, and if it is consistent, parents acknowledge it and society validates the discovery. For those of us who are transgendered the discovery is not met with open arms. Our parents are initially shocked and, if we continue to insist, often go to extreme lengths to ‘correct’ our misconceptions of our ‘real’ gender. As I’ve written in previous entries, my parents reaction and the reaction of society in general to my ‘gender inconsistent’ behaviour forced me to hide my discovery and try to act ‘correctly’. Similar to my discovery that the elimination of certain bodily fluids was appropriate in one circumstance but not in others, I learned that feminine behaviour in boys was not permitted ever. And I began engaging in various activities in an attempt to act in a way appropriate to my permitted gender, much as I learned that the bathroom was the only appropriate place in my previous example, I learned there was never an appropriate place for me to be feminine so I set about ridding myself of my unacceptable feminine behaviours.
As I grew into my teens I found that no matter what I did I could not shake the fundamental personal truth of my gender. I once even tested the ‘acceptability’ of my intense desire with my best friend in elementary school (I must have been 12 or 13). I told him that I had always wondered what it was like to be a girl and that one day I wanted to change my sex to see how it is. The confused look on his face and his total lack of comprehension forced me to laugh it off as just a silly joke and reinforced my understanding that I needed to suppress or ‘correct’ my instinctive understanding of my own gender. As an aside, this was in the same group of friends who ‘evolved (devolved?!)’ into head-bangers. It took me roughly twenty-five years after that incident to admit, first to myself and then to my new best friend, my wife, that I needed to accept a fundamental truth about who I am and to begin the process of reconciling my physical characteristics to be congruent with what I learned when I ‘discovered’ my gender so many years ago.
I am just beginning to understand that the truth of my gender has many, far reaching, consequences. The first consequence I am now realizing is the loss of my new best friend. But the consequences have not all been negatives. I am finding a real peace of mind for the first time and experiencing joy more often than ever (and I understand that once I am on estrogen I will experience these things more often). Ironically my relationship with my wife is the best it has ever been.
What I’ve come to realize is that for every personal truth discovered and acknowledged, there is a consequence. For the alcoholic a preference for drinking can lead to a ruined life but with the proper willpower and support they can overcome their addiction. For something as fundamental a truth as gender though, I have found that no matter how much willpower I have or how much support I get, I cannot suppress this most essential truth – my femininity without damaging consequences.
Discovering who we are and learning to love ourselves for who we are is an essential part living a happy and fulfilling life. For those of us whose fundamental natures are at odds with what is accepted by society, learning to love ourselves for who we honestly are is difficult, and often heartbreaking, but the choice is between hating ourselves so that others accept us or loving ourselves and hoping that others will learn to love us for who we are, not who we pretend to be. Hating ourselves leads to depression and death, loving ourselves leads to happiness and life.
I choose life.
Love,
Beth
