Look at me going, two posts in two days.
I'm not sure if everyone has picked this up yet or not, but I live in Canada. And even though her news reporting has little to do with the country I live in I have been watching a fair bit of Rachel Maddow clips on Youtube lately. I guess it's the combination of her delivery and the fact that the USA seems to be totally insane that has me glued to my computer screen. I find her funny, articulate and interested in the same things I am. Thankfully she is a self proclaimed lesbian, (for the love of fuck I hope I didn't make that up) and perhaps because of that she covers a lot of LGBT rights, well I guess mostly LG rights, but I'm not sure how much Trans rights pop up in the US separately from LG rights.
Through her show however, I have seen a lot of the anti-gay garbage that others get on with. As I've said, I live in Canada but as I watch these people go on with their anti-gay rhetoric I can't help but wonder how much longer until government officials in Canada start working anti-gay policies in their agenda. It worries me because I feel like I am watching Canada step backwards in human rights and I'm not utterly convinced that our neighbours to the south aren't influencing some of the..... less cognizant members of Canadian government.
Now I'm not a political science major so I'm not going to try and explain all the details but for my American readers out there, laws in Canada get passed more-or-less like they do in the states. Very basically, a bunch of people have to vote on a bill, it can be amended before passing, etc etc. (holy watered down version...) though our passed federal laws seem to have more direct impact on the entire country then they do in the US, but maybe not... like I said I'm no expert.
Anyway, there has been a bill (law) recently try to get passed here in Canada that was meant to give transgender people more rights, it was going to be a good thing for us, non-discrimination laws and the like. It didn't pass however. It had the full support of one side of our government but a member of the other side added an amendment that basically said that trans-men and women need to use the public bathroom of their assigned sex at birth. Getting the bill labeled "the bathroom bill" and forced supports of the bill to vote against it because they didn't want this in what was going to be a ground breaking bill. I believe something similar has passed, or perhaps is trying to be passed in a few states in the US, or something similar to it. I know this only because I have been considering going to our local mall (yes, yes, I live in a small city) and go hang out in the men's washroom in protest and before I had the chance I was getting plenty of articles of trans men and women doing this exact thing in the US over a similar law.
And just like that, something clicked and my world started to get smaller. Canada has always been looked at as being heavily influenced by America. I have spoken with a few patriots here that would argue differently but the truth is our cultures are very similar and most of our media comes from the US. Most of our TV channels here are US based and therefore carry US news, I have no numbers but I would have to say the vast majority of TV shows in general are US based. And when you influence a people, you influence their government.
For example, apparently the Canadian government has found it prudent to give tax breaks plus direct funding to an anti-gay group here in Canada called "Crossroads Christian Communications Inc." Thankfully Canada does have fairly solid discrimination laws and after it was found out that Canada was supporting this group the government had to investigate. But therein lies a problem. Yes they stopped funding for the investigation (I cannot find any updates) but the problem is they would have never stopped if the public didn't stumble upon what was happening. Just to be clear, this group had on their website statements like homosexuality and transvestism are sins equivalent to pedophilia and bestiality and are sinners that need to repent. They were taken down when they realized the public's eyes were starting to focus on them. Their views weren't a secret beforehand and the government still thought it a good idea to fund them.
Thanks to shows like Rachel Maddow and you know, being alive, I have heard every possible explanation of why someone is anti-gay. Everything from homosexuals being pedophiles to ruining the fabric of our society to abominations that are against gods will. These people face pro-gay rights with the certainty and smugness of moral superiority. They are firmly in the position that they are correct and you are somehow blind to the truth and you need to change to fit their description of the world.
That is really all it comes down to, they want to shape the world to fit what they are comfortable enough with to let go of their security blankets. When I started this post I had planned on inserting a couple of statistics I could find, like how the divorce rate is a full percentage lower for homosexuals then for heterosexuals, or how that there is zero evidence that suggests that pedophilia and homosexuality are linked at all. I heard the opposite spewed from bigot mouths on many occasions and I thought it would be useful to have those stats here as "proof". The problem is, these people are immune to logic. No one has ever convinced one of these sort of people by trying to talk sensibly to them. So unfortunately there seems to be little left to say to them. They have removed themselves from the conversation by essentially putting thing fingers in their ears and screaming "la la la" over and over.
Do you know what is a powerful deterrent though? Something everyone in the LGBT community is all too familiar with? Public ridicule. Now I know, it feels like we would be sinking to their level by doing this, and I would caution against it but I think it is time. It is time we stop fulfilling the victim role exactly how they want us to, constantly defensive and emotional, because it is so personal to us. We need to climb on top of our moral high ground and start glaring back. Their arguments center around violence, trying to change people, trying to impose your will on someone is violence. Our argument centers on peace, allow us to live our lives without persecution. Instead of getting defensive or hurt when someone says these anti-gay things to you, instead of that, laugh at them. Laugh at them like they are trying to have a serious discussion about Elvis still being alive and well and having margaritas with Jimmy Hoffa in Argentina.
We give them ammunition when we play their silly game. The constant back and forth they want to get everything tied up and clouded in until no one is sure what we're talking about any more. Think about it, when someone approaches you with anti-gay speech you feel compelled to give in to their trolling and get into the fight they just picked. Now if someone were to seriously say, "You know, people who drive red sports cars have huge penis's" you'd look at them with an ill-concealed look of "wtf?" on your face. That's exactly how we should treat these anti-gay children. Give them no ground for purchase, blow them off like the obscurity in history they are destined to be.
Sunday, 15 March 2015
Saturday, 14 March 2015
My World
I've been thinking about this post for a long time now, a month or more I would say. I feel like I have come to a point where I'm not sure what else to say. I feel like I have been saying more or less the same things over and over just in a different way and quite honestly, I have gotten somewhat bored of it.
What I never get bored of is thinking. I get frustrated with it, I get angry or depressed with it even but I never stop. This is something I have been thinking about in relation to me and nothing else for several months, it is only the last few months that I have been thinking about how to make this a post.
It started when talking to a friend, the conversation was about me specifically and how I was feeling. It was all in good intentions and went something like this.
Friend: "Yadda yadda"
Me: "blah blah"
Friend: "As long as you feel like a woman then it'll be ok."
Now without getting into where that came from, and through no reason of it being said by this person, I couldn't help but think about that statement non-stop. And the question I kept asking myself was a simple one, in form if nothing else. "What do you mean 'feel like a woman'?"
That question has been the focal point of my journey as a trans-woman ever since I knew I wanted to be a woman. I would think to myself constantly that if I were meant to be a woman, or later when I knew the label for it, if I am transgender then there should be something intrinsic about me that is definitively female. I searched my inner self high and low, and over two decades and have only found the question to be a non-starter. The test that every seemingly good answer always failed to pass was, "Is this feeling I have ONLY able to be had by a woman."
The answer to that is of course, "No.". To be the person I am, to be real followers of the values the majority of the LGBTQ2 world seems to profess and I certainly do, I simply cannot believe there is a single one thing that either gender exclusively feels. How sexist to suggest otherwise, wouldn't you agree?
But I've come to see how I live in a perfect world, largely because I spend 90% of my time alone. Not because I'm perfect (lol) but because everything in a world that consists of 90% me is something I clearly mostly agree with. The real world doesn't seem to fully accept this spectrum. Now I'm sure these people have their hearts in the right place, the problem tends to come when the spectrum doesn't work for them. I'll try to explain...
An increasingly large amount of the population is started to see gender and sexuality as a spectrum. I think one could argue a circle, but I'm not going to try that here. Essentially you have male and hetero on one side female and hetero on the other and people fall somewhere in between that. Now in my world people don't care where other people fall in that spectrum. In my world anyone can be who they want to be, love who they want to love, use which bathroom they want to use. Sorry, not "don't care" that's too harsh for my world, people love the fact that you are being you in my world.
In the real world however, a lot of people do get upset if you are something they don't agree with, you can only love certain people and who goes to which bathroom is up for debate. The problem, as I see it, is people lump all of these things together when it comes to fighting for rights. Where people get very emotional and defensive when you try to tell them how they can dress or look or who they are allowed to love, and with understanding. These are the sort of things that are absolutely not up for debate. These are the sort of things that is no one else's business like who or how you fuck. With these, case closed, move along, nothing to see here as far as I'm concerned. Because in my world gender and sexuality isn't something you try to hide from the world, it is something you try to bring to the world, something every human being needs to cherish about themselves.
The other questions though, like who can go where, I'm far more uncertain. The public washroom question is one that seems like I can't think about fairly because I always simply fall on "who really cares"? Clearly some people do but I can't think of a sensible argument that they may be correct so I can't come up with sensible reasoning that could convince these people.
Honestly, that is a problem I have for most of these questions, the Wiccan Rede is the perfect answer, "Harm none, do what ye will." But let me talk about a problem that I had to try to solve in the real world and honestly, didn't. Now honestly my answer would have affected nothing, I'm not in that sort of position, but there was a point that it came to me to figure out.
I was talking with two friends of mine, we were getting together to talk about a workshop we were going to do with the women's center in my city. We ended up talking about inclusion, who would/is accepted in a woman's center? We didn't know the answer, and sadly I didn't find out through no fault but my own from not asking yet. (something I will have to do) But we had a little brainstorming session. I won't get into our talk but I will explain my thinking on the whole situation.
I looked at it this way. Let's go down the list of who is and isn't included, so we start with women, obviously women are welcome in a women's center. Next is trans-women, which as far as we knew were also welcome. I guess we skipped over gender neutral (sorry) and next was trans-men, we honestly had no answer for this, were they already welcome, should they be and should we convince a center to? And then there is men who aren't welcome. My inner question is, where is the dividing line between trans-men and men? I sort of defaulted to how the trans-men feel about it because I have no idea, really. This is where the spectrum gets complicated and sometimes works against us. And by work against us, I mean it doesn't work in our immediate favour. Nothing but good can come from getting the entire population to accept and fully understand this spectrum.
Why should trans-men be welcome? I couldn't help but think about being in the opposite situation. If there were such a thing as a "Men's center" and they were to say they welcome trans-women I would actually be insulted, profoundly insulted. Honestly, asking myself where the dividing line between trans-men and men felt insulting. Imagine if someone were to ask me, "Where do you think the dividing line between women and trans-women is?" I'd probably go ballistic. If a Men's center was welcoming trans-women I would think they should be welcoming cis-women. Therefore, the opposite seems to make sense to me as well. If you allow trans-men in a women's center, then you should allow men. To say other wise feels to me to be insulting to the trans community as a whole. You are basically saying, while trying to be helpful, you aren't entirely a man and you're close enough to a woman to be allowed. I would chew on a cinderblock if someone said the opposite to me.
I guess I could come up with a working decision if I ran such a place and had to make it myself, but since I don't I have yet to answer this question in any sort of meaningful existential way. I can't answer this question for the same reason I can't answer the question I started with. Where is this line that everyone wants to draw? What are these feelings that are absolutely male or female? I feel like the world is locked in the binary frame of mind simply by giving weight to those questions because I think a lot of people think they have answers. People seem to think too small, they think of one or two hyper examples and assume the rest falls into place. We know the real world isn't like that at all. The real world consists of every option you can think of and they are ALL valid.
I feel like I am example of how much harm these absolute questions with no answers caused. When I was trying to figure myself out in my young years I knew nothing about the world, all I knew was what was around me. What was around me, especially back then, was a constant barrage of binary gender and sexual do's and don'ts. This works for most people because most people are cis-hetero but when you aren't one of those people, the pressure of this imposed binary becomes your cage. When your gender becomes a question, because for most it never is questioned, you have nothing to look at for answers but the ocean of possibilities within your own heart and mind. All I had was this whimsical desire to shed the body I was in and don a new one. I couldn't place my feelings in boxes labelled "male" and "female"
And that's it, that's all I can come up with. The only thing I can equate "feeling like a woman" to is how I feel about how people view me. I can't say "I'm a woman because I feel pretty.". "Pretty" has no gender, it's just a word, but I can say I love how I feel when someone tells me I look pretty. (female being implied) It is the person who I present to others that makes me feel like a woman everything else is just "me".
I guess I spend a lot of time thinking about how the world around a trans-person affects them because I feel deeply affected by it myself particularly when I was young. That's why I have invented my world. In my world there is no gender or sexual pressure on kids, or anyone really. I feel no need to keep sex away from children, in fact I have always found it suspect when people say we can't show kids sexual material but encourage them to violence. (and then wonder why violence is sexualized, sigh) The more comfortable our entire culture becomes with gender and sexuality the easier these young people will find it do discover themselves. Imagine a world where 100% of the children grow up not just being ok with, but being confident in their sexuality and knowledgeable of the sexuality of others. Once that generation grows up we will have law makers, civil servants, volunteers, doctors and their patients, etc etc that would have no need for questions like "what bathroom should a certain group use?". Gendered bathrooms, change rooms, clothing, toys would become a thing of the past, a relic of the "old way we used to think."
Then maybe, just maybe, I could welcome you all to my world.
What I never get bored of is thinking. I get frustrated with it, I get angry or depressed with it even but I never stop. This is something I have been thinking about in relation to me and nothing else for several months, it is only the last few months that I have been thinking about how to make this a post.
It started when talking to a friend, the conversation was about me specifically and how I was feeling. It was all in good intentions and went something like this.
Friend: "Yadda yadda"
Me: "blah blah"
Friend: "As long as you feel like a woman then it'll be ok."
Now without getting into where that came from, and through no reason of it being said by this person, I couldn't help but think about that statement non-stop. And the question I kept asking myself was a simple one, in form if nothing else. "What do you mean 'feel like a woman'?"
That question has been the focal point of my journey as a trans-woman ever since I knew I wanted to be a woman. I would think to myself constantly that if I were meant to be a woman, or later when I knew the label for it, if I am transgender then there should be something intrinsic about me that is definitively female. I searched my inner self high and low, and over two decades and have only found the question to be a non-starter. The test that every seemingly good answer always failed to pass was, "Is this feeling I have ONLY able to be had by a woman."
The answer to that is of course, "No.". To be the person I am, to be real followers of the values the majority of the LGBTQ2 world seems to profess and I certainly do, I simply cannot believe there is a single one thing that either gender exclusively feels. How sexist to suggest otherwise, wouldn't you agree?
But I've come to see how I live in a perfect world, largely because I spend 90% of my time alone. Not because I'm perfect (lol) but because everything in a world that consists of 90% me is something I clearly mostly agree with. The real world doesn't seem to fully accept this spectrum. Now I'm sure these people have their hearts in the right place, the problem tends to come when the spectrum doesn't work for them. I'll try to explain...
An increasingly large amount of the population is started to see gender and sexuality as a spectrum. I think one could argue a circle, but I'm not going to try that here. Essentially you have male and hetero on one side female and hetero on the other and people fall somewhere in between that. Now in my world people don't care where other people fall in that spectrum. In my world anyone can be who they want to be, love who they want to love, use which bathroom they want to use. Sorry, not "don't care" that's too harsh for my world, people love the fact that you are being you in my world.
In the real world however, a lot of people do get upset if you are something they don't agree with, you can only love certain people and who goes to which bathroom is up for debate. The problem, as I see it, is people lump all of these things together when it comes to fighting for rights. Where people get very emotional and defensive when you try to tell them how they can dress or look or who they are allowed to love, and with understanding. These are the sort of things that are absolutely not up for debate. These are the sort of things that is no one else's business like who or how you fuck. With these, case closed, move along, nothing to see here as far as I'm concerned. Because in my world gender and sexuality isn't something you try to hide from the world, it is something you try to bring to the world, something every human being needs to cherish about themselves.
The other questions though, like who can go where, I'm far more uncertain. The public washroom question is one that seems like I can't think about fairly because I always simply fall on "who really cares"? Clearly some people do but I can't think of a sensible argument that they may be correct so I can't come up with sensible reasoning that could convince these people.
Honestly, that is a problem I have for most of these questions, the Wiccan Rede is the perfect answer, "Harm none, do what ye will." But let me talk about a problem that I had to try to solve in the real world and honestly, didn't. Now honestly my answer would have affected nothing, I'm not in that sort of position, but there was a point that it came to me to figure out.
I was talking with two friends of mine, we were getting together to talk about a workshop we were going to do with the women's center in my city. We ended up talking about inclusion, who would/is accepted in a woman's center? We didn't know the answer, and sadly I didn't find out through no fault but my own from not asking yet. (something I will have to do) But we had a little brainstorming session. I won't get into our talk but I will explain my thinking on the whole situation.
I looked at it this way. Let's go down the list of who is and isn't included, so we start with women, obviously women are welcome in a women's center. Next is trans-women, which as far as we knew were also welcome. I guess we skipped over gender neutral (sorry) and next was trans-men, we honestly had no answer for this, were they already welcome, should they be and should we convince a center to? And then there is men who aren't welcome. My inner question is, where is the dividing line between trans-men and men? I sort of defaulted to how the trans-men feel about it because I have no idea, really. This is where the spectrum gets complicated and sometimes works against us. And by work against us, I mean it doesn't work in our immediate favour. Nothing but good can come from getting the entire population to accept and fully understand this spectrum.
Why should trans-men be welcome? I couldn't help but think about being in the opposite situation. If there were such a thing as a "Men's center" and they were to say they welcome trans-women I would actually be insulted, profoundly insulted. Honestly, asking myself where the dividing line between trans-men and men felt insulting. Imagine if someone were to ask me, "Where do you think the dividing line between women and trans-women is?" I'd probably go ballistic. If a Men's center was welcoming trans-women I would think they should be welcoming cis-women. Therefore, the opposite seems to make sense to me as well. If you allow trans-men in a women's center, then you should allow men. To say other wise feels to me to be insulting to the trans community as a whole. You are basically saying, while trying to be helpful, you aren't entirely a man and you're close enough to a woman to be allowed. I would chew on a cinderblock if someone said the opposite to me.
I guess I could come up with a working decision if I ran such a place and had to make it myself, but since I don't I have yet to answer this question in any sort of meaningful existential way. I can't answer this question for the same reason I can't answer the question I started with. Where is this line that everyone wants to draw? What are these feelings that are absolutely male or female? I feel like the world is locked in the binary frame of mind simply by giving weight to those questions because I think a lot of people think they have answers. People seem to think too small, they think of one or two hyper examples and assume the rest falls into place. We know the real world isn't like that at all. The real world consists of every option you can think of and they are ALL valid.
I feel like I am example of how much harm these absolute questions with no answers caused. When I was trying to figure myself out in my young years I knew nothing about the world, all I knew was what was around me. What was around me, especially back then, was a constant barrage of binary gender and sexual do's and don'ts. This works for most people because most people are cis-hetero but when you aren't one of those people, the pressure of this imposed binary becomes your cage. When your gender becomes a question, because for most it never is questioned, you have nothing to look at for answers but the ocean of possibilities within your own heart and mind. All I had was this whimsical desire to shed the body I was in and don a new one. I couldn't place my feelings in boxes labelled "male" and "female"
And that's it, that's all I can come up with. The only thing I can equate "feeling like a woman" to is how I feel about how people view me. I can't say "I'm a woman because I feel pretty.". "Pretty" has no gender, it's just a word, but I can say I love how I feel when someone tells me I look pretty. (female being implied) It is the person who I present to others that makes me feel like a woman everything else is just "me".
I guess I spend a lot of time thinking about how the world around a trans-person affects them because I feel deeply affected by it myself particularly when I was young. That's why I have invented my world. In my world there is no gender or sexual pressure on kids, or anyone really. I feel no need to keep sex away from children, in fact I have always found it suspect when people say we can't show kids sexual material but encourage them to violence. (and then wonder why violence is sexualized, sigh) The more comfortable our entire culture becomes with gender and sexuality the easier these young people will find it do discover themselves. Imagine a world where 100% of the children grow up not just being ok with, but being confident in their sexuality and knowledgeable of the sexuality of others. Once that generation grows up we will have law makers, civil servants, volunteers, doctors and their patients, etc etc that would have no need for questions like "what bathroom should a certain group use?". Gendered bathrooms, change rooms, clothing, toys would become a thing of the past, a relic of the "old way we used to think."
Then maybe, just maybe, I could welcome you all to my world.
Sunday, 1 February 2015
Hopefully
I've been toying with how to write this next post for a few days now. It started as a result of something my friend asked me, someone who knows a fair number of transgender people. It was something like, "Why don't we hear about positive transgender experience, or why don't people want to talk about positive transgender experience?"
Now out of context of the entire conversation that may sound a little short-sighted or insulting in some way, but I assure you it wasn't as such, but she brought up a good point. Personally, during pride week in this city last summer, I contacted several news organizations with the story of a transgender woman with a positive experience in our city, working, my own apartment, and a drastic change as a result of transition. I got no bites.
Anyway, there is of course plenty of reasons we don't hear many positive stories. For one, news is rarely positive, period. There are lots I can get into, but I'm going to write about the one I can relate to. That is, why wouldn't those of us with positive experiences talk about it?
Why I am hesitant about it is I feel bad. I know of so many transgender people that have had to deal with so much more than I have, and have had less luck in general then I have had when it comes to transitioning. I mean there are a host of things that can go wrong in a transition. Anything from your parents rejecting you to your hormone replacement not working. I have had little trouble in any aspect of my transition, so I can't really relate to how it would feel like to face some like others have. I have felt the complete fear of them though.
I have posted a mix of emotions on this blog so far, and that is for a reason. I think people need to see the "realness" behind transgender life. Not necessarily how "shockingly real" it is, though it certainly can be, but how there are also plenty of transgender people you never hear about that are quietly, happily transitioning, and they have lives like everyone else.
I feel like we need to hear more stories like these. Yes, the stories of Lavern Cox and Janet Mock are just fantastic to hear, but I think it says more for us to see the "Jack and Janes" of the transgender world. For one, the cis-folk out there need to see that we are everywhere. No different than the homosexual movement eventually did, the more that come out the more people see how "normal" we really are and the more comfortable people become.
The more important side, in my opinion, is what it can say to those that still haven't been able to start transitioning because they are too afraid to. I think every one of us goes through this, I know I did. Besides all of the many other questions, doubts and fears you have you also worry about what if transitioning doesn't "work". All I ever heard about was bad stories, ever. As far as I knew not a single transition ended well. I could find only two types of literature. Either people talking about how their lives have fallen apart or people who said nothing about their personal lives other than a hint of "I don't go there anymore." tucked in between the lines.
I'd like to start a trend. There are a lot of trans people that do little but talk about the negative, and I guess that plays it's part. People do need to see how society treats us so we can open their eyes. What I'd like to do is start people talking about how their transition makes them happy. I have already said quite a bit of positive things about my transition and honestly, it has only gotten better. We need more of it.
I have gotten so many messages from people telling me how they wish they could be as brave as me, or wish their life circumstances could allow a transition and it breaks my heart. The fear (and possibly reality) of being another statistic is great enough to keep many people from being themselves. Maybe if they could read more blogs and stories like mine they would have the courage to face their fears. Maybe instead of being afraid of losing someone, perhaps they would hope that person would understand and help them. I'm hard pressed to think of someone with more doubt and uncertainty than a transgender person starting their path into transition, every little bit of hope helps.
Now out of context of the entire conversation that may sound a little short-sighted or insulting in some way, but I assure you it wasn't as such, but she brought up a good point. Personally, during pride week in this city last summer, I contacted several news organizations with the story of a transgender woman with a positive experience in our city, working, my own apartment, and a drastic change as a result of transition. I got no bites.
Anyway, there is of course plenty of reasons we don't hear many positive stories. For one, news is rarely positive, period. There are lots I can get into, but I'm going to write about the one I can relate to. That is, why wouldn't those of us with positive experiences talk about it?
Why I am hesitant about it is I feel bad. I know of so many transgender people that have had to deal with so much more than I have, and have had less luck in general then I have had when it comes to transitioning. I mean there are a host of things that can go wrong in a transition. Anything from your parents rejecting you to your hormone replacement not working. I have had little trouble in any aspect of my transition, so I can't really relate to how it would feel like to face some like others have. I have felt the complete fear of them though.
I have posted a mix of emotions on this blog so far, and that is for a reason. I think people need to see the "realness" behind transgender life. Not necessarily how "shockingly real" it is, though it certainly can be, but how there are also plenty of transgender people you never hear about that are quietly, happily transitioning, and they have lives like everyone else.
I feel like we need to hear more stories like these. Yes, the stories of Lavern Cox and Janet Mock are just fantastic to hear, but I think it says more for us to see the "Jack and Janes" of the transgender world. For one, the cis-folk out there need to see that we are everywhere. No different than the homosexual movement eventually did, the more that come out the more people see how "normal" we really are and the more comfortable people become.
The more important side, in my opinion, is what it can say to those that still haven't been able to start transitioning because they are too afraid to. I think every one of us goes through this, I know I did. Besides all of the many other questions, doubts and fears you have you also worry about what if transitioning doesn't "work". All I ever heard about was bad stories, ever. As far as I knew not a single transition ended well. I could find only two types of literature. Either people talking about how their lives have fallen apart or people who said nothing about their personal lives other than a hint of "I don't go there anymore." tucked in between the lines.
I'd like to start a trend. There are a lot of trans people that do little but talk about the negative, and I guess that plays it's part. People do need to see how society treats us so we can open their eyes. What I'd like to do is start people talking about how their transition makes them happy. I have already said quite a bit of positive things about my transition and honestly, it has only gotten better. We need more of it.
I have gotten so many messages from people telling me how they wish they could be as brave as me, or wish their life circumstances could allow a transition and it breaks my heart. The fear (and possibly reality) of being another statistic is great enough to keep many people from being themselves. Maybe if they could read more blogs and stories like mine they would have the courage to face their fears. Maybe instead of being afraid of losing someone, perhaps they would hope that person would understand and help them. I'm hard pressed to think of someone with more doubt and uncertainty than a transgender person starting their path into transition, every little bit of hope helps.
Monday, 19 January 2015
Picture This
I often find myself reflecting on my personality and asking myself what parts of me are there because I am transgender. I guess in a way I try to think how the rest of the world must feel about something then compare it to how I feel about it and then decide if growing up unsure of my gender had anything to do with it. Well partially. A lot of the times I think back on things I have thought about myself or have done in the past and I see how being transgender directly affected that.I feel like I can't stop myself from doing this. It feels to me as something that is just intrinsic of who I am. Ironically, it is something that is a result of being transgender, I think.
I struggled with being transgender for years, that is true, but I always kinda knew how different I was. While lack of information was the real culprit, that combination of being transgender and not knowing it was even a valid life option lead to me dealing with who I was, affected who I was, in many ways.
The thing that made it difficult for me to see the truth about myself was that to me, I was "just me". I don't mean that in some cute way, I mean I was just a kid being a kid, like all kids. When I became a teenager and started to become self conscious, like all teenagers do, I realized I had this part about me that didn't fit what was "ok" for a boy to feel like.
Because we we all taught that as young as possible, aren't we? What makes a "good" and "bad" boy/girl/person? From the fire fighter who's a hero and helps people to the kid who's a bully and teases people. I can't say I remember how, but somewhere in my life I learned that boys were not allowed to be like girls. That boys that liked feminine things were perverts and men that liked feminine things were either gay or disgusting (those two words at the time only just starting to not be synonymous).
So what was I?
I know one thing I was, I was lucky. I was lucky that I was born stubborn and confident. For the majority of my teen years I struggled daily with this idea, "I'm a good person, why do I have all of these "bad" feelings, wants and desires?"
I remember being in a girlfriends bedroom, or any females room for whatever reason and I would feel like my world was closing in on me. I wanted to look at everything, I wanted to get some sense of what it felt like to live as a girl at the same time I would be inches away from my horrible secret that it would kill me if anyone found out. I didn't really realize what I was doing, to be honest. There was just something that drew me to these things and living like it that made me feel comfortable. I was just "being me" as before, but now that "me" had a label on it, one that made me hate myself.
In bed after days like these, or similar ones, more often than not I would cry myself to sleep. I'd be asking myself that question, "Why do I feel like this? Only 'bad' people feel like this." I would hate myself for feeling that way, and I mean hate. Hate that manifested itself in everything from cutting myself to year long depression. I would see a girl and think she was beautiful, and instead of imagining feeling her body against mine, I'd imagine what it would feel like to have that body. After realizing what I was feeling, and not being able to deal with it internally, I didn't know what else to do. I wasn't a bad kid, I didn't get into trouble, I didn't drink or be out late or whatever. I think cutting myself with something was the best thing I could come up with that wasn't hurting anyone else and besides, it was to this body that didn't really feel like mine anyway.
That is something else that is a result of being transgender for me. I was never really attached to my body... I'm not sure how else to say it. All of my life the idea of something happening to my genitals didn't really bother me. My body just felt like a box carrying "me" around. This happened later in my life than my teen years, maybe it started in my late teens. I started to gain weight in my early twenties. I was a very healthy and in shape teen, athletic. What happened was I started to gain weight almost at the same time I started to find language to put my feelings into terms that were real. I distinctly remember looking at myself in the mirror after gaining weight and thinking "hey, now I look like I have a hips like a woman." I was pretty pleased with myself. I was wrong, I looked awful, but I saw what I wanted to.
Later in life after allowing myself to buy and wear some female clothing again I realized women's lingerie was not meant to go on a man my size. I told everyone my motivation was seeing the built men on "300" but the truth is it was because I wanted to look good in lingerie. What happened at the same time however was a crushing quasi-relationship that had me hating myself even more and blaming it on this "sick person" I am. So I decided to never go there again, and kept up with the exercising and losing weight until I was too thin. I think I could have been anorexic for a while. Another trait passed on to me from being transgender is listening to what others say about me, and after hearing several people give me the "Uh, you aren't fat at all. In fact you're too thin." talk I started to be sensible about it.
The point I'm trying to make here is being transgender has been hard on my body.
The part that really gets to me when I stop to think about it is how being transgender has affected my mind. Not just my thoughts, and feelings, but my very essence, my beliefs, my desires, my self image. I have lived my life questioning everything about me, a self-doubt that is pervasive throughout everything in my life, everything that makes up me. Questions that the outside world will happily, quickly, and with zero conscious and empathy give you their answers to. I'm not sure if it is fair to say this is true about all trans people, but for me growing up as a transwoman was traumatic. Something that only recent talks with my therapist has me thinking about. Again, to me I was just "being me" going through life, taking and dealing with things like I assumed we all do.
However, like any trauma victim it has left deep scars on who I am that are so much a part of me that I have no idea when they are influencing my life and decisions now. Feeling like no one could ever love me, which is progress from no one SHOULD love me, or feeling like I am my own best company which works out because I also feel like no one wants my company. Having no sense of "self" or who you are because I, until relatively recently never was who I am.
There are other things that being transgender has created in me that are neither horrible, or joyous. Being self reflective was something that was forced on to me. It started from what I mentioned earlier, how I had that one question always in my mind, "I'm a good person, why do I feel "bad" things?". I picked apart everything I did. Every. Little. Thing. Especially anything that had to do with a moral or ethical choice. I had to make sure I was correct, that I wasn't a bad person. It was possible I thought I was good but I actually wasn't. I had read enough to know of the villain who believes he is right in his doings. The time up until reaching the conclusion that I am indeed a rather "good" person was very hard. This was my massive depressive stage. After my depression I started to realize that regardless of what people may think of the OTHER stuff going on in my head, I'm still a good person.
This lead me to another frame of mind that is intrinsic in me now as well. How open minded I am, particularly sexually, or sexuality. After realizing I was a good person even though I felt the way some of the "worst" (read perverted, really) people in the world felt I couldn't help but think that I must not be the only one. I started seeing people in a very different light. I started to see individual struggles. How the people with the worst ones tend to be the most quiet, and how, like me, they have a hard time accepting help. I developed an empathy or these sort of people, something I think my friends picked up on, as I have mentioned before. A part of me wishes I choose a career path that would have lead to me helping those people but I had other things on my mind.
There is a point to this whole post. Yesterday I took a picture of myself. (wtf does all of this have to do with a picture, I know.) This picture is of me with no makeup. I took this picture and posted it to facebook and immediately contacted the few friends I have to take a look, even called my parents. People don't seem to understand what this picture means to me. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like I was faking being a woman. Right or wrong there is a part of me that gets utterly disgusted when I try to look feminine and when I look in the mirror all I see is a crossdresser, basically. (No offense CD's out there). This time though, I came out of the bathroom and walked in front of my full length mirror and had to stop and go back to it to look some more. I couldn't get over how feminine I looked while totally naked, makeup and all.
That changed my entire outlook instantly. It has been so powerful that I could feel my state of mind, emotions, self awareness, sexuality, and more starting to shift all day yesterday. To see a genuine woman looking back at me in the mirror is finally allowing me to feel like a genuine woman in general. My body is beginning to feel like mine now, like it never did before. I'll admit to being a little "catch phrase-y" in the past when describing how significant things have been but this time I'm not sure what to say. I feel like my whole being has started to change. It's hard to imagine such an impact coming from such a simple thing. A picture that, admittedly, doesn't make me look gorgeous, but does make me look decidedly female, and with no make up, no "faking it".
The change is real though, I actually feel like a woman, I am now able to picture myself doing things, like typing on this computer, and see the woman I always felt I was. What is changing is many of the things I started talking about on this post. My self worth especially. I'm starting to feel attractive, desirable even. I'm starting to feel power in my femininity.... power. Imagine?
I feel like I'm running out of ways to articulate myself now so what I will do is leave you with said picture. I barely stop looking at it, I can't believe that is me in the picture. Anyway, take care everyone.
I struggled with being transgender for years, that is true, but I always kinda knew how different I was. While lack of information was the real culprit, that combination of being transgender and not knowing it was even a valid life option lead to me dealing with who I was, affected who I was, in many ways.
The thing that made it difficult for me to see the truth about myself was that to me, I was "just me". I don't mean that in some cute way, I mean I was just a kid being a kid, like all kids. When I became a teenager and started to become self conscious, like all teenagers do, I realized I had this part about me that didn't fit what was "ok" for a boy to feel like.
Because we we all taught that as young as possible, aren't we? What makes a "good" and "bad" boy/girl/person? From the fire fighter who's a hero and helps people to the kid who's a bully and teases people. I can't say I remember how, but somewhere in my life I learned that boys were not allowed to be like girls. That boys that liked feminine things were perverts and men that liked feminine things were either gay or disgusting (those two words at the time only just starting to not be synonymous).
So what was I?
I know one thing I was, I was lucky. I was lucky that I was born stubborn and confident. For the majority of my teen years I struggled daily with this idea, "I'm a good person, why do I have all of these "bad" feelings, wants and desires?"
I remember being in a girlfriends bedroom, or any females room for whatever reason and I would feel like my world was closing in on me. I wanted to look at everything, I wanted to get some sense of what it felt like to live as a girl at the same time I would be inches away from my horrible secret that it would kill me if anyone found out. I didn't really realize what I was doing, to be honest. There was just something that drew me to these things and living like it that made me feel comfortable. I was just "being me" as before, but now that "me" had a label on it, one that made me hate myself.
In bed after days like these, or similar ones, more often than not I would cry myself to sleep. I'd be asking myself that question, "Why do I feel like this? Only 'bad' people feel like this." I would hate myself for feeling that way, and I mean hate. Hate that manifested itself in everything from cutting myself to year long depression. I would see a girl and think she was beautiful, and instead of imagining feeling her body against mine, I'd imagine what it would feel like to have that body. After realizing what I was feeling, and not being able to deal with it internally, I didn't know what else to do. I wasn't a bad kid, I didn't get into trouble, I didn't drink or be out late or whatever. I think cutting myself with something was the best thing I could come up with that wasn't hurting anyone else and besides, it was to this body that didn't really feel like mine anyway.
That is something else that is a result of being transgender for me. I was never really attached to my body... I'm not sure how else to say it. All of my life the idea of something happening to my genitals didn't really bother me. My body just felt like a box carrying "me" around. This happened later in my life than my teen years, maybe it started in my late teens. I started to gain weight in my early twenties. I was a very healthy and in shape teen, athletic. What happened was I started to gain weight almost at the same time I started to find language to put my feelings into terms that were real. I distinctly remember looking at myself in the mirror after gaining weight and thinking "hey, now I look like I have a hips like a woman." I was pretty pleased with myself. I was wrong, I looked awful, but I saw what I wanted to.
Later in life after allowing myself to buy and wear some female clothing again I realized women's lingerie was not meant to go on a man my size. I told everyone my motivation was seeing the built men on "300" but the truth is it was because I wanted to look good in lingerie. What happened at the same time however was a crushing quasi-relationship that had me hating myself even more and blaming it on this "sick person" I am. So I decided to never go there again, and kept up with the exercising and losing weight until I was too thin. I think I could have been anorexic for a while. Another trait passed on to me from being transgender is listening to what others say about me, and after hearing several people give me the "Uh, you aren't fat at all. In fact you're too thin." talk I started to be sensible about it.
The point I'm trying to make here is being transgender has been hard on my body.
The part that really gets to me when I stop to think about it is how being transgender has affected my mind. Not just my thoughts, and feelings, but my very essence, my beliefs, my desires, my self image. I have lived my life questioning everything about me, a self-doubt that is pervasive throughout everything in my life, everything that makes up me. Questions that the outside world will happily, quickly, and with zero conscious and empathy give you their answers to. I'm not sure if it is fair to say this is true about all trans people, but for me growing up as a transwoman was traumatic. Something that only recent talks with my therapist has me thinking about. Again, to me I was just "being me" going through life, taking and dealing with things like I assumed we all do.
However, like any trauma victim it has left deep scars on who I am that are so much a part of me that I have no idea when they are influencing my life and decisions now. Feeling like no one could ever love me, which is progress from no one SHOULD love me, or feeling like I am my own best company which works out because I also feel like no one wants my company. Having no sense of "self" or who you are because I, until relatively recently never was who I am.
There are other things that being transgender has created in me that are neither horrible, or joyous. Being self reflective was something that was forced on to me. It started from what I mentioned earlier, how I had that one question always in my mind, "I'm a good person, why do I feel "bad" things?". I picked apart everything I did. Every. Little. Thing. Especially anything that had to do with a moral or ethical choice. I had to make sure I was correct, that I wasn't a bad person. It was possible I thought I was good but I actually wasn't. I had read enough to know of the villain who believes he is right in his doings. The time up until reaching the conclusion that I am indeed a rather "good" person was very hard. This was my massive depressive stage. After my depression I started to realize that regardless of what people may think of the OTHER stuff going on in my head, I'm still a good person.
This lead me to another frame of mind that is intrinsic in me now as well. How open minded I am, particularly sexually, or sexuality. After realizing I was a good person even though I felt the way some of the "worst" (read perverted, really) people in the world felt I couldn't help but think that I must not be the only one. I started seeing people in a very different light. I started to see individual struggles. How the people with the worst ones tend to be the most quiet, and how, like me, they have a hard time accepting help. I developed an empathy or these sort of people, something I think my friends picked up on, as I have mentioned before. A part of me wishes I choose a career path that would have lead to me helping those people but I had other things on my mind.
There is a point to this whole post. Yesterday I took a picture of myself. (wtf does all of this have to do with a picture, I know.) This picture is of me with no makeup. I took this picture and posted it to facebook and immediately contacted the few friends I have to take a look, even called my parents. People don't seem to understand what this picture means to me. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like I was faking being a woman. Right or wrong there is a part of me that gets utterly disgusted when I try to look feminine and when I look in the mirror all I see is a crossdresser, basically. (No offense CD's out there). This time though, I came out of the bathroom and walked in front of my full length mirror and had to stop and go back to it to look some more. I couldn't get over how feminine I looked while totally naked, makeup and all.
That changed my entire outlook instantly. It has been so powerful that I could feel my state of mind, emotions, self awareness, sexuality, and more starting to shift all day yesterday. To see a genuine woman looking back at me in the mirror is finally allowing me to feel like a genuine woman in general. My body is beginning to feel like mine now, like it never did before. I'll admit to being a little "catch phrase-y" in the past when describing how significant things have been but this time I'm not sure what to say. I feel like my whole being has started to change. It's hard to imagine such an impact coming from such a simple thing. A picture that, admittedly, doesn't make me look gorgeous, but does make me look decidedly female, and with no make up, no "faking it".
The change is real though, I actually feel like a woman, I am now able to picture myself doing things, like typing on this computer, and see the woman I always felt I was. What is changing is many of the things I started talking about on this post. My self worth especially. I'm starting to feel attractive, desirable even. I'm starting to feel power in my femininity.... power. Imagine?
I feel like I'm running out of ways to articulate myself now so what I will do is leave you with said picture. I barely stop looking at it, I can't believe that is me in the picture. Anyway, take care everyone.
Friday, 2 January 2015
Number One
Well everyone guess what. I have finally had sex with a man. And holy god damn was it ever fun.
I met him over the internet. Of course right? Who actually meets people in person anymore? We talked a bit over a few days and I invited him over. This isn't the first time I have met someone from the internet and every other time was kinda lame. Honestly, the main reason I had him over was I was getting to the point that I had to do this.
Not to long before this actually happened something changed in me. I mentioned a while ago the changes that had happened in my breast, we those changes happened everywhere. My body has gone under some major changes in the last few months, and still is. (more on that later). Along with the physical changes I started to become more comfortable with my body emotionally. It feels so much more like a woman's body, a difference I notice regularly.
Ok, off topic, but I want to say this. Over the course of the last year and a half of being on hormones there have been times that I have felt like I am actually supposed to be a man, not a woman, and I'm screwing up here. 90% of the time that feeling comes from seeing or picturing my body or how I move or how I emotionally react to my body. Essentially it is what is left of my dysphoria now. To use my therapists favorite word, the "incongruence" triggers my dysphoria.
This new change has started to keep those feelings at bay. I found that at first the HRT made me feel better for a few reasons. I knew I was doing something to start my transition, the hormones in my body started to level out to where they should have been, and I would see changes being made, like my skin softening. What is happened now though makes those earlier changes seem almost superficial. At almost 2 years, my body is now beginning to really fill out as a woman's. Honestly, my figure has changed more then I had expected it to when I started and I easily see more changes coming. Right now, there would be no way for me to pass as a man. Not shave for a month I guess. But clean shaven, and maybe foundation and I could stand in front of you in my panties and you would not tell I was a man without looking quite closely.
Almost done with my tangent. what I want to say about this, is this. Over the years the dysphoria we face as transgender people is oppressive.... smothering, it can leave you doubting everything about yourself and it can leave you feeling like it will never end. I'm here to tell you it can, and it will. Those of you out there finding it hard to carry on, like I have so many times before, keep on pushing. Transitioning is the hardest thing someone can do, in my opinion, but I promise, it will be worth it in the end. It will be worth it as you go along, I am finding out.
Ok, so, where was I? Right, this guy. One of the side effects of the changes to my body was my confidence started to grow. As my confidence and appreciation of my body grew, the more sexual I found myself getting until finally I got to the point that I thought "Ok! Time to share this with someone!" I felt like a teen again, just wanting to have someone touch my body. I have to say, seeing that from a more mature age made it feel more passionate for me.
And speaking of passion.... this guy... damn. I can't say he was cut from marble or anything, but he had a wonderful body, nice smile, cute/shy-ish way of talking. However, he wasn't shy when we started to get naked... nope. Being on this end of things was amazing. Having someone pick me up, move me around, position me *cough* was different. That plus his touching me, enjoying my body, running his hands and lips... wherever. God it was different..
ok, I need to take a breather, lmao.
The experience was all together amazing. No offense to her, but it was far more passionate, and intense then my first woman. Being sexual as a woman, letting myself feel how I want to feel... or simply letting myself feel, is part of me like having sex before never was. Instead of being a locksmith I ride a wave of pleasure. It is exquisite.
I met him over the internet. Of course right? Who actually meets people in person anymore? We talked a bit over a few days and I invited him over. This isn't the first time I have met someone from the internet and every other time was kinda lame. Honestly, the main reason I had him over was I was getting to the point that I had to do this.
Not to long before this actually happened something changed in me. I mentioned a while ago the changes that had happened in my breast, we those changes happened everywhere. My body has gone under some major changes in the last few months, and still is. (more on that later). Along with the physical changes I started to become more comfortable with my body emotionally. It feels so much more like a woman's body, a difference I notice regularly.
Ok, off topic, but I want to say this. Over the course of the last year and a half of being on hormones there have been times that I have felt like I am actually supposed to be a man, not a woman, and I'm screwing up here. 90% of the time that feeling comes from seeing or picturing my body or how I move or how I emotionally react to my body. Essentially it is what is left of my dysphoria now. To use my therapists favorite word, the "incongruence" triggers my dysphoria.
This new change has started to keep those feelings at bay. I found that at first the HRT made me feel better for a few reasons. I knew I was doing something to start my transition, the hormones in my body started to level out to where they should have been, and I would see changes being made, like my skin softening. What is happened now though makes those earlier changes seem almost superficial. At almost 2 years, my body is now beginning to really fill out as a woman's. Honestly, my figure has changed more then I had expected it to when I started and I easily see more changes coming. Right now, there would be no way for me to pass as a man. Not shave for a month I guess. But clean shaven, and maybe foundation and I could stand in front of you in my panties and you would not tell I was a man without looking quite closely.
Almost done with my tangent. what I want to say about this, is this. Over the years the dysphoria we face as transgender people is oppressive.... smothering, it can leave you doubting everything about yourself and it can leave you feeling like it will never end. I'm here to tell you it can, and it will. Those of you out there finding it hard to carry on, like I have so many times before, keep on pushing. Transitioning is the hardest thing someone can do, in my opinion, but I promise, it will be worth it in the end. It will be worth it as you go along, I am finding out.
Ok, so, where was I? Right, this guy. One of the side effects of the changes to my body was my confidence started to grow. As my confidence and appreciation of my body grew, the more sexual I found myself getting until finally I got to the point that I thought "Ok! Time to share this with someone!" I felt like a teen again, just wanting to have someone touch my body. I have to say, seeing that from a more mature age made it feel more passionate for me.
And speaking of passion.... this guy... damn. I can't say he was cut from marble or anything, but he had a wonderful body, nice smile, cute/shy-ish way of talking. However, he wasn't shy when we started to get naked... nope. Being on this end of things was amazing. Having someone pick me up, move me around, position me *cough* was different. That plus his touching me, enjoying my body, running his hands and lips... wherever. God it was different..
ok, I need to take a breather, lmao.
The experience was all together amazing. No offense to her, but it was far more passionate, and intense then my first woman. Being sexual as a woman, letting myself feel how I want to feel... or simply letting myself feel, is part of me like having sex before never was. Instead of being a locksmith I ride a wave of pleasure. It is exquisite.
Thursday, 1 January 2015
Poof
Sorry about the long hiatus, between work, my computer not working and my internet connection not working it became quite difficult. Now I have another problem, I have no idea what to write about or how to write, I've kinda lost it a little after not using it for a while. So I'm just going to dive right in, in typical Rebecca fashion.
There has been something on my mind for a good while now, even before last writing here. I think I may have briefly mentioned it before, but it's something that is seriously on my mind and I just may go through with it.
What that is, is moving off, starting a new life. I don't just mean going to another city and trying life there. I mean doing all but faking my own death and disappearing away from everyone I know and starting my life completely new in a completely new city. From my understanding many transgender people feel this way at some point. Honestly, I'm surprised I don't personally know of any. I guess then that it would only make statistical sense that I be the trans person I know that has done this.
I feel this way for a lot of reasons. It seems to be another one of those decisions I've wanted to make in a long time but haven't yet. What I have learned about myself is those are the things I always eventually do and after I do them I always find it was the right thing for me. I'm actually getting to the point that I let that feeling I get for these sort of decisions to make the decisions for me, if I find I can't come to one without it.
So why do I want to do this? Well I want to move for several reasons. I guess some of it is a "grass is greener" sort of view, but I live in a small city, a city I have always said was too small for me, and I think I would have more opportunities in a different/bigger one. This may be some what redundant but I'm also kinda done with this place. The available work, the weather, and to some extent even the people. The people for two reasons, one is the close-mindedness of too many people here, the other I'll get into in a moment.
That's just why I want to move. Why I want to disappear obviously has to do with people. I have to say the single biggest reason I want to disappear is to completely shed my past. Nothing reminds me more than people.
Here's the thing. I often reflect on my past, the "boy" I used to be. I really have become to see her as the young very confused and lost trans-teen. These reflections however, are mostly me sorting out where being transgender came from. Something I often say you shouldn't try to do I know, but it's impossible not to. I pass by places in this small city that remind me of past relationships, or stages of my life and some of them make me think "meh" some of them make me wish in the worst way I was a woman at the time, and those are the ones that get to me.
What people do is not let me let go of the emotional baggage of being transgender and they also trigger just about everything that makes being transgender difficult in your own mind.
For example, people who knew me in the past and either refuse to call me "Rebecca" or forget to so much that I just as well not have changed my name. The holidays were more or less the last straw for me. I seen a good bit of family and the majority of them got my name wrong most of the time. Yes yes, I know, I should be patient, they have been calling me that for 30ish years... blah blah blah. However, I am sick of it. It has been almost two years, my name is Rebecca. It has gotten to the point that it has become a major reason to move and disappear. If I never hear that name again, or be called "him" once more it would be worth it.
I also met an old co-worker that flat out refused to call me Rebecca because she "knew me as <insert name here>." If I wasn't in a nice restaurant at the time I would have completely lost it but I managed to keep my cool and just eat my app without any bloodshed.
I guess to these people, it's simply a matter of it being "no big deal" to them. I can even sit here and admit that that is a reasonably good way for them to be, it's kinda nice that they don't see the difference.
However.
I forget where exactly I read this, it was something that I scrolled by on facebook. It was someone talking about, and to, our transgender allies. Or actually now that I think about it, it may have been a lesbian who wrote it. Either way, it is the perfect message to our allies and it sums up nicely how I feel and that "no big deal" isn't as nice as you may think. Essentially what this person said is that that isn't enough. We don't want you to just be blind about it, we want you to see us. I may want the general public to just look at me and think "she" because that's how I look and act, etc and that's how I want to be. My family and close friends and allies though, I want them to call me by my correct name (because it is legally changed) and use proper pronouns because they know who I am. They know I am transgender, they see it, they fully accept it and they call me the correct things out of respect for who it is that I am.
Knowing I'm transgender and continuously calling me my old name and pronoun hurts far more than some random person. If a store clerk looks at me and thinks I warrant a "sir" then that's "my fault" for not looking feminine enough (oh please oh please, let's just leave this as is for now and not kill the poor clerk or get into how that's an awful frame of mind on my part.) But if my family, or friends call me sir, they know. They know that hurts me, they know that reminds me of a time of my life that was nightmarish. They know better.
Besides that, I find myself still catering to the people of my past a bit when it comes to my personality, interests, lifestyle and life choices. Many of which, I feel, are more suited for a larger city anyway. There are still some people I spend time with and ever so subtly start feeling like that old person and it makes me want to jump in a shower...
...of fire ants
Which brings me to another point. If I move to a place full of strangers, at this point in my transition, I would simply be "she". Everyone would treat me as a cis woman and I LONG to know what that feels like. Right now I live two lives, the people that think I am a cis woman and the people that know I am not. I am a different person around both groups of people and I like everything involved in everyone thinking I'm a cis woman a lot more. Imagine never talking on the phone to someone that might accidentally call me "him" from memory. Or not being on the outside of the social dynamic because people don't know where you "fit" anymore.
As I said, I have been thinking about this for quite some time. During that time I have slowly eliminated the various things that were keeping me from this decision. One of those that is gone is giving people time to "get used to it." whatever that was about. People expect you to change your language instantly on a regularly basis, some people in my life can't be bothered with it for my sake. Another that is slowly going away is my fear of doing it. In fact, I'd say that is gone now too. And honestly, that is usually the last step for me in these big decisions.
Also, there are a handful of people that I wouldn't want to leave behind, people that I would tell where I was going and talk to while I was there. I used to feel like that was half assing it, honestly. If I'm going to vanish, then vanish 100%. This is something else I have gotten over.
The main thing currently holding me back is money and knowledge. I need to pick a spot, I need to find out costs, living arrangements, etc. It is possible I will overcome the financial situation in a reasonably short amount of time.
All of this being said, dear reader, I will keep everyone here filled in and probably won't be giving it up as part of my disappearing act.
Well, a short one today, I had to get back into the mindset, sorry if this one isn't up to par.
There has been something on my mind for a good while now, even before last writing here. I think I may have briefly mentioned it before, but it's something that is seriously on my mind and I just may go through with it.
What that is, is moving off, starting a new life. I don't just mean going to another city and trying life there. I mean doing all but faking my own death and disappearing away from everyone I know and starting my life completely new in a completely new city. From my understanding many transgender people feel this way at some point. Honestly, I'm surprised I don't personally know of any. I guess then that it would only make statistical sense that I be the trans person I know that has done this.
I feel this way for a lot of reasons. It seems to be another one of those decisions I've wanted to make in a long time but haven't yet. What I have learned about myself is those are the things I always eventually do and after I do them I always find it was the right thing for me. I'm actually getting to the point that I let that feeling I get for these sort of decisions to make the decisions for me, if I find I can't come to one without it.
So why do I want to do this? Well I want to move for several reasons. I guess some of it is a "grass is greener" sort of view, but I live in a small city, a city I have always said was too small for me, and I think I would have more opportunities in a different/bigger one. This may be some what redundant but I'm also kinda done with this place. The available work, the weather, and to some extent even the people. The people for two reasons, one is the close-mindedness of too many people here, the other I'll get into in a moment.
That's just why I want to move. Why I want to disappear obviously has to do with people. I have to say the single biggest reason I want to disappear is to completely shed my past. Nothing reminds me more than people.
Here's the thing. I often reflect on my past, the "boy" I used to be. I really have become to see her as the young very confused and lost trans-teen. These reflections however, are mostly me sorting out where being transgender came from. Something I often say you shouldn't try to do I know, but it's impossible not to. I pass by places in this small city that remind me of past relationships, or stages of my life and some of them make me think "meh" some of them make me wish in the worst way I was a woman at the time, and those are the ones that get to me.
What people do is not let me let go of the emotional baggage of being transgender and they also trigger just about everything that makes being transgender difficult in your own mind.
For example, people who knew me in the past and either refuse to call me "Rebecca" or forget to so much that I just as well not have changed my name. The holidays were more or less the last straw for me. I seen a good bit of family and the majority of them got my name wrong most of the time. Yes yes, I know, I should be patient, they have been calling me that for 30ish years... blah blah blah. However, I am sick of it. It has been almost two years, my name is Rebecca. It has gotten to the point that it has become a major reason to move and disappear. If I never hear that name again, or be called "him" once more it would be worth it.
I also met an old co-worker that flat out refused to call me Rebecca because she "knew me as <insert name here>." If I wasn't in a nice restaurant at the time I would have completely lost it but I managed to keep my cool and just eat my app without any bloodshed.
I guess to these people, it's simply a matter of it being "no big deal" to them. I can even sit here and admit that that is a reasonably good way for them to be, it's kinda nice that they don't see the difference.
However.
I forget where exactly I read this, it was something that I scrolled by on facebook. It was someone talking about, and to, our transgender allies. Or actually now that I think about it, it may have been a lesbian who wrote it. Either way, it is the perfect message to our allies and it sums up nicely how I feel and that "no big deal" isn't as nice as you may think. Essentially what this person said is that that isn't enough. We don't want you to just be blind about it, we want you to see us. I may want the general public to just look at me and think "she" because that's how I look and act, etc and that's how I want to be. My family and close friends and allies though, I want them to call me by my correct name (because it is legally changed) and use proper pronouns because they know who I am. They know I am transgender, they see it, they fully accept it and they call me the correct things out of respect for who it is that I am.
Knowing I'm transgender and continuously calling me my old name and pronoun hurts far more than some random person. If a store clerk looks at me and thinks I warrant a "sir" then that's "my fault" for not looking feminine enough (oh please oh please, let's just leave this as is for now and not kill the poor clerk or get into how that's an awful frame of mind on my part.) But if my family, or friends call me sir, they know. They know that hurts me, they know that reminds me of a time of my life that was nightmarish. They know better.
Besides that, I find myself still catering to the people of my past a bit when it comes to my personality, interests, lifestyle and life choices. Many of which, I feel, are more suited for a larger city anyway. There are still some people I spend time with and ever so subtly start feeling like that old person and it makes me want to jump in a shower...
...of fire ants
Which brings me to another point. If I move to a place full of strangers, at this point in my transition, I would simply be "she". Everyone would treat me as a cis woman and I LONG to know what that feels like. Right now I live two lives, the people that think I am a cis woman and the people that know I am not. I am a different person around both groups of people and I like everything involved in everyone thinking I'm a cis woman a lot more. Imagine never talking on the phone to someone that might accidentally call me "him" from memory. Or not being on the outside of the social dynamic because people don't know where you "fit" anymore.
As I said, I have been thinking about this for quite some time. During that time I have slowly eliminated the various things that were keeping me from this decision. One of those that is gone is giving people time to "get used to it." whatever that was about. People expect you to change your language instantly on a regularly basis, some people in my life can't be bothered with it for my sake. Another that is slowly going away is my fear of doing it. In fact, I'd say that is gone now too. And honestly, that is usually the last step for me in these big decisions.
Also, there are a handful of people that I wouldn't want to leave behind, people that I would tell where I was going and talk to while I was there. I used to feel like that was half assing it, honestly. If I'm going to vanish, then vanish 100%. This is something else I have gotten over.
The main thing currently holding me back is money and knowledge. I need to pick a spot, I need to find out costs, living arrangements, etc. It is possible I will overcome the financial situation in a reasonably short amount of time.
All of this being said, dear reader, I will keep everyone here filled in and probably won't be giving it up as part of my disappearing act.
Well, a short one today, I had to get back into the mindset, sorry if this one isn't up to par.
Thursday, 9 October 2014
Unison
It has been a while since I wrote something last (again) and I feel sort of bad about it. I've been busy, sure, but I've also been taking time to learn who I am now and to start living my life as I want to rather than how I think I "should". I do have a fair amount of good news to share, however.
First of all, I have gotten a promotion at work to assistant kitchen manager. Not too shabby for a trans-woman, I think. Honestly, it seems insignificant in the grand scheme of the world but at the same time it is an accomplishment and one I think other trans-women should see, for the same reason it makes my therapist happy. I am a new-ish trans-woman who is now flourishing in the workforce. It is nice to see that we can accomplish things just like anyone else. Also it shows how "settled" in to myself I have gotten.
That's really all I wanted to say about that. What I really want to talk about is me, my body and emotional state.
The most significant change that has happened in a fairly long time has been my breasts. Which, I must say, is about damn time. I've had a small "A" for months now and besides that they have been "pre-teen" breasts. Not shaped quite like a breast normally is and my nipples have always been hard and sore. So sore I could barely touch them without wincing. In fact, I avoided touching them as much as possible, I didn't really like them. Apparently, according to my therapist, that is typical of young girls, many of them being fairly unhappy with their breasts when they first start to develop. Oh, and by "hard nipples' I don't mean just the tip of them, like I've been cold for the last few months. I mean the base of the nipple, just under the areola used to feel like I had a stack of quarters there. Also, the areola and nipple has always been tight and "puckered" for a lack of better words.
All of that has changed. The hardness totally gone, along with the soreness. My entire nipple and breast all feel the same, there is no distinction between where my breast stops and my areola starts other then the color, and they are very, very soft. I have even filled out a little more. I am a full "A" now and maybe even approaching a "B" in the near future.
The crazy thing about it is it all just happened one day, literally. I woke up Friday morning and went to work with the same "blah tits" I've had for a while now. Later that night when getting ready for bed was when I noticed they looked and felt completely different. I was off Saturday and I spent most of the morning with no shirt or bra on looking at and touching my breasts, the change was so fast and dramatic I was bewildered.
What an impact this has had. Honestly, it is the most significant change I have had in the last several months. I went from seriously disliking my breasts to utterly loving them. I feel like I have "real" breasts now, they even make me feel more like a woman. They turn me on, fantasizing about having someone enjoying them turns me on now too, rather than giving me a feeling of disappointment. I am suddenly proud of them, excited by them even. So much so that I went out that Saturday and bought my first two pairs of push-up bras. I never really liked the idea of a push-up bra, feeling fake, like I was trying to make them look bigger. Now I feel totally different about it, now it is to present them for everyone to see.
The emotional breakthrough this has created has affected my entire being. I am far more comfortable with my entire body now, I feel like a complete woman. The feeling of congruence has even reduced my doubt by a great deal. Honestly, the great impact it has had has been such a subtle change in my perspective and thinking that it is hard to explain. Having just my breasts change to what they are now has given me confidence in my entire body. Not just confidence, everything just feels "right" now. My body is mine now, and it is a woman's body, two things my mind has had a hard time accepting.
I think I have spelled out the majority of emotional changes I have gone through as well. I spent a lot of my life thinking "I am a man, I don't want to be, but that's the body I have.". That eventually changed to "I am nothing, an it. Neither man or woman.", having no concrete thoughts to attach my feelings to. I felt this way for a long time, before transitioning. Transitioning, up to now, has actually made that feeling stronger, all I seen was this body somewhere between man and woman. Very recently my thoughts have turned to "I am a woman in a woman's body and I feel complete."
What a strange feeling it is to feel this way now. I rarely question myself anymore. In my minds eye I am a beautiful woman, period. My transition now feels real, like something I can count on, attach myself to. I haven't let myself feel that about anything or anyone for countless years. My transition has always been the most important thing in my life but now it has become more that that. It has become nurturing, my security blanket. It is the one thing in my life I feel any control over, like I can call it "mine". Best of all, I now feel like it has been a success and will continue to be a success. It is the one thing in my life that I know is there for me and only me. I feel calm knowing it is in my life.
Everything has fallen into place.
I wish I could crack open my head and heart and let you feel what I am feeling. There is no way those words I have just written have done a complete enough job explaining how I feel now. I am not sure if this has all come from my breast development or if my entire body has changed as well. It seems like it could have been my entire body, just punctuated by my breasts. Either way my entire body and mind feels better, feels more complete. AND most powerful of all, my mind and body feel congruent with each other for the first time in my life.
That is no small thing. Only the transgender can truly understand what I mean when I say that. To anyone else it is just a bunch of words. So I'm going to say it again, for the first time in my life (36 years old here) my feelings, mind and body feel as one. I didn't know people could feel like this.
It's beautiful.
First of all, I have gotten a promotion at work to assistant kitchen manager. Not too shabby for a trans-woman, I think. Honestly, it seems insignificant in the grand scheme of the world but at the same time it is an accomplishment and one I think other trans-women should see, for the same reason it makes my therapist happy. I am a new-ish trans-woman who is now flourishing in the workforce. It is nice to see that we can accomplish things just like anyone else. Also it shows how "settled" in to myself I have gotten.
That's really all I wanted to say about that. What I really want to talk about is me, my body and emotional state.
The most significant change that has happened in a fairly long time has been my breasts. Which, I must say, is about damn time. I've had a small "A" for months now and besides that they have been "pre-teen" breasts. Not shaped quite like a breast normally is and my nipples have always been hard and sore. So sore I could barely touch them without wincing. In fact, I avoided touching them as much as possible, I didn't really like them. Apparently, according to my therapist, that is typical of young girls, many of them being fairly unhappy with their breasts when they first start to develop. Oh, and by "hard nipples' I don't mean just the tip of them, like I've been cold for the last few months. I mean the base of the nipple, just under the areola used to feel like I had a stack of quarters there. Also, the areola and nipple has always been tight and "puckered" for a lack of better words.
All of that has changed. The hardness totally gone, along with the soreness. My entire nipple and breast all feel the same, there is no distinction between where my breast stops and my areola starts other then the color, and they are very, very soft. I have even filled out a little more. I am a full "A" now and maybe even approaching a "B" in the near future.
The crazy thing about it is it all just happened one day, literally. I woke up Friday morning and went to work with the same "blah tits" I've had for a while now. Later that night when getting ready for bed was when I noticed they looked and felt completely different. I was off Saturday and I spent most of the morning with no shirt or bra on looking at and touching my breasts, the change was so fast and dramatic I was bewildered.
What an impact this has had. Honestly, it is the most significant change I have had in the last several months. I went from seriously disliking my breasts to utterly loving them. I feel like I have "real" breasts now, they even make me feel more like a woman. They turn me on, fantasizing about having someone enjoying them turns me on now too, rather than giving me a feeling of disappointment. I am suddenly proud of them, excited by them even. So much so that I went out that Saturday and bought my first two pairs of push-up bras. I never really liked the idea of a push-up bra, feeling fake, like I was trying to make them look bigger. Now I feel totally different about it, now it is to present them for everyone to see.
The emotional breakthrough this has created has affected my entire being. I am far more comfortable with my entire body now, I feel like a complete woman. The feeling of congruence has even reduced my doubt by a great deal. Honestly, the great impact it has had has been such a subtle change in my perspective and thinking that it is hard to explain. Having just my breasts change to what they are now has given me confidence in my entire body. Not just confidence, everything just feels "right" now. My body is mine now, and it is a woman's body, two things my mind has had a hard time accepting.
I think I have spelled out the majority of emotional changes I have gone through as well. I spent a lot of my life thinking "I am a man, I don't want to be, but that's the body I have.". That eventually changed to "I am nothing, an it. Neither man or woman.", having no concrete thoughts to attach my feelings to. I felt this way for a long time, before transitioning. Transitioning, up to now, has actually made that feeling stronger, all I seen was this body somewhere between man and woman. Very recently my thoughts have turned to "I am a woman in a woman's body and I feel complete."
What a strange feeling it is to feel this way now. I rarely question myself anymore. In my minds eye I am a beautiful woman, period. My transition now feels real, like something I can count on, attach myself to. I haven't let myself feel that about anything or anyone for countless years. My transition has always been the most important thing in my life but now it has become more that that. It has become nurturing, my security blanket. It is the one thing in my life I feel any control over, like I can call it "mine". Best of all, I now feel like it has been a success and will continue to be a success. It is the one thing in my life that I know is there for me and only me. I feel calm knowing it is in my life.
Everything has fallen into place.
I wish I could crack open my head and heart and let you feel what I am feeling. There is no way those words I have just written have done a complete enough job explaining how I feel now. I am not sure if this has all come from my breast development or if my entire body has changed as well. It seems like it could have been my entire body, just punctuated by my breasts. Either way my entire body and mind feels better, feels more complete. AND most powerful of all, my mind and body feel congruent with each other for the first time in my life.
That is no small thing. Only the transgender can truly understand what I mean when I say that. To anyone else it is just a bunch of words. So I'm going to say it again, for the first time in my life (36 years old here) my feelings, mind and body feel as one. I didn't know people could feel like this.
It's beautiful.
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