You are currently browsing the GenderBlog weblog archives for January, 2010.
30 January 2010 by kathleen.
I have had Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS, or Gender Reassignment Surgery, or Gender Confirmation Surgery) as I said a few weeks ago. In a few more weeks, I hope, I will have some corrective surgery for after-effects of a prostatectomy I had in 2001.
I have not had breast augmentation. I have not had facial feminization surgery. My Adam’s apple thankfully isn’t very prominent, so I haven’t had a trachial shave. I haven’t had rhinoplasty (a “nose job”) even though I’ve always thought my nose was a little large. On my boy self, it was large; on me, I think it goes beyond large.
My body, though, isn’t identical to me. It is an essential part of my essence, but it isn’t the whole thing. It goes back to loving my body.
When I don’t love my self, I fasten upon every detail, large or small, to prove that I am not lovable:
Whether or not each one of those things is true, not one of them — not even all of them together — is reason for me not to love myself. Since I do love myself, it doesn’t matter whether I have any of them fixed.
If SRS changed anything, it has reinforced my sense of identity as a woman; I am a person who has a vagina. That vagina really is important to me. I see now that I left this out of my earlier post. For me a really good reason to have SRS was that I wanted a vagina. Now that I have a vagina, and I love myself for being who and what I am — I don’t need anything else.
All the other things I could have fixed? Well, maybe someday, if I win the lottery….
Posted in Loving Myself, M-to-F surgery | 1 Comment »
28 January 2010 by kathleen.
I was thinking about subjects for blog posts, articles to compose over the next few weeks or months. But it occurred to me to ask myself the questions in the title to this post.
How long have I been “this way”? Fifty years at least (if you count from age 9, when I began to have a renewed interest in womens’ clothes). Or 60 years if you count my own hazy memories, from age 2 or 3, of putting on mom’s lipstick and earrings, and getting caught by dad — an incident which put me into the closet till age 9.
Here’s what I mean by “this way”: that I have had one foot in each gender; that I have been living for nearly 60 years as a boy/man/male, and all that time wanting to be a girl/woman/female. That double-gendered condition has been my transgender. It is me, still: that I have some awareness of both genders all the time.
Since my transition, noted here, my self perception has been evolving toward a predominantly female view. That is, I see myself as a woman now, and I encounter what others have encountered before me: with a successful transition, my transgender becomes invisible. I am now what I appear to be, instead of merely what I want to be.
Well, wait, no not exactly. Yes, I am a woman — in some sense of “am” — but I continue to experience the double-gender vision. I know I am speaking as a woman, and that my listeners perceive me as a woman, but I am also aware that I have a huge behavioral and experiential history as a man. And I still have XY chromosomes, and all the physical structure that XY engender.
I don’t have an answer today. At least temporarily I shall retain a two-footed stance, except that instead of a foot in maleness and a foot in femaleness, I shall have a foot in transgender and a foot in femaleness.
Posted in General MtF topics | 1 Comment »
25 January 2010 by kathleen.
I love being a woman driver! If I drive the speed limit, no one notices. If I drive a little slower, well, I’m just another one of those damned old ladies — so what?
As a man, I was always up tight when I drove. I heard a lot of stuff in my head: “Don’t drive too fast! Don’t drive too slow! Watch where you’re going. Expect the unexpected. Watch your speed. Watch your blind spot. Keep moving or the car behind will plow into you.”
When I was “a man dressed as a woman”, of course, I had a double helping of anxiety, because the fear of getting caught. I have that fear no more, because I am — at least legally — a woman; I can’t get caught as a man. With that knowledge and the self-confidence that goes with it, I have been able to settle into being a woman driver.
As I did so, I began to realize that I was more relaxed behind the wheel as Kathleen than I was as John, my boy self. It was no big deal when Kathleen missed a turn and had to double-back. Had John done the same thing, his stomach would have been in knots. I know: John missed turns many times, and was upset every time. When Kathleen misses a turn, well, all I do is to begin thinking how to get back. I don’t have to agonize over an error. I can enjoy driving!
I also don’t have the fire of testosterone boiling through my veins the way John did. I don’t have to go faster than the car next to me. I don’t have to drive faster just because there is no police officer in sight. I don’t have to yell — or even think — obscenities at the the driver who wouldn’t let me in, or who cut me off.
So, I don’t deliberately drive slowly to annoy other drivers, but I don’t hurry if there’s no urgency. I’m confident that my gray-haired head is visible through the windshield, and that the testo-pumped males will just go around me.
I think my feelings about driving are experience-based, not role-based. That is, I have memories of unpleasant experiences driving as a man, but (so far) no bad experiences driving as a woman. I suppose there are some role-based expectations, and I might have had loads more had I learned to drive as a girl, but as it is now I don’t have the same set of expectations as I did when I learned to drive as a male.
Posted in Sex & Gender Roles | No Comments »
24 January 2010 by kathleen.
A few years ago I came across this page of handwriting tips at Transsexual Road Map.
Over the decades of male life, I developed a distinctive handwriting. I had a sense that it was masculine, and this article showed me why: spikes. My handwriting used to be spiky, and the letters were sloppy.
I looked at the tips for more feminine handwriting, and I decided to change. I knew I could change it because I’d changed once before, in my first or second year of college. At the time I thought my handwriting looked immature as well as sloppy, and I resolved to change it. I experimented with some different letter shapes, and made some choices. It took a few days of attention to my writing, then a few more weeks of practice, but it became my normal writing.
I read and re-read the article at TS Road Map, then began to experiment. A couple of the suggested tips my hand just would not do. Others I could do with close attention. Some things seemed to flow more naturally, and I stuck with those. I experimented some more.
I need to be more deliberate when I form the shapes of letters. But wait: I need to be more deliberate in everything I do as a woman. For example, I noticed that I had a tendency to smash the tips of my fingers into things. That arose partly from the recklessness that males engage in. I paid attention to the movements of my hands, and now I place them more carefully, all the time.
And there are more opportunities to be more deliberate: we choose the colors of our clothes, the colors of our makeup, the way our hair lays — or doesn’t. We take time and deliberate care with our appearance, and that spills over into our handwriting.
For me, the changes in my behavior are reflected in the changes in my handwriting, and the changes in my handwriting have been reflected in my behaviors. As I change my handwriting, I change my perceptions and my behaviors.
For the transman the same sorts of changes apply, but in reverse. Feminine handwriting may give you away, perhaps when you fill out a job application. The same pages that gave me tips for feminine handwriting have tips to enable you to make your handwriting take on more masculine characteristics.
If you haven’t changed your handwriting yet, I urge you to read this article and experiment with your handwriting. It isn’t easy to change how you write, but it is possible. And for me changing my handwriting was an essential adjunct to the other behavioral changes I’ve made in my life.
That’s what, for me, being transsexual is all about: changing my life.
Posted in General FtM topics, General MtF topics | 2 Comments »
23 January 2010 by kathleen.
It occurred to me that if you went to high school with me and read the blog post High School Reunion, Part 1, you might be offended. You might be thinking, “You mean that s.o.b. was lying to us all the time?”
No. I wasn’t lying, I was hiding. I didn’t even know what I was. I thought I was being tempted into sin, and I was resisting that temptation. Er, well, mostly resisting. I think I can safely say this now: I read the Ann Landers column in the newspaper in high school.
Now, think about it: where did the Ann Landers and Dear Abby columns appear in the paper? In the 1960’s, when local newspapers were still sizable, there was usually a section of the paper that covered “Women’s Issues”: food, cooking, fashion, astrology, advice to the lovelorn, and Landers/Abby. Guess what they also put in that section: lingerie ads, including girdles. So, yes, I would read Ann Landers for the advice, but I would also study ads on the adjacent pages.
So you, my high school friends, had no idea what I was doing when I got home from school. I was not about to tell you. I had absorbed from the culture that boys aren’t supposed to know about or be interested in bras, slips, girdles, and nylons — except how to get them off a girl with whom you’re parked in Lovers’ Lane.
Because I never sought to get close to other boys, I don’t know how many of you, my all-boys Catholic high school classmates — how many of you were into other boys, or were into girls clothes the same way I was. There were 450 students in my graduating class. Even assuming that the few boys who thought they might be queer may have self-selected for public school instead of Catholic school, there were probably 10-15 of you who were gay and knew it by graduation day. I don’t know if you hid it from the rest of our classmates, but you sure hid it from me.
I went to the 5-year reunion, and I met one or two of you there. I don’t expect you will go to the 45th reunion, just as I probably will not. I really am curious, though: how many of you, my classmates, are also transgendered? Is it worth going to the reunion to find out? If any of us are gay or transgendered, will they let us in? Have they frozen us out for so long that we won’t bother to even try?
Posted in General MtF topics | 1 Comment »
21 January 2010 by kathleen.
I wrote earlier about how I found out my name. More than 50 years passed before I began using that name, Kathleen. When my transgender began to emerge in my late teens, I didn’t like the name. Or rather, I didn’t like the fact that mom told me what my name was supposed to be.
I moved out of my parents’ home and got my own apartment in 1972 or ‘73, so I was able to experiment a little more. Back then, instead of HotMail or AOL accounts, we had Post Office boxes, to exchange anonymous snail mail with people whose addresses we found in the back of slick magazines from the adult bookstore. I wasn’t yet ready for piercings and bondage, so the Virginia Prince Tri-ESS stuff seemed to be about my speed. After exchanging a few letters with people in Tri-ESS, it was clear that I was a novice because I didn’t have a “femme name”.
Having a separate name for dressing up seemed bizarre at the time, but I went along with it. What name to use? I felt at the time that if I were to use the name Kathleen, it would be capitulating to mom’s whim, wish, or daydream — whatever it was. I was not going to do that: I was not going to wear women’s clothes because mom wanted me to. I was going to wear them because I wanted to.
Frank Sinatra’s song, Nancy with the Laughing Face, was popular around then. I liked the song, so I chose the name Nancy. I was known as Nancy from about 1973 till 2002 or 2003.
I finally accepted mom’s name for me because of this incident. A female coworker was pregnant with her second child. One day, she was chatting on the phone with a friend. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop; it’s just that I wasn’t deep into anything at my own desk, so I happened to overhear. The coworker had just had the ultrasound checkup where they are able to identify the sex of the fetus. She was talking to her girlfriend about it, but of course, she said, she already knew it was going to be a girl. I heard her say, “A mother always knows.”
There was something in the tone of her voice that brought mom’s words back to me. Mom used to use that exact tone of voice. It then occurred to me that mom just might have known even before my birth that I was transgendered. Not that she would have used that word, of course. Mom carried me 5 or 6 years before news of Christine Jorgensen’s famous sex change hit the glossy magazines.
Suppose mom really did know that she was carrying a transsexual, but didn’t have the words for it. What might she have said to convey the same thought? She might have said, “You were supposed to be a girl.”
All this came back to me in a flash when I heard my coworker talking. As I said, I wasn’t eavesdropping, and I haven’t the slightest idea what the rest of her conversation contained. I think the Holy Spirit wanted me to hear her words; I think I needed to hear those words.
I know, I know….. It’s much more likely that mom really wanted a girl, so she made up the story. Well, whatever. Mom died in 1996, and I never spoke to her about my life as a woman, or about the name she gave me.
This is a fact: as I began to use the name Kathleen, my identity as Kathleen slowly became more distinct. It culminated in my transition in December, 2007, and my surgery in March, 2009.
Thank you, mom. One of the biggest regrets of my life is that you never got to meet the daughter you knew you should have had.
Posted in General MtF topics | 1 Comment »
19 January 2010 by kathleen.
I spent a lot of my life detesting parts of my body. I hated my testicles, those testosterone-pumping nuggets that kept my sexual response on edge. Part of my body-hatred was cultural, I know: most of us, transgendered or not, have some part or parts of our bodies that we hate. It’s just that for us, the part we hate is tied to sexual identity. I mean, supposed I was upset and depressed because my ears stuck out too far. Well, I might not like it, but my identity as a man (or woman) isn’t tied to the size of my ears. My self-esteem might be, but not my sexual identity. That’s something that sets us apart.
I have very functional thighs, and knees. Except for a few scars here and there, I have all my fingers and toes, and they all work. Wrists, too, and forearms and elbows. Shoulders muscles are tight and sore on occasion, but functional. My feet are a bit bigger than I’d wish for if I could start over, but they are functional. Better yet, I have worked to make them move more gracefully than they used to.
I could go further with the inventory: pancreas, spleen, hypothalamus, liver….. But you have those parts, too. My point is to appreciate them!
I know, I know: I hated parts of me, too. I focused on the tiny parts I didn’t like, or wasn’t comfortable with, and didn’t pay attention to the whole picture. When I (finally) came to appreciate and to love myself because I am transsexual: that made the whole difference. And it made the difference regardless of surgery.
I mean, once I began to love myself, loving my body was easy, normal, natural, obvious. I love my body because I love myself.
If you are planning it the other way around — namely, “I will love myself when I have the body I’m supposed to have” — I think you’re in for a rough time.
I want to say this: once I began to love myself, it was amazing how the world changed! All the people I was sure were against me, all the people who I was sure would beat me up if they found out I like to wear women’s clothes, all the fingers I was sure were pointing at me: I couldn’t find them after I started to love myself.
Imagine that!
Let me suggest this course of action: while you’re waiting to start hormones, or waiting for surgery, think about loving yourself just exactly as you are right now. Love yourself in spite of being transsexual. Love yourself because you are transsexual. If you can get to that place of loving yourself, I think you will find that the hormones and the surgery and whatever else you need fall right into line for you.
Posted in Loving Myself | 1 Comment »
18 January 2010 by kathleen.
Sex Reassignment Surgery (or Gender Reassignment Surgery, or Gender Confirmation Surgery) is not the inevitable end result of transsexualism. Thousands of my my peers — both transmen and transwomen — cannot have surgery for financial reasons; thousands more cannot for political reasons (i.e., they live in a culture in which transsexualism is punishable by death); thousands more have medical conditions that prevent them from having surgery; still more thousands fear to do so for social reasons (i.e., family or friends will disown them).
Even when there are no external impediments, SRS may not be the best course for a specific transsexual person. Choosing to have one’s genitals physically altered has spiritual, emotional, and rational components. After discussing the alternatives with my partner, I chose to go ahead with SRS for these reasons:
Well, those were the three reasons that clinched the decision for me. Living full time as Kathleen had already removed the depression which plagued me for so much of my life. I had already come to accept my body as it was, and to love it. I had already come to love myself as a transgendered person. Had there been a medical impediment to SRS, I don’t believe I would have gone into depression, because I loved myself as I was.
So for those three reasons, I chose — and my partner concurred — that SRS was the course of action for me. Those might be good reasons for you, too, or they might not. SRS is just not the right course for every transgendered person. But, you know, that’s part of the excitement! Yet another advantage to being transgendered is that your choice of paths isn’t obvious. You don’t have the luxury of doing what everyone else does; your challenge is to discover the right path for you.
Posted in M-to-F surgery | 1 Comment »
17 January 2010 by kathleen.
All through our lives we act out various social roles: student, parent, woman, teenager, man, employee. What is the difference between behavior that arises from a social contract, and behavior that arises from qualities or characteristics of my essence?
I created this category for posts in which I consider aspects of behaviors and attitudes labeled “feminine” or “masculine”. Here are some examples of what I mean:
I like to cook. Does that desire arise from a feminine aspect of my essence? is cooking (as opposed to the position of professional chef) a gender role? a sex role? not a role at all?
After I cook, I like to clean up my kitchen. Is that an aspect of a role? is that attitude one that I might have absorbed from my mother, so that for me the tidying instinct is not role-based at all? or is cleaning a “feminine” characteristic?
I did not either father or mother any children. That condition arose from my own self-hatred and lack of self-esteem. Nurturing, I’ve heard, is supposed to be feminine. Are there no nurturing fathers? Is nurture a task or a role? Since I didn’t nurture a child, is my assertion of femininity bogus?
These are not trivial or silly questions for a transsexual. When I say “I am a man trapped in a woman’s body” or the reverse, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body“, what do I mean? How do I know?
If there were no homosexuality, then if I wanted to have sexual relations with a person of my own sex I would know I was in the “wrong” sex and that I should change; that is, sexual preference would indicate gender. But, alas, there are too many male-loving males who like being male, and too many female-loving females who like being female for sexual preference to be the deciding factor.
And so, when I put a post into the Sex and Gender Roles category, that’s what it will be about: when I assert that a behavior is masculine or feminine, am I speaking of roles or essence?
Posted in Sex & Gender Roles | 1 Comment »
16 January 2010 by kathleen.
Some years ago, I was talking with a woman co-worker, and in the the course of the conversation she said, “My preacher said that women are the weaker vessel. What do you think about that? We are the weaker vessel — don’t you agree?”
The phrase “weaker vessel” shows up in 1 Peter 3:7 (King James Version). I didn’t agree with this coworker then — decades before I was to become a woman myself — and I don’t agree with it now, though that does not mean that I reject everything Peter wrote.
If women appear weaker, the impression of weakness ignores the strong and resilient spirit that holds families together through emotional pain and physical hardship; ignores the internal toughness that drives a woman to care for her husband in spite of his abuse; ignores the sacrifices that countless mothers have made to watch their children grow and thrive.
Weaker vessel? What weaker vessel?
Thinner bones: yes, women’s bones are smaller, their skulls thinner. Smaller, less-dense muscles: yes, that too, unless a woman works very hard to develop them. The physical structure, though, is only a part of the whole organism. Is a willow sapling weaker than a mature oak? Yes, if you are measure the characteristics of tension, compression, and shear. But the willow will bend in a storm that may snap the oak or uproot it. The stronger tree is the one better suited to withstand the stresses applied to it. Generalizing from an abstraction of a stress to an abstraction of a tree may be tenuous, but as a metaphor I think it clarifies my question: how do you measure strong?
Are we transwomen “weaker vessels” because we reject the strength and aggressiveness that native testosterone gave us? Inviting weakness was not my purpose in going through surgery. I hope — I plan — to contribute to society as much or more now that I am a woman. That contribution won’t come through sizable muscles. All of us who have transitioned, though, even the unsuccessful, have demonstrated uncommon inner strength, not weakness.
Posted in General MtF topics | 1 Comment »