You are currently browsing the GenderBlog weblog archives for November, 2010.
29 November 2010 by kathleen.
I know it seems impossible to you that you could pass as a woman: you’re too big; you’re losing your hair; you need to loose weight; your feet are too big; blah…. blah…. blah.
Society doesn’t want you to know how easy it is to pass as a woman. It takes attention for a while, but you can learn what is expected of women in our society. When you do what is expected, you can pass, regardless of your height or size.
Instead, we make it hard. Without full awareness, we clutch at the life we have lived from birth, even as we assert our desire to grasp another life instead. It is hard to let go of being male. I know it’s hard, and I see transwomen living with male behaviors as they stumblingly act out some vision of femininity: they do what they themselves expect instead of what others expect.
The biggest giveaway is for a transwoman to insist that she must be a woman on her terms — everyone else has to change and to stop laughing at how she acts out her fantasy of womanhood. I am thinking of
We invite others to notice us when we present visual elements and behaviors that are not congruent to other women around us: we don’t fit others’ expectations. If you choose to thumb your nose at others’ expectations, and they see you as a threat — they will act appropriately.
Posted in Passing | 4 Comments »
27 November 2010 by kathleen.
I have written Parts 1 through 4 already about things to do — and things not to do — if you want to stay married through and after transition and surgery. Here is another: don’t continue to exercise husband’s prerogatives.
Sex on demand is one of many husband’s prerogatives; others are the television channel, time and content of dinner, beverages. Of course, how you’ve worked out sex over the course of your marriage is personal. If you are still expecting, or even insisting on, sex when you want it despite what I said in Part 3 you need to do some reflecting. If you’ve been the sort of husband to call out, “Bring me another beer, will you!”, you really need to think about what you’re doing because that behavior will not fly when you’re a woman.
Then again, maybe it is appropriate: some of us under the transgender umbrella never desire to become women. Some of us are living through autogynephilia; that is, we may be sexually aroused by the thought or image of us as a woman. There is no judgment here. If that is where you are, it’s OK. Your wife, however, may feel discounted and diminished if your interest in things feminine goes no further than sex, because she may take it to mean that her sexual performance is unsatisfactory.
If you do not have any desire to actually live as a woman — if you only like to fantasize about it — then you need to reassure her frequently:
If you really are making plans to transition, then if you are to stay married your relationship can become a partnership of equals. For your own capacity to pass, you must also get into the soul of being a woman in the society in which you live. In the United States in 2010, that means sharing both privilege and responsibility with the person to whom you are still married.
Posted in Being/staying married, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »
25 November 2010 by kathleen.
Today, November 25, 2010, is a United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. It is also the start of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, which ends December 10 with Human Rights Day.
As important as the Transgender Day of Remembrance is, born-women are murdered, raped, assaulted, and mutilated in astonishing numbers. Their transgression: being women! They are not murdered for looking like women; they are not assaulted for wanting to be women — no: their only crime is being women.
They are doing nothing scary, nothing threatening. They are just going about the business of being wives, daughters, lovers, and mothers. For that they are subject to merciless assault.
When women around the world are no longer subject to inexcusable violence, neither will be we who are transgendered. Please support the elimination of violence against women any way you can.
Posted in General FtM topics, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »
24 November 2010 by kathleen.
Back 10 years — 15 years — 20 years or more — before my transition, I used to fantasize about no longer having male genitalia. Even as I fantasized, I realized how ironic the situation was: thinking about not having a penis caused pleasure in it. I guess this is Autogynephilia or something like it. My drive, though, was not to have female genitals, but simply to get rid of the male genitals I had.
It is interesting to me that after I began estrogen, I had somewhat reduced physical pleasure, but significantly increased psychological pleasure. Concurrently, I lost interest in fantasy stories about crossdressing, forced-feminization, bondage, and related themes. Until then, I used to spend many hours each week reading stories such as those on the TG story sites (like TG Fiction).
Today, three years after transition, I have virtually no vagina because of the prostate cancer I had. My surgeon sculpted beautiful labia and a functional clitoris which is pleasurable from time to time, but if I had gone for surgery with the intent of increasing physical pleasure I would be deeply disappointed by now.
Instead, it is the experience of being my Kathleen-self that gives me the most pleasure and satisfaction day to day. By that I mean: I am having fun being who I am, expressing talents that were suppressed since childhood, feeling emotions I was never permitted to feel before, establishing relationships that were formerly impossible. Better yet, the chronic depression of my youth and middle age has not returned.
Posted in AutoBiog | 1 Comment »
21 November 2010 by kathleen.
There used to be a little quiz circulating among crossdressers and the transgender community: If there were a pill that would make your need to crossdress go away, would you take it? Would you take a pill if if could make you “normal”?
In the early 1980’s I began attending group therapy sessions with a non-traditional therapist and hypnotist. He did a lot of marriage counseling and smoking cessation, but he also had a general-purpose therapy group, too. After a few months, he revealed that he didn’t think there was any such thing as “transgender” and, he said, the established experts asserted it was incurable. He implied very clearly that he didn’t agree with that position. I gathered he intended to demonstrate that the experts were full of s–t.
Over the next 7-8 years I gradually absorbed “the pill” rather than swallowing it whole and all at once. The therapist had been very effective at teaching control of thoughts and emotions, so effective that by the time I stopped attending the group in the early 1990’s, I was adept at anesthetizing myself. I did it so well that I didn’t realize how depressed I was. I had also absorbed some mental, non-theistic-prayer techniques and began to apply them to hastening my death.
By the late ’90’s, I was convinced that
In the 10 years I struggled to die, I succeeded in acquiring prostate cancer — at age 53, unusually young. I chose surgical removal of the prostate. My depression at the time was so deep that as they wheeled me into the operating room, I continued to pray that I would not wake up after the prostatectomy.
I write this now to illustrate the range of opinions with which I have experienced my transgender. I have not always accepted transgender at face value. I lived in an emotional straitjacket for over 20 years as I struggled to deny the validity of my feelings and the truth of my essence.
Actually, it was acupuncture that broke my depression. In 2002 I sought treatment for persistent back pain. After 8-10 sessions I realized that my back still hurt, but I now felt so good that I no longer cared about the pain. That awareness led me to realize the depth of the depression in which I had been living, and was the beginning of climbing out of those depths. Several years later I made the breakthrough to Jesus Christ that I mentioned in this post.
I write this today so you will know that my transgender is not unexamined, that I came to accept my own nature only after protracted denial.
Posted in AutoBiog, Prostate cancer & SRS | 1 Comment »
19 November 2010 by kathleen.
We transgendered have a day of remembrance: November 20.
On that day we remember our defeats, just as the Serbian people do when they celebrate their defeat at the Battle of Kosovo June 15, 1389.
I salute Ethan St. Pierre’s Transgender Day of Remembrance. His work on this event — 12 years worth of work — is a valuable asset to transgendered people around the world, and to societies around the world, too.
But I have to ask: when will we have a day of celebration? When will we celebrate the successes of transmen and transwomen, instead of commemorating their deaths? Hearing about transmen and transwomen being brutally murdered: does this give anyone hope that It Gets Better?
Instead of holding up these images of death, how can we speak a message of hope to ourselves and to despondent transgender teens and young adults?
Posted in General FtM topics, General MtF topics | 4 Comments »
17 November 2010 by kathleen.
I was intrigued by the blog post Why? at Salad Bingo — intrigued but ultimately puzzled. No one has asked me any of the questions Diana has encountered.
If someone were to ask me, “Why did you want to be a woman?” I can’t think of a better answer than, “Because.” By that I mean: it’s none of their business.
I could ask a skydiver, “Why?” I could ask a marathon runner, “Why?” I could ask a competitive weight-lifter, “Why?” I don’t understand any of these behaviors (and a whole lot more!), but my questions would be impertinent, irrelevant, and just plain none of my business.
I do have reasons why, being transgendered, I chose surgery, but there are no reasons why I am transgendered. I used to ask “why”, and I made up all kinds of unsatisfying answers. I’ve heard other people make up even more creative reasons “why” than I was able to make up for myself.
The day I accepted that God had a reason for making me transgendered is the day I stopped asking “why,” or answering impertinent questions about it. By the way, don’t ask me what God’s reason was: it’s none of my business. Week by week I discover new gifts and interests that living life in my chosen gender reveals to me. And each new discovery is another piece of the answer to “Why?”
Posted in God and Transsexuals, General MtF topics | 2 Comments »
15 November 2010 by kathleen.
I heard today about a report issued by the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) containing recommendations for policies and best practices regarding transgendered athletes in high school and college. The report is the first to address transgendered student athletes, and it provides comprehensive model policies.
The report is entitled On the Team: Equal Opportunity for Transgender Student Athletes, and is a free download in PDF format.
This document can be valuable in framing issues for discussion with school administrators, as well as in drafting policies at the local level. If you are involved with high school or college education, if you are a transgendered student, or if you have a transgendered child, please read this report.
Posted in General FtM topics, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »
13 November 2010 by kathleen.
Every once in a while, you may come across an article or a blog post that describes transgender as a “lifestyle”. Being transgendered, I can make some lifestyle choices, the same as any cis-gendered person can. But transgender itself — the state of having one’s gender be the transgender — that is not a lifestyle, nor is gay or lesbian a lifestyle. Don’t let anyone tell you it is.
Lifestyles are choices, e.g., barhopping versus attending the opera or symphony — those are choices. Or vacationing in the winter at ski resorts versus in the summer in the Caribbean. Or camping versus taking a cruise. Or even having children or not. Those are lifestyle choices.
Trangender is being; it is not lifestyle; it is not a choice. Being transgender is no more choice than being Asian, African-American, or Caucasian.
There are some who think that gays choose to be gay, they way they might choose a white shirt instead of a tan shirt. Or that lesbians choose female partners the way they might choose one pair of shoes over another. Or that you and I choose our transgender the way we might choose which television program to watch tonight.
Being the way we are, we can choose a suicidal lifestyle, or an alcohol-abuse lifestyle; far too many of us who are transgendered do choose those lifestyles. A fundamental choice — not a lifestyle choice — is to hide your nature, or to express it. One or another lifestyle choice may occur after that choice, but whether you go to the opera as your birth gender or your chosen gender is not a lifestyle choice: it is a choice to be authentically yourself or not.
Posted in General FtM topics, General MtF topics | 2 Comments »
11 November 2010 by kathleen.
There are transgendered persons who are serving, and who have served, in the Armed Forces of the United States, in spite of the blundering Don’t ask, don’t tell policy.
I thank you for your service to our country. I acknowledge your determination to be the best man you could be, even when you knew inside that man was the wrong term for you. Human beings of all ages, genders, and stations in life exhibit amazing dedication and discipline in the face of societal opposition.
Honor yourself for your persistence, dedication, and love. If you have not yet done so, please plan to experience your own essence in the time left to you on this earth.
Posted in General MtF topics | 1 Comment »