Am I the only one?

[Trixie]

I relinquish my crown as Queen of Self Denial and First Lady of Delayed Gratification to you.

Without the occasional cross-dressing I allowed myself all my life, I don't know how I might have gotten by. No matter how hard I wanted to be "Normal", especially in the aftermath of my life turning to crap as a result of me being trans, I not once did a purge. The closest ever is just packing stuff away which lasted only a few months.

I cannot imagine anything harder than "Just a dude"

Well... that's not very encouraging.  It's really hard for me too. I can't do it though. Cross dressing would result in exactly the same problems that coming out and transitioning would. If I were to do it, I'd want to go all the way. I'm not doing it because I will not be able to handle rejection by family and society, and being an outcast. Maybe that doesn't happen for others, but it would happen to me.

Reading your posts and seeing the different levels dysphoria that exist gave me an epiphony of sorts. I had never thought to break gender into its two parts and then  consider each on its own. Doing so allows me to relate each to my always comforting bell shaped curve.  I wonder,  if the parts of gender could be quantified, it would be possible to derermine how much opposition an average person could tolerate?  As much as giving numerical gender ratings for body and soul is impossible,  the perspective works for my concrete thinking brain.  Is it reasonable to ignore physical gender and then think of mental gender like a scale with very feminine on one end, and very masculine on the other? Or is this an over simplification that doesn't  work in the real world?

I don't know... it bothers to ever think of myself as being less female than others, though I guess I am...

[Constance]

Trixie,

Family stuff is not easy. I wish I had some guidance to offer on that score, but I don't. What I did was to tell my family I was transitioning and that I had picked out a new first and middle name. I stopped there to see their reactions. If they had rejected me, I would have chosen a new last name, too.

As to  whether or not you are less than female, I'll say this: you are how you identify. It could be argued, for instance, that I am not female as I've not yet had any surgeries. At present, I identify as a male-bodied woman. That's what works for me at this time. Prior to pursuing transition, I pretty much kept things to myself and identified as androgyne or a non-binary gender variant or genderqueer person. Did that mean I was less than male or less than female? I don't know, as I identified as something that was both and neither. In the long run, that didn't work for me, and these days I'm a somewhat genderqueer MTF.

[Constance]

Is it reasonable to ignore physical gender and then think of mental gender like a scale with very feminine on one end, and very masculine on the other? Or is this an over simplification that doesn't  work in the real world?

I don't think this is an oversimplification. I think you'll find that there are others here at Susans, primarily in the Androgyne boards I think, who will also assert that gender is much broader than one or the other.

Last summer, my daughter and I attended a workshop on Raising Gender Variant Children that was hosted at my church and presented by a group called Gender Spectrum. My daughter and I found the presentation fascinating, as it was something we could both relate to. True, at that point I thought of myself as MTF, but I've kept a certain amount of queerness to my gender. My daughter identifies as a cisgender genderqueer woman.

[JoanneB]

Cross-dressing or other techniques to ease the dysphoria can be a very private experience. For 30+ years I needed the occasional, perhaps once a month, "escape". To see myself as I felt I should have been. To spend a few hours behind closed doors with blackout curtains on the windows for the neighbors prying eyes, was sort of good enough. At first my wife would spend the day shopping. Over time she started hanging around the house instead.

I cannot see how total self-denial is better than a little self indulgence. The dysphoria will always be there. It never goes away. You can distract and deny yourself, self medicate with drugs or alcohol, or any number of other things to not dwell on it. Yet, when your head hits the pillow at night, it will be there to say good-night. Eventually the pain of having to deny a significant portion of your being will eat away at you. You can wind up eventually living a joyless life, as I had. Worse, angry; as I saw first hand during Senate testimony for Maryland's TG rights bill last month from a few "Cured" individuals that spoke in opposition.

The "All in or all out" Black & White thinking prevents one from seeing all the colors of a solution around them. I had major bout with that mindset a month or so ago when I realized that the reason I had a major "WTF am I doing?" meltdown, was in response to feeling with absolute certainty that I can pass and get by in the real world. Oh Crap! No excuse not to go full-time and the works, right? No more life long excuse of "I'll never pass. I'll just be laughed at and ridiculed". Easy solution, back to total denial of my fem self, followed by a host of other bad self-destructive behaviors.

Three months of crap because of Black & White thinking. Up until then I was joyous being able to be me the few days I could each week. Why change anything? I don't Need to transition. Transition or suicide are not the only viable options for me. I've been doing fine. As a matter of fact, transition would take away the top two things in my life that give it meaning, my wife and my work.