Quote from: rachl on August 14, 2012, 08:40:12 AM
This doesn't accord with self-reports of some TS women who began as cross dressers, sometimes for many years. They say, "I was a cross dresser, then I realized that I'm a trans woman," or some such. They actively identify their past selves as having been cross dressers, not "TS all along," as you suggest. ...careful not to project theory onto experience too hastily.
I think Berkley was seeing the deeper truth.
When I was young my mother commented that I talked and acted like, "a little queer". She told me not to talk or act like that because people would think I was "a little ->-bleeped-<-got". Her words, not mine. She put the fear in my mind that I had to conform to expectations in order to be accepted so at the tender age of maybe seven, eight or nine... I started trying to talk and act in ways what would appeal to my mother and my father. Dad was always trying to get me to hold my shoulders up so I would look more masculine. I was put back a year (second grade) and the reason was that I needed to catch up with the other boys physically...
Also the fear of Hell fire was put into me, that if I didn't conform to these expectations that I would spend eternity in Hell, suffering eternal torture and all this was done by the people who were supposed to love me more than anyone else. My protectors and providers, my parents. And I the first born didn't have the experiences of an older sibling to refer to so it all struck me as a absolutely necessary reality, life or death. And why would my parents lie to me or steer me wrong, that thought was unfathomable.
What happened after a few years was that I came to believe that I was a heterosexual male. I was never happy, I was miserable, reckless and suicidal, never a moment of happiness. I felt like a shadow, an observer. I felt like I didn't have a body, I was just two eyes looking out at the world seeing other people having lives.
But I believed I was a heterosexual male. I had become afraid of gay men. I was so afraid of becoming one of them that I couldn't even entertain the idea that I could ever be one of them, instead I experienced fear which turned to anger and hatred. I never acted on my feelings but my head was a very unhappy place.
I didn't believe that transition was possible for me. I was too old, too masculine. My hands were too big. No one would ever accept me. my family would disown me. Eventually I began to explore myself. Who was I really? All this praying and never an answer to my prayers. Obviously god despised me. Time for me to despise god. I set about not believing in god. It gave me liberty to explore my needs. But I honestly believed that transition would be impossible and for a time I thought maybe I could be a "->-bleeped-<-" (I had recently learned about them on the Internet having bought my first computer). Then eventually I began going to gender support meetings and I identified (reluctantly) as a crossdresser because I believed I was limited to that, being I would never succeed at transition.
But I was wrong and I wasted a lot of years that could have been happy and productive. Life managed to become so uncomfortable and meaningless, joyless that I was forced to transition. The only alternative was to die. Was I ever really a crossdresser or a ->-bleeped-<-? Depends on how you look at it. Still does. When people are told a story that I am a woman who used to be a man they believe that story, they believe that I am a man who wants to be a woman. It doesn't matter that I have been living as a female since 2005. All of that becomes invisible to them. They believe that the kit car is really a VW bug and not a Ferrari because they will never understand that being a woman is a verb. A woman is not an object or a thing. A woman is a being. Being a woman is all about the being. It doesn't matter if you were a possum or a rock lobster in your previous incarnation. Except it does matter to non-trans people and some trans people and it always will. Because non-trans people don't believe in magic because like Axelle likes to say, "People can't understand what they have never experienced."
If you need to transition to have a life quit stalling, get it over with and get on with the being. And own your womanhood or manhood. Don't spend your life seeking acceptance because no one is worthy enough to give it to you. You have to cultivate acceptance within yourself. You CANNOT get it from someone else, not REAL acceptance. You will never even know what acceptance really is until you learn to accept yourself so how could someone possibly give it to you, you wouldn't even recognize it if you never experienced it before (within yourself).
Transition isn't a secret, it isn't a lie. It's about owning yourself. When you seek acceptance other people own you. When you live your life with a secret it's because you are allowing yourself to be owned by the consciences of everyone else except yourself. When you accept yourself you realize that the secret is that you have always been male or female. Assuming you are a transsexual in my own understanding of the definition. But a familiar environment will never allow you to achieve success because it will depend upon the ability of others to accept you and it will prevent you from ever experiencing real acceptance. It will become a drug and you will become the addict, always needing a new fix. Always disappointed with the high and at the end of the day you will be destitute, trying to figure out how to get your next fix. Thinking to yourself that maybe that next fix will be the one that finally makes everything right.
Acceptance is a lie. But you can learn to accept yourself through being. Being is an action. Take action. Until you actually accept yourself "acceptance" will always be a substitute, a drug, a fix. You won't know acceptance but someone will sell you something they call "acceptance" and you will buy it, because you won't know any better. How could you? What they are really selling you is the most destructive and addictive drug known to man, one that turns people into empty shells, zombies... addicts. Don't fall for it.
Go through that gate, the one that others are too afraid to enter and you will find yourself. Learn to base your life on truth, on that foundation within yourself that you have always been male or female. Right now it may be hidden in the sand but once you begin building upon it you will always know where it is and that it is down there beneath everything. Let it be your support. Let it be the basis of everything you create in life. No one else will ever see your foundation because it is buried in the earth. Don't expect them to see it or believe in it. Like some dude said eons ago, "They will know you not by your words but by your actions." The truth is that words, even the most eloquent words will undo everything you work for and turn your life into a "story", a fable. If you want to be 'it' (if you want a life) you will only ever experience any success by being 'it', the life you seek. Narratives that tell a different story than that of being what you really are will always betray you. Unless you are comfortable with people knowing that you are someone who eternally wants to be. And wanting to be is so nostalgic and you can romance it to the grave. But being will actually allow you to have a life. Assuming that a life is what you need, one where you can be who you really are in a binary existence. Because in the shared-reality that we call the human experience a woman can be masculine and a man can be feminine but a man can never become a woman. Unless you realize (by being) and experience that you have always been this thing that you seek to become, you will NEVER attain it. Realize that it is already within you and learn to make it real. You can't do that with words or statements or coming out letters or documentaries or YouTube channels.
