Labels

[Emily Aster]

Forgive me for spending so much time trying to label myself, but I like to have structure in my life and without being able to effectively label myself, it's just one more thing that's not quite right. I guess it's sort of an OCD thing.

Some of you know that I've been kind of back and forth to extreme ends of the spectrum with trying to determine where I fall. I've started to try to open my mind a bit to more possibilities lately, meaning today. I'm starting to see that I have two dysphorias that might not be as intertwined as I thought. I have a physical dysphoria and a gender dysphoria.

Physically, I am absolutely ready for a transition. No doubts there. I absolutely hate seeing a man in the mirror and have a definite need to see a woman there instead.

The problems I've been having are with feeling more feminine or masculine as the days progress. I think if I separate out gender dysphoria from physical, that I can start to see that I may be gender fluid. I could see myself learning to deal with my gender moving around a lot, but I can't get over the physical dysphoria.

This kind of worries me because it seems like there are still hoops to jump through. Even though the rules have relaxed a bit, I still feel like if I find that presenting as more fluid is who I am, that it will be an obstacle in the road towards correcting my physical dysphoria. Like if I'm not presenting female enough, I'll never be able to take care of that part of my dysphoria.

Thoughts?

[Keira]

This ^

You have just read my mind.

I'm having the same gender-fluid issues; I know I want to transition, I just don't feel 100% female 24/7. For this reason I keep doubting my own identity.

I know what you mean about labeling, I do the exact same thing. I've come out a few times under different labels; and now my parents just think I'm confused. But I'm not confused, I know how I feel but I can't label it.

Right now I feel somewhere between transexual/genderqueer/gender-fluid/androgyne. Maybe labels just don't suit some of us?

I also know what you mean regarding your dysphoria. I want to look and be treated as female, but my gender-fluid feelings betray my transitioning.

[Emily Aster]

Right now I feel somewhere between transexual/genderqueer/gender-fluid/androgyne. Maybe labels just don't suit some of us?

I kind of like this. Maybe my label is "beyond labeling".

[Lesley_Roberta]

Recently I have been starting to doubt my being dual minded.

I have begun to wonder, if some or all of my male mind was ever real. I am beginning to wonder, have I been female all along, in a male body, and just suffering from conditioning that suppressed my female mind?

Let's face it, you can't work with parts you don't have, and thus, the parts you do have, are what you have to work with. So maybe when I get horny, I am not getting horny as a male, I am just stuck using a male's set of parts to arrive at sexual satisfaction.

What I am getting at, is in the morning, maybe it isn't my male half wanting some time, maybe it's me, and I just don't have female parts to work with. I'm stuck using the parts I was given, and maybe it's not my fault if male parts seem to want to function in the morning. I don't seem to be quite the same person between the ears though, once I have managed to give what I think is my other self what they are wanting (sex).

But I have been learning to take over and own the day, to own the non sex portions of my routine. To make them mine.

When I look in the mirror, of course I see a male body. And I sure would rather not see a male. I have no idea what 'I' look like though. I suppose in a wig and makeup I might even laugh some. I sure wish I had the chance to 'see' me though.

But I feel like 'me' for the whole day, even though I don't normally retain much in the way of indicators. I at least continue to think like 'me'.

An old friend asked me in an email, so am I a gay woman or a straight woman? Interesting question to be honest.
If I didn't hate men so much, how would that effect me? I'm not homophobic, but I don't think of myself as homosexual. But what else could I be, if I consider myself a woman, and I only want to have sex with women?

[Barbara Ella]

These thoughts are ever present in my life.  At my age, the years necessary to transition just aren't there.  (66 now, just started this journey 17 months ago). How do i balance the dysphoria knowing that realistically, given age and family that going 24/7, or any type of augmentation are out of the question.  I think female, I see male.  How can this work?  I have found that HRT does take an edge off slightly in that my mind can now ignore the lessened male thoughts/feelings.  If I am just gender fluid, I have a dominant part that I can take solace in.  I just don't look at me much.

Barbara

[Lesley_Roberta]

Barb has the same problem I have. Age.

Presto and I am in a woman's body would be also presto I am in a 50 year old woman's body.

Not a 15 year old girls body or a 25 year old or a 35 year old or a 45 year old.

All those moments, and they will not be arriving for me. No first period, no first orgasm, no first kiss with the opposite gender at an age when it will still be special. No being a young mother, not even a middle aged woman. Heck I am past the whole mid life region entirely.

And thanks to my health, I am basically living the life of a female senior citizen to some extent. Well a senior at any rate. Most annoying and yet funny moment in recent time. I have A been mistaken for my mother's husband, and B enigmatically, I have had people twice offer to help me cross at the lights.

I can't reeeeeeeally see me buying and wearing hot pants, or very short mini skirts.
I don't really even like them though. I've gotten too old for all that.
I think I'd be kidding myself pretending a sexy bikini is ever to happen simply because it wouldn't look any better than on any other granny

I don't want to be stuck in an old man, but I suppose I am not in a hurry to be an old woman either. Drat I hate being old.

[Emily Aster]

I'm still kind of holding onto that mini skirt dream mentally, but I'm beyond that myself. I'm only about 38 (I stopped caring about numbers to age me and just round up these days), but 38 and overweight now and with a thyroid issue, it seems rather impossible to get rid of it. I'd even settle for dresses, but I don't feel like I look very good in them to other people, although I do like wearing them at home. I usually just go out in jeans.

I do seem to have the courage to experiment publicly, somewhat. I shot pool the other night with my hair shooting off in every direction. I looked like Pippy Longstocking with an extra pigtail in the center of my head in the style of There's Something About Mary. My friends kept telling me to fix it because it was bothering them, but I really didn't care. People must be afraid of offending others too cause it was only my friends giving me a hard time. If I can take that confidence with my hair and apply it to clothing, I'll be all set.

[Heather]

I can't reeeeeeeally see me buying and wearing hot pants, or very short mini skirts.
I don't really even like them though. I've gotten too old for all that.
I think I'd be kidding myself pretending a sexy bikini is ever to happen simply because it wouldn't look any better than on any other granny

I don't want to be stuck in an old man, but I suppose I am not in a hurry to be an old woman either. Drat I hate being old.

I think we all hate getting old but their is nothing we can do about that. I don't think your age has anything thing to do with wearing hot pants and mini skirts. I'm 33 and can't see myself wearing hot pants or mini skirts not only am I to old for that it's just not my kind of thing. I want look like an adult and them types of clothes or for teenagers or for women who cannot accept the fact they are no longer teenagers. And as far as a bikinis goes god no!!! no way no how.

[Erin]

I have the same issues too. I do not feel I am a woman 24/7. So much of the time I just do not think about it. When I do I think of myself a feminine.

I have had the hardest time seeing myself as anything but me. My labels may have changed over time but they keep getting more descriptive.

As for bikinis and miniskirts wouldn't that be nice? Well I guess my age is showing I know they will not work for me. Oh to me young again.

[suzifrommd]

All those moments, and they will not be arriving for me. No first period, no first orgasm, no first kiss with the opposite gender at an age when it will still be special. No being a young mother, not even a middle aged woman. Heck I am past the whole mid life region entirely.

Well, the first orgasm, I'm a year older than you are, and I had my first female orgasm last week. Worth waiting for.

I also bought a miniskirt. I'll probably be careful where I wear it - only in company that won't judge my clothing choices. But I WILL wear it.

I agree with you, I'd prefer to be a 25 year old woman to a 51 year old.

But I'm thrilled to be a woman at any age. It's how I was meant to live. Better late than never.

[Erin]

Well, the first orgasm, I'm a year older than you are, and I had my first female orgasm last week. Worth waiting for.

I also bought a miniskirt. I'll probably be careful where I wear it - only in company that won't judge my clothing choices. But I WILL wear it.

Oh Yeah you are an inspiration! Thank you for that. hehe.....

[spacial]

Say you are chronlogically 60 YO but you:

can 90 push ups, 10 chin ups, run a mile under 12 min, dahs 100 yards in less than 12 seconds.

Your sugar, cholesterol, weight, and blood preassure are normal; you still have all your teeth, and a headfull of hair

Youare still learning...a new language..taking new classes at the local college..dance..sings..teaches...


How old are you??


We in America love labels...and with the labels coem expectations...all phoney in my book...

But do you seriously think that people who can doo all that have any time left time enjoy any of it?

There was a time, in my early 30s, when I could do 50 pressups, but I had to practice every night to maintain it.

[Padma]

Coming back to the OP, I'm similar, in that my transition is all about my anatomy, because I am and always will be a very genderqueer woman (hence Womandrogyne) - I just have the wrong anatomy, and I'm sorting that out. I have had no problems within the system itself presenting as a more androgynous, dykey woman, and getting taken seriously - the only problems I've has are with überbinary and prejudiced trans women. I'd say: be yourself, as loudly and comfortably as possible - people know when you're being genuine.

[Lesley_Roberta]

I have a label, that I have had trouble with, since I could read. It goes back to perhaps the most defining part of my life.

I became totally obsessed with knowledge.

I hung out in libraries, I often avoided class as they were too slow moving. I skipped a lot of school during jr high to go surround myself in bookstores with history books. I spent most of high school in the library avoiding classes by reading the text books. Yes I know, plenty of kids hid in the library, and they were just plain hiding. Me, I ended up with a personal library that normally was able to point out all the errors in the current text books in my classes. I gained a dislike of reading old books that were factually challenged. I grew up in the era of the new science of plate tectonics and watched how it torn apart a lot of old beliefs. I grew up around space sciences exposing the universe to view. I know for instance how long man has been aware that the universe was made up of millions of galaxies made of millions of stars each.

Today Goggle has made it so everyone can 'think' they are so smart all because they can 'conveniently' find the answer to a question on Goggle and be able to reply with incredible speed and play the part of the oh so smart individual.

You should try that trick though while in the same room with me, and sipping a beer on the porch and no internet to help you out.

The thing is I CAN teach virtually any class in high school right now, no prep time, just walk into a classroom, no books nothing and teach an entire 40 minute class just for the heck of it. I have no credentials, I have never required them. I gave up the teacher dream when it became clear they wanted me to spend 6 expensive years in college proving I could teach so that I could be dumped in a grade 3 classroom to earn my first rung on the ladder. I wasn't that desperate to prove the point, that I can teach.

But I still have the label. And that label is the one they always place on the person that is smarter than everyone else. My fav show Sailor Moon had a girl in that role. Sailor Mercury, aka Ami Mizuno. She dreamed of being a doctor. She started the show being the girl no one ever socialized with. She was always in a text book. She plays the part of the brains of the group. Her powers are not flashy, not destructive, not glamorous looking. But she's the one that will have the answers.

I've gone through my entire life knowing I had the answers to just about anything. And people being people, they would rather listen to their own answers most of the time. Especially when they concern cherished beliefs. I frequently only get along with people, that simply agree with me and thus there is no conflict. I occasionally benefit from being in sync with the beliefs of those around me.


It's because of how I have gone through a great many years being shunned, that I suppose I have not had more trouble suddenly being Lesley Roberta, a girl, whom everyone thought as Leslie Robert, a boy. Frankly, I have had less trouble with gender issues, than I have had with having access to answers that no one wanted to hear. They say the truth is out there. It's a popular expression. But no one is going to thank you for pointing out most of it. Especially when it ruins their cherished notions, their security.

If I had to write on my label, how I often feel what I think of myself, I think 'bucket of icewater in the face' sums it up rather well.

If tomorrow I walked out my front door sporting evidence of breasts I had not had the day before, a nice head of hair, a great make up job, and an outfit to die for, maybe I wouldn't even look like the person that is assumed to live here enough they might not even recognize me. I am used to not being seen though. They always see 'him'. I don't think anyone even knows what I look like.
But I am pretty sure, that look would not be responded to even half as strongly, as my giving a 1 hour long lecture in a science classroom on a few of my own beliefs as supported by several decades of education.
Nope, I would not get any flak over having taught dressed like that. But, I am sure I'd have a great many angry parents complaining about what I was teaching.

I'm a big fan of the old film Inherit the Wind.

[Emily Aster]

It's kind of funny how things turn out. Your life is not that dissimilar from mine. I spent most of high school reading books at the library and book stores on particle physics, fractals, and infinity. I came home from school and studied chemistry for fun. I tutored college kids in calculus before I had even taken it in high school. I was on a first name basis with almost every NASA lab out there. I was really into astronomy and would write them on a daily basis. They used to get mad at me and tell me to go to the nearest lab instead, so that's the only one I never wrote to! They would send me free images (that weren't really free) just to shut me up. My room was a collage of images of galaxies. But people didn't shun me for it. They praised me for it, father aside of course.

So I get to the whole trans issue and I wonder why it's so hard to nail this down when all that was so easy. I thought it was because I was too analytical and I can't nail down a moving target. I figure things out, then I start analyzing in the opposite direction to determine if what I figured out is really true. Rinse and repeat. But seeing that you are just as analytical and found it easy to nail down, now I feel like there's supposed to be another piece of the puzzle and someone took it off the table when I wasn't looking. It definitely helped to break things down into physical and gender for me, but that gender aspect still messes my day up. Maybe it's because I've specialized in science and this is more social. Maybe it's time to learn a new trade in order to understand myself.

[Keira]

Well it appears that I was wrong...I'm not the only self-teaching bibliophile here!

I'm mostly into Philosophy, Sociology, Comparative Religion, and Evolution. Although, I am starting to read some books on physics. I also enjoy literature, particularly poetry and stories with deep themes (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Hunger Games, etc.).

Oddly enough, it's still difficult for me to accept that I am trans. It's like the more intelligent a person is, the more they are doubtful. It's sort of like the puzzle piece that completes the puzzle is missing from my life. When I found the piece and put it in place, I can't bear to look at the picture that it has completed/revealed.

I've been figuring myself out for almost 7 months...and I'm still not quite done with my doubts.

-Sky

[Lesley_Roberta]

Emily, it looks like we would get along

Yeah, I was nothing but factoids and specifics.

Gender issues, it is just not that easy is it. And the people we rely on, well I don't think too kindly of the field of psychiatry when it comes to calling it a 'science'. Granted it is more science than economics is. But the people I have met so far, they can be grouped as follows 1. people with a degree and no real talent and likely of little use half the time and 2. people with real talent, who never really needed the degree to be of any use to a person with a problem that isn't so easy to quantify from a text book, because they can actually 'see' into a person and help them.

I have been talking with a woman now for several years (my wife and I have been seeing her more correctly). I don't know what her formal training is, or what credentials she possesses (never asked), but she has more capacity than any of the psychiatrists I have experienced. Any of the mess that is my life, that has been cleaned up, has been thanks to her skill, not anyone else that's for sure.

[Lesley_Roberta]

Sky Blue. The more we know, the more we know how little we know

The biggest hell I face, is in knowing too much.

I can give you a good debate on why religion is just what it is, but at the same time, I am also aware that for all the answers it possesses, science sometimes just can't provide the really powerful ones. It can tell us why some of our notions are just archaic badly presented ideas coming from a time when too little was actually known. But, when those that cherish those notions counter with, ok so prove me wrong, well the best we can usually do is present them with the facts as they are, and let them see, that neither of us have the answer.

The trick is to accept that neither of us have the answer, and to realize you can't stop looking.

I can tell you a dozen reasons for how we might have gotten here, but I can't tell you WHY we are here.

Warning signals should be sounding anytime someone claims to know though.

[Lesley_Roberta]

Looking at myself in the mirror and saying 'I am a woman' I wish I had grown up in pretty dresses played with dolls and had been scolded for acting like a tomboy, it is not easy to come to terms with.

And no amount of previous learning is helping me much.

I analyze instinctively. I am used to tearing a problem to pieces. I am also a wargamer, I am used to managing vast sums of details and playing the equal of scores of chess games in my head at the same time. Data management is nothing to me.

It hasn't helped much. Being transgender is in the realm of the metaphysical, the intangible, it deal with the self, the soul, the mind, the final frontier, because contrary to the show Star Trek, it isn't out in space.

But this form of mental quandary is not new to me. I spent from 1994 to 2000 trying to come to grips with fybromyalgia. This condition will traumatize you in ways you won't see easily. If you have been injured and you lose your sight or the use of a limb people will see that and not find it hard to accept why you might be challenged in some tasks. Fybromyalgia didn't cost me a sense, or a specific portion of my anatomy. It took away 60% of my energy level, and left me with an inadequate capacity to do anything 'routine'. It makes it so any form of physical activity can and usually does lead to considerable pain. It's random, it is non location specific, it impacts the nervous system. It is not really visible.
I went for 3 years telling myself I was a &*@#$ lazy deadbeat. I was not willing to just accept I had this kooky as then unknown 'condition'. I finally had to accept that something was doing it though. I spent the rest of the 90s basically beating myself up over it. I wouldn't let myself enjoy anything. I hadn't earned the right to all the 'spare free time'.

Not wanting to offend, but to be honest, coping with becoming a woman inside of a male body is a walk in the park after dealing with fybromyalgia. Being thought of as gay, it hurts a lot less than 'lazy good for nothing leech'. But it isn't easy all the same. Sure no picnic when you consider I am dealing with being 50, being disabled with a weird invisible condition, and wanting to be a woman. All at the same time. It doesn't help that fybromyalgia is considered a 'woman's illness' primarily because men suffer from a problem called 'macho male pride'. They would never admit to having it routinely.

I have agonized over suicide more than a few times. I am not sure there was ever a problem worrying if I would. Surely if I was prone to doing so, I sure as hell would have done so a long time ago. I've been given such a bounty of reasons already. I often ponder if I can relate to pain accurately any more. I am in pain so often, I am not sure what an absence of pain even feels like.

Fybromyalgia, it can cause me pain from having sex, from sitting too long, standing too long, walking too long, using my hands too long, failing to use my hands too long. I can't sit in an office because I can't sit longer than 20 minutes. I can't walk more than a block without my cane. I can't stand at a counter longer than 15 minutes. If I use a screwdriver for almost any ordinary task it is a risk of a day's pain tomorrow. I even have trouble reading a book or watching TV.

About the only thing that has survived intact over my 50 years, is my mind. Now I find I can barely focus my thinking. Am I a man that is in here or a woman? Was there ever a man in here? Why am I having trouble relating to all that I have been for years? I actually find my science knowledge more prone to making me agitated. I find my history knowledge has become a heavy weight I wish I could take off.

[peky]

I have a label, that I have had trouble with, since I could read. It goes back to perhaps the most defining part of my life.

I became totally obsessed with knowledge.

I hung out in libraries, I often avoided class as they were too slow moving. I skipped a lot of school during jr high to go surround myself in bookstores with history books. I spent most of high school in the library avoiding classes by reading the text books. Yes I know, plenty of kids hid in the library, and they were just plain hiding. Me, I ended up with a personal library that normally was able to point out all the errors in the current text books in my classes. I gained a dislike of reading old books that were factually challenged. I grew up in the era of the new science of plate tectonics and watched how it torn apart a lot of old beliefs. I grew up around space sciences exposing the universe to view. I know for instance how long man has been aware that the universe was made up of millions of galaxies made of millions of stars each.

Today Goggle has made it so everyone can 'think' they are so smart all because they can 'conveniently' find the answer to a question on Goggle and be able to reply with incredible speed and play the part of the oh so smart individual.

You should try that trick though while in the same room with me, and sipping a beer on the porch and no internet to help you out.

The thing is I CAN teach virtually any class in high school right now, no prep time, just walk into a classroom, no books nothing and teach an entire 40 minute class just for the heck of it. I have no credentials, I have never required them. I gave up the teacher dream when it became clear they wanted me to spend 6 expensive years in college proving I could teach so that I could be dumped in a grade 3 classroom to earn my first rung on the ladder. I wasn't that desperate to prove the point, that I can teach.

But I still have the label. And that label is the one they always place on the person that is smarter than everyone else. My fav show Sailor Moon had a girl in that role. Sailor Mercury, aka Ami Mizuno. She dreamed of being a doctor. She started the show being the girl no one ever socialized with. She was always in a text book. She plays the part of the brains of the group. Her powers are not flashy, not destructive, not glamorous looking. But she's the one that will have the answers.

I've gone through my entire life knowing I had the answers to just about anything. And people being people, they would rather listen to their own answers most of the time. Especially when they concern cherished beliefs. I frequently only get along with people, that simply agree with me and thus there is no conflict. I occasionally benefit from being in sync with the beliefs of those around me.


It's because of how I have gone through a great many years being shunned, that I suppose I have not had more trouble suddenly being Lesley Roberta, a girl, whom everyone thought as Leslie Robert, a boy. Frankly, I have had less trouble with gender issues, than I have had with having access to answers that no one wanted to hear. They say the truth is out there. It's a popular expression. But no one is going to thank you for pointing out most of it. Especially when it ruins their cherished notions, their security.

If I had to write on my label, how I often feel what I think of myself, I think 'bucket of icewater in the face' sums it up rather well.

If tomorrow I walked out my front door sporting evidence of breasts I had not had the day before, a nice head of hair, a great make up job, and an outfit to die for, maybe I wouldn't even look like the person that is assumed to live here enough they might not even recognize me. I am used to not being seen though. They always see 'him'. I don't think anyone even knows what I look like.
But I am pretty sure, that look would not be responded to even half as strongly, as my giving a 1 hour long lecture in a science classroom on a few of my own beliefs as supported by several decades of education.
Nope, I would not get any flak over having taught dressed like that. But, I am sure I'd have a great many angry parents complaining about what I was teaching.

I'm a big fan of the old film Inherit the Wind.

hum...maybe is a common thread to all of us GNC folks...that is that we have a SI and thus always hoarding knowledge


I am about to star my 4th advance degree and have a dozen of trade and hobby certificates...LOL