Hi to everyone on this discussion board! I've been lurking for a while here, since I really love the wealth of information and sense of mostly positive community I've observed so far, and reading the goings-on here has helped me a great deal with reminding myself that I'm not alone in this.
I consider myself bi-gender, as I have, from as long as I can remember, felt that there were two doors to identity inside me, so to speak--one for the male I had been assigned at birth, and one for the girl inside me I've had to suppress for most of my life. I do distinctly feel that, if I had been able to choose, I would have preferred being assigned female at birth, but what tends to happen with me is that I "switch" daily from one gender to the other. Because I identify much more as female, however, and because I grew up in a largely homophobic Anglophone Caribbean island, I have had to keep this side of myself secret for quite some time to protect myself--and, to some degree, to protect my parents, as well. The word "transgender" is virtually unknown where I live, unfortunately, and the few times it has come up in local news it has always been lumped together with homosexuality as a "deviant" "un-Christian" behaviour that must be destroyed. There is a violence to the rhetoric at home that unnerves me and has forced me to be quiet about this for so long, though I have wished I could simply show everyone the girl in me for so long, since I can't see who I would be harming by doing so.
But recently--I'm in my mid-twenties--I began opening up to a few people about my gender identity, told my parents (which has not gone so well, but could have gone worse), found a gender counsellor, and have begun presenting as female when not at home almost every evening after teaching/school (since I still present, not entirely by choice, as male when I teach or go to university classes); I have begun going to stores, to makeup counters in the mall, etc. presenting as female, and I've felt so, so much happier ever since. Because I am in grad school in a relatively liberal patch of Florida (Tallahassee), I have a lot more freedom to present as I feel happy than I do in the Caribbean. I am so much happier presenting as female, indeed, that I have begun to wonder if my identifying as bi-gender is even fully accurate, but I know what I want more than anything is the freedom to be me. I am pre-HRT.
My grad work is in English lit and creative writing/fiction.
I look forward to meeting everyone here and contributing as best as I can.
Gabrielle/Gabby
