Was your life really 'Living a Lie'?

[LizMarie]

Hi LizMarie,

SBC = Southern Baptist Convention right? I must say you are a trooper.  I think my coming out would be hard, but Texas, SBC, wow that's sounds like a tough slog.    Do you live in the Austin area?  I hear it's a little more friendly to transgender people.

As for people being rational, my father would tell me as a kid never to expect more than 10% of the population to be rational.

Take care,
Paige

Houston, and I work in the IT side of oil and gas, which is actually amazingly supportive. In fact, I just took a Code of Conduct refresher today and my company lives by this paragraph:

Discriminating against or harassing a co-worker based on race, religion, color, sex, national origin, age, pregnancy, citizenship, disability, marital or familial status, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, size, gender identity, physical appearance, HIV status, ancestry, genetic predisposition, or family responsibilities is prohibited and may violate state or federal law.

I've heard of people dismissed for telling racist jokes or behaving in a sexist manner. No one I've known personally, but apparently it has happened rarely over the years. But management here has a zero tolerance policy for disruptive workplace behavior here. When I asked HR how they would handle another woman being uncomfortable with me in the restroom (it has not happened to the best of my knowledge), she said that she'd tell them the same thing as if they were uncomfortable with a person of color in the restroom - get over it or find another restroom. And my HR rep is black, so that made the statement all the more amusing and bonding. (She and I get along great so far!)

The major cities are not too bad inside the urban areas. Houston actually has a longstanding transgender community that goes clear back to the 1970s at least. Living "inside the loop" is far more liberal and forgiving territory than living "outside the loop" in the suburbs, which are predominantly white, protestant, and mostly SBC. But as I've said in another thread, most of these haters and deniers don't even know there are trans people (and particularly transwomen which seems to be the biggest sticking point) all around them every day. One very cute and young trans woman relayed coming out in a bar to a guy who was hitting on her and making homophobic and transphobic remarks through the evening. She didn't like him so she told him she was trans and he refused to believe it, insisting she was just saying that to get rid of him.

So the cognitive dissonance and the stereotypes can be very ingrained, and not impacted by rationality at all.

[Paige]

Houston, and I work in the IT side of oil and gas, which is actually amazingly supportive. In fact, I just took a Code of Conduct refresher today and my company lives by this paragraph:

I've heard of people dismissed for telling racist jokes or behaving in a sexist manner. No one I've known personally, but apparently it has happened rarely over the years. But management here has a zero tolerance policy for disruptive workplace behavior here. When I asked HR how they would handle another woman being uncomfortable with me in the restroom (it has not happened to the best of my knowledge), she said that she'd tell them the same thing as if they were uncomfortable with a person of color in the restroom - get over it or find another restroom. And my HR rep is black, so that made the statement all the more amusing and bonding. (She and I get along great so far!)

The major cities are not too bad inside the urban areas. Houston actually has a longstanding transgender community that goes clear back to the 1970s at least. Living "inside the loop" is far more liberal and forgiving territory than living "outside the loop" in the suburbs, which are predominantly white, protestant, and mostly SBC. But as I've said in another thread, most of these haters and deniers don't even know there are trans people (and particularly transwomen which seems to be the biggest sticking point) all around them every day. One very cute and young trans woman relayed coming out in a bar to a guy who was hitting on her and making homophobic and transphobic remarks through the evening. She didn't like him so she told him she was trans and he refused to believe it, insisting she was just saying that to get rid of him.

So the cognitive dissonance and the stereotypes can be very ingrained, and not impacted by rationality at all.

Thanks for educating me about Texas.  It's good to know that there are some safe places there. I'm glad things are working out for you in Houston.

Take care,
Paige

[viktor_tokyo]

Since discovering that I'm trans, I feel like society, culture, and science has been lying to me all these years! They tricked me good thinking I was a woman and a lesbian even though it didn't feel right.

[PinkCloud]

I never lied to myself. I was simply ignorant, and steamrolled over my feelings for so long that I didn't hear the woman screaming inside anymore. Maybe she gave up at some point, for me not listening, only to return to blast my emotions when I finally heard her, ...and she was me all along.

[JoanneB]

Quite a few interesting points. Many that mirror my own thoughts through time.

I am often tempted to say I lived a lie. As hard as it is not to say, it is even harder for me to say all the events of my life, all the things I value, all that has gone into making me me is all a lie. That I am not me.

Sorry, I spent the better part of the past 6 years undoing that thinking. Yes, I did feel I was trying to live up to an image. I was an actor. A Hollywood facade of a man. Fueled by shame, it led to me believing none of the great things I achieved were really mine, but earned by some other person since I wasn't being the real me.

During all that time though, I now know I was being the real me. The only me I could have been at that point in my life. I did everything I knew was right. I followed my core beliefs. I did what I needed to do, at that time. I was ill equipped,  ill prepared, too fragile to do anything more. I was being true to the person I was then.

Today, I know better. I feel and believe I legitimately earned, and most importantly deserve, the gifts I have. Today I know I would be living a lie if I succumbed to my now rare "WTF am I doing???" funks. I know better. I know I'd be stopping this progress for a lie I'd be telling myself. I know all that I have and am doing is the right thing for me to. Even my wife had to hit me up the side of the head with the proverbial  2x4 when I ventured there.

Perhaps there are some out there that have "Lived a lie" under this criteria. I don't believe in absolutes when it comes to people. As hard for me to believe that anyone who feels so strongly about their gender, who eventually started the process and came out the side said... "Nah.. not today". Somehow I suspect they felt they really weren't up to the challenges, at that point in their life.

How can you be living a lie when you are living as the only person you feel you are capable of being? In other words, Reality is Truth

[GnomeKid]

Sometimes I feel like the past was more the truth then the present.  Although I never attempt to hide being trans people used to assume some fairly accurate details of my life from my facade.  Now I don't think people get an accurate reading at all.  In fact, if I met someone like myself on the street I'd probably assume they were a typical straight white douche bag with no extraordinary problems or conflicts in life.  I get asked about things all the time that take me off guard because its just so not my life.  Oh well.  Like I said... I don't attempt stealth status, but I also don't go shouting it from the rooftops inappropriately.  Sometimes it does feel like lying by omission.  Lots of people have those things in life though... trans related or not.  Tragedies and traumas from the past that have shaped who they are.. 

That being said I feel 75% more comfortable with my physical form than I did previously. (still waiting on that other 15% after bottom surgery.. of the remaining 10%...  5% is just human... 5% for the downsides of a phalloplasty compared to "real")

[darkblade]

I wouldn't say my childhood was a lie, I don't even remember all that much from it. Neither would I say my early teenage years were. But I remember a certain point in my high school when I promised myself that I would compromise as best as I possibly could to avoid the arguments I was having with my mom every other day (mostly over my appearance). Everything on from that day until a couple of months ago, that was a lie. The memory of having made that promise to myself had completely repressed itself and when it resurfaced several weeks ago, my first thoughts were "this isn't me, I've spent the last 5 years living a lie." And it was a lie, because I wasn't being me and I spent too much time believing things were part of who I am when in reality, had I not forgotten about that promise, I would have known that all I was doing was going through the motions of what was expected of me. I wasn't being me, and that was a lie. It was a lie to myself primarily though, in hindsight I can tell that most of my friends knew I wasn't being me, it seems like I was the only one who didn't.

[DanielleA]

I found that I was more honest with myself and my feelings when I was on my own for the day. When family members were around , I would stifle these emotions and needs because my biomother was an extreme "christian". Meaning that if she found out that I was dressing in girls clothes ect. That she would hurt me with a horse cane. She would use lesser excuses to hurt me. I could never tell people I know as they could end up telling my biomother. I tried really hard to shut off my emotions and not portray my female side but my brothers still thought that there was something off about me. Now, I have no reason to hide myself. I have grown as a woman, I relearnt to trust people and there are many family and friends who have my back when I need them.
My early life was definitly living a lie as it was all I could do to protect myself.

[Lostkitten]

How would it be a lie? It all happened the way it had to happen. If my past was a lie then so is my present and the future o.o.

[Kimberley Beauregard]

I never lived a lie, I just never got the chance to express the other side of myself.

[emilyking]

FYI: I'm IS.

In a way yes.  When I had a physical around 10-11, the nurse asked me if my testicals had always been the same size.  I told her yes, and she told me to tell them if one got bigger than the other.  She never told me why or told my parents anything.  I think she suspected something, but didn't say a word (as per Intersex cases often happen.).

Even when I was around 18, my doctor didn't say anything even thou I had female secondary sexual characteristics. 

So, yes I feel that in a major way I was living a lie because no one said something, when they should've.

[Natalie]

Yes, it was living a lie for me. Everything was fake.

[Evangeline]

When I was in college, and things were more accepting, I could just be myself, mostly. There, I think that, while I didn't know what I was... I was living as best as I knew how with the information that I had available. After that point, I'm not so sure that I can say that this is the case. I still didn't know exactly what was wrong. I'd heard the words "transsexual" and "transgender", but I'd always figured that this had nothing to do with what I was feeling (of course, I never looked anything up).

After college, came the "working environment". I quickly learned that there were some things that those perceived as "male" were virtually required to say, otherwise, their would be immediate and sometimes harsh social consequences. After having my hours chopped harshly on my second job due to "not fitting in", I learned how to maintain my mask. No more slip-ups, and I keep the most elaborate fiction alive.

What sports teams? What did you do last weekend? What are your thoughts about ________? - It was all one big creative writing/speaking exercise designed to avoid drawing attention to the fact that, no, I don't fit in at all. For me, quite literally, I can say that my current life is a lie. I'm working on changing this, but it's not something that's coming easy at all.

[HughE]

I wasn't living a lie, it was more a case of making the false assumption that just because my parents, my family and everyone else around me was either a man or a woman, the same must be true for me too. I now know that a lot of who I was previously was fake though, that I'd subconsciously been copying what male people do, and had used that to create a fake male persona so I could better fit in with my assigned gender.

[Mariah]

Part of reason it was a lie was that yes I wasn't truthful with myself and others, but also the fact the doctor's and others around me were not fully truthful with me either. My parents were told no more than they had to be told. Society and how they have handled cases like mine and many others are why we feel like the lives we lived to some extent were a lie. I can honestly say the life I lived or more like my existence wasn't fully a lie. Parts of my personality and who I am shined through all those years even when I didn't realize, but the friends around me did. They kept silent about some of the things they noticed. Society's beliefs and mishandling of things is what forces us to live lies until we have the courage and strength to free ourselves from those chains that kept us trapped. Regardless I'm glad I'm free of those trappings and able to fully move forward and live my life.
Mariah

FYI: I'm IS.

In a way yes.  When I had a physical around 10-11, the nurse asked me if my testicals had always been the same size.  I told her yes, and she told me to tell them if one got bigger than the other.  She never told me why or told my parents anything.  I think she suspected something, but didn't say a word (as per Intersex cases often happen.).

Even when I was around 18, my doctor didn't say anything even thou I had female secondary sexual characteristics. 

So, yes I feel that in a major way I was living a lie because no one said something, when they should've.

[Peebles]

I can relate to the whole 'living a lie' thing a bit, I felt aweful in going along with things I hated and such.

In general though, I was more of 'not living at all' than living a lie. I kinda cloistered myself up so I didn't have to be fake with people. 

[Illuminess]

I think if I were to say I was living a lie then I would have been fully aware, for the past 33 years, of what was going on with me. I think I was living as genuinely as I knew how, keeping myself distracted with music, photography, books and writing. I never really put on a facade of masculinity or some male gender role. I've just been Me the best I knew how as I slowly tried to figure out what my underlying identity was.

I always hated male pronouns and compliments like "handsome", but I just ignored them, that is, until I started relating more to an androgynous state of being. I would say I was "a sentient being inhabiting a vessel" as I really didn't identify as male or female in stereotypical fashion. I was always far more emotionally sensitive and more "effeminate" than what was accepted, and I was repeatedly accused of being gay in hostile ways (i.e. ->-bleeped-<-, homo, etc.) until the point where I actually had to question it, myself. Nope, I definitely had no attractions like that, so what the heck was going on?

I started becoming highly fascinated by androgyny like Placebo's Brian Molko, thinking I wanted to look like that. Still, the concept of transgender was nowhere to be found. Also, I've always been more attracted to women who were more often lesbian or just more aggressive. So, here I was... not into guys, but attracted to girls who had boyish personalities. I was eventually starting to really believe that I was, as the phrase goes, a lesbian trapped in a male body. My brain had taken a freakish turn in development giving me the neurological makeup of a gay female.

I know the  ->-bleeped-<- crowd would love to try to deconstruct that into some kind of fetish, but I've never been a sexual person. I've been with less than 10 people sexually, all of them monogamous relationships. A couple of them became very frustrated with me for not wanting to get it on regularly. So, how could I possibly be autogynephelic if I am not aroused by any of this? I simply know who I am now and what needs to be done.

I've read that if cis men were to take HRT they would become very uncomfortable and dysphoric. Well, I can safely say that I am not a cis male. HRT has been a blessing.

So, I wasn't living a lie; I was just living in oblivion until I finally learned what transgender means. At first, I thought I could just identify as genderqueer, but that wasn't satisfactory. I had to get away from any chance of being referred to with male pronouns. My friends are now using female pronouns with me and for the first time I'm not quietly cringing. The only way I could live a lie, at this point, would be to stop transitioning. That's just not going to happen.

[Zoetrope]

To put it quickly - no.

It *was* me there, but only such of me that was allowed on the surface.

My ... experience of life was very internal. By contrast I can now express and explore that private self ...

Not in lock-down anymore ... :~)

[Kelly_1979]

A bit complicated. Since I'm still not like 100% of what I'll do I can't (don't?) want to believe my destiny (?). Anyway, I wouldn't exactly say it's been a "lie". Since I was very young I wanted to be a girl but at the same time I "knew" I was a boy. I tried to put things as fetishes aside (I do have certain fetishes - hair, nails, high heels) but didn't work. Sometimes just daydreaming I caught myself imagining my future myself as a girl and then I ask myself "wtf are you thinking". So you could say that even REALLY wanting to be a girl (numerous circumstances - if I try to remember I keep finding more and more) I somehow know I'm a guy.

Told you it was complicated.

Hopefully things will get clearer in the future...

[Obfuskatie]

I think it is more important to try to live an authentic life, where you strive to be the happiest you can and hopefully you can better the lives of those around you.  I guess it's applicable to call it living a lie if we're talking about people who learn they need to change but refuse to because of how scary change can be.  This is not just a transgender thing.  It's all about learning self-actualization, instead of repressing your thoughts and feelings for whatever reason.  Internalized homophobia or transphobia, being an ethnic minority and republican, in a loveless marriage but afraid to leave your kids with your spouse or being single and having to work again, etc.

I agree that "living a lie" bugs me, just as much a "woman trapped in a man's body," or vice versa.  But that is a whole other can of worms 

There are a lot more levels to lying and telling the truth.  It bugs the crap out of me when people equate lying with other things. 
  So here's a truth table apropos of nothing.

                               |          Vocalized          |       Unvocalized                        |      Unintentionally Divulged      |    Implying the Opposite While Telling a
Truth                       |    Honest                    |    Lie by Omission                     |    Blurting the Truth (Secret)     |     Disingenuous / Insincere
Untruth                   |    Lying                       |    Honesty by Omission             |    Blurting a Rumor                   |     Sarcastic / Sardonic
Partial Falsehood      |    White Lie                 |    Withholding a Misconception  |    Spreading a Rumor                |     Hinting at the Truth
Partial Truth            |    Hedging the Truth     |    Withholding the Truth           |    Gossiping                              |     Misleading Someone