Identifying myself

[Lady Smith]

I thought I'd done all this, - identifying myself to myself, - but the business of discovering that I'm a DES child broke the dam that was holding back all kinds of stuff I'd hidden from myself and not really dealt with the first time around.  I always told my kids when they were growing up that labels are for jam jars not people, but despite that I find myself needing to define myself in a way that I can actually believe in.

I was assigned male at birth which I definitely don't agree with or I wouldn't be here writing this.  When it comes to filling out forms or whatever I write 'F', but what do I mean by that?  The conclusion I've come to is that when I write 'F' I mean 'not male'.  I was born on the intersex spectrum with my testicles inside my body and I discovered when I was quite young that I could roll my penis back on itself and tuck it away.  Being only a child I didn't know a blind thing about what gender was or even the existence of sex as being something grown up people did, but I did like it when my penis was out of sight.  When I got erections I would hit and twist my penis until the erection went away because I didn't like it.  Don't think for one moment that this was masturbation because it wasn't.  I'm sure I hurt myself sometimes, but to my child's mind it was worth it just to make it stop.

As a child I was always tall for my age, long limbed and skinny.  My parents cut my hair in a crewcut which I came to hate and as soon as I was old enough to make up my own mind I grew my hair out and wore it long.  I just felt better with my hair long no matter what older relatives often said about it (Oh you've got a new girl in the family....Ha ha..).  As a child I was highly imaginative, solitary, quite naive and child-like.  Not a good combination when your height always makes people think you're a couple of years older than you really are.  'Big boys don't XXXXX', became a mantra I hated and I still cringe even now if I overhear a parent saying that to one of their children.

I won't give you the whole rundown about my childhood because I will being doing enough of that with a therapist hopefully fairly soon, but I will say that being told that people might think I was mentally deficient because of the type of games and toys I wanted to play with by my own father scored pretty darn high on the pain scale when I was only 12.
Hurt and pain comes from males was the lesson of my childhood which makes me very glad I'm not one.

Being 'fixed' by painful and upsetting surgery and never having the reason why explained to me is something that brings tears to my eyes even now.  In hospital the exalted male surgeon got very upset with me because I wouldn't let the band of medical students trailing about after him have a proper look at what he'd done to me.  Being intimately looked at and poked about by a pack of strangers I'd never seen before was terrifying for upset post surgery me so what did he damn well expect. B@stard!

The only anchor I have which helped me to arrive at someplace I can call safe is that I have two now adult children who wouldn't be here now if I hadn't been 'fixed'.  The only anchor which prevents me from going into a total hate fest against men is that I have a wonderful kind and gentle heterosexual son (who has just completed his law degree just as a by the way).  On the other hand my assigned male at birth demi-girl daughter who is a highly skilled virtual systems programmer has been shot twice and stabbed at least once that I know of and has been attacked by males far more times than I want to think about in the 30 years she's been alive.  In most of those attacks though those males got the shock of their life because my daughter is skilled in Krav Maga and they generally got what they richly deserved.
Is it any wonder I want to identify as being 'not male' and used to feel so angry if anybody misgendered me.  And if any man tried to hit on me my contempt for them was almost overwhelming.

As some of you know I write and I've written several science fiction stories with a third gender theme.  Deep down inside myself I'm coming to realise that I wish I had been born completely intersex and not assigned either 'M' or 'F' at birth.  Taking religious vows is my refuge, my cry to the world that I'm not going to play your stupid cruel sex games anymore.  Nobody is going to bring on my dysphoria by making me their dirty sex toy anymore.  And yes I'm well aware that after therapy I might just discover that my religious vocation isn't a sincere one afterall, but I'll get to that when I get to it.

I only got married because I wanted children.  If I'd been able to get pregnant like I day dreamed about in my teens I wouldn't have bothered.  Being married was hell and I suffered every kind of sexual dysfunction you could imagine because my true inner self wasn't going to let me get away with taking pretending to be a man that far.  My ex used to say I was like living with a flatmate not a husband and not very kindly either.  I used to get accused of being like a woman in bed too which shouldn't come as any surprise.  Basically I subjected myself to 15 years of constant verbal abuse over being a lousy lover and husband simply because I stuck with the 'safe' lie that I was a man.

This is turning into a book.  I'm going to go ask my daughter for a cigarette and leave this here for now.  If she has any cider left in the fridge I might get drunk too.

[Ms Grace]

Thanks for sharing. I think as a child the one thing I really hated was being identified as a boy. I didn't really know what it meant at the time but it was a very strong feeling.

[Maddy_Aya_W.]

Isn't it funny? How just when we think we know who we are, the World throws us a curveball. In the time I've been alive, I can remember vividly, times when being male seemed just peachy. At least, I thought it was. Until, before long, here comes that curveball. I've always kind of known I didn't mesh so well with my birth gender. I've spent about 20 years telling myself, I was "crazy", or tricking myself into thinking it was some sort of sexual thing, or that I would grow out of it, or even just that I wanted to be male. No matter the effort I've put into covering up who I am, It'd always backlash, and I'd end up drowning in my own femininity. I've given up so many articles of clothing, because I was scared to embrace the truth. I've wasted time and energy, on relationships I kind of knew would never work out, and I also grew to have a strong distaste for my birth gender, and others born into it. I kind of grew out of it, I don't hate all men anymore, I just hate how slovenly most men act. So much time, and energy wasted, but I can't think about that, on to the future. Whatever it may hold, I'll be there to face it. I will stand tall, and I will work toward true happiness. Whatever that means for me, I'm not exactly sure, but  cute outfits are involved. Which is a plus. Sorry to get all wordy, your story speaks to me. Stay strong, stay positive.

~Maddy

[Tysilio]

Lady Smith, thank you for sharing more of your story -- and your feelings. I don't think we ever stop figuring out who we are -- or if we do, we get a bit stagnant.  The bitch of it is that so much of the time, it's a painful process: just when we think we're comfortable with ourselves, something pulls out the rug and we're on our asses again.

It takes a lot of courage and resilience to confront something this big as directly as you're doing. Whoever you turn out to be, I'd be proud to know you.

[Lady Smith]

Thank you Tysilio.  At the age I am I don't want to be living anymore lies so really my only choice is to directly face all my pain and fears and to resolve them.  My daughter didn't have any cider left so I didn't get drunk which is a good thing because I'm not really supposed to drink with some of the meds I'm taking.

Yes Maddy life can throw us some great curve balls to knock us out our comfort zones, but then on the other hand if that comfort is dependent on lies and blinkered vision it's not really living is it.

Thanks Grace for being you because I've drawn strength from your own life story and the way you are now so much the woman you know yourself to be.

Whatever happens with my religious vocation I know I'm not going to give up on Franciscan spirituality because it is good for me and at its heart it is simple Christianity completely lacking in dogma and divisive attitudes towards others.  As for the way I present to the world I feel very comfortable dressing as I do completely covered from wrist to ankle to neck in my slightly ethnic old fashioned style of clothing and headscarves.  Knowledge of my body is only for the one I trust enough to be my lover so nobody else needs to see it.  As a contemplative woman of faith Christ is my lover so my old fashioned modest style of dressing works for me.
It is the sense within me of being neither male or female, but third that has led me to not bothering with makeup or waxing/plucking/shaving and I stopped wearing a bra quite a while ago.  I use vitamin E oil on my skin, but that's about as much as I do.  I like my face and I wouldn't want change anything about it even though I'm 61 and age is taking its toll.  On the rare occasions I look at myself in the mirror naked (with wart covered up) I see a femme non-male person which makes me happy.  HRT has done everything I want for me, it's just unfortunate that I was prescribed Premarin for years which has messed up my liver and kidneys, but I guess I can live with that.

Now I just need to do something about dealing with the stuff that's causing all this pain and anger and brings me to tears.

[Maddy_Aya_W.]

Yes Maddy life can throw us some great curve balls to knock us out our comfort zones, but then on the other hand if that comfort is dependent on lies and blinkered vision it's not really living is it.

Definitely not, if you're not comfortable living with yourself, how can anyone be comfortable with you? I hope you find the answers you seek, best of luck.

~Maddy

[Laura_7]

Imo it were completely different times then...
for me like when you watch an old movie... many of the attitudes displayed there are unacceptable now...

imo its ok to think about a few things, to draw a few conclusions...
but I'd not dwell on them...

look at how much has changed the last years, concerning sentiment and information...

and many of the younger generations are much more accepting imo...

I'd say make the best of what is now... there is so much information and positive people around...

and you might simply do a few things that fulfill you and bring you back in the moment...
contemplating a flower, enjoying its colours and texture...
listening to birds...

cooking, gardening....

have a *hug* and a *kiss* (on the cheek )

[Lady Smith]

Yes Laura it's just like a sad old movie chock full of the lingering bad attitudes of the 1950s.  Certainly here in New Zealand things are a lot better now than when I first transitioned, good information is only a mouse click away, our Health Department has a written TG policy and set of guidelines, we have TG police officers, TG lawyers and we even had a TG member of parliament a few years ago. (Hopefully next election we will have another one which will be very good)

I certainly don't want to dwell on my anger and pain, that sort of thing could lead to bombing all male gatherings which is definitely something I don't want to even start to think about!  Fortunately I do have good tools in the form of meditative prayer and spiritual contemplation to help me get through this.  I am going to back that up with therapy though to make sure all this mess has been safely put to rest so I can carry on with my normally peaceful life.  I think my self identification of being third is here to stay though.  Modern words like 'gender queer' don't float my boat and I've never been entirely happy with 'intersex' either.

Ta for the hug and the sisterly kiss by the way.