Hi there, I'm Polly--at the moment! :-)

[pollypath]

Hi there,

I'm 55 years old and living in Massachusetts USA.  I have been on a testosterone blocker for about 6 months now and it has made me feel a whole lot better.  The thing is this--my gender identity seems to fluctuate thorough the day/night and this had me very puzzled most of my life and also helped me to "bury and ignore it" till a few years ago.  I had thought till a couple of years ago that I was "bi" but even that didn't seem to fit my emotional state.

Then I came across this article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22364652 and it shed light on my situation.

I have searched high and low for others who have this but haven't found any.  I contacted the author of the article above and she interviewed me in depth for an hour, for her research, but I didn't think to ask her if she knew about a forum and now she doesn't respond to my emails.

When I feel male, I feel fully male and likewise when female, "fully" female though I have a male body.  The only reliable part of it is that at night, I always identify as female, but towards the end of the day at work--a high intensity software development job, I find I feel very "male."

That being said, I feel much happier, calmer, and grounded in female mode.  In male mode, I find I am largely "out of my body," fiercely analytical, and intellectually very "bold"--my bosses tend to call my ideas "bold."

I then went to a gender therapist with over 25 years of experience with transgender people and she hadn't even heard of it.  Then she went for an international conference on gender issues and when she came back she told me that most therapists haven't heard of it and those that have discount it as "denial" on the part of the person in question that they are really transgender.

I myself think it isn't as simple as that.  I am fortunate in that I have a doctor at Fenway Health in Boston who is very familiar with this issue and has suggested I try only spironolactone to see if that helps and that is what I have been doing for the last 6 months.  And yes, I am at <Not Permitted>/day and it seems to help a lot, reducing the switching--I now switch only once every two or three days.  I don't think this is a "placebo" effect--it has almost completely eliminated my desire for sex, which (after) would throw me reliably into male mode for a few hours.

I wouldn't mind all this switching between modes but for one thing--the switch to male mode often happens suddenly, and when it happens, I am filled with despair.  Till recently I felt that I was "mad/insane," like a serial killer with an "entity" in them except my "entity" instead of wanting to go around killing women, wants to become a women...but my gender doctor at Fenway smiles tolerantly when I tell him this and replies that "mad" is for "when there is no known reason" but here, he thinks persons like me have "dual" circuits in their brain and the brain switches between them.  I love my doctor dearly, but for him I don't know where I would be.

My therapist tells me it is my "social constructs of gender identity" that are driving this and discounts any brain structure talk (also smiles tolerantly).  So I am torn between one dr. who says it is my brain structure and another who says it is my "social construction" of what it  means to be male/female.

I feel I would like to transition to a female, but fear what may happen when I switch to male mode and now find I have made changes that are permanent...for the few hours until I switch back, there is no saying what I may do.

Anyway, there seems no forum for people with AGI (alternate gender incongruity) and I was hoping to find one here...not sure how to request that one be created.  I feel I am extremely lucky in that my daughters and wife are sympathetic to my "condition" and that I have strong support from a therapist and gender specialist doctor.  Still, the journey isn't easy.

best.
Polly

Mod Edit: Removed Dosage

[V M]

Hi Polly 

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V M

[Moomin]

Hiya Polly! I'm new here myself, so thought I'd say hi Looking forward to hearing more from you x

[Dena]

Welcome to Susan's Place. We have over 20,000 registered users and have issued about 46,000 IDs over the years so pretty much everything that's out there has appeared on this site. The term for what you have is Gender Fluid and it is pretty rare but in the last 6 months I have greeted at least one gender fluid with a female birth gender and I clearly recall reading post from a birth gender of male so you will find them on this site. There are several others who have posted on the site that might be gender fluid as well but I haven't seen enough of their posts to be able to tell for sure. They fall under the non binary section of the site  and if you are looking for their post, you should be able to find what you are after there and possibly in introductions.

The birth gender of male said it best in that you can be shopping for a dress one moment and then you eye catches a pair of hiking boots. One solution is to find a look that you can be comfortable in either gender. Sometimes they use different names depending on how they are feeling that day. Altering your gender surgically may help but you have to be pretty sure that you will be more comfortable in the new gender. There isn't a one size fits all solution to people who are gender fluid and it requires you to very carefully weigh out your options before making any decisions. Good luck in your quest and feel free to ask me any questions you might have.

[pollypath]

hmmm...not quite sure that the term "fluid" captures my experience of the transition...the words "Alternate" and
"Incongruity" in the "Alternate Gender Incongruity" paper seem more apt, at least, for my experience of such transitions.  The transition is sudden, seemingly instantaneous, like waking up suddenly, like a JERK, more than anything continuous.  NPR did a profile of one such person and she switches back to male mode in the middle of the interview, and like my own experience, seems horrified at the sudden switch and that s/he does this--s/he cuts the interview short immediately.  I know exactly what this person is going through--the deep deep suspicion that one is quite thoroughly insane, in the layperson's sense of the term.  Here is the link for anyone intersted: http://www.radiolab.org/story/invisibilia/

[Dena]

The fluid is not intended to describe how the switch takes place but instead it point to the fact the identity needle isn't always pointing to the same place on the scale. I was MTF transexual. there are FTMs, CIS and gender queer who point to different points on the sexual scale but they stay more or less at the same place. Gender Fluid is the only one that moves from one place to another. In my example of the born male, for the switch to take place while shopping, it had to happen as fast as your did. The born female. had two different looks and would decide each morning which one to wear but still might switch during the day. You are more likely to find people like yourself if you use the common terminology instead of the medical terminology as up to now, gender fluid is the only term I have heard it called by.

[pollypath]

Good information/points, appreciate it.
Polly