I guess this is where it begins. Whatever "it" is. We'll flesh that out here in a minute.
It's not something I talk about, which may sound familiar, but I guess here's the place to talk about it. I've thought a lot about posting here, signed up on a spur-of-the-moment and just lurked.
A part of me wants to assign labels to myself. I guess you could call me genderqueer/CD, genetically male, bisexual, polyamorous. Many of the personality tests classify me as a woman, but just barely. Right on that middle ground on the curve of gender.
I really didn't even think about this stuff much until recently. I am mid-late twenties. Late onset, I guess, though I've CD'd a few times that I remember into adolecence (like maybe four or five times. Really. That's all.). I blame it on my dad's death which interrupted a lot of flow; I had just started asking those questions about myself and had to stop all that and focus on family and then college, a new girlfriend (who is now my wife), then child, then a new job, then child, and hating my job that I got in-between kids. Fought with depression for the whole time, too. Still do.
Right now, as of this moment, I have no desire to transition, so I don't believe I am TS. If I am just thinking about these now, who knows how that will go. At this point I'm into gender agnosticism. "I don't know what gender I am, if any." I would like to think of gender as a switch. On occasion, I like who I am, being a boy for the rest of my days isn't 100% bad, but, like I said, it's a switch, and I know that one day it'll be fine and the next day it's not. I do not know how far this will go, if any further.
I've crossdressed a few times out with my wife on Halloween and special occasions. Yeah, I think she knows. Your husband can't dress as a girl regularly for Halloween and have books like "My Husband Betty" and other gender identity books without having some clue. (Yeah, the "it's for homework" line works only occasionally; I'm a part-time grad student. Interests in rhetoric, gender studies, feminism, the written word and identity, blogs, and more.) The shaved legs don't really give much in the way of interpretation, either. Hell, my myspace profile has a picture of me in a skirt, garters, and a tight sweater. My wife is on my friends-list, and she even dressed me up that day.
Sometimes we'll be in the makeup aisle and she'll offer to buy me stuff. I'll read the girl magazines in priority to anything to do with typical guy stuff. Seems like a slight thing, but it's typical.
So, I haven't told her the genderqueer/CD part of me yet explicitly. We're expecting our second child and now just seems like a bad time to lump that on her. I told her about my bisexuality and my polyamory beliefs (though I made a committment to her) early in our relationship, though we didn't really discuss them a lot. She makes good-humored gay jokes about me and we laugh.
The husband/wife part of our life is good. I'm just here for the people and, when the time comes, some support for telling my wife how I really feel about my genderqueer/CD identity.
So, it's not a stretch or a matter of predjudice with my wife, it's a matter of how close to home it hits. Some people have more accepting wives than others, and I am cautiously optimistic. I just think the new baby needs to be around for a little bit before I give her this hurdle to go over.
The current child is, in my opinion, too young to need to worry if daddy will be a girl tomorrow and a boy after that again. The next child may not be able to live without that question.
We go to gay pride parades with friends, write letters to our congresscritters for equal marriage rights and other such issues; I'm just getting involved with the LGBT organization within my company (getting newsletters is really not involved, I know). Though I hate my job, let's not start on that now, I'm glad that there is a particular group for us in my company. And at university. A professor I made a connection with this semester has one of those pink triangles on his office door. Maybe I'll talk with him, too.
I'd like to be more involved, but even the presentation to the Diversity Council at work about LGBT I gave was met with a reception that could only be considered "cool". I kept myself out of it! All just facts and statistics. Very impersonal and diplomatic. Did I mention I live in the middle of the mid-west? Though the company is international, my location is still a bit on the red-state kind of mentality. It's hard, I've gotten positive feedback from a right-winger, but at least one person won't talk to me now.
I don't talk much. This is probably the longest post I'll make, but what I've read so far has been helpful and good and caring. Keep it up.
Thanks for your time.
Beatrix
