Socialization issues

[FairyGirl]

I have the feeling we all agree with each other but keep on arguing anyway.  Major disconnect going on between my intended meaning and how it's being interpreted. Now that I've seen at least three people disagree with me by rewording my thoughts on this I'm going to blame my poor communication skills .  I agree that Nicky phrased it best, so just refer to her post for my opinion.

No, I think that's completely wrong.

hmmm I don't see where I'm disagreeing with you Spacial and I was actually agreeing with Jen. I knew at age 4 as well, and I always knew,  and despite years of male socialization that knowledge, feeling, whatever never went away. The point I was making is that if we are born female then at best our experiences are those of a female socialized as male, as Nicky so eloquently put it. Basically none of us can know exactly how anyone else dealt with our socialization, and perhaps we can all agree that the original statements were too generalized and based on assumptions not necessarily true for everyone.

[spacial]

I also believe that to say no one who has not had a period can understand is too all-or-nothing. Yes I will never know completely what it is like. But if I listen, with my heart open, I can understand about it with more than my intellect.

Empathy is real.

I apologise for the way I attempted to make that point and thank you for highlighting it.

I think we are each, to a significant extent, the sum totals of our past.

But I do believe, nay, I know that the essence of my being is female.

Though I appreciate that this was a rather trite and parhaps ignorant way of attempting to illustrate a point.


Post Merge: January 19, 2010, 05:38:14 PM

hmmm I don't see where I'm disagreeing with you Spacial and I was actually agreeing with Jen. I knew at age 4 as well, and I always knew,  and despite years of male socialization that knowledge, feeling, whatever never went away. The point I was making is that if we are born female then at best our experiences are those of a female socialized as male, as Nicky so eloquently put it. Basically none of us can know exactly how anyone else dealt with our socialization, and perhaps we can all agree that the original statements were too generalized and based on assumptions not necessarily true for everyone.

The point I was taking issue with was:

The argument also seems to assume (erroneously) that we pull this idea that we are women somewhere out of thin air and there can be no basis for it other than our imaginations.

If you got the impression that I was attacking you specifically, then I do apologise.

It was this notion. I accept that you were not asserting it. I should have been clearer.

To anyone else. I really wasn't trying to attack anyone nor undermine your positions. I was allowing my thoughts to free flow and expressing what emerged.

I really, really, really am on the same side as all of you.

besides which, I love you all to pieces. 

[FairyGirl]

perhaps we can never know what it's like to bleed every month. However, another recent thread here showed that it seems to be a common phenomenon that after a period of time on HRT we can pretty much have all the other symptoms.

Geez. Yeah, it's that time of the month, again. Every month, same thing. It starts with feeling a little amorous, proceeding to simply feeling bloated and fat (although the slight swelling of my breasts at this time is welcomed). This further progresses to increasing tenderness in my nipples (among other places), finally giving way to full blown emotional chaos with the accompanying tear-fest over any and everything. The whole process from first symptoms and back again takes more than a week. So here I am again in my emotional basket, as in basket case. This morning I burst into tears because I finished reading a book I was enjoying. The book wasn't sad, but I was evidently because I had finished it. After that it was like someone had turned on the faucet. I started crying over literally nothing. There was no rhyme or reason for it whatsoever, it just welled up inside me and had to come out.

Sigh. The joys of womanhood. I love the Moon, I love to play outside at night under her magical light, I love to follow her phases and I find it utterly fascinating that the direction of the waning/waxing cycle runs backwards down here in the southern hemisphere because she appears upside down from her appearance in the north. This monthly cycle thing, I haven't pinned down the exact number of days yet but it's something just under a calendar month, makes me feel connected to her in a way I never could before. This is part of what it means to be female. True I may have missed it before, but I get it now. And so I see that women share a kind of common bond in even this.

And it is the same with all of us who share or who have shared this disease of transsexualism, or whatever you want to call it. We've all been there and we KNOW. So many people brush us off as having made some kind of kamakazi lifestyle choice, as if our gender is ever a choice that anyone can make. But they cannot know like we know, or feel the utter horror of being forced to live as the wrong sex, or know what it's like to confront that part of your soul that knows what everyone has told you your whole life long about who you are is simply not true, and despite years of trying to conform to that false image we can never really lose the feeling that it isn't who we were meant to be.

ps. **hugs** Spacial

[MaggieB]

And it is the same with all of us who share or who have shared this disease of transsexualism, or whatever you want to call it. We've all been there and we KNOW. So many people brush us off as having made some kind of kamakazi lifestyle choice, as if our gender is ever a choice that anyone can make. But they cannot know like we know, or feel the utter horror of being forced to live as the wrong sex, or know what it's like to confront that part of your soul that knows what everyone has told you your whole life long about who you are is simply not true, and despite years of trying to conform to that false image we can never really lose the feeling that it isn't who we were meant to be.

I so very much agree with this. Very well put and to the point exactly.
Thank you.

Maggie

[BunnyBee]

besides which, I love you all to pieces. 

<3 <3 <3

Btw fairygirl, that was beautiful .

I adore the direction this thread took. ^^

[tekla]

If your parents accepted who you are, like say Kim Petres, do you grow up the same as other transpersons?  I doubt it.  And even before that, when none of this was known, some of us grew up in an atmosphere that was loving, accepting and had people willing to defend us, I'm sure that makes some difference.

[Marie731]

As a result, I have to admit that I cannot say I experienced or understand the female experience. As a result, I have stopped discussing women's issues with my wife because it will cause an instant argument. She is right. I don't know what it is like.

Exactly. So I have to wonder: can we ever truly know or have the "female experience" now?

[Alyssa M.]

I'm an immigrant to Womanhood. I'm a refugee from Manhood. Life in that country became impossible, and so I immigrated to a land I had always wanted to inhabit.

My mother is an immigrant as well, in the ordinary geopolitical sense. She defected from her country because it was politically repressive (well, in a nutshell).

I don't think my mother understands what it means to grow up in America (whatever that means) the way I or my sisters or my father do. And I don't know what it means to grow up a girl. Nevertheless, there's enough difference in the experience, difference that I witnessed firsthand watching my sisters grow up, that I feel that I was robbed of the childhood I ought to have had. But to say my mother doesn't know what it means to be and American is just foolish. She is American. And I am a woman. We're just in a particular minority among many minorities within those categories, and we understand perfectly well what it means to be ourselves.

Those who disregard our experiences only diminish their own understanding.

[FairyGirl]

good analogy Alyssa

[Alyssa M.]

Thank you.

But it's not mine. It's just one that resonated with me pretty strongly. It comes from the Vagina Monologues -- see "Beautiful Daughters" if you haven't yet.

"You know how people feel about immigrants."

[lilacwoman]

perhaps we can never know what it's like to bleed every month. However, another recent thread here showed that it seems to be a common phenomenon that after a period of time on HRT we can pretty much have all the other symptoms.

Geez. Yeah, it's that time of the month, again. Every month, same thing. It starts with feeling a little amorous, proceeding to simply feeling bloated and fat (although the slight swelling of my breasts at this time is welcomed). This further progresses to increasing tenderness in my nipples (among other places), finally giving way to full blown emotional chaos with the accompanying tear-fest over any and everything. The whole process from first symptoms and back again takes more than a week. So here I am again in my emotional basket, as in basket case. This morning I burst into tears because I finished reading a book I was enjoying. The book wasn't sad, but I was evidently because I had finished it. After that it was like someone had turned on the faucet. I started crying over literally nothing. There was no rhyme or reason for it whatsoever, it just welled up inside me and had to come out.

Sigh. The joys of womanhood. I love the Moon, I love to play outside at night under her magical light, I love to follow her phases and I find it utterly fascinating that the direction of the waning/waxing cycle runs backwards down here in the southern hemisphere because she appears upside down from her appearance in the north. This monthly cycle thing, I haven't pinned down the exact number of days yet but it's something just under a calendar month, makes me feel connected to her in a way I never could before. This is part of what it means to be female. True I may have missed it before, but I get it now. And so I see that women share a kind of common bond in even this.

And it is the same with all of us who share or who have shared this disease of transsexualism, or whatever you want to call it. We've all been there and we KNOW. So many people brush us off as having made some kind of kamakazi lifestyle choice, as if our gender is ever a choice that anyone can make. But they cannot know like we know, or feel the utter horror of being forced to live as the wrong sex, or know what it's like to confront that part of your soul that knows what everyone has told you your whole life long about who you are is simply not true, and despite years of trying to conform to that false image we can never really lose the feeling that it isn't who we were meant to be.

ps. **hugs**

Post Merge: January 20, 2010, 02:14:24 AM
sorry, silly comp hiccuped..
Fairy Girl what I was going to say was you may be just so far over to female that you're more AIS than TS... my AIS friends have same feelings as you...ever had your chromosomes checked and been xrayed to see if you're not intersexed?

[Tammy Hope]

'zackly.

OT:

THAT, FG, is by FAR the best Avatar of you I've seen. You are flat out beautiful in that pic.


Post Merge: January 20, 2010, 02:49:54 AM

And it is the same with all of us who share or who have shared this disease of transsexualism, or whatever you want to call it. We've all been there and we KNOW. So many people brush us off as having made some kind of kamakazi lifestyle choice, as if our gender is ever a choice that anyone can make. But they cannot know like we know, or feel the utter horror of being forced to live as the wrong sex, or know what it's like to confront that part of your soul that knows what everyone has told you your whole life long about who you are is simply not true, and despite years of trying to conform to that false image we can never really lose the feeling that it isn't who we were meant to be.

This.

The wife and I were looking through some old photo albums tonight (for other reasons) and occasionally I'd come across otherwise interesting pics except they also had "him"

And it just so nauseated me to have to look on that image - everything about it looks so wrong.

I agree with a lot of what's been said here - about having a unique socialization no matter who you are...about the TS experience in youth being something that doesn't fit well in either "traditional" gender experience...

But I do acknowledge that there IS a "traditional" umbrella under which MOST people are socialized to their birth gender. not every girl is the prom queen but the vast majority of them want to be, or whatever...there is a broad vague set of stimuli and responses common to being a girl (or boy) that are at odds with the experience of the other gender and which I consider tragically lost to me in much the same way that music is tragically lost to the one born deaf or sunsets are lost to one born blind.

But Sandy said something to be considered too - we have the privileged of having a set of experiences non-trans people never will. While I don't consider that sufficent compensation for what I missed, I don't want to overlook its value.

[FairyGirl]

Fairy Girl what I was going to say was you may be just so far over to female that you're more AIS than TS... my AIS friends have same feelings as you...ever had your chromosomes checked and been xrayed to see if you're not intersexed?

lol I don't think so, but maybe I will. I'm getting all that fixed soon anyway

and thank you Laura. I know how you feel about seeing those old pics too... luckily most of mine burned up when I had my house fire but I'm sure my mom will always keep a few around to embarass me with 

[rejennyrated]

Fairy Girl what I was going to say was you may be just so far over to female that you're more AIS than TS... my AIS friends have same feelings as you...ever had your chromosomes checked and been xrayed to see if you're not intersexed?

As someone who was late diagnosed with partial AIS myself this is indeed possible. Although the diagnosis is a little more complex, it involves ultrasound, pelvic exam, hormone responses and indeed full genetic screening. The thing is, one has to ask whether it makes any difference. Personally I'm not sure. Mine was only eventually found because of another medical issue.

If your parents accepted who you are, like say Kim Petres, do you grow up the same as other transpersons?  I doubt it.  And even before that, when none of this was known, some of us grew up in an atmosphere that was loving, accepting and had people willing to defend us, I'm sure that makes some difference.

It certainly does. Like I said in the seecond post in this thread, possibly because they had some knowlege or intuition about me, my parents more or less allowed me to be myself as I grew up.

True I never had a first period, and true back then I was considered by many to be an oddity but I still maintain that my socialisation was at worst somewhere in between and at best close to female.

As to whether any of that matters or not, I think it is for others, and not for me to say.