I am 70 now. I remember being in a crib, playing with my friend Elaine, and being in nursery school at age 3 or 4. I don't remember thinking much about gender then, but a year or two later, I remember sitting with Greta, in religious school, listening to the children's choir, lamenting that boys' voices change. I had both boy and girl friends in grade school, and played sandlot baseball, football, and engaged in snowball fights. I also played dolls with girl friends, especially Nancy. Nancy, an Orthodox Jew, invited me to a Chanukah celebration once, and I felt distinctly uncomfortable sitting downstairs with the men, while she was upstairs with the women.
Still, it wasn't until high school that I felt out of step. I played with a boy, Jerry(?), for the first year or two, much as I'd played in grade school, but we grew increasingly distant. I stood alone in the local drugstore reading a biography of Christine Jorgenson, knowing I wanted to do what she had done, except that I found the idea of sex/dating males abhorrent, and did not want to be a celebrity. Nothing came of that experience, nor did I speak about it to anyone. Probably, my best friend from grade school and through high school was Jeanette. I wore her dress all one afternoon after she complained about having to wear dresses to high school. I sympathized with her, but enjoyed wearing the dress (I later wore the dress of a cousin, but was caught and humiliated). Through my teens and twenties, I was deeply concerned people would sense that I was not a guy, and humiliate me. Getting married while yet in college and growing a beard soon after took care of that for a while.
Gradually, she found out about me. The fact that I always scored more feminine than she on magazine quizzes was amusing. Knitting, cooking, and sewing were OK. Carrying a purse and bicycling with a female friend were not. She made my life unpleasant enough that I divorced her after 24 years. She soon re-married--an opinionated machinist who works on cars in his spare time.
I hadn't yet separated sex and gender, and developed the idea that individual men and women vary more in femininity/masculinity than the average man and woman do. Shortly after I met my second wife, I assured her that she need not worry I would try to seduce her; I merely wanted to be friends. She said, in that case, she might seduce me. Later, I asked her if, given her ambitious, type A personality, she hadn't thought she'd rather have been born a boy, as I wished I'd been born a girl.
Twenty years later, my doctor prescribed a mild anti-androgen to fight a prostate problem, and I thought I'd finally been granted my my wish and would have a female body. I was in a state of high euphoria and excitement. I was also deeply worried since I have 4 children and a wife I deeply love and am very close to. I scoured the web for information on sex changes, took the usual online gender tests with my usual results, and discovered Susan's Place. It was here, 3 years ago, that I discovered gender (as opposed to sex) and the concept of the androgyne.
Given my experience of 3 years ago, I know I'd like to try HRT. I know when I am with a group of women, I want to be "one of the girls." I am less sure that I am willing to engage in real life experience as a woman. Playing the male role has given me a best friend I get to live with, plus 4 children, and 3 grandchildren. It is a rare woman who is willing to give up her children and grandchildren. Yet I know, as I've known at least since puberty, that I am not a man. Next month, I finally have an appointment with the gender therapist I first contacted 3 years ago, authorized by my health insurance. I move slowly. Sorry for the wordy and delayed answer; I hope I have given a coherent set of answers to your questions, Raven.
S
