(Oh, I just know I'm posting this in the wrong place...)
'Kay. Name's Christopher. Get it? Got it? Good.
Gender... is so wonderful, such a broad spectrum... and my own is back on confusing the everloving Jesus outta me. o-e;
So, I'm XX. Raised as such, too.
I don't remember a whole lot about that, though. I remember my sister and I swimming in this little pool in only our panties, and then later getting promoted to bikinis. I don't really remember hating that. I don't remember hating having to wear dresses to church. I do remember having favorite dresses, though. Although at home, you couldn't catch me dead in anything but shorts, jeans, and some type of T-shirt (usually a girly-ish one). I shaved my legs and underarms often -- sometimes even my stomach. I was always amused by looking at the hair that came off on the razor. It was disgustingly funny -- but mostly funny.
My favorite game was House. Since I was older and taller, I was the Daddy, and my little sister was the Mommy. We had baby dolls, we'd do stuff I suspect we'd seen on TVLand -- I'd draw a pretend newspaper and read it while my sister tended to the babies and we argued. XD When my cousin Nathan was over with his sister, it got more complicated. Nathan was the daddy, my sister was the mother, Nathan's sister was the daughter, and I was the dog, or aunt, or neighbor, or mailman who awkwardly stayed at the house for uber long periods of time. (trufax.)
I had no real preference. I pretty much fell into the role of the dad (or mailman who never brought mail), though I remember, vaguely, being just the slightest bit annoyed at having to be Daddy. Then I just followed the logic that since my sister was shorter and WANTED to be mommy, then I had to be Daddy. (I pretty much just did whatever she wanted, as long as we could play.) I came to like it. I played dress-up quite a bit as well. Always in some sort of ridiculous dress and boa and such. My favorite picture of myself as a kid is of me, my cousin Nathan, and my sister in our bathing suits. I'm in a bikini than I have completed with a lei on my head and another around my neck, and stuck in the bikini bottom is a ring of plants I gathered to make a grass skirt.
I played with dolls and stuffed animals. With my cousin Nathan, I played with my collection of dolls combined with his dolls action figures. We created little games that seemed exactly like playing barbie dolls with my sister to me. We played with toy cars, and even that game seemed like playing dolls. The only recognizable difference was the slight increase in violence, but even that was small. The cars would run over each other, the action figures would smack around the dolls... the dolls would be considerably more sexual with each other when we only had them. Seems like the only differences to me.
When I was in Kindergarten, I remember looking around and just being struck by the fact that I could not see my own face, but I could see everyone else's. I looked at my hands. I moved them. I could see them, and it was from a higher angle. I assumed everyone else saw the same way, that their view was that they could not see their own face. So I just figured a person is their eyes -- their brain.
The body was a temple (to use terms I'd heard in church) that existed solely to hold the brain in, to help it gain knowledge. Yes, this is actually what I believed at that age. Little kids seem to be pretty androgynous on a whole (at least, in my experience)... people tell them things are feminine, things are masculine, they have to do this or that because this is what their genitals are... a lot of it burns in. I didn't really consider gender as important. It seemed like this thing people were or weren't. I didn't really care all that much -- they said I was a girl, so perhaps I was. I had no reason to doubt it, much less care about it.
When I got older (about 11), I started wondering what maleness and femaleness meant. Person = brain, brain = no genitals, so a person's gender couldn't be their body's decision. I could never arrive at a conclusion. I pretty much decided that although I was a girl, I wasn't really a girl. My mother, once, was talking about this guy she and her ex-husband were friends with. His name? Kathy. They called him, claiming to do so by his wishes, "He-She", and used female pronouns. This interested me. He dressed male, stuffed his pants with a sock, taped his breasts back, and had a girlfriend who knew all this. And she loved him.
I never met Kathy (whom I call Kasey in my head), but I would think about him sometimes. It all came down to, "Amazing, simply amazing. He did that. People do that. And people are okay with it. He found love. Amazing." I had originally just figured I wouldn't get married. I didn't care too much about guys or girls in terms of dating. Kasey just kind of amazed me. The idea of him. I don't know if he's alive, or where he is. I'm not sure if I care or not. The only thing I'd have to say to him is "Thank you for being you."
When I was 12, I figured I was bisexual. I do not remember how I came across the idea of transgender people. I just remember nodding a lot, and agreeing completely with a lot of it. Transsexuality came a bit later. I read about it, remembered Kasey, and just froze up. Me? Never. Maybe. Possibly.
I figured I was much too feminine. True, I was considered a complete tomboy as a little kid, but according to myself, I wasn't anything like what they said. I saw things like little kids refusing to wear clothes of their birth sex -- I didn't mind. I loved dresses, up to a point, and the point came when I simply wanted to wear women's dress pants like all the other girls were. I never played exclusively with trucks, I didn't get into fights, I never expressed any desire to play football or any other manly sport -- I actually joined a ballet class for a year! Soccer was my thing. (I was always jealous that the boys were allowed to take off their shirts, though. It seemed relaxing and free.) I loved my hair long. (And for the record, I have swam with my shirt off once after getting boobs. My granddaddy let me, when we were alone in his pool. No, don't get the wrong idea. He's not a pedophile. I loved the feeling, it felt right. It was scary, though, to have to scramble back into a bra when he gave the alarm my grandma or uncle or cousins were coming.)
I had no real problem with my breasts, and my vagina wasn't off too much stress to me. Sometimes I'd feel a phantom penis, but only if I focused extremely hard, and I have way too short an attention span. (Sometimes, though, I can feel the erection. And I cannot make it go down. In fact, trying makes it worse. Little jackass...) I became a bit fixtated with trying to pass, though, and got some clothes that I felt would help. I put on these large pants that I liked because if I stood at a certain angle, I could feel no fabric touching my legs. Baggy! I had a jersey, I had some gauze, I had a chain necklace. Very moronic combination, but with my sister's help, I was able to get the gauze tight enough around me that, when I put on the jersey, if I turned sideways, I couldn't see the breasts in the mirror. Amazing, simply amazing.
I turned around with another mirror to see my hair, and that's when I saw it. I had had it cut a bit before that, so it was a bit androgynous. I saw the exact shape my hair was supposed to be in. It was the back of a boy's head, and I knew him, I knew him, and I knew he was there. He had been in all my dreams. I would dream dreams that had me, and I would see I was a boy, I had a dick. Oftentimes I looked exactly as I did at the time, just with a dick. I could feel it in my dreams, too. I could jack off in a dream and it was an indescribable feeling of rightness, I could feel the skin, the "aftermath", everything. Once I dreamt I had a flat chest and was smiling. Like all dreams, these ended. I remember one flat chest dream ending with me lurching up in bed with an overjoyed gasp, thinking it had finally come true. A few minutes later, reality dawned on me. Oh, right. I have boobs. I feel the sports bra and tape. They're still required. Damn it. The dick-dreams ended considerably worse -- usually in depression or tears.
Today, my dysphoria comes mostly from my -- well, I have no idea what it's called. Midsection? That area between the breasts and hips. I refer to them as "dents" -- and I despise them with all my heart. I often wish I were born with a form of intersexuality. Preferably an ambiguous genitals kind. A kind where I could have both, so I wouldn't be as upset when sexual desires wash over and I have nothing to hold. Or at least get rid of this annoying ache that says, "Hey! HEY! YOU ARE MISSING SOMETHING! It hurts, where the hell did you put it?!".
I'm a little confused that I can't actually control the erm, size of the phantom. I don't really mind. It's small -- I don't care often. When I do, I don't think I can do much about it. And in the back of my mind I'm screaming, "There is NOTHING there! What's wrong with you?! Besides, it's called imagination!" ...nope, doesn't work. I am small, even in my imagination. Gonna live with that.
I did use to wonder why people couldn't be, and I quote from my own 8-year-old train of thought, "girls on top and boys on the bottom, or boys on top and girls on the bottom". I figured either would work out great for me. Now I'm more wishing I could have long hair, a beard, have pecs, and have a dick and a vagina. I identify to others as a feminine, gay transguy individual -- gay/pansexual to those I bother explaining things to. But I wonder if I'm more of an androgyne individual than anything. I don't feel male or female too much. Just leaning towards male.
Sometimes I wish I could live in a nudist colony. I would just tell people my dick was cut off. (I might actually do this if my granddad ever goes through with planning a trip to a nudist colony...) I am really comfortable with myself naked. I see a guy. (A very cute one. XD) I can't see the female in my face, and I think this has rubbed off on others, because when I asked my sister if she could, she said "no." said I looked more like a gay guy. It was then I told her that I was wearing her mascara, and she punched me. o-o XD
I have an "please ask, do tell" policy when it comes to gender. I can talk at lengths about it. My friends find this annoying and interesting, if I'm to trust them. One friend is very binary about everything, says I should shut up about it because no one cares. I quoted MLK, he says MLK and I have different messages. "Treat everyone equally" and "Treat everyone equally". Not the same thing, obviously.
But if I dress like a girl on purpose, it's usually for some sort of sexual appeal, and I never leave my room or the bathroom. I have had the urge for the longest time to wear a dress, pantyhose, and nice dress shoes, but I can't. For one, I don't have the money. Secondly, my mother would just see it as, "Oh, $he finally came to her (his) senses." She thinks I'm stupid, that it's a phase, and she refuses my boy name and correct pronouns. I don't want her out of my life... but I think it's sad she can't see the beauty beyond binary gender. I want to help people see it.
I want to take T. I feel I could get very close to my desired body, especially with chest surgery. I feel like no therapist would take me seriously as an transsexual androgyne/androgynous transsexual (if I even AM!)... it's annoying. And even more so, I'm doubting everything, and it makes me wonder what the hell I am.
I'm in high school right now, and I'm saving money for a therapist's appointment that probably won't happen until next summer, and that's if I learn the way there or my granddaddy accepts me far enough to make it to the door. (I think he might. He has, mostly, so far.)
I am so sorry for this huge rant... I just am so very confused about my identity and needed to get it off my chest. =_=;; Again, many apologies.
- Christopher.
*scurries away*
