Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Leigh once posted a couple of metaphors for the 'choice' a transsexual has in transitioning/not transitioning:

"It's like choosing to leave the room you're in because you just noticed it's on fire."

"It's like choosing NOT to jump off a high cliff and moving back to safety."

One metaphor I'd like to get away from is the trapped-in-the-body-of-the-opposite-gender one.

Can we come up with other metaphors that illustrate the idea that, once a transsexual accepts him- or herself, choosing NOT to transition is for most of us fraught with danger and not really an option?

Karen

It is like being paralyzed from head to toe all your life and one day you decide to walk,  to run, to talk, to laugh, to live.......


tinkerbell :icon_chick:

It's like crawling out of a cesspool and taking a nice long shower.

It's like realizing there's finally a cure for a flesh-eating cancer you have.

Melissa

It's like noticing that you have a brake pedal for the first time.... and you can use it to prevent running into that brick wall too!

You choose to quit banging your head against the wall.

It is stepping out of the way of an oncoming train.

It is getting out of the shark infested waters.

Time to quit feeding the tigers with your bare hands.

It's like moving into an earthquake zone from a hurricaine zone.

....


Cindi

Don't like metaphores, don't like labels...

Woman suits just fine thank you.

Steph

QuoteWoman suits just fine thank you.

I'm going with Steph on this but I always said it was like going from darkness to light and beauty.  :angel:

It's like hearing colors and seeing music without the use of chemicals.

It's like having your heart released from a cage.

It's like knowing you live in a beautiful sea and you will not drown.



I hope I didn't didn't unconsciously steal from anyone.

rebecca fog

Quote from: Steph on October 19, 2006, 05:17:32 AM
Don't like metaphores, don't like labels...

Woman suits just fine thank you.

Steph

I love what Steph had to say. I just want to be a woman. Accepted or not, I just want my inner beauty to shine through for the first time in my life.

Genevieve

It's like trying to hold your breath... for forty-two years.

Quote from: Kate on October 19, 2006, 10:42:34 AM
It's like trying to hold your breath... for forty-two years.

Lol, yes it is and I'm not even 42 years old.   :o

Melissa

you nailed it, Kate.

Catapillar to cacoon to butterfly.  Butterflies are free.......


gill

Yep, these are all good.

It is going from a living hell to heaven on earth, dysphoria to euphoria.

It is when you lift your face to the sky, and spread your arms wide open, and feel the rain on face from the heavens.
                                             Marco

                                                 

Quote from: Marco on October 19, 2006, 02:02:10 PM
It is when you lift your face to the sky, and spread your arms wide open, and feel the rain on face from the heavens.                                        

"God is in the rain..."

Guess i'm scared to find out, the end result may not make me happier or worse it could be worse as opposed to anticipating it to be great and then?  tragic events could ensue as those ghosts and devils always seem to be near!
R

We are all like books.  There's a cover and the pages in between.  What makes a book is what's on the pages, not the cover.  I was born with the wrong cover.  All I want is to make the cover match what's on the pages.

It's like leaving a witness protection program that you were born into - where you had to lie, cheat and deceive everyone you knew and loved just to be safe even though it never removed the abject fear - and finally letting everyone know who you REALLY are and letting the fear go.

It is like having been burning in hell all your life and then you return to where you belong, heaven.


tinkerbell :icon_chick:

   I vote that Tinkerbell receive an award for coming up with a gut wrencher. A metaphor strong enough to feel.

Here's a bad awful one!
""If you've been forced to live your life inside a coffin it is only fitting that you be burried in one when you die""
Yuck, sorry! .......

That is pretty awful, Ricki. ;)

  You're on the right track, though, this is my interpretation of the coffin metaphor:

  Once you choose to transition, you have chosen to not get inside the coffin.

Or,

  If you choose to live within a coffin, you'll have gone nowhere before you die.

  Apparently, using a coffin in my metaphors is my downfall also. Alas,

this one i like ""f you choose to live within a coffin, you'll have gone nowhere before you die""
Very good! 
I'm more depressive on paper, in person people say i am funny, witty chatty upbeat?  Hmmmmmmm where the heck is this person all the time>?
Oh My Holy stars maybe I'm not TS.. maybe I'm multiple personalities like EVE....Agghhhhh I could be killing people in my spare time or going through peoples trash on mondays? agghhhhhh
Coffee in the morning vodka in the evening, what a diet.....


Posted on: October 20, 2006, 05:23:11 PM

---

maybe not a metaphor but i always liked this one
"beware of the lion that does not show its teeth"
is that sort of like keep your enemies close
Or-
by not transitioning I am not complete...
Do i need to be complete to have transitioned?

I do not think i am good at this????? FROWN!!!

Quote from: Kate on October 19, 2006, 10:42:34 AM
It's like trying to hold your breath... for forty-two years.

I held my breath for 54 years.  Not something I'm proud of.

Last night I heard a good one at the TG support group (http://sacgender.org/wiki/index.php/MatherTsSupportGroup) meeting -- "It came down to a choice of living as a woman or dying as a man" (Stephanie)

Karen

Ricki,

  Killing people in your spare time is wrong. You should only be killing when there is a paycheck involved.
 

I missed my calling I think i should of been one of those small 5'7" stealth type hit men? We Heeeee  then when i transition I'll be a hit woman! 
I'm back from camping check out my post about the tree!
Maybe sort of like a metaphor??

A stanza from a poem:

QuoteI have no body.  A human soul needs a body to live.
So for now, I have possessed this man's body.
He was already dead when I found him.
Please forgive my current appearance.
It's the only lump of flesh I had access to,
Something I can work on...
To be alive.

Wow!  just wow!!!   :( :'(....and how many of us have felt or still feel this way....

tinkerbell :icon_chick:

I'm liking the witness protection program analogy.  That is a big winner.

Yes Kate, God is in the rain. ;)

Cindi

It's like attending a masqurade party all your life and having no fun at it.

Its like playing a out of tune instrument, where only you can hear that bad cord.

It's like deciding to grab onto the ledge of the pit you've been falling in for all your life.

It's like discovering an escape route from Hell.

It's like living on a desolate island only to discover an abundance of life on the other side.  The choice is deciding to move to the other side of that island.

Melissa

Quote from: Melissa on October 24, 2006, 10:54:47 AM
It's like deciding to grab onto the ledge of the pit you've been foalling in fo rall your life.
Melissa

"foalling"  Let's see a foal is a little horse isn't it?  So to "foal" as a verb would be giving birth to a horse?  I know it's a typo, but I'm laughing my proverbial horse's arse off here.

Cindi

How about...

It's like trying to hold your breath, eventually you got to breath.

It's like wakeing up from a long slumber to a beautiful morning

Hey everyone,

Which of us, upon being born, would choose not to take that first breath?

Love always,
Elizabeth

Wow has this thread ever brought about a flash back lol. I remembered in June of 2004 telling my doctor that I was transgendered. In July I told him I wanted to transition. I think my words were something to the effect of 'I've been living as a male all these years and now I CHOOSE to live my remaining years as a female, WOW was my male persona ever full of itself. Fast forward to December, I still was NOT on HRT as my doctor had no experience with this and could not find anyone to assist him in what to do. I had already run into 2 roadblocks one with the 'Clarke' institute in TO and another not quite so bad with the Sherbourne clinic there as well. Needless to say I was only days away from actually breaking into a drug store to get my drugs when I found an online pharmacy that allowed me to proceed without the B&E thing. In short, for me once I had accepted the need to change and the consequences the pressure to move forward nearly reached the breaking point. SO it never was a CHOICE lol. I have to admit though that I have on numerous occassions, usually milestones, when I have cried in knowing that that Persona was dying in order to give me Life. It had done a reasonable good job of protecting the little girl bottled up inside for all those many years.

Byee,
  Brina

wow, Brina!

   That was a good description of the need to transition.
   I had the same thing with my old self dying. I had to die before my rebirth. That was this year. I'm still trying to start HRT.

It is like being blind since birth, unable to see the sun, the colors and the beauty of life, and finally one day you can see everything; and although your eyes may hurt until they adjust to the light, and the pain may take a while to cease, the fact that you can see is everything that matters...



tinkerbell :icon_chick:

Quote from: Tinkerbell on November 14, 2006, 03:18:45 PM
It is like being blind since birth, unable to see the sun, the colors and the beauty of life, and finally one day you can see everything; and although your eyes may hurt until they adjust to the light, and the pain may take a while to cease, the fact that you can see is everything that matters...



tinkerbell :icon_chick:

And then everyone around you says that you aren't supposed to see.. that it is unnatural... that God made you and that you shouldn't make it so that you can see.... "that he doesn't make mistakes."

;)

Cindi

Quote from: Cindianna_Jones on November 14, 2006, 07:13:33 PM

And then everyone around you says that you aren't supposed to see.. that it is unnatural... that God made you and that you shouldn't make it so that you can see.... "that he doesn't make mistakes."

;)

...so our duty is to pretend that 'God doesn't make mistakes'?  That the emperor in fact really does have clothes (when he's walkin' about wit' 'is bum exposed and all...) so as not to embarrass -- WHO?  Certainly not God, who could afford to care less what we think.  I think it's to protect the reputation of all those other people who talked themselves into believing that that's a snazzy pair of duds our very own Emperor is wearing...

(sorry, got a little heated there...)

Karen

In royal purple no less.  And let us not forget Danny Kay's role in all of this. Yes, it is the great transsexual conspiracy to convince you to cut it off.  And ye, verily, they shall succeed. 

;)

Cindi

Quote from: Cindianna_Jones on November 14, 2006, 07:13:33 PM
And then everyone around you says that you aren't supposed to see.. that it is unnatural... that God made you and that you shouldn't make it so that you can see.... "that he doesn't make mistakes."

;)

Cindi

LMAO!!! :D :D :D

Melissa

Quote from: Cindianna_Jones on November 14, 2006, 11:04:35 PM
In royal purple no less.  And let us not forget Danny Kay's role in all of this. Yes, it is the great transsexual conspiracy to convince you to cut it off.  And ye, verily, they shall succeed. 

;)

Cindi

   What did Danny Kaye have to do with this? Are you serious?
   Cut what off? - I think I know what, but I did not know there is a conspiracy.
   Which side am I on? Please, I am a little befuddled by all this.


Becca

Quote from: RebeccaFog on November 15, 2006, 07:30:49 AM

   What did Danny Kaye have to do with this? Are you serious?
   Cut what off? - I think I know what, but I did not know there is a conspiracy.
   Which side am I on? Please, I am a little befuddled by all this.

Becca

In Cindi's book Squirrel Cage, she mentioned that people in Salt Lake told her that there's a conspiracy of transsexuals in California who sit around in skirts and blouses and dare each other to get (da-Da-DA-DUMMMM!) "The Operation", and that if they got any young junior high football jock alone long enough, they cold talk him into a Trip to Trinidad to slide under the Scalpel of one Doctor Stanley Biber...

Yeah -- right...

Danny Kay?

Karen

I need to get that book. I'll just hit Amazon today.

But is the Danny Kay reference about just some guy, or is it a reference to Danny Kaye, the entertainer?


Peace [&] Love

Becca

I just thought of a great way of explaining this to cisgendered people.

Imagine you have a tumor that causes you to be in constant agonizing pain every second of the day.  You've had it for as long as you remember and you've come up with coping techniques to deal with that pain, but that pain has recently become worse as coping techniques have failed.   And then one day you find out there's a cure for that pain, but people tell you that God made you this way and you should live in this pain.  They don't understand that the pain has become pure agonizing hell and you can not function anymore in life.  Your choices are dying or going for the cure.  I chose to go for the cure.

I think by translating the emotional and mental pain into physical pain it could help others understand.

Melissa

   For me, it was physical.  After years of hiding and pretending, I was having neck & upper back pains. Sometimes, I felt pain in my scrotum. My head hurt all of the time. I had little mystery pains come and go from my arms. Oh, and my chest hurt.
   I almost forgot, the panic attacks and shortness of breath and blurred vision.

Ahh, I don't know about mataphors in that I don't feel it is a choice myself. Once you realize who you are you can hide it in terms of appearance but inside you are still a woman (or guy for f2m) and that is a reality. When we just live as our selves we just shed a false shell and show the world the person we are for real. I don't wake in the morn and say I think I'll choose to be a woman today. I am a woman and that is reality, not choice. I don't mean to be a party pooper here but the term choice and transition never really were my favs anyways.
                          Kim   :angel: