The following is a comment my ex-wife, Brandi, left on my video "A T-Girl's Hopes and Dreams (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbYMwYLb7Ic )." In this newer video I talk about it and ask other people's opinions on her comment. The questions are mostly aimed at other transgendered people who have gone through this or are currently going through this right now. What I mean is: Do you see yourself as two people (the male and female sides) or just one? It's hard to explain if you arent transgendered. I would just like to share my feelings, concerns and questions. This is not meant to ridicule or insult Brandi in any way. She is learning me and we have grown closer as sisters more than anything and I love her for all she has done for me. She has watched all of my videos. That means alot to me. I'd like to thank her for her time and all her kindness and love she has shown me. Im happy that she accepts me for the woman I am to become. Thank you, Brandi. I love you, sis!
Her letter is next, followed by the video...
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Brandi -
"I'm gonna post this live so your friends can agree or disagree and you can delete if you want. I have watched all your videos and you have come such a long way. I am noticing something, you are trying to keep tommy/charity separate. I don't. You are and will always be my tommie.lol. You beat yourself up because you aren't giving charity her run. You are Charity. You can dress up or down. Be in full wig,makeup and dress or in your guy jeans and a ball cap. Am I not brandi in a dress with full make up or in my shorts and hair in a clip with no makeup on right? You feel you let yourself down when you don't let her come to life. That is you. Your job hired you as a man, yes confusing the situation could lose your job and you have a family to provide for but what you don't realize is even if you are charity and go to work wouldn't you still be no make up and hair up in coveralls. What I am trying to say is it doesn't matter all the makeup (that makes us feel better to be dressed up) you are who you are and it is coming out a lot more that you are more comfortable. You can't hide. Quit trying to separate the two you are gonna give yourself split personality disorder.lol..Give it time. Love ya"
EXTRA - Not in the video:
"Sweetie its all baby steps. Don't sweat the small stuff. Women or man we all have to face and deal with "what people think". I believe I have been with you thru the majority of "you discovering yourself". Seems like you are worried that you are letting Charity down not bringing her to light all the time. Your job hired you as a man and you know that they are homophobic. What you don't realize is you are charity all the time, with or without the makeup quit trying to separate the two."
Anyways, heres the video link and my questions I asked are on this video:
TRANSGENDERED - ONE PERSON OR TWO? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ni2iUzW4j0
I don't believe the two are seperate. If you create a male side to get on with life, that side is still a part of you - whether it's accurately representative of who you would wish to be or not. After all, a person is what they do moreso than what they think of doing, or rather who a person is, rather than who a person wishes to be at the time.
The division as a whole is a little silly, I find. I like to think that the "male side" is really just a measure your "female side" takes to make life easier. You are you, and everything you do is a part of you. There aren't any sides... just perceived ones, as seeing them as sides makes the process easier to understand, and it makes the whole thing a little more dramatic.
In boy mode or girl mode its just "me", two sides? for the ease of explanation others might understand perhaps that could be,
I have had 50 years to fine tune my mind to accept the best it can just what is going on..frustration though can be a daily event, however days are getting better now that I can be in visible "girl mode" comfortably at home with my wife.
But...no matter what I wear or am doing in public, at work or with clients, in my "mind" I am a girl...what people actually see may appear to be actually male
Quote from: Kelly J. P. on April 17, 2012, 03:03:28 PM
I don't believe the two are seperate. If you create a male side to get on with life, that side is still a part of you - whether it's accurately representative of who you would wish to be or not. After all, a person is what they do moreso than what they think of doing, or rather who a person is, rather than who a person wishes to be at the time.
The division as a whole is a little silly, I find. I like to think that the "male side" is really just a measure your "female side" takes to make life easier. You are you, and everything you do is a part of you. There aren't any sides... just perceived ones, as seeing them as sides makes the process easier to understand, and it makes the whole thing a little more dramatic.
wow Kelly, I was typing my thoughts as you posted that...how eerily similar
Sometimes I feel like I have a superhero identity.
"A mild mannered guy during the daytime but at night, he becomes Tgirl! Few know of her fabulous style and her glamorous beauty!"
I know Im silly but It really was like I kept the two sides secret. I didnt want anyone to know about me as Charity. But as I have came out of the closet to alot of people, Im starting to see that line being blurred and just being myself now.
Two years ago I concluded my life had it's downs and outs primarily due to my trans issues. Or, more specifically how I addressed them. I realized I had built this great wall between Joanne and John. In building that wall to protect John, brick by brick I was actually walling him in, denying him a life, denying him joy. I reasoned the best thing I can do for myself is to make one whole complete person by tearing down that wall.
There was no other goal in mind. Certainly not transition of any sort. I just knew that I needed to be one whole person again. So far I think, or thought it was working, that both persona's were melding into one. What is bothersome is the few people that know both well all say the same thing, that I am different depending on presentation. What scares the crap out of me is Joanne is the better/healthier/happier/stronger/more self assured of the two.
Like I needed more to worry about! ::)
Ideally I would like to say it's just one person but be it in my personal case I can't transition right now I definatelly see it as two people....the strong more cold side and the presentation of being weak side....kind of like in Yugioh
I suppose I do have to be careful of my outward mannerisms depending on who I am dealing with, when talking with customers about an art project I have to catch myself once in awhile when I get all excited when in "artist mode" and my femme side comes out even though they are clearly looking at a guy in front of them...yikes! the art I do clearly is in a very very male dominated industry ;)
So ideally I guess it all really depends on if you are transitioning or planning on transitioning or not OR if you just wanna keep your female side secret.
Definitely just one person.
I admit that I rather like referring to a male and female side of myself. I did this when I was pretty young - I created people that represented certain fragments of my persona. Eventually, this evolved into representing a masculine and a feminine side - among other sides, of course.
I still refer to them as such because those people I created have been lifelong friends... though I also do it to be dramatic, which I find quite amusing.
But it's important to realize that I am still one person - I feel a lot more unified than I used to, for sure, but while I might have different parts of who I am, they are merely fragments of a single greater whole.
I have a bit of a strange outlook on many things, so this will probably not make sense, but I wanted to contribute my thoughts anyway :)
I used to see it as two sides when I was younger, but after musing over the issue intently, I've been coming to the idea that, by doing that, I was forcing myself into an extreme binary situation. The act of forcing myself to fit anything by dividing it cleanly into male/female, I feel, limits my ability to live completely. Now, I'm in a nice little University bubble right now, so I may be too optimistic. I see how in a current job situation, the division is necessary. This is more philosophically speaking.
My outlook on the state of myself is that I've always been perceived as a kind of girly sort of guy. That's fine. What matters to me most is how I feel about myself. Trying to partition out my life into two personas is too much effort and too much acting for me. I will dress however the heck I want, act however the heck I want and cut my hair however the heck I want.
Whatever you do, however you present yourself, in my mind, the most important thing is that you let yourself be you. You're the only one who is.
I just feel like 1 person.
When I tried to hard to be female, I still had the same hobbies, interest, tastes in music, art, food, etc as I am now, when I am true to myself and not hiding my androgynous feelings and wanting to become a beautiful dandy guy.
Before or after my transition, I still love goth music, clothes, photographing, I am still autistic, still have fibromyalgia, still have a dog which I love to death. The transition only changes my body, name and maybe even legally my gender on paper, and allowes me to be open about some aspects of myself. But still, I am the same person all the time. That's how I feel about it.
Quote from: pretty on April 18, 2012, 03:14:56 AM
Definitely just one person.
This.
Everything else that worked against who I am becoming now was merely a facade I put up.
When I lived as two people the really girlie side of me lived fearfully in a cave, and the butch female lived in confusion never feeling the male ego boost when you did something well, never knowing how to relate as a male to a female, like I imagined I should, never being able to strut like a male, choking when I played ping pong or pool, when the male I played against went into competition mode, waiting patiently like a well mannered girl to be sent onto the field in a football game, and being treated as fragile by the coach because I was skinny and being male was not spontaneous for me. I am not sure how I would have fit in in the female role. But, I can imagine my pretty little self jumping up and down yelling at may man in my cute little outfit and putting on my make up. Something was missing.
Now was I one person or two. The world saw me and treated me as a male and I tried to act like a male and do male things in a totally clueless way. The males in my life were no help because even though my father and step father were handy with their hands, they didn't do anything around the house except sit in a chair and drink beer while they read a paper, listen to the radio, watched television or sleep on the couch.
I was supposed to automatically know how to do man things. I tried and eventually had more tools than either one of them and could use them fairly well, but I fretted and worried about everything I fixed or built, and only felt relieved when I fixed it, never getting any male ego boost.
It took too much energy trying to live like a male and my female was too scared to see the light of day. I was consumed with surviving and taking care of my self.
In trying to be what I was not and not learning to live who I was I hid myself in religion, family, and work. Others expected me to do for them because I was seen as the father, while they had no obligations to me as children or did my wife who loved her job more than her family.
I was too weak to stand up for myself and kept thinking that if I did the right thing, everything would be OK. It was and it wasn't. This kept me from being a drug addict or an alcoholic. I was just a hyper workaholic who did for others at the deprivation of myself whose was spiritually dead in the water because religion was not about developing a relationship with God and growing spiritually but about being a safety net that set a path for me to follow and kept me from abusing myself except for overworking and stressing myself out. One person or two.
One day in 1999 that who world that I had prompt up as a pseudo male just up and disappeared. Most of the kids had grown up and left. My ex asked me to borrow the pickup and when I came home she and my teenager daughter were gone, moved to a town 80 miles away where she had a job. I was left with an angry note.
One person or two butch female or girly female. Mike had no reason left to exist except as a shell to go to work for 6 hours a day. Michelle was free to crawl out of her cave. So here I am.
Being male had its price because male hormones shaped my body for over 50 years, and had shaped my public identification. But its funny most of my male past has gone poof. Schools where I worked have closed down or changed totally, houses have burned down, people have moved on and my parents have died. I moved away from everything familiar to me. Michelle is all that's left. One person or two.
I don't know you decide. Now I am me, Michelle, and I don't care if people see me as male or female. No body stares when I shop for bras or make up or dresses. Within one breath people call me sir and madam. What is passing. I am not treated as a total being to be avoided at all costs. Many people on the bus who ignore me, I am happy to have them ignore me. I am a home bound grandma who never sees her grand children and whose older children live on the opposite coast, and whose siblings live in the middle, they don't have to deal with me and I don't deal with them. We meet and deal with each other on Facebook. As far as interpersonal relationships go, I still am crappy.
Am I one person or two. All I can be is one in my head. As far as your head goes, am I one person or two. Not my problem. Your problem.
As a general answer: both.
One determined by me, another determined by those who believe they know me.
Often they aren't the same. Yet if reality is perception, then they're both real.
Only one, however, the one I choose to be, is actually alive.
As for the specific notion of male and female personas, as mentioned. To my mind they're both facets of the same diamond. Those, along with myriad other facets make up who I am.
"As for the specific notion of male and female personas, as mentioned. To my mind they're both facets of the same diamond. Those, along with myriad other facets make up who I am."
well said Sephirah!
Just one. However when I did carry on with the role; I did have to monitor my mannerisms so as to fit the male role. People who knew me then find diffcult, now, to reconcile my female appearance and mannerism with my still assertive personality. My children do not have this problem as they on only knew 'Peky," as the role was not carried on at home.
Before I went full time it would feel like a "dual role", mainly in appearance, but I never felt I was two people. Even the dual role thing was too much and I finally had to jump into living full time. That said I'm still doing some/many of the same things I did before I transitioned, I just look better doing them now :)
Quote from: Stephe on April 18, 2012, 09:41:41 PM
Before I went full time it would feel like a "dual role", mainly in appearance, but I never felt I was two people.
Stephe. I like this. This clears up alot of thoughts.
My people, Ojibwas, believe that transgendered people are two-spirited and are to be revered. When my transition started there were two beings, him for work and me for the rest of life. But they were the same person.
Quote from: Ms. OBrien on April 19, 2012, 06:13:17 AM
My people, Ojibwas, believe that transgendered people are two-spirited and are to be revered. When my transition started there were two beings, him for work and me for the rest of life. But they were the same person.
And all along i thought you were Irish!
I don't know if this helps any. But, Andrea, for me. Due to living location, family, and current finances. Is more in the head and heart, than in the world. Yet we are the same in most respects. We spring from the same source of experiences. Where the world sees a odd middle aged man. If transition were to happen. It would see a odd middle aged woman.
I think the duality comes in explaining it to others, because ultimately, the truth is simple: We are only who we are. Whether or not we are in the correct gender is still only a part of who we are. Because we can be nothing more than that. Duality outside of the mind does not exist. Just like life and death. These aren't two seperate things. As we are living, we are also dying. You cannot have one without the other, so it is only one. You cannot have one version of you without the other, so you are one.
We wouldn't seperate ourselves for who we are when we eat chocolate ice cream, and who we are when we eat vanilla. Yes, its a simple concept, but easily extrapolated into gender. if we transition, we still are only who we are...... just more of who we want to be.
For the longest time, I had thought "Who am I going to be when I'm a woman"? It had given me all sorts of headaches. The mind, anxiously dividing... searching in duality. Of course, the answer was simple, even though it took forever for me to believe. I am going to be me! Same sense of humor, same likes and dislikes. I am going to be me, although I will be me in the outward expression that I choose closest resembles my soul. Trying to think of myself as a different person caused a LOT of grief. I can't tell you the release I felt when I finally knew that I would still be me. the duality was gone, and as such, so was the fear.
Sometimes I get a little long winded.... but hope this helps. Just a different slant on it all.
Quote from: auburnaubrey on April 21, 2012, 12:54:59 PM
I think the duality comes in explaining it to others, because ultimately, the truth is simple: We are only who we are. Whether or not we are in the correct gender is still only a part of who we are. Because we can be nothing more than that. Duality outside of the mind does not exist. Just like life and death. These aren't two separate things. As we are living, we are also dying. You cannot have one without the other, so it is only one. You cannot have one version of you without the other, so you are one.
We wouldn't separate ourselves for who we are when we eat chocolate ice cream, and who we are when we eat vanilla. Yes, its a simple concept, but easily extrapolated into gender. if we transition, we still are only who we are...... just more of who we want to be.
For the longest time, I had thought "Who am I going to be when I'm a woman"? It had given me all sorts of headaches. The mind, anxiously dividing... searching in duality. Of course, the answer was simple, even though it took forever for me to believe. I am going to be me! Same sense of humor, same likes and dislikes. I am going to be me, although I will be me in the outward expression that I choose closest resembles my soul. Trying to think of myself as a different person caused a LOT of grief. I can't tell you the release I felt when I finally knew that I would still be me. the duality was gone, and as such, so was the fear.
Sometimes I get a little long winded.... but hope this helps. Just a different slant on it all.
Very good to see that in words Aubrey, that is a perfect description
For many many years I was confused about "who/what" am I... Once I realized that "I am just me" it all became much clearer and easier on my mind...but yes, for the sake of explaining you sometimes have to use the duality concept as people see the 3D physical appearances and they need to put a label on it.
Quote from: Michelle G on April 21, 2012, 01:19:46 PM
but yes, for the sake of explaining you sometimes have to use the duality concept as people see the 3D physical appearances and they need to put a label on it.
Yeah, humans for the most part, feel the need to "catagorize" things in order for them to understand them... of course, that's one of the big flaws of humans... the need to "understand". If they could only replace that word with "accept", then they would realize they don't need to understand everything... because we just can't understand everything.
I think that I fell into the trap of duality, because my thoughts would catagorize themselves as "in my male form" and "in my female form", and that in itself kind of boxed me in to my own thoughts... Which led to frustration, which led to fear, which led to being stuck. Unfortunately, gender is used as a great "seperator"...... instead of people just being people. We don't categorize chemical engineers vs non chemical engineers!! LOL. They are just people in a profession. I am just a person in a gender! ;D
For me as an androgyne, I used to think of myself as two separate people before I was able to integrate both sides into a cohesive identity. For you, however, as many people have said, the "male" side seems far more like a created person you acted as in order to get by. Ultimately, though, only you can decide which part of the male presentation is the actual you and to integrate those things into the real you as a woman.