I would imagine that many if not most Transsexuals who successfully transitioned and integrated themselves into society do not want to compromise what they have achieved after what has been a life of living hell ... -- Ladyrider
I have heard about this living hell for years. I have no doubt that things can be bad, at least relatively speaking.
Do we care to enumerate our numerous days on the street smoking crack and turning tricks, our muscular dystrophy, our living on $35/year, the ravages beriberi and rickets visited on our lives, the schizophrenia onset when we were 22 and about to graduate from Harvard or Dakota State at the head of our class?
Maybe we could add-in a story about repeated rapes, beatings by police or other citizens? How 'bout the time we had breast cancer, cervical cancer, were terminated from our jobs or were paid less than the going rate because of our sex, gender-identity, color, or religion?
Or the time we were interned in a refugee camp while Israeli soldiers cut off our water and electricity and kept us inside the perimeter for days on end as a prisoner, although we'd never been tried or convicted for anything at all except that our family had been born where they were?
Maybe a frisson of death-squads taking us away and murdering us in the sunset jungles of Guatemala or on the swaying pampas of Argentina? Or the genocide we suffered in Bosnia or Rwanda?
Should I go on? Naw, why do that?
I know a lot of us, perhaps all, go through some rather physically and psychologically harrowing experiences. Some of us decide, or nearly decide, but most of us seem to say we just "would have decided" to commit suicide out of frustration and despair.
Psychological problems are still problems. As many of us also discover the "living hell" our psyches experience are usually pretty well ameliorated by enough money earned, saved, inherited, gifted or paid to a credit card company to plunk down for surgeries, therapy, medications.
Of course not everyone can afford that.
Fact is, and all we generally have to do is look at any webz BB we happen to use a lot and see, that the "phenomenon" of transsexing is a mostly white, middle to upper middle to upper class, professional, reasonably educated, European-heritage phenomenon. We're the ones who generally afford it. We're the ones whose governments often pick up the tab for it.
The ones who don't: non-ops, too-poor-to-ever-ops, too-sick-to-risk-it-ops, too-lacking-in-knowledge-to-ever-realize-they-might-ops or just plain I-don't-want-to-risk-it-ops or never-thought-about-it-but-have-some-gender-dissonance-ops are usually the ones who we create a second-tier in our minds for.
They either don't exist or we don't want to agree that they are just as worthy of having their dysphorias treated as the more economically-viable folk who do manage that.
Thus, we tell ourselves they are a different order of human being from us. We who have "taken the bull by the horns" and made ourselves ourselves and we are different, o so different, from them and they will make us look bad, take away our status and "ruin" our lives if we even for a second allow them to be part of us, or recognize that we are part of them. Part of them simply because we share a common humanity and common desires and joys and sorrows, common dreams for the future.
But they don't look right, sound right, dress right or identify right and they are certainly not "our people."
I often think that transsexuals who have "successfully transitioned and integrated themselves into society" and "do not want to compromise what they have achieved" don't want to face the fact that we are still pretty much who we were before that transition. Except now we have penises when we didn't or vulvas when we didn't and so feel a lot more contentment on our surface than we did before.
We've managed to afford one or four surgeries through the course of our "living hell" and can't really come to grips with ourselves as plain ole human beings and so need to rewrite our histories and build all sorts of walls around our lives to wall in our self-loathing and doubt.
The fear of being seen has been a part of our lives since many of us were very, very young and we just never manage to break through that loathing and hiding. It's still there and we despise "them" for causing us somewhere in the dead of the night to wake-up with nightmares that we might be one of them! Someone might someday know, or find out, and wouldn't believe I am who I am ever again.
Not so much deception or lying, just an unwillingness to see how utterly devoid of any kind of self-acceptance we actually are. I mean, even after all that horrendous and hellish living -- why, we hardly sound like we're decrepit or broken or even much bruised.
But, we sure do like to tell everyone just how hard life was back when the school-buses didn't run, the water was from a well and the log-cabin was falling down around our ears. That story, that meme, seems so much more satisfying to our ears.
But, the telltale heart beats louder and louder and the dislike, disgust, ... hate ... pervades the rooms we drift through. We wish to stop the beating that's so loud, so uncomfortable. We must rip that heart out and destroy it so that infernal beating will cease. Where are those people hiding. Their hearts must stop beating!
So, we take the knife, raise it ...
And plunge it deeply into that loudly beating heart and silence it, breathe easier.
Breathe out our life's blood through the wound we have made in ourselves.
Edited this morning, 5/21/09 @ 9:00 a.m. for punctuation and word-choices. -- Nichole
So tragic, so sad and so true. Makes one wonder just how many of us make it over that hypothetical line and live happy fulfilling lives. I can only pray that those who leave here to live their lives as their true selves find happiness in their lives, for they so deserve to. It can be done, I did climb out of the bottomless pit of a past life to find a degree of happiness and contentment to feel the warm sun of life.
Cindy
Nicolle
What a nice post.
I worry? about this also. I feel deeply guilty at times because my problems are, well, mundane. I want corrective surgry. I have a good job, and I know many at Susan's don't but we can all afford internet.
I can afford to dress myself, feed myself, buy books and music. Plan. I can control my destiny to a great extent. I do have 2,5, 10 year plans. Ok I may die tonight but I don't intend to.
I live in a country and the society of that country that has the advantages. I feel deeply ashamed how my country treats the native Aboriginal population, I'm ashamed of how "boat people" are discarded.
I am a very lucky girl. Yes I struggle with depression, but I can get treatment. I'm not living in the squalor of a refugee camp suffering from depression wondering how I can eat. Would I want to transition there. Yes, but it would be utterly impossible. A futile dream. I presume that it would not matter to me.
If the opnion you are expressing is that we (TS) tend to enlarge our problems, I need a better adjective, then I think you are correct. However I also think it may be site specific. Since we are talking to TS friends we may tend to seek sympathy. Something that "normal" society does not give us. As it does not give sympathy to the poor, the drug addicts, the mentally ill. Society only gives sympathy to those who fit what the majority want. "Oh we pay so much tax" which also means you have a job. The mortgage repayments are too high; you own a house. etc etc.
No I don't agree aout being in a living hell. My wife who is perfectly mentally normal, highly educated and has travelled the world with me, had a bizzare accident. One week we were treking through the bush. A month later she couldn't move. She still can't and has to live in a nursing home, average age 87, she is 55. That is a living hell.
Sorry if this is a rant
Cindy
Cindy (James), I'm so sorry about your wife. I can imagine the "living hell" of your wife. My mother, much older, was placed in one of those by my brother. It was across town from me, but 45 miles from where he lived. I was her most regular visitor as she went down into the depths of Alzheimer's Disease. Yes, I can imagine how your wife must feel in such a place. You're entitled to at least a rant.
"Enlarge." :laugh: Yes, I think "enlarge" is a rather harmless word in this context. I'd use "inflate" or even "lie about" in some cases.
No one should underestimate the difficulties of gender dysphoria or of living a life that's socially-despised. Many of us have built our lives to some extent. But, most transsexuals I have "met" over the years at forums like this certainly appear and present themselves as having been "always middle-class" at the least. I've yet to meet on boards or in-person any TS/TG who was born deathly-poor in a hut on the outskirts of Dhaka and has "raised herself by her bootstraps" to become a computer-engineer in USA. They may exist, prolly do, but they aren't around me and never have been.
Cindy(bc), thank you as well. That was a nice post. :)
QuoteI can only pray that those who leave here to live their lives as their true selves find happiness in their lives, for they so deserve to. It can be done, I did climb out of the bottomless pit of a past life to find a degree of happiness and contentment to feel the warm sun of life.
You've said before you were a "street-drunk." Having worked through the years with many who, even in major, wealthy, American cities who have attempted to do that, I know that it requires struggle and more than just a bit of luck. I'm glad you made it.
I guess my point, though, is also that I get very tired of reading of the "travails" we tend to apply to our lives. And, tbh, I get rather concerned sometimes by those who appear so frightened of somehow being "outed" that they appear to only have post-transsexual lives in the pixels and conversations of places like this. They often appear afraid of being seen with other men and women of transsexing histories or to be "known" for fear that their lives will be ruined. That seems kinda sad.
I've often read the trope "well, if I survived cancer, would I walk around always calling myself a "cancer?" I always find the argument not only unpersuasive, but downright ridiculous anymore.
No, you wouldn't do that. Nor would I. But there is also that element of fear and self-loathing that appears to me to be part of the process of "re-defining my life." As though there were shame in simply having been born, with whatever traits and conditions that birth gives every human being.
And there's no doubt that being a transsexual or a transgender person and known as such may well cause some social exile. But, in our time we have seen much of that "truth" go flying back behind us. A lot of the reason for that is that women and men have unrolled their lives and their experiences for others to see.
In doing so they have often called out the humane and compassionate core of many individuals who "never knew." Just as many of us as we grew in rural, or poor urban areas "never knew." We never knew there were others, never knew that technology could afford us some relief, never knew we were anything but alone, frightened and hopeless.
It can be difficult today to realize, from sitting at my computer, that I "never knew." It's all too easy to make the tacit assumption that others now can't possibly be in the position of "never knowing." Yet, they are there, all over the world.
The fact that I have had a surgery, experienced & experience hormone treatments, etc is positive for me. For a long while I admit I was in that never-tell, never-let-on and never-be-around-or-admit-a-psychic-kinship-with-those-who-were-for-fear-of-someone-finding-out-because-then-they-would-be-as-disgusted-as-I-am-at-my-history crowd. *sigh*
Life changes. It was what it was and I have to own it. It was there and real and a part of my life. And ya know? when I do that (own it all) I do find some peace within myself. It's the sort of peace that comes with truly being able to live my life as it is: all the history, all the hope, all the delight and sadness. In that comes peace without the nagging fear that it will all be taken away by a credit-check or security-check. (Last one of those I had the vetter just said "O, just write female. You are ya know" and smiled.)
I'm not suggesting that everyone can, maybe even not suggesting that everyone should, be able to talk about our lives in a totally open fashion with everyone. I mean, cancer survivors, mental health patients, and rape survivors don't. Yet, they do talk and they are at the least somewhat open in the right circumstances. But, they also don't make attempts to further pathologize or exile or deny knowing those who do speak publically about their pasts.
In my line-of-work I have discovered the freedom and the lifting of oppression and depression that can arise by people simply owning their lives and their histories -- through and past the fear they have of how that will be seen by others.
We live our lives as we wish to live them. But I suspect from my reading that many who live their lives in secret also live them in fear, at least to some degree, some with overwhelming degrees that they will be detected as "false." What's false about a human life?
I think that maybe the difference might be: those who can live with the secret revealed if it is revealed and those who under revealing circumstances would be terrorized by their pasts. There doesn't appear to be a lot of "happiness and contentment to feel the warm sun of life" in living with as much fear of discovery I see and have seen in some of my friends who appear to merely have transferred one life of fear and deception for another.
N~
Quote from: NicholeI think that maybe the difference might be: those who can live with the secret revealed if it is revealed and those who under revealing circumstances would be terrorized by their pasts.
Its not denial of the past that so much the issue as not wanting the constant reminder of the pain and suffering endured. Which doesnt excuse extricating one's past. We are the sum of our parts...
Your post hits me hard because both where I came from, where I am... and where I am going.... Its still difficult for me to talk to anyone about my past with anyone who doesnt know about me as Stacy.
My past is similar in many respects to the kinds of trauma others endured... I suffered abuse growing up, and the violence in the house was both unpredictable and destructive. Ive known I was TS since I was a child, and having been caught a few times dressed I was subjected to a battery of psychological crap that did little to address my identity. Being diagnosed as ADD and fed Ritalin certainly didnt do much to help. Developed an eating disorder by 15 which just drove me deeper into the closet. By the time I was in college I was living a second life as Stacy hanging out in places I should never have been. Alcohol became an easy crutch, and I almost dropped out of school. When I finally did confront my bullimea I was pawned off to another therapist who told me I was suffering a womans disease and that I was sick for thinking I was a woman and for crossdressing. That was the night I tried to kill myself... somehow I managed to get past all that, but it wasnt just a one time thing. Thoughts of suicide hung with me for a long time.
I cant tell you how tortured I feel thinking I should have transitioned in my 20s. I was on the outs with my family and didnt care about finishing school. I didnt care that only sick people changed their gender through hormones and surgery.
Quote from: Janice Joplin"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don't mean nothing honey if it ain't free"
I was so convinced that I was damaged that I was detemined to bury Stacy once and for all. Finished school, moved away from my home to start over, made new friends, met and married my wife, built a new business, had a child.. yeah, sounds so much like the american dream....
Except you can never bury your past... you cant kill the loud the deafening roar of who you are...
Quote from: NicholeBut, the telltale heart beats louder and louder and the dislike, disgust, ... hate ... pervades the rooms we drift through.
I came back home and rebuilt my life. But I never shook the feeling of being damaged, being sick. After all, what normal person "thinks" they are mis-gendered? And so Stacy came back with a vengence. But only closeted. Even though I had been out in my past I was so afraid of discovery. I now had an ex-wife who wanted me out of my son's life. I rebuilt my business after my ex decimated the last one, and managed to recover from financial ruin caused by divorce. (You think transitioning is expensive? Talk to me after going through a divorce...). I made a whole new life... but a dual life.
No matter how I tried to raise the blade I couldnt silence the sound of the heartbeat... and my experience with therapists was adversarial to say the least... but I lucked out and found someone who has helped me in ways I could never have imagined...
And the cyber world opened new doors for information and finding others who more than just understood... they shared alot of the same experiences. For the first time I came to terms with who I am... and the past I so "easily" talk/post about now... it was the first time I told anyone, any other living soul. I never told my wife, or the GF after her... and thats when we come face to face with living "the lie". The guilt of not having shared such a huge part of who we were...
The fears are still real. Will my family reject me? Will my son, who has excluded me from his life because of his mother's poison... will he shut me out for good? Will I lose my business if I come out? My clients? My business partner? What about my friends? Everything that I have worked so hard for...
Quote from: NicholeThe ones who don't: non-ops, too-poor-to-ever-ops, too-sick-to-risk-it-ops, too-lacking-in-knowledge-to-ever-realize-they-might-ops or just plain I-don't-want-to-risk-it-ops or never-thought-about-it-but-have-some-gender-dissonance-ops are usually the ones who we create a second-tier in our minds for.
They either don't exist or we don't want to agree that they are just as worthy of having their dysphorias treated as the more economically-viable folk who do manage that.
Thus, we tell ourselves they are a different order of human being from us. We who have "taken the bull by the horns" and made ourselves ourselves and we are different, o so different, from them and they will make us look bad, take away our status and "ruin" our lives if we even for a second allow them to be part of us, or recognize that we are part of them. Part of them simply because we share a common humanity and common desires and joys and sorrows, common dreams for the future.
But they don't look right, sound right, dress right or identify right and they are certainly not "our people."
And therein lies the difference... there is that turning point... I saw somewhere else where someone described it as the concept of one's "bell going off". Of realizing that in spite of the fears that the deafening sound of the explosive heartbeats cannot be shut out anymore...
So its not that the fears have changed... its that the need to transition are so great that they surpass the fear factor. And so we embark on the next leg of the journey, knowing full well that to achieve the peace and healing we so desperately have sought for so long... will have a very high cost.
Ive followed the journey of others who posted elsewhere.. and some who are active here. At times I feel like an outsider... like "they" arent approachable, because, well sh*t, look at me. They are "there", and I'm still "here". But thats just not true.. they have reached out... and to the others that deny their past, well, in the end thats what going to do them in.
But I will always have a place in heart... and soul... for those that farther behind on the path and havent made the journey to this point. They deserve no less friendship, understanding or acceptance. If they remain where they are, for whatever reason... it doesnt mean they are weak. Or that they deserve the suffering they endure simply because they cant continue on.
We as human beings are capable of extraordinary feats of strength and compassion... its what seperates up from the rest of the animal kingdom. Thats what gets us through life.. day by day, or hour by hour. But theres a lifes lesson there... dont let your new found strength blind you to your past.
We are the sum of our parts... warts and all.
Hi Nichole, I am open where I need to be open, I work with TS people at our local support group, but then I also still go to AA meetings even aftr not having touched a drop in 22 years. To the rest of the world I am who I present and they don't need to know any different.
I don't worry myself sick anymore if someone should come up to me and ask me that dreaded impertinent question, but it has not happened. We are never 100% safe, it can happen, so one should be prepared in-case of the possible outcome. If I somehow got outed, I would take it in stride.
Yes it is unfortunate that those who have gone through the entire transitional phase disappear into the woodwork, fearing of even being associated with those TS still in transition, or fearing any association with anything to do with their roots.
But then in many ways I can't really blame them, especially if they have began a new life as their true selves, perhaps married and working at new careers, new friends that only know them as who they present. I have even heard some say that it would upset their spouse and their new role in life and maybe even possibly cost them their jobs if they were ever to be outed.
Many a times though, it happens, many times we out ourselves before anyone else does. It has happened to me at the woman's shelter where I work. I outed myself to my employer in order to protect someone else, but luckily it stayed between me and her.
I have been fortunate to have friends both with TS and cisgendered folks, so I have not really felt isolated like some have.
Here is a letter I posted in the the local Vancouver Gender Blender forums.
QuoteJust to share a little about transitioning and SRS and my experiences, but let us first do a short review.
First, remember no two TS-girls will have quite the same experience.
Are you preparing for SRS? Then may I make a few more small points about why many post op TS-girls don't come back to message boards like this? It is not just because of pride, nor is it being just unwilling to admit they are hurting and need help in some way or another. This hurting can be from different real life experiences. Problems adjusting to daily life, isolating, inability to make friends, problems with family, boy friends, girl friends, difficulties at work, or difficulties finding a job, resulting in money problems family problems and any other number of real life experience problems they may not have been prepared for. etc.
Yes, some of the problems before SRS may not change all that much and can be carried over after SRS, unless dealt with prior to SRS. This is why it is also important that you learn to adjust to the circumstances and work on resolving possible problems beforehand, even if the full time experience has to be extended in order to do so. Be prepared and conditioned to live in the preferred gender, female in this case. Some actually make the error and neglect or wait for the last moment to prepare for this and as a result they are at a loss or in the dark as to how to live like a woman when they come out at the other end of transitioning tunnel into the hash bright light of real life.
There is a lot more to becoming a woman then just looking good in the physical image and body. Evolving physically as a passable woman is wonderful for your self-image and will be a great asset to your credibility. But evolving within, the inner self, is also very important. This growth I believe is both psychological and possibly spiritual in nature as well, and in this respect we have only begun the journey into womanhood.
This learning and growing will continue for the rest of our lives. I am 9 years full time and I am still discovering and learning different facets and characteristics about the growing inner self. A GG on the other hand has grown-up or evolved to be who she is from early childhood to wherever she finds herself in her present life, then followed by all the experiences from teenage puberty to womanhood, to conceiving a child and childbirth and rearing of children. But then, even a GG still undergoes and experiences growth within throughout her whole life. It's much like preparing for a new job, like it is wise to learn what all different aspects and responsibilities of your job is going to be before just jump in blindfolded.
Do you know what being a woman is and what living as a woman is like? The feelings, thoughts, and how she perceives the environment and other people around her she interacts with everyday? To be sure, there is not only the physical differences between women and men, but also how they feel, see, and, conceive the world around them in contemporary society. Some call these differences, stereo types, and this is where it is a seriously hazardous conception to adopt. Yes maybe many of the characteristic could be categorized as stereotypical, because of many different reasons. Much of them being in the bringing up and social conditioning, but then if you are going to be a duck I would strongly suggest you wear a duck suit and learn to walk and quack like a duck.
Both genders can perform many of the same tasks and show little difference in other observable ways while they go about doing what ever similar tasks.. But the greater difference between a woman and a man I believe would be inward. Now these ideas are only samples, not hard scientific fact. But it's not really as big a deal as it may seem. Just let instinct and intuition guide you. Estrogen will stimulate and awaken instinct and intuition to a fair degree.
I do know some post op TS-girls that have moved on with their lives and have done well for themselves. They have good jobs and have even settled down with either a male or female partner. But unfortunately I have seen some end up alone and very lonely mostly because of fear of changing their circumstances by unfortunately not allowing themselves to merge into or accepting and allowing themselves to be their true selves. But for whatever their reason, real, imaginary, or self-imposed fear beats them back. Something else about post ops, they are quite close-lipped about what is going on in their lives even if they do return to work with TS folks or return to the TS message boards. I believe that after all the years they have worked to have a stealth life, their greatest fear is that of being outed, and this has happened on occasion on message boards or while out in the community working with TS folks. Some unfortunately had to make that choice in order to come to the defense of others and for what ever other reasons
As for myself my personal feelings are that even though I have come to be close friends with some of these girls, once they leave the community in pursuit of their new life, I do pray they do not come back to the boards, or support groups, for the reason being is that to many times if they do it usually spelled bad news for them. As for myself, it has always been my nature to do my best to be of service to those in need, whether that be TS, alcoholic, addict mental health recipient, street people, after all I am retired social worker with 22 years experience behind me and I still am in the service of other on a voluntary basis. Whether it be rescuing animals or people that is my nature.
Love Cindy
A beautiful post, Stacy Brahm. Just beautiful. :icon_hug:
Cindy, I'll be very honest, if somewhat controversial in some quarters. You've passed beyond your GID.
Because, here's the controversial part, you can live and walk through your life anyway with people knowing and you're not afraid of that.
That just to say: I truly believe that when GID no longer's with us as individuals: then as Stacy said, we have no fear of being known "warts and all." As long as we deny, strive mightily to cover the fact of our transsexuality we are living yet again in the coils of hiding, fear, loathing & self-loathing and yes, deception at any cost.
If it walks, eats, quacks like a duck ... well, it's a duck; and my description above walks, acts and feels just like GID did for me.
It's not about having to be out. It's about how I cope with the fact that I am out if it occurs. How I cope with the possibility of it being known. If I can live with that, embrace it. Then GID has disappeared. If not, not.
Nichole
I guess I should feel honored that you quoted my post Nichole and used it as the basis for such a wonderful dissertation.
I feel kinda sheepish having used the words "living hell", to describe what I felt many transsexuals must endure to achieve a level of happiness to make their miserable lives worth living. Those white middle class types will be the downfall of us all.
But... I'm not sure why I should feel guilty about being successful though as I didn't go through transition to become a transsexual or to remain a transsexual, for what would be the point?
QuoteI often think that transsexuals who have "successfully transitioned and integrated themselves into society" and "do not want to compromise what they have achieved" don't want to face the fact that we are still pretty much who we were before that transition.
Of course we are the same, the only thing that really changes is the bodies that carry what some would call troubled minds. Just as one doesn't become queer, one does not become TS, we were born that way. (Well in my humble opinion)
-={LR}=-
Quote from: Ladyrider on May 22, 2009, 10:05:31 PM
Of course we are the same, the only thing that really changes is the bodies that carry what some would call troubled minds. Just as one doesn't become queer, one does not become TS, we were born that way. (Well in my humble opinion)
-={LR}=-
I'm amazed at how much the same I am, deep in side. Yes, I have to do different things with my voice, but I have muscle memory now and I don't even think about it.
But my deep personality is much more appropriate to the external vessel "Karen" than it ever was to [______] I won't use the old name as I feel it'd just cloud the issue.
But I was a cub scout, a Boy Scout, a Marine, and a soldier in the Army. I got to do neat things that girls are disuaded from doing, like working on jet engines and and learning demolitions and playing in a rock band. Auto mechanics can't bull**it me, I know my way around the static displays at an air show. (And speaking of airshows, I had several of the airmen tell me I looked hot in my denim jumpsuit (maybe it was the red visor with the legend [REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT] on it >:-) ))
I'm not going to lie about that experience. The tech knowledge comes in handy, and I still get gallant males that offer to help, pick up and carry heavy items without asking, and hold doors for me.
That's just skimming the surface.
And I'm oh-so lucky to have had encouragement to be out and unashamed.
YMMV, but it's working for me.
Karen
I live in hell. But people keep trying to tell me it's the planet earth or some stupid crap :P
Hi Nichole, My favorite saying is if you want to be a duck then you better first wear a duck suit then learn to walk and quack like a duck.
Of course I don't want the biger part of society to know about my past, but if it happens, it will not destroy me. I won't go looking for a mouse hole to hide in, the house mouse has had enough of hiding in mouse holes. I love socialising with people, both women and men, it's to much of the better part of my life after having doing social work for over 22 years.
Karen, I did all that stuff to except for the military. I did the dune buggy stuff, hot rods, speed boats, snow machines, worked most of my life as a laborer with a grade five education, traveled over most of eastern Canada and US. It certainly didn't make me more of a boy, but it was fun. ;D
Cindy
Having a debate about who's life is worse and sucks more is counterproductive. Sure, bad things have happened to other people, perhaps much worse than anything we've ever encountered ourselves. We can never know, we've never been that person. And, face it, all of that is, at best, relative.
Once I was lecturing my kid along those lines and his response, wise beyond his years, was: "just because 6 million people were killed by the Nazis, it doesn't mean it don't hurt when I drop a brick on my foot." Ouch.
Still, the 'living hell' line seemed a bit much. And, in that, how much of that hell was GID, how much other things?
I've known a few people who kinda like being TG. Who found it something to celebrate in their life. Are they in error? Should they dwell in misery and depression?
But I think that Nichole is right when she points out - and I worry a lot about some of the others along these lines - that an SRS is just that, and only that. All of those who think its going to be a miracle in their life, well, it might be, but only a little bit - its not going to redo everything. Seems to me that more or less, most things are still about the same. To the degree that you might be happier in yourself, you might be better adjusted. But to the degree that you are unskilled, it's not going to help you get a job. To the degree that your personality sucks, it's not going to make you popular. And to the degree that other problems and conditions exist it's not going to make them go away.
And, no doubt, its very much a socioeconomic privilege that many will never have.
How much of this misery is our own doing, a self-inflicted wound that we keep bleeding hoping to prey upon the sympathy of others? Is that better than just being only one more person in a rather crazy world? How much of it comes from a "Look AT ME!" need that can only be fulfilled by others?
Sad that so much stuff is that way, people saying they are doing it for themselves, but in reality they do it for others, and vice-versa.
Good post, Tekla. And good topic, Nichole.
Hell has particular meaning to me. It's a kind of suffering that isolates and starves hope. Every hell is a personal hell, and it can exist no matter what the outward circumstances. Hell is a state of mind; the opposite of hell is connection and harmony with external reality -- and often exists independent of external reality as well.
The closest I have been to hell had a lot to do with my inability to deal with my GID; at the time it was really hell. By moving past it and healing from it, I can look back on it, and illuminated by the light of my present more connected state, it looks a lot less hellish.
So when I say that my struggle with gender has been hell, I don't mean to make any comparison with anyone else's suffering, but only to describe the particular kind of suffering that it was and sometimes still is.
Another person's hell does not ameliorate mine. Never has, and likely never will.
Quote from: Ladyrider on May 22, 2009, 10:05:31 PM
I guess I should feel honored that you quoted my post Nichole and used it as the basis for such a wonderful dissertation.
I feel kinda sheepish having used the words "living hell", to describe what I felt many transsexuals must endure to achieve a level of happiness to make their miserable lives worth living. Those white middle class types will be the downfall of us all.
But... I'm not sure why I should feel guilty about being successful though as I didn't go through transition to become a transsexual or to remain a transsexual, for what would be the point?
Of course we are the same, the only thing that really changes is the bodies that carry what some would call troubled minds. Just as one doesn't become queer, one does not become TS, we were born that way. (Well in my humble opinion)
-={LR}=-
O, don't be, LR, you stumbled into a usage I found useful. No need to feel honored by that. :) Especially in that you managed to fasten your focus, apparently, on two of the minor notes in the post and evidently missed the body of the concerto, certainly the
leit-motif thread of it.
The fact of privilege lives with us all. Few (no one, as best I can tell) people escape it in all aspects of our lives. Some have relatively more and others relatively less, but pretty much all of us are privileged somewhere along the line. The important thing about economic class, race, ethnic, sex, feature and other privileges is simply to be aware where we have it and that the privilege isn't the source of our self-worth, self-esteem.
In fact, I would opine that using one's inherent or developed privilege as a marker of one's self-worth or a valid or even reasonable comparison of one's self with other's unlike her is rather an insane and useless effort. It neither builds nor enhances nor makes self-worth. Neither does it build or enhance any actual self-esteeem. The focus in those efforts is always outward and provides only a thin facade of inner strength and worth.
Having a pussy makes me a part of a bit over 50% of the total world-population. That hardly makes me exemplary or special in any way at all. Neither does having a dick for pretty much the same reasons. Those arguments I have read from TSes across the years on forums like this or on list-servs are self-defeating and ephemeral as the next time someone realizes that the person in question wasn't born with those organs configured the way they are the facade crumbles.
That's why I said to Cindybc that her GID is gone. She doesn't rest her value on her pussy. Others here certainly appear to do that and when I see it I don't see confidence and inner strength and belief. I see instead a continuing fight with GID that will never be successful without an internal process of understanding that worth comes from something other than a bodily organ, or the ability to have such an organ changed. I also see a normally frenzied and loud protest that "I am too better than." It's extraordinarily unconvincing. I don't think it even convinces those who employ the method.
I understand, all too well, that for an early transitioner such a valuing is a rather simple provider of what appears to be an easy path to changing her or his self-concept and value. But, as most such easy and facile answers are it's a wisp and disappears all too easily with one untoward event and leaves the transitioner deeply enmeshed in his or her self-devaluation and the increase of fear and shame. It enhances the problem, GID, and saps the strength the transitioner does have to help her escape the "defect" or the "disease."
As tekla said, "hellishness" or "sorrow" or "pain" are relative things. Mine for me is always of more concern to me than yours, for instance. Yet, yours would understandably be more important and acute for you than would be mine. So that, too, is a non-issue. One I can use to blur or distract from the core problem: my own fear, loathing and shame for myself.
To be able to understand my own viability and worth is to raise it interiorly, the only place it can derive and thrive. To raise it by making false and useless comparisons with another or a group of others is useless and ineffective. As is generally proven out by the immediate protest raised by a word or idea that the person who has raised his or her value exteriorly makes vociferously any time someone raises his or her internal fear level that she or he might not be "all that."
That I can walk through the world being myself, feeling no shame or fear in doing so regardless of my skin-color, my designated or formerly designated sex, my socio-economic status, whom I am friends with or where I reside without having to rely on any of those qualities and circumstances to give me a sense-of-worth is the end of my GID.
If one reaches that pre-op, post-op, non-op or as genderqueer, androgyne, crossdresser, gay, straight or lesbian then one reaches something of value for herself. To use the exterior status of being someone who uses as her raison d'etre: "being successful ... as I didn't go through transition to become a transsexual or to remain a transsexual, for what would be the point" has indeed "missed the point." The vehicle is one that has no engine, no transmission and no means of locomotion. It merely sits as a display in a park and lends little value to one's self except as a place for children to climb and play.
Being "not a transsexual" is as valuable for my self-worth as is "not being a frog or a newt." Being "not a transsexual"
cannot and does not by some magical property of the incantation itself expunge the ongoing pain of my GID. In fact, it enhances it.
Nichole
Quote from: Nichole on May 23, 2009, 03:39:55 PM
Being "not a transsexual" is as valuable for my self-worth as is "not being a frog or a newt."
Nichole
Did you get better? >:-)
Quote from: Monty Python & The Holy GrailShe's a witch! Burn her!
=K
Another person's hell does not ameliorate mine. Never has, and likely never will.
The guys where I work say "You signed up for it, so the pain is mandatory, the suffering however is optional."
Quote from: Karen on May 23, 2009, 03:45:34 PM
Did you get better? >:-)
=K
I did, but found that the change didn't do anything, one way or another, for my self-esteem. :)
Quote from: Monty Python & The Holy GrailShe's a witch! Burn her!
O, you noticed the way those blighters weighed me with that damned duck and proved I was a witch? :)
I have to admit that sometimes I'm amused when I see the attempts made again by that same crew in different forms. :)
Quote from: Alyssa M. on May 23, 2009, 02:06:05 PM
And good topic, Nichole.
Alyssa, thank you. You're one of those people around here who never just toss out a compliment for the sake of doing it. :)
N~
Quote from: Nichole on May 23, 2009, 03:39:55 PM
O, don't be, LR, you stumbled into a usage I found useful. No need to feel honored by that. :) Especially in that you managed to fasten your focus, apparently, on two of the minor notes in the post and evidently missed the body of the concerto, certainly the leit-motif thread of it.
...
Nichole
O darn! Stumble, stumble, stumble, that's me, but I'm happy you found it useful, I'm always willing to lend a hand :) Actually, I managed to focus on the entire concerto and found it to be quite good, very interesting reading as well. :)
-={LR}=-
Quote from: Ladyrider on May 23, 2009, 05:01:05 PM
O darn! Stumble, stumble, stumble, that's me, but I'm happy you found it useful, I'm always willing to lend a hand :) Actually, I managed to focus on the entire concerto and found it to be quite good, very interesting reading as well. :)
-={LR}=-
O, you! :laugh: It's a crib from John McLaughlin!! Well, sorta, he'd prolly have used "lurched!" :) But it seemed useful as well.
Thank you. I appreciate what I'll take as a compliment. :)
Nichole
Quote from: tekla on May 23, 2009, 03:59:41 PM
Another person's hell does not ameliorate mine. Never has, and likely never will.
The guys where I work say "You signed up for it, so the pain is mandatory, the suffering however is optional."
Agreed; but unfortunately, I have no "easy" button for this sort of thing. I'm working through my stuff at my own pace and making progress. After half a lifetime of ignorantly and perversely torturing myself, I think I'm entitled to a couple of years to LEARN how to stop. And whether I'm entitled to it is actually not an issue. I know from hard experience that I cannot suddenly stop. Maybe other people can. Not I.
Anyway, the "hell" in my post can be taken as a universal reference rather than a specific statement about my current state. To be honest, I wouldn't say that I'm in hell now, although I do feel that way on certain days. I'm just going through a rough time in my life, that's all. Eventually, I will get where I'm going, and then I will keep ON going. Eventually.
Quote from: Nichole on May 23, 2009, 05:06:38 PMO, you! :laugh: It's a crib from John McLaughlin!!
WRONG! You're just being shy, Eleanor; you fabricated the usage from pure creativity. Issue number seven: what did you have for breakfast? WRONG! You all had Special K with ba-na-na!
Quote from: Alyssa M. on May 23, 2009, 05:54:11 PM
WRONG! You're just being shy, Eleanor; you fabricated the usage from pure creativity. Issue number seven: what did you have for breakfast? WRONG! You all had Special K with ba-na-na!
Cute and funny, but you and me ARE gonna fight if you think I look or act like Eleanor Clift!! :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
N~
Nichole, this post is mostly awesome.
However, I don't feel like there's anything wrong in only identifying with part of the 'community,' and not all of it. Early in transition folks regularly make claims that their farther in transitioning peers' comments regarding their progress make them feel bad and dysphoric, so the conversations are forced to tip toe around their issues. When the situation is reversed, those farther along are labeled as privileged and judgmental for stating that they don't understand people who have yet to transition or those who have vowed not to. What's with the double standard?
Well, community is ALL the people around you, not just the ones you agree with or like.
Quote from: Mister on May 23, 2009, 06:51:50 PM
Nichole, this post is mostly awesome.
However, I don't feel like there's anything wrong in only identifying with part of the 'community,' and not all of it. Early in transition folks regularly make claims that their farther in transitioning peers' comments regarding their progress make them feel bad and dysphoric, so the conversations are forced to tip toe around their issues. When the situation is reversed, those farther along are labeled as privileged and judgmental for stating that they don't understand people who have yet to transition or those who have vowed not to. What's with the double standard?
Well then, Mister, I'll give you a mostly-thank-you. :laugh:
Hmmm, which double standard would that be, dear? Which of the three posts are you talking about, because they certainly all don't replicate one another?
Here I've been thinking I've been writing about the ways we see and esteem ourselves. Not how we compare with others in our own minds. I can generally make sure that any comparison I make between you and me, for instance, has me all higher than you. Q.E.D.: by the metaphysically evident fact of the matter. :laugh:
Not particularly surprising or valid is it? :)
If you and the rest of those hereabouts who make those distinctions were actually "stating that they don't understand people who have yet to transition or those who have vowed not to" then you might have a leg to stand on with that "double-standard" stuff.
But, that's never what's said and you are rather well aware of that. What's normally stated rather vociferously is that " 'those people' are not as good as me nor are they worth my while to accept as being real." Or something of the sort.
Perhaps you should try to ask me something that is actually to the point of the three posts, Mister, rather than making a transparent attempt to rearrange the language you and others generally use in making your "lack of understanding" evident. Suggesting a double-standard is at work elsewhere when you're one of the largest purveyors of double-standards on the board's kinda breathtaking in its audacity, doncha think, luv? :laugh:
That was just plain ole weak, dude. Better get together a better brain-trust than you have now before you try to poke a hole where there is none, at least not the one your suggesting. Mister, you at least have to talk about what was in the post. :)
Understanding and appreciative, as always,
Nichole
Quote from: Nichole on May 23, 2009, 09:55:15 PM
Well then, Mister, I'll give you a mostly-thank-you. :laugh:
Hmmm, which double standard would that be, dear? Which of the three posts are you talking about, because they certainly all don't replicate one another?
Here I've been thinking I've been writing about the ways we see and esteem ourselves. Not how we compare with others in our own minds. I can generally make sure that any comparison I make between you and me, for instance, has me all higher than you. Q.E.D.: by the metaphysically evident fact of the matter. :laugh:
Not particularly surprising or valid is it? :)
If you and the rest of those hereabouts who make those distinctions were actually "stating that they don't understand people who have yet to transition or those who have vowed not to" then you might have a leg to stand on with that "double-standard" stuff.
But, that's never what's said and you are rather well aware of that. What's normally stated rather vociferously is that " 'those people' are not as good as me nor are they worth my while to accept as being real." Or something of the sort.
Perhaps you should try to ask me something that is actually to the point of the three posts, Mister, rather than making a transparent attempt to rearrange the language you and others generally use in making your "lack of understanding" evident. Suggesting a double-standard is at work elsewhere when you're one of the largest purveyors of double-standards on the board's kinda breathtaking in its audacity, doncha think, luv? :laugh:
That was just plain ole weak, dude. Better get together a better brain-trust than you have now before you try to poke a hole where there is none, at least not the one your suggesting. Mister, you at least have to talk about what was in the post. :)
Understanding and appreciative, as always,
Nichole
Hey Mister... I think you just got kicked in the proverbial nuts. ;)
-={LR}=-
I agree with Nichole, When I came to discover what being trans was and what GID meant I set my own course of action, rules, standards, and just went about doing what I needed to do to be who I perceived myself to be. Well it didn't quite all turn out the way I had planned but it came out pretty darn close, close enough for my satisfaction.
Once one knows what direction they are going in, debate and nit picking about definitions and labels, like what goes on in some of the threads here should not keep one from continuing on the journey that they have chosen.
Cindy
The joy is, or at least should be, in the journey after all.
Hi Tekla, I couldn't agree more. You know there is much in my life I wish would have been different but there was also much of it I wouldn't want any different.
Cindy skids in sideways on her bicycle in a cloud of dust at Saint Peter's gate. Hair all disheveled, bugs in her teeth, holding a ghetto blaster on her shoulder blasting out some good ole rock and roll, she shouts to St. Peter, "it's been one hell of a trip."
Cindy
Quote from: tekla on May 24, 2009, 01:21:28 AM
The joy is, or at least should be, in the journey after all.
Too often Ive run into those that regard the journey as some kind of mission, a jihad of sorts. They shout from the rooftops how happy they are and how
you should be happy... no, should feel privileged... too to be enlisted in the rank and file on the march towards SRS. Sad to say, the more they shout the more it becomes evident how truly unhappy they are...
They tend to forget that the whole point is to heal the spirit and find the peace that has elluded them for so long...
Quote from: cindybcCindy skids in sideways on her bicycle in a cloud of dust at Saint Peter's gate. Hair all disheveled, bugs in her teeth, holding a ghetto blaster on her shoulder blasting out some good ole rock and roll, she shouts to St. Peter, "it's been one hell of a trip."
That sure made me smile :D, and made me think of this lyric from uncle jer...
You imagine me sipping champagne from your boot
For taste of your elegant pride
I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe
But at least Im enjoying the ride, at least Ill enjoy the ride.
Quote from: tekla on Today at 02:21:28 am
The joy is, or at least should be, in the journey after all.
Quote from Stacey Brahm
Too often Ive run into those that regard the journey as some kind of mission, a jihad of sorts. They shout from the rooftops how happy they are and how you should be happy... no, should feel privileged... too to be enlisted in the rank and file on the march towards SRS. Sad to say, the more they shout the more it becomes evident how truly unhappy they are...
I totally agree, all lifes are a journey of discovery. Some are undoubtably worse than others. As I said before I regard myself as privilged. I am living a Most Fortunate Life, and if you read that book, we will have an understanding of acceptance and discovery.
I don't know where in the journey I am. But its been a lot of laughs, lots of tears, lots of love. Very little hate, a most useless emotion. I still can look in the mirror and accept what I have done to others with ease. And I think that is a good journey, no matter what else has happened to me.
Cindy James
Umm, Hell in a Bucket is a Weir/Barlow song, but WTF.
I do however love the verse:
You must really consider the circus
It just might be your kind of zoo
I can't think of a place that's more perfect
For a person as perfect as you.
I think on that often as I read how perfect some people find themselves being in here (and just about everywhere else too).
I was backstage one night taking with a very pretty girl who was telling me how special you had to be to get backstage, she went on and on about it, told me about all the people she knew - and how oh so very important she was. Somehow, in the midst of that personal love fest she bothered to ask me who I knew, how was I special enough to be there. I said "I'm the janitor, I just swept my way back here." Poor dear, looked crushed.
I've encountered others who think 'they have arrived' and I wonder - was this what all of that was for, so you could be standing here talking to me? Wow.
I guess I should feel honored or something. But mostly I wind up thinking that its all pretty vacant. You know the sun gonna come up in the east and go down in the west tomorrow, and its going to be like any other day.
And that Jer did sing:
See here how everything led up to this day,
And it's just like any other day that's ever been.
Sun going up and then the sun going down.
Shine through my window and my friends they come around.
Quote from: tekla on May 24, 2009, 10:43:54 AM
Umm, Hell in a Bucket is a Weir/Barlow song, but WTF.
Yup, you are right... was never a deadhead, so didnt really pay attention... :D
But that song does sum up your point. In all the years Ive run an IT consultancy Ive run into so many narcissistic types who love to tell me how important they are and what it took for them to get there... and when asked how I got there, I say "Oh, Im just here to clean up the sh*t y'all left behind". :laugh:
Problem is its not so easy to disimiss folks like that when its an emotionally charged issue like transitioning. We go through so many years of angst, while the war rages in our heads. We finally come to terms with ourselves and choose a path that will lead us to peace... and after all that, we can still end up feeling like outsiders for not having "put in our time". Like the girl who thought she was special for being backstage, so many wear their war wounds like a backstage pass they can wave in other's faces.
Quote from: Bernie TaupinLevon wears his war wound like a crown
Everytime I feel beaten down, I try to remember what it is I am doing and where I am going... Its a fine grey line between acknowledging you past and using it like a weapon, which is no better than severing your past like a cancer. Its when your at your lowest and you just dont feel like facing another moment that you need to draw on the past for strength... "dammit, I made it this far! Im not going to face another day angry, hurt, alone... I choose to live!" I know, its easier said than done, and often Ive choked out those words through a river of tears. But for a life of living in hell, Ive touched alot of people and they've touched me. I dont want to trade that, and thats what makes coming out so terrifying. We fear losing the very things we hold so dear.
I've said in my earlier post that we are the sum of our experiences, and I have to believe the best parts of me emerged from everything Ive been through. Same for all of us. The sound of the telltale heart echoing in our heads tells us we are still alive...
BTW, anyone can tell it can sometimes take decades to get the key to the executive washroom. It only takes the cleaning staff the time it takes to fill out the W4. :laugh:
BTW, anyone can tell it can sometimes take decades to get the key to the executive washroom. It only takes the cleaning staff the time it takes to fill out the W4.
Awesome
Sometimes I think I have had a sh**t life...
.."Living the lie"....
I read this thread, and I realise that I have done a lot that a lot of people in this world have never had the chance to do..
So maybe a little GID pain is something I should live with to the end of my days....
Certainly I should not steal valuable funds from an overstretched NHS system in the UK, struggling to cope with the numerous needy people flooding into my country...Lets face it there are younger folk that can make better use of the funds for treatment of thier GID, and yet are still looking at a 6 year waiting list in a lot of areas...
From the outset I have realised that this pain is something I need to pay for in both monetary and personal terms for my sins..
..but then should I steal from my children's inheritance, by consuming the funds of 50 years of struggle to build a family and a home..?
..If there is a god or a place in any religion that allows entry to somewhere peaceful, I am confident that I have saved 2 lives in my existence that would have otherwise been lost, so surely that compensates for me considering taking my own?
Oh to hell with it.. I really don't know what I want or deserve anymore. :-\
Nichole.... this post and the responses were excellent..
It just highlights what a hopeless case people like me are......
:icon_hug:
Chrissty
Quote from: Nichole on May 23, 2009, 09:55:15 PM
Here I've been thinking I've been writing about the ways we see and esteem ourselves. Not how we compare with others in our own minds. I can generally make sure that any comparison I make between you and me, for instance, has me all higher than you. Q.E.D.: by the metaphysically evident fact of the matter. :laugh:
Not particularly surprising or valid is it? :)
It was brought to my attention today by PM that the quote above could have been misconstrued by not only Mister, but quite possibly by others.
Thus, today I wrote a more full explanation of my response to Mister to show that, no, I was not unequivocally stating that I thought I was "higher" than him at all. The point was illustrative of something I am getting at: that a rather facile and invidious comparison of any one to any one else is not only not meaningful, but is downright ridiculous.
As I also mention below, in my PM response to the questioner I decided to make a short story long so as to avoid, if possible any further misunderstanding.
The post is long, but I felt that the shorter one was not understood and I wanted to try to avoid any more misunderstanding of my position.
My position, as hopefully all will see below, is that GID quite obviously continues to plague many post-op individuals given the ways they seem to be loathe to embrace life rather than catechisms, ideologies and labels that attempt to make some better in the TG-rainbow and others less-than.
Hopefully the explanation below will clear up any misconceptions about exactly where I stand.
You missed the irony I intended. What you said there is true, I have not much of an idea about him except that formed from the things I read that he writes here and the nuances of the way he uses language.
And that was my point. One can always rate him or her self "better than" "smarter than" or "whatever than" someone else: in our own minds. That doesn't mean that he or she is in fact "better than," "smarter than" or "whatever than" anyone else at all.
It was illustrative of how ridiculous that entire "I am better than because I have had full SRS and now am a 'real' woman or man and you're not because you ONLY had an orch, a breast-removal but no hysterectomy and no phalloplasty; or because you are just a cross-dresser, etc" is in reality.
You're absolutely right. The statement I wrote there was ridiculous. But no more ridiculous than those other statements I see made here and elsewhere every day I am on this or another board or have occasion to read someone's blog.
That valuation is no better than a valuation that a white man might make that he is better than any woman because he's a man, or that he's better than a man of color because he's white. They are all ridiculous on their face. Just as are the ideological HBS-like statements about valuated degrees of transsexuality and "fetishism."
Which in point of fact is one of my major points in that series of essays in that thread: the invidious comparisons made between ourselves and others on something as insanely non-comparative as, in that case, how much surgery anyone has had, or whether or not they refer to themselves as TS or TG or as woman or man
is an absurd way to value or devalue any one or any thing. The statement you took offense at was meant to show just how absurd all of that sort of valuation is. Not to make some statement that Mister has less value or intelligence or ability than I have. Yet, most of us make that sort of absurb valuation almost daily, especially in regard to other people who transition or do not.
Your immediate offense at just the suggestion shows me that you understand that illustration on a gut-level. With that understanding, perhaps, you can also see how when you, perhaps, might make a similar valuation of someone else then offense is a rather natural reaction and the statement is, on it's face, ridiculous as well.
You and they are valuable and have talent regardless of anything else. If we are going to build self-esteem and self-worth then it has to be an internal thing where we get comfortable and content with whomever we are. No amount of comparison we make between ourselves and others gives us any self-value at all.
If my self-value is actually high I will be able to face the world as just me, a being who was formed through her own history and life. I will find worth there and none of it will embarass, frighten or shame me.
The "newbies," or however you referred to them as people, being weaker in a lot of ways in regard to their self-esteem can thus, be treated in a way that does take care of the external regard we show for them for they'll derive both benefit from it just as we did when we started transition and others showed us that same positive regard. They are, of necessity, weaker in self-esteem, allegedly, than someone who transitioned ten years ago, or someone who had their surgeries, name/sex changes on legal documents, etc, etc.
What you called a double-standard is the absolute difference between someone just discovering themselves and others who try to maintain that their worth and value come through having "totally completed srs" and now being "women and men." Yet, that difference says absolutely nothing about the value or worth of the newbie.
They are, allegedly, weaker in that regard than someone who has completed his transition like you have. Thus, it's incumbent, seems to me, to be able to show them that positive regard and be more understanding of the ways they are likely to feel about themselves.
I recall my shame and self-loathing and fear when I was bound in the coils of GID. I'm sure you do as well.
If that second group has gone beyond their GID in a way that they have ended their GID, then such ones will not try to use some invidious comparison to make themselves seem "better than." If they are actually "beyond their GID" then it should become easier, I believe, to show tolerance and acceptance that others do NOT have to be just like them (the "complete transitioners") through their approach to their lives.
Afterall, I am then supposedly no longer struggling with the fear, self-loathing and shame. I've done what I've done and am walking elsewhere in my life. I can show those "others" regard and understanding because I am no longer enmeshed with GID and it's consequent fear, shame and self-loathing.
If I still live, after SRS and being designated legally and physically for all to see and regard as "just another woman or man," in the fear, shame, unbelief in myself that are some of the key components of GID, then I am, regardless of surgeries, showing a serious lack of overcoming any GID at all. I am still acting and living in the throes of GID regardless of op status. Op status doesn't make anyone better than anyone else. Nor does it make an end to GID.
That becomes quite obvious when one sees post-ops vigorously object to being "like" someone else who hasn't become post-op as yet, or never will. The external difference is no difference at all. Rather it's a pose by the post-ops to try and make themselves feel that they have successfully overcome what their behaviors show they have not:
GID.
What I wrote to you in that post was an illustration that any of us can make the claim to be better than anyone, but that the claim is invalid and self-serving and very likely has no basis in truth.
Just as I said in the sentence that followed the one you took offense at.
Whew, a really long explanation for something I thought you'd be able to "get" right at the moment you read it. Sorry that you didn't. I do not think I am better than you. Different, perhaps, especially in regard to MTF and FTM, but not better in any way.
Note: I am NOT saying that people aren't entitled to choose with whom to make friendships. They are of course. But the unreasoning and hateful and vociferous claims that "I am a real woman and you are not because of your op-status, way you designate yourself, looks-status, etc" is a pose that is used by people to try and make the semblance of a self-esteem, fearlessness and worth that they do not feel within themselves.
Nichole
Hi, Chrissty, hon, I have heard a few horror stories about Charing Cross. Which story is true or not true, only heaven knows. But the 6 years number appears to be pretty consistent from what I have picked up from other folks in the UK. It took me 52 years to figure out what was wrong with me and another two years to start doing something about it.
I suppose I could say I was lucky that I had nothing to lose when I started transitioning. I had already lost everything that was of value or meant anything to me, including family, years before I arrived at the doorstep to transition.
You might be amazed what a person can do when they become desperate enough and say, "What have I go to lose?"
Once the decision was made it was like starting my life over again, learning new life skills and how to cope with the every day experiences and people.
For me I once used to say it is so unfortunate I didn't discover whom I was years ago and to have a fuller, longer life in my true role, the who I discovered was me all along, anyway.
Well, I make the best of it, and make every precious second of every day count. To be happy content and at peace with myself and experiencing life as my true self.
The world ain't gonna end tomorrow, hon. You still have many tomorrows and at least an 80% chance you are going to live beyond the six years that Charing Cross set for an individual to be recommended for HRT and surgery.
As for family, home, friends, job, etc., etc., you are the only one that can make that choice as to whether you will sacrifice transitions for these causes. I must say this would take a lot of self-determination and strength which is indeed a rarity, if even possible, among those TS with GID who are trying to refrain from transitioning. But you are the only one that can make that decision, no one else can do it for you, nor do they have the rights to even attempt to do so.
This is a decision only you can make and once you do, there are those who will be there to guide you along on your journey of bringing body and soul into harmony.
Cindy
Hi Cindy,
Thank you for your response....I regret that I was having a bit of a "moment " earlier... it's 04.30am here, and have calmed down now. :icon_bunch:
I may have given the wrong impression...I have long since given up any real hope of using the health service I have paid into all my life, and recognised that I will have to pay for everything privately. I am one of the "lucky" ones who in theory could get enough cash together to complete transition, if I make that choice.
Although I can now see that I have had GID all my life, I have only recognised it properly within the last couple of years, and in the last 12 months it has been a struggle to deal with the symptoms as they grow and develop, like many others here.
The question in my head remains; that as I have already seen a number of my close friends suffer and die from cancer and brain tumours in which they had no choice, I'm just not sure I have the right to cause similar grief to my family over this, no matter how painful, in my remaining years.
Whatever my decision, I am grateful to at least have the final choice....
What is terribly wrong about this country however is that there are so many younger folk that have no funds or choice that cannot even get to see a gender therapist to talk in less than a 1 year wait, in a system that claims healthcare for all. 6 years is a figure now the GRS waiting period being quoted for some on the UK forums, who have already passed RLE (commonly running at 4 years from initial consultation in the NHS system).
I see that I may be a little off-topic here, so to address the main subject....
In terms of those who may say that I, and others like me are not TS because we have not started physical transition, then I defy them to say what I am. I have long since accepted that having failed to fall into a neat category in society, I have also failed to do the same here. All I can say is that there are many roads to the same destination, and some are longer and more torturous than others.
I don't see transition as an elitist club, just an unavoidable phase of my life that may, or may not, happen before I die, depending on how fast the symptoms continue to develop. If I am prepared to put my family though hell, then why should a few comments here worry me?
That said, I am grateful for the many unique and wonderful friends I have made here, that are making my journey bearable. :icon_bunch:
:icon_hug:
Chrissty
Dang so much good stuff in this thread. Too much to respond to actually, but I do want to say I greatly appreciate the insights offered by Nichole and many of you.
For my part, I'll just make a comment. First, the reason I've always felt GID seems to affect those who are 'privileged' is because, despite how grating it can be, it is a high class problem. By high class I mean, as it ranks on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it isn't nearly as basic to life as food, water, shelter, etc. The fact it can make us suicidal is, in fact, quite telling of the nature of the condition. That happens because we are allowed to focus on it too much. And we can only afford to focus on it because our other, more basic needs, are often met - food, water, clothing, shelter, etc. When I was homeless, my first priority wasn't, "am I comfortable in my skin", but rather, "where is my next meal coming from"? Because of this, I imagine those for whom their primary struggle is to eat, or the 'less-privileged', they won't be too worried about their GID.
Hi Chrissty, I believe that Nichole's topic is very much part of what we have been discussing. I just wish for you to know that I would not look down my nose at anyone for whatever reasons. I may not agree with someone's outlook or definition of what transitioning is all about or how they choose to do it, but I am not here to argue such and nitpick over the many different classifications that are based on whatever is involved in transitioning.
I just know from my own personal observation and experience that GID does not lessen or get better as time passes. As you get older it gets more hellish to cope with. Some have done it, but they weren't happy campers to be sure. I am not aware of anyone who has found a way to defeat GID and remain mentally stable without transitioning.
But then, sis, I am not here to argue the fine points of whether you should transition or not transition. I am here in this group to use what personal knowledge and experience I have and do my best to give support and guidance to those who want it, labels notwithstanding.
Cindy
Post Merge: May 24, 2009, 08:10:21 PM
QuoteGID seems to affect those who are 'privileged' is because, despite how grating it can be, it is a high class problem
Hi Interallia
I have no idea how anyone could forget that there are many of us who are living on the streets, looking for a meal, and are in such a predicament because they suffer from GID. I submit that the only privilege involved is having been born with GID.
If one cannot land or hold a job because they are gender dysphoric, then how can they climb to the next level of Maslow's Hierarchy?
Until one has earnestly tried to transition on the job, one cannot know the negativity that causes. People get fired for transitioning. They are gently forced to leave a job that they have done well for no reason other than they are transitioning to their true gender. My mate was "shown the door" over a period of two years.
These conversation boards are filled with anecdotal and actual evidence of TS persons not being able to get a job because of their appearance or over which washroom they would need to use.
In the last year there was a case brought to court concerning a person who was interviewed by the Library of Congress for a position that required a defined set of skills and a high military clearance. He got the job and was asked to meet the hiring manager over lunch. When the otherwise-qualified candidate showed-up at the lunch in feminine attire the job offer was withdrawn.
I suppose that she had the privilege of having a job within her grasp only to find it snatched away by transphobia. Where is the privilege in that? How is that "high-class" problem?
I don't follow the "curative" approach to transsexualism as embraced by Zucker et al. It just doesn't work.
However, there is another privilege to be recognized here. Really, it's a basic human right. That is the right for a person to be who they truly are, both inside and outside.
I lived on the street for nearly ten years, not knowing where my next meal was coming from or if I would have a roof over my head to keep me out of the weather. Even though I didn't know what GID was at the time I certainly had the symptoms, full blown GID. Try and hide that and survive on the street and try to get work and go to school so that I could do something for myself.
I graduated from school with a certificate for social worker and fortunately, a few years later I also had the fortune of transitioning on the job without repercussions. I worked the last ten years of my profession proudly as a social worker as a woman. I am grateful for having had the "privilege" of working as my true self with those who were in need that includes street people.
Cindy
I think I was misunderstood, Cindy. Let me clarify.
One of the original ideas presented in this thread was that those who were transitioning tended to be white, middle to upper middle class males, and reasonably educated. This is what was referred to as 'privileged'. I chose to use the word 'priviledged' because it was used earlier.
So what I am saying is that the reason you see more white, middle to upper middle class males, and reasonably educated people transitioning is because they are NOT worried about where their next meal will come from. Now, if transitioning significantly drops their economic status, then obviously they will need to deal with new priorities and probably will be less focused on purchasing things like hormones, worrying about surgery, etc and more focused on their basic needs. "High class" referred to the fact that it is not generally a problem that needs to be dealt with until one is in a position one can reasonably achieve it.
Hi Interalia. I would like to invite you to fly here to Vancouver so I can introduce you the TS community. I don't believe there is one individual out of the two hundred or so members that come to the support meetings who has any great amount of money, more like hardly enough money to subsist on and still going forward with transitioning.
A good many are black, Latino, Hispanic, Asian, and second generation European Americans, and many more who come here to Canada to transition who are from poorer more socially constrained countries where it would be next to impossible to do it.
Cindy
Quote from: Nichole on May 22, 2009, 01:55:46 AM
Fact is, and all we generally have to do is look at any webz BB we happen to use a lot and see, that the "phenomenon" of transsexing is a mostly white, middle to upper middle to upper class, professional, reasonably educated, European-heritage phenomenon. We're the ones who generally afford it. We're the ones whose governments often pick up the tab for it.
My experience echoes that of Nichole's. I realize it isn't like this everywhere, but it would be VERY hard to convince me that this doesn't describe the majority of people who seek transition.
QuoteFact is, and all we generally have to do is look at any webz BB we happen to use a lot and see, that the "phenomenon" of transsexing is a mostly white, middle to upper middle to upper class, professional, reasonably educated, European-heritage phenomenon. We're the ones who generally afford it. We're the ones whose governments often pick up the tab for it.
The demographic you picked out is also the one most likely to have home internet access where one could research topics with social stigma in a private, safe environment.
Well Canada used to cover it, that seems more problematic all the time, but for those who have to do it out of pocket, it sure moves the income requirements up a bit.
Try Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, San Fransisco, Los Angeles, just to name a few from the top of my head that I am familiar with.
In Canada there is here in BC and a good second runner-up is Montreal Quebec followed by Toronto in Ontario. These cities have people of all nations under the TG umbrela.
Cindy
Quote from: cindybc on May 26, 2009, 02:12:22 AM
Try Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, San Fransisco, Los Angeles, just to name a few from the top of my head that I am familiar with.
In Canada there is here in BC and a good second runner-up is Montreal Quebec followed by Toronto in Ontario. These cities have people of all nations under the TG umbrela.
Cindy
There are also accessible services in Philadelphia, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, LA, Austin...
QuoteWell Canada used to cover it, that seems more problematic all the time, but for those who have to do it out of pocket, it sure moves the income requirements up a bit.
Hi Tekla, you got it mostly correct, BC, Alberta, for now, and Ontario as well, but I am not certain if the other provinces do. Provincial health insurance in most provinces will cover doctors and therapists and hospital stays and will even cover HRT in some places.
Even in those places that don't I have seen persons who were so desperate for estrogen that it is like an addiction to narcotics. They can not function without estrogen in their system. They will get it where ever and how ever and whichever way they can get it.
Cindy
Quote from: cindybc on May 26, 2009, 02:24:17 AM
...
... They can not function without estrogen in their system. They will get it where ever and how ever and whichever way they can get it. [/b][/i]
I don't know, but I presume that anyone who does hrt for the purposes of transition and all "post-ops" at one time or another did not have estrogen in their systems and did not have vaginas. I could be wrong about that, but think I'm not.
Since they all managed to live to at least age 18-19 I will presume as well that they were able "to function" at least to the level of feeding, clothing and sheltering (somehow) themselves.
However the thread wasn't meant to take the arguments being furthered in the "non-op" section and to tranfer them here. The OP and further posts I've placed into this thread are about ongoing GID as evidenced by behavior portrayed by the actions and words of some people.
I don't think that the arguments I have been making are "full and complete" by any means. But I think the case for what I am proposing is pretty darned good on its face. What I was hoping to do was to have feedback, diverging opinions, ways in which the ideas I presented were flawed in a way that doesn't just say "you're wrong."
Threads have lives of their own, but as the OP I'd like to see a discussion of what was there. Just sayin'.
Quote from: Mister on May 26, 2009, 02:05:32 AM
The demographic you picked out is also the one most likely to have home internet access where one could research topics with social stigma in a private, safe environment.
I quite agree, Mister, yet another brick in the wall that allows some peeps better and safer access to information and the means to further their treatments without undergoing the social stigma and fear many have no choice but to endure should they choose to transition; provided, of course, that they even know that they can transition.
N~
Hi Nichole, it may have been just as much desperation brought about by GID as it is needing the estrogen and quite possibly other psychological problems are also involved, but I have seen some who were pretty well bummed out on life.
However I suppose I did wander off topic, my apologies. I believe that this discussion can be a truly helpful topic that should be beneficial for anyone who has lost sight of what transitioning and post transitioning truly means and how to prepare.
Cindy
Quote from: Nichole on May 26, 2009, 07:55:06 AM
... the social stigma and fear many have no choice but to endure should they choose to transition; provided, of course, that they even know that they can transition.
Just a bit more on that for a second. Another aspect of that, Mister, is that it becomes kinda easy for those of us who can afford and maintain access to information, "hidden" forums" etc to come to the point where we cannot imagine that "no one" doesn't know that they can transition.
Again, we are moulded by our own circumstances. It's one thing for us to read about DSM-protests and laws being passed in various countries, cities, states, etc and apply the lacks that some people have in their lives to the realization that vast quantities of people have not been exposed to such information and knowledge.
Blind spots, we all have 'em.
N~
Absolutely. I don't know how many times I've heard stories about someone identifying with info they find on the web, gender related or not. Ten years ago, my mother would have probably told you all transsexuals are prostituting men in dresses. Now, she has harnessed the power of the google and has taught herself otherwise.
One reason why its so important that forums like this exist... but also why the chasm between those that complete the journey and those on their way needs to be narrowed... if not closed completely. Until a few years ago I had no idea forums like these existed.... hell, I had no idea that I wasnt alone. Imagine how many still feel closeted without the knowledge of options avaiable to them.
I for one am grateful to those who offer the compassion, advice or just plain friendship who have already been throught the wringer and have found their peace.
One of the more amazing things to me is how some situation can end up horrible for some, but great for others. Take grad school. For some people its a process of both discovery and skill acquisition, for others its the beginning of a long slide to the bottom. Same as the military, I know some people who it was the best thing that ever happened to them, it moved them not just out but also up. Others, well it didn't work out so well.
And, as all people who transition did not arrive at that point in the same way, its not that hard to calculate that they are not going to be on the same end coming out.
I have a friend who in her misspent youth wrote a bit of code that was critical to the development of computer/video games, she has an intellectual property copyright on it and as long as people play video games she's going to get a nice (not huge, but good enough to live on) check for the rest of her life. It does not take a huge imagination to understand that have a guaranteed $3K a month coming in is going to make your life and transition a bit easier. She had no kids, and her ex was a very accomplished businesswomen in her own right, so when they split there were no money arguments, no big child custody deal, so that helped too.
To the best of my knowledge her life is not now, nor has it ever been, a living hell.
I have seen others, far too many, who were thinking they were escaping something who came here to SF to find that life here was much worse for them than it was before. No job, no skills to find one in a competitive market, no money - it sucks. (GID or no) When they end up transitioning they still have no skills, no job, and life still sucks - and perhaps for some, who thought it would be the huge change they needed, finding out it wasn't so put them into a deep suicidal depression that ended in the obvious way. Anyone who has been around the trans community knows of people who killed themselves post-transition.
Obviously life conditions make a huge difference. They say "Money can not buy happiness." I'm sure that's true. However, it damn sure can postpone unhappiness - which often amounts to the same thing.
In here, like a lot of other things and places, people have a common background of knowledge and a vocabulary (bordering on jargon) that they understand that is not common in the rest of the world. I can assume that anyone without stage training could come to work with me and be instantly confused. What's a mover, a par, a leko? What a focus, spin the bottle, how do you fuzz or sharp, and what the fark is a ballyhoo? What's a DAT vs. an XLR cable? What's edison vs. stage pin? Hell, our directions are all backwards on a stage - which we don't even call a stage, it's 'the deck', as right is left, up is down and so on.
->-bleeped-<- to the outside world sounds just like that. And far too often we think others ought to know things that they sooner would rather not know.
Quote from: Stacy Brahm on May 26, 2009, 12:12:09 PM
I for one am grateful to those who offer the compassion, advice or just plain friendship who have already been throught the wringer and have found their peace.
Which was the precipitating aspect of these posts to begin with, Stacy. How is it that some people can be in places like this after being "surgically complete" and still provide understanding to those who chose to take a different avenue to "completion" and others seem hell-bent on trying to ram down everyone's throat the idea:
"this is the way, the truth and the light and no one comes to completion except by the way I did." At the same time others are desirous of being unknown, but not so afraid of being known that their quality of life is diminished in some fashion by the fear of being known nor by the actual fact of being "outed." Yes, different strokes, but to posit GID and to posit an end to it with surgery completed through SRS seems to me also to pose the problem of "what if srs doesn't end GID?" Like tekla said, that's a trope we have perpetuated that may or may not be valid at all or at least "valid for all."
Like I said much earlier, being able to go about one's daily life as "just another woman or man" certainly has its advantages, and sometimes has it's awkward moments. :) Like the one I had at the pool yesterday when an acquaintance opined that "you are just like me. You decided to have your children 7 years apart and I bet your body recuperated really well between your pregnancies." :)
Yep, it's a good feeling and my response was simply: "yes, the boys are 7 years apart." I don't think it's incumbent to tell all and to out oneself for just any ole reason, nor do I think it's "lying" when anyone doesn't out herself or himself.
I do think there are some personality ... distortions, anyhow, when "my way or the highway" seems to become one's
raison d'etre and the resultant commotion compares favorably to boys in locker rooms comparing penises in middle schools! :)
No one's avenues "affect" me in regard to how "valid or invalidly" I am a woman. In all of the conversations and interactions I have weekly with so-called GGs (and that is where I have the huge majority of my interactions) I have never, even in the most intimate discussions about the most intimate things, ever experienced a discussion, let alone a heated one, about "who is a real woman and what sort of body configuration one acquires or is born with or without" (breasts removed or without removal, uterine removals, ovarian losses or being born without any or all of those items) becoming a war of who's real and who's not. And yes, in some of those discussions, when I am with people I have revealed my history to, we have talked about those very things. "Being a real woman" never seems to be a starter, even when I have brought it up and desired discussions about it. Usually there comes this vague and wondering expression to the faces and the instant query of "what the hell are you talkin' about?!!"
Having only those experiences within TG forums it strikes me that the Occam's Razor here might well be an ongoing battle with GID regardless of post-op status.
Nichole
QuoteHowever, it damn sure can postpone unhappiness
A few lottery winners end up worse off as they also lose their friends.
Postpone, not eliminate - and in that case, its often easy come - easy go. Lots of money is like a Ferrari, if you've been doing nothing your whole life but driving a Pinto, you might get in big trouble real fast. So when these huge windfalls come on people who have no experience handling, managing, and dealing with large amounts, it's not a surprise that trouble often follows. Its been said by some that the best thing you can do with a large lottery winning is move far away where no one knows the old you and cut off all previous ties except for the most immediate immediate family. I'm sure there is some sense in that.
And, long before the lottery, it was pretty common knowledge that unworthy heirs don't keep that money very long. Hence, trust funds.
I'm sorry if my previous post was off-topic Nichole, it was not intentional, but more a case of loosing objectivity due to my emotional state at the time.
Quote from: Nichole on May 26, 2009, 12:47:39 PM
Which was the precipitating aspect of these posts to begin with, Stacy. How is it that some people can be in places like this after being "surgically complete" and still provide understanding to those who chose to take a different avenue to "completion" and others seem hell-bent on trying to ram down everyone's throat the idea: "this is the way, the truth and the light and no one comes to completion except by the way I did."
I'm not surprised that this happens, and it is something that is not restricted to transgender issues. It so often comes down to personal insecurity, the folk who have to repeatedly force feed a single viewpoint are so often desperately trying to validate themselves by convincing others to follow. By comparison, the "mentor" types are able to make insightful and unique observations for an individual, because they are able to listen; being both comfortable in who they are, and where they are going with no "axe to grind".
I think it is wonderful that this site attracts so many "mentors", and it is one of the reasons why Susan's is so active and friendly on the whole.
With respect on the other subject, I will continue to hold the view that privilege has nothing to do with GID, as it only affects the ability of the individual to deal with the symptoms. As has been discussed before, there are cultures in this world where those with the symptoms are welcome to live and express themselves as their true gender. Such cultures may be considered relatively "poor" by western societies, but the social interaction is something we should admire.
Yes, we may have access to more funds and procedures, but were do we stop satisfying our condition, and start satisfying only the expectations of our binary society.
Chrissty
The topic may have been veering, but topics do, Chrissty. It seems to be their nature. :laugh: And I absolutely agree with this:
Quote from: Chrissty on May 26, 2009, 03:21:09 PM
I'm not surprised that this happens, and it is something that is not restricted to transgender issues. It so often comes down to personal insecurity, the folk who have to repeatedly force feed a single viewpoint are so often desperately trying to validate themselves by convincing others to follow. By comparison, the "mentor" types are able to make insightful and unique observations for an individual, because they are able to listen; being both comfortable in who they are, and where they are going with no "axe to grind".
...
With respect on the other subject, I will continue to hold the view that privilege has nothing to do with GID, as it only affects the ability of the individual to deal with the symptoms.
QFT.
GID is a socio-economic and ethnic and cultural equal opportunity condition. :) My points in that area are tied to what ten years gender-board experiences have given me to see and participate in myself. :)
Quote from: Nichole on May 26, 2009, 03:26:57 PM
GID is a socio-economic and ethnic and cultural equal opportunity condition. :)
;D ;D
The original post took me instantly to my life before it was decided I was transitioning. In no way would I say my life was a living hell then. In fact, it was pretty good. I had three healthy kids and a nice wife. I had friends who respected me and always enjoyed my company. My mom was always happy to hear from me and see me as were most of my siblings. While my dad was alive he and I spent a lot of quality time and after he passed his wife and I remained good friends. And at work I achieved what few in my field have. I was highly respected and made a good living. Not bad.
The only problem was that I was trans.
And the only major mistake I made was not controlling, analyzing and assessing the impact of my coming out.
I won't go into detail about the whole coming out fiasco but I will say since then I've lost pretty much everything I had prior to coming out.
But I did find the love of my life. ;D
Life today is harder when I'm dealing with the outside world. Those who knew me before find it too hard to accept as a woman the person they once saw as a very masculine man. And I understand their difficulty or even inability to do so. I played the part very well.
For those who meet me today, they see the male traits and wonder. Once I speak, the suspicion of my birth gender is often validated. My male voice was deeper than 95% of men. And there's all the other residual effects from over half a century playing the part of a man that seep through.
Once I step outside the door the challenge begins. So in many ways, my life today is harder than it was before.
But inside, the war has ended. I am no longer battling during every waking hour of the day and that brings a lot of relief from stress, anxiety, depression, etc. So, in that respect, my life is easier. There's a lot to be said about the benefits of gaining one's freedom.
I don't believe I was put here to have a cushy life and I don't expect to have one. No one gets that. And I'm fine with that. But I do know, had I not been trans, my life would have been a cakewalk compared to what it is now. Sometimes I recall the times when the trans issue wasn't burning inside me and I was pretty happy in my male life then.
Everyone has their challenges. No one gets a free pass. You have to make the best of what you have and I'm working on that. And I probably will for the rest of my life. It gives me something to live for. ;)
Tolle said something like "Unhappiness is never the situation, only your thoughts about it." And I believe that. But sometimes I forget and I have to get a good kick in the butt to remind me.
Julie
GID is a socio-economic and ethnic and cultural equal opportunity condition.
The outcomes are hardly equal opportunity however.
Quote from: tekla on May 26, 2009, 03:41:44 PM
GID is a socio-economic and ethnic and cultural equal opportunity condition.
The outcomes are hardly equal opportunity however.
Agreed. The evidence abounds though that even with the socio-economic advantage some continue to struggle in other aspects of their lives.
Julie Marie's post pretty well encapsulated that. Nice, excellent post, JM! :)
Quote from: Julie MarieI don't believe I was put here to have a cushy life and I don't expect to have one. No one gets that. And I'm fine with that. But I do know, had I not been trans, my life would have been a cakewalk compared to what it is now.
And thats what make being trans and transitioning so difficult. Its not simply about economics alone... we go through life building a framework... maybe better described as weaving a tapestry composed of friends and loved ones who touch our lives and become part of us. Of goals, dreams and ambitions that we realize... of growth we achive through our successes and failures. And yet we willingly trade that away, give up control of our own destiny because of something we have no control over. We hope that we can find strength, compassion, understanding in those who become intertwined in our psyche. But when all is said and done, whatever path we choose, we cant rely on others to define our happiness -- to define us. And that can be, and often is, a damned lonely trek.
Ive never relied on others to validate my sense of self worth. Whenever someone has said something cant be done, that things cannot be changed, that my conviction or beliefs were scrutinized, Ive always found following my head, my heart, my gut... was always the right choice
regardless of the outcome.
But no man/woman is an island. Humans by nature are social creatures, and without contact, touch, intimacy... we whither and die. And where is that going to come from? Our nature is to seek out those who would understand our vision... who can relate to the very things that make up our core. So when those people turn on us in an effort to separate their "before" life from their "after"... everyone loses. And it hurts like hell!
Some would tell you "->-bleeped-<- the others, I dont care what they think!", I wonder how far they really get. Its not even about whether they resolve their GID... better question is do they resolve the missing puzzle pieces, or will they forever be shelved somewhere, waiting to be completed "some day"...
Quote from: Paul SimonAnd a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries...
I for one would rather feel pain and cry tears... at least I know that I am still alive....
Quote from: Stacy Brahm on May 26, 2009, 04:23:02 PM
Some would tell you "->-bleeped-<- the others, I dont care what they think!", I wonder how far they really get. Its not even about whether they resolve their GID... better question is do they resolve the missing puzzle pieces, or will they forever be shelved somewhere, waiting to be completed "some day"...
I for one would rather feel pain and cry tears... at least I know that I am still alive....
Thank you Stacy! I so often have heard the "why care about them" mantra but to me all that is is avoiding what you can't handle. It's tough to face rejection and even tougher to try to get those who reject you to listen to you. They can't face it so they avoid it. If we ever expect them to come around we can't do what they do.
If you acknowledge your feelings and let them happen you are on the path to healing.
Julie
Quote from: cindybc on May 24, 2009, 11:36:14 PM
Hi Chrissty, I believe that Nichole's topic is very much part of what we have been discussing. I just wish for you to know that I would not look down my nose at anyone for whatever reasons. I may not agree with someone's outlook or definition of what transitioning is all about or how they choose to do it, but I am not here to argue such and nitpick over the many different classifications that are based on whatever is involved in transitioning.
I just know from my own personal observation and experience that GID does not lessen or get better as time passes. As you get older it gets more hellish to cope with. Some have done it, but they weren't happy campers to be sure. I am not aware of anyone who has found a way to defeat GID and remain mentally stable without transitioning.
But then, sis, I am not here to argue the fine points of whether you should transition or not transition. I am here in this group to use what personal knowledge and experience I have and do my best to give support and guidance to those who want it, labels notwithstanding.
Cindy
Post Merge: May 24, 2009, 06:10:21 PM
Hi Interallia
I have no idea how anyone could forget that there are many of us who are living on the streets, looking for a meal, and are in such a predicament because they suffer from GID. I submit that the only privilege involved is having been born with GID.
If one cannot land or hold a job because they are gender dysphoric, then how can they climb to the next level of Maslow's Hierarchy?
Until one has earnestly tried to transition on the job, one cannot know the negativity that causes. People get fired for transitioning. They are gently forced to leave a job that they have done well for no reason other than they are transitioning to their true gender. My mate was "shown the door" over a period of two years.
These conversation boards are filled with anecdotal and actual evidence of TS persons not being able to get a job because of their appearance or over which washroom they would need to use.
In the last year there was a case brought to court concerning a person who was interviewed by the Library of Congress for a position that required a defined set of skills and a high military clearance. He got the job and was asked to meet the hiring manager over lunch. When the otherwise-qualified candidate showed-up at the lunch in feminine attire the job offer was withdrawn.
I suppose that she had the privilege of having a job within her grasp only to find it snatched away by transphobia. Where is the privilege in that? How is that "high-class" problem?
I don't follow the "curative" approach to transsexualism as embraced by Zucker et al. It just doesn't work.
However, there is another privilege to be recognized here. Really, it's a basic human right. That is the right for a person to be who they truly are, both inside and outside.
I lived on the street for nearly ten years, not knowing where my next meal was coming from or if I would have a roof over my head to keep me out of the weather. Even though I didn't know what GID was at the time I certainly had the symptoms, full blown GID. Try and hide that and survive on the street and try to get work and go to school so that I could do something for myself.
I graduated from school with a certificate for social worker and fortunately, a few years later I also had the fortune of transitioning on the job without repercussions. I worked the last ten years of my profession proudly as a social worker as a woman. I am grateful for having had the "privilege" of working as my true self with those who were in need that includes street people.
Cindy
Excellent points, Cindy. To the transsexual sex worker or homeless TS, GID seems to still be on the level of the most basic needs.
Post Merge: May 26, 2009, 05:09:56 PM
Quote from: interalia on May 26, 2009, 02:01:13 AM
My experience echoes that of Nichole's. I realize it isn't like this everywhere, but it would be VERY hard to convince me that this doesn't describe the majority of people who seek transition.
You're forgetting the large number of black and other minority transwomen transitioning without real means to do so, engaged in sex work and the like just to survive. Now, whether it's true that most who have actually undergone SRS are the privileged majority, I don't know.
Quote from: Nero on May 26, 2009, 05:02:43 PM
You're forgetting the large number of black and other minority transwomen transitioning without real means to do so, engaged in sex work and the like just to survive. Now, whether it's true that most who have actually undergone SRS are the privileged majority, I don't know.
Whether the majority of people transitioning are privileged or not wasn't exactly my point about privilege. My point about privilege is that it's more than well-represented on internetz boards and forums that discuss transitioning. In that regard we are a very white, very middle-to-upper class group and have the leisure and the means to have the silly arguments we further about "who is real and how you prove that to x's satisfaction."
When you're busting your ass to eat and shelter and clothe yourself you're generally not much interested in arguments about who is a "classic" or "unclassic" transsexual and who is or is not qualified to be called "woman" or "man."
Sister mine, I can't type much due to the injury to my arm--which is improving with treatment today--but I know that I personally traded in the fear of having my gender dysphoria ferreted out and exposed for the fear of my past being discovered an exposed, thereby changing people's view of me.
My stalker forced my hand, and i came out entirely. As a result, I am no longer hiding a huge portion of who I am, just like before. Now my friends know me "warts and all" as you have said, and the love and acceptance I have received from my cisgendered friends has stunned me and left me feeling blessed.
Shay
Quote from: Nichole on May 26, 2009, 05:17:07 PM
Whether the majority of people transitioning are privileged or not wasn't exactly my point about privilege. My point about privilege is that it's more than well-represented on internetz boards and forums that discuss transitioning. In that regard we are a very white, very middle-to-upper class group and have the leisure and the means to have the silly arguments we further about "who is real and how you prove that to x's satisfaction."
When you're busting your ass to eat and shelter and clothe yourself you're generally not much interested in arguments about who is a "classic" or "unclassic" transsexual and who is or is not qualified to be called "woman" or "man."
Ah ok. That does make sense. Net trans discussion and groups do seem to be overly white, privileged representative. With good reason as you stated. Underprivileged transpeople may not even have net access and if they do, they certainly don't have time to talk definitions.
Quote from: Stealthgrrl on May 26, 2009, 07:03:22 PM
Now my friends know me "warts and all" as you have said, and the love and acceptance I have received from my cisgendered friends has stunned me and left me feeling blessed.
:) Yes, I know. :laugh: Not all of our fears are meaningless or without pain. Some become very horrific: I think about girls like Angie and Gwen and understand that being open may not always be the safest and best way to live.
But I am too well aware of this from my own life, Shay. Living in fear and self-loathing only took me deeoer into despair, fear and self-loathing.
Being "out and proud" isn't everyone's answer, maybe not even an answer for most of us. But finding our own internal validity as human beings, just as we are, with no recourse to having to fit someone else's mould for fear we shall "not belong" or be discovered. Doesn't seem to me to differ from the fear, despair and self-loathing that most of us admit to before we transitioned (to whatever degree we shall or have.)
To continue making the effort to build self-efficacy from outward to inward is a losing effort, best as I can tell. Most of our "doctrines" and the ways we try so hard to force others to "be like me or you're not real or worthy" are more than lost causes. They are the seeds of our own self-despising that we nourish and allow to grow thick within us, choking out the acceptance and validity that we so urgently crave.
Well, just imo, and speaking from my experience. :)
You've got a remarkable set of cissexual friends, Shay. Trans ones as well. :)
N~
QuoteWhether the majority of people transitioning are privileged or not wasn't exactly my point about privilege. My point about privilege is that it's more than well-represented on internetz boards and forums that discuss transitioning. In that regard we are a very white, very middle-to-upper class group and have the leisure and the means to have the silly arguments we further about "who is real and how you prove that to x's satisfaction."
When you're busting your ass to eat and shelter and clothe yourself you're generally not much interested in arguments about who is a "classic" or "unclassic" transsexual and who is or is not qualified to be called "woman" or "man."
"Ah!" OK now I get it. Like Nero I was a bit flamboozled or way laid over the interpretation as to how this middle to upper class folks suffering with GID verses those who are poor or on the street was being arrived at, or how it was being separately classification. In respect to the Internet, yes I must agree, thank you for the clarification hon.
Well when I first came to Susan's 12 years ago, I was probably just irking my way up middle class or the upper end of of the scale to lower class. But then even when I was living on the street I always did my best to retain some pride in myself and did my best to retain some semblance of self confidence and self esteem, even if I didn't have two pennies to rub together. I believe it was a combination of alcoholism and GID that brought me to the streets to start with. Well at the time I had found a lot more peace on the street then I had done before for a good many years, and I will not go further because that would be another story.
Today I am retired and so is my mate and between the two of our pensions we aren't hurtin for money, reasonably well off. This probably the best and happiest I have ever experienced before in just a few short years. Nobody knows anything about my past here and never had any reason to tell anyone any different then what they see me present as. Of course those at the support group know but then that is also part of the volunteer work I do outside of the women's shelter.
No I didn't come here to argue with anyone about how they wish to do things. But I get curious and I want to know who does what and why so maybe sometimes I may come out sounding like I am asking some impertanant questions. Sorry to all If I did come out sounding like that.
Cindy
Time for some of the rest...
A living hell.
A friend of mine who runs a fairly high profile blog once asked me why I once said I wouldn't wish being TS on my worst enemy.
She asked me why I said that -- being trans wasn't bad, it wasn't shameful. Why would I ever say that?
I said because it was too good a thing.
Too wonderful an experience. Too incredible a journey.
I don't remember the bad. Generally speaking, when I look back in casual search of my memories, I remember only those moments after the bad.
but for my transition, I was made to remember the bad, to revisit those moments of my childhood and adulthood that I had so readily forgotten, and so happily.
It sucked, but ya know what?
I only had to remember them. Not drag them into my life today and now.
Not let them dictate who I was or how I was going to be.
I am not ashamed of my life before transition -- I loved it. But I am not that person anymore --I have changed. I have grown and learned and moved beyond the testosterone shots and the rage and the occasinal miseries
And I agree with Nichole -- I'm weird, but transition can end. Its not forever. Its a moment between point a and point b.
For me, it was rather strange --but I like that. I place great value in not being normal, not being run of the mill. and yet, I am.
I often say I am perfect. And Its fascinating how people say that can't be possible.
Yet I am. Because *anything* is possible. And the only perfection I need is to be a perfect me.
Quote from: dyssonance on May 27, 2009, 11:31:48 PM
...
And I agree with Nichole -- I'm weird, but transition can end. It's not forever. Its a moment between point a and point b.
Nichole, being both a hedge witch and a hedge metaphysician in one of my guises, doesn't believe transition ends, Dyss. O, perhaps the one where my body changed and the markers on identity documents changed ends. But, in the larger use of that term it never ends.
I live, I grow. I grow, I change. Transition. In the end even death isn't an end. My constituent matter and energy are always conserved and keep on going and changing. The great Unbroken Circle. :)
I plan to be burnt, preferably on a pyre on a headland. But for those who don't there will come a time, perhaps, when the body remains are exhumed: a forensic pathologist, an archaeologist or anthropologist, might run across those in the course of a dig or an autopsy and label those remains "human male,
Homo sapiens." The ultimate outing from a stealth life? Or, just another predictable brick in the wall?
Even before that I presume, if we stay in USA, there will be an undertaker who will "prepare" our bodies for cremation or burial. "Hmmm," says she, "this corpse is listed female, but as I work on her I see she was born male for all intents and purposes. Curious, must have been trans." :)
Ah, but then you make the true point. :)
Quote... I place great value in not being normal, not being run of the mill. and yet, I am.
I often say I am perfect. And Its fascinating how people say that can't be possible.
Yet I am. Because *anything* is possible. And the only perfection I need is to be a perfect me.
And to affirm that, to be able to affirm that, you must be whole. Perhaps no one but one's self need own one's history in this set of bodies, but to see one's own perfection
one must at the least own it. In one's deepest heart of hearts one must own that one's history is what it is and was. To rail and deny and kick against that is to continue the basic pattern of GID.
What I too often see is the persistent desire to be rid of not just body configurations, but to be rid of much of a life. But life, by it's nature, is born, matures and eventually dies. It's sparks are transferred to other shapes and forms.
But it's history is what built it.
It seems to me that when we deny to ourselves our histories then we basically continue in self-loathing and fear. A fear and loathing, possibly, more acute than that we experienced prior to beginning that physical transition.
It took me years to realize that.
I find I cannot condemn in the least those who want to live their lives forgetting who they were and from whence they came. I expect there's no real need to be "out."
But, there is a real need to know thyself. To deny myself that is to deny myself life and memory. The joys (and there were joys) of a huge portion of my life and to begin life in the most bereft sense of that term "begin" as only a partial person with a partial life.
I found that when I came to terms with that, I was able to come to terms with others knowing if they had to and that their knowing didn't arouse my fear and self-loathing. It was gone and with it the last vestiges of GID.
Then I, like you, could be perfect. Not in practically every way like Mary Poppins, but in the way one can then snuggle into his/her life and find,
mirabile dictu, peace and comfort. Someone knowing doesn't matter. They cannot steal my life if I refuse to give it away. :)
N~
Quote from: Nichole on May 28, 2009, 12:07:40 AM
Nichole, being both a hedge witch and a hedge metaphysician in one of my guises, doesn't believe transition ends, Dyss. O, perhaps the one where my body changed and the markers on identity documents changed ends. But, in the larger use of that term it never ends.
I live, I grow. I grow, I change. Transition. In the end even death isn't an end. My constituent matter and energy are always conserved and keep on going and changing. The great Unbroken Circle. :)
I plan to be burnt, perferably on a pyre on a headland. But for those who don't there will come a time, perhaps, when the body remains are exhumed: a forensic pathologist, an archaeologist or anthropologist, might run across those in the course of a dig or an autopsy and label those remains "human male, Homo sapiens." The ultimate outing from a stealth life? Or, just another predictable brick in the wall?
Even before I presume, if we stay in USA there will be an undertaker who will "prepare" our bodies for cremation or burial. "Hmmm," says she, "this corpse is listed female, but as i work on her I see she was born male for all intents and purposes. Curious, must have been trans." :)
Ah, but then you make the true point. :)
And to affirm that, to be able to affirm that, you must be whole. Perhaps no one but you need own one's history in this set of bodies, but to see one's own perfection one must at the least own it. In one's deepest heart of hearts one must own that one's history is what it is and was. To rail and deny and kick against that is to continue the basic pattern of GID.
What I too often see is the persistent desire to be rid of not just body configurations, but to be rid of much of a life. But life, by it's nature is born, matures and eventually dies. It's sparks are transferred to other shapes and forms.
But it's history is what built it.
It seems to me that when we deny to ourselves our histories then we basically continue in self-loathing and fear. A fear and loathing, possibly, more acute than that we experienced prior to beginning that physical transition.
It took me years to realize that.
I find I cannot condemn in the least those who want to live their lives forgetting who they were and from whence they came. I expect there's no real need to be "out."
But, there is a real need to know thyself. To deny myself that is to deny myself life and memory. The joys (and there were joys) of a huge portion of my life and to begin life in the most bereft sense of that term "begin" as only a partial person with a partial life.
I found that when I came to terms with that, I was able to come to terms with others knowing if they had to and that their knowing didn't arouse my fear and self-loathing. It was gone and with it the last vestiges of GID.
Then I, like you, could be perfect. Not in practically every way like Mary Poppins, but in the way one can then snuggle into his/her life and finds, mirabile dictu, peace and comfort. Someone knowing doesn't matter. They cannot steal my life if I refuse to give it away. :)
N~
That was gorgeous, Nikki. And so true.
And you, Nero, are beautiful, rare, precious, and my friend. :) Thank you.
N~
Hi, Nichole, I didn't know I had a sister witch and metaphysical scholar on this board. ;D
QuoteBut, there is a real need to know thyself. To deny myself that is to deny myself life and memory. The joys (and there were joys) of a huge portion of my life and to begin life in the most bereft sense of that term "begin" as only a partial person with a partial life.
Yes, there are many very good memories of my past as a child and in my grown-up years. I look back upon the years of hardships I have suffered as learning experiences. All that I have experienced in life were lessons which taught me how to keep moving forward on my journey through life even through the most devastating of times. I truly believe I would not be here if I had not strove to keep moving forward.
As for the GID, it all was part of my life, part of the many experiences that I needed for growth, both mentally and spiritually. Although I have felt regret, shame, and failure in the past, today I have no such feelings.
Looking back I have no difficulty in seeing my true self, the one I have been all along and to this day. I do my best to rejoice and embrace life today. I plan my future and live it as best I can. I shall always be who I am as I was within and now present without.
But of course, transitioning is a never ending story. It is an inner growth, a soul growth. I believe that all in the universe undergoes a recycling processes. I am for once in my life as whole as I will ever be in this reality. I am who I am.
I will be what I shall be and I won't be around to see the forensic pathologist, an archaeologist or anthropologist classify my remains and I could not care less what they do with my remains. I will already be at the Pearly Gates collecting my fairy wings for my next mission in the Enchanted Forest.
Cindy
Quote from: NicholeWhat I too often see is the persistent desire to be rid of not just body configurations, but to be rid of much of a life. But life, by it's nature, is born, matures and eventually dies. It's sparks are transferred to other shapes and forms.
But it's history is what built it.
It seems to me that when we deny to ourselves our histories then we basically continue in self-loathing and fear. A fear and loathing, possibly, more acute than that we experienced prior to beginning that physical transition.
I think its really two separate but parallel paths. Our need to transition stems from feeling out of sync, an impedance mismtach between our minds and our physical existance... but this should not be confused or blamed for the bad things we experience in life. I think the reason so many of us lump the two together is that suffering we may experience outside the relm of GID tends to intensify and magnify the already psychological pummeling we put ourselves through trying to make sense of a situation that is clearly not in our control. It doesnt take long before we start to blame all the other things in our lives for our GID... and when some do make the transition they want to discard anything to do with the GID they felt... and hence all of the unrelated history with it.
Quote from: Al PachinoBut there is nothin like the sight of an amputated spirit, there is no prosthetic for that.
Denial of our past doesn't work... everything that happens to us in life... every joy, every sorrow, every emotion and experience shapes us and defines who we are and who we become. It shapes our character and our outlook on life. There is no way to remove the parts we disdain without inadvertantly tossing some of our best bits into the trash.
Quote from: CindyBut of course, transitioning is a never ending story. It is an inner growth, a soul growth.
That seems to be the second mistake many tend to make. Instead of seeing transitioning as merely another stop along the journey, many treat it like the finish line in a race where they've spent a lifetime doing endless laps around some oval track.
Our lives are spent on a quest.... quest for love, for knowledge, for friendship... for those things that make us complete. But we are an ever changing puzzle, and just when we think we found the last piece, we look down and find the picture has changed! Some see that as a new challenge, others look in dismay and throw up their hands in disgust... and learn nothing in the process.
I'll clue you in on a little secret.... it was never about finishing the puzzle...
Quote from: cindybc on May 28, 2009, 02:22:14 AM
I will be what I shall be and I won't be around to see the forensic pathologist, an archaeologist or anthropologist classify my remains and I could not care less what they do with my remains. I will already be at the Pearly Gates collecting my fairy wings for my next mission in the Enchanted Forest.
Nope, nor would I expect anyone to do that. Why? Because it would just be ridiculous, wouldn't it! I mean, one's body's dead, buried and what does it matter, right?
What does it matter while we're still alive? (And it obviously matters a lot to a number of rather loud and insistent folks.)
We are consistenty trying to make dualities: life/death, black/white, male/female and trying to match our lives and hearts to one or the other.
We carve ourselves into at least two pieces from the git, helped along by some of the most insane religious belief ever come to earth.
Life is unity. Each of our lives is a unity. My life is not a train that I stop from time to time and uncouple cars and leave them on a siding somewhere never to be used or seen again.
Stacy's right, I think, that it, all of it
... was never about finishing the puzzle.... How does one finish what has no alpha-point and no omega-point?
N~
Even before that I presume, if we stay in USA, there will be an undertaker who will "prepare" our bodies for cremation or burial. "Hmmm," says she, "this corpse is listed female, but as I work on her I see she was born male for all intents and purposes. Curious, must have been trans."
I think at that point your dead - as in 'not getting any better.' And dead is just another way of saying "Franky my dear, I don't give a damn."
And exactly what is a 'sane' religion?
And not much is black and white - hell black and white are not even black and white but a bunch of shades. Some white people can be darker than some black people - and when you ponder on that little oddity you begin to understand how f-ed up that simple duality deal is. It's only stupidity that sees life in such a clear cut distinction.
In the course of one's life she sometimes has to think and try to put down in words how she goes about thinking and reacting, most especially, in this case, to the things she reads on boards, blogs, the internet. Sometimes the best thinking and feeling seems to come to me when someone I care about asks a question, or a set of questions, privately.
I feel a responsibility to be as clear and open to them as I can be. They are important. How I say things, what I say to them, matters a great deal. For, often, when they ask they are in pain and doubt and they are hopeful for something, I think, beyond just a cast-away cliche, a party-line. They want something for their life, something that might in some way help them to find ways to heal.
This morning I had to do that again. I've been corresponding with a woman who has some baggage she wants to be rid of, or at least store away in a safe place so she doesn't have to lift and carry it constantly, some worries and doubts about herself.
In answering I felt I had to be both open and real, at least about myself. She deserves more than some ideological BS that I might feel justifies me and the ways I live and have lived my life. What follows is an excerpt from what I sent her. I think it has a bearing on this thread.
tekla, as ever you make good, if sometimes "crisp," points. :)
O, btw, Stacy Brahm, your thoughts and feelings are impressive, girl. :) They have the solid chime of "truth," or at least the solid chime of "truth" as best we can know it. :) Thank you for your posts.
What follows is the edited letter.
One thing about GID, I think, is that we learn early and well how to "hide" ourselves. I mean, it becomes first nature to distract people from the real and send them haring off in some other direction. For me, I have found that the tactic is a bad one.
We spend years in deception and lying and self-denigration and it's all too easy to keep doing that post-transition. Afterall, for most of us it is what we know best. It's become part-and-parcel of our psychic (when I say "psychic" I usually mean a fairly literal ancient Greek meaning of "soul") habits. Why change that? I mean it is "me" isn't it?
Well, perhaps, but it's similar to the way your body-configuration was "you" but not quite the "you" you felt it was. Even so, your habits of mind, the neural pathways you've worn deep into yourself, are indeed "you," but they are also, often enough, overlays you've crafted through years and years of protecting yourself.
One of the things I know as well as I know my own name is that such "protections" are very often not protections at all. They are attempts at self-soothing that work out poorly over time for those who use them.
I am convinced that when she does that (denies that she was ever configured as male) the girl doesn't grow. She just firms up a very old and well-worn pathway she's been walking for years anyhow. I mean, the point is to "be myself," no? Well, continuing to cringe and cower behind one's GID and allowing it to continue unabated afterwards just seems self-defeating to me.
No, everyone needn't know. One doesn't have to trumpet her life all around to overcome that sense of having to somehow lead a double life. But, owning that I am all of my parts, from the foundation up and all I continue to add on as annexes, just seems and proves in my life much healthier for me. And from what I have seen, proves out as well in the lives of others who have and did struggle with GID.
Of course I am a woman, just as at one time I was a girl. But, through all of that I had a male-body and was raised and taught a lot of male-behaviors and all of that overlaid and burrowed into how I expressed "me." It doesn't just magically disappear because I start walking around with a neo-vagina, breasts and a dose of estrogen in me. To think that it does is some of the most magical of magical thinking.
I think that anyone who believes that and acts "as if" she has somehow managed to "leave the old me behind" is asking for psychic and emotional problems on a huge scale. That she'll never get to where she thinks she's going.
Kate Grimaldi (don't know if you were ever acquainted with her on TS boards) had her "6 levels of transformation in a TS." The last was "now you are gg." I believe that she was right. However, Kate seemed to think that SRS was a requirement that had to be met before that could occur. I am not and lots of folks I greatly respect and who've been at this transition-thingie and this living after thingy (post-ops) for a very long time agree.
I also believe that at the same time one knows and builds on her past and that all of that is a gg who used to have a set of balls and still has a penis but it's become an internal sheath. No one escapes her life.
I think, strangely, for those of us who experienced childhood abuse or sexual abuse as adolescents or as young adults, or even as full-adults, that we have the proof of that. We can hide it, deny it, avoid it, but dammit it does keep coming back. Until you find ways to incorporate it and live with it and never forget that it's there and that it makes you in part what you are.
It doesn't paralyze you anymore, the memories. It doesn't take hold of you as though you were living the events themselves again and again like it once did. But, you know quite well that it's part of you and like any other part of you it continues to have an effect on "who I am."
Trying to avoid it just brings more intense symptomatology to the person who tries to "forgidaboudid." It won't be forgotten. It will not just lie there on one side while I traipse on as if it was never there.
My body recalls. My mind recalls. My emotions recall. If I ignore all those recalls then I pay the price with fear, doubt, pain (physical and psychic,) dissociation, night-terrors, fear of crowds, fear of going out, shame and, eventually a full-blown and intractable mental illness if I don't work through it and incorporate it in a way quite differently than I had been incorporating it, or exiling it. *sigh*
My observations about GID are that there are similarites, huge ones, overwhelming ones, with PTSD. In fact, GID sometimes is the root of someone's PTSD.
I'm a good reader. I've worked with language most of my life. It was my first and longest love of human subjects for study and holding in one's heart. I was reading at age four! By the time I was seven I had read the entire 20 or whatever volumes there were of The World Book Encyclopedia my parents had bought "so Nikki will be able to do well in school." Then I started on Brittanica and finished it by age ten. :)
Latter in life I worked as a linguist. Not a poly-glot, but as someone who parsed and examined language and broke it down and studied its constituent parts and tried to work out how communication and language worked.
*What follows is a "how does Nichole do it" thing. When I use "you" in it I am not talking about "you" personally. Rather, it's that generalized "you" that means anyone and everyone I pay attention to on any board or blog, meeting with, etc. I pay a lot of attention. :) *
I've written for years and have learned that (regardless of what some of the people on boards write) found that, people DO express their deepest selves in the things they write. "You don't know me!" Well, yes, I haven't spent time with your person in the flesh. I don't live in your town. Nor have I followed your trajectory through life.
But, au contraire, I do k-n-o-w you, because I can read you, see the ways you express yourself, how you express yourself, feel and read the things that trouble you and that you are always on about because they hurt you and whether they cause you doubt or fear. There's a lot that a person who knows a lot about language and style can get from even the most rudimentary writing.
And, I'm a therapist. I watch and pay attention to nuance (even in writing.) I see and remember the things that make you angry and hurt and fearful and how you try to hide yourself. I see and take in the things that make you happy, defensive, doubtful. I do know you to a large degree, regardless of what you think.
How? Because, like it or not, you reveal yourself in everything you write or say or express and I have watched and paid close attention and understand what I have seen and observed and taken in about you. I make notes. It's what I do.
Hope that doesn't sound too brash or too braggart-y. It's just what's there. What I see and do and how often, like around 100%, it's true and my judgements are usually pretty "on-target" as well. It's a gift, I suppose.
But it's no more "gifted" than a wood-carver who's been at the work for years can make wondrous and beautiful things with wood and knife or chisels. No more "gifted" than Yo-Yo Ma plays his cello, or than a computer-engineer through experience can trouble-shoot without usually making many mistakes in doing so. We do, we learn. The more we learn the better we do what we do. Same for most everyone. *shrug*
Actually, it's more like a craft, something learned through long practice, repetition and time and listening and hours and hours and hours and years of practice and failure and working it out again. It's hard work and doesn't come "naturally." The bent may be natural, but as Ezra Pound said about writing poetry: "It's 98% sweat and hard work and learning and about 2% talent."
So, no, no one has to own her life in it's totality. No one must follow me. Perhaps some will be fine continuing to deny and hide, make it through forever by denying their lives were as they were and that what went before always builds what comes latter. But, without exception, unless, perhaps, someone is truly and materially, born-again at age 25, 30, 40, 50, 60 whatever, then past builds the present and the future. But, some folk possibly also believe that space-aliens are frequent visitors to their lives and that Moses actually was responsible for the tidal wave in the Red Sea that "overwhelmed Pharoah's army." :)
Perhaps it's all true. Perhaps myths don't find the point in a different way but are totally historical in every detail.
Perhaps.
As a survivor I can attest from personal experience that it doesn't go away by shoving it away from me. It doesn't shove. And though it may relent for some period of time, it never actually goes away. What happened, happened. Period. What happened has current effects regardless of whether I have them healed or not. Even scars have an effect. :)
Same with GID. It was real and very much a part of my life. Like the PTSD, though, GID no longer rules and controls all of my life. It is in the past; but, just like the layer of calcium that laid down on my bones when I was fourteen is still there (best I know) GID and PTSD have also left their marks.
It's just that that layer is no longer the covering of my bones. But, it's down there somewhere, and all the layers above it have it as a foundation for their existence. So too with GID and PTSD in our lives, in our souls.
So too with a cold cone of an extinct volcano. It's there. It marks the past, but to pretend it is no longer there and never was there and that the geography of the place wasn't and isn't affected in some way by it is to simply ignore the truth of geography.
The soul's geography, the body's geography, is no different.
Nichole
Nichole, Ive been following this thread since you first started it. There is something in the thoughts posted here that resonates inside of me... some good, some painful... and some leaving me rethinking the past and present... and pondering the future. I sometimes like to think about an idea and kick it around in my head before I respond. But sometimes its better to just get the words down while the emotion is that raw. Something in this last volley has stirred me almost to the point of tears... so here goes, I hope it comes out coherant.
I am a woman. Always have know that. There has never been a doubt in my mind. Even as a child I knew I was female. But back then I didnt have the tools to grapple with the sense of feeling depolarized in a world where gender was supposed to be so clear and concise. Sugar and spice and all of that crap! :icon_shakefist:
When I tried to talk to those who were well along the path I was bombarded with all kinds of rules, preconditions, tests and such. If you arent 'A' and 'B' then you cant be 'C', and so forth. The more questions I asked the more of a brick wall I hit.
We talk about the pain of GID. Some describe it vividly as a pure hatred of the body they were stuck with. Others being forced to do 'XY' when they feel 'XX' and vice versa. My pain runs a different path. I let others convince me that I was flawed... not for physically being a female stuck in a male body. Oh no, that would be too simplistic. No, I was sick, damaged, sub-human because I felt these things. It goes back to the first time I was caught dressed. Instead of a loving caring response I was labeled a problem child who engaged in sick behavior. Subjected to all of the best quackery that my parents could afford. If I didnt relate to the other boys in the class, it must be because I was anti-social... couldnt possibly be that I didnt relate to being male. And so it went... when combined with domestic violence and an eating disorder it wasnt hard to believe that I was psychologically damaged goods.
I gave up control as a child to other adults and let them define for me what characterizes normal. By the time I was a teenager I was on a self destructive path. College years lead to seeking out venues to be TG/TS by living a dual life. Back then only sick people considered HRT or SRS. When I sought professional help I was told I was sick... that my TG/TS behavior was a sign of serious psychological problems, that I would have to overcome that to be normal.
So I buried everything. Massive purge.... and I dont mean just clothing. My whole life turned upside down. As if I could just will GID away with a disciplined mindset. But it never goes away... and when it erupted again it was stronger than ever. We cannot bury or deny our pasts.
It is only in the last several years with the help of a good therapist that I started to accept who I was. That didnt come easy, and it wasnt possible without tackling other issues as well. We cannot even begin the healing process until we know the enemy we face.
Quote from: Janet LynnSo often time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key. ~The Eagles, "Already Gone"
Ive faced my demons, and I finally realized that:
* I am not sick or damaged for being TG/TS.
* I cannot give control away to others
* I needed to confront my past in order to break the cycle.
But the story doesnt end there. Transitioning is a journey whose purpose is to find the peace that was sought after for so long. But as I ponder the future I face and the challenges it presents, it occured to me that I am already on a parallel road.
Quote from: Stacy Brahm in The Dirty SecretI was talking to a good friend on the phone a few nights ago, one of those heart-to-heart conversations... the ones that always occur at 2am. I was trying to describe the feeling of knowing in my heart what path I must take, and yet grappling with the fear of the unknown. I said to her that Ive never before had to deal with anything in my life where there was a point of no return...
The it hit me out of the blue.... like the answer to the sound of one hand clapping. That statement was not true.... we all take that leap of faith, and you have too... its called being a parent, bringing a child into the world.
In my case, my wife and I spent years battling infertility including hormones (both of us) and surgery (me). We were both told it was hopeless. The marriage was already falling apart. I guess we both let our guard down.... bang! Was 3 1/2 weeks later (her cycle), morning after an awful day of fighting, morning after I decided to call it quits on the marriage. She told me she missed her period. Just so you understand... you could time the atomic clock in Boulder CO to her cycle. She was pregnant...
Imagine a failed marriage and a kid on the way... I never was so afraid, so conflicted... for me it was a one way path, abortion was out of the question. And up until the moment I held my son, I could not imagine this forever life changing event that took place...
And thats just the point. From the moment I picked up my son, literally, I was never afraid again. Never felt any of the gut wrenching emotions I felt up until that moment...
I realized that the path I chose to raise my son in the face of an unforgiving and poisoness ex-spouse strikes a similar chord.
It took me a long time to heal from a broken marriage, but the failed relationship and its hurt never really go away. Instead, I had to heal and get past the divorce. Not an easy thing to do when we share the responsibility of raising a child together. And because of my son, she will always be a part of my life whether I like it or not.
I drew strength from the failed marriage and my attempts to raise my son in the face of the perfect storm that is my ex-wife. I can tell you with absolute certainty that I never regretted my decision to divorce, and that I never again felt the enormous weight of doubt once I picked up my (then) newborn son. I never used my past as a reason to become bitter... and I know it will always be a part of me.
I am at the begining of the next phase of my journey. I have no intention... or need really... of denying my past of distancing myself from it. Once I realized that years of anger and hatred were tied to a negative self image, and was finally able to come to terms with how I see myself... I can finally tackle the task at hand. To my mind the parallels are striking. I am taking ownership for my own happiness. I will not forget who I was and where I came from, and I will not allow my past to dictate my future decisions. I dont expect a magic bullet... thats just a myth.
So why is it I still feel the tears coming on? I suppose its because I know intellectually that the end of this phase will culminate in the peace I seek. But I cant predict how the future will unfold. No one can. I did not expect my son to have distanced himself from me after so many years. Its very easy to become overwhelmed by all of the steps involved. So the best I can do is one day at a time. The beginning of any journey always seems daunting. And the future hasnt been written yet... Mostly though the GID is still there, hence the reason to make this journey so I can address it head on.
I think the philosophers Jagger & Richards said it best...
QuoteYou cant always get what you want... but if you try sometime you'll find you get what you need.
Building upon the foundation of the old, I like that. Actually I have never heard transition GID and PTSD described as one so articulately.
It is about acceptance and building upon the old, and a lot eating of humble pie. My feet kissing days are done with in this life time, but I will always be around with a shoulder for the weary.
Cindy
Quote from: Nichole on May 29, 2009, 11:57:35 AM
My observations about GID are that there are similarites, huge ones, overwhelming ones, with PTSD. In fact, GID sometimes is the root of someone's PTSD.
Nichole
I find that a really interesting statement. So say like you acted like a girl or as my dad called it a "wuss" and wanted to toughen me up? He's hurt me pretty bad, knocked me through a wall pr two, and has kicked my butt so hard at times I didn't need ear warmers for an entire winter.
I have no doubt I have PTSD. But was it caused by my forced suppression for fear of getting the crap beat out of me or do I have a double dose of it?
Actually in reality C-PTSD is what fits me the best.
Trauma sources include sexual abuse (especially child sexual abuse), physical abuse, emotional abuse, domestic violence, torture and violations of personal boundaries[3] such as serial intimate betrayals that are discovered and denied[4][5] – known as gaslighting
Gaslighting is a form of intimidation or psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory and perception. The classic example of gaslighting is to change things in a person's environment without their knowledge, and to explain that they "must be imagining things" when they challenge these changes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting)
In other words I wasn't thrown down the stairs!! I fell. Don't I remember? I'm such a klutz.
Anyhow if PTSD is caused by GID..then it is a little confusing for me since I have GID and a crappy upbringing. My new therapist is going to have fun with me.
Lori, the quote you used wasn't an all or nothing, every time the same, kinda commentary. I see and have seen similarities, huge ones between the patients who present with one and those who present with the other.
In some case they are related, one to the other. But not in all.
Your therapist will, indeed, have "fun" with you; but that sort of case is never "fun" at all. It's sad, sometimes almost intractable, and may well resepond well to a kind of dialectical-behavioral approach.
The "recreation" of a scenario in which the victim becomes the initiator of the incident, often with the perp totally removed, is not at all unusual: from spousal abuse wherein the victim "aggravated" the perp to commit the violent acts to the child with a memory that has been warped intentionally by the perpetrator.
I ache with the pain you have. I cn only imagine the hell your childhood must've been.
I would suggest, as I've told you before, that you not focus much on etiology: how did I get this way as much as getting better.
It's possible, even for someone who's been through as much as you have. :icon_hug:
Nichole