Righty, well, I'm on here periodically, and then I retreat as many of you know. What a kafuffle this all is.

I had the money to go private, and to, in effect, tailor my transition without having to jump through the damaging hoops specified by the UK's wonderful and well-meaning but also frighteningly old-fashioned standards of care. But I ended up spending my money on projects instead, and am now taking  second job to pay back the credit card bill. I should be square again and in credit by this time next year. This really seems like a confession.

In the end, I couldn't make up my mind, I didn't have the power to go through with it. I am furiously bad with making decisions day-to-day, I panic at the choice extended to me at music shops, for instance. And this opportunity and the decision presented, just blew every logical and emotional circuit in my brain. So I buried myself in distractions. I used to think that with the cash available, I would take HRT. But it appears, not. I now wonder whether I'd actually get FFS if I had that amount of money, even though that's what I've always wanted, even before I recognised I had actual gender dysphoria.

So why so?     

I feel there's no point. For various reasons. I've even stopped dressing up in private now. And I just accept the receding hairline, thinning hair, pointless bulking out and coarsening skin with a resigned sense of deep defeat. I don't have enough faith I'll gain any positive effects from HRT to balance out the destruction of fertility, sex drive and collapse of metabolism. I can't get over the feeling that ruining fertility is a sin, even though that I logically know that its not a sin and I could bank for future IVF (though from what I hear, conceiving successfully through IVF is fairly difficult at the best of times).

As well as these hang-ups, I also continue to feel cut-off from the mindsets of men and women. I feel as out of my depths in a group of women talking about "feminine issues" as I do in a room of men taking delight in being gruff and being "guyish". After spending more time with women than men over the past two years, I feel a dispiriting sense of familiarly to my fish-out-water feelings. As if I've travelled the world to its further reaches only to find I'm essentially back where I started. Men and women are just so...utterly polarised and so almost hysterically keen to be seen as distinctly male or female, that every facet of existence has to conform. Whilst I do understand that there are many on this forum that feel the same, indeed, even a forum unto itself. However offline and in real life, there just appears to myself. I've tried meeting with others but it never pays off. Binary transgender people want to disappear into the masses without trace and non-binaries continue to dress-up indoors and alone. Sadly, I don't have the confidence (or more importantly the skills in work) to be financially secure as someone who stands out as a non-binary transsexual. If I were to be more attractive (as beauty is an immutable currency that allows for many socially-unacceptable traits) and more intelligent, then I could weather the potential crap-storm that invariably follows a transition. 

Yep, I'm aware I'm courting a "well, welcome to being transgender/ transexual" comment, which is fair enough, but its still irritating that it's like this. Its irritating because it means I can't make a decision, as all the bullsh*t surrounding being male or female is just deafening, and I'm barely sure of who I am in the shadows, let alone in the sharp lights of everyone else's bigoted gleefully smug-to-be "real men" and "real women" gaze. There's not enough who are transgender, let alone non-binaries, in positions of power in the media to begin reshaping the very malleable minds of the populace. Control the media and you control people. Anyway, I'm going off on one! :-p

So I could just slink away and get on with conforming, but the trouble is, I feel angrier still. And of course, its not healthy or wise. How do you quell the anger? I increasingly feel jealous of the women I am attracted to, its ridiculous really. My emotions fire off. But, there it is, the annoyance and anger as I see my decay and their luminance, they look and present how I want to. And then to add insult to injury  in order to attract them as a partner, I then need to further restrict my identity to conform to the standards of behaviour and presentation that 99.9% of women expect from a guy. I'm expected to appreciate the modern women's gender duality, and yet I am expected to be a one-dimensional male. It'll continue to damage society, it will, this gender equality paradox which we're cultivating. Only those non-binaries like myself notice this though, (as we're not just disenfranchised by one gender  but by both) as everyone else trans or cis are picking a side and sticking with it, keeping their heads down.

Its strange, I feel the need to defend masculinity, and I feel threatened by femininity and feminism, but ultimately its my own "masculinity" I feel is being threatened. Which isn't the masculinity that regular guys seem to even need to defend, so it seems. I feel threatened by feminism as there's no place for someone like me in that equality, in the same way as there's no place for me in the patriarchy. Its one gender dictatorship or the other. Doesn't matter whether its cis women or cis men in power, I'll never be appreciated, non binaries never will. You won't find us on the cover of any fashion magazine, or in demand on dating sites or "employee / employer of the month in any industry.

Yes, this has turned into a rant, wasn't meant to be, but I feel the need to just express this. I have to. I mean no offence and I do not wish to upset anyone. Tis the season, afterall.

I just wish I could calm myself, and find some peace, to be able to make a decision. This gender stuff with me, its a fire that's always existed. Couple that with my attraction to women and this confused attraction with certain males, makes no sense. There seems to be no end to it, that's what frustrates me the most. I just don't see how to make who I am work.



 

Hi, Stella!  I can relate to a lot of stuff you're saying here.  My own view of myself tends to fluctuate, depending on I don't know what.  In a way I see myself as non-binary, in a way as female.  But I'm not sure it matters.  I live full-time as female, and that's what makes me happy.  That's my basic objective: to be happy, and I've gone a long way towards achieving that.

What others expect of me, I don't know and it doesn't really matter.  I'm going to be the type of person/woman that I want to be, doing what comes naturally to me.  I'm not sure I need to waste a lot of time worrying about what others expect.  There are lots of people who know I'm trans and I never get any flak from them about how I'm not doing things right, in the proper female manner.

Perhaps rather than worrying about the theory behind the question, you need to take a practical approach.  Find out how to live in a way that makes you happy.  That may require some experimentation, and it depends on your circumstances how much freedom you have to experiment.  But as I said, the objective for me is to be happy.  Let others worry about how or where I fit in, if they want to.

I have to echo Foxglove here, be whatever the hell you want to be and f**k the rest of them, although she said it a little less bluntly than me   We're supposed to follow certain paths from the moment we're born, and stepping off that path in any way will always pee people off and make you feel alienated.
And you can spend a lifetime trying to 'make sense' of things, don't waste your time trying babe. 
Society is designed to make us feel that need to BE something, something with a well defined label but that's all BS. Just relax a bit and try to stop being so hard on yourself and please, don't let that feeling of defeat get a hold of you, hugs.

Quote from: ChrissyChips on December 15, 2014, 05:24:18 PM
I have to echo Foxglove here, be whatever the hell you want to be and f**k the rest of them, although she said it a little less bluntly than me   We're supposed to follow certain paths from the moment we're born, and stepping off that path in any way will always pee people off and make you feel alienated.
And you can spend a lifetime trying to 'make sense' of things, don't waste your time trying babe. 
Society is designed to make us feel that need to BE something, something with a well defined label but that's all BS. Just relax a bit and try to stop being so hard on yourself and please, don't let that feeling of defeat get a hold of you, hugs.

ditto

Hello everyone Thank you for replying.

I was quite fired up when writing it, and easily get fired up about in general. Thank you for the encouragement about being myself, as well. I don't know really how to be what I want to be though, as it conflicts so much. I'd hoped the therapy would assist in addressing these issues, to trace the genesis of certain thoughts, fears and wishes, but as yet no results have yielded. Nothing to aid clarity, anyway. Its all very duff. I feel like a fool and it disturbs me that I am eternally restless about the whole situation.

Hanazono, I'm not surprised there were things people may take issue with.

I see women and I feel almost repulsed by their curves, the fact there's extra fat on certain places, perhaps its some weird hidden misogyny I had no idea existed? I also am repulsed by the male shape, and how I've developed over the years as a man. I'm getting that burnt-out look that men get when they reach thirty+ - hair's all lank and thin, skin looks greasy but shapeless, eyes dull, etc. I feel scared of becoming either it seems, perhaps due to the fact I was quite androgynous until quite recently?

What I can't understand about me is why I feel I need to see a feminine face when I picture myself, and why I automatically have always wanted to look more delicate, more refined, prettier, etc, instead of wanting to look more manly. I know that "looking pretty" is not what being a female is all about, but I mention that wish to draw attention to the fact that I've distinctly never wanted to look male - I've never wanted the traits attributed to looking male. I don't like the harshness and the chunky bits and such, it doesn't represent me and how I wish to present.  Ultimately I think that its more about presentation than prettiness, but there is a high level of wanting to achieve attractiveness, but its more of a raw female softness and attractiveness and not the airbrushed, sexualised image of femininity that men tend to prefer.

However, this contradicts my appreciation for my male deep voice (despite the fact that I felt initially crestfallen when I discovered that my voice had dropped). Ultimately I feel I've fully come to accept my voice. And I also appreciation certain parts of my male body, though the way I see them and use them and express them is decidedly feminine. An accurate analogy would be to imagine a curious lesbian cis-girl getting the opportunity to "wear" (or joyride) a male body whenever she wants, though her identity would still be female. I don't own my male body like a man tends to own his body.

Ultimately though, the problem is, that taking HRT would impair the attributes that I appreciate.

I just can't get this identity to work in my own friggin' head!! And if I can't get it to work in my own head, how the hell can I make this work externally in a world of bigots and stereotypes? I need to be completely cast-iron in my resolve, commitment and confidence to make this identity work and to make it, and myself, powerful enough to be able to ride the social, physical and financial storms of transition. Otherwise I'll run aground in the process and be broken up by all the conflicting external and internal forces at work.

I've developed a massive chip on my shoulder, now. I feel much jealously towards even the women that I fancy and date, its morphing into an anger that makes me feel like I am boiling. And yet I also have this fear of turning into them. Plus I also constantly feel the need to defend my masculinity to people, to hide my femininity, or be written off by them as weak, effeminate, whimpish and irrelevant.

I feel like I'm trapped, as if I take HRT, and my genitalia ceases its work without significant advantages elsewhere (such as decent facial feminisation), then I'd fall into the purgatory that is broken androgyny. A man is his genitalia, without it, he is nothing (according to society). And so, to loose that, its very scary as social currency equals happiness. Otherwise you're just a lonely, irrelevant person who no one will date or employ. 

And this is why I am so angry. Its all festered into a poisonous feedback loop, a soup of anger, hate, fear and confusion. And I dislike myself for turning into this.

Hats off to everyone on Susan's who manage to work this all out, go out, do what they need to do and get on with life. That's some serious gumption, very admirable.

Quote from: Stella Stanhope on December 18, 2014, 07:29:19 AM
And this is why I am so angry. Its all festered into a poisonous feedback loop, a soup of anger, hate, fear and confusion. And I dislike myself for turning into this.

Stop worrying about transition, it seems like you have more serious issues to sort out first. Have you considered getting referred to local mental health services to see if they can help you straighten out your anger and revulsion issues? Maybe once that is done you will know better on which side of the gender fence you should be.