After I discovered what the word transsexual was and that there was something one could to about it, and many did. To me it was like I was drowning at sea and someone had just thrown me a life preserver. That word of salvation was *transition*. I didn't now anything about any of the other shades in the gender spectrum back then, just the word transsexual.

I have asked myself many times how does transsexuality and GID happen and why. Fear? but of course, I don't think there is a soul who doesn't feel fear at the thoughts of transitioning, but that never held me back. I was 55 years old and no one to hold me back, or no one for me to hold back for.

After my first day full time I no longer had any doubt and the fear deminished each day I went out presenting as myself and within a couple of weeks I felt like I had always been who I was. I never felt fake, I knew who the inner self was before I even started transitioning, I had no doubt of that, I only just needed to let her emerge outwards to the surface.

I integrated easily on the job and with the town people. I have always been an outgoing upbeat person and still am and I beleive it was that kind of attitude and personality that helped me to be accepted.

Cindy   

Quote from: cindybc on June 01, 2009, 03:48:21 AM
After I discovered what the word transsexual was and that there was something one could to about it, and many did. To me it was like I was drowning at sea and someone had just thrown me a life preserver. That word of salvation was *transition*. I didn't now anything about any of the other shades in the gender spectrum back then, just the word transsexual.

I have asked myself many times how does transsexuality and GID happen and why. Fear? but of course, I don't think there is a soul who doesn't feel fear at the thoughts of transitioning, but that never held me back. I was 55 years old and no one to hold me back, or no one for me to hold back for.

After my first day full time I no longer had any doubt and the fear deminished each day I went out presenting as myself and within a couple of weeks I felt like I had always been who I was. I never felt fake, I knew who the inner self was before I even started transitioning, I had no doubt of that, I only just needed to let her emerge outwards to the surface.

I integrated easily on the job and with the town people. I have always been an outgoing upbeat person and still am and I beleive it was that kind of attitude and personality that helped me to be accepted.

Cindy   

Me too.  Once begun, my only doubts were whether I could do this, never whether I should.  Like Janet, I did lots of research.  I finally took the first steps but refused to look too far down the path.  I only knew I had to begin.

I didn't know how good a woman I would be but I was sure I would be happier pretending to be a woman than I ever was pretending to be a man.  So far, that has been true for me.

I have consistently applied the word transgendered to myself, since it can be all-inclusive.  Now I am beginning to accept the word transsexual.

But words don't matter.  Categories don't matter.  Being yourself matters.  And finding yourself can be a confusing and wondrous journey.

- Kate

Oh yes, I spent a lot of years hiding who I was, pretending I was something else, hoping I was something else, begging to be something else, mostly to convince myself, but also to provide for my family and all of that.  There are times I think I am a fraud, and realize that the only time this is true is when I am being disingenuous with who I am.  In other words, if I cannot be who I truly am, every relationship I have had is fraudulent.  Every conversation is misleading.  Every memory a lie.  Every hope delusion.

Kristi

Quote from: Kristi on June 01, 2009, 09:30:08 AMIn other words, if I cannot be who I truly am, every relationship I have had is fraudulent.  Every conversation is misleading.  Every memory a lie.  Every hope delusion.

Kristi

WOW. So much truth to that.

But remember -- society sanctions against non-normalcy.  There is a price to be paid for being who you really are if who you really are is not just like the established order says it is.

I can't find it now, but there was an essay at Huffington Post that summed up the gay experience with being outside the accepted norms.  A man who was gay found himself seated next to a nosy, grandmotherly woman.  He knew the type and dreaded the conversation.  She kept asking him about himself, and if he had a wife and kids.  He tried to dodge the question as best he could...  She kept at it.  He said that he just wasn't the marrying type.  She said he was so handsome, he should have girls chasing him, etc.  And now she really started asking him why he wasn't married.

He capitulated.  "I'm gay," he said. "How dare you shove your disgusting lifestyle down our throats!" she retorted.  He pointed out that he'd been trying to avoid the topic with her for the past half hour, but it was she who persisted.

Then he asked her if she expected him to lie to her.

"Yes" she said.

"Is truth and honesty a virtue?" he asked.  She agreed.

"But when it makes you uncomfortable, you expect me to lie?"

That shut her up

We transgenders have a double-bind.  Those of us who pass well are expected to go deep stealth and never tell, because if we are found out, they will dogpile on us for being deceivers -- the longer the period in stealth, the larger the punishment.

But if we admit up front of our transgender-ness, we're punished for being disgusting.

Still, what Kristi said is right:

Quoteif I cannot be who I truly am, every relationship I have had is fraudulent.  Every conversation is misleading.  Every memory a lie.  Every hope delusion.

Through the fire is our eventual freedom.

Karen

Well I look at it this way, I am 63 years old, I already lived as my true self for nearly a decade, 6 years of that decade people knew who I was and accepted me as who I presented.

For the last part of that decade I have moved, people don't know anything about my past except for when I am a facilitator at the local TS support group once a week. And so now I have a balance, I work with TS and I also work at a Woman's Shelter, (As a bonafide woman). I never had to lie to any of my cisgendered friends about my past.

I have many friends because I also run a local meetup group.  I only just switch the gender roles in my stories of my past life when talking about such things as child rearing, I helped raise 8 children through the years, including my own three. That made for A lot of diaper changing and a lot of small talk sitting around the table drinking coffee with other women. So I fit in the roll quite well when it comes to telling stories of the past.

Now I have maybe thirty more years to go, if I'm long lived, and I intend to enjoy every moment to the fullest like there were no tomorrow. Worrying about being outed is to much of a waste of energy. "Why worry?" Because you never know about tomorrow, I could walk out of the house and get run over by a ->-bleeped-<- hating city bus driver or die of a heart attack. Whats the diff, I'm just as dead either way.

So if one is in for the deal then you better belly up to the card table.

Cindy 

I know that when I was very young, I just plain did not know what was going on. Why did I like to dress as a girl, why did I like to play with dolls, why did I like to bake and sew and not play football, why did I find boys attractive?

I don't think I ever faced denial. When I was young I did not know what it meant to be gay, and especially to be transgendered or transsexual. Even as I grew older I still did not fully know what was going on.

So for me, it was never denial about who I was. I just learned more and more about myself along the way to find how transgendered I am.

Quote from: Becca on May 27, 2009, 12:09:56 AMHormone therapy, for me, was the bellringer. When I started supressing my testosterone production, and replacing it with Estrogen and liked it, the doubts vanished.

^^^
This!

My Mom and my sisters-- far away in other parts of the country, without ever seeing me or knowing my current life at all-- have judged me as a fraud and keep telling me I'm not who I know myself to be. If they could see how I'm living now, post-transition, and how much happier I am, they wouldn't be able to say that. But for years now they have exiled me and refused to see me, so that sight unseen they can judge me.  All they did was add to the burden I had to lift to get out from under it, as they tried to plant doubts that I'm for real, and I had to devote more mental energy to refuting them.

By now, though, their denial is so obviously wrong I can't be bothered any more. I know who I am, I'm secure in who I am, and I'm finally living that knowledge. Nobody can put me back in denial any more-- once you've seen the truth, you can't go back to lying to yourself. Nobody can take that inner security away from me. You're so right, the hormones definitively clinched it.

Alan Turing was a gay man, he was arrested and convicted of homosexuality when it was illegal, and they forced him to take estrogen as punishment. But he was a man. He could not deal with the effect of estrogen on his body and mind, so he killed himself. They effectively murdered him. One of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, whose discoveries have shaped all of our lives, who saved his country from the Nazis, and this is the gratitude they showed him.

He basically died from sudden gender dysphoria. We have gotten more or less used to it, having dealt with it all our lives, and usually manage to tough it out until we can get it fixed. But for it to suddenly hit someone who'd never had it before must be shattering.

But now I'm thriving on E like I never could have before. I'm a fish born on dry land who finally made it into the water.

---

Post Merge: June 04, 2009, 02:02:22 PM

---

Quote from: Lori on June 01, 2009, 02:24:07 PM

Quote from: Kristi on June 01, 2009, 09:30:08 AMif I cannot be who I truly am, every relationship I have had is fraudulent.  Every conversation is misleading.  Every memory a lie.  Every hope delusion.

WOW. So much truth to that.

+1