[GoneGirl]

Miranda,

We do see the world in much the same light. Our trans evolutions also match up pretty well. And, yes, we are a rather diverse bunch here at BN. I used to read every post on the 'Genetic Male' subforum. Now, my focus is mostly limited to the Gender Identity, Personal Programs, and Picture Pages subforums. I wasn't even aware of the trolling issue that prompted the creation of the specially protected 'Males Staying Male' subforum. I have no interest in the guys wanting to grow boobs for whatever reason. I don't see any need to attack them, however. Live and let live.

Transitioning is an enormous endeavor. When looked at as a whole it seems an impossible undertaking. There are so many obstacles and chances for failure. I view it a lot like I view getting married and raising a family. The commitment, responsibility, heartache, and the risks are overwhelming when you stop to think about it. And, yet we take it on anyway to satisfy a deep seated need and the promise of true happiness. You get through both by taking it one step at a time.

Being late transitioning transsexuals puts us, Miranda, in a rather exclusive club of our own. What is it like to live in two genders -- to see the world through the eyes of a man and later as a woman? Some would object and argue that your gender cannot change. If you are a transsexual woman, you were always a woman, never a man. I see it differently.

I have a strong sense that I have both a male and female brain. The male brain (A) and the female brain (B) share brain matter (shaded overlap-C) as shown in this Venn diagram:



When I lived as a man, I didn't go around thinking "I'm a woman trapped in a man's body!" My GD symptoms showed up in less direct and harder to interpret ways most of which disappeared when I changed to an estrogen dominant hormonal balance.

On estrogen, my female brain (B) gradually took over my conscious mind while my male brain (A) faded away. My former male perspective has since been replaced with my new female perspective. The differences are real as my spouse will attest to.

One of the most interesting consequences of this gender switch is that, as a woman, I harbor no ill will toward men. I feel that I understand men having identified as a male for so long.

So how do I know I'm a woman? Simple. With my female brain now well nourished with E, and my male brain deprived of T, my physiologically based GD symptoms are gone, except that now I feel the distress of being a "woman trapped in a man's body". Estrogen has turned me into a "primary transsexual woman" where, in every waking hour of the day, I have an unmistakable sense of being a woman, and an intense need to make my external appearance match my sense of gender.

This outcome is what those who have experienced the same phenomenon call the "slippery slope" or the "pink fog". It is real. And it's why people are cautioned about messing with their hormones. It doesn't effect everyone. You have to fall substantially to the female side of the gender spectrum for it to have any effect. If your gender falls more to the male end, flipping one's hormone balance will not push you into the fog, but it can produce the opposite effect -- mental discord. This is, in fact, the way gender therapists diagnose a patient as being transsexual or not.

To have one's gender identity and biological sex so far mismatched is a relatively rare occurrence in the development of a fetus. That's why there are so many more male self-identifying cross dressers than there are transsexual women -- and I truly believe there are many more men who would cross dress if it were not taboo. (And as a side note: Those deep feelings can be scary for a man, and ellicit negative emotional reactions to trans people.) Cross dressers are men who have a need to express their feminine side now and then while hiding from the disapproving eye of society. Transsexual women are women who, like all women, can express their male side freely. Could this be the source of the friction between these two disparate trans groups?

Clara

[Miranda-nata-est]

Miranda,

We do see the world in much the same light. Our trans evolutions also match up pretty well.

I had sort of noticed that also which is one of the reasons I follow your postings with interest.


Being late transitioning transsexuals puts us, Miranda, in a rather exclusive club of our own. What is it like to live in two genders -- to see the world through the eyes of a man and later as a woman? Some would object and argue that your gender cannot change. If you are a transsexual woman, you were always a woman, never a man. I see it differently.

I am certain your theory is true. I have had this discussion many times with friends and have always maintained that it is a great privilige in many ways to have transitioned in later life. There are not so many people around who have had the opportunity to truly experience life from both sides of the gender divide. It is this difference that we can sort of understand but is inexplainable to those who have not experienced it; even those closest to us might understand the concept but just don't have any way to fit our explanations into an experience framework they can understand. One has to live it to understand it. There are definitely two gender based diverse world viewpoints. It is of great value to have both in one's past and certainly helps one to understand the attitudes of people in the world around.

It is not all good news though. I really, really regret not having a female history to look back on. I would have certainly thrown myself into the crazy young years, I would have loved the chance to wear clothes I now never shall. Growing up as a girl in the 60s and 70s must have been something else!!!!, although who knows, the reality might not have been quite as good as the imagined experience.
I am a bit ambivalent about never having had the chance to bear children (as a cis female I mean). The couple of true Transwomen I know personally both maintain that this is one of their biggest regrets, but I am not so sure. I have 3 daughters of my own (who I brought up on my own for several years) and one step-daughter and now two female grand-children (now do you see why I HAD to transition - as a male I was just totally outnumbered - if you cannot beat them, .......), as such although I have never done the pregnancy and giving birth bit, I am not convinced that for me it was a big loss.

Another bad thing about late transition is this race against the biological clock. I am just so aware of the tick of the clock which, until this all kicked off big time, just hadn't been an issue in life.


The other factor to bear in mind is that, had I transitioned earlier in life, I would not now be the person I am, a person I now pretty much like. I would not have had 50 odd years of male experiences which on the whole were good, despite the void which was ever present. Above all, I wouldn't live in the world space I do now which I definitely like. Me, as I am with my wife, my family, friends, this home, everything, just wouldn't have ever existed. Life would have gone down a completely different path. Whilst I obviously wouldn't have known about and so missed this existence, the alternative reality which might have unfolded is unlikely to have brought me to a place better than this (although, who knows ... I might have married into royalty or something, I quite fancy the idea being a princess!!!



Transsexual women are women who, like all women, can express their male side freely. Could this be the source of the friction between these two disparate trans groups?

That is certainly a possible explanation for the divergence of opinion. I don't really know enough to comment. However, this part about transsexual women being free to express our male side raises a few points.

It is only as one progresses a fair way down the path that one gets to grips with this as a truth. Initially, there is a tendency to try to conform to the female stereotype model and to discard or hide anything which might be seen to others to be male. It is almost as if one feels that to exhibit male charateristics is to somehow detract from the female persona one is trying to convince the world is now the 'real you'. I struggled with this quite a bit as so many of my pasttimes, hobbies and activities are pretty much straight out of the male stereotype model. In time, I came to realise that it was, in fact, an issue in my head rather than in the wider world. I was the one with the stereotyped world imprinted in my mind and this was why I was having such difficulty reconciling the activities I still enjoy with the world I now inhabit. As soon as I got to grips with this truth, everything became much clearer and simpler. Just do whatever I feel like!! At times, I still find myself doing battle with my inner self over this though, I do still think about the image I am portraying.and probably always will. For example, I still have a couple of sets of old male clothes which I tend to wear when doing heavy outside work, or working on a tractor gearbox etc.. This is for purely practical reasons, my female wardrobe doesn't have clothes old enough that I wouldn't mind wrecking them with oil, cement dust and so on. I hate being seen dressed like this for some reason. It is irrational really - but hey, are we ment to be rational??

Having said all that though, I am finding that my priorities are changing anyway as time goes on. Without conscious effort on my part, New activities and pasttimes are coming in which are more 'feminine' and are edging out some of the old favourites, or at least relegating them to a much lower level of importance. It will be interesting to see where this process ends up.



Clara[/color]

Miranda

[ElainMoria]

This outcome is what those who have experienced the same phenomenon call the "slippery slope" or the "pink fog". It is real. And it's why people are cautioned about messing with their hormones. It doesn't effect everyone. You have to fall substantially to the female side of the gender spectrum for it to have any effect. If your gender falls more to the male end, flipping one's hormone balance will not push you into the fog, but it can produce the opposite effect -- mental discord. This is, in fact, the way gender therapists diagnose a patient as being transsexual or not.

Transsexual women are women who, like all women, can express their male side freely. Could this be the source of the friction between these two disparate trans groups?

Clara

It's interesting that you mention the Pink Fog aspect. As I think everyone here in the GM section knows by now I have stopped taking the herbals and gone to full synthetics in my process to transition. One of the things I find myself still struggling with is being out in public. I have always been most comfortable in jeans (or khaki shorts) and a t-shirt.

Now more than 4 months into full on HRT I find an odd shift going on between my ears. I look at myself in the mirror and I want to look good. I want clothing that fits, not clothing that is loose. I painted my nails and now every time I catch a glimpse of my hands in the mirror I no longer hate what I see. I have actually stopped and enjoyed the feminine look of my hands.

As my breasts develop I find myself looking in the mirror, wanting to see if their shape and form is noticeable. Not because I want to hide them.. but because as they develop I find myself more and more satisfied with my body. Things are starting to FEEL right. My mental shift and attitudes are finally aligning with my internal sense of who I am.

I wasn't really a 'gentle' boy growing up. I was the outcast. The geek. The kid who's IQ was so high that the teachers couldn't understand why I got D's and F's when I was capable of straight A's without any real effort. I was the kid who preferred to be alone. Who would skip school to go fishing rather than have to be around my teachers and classmates. I was the loner. I was hiding from everyone, myself included, even then.

I cross dressed in my childhood, though I hid that from EVERYONE. When I hit adulthood I only did that on rare occasions and always felt great while doing it but the guilt I would feel after... would throw me off for months, sometimes for years.

It really took coming to BN for me to start understanding what was really going on with me. And like you Clara.. as the estrogen begins to take a dominant hold in my body.. my mental 'view' is shifting and aligning to the real me and for the first time in my life I am starting to be happy with myself. I am still very dysphoric, especially where my beard and body hair is concerned but those are things I can work on and correct.

For me.. I am starting to think I have entered the "Pink Fog" part of my transition and it makes me very happy indeed. Now if I could just make my breasts grow to their proper size over night and make the area under my nipples stop hurting so much I would be ecstatic lol.

~Elain

[WantAPair]

I wasn't really a 'gentle' boy growing up. I was the outcast. The geek. The kid who's IQ was so high that the teachers couldn't understand why I got D's and F's when I was capable of straight A's without any real effort. I was the kid who preferred to be alone. Who would skip school to go fishing rather than have to be around my teachers and classmates. I was the loner. I was hiding from everyone, myself included, even then.

I cross dressed in my childhood, though I hid that from EVERYONE. When I hit adulthood I only did that on rare occasions and always felt great while doing it but the guilt I would feel after... would throw me off for months, sometimes for years.

~Elain

I was also the outcast. Always TRYING to make friends, but, somehow, collecting more enemies than friends. Not a geek or a major brain. I was smarter than a lot of the other kids, but was never given the chance very often to show it and always made out to be the class idiot, partly because I grew up REAL fast, out-growing my clothes before I even had them for half a year: what fit nicely at Christmas was way too small by the end of the school year in June! And, partly because I was the tallest kid in the class, so, I stuck out like a sore thumb! Not having any front teeth during my 12th to 13th year didn't help, either!
I, too, preferred to be all by my lonesome...to a degree. At least that way I could "stay out of trouble". I never got INTO trouble, trouble always found me and then I got punished for it! Sitting all by myself at the far end of the cafeteria one day, some kid I'd NEVER even HEARD of before comes up me from out of nowhere and starts demanding I give him the 25 cents I borrowed from him!! After turning him down a few times, he starts fighting me!! Next thing I know, I'M in the principal's office being reprimanded for starting a fight!!
I never skipped classes until 7th grade when we suddenly HAD to get naked in the locker room in gym class!! If that wasn't bad enough, some of the more asshole-type kids would get their jollies by trying to spray deodorant on the nuts of some of the "weaker" kids. I wasn't interested at all in either of those factions of that class, so, I'd skip it any time I could.
I started attempting to cross-dress around the age of 5 or 8, I can't seem to recall which. I think I was probably 8. Stealing mom's bras, at first, eventually nicking my little sisters' things, getting into tampons, eventually actually buying my own pantyhose. I wore a pair of red one's to my grandmother's funeral when I was about 16. I hardly remember ANYTHING about the funeral other than being scared that someone would see my pantyhose under my pants!! Growing so fast, my pants quickly nearly became shorts!! So, there was always the risk of them riding up enough to show off my pantyhose! About 6 years later, I joined my band and after another 4 years, started wearing a mini skirt, tights or pantyhose and a leotard on stage for every show! On a few cases, I even wore a bra with the cups loaded with a pair of Nerf balls! I'm sitting here trying to figure out HOW I introduced the skirt to the band and I just can't recall!! Seems to me I was already wearing a unitard about 18 months before that! My singer & I shot a video in 1984 where I pretended to play drums to the song being used and I KNOW I wore my shiny blue unitard! I was worried that, with chromo key, the blue just might make all but my head, hands and feet disappear!! Anyway, I'm pretty sure that was nearly 2 years before the skirt came along.
In the late `80's/early `90's, Curves came along and I couldn't WAIT to get my own pair!! I finally did about 4 years later! What BLISS it was to FINALLY have tits!!!!

[Miranda-nata-est]

It's interesting that you mention the Pink Fog aspect. As I think everyone here in the GM section knows by now I have stopped taking the herbals and gone to full synthetics in my process to transition. One of the things I find myself still struggling with is being out in public. I have always been most comfortable in jeans (or khaki shorts) and a t-shirt.

Now more than 4 months into full on HRT I find an odd shift going on between my ears. I look at myself in the mirror and I want to look good. I want clothing that fits, not clothing that is loose. I painted my nails and now every time I catch a glimpse of my hands in the mirror I no longer hate what I see. I have actually stopped and enjoyed the feminine look of my hands.

As my breasts develop I find myself looking in the mirror, wanting to see if their shape and form is noticeable. Not because I want to hide them.. but because as they develop I find myself more and more satisfied with my body. Things are starting to FEEL right. My mental shift and attitudes are finally aligning with my internal sense of who I am.


.............

For me.. I am starting to think I have entered the "Pink Fog" part of my transition and it makes me very happy indeed. Now if I could just make my breasts grow to their proper size over night and make the area under my nipples stop hurting so much I would be ecstatic lol.

~Elain

Hi Elain,

you just wait - it gets better and better!!!!!!

As you have doubtlessly realised, once you reach a certain point, there is absolutely no way back - not that anyone who has reached this point for the right reasons would ever consider going back. You cannot unlearn the things you now know.


My advice is to get onto the hair reduction ASAP. This is the most protracted individual physical process of them all and is extremely time consuming. 50 hours of electro so far and I am just beginning to see some reduction in places, I estimate some 2 - 300 hours to get a reasonable clearance followed by an ongoing program of infrequent tidy ups.

Glad to hear your journey to date is going well - savour every moment!!


Miranda


PS You talk about clothing choice issues .... Take a good look at what the cis gendered females around you are wearing when out and about in daily life.... for example, jeans and pretty tops are quite common around our neighbourhood on nice days at this time of year. It is only when dressing up for an evening out that the chic clothing and time consuming make-up comes out. There is a tendency for Trans people to almost try too hard to look glam and glitzy at all times. This actually has the opposite effect to the one desired by most of them, it just makes them stand out as different. So, not only age appropriate clothing, but time and place appropriate clothing also.

[GoneGirl]

In just 3 weeks, my wife and I will travel to my home town to attend my 50th high school class reunion. It appears that it will be well attended. There have been several major milestones in my transition thus far, and I count this as a very important one, too.

I have written before that my ultimate goal is to live the rest of my life as my birth gender. No, I didn't misstate that. My birth gender was female. I was mistakenly declared to be male, setting me up for a life overshadowed by confusion and self-doubt.

My class reunion will be a test and training ground for integrating into the cisgender world as a woman. If I can do so, it will be a huge step forward in my transition and toward achieving my goal.

I cannot hide the fact that I am a 'trans woman'. Everyone will know that I once walked the halls of our high school as a young man. Some will have a hard time wrapping their heads around my transformation. Others will embrace me, and speak kind words of encouragement, admiration, and friendship. For me it will be the equivalent of staring down the fire breathing dragon -- the shedding of the last remnants of fear and self-doubt that have hung like a heavy wrap about my shoulders since my earliest recollections.

As late as 6 months ago, I couldn't conceive of exposing myself to what I thought would be horribly uncomfortable, if not humiliating. Today, I am looking forward to it. Why the change in my outlook?

I think that in a gender transition, there is a point after which everything becomes easier. I think of it being like reaching 'critical mass' in a nuclear reaction. It's very hard to reach that point, but once there, everything falls into place and things move along with ease.

If I were to describe that point, I would say that it's when you unequivocally know that you are female and always have been female. I feel that I've since crossed that threshold.

I attended a lecture by a physician/endocrinologist well versed in the area of transgender medicine. The doctor told about a study of people who suffered from dementia (Alzheimer's). Even when patients reached advanced stages of the disease (loss of memory, the ability to recognize family members, etc.), they never lost their sense of gender identity. Gender identity is an intrinsic aspect of one's self-knowledge.

Achieving clarity in self-knowledge of my gender has been difficult. Several things stand out. My decision to present full-time as a woman 10 months ago affirmed my gender identity to myself and my family. Walking out of the Kendall County circuit court room with a court order changing my legal name, brought tears of joy to my eyes. Holding that amended birth certificate with the State of Minnesota Registrar's raised seal, and seeing my name and corrected birth gender, made my heart beat with excitement. And, of course, returning from Spain, no longer burdened with masculine facial features meant that my inner sense of being female was more than ever being reflected by my external appearance.

But most important, was my realizing that I'm now more female than male in all the ways one can distinguish the sexes. I have reached a tipping point where my femaleness outweighs my maleness. And the thing that caused the final shift was the acknowledgement of my female gender by cisgender people. That, for me, was the last missing piece of the puzzle, and I can't overstate how important it has been to me.

When I get back from my reunion I will know whether or not I have reached my goal. I will know whether or not I have replaced the label 'transgender woman' with simply 'woman'. It feels so close. I hope I'm not disappointed. But, if I'm being too optimistic, if I'm not there yet, I will simply continue on my journey. What else can I do?

Clara

[Miranda-nata-est]

Hey Clara,

Maybe I am not quite as far behind you as I had thought.

I recognise exactly the stage you describe. There is a certainty and clarity now which was only hinted at before during my fumbling early steps of fear and uncertainty and which suddenly took hold in my conciousness. As you describe, it is a defining point at which you realise, at last, exactly who you are.

This is not to say this is the end of it though. My Psychotherapist has assured me that I am as yet a mere child on the way to becoming a fully fledged woman. She expressed the view that I would, as do most who journey towards full womanhood, undergo a period of adolescence and exhibit a large number of the traits normally associated with girls in their teens as I develop a style of my own and find my place in the female hierarchy. Vivien was delighted to hear this, that she might have again to put up with a girl displaying teenage characteristics in the house ... (Well, I think she meant she was delighted when she said 'Oh, Bloody Hell,... not really? ).

If you lived here in England, I would predict that your re-union would be a great success - I hope that the same applies in the circles within the US that you frequent. It is a big step, but I agree, one to be embraced and not shied away from.

I have a fairly big wedding to attend in September, a lot of people I haven't seen for some years will be there. I too am actually looking forward to it. There will be questions to answer and explanations to be made I am sure, but ultimately I am regarding it as just another social event.

Other indications that you have reached this stage include things such as... you don't really think about your gender when out and about. You walk into shops, fill the car with diesel, go out to the pub, just do all the normal day to day stuff without thinking all the time 'I am a girl doing this'. Life just gets into a routine in which you unthinkingly assume your natural role. You collect the grand-children from school, take them to the beach etc - it is all just normal. (Well OK, swimming is a bit of a tricky one just yet - roll on the GCS ). You find yourself interacting as a female with the rest of the world without much thought of how you reached this point. In short, living as a female just becomes the norm - in fact, so much the norm that you are no longer 'living as a female' you are just living.

I have most of these things in place although there is still much to learn for me in my relationship with other males. I am finding this one is a bit tricky anyway (mainly because I can remember the disquiet I would have felt if the places were reversed and I was them and they were me; this is particularly true if out somewhere in public) but it is complicated even further as I am still trying to work out where my sexuality is going to finally lie. I used to be predominantly attracted to females but very occasionally could find myself fancying a particularly attractive male. This balance seems to be shifting a bit and I am a bit unsure where it will finally end up. I think it likely that I will end up a Bi-Female and that seems a pretty good compromise to me!! I have always believed that interaction of any kind between the sexes usually involves a hint of sexual posturing and I have still to learn how to deal with all this!!


The tipping point for me came a couple of weeks ago, I know pretty much when it occurred and why. It was after I had successfully managed to resolve the issues I had in my mind about my future appearance and the implications of living in a body which would still be discernible to some degree as male on the outside. With that clear in my head, nothing else is there on the horizon as a potential problem. That means my transition is complete mentally (as far as I can tell), now there just remain some practical matters to sort out and a lot of learning about myself still to do. The various surgeries that I will be undertaking will be closure steps along the way. The path is absolutely clear and the destination now certain. It will still take time and effort to get to the end of this, but I now see it as a downhill leg towards the finish line.

Its a bit sad in a way (understated, once again). I get the feeling that a group of us are sort of coming towards a point where we will go our separate ways - a group with whom we have shared quite a lot of our innermost thoughts and secrets. It is a bit like a nest of fledglings who are rapidly gaining their flight feathers. You just know that one day soon, we will fly the nest which has supported and nurtured us for a protracted period, through some pretty dramatic and difficult days. Yet, to grow and mature fully, we must spread our wings and find our place in the world outside.


I Bloody HATE endings with a passion like you wouldn't believe, they really, really get to me!!! I hope it doesn't happen just yet.

Miranda

[GoneGirl]

Miranda, thanks for engaging in this discussion. Writing down one's ideas has a way of clarifying nagging issues. I have another area of concern that you may find relevant in your circumstances. Societal validation.

Gender transition starts off being all about making one's external appearance match one's internal self-concept. It's certainly a huge part of anyone's transition and very difficult to do. We spend 90% of our time and resources focusing on the physical transformative aspects of transition. But, after awhile the emphasis shifts more to our relationships with others; people that are special in our lives as well as total strangers.

The challenge that I'm facing now concerns what I call 'societal validation.' Being accepted by the society in which I live my life day in and day out. Some will criticize me for reinforcing society's binary gender paradigm (you're either a man or a woman), but that's too bad. I'm a woman, identify as a woman, and I want others to see me as a woman.

That doesn't mean that there isn't room for those who are in the middle, bouncing between male and female genders, or presenting an ambiguous gender identity. Like I said, I have lots of male friends that like to express their feminine side by cross-dressing as the need and opportunity arise. This is who they are.

I'm entering the phase of my transition where I want to be seen and treated as a woman. My 'girl' friends don't really understand this, and still treat me like I'm a guy in a dress. There's no intention on their part to make me feel uncomfortable, it's just who they are, and not being women, themselves, they aren't sensitive to how I feel. I know this is true, because if a GG is in our midst, they will change their demeanor toward her very noticeably. It's very easy to see that many of my TG friends are men first and foremost. Putting on makeup and a dress does not make them women, and, by and large, they are fine with that. It's becoming a problem for me because the effect it has is to make me feel invalidated in their presence.

I'm finding myself avoiding social occasions where this dynamic is likely to play out. When someone like me who wants to be seen and treated like a female, hangs with male-identifying CDers in a public setting (e.g., restaurant, shopping mall, nightclub, etc.) I become someone who I don't want to be in the eyes of strangers. In those situations, no matter how good my presentation, I'm tagged as a male CDer myself.

It isn't that I object to their gender identity and how they wish to express it. It's that my gender identity is then misinterpreted by strangers; I become someone I'm not. Believe me, it does make a difference in the way people interact with me depending on if they read me as TG or GG. It serves to remind me of the limitations I face in blending seamlessly into the cisgender world which is my goal.

To be criticized for wanting to blend, and in so doing reinforcing the binary gender model of society, is to deny my right to be myself for the sake of others who would dismantle that model. I can't accept that criticism as being any more valid than my expecting my CD friends to transition to be more like me to preserve the binary model.

The answer is to simply move on. It's an aspect of gender transitioning like so many other challenges that we have to confront.

The transgender umbrella has been defined too broadly for us all to embrace a common cause. It seems there is too wide a gap between transsexuals and other transgender people. Attempts to lump us all together along with gay people into a single advocacy group is problematic, in my opinion. I predict it will splinter into two or more separate entities.

Clara

[Miranda-nata-est]

Miranda, thanks for engaging in this discussion. Writing down one's ideas has a way of clarifying nagging issues. I have another area of concern that you may find relevant in your circumstances. Societal validation.

Gender transition starts off being all about making one's external appearance match one's internal self-concept. It's certainly a huge part of anyone's transition and very difficult to do. We spend 90% of our time and resources focusing on the physical transformative aspects of transition. But, after awhile the emphasis shifts more to our relationships with others; people that are special in our lives as well as total strangers.

The challenge that I'm facing now concerns what I call 'societal validation.' Being accepted by the society in which I live my life day in and day out. Some will criticize me for reinforcing society's binary gender paradigm (you're either a man or a woman), but that's too bad. I'm a woman, identify as a woman, and I want others to see me as a woman.

That doesn't mean that there isn't room for those who are in the middle, bouncing between male and female genders, or presenting an ambiguous gender identity. Like I said, I have lots of male friends that like to express their feminine side by cross-dressing as the need and opportunity arise. This is who they are.

I'm entering the phase of my transition where I want to be seen and treated as a woman. My 'girl' friends don't really understand this, and still treat me like I'm a guy in a dress. There's no intention on their part to make me feel uncomfortable, it's just who they are, and not being women, themselves, they aren't sensitive to how I feel. I know this is true, because if a GG is in our midst, they will change their demeanor toward her very noticeably. It's very easy to see that many of my TG friends are men first and foremost. Putting on makeup and a dress does not make them women, and, by and large, they are fine with that. It's becoming a problem for me because the effect it has is to make me feel invalidated in their presence.

I'm finding myself avoiding social occasions where this dynamic is likely to play out. When someone like me who wants to be seen and treated like a female, hangs with male-identifying CDers in a public setting (e.g., restaurant, shopping mall, nightclub, etc.) I become someone who I don't want to be in the eyes of strangers. In those situations, no matter how good my presentation, I'm tagged as a male CDer myself.

It isn't that I object to their gender identity and how they wish to express it. It's that my gender identity is then misinterpreted by strangers; I become someone I'm not. Believe me, it does make a difference in the way people interact with me depending on if they read me as TG or GG. It serves to remind me of the limitations I face in blending seamlessly into the cisgender world which is my goal.

To be criticized for wanting to blend, and in so doing reinforcing the binary gender model of society, is to deny my right to be myself for the sake of others who would dismantle that model. I can't accept that criticism as being any more valid than my expecting my CD friends to transition to be more like me to preserve the binary model.

The answer is to simply move on. It's an aspect of gender transitioning like so many other challenges that we have to confront.

The transgender umbrella has been defined too broadly for us all to embrace a common cause. It seems there is too wide a gap between transsexuals and other transgender people. Attempts to lump us all together along with gay people into a single advocacy group is problematic, in my opinion. I predict it will splinter into two or more separate entities.

Clara

Hi Clara,


Back in post number 20 in this thread, I wrote a paragraph which sort of hinted at my take on a number of these issues.

I completely agree that it is wrong to bracket T with LGB in LGBT. Whilst Transgender is a big umbrella, my understanding is that the majority sheltering under it, are not there for primarily sexual orientation reasons. This mis-linking immediately reinforces in the minds of the un-informed the belief that Transgenderism is purely a sexual issue; it certainly doesn't help to explain to people the difference between gender and sexual orientation..

I am personally not keen, as a person correcting my gender imbalance, to be bracketed with the entire TG movement either. Those who go the full way to identifying a full blown gender issue and who then go on to do something about it are a very small proportion of the wider TG 'community'.

There is a perception of the Transgender world amongst most of the wider populace which I am afraid carries all sorts of negative undertones . They are fed, largely by the media, a picture of a world of depravity and sleaziness, a world which thrives in the dark places. The problem is that the differences between the various TG subgroups are not widely understood, all TG's are seen to be the same and the distinctions between us are not clear to those outside the TG network.

Against this backdrop, I don't think those in the TG world do themselves ('themselves' was deliberate) any favours. I am convinced there are those who revel in this image and promote it, those who flaunt the 'typical' TG image in public. Then there are those who, for various reasons, are not 'out' who unwittingly portray an awful image of secrecy and shame whilst skulking surreptitiously around the clothing racks in the high street shops (It's not their fault, society forces them into this role, I know) . Also, dare I say it, events such as the LGBT 'Pride' marches, events such as Sparkle in Manchester, actually have the effect of re-inforcing people's stereotyped views of the TG world (and come to that the LGB worlds also) thereby polarising opinions, exactly the opposite of what is intended. We become 'on display' as different which actually unwinds history to a time where we were regarded as somehow freaks of nature and abnormal.

As a person who would be labelled by others as TS who just wants to get on with life, living as me (who happens to be a woman) in the wider community, I just don't identify with any of this. Society just has to fix labels on people - I don't want to be labelled by those around me as TG , nor as TS, nor as a Transwoman, in fact, I don't want to be labelled at all, by anyone!!.

I re-iterate, I have absolutely nothing against any of these groups of people. It would be the pinnacle of hypocrisy to criticise other sectors of the community for being 'non standard'. I like the fact that society is such a mixed up, diverse arena. It would be dull, dull if we were all the same and fitted into those pigeon holes the social engineers would like us to. 'Vive La Difference' as the French say.


Vivien and I didn't hang around the Sparkle festival for long. We just felt completely out of place. We moved on and just enjoyed the other, non segregated things that Manchester had to offer over the weekend and in so doing, met a lot of really nice, 'ordinary' people which is ultimately how we view ourselves.


On another of the points you raise, I don't really make a conscious decision to 'blend in' or to 'pass' as such when I walk out through the door. Blending, for me, is, hopefully, just the final outcome of what is going on within; I am beginning to accept that my dress sense and behaviour patterns just naturally, without much thought, fall within the 'norms' of the 'average' female. The transition process, for me, doesn't specifically have blending or passing as a defined goal in its own right. Being accepted as a woman by all I meet is an outcome of the fact that I am just showing the me I feel inside. It is a validation in a way, but not one which I am specifically looking for - it's just great that it continues to occur ever more frequently.

I am finding that I am now being correctly identified as female by almost 100% of the female world but still probably only by about 50% of males. Its interesting this, because I don't feel that anything has changed which would result in this now nearly 100% recognition by other women. There must be a whole raft of subconscious signals being emitted which others pick up on; women, of course, being much more adept at this than men!! You just wait until the FFS though

(As an aside, the Facial Team quote showed up last night - now just trying to get Skype loaded and working).

In some ways I don't really care about the 50% of males who read me incorrectly yet in other ways it rankles quite a bit. I don't personally believe it is ever possible to get to a point where the entire world would just never believe you were once male, the ultimate in MTF transition as I see it. I tend towards the view that we are all slotting into a place somewhere on a scale of 'passability' - some will for ever display more masculine features than others. This means that there will ALWAYS be people out there who will spot the fact that my underlying frame is male, no matter how much I throw at the change in terms of resources and self training. What I would ideally like is to reach a point where the number of people I meet who instinctively read me correctly and who continue to read me correctly with greater knowledge of me is at a threshold I can cope with. It will never be 100%, but hey, 99% will just have to do.


Did you ever read this interesting article from Alexandra Hamer's website?

http://www.virtualffs.co.uk/My_Facial_Fe...irror.html

It is just so easy to be over self critical. We are probably all doing much better than we think. There is the positive for the day!!!!!



Miranda

[GoneGirl]

Hi Miranda,
I continue to find your posts interesting and informative. I have been missing that here at BN which seems to have lost most of its best posters, from my perspective anyway.

I don't disagree with you about the unnatural lumping of gender identity with sexual orientation. I think it was done for political expediency. The TG community is even more marginalized than the gay community. We do share a struggle for our civil rights, so in that sense we are on the same side.

Interestingly, now that I am perceived as a woman everywhere I go, when I'm with my spouse (I've stopped referring to her as my wife), we are perceived as a same-sex couple. So even as I shed the 'trans' label, I now have been slapped with the 'gay' label by the larger world. It seems that even if I can achieve cisgender womanhood, I have to give up being seen as hetero-normative even though my sexual orientation hasn't changed!

I'm so glad that the public is starting to see a more positive image of transsexual people. I can't say that for transgender people as a whole. Celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox are very helpful in that regard. I do believe that society will learn to embrace transsexuals before other segments of the transgender community. The reason is that being transsexual doesn't discredit or subvert the binary gender world order which, whether we like it or not, it's here to stay.

My spouse once confessed after I had come out to her, that she was glad that I was transsexual rather than a cross-dresser. When I asked why, she said that people can understand what it means to be transsexual easier than what it means to be a man who likes to pretend to be a woman. I can see that. When I tell people that I was born a female inside, but with male reproductive organs, they usually get it.

Even I have a hard time understanding what it means to be born a male, to be comfortable being a man, but have a need to express one's feminine side by dressing up in women's clothes. I accept it -- as I've said, I have many CD friends -- but I really don't understand it. And, don't ask about males who want to have real breasts! I've never heard a rational explanation, even from the members of this board. It's going to be a much harder effort for the larger TG community (non-transsexuals) to gain full societal acceptance; mainly because it makes things too complex. I agree that this dichotomy within the TG world is becoming increasingly evident. I see it happening here in this forum with the effort to segregate transsexuals from the non-transsexuals, despite transsexuals being a minority presence here.

Another difference between transgender people and their transsexual brothers and sisters is that the transsexual label is temporal. I envision the day, as you do, when I no longer call myself 'transsexual'. I see that point in time as marking the end of my transition. It will become pointless to use the qualifier 'transsexual' in identifying myself as a woman. Only for historical or medical reasons will the distinction be important. I will simply be a woman. I love the simplicity of it. That's what I'm talking about when I use the word 'Blend' to describe my ultimate transition goal.

So, are you planning to stick around here, Miranda? I don't know about you, but I certainly don't feel welcome here anymore. I'm thinking it's probably a temporary development that will fade with time. I've submitted over 2300 posts to this forum, so I'm not some fly-by-night contributor who hasn't had an impact on the content and tenor of the discussions here.

A successful forum has to provide value if it is to survive. I know that there are people who come here in a state of confusion about their gender identity/expression who could benefit from the broad range of experience that this forum offers. I can say that because that was my own experience, and, like others have expressed, I will always keep a special place in my heart for Breast Nexus and for all the helpful people here.

Clara