[AnnieBL]

I'm struggling to come to an understanding of what it really means to have a split gender identity. Most of us I think who are born this way, tend to live at one end of the gender spectrum or the other due to the expectations and conditioning that we experience growing up.

I just finished reading "Annabel" by Kathleen Winter (thanks Annie for suggesting this book). It's about an intersexed child who was assigned to the male gender at birth, but who had a strong female gender identity. His father's attempts to raise him as a normal son were a source of major frustration for him and his son. I found myself wondering if I were that child, would I have frustrated this father in the same way?

The conclusion I came to was maybe, to some extent, but certainly not to the same degree as the young boy in the novel. I was able to suppress overt female expression very well, even as I allowed my female personality, likes and dislikes, to mingle and merge with my assigned gender role. I chose to live as a male in every way the I was capable of, but if I had been declared a girl at birth, could I just as well have chosen to live my life as a female, everything else being the same? If the answer to that question is 'yes', then I would have to conclude that my gender split is very near 50/50.

Somehow I think I could have grown up as a girl just fine. Probably a bit of a tomboy, but a female none the less. Would I have been happier growing up as a girl? Probably not, but I don't think I would have been unhappy either.

At this late stage of my life, the female side of me is crying out for long denied attention. I'm confident that my crossdressing and attempts to feminize my appearance are not a sexual fetish. It's not a source of sexual arousal. I do not feel shame or guilt about allowing myself feminine expression, but I am concerned for how 'coming out' would affect my relationship with friends and family. I'm not gender dysphoric, so I don't need to transition to life as a woman. But I can't say with certainty that it will not happen, simply because I'm still not at a stable point in my transition.

My gender identity may have been fixed at birth, but my gender expression is not fixed. It is developing rather rapidly since I started NBE. That should raise some yellow flags to anyone who is engaged or thinking about becoming engaged in this pursuit. As my mama used to say, "Don't dive head first into unknown waters!"

Am I sorry that I found this sight and am on this path? No. It's working out for me as best I can determine. It feels right as I enter my 8th month. I just wonder where I'll be a year from now, and 5 years from now. Time alone will tell.

Clara

Thank you Clara for this thread, and thank you everyone else who has contributed. I would have posted sooner, but I have had my own preoccupations the last few days, the resolution of some of which may have some relevance to your question.

My own take is that not only is gender a spectrum, but it is not merely a linear spectrum but at least a two dimensional spectrum such that while those at the outer ends of the spectrum have a gender which is pretty much fixed, everyone in between has their own personal spectrum, which is widest for those in the middle, thus accommodating the variable gender proportions that you and the other contributors have reported. For myself, I have tended to the view that I was born with a brain that was not strongly gendered, and thus not only uncomfortable with being forced into a male behavioral box, but probably would also have been just as uncomfortable if I had been born genetically female but forced into a female box.. I saw my male persona as being hormone driven rather than brain driven, and so as the hormonal drive diminished so did my male gender characteristics, resulting in a 'second dimension' gender shift. I never managed to get quite clear in my mind why I had such an intense interest in what it feels like to be female (in the absence of sublimating factors). The events of the past few days have begun to make wonder whether in fact I do have a female persona which has been so deeply repressed, even after my full realization that I have gender issues, that she is only now beginning to emerge. I don't know what this would do to my percentages in the second gender dimension.

While wayne/Annabel's dysphoria in the book had passages to which I could relate to, but of course I,not intersex so there's awhole extra dimension. I was very impressed by her her humanity in developing her other main charac, and her descriptions of the Labrador environment and society.