Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Private Lives / Public Lives



"If I was ur girlfriend,  would you let me dress u?"   Prince

I have for most of my life lived a dual life.  Public Male / Fantasy Female.  As I have given my female side more public attention, I have become more acutely aware of the issues of dual identity.  In a world where we are urged to be ourselves, to be honest in how we present ourselves, dual identity can cause a lot of issues.  Probably the most fundamental one is with loved ones.  If you hide an identity from loved ones, then you can get your head into all sorts of twists and turns.   To speak of one example in my life,  the love of my mother and father.  They are both dead many years, and when they were alive I wasn't one to share my gender variance with them, or practically anyone else.  Now that I have a much more complete transgender identity, not just sexual fantasy, the question arises,  did my Mom and Dad love Belinda?   That is the type of question that can give you a headache.  So ... if you please take an excedrin and take my survey.





Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Bent




Where am I to go now that I've gone too far
    When the Bullet Hits the Bone   Golden Earring

We all begin this life with a gender assignment provided by the adults as they take a look at your naughty parts.   Then we are expected to learn our gender roles in endless rehearsals performed before a thousand directors, and a thousand heckling spectators.  At the end it is expected that we provide some good breeding stock so that the merry go round can continue to function.  Or leastwise that is how I see it.  I have been spending the last day or so, studying curved spaces, and socializing with friends old and new.  In a curved space, if you take an arrow pointing  straight in one direction, and waltz it around in a circle, continuing to point it in the same direction in space,  then you will find that your arrow is pointing in a new direction when you come back to where you started.  In fact that is how you know that the space you are in is curved.  Otherwise you might be clueless.
So I had an opportunity to have a date with a boy.  I arrived at his house in my most fashionable Belinda-ness, and then proceeded to turn this lovely boy into my maid, Daphne.  Daphne was a perfect lady in all but her naughty parts, and she allowed me to direct her much as one might any maid, if one was a very kinky Domme.  And because Daphne would do just what I said, and only what I said, I could play out my fantasy scenario where a strong woman turns a hapless sissy boy into her maid, and sex slave.  The only twist in the scene is that I was the strong woman, and I was teasing the sissy boy, who was evidently a boy despite all the frillies and the mincing behaviors that I insisted upon.  My last post was entitled Make Someone Happy, and it seems that I did.  And as the song scribblers promised I am happy too.
And I can assure you that the space around here is bent.   And I wouldn't know a straight arrow if it was pointing right at me.

Monday, February 25, 2013

Make Someone Happy



Fame if you win it, comes and goes in a minute.
Where's the real stuff in life to cling to
Love is the answer, Someone to love is the answer.
Make Somone Happy  /  Styne, Comden and Greene.

Where is the real stuff in life to cling to?  I have been hearing this tune for the past week in the cavern of my heart, where there are a surprising number of songs from my parent's generation.  I can't argue with the first line.  It's the third that is giving me some trouble.  Let me paraphrase

Love if you win it, comes and goes in a minute..  where's..... You get the point.  Love particularly the Love that was being promoted here, is conditional.  As a veteran of more than one marriage I can certainly endorse that.  It comes and it goes.  Or at my age it mostly does neither, but that is another story, and if it ain't the real stuff in life to cling to...then I guess it doesn't matter at this point.

So what is the real stuff in live to cling to?   Well if we are on the right track at all, then I think we can say Love that lasts.  And if it really lasts, and it doesn't check every few minutes whether you turned into an asshole, then I would call that love unconditional.

In this life, I have only seen this approached not by brotherly or otherly love, but by motherly love.  Even the most unsavory characters can often take comfort in the fact that their mother loves them.  But it is not really something you control, Is it?  I mean your mother loves you or she doesn't.  Then there is the transgender angle.  A number of transgender people that i have known have experienced traumatic interactions with their parents when they came out to them.  This I think is more likely with their fathers than their mothers from my limited sample, and in my own case, my mother and father never knew about my gender issues during their lifetimes.  Which points to the other issue with motherly love.  Presumably it ends when your mother dies.

I have been of course saving the obvious answer for last.  Unconditional Love... The Love of God.
But not so fast.   I have been recently mulling over my old Catholic roots,  And I can assure you that in that tradition .... well let me sing it for you....

God's Love if you win it comes and goes in a minute...  That is what the concept of mortal sin, and mortal sin's old friend damnation is all about.  Is it not.

And so I am left still with the unanswered question.
Where is the real stuff in life to cling to?
I am not getting any younger or smarter,  so there is a certain urgency to the question.  
Should I announce a prize for the best answer?



Wednesday, February 20, 2013

May I See Your Gender Identification II







There is a movement afoot to reject the gender binary.  One facet of this movement is an acknowledgement that the gender binary, may be flawed.  What is a male, and what is a female?  This determination is needed for traditional marriage, and traditional post gold medal investigations at the Olympics.  The athletic world where the perils of this common sense distinction have been well established, has taken to avoiding the issue where possible.  Wikipedia: Gender_verification_in_sports  The problems of answering this question in the case of marriage, are discussed in a very informative blog:  Intersex Roadshow.   Being raised catholic, I have looked at that perspective, and written in detail about it, on my new alternate blog, the one where I am pretentious and boring,  (Ok, more pretentious and boring):   The Other Side of That Life I've Been Living.
All these problems.  Why not just chuck the whole thing.   Recently a friend had an exchange with some young people on Fetlife.  My friend was interested in creating coalition and bonding across the generations for transgender people, perceiving a split between TOG and TNG.  The young people, most of whom descrribed themselves as Queer, or Gender Queer, seemed uninterested, because the older generation of transgender people in their opinion was poisoned by indoctrination in the gender binary.  A clear example would be folks who described themselves as transexuals, and went into a doctors care, establishing their "femaleness" to said doctors satisfaction as per legal requirements, and then were permitted sex re-assignment to the other side of the binary.  "Hooey" my young friends would have said if they know any such quaint phrases.  Secondly, they didn't regard being trans and being so very important that it needed to be worked on.   This was one of their identities,  woman, lesbian, queer being others.  They were not by their own descriptions hung up on the gender labels.

So relax Grandma....(Grandpa?)

My instincts finely honed on the generational conflicts of the 60's is to give these folks a virtual hug and a right on sister.  Not that I don't believe that there will continue to be a gender binary  centered around love and family etc. , but only that the ascendancy of this binary to relationships of power, dress, interests, car you drive, cigarette you smoke etc etc.. ad nauseum...is oppresive to everyone, not just those who straddle the gender fence.
That being said, I am clearly a creature of a culture for which the empire of gender was big, even as it was crumbling.   I femulate, and I masculinizie myself when that is required at work or with family.  In that framework, I fret and fret.   Am I looking weird at the mall.  Am I looking weird at the family re-union.  I seek help.  The philosophers provide guidance.   Free your mind. The rest will follow.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

May I See Your Gender Identification Please?



"I'm not dumb but I can't understand why she walked like a woman, but talked like a man"
Ray Davies

In the last post, I spoke about my wish to walk the walk.  And so in my flats, long skirted, modestly made up, pretty blouse, girly scarf,  I have indeed twice recently walked the walk in the Malls.  And there I have found that I can roam the stores without incident. (Or almost.  A young couple saw me walking by the booth that they were selling something or other from, and asked me to pose with them for pictures. Does this mean I am eligible for my own reality show?)   But generally, I can browse comfortably, and with family friendly restrooms,  one of the great impediments to my peripatetic adventures is mitigated, (See Ordinary Life)   And so I can have a most pleasant outing en-femme, all by myself whenever I wish.

But these adventures, have highlighted some issues that I otherwise, have avoided.  The old Belinda (the one from last month!) generally never really confronted the issue of passing or getting read with any seriousness.  My social circle, of course know me.  I don't sit with my legs spread and my panties showing, so I don't get corrected very often,  And a number of good friends, don't even consider trying to pass, even though they crossdress, so they are usually without criticism or advice.

I however am different, or at least I think so.  I would pass if I could, so I am confronted with my number one give away,  my voice.   In the mall, this translates into a reticence about talking.  Cruel irony, because as a male no one wants to talk to me, but as a femulator, I am more approachable, and anyway, store clerks talk to you, and i feel self-conscious talking back.  Bummer as we used to say in the bad old days.  To a lesser extent my walk and gestures could certainly be improved, but I have worked on them.


"How do you feel?
I feel real phoney when my name is Phil
or was that Bill."

The Red Telephone,   Arthur Lee,  Love.

Or in my case perhaps Belinda.   So the issue in a nutshell is  "How can you occupy one skin with two genders, and remain sane... (or perhaps a more modest goal... remain uninstitutionalized).  I have been reading a little of the writings from TNG... Trekkies note, I am not talking about Data, but rather youth.
My impression is that they approach the whole thing differently,  but I will leave that for my next post.
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