Sunday, October 26, 2014

My Digit Ratio is Very Femme




"Tell me who are you? "
Peter Townsend

I was reading about the digit ratio.      Wikipedia has a fairly extensive discussion

On average Males have been found to have lower ratios of their index finger length to their ring finger length.  The average difference in these ratios is small.   For males the average ratio is .947, and for females it is .965.    I measured my own, and I was close to 1.0.
  Yes!
 I knew I was depraved because I was deprived, I just didn't realize I was deprived of pre-natal androgen.
But seriously, I realize that this may not even indicate that in my case.  The average ratios do not necessarily apply to the specifics of my genetic inheritance.  ( I should measure my brother and sister's fingers, perhaps while they sleep)  and I have been mucking about in this literature, the scientific basis of gender variance and finding that the answers of science do not necessarily add up to self-knowledge or peace of mind.
Perhaps my deprivation based depravity, is based itself on depravity in a previous life.  Perhaps my depravity however it is caused, only exists in the blindness of the culture in which i was raised.  Perhaps I am willfully depraved.
However my gender dysphoria and associated behavior is caused, I find that understanding certain facts about it, does not necessarily add up to solutions to my gender dilemma, which basically is  Can I sit on the fence forever.... which perhaps I can, in fact I think I probably will.   But fence sitting can be awful uncomfortable, and I wonder where comfort can be found.
Going to Florida this week,  the Everglades to birdwatch, and later in the week the Keys.  In fact I expect to be on Duvall Street on Halloween.  I can't really see myself not dressing for that occasion, but that probably means that I will have to pay for a checked bag.  It is neither easy or cheap to be a part-time girl.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Hair: A Lament




"Give me down to there.  Hair    Shoulder-length or longer".   MacDermot, Rado, and Ragni.


I have had a  happy seven year relationship with estrogen.  Long undecided about the seriousness of my  gender quirk,  I have over and over been surprised by my need to acknowledge my feminine side.  Hormones were perhaps the greatest surprise to my addled psyche.   First trying herbal stuff and then turning to the internet for the real thing in the form of patches that you slapped on your butt, and let them do their magic.  I didn't notice many emotional changes in my estrogen soaked brain, but i sure noticed changes to my estrogen soaked chest, breasts!   Well golly. I guess that I was rather more serious about my femininity than I sometimes imagined.
That was 2007, and within months I began dressing in public and socializing with other open mined and like minded persons as Belinda.  I was still a closeted cross-dresser i suppose, but i had opened the closet and taken a nice stroll around the house.  There were people who knew me as Belinda, and only knew me as Belinda.  And of course with shaved legs, chest, and breasts,  breasts so sensitive I was amazed,  I began to believe that I was truly trans.  In the years that followed, i grew to believe more in the importance of my Belinda-ness to my future happiness.  When i retired, i pierced my ears and began to grow my hair long, finally coloring my old lady hair at the salon,  among the other ladies old and young.   In recent months I had begun to see a gender therapist, began to see a clinic to get legal hormones, and revealed my transgender proclivities to my siblings and children.    All the signs of late onset transition.
Then whammo!  One week I was contemplating my future, and  then the next I was seriously contemplating the concept of no future.  After a few weeks,    I had a brain operation to remove a meningioma,  and took many weeks to recover, but recover I did and when I finally realized that this was not my final chapter, I once again began to think about the future, but the future wasn't like it had been.   I looked into meningiomas, and realized that prudence dictated that i accept the possibility that HRT had possibly contributed to my illness and I stopped taking estrogen.  When I thought my life might be very short, I felt that gender issues were not necessarily the most important issues.   But things have changed now.
Two months without estrogen have left me with a lot of anxiety.   It has made my beard more hairy, my mind more horny,  just feeling in general more mannish and the hair on my head....
Well brain surgery is not ever the best thing for your hairdo.   And then I began to worry about male pattern baldness, and started noticing that perhaps my hair was indeed falling out.  You can just put on a wig,  right?  like so many of the other girls.  I must have 4 of them in the back of my closet.  Each of us is unique in our history, and our relationship to gender.  I have never felt that my male self was a mask or a shell, hiding my female self.   Rather I felt like I had to create my feminine self, and part of that creation was physical,  breasts, hair, hairless skin which remind me when I look in a mirror at any time that I am of two genders or none depending on your point of view.   I can live perfectly contentedly with old lady hair dyed or not, but I fear that old man hair will make me cry.

But yesterday I think I came upon a solution.   Avodart,  dutasteride.   The anti-androgen that is used as a treatment for hair loss.   I know it is shallow to worry about what is on top of my head rather than what is in it,  but I never claimed to be that deep.   My poor hair may not be what it once was, but I am not going to give it up without a fight.  My order is being shipped as I write this.  Most transsexuals take estrogen and anti-androgens at the same time.    I have decided to practice serial hormonics.

Friday, October 17, 2014

Good News and Bad News






"Enjoy yourself ,  Its later than you think"

"Enjoy Yourself" a popular song published in 1949,  music by Carl Sigman ,lyrics by Herb Magidson.


I find myself on the other side of my brain operation undead, and as always undecided.   In the months before the operation i was rushing to try to integrate my life of two genders.  All of my significant others were told of Belinda. I started seeing a therapist.  I checked in to the Mazzoni Center, a local LGBT clinic who I know would give me legal hormones.  This was all done in an atmosphere of some foreboding.
  (See my pre-convulsion blog entries from a few months back.}  http://harmonybelle.blogspot.com/2014/05/transitions.html

Well now all is revealed.  I had a meningioma and was symptomatic for some months before it revealed itself with a convulsion, a trip to the emergency room, and a CT scan there.  I remember being relieved when the ER doctor explained to me that I had a brain tumor.  "Oh so I am not crazy, I am simply damaged."   That was Father's day in june, and basically I was more or less convinced that it would be the end or at least some major disability that would follow this diagnosis and the subsequent operation.  Well it wasn't.  I feel in fact better than I have all year.  The operation was a great success.

There was one kick in the head however that I have only gradually become aware of.    There is a potential link between hormone use in transgender folks, and meningiomas.


http://openmindedhealth.com/2013/06/article-review-recurrence-and-progression-of-meningioma-in-male-to-female-transgender-individuals-during-exogenous-hormone-us


These links are even better established for cis-gender women who use hormone replacement therapy

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23702884


As I have proclaimed a number of times on the blog,

http://harmonybelle.blogspot.com/2009/12/full-moons-pheromones-and-i-phones.html

http://harmonybelle.blogspot.com/2012/04/breasts-bras-and-boys.html

I have been using Climara patches for a number of years, about 7, without benefit of medical supervision.

Based on what I now know, I have stopped, and that makes me very sad.  As a part time girl, hormones were very very important to my identity as a t-girl.  Without them I find myself somewhat at a loss.  I started noticing effects right away, including increased horniness, beard, and possibly the beginnings of hair loss.  Boo Hoo.

So a big big question for me is.   Should I start taking them again.  Or is that a foolish risk?

And if I continue not to take them, what does it all mean for Belinda.  The whole ordeal has been a lot tougher on Belinda than Bill.  Bill has the family, and the family was so good to me and generous with their time during my illness, that I was overwhelmed.   Belinda doesn't really have that consolation.  I only really communicated with my friend Ellen throughout the illness, and she was as always good to me, but most of my casual friends I basically left in the dark, and one particularly close acquaintance, the woman I was providing service to in a M/S relationship.  I abruptly cut it off with when she ascribed some complaints I had regarding her insufferably arrogant behavior as the actions of the brain tumor.
If she is right I can only say;

  "Thanks brain tumor! "

One thing the illness taught me is that I should be more prudent in my choices of who I socialize with.  but I still have to find a way to integrate the lives of Bill and Belinda more fully.