Transitions

someone's got it in for me.....Bob Dylan  Idiot Wind

When a moth, the size of a bat,  the Luna Moth shows up outside your cabin,  Bob's immortal words ring true.  Especially when the Great Crested Flycatcher, suddenly drops dead out of the sky, practically on top of you,  for the sake of accuracy two, but who is counting.  because as I sit here now in boy mode,  someone has it in for me,  and I think I know who it is.
I am two weeks into therapy.  I have told all my children now, and it has been very gratifying that each of them, there are four, (two who have known a while and two who i just told) expressed their fullest support " I just want you to be happy, being the clear refrain.  I guess I have always considered "transitioning"  to involve a fair amount of blood,  (surgery)  but it turns out that isnt what it is at all, and I am transitioning from the deep closet where I have spent a great deal of time, comfortable time, to the bright sunlight,  You know the one where Icarus met his demise.  See any resemblence between Icarus, and a certain moth?
And what is that demise?   How about this analogy that a friend gave for my present condition.  It is the 15th round Bill and Belinda have been going at it for quite some time.  but the end is near, and it will not be a decision,  one of these fighters goes on, the other KOed.  And everyone is rooting for Belinda, so where does that leave me?
It appears that there is an assumption that two people cannot live in the same body sanely.  But of course they are doing so now, or rather they live today in a state of depression, and anxiety, and I guess the assumption is that the source of that depression and anxiety is that I am two people, in one body.

 Recently, i saw the following quote

Settling may masquerade as practicality, but nothing is worth the erosion of your truest self"
Dr F Emilia Sam
 http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-13888/5-telltale-signs-youre-settling-for-less-in-life-love.html

In the context that it was quoted, I thought that it was another jettison your old self, and get a shiny new self, that dresses better but I am exploring another option.

truest implies three, and I have only been thinking about two   bill/belinda  but what if there were a truest self that underlying them both?  After all Eve had three faces, and I am just as screwed up as she.

Then that self would need a name.

Two Faces Have I

will I walk with a smile on my face,  knowing I live a lie   lou christie  Two Faces Have I

Well now i have done it.  Broke my brain!  And you know how much that can cost to repair!  But what can you do? You have to have one, unless you appear on TV or DC.  So it is into the shop for me.

yes indeed a checkup form the neckup, long overdue.

So I am in therapy, like a fish in water.  Why do i say that? Well therapy it turns out is all about me!

Or should I say us?

Bill and Belinda

And that is the crux of the matter.  It had always been about pronouns but I have been concentrating on he/she but maybe it was always me/us.   Let me describe myself

Bill is antisocial, except for a layer of family ties which are tight.  Belinda is social butterfly with a bunch of superficial relationships.  She has few interests except shopping and makeup and hair of course.  She borrows heavily from Bill in this regard,  Because Bill is a bird fancier and an intellectual, though some of these interests overlap, for example, Judith Butler .  Tell the truth she made him read it, but she couldnt make him understand it.  Bill is a fop, or whatever word you want to use for long dyed hair, and lots of jewelry. again there is a reason for it.  You see they share the same body, and Belinda who occupied it later when it was in some dis-repair made some improvements the most substantial one being breasts which I have spoken about a few times on this blog most recently here.  (They also share the same voice, but there is a battle about that).  So when I strip naked and look in a mirror who do I see?

At this point in time, that is the issue, I dont know if it will be when next I write.  After all I spent 65 years, putting myself in this condition.  It will probably take more than an hour of gender counselling to unravel it.

But it has become increasingly evident that something will unravel

Depraved? Deprived?

We are misunderstood

Deep down inside us there is good

West Side Story....  Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

It has been almost a year.  Lots of things have changed, including my hair color.  I just returned from a transgender conference,  the Keystone Conference, in Harrisburg Pa.  It was my first, which I went to on the advice of my hairdresser.   But it really got me to thinking dark and dangerous thoughts, the enemy of complacency.

When I look in the mirror I see what you see.  Most of my life that was a man, but I am not a man and therein lies a dilemma.  You saw a boy then a man, so you treated me like a boy , then a man.  And therein lies confusion,  gender confusion. 

Now these days,  I look like something else.  I don't think there is an accepted name for it or at least a polite one.  I have small but pronounced tits on my slender frame and I have a penis surrounded by grey hair, though my hair on top of my head is long and brunette.

Now I know having just attended a transgender conference which is how to get the best information about feminization of the body,  that if I had a great deal of money,  I could look in the mirror and see a woman. But i am not a woman despite feminizing myself.  So therein lies the dilemma.   At least in a world that says
"There are men and there are women, and that is not a choice anyway.  We already chose for you,  How?  Look in the mirror."  I say I am not a man and I am not a woman.

And of course, there are people quite a bit like me who say, we have been mis-identified.  a woman living inside a shell of a man, or a man living inside the shell of a woman.  And I do not wish to contradict them.  Finally for the first time in human history you can choose ( if you have the cash), and if you are willing to in some sense obliterate your past. 

I know in my estrogen soaked heart why so many have accepted these conditions. And I know in my estrogen soaked brain,  that in revolutionary times when conditions are overthrown there is unavoidable pain and anger.   

And so I  say ... fie upon it,  the boxes to check,  the bathrooms to choose,   I am not in the wrong bathroom, or the wrong body.   I am in thrall to bad ideas which I acquired from you,  you cis-gendered privileged smug strawman.   I am depraved as you have amply pointed out in a thousand subtle ways, but now I understand.
I understand because heard the voices of young transmen, young transmen who have little money hence little representation in the vendor areas in Harrisburg.    I am depraved because I am deprived.  It is only a question of saying what exactly I am deprived of.  I can label it.  Gender Identity.  But what the hell is that?  (to be continued results of the survey I gave in June)

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.

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.

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?

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.