I haven’t posted much in a year and I wanted to give an update on my journey.
First for the old forum regulars you may remember me, for newer ones, look at my join date. I have been around the block and paid my dues and have done more self analysis than the average bear, and I have counseling bills to prove it. In a nutshell I have known since pre-k I was a girl, I have the childhood traumas from grade school where it was made clear to me I wasn’t a girl and had better act like a boy. My secret life inner life and struggles to fit in began then. I learned about MTF-TS but was confounded because they all wanted to have sex with men and I didn’t. I eventually accepted that you can be MTF and have a lesbian sexual orientation. I started myself on HT a decade ago, and I knew it was the right thing.
But the closeted secret life I lived was killing me. In January 2013 I decided I was going to live my life “out” to my wife, friends and family, and I self declared my freedom to be me. My wife knew pre-marriage, but I had stayed closeted so it was pretty meaningless to her what I was holding back. When I came “out” I anticipated the full MTF-SRS was my path, but by March, after the angst of a repressed life cleared, I felt different.
I was on MTF HT, but the SRS route wasn’t feeling like a natural fit, it felt forced. It was as if everyone told me it was the only way, and I rethought that, and realized others (albeit a small minority of others) preferred the middle.
I reflected on gender and societies designated acoutrements of gender. I re-read Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, and did her My Gender Workbook, and both held new meaning. I remembered a 20 year old essay I read in Tapestry or Chrysalis or Aegis, by Sheila Kirk, MD, about “why not have breasts and a penis too?” That essay had always stuck with me.
I rejected the SRS path and aimed for something in the middle, the “Gender Outlaw” path. I still consider myself MTF-TS, my heart is that of a woman, but many do not think I am TS. Many think being TS means you must go on to become the opposite gender. The labeling arguments, and “true TS” arguments get tiresome. Kate Bornstein did the full MTF-SRS path and backtracked to the middle. She struggled with this same nomenclature debate and gave meaning to the “Gender Outlaw” expression.
I am married (still), and I need to say this because it is important about who I am, and despite my disagreement, some who I respect think it is "THE" reason why I am Gender Outlaw and have concluded SRS is a bad fit for me. I have always been in love with my wife, and she with me. We have strong romantic streaks, are an emotionally close and involved couple, and both family oriented. No matter what gender I present in, she is the object of my desire.
And I can’t deny that this love greatly affects my decisions. She has a negative interest in a lesbian relationship (I get it, I have negative interest in men). And in January 2013 I was heart broken that the consequence of my decision was the probable loss of this relationship, as was she.
But by May 12, 2013 my wife trusted my stated intent to be in the “Gender Outlaw” middle enough to find middle ground with me and we recommitted ourselves to each other. She is amazing in that she has done this. In the last year I have continued to explore myself and how I want to express my gendered self, and she has explored how much trans gender expression she is comfortable with. Some compromises come easy; Love alone holds some of them together.
So, here I am. In the middle. I am fine being “Gender Outlaw.” On MTF HT for a long time I have breasts of my own (38B/C), I still have a functioning penis (I carefully watch the Spiro dosage), I have long hair (think metal rock band), I present male, but from behind or in a glance I get mistaken as a woman. The degree to which my clothes are blended and my breasts show depends upon whom I am around. But it is working for me. . . I am not hiding; I am getting to be “me.”
The point I’d like to make is that this gender stuff is wrapped up in your feelings and logic and culture and spouses and jobs and kids and all else that makes up your life. The path to express your transgenderedness may not be clear to you. Just know there are a lot of custom paths taken by many who have gone before you to express their transgenderedness.
Find YOUR path. And if you are genuinely struggling, perhaps suicidal, just do whatever it takes to make your life worth living.
