What I'm learning from my gender therapist

[sandra-leigh]

I started going to a gender therapist. I've had 4 hours worth now, the latest of them yesterday. And what the gender therapist is telling me is this:

Don't label yourself and then define yourself and your likes and dislikes according to what is associated with the label. Instead, try different things, a variety of things, and find out by experiment what works for you; leave the labeling for afterwards, or just don't bother with it. Construct your identity according to your experiences, according to what experience shows works for you -- what works on the inside, not just on the outside.

An example she gave is that when a young woman starts "dressing up", she doesn't know if she is the kind of woman who likes makeup (or what kind of makeup). So she experiments with a variety of makeup, and through her experiences, finds out whether she likes makeup or not. Especially as she gets a bit older and matures out of the peer pressure to wear the latest pop-star look, she doesn't rationally decide ahead of time that she will or will not like
makeup: she tries it and finds out and constructs herself around how she feels, around how she feels about herself when she wears it, around how she feels about how others react to her makeup.


A small bit of context: I went to the therapist feeling myself to be transgendered but not transsexual -- feeling that I was an every-variable mix of male and female. But my life hasn't been one conducive to knowing that is "normal and acceptable" as a "plain male", so I wanted a second opinion from someone experienced in the field. I'm new to this (5 years since I started crossdressing, less than a year of thinking of myself as transgendered), and it can be more than a little confusing: how did I know I was asking myself the right questions?

So the first thing I wanted to do with the therapist was to determine whether my self-assessment was more or less accurate. But from another perspective, making that determination is called something else entirely: it could be called "labeling myself", categorizing who I am and working out everything after that. And my gender therapist is saying is that instead I should continue what I had been doing: experiment, see how I feel, move forward from that.

One way of phrasing this might be that the gender therapist is telling me that I am not a Category: I am me, very much still evolving, and when I settle down more, figure out more how I want to live and dress, whether there is a Name for that type of life doesn't matter. You are who you are.



If I might add a note about this process of self-discovery. This isn't what my gender therapist told me / guided me, but my gender therapist is fairly pleased that I have done it:

I recommend that when you are experimenting with what you like, what feels comfortable to you, that your experimenting includes some trials of what is sometimes called "gender-bending": deliberately mixing the male and female. Don't confine your experiments to being "as female as possible": that's defining your identity according to pre-conceived categories, not according to your experiences.

Being "a guy in a skirt" or "a guy in a dress" is nerve-wracking... the first few times. Some of you will find you hate it, will find that you really want to be "pure female" -- but others of you, including definitely some who thought they wanted to be pure female, to be perceived as a Woman with the male hidden or internally pushed aside, will find that "being a woman" is not really where you are. Unless you are intending to Transition (with or without surgery), "being a Woman" (as far as others can tell) will be a part-time occupation: by trying the experiment, some of you will find (as I did) that the the feminine part of you wants full-time potential for expression without "replacing" the male part of you -- will find that you need to live your life as a gender mix.

This may sound like a paradox, but as long as I was "hiding behind my wig" and trying to look as female as practical (considering time and budget constraints), people continued to perceive me as male no matter how I was dressed -- they were nice, the women especially were encouraging, but I was picked out as "male" in a fraction of a second. Now that I have mostly given up on that and started going out as a blended person, guy face and light makeup and notably female clothes, when until I stopped caring about what they perceived and became comfortable with being me: now people perceive the female in me. It's like Zen: I had to give up the trying and just be.

[pickles]

Your therapist sounds pretty good actually, I would stick with them. The rest of it is work you'll have to put into it, no one else can do it for you. I'd just keep on keeping on and building a group of friends that really understand is a tremendous help too.

[Kinky with Ink]

Wall of words! Thanks for the great advice though. We don't nearly see enough posts like these as I would like. I'm still in the confused as bloody hell stage, but that's part of life I guess....discovering more about yourself as you go along.

[Wen4cd]

I think you and your therapist are on the right track.

[NathalieX66]

This is all fine and great, and I get the general gist of You are who you are, just be you, experiment, and find what you're all about . this hs what I've had people tell me all my life (parents, teachers, employers, etc), and I'm about as much of an individual as one can possibly be, never one to conform to anything...and a strong-minded one at that.

....BUT

How does one address the issue of how to interact with society, or better yet, how will society interact with you?

Some may say "who cares what people think!" but in reality, your interactions with people and how people interact with you does matter greatly. I can only speak for my self, but I value my relationships with other people, whether it be co-workers, family, friends, etc. They treat me well in kind. Once you throw the 'transgender' card at them by being so, it may or could have an effect. This is something you have no control over. Society has yet to overcome the fear of transgender, in whatever form it may be. So my point is, that once you take yourself out of the equation, and deal with the existing surroundings, and the people in your life, the math becomes different. Maybe someone has a good reply to this one.

[JoAnne Wheeler]

Sandra-Leigh - this goes right along with my thread of todays' date: Trandgendered ?

The only differences are:

1) I have been able to accept myself w/o the necessity of a gender counselor

2) I have obstacles in my path -> 1) my Spouse of 39 years; 2) my vocation/job; 3) my friends and 4) to a lesser extent, my biological family (whom I have written about previously on numerous occasions on this site)

3) I am extremely frustrated at the present time because I cannot express my inner feminity as much as I NEED to

I am who I am - but with a lot of baggage

JoAnne Wheeler

[sandra-leigh]

I don't have any magic answers on how to manage interactions with others, especially with those closest to us. I got to the point where I told my immediate family and my closest friend: keeping this part of me inside and bottled was breaking me down more than telling. We worry a lot about what our family and friends will say if they only knew, and that worry can be a massive drain on us. Now I know what those closest to me will say (have said), and I can proceed from there instead of riding the hobby-horse of internal anxiety and indecision.

Those of my immediate neighbours who don't know by now, it's just by chance or "willful blindness". I recently broke one of my final barriers and into the corner store (4 houses down) in a long skirt: they were happy to see me, and the clothes weren't important to them. Upon returning from the store that day, my neighbours 3 houses down were outside and in a chatty mode, so I talked to them with the skirt clearly visible; it was one of the longer conversations we've had to date; there was no apparent "agenda" in talking to me, no shunning of me, no visible concern about my clothes: just two nearby-neighbours talking normally. And yes, the husband was an active participant in the conversation.

The tough part has been dealing with my wife. We went through some really rough patches, of which cross-dressing was only one part. Now she doesn't know how she feels about it, doesn't know how where her boundaries are, she just knows that it is "confusing to have a husband who dresses in women's clothes". Unfortunately she has a number of issues on her mind and tends to avoid actively thinking about it... so we go through day by day and we get our signals mixed and our wires crossed because she can't or won't talk about it. And it's hard on me to not know whether anything in particular will "push her too far" or be perceived as hostile... but she is slowly adapting, even telling me that a distinctly feminine top looks good on me and has no trouble with me wearing it out in public with her. Some parts she has adapted enough to that she doesn't even appear to notice any more; other parts bother her even though no-one else is paying attention.

My sister's therapist has a way of expressing part of it: You can only keep compromising so far to avoid potentially hurting someone, and at some point you have to put you in the agenda. That doesn't mean pushing your way as a "this is the way things are going to be!" fact: it means talking about what is important to you, making your partner aware of your feelings, and refusing to have your feelings dismissed as worthless or irrational or irrelevant or perverted, etc.. You can't just live your partner's idea of life.

[Ann Thomas]

What your therapist has guided you through is what I've had to do with various parts of my life, and it seems to be a key to unlocking a lot of things. I also dress female as much as possible but do not even try to pass as female. as a result I have been far more accepted than I was before. Truly it is very Zen.

Hugs,
Ann

[Fab Karen]

Your therapist is breaking you of the myths of gender-roles - "women are THIS and men are THAT" "only men can do this" etc.

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players"

[sherri]

I think you'll eventually discover -- and this may even be what you're saying now -- is that gender expression is not an either / or proposition; in other words, it's not a zero sum situation. Unless CDing is just a fetish for you (and it doesn't sound like it is), in time a blended personna emerges that expresses itself in a more feminine way, whether or not you are dressed for the part. It occurred to me just the other day while I was out cycling just how changed I really am, almost unconsciously. That hadn't really hadn't registered with me so distinctly before, sorta like it happened over time without me really noticing. It's still me, but an evolved me with decidedly feminine interests and traits I'd never expressed before, and that comes out even when I'm "in guy mode". I guess I thought I had been compartmentalizing, but such is obviously not the case.

Nowadays I'm vaguely aware that in various roles and activities circumstances dictate that I conform to society's stereotypical expectations, at least in appearance, but I've shed any notion that I have to think or behave or express to suit someone else's expectations. Eight years of regular gender blending has changed all that, and I like the changes -- a lot -- and other people have noticed them too, in a good way.

In my case, I do need to do the whole gurl thing on a regular basis, and even wish I could do it more often. It's what feels best and most natural to me, and more than that, I do need for other people to take the full-blown Sherri into account when interacting with me. But as far as sensibilities and behavior go, there's really not much difference in me regardless of outward appearance.

[Margot]

Sounds like you have found a good therapist. Do you think if the therapist was male his answers might be different? Just thinking.
Mine was male and he screwed with my head and was the final straw in the break-up of my marriage many years ago.
Been married a second time for 25yrs. and will not try therapy again. My current wife is very supportive of Margot and no other questions asked. I guess I don't need to get over it after all

Margot

[Sally2005]

I think the therapist is on the right track. I worked through a lot of what you say. It helps a lot to know who you are and it doesn't have to fit a word... it makes it easir for others to understand a little about yourself (assuming they understand what a label means). Keep the posts about your session coming if you can, I think they are valuable for others to read.