l:
I identify as Transgender. I do cross the gender boundary, both at home and out in public. Last month I outted myself to a significant number of people. In one situation, I was dressed. In two other situations, I was not dressed, but I showed a photo of me while dressed. In those two instances, I stated specifically that I was Transgender, but that it was not of such significance that would warrant transitioning. The full accounting was in a thread that I created with SteppingOUT in the thread title.
While I have not done therapy as a means of figuring out where things stand for me, my logic is this:
Going back to childhood, there have always been things that touched me to the point of tears; or at least bordering on it. It could be something that I read, a movie that I saw, a perfect cloud formation, whatever. There is a quote from the late poet Audre Lorde that never ceases to effect me:
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
Whatever nerve it touches, it finds the same one every time. I spent 6 years working as an ex-patriot in Taiwan. Every now and then, I would be waiting for a traffic light to change and it would occur to me that what I was doing was far beyond any dreams that I ever had. I was living in a foreign country halfway around the world and I was doing just fine. A couple of times I almost missed the traffic light as I was wiping the tears away. Anyway, there has always been this other side that I really didn't understand (and seemed to be damned inconvenient), at least until I started dressing.
People here talk about the feeling of shame and guilt that they have experienced as a function of dressing and how many have purged wardrobes; even multiple times in some cases. I've experienced very little shame and guilt and the idea of purging never occured to me until I read about it here. There is very little in the way of negatives that I associate with dressing. In a way, it was like falling into a hole by accident and then discovering that you stumbled upon a Really Cool Place. It almost seemed to be too easy. When I looked back, I realized that maybe I had found something that was a major piece to the puzzle.
Along the way I made some other discoveries. I don't like to refer to DeeAnn in the 3rd person as I don't view her as a separate entity. I also don't wake up in the morning and think about if I feel like Don or DeeAnn. They are just different facets of the same gem stone. The same qualities are present with the difference being magnitude as a function of how I'm presenting. It's probably also important to note that I've never had a problem with presenting and functioning as a male. Part of that is likely conditioning, but I've never sensed a conflict between genders.
So, I've come to the conclusion that there is definitely a feminine side to my personality. Said another way, I don't view myself as 100% male. It appears that this female energy has always been present, but was suppressed and/or ignored in order to make it easier for me to fit into the world as a male. But, to this point it hasn't felt like the female part is strong enough to take over. So far Don and DeeAnn are coexisting nicely. Perhaps equilibrium has been reached.
DeeAnn