Me/gender history

This page discusses a subject that was once considered something about which one didn't talk openly, and some individuals (especially those of earlier generations) may find it awkward or embarrassing.

This is the story of my life as relates to gender, especially with regard to gender dysphoria. It talks rather a lot about naughty bits, and also feelings (which everyone knows are unfortunate and not something of which one admits in public to being in possession).

It is heavily based on a self-introduction I wrote for my first transition therapist but never presented.

Preface

I've often wondered why I found it so impossible, for the first 35 years of my life, to consider the idea that I might be, or would like to be (depending on how you define things), female – even before I knew that girls and boys are physically different, when I might easily have thought that the designation was arbitrary, or based on behavior. Maybe that was when my mother explained that "boys have penises and girls have vaginas", and I just accepted that without really understanding what a vagina was, or that it was visually different from a penis. I often wonder if I ever asked "are you sure I'm not a girl?"; this could have happened, but I don't remember it.

After the Great Regenderation of 2000, I found it somewhat distressing that so many other transfemale people remember believing "I am a girl" from a very early age and yet I didn't – despite the many clues, despite the high likelihood that I would have latched onto this idea and clung to it like a rabid dog if it had ever gotten as far as to become a fully conscious thought.

At some point, I realized that I had basically gotten the idea that this was in fact logically impossible; the conceptual framework I had been given for thinking about gender made it a contradiction in terms. So I literally couldn't conceive that this was the truth, no matter how much I (inexplicably) wanted it to be.

1968ish - early memory age 3-4

This is the earliest clue I can think of. I must have been about 3 or 4, because my younger sister had not yet been born. We were visiting friends of my parents, who had two boys (Chuckie and Neal) somewhere around my age. It was bedtime, and one of them said (in the mildly taunting sort of way that kids about that age often do) "we're going to see a willie!", referring to the fact that it was my turn to take off my pants and get into pajamas.

I remember wanting to say that I didn't have a willie to show -- and, for about half a second, thinking that this was true -- but then realizing that actually, yes, if I undressed completely they would in fact see my willie, because (as with them) there was one attached to me. Apparently unlike them, however, I wasn't interested in displaying it; I dealt with the issue by leaving my underwear on.

Now... it's entirely possible that I'm retroactively embellishing some of this story. Maybe I just felt resentment that something involuntarily attached to me could be used as a way of teasing me. Maybe leaving my underwear on was already an established habit by this time -- but even that seems a bit unusual; boys are not typically shy about showing their willies. I'm pretty sure I remember feeling somewhat negative about willies in general, prior to this. I remember being annoyed that I couldn't prove them wrong by somehow disowning it or removing it, since I had absolutely no emotional attachment to it.

It's kind of a small clue, and perhaps I'm making more out of it than is actually there -- but it's the earliest such incident I remember well enough to narrate.

I also remember, around this age, trying to figure out what the thing was even good for, aside from the obvious convenience of standing up to pee. It just didn't seem right; it seemed like something that wasn't quite part of me, an afterthought.

1969ish - what girls have

It happened that when I was 4, I was in the room when a girl-baby was having her diaper changed, saw a vagina for the first time, and realized that not everyone has a willie – that girls, in fact, had something completely different, and that's how it's decided that they are girls. (I'm sure I must have been told this at some earlier point, but the reality of it apparently hadn't sunk in.)

I remember immediately thinking that what girls had was much nicer, and wanting to have something all neat and compact like that instead of what I did have. This is a thought which would recur many times, though I only remember a few specific instances.

One of them: much later, in grade school (it could have been anywhere from 2nd to 9th grade; I can't seem to place any context around it), I came across some sort of fantasy story or maybe just a premise (I have no idea where; the concept seems much too racy for a children's book, or even a sex education text) where a boy wakes up one day with his penis changed into a vagina, and he has to work out how he's going to deal with other boys seeing him naked in the locker room. I don't even remember anything beyond that except that I found the premise very appealing, and spent some time trying to imagine how I would react in that situation.

It would actually never have been a problem for me; I always found it embarrassing to be naked around boys, and always hung up a towel to change behind or wrapped a towel around my waist and changed under that (this was not typical behavior, and I felt weird for doing it, but being seen felt like it would have been worse) – so there isn't any way anyone could have noticed, really.

1969-71 - preschool

Preschool, which started no later than 1969 (age 4), brought another set of clues:

• I strongly preferred playing with girls.
  • It seemed obvious to me that they were smarter than boys. They used words to communicate, and were more interested in cooperation than in fighting.
  • They were definitely nicer and gentler, or most of them were.
• Boys tended to be too violent and hostile for me.
  • What may be my earliest memory of that preschool -- possibly the first day -- was being pushed over by a boy, for no apparent reason.
  • I liked to build things, but the boys were typically more interested in knocking things down. I found it completely shocking the first time this happened to something I had built. I couldn't understand why someone would do that.

I hated it when we had competitive sports where the teams were defined by gender. I wanted the girls to win because I liked them better, but I was (of course) put on the boys' team. (I'm not sure if this happened first in preschool or later; it does seem like more of a DA kind of thing to do.)

I remember thinking that there was just something essentially different about the way girls looked, even leaving aside differences in clothing or hair-length, but the only way I could characterize it was that boys were sort of "dry" and "dusty" (I don't really know what I mean by that), while girls were more alive somehow.

There were also things which, in hindsight, threw me off the trail:

• I didn't like playing with dolls.
• I didn't like playing "house".
• I would often play "house" with the girls because that's what they wanted to play, but I felt out of place in most of the roles.
• I didn't like dresses; I preferred it when girls wore pants, because dresses limited the kinds of activities you could do.
• I didn't like high-heels or lipstick (even in pretend).
• I did like playing with some of the types of toys generally considered "boys'" toys: building blocks, Legos, electrical things

I have this memory of going down the slide in the preschool playground and thinking "there's something different about me, and it has to do with boys and girls". (I clearly had a space set aside in my head for the word "gender", but I don't think I came across it until approximately middle school.)

Another important bit: I remember thinking that if that's how boys are (violent and obnoxious), and if I'm a boy, then that violence and obnoxiousness just hadn't come out yet for some reason -- it must be lurking somewhere inside me, ready to surface at any time -- and then I'll be unfit company for girls, and they won't want to play with me anymore. It didn't help that my dad would constantly make comments about how boys were basically just little savages, and girls were sweet and civilized (...which is ironic, considering that most of his views on gender, especially later, seemed to be rather misogynistic).

That preschool-era worry that somewhere inside me was this hidden male nature that I couldn't control and which might one day emerge and take over (perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently) seems to have become part of my identity -- as I still (as I'm writing this) find myself wanting/needing to prove, somehow, that I'm "worthy" of being female. I'm not even sure how that would work; I can't quite picture it as being like a ritual or test, and I'm not sure whether it's more important that it be convincing to other people or that it be convincing to me. (Both of those seem important, though.)

I do feel strongly that having fewer specifically male physical attributes (as few as possible), and becoming physically more feminine, would help. If I could look at myself in the mirror, or in a photograph, and (without forcing it) see someone female, that would be... amazing, and huge... (added later: so it may be that the "test" I imagine myself passing is just self-evaluation: I want to feel like I come across as unambiguously female.)

But anyway... I was at that same school, with mostly the same kids, same patterns, for 1st grade (1970-71). Then my parents sent me to a much more formal school (Durham Academy) for second grade.

(Added later: one more thing I remember -- not so much a clue about gender, but a suggestion that I felt something wasn't right. I have a vivid memory, on my 6th birthday (1971), that I didn't feel I was ready to turn six. At the party, I initially refused to participate in the ritual of candle-blowing; I remember starting to leave the dining room where the party was and heading upstairs towards my bedroom. I was eventually cajoled back down. I don't know exactly what I was thinking, but I'm pretty sure it was along the lines of believing that other six-year-olds were much more capable than I was, and I wasn't ready to take on that level of functionality yet.)

still needs editing from this point

1971-72 - DA, 2nd grade

In the 1970s, Durham Academy was the kind of place where status was everything -- and this filtered down even to the 2nd grade. Every potential relationship (I realize in retrospect) was evaluated in terms of whether it would enhance your status or diminish it... and for some reason, I was considered to be someone who would lower anyone's social standing. I had known a couple of the girls in my DA class from preschool, and even they looked down on me. Nobody would explain why. That was basically the end, for many years, of my having friends to whom I actually related and with whom I felt comfortable. Everyone kept pretty much to their own assigned gender, taunting and teasing aside. I had boy "friends" in the neighborhood, but they tended to be too much into the military and fighting and sports. They were nonetheless the kids with whom it was socially expected/acceptable that I would want to hang out, so I did.

(I think it was somewhere between an expectation and what was acceptable -- it wasn't exactly unacceptable that I would want to maintain friendships with girls, but I think the adults forgot that this was something I preferred, or assumed that it was a phase I was now over, or something... while perhaps having their own preference that I should play with boys, because that was more natural or healthy or something.)

That was pretty much the pattern for the next seven years: no friends at school, and being thrown in with neighborhood boys at home. Although I did have one or two female friends outside of school -- daughters of friends of my parents -- I only got to see them occasionally, when our families decided to get together for one occasion or another. Christine (who went by "Chris" and was about 2 years older) and Selah (who was my age and had been at preschool) were both more or less tomboys. (I've got a whole essay about Christine which I should probably include here.) Christine taught me to knit, and also how to play "Heart and Soul" on the piano -- and I specifically remember her praising me for not being like the boys to whom she had tried to teach it. They apparently didn't seem to be paying attention or had a hard time or something, while I had learned it easily, more like a girl. Again, I felt that odd thrill, but of course didn't know what to do about it, except that it would be best if I didn't talk about it to anyone else.

I do remember that bit of praise coming back into my head repeatedly, months and years later. I think I must have accepted "like a girl" as part of my identity at that point, because it made me just a little bit happy, but it still wasn't something I could talk about or do anything with because it was also supposed to be shameful.

1972-73 - England, 3rd grade

In 3rd grade (despite the change of venue, the social rules seemed pretty much the same), I was being chased around the neighborhood by a bunch of older boys. Having previously explored the nearby woods pretty thoroughly, I ducked into the nearest entrance (yards are fenced off in England) and then, when I briefly had a lead, doubled back via a hidden path. This gave me the opportunity to overhear them talking to each other as they went past, looking for me -- and I remember realizing that they seemed to think I was female... which gave me this odd thrill, though at the same time I knew I was supposed to be ashamed of it.

I also remember being called "queer" at school. I didn't know what it meant, and nobody would tell me.

Christine's family was in England when we were, though in a different town; she and I took a long bus ride together (no adults) to get from my parents' house to hers. I think there was a sleepover involved at each end, but I don't remember. (Added later: I admired her self-confidence -- she did all the negotiating and other social interactions necessary to get us from point A to point B -- and also felt the beginnings of a long pattern of feeling inferior, because I couldn't possibly have handled all that even just for myself; it would have been too terrifying.)

1973-78 - DA, 4th-8th

My social status apparently plummeted even further when I got back from England -- I had the residue of an Oxford accent, and of course had been out of the loop for a year -- and things soon reached a nadir where the entire class would routinely chase me around the playground. (In retrospect, I have to wonder: where the hell were the teachers when this was happening? I seem to recall telling teachers about it, and either being ignored or being chastized for tattling or something. DA had a very "survival of the fittest" attitude.) I don't specifically remember being beat up, but I remember thinking about it as if it was a frequent thing, so I suspect it happened multiple times and I've just blotted it out of my memory.

Eventually they got bored of the chasing, and the bullying mostly tapered off over the years, but my status as Permanent Outcast was settled by then -- although, of course, nobody would explain why I was the outcast, aside from vague statements like "you're just weird"... and, at some point (maybe 6th grade?), words like "gay" and "faggot" began being tossed around. I didn't know what those words meant, except "low-status person that you have to make fun of to preserve your own status". Teasing remained a daily thing. "Smear the queer" was a favorite recess pastime.

I think it was 5th grade sex education class where we were taught that when you get to a certain age, chemicals go to these particular places in your brain and make you start feeling attracted to the opposite sex. I remember wishing that there were some way to turn that off, because it sounded like being controlled by something alien and destructive; I imagined mounting a switch in the side of my head to deactivate that part of my brain, or stop the chemicals from going there. (I didn't like the idea of permanently cutting it off with some sort of operation, though it's not that I thought I might ever want it back; it's just that I've always had a hard time dealing with irrevocable decisions.)

I also remember speculating to my mom that maybe it would work differently for me: most boys like other boys and hate girls, and when they get older they start liking girls -- but I'd always liked girls and often been at odds with boys, so maybe I'd like boys more when I got older? She dismissed that possibility. (I had just independently discovered the idea of homosexuality, but apparently she didn't think I needed to know that.)

I also remember speculating, as a possible explanation for how poorly I seemed to fit in socially as well as other oddities (such as liking girls at an early age), that my brain-wiring was different in some way from most people's, the result of some kind of mutation or something -- but at the time, I believed that this wasn't something that ever really happened (least of all to unexceptional people like me), so I dismissed the idea: it was clearly sheer science-fiction, and just trying to make myself out to be special in some way so as to excuse my obvious deficiencies. (It wasn't until 1999 or so that I finally came across confirmation that many human brains are in fact wired differently, and the evidence would seem to indicate pretty clearly that mine is one that is.)

I remember being worried that I would get erections at school, and that people might be able to see them, and make fun of me for it. (I suppose this isn't that unusual for someone of generally shy disposition, but I get the impression that most boys think boners are awesome.)

For fourth grade graduation, boys were required to wear suits and ties. I absolutely hated this, because it further segregated everyone by gender (although what the girls were wearing kind of repelled me too). I hated it again in 7th or 8th grade when the entire class took a field trip to Washington DC and were required to wear suits and ties to a theatre. At some point after that, I decided I would never again wear a tie for any reason, except as a joke. (Later, in 1985, I wore a Grover/Sesame Street tie for my first real job interview. I'm pretty sure this was after that decision, but my resolve was not as strong as it later became and I excused my relapse with the idea that Grover's presence qualified it as a joke-tie. The fact that it had been given to me by Tigger bestowed a certain feminine aura-of-protection upon it, as well.)

Somewhere around 5th grade, I got a book about the history of newspaper comic strips. There was one sample frame from a strip in which an adolescent boy is shaving his face for the first time, and seems to be happy about it. I also came across other examples of young boys either looking forward to shaving or being happy when their beards started to come in. I was utterly baffled by this attitude, since I had always felt great trepidation about the idea of growing facial hair, about what I would look like with it, about looking "like a man". I thought maybe my feelings about that would change over time, too... so I dealt with it by avoiding thinking about it, because there were many years to go before it would be a reality and it wasn't pleasant to think about.

I had much the same feelings about chest hair -- which fortunately never got very thick or widespread. Small favors FTW.

1978-79ish - DA, 8th grade

I remember not finding breasts at all attractive, even knowing I was supposed to. One day, though, it suddenly occurred to me that breasts weren't something girls put on (like dresses, jewelry, or makeup -- all of which vaguely repelled me) -- they weren't deliberate social signals; they just happened, whether you wanted them or not. And then, for some reason, I found myself imagining myself as a tomboyish girl of about my then-age, finding that I was growing breasts whether I wanted to or not... and it was like a floodgate opening. My attraction for them still wasn't quite conventional in a lot of ways, but I chalked the differences up to "taste". I became desperately interested in what it felt like, as a girl, physically and socially, to grow breasts (but at that time didn't have anyone to ask).

In retrospect, that should have been a huge clue.

Around this time, I came across an article in Omni magazine about gender oddities -- men in a particular South American village who are born looking like (and are perceived as) girls, then at puberty acquire all the requisite male characteristics; a "boy" who, at puberty, started regularly bleeding from his penis and was discovered to have female reproductive organs inside. I remember having this vague hope that something like that would turn out to be true of me, that I was some sort of oddity who only looked male -- but as with the "brain wiring" speculation, my frontal personality dismissed this as me just being ridiculous again.

I also remember reading an article about this brilliant girl who had begun attending college at a ridiculously young age -- maybe 12? -- and feeling hopelessly inadequate by comparison. In retrospect, I think I wanted to be her; I saw her as a role model, against whom I was measuring up rather poorly. By contrast, I now realize, I have never had male role models. There was an exercise in summer school one year where we had to write about one of our "heroes" -- and I basically had to pick someone whose actions I found admirable and knew enough about to fill up half a page, because I never really felt like I had any heroes or role-models, not even the writers I liked (who at that time were pretty much all male)... and yet there weren't really any women I identified with either, because they also seemed too different from me. The few people I did identify with tended to be fictional characters, and female, and preadolescent.

In 7th and 8th grade, my grades started slipping just a little (oh noes, a 'C'!) -- and I managed to convince my parents that a different school might be the thing to fix that -- so I was sent to Carolina Friends School for 9th grade.

1979-1981 - CFS (high school), the okay bits

There's always drama in high school, right? To make a long story short, in 10th grade I found my soul-mate (Jenny) but screwed up the friendship by being too demanding, and then she killed herself, and then I nearly did too. There, big drama out of the way...

J was in a little group of three somewhat geeky girls one grade lower (they had been in the middle school the previous year), the other two being C and E (who was more horsey than geeky, but like me they were all fans of Dr. Who, Star Trek, Monty Python, and Douglas Adams), and we made a point that we were "friends", that none of them were my "girlfriend" and I was not their "boyfriend". I knew was supposed to be interested in "dating" at that age, but I never really could quite figure out how a "date" is different from meeting up with a friend, or why I would specifically want to go on one, or why I would ever want to "marry" someone (which was at least one implication of "dating" a "girlfriend"), other than as a way around social taboos against "cohabitation". One of the teachers even made a bet with C that I would ask her on a date at some point because that's how boys are. (I overheard the end part of the discussion, got all paranoid and made her tell me what the bet was. I was very insecure.)

I'll skip rehashing any details that are in the full Jenny Story, and try to just hit the pieces that are related to gender identity.

I remember noticing that the veins on the backs of my hands were becoming more prominent, and not liking this -- especially when compared to C's hands, whose complexion and texture were more like mine used to be.

Jenny once said I "throw like a girl". I had mixed feelings about this; the earlier instances of being "like a girl" had come across as approval, while this was around the time when there had started to be conflict, and her saying that felt like a way of distancing herself from me just a bit. I was starting to feel like I was failing at being "like a girl" in all the important ways -- I couldn't "just be friends" with them the way I wanted to or used to -- and only succeeding in ways that made me more useless and problematic.

I remember discussing gender roles with J and telling her I had decided that whatever else I might be, I definitely wasn't a "man". When she asked what I thought I was, I said I guess I'm a "boy" -- but I wasn't at all happy with that word either. I remember feeling increasingly inferior to all of them, and to J especially, because I couldn't be more like them.

(I also asked both J and C the question about breasts. Unsatisfyingly, they didn't seem to have any particular reactions; it was no big deal to them. I would later ask it of every female person with whom I became close -- that's four, if I'm counting correctly, plus J&C -- and got much the same answer. ...and I still didn't understand why I found the question so compelling.)

In retrospect, I think most of the conflict with J revolved around the fact that, to put it plainly, she was physically and in many other ways the girl I wished I was -- but I had apparently taken on a strong taboo against even allowing that thought to fully form before dismissing it (repeatedly).

I was too embarrassed, and it was too painfully not-reality, to even consider the idea of seriously referring to or imagining myself as female, even when more blatant clues came along -- like the time J stuck a flower in my hair and I kept it there all the way home; the way I felt more comfortable sitting cross-legged after I saw her doing it; the way I completely freaked out internally when she wore a dress to school one day. (Regarding that last one: my own reaction took me completely by surprise, and just underscored yet again my awareness that there was Something Going On with me, and that it had to do with gender -- but I was too depressed to see a way of dealing with it beyond just Must Haz Moar Jenny.)

I also had this idea that wanting to be another person (of any gender) was somehow emotionally very unhealthy, some form of personal obsession or hero-worship (C was very down on hero-worship) and in any case something I needed to suppress or get over, for my own good as well as everyone else's. All my socialization was telling me to suppress and ignore those thoughts, which of course did nothing at all to reduce the distress.

Since I kept suppressing it (instead of acknowledging it, not blaming myself for it, and trying to come to grips with it), it kept coming out in other ways -- mainly a sort of intense clinginess. I felt better when she was around, and worse than ever when she wasn't. Her physical presence was a tantalizing glimpse of a better existence that I couldn't figure out how to reach, which both alleviated and highlighted my feeling of dysphoria (which I didn't have a name for at the time, and thought it must have something to do with being "in love" or "crushing" or some other more traditional explanation) -- so of course I inevitably found myself seeking more and more contact with her. Unfortunately, she was someone who needed a certain amount of privacy and alone-time, so this was not a sustainable dynamic.

If I had somehow understood that just because I shouldn't feel a certain way doesn't mean I don't feel feel that way (and that feelings can't make you a bad person; it's what you do with them that matters), then perhaps progress could have been made. With enough mental chewing on the fact that I did feel that way (however irrational it might be), I might have then made it to the next step: if the person I seem to want to be is a girl, then maybe I want to be a girl; if I actually want to be a girl, then I can't really be a boy, mentally, can I? ...because boys don't want to be girls; they're attracted to them, they want to have sex with them, they want to possess them... but they don't want to be them -- though actually, now that I mention this train of thought, I think I actually had on some level decided that most boys secretly wanted to be girls, which explained how possessive and controlling they could get, which in turn explained that my own possessiveness and controllingness was perfectly normal male behavior, nothing unusual... which again threw me off the trail.

At the time, I had absolutely no basis for thinking that a boy body could contain a girl brain. It went against everything we'd been taught. It also went against the then-popular liberal belief that gender is just socialization and boys and girls are really basically the same mentally (perhaps aside from sexual orientation): if brains are the same regardless of gender, then the gender of your brain is defined entirely by the gender of your body.

And despite that logic, I actually found the idea that boy-brains and girl-brains could be different, even statistically, to be threatening -- since it put more of a gap between me (who, "obviously", was a boy) and the girls I was (or wanted to be) friends with. It appeared to justify, at least potentially, any number of gender-related divisions and taboos (with me on the wrong side). Maybe if I hadn't found both points so depressing to think about, I would have noticed the logical contradictions between them.

On top of that was a large amount of cultural evidence that all of this was perfectly normal male psychology. A few song lyrics come to mind: "The only time I feel all right is by your side"; "I want you so bad, it's driving me mad"; "I can't live if living is without you."; "I need you... like the flowers need the rain"; later, "I want a new drug [...] that makes me feel like I feel when I'm with you".

I was extremely resistant to the idea that I was "in love" with her, but at the time it was the only explanation on the table, and the evidence for it seemed pretty overwhelming. It's hard to argue or imagine that a decision is wrong when there aren't any apparent alternatives. If the only choice is "X", then all evidence seems to point towards it, or towards nothing; any evidence that clearly doesn't fit is probably wrong in some way. The numerous ways in which "in love" didn't fit my actual feelings and behavior were, therefore, either (a) me being in denial ("I'm not in love", 10cc), (b) me trying to be a special snowflake, or (c) minor and irrelevant.

Having "fallen in love" was yet another source of shame for me, as it put the lie to my (our) oh-so-high-minded claims of "just being friends", and kind of meant that I had betrayed this core thing that we stood for.

1982-84 - very bad years

These were the worst years of my life, before or since. In approximate order:

• Jenny told me we couldn't be friends anymore (over xmas break, near the end of 1981).
• My facial hair started growing.
• I left CFS after 11th grade, finding it too painful to be around J when we couldn't be friends, and tried to go to college instead.
• I failed miserably at this. (I sought counseling at the college when I seemed to be having trouble keeping up, but it didn't even occur to me to talk about emotional issues.)
• Jenny disappeared one morning, near the end of the school year (May 1983, a couple of weeks after my birthday). Everyone thought she had run away.
• Her body was found in the woods over a year later.
• When her body was found, thus ending the last hope of her return, I came very close to suicide (I had written a note) but backed off at the last second, basically promising myself that I would stop honoring commitments other people had made for me and live for myself instead, and that I could always change my mind later.

One bit that doesn't quite fit into the rest of the narrative sequence: the summer after 11th grade, 1982, I had gone to a summer "pre-college" program at Duke, and done reasonably well. This was probably due largely to a couple of specific factors (1) there were only two courses, so less juggling (always difficult for me because of undiagnosed ADD); (2) I was surrounded by highly motivated achiever-kids who organized homework and study groups in which I participated. It also helped that there were several girls with whom I was able to strike up friendships; we stayed in touch by mail for a few years after that. I regret not maintaining those connections, even though they were not especially deep.

At that program, there was one particular girl who, I realized much later, outright propositioned me for sex. I didn't catch the signal; I'm not sure what I would have done if I had caught it, but I think I would have asked if we could just cuddle instead. We sat around with me playing silly songs on the guitar instead... and she never had any further interest in interacting with me, which made me sad and (yet again) shored up my feelings of inadequacy.

But for the most part, especially right after each of the three Jenny-shocks (each worse than the one before), I was in very bad shape.

I carved "HELP" into the back of my hand with a sharp blade, then claimed it was cat-scratches when asked about it over dinner. I was mostly in denial about the facial hair; it's like something just shorted out inside me. I couldn't stand how I looked. There's a picture of me from this era (probably on the family beach trip right after J disappeared), and whenever I come across it my first reaction is always "who the hell is that asshole?". I pulled out every single hair with a pair of pliers, when they first came in. When they grew back, I tried to do it again... but this proved to be impractical.

My parents were, apparently, absolutely oblivious to the fact that I was having emotional trouble; I was mostly pretty well-behaved, and never got into drinking or drugs. I certainly didn't go out late carousing with my friends, partly because I didn't have any friends left... except Tigger, who lived far away.

Tigger was, in fact, my only real link to humanity at that point. She was a mutual friend of Jenny & co. whose family had returned to Michigan the same year I met Jenny. On Jenny's recommendation (when we were still friends), I had started writing her, she had written back, and the correspondence had continued more or less regularly from there.

She was due to go to college (at Brown) starting in the fall of 1985. Feeling like I very much needed to get away from my parents and all their expectations, I hatched a plan to go spend the summer in Michigan and then follow her to college, to which she (perhaps reluctantly) agreed. Although this sounds like a recipe for disaster (and parts of it were pretty stupid), it ultimately worked out very well and probably saved my life. (Tigger and I remained close friends until her 2003 death from brain cancer.)

At some point before leaving Durham, I finally surrendered to the awful reality of what had happened to me, and started shaving. Buying a shaver felt like some sort of punishment. Having to use it every day was a penance. Every time I have to shave, it feels like a small surrender. (Later: I console myself somewhat by touching the mostly-cleared right side of my face. I suspect that I will start to feel much better as the line-of-clearing crosses the more visible parts of my face.)

1985-89 - Providence

Again sticking mainly to the gender-related bits...

I remember discussing genitalia with Tigger (we talked about a lot of very intimate stuff, as had J & I), referring to mine as "that stupid thing hanging down between my legs" (henceforth just That Stupid Thing, TST).

Although we never really lived together we often literally slept together, for cuddling and intimacy; despite the intimacy, there was no intercourse. First off, I was terrified of pregnancy (perhaps even more so than she was), and the responsibilities it would bring (which I knew I was nowhere near being ready to handle, and perhaps never would be) -- but also, sex never really seemed like what I wanted. I certainly had plenty of opportunity to at least try for it, and never did. I would sometimes fold TST back between my legs so it wouldn't get in the way of cuddling, though more frequently we just kept our underwear on.

At some point after all this, I realized that the nature of my interaction with Tigger kind of disproved all those fears (going back to kindergarten) of my male nature taking over: I had never even wanted to try to talk her into sex, much less actually tried to do so or to force the issue, despite more than ample opportunity. Sex wasn't something I seemed to be drawn to, or to want. (So, I then had to wonder: WTF is it that I do want? Because I clearly wanted something very badly.)

Also: Tigger and I saw a movie in which (in one part of the story) a girl pretends to be a boy in order to be allowed on a sports team. Her breasts are just starting to grow, and she has to bind them in order to continue passing -- and then one day the coach announces that they have to play "shirts vs. skins", and puts her on the skins team, and she is basically outed as female. This evoked strong feelings... for some reason, I identify intensely with the idea of a female-bodied, female-identified person pretending to be male. This has been a recurring theme. (I sometimes describe this sort of thing as "Woozleporn".)

In retrospect, I often used Tigger as a sort of social proxy -- think of Cyrano de Bergerac using Christian as a proxy for interacting with Roxane -- where I would "hide" by being quiet and fading into the background. She would establish the social mode and gain entrance into what would later be called "women's space" -- she having vouched for me being "safe", one way or another -- and I would tag along. (In return, I helped her with a lot of logistical/practical stuff, so I think it may have been an even trade.) This substantially abated my social dysphoria during that time.

Addendum: When I originally wrote this, there's a part I didn't mention because it didn't fit cleanly with the narrative I wanted to get across, but I do think it's related. About 3 years in, my employer's graduate student left and he took on a new one. Her name was Hilary (with one L), and we became quite close -- partly because of a number of points of resemblance to Jenny, both physically and in a tendency to come across as dispassionate on the surface while in fact having an awful lot going on internally, but also because of shared geeky interests and the fact of both being sensitive people who had been through some pretty ugly trauma.

Flashback to the day Jenny wore a dress to school, and I felt everything falling apart inside of me and I didn't understand why. There was a similar moment with Hilary, when she was showing our mutual boss a video of herself doing some form of dance (might have been contra, but I think it was something related). I recognized the feeling, and was aware that it would be wrong of me to try to stop her from doing this thing that she enjoyed, so I mostly suppressed it.

When I left Providence at the end of 1989, one of my major motivations was a feeling that I was in danger of destroying my friendship with Hilary the same way I had destroyed my friendship with Jenny, and that I needed to back off in order to prevent that.

1990-91 - Durham

When Tigger and most of the other people I knew at Brown were graduating and going elsewhere, I panicked a little... and it happened that I was offered an interesting job in Durham right at that time, and I had already been wanting to move back there (I never really felt comfortable in Providence)... and it also happened that I had reconnected with Livia, a girl who had been one of the few at DA who hadn't been part of the teasing brigade, and there had been a strong suggestion that we might get together on an intimate level... so I made what seemed like a sensible decision at the time, and accepted the job.

To make a long story short: the intimacy happened, but it turned into sex -- which is apparently what she thought I wanted and was expecting; I thought we were just cuddling and exploring.

An incident which seems relevant: she sewed me a pair of pants out of some light cloth, for reasons I can't remember -- and the only thing I didn't like about it was that it made my crotch-bulge too obvious.

And then, kind of all at once, a series of things happened and she talked me into marrying her and moving down to Georgia -- not that it was a hard sell; I thought that perhaps marriage (so often extolled as the end-all, be-all of existence or at least the logical culmination of being attracted to someone) would finally be the fix for all those painful feelings of attraction and wrongness. (I also thought the living situation in Georgia would give me more freedom to work creatively -- which also turned out to be wrong, but that's another story.)

It will be relevant later that one of my preconditions for marriage was that it wouldn't be allowed to affect my friendships (old or new) with other female people. (Ironically, she said that the fact that I had women friends who were really friends was one of the things she liked about me.)

1992-2000 - marriage

It took me awhile to remember more than a couple of relevant things from this time. It was another unhappy phase, and I've blotted a lot of it out. We were isolated, impoverished, disrespected by Livia's relatives, and surrounded by a culture that was more intensely gendering than any I'd ever lived in before, and I was doing my best to play a sort of lightly-tweaked "husband" role that wasn't me. I was not happy, but I figured this was the "paying the dues" part of the deal, and if I just kept going I'd eventually get the rewards... which turned out to be a false promise in more ways than one.

But anyway, the bits of that era which seem relevant from a gender dysphoria perspective:

First: She talked me into the idea that we needed to have a child, her "biological clock" overruling my objections -- and I was quietly sad when (in 1994) she did in fact get pregnant, because that pretty much demolished any hope that I had some kind of weird not-really-male reproductive or genetic condition (see Omni magazine... oh, and also, did I mention that I was terrified of pregnancy?). I'm someone's biological father now, and there's nothing that can ever erase that fact. I resent that she did this to me, but I realize she didn't understand how much pain that would cause me (nor did I really fully grasp it at the time; I just knew I didn't want to do it). The "man" she was in love with was an illusion I never claimed to be, but that didn't stop her from seeing it.

Possibly relevant: I did most of the childcare for the first couple of years, while she worked various low-paying jobs. This was immensely frustrating because I couldn't get any work done, but that's another story.

I was very glad that the child was a girl; I remember thinking that having to raise a boy would be the final slap in the face. I also decided that I really needed to figure out what was going on inside my head before she reached adolescence, so that whatever-it-was wouldn't be likely to cause issues for her. This may be part of why I started more intensely looking for gender-related materials that might help me figure things out. I also became aware of the world wide web in 1995 (having only used the internet for email before that), which made it easier to find such materials.

Second: I was invited to a bachelor party for one of my bandmates. I wanted to bring Livia along, but was informed that this wasn't how bachelor parties worked. The "party" involved all of us (the guys in the band and me) going to a strip joint. Watching the naked dancers just felt... not morally wrong, but like a betrayal of how I would have wanted to relate to them (as people, as friends). I think I spent most of the time reading a book and not looking.

I should probably note: that which most people consider pornographic, I consider icky or uninteresting. Scenes with sex or even kissing have always been a turn-off. What excites me tends to involve gender-swapping or girls breaking gender taboos.

Third: in another band I briefly played with, the nominal leader actually said "no girls" when we were looking for more players. Despite this, a female electric bassist auditioned. I wanted to somehow communicate to her that I was on her side, but couldn't figure out how. I thought her musicianship was entirely acceptable (though I was probably biased; I wanted to be in a band with women)... but she never came back. (She brought cookies that one time... which, I think, says a lot about gender customs and expectations, especially in the South. I certainly wouldn't have expected it of any bandmate, or thought less of them for not doing it, regardless of gender... and it was almost kind of embarrassing that she did it. I wanted to say "no no, you're not valuable because you make cookies and are "nice"; you're valuable because you play bass and can communicate with others. Give yourself more credit for being who you are!" but I don't think I could have articulated that at the time.)

Fourth, and most significantly: In February 2000, I was feeling particularly dysphoric (a word I hadn't yet learned but was just about to) and searching the internet with phrases like "I should have been a boy" (wanting to read about the experiences of tomboys) when, for some reason, I switched and searched for "I should have been a girl" -- and came across one of those informal (and supposedly unreliable) online gender identity tests. I took it, expecting to confirm my assumed identity as a "feminine male" (that is, just slightly to the male side of neuter), but instead the results which came back said I was several points into the female side of neuter.

...and that, combined with the other information on the site, was enough to finally kick the necessary realization into my head: you can have a girl brain in a boy body, and oh by the way this explains everything.

2000-2002 - divorce

Again skipping a lot of non-gender-related stuff... I told L about the discovery right away, and we had what I vaguely remember as a supportive conversation, although she wasn't at all keen on being married to a woman. Soon after that, I realized that although I was willing to continue having sex with her, it wasn't something I wanted (for my own sake), and I told her that as well. Both of these things were substantial issues for her, and we decided to give it a year or so to see if anything changed before deciding whether to separate or not. (I told Tigger as well, on the phone, and she said something like "Oh, that makes complete sense! You're a girl-mouse!" because that's the kind of thing Tigger would say.)

I also decided to start socially transitioning, as best I could without outside help, right away:

• L and I had previously had a deal that she would keep her hair long if I would cut mine. At this point, I told her she could cut hers because I was going to grow mine long. (I had never liked the idea of being "a guy with long hair", but I decided that if I'm not really a guy, then I should grow it however I like it -- and let her grow hers how she likes it into the bargain; everybody wins.)
• I stopped trying to "masculinize" my body language, speech cadence, etc. I don't know if anyone noticed, but it did feel nice not to be doing all that subtle self-policing anymore.
• I made a point of not ever using urinals or standing up to pee, from that point forward -- reasoning that ditching the equipment is permanent, so I should make sure I'm okay with all the implications of that. (As it happened, I had generally preferred to sit down anyway; less tiring, less messy.)
• Now that I understood that many of the strong feelings I'd been having were just dysphoria and not some evil Inner Male Nature struggling to dominate me, I started being a bit more experimental. The one that sticks most in my mind is tucking TST up into its body-cavity and using packing-tape to hold it there (having shaved off all the pubic hair so the tape could stick; I also later discovered that ductape works better) -- sort of a best-approximation of making it go away. The feeling of it sort-of not being there was rather euphoric.

Even more euphoric was walking around like that while wearing a nightgown -- nothing poking out; just the cloth going (almost) straight down. I suspect this means that once it's really gone (i.e. post-GCS), I might be more interested in wearing dresses or pants made of lighter cloth (remember the one L made in Durham?), i.e. more feminine clothing -- but not before that.

During that year, two further things happened:

1. Sandy first contacted me online, and we quickly became close. I explained about the gender dysphoria very early on. She has been completely supportive -- at times, more supportive than I am of myself.

2. I sought therapy, with the intention of eventually proceeding to physical transition (i.e. hormones and GCS, though proceeding slowly for Livia's sake). Unfortunately the nearest gender therapist at that time was Virginia Erhardt in Atlanta, and I never really felt like she was taking me seriously... and then after only a few sessions (a couple on the phone, always frustratingly brief, and one where we both drove down to Atlanta to meet her in person), my work contract was terminated (for reasons having nothing to do with me) and I stopped the therapy to save money.

Long story short, a year later the dysphoria hadn't magically gone away, and we decided to divorce. (I was actually kind of relieved, not being at all happy with the existence she seemed to want to live or even with the idea of being married, but that's a different thread. We did part more or less amicably.) There was a lot of drama having to do with certain people who were my business associates at the time, but again that's a separate story. Eventually I moved in with Sandy and became effectively a second parent for her three younger kids.

Another related observation from this time-span: I've read over and over again that women have more difficulty being taken seriously than men do. A suggestion made by a woman at a meeting will be ignored; the same suggestion repeated by a man will receive lavish praise. Transwomen and transmen have both reported this differential in how they are treated by coworkers -- transmen suddenly find themselves being taken seriously; transwomen suddenly find it much harder to be heard. The point of mentioning this is that I think I've always been treated that way, at least in environments where there was what I'll call (for lack of a better phrase) a "masculine ethos" or "patriarchal work-culture", though perhaps "highly competitive atmosphere" would be accurate enough.

So in that sense too, I've already socially transitioned -- had, in fact, socially transitioned before discovering my gender dysphoria. I had always felt like I was regarded by males of a certain social philosophy (aggressive, competitive) as being lower on some invisible hierarchy, and the dysphoria finally explained it. It also explained why I never seemed to be interested in (or to understand) the dominance games they tended to play with each other, and sometimes tried to engage me in.

(A later thought along these lines: Sometimes I find myself thinking how odd it was to suddenly discover that I'm transgender, after so many years, and to suddenly switch to using that label for myself without some long-drawn-out process of slowly coming to terms with it -- and then I remember: no, I've always been "queer", weird in some way that nobody would explain. This, finally, is just the word for it. I have always been trans, and it did take many years of self-analysis before I began to accept that part of myself and to understand what it was about; I just didn't know what it was called, or even that it was a thing other people experienced.)

2003-present - Durham

An assortment of relevant factoids from this time:

• Although generally impoverished, when I had a cash windfall around 2004 I used it to buy a package of 6 laser hair-removal treatments from a place way out past Carrboro. I got through 4 of the treatments when the Josh Crisis hit, and was never able to get back for the other 2. I'm not sure it's worth the effort at this point.
• Further experiments with folding or tucking TST revealed that I really really like snuggling much better that way. (L always objected when I did this...)
• In the absence of resources to do anything much towards transition, Sandy encouraged me to write about it; I wrote a fair amount between about 2002 and 2005. Going back through that writing, my feelings on the matter seem strongly consistent with my current feelings on many points, including:
  • Having a thing-that-sticks-out there feels wrong. Imagining myself without it feels right.
  • Being viewed socially as a male rather than a female is painful, but somewhat less painful than the body dysphoria.
  • The more I can feel like I am "really" (whatever that means, but it seems to be a physical thing) female, the less I mind it if some people see me as male.
• Sandy recently talked me into spending $200 on an unproven "home depilation" device. On reading the manual I found that it apparently is not approved for use on male facial hair, but I've been using it to attempt facial depilation anyway for many weeks, with some apparent success. My main hope is that this (plus the four laser treatments) will reduce the amount of necessary electrolysis work, thus saving money and time.
• I wrote and recorded a song about gender dysphoria, and (without really trying to) wrote another song about GCS.

A cash windfall made it theoretically possible to have started therapy as early as last year, but I was putting it off on the theory that I needed to get a potential money-making project going first. I was finally pushed into action by the thought of enduring yet another beach vacation while trapped in a male body. It's almost certainly impossible to get GCS in less than a year (or two... or three...), but at the very least it would be nice to be settled into a hormone regimen by this October, when the vacation is scheduled. I would very much like to be done with GCS before I turn 55, hopefully sooner. (I originally wanted this to happen before I turned 40.)

Concluding thought

One of my recurring paranoid worries is of something happening that will permanently prevent me from getting GCS (Fundies pass a law to make it illegal? Civilization collapses? Nobody believes me?), and I will have to spend the rest of my life like this. Rationally I know this is very low-probability, but I think the fact that I worry about it anyway says something about how important this is to me, on some deep subrational level.