GenderBendy

Welcome!

Hello!  My name is Lisa.  In November 2008 (having presented as male all my life) I wrote to my own surprise in my journal:  "I just want to be a girl."  Now I am living full-time as a woman.  The purpose of this blog is to document my ongoing gender metamorphosis.  Thank you for reading!  :-)

Man in a dress no more

Yesterday I bought a dress. So what? Yeah, you’re right, not earth-shaking, but the moment does provide an object lesson in layers of becoming.

One of the first things I did after my gender revelation in ‘08 was buy a grey knit sweater-dress with a big floppy collar, at Reny’s. Oh, my, I was in state - terrified and ecstatic. I couldn’t conceive of trying it on in the store, so I took it home, discovered it was too small, and went back in an even more heightened state to exchange it. The flat hard look the young woman behind the returns desk gave me was my first encounter with the judgemental eyes of the world.

I had fun with my new dress. I put it on along with my new garter-belt stockings and black pumps and costume-jewelry pearls from Walmart and my outrageous rolled-up-sock-with-filbert-nipples boobs and posed for the camera. It was the beginning of figuring out who I was.

As time went on I acquired more dresses, of two types: fancy ones from the evening gown racks at Goodwill, and simpler everyday ones either bought without trying on or given by friends. I continued to have fun wearing both kinds at home, but the only time I wore a dress in public was when I put on one of the fancy ones for a soirée - the USM drag show, the EQ Maine dinner, a holiday party - and it was always a big deal. I never wore the simpler ones in public, even after I was completely out and living full time as a woman, because I just didn’t like the way I looked in them.

Yesterday I met Susan for a shopping date at the mall, and on the sale rack at Banana Republic I found a light soft grey-and-white V-neck dress in stretchy cotton. I tried it on and stood looking at myself in the three-way mirror. Susan looked with me.

Me, to myself: Shoulders back, dear. Chin up. Relax the lower back more, let it curve. Is it binding or bagging under the the arms? No, seems to be just right. Wow, not bad at all.

Susan: Oh, that’s really nice.

Me: I don’t know...I just don’t wear dresses. People don’t, you know? So it’s a thing.

Susan: What do you mean?

Me: Well, I have dresses, and I put them on and look in the mirror, and I see...I don’t know, I’m so tall, my shoulders are still so broad, my hips are narrow...I still see a man in a dress.

Susan: You don’t look like a man in a dress. I’m not just saying that. I want you to feel good, but I would say if you did. You don’t look like a man in a dress.

Me: Thanks, I needed to hear someone say that.

I bought the dress (Only $18 on deep discount - score!), and in a few months, maybe on the first really warm day of spring, I’m going to wear it to work. No back-up outfit in a bag in case I chicken out. I’m going to commit to the dress for the day. And honestly, I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal. Check out how far I’ve come:

12/31/2008:

1/15/2012:

Daddio forever

My dear children whom I love more than anything,

In December I asked you to come up with something else to call me besides “Daddio,” and to start using female pronouns when talking to me and about me. Then I pushed you, hard. I did it because each year before Christmas for many years I have grieved all over again for my mother’s death and yearned desperately for the acceptance I will never get from her. I was feeling extremely needy, and in my need I turned to you. That was a parenting fail. It is not your job, at this stage in your lives, to parent me, nor, for that matter, to play any role for anyone, no matter how much you love them. It is your job to continue to work on figuring out who you are going to be in the world and to move toward your versions of adulthood, and it is my job to support you in your growing up. I’m back to doing that, and I’m sorry I faltered.

I withdraw my request that you stop calling me “Daddio.” That word is full of love and the history of who we have been together all through your childhood, and I don’t want to lose it or what it represents. So, I welcome “Daddio” as long as you want to keep using it...for the rest of our lives, if you want.

I do still hope that in your own time, when you feel ready, you could start using female pronouns for me, and that you will stay open to the idea of finding other new things to call me which include recognition of who I am now. I say this because while I *am* still the same dad you have always known, I am also in a real way a woman you’ve only just met. It’s like, “Um...hi. My name’s Lisa, and I’ve been lurking inside your dad all these years...actually, I *was* him, but in disguise. Now I’m standing here right in front of you as my actual self. So, anyway, um...nice to finally meet you...and, uh, I feel like baking...what kind of cookies do you want?"

Trans *is* weird, but it's a thing that can be gotten used to, and we are all such smart people and have so much love between us, I’m sure that over time we can find creative positive ways to incorporate my true gender into our family dynamic. And regardless of what you call me or what pronouns you use, I’m here for you, and I always will be. No doubt I will falter again from time to time...I’m only human...but I’m here.

Now, go finish your homework.

Love,

Daddio/Lisa/E/Zabi...etc. etc.

Insight on the holiday gauntlet

One day as the Christmas season approached Elizabeth told her 16-year-old son that she wanted him to stop calling her “Daddio.” She told him that every time he said it it felt like being punched in the stomach. Looking uncomfortable, he reluctantly agreed. The next day, she followed up: she said she was repeating the request so he knew she was serious about it, and that she also wanted female pronouns and gender words. He listened silently and did not refuse; but as the week went on he used the same masculine gender words as before, and scowled at her when she corrected him.

A few days later, when Elizabeth picked her daughter up from college, she told her that she was asking these things of her too. Her daughter, having recently claimed Queer identity herself, was more accepting, at least to talk about it, but as the days passed she avoided pronouns rather than switching to “she,” and also still said “Daddio.”

Several days went by. Elizabeth wept often, thinking of her long-dead mother, as she often did in the weeks before Christmas each year, with grief and fury and aching need for maternal comfort all balled together in a black mass...and her will to push her children to greater acceptance faltered. She couldn't see a way to back off from having pushed them without returning to the old bad man-box, but she knew it was wrong to have turned to them in her need, so driving her son to school one morning she said, “About the gender words thing...”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, wiping at his eye.

“Wait, let me finish. I think you’re going to like what I’m going to say. You have told me you can’t deal with this right now, and I’m accepting that. I’m backing off.”

“Thank you.”

That felt right, but it didn't stop the storm of pain and sadness, which loomed just as black as ever. Elizabeth held herself together in hopes of making it to her next therapy appointment...but at the appointed hour the door did not open. She waited fifteen minutes, then knocked. There had been a scheduling snafu; her therapist was seeing another patient. “I need to see you,” Elizabeth said. Text me later, said the therapist, and Elizabeth stumbled downstairs.

In her parked car she burst into wild sobs. “I want my mother!” she screamed. And, “I deserve to exist in the world! I do! I do! I deserve to exist!”...needing to say it so vehemently because of a terrible fear that it wasn’t true. Her courage and strength had failed her, and she felt as at other times at this same nadir the crushing weight of so many years of existence with self denied, of existence only through the mask of maleness, of shadow-life. She sobbed in her car for nearly an hour, then texted and asked if she could come back in, and her therapist texted back yes.

The session was oddly strained. Even in the midst of blurting out her dilemma Elizabeth sensed her therapist groping for responses...she sensed impatience, annoyance. Her therapist defended the children’s right to process in their own time, and to be parented by Elizabeth even as she struggled with her own pain, and Elizabeth agreed. But what about her own terrible need then? With time running out, the therapist said the words which Elizabeth needed to hear: “You do deserve to exist in the world.”

In a grateful rush: “Yes, thank you...I needed to hear someone say that. Thank you so much.”

“You do. You deserve to exist as Lisa you deserve to exist as Dave...”

“What? I wish you hadn’t said that last part.”

In a vehement note-to-self whisper: “I’m never going to say that name again.”

The last few minutes of the appointment were awkward, and Elizabeth left without making another appointment.

On the way home, bumped out of her rut of self-pity by irritation, Elizabeth formulated a new thought: OK, for the past twenty years I’ve been mising the presence of a mom in my Christmases...so fuck it, I’m gonna be the mom. My children can call me what they like, but what they’re getting is mothering.

She put her thought and heart into selecting presents; she cleaned; she bought herself a mixer and baked enough not only to satisfy her household’s sweet teeth, but to take plates to neighbors too; she wrapped; she played the piano while her daughter and her daughter’s girlfriend decorated the tree. In a word, for the first time in her adult life, she committed to the holiday, not as a religious nor a commercial celebration, but as the simple family gathering it had been for her when she was growing up...and the children seemed to have a good Christmas.

And, what about Elizabeth? Well, she survived. The amount of hurt she felt running the seasonal gauntlet was not less than in previous years; but in trying to make a real warm holiday happen in her own home she felt more joy in the day than ever before since her mother’s death, and she figured that counted as a victory.

Three years and a day and counting

I recorded the following audio file on my hand-held flash recorder during my commute the morning after posting the last post. It's a rebuttal of sorts, or a next step which, in retrospect, I was still working on when I wrote that last post. 

3 years and a day

 Since I made this recording it has further occurred to me that "please yourself" can mean both "strive to reach your own standards," and simply "try to get what you really want," and I have been experiencing a curious new sense of freedom from worry about what other people think and expect of me. Perhaps a major step...the changing of a lifelong mental habit of existing in a perpetual state of anxiety to please others...hmm, we'll see.

 

Three years and counting

December is my darkest month. That was true before any of this gender business surfaced, and it’s still true. I always feel sad in December because my parents are dead and gone, and this year I’ve made a quick hard start to the annual holiday blues.
     
Besides just missing them, I want to show my parents me. I want to say to each of them: all that time, you had a daughter instead of a son, and neither of us knew it. Can you love me? It would have been the hardest question I would ever have had to ask in my whole life, but I still want to ask it. I never get to do that. Never.

A dark phrase recurs in my life: “No love for you.” I find myself saying it when I miss my parents, when I review my tragicomic romantic history, after each rejection on match.com, and when I look in the mirror and fail to imagine a masculine person I could love who might be able to see past the leftover bits of my physical maleness and love me back.

Does this purported possible partner have to be a masculine person? No...but I can’t see how to love another feminine person, because I fear her wanting me to be the masculine one, which is what I did for all those years, to my enduring pain. I don’t know if I can ever go back there. But, on the other hand, why not? Wouldn’t it be better if someone loved and wanted the whole me, including the 45 years of life as a man, which will always be part of who I am?

I. DON’T. KNOW.

I’m fucking confused, because I don’t feel any different. I feel like I felt when everyone in the world including me saw me as a man. So how am I not still a man? Or is self in essence genderless, and gender a cloak we put on when we turn to face the world?

I’m in another patch of wishing this had never happened. Not doubting...there’s no doubt. But I’m fucking sick of it. I want to stop being trans now. I want to not have to work so hard at just presenting myself to the world every day. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKF CUKF CUFKUCKUF CFKUCK UCDFKU CFKU CKLFU CLKFU XCKFU DXKFU XDLFKUS  DLFKSDUFLKLkdf get the idea?

Anyway, guess what? I’ve been self-aware as trans for three years. It was at this dark time of year in 2008 I wrote “I just want to be a girl” in my journal, from which all else has followed. I was going to work up a peppy and clever summing-up post about that, but the above is what came out instead.

There *have* been some positive developments recently. After some bureaucratic hassle I got my new passport the other day, with my new legal name and an “F” for gender. That means I can keep my consultation appointment in a couple of weeks in Montreal, in preparation for SRS this coming summer.

Also, my daughter, home from college for the holiday, told me she has started calling me her mom when she’s talking to people about me. That’s so lovely...but on the other hand, she also still calls me “Daddio.” The “Daddio” issue just sucks. It’s what both my children have always called me, and it is a word full of history and love, so I can hardly blame them for hanging onto it, but every time they say it I feel shoved back into an old bad wrong box, and it makes me wretched.

Here’s my big three-years-and-counting insight: I’m not done yet. With day-to-day living going well and my surgery scheduled, I’ve been feeling like I’ve completed something, or at least arranged for the completion...but really, everything is still in process. Helping my children come to terms, the search for love, hormonal changes, the search for a voice I can stand, electrolysis, the question of whether to get facial surgery (which I’ve been aching for again)... all still incomplete, all still happening.

I’m so fucking tired...but, here I still am, surviving a day at a time, writing, working, persevering...enduring. There is joy. I know, because I remember feeling it. I can’t access it now, but I feel pretty confident that it will be back. Meanwhile, I endure. Happy fucking December.

Adventures in cyberdateland

I’ve been on match.com for a well over a week, and have had several interesting and instructive encounters. Not in person...I’m being too cautious for that. E-mail exchanges.

Case #1: Creepy guy
Him: So you’re trans, cool, and you look fantastic!
Me: Thanks! Gonna post a pic? Tell me more about you...and hey, it’s cool you’re so cool about trans.
Him: No pic - I don’t want backlash at work. Not much to tell about me. I had someone in my family go through transition, so I know what it’s like. You should know for me this is a straight heterosexual relationship. You look amazing!
Me: (thinking: “relationship”?) Uh...thanks! Tell me more about your trans relative...I’d like to hear the story.
Him: Not much to tell; it just helps me understand who you are. You should know, at the age we are I expect to get sexual early in a relationship.
Me: Bye.
Him: Don’t deny your sexuality!
Me: (no answer)
(True confession time: while I would never hook up with such a person, his aggressiveness was good for a tickle of titillation. Such forthright single-minded desire, for me! My, my. *fans self*)

Case #2: Self-effacing guy
Him: So you’re trans...wow, you’re so brave.
Me: Thanks! Tell me more about you.
Him: Oh, I’m just an ordinary guy. I'm boring, really - not like you. Nothing much to tell...I live with five cats and my former girlfriend.
Me: Good luck, bye.

Case #3: Courteous guy
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: I just found someone, but best of luck in your search.
Him: So sorry, Madamoiselle, I didn’t put your name in my first e-mail.
Me: No worries. Thanks for the reply.
(This conversation was conducted in French.)

Case #4: Religious guy
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: Thanks, I just found someone, but there’s this book you really should read...it changed my life...(4 long paragraphs I didn’t read).

Cases #5 - 8 or so: Polite rejections
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: (polite discouraging reply, good luck)
Me: (polite thanks, good luck)

Cases #9 - 25 or so: Impolite rejections
Me: Hi, I like your profile. If mine doesn’t freak you out, maybe we could chat.
Him: (no answer)

And, finally, Case #26: Tingle tingle
Him: Your profile is unusual. I’m intrigued. Wanna get coffee or a glass of wine sometime?
Me: Thanks! I like your profile too - it’s quirky and funny. And thanks for the invitation...I’d like to, but this is new for me, so I’m feeling cautious. Could we exchange a few more e-mails first? And, please tell me more about you...
Him: No problem...we’ll go at your pace. About me: (some interesting deep stuff about life as a journey, overcoming struggles, attitude about the remaining years...)
Me: I think we have some things in common...thanks for sharing so freely! And here’s some lighter stuff about me: (description of my day, mentioning work, parenting...trying to convey an idea of my life)
Him: (no answer for two days)
Me: (checking e-mail frequently, wondering if I somehow scared him off, wondering if I should e-mail him again, aware that I will feel disappointed if I don’t hear back or get the brush-off now)

I wonder, how different would this experience be if I was cisgendered? Hmm...maybe not much. And, hey, #26, if you ever read this, as of this writing you've already touched me, and whatever happens, I will remember you fondly as the first man to express honest-seeming gentlemanly interest in me as a woman on line. That's actually pretty big...so, thanks. :-)

%&@# voice

 I continue to struggle with voice. I'm not even close to where I want to be, I don't feel like I'm making any progress, and I'm frustrated and afraid that I'm never going to be able to figure this out. In internet audio files I have heard stunning results...natural, warm, expressive, *beautiful* female voices. I underestand the techniques, but I just can't seem to do it. I'm still all scratchy and creaky and falsetto-y. I still sound to my own ears like a man. Worse: like a man hurting himself to no useful end. Fuck.

I think I'm going to have to break down and seek professional voice coaching. What will it cost? Money and pride. Ha.

In the meantime, I thought it would be different and instructive to post some audio. Earlier this year I bought a little handheld digital recorder which I keep in my car so I can practice while I commute. I recorded the following yesterday while driving on the Maine Turnpike. As you will hear, it's the second of two takes. It runs a bit over seven minutes and turned out to be as good a summary of where I am now in the transition process as I could have produced had a sat down to write it.

Voice 11/11/11

 [note added 3 days later: the above explanatory text came out of feeling frustrated and needing to vent; the voice issue is both less fraught and more complicated than that. Less fraught: day to day I'm comfy most of the time regardless of how my voice sounds as long as I am accepted and treated as a woman, which I mostly am these days, at least face to face - telephone conversations are still  challenging. More complicated: the central reason, I think, I'm having trouble developing the voice I want is that I'm conflicted about what voice I want: a startlingly natural woman's voice, or a defiantly odd I'm-trans-and-I'm-proud voice. At least I don't feel compelled to press the matter. Mostly I feel content to just be and speak and change as I need to change. This involves some squirming, but it's healthy, I think.]

 

Hey baby, click on me!

The feeling of wanting a special someone in my life has been building for a long time, and I guess with my surgery scheduled I could finally give myself permission to look, because earlier this week I went to Zoosk.com and submitted a “woman looking for men” profile. I picked Zoosk because of their hip young vibe, figuring they would be more accepting than the stodgy old established dating sites. This was my self-description:

Well, I'm trans. I hate to lead with that, because it is not nearly the most important thing about me, but I figure it's good to be clear from the start. In short, I was born with a male body and lived the first 46 years of my life as a man, but that was all a mistake and is in the past, and now I am totally grooving on living as the woman I was always supposed to be. (I am in the process of getting the male body issue fixed). Aside from that, I'm a non-profit manager with sidelines in writing and crossword-puzzle construction; I have two teenage children, one in college and one in high school; and my big project right now is to become fluent in French. I have a dream of moving to France someday for a while to teach English, so if we're going to spend the rest of our lives together, darling, you better be willing to travel... ;-) (Note: I'm curious whether the gatekeepers at Zoosk.com will allow me, an out trans woman, on their site. If you're reading this, they did, and good for them. But if you are the gatekeeper and you are about to reject my profile, shame on you.)

Yep, shame on them. Everything I entered was rejected with boilerplate e-mails citing “inappropriate content.” While deleting the last shreds of my profile I wrote in the “why are you leaving?” text box that I felt I had been discriminated against and would appreciate an e-mail back with an explanation of the rationale of their decision. No reply.

Next I went to match.com, whose services I had used when I was dating as a man looking for women. According to one ranking table I found they have the largest customer base of any dating site. Lo and behold, my profile, with the same descrip above, was accepted! Good for them.

In my first 24 hours my profile has been viewed 54 times, and I have been winked at about a dozen times.

It’s gratifying, of course, to be winked at, but I wonder if some of these guys have done anything more than glance at my headshot before they wink, because with about half of them when I clicked to view *their* profiles, they had become unavailable. I take that to mean they went back to learn who they had winked at, discovered I’m trans, and shut me out.

Yes, I am assuming rejection. I wish I wasn’t, but on the other hand, I already know from abundant experience how freaky my mere existence is for most men. Kinda cute, still has a penis...fuck fuck fuck, run screaming from the screen! Also, most of the guys who have winked at me live thousands of miles away. Tulsa? WTF? How did you even find me?

I’ve done some searching too, and winked at four guys, discovering in the process a little more about who I am looking for. All four sound cerebral, and look and/or sound unconventional and quirky; I detect humor and engagement with life in all of them; they can all spell and write; and they are all tall. This last is shallow, I know, but I *do* so enjoy feeling petite and svelte standing next to someone... :-p I sent one, a writer in Mass, a one-line e-mail, because some word-play in his profile made me smile. No answer so far, and no other e-mails.

So here I am, sweet 49 and never been kissed. I’m feeling vulnerable and tentative, but also curious and eager; and as with surgery, I hardly dare imagine how good it might be. I might discover, for the first time in my life, what love and sex are both really about...which would be terribly sad in a way, but which could also be fucking incredible.

The Trans Explosion

The article I wrote recently for Out in Maine, the LGBT quarterly supplement to the Portland Phoenix, has been posted on line. In the article I assert that trans really seems to be *happening* right now in crucial ways, and, using local examples in Maine, explore how personal trans narratives are driving this change and vice versa. If I have piqued your interest, you can check it out here...

Out of a flame war, pandemic love

Last night my 19-year old daughter Madeleine posted on facebook some whimsical wordplay based on terms she is trying out to describe her sexuality. She has already claimed “pansexual,” (which I also am coming to prefer for myself), meaning attracted to people based on who they are as people, regardless of biological sex or gender; and she’s trying out the word “demisexual”, meaning not tending to feel sexual attraction except to a person with whom one has first become emotionally intimate (which I also like for myself...I hope you don’t mind, dearest, that I’m co-opting your words). “Demisexual” is a new-minted word, courtesy of the asexuality movement, for an old-fashioned idea: sex as an adjunct to, an extension and expression of, love. So Mad’s line was that she’s a “pandemic romantic,” which, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s funny.

A few of her friends posted light-hearted comments, and then one particular friend, whom I will call X, posted this: “‘Pansexual’ is an orientation. ‘Demisexual’ is not. Neither is ‘romantic’. Just sayin'.”

An escalation ensued. Points got misunderstood, feelings got hurt, and what could have been a substantive conversation about the complexities of identity quickly turned personal. An hour and 40-some posts later, several people had posted things they are probably regretting today (if they’re done fuming), my daughter had defriended X, and various friends both in cyber and real space were giving her hugs in commiseration for having been the unwitting trigger of, and scorched figure at the center of, a doozy of a flame war.

This incident has helped me crystallize some thoughts about sex, gender, and queer identity. First of all, I respectfully disagree with X. Demisexuality and being a romantic *are* both orientations. In fact, in a way, they are more radical orientations than the L, G, and B of LGBT, because, just as pansexuality challenges the unquestioned assumption behind these letters that gender matters, they challenge the unquestioned assumption that sex matters. They are a “none of the above” option. They say: “If I, whoever I turn out to be, should happen to want to go to bed with my sweetie, whoever my sweetie turns out to be, it will be because I love my sweetie and my sweetie loves me. Love is different from sex and knows no gender, and love is what matters most to me.”

I am *not* saying that LGB folk don’t understand or care about love. Completely not. But queer culture does seem to me to be as obsessed with sex as our culture as a whole is. I don’t really have a problem with that, though as a person who cares less about sex than love it makes me feel marginalized at both cultural levels. And I could hardly blame people fighting for equality for their sexual identities if they felt threatened by the idea that sex doesn’t matter. I do have a problem, though, when it becomes politically incorrect to speak of non-sexual or only-incidentally-sexual love.

And, I *am* saying that the emphasis on traditional concepts of gender inherent in the definitions of L, G, and B sometimes feels inimical to the interests of us T folk. My dear LGB friends: I thank you most fervently for the enormous amount of help and support you have given me in my gender work, both individually and, by fighting a version of the same fight first, on a global scale. I have learned and benefited from your struggle. I stand shoulder to shoulder with you against the forces of prejudice and hate which so seldom distinguish between us. And, I enjoy your company, feel at ease with you, and am so grateful to have been welcomed in under the big LGBT umbrella. But, alas, all that said, I do also sometimes see you as part of the gender hegemony against which, all my life, I have struggled. I will never self-identify as gay, lesbian, bi, hetero or homo, because all of this terminology fails to challenge and continues to perpetrate the bad old binary concept of gender. Until I come up with something I like better, I am a pandemisexual romantic trans woman.

May I invite you to join me and Mad in seeking new ways of talking about ourselves and each other which celebrate the diversity, complexity, and subtlety of gender as thoroughly as we have celebrated the diversity, complexity, and subtlety of sexuality? And could we all, please, get at least part of the way back to the charming old-fashioned notion of speaking reverently of love?