My story
Unlike a lot of transpeople I
didn't grow up convinced that my gender was wrong from an early
age. Either the gender patterning of my conservative rural
upbringing was so strong that the concept didn't even occur to me,
or I'm not what some literature calls a "primary" transexual.
That being said, cross-gender ideation and a considerable curiosity of what it
would be like to be a girl chewed up a lot of my thinking from the age of
around 8. I was also a lot more emotionally sensitive than other boys
and often teased and bullied well into my high school years. Because the
sports field was where a lot of this bullying took place (I wasn't a brilliant
athlete - had poor hand-eye coordination and even poorer footspeed), I
withdrew to the library where I immersed myself in books. Lots of books.
I hit puberty fairly early -
at around 10 years of age my voice dropped and I started
developing sexually. At that point, rather than simply being fixated on
what it would be like to have sex *with* a girl, I fixated on what it would be
like to have sex *as* a girl. Without going into details - I had an
active fantasy life in this respect. I remember clearly watching a
segment on 60 minutes about a transwoman who had just gone through GRS when I
was around 12, and thought to myself "Yeah - that should be
me!" Of course, I kept my trap shut about it, fearing that my folks
would think I was somehow "broken".
During
late high school I tried on some of mum's clothes and was busted with a bra of
hers which I had been stuffing with socks in one of my drawers. I was
too ashamed to explain but as of that moment (I think I was around 14) I
clamped down hard and tried to put any gender variant thoughts out of my
mind. I made more of an effort to be "blokey" - becoming more
active in sports and started to feel like I was "fitting in" more.
When I got to
uni, that sense of social adjustment was enhanced - I hung out at the bar a
lot (which had a negative impact on my marks) but made friendships which have
(in some cases) lasted to the current day.
Eventually I
dropped out of Engineering to pursue a career in computing. After a year
or two doing computer retail and technical help-line work I moved interstate
and found a professional IT role. And that's where things start getting
interesting.
About a year into the new
job I came across links on a website regarding "transsexuals".
Having lived a pretty sheltered existence I hadn't really been exposed to the
expression and alta-vista'd (this was pre-google) the word and thus opened the
lid of Pandora's box. I had a name for the feelings I had secretly
nursed through childhood, and I got myself onto a few support lists. I
also came across Antijen and became an active member of the list for young
T-folks. I visited the local transgender support office's counselling
service and laid it all out. The release was cathartic... I felt good about
myself for the first time in ages. Unfortunately with that self-esteem,
I also picked up a degree of assertiveness and began to function better in
social situations. When this started to happen I started thinking
"Crap - I've got too much to lose now. I'll put the gender stuff
away and start enjoying what I've got." I had a couple of
girlfriends, then met a woman who I lived with for three years in a defacto
relationship. When that relationship lost its shiny newness she and I
both lapsed into depressive behaviours. And my gender questions reared
up again. I came out to my partner about it and she tried to be
supportive, but ultimately she couldn't cope with it and moved out. With
the realisation that this isn't a situation people would accept easily I
repressed it all again. Three years on from that point, I'm unemployed
back in my home state, and going through a major bout of depression related to
a lack of career-related self-esteem, problems relating to my parents (who
have generously housed and fed me while unemployed), and a lack of social
interaction. Into this mix has come a string of transgender themed news
articles, documentaries, film/TV characters, etc have appeared within a week
or two of each other, booting me back out of the closet into a state of
horrific confusion. Thankfully I'm a little older and wiser now and
having been through gender identity uncertainties before I'm kind of
aware of the steps in the cycle. I've been able to step back from the
gender question and see that in these situations there's a broader question of
self-concept and personal identity that I've been failing to confront.
This more objective view is what I'm sharing in the main article. As for what happens next for me? Deep
therapy methinks, with the goal being the attainment of a satisfactory answer
to the question of "Who Am I?" Once I know that with certainty
my actions with respect to gender identity will flow more smoothly and with
greater certainty. |
What I'm going to work through is a few thoughts on
how self-concept is achieved, and its role at the heart of transgendered
thinking. The "My Story" box gives a little of my personal history
(not particularly detailed) with this field of thinking and later in the article
I'll reference some of the concepts I'm outlining back to my own personal
history of transgendered thinking.
So... let's get into it then shall we?
You can surf the web forever looking at the stories of transfolk who have
been actively aware of their gender dysphoria (or cross-gender euphoria as the
case may be) since childhood; who played with dolls instead of Tonka-trucks;
whose best friends were girls; who liked girly colours more than boyish colours;
and so forth. You can also find vast amounts of reference material that
discusses this kind of extreme transgendered behaviour. Unfortunately, not
every person identifying as transgendered falls neatly into Harry Benjamin's
definition of a "Primary Transsexual", which makes the delivery of
care and advice to people outside that tight category quite difficult.
My theory is that there's another way of looking at transgender behaviours
and ideation which applies to both "primary transsexuals",
"secondary transexuals", "cross-dressers" and other people
who want to blur their gender alignment. I honestly believe that in
many cases transgender thinking is a result of incomplete identity formation on
multiple levels. Eric Erikson formulated a model of personal evolution
which talks about various phases of identity generation and the impacts of
incomplete identity. I haven't read his theories in great detail but the
summary makes some sense.
When you apply Erikson's model in the context of gender alignment it's
possible to see people reaching out for a sense of "completion" of
their overall identity and grasping onto transgendered self-concept as a sort of
life-raft. "This is what I was looking for! There's something
here that will fill the void in me." Thus fixated on realising their
transgender-"enhanced" identity, they actually adapt their behaviours
to fit the new self-concept.
If that self-concept had to do with a like or dislike for
a hobby such as trainspotting, or wearing red things, or playing a particular
sport, this would be quite harmless. Unfortunately, once people start
trying to convince themselves that they are transgendered it can have a much
bigger impact on their lives than any of the benign identity modifications I
listed above.
Administering hormones, opting for body/facial
modifications, chipping away at the GRS gatekeepers and dealing with the social
impacts of the transgendered condition are all very permanent and very serious
issues. If a transperson has jumped for the wrong life-raft and end up
going through with GRS it can be catastrophic. The last time I saw stats
on it, only about 4% of people who undergo full transition feel any better about
themselves 12 months after surgery than they did before transition. I
believe that number is higher for young transpersons who are behaviourally
identified as transgendered from a young age, but even then it's not necessarily
a magic bullet that will solve everyone's problems.
Another identity trap that transgenderism can unleash on
the unsuspecting is the sense of belonging one gets when joining a support
group. Admittedly some T-folks can be pretty bitchy, especially about
things like the variety of pedantic opinions on definitions of the term
"transsexual" and so forth. This sense of being with people
"who understand you" can be as dangerous as the incorrect assumption
that your identity problems are gender related.
For the record, I believe sincerely that there are people
for whom transition and GRS is the right choice. Who knows - I might
actually end up being one of them once I've got my own identity issues straight
in my head. But there's cognitive traps for the unwary that people should
be aware of. When I first started looking into transgender theory and
practice I can say I definitely fell for both of the traps I described
above. I was unhappy with my self-concept and transgenderedness seemed to
be as good a life-raft as any other I'd seen!
The first point of denial was the realisation that I'd
fallen into the first trap. When I did that I swore to myself that if I
fell prey to gender-variant thinking again that I'd make sure it was something I
did under my own steam - that my associations with other transgendered folk
would be treated with ruthless objectivity.
Of course - I still hadn't stepped out of the other
trap. That of choosing the wrong life-raft. When my relationship
with my ex broke up, I saw that one for what it was, and linked the broader
identity issue with the core problem with the relationship - primarily a fear of
commitment on both our parts.
So here I am now... starting to feel that perhaps I made
a mistake in setting it aside. Being a creative person with a vivid
imagination it's easy for me to see myself living as a woman - both in the
day-to-day areas as well as sexually. And there are psychosexual identity
issues I haven't yet addressed. While I can function sexually as a man I
don't feel particularly genuine in the role. My preferences with respect
to sexual activities involve drawn-out foreplay rather than machine-gun
penetrative sex. That's definitely a "feminine" attribute but
I'm still trying to decide what context that belongs in.
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