Lately I've been trying to reconcile my life-long testimony of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ with my longstanding feelings of gender... well, "muddiness" for lack of a better word. Let me explain.
So for nearly as long as I can remember, I've been dealing with thoughts and feelings that aren't a perfect fit with my birth gender. It wasn't that I felt like I was a girl born in a boy's body -- I'm pretty sure my spirit is male, if it has to come down to a binary choice. But we're learning that gender is a continuum, not just black and white, and there are certain aspects of the role assigned to me by society and biology that just don't fit who I am:
- I'm not at all aggressive or assertive, even though I like comic book superheroes and played with Transformers as a kid.
- I'm extremely nonconfrontational, unless I feel like someone is being bossed around / treated unfairly.
- I'd rather build things up than tear them down. Even as a teenager, random destruction and pyromania have never appealed to me (except for anthills. For some reason I loved kicking over the anthills in the Rocky Mountain high desert where my grandparents lived).
- I hate watching sports, unless I know someone on one of the teams (like in little league). Actually, I'm not even very fond of playing most sports... unless it's as a bonding activity with friends I care about.
- When faced with a choice between "hanging out with the guys" and tucking my kids in at night, the kids win every time.
- (thinking about it, I don't even really have any guy friends outside of work and the Internet, although I get along okay with the guys in my neighborhood and at church)
- I try to be handy with cars like my Dad and Grandpa before me, but more often than not I just don't have the hands or the head for it, and we just leave it to the mechanic.
- On Tuesday nights, when I take my kids to church youth activities, I'd rather sit in the foyer and talk with the other kids' moms than go in the gym and play basketball with their dads.
- I'm the designated doer of dishes in the house, and if I weren't out all day "bringing home the bacon," I'd be home "frying it up in the pan," doing a good chunk of the cooking too.
Anyway, you get the idea. In a lot of ways, I'm not a very "manly man." And yet...
- I feel like bringing home the bacon is my responsibility, and I take it very seriously.
- Physically, I'm very obviously male: I'm broad-shouldered, relatively tall (5'11"), have kind of big feet, and my entire body is covered in hair (even my 5-o'clock shadow has a 5-o'clock shadow!)
- I like some masculine things: sports cars and power tools.
- I'm humbled to hold the Priesthood of God, and seek to use it to serve and bless the lives of others.
- I love my wife, and have never had any interest in a romantic relationship with a man.
Anyway. I've spent most of my 14 years of married life on the binge/purge crossdressing merry-go-round, always feeling like it was something of a compulsion, but then subsequently feeling shame and guilt that I wasn't conforming to the role God had ordained for me. Sometimes, sadly, that shame would be compounded by an indulgence in online entertainment that, well, let's just say it's not virtuous, lovely or of good report, and it made me even more sure that my gender confusion was somehow wrong or sinful.
Almost always, these guilty/shameful feelings have been accompanied by fears of what would happen if my wife were to find out, and guilt that I've gotten so adept at hiding this from her. She walked in on me wearing her clothes a few times early on in our marriage and was very emotionally hurt by it, so I've always been afraid to really open up to her about why I feel the need to do it. I really need to, though.
These two worlds I live in often feel hopelessly irreconcilable. My wife and kids are upstairs in bed, and here I sit on the couch in a skirt, trying to figure out why. Finally, one night about a week ago, instead of searching for fulfillment by reading from the lion's share of online transgendered sites, many of which don't share my values, I Googled "transgender mormon," and was thunderstruck by what I learned: there are other LDS men who feel the same way as I do, and instead of denying these powerful urges (which never fully works -- they always come back more powerful than ever) or leaving their families and the Church to pursue gender transition, are trying to find a middle ground: embracing their feminine sides in a way that is in harmony with the Gospel!
Can such a thing be possible?
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