(This is part 6 of my observance of Transgender Awareness Month, my answers to the 30 Day Trans-Challenge.)
6) Who was the first person you told about being trans?
In real life? my sweetheart, my one-and-only, my dear wife. I call her DW here on the blog.
Online? I think the first person I actually talked to online about my gender issues was Christi Taylor, who used to blog at TransChristian, but has since shut down that blog and moved on. She's also the first person besides my wife that I've met in real life and who knows both sides of me. That conversation meant so much to me at the time, I don't think she has any idea how much. She's been going through a really rough patch the past year or so, and I very rarely ever hear from her anymore. I miss her. :(
Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't posted much lately; we've recently moved cross-country, and are still unpacking boxes (and probably will be for the next 6 months -- at least it feels that way sometimes!)
Recently a new online friend posted to a thread on the NorthStar Transgender Support mailing list, talking about her experiences growing up trans*, and explicitly mentioned me as someone who might have a slightly different experience, since I identify more genderqueer than transsexual (Wikipedia's page, which I linked to, has a better explanation than I can give succinctly, if you're curious about what that means).
Anyway, I ended up writing back quite a bit (probably more than everyone else on the thread cared to see, actually. Sorry!), and when I was done, I realized that I haven't really blogged too much over here about my realization that my transgender experience is probably a little different than most. So, I'm going to publish an edited version of those comments here. For those of you reading this that are also on the NS mailing list, please forgive the redundancy.
It's funny, but while my experience is in many ways different from a lot of us in the group, in other ways it's very much the same. I have a lot of attitudes and mannerisms that aren't male-typical, and had even more as a teen before they were kind of shamed out of me by people who told me that I shouldn't act this way or that. For instance, I used to be a kind of a "chatty Cathy," which sometimes got me attention from people around us when we were out in public settings, and my Mom was always trying to get me to quiet down. Looking back now, I think that maybe it was just as much about my intonation and speech patterns as it was my volume. (I'll note that since accepting myself for who I am, I'm getting kinda chatty again -- at least in certain circles)
As a kid, I had a lot of female friends, and very few close guy friends. That was fine in elementary school, but by middle school, when my classmates were starting to pair off as couples and get shy around the opposite sex, suddenly it wasn't cool anymore for me to "fraternize with the enemy," so to speak, and I lost some good friends because of it, without ever really comprehending why. My lack of understanding about how to navigate normal male group dynamics made me an outsider in my ward, neighborhood, school -- just about everywhere, as I didn't really "get" any of the other boys, they certainly didn't know what to make of me, and since I was a boy, the girls weren't really interested in letting me hang around.
Nowadays, the things that get to me the most are when D.W. expects me to act as the stereotypical Mormon "head of household", leading in family scripture study, always being the one to call on people to pray at dinner, that sort of thing. It just DOES NOT come naturally to me, and if I balk when she asks me to do something like that, I think she thinks it's just a lack of self-confidence (or worse, a lack of interest), and not the deep-seated incongruity I feel all the time in those situations -- like, why do I always have to be the one in charge? Why do I always have to be the strong, confident one, just because of the configuration of my privates? Sometimes I wish I had someone to put their arms around me, hold me close, and make me feel safe and protected. Being "the patriarch" is emotionally exhausting to me.
This discomfort affects me at work, too -- I have a hard time being assertive, often preferring to be the one forging compromises and trying to make everyone happy. Sometimes I get nervous about that, and hope that it's not a career-limiting trait (more on that in another post)
Looking at that rambling narrative, I notice it's mostly about gender roles, not strictly about my gender identification. But that's a whole different, tangled-up topic that'll take me a while to properly articulate. For now, let me just say this: it's complicated.
Anyway, maybe this will help someone else out there in the vastness of the Internet. I sure wish the same breadth of information were available to me when I was a kid -- I would have figured things out a lot sooner.
Just a quick note before the day is past. To everyone who has been there for me this year, as I've struggled to come to grips with who I am and what it means, a huge THANK YOU! Seriously, you all mean so much to me, individually and collectively, I would be a lesser person indeed without your friendships.
Lately I haven't given a lot of attention to this blog, largely because I'm in a dip, or ebb in feelings of Gender Dysphoria at the moment. Also, I imagine, because I'm starting to figure out the things that trigger my GD, and finding coping strategies that take the edge off. Fellow nontransitioning MTF Calie has what she calls her "TIDE" recipe, which inspires and informs my approach quite a bit:
T - Trans friends who understand me.
I - Immersing myself in my work and hobbies.
D - Diet and eating right.
E - Exercise and staying healthy.
I should probably add "pure will-power" to the list.
Thanks to the Internet, I definitely have Trans friends who understand me. Thanks, everyone! :)
I have indeed been immersing myself in work, home & family time, and returning to some hobbies I haven't made much time for this year. Being busy helps.
I've been paying a lot of attention to my health this year, exercising regularly (almost daily when the weather and my health allow it), eating less, and almost entirely cutting soft drinks out of my diet (but I do drink a lot of Crystal Light, because I'm a little obsessively particular about the taste of water). All told, I feel WAY better about my body and overall health than I did a year ago (face scar from this summer's epic bike crash notwithstanding). Still not the body my inner self wants to see looking back at me in the mirror, but closer.
A few days ago on the TGIMormons mailing list, a member named Cassandra posted some beautiful thoughts on the challenges we face as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who experience some measure of gender incongruence. I liked it so much, I wrote a much longer reply than usual (full disclosure: usually I just lurk over there, and don't post much at all, so any reply from me is going to be longer than usual). Anyway, I thought her initial comment and my reply would make a good fit for here on my blog:
First, I want to make it clear that I sincerely believe that transsexuality results from divinely-inspired natural processes that are designed to maximize diversity among His children. Diversity is good and healthy. (Ditto for androgyny and other points on the gender map)
...
In a gender context, the challenge inherent to androgyny is hammering out one’s own path that will bring them to joy and exultation. Androgynes can’t use either the “male” or the “female” cookbook.
I was really happy to see her include androgynes in her very thoughtful post! Yeah, the more I ponder on my unique position along the gender spectrum, the more I think that's where I fit. Which is weird, because that makes me something of a minority, even among the transgender support groups I've joined online!
Often androgynes get forgotten about, I think, because most Trans folk have a very clear picture in their head of which camp they should be in, pink or blue. It's taken me a while to slowly come to the conclusion that I'm uncomfortable in the "blue" camp not because I want to be in the "pink" camp, but because I know, somewhere out there, there's a "purple" camp!
Like Cassandra said, neither a pure-male or a pure-female cookbook would feel perfectly "right" to an androgyne, and indeed I do bounce back and forth a bit in my interactions with my ward family members. For instance, I tend to lean a little more toward femme topics and interests when I'm talking with other kids' moms while waiting for my kids on Mutual night. Then when I'm in a gathering with other Elders, I gravitate to the guys that, like me, have a deep disinterest in sports, cars, guns, and movies full of explosions (there aren't that many of us). So either way, I'm able to carry on a conversation with my fellow ward members, and I think I get along reasonably well with everyone, but it's rare when I'm able to really connect with anyone, and I don't have many what I'd think of as close friends (not saying "oh poor me" or anything, just stating a fact).
I guess another way to say that is to say this: I find myself smiling and nodding a lot, simply choosing not to disclose when my thoughts and feelings don't line up with the gendered expectations of others. Sometimes, I'll speak up in Sunday School or Priesthood if I feel things need to be clarified — the notion of the Prosperity Gospel," for example, sneaks in every now and then, and certain interpretations of the Proclamation on the Family — but often I have learned to just keep my big mouth shut so I can keep my foot out of it!
Someday I'll find that purple cookbook... or maybe I'll have to be the one to write it...
I recently saw a great middle school production of Seussical the Musical, and was really touched by a couple of the songs. One of my many girlish traits has always been that stuff like this makes my cry, and this show was no exception.
The main story is about Horton the elephant trying to save the tiny Whos, who live on a dust speck on a clover blossom. Only he, with his enormous ears, can hear their cries, and only he, with his enormous heart, dedicates himself to helping them find a safe haven -- in spite of the mocking, scorn, and even threats of harm that everyone else in the jungle heap upon him. The other main character, Jojo, is one of the Whos down in Whoville that also feels like an outcast because he sees things differently than everyone else. The play weaves their two tales together, and becomes this amazing story of how love, friendship, and understanding can give us all hope.
There's one song in particular, where Horton and Jojo both feel alone and outcast, then find each other -- a kindred voice in the darkness that understands exactly what they're feeling, and lets them both know that they're not alone, as long as they have each other. This in spite of the fact that they may never actually meet in real life, due to being literally worlds apart. The song really jumped out at me in bright neon letters 3 stories tall; what better metaphor for what I've experienced in the past few months, thinking myself alone as a transgendered husband and father, then discovering amazingfriends that are feeling and experiencing much, if not exactly, the same things! Wow:
To my new trans Mormon friends, who let me know that I am not alone: thank you!
And to anyone else out there reading my blog: you're not alone in the universe, either! We're out here, trying to make our voices heard in whatever small way we can, hoping we can make a difference in each others' lives. And by that act alone, we can.
