Okay, you win. Transsexing my body, but deep in my head, the right gender - and I don't like it.

[the_fantastic_ms_fox]

I'm trying to follow Tim's fine advice about coming out: try a bunch of different stuff, see what works for you, find parts of your identity, and then see what you think of queer "norms."

Translasses have the option of presenting as visibly queer lasses. The advantage of this is that onlookers will be more likely to confirm their identity, as they'll write off the genderfucked appearance as some Sapphist side-effect ("enough Indigo girls and you just sprout stubble - it's true - so tell your teenage son to crank up The Watershed"). The disadvantage is that you always look queer.

The big advantage is that if you are a translass who is happy being obviously dykey (::the authour waves::), then this will make you happy. Otherwise it'll make you miserable - although some might find it better than being read as transsexual.

Anyhow, I cut my hair because it was "too long." Today I remembered what "too long" means.

"Too long" means "too feminine and not queer enough." (insufficiently Dykey) [Edit: tomboi-dykey]
"Too long" also means "it frames my face in such a way that it makes me look like a man in a dress." (overly Trans) [edit: transexual]

(note the connections in my head: dykey = good; trans = bad --- mmm?)

[later edit: masculine - good / feminine = bad?]

While I'm trying out things with my appearance, there's this nest of fears and hopes that yards me to one side or the other.

I'm afraid that if I look feminine, I'll look trans. I hate looking trans. I didn't ask to be born into the wrong sex, and I'm MtF because I have little other alternative to get where I want to go. Note the resentment? Part of this is due to the unpleasant experiences that I've had in meeting some other transwomen (in rapid sequence), and these were most of the first times that I'd met transwomen (at least that I'm aware of), so those fears of awkwardness, pariah status, overt social and phisical hostility, detriorating mental health and suicide, have stuck with me I guess. Living in a society that teaches us to hate femininity in men probably has something to do with it too.

I'm also afraid of looking decreasingly feminine and increasingly...  butch? Soft butch. Really soft, like squishy.

I'd hardly say that I'm a highly masculine person, but I'd also say that the more I look at queer female presentations, the more I feel drawn towards the masculine. It's comfortable. In fact it may be the first time I've felt comfortable behaving in a masculine fashion - without that grinding spirit-noise that it used to provoke, like a car with worn-through brake pads.

But to an extent, "comfortable" means "safe,"  and safe means "I want to hold back and turn to something familiar." And maybe some of it means "This will make me less of a man in a dress and more of a tomboi, because the latter form of gender transgression is more acceptable where I come from, and besides, it puts me one step further away from all the broken MtFs I've met."

On the other side. I'm also avoiding moving over to the masculine at all because it means that I'm breaking the norm for MtFs in two frightening ways. It could seriously undermine my attempts to justify to a psychiatric panel why I need the big switch (seriously - that's how getting genital surgery works) and so delay it. And "masculine MtF" it puts me so far outside the range of what most people, even those into queer issues, see as intelligible, and pretty much drops me outside the range of common experience. I mean, what the fuck is a squishy (i.e. really really soft) butch MtF? That's... what the fuck?


It's not as bad as this might make it seem. There is lots of time for experimentation.
It is however weird and new, and there is almost no support or reference for this kind of thing. Hence the long LJ posts, as you might have noticed.

Comments

[legacyofty.livejournal.com]

I may not have ever changed my sex or ever pursued being queer much, but I change my look from season to season. I also like my skirts (for me, not because they're feminine, it's how they display the dynamism of movement through the hips and legs.) I'd be more than willing to chat with you about changing your look and style from something you've gotten used to. I can relate how I was in the past. Talk to you soon.

[hundun.livejournal.com]

Much appreciated.

[estrellada.livejournal.com]

Coming out as queer (yay using it as a random umbrella term) doesn't mean you automatically step into a tailor-made queer identity/expression. Sorry. Takes time. I'm still playing with it, 10-14 years later.

Eventually, you'll know what works for you. There is always a concern re: intelligibility, but that is sometimes more or less important, and eventually you develop strategies for communicating your self/desires/id to people.

not enough tea.

[hundun.livejournal.com]

And here are the origins of the "fuck labels" camp, one would imagine.

[estrellada.livejournal.com]

For shore.

Reading you posts, I wish that there was something more to say that this:

You're part of trail-blazing, and it sucks and it's hard, and tho there are a few examples, you're still fundamentally doing new things in paradigms that are barely understood and only starting to be put into practice. I wish I could say "don't worry, it'll be over soon", but we both know it won't.

All I can do is remind you that it's OKAY to take breaks, that you need to take care of yourself, and that it's okay to want to hit people over the head with an opportunity pan.

And take care of yourself, right?

In any case, I'm looking forward to camping/hook pull.

Also, name carving?

[hundun.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I also very much appreciate the email.

I think that part of what may be driving the mindfuckery is the order in which I'm exploring things. Most dykes sort out that they're female pretty fast, then figure out that they're interested in other lasses, often focusing on those lasses who come across as also liking lasses. And then some of the more academic-minded ones do part of a degree in women and gender studies, focusing on queer issues. I did things in a kinda different order and at different ages, so I have all these references swimming around I guess.

I'm not sure what "taking a break" looks like.

Carving would very much be awesome. I think that I'd like to round out the renaming soonish, as I overlooked something in the ritual (i.e. returning to life).

[darthmaus.livejournal.com]

Whichever way you go, you *are* breaking new ground, and that's going to be confusing and intimidating - but it's really admirable and you'll find the Amy you're comfortable being in there somewhere. She's just probably not lurking in any of the well-travelled paths.

And "masculine MtF" it puts me so far outside the range of what most people, even those into queer issues, see as intelligible, and pretty much drops me outside the range of common experience. I mean, what the fuck is a squishy (i.e. really really soft) butch MtF? That's... what the fuck?

That, to me, is the ultimate realisation that not only is gender not binary, it's not even a one-dimensional continuum - it's, like, three or four or maybe more. To be honest with you, of the non-broken non-screwed-up MtFs I've known, very few fit strictly into the "I'm a WOMAN! Therefore I must be and do, talk, walk, and dress all things that society defines as feminine in order to be accepted as such!" model - those are the screwed-up ones. The smart, together ones have custom-built their own gender, with varying results that may or may not involve significant elements of socially prescribed femininity - which seems to me to be exactly what you're doing.

I do NOT mean to imply that this is easy - I can't even imagine how hard it is - but I do believe that it's *right*. And surely if you articulate your identity and your reasoning (once you've had that experimentation time to figure it out for yourself, of course) the psychiatric panel will get it? There, I certainly have no idea - how much do these shrinks really understand the variability and mutability of gender?

Keep experimenting. You rock.

[osmie]

very few fit strictly into the "I'm a WOMAN! Therefore I must be and do, talk, walk, and dress all things that society defines as feminine in order to be accepted as such!" model - those are the screwed-up ones.

This doesn't just apply to MtFs. Anyone, of any class or gender or creed, who grabs a label and says, "I'm an XYZ - therefore I must be/do/talk/walk/dress exactly like an XYZ," isn't looking for an identity; they're looking for a cult. And it shows.

Women who are born and grow up without gender dysphoria tend (once they're through being teenagers) to approach such matters rather automatically: "I think I'll be like this; do such-and-such a thing; talk like so; walk thus; wear these clothes today. Well, yes, of course I'm a woman, why would you bother asking? Because women don't do things this way? Watch me." It's a descriptive attitude towards gender: "women" do whatever women, out in the world, do.

Teenagers and MtFs, however, have something to prove, and this tends to lead them into a prescriptive attitude: "Women do LMNOP; I need to prove I'm a woman now; therefore I must do LMNOP." The big trouble here for transfolk -- apart from the obvious fact that everyone expects this kind of attitude from teenagers, but very few transfolk actually transition that young -- is that no other group spends a whole lifetime questioning their gender. It feels normal. Doing whatever the other boys do because otherwise everyone will realize you're a girl? I bet there are a lot of cisgirls who've tried it for a week, but keeping it up for twelve years is kind of a trans-unique experience. By the time transition happens, doing whatever the other women do isn't a pure expression of adolescent angst, but a lifelong habit which needs conscious breaking.

[darthmaus.livejournal.com]

I totally agree - and that's exactly what I meant when I said that I know I can have no idea how hard it is to do as a trans person. I wouldn't say that I personally fit too many stereotypes of the "woman" label, but as I was born with it and never felt a need to question whether it applies to me (although I do spend a lot of time questioning what it *means* - but that's different) - so I have pretty much no idea what transfolk go through.

I just think it's sad that many MtFs are denied during transition and even afterwards by social/psychiatric/emotional forces the same right that I've been blessed with, to question what "female" and "woman" are and decide what they mean for me without having to prove that they apply to me - and it's really wonderful to see those who do have that courage. All women - everybody, in fact - should be able to do so, I think.

[hundun.livejournal.com]

Multiple continua model - hoorah!

[eva00.livejournal.com]

If you would like, I will look up my friend Jade and introduce the two of you. She might have some interesting things to chat with you about on the topic of MtF, as I met her when she was still a teenage boy who wanted very much to be a teenage girl.