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?
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branchandroot
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Date: 2007-09-08 04:53 pm (UTC)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.