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.

[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.

[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.

[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.