The End of the Week is Nigh!

Hey All,

Well a night of wild dancing abandon wasn't exactly where I ended up more like a sad lonely dance floor gasping its' last breaths and me desperately trying to keep it alive. In general I find lesbians to be not the best at keeping the dance vibe going ( emotive I know and please forgive me my sweeping generalization ) they tend to enjoy groping, conversations ( usually involving making fun of the people dancing ) and getting so drunk they can't speak ( which is sad )

Anyway I had once again over comitted myself so this week I not only missed Switchs' Sexy Mustache party ( which totally broke my heart because I have a real thing for a girl in a fake mustache I don't know why just do ) and then Lynnee Breedloves' show ( which I was again really sad about. It has made me wonder about how I am going to stitch these two very different lives of mine together. How do I bring my old friends whom I love dearly and my new friends who understand parts of me that I have never been able to talk about together? Is it even possible. I don't want to give up the history and time invested in these relationships but a lot of my old friends I have never even discussed the idea of Trans identity with. They know me as a female and not a transgendered entity. How do I talk to them about this?

My new friends ( well I hope they will be ) I feel we have clicked and I want to spend more time with them they have stories to tell that I want and need to hear and I have things I want to share with them. I want to be part of these amazing experiences seeing people getting up and talking about things I am still terrified of saying each time giving me more and more hope and more and more courage to take another shuffle down this road. I'm not moving fast some would say I'm hardly moving at all but that's just the kind of person I am I guess. Inside there is a battle going on, the part of me that doesn't want to mess things up with change and is afraid of where this will take me vs the part of me that says life is too short and I'll be damned if I'm going to look back and wonder why I didn't have the guts to do it. I think I know which side has won already but still I've not found the strength to move into the next step.

I guess I'm afraid of being hurt, which at the end of the day is silly, I'm hurting now, people hurt people that is just life. It cannot be avoided and what defines me is not the hurting but how I respond to it, do I have the strength to pick myself up and find a way to be a better me or do I lie down and cry about it? I want to be the one who pick myself up and shows a bit of courage but right now I just feel like a coward.

I met an old school friend a while ago now, we hadn't seen each other since we were children together and he told me that what he remembered about me most clearly was one assembly the teachers were ripping us out for water balloon fights that had gotten out of hand and they were going to punish the whole year if the offenders didn't confess right there and I stood up and admitted to the water play and defended our actions as being the way we as teenagers released our aggression and that is was in the grand scheme of things pretty harmless and they should show some understanding.

I had forgotten that incident, but I want to have the courage of that young me back then, the me that said to hell with the world and I'm going to do what I think is right, and I'll take the consequences. Oh to have that courage again, I weep for it, in the darkness of night when I lie alone I search myself for it and find I am wanting. I know I must make my choices I cannot lie in this darkness forever hoping someone else will switch on the light for me, consequences be damned I must find a way to do what is right.

Hump Day

Hey world, it's been a tough week, I'm feeling lonely and frustrated and in need of some wild abandon on the dance floor to melt away the weeks stresses and strains. I've been a lone girl in a room with no windows full of men and they haven't let me forget it for a second I am a little demoralized by it all and long for Friday when I won't have to see them anymore.

I don't know if I am feeling a little bit more fragile than I usually do because I don't often let stuff like this bother me. Most days I just play the one of the boys card but I can't seem to bring myself to do it here. Their comments are testing I can feel them probing with their wife jokes and eye candy comments to see just how far they can push me, will I snap, will I run away and cry no I just pretend it doesn't happen even though it does wear me out day after day. What is it they are trying to achieve with this? I am intimidating them that is obvious but I don't really understand why and I am too tired to care right now.

Roll on Friday, Friday night of music and drink and dancing till my legs and hips feel like they will fall off. It is one of the few times I enjoy the femaleness of my body when I dance the rolling curves and curls of back and hip that I never really see men do. It is one of the few places I enjoy feeling female though this too comes at a price what does it mean for me in terms of my gender identity. I feel more and more that I cannot choose one or the other when it comes to gender that for me choosing one is to reject the other and I am not sure that is the right thing for me to do with myself I am learning and finding parts of myself that I am enjoying like this dancing me. Maybe it is selfish but I don't believe I should ave to choose one or the other I think it is a limitation on society to not be able to find space for me as both and that I am all kinds of people in the world who would enjoy being both instead of one or the other suffer a little and sometimes alot for it.

A Quick Note

I know I need to find some time to sit down and write something here, right now I am being distracted away by the allure of exercising and getting a body that looks and feels more like the me I imagine myself to be I don't know why I have wasted so much time ignoring my body and abusing it when all I had to do was work it until I at least had something closer to the lean mean body I imagine myself to have. Funny how something so blindingly obvious has taken me so long to work out for myself. I am relishing every change as the fat melts away I can see myself becoming more and more the masculine body I have always believed was there I am excited by it and want to just keep on going. Running, cycling and weights are my new friends and they make me very happy. I really am very excited by this discovering of a new me under my fat and I can't wait till I get a binder and packer and truly transform into something I had always dreamed I was, obviously the adrenaline from the nights bike ride hasn't worn off yet.

The Pronoun

So I have been thinking about this alot the last few days, in fact it has strangely dominated my train of thought making any other kind of posting on other musings quite impossible. Usually in the day to day I don't really think much about what pronoun is used in connection with me it all seems much of a muchness and quite pointless I guess because I mainly feel a bit of both one day this one day that sometimes both at the same time and I don't really know what that means at the end of the day, but then something kind of strange happened.

I was at one of the shows I have been going to see and someone asked which gender preferred to be referred to as and I gave my usual oh it doesn't matter thing and they then used the she pronoun. I was instantly irked by such a thing and I am not sure why, I had just given my permission to use either yet when 'she' was chosen I was upset by it and since then I have had to think very carefully about this, I've tossed it over and over in my mind and still could not work out why it bothered me. Then a few days later it happened again this time in a different place, same circumstance I gave my consent to use either and they chose 'she' again I felt my gut twist with something akin to but not quite pain as the sound touched me. It sounded alien and as if it didn't belong to me and yet everyday I am referred to in this manner why does it bother me now?

I have to ask myself am I afraid to be called he? Is that why I give my permission to use either? Do I secretly wish that people will see the inner male and choose that pronoun? And why an earth does the pronoun even matter to me so bloody much, I must admit I am angry with myself for what feels like childish behaviour. I suppose on some level it is just that, the people I have been mixing with they accept trans identities and I want to be recognized for that I suppose I am secretly hoping that they will see the inner boy or man or whatever it is and say 'he' instead so that I can for a moment be somewhere where I am not a freak or have people embarrassed because they have mistaken me for a man and see how it feels for me to be 'he'. Of course it is completely silly of me to think that anyone would be able to know this and me begin in the positions of those people would do exactly the same and use 'she' so this is about me again.

I am very seriously looking into some binding and packing options, still a little bit scared to buy them but I keep getting on the web and looking at the websites and I have asked a few people on the TF board about it and they totally recommend it so I think I must try and find the courage to get on with it and give it a try and then see if the pronoun I secretly wish for is used, I hope it is and this way it means I really can be both male and female in this body and I think that could be quite beautiful and I think maybe I could live with that or at least I hope I can. We shall have to see, it's funny though that the thing that is the scariest and the hardest is this, to become more me.

First

Well as I said Thursday was a big night for me, I met loads of people ( for me anyway ) I was practically a social butterfly I spoke to so many people, I flitted from group to group chatting and laughing then moving on it was pretty spectacular. I met new people who just up and talked to me which was very cool, ended up at the beginning of the evening talking to a lovely butch lesbian who I'd never met about the state of butchness today and how butches do seem to be a breed that is dying out in the lesbian world ( but more on that later ). I sat with her and her lovely friends during the show and then during breaks and at the end hung out with the gorgeous TFers, met a few new people from the GB boards all very cool :)

So on the on stage spectacular was over we had a bit of the old dancing, not many people stayed to dance which was sad as I do like to dance till I drop, but it was a school night I guess, some of the hardcore remained and we made the best of the dance floor. It was good fun I got to shake my thang had my boobs poked ( definitely a first for me ) but it was done in a spirit of fun as opposed to lechery ( though it may well have been a clever disguise ) so I didn't object ( I have known worse on the dance floor, maybe I'll even talk about it one day, or god help you you'll be in a club with me and see it for yourself ha! )

Anyway I was just finishing off the last of my G&T ( the only thing I drink ) and I got pulled in as an impartial adjudicator for a discussion on hair (of which I have little ) between a very sweet and tall gentleman and a rather pretty white haired lady. I don't think they needed my impartial observations on the matter I feel it was pretty much settled, but I did get a very nice pat on the cheek ( my face naughty reader ) and she said ' What a handsome boy. ' Now in all my years of being mistaken for a male I have never had a girl pat me on the cheek fondly and call me a handsome boy it was a truly beautiful moment. I instantly broke out into a smile and I could feel myself fill with happiness, she then asked me where I was from then proclaimed me boring and I was instantly dismissed when I said I was from London, but I didn't care I listened to her call me a handsome boy all the way home in my head.

Stripped Bare

This was a crazy night full of things but right now I am just going to talk about this, other stuff can wait:

OK so as mentioned before I went to see Stripped Bare - Killpussy, I didn't know what to expect and I've never seen her perform, but I suppose on some level I was expecting the same sort of directness as the previous shows and I don't think I was the only one. There were more people than the last shows due ( I was told ) to her following and I think they had their own expectations as well.

This made her job all the harder I think, I had to take time to think about this show not only because it had a different format but also because it was a different type of performance. Killpussy took a more theatrical approach, I loved this show because of it's cleverness it required that the audience look beneath the surface and I was a little frustrated by elements of the audience that didn't afford her the attention I felt this deserved, but in the end I managed to tune them out and give her my full attention.


I can only go by what I have gathered so far but the performers for Wotever Sex are laying their lives out in these shows. Experiences are real and close and deeply personal and there was a lot of content in her show, it was complex and layered that kept me going over parts, wanting to decode and investigate. It made me want to know more about what lay beneath the performer.The whole show was in a way a tease giving glimpses of her experience, just enough to tantalize us and make us hunger to know more.

This was a reflective journey she took on the persona of her future self and looked back through her life taking us with her and letting us see the moments that shaped her. Her work was clever, funny and full of her intelligence.


Beneath the bravado there is a sense of vulnerability, right upfront she lays it on the line, I'm shy ( said tongue in cheek and drawing laughter from the audience ) but it is Killpussy who is bold and unstoppable and without fear. Killpussy who has demanded to be born and to explode into the world. Time and time again she comments on not going out because it isn't safe and yet in her domain she is quite unquestionably Mistress of all she surveys.

I love the subtlety of this performance and I find myself asking again and again why these clothes over all the others in this whole shop full is it the significant moments they represent or are they even more, are they like she says at one point physical manifestations of herself. Are those parts still there has she evolved and moved into other suits, does she carry them with her still? All these questions. I love the outfits the playful red nightie with the polka dots, the poignant white dress suit. The tale delivered defiantly it was the one that stayed with me, stuck. Something ( or someone ) discarded and left broken, filthy and worthless being found and brought back to life, glory and being loved is something that will always tear at the heart, the sheer joyousness of Nukie Nana and even the satiny pink Princess gown found a place in my heart.

The finale is the birthday suit, which of course brought raucous joy and approval from the crowd to a song proclaiming 'I like you better when your naked' tied it all together, a long and difficult journey through hard choices and hard times uplifted and celebrated with self love and acceptance ( and floaty feather fans ). It made me ask myself when will I find that freedom, that courage, to love and accept the all of me. There was also the lightly touched upon idea that we should be constantly evolving beings in our sexuality/gender identity I love this idea and hope to see more of it in the future. I do have a fondness for the idea that we are and should constantly evolve, that means different things to different people of course but it is important to explore, get out of our comfort zones and see where it takes us, how it changes us.

Thank you Killpussy this was a beautiful show it left me turning it over in my mind, wondering speculating and I still am asking that big question how do I find a way to accept all the parts, all the memories, mistakes and seeing some of your journey through that was inspiring. I look forward to seeing how this show develops and I am sure I will be watching it again.

Head Cold

Seems of little relevance having a head cold maybe, just thought I'd use it as a title. Well since emerging from my funkiness I have brought with me a bit of a head cold which is not a big deal. It does make my head hurt and allow me on some level to continue a bit of self-pity the wistful fantasy of having some nubile beauty nursing me back to health is always one of my favorites and who knows one day it could happen.

I have also had a chance to look up again and see the sun, feel it's warmth on my face and remember what it is to be hopeful again. I have found hope in some unexpected places as of late in people I had not expected. In friendly hands extended in good faith and kindness and that is quite an amazing thing, who knows what will come of it or where it will take me but they are beginnings and beginnings are always full of hope and promise and possibility and I thrive on that. I am not really much of a planner, more of a float along and see where the world takes me kind of person, which is why when people assume that I am after something in particular I tend to get a bit annoyed. I like to see where something goes not plan it out, I know this often can lead to danger and disappointment and hurt and scars but, I survive and sometimes I even learn something about myself which is always good.

I'm off to see another show at the RVT tonight despite my cold I do not think I can bare to miss it, I am very excited to see what Stripped Bare by Killpussy will teach me or show me about myself. I am really quite sad too that these set of shows will only be seen once especially as I am going to have to miss two of them due to previous commitments. I do hope somehow in the future world there will be a space for them to be shown again. I am sure that elements of these shows will turn up in other things but to see the six run again I think would be very exciting and important.

I hope Wotever realize just how much they are appreciated, I think it's important that they feel the huge love and appreciation I have seen for them from their members and I add myself in that too. Before Wotever I had no place where I could learn to be myself. I have struggled to be what other people have wanted of me for years and only found confusion and self loathing. I had seen Wotever around but had been to scared to go on my own ( unusual for me, but that's how close to the center this was for me ) I met a friend who took me to Bar Wotever and opened the door for me, since then I have looked for ways to be with them and get to know the people there and I have been welcomed and people have shared with me about things I could not even speak of until a few months ago so this really has been an amazing place for me and I hope I'll continue to be a part of this because it is a beautiful and rare oasis where you can be yourself and be accepted. Thanks Wotever!

Returning to the middle

Well I've had a couple of self indulgent pity days I guess, moping around in my head feeling sorry for myself and waaaing at the world. Now I am over it I feel better and a touch sheepish about it as per usual.

Most of the time I'm pretty happy with myself I like my wit and intelligence ( oh such boasting ) I just don't like the body I'm in and I'm making changes to try and like it more, but it takes time especially when I have spent the last 20 years filling it to bursting with bad food and refusing to move it around. I became the worst kind of body and deep inside I guess I was hoping to kill it off as soon as possible. I am trying to fix that now and am making progress, I am not the same fat slob I was say 6months ago but a smaller quicker fat slob so I'm getting there and in time I'll get to lean and maybe even catlike ( which I'd really like ) but this is done with small and gradual stepping not instantly and I have to keep reminding myself of that.

Last week I wanted to be the lean catlike me I think I am inside right now and seeing the smaller fat slob in the mirror made me angry and frustrated which then lead to pity and tantrums so next time hopefully I'll read this and remember that I'm getting there slowly and as long as I keep the tantrums at bay and keep putting one foot in front of the other I'm gonna get there.

Hard Choices

We all need a bit of physical contact, usually a hug from a friend and I've been thinking about this. What does someone touching you say, on a very unspoken level for me touching says I am accepted. That I am not some kind of monster or diseased or wrong, it says I think you are nice enough inside and out to make me want to physicially connect you to me in a non-sexual way.

Lately thoguh I am finding it harder and harder to let people touch me, it's not that I don't want it because I really do and in a way that is the problem. I crave that physical contact in a way that when someone does give me a hug or touch my arm it is so intensely personal fo me that it is uncomfortable. I miss the physicality of people only recently have I found people around me willing to touch me in a friendly way and it is addictive. I must keep acceptable boundries even though I am not sure where they are. I cannot allow myself to crave that contact the way I do, I may have to go back to my glass bubble just to keep my sanity.

Priscilla saves me!

I was wondering around in my funk feeling sorry for myself, but luckily it couldn't last as I was booked to go out with my friends to see Priscilla! No one on this earth can compare to those fierce beautiful creatures ( I just know I'll get in toruble for saying that ). Otherworldly the perfect mixture of power and delicacy, so seeminly fragile but so undaunted by the world surely they are the fiercest of us all to stand head and sholders above the rest in their sequins and makeup and proclaim to the world that it cannot break them even when they are broken they will not surrender. I love them.

They are the larger than life, completely unapologetic and without compromise, the toughest of the tough. You just don't mess with a Drag Queen unless you want to hurt. They are my heroes.

I always remember going to a cocktail bar near Warren St when I was much younger with a female friend of mine. We were two lesbians in a bar full of Drag Queens, you could feel the strength in that bar. I was both terrified and excited all at once to be near them, they looked me over with a cold stare assessing me in the kind of way only a Drag Queen can. I smiled back and laughed when they made jokes at my expense, they are allowed to, they make a coward of me in this world. They relax a little realizing I am not one of those crazy take offense at anything lesbians and we have a few drinks and chat about nothing in particular and it was easily one of the top 10 nights of my life.

Dark Places

I'm in a dark place today, I stood in the shower turned the hot water right up and secretly hoped that if the water got hot enough it might wash my breasts away and leave me with something closer to what I feel underneath. It sounds strange I know stupid even, I suppose I hope somehow that the need to make a decision I can settle with would be taken away from me and I could just somehow fall into being physically more myself without having to deal with the confusion and uncertainty I seem to have to deal with to get there.

I wonder sometimes quietly in the back of my mind where I don't want to say out loud if I'd be on some level a bit relieved if I was diagnosed with something that would require me to have my breasts removed. I thought I was comfortable with my body or at least resigned to it but today I feel trapped and alone and desperate to escape this flesh. I am in a dark place today.

Gin and Confusion

Well It's been a few days since my last post mainly because my weekend seemed to begin on Thursday and didn't finish till Sunday night. I feel like I've been on a bit of a roller coaster from the heady highs of Thursday at RVT to the weary lows of Sunday night. In between that I partied and drank and generally had a good time, but there were also moments over that time that now I am filled with confusion and some regret over.

Funnily enough maybe because I have spent most of my weekend thinking about it I noticed some posts come up about coming out to people and whether or not you should or if it's any of their business etc. A really good question and I am starting to wonder more and more, do I really need to tell people who are not like myself about my gender identity. It doesn't make me feel good about myself to tell people who don't have these questions, in fact I feel childish and attention seeking and once again I am finding myself avoiding the word transgender and feeling as if I don't have the right to use it because I am constantly in conflict about it and scared and I feel like I should be more sure I guess.

It all comes down to one moment over the last few days and nights I guess. In general I have found gay men to be more accepting than women about my thoughts. Most of the time women react in a rather shocked and disbelieving way. There is no obvious disapproval but I can't help but feel behind the surface there is something there that finds this aspect of me to be not just unattractive but on some level abhorrent. I suppose it is not really surprising as on the surface it can be seen as a rejection of the female gender, I suppose I could just be projecting that because of my own questions but I have yet to meet a woman who gives me the impression that it isn't a big deal.

Gay men I have known on the other hand seem unfazed and even in some instances encouraging of my feelings and maybe this is why I was lulled into what I think now may have been a false sense of security. So I was out partying with my male friends, I am naturally more at ease with men I feel I can be myself and they seem to understand the way I am. We partied late into the night and at about 3am started just chatting generally in a fairly drunken way and I mentioned I had gender identity issues ( which is how I tend to refer to it as I am still a little uncomfortable with the word transgender I guess ).

One of my friends had heard it all before and was fairly uninterested in the whole thing but the other had not and he asked me about it. I explained as best I could in my drunken state and then the subject was dropped. The next day upon sobering I looked back at that conversation and felt unsettled by it and I think my friend may have been too as we avoided each other pretty much for the following day. Which only served to expose and grow my feeling of unsettledness and I started to think to myself that maybe it's not really a good idea for me to talk about this stuff with my friends.

I need on some level to talk to people about it because, by talking it helps me work out what I mean in my own head, but I need people who can understand and don't mind telling me how they have dealt with it. It's difficult for me to come to terms with this because I can't physically grab hold of something and say hey here it is this is what it looks like. It has no real tangibility except within me, beneath the surface and when I talk to people who can't feel that I find myself questioning those feelings and questioning myself.

Sex Education and Stone Femme Shoes

Last night I went to see Stone Femme Shoes at the RVT, the second of six shows put on there by Wotever about sexual and gender identity and other stuff too often drawn from the personal experiences of the performers themselves. So far there have been two shows Sex Education by Josephine Wilson and this week Stone Femme Shoes by Jet Moon and both shows have blown me away. Their courage to lay it out there for the audience to look at astounds me. Some of the content is raw and it pulls at me in a way that says this is something real not imagined but felt and touched and from the real world.

Josephines' work was personally affecting to me because I could see so many parallels to my own life. It touched me in a way that was immediate and direct. Her open venerability her journey, not quite fitting into the world and searching for that place you can call yourself home reached right in and opened up old wounds I thought long buried, but also fueled a new hope that I could find that place and that even more importantly I wasn't alone. It sounds a little tired I suppose but I refuse to apologise for it, we all want to feel like we aren't the only ones be it hard or easy sharing experience is part of what builds our humanity connects us to each other and the world.

So I came to see Stone Femme Shoes thinking it would be interesting, but not really expecting it to have the same kind of resonance that Sex Education the week before did. I could not be more wrong. It was just as raw, Jet was incredible, allowing us to see her not just unapologetic and powerful but also human and real and breathtakingly honest. She shocked me and shook me made me look at myself and ask what my perceptions of femme were and how had they been affected by my need to be male and my years of suppressing my femaleness. I've been guilty of making femmes invisible in my time, I've overlooked and simplified. I couldn't do that after seeing this show. My perceptions of the femme landscape have been fundamentally changed and I'll admit I am more than a little ashamed with myself for not being smart enough or brave enough to explore this on my own. This show spoke to me or something in me and I really wasn't expecting it to, it's going to take me a while to digest it I think.

These shows so far have been so powerful to me, I think it is so important for people like myself who are asking the kind of questions we are to have people like Jet and Josephine to share themselves like this, they comfort and disturb, give us answers and questions. I am so looking forward to the shows to come and do so hope that these shows aren't a one off and that more people get a chance to see these and that I get a chance to see them again!

Here's the thing.

I've been playing around with a bit of male power dressing as of late and going out, what I mean by that is basically that I wear a suit. Now I like suits, I like the cut and the line, there is something very protective about them almost like armour.

I've had some interesting responses both from other people and more surprisingly from myself. People are either intimidated or intrigued by me in a suit, not really all that surprising and not so different I guess from me normally. Some people have commented on how they like the way I look in a suit and others avoid eye contact at all costs as if I may attack them if they do, which of course I wouldn't

But here's the really big thing for me, I don't really like myself in a suit. It's a recent phenomena, since I have started taking care of my body and loosing weight. I have decided that I am not lean enough to look good in a suit weird eh? I put on a shirt and tie and all I can see are curves and bulges, it's is almost as if the maleness of the suit exposes me as being female and it makes me uncomfortable.

I am genuinely surprised by this, I find myself thinking about chest binding ( I've not really thought of that since I was a kid ). I just feel like another butch dyke in a shirt and tie, which makes me feel kinda sad, I'm not sure what it means for me because I do love the old shirt and tie. Anyway I took off said shirt and tie and put on a t-shirt and I instantly felt like my old male self again this really is one of the strangest things I think I've ever noticed about myself. Maybe my feelings will change once I drop some more and start looking a bit leaner but if not what does this mean for my relationship with the suit?

Loosing to gain.

I came across an interesting comment yesterday by a trans person who talked about their feelings of loss for the gender they were leaving in order to be the gender they are meant to be. This really struck a chord with me. All too often we are presented with the requirements for absolutes in this world and humans just don't work that way. We give and take, weigh out the pros's and con's in order to find what we hope is a decision we can live with.

When I was much younger I was a much more black and white person and had I had the opportunity I am fairly sure I would of ploughed ahead with transitioning not really considering much the cost of that change. Maybe I would of been happier, maybe I would of adjusted to the world more readily, but maybe the answers I was looking for in that transition would not of been there. What then?

Basically I hated my body to the point that I denied it's existence, the very thought of taking off my clothes on my own ( much less another person ) was torture. I went through years of depression and self loathing, but in time I formed a sort of truce with my body and now I am not so sure I am willing now to go through what I would of so readily run into as a young person. Those years have changed me, made me something I didn't even imagine as a youth was possible and now I look to explore avenues which simply weren't there for me years ago.

I'm not saying this is the way it should be for everyone, no way, I wouldn't wish those years of being invisible and inconsequential on anyone. Of feeling worthless and without hope, I'm just noticing for the first time that not taking that option hasn't stopped me for evolving and adapting to find something new in myself a place where I have decided I can exist and have for some time I think. I don't know if it'll be that way forever, probably not. It is in my nature and I think the nature of all people to change a little bit everyday. So who knows where this might take me especially now I am finding doors that lead me to new people who share these feelings or at least ideas.

It really is like a new world out there and how quickly the world opened up, maybe because it's finally the right time to go out and find the parts of me I am missing. I am also wondering about the parts of me I already have, what do I keep, what do I give up, why should I give up anything?

Small Steps 2

So I have been accepted onto the messageboard I registered with and spent my usual blogging time on it hence my lack of a post. How exciting, I am trawling through posts like a starving creature drinking in everything I can and trying to think of things to say and get involved. I'm probably trying too hard and am still nervous about the whole thing.

You would think I'd feel comfortable really but after so long not being able to talk about how I feel even now in a place where I can I worry about saying something that will make people disapprove or think less of me for it. I for all my claims of Independence and not giving a bleep just want to be somewhere where I can fit in and sometimes that need in me no matter how much it annoys me does turn me into something I'm not. It's a destructive behaviour which I need to gain some sort of control over because I shouldn't be hiding who and what I am, but finding people who will accept me and like me for who I am unhidden. Easier said than done, but it's down to me to put myself out there and not hide that's the long and short of it.

So far there people on the boards have been very welcoming and have encouraged me to post and get involved which is truly lovely and makes me feel excited about getting to know these people better, share ideas with them and hear what they have to say about their experiences. Already I have seen posts that have voiced things that I have felt in my life and it grabs at me in a way I don't have words to explain, it's frightening and alluring at the same time. I just want to dive in, get to know who these people are and tell them about me. They are getting involved and doing whatever they can think of to put their content out there. The energy is amazing and contagious and I do so hope I find a way to be a valued part of this world.

Small Steps

So today, I have registered on a transgender noticeboard, approval still pending. It is a small step into a place where I may be able to talk about things I am thinking and feeling and seeing what other people have to say and think about themselves. I have noticed a plethora of subgroups within the wider transgender umbrella and I find myself wondering what subgroup do I fit into? In my very basic understanding of the whole definition thing I believed I would come under transgender which I do but that covers all kinds of people that I am also not, so what am I?

More investigation is obviously required. Do I really need a label? Should I label myself? These feel like questions I should of answered years ago, it feels unfair and in a way childish to be asking them and yet I know ask them I must or i'll never work out what I'm about. It is quietly exciting but also very daunting to find myself at what feels like the begining all over again. Hopefully they will accept my registration and I can find out a bit more.

Thought for the day. 09/03/09

I have over the years kept quiet about this subject as mentioned before. I have told myself to forget it, get on with things, that its all just in my imagination, a flight of fancy. I could keep on that way I suppose, but when you do that, deny the existence of part of yourself you loose more than just that part. You loose the ability to trust in yourself, you stop believing in quiet but very important parts of yourself, like intuition and self assurance. It took me a long time to realize this, I guess I'm a slow learner.

I have to believe I'm not making this up, I've carried these feelings around for basically my whole life. If it was just a flight of fancy surely I would of just let it go by now and for the first time I am accepting it I am finding happiness and confidence in myself. A desire to be better in myself and more me and to explore me, surely this means something.

I still haven't really talked to anyone who is out as a transgendered person about this stuff. I am still nervous about talking to another person and saying the words I've kept quiet for so long out loud. I'm not sure what I'm scared of, rejection, that I'll find myself wanting to change in ways that will upset the people I love again, that I'll get carried away into a place I wasn't really meaning to go, I don't know all these things and more. Even if these things come to pass I have to find a way to say out load and talk about this with other people who understand I need to grow and find a way to make this part of who I am not something I hide away and let eat at me from the inside.

Looking back

When I started to consider that I may have gender issues ( which was how I used to describe myself, someone with gender issues ). There were only really two alternatives as far as I was aware, I could be a butch lesbian or become a FTM transsexual.

I considered the latter very very carefully not only because it is a huge thing to do and very difficult to find someone to do it, but also because of the way the people I loved reacted to the idea of me having operations to change my sex. To them I was a beautiful person inside and out and the idea of me having operations to remove my breasts and have male genitalia was just mutilation. I guess I could of ignored them and just gone ahead because it was what I at the time thought was right for me, but for whatever reason I didn't do that I put myself in their shoes and tried to see where they were coming from and I did see to enough of an extent to hold off. ( Just to clarify here this is purely to do with me and is in no way a comment on the way I think all people considering sex reassignment should think, everyone has do what's right for them I believe that very strongly ). Part of it was that, but the other part was because their reaction made me feel like what I was feeling was wrong and somehow dysfunctional. I stopped trying to talk to them about how I felt about my gender because I was afraid of upsetting them and for many years I stopped talking.



My behaviour became more and more destructive as I tried to find a way to reconcile my body image with my actual body. I was like a man dying of thirst in the desert, if anything come on TV about transsexuals I would drink in it but never satisfied and slightly tortured because I could not speak to people I trusted about what these things made me feel. If I'd had the facilities to access sex reassignment when I was younger I think it would of been a different story here, I think I would have had those operations. Now I am not so sure, but it makes me wonder. If I had had that chance what would I be like now, would I have gone the whole way? What would my name be? Would all the years I spent hating myself and ignoring my body of been happy and productive years? I am now happier with myself than I have ever been and I'm learning to find things to love and explore in my life rather than let it waste away but still I cannot help but wonder a little.

Why one or the other? ( Thought of the day 8th March )

As I have grown older and come to accept myself a little more I have started to ask myself why do I have to be one or the other? Why do I have to be male or female?

Surely most of my internal conflict through my life has been the result of the idea that I could only be male or female. This thought came to me ( maybe not the most orignal thought, but hey I'm just starting ) for the first time about a year ago now when I was at the LGBT film festival and I came across a film about someone called Papi who referred to herself as a transgendered entity ( I didn't get to see the film all booked up, but I'm still trying ) I'd never heard this expression before and for the first time I asked myself why can't I be both?

Beginings are never easy.

Hello out there,

Now where do I start? I was born biologically female, but all my life I have lived in a sort of grey space between genders.

Mostly without even trying I am mistaken for male and I don't really mind to be honest. Sometimes I'm proud of it. Gender to me has always felt kind of fluid, I've never been comfortable in girls clothes, wearing makeup, playing with girl toys. I've always preferred the rough and tumble and directness of boy's I understand their logic, I am comfortable around them.

Girls make me nervous, I don't know how to act around them, I don't seem to understand the verbal or socail cues they expect me to. Maybe that's a result of exposure rather than biology I don't know. Even as a young child I was treated like a boy by other people, people would call me a my father's son etc. I didn't fight that or get upset I embraced it even that young. My mother was a tomboy and saw nothing wrong with my non-girlie behaviour. I am a girl, but not one too maybe that's why I feel out of place.

What this meant as I grew older is that I was left with a question hanging over my head, not just the obvious one that other people asked themselves, is it a man or a woman? But a question in my mind that I have carried with myself all my life, what does this mean to me?

When I was young, in my mind I had no gender I was just me. Admittedly I played superheroes with the boys, not with dolls or my little pony's' but I thought nothing of that. I was different from oher boys physicially, some of those differences frustrated me but generally I could live with them. Funny how looking back and remembering this now accepting that I am of a transgendered nature I get it, I knew the word girl referred to me on some level but in my mind I was a boy which is why puberty was such a shock. My mother prepared me for the whole thing with a detailed chat on what was going to happen but again somehow I just didn't feel like it applied to me. I thought I'd be the way I was forever.

I think could of lived with most things, but the day I started growing breasts was quite possibly the worst day of my life. And as if life had a personal vendetta against me I wasn't one of those girls who was going to always complain about their lack of endowments ( I would of so been happier with that ) I had all the curves not in excess but in abundance. I could no longer deny my gender it was there right in front of me whenever I looked down, and other people could see it too and all of a sudden I was a girl and me no more. I know it must seem a trivial thing, but for me at the age of 10 or 11 it was like my body had rebelled against me, betrayed me. And I began a long walk down the road of ignoring my body, I just simply pretended it wasn't there anymore. I didn't look in mirrors and I didn't look after it.

So now I was a girl in everyone elses eyes I could not deny it, could not blur the lines and slip between like I had before. I was trapped, locked in and without escape. I was put in dresses, sent to an all girls school where I felt very alone. A few girls I met I bonded with because of their boyish nature but we were all girls there and growing up to do what girls do, get married and have kids was what everyone was about. What we were all expected to do and most girls seemed happy with that. They all talked about boyfriends and getting married, how many children they wanted. They also talked about careers and what they wanted to be when they drew up I must add but all of that seemed secondary to the whole meeting a man and getting married bit. For a while I worked on accepting that, there were no alternatives really available to me in that life. I like most young girls accepted that that must be what lifes' all about, but something still nagged at me and I think it must of shown as grew older less and less of the girls I had met there kept my company. I became a loner, not ridiculed or excluded actively, just not sought out for company. I was strange and different and that made them as uncomfortable around me as I was them. Having said that I did still have a great time there, I was sporty and they had loads of sports to keep me occupied and it was a good school. Just this feeling sitting there in the back of myself never left me this, not quite right feeling.

It was also the first place I came across the word lesbian, one girl in my class was teased ruthlesly for being one though at 11 I doubt she actually had made that decision yet. It was more just a word girls could use to be cruel and hurtful to her for not being pretty enough or something. Looking back now I should of actually talked to her about it but I lacked maturity and in my desire to fit in didn't want to start bringing attention to myself by association with her ( sounds terrible I know but these are the thoughts of my childhood ) This did though introduce me to a new type of possibility for my future I started to consider the word homosexual. I learnt the word, what it meant but that was about all. It didn't scare me or shock me it was just something else if anything it felt kinda comfortable in my mind. At this point I should probably mention that I have an incredibly liberal family and this allowed me to find the space to do this at a young age I know there are people out there who don't get the chance to ask these questions until much later and I am deeply grateful for my family.

Then a few years later I had a stroke of luck and we moved my very colonial environment to London, city of opportunity. Where peoples are as diverse and varied as snowflakes. I was terrified.