My Trans Narrative
In the transgender world, there is the concept of the Trans Narrative. Back in the time of my youth, the standards of care required people to prove their trans-ness. You had to have 'always been' associated in your mind with your target gender, from a young age preferring the trappings of that gender and desiring to be a fully hetero- member of that gender. If you came to your mandated therapy appointments not fully decked out in clothing strongly aligned with your desired gender expression, you weren't serious enough; and therefore not trans.
Luckily, things have progressed a lot since then, and we are hearing of more and varied histories of people growing up and coming to terms with their gender. There is no one-size-fits-all narrative that we all must be shoe-horned into. To help foster that realization for others, and thereby maybe support fellow transgender folks, I want to tell my personal narrative and let them know their story doesn't have to match any standard model to be valid.
I was born in September of 1973. When I was old enough to remember interacting with the world, I had an older sister whom I adored, and I had a stay at home Mother and a Father trying to build a business. At this time, and until puberty, I had no gender awareness at all. I was just a kid, doing kid things, and having fun when and where I could. Along about age four I got a little sister added to the family. The addition prompted a move, which left a few friends behind, but got me a sand pile, which I truly loved. As we grew, I truly loved my little sister too, though we were often at each other's throats; we seemed to be able to scratch nerves with ease.
When I played, I don't recall gender being a part of it. It was play, mostly make-believe (which could be construed as feminine, but I don't feel that strongly) and running around in the woods, or riding bikes; lots of legos when I could convince my friend down the street to use his. I also loved building elaborate scenes in my sand pile with army men and trucks and sticks and rocks and playing out stories, most often war stories but also sometimes post-apocalyptic stories too.
In grade school, on the cusp of puberty, there was a girl in my class that wanted me to be her boyfriend. I had no idea what that was about, and was uninterested, but I had no paradigm to know what she was after. All I wanted to do was play on the swings, or the jungle gym, at recess with my friends. I played some sports around this time, but they failed to keep me interested. I wasn't good at them, really. I couldn't get myself out of my head enough to just play the sport. So I dropped out of them early, only playing the street versions where the score hardly mattered and it was just fun. What I did take to strongly was Scouting. I loved the woods craft, and the camping, and the learning fun things and getting the badges to prove my proficiency. I really loved being the leader of a patrol, and later of the whole troop and usually I was the one cooking for the troop on camp outs.
It wasn't until middle school, about, when gender became a thing. My body began changing, and I began noticing people and what made them attractive, and wondering how and where I fit into it. And, I began to know, that I didn't fit into what I was growing into. I was attracted to girls, but I also felt I related to them more. I would prefer to read, as I had always loved reading, over many physical activities. Not that reading is feminine, per-se, but I felt then that it was as it was more cerebral over physical. I liked expanding my mind way more than expanding my muscles. I liked learning, also, how people related to one another. I wanted to talk and dream with others, rather than beat them with a ball on a court.
This was one of the first things that tripped me up in my gender discovery and held off my transition. In my youth I equated sexual attraction much too closely to gender identity. I was too hetero-normative. If I had been attracted to boys, maybe then I would have found it easier to also embrace my femininity? Maybe, but who knows now. I don't know that it matters anymore.
But soon, as the dissonance between my assigned gender and my felt gender grew, I sought out ways to make sense of it. I tried on women's clothing. I started by borrowing things from the laundry and trying them on in secret, then quickly putting them back. Then I stole some clothes and kept them hidden away to wear whenever the opportunity arose. Finally I tried to get my own set.
I had a large-ish extended family and we often had hand-me-downs cycling back and forth between our homes. That was a constant source of addition to my 'wardrobe'. When things went out, I chose a few that I liked before they left. When more came in, I would do the same. I soon had a good little bit. But it wasn't enough; I needed knowledge.
I had a friend with a progressive liberal pair of parents that dealt with 'the talk' by giving him a huge book on human sexuality. I borrowed it and devoured its contents. I now had some terminology to go with what I was doing. There was cross-dressing and transvestism. And there was transsexual. (it was a book written in the eighties on research from the sixties and seventies) I thought that cross-dresser was an apt description and it satisfied the dissonance I felt between my sexual attraction and my gender exploration as the book said cross-dressers were heterosexual males who dressed up as women sometimes. I felt that was an apt description, and for a time it was. I was definitely not a transsexual...
Now, even with this revelation, there was no smooth sailing. I had deep shame and disgust. Despite having the book say that there was no shame in it, my culture and my religion sure said there was. I was going against the 'natural order'. I couldn't tell anyone about it, and when I inevitably got caught at it by my loving and attentive parents, the shame intensified. I swore I would get over it, and I'd purge all the things I had accumulated, and try to be a born-again cisgender boy. But it never stuck. I would purge a few times through the end of middle school and into high school. Finally in college, I fell into a resigned acceptance. I was closeted, but I was a cross-dresser. That was one facet of my identity now.
Years passed. I now have a term for what dominated most of my life from puberty to now, and that is dysphoria. I saw myself, and it wasn't right. It wasn't what I was supposed to see. I saw a broadening chest without breasts, widening shoulders, muscle growth and hair everywhere! I hated that hair (and still do). I stopped shaving when I went off to college, not because I liked a beard, but because constantly having to shave and still not being clear of hair on my face every morning just kept reminding me that it shouldn't be there... that I hated it. With a beard I could trim weekly at most and still be 'acceptable' in polite society. I grew long hair as well, because I liked it, but also because it felt a little bit feminine when I allowed myself to not have it tied back.
I met a few girls, and women, and dated, but it never worked out very well. I didn't know how to be the man they wanted, in most cases, and it just stressed me out. I couldn't be me... and I couldn't be what they wanted me to be. Sex was awkward at best. I was great at doing the foreplay, and loved everything leading up to the intercourse, but that last little bit would never work out right. I couldn't keep an erection long, and if I did, sex would often end prematurely. It was often miserable, sometimes wonderful, but always puzzling. At least, until I met my wife.
I had been celibate for a while leading up to meeting her, and when I did, it was love at first sight. I don't know what exactly it was, but she was beautiful. And when we actually met, she was smart and funny too. She was perfect. I agonized over asking her out, I didn't want to ruin a perfect chivalrous love that I had by rejection. She fixed that by pursuing me, instead. We had an odd courtship, but it worked for us as our oddness matched. When we finally began dating seriously I told her all of my 'failings' and she didn't reject me as I had expected. She was uncomfortable with my cross-dressing, but accepted it as part of me. That acceptance led me to be able to be more comfortable with her than with any partner before, and it helped on the sex front. We worked through my performance failures and soon they were less frequent and we had a great sex life.
We dated for years, became engaged for a few more and married ten years after we met. We had ups and downs, but throughout we were strong for each other and continually tried to keep the relationship strong. However, my gender issues continued to lurk and cast a shadow on this perfect love. Because of her statement of discomfort at the beginning of our relationship, I would only cross-dress when she was not around to see it. I wouldn't rush off and hide what I was doing if she came home at a time I hadn't expected, but I wouldn't be comfortable until I had changed back into drab. This would become a problem later.
Five years after we were married, my dysphoria was getting so bad it was not contained by occasional dressing anymore. I had a job that made me cut my hair and it was short and boy-ish constantly, I had really stopped caring about my physical appearance and had gained weight steadily since after college and it was wearing on me now, and my sexual dysfunction had returned with stress and wondering if I was good enough creeping in and ruining what we had. I had to do something, so I started dressing more often. I got rid of all my masculine underwear and wore exclusively panties and most weekends I wore exclusively feminine clothing. It helped, but only a little bit.
Finally, last year, I couldn't take it any more. I had been looking into gender issues and the newer theories and research on them, and I knew I needed to try something more. I bought some herbal supplements online that various blogs and websites purported to mimic HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and dove in. It was an experiment that I didn't expect to do anything... but it did. My dysphoria drastically dropped because of the physiological changes and maybe because of the hormone like action in my brain. I noticed that my body hair slowed in growth, and was a little softer. And spontaneous erections, one of my greatest banes because it was a constant reminder of my penis' existence, totally stopped. Lastly, I began to feel emotions again. Dysphoria all these years had made me dissociate from the world and I could only feel the most intense emotion at all, and it seemed as if I had been playing a video game rather than living. It was as if a veil had been lifted. I went off the herbs and slowly things began returning to situation normal.
I knew what my next step was.
I sought out a therapist versed in gender identity and got an appointment. I worked with her on figuring out what I wanted to do, and three months later I booked an appointment with an Endocrinologist, got my meds prescribed, and on December 23, I began my transition. I had come to realize I was a lesbian trans woman all my life. And now, I can try to live that life authentically and fully.
That was forty-four years of my life in a very rough outline. There are lots of things I glossed over and many things that I outright omitted. I don't think they are part of my trans-identity and don't need to be gone into here, but they are part of me, and I may touch on them in another post as I define myself and talk about my journey.
-Ginny (finally)
In the transgender world, there is the concept of the Trans Narrative. Back in the time of my youth, the standards of care required people to prove their trans-ness. You had to have 'always been' associated in your mind with your target gender, from a young age preferring the trappings of that gender and desiring to be a fully hetero- member of that gender. If you came to your mandated therapy appointments not fully decked out in clothing strongly aligned with your desired gender expression, you weren't serious enough; and therefore not trans.
Luckily, things have progressed a lot since then, and we are hearing of more and varied histories of people growing up and coming to terms with their gender. There is no one-size-fits-all narrative that we all must be shoe-horned into. To help foster that realization for others, and thereby maybe support fellow transgender folks, I want to tell my personal narrative and let them know their story doesn't have to match any standard model to be valid.
I was born in September of 1973. When I was old enough to remember interacting with the world, I had an older sister whom I adored, and I had a stay at home Mother and a Father trying to build a business. At this time, and until puberty, I had no gender awareness at all. I was just a kid, doing kid things, and having fun when and where I could. Along about age four I got a little sister added to the family. The addition prompted a move, which left a few friends behind, but got me a sand pile, which I truly loved. As we grew, I truly loved my little sister too, though we were often at each other's throats; we seemed to be able to scratch nerves with ease.
When I played, I don't recall gender being a part of it. It was play, mostly make-believe (which could be construed as feminine, but I don't feel that strongly) and running around in the woods, or riding bikes; lots of legos when I could convince my friend down the street to use his. I also loved building elaborate scenes in my sand pile with army men and trucks and sticks and rocks and playing out stories, most often war stories but also sometimes post-apocalyptic stories too.
In grade school, on the cusp of puberty, there was a girl in my class that wanted me to be her boyfriend. I had no idea what that was about, and was uninterested, but I had no paradigm to know what she was after. All I wanted to do was play on the swings, or the jungle gym, at recess with my friends. I played some sports around this time, but they failed to keep me interested. I wasn't good at them, really. I couldn't get myself out of my head enough to just play the sport. So I dropped out of them early, only playing the street versions where the score hardly mattered and it was just fun. What I did take to strongly was Scouting. I loved the woods craft, and the camping, and the learning fun things and getting the badges to prove my proficiency. I really loved being the leader of a patrol, and later of the whole troop and usually I was the one cooking for the troop on camp outs.
It wasn't until middle school, about, when gender became a thing. My body began changing, and I began noticing people and what made them attractive, and wondering how and where I fit into it. And, I began to know, that I didn't fit into what I was growing into. I was attracted to girls, but I also felt I related to them more. I would prefer to read, as I had always loved reading, over many physical activities. Not that reading is feminine, per-se, but I felt then that it was as it was more cerebral over physical. I liked expanding my mind way more than expanding my muscles. I liked learning, also, how people related to one another. I wanted to talk and dream with others, rather than beat them with a ball on a court.
This was one of the first things that tripped me up in my gender discovery and held off my transition. In my youth I equated sexual attraction much too closely to gender identity. I was too hetero-normative. If I had been attracted to boys, maybe then I would have found it easier to also embrace my femininity? Maybe, but who knows now. I don't know that it matters anymore.
But soon, as the dissonance between my assigned gender and my felt gender grew, I sought out ways to make sense of it. I tried on women's clothing. I started by borrowing things from the laundry and trying them on in secret, then quickly putting them back. Then I stole some clothes and kept them hidden away to wear whenever the opportunity arose. Finally I tried to get my own set.
I had a large-ish extended family and we often had hand-me-downs cycling back and forth between our homes. That was a constant source of addition to my 'wardrobe'. When things went out, I chose a few that I liked before they left. When more came in, I would do the same. I soon had a good little bit. But it wasn't enough; I needed knowledge.
I had a friend with a progressive liberal pair of parents that dealt with 'the talk' by giving him a huge book on human sexuality. I borrowed it and devoured its contents. I now had some terminology to go with what I was doing. There was cross-dressing and transvestism. And there was transsexual. (it was a book written in the eighties on research from the sixties and seventies) I thought that cross-dresser was an apt description and it satisfied the dissonance I felt between my sexual attraction and my gender exploration as the book said cross-dressers were heterosexual males who dressed up as women sometimes. I felt that was an apt description, and for a time it was. I was definitely not a transsexual...
Now, even with this revelation, there was no smooth sailing. I had deep shame and disgust. Despite having the book say that there was no shame in it, my culture and my religion sure said there was. I was going against the 'natural order'. I couldn't tell anyone about it, and when I inevitably got caught at it by my loving and attentive parents, the shame intensified. I swore I would get over it, and I'd purge all the things I had accumulated, and try to be a born-again cisgender boy. But it never stuck. I would purge a few times through the end of middle school and into high school. Finally in college, I fell into a resigned acceptance. I was closeted, but I was a cross-dresser. That was one facet of my identity now.
Years passed. I now have a term for what dominated most of my life from puberty to now, and that is dysphoria. I saw myself, and it wasn't right. It wasn't what I was supposed to see. I saw a broadening chest without breasts, widening shoulders, muscle growth and hair everywhere! I hated that hair (and still do). I stopped shaving when I went off to college, not because I liked a beard, but because constantly having to shave and still not being clear of hair on my face every morning just kept reminding me that it shouldn't be there... that I hated it. With a beard I could trim weekly at most and still be 'acceptable' in polite society. I grew long hair as well, because I liked it, but also because it felt a little bit feminine when I allowed myself to not have it tied back.
I met a few girls, and women, and dated, but it never worked out very well. I didn't know how to be the man they wanted, in most cases, and it just stressed me out. I couldn't be me... and I couldn't be what they wanted me to be. Sex was awkward at best. I was great at doing the foreplay, and loved everything leading up to the intercourse, but that last little bit would never work out right. I couldn't keep an erection long, and if I did, sex would often end prematurely. It was often miserable, sometimes wonderful, but always puzzling. At least, until I met my wife.
I had been celibate for a while leading up to meeting her, and when I did, it was love at first sight. I don't know what exactly it was, but she was beautiful. And when we actually met, she was smart and funny too. She was perfect. I agonized over asking her out, I didn't want to ruin a perfect chivalrous love that I had by rejection. She fixed that by pursuing me, instead. We had an odd courtship, but it worked for us as our oddness matched. When we finally began dating seriously I told her all of my 'failings' and she didn't reject me as I had expected. She was uncomfortable with my cross-dressing, but accepted it as part of me. That acceptance led me to be able to be more comfortable with her than with any partner before, and it helped on the sex front. We worked through my performance failures and soon they were less frequent and we had a great sex life.
We dated for years, became engaged for a few more and married ten years after we met. We had ups and downs, but throughout we were strong for each other and continually tried to keep the relationship strong. However, my gender issues continued to lurk and cast a shadow on this perfect love. Because of her statement of discomfort at the beginning of our relationship, I would only cross-dress when she was not around to see it. I wouldn't rush off and hide what I was doing if she came home at a time I hadn't expected, but I wouldn't be comfortable until I had changed back into drab. This would become a problem later.
Five years after we were married, my dysphoria was getting so bad it was not contained by occasional dressing anymore. I had a job that made me cut my hair and it was short and boy-ish constantly, I had really stopped caring about my physical appearance and had gained weight steadily since after college and it was wearing on me now, and my sexual dysfunction had returned with stress and wondering if I was good enough creeping in and ruining what we had. I had to do something, so I started dressing more often. I got rid of all my masculine underwear and wore exclusively panties and most weekends I wore exclusively feminine clothing. It helped, but only a little bit.
Finally, last year, I couldn't take it any more. I had been looking into gender issues and the newer theories and research on them, and I knew I needed to try something more. I bought some herbal supplements online that various blogs and websites purported to mimic HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and dove in. It was an experiment that I didn't expect to do anything... but it did. My dysphoria drastically dropped because of the physiological changes and maybe because of the hormone like action in my brain. I noticed that my body hair slowed in growth, and was a little softer. And spontaneous erections, one of my greatest banes because it was a constant reminder of my penis' existence, totally stopped. Lastly, I began to feel emotions again. Dysphoria all these years had made me dissociate from the world and I could only feel the most intense emotion at all, and it seemed as if I had been playing a video game rather than living. It was as if a veil had been lifted. I went off the herbs and slowly things began returning to situation normal.
I knew what my next step was.
I sought out a therapist versed in gender identity and got an appointment. I worked with her on figuring out what I wanted to do, and three months later I booked an appointment with an Endocrinologist, got my meds prescribed, and on December 23, I began my transition. I had come to realize I was a lesbian trans woman all my life. And now, I can try to live that life authentically and fully.
That was forty-four years of my life in a very rough outline. There are lots of things I glossed over and many things that I outright omitted. I don't think they are part of my trans-identity and don't need to be gone into here, but they are part of me, and I may touch on them in another post as I define myself and talk about my journey.
-Ginny (finally)
Comments
Post a Comment