Adjectif

"Trans-huh?" revisited...

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 12:52:12 GMT

I was rereading old entries and saw my one on the use of "woman" and "girl" and "man" and "boy" to talk about various members of the trans community. Here's what Google says today:

trans-woman, transwoman: 72880
trans-girl, transgirl: 80800
trans-man, transman: 245000
trans-boy, transboy: 12179

So what we learn is that transwoman has grown in popularity relative to transgirl, but that transgirl is still more popular. That transboy is far less popular then transman now then it used to be. And that transman has had huge gains in popularity, being far more popular then even transwoman + transgirl combined. I do find it interesting that the FTM community seems to use "transman" for more often then the MTF community uses "transwoman" or "transgirl". I wonder if this has to do with society simply assuming "transsexual" or "transgender" to be refering to MTFs and so the FTM community has had a greater need to be specific?

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 18:10:47 GMT

Oh, there's one detail I didn't mention in my last post: I've been coping in part by playing a lot of World of Warcraft. It worries me a little... it's kind of magical wish fullfillment... I can be instantly female bodied and accepted by the world as being who and what I am. It's clearly helped me go a year without nearly as much pain as I've had in previous years, but it doesn't do anything for me long term.

And then what happened?

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 04:31:32 GMT

Well children, it was about then that a friend got this idea about starting a new business... and somehow this seemed like a good idea to me. I started spending my free time working on that, while still working my main job. (This also had the side effect of leaving me no time for introspection— I think this was a way for me to avoid my issues.) So I was really busy as we worked hard on both a business plan and the software that would support it.

Meanwhile I was applying to jobs down in the City and had a couple of interviews. (This was for four reasons: 1) I wasn't making enough money at my main job to do anything other then get by— this wasn't any fun. 2) If I ever wanted to transition then I'd need cash reserves. 3) It'd be a lot easier to get services to support transition in the City. 4) It'd get me closer to the friend that I was starting the business with.) Anyway, I interviewed a few places and they were very slow to get back to me. In November I finally decided to move to the City, new job or no, in part 'cause my existing job was prepared to let me work from there. So I moved down with the idea in my mind that I'd be working on this new business.

Only a week after I'd selected an apartment I got a call from one of the places I'd interviewed at during the summer. They'd misplaced my paperwork and were very apologetic. They called me in for lunch and offered me the job on the spot, making more then I'd ever made anywhere before. I took it, though it did restrict just how much work I could do on the new business. And indeed, it made it so that I had even less time to introspect. So now nearly a year's passed since I moved down here... no visible progress has been made, though not a day goes by that I don't think about it...

Ugh...

Fri, 27 May 2005 21:50:32 GMT

Looking at my behavior I'm afraid that I may falling into a depression. Not the I'm-so-sad kind, but rather the hopeless-lack-of-activity kind. Listless, agoraphobic, shut in, all of these would describe me this past month or so. I'm in an up-mode today, which is the only reason that I'm able to have the where-with-all to even post this. It all became clear to me after I spent the entire day Wednesday self-consciously in a funk, unable to bring myself to do anything.

While some of this may be due to gender issues-- I'm starting to have the need to come out to more people and that's always really stressful-- that's only part of it. I changing jobs right now, leaving the company that I'm at now that I'm a partial owner of-- not because I'm unhappy with it but simply because it can't pay me either regularly or enough. So I get to job hunt and move... great more stress. But it's ultimately positive, I think. Right now I'm in a small town in a small state with basically no obvious trans-friendly resources. Getting a new job will move me into a city with lots of trans-related resources. This is actually a significant part of what brought about my decision to quit. The fact that my trans-ness is a significant factor in my decision is also pushing my need to come out-- I'd like to be able to tell my business partner so that I can help further alay his fears that I'm leaving due to some fault of his. But I also promised myself that I'd come out to my parents before I came out to anyone else...

And it's not that I fear a negative reaction from my parents. It's just that it will be emotionally draining and thus I'm avoiding it. And the depressive funk I've been in doesn't help me get up the gumption to do it.

I should add that the depressive funk is more worrying to me now then it once would have been, due to the fact that my mother was diagnosed a few years back with manic-depressive disorder. And that's inheritable. Mind you, she had only been expressing obvious symptoms of it for a year or so when she was diagnosed. It's not something that she had been suffering with her whole life. And she's on medication that really did return her to her pre-symptom self. So it's not like a-- oh no, the world would end-- sort of thing, but it is something I watch for in myself when I see highs or lows. Still, it's hard to know exactly where the line between normality and pathology lies.

Interview with Deborah Rudacille on the science of gender

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 06:56:57 GMT

I posted this over on transgender yesterday:
IT Conversations has this interview available:

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Johns-Hopkins' Deborah Rudacille about scientific definitions -- science now shows us that tens of millions of people do not fall into the physiological definition of either male and female. They talk about her new book: "The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights."

http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail440.html
(IT Conversations is a podcasting site, as such the interview is available for download in MP3 format.)

On names...

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 06:39:56 GMT

I haven't selected a name yet. I have the option of selecting a female name that has the same nickname as my male name. As I'm only known by my nickname this would one less thing for folks to get used to. On the other hand, it seems to me that it might simply allow them to pretend that it's not happening, screw up pronouns, etc. Still, it does seem like the path of maximum lazyness and if there's anything I've learned, it's that the path of maximum lazyness is the path most often followed.

I posed this as a question to the mtf community here.

[Edit Dec 29th, 2006] I did actually pick a name... really, I had picked it even before I began this journal, I just wasn't commited to it yet. But now it's as deeply a part of me as my birth name ever was.

On procrastination...

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 06:36:49 GMT

I had kind of been excusing myself for not making any progress in the last two months because there had been the possibility I would be moving to the city soon. (To start a software startup.) While this is still likely, I've realized that I need to not procrastinate any more.

First step going forward is hair removal, I think. Right now I'm tentatively planning on laser followed by electrolysis. From what I've read, I'm a pretty ideal candidate for laser, with dark (almost black) hair and extremely pale skin. Meanwhile I should be finding a therapist— though that's trickier due to my ruralness and non-driveyness— I may wait until moving to teh City. I guess it depends on how long it takes to become city bound. There just aren't many choices within a reasonable distance for me.

[Edit Dec 29th, 2006] Oh look, that didn't happen. :( As I said later, I did move to the City, start the startup, started a new job, and started living all of my free time in virtual worlds where transition isn't necessary. So once again I neglect my body (I become more and more dissassociated with it as the years go by). Still, there's some hope on the horizon now... though only time will tell if it's a false dawn.

On coming out...

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 06:28:26 GMT

During transition all trans-people are forced to be out to many people (friends, family, employer, aquantences, etc).

This is rather different then the GLB growd, who can be picky about who to tell. Certainly, the server at your a restraunt you frequent doesn't have to know— this is hard to avoid for a trans-person. Maybe I'm just being small towny about this?
[Edit: Not meaning that the server will "read" you, but rather that they've seen you before and after transition.]

This is one of the reasons I think the trans-crowd is pretty invisible post transition. They've been forced to be out so much that they're sick of it and just want to sink into the background. I suppose the other part is that the first years post-transition involve, I'm sure, much insecurity in one's acceptance in one's new projected sex.

Now mind you, as I'm oriented towards women I'll still have to deal with out-issues, but they will actually help confirm my new sex, so I don't expect to be closeted in that respect.

Told a friend...

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 06:22:22 GMT

Back around the end of January I came out to my oldest and best friend. He's taken it quite well, though that's not really surprising to me. (I will be surprised if I have trouble with anyone I actually care about, but you never know.)

I did this because I had the need to speak to someone. Talking to yourself in journal form is one thing, actually speaking to another is quite different. This is part of the reason that it is very difficult to bring about personal change through self-analysis alone.

We talked for several hours after I told him. One thing I thought was interesting was that he didn't actually immediately associate transsexualism with transition to the other sex. I guess he must have been hanging around with genderqueer folk.

Voice

Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:16:57 GMT

Voice is one of those critical, often difficult and extremely personal issues for anyone transitioning. It's also one that I find especially interesting due to my interests in linguistics and language. While it was a concern for me, I wasn't too worried as I've always had a pretty good ear for the sounds of language.

A month or so ago I figured out how to produce a reasonably female-sounding voice that didn't sound like a caricature. I played some with using frequency analysis tools (which were fun, but for me, unhelpful). The voice just came to me one night while lying in bed. I'm not yet able to articulate exactly how I'm creating the voice.

In order to give myself tasks in practicing the voice, I'm going to go through my old posts and record readings of them. I'll then post the readings as comments. I suppose that once I finish going through once, I may go back and start again. It should provide an interesting view of the evolution of my voice.

[Edit: Hahaha, practice will I? Okay, so that didn't happen... and I'm not totally happy with where my voice stands today but I am pretty confident that I'll achieve it.]

The coming year

Mon, 10 Jan 2005 14:58:38 GMT

For the first time I can remember I have a specific future that I'm looking towards for the coming year...

I'll be taking my second Japanese language class starting later this month. Learning a language makes me go *squee*.
I intend to start electrolysis in the next month or two (or three). It will be interesting to see what reactions will be like as this will be the first time I will have shaved since I was 18.
I also intend to find a therapist to start down the more official road. Not only for the practical reasons, but also because I think it will be genuinely helpful. I do dispair at the prospect of finding someone local. It seems likely that the closest I'll be able to find will be an hour or more away. (It is pretty rural where I live.)
More work on the Voice. More on this in a moment...

These past three weeks...

Mon, 15 Nov 2004 13:00:52 GMT

I've been away from the journal for three weeks. In that time I've been trying to retake control of my life. In the past I haven't had any direction. I had let my life run down the default track. I was lucky enough and talented enough to do reasonably well with no direction, but it wasn't actually getting me anywhere. As I've said before, I think my directionlessness can be directly tied to my unconscious attempts to avoid dealing with my gender dysphora.

Anyway, as part of my fixing my life I've done the follow:

* I've reorganized my schedule, strictly segregating work from personal time. Until now I had arbitrarily let them intermix, resulting in very little personal time.
* I've started taking better care of my body, eating less, exercising more, having breakfast, etc.
* I've started strictly scheduling my time. Though this needs to be extended even further.

Whenever I start to slack on my new regimen I come back here and find my resolve strong once again.

On the effects of journaling

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 21:56:36 GMT

These past two days, now that I've begun to write all this down, I have felt as well as I can ever remember feeling. Not better mind you, every year I have a few days like this, but as good as the best is pretty darn good. I think it's allowed me to clarify my thinking even more then the internal monologueing that I did prior to this.

Though I find myself only able to speak of the feeling in cliches:
Like a breath of fresh air
Liberating
Like seeing the world anew

On being your own Cassandra

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:45:06 GMT

Looking back I feel like I have, at times, been my own oracle. Sitting in the curling smoke of self-knowledge, looking forward and intoning: "Someday, I will feel X. I don't today. I can't even fully understand it today. But someday I know I will." And then years later having it come to pass.

This is how I felt at eight or nine looking on towards puberty, though of course it takes no sage to predict that (but to an eight year old it feels like it does). I didn't look upon in apprehensively, just dispationately.

And again, this is how I felt at 21 looking and seeing the kernel of gender dysphora within me.

Phone numbers in Pi

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:19:23 GMT

While I can pull various anecdotes from my past that seem to afirm my gender dysphora, I'm always afraid it's like finding phone numbers in Pi. You see, you can find any number in Pi, if you can but search far enough into it, since it is an infinite list of non-repeating numbers. More generally, given a large enough sample size, you can find examples of anything.

And so I fear that I'm projecting my (gender dysphoric) world view today onto my own past. I despair at the prospect of trying to view our past without the filter of the present.

Cognitive dissonance

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:02:39 GMT

I guess the point of some of these entries really is that I didn't have the same cognitive dissonance that many tg/ts people do. When I read their stories they seem to be filled with agony due to the cognitive dissonance between how they self-identify and how the world treats them.

[Edit Dec 29th, 2006] I wasn't feeling it at the time I wrote the post but I've had moments since then that I've broken down and burried my face in a pillow and cried.

On masculinity and femininity

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 15:56:50 GMT

One of the things that has, I think, made it difficult for me to confront this is that I was not raised with society standard views of what men and women should be like. Mind you, I don't view this as a negative. It's core to who I am and who my parents are. I wouldn't be me without my fluid views as to gender appropriate activities.

This brought about two things:

My view of masculinity was broad enough to include a lot of what is traditionally viewed as feminine only.
My view of femininity was broad enough not to require me to step very far out of traditional masculine roles in order to reach it.

Since the world of the masculine and the world of the feminine overlap for me, I could step over to the other side and not have this be obvious to the world at large.

Trans-huh?

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 18:05:49 GMT

I've noticed that when trans-folk talk about themselves they usually use trans-girl or trans-man. More rarely do you see trans-woman and trans-boy seems to be rare. The femanist in me rebells at this. Google seems to back up these observations:

trans-girl: 12000
trans-woman: 4980
trans-man: 12700
trans-boy: 8480

Is this because trans-folk, in an effort to pass, tend to retreat into the most conservative of gender presentations in their new gender? This probably helps when in stealth mode.

[Edit Dec 29th, 2006] The numbers have changed lot, see here.

Thinking back ten years...

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 06:29:57 GMT

I realize that even then I was entertaining ideas that I my be trans, even if I didn't really know it at the time.

I remember wondering if my life would have been substantively different had I been born female. I spent enough time on enough seperate occasions that I still remember those thought experiments today.

When I dropped out of highschool...

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 06:24:38 GMT

When I dropped out of highschool, I did so by staying up all night writing whatever came to mind. I then shared it with my parents in the morning. The recognized that it was no longer doing anything for me and I was removed from the rolls (I got my GED a few months later).

I'd been recalling one of the images in it for a while now but I had been unable to veryify my memory until just two weeks ago. Here is the passage, unedited. It is made up of reporting images that I could see when I closed my eyes, mixed with my analysis at the time. I was 17 when I wrote this.

My images that I have not lived aare mostly fixed around a future family, in particular my child.

I don't have any images of a wife, however I do fo a daughter. Two in fact. The first is of her, perhaps five years old. Maybe a little younger. It is almost photographic like. It is hard to describe, but I actually feel a parental surge when I think of it, which I also cannot describe, but I am at a loss of word sto describe all that I feel. A need to protect, love, nurture, teach, help. The second is of her as a teenage of perhaps fourteen, or fifteen. The feelings are just as trong here, but the image isn't as clear. More like a glance into a room, one is walking past. I find it hard to continue, due to emothion. I almost feel grief as of a loss of something I do not have.

My memory of the images today are thus:
The first, younger image, was one of the girl curled up in a fetal postion, floating in blackness.
The second older image was of the girl sitting upon a chair in a pool of light, surrounded by blackness.

My analysis today is very different then it was then. I viewed the vision as that of a daughter at the time. Now I believe that it was a vision of myself. In fact, this fits very well with my own personal history.

When I was young I was not particularly constrained by gender roles (in large part due to my parents concerted efforts). This meant that I could happily just be, without having to personally worry about gender roles. Thus my female identity from that period is well formed. Later, as society at large had a larger impact on my life, I was pushed into the role that society had cast for my physical gender (combined with puberty of course) and as a result my teenage female self was ill defined. But seeing it made my cry out in grief and pain. And then I buried all of this for several years. *sigh*

This analysis is one that I came to perhaps a year ago, but I didn't want to attach too much meaning to it until I got to see the original writing again. I feared that I was projecting too much of myself now into it. Seeing it now I don't believe I was. It actually fits better then I expected.

Why now?

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 05:11:45 GMT

One thing I wanted to address in the last entry was what brought me to the point of writing these entries. The bigest thing was, after having created this account and adding a bunch of trans commmuties, reading others postings and having my own story to tell.

But one thing that really encouraged me was hearing that a teacher at my father's school recently came out as m-to-f trans. She's undergoing hormone treatment now and will be ready for reassignment surgery next summer. What I found so encouraging was her courage to do this now. She's almost fifty and is 6'4". This makes my fears about my own ability to pass seem kind of insignificant.

What I fear

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 05:05:57 GMT

I've been very slow to deal with my gender dysphora. As I said earlier, I've been aware of it for years. I'm a happy person by default, now-a-days. Though this may just be a case of buying my own spin*. I can currently identify two things that were holding me back from dealing with it. One was fear of transition. The other was unwillingness to fit others stereotypes of what genders should be like.

I've discussed the fear of transition already some. (It's pretty straight forward anyway. Fear of the various negatives that come from it. Fear of change generally.)

The stereotype issue though, I think, may be some what unique. One of the core values that I was raised with was that gender stereotypes are destructive. I object when male associates make sexist or stereotyped comments about women. Similarly I object when female associates make sexist or stereotyped comments about men. Often I object by saying "don't generalize, _I'm_ not like that". But as soon as I say it I hear myself thinking "yeah, but you don't identify as male, so doesn't that prove their point?" I kind of hate the idea that when I come out as trans people might say "ah-hah! I can now understand your behavior in the past", on the other hand such a statement would feel like an affirmation of my status.

* There was a time when I realized two things: A) People are perceived as more successful, more attractive, better in all ways, if they appear happy, smiling. B) Presenting oneself as happy can produce actual feelings of happiness. Taking these together I decided to start presenting myself as happy. A side effect of this was that if I wasn't smiling all the time people started interpreting me as being upset. Another is that I came to think of myself as being basically happy. I now think that at its core this was a way of avoiding dealing with self actualization issues.

My happy childhood

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 04:53:10 GMT

When I was very young (first half of primary school and before) I didn't have any gender identity problems. My parents conciously did not foist societal gender roles upon me. My only friends at the time were male but that's because the only kids my age near me (prior to school) and at school were male. (I went to a K-12 free school for K-3. It was very small. When I started there were four other kids my age (or a year older) and they were all boys.) My toys ranged the spectrum -- dolls, stuffed animals, transformers, star wars action figures. Though I did already loathe GI Joe (my paternal grandmother got me one of those one year). The fact that my parents very specifically did not want to impose societies ideas of what was appropriate or inappropriate, I think helped me not have the sense of conflict that so many transgendered people have. Additionally, going to a free school meant that I continued to get role models who weren't into machismo. Others in society do have an impact, but at that age and with the relative level of isolation that I had, the impact was minor for me.

(I should also note that I these years were spent living in an extremely rural area. Our closest neighbors were a 1/4 of a mile a way through the forest on an unmarked path.)

Fears

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 03:58:30 GMT

One of the things that has stopped me from doing more then just saying it in my own mind (and I've been doing that for years) is fear of transition. At this point I think the only part I truely fear is voice training. Everything else, though painful, slow and difficult, is well defined for me. But changing ones voice so that it can pass...

Even now it seems daunting to me. I suppose what I now need is to see success stories. What little media coverage there is, seems to always be focussed on transition. I suppose this makes sense. Once you're passing, TV coverage is kind of dull.

An observation on who I viewed as peers

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 03:26:10 GMT

At the end of grammar school and the begining of junior highschool, those that I viewed myself as competative with academically were girls. Looking back now I realize that there were boys who were equally competative. Mind you, I only know this because of, for instance, newspaper photos that include them. They were invisible to me then and I have no memory of them now.