Unwritten Rules of Gender Part 2: Behavior and Communication

Gender Therapy Day: 199

See Gender Therapy: Day 000 to learn more about my hormone-induced journey of self discovery. 

"When a man focuses on the content level of meaning after a woman has disclosed a problem, she may feel he is disregarding her emotions and concerns. He, on the other hand, may well be trying to support her in the way that he has learned to show support – suggesting ways to solve the problem." (source)

Unwritten Rules of Gender Part 2: Behavior and Communication.

See Unwritten Rules of Gender Part 1 to hear about Identity.

I have been meaning to write about gender and communication for months now and finally I feel like I have the words with which to articulate how complicated communication can be in regards to gender.

For the past few months I have had trouble communicating with my roommate. With the addition of a new sublet our relationship began to deteriorate. What I thought I was observing was her crumbling under the stress of a new, incompatible personality into her intimate space, and that I was attempting to be helpful by offering suggestions. In reality it was me not validating her during this experience, which was stressing her out more than the original stressor of having a new roommate. All she wanted all this time was for her experience to be acknowledged and for her efforts to be appreciated, and all I did was make her feel like I was blaming her for the whole situation.

In short: I'm not very good at validation, and I am pushy about my advice.

We broke down and had a successful heart-to-heart last night thanks to her having suggested I look into reading about "non-violent communication". After a few weeks of practicing the structure and looking for key words which reveal someone's emotional state, I ended up learning how very, very incompatible my own natural communication style is with other people, specifically females. (Not to be stereotypical, but gendered communication is ingrained in us. Read on, I promise it gets better.)

All my life I have been a very confident, fearless individual. I spoke my mind and used direct language. Growing up I was my mother's "star child" and she and other adults fed me innumerable cliches about how I will accomplish much in life and how I will go far and wide. My ambitions and strong traits were encouraged at home and also at school.

At the same time my superiors found me obnoxious, inappropriate, and lacking common sense. I wasn't the average heteronormative, Christian, middle class kid, and my problems were assumed to be associated with poverty, or a high intellect. I didn't have mentors who could show me the ropes or guide me and correct my behavior. All anybody saw of me was an ambitious young person who shouldn't be discouraged or distracted from my goals. They figured it would be my lack of monetary resources that would hold me back in life, not my shitty interpersonal skills.

I somehow navigated my way out of childhood with a sort of clumsy method of communication that emphasized a concise and business-oriented style. With my confidence I was mistaken for a leader and was encouraged to pursue leadership positions. Unfortunately my boldness was not always helpful in resolving conflict or connecting with club members. In many situations people thought I was heartless and out of touch. When told not to listen to naysayers I learned to blame others for their inability to communicate with me instead of looking at myself critically or recognizing my bad traits. My peers no longer trusted me to empathize with them or to be a diplomatic representative of their cause. I was an individualist, a freelancer, a drifter, and alone.

Because of this I tumbled out into the world as an adolescent largely misunderstood and left out of intimate conversations. What I found however, was that I was great at networking and establishing shallow relationships. Very solution-oriented, I listened to problems and offered solutions. I suggested ideas in groups and mingled with a variety of successful people. I succeeded to land jobs and internships, all based on a good first impression.

I think this has a lot to do with gender because professional communication in this society is based on male speech patterns and I had met that basic standard. I identified more and more with men and their personalities that over time I described my personality and presented myself as more "masculine", and it worked. I recognized that I had a very male-oriented way of thinking and interaction.

The typical male's style of communication in the society I live in is described as being utilitarian, geared towards accomplishing objectives and getting to the point of the conversation. Men interact with the intention of maintaining their status and controlling themselves. The communication style is more direct, interruptions are not uncommon, and examples are used in general terms. Feedback is not always necessary and emotional responses are often inappropriate. If another man is asked for advice this raises their status. In bullet format:

	status and control – give advice
	instrumentality – the use of speech to accomplish objectives (discover facts, get information, and suggest solutions)
	conversational command – men tend to talk more and at greater length than women (in most circumstances)
	men are more likely to interrupt to exert control than women
	direct and assertive
	more abstract than feminine speech (men often speak in general terms that are removed from concrete experiences and distanced from personal feelings)
	less emotionally responsive than feminine speech patterns (men, more often than women, give minimal response cues)

These and heteronormative styles of gendered communication can be found here. (Disclaimer: Not all masculine identified individuals match these styles of communication. While heterosexuals and the associated binary culture are common, they are no longer the norm. The standards and definition of masculinity are changing dramatically.)

This whole list typifies my communication style almost perfectly, which further enforces my longing for being recognized as masculine and for transitioning. However this list does nothing for me when I am perceived as female and thus expected to interact in a very different manner. All I succeed to do is confuse people. I seem "antisocial", "awkward", "aggressive", "uncultured", and "intimidating". I am a "weird girl", and not to be trusted. It hurts my relationship building skills with heterosexual men I wish to befriend and interested women I wish to pursue.

As a child I can see when these patterns were being formed. In elementary school I was annoying and energetic. I was a big kid, smart and quick and reckless, but I didn't listen very closely to "no" and "stop" and ended up accidentally hurting others. That was okay with the boys, but the girls thought I was aggressive and avoided me.

Because of this I was never properly socialized as a girl. I didn't get the chance to develop my feminine social skills, and I was lost when it came time for me to grow up and be a woman. I knew I was very different from other girls, but they rejected me, and I resented that.

At some point I regarded their motives and social activities as stupid and pointless. Uncomfortable clothing, expensive accessories, lengthy sessions in front of mirrors, for what? To enhance your appearance to attract boys? Emotional, lengthy conversations, for what? To strengthen relationships with equally annoying girls?

In my childhood I didn't have examples of successful women, only overly sexualized and emotionally unstable stereotypes. I didn't see women in heterosexual relationships who had ambitious goals outside of family building. I concluded that if this was what femininity was about, then to hell with being a sexual object! I wanted nothing to do with female culture! (Mind you this was my childhood experience and not representative of my educated opinions or later experiences. I know there are heterosexual, feminine women leaders and professional mothers in real life.)

I gave up on fitting it. I just focused on being myself and establishing myself in the professional world. I didn't focus on gender but instead carved out respect with my assertive communication style. I rejected and corrected people's expectations of me based on my assumed gender and pushed forward. Mastering being an emotional creature was not important to meeting my goals and I thought feminine speech patterns inhibited me in the professional world.

Unfortunately in the world of interpersonal communication my masculine pattern of communication only continued to make it difficult to establish relationships. In recent years women still don't feel comfortable around me. I am often very concise in my verbage and don't connect with them on a deep level. This is a major source of frustration for me when it comes to making friends and having relationships. It's difficult enough to find women who get along with me, but more so women who are interested in me.

Sometimes men who approach me find my communication style brutal and clumsy, but I usually have an easier time diving into a conversation and establishing a friendship. Unfortunately often times I can't be too close or they fall for me. In my adolescence these relationships were mistaken for romance. Only recently did I realize this was a problem in communication and not a problem with me.

Looking at myself now I feel like there is a large chasm of communication skills that I need to fill. People to this day regard me as tactless. While that helps point out that there is something wrong, this tells me nothing about what I should be working on, or how to go about it, or which ways are correct and appropriate, and which ways are offensive and disrespectful.

With a sense of desperation and drudgery I turned to my gender therapist with the "non-violent communication" material my roommate suggested I read about. They then gave me a worksheet to practice and I've been on it for weeks. Practicing the conversation structure and looking for key words as to how others express themselves. Ultimately it comes down to listening passionately to what is being said and to look for opportunities to contribute.

Speaking with my roommate with compassion and understanding for the first time in months I recognized that this pattern of communication works and makes people comfortable. It gives them the space they need to articulate themselves. These patterns are also similar to feminine styles of communication, which makes sense that it is something I have to practice and which does not come naturally to me. It was also something that was unattractive to me in childhood, but something that I need to work on, now more than ever.

For women, communication is crucial for building relationships. It is the basic method through which they maintain relationships and it is means for sharing information about themselves to understand one another. It is also vitally important in relating to one another, comforting one another, and empathizing. Having personal anecdotes in discussion implies credibility and mastery. Being responsive is very important in conversation as is maintaining eye contact and encouraging each other to extend the conversation is a sign of acceptance and builds deep connections. In bullet format:

	show support for others. Communicators often express feelings of sympathy and understanding. The relationship level of talk focuses on feelings and on the relationship between the communicators rather than the content of the message.
	questions that probe for greater understanding of feelings and perceptions surrounding the subject of the talk
	maintenance work” which involves efforts to sustain conversation by inviting others to speak
	responsiveness (eye contact, nod or say, “tell me more” or “that’s interesting.”)
	a concrete, real style (details, personal disclosures)
	tentativeness (tentative communication leaves the door open for others to respond)

From the same website above. (Disclaimer: Ideally communication is the key to all relationships, regardless of gender. While it is common for feminine identifying individuals to develop unique communication styles specifically to empathize and maintain relationships, not all women communicate in the same way or for the same reasons. The standards and definition of femininity are changing dramatically.)

What I have learned through studying non-violent communication is my communication style is largely incompatible with most women, and also with many men. My communication style has always been based on content when instead I should be focused on context. Instead of using conversation as a form of entertainment or a tool for productivity, I should instead use it as a way to learn about other people and build relationships.

Not every conversation I will have with someone needs to have a topic and a well endowed range of information. Not every person is looking for my expertise on a subject or cares to hear my advice stacked with statistics. Sometimes when people come to me they are seeking to vent and want to hear validation. Sometimes they just want to be heard and understood and have their existence recognized.

If I were seeking to establish a connection with someone I could contribute something interesting and encourage them to speak more about themselves. I could ask about them and be more responsive to their stories. I could be more supportive of their ideas instead of critical. I could stop suggesting expansive new paradigms and start listening to their own unique development. I could stop psychoanalyzing them and just listen to their own perspective of themselves and their lives.

I have always had a long-term plan for my life, and often relentlessly pursue opportunities for advancement, but in the long-term relationships are arguably the most important aspect of building a satisfying life. No matter how engaging of a task I am completing or how amazing a career I have, if I can't develop fulfilling relationships I will only feel lonely and empty in life.

Am I getting a little too existentialist here? My point is that I stink at communication sometimes, which means I stink worse at relationships, and that in order to be myself I need to be less focused on being masculine and more focused on learning how to communicate with other people, of all sexes.

Gender Therapy: Day 194 Golden Star Lesbians

See Gender Therapy: Day 000 to learn more about my hormone-induced journey of self discovery. 

Yesterday marked the date of my last visit to the clinic for my hormonal birth control research shtick. I gave four vials of blood, my last three month's worth of sexual history, and two samples of my cervix. They also tried to collect a sample of my endometrium (read: uterus) but failed to and I asked them to stop trying. Apparently the lining of my uterus thins as being on hormonal birth control prevents one from being pregnant while their body thinks they're already pregnant. However their attempt was exceptionally painful and put me into shock, as it did the previous two times.

I don't think painful gives the experience enough justice. It was a feeling of violation and then all of a sudden the instrument inside of you bites you and your muscles spasm into a cramp and you close your legs and turn white and nearly faint because ouch. Just short of traumatic.

Anyway, it was intense and I don't want to do that ever again; for the same reason I don't want to give bone marrow. I love helping other people but not at the risk of my own physical health and autonomy. Not even for painful seconds worth of torture. I'm not that kind of person.

So I gave my samples, got paid and got the hell out of there. The moments passed quickly, I was out in under two hours instead of the usual four. I treated myself to some Chinese food before work and then I recounted how I told them I hadn't had sex in over a month. The last time I did, it was wonderful and beautiful but I was thinking about somebody else.

About a month ago I succeeded to have a date with a beautiful older women. I thought about her for days on end. Then she stopped talking to me and I freaked and felt insecure about all the things I am not and all the people I don't have in my life and all the judgement I have ever received about my sexuality. Well no wonder I'm not getring laid. Who wants to have sex with an emotionally insecure spazz?

The weeks following my usual cuddle buddy had more important things to do than to invite me over for a few hours of distracting escapism. They are in the middle of moving forward with major life changes and need to focus on themselves and the things that they need. At first it hurt to feel like I wasn't as important, but at the same time I too need to change things up and move forward with my life. I want to find a romantic partner, someone I can build a life together with instead of escape life together with. 

Actually it felt more like losing a best friend. That's harder to deal with, but I need more friends anyway. I am a lot more mentally active in the spring and summer than one person can handle.

Somewhere during that month I talked about wanting to be abstinent again and about how liberating it was to not think of myself as a sexual creature who needs sex to be healthy or happy. They didn't believe me at first but that's definitely what happened over time. I also spoke about my dating experience with a "golden star" lesbian and they succeeded in challenging my sexuality by calling me a "cardboard star" lesbian because of my history with guys.

"Golden star" lesbian is the title given to a lesbian woman who has never has sex with a man. It is a rare occurrence and they hold onto this title with a sense of accomplishment and pride. However, thinking critically about it, the whole "golden star" lesbian superiority complex is incredibly sexist. There are groups of lesbian women who are misandrists who hate men, sure, but there are also groups of lesbians who judge an rank other lesbians for their past, and sometimes even present.

The title of a "golden star" lesbian disqualifies anyone who has touched men or identifies as a man. It disqualifies lesbians who once identified as bisexual, lesbians who once identified as straight, sexual assault victims, anyone who has or once had male genitalia or who identifies or once identified as a man, such as trans* people, and it also disqualifies partners of trans* people.

Basically this concept enforces the ideal standard of a lesbian as being a biological female who has never been sexual with a man. That is extremely sexist! When asked why they never tried, they might say, "Ew! No Way! Dicks are gross!" However it doesn't matter how raunchy the women they have slept with could have been. The lesbian who has had sex with drunken women with caked on makeup who puked all over themselves and couldn't utilize their bowels in a clean manner could be a "golden star", but the woman who once touched a wiener in college is not eligible? Also the first scenario is gross. 

What is wrong with having sex with men? Why are they so "icky"? Why are they somehow less sexually desirable? Why is it wrong to find them sexually desirable?

Why can a woman have sex with as many women as they want but not a man? In fact this sort of discrimination applies to men too. Bisexual men are looked down upon, and gay men too, because having sex with men is "icky". Why can a man have sex with as many woman as they want but not another man? Women are looked down upon as well when they have sex with men, such as before marriage, or when they get divorced, or when they have sex with more than one man. Why can a straight women "experiment" with as many women as they want but they shouldn't "experiment" with lots of men? It is sexist. It is all very very sexist.

These sorts of concepts are the reason I don't like to reveal my own sexuality. I don't want people to assume things of me based on my interests or behaviors or history or future. The fact that sexuality and romantic interest are defined differently, and strictly, is also kind of bullshit. Aromantic, bisexual, homoromantic, asexual, heteroromantic... Who cares!? If you like someone why do you have to base your whole identity around it? And if you include gender it gets even more complicated. 

For example: Can an agender person even have a sex-segregated sexuality? What if they like women sexually but men romantically? What do you call a trans man who likes other trans men? Gay? What if he likes cis men? What about cis people who like hermaphrodidic imagery? Is fury a sexuality? What about asexual aromantics? 

The point is there are as many different sexualities as there are people, but most prefer to be grouped together into generic terms and are happy to fulfill expectations. Unfortunately the more people per group the more crowded and unhappy it can be and thus people create new terms everyday to better describe and understand themselves.

But I think it's bullshit that a bisexual who has never had sex with a man is still less appealing to some than a lesbian who has never had sex with a man.

And I am NOT a "cardboard star" lesbian because I am NOT sexist. I love women. I love men. I love trans* people. I love cis* people. I love queer people and straight people and disabled people and able people and mentally variant people and neurotypicals. I might not be romantically attracted to everyone, nor would I want sex with everyone, but that doesn't mean that I think any gender or any sex or any person is better or worse or cleaner or more gross. 

Honestly I judge how I feel about someone only after I've been around them for some time, and I tell them what I feel without the need to declare some universal sexuality. I shouldn't have to label myself just because I'm not 100% sure about my interest in everyone I see. And if I do use a label one day I don't want it to be challenged based on my history, or their insecurity of my sexual future.

All of this just further makes me want to transition to a man just to shuck the potential for me to be called a lesbian, a "cardboard star" lesbian, a misandrist, a feminazi, or any other extremist, sexist labels. At the same time it makes me want to never again touch a man for fear that I will be thrown out of lesbian circles of all kinds, as if these ideas are the golden standard for lesbian women to aspire to. The whole idea of sex-segregated sex makes me want to curl up into a ball and become a rock. An asexual rock. One without genitalia, so I can't have my sensitive, fleshy samples taken.

Gender Therapy: Day 167 Negotating Relationships, Negotiating Emotions

See Gender Therapy: Day 000 to learn more about my hormone-induced journey of self discovery. 

I expect this post to be up and down, back and forth, conflicting and complex. Maybe it's because I'm human, and maybe you feel this way too, but it will be a roller coaster of a read. Fair warning.

This is a roller coaster. This is how I feel. This is how I think. This is how I feel about other people. This is how other people make me feel. This is how life makes me feel. This is how jobs make me feel. This is how classes make me feel. This is how the future makes me feel, and the past makes me feel, and how I feel right now. When I don't feel this, I feel like I'm waiting for the ride to start again. I'm always in the cart, and I'm always on this roller coaster.

Not many people know this, but this is how I always feel. This is who I am.

Many people don't think that I'm very empathetic, and that I don't know how they feel when they tell me about difficulties in their life. I tend to keep a lot of this introspective knowledge about myself to myself, because I don't want them to think I'm hypersensitive to emotions, or that I'm emotionally unstable.

Here's how investors feel. Maybe they have Bipolar II Disorder.

Honestly I've gone through every emotion in the book, and I have the potential to cycle through this every day, or every other day, but definitely every week, and every month, and absolutely every year.

I feel like I have anniversaries for everything in my life. Every time that I remember something that happened to me in the past, whether it was a major event or a minor event, just the fact that I remember that it happened brings back how I felt about it, and then I feel that way.

That would explain why I am forgetful about a lot of things. I don't want to remember everything that has ever happened to me. I would rather repress most of it and continue pushing forward, feeling and experiencing new things, instead of being held back by the chains of time, feeling everything I've already felt before, cycling through emotions I no longer want to feel.

I don't like to watch movies because I get sucked in to how the characters feel, and I am ashamed at how stupid a lot of them act. They make dumb decisions that put everybody at risk, because of their squishie morality and their negligence to logic or survivalism. I feel stupid about myself because I am a human and I might do something like that. When people bring me to movie theatres they quickly learn what a bad idea it was. I publicly announce when the characters make stupid decisions and what they should have done. This is why people don't think I'm very nice.

Take the movie 2012 for example. SPOILER ALERT: When the family forced open the ship while the whole world was flooding dramatically so that more people could get on, they essentially broke the door. Now the whole ship will flood and everyone on that ship will die. Dumbasses.

I prefer to watch cartoons and shows that don't have such predictable morals so that I can actually enjoy the plot and the message, or the art and and theme, instead of hyperfocusing on how the characters are going about making decisions. Maybe it also has something to do with ADHD.

Visual art is my favorite and I could be completely consumed by an art piece for minutes and hours. Art gallery hopping is one of my favorite activities and I will sit and stare at my favorite piece of the night for a very long time. If I can get away with it I will take a picture of the piece.

I often steal pictures I find online, anything that catches and holds my eye for more than a few minutes. I will make one my desktop picture for months. I have folders and websites full of thousands of these pictures. I revisit them and analyze them for meaning and draw them and recreate them to mean different things. What did the artist want to communicate? Who is the artist? What is their background? What medium did they use? How much did it cost to make? How did they blend these colors? How did they get that texture? What other media are they referencing? What stories influenced them? Which other artists did they interact with? Did they talk to non-artists? Were they inspired by day-to-day life, by a lecture, by a book?

My imagination is a very vivid place. I can be very happy for days about something I think will happen in the future, imagining what a wonderful place life would be when that happens. Sometimes I will be very sad for days thinking about something terrible that has happened, or that might happen.

My dreams are so realistic I toss and turn and sometimes wake up crying to someone who isn't there or jumping out of bed to fight a phantom monster. Sometimes I've called people to ask about why they killed their brother or why they sold their house. Sometimes I carry on in conversation with people and ask for clarification only to say, "Oh sorry, that was just a dream."

I've felt and imagined so many different things I feel like I know what it feels like to be a bear hunter in the arctic circle or a native farmer on New Guinea. I feel like I could easily go through the motions of the Wright Brothers or Marco Polo or Genghis Khan, because I know how they feel. I can imagine what their life is like. I can imagine how they feel. I can imagine how their life was, the joy and excitement and the struggles and the criticism they've received.

I could totally live in Papua New Guinea. I know how they feel.

When I listen to music I usually do so privately. I will be singing my guts out to Evanescence, "Call me when you're Sober", or to Louis Armstrong, "What a Wonderful World". If people knew they would think I'm some kind of depressed. I sing and feel every lyric so intensely and it makes me feel alive. I don't actually think this way, about anyone or anything in particular, I just feel this way. When the song is over the feeling is over.

On a regular basis I prefer to listen to nonsensical music like the Gorillaz or Beck just so that I don't get so caught up in how they feel, because their lyrics don't make any damn sense. For the same reasons I delight in music videos.

I can very easily get overwhelmed by people and don't like to spend too much time with any one person or else by the end of it I will feel exhausted and can't do anything else with myself by the end of the day. This is very aspie of me and it's a real problem. However I love spending time with people and learning about them, getting to know them.

I analyze what person think and how they feel and think about what they've gone through in life and how they've evolved to become the person they are. I like when my friends have very diverse backgrounds so that the evolution is different each time, and unique and new, like my international friends or those who grew up differently than myself. I can cripple myself if I think too hard about it, but I try not to judge them or make them into just an idea. They are still people, very interesting people, but people none-the-less.

I need to interact with people regularly, even if it is for a little while. I need to know that people value me and that they enjoy my company and are willing to set time aside to spend with me. I have to negotiate the amount of time that I spend with people so that I don't get too overwhelmed by them but also so that I have enough time to do other things with my life, like working and keeping my house clean and feeding myself.

I like it best when I can live with people who like me and interact with me. Less travel time and no need to schedule interactions. When I feel loved and cared for and like someone is watching over me on a regular basis, I feel stable and secure. When someone is looking forward to me pursuing important things in my life, like a degree, a job, waiting for me to buy a camera and start freelancing, I feel important. I like telling people about interesting developments in my life and having them support and validate my decisions. This is probably why I like responsibility so much, because I feel like I am a part of something, I feel like I am involved, and I like it when I can meet people's expectations.

I feel most unstable when I feel alone. Loneliness is a poison to me. When someone leaves my life, when they move away or stop visiting with me, when they drop communication or I see them less and less regularly, I feel alone, I feel isolated.

When someone close to me leaves, or even just the thought of them leaving will cause me to freak out. I feel abandoned. Sometimes I cry and scream and think they don't love me. Sometimes I feel like a bad person and deserve to be punished. Sometimes I think they are selfish for thinking they don't need me, sometimes I think I am selfish for thinking they need me. I feel vulnerable and child-like. I don't show this, but I feel this way, and I feel this way out loud when I am alone.

Maybe it's partially due to PTSD, but this is why relationships are difficult. Ideally I want to be close to people, as many people as I can. I want to gobble them up, put them in my life, interact with them regularly, see them often, talk to them, play with them, cry with them, listen to them and help them solve problems in their life. I want to explain myself and how I feel and problem-solve out the kinks in my life, and be an important person to them like they are to me. I want us all to live together in our own unique utopian community, where all my favorite people are and where we all get along. We each have unique skills and thoughts and we can use them to overcome anything, together.

In actuality I don't want anyone to know how screwed up my past was, and I don't want them to hold it against me, and I don't want them to hold me against the person I was in the past and to compare and contrast me with that person. I don't want other people to know my vulnerabilities and to be able to use them against me, I don't want to tell them about all the pending events in my life so that they expect me to complete each task I set out to do. I am reserved.

The reality is I keep a lot of things to myself, including how I feel and think about everything. I seem unconcerned and distracted and busy all the time. I am not home most of the time and I am off pursuing opportunities, keeping appointments, out on friend dates and responding to emails and setting up new dates. I am running errands and grocery shopping, I am price checking things I want to buy and things I don't want to buy and comparing what my life would be like with these things vs without them. I am independent.

I don't want people to expect me to always be there, that is selfish. I don't want people to always expect me to fix their problems, or to fix the drain, or to always be able to afford groceries or to always be happy and available. That is unrealistic. I don't always feel as strong as people think I am, and I don't always feel as competent as people expect me to be, and I don't want them to know this about me, and I don't want their undying confidence in my abilities to ever subside.

I am afraid to tell people about myself, afraid that they won't trust the things that I say, because I say and think and feel differently every time I speak, and every time they will ask me about something they will get a different answer. This scares me and I rarely take the things I think and feel seriously. I doubt that anyone takes me seriously and I don't doubt it if they actually don't think I'm a serious person. I try to hold back from talking about conflicting ideas and when I do so successfully, I am able to have strong and important professional relationships. When I don't, they fall apart and I have to move on.

In my close relationships there is more flexibility and it's okay if I don't have only one-sided answers to give. Many people appreciate that I have complex analytically abilities, that I can listen to their own complicated situations and lives and feelings and smooth it out to find the things that are most important to them. People like that I have crystal clarity when it comes to their lives. I look like some kind of psychologist, as if I have been doing this for years. Close friends trust and confide in me, strangers ask me to figure out if they are gay or if they should pursue a relationship (this stuff really happens).

The truth is that not everyone wants to hear my two cents however and if I bust out my overwhelming thoughts on the wrong person they will run away screaming from me (this has really happened too).

The truth is that I know this and I have to be careful with whom I articulate my ideas. I feel like every person I know I need to create completely different communication skills with, and I have to talk about specific things with them. Some of my friends I can't talk about trans* things with, other friends I can't talk about videography with, still other people don't want to hear about my travel plans or my blog or my fantasy girlfriend.

Negotiating relationships is hard. It is hard enough that it takes me a while to get comfortable to people. It takes weeks and months before I trust them enough to reveal anything about me. Usually my relationships start out very one-sided, me listening in on their story, them trusting me every step of the way. Usually they talk more than I do, and I really don't mind.

It takes me seconds to make friends but weeks to keep them and months to find time to interact with them regularly. I meet a lot of people and I want to keep them all, but I can't always. For this I am glad to have Facebook. I usually see my closest friends but only once a week, sometimes twice a week, and my most interesting friends maybe once a month, or every two months.

It takes me months to get the guts to date someone and months more until I feel confident enough to tell them how I feel about things. This is challenging because most people want to be friends instantly, and many people want to become best friends in a short amount of time, and a lot of the time people are impatient about romance and sex and want it to go flawlessly and think something's wrong if it takes too much time.

For the people I do succeed to connect with, I tend to put priority levels on them. The most important people are the ones who give me money, or people who love me. I tend to put work above everybody but I will skip work if somebody needs me. I do whatever I can for these people. 

It would be best if I could schedule everybody into my life, but a lot of people are not good at keeping appointments, and some people don't even like texting or calling. I have to approach everyone on their own terms and communicate with them how they like to communicate. 

In the mean time I keep up with people through Facebook; even if I can't hang out with them or get to know them in person I can still know about them. I may not be confident enough to hang out with them or have any time to travel and see them, but I'm still interested in knowing them.

Unfortunately this means a lot of my close relationships are one-sided, meaning people are confiding in me. For other people it feels one-sided in that I am only interested in them, such as when dates are canceled or calls aren't returned, and my only communication with them is through a Facebook wall. A lot of my relationships are also maintained over long periods of time, and we can't interact on a regularly basis as I would like. This makes me feel like my own problems are very complex and that my own needs are very demanding, and that no body cares to accommodate me. I feel like no one has the patience for me, and like I have no time for other people, and that people aren't interested in me.

Oftentimes I isolate myself because of this.

Usually when I feel so overwhelmed thinking about the fact that no body likes me I try to reach out to people, to go through and respond to old emails, to call people I know will talk to me, or to go through their Facebook to see what I've missed.

For other intense emotional fits I turn my attention inward to focus on what the problem might be. Am I hungry? Am I tired? Am I lonely? Am I bored?

If none of the above I ball myself in my room and go about solving these universal problems for the world. I go through the ups and down, the pros and cons, I feel intense and helpless and hopeful and powerful and pathetic and willful and watch inspirational videos and listen to whiny repetitive music and then nonsensical music and I'm eating chocolate and snacks and trying to stay hydrated. When I am done I bust out of my room and continue on with my life and tell the first person I meet about the grand ideas I have, the solutions to my problems and the amazing things I am going to do with my life. I am drenched in confidence and no one has the will to put me down.

This is how I go through life.

If you don't get this you should see Jane Mcgonigal and then play the game.

In case you haven't noticed I do feel very insecure right now, and this is why I wrote this post in a pretty short amount of time. Just the other month ago I made a pass at a pretty lady. Since then she has had reservations about my age and does not speak to me very regularly. We went on two dates in less than a week and she hasn't talked to me since. I don't know how she feels but it's driving me nuts whether or not she wants to continue with this relationship.

I feel very insecure about a lot of things right now and I am trying not to lash out at people or overwhelm them because of it. It makes me feel insecure too that I can't share my overwhelming thoughts with people and get crystal clear results, and it makes me feel insecure that I might hurt other people with my own thoughts. I am not a mean, hateful, malicious person, just someone with complex thought patterns. I am not too busy and disinterested and antisocial, I am just trying to prioritize my life so that I can accomplish difficult things and spend time with meaningful people as often as I can.

Feeling so emotionally unstable it makes me feel like I should get more emotionally stable friends. While I'm at it I should find more emotionally mature friends, so that they can be the ones to analyze my thoughts and find the most important things I feel. I also miss having a regular community of mentors and teachers and people who know more about things than I do, like I had when I was in school, and like I imagined this household to be. I want these kinds of people to interact with regularly so that I don't feel like such a child wandering in the dark, alone and scared.

Gender Therapy: Day 159 Mental Health, Variance, Gender

See Gender Therapy: Day 000 to learn more about my hormone-induced journey of self discovery. 

"I prefer to use the word mental variance. It doesn't insinuate that something needs cured, unlike mental illness or mental disorder."

I haven't written in over a month. Lately I have been dealing with the realization that I may have one or several mental health issues and have been evaluating myself constantly to figure out how this will affect me, my future career, and my life, and reflecting upon my mental history through the perspective of these disorders to reframe my childhood. It explains a lot, but it leaves my future feeling vulnerable to my own self.

For several months now I have dug up the idea that I may be on the autism spectrum. I haven't looked into it in years since I last hung out with a collect self-identifying aspie group meetup, but I have started to read aspie blogs and am intrigued how similar our writing styles are. I told my roommate: "Either I'm autistic or I'm trans*" in explaining my boyish behavior and insensitivity to all things female and feminine.

I match the diagnostic for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder) verbatim and am reading a book on the subject for confirmation. I speak fast, think fast, get bored easily, and overstimulate myself with music to stay focused. For memory I use repetition for names, mnemonics for boring information, calendars for making and keeping long-term commitments and events, and messes for remembering to complete tasks around the house, for example leaving the laundry room light on to finish my load.

The other day I called a research study (there is a large medical research university in my city) to participate in a study about emotional and physiological health and their relationship to one another. They were open to participants who have a history of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or trauma, the last of which I qualified for. Over the phone they were unsure of my status and when they brought me in they confirmed that I would meet the requirements of Bipolar II Disorder if I had longer episodes of depression (which I used to have in childhood).

As of two weeks ago I started gender therapy at a local LGBTQ clinic and am currently in counseling, a proactive approach on my account to figure it out, once and for all, and to find the proper methods for dealing with tough mental and emotional challenges. My assigned counselor is gay and bubbly and delightful and is interested in hooking me up with other medical professionals to get proper diagnoses so this is something in development, but it is of serious interest to me and takes a significant amount of energy to process.

As a side note having an LGBTQ-focused counselor helps narrow my interests in taking hormones and potential transition. My gender goal was named, "finding a suitable gender presentation that I and others feel comfortable with", such as on a professional level, and some of the things hormones would help with include facial hair and voice deepening. I have other goals as well such as exploring what it means to self identify as one gender versus what it means for others to identify you as one gender. I want to meet and talk to other individuals who identify as both, or neither, and those who are actively interested in not transitioning but instead living "naturally", while still establishing a binary identity. My counselor mentioned working on communication and relationship skills, as I have a hard time connecting with other females, especially feminine types.

In less than a month I will be off of hormonal birth control and will be paying close attention to how this affects my gender dysphoria and my general attitude towards those close to me. Lately I have not been feeling so concerned with gender. For a few weeks I was very upset about being female and insisted on dressing masculine as often as I could, attempting to pass and holding my tongue where I could so as to not be outed. For a few weeks following that I felt undeniably feminine and sexy, looking at more feminine pictures, artwork, nudity, and embracing what it meant to have female anatomy. I had shucked my packer and dressed in more tight clothes, although I had tossed most of them.

The weeks following that and leading up to now I have felt the need to neither dress masculine nor feminine. I have felt very stable in my ways, my lower-than-most female vocals proud and intelligent, my dress very androgynous and practical for bike riding and dressing professionally (sans muddy, snowy, salty boots). I have felt very loved and connected to the individuals in my lives, their acknowledgement and affirmation of my self being myself, their curiosity in my thoughts about gender, and their acceptance of my lack of interest in being a she or a he.

--

And now for a poetic essay about myself:

I feel like a lie. I feel as though the things that I want my life to be are not really me. They are not the female that I am, they are different than that. The things I want are ambitious and complicated and self-destructive, and that I will kill myself in my pursuit of happiness.

I want to travel, I want to marry a woman, I want to own a tavern, I want to speak many languages, I want to create media, to be respected, I want to be a man, I want to keep my female body, I want to challenge dominant culture and I want to do this all in a timely manner.

It sounds so simple written down but each of these goals takes large amounts of time and a tremendous amount of undying energy, social networks, money falling from the sky, luck, and creative problem solving. I feel like I am a lie because I have done none of these things. Okay so I've had a few girlfriends and I can speak two languages and I got a scholarship to go abroad. Maybe this blog even counts as challenging the norm, but I don't feel like I've had an active part in any of these activities, that I just happened upon the opportunity and pursued them passively.

I feel as though I am in the preparatory stages of accomplishing such things but I am not yet halfway there, I am still in the rising action part of the story, and have not yet reached a point where I can no longer turn back. I feel like there is too much opportunity to just stop here and live a normal life, a stable life, and because I am so much closer to that boring life than I am the life I want to live I feel as though I am living a lie.

I am the lie. I am fragile and female and I need stability, people I trust to interact with regularly, people to love and care for, food to eat everyday, exercise I must be disciplined about, ten hours of sleep and a stable job. These things are opposite what I want and almost separate from that which I'd prefer to do. I feel like I can't pursue my true interests because my own biological being holds me back, and I feel this way because it is becoming more obvious to me how my brain and body work.

When I do not give it the attention it needs it causes me to mentally break down, to lose a day because I'd prefer to stay in bed and think negatively. I feel exhausted and need to be alone and will not leave the house, and if I tried it takes a great deal of encouragement to do so, which often ends in internal conflict which has a 50/50 chance fail rate and I collapse and crawl back into bed, now with a headache.

I never noticed these things about myself until recently, when I finished school and got a boring job and had a small group of friends and my life became quiet. The dust settled and I saw nothing but myself, and myself I have been staring at for months. Myself has developed many intricacies that leading a normal, boring life feels impossible.

I can't stand it. Myself forces me to miss work if I do the same things for three days in a row, just to change things up a little. Myself can't stand being locked into a social engagement for an undetermined amount of time; I must know when I can leave, and I will leave promptly, or else I will become agitated and shut down. Myself needs large amounts of food to keep going, and a variety of food, as myself refuses to eat the same thing more than twice and misses meals if there isn't anything quick and sweet to snack on regularly. Myself needs eight to ten hours of sleep a night and if I don't get that the next day is miserable and I just want to die. Myself wistfully drifts from interest to interest and will put an article about the bible on a higher priority level than the emails I need to respond to promptly regarding bills; my interests are expansive and will capture my attention despite how much time I don't have to spend. Lastly, and the most difficult attribute of the self, at least once a week I experience an extreme high state of being, a sort of manic-mode that lasts as long as several days as as little as one wake cycle. It is good in that I can be extremely productive in that time, and bad in that it hits without warning and I can't always take advantage of it, and I always lose sleep because of it. Similarly at least once every two weeks I experience an extreme low that causes me to feel and think about miserable things and to reevaluate my life with a consistently hopeless attitude which is contagious and thus causes me to isolate myself. This too happens without warning and can disrupt my life. I sleep too much and cancel appointments.

Life is rough, and I'm a complicated individual, and that is difficult to accept. I have lived most of my life being easy going and subject to my environment, letting the wind dictate my emotions and thoughts and letting myself experience things with an innocent eye, ready and willing to reach enlightenment at any given moment. Now my body, and my mind, demands structure and stability and will throw me into despair if I don't give it what it asks.

Yet, once I satisfy these requirements my true desires bubble up from the surface and overwhelm my very need to exist, asking and begging and pleading that I just let go of everything and make an irresponsible investment in a vehicle which will take me across the country, or to quit my job and hope freelance media creation pays the bills, or to just couch surf with my friend in England and go to Oxford for a master's in whatever-I-feel-like-studying. I don't want to take responsibility for myself, I just want to go with the flow. I don't want to mandate my body to stability, I just want it to adapt to new environments and to eat whatever is available.

I feel like my own mind holds me back from doing anything fulfilling. I swing wildly from energized to exhausted, I have many interests and can't organize the time to focus and complete things, I take it one day a a time as I have the inspiration and free time, but it takes work to maintain myself in between and I rely on other people to push and guide me to do the things I want to do. Unfortunately not everybody thinks my interests are valid or responsible, so they passively encourage me as I publicly voice my progress in any area. Even I can't keep up with the amount of open-ended projects I am actively pursuing. I've attempted to make a wall of stickies and tape but the perfect organizational structure is impossible and I am discouraged when the stickies come loose and my rooms gets messy.

Maybe this is the conflict I have always had within myself, and something that all ambitious people have: want vs. need; time will always be against me. Maybe this life I have lived is coming to an end, a completion of who I am in my current identity and the prelude to the person I am transitioning into, the person I want to become. Maybe this is Eddie, the person no one but me can imagine, the person no one yet believes exists. Maybe these passive individuals in my life are secretly jealous of my ambitions and are more interested in keeping me the same, a passive way of holding me back, to prevent my better half from intimidating them. Maybe the naysayers want me to be isolated, hungry, depressed, weak and feminine, something they can control and predict and use for their own interests, be it sexual or romantic or friendly or supportive.

I am not a person but a ball of energy that people want to tap into. I run free and fly far but people want to harness my energy. They need me but I need myself more. I need to be myself, I need to be the person I want to be. I need to leave my weaknesses behind, and if that means leaving people, maybe I need to leave my old self behind.

--

"Congratulations! You've figured it all out. You've managed to use your disorder to your advantage."

In the time since I haven't written a few other things have changed too. I took a job offer tutoring at a local high school, I've been involved with two different paid video production teams (companies?) one which I also edit websites for, and I'm in the process of quitting one job to start a new one: same pay, same field, but closer to my house.

I am happy about the production gigs as those are in my field, and the dumb job is mostly for financial stability, though I enjoy tutoring despite the small amount of hours because it allows me to be home early and do other things with my life. The students are also interesting.

The high school I tutor at has a predominantly black population in a predominantly poor neighborhood at the edge of town. I embraced the opportunity to learn about the subtle cultural differences of a demographic I am not usually surrounded by. Although I am not sheltered by definition, I did go to a predominantly white school. It's been a good experience so far, and between sessions I read the African-American history textbook.

At first it was overwhelming. The school felt like a jail. They locked the bathrooms and had their students escorted from class to class. There was a metal detector at the entrance and a security team waiting to be called upon from the room full of cameras. There was a sort of hard-ass attitude towards the kids, a strict way in which they were treated and expected to cooperate immediately. It felt like institutional racism but I'm not an expert on these subjects.

I got along with the kids pretty well; I find them smart and crafty. I engage in conversation with them about their goals for finishing their classes and about what they would rather be doing than sitting here at a computer screen. For the most part their being in an after school credit recovery program is because of having missed classes due to needing to work or help out with their families, or just being distracted with extra curriculars. I don't judge them since there are a million reasons to miss class. Perhaps they were bored of a shitty school curriculum. Perhaps they were thinking about what they want to do with their lives and pursuing their interests instead of concentrating on homework. Perhaps the institution did not accommodate their financial needs or their family makeup. Perhaps they had problems at home.

In the beginning there was a girl in class who was being rowdy and talkative. The teacher in charge of the class asked her to shush and to concentrate on her work. The other students, clicking away at their online class environment, paid no attention to the outburst from this young woman and didn't blink an eye when I was asked to call security to escort her from the room.

Another student in the class was sprawling on his desk space, being bored and listless. I visited him frequently to ask how far along in his online course he was and usually got a very half-assed answer. After doing the math to figure out how many lessons and modules he had to do a month to make his goal, he dismissed my suggestions claiming he would just do this online class next year. I told him that it didn't make sense to sit here and do nothing, that he could be doing other things with his time after school. He responded that he preferred to be here instead.

Whatever reason these kids were here for, they seemed like regular kids to me. They were snarky and silly and every so often looked at their phone between quizzes. Today was the fourth day on the job and today I learned that there is a large mentally ill student population. This came as a surprise to me as I had not associated the behaviors of the students in the program to be mentally ill. The girl who acted up was later described as too unstable to be in this kind of environment, and thus it was requested she be escorted and put into a different program. The boy who seemed to sit around doing nothing was later described as mentally handicapped, and that he perhaps had a physically abusive home life. I learned today that they have a full mental health team as well to check up on the kids, to make sure they make it to class, to make sure they are feeling okay.

I had not thought these students' behaviors were abnormal or related to mental disorders. I thought they were a little complicated, perhaps they had a hard home life. I knew some were anxious and others were misunderstood, if not bored. They were all very interesting and honest, if not a little cold at first. However when it was explained to me how these students thought and felt it made sense why I related to them so well. Dealing with difficult people is what I'm was used to growing up. Handling inflexible, challenging situations is the norm for me. Feeling intense, unpredictable, and unmotivated to follow directions was how my life was.

My brother used to act up all the time when he was in school. He would be himself, loud and rowdy, and when an authority figure told him to shut up and sit down things would get physical. I skipped school more often than I would like to admit, feeling reluctant to wake up each morning and feeling like my body was aching for hours every day. Home was chaos, and school was cold and oppressive, and my friends felt the same way. I could speak to these individuals because I was used to the complicated kids of my childhood.

My childhood friends were bipolar, depressed, they had personality disorders, severe anxiety, disassociation. They spent time in prison, they were sex addicts, they did drugs, they gave themselves tattoos. They loved me, traded video games with me, hacked websites with me, we climbed fences to play on playgrounds after hours, we walked the streets at night, we had skateboards and BMX bikes with pegs. These memories haunt me in a whimsical way, but recognizing the potential for my childhood friends to have undiagnosed disorders that go untreated makes me uneasy. Just the same, their emotional intensity, their spontaneous desires and unpredictable needs are familiar to me.

Since having moved far far away from home I have found a city that is very generous to me and very polite about my existence. Never have I felt that I should not be here, that I should get out and leave because I do not belong. It has given me an advanced degree in an extremely timely manner, it has given me job stability, it has given me a loving family, it has given me a safe environment within which to heal and feel comfortable, it has provided for me multiple communities to intermingle with, from queers to cyclists, Latinos to Jews, feminists and activists, volunteers and professionals, producers and artists and musicians and writers and poets and lovers and friends.

This city continues to answer my prayers and to listen to my desires and to creatively present opportunities for me to pursue and explore. Most of all it has helped me to solidify many ideas about myself that I once thought were silly or selfish or insane, and it has helped me to let go of those habits and behaviors and phrases which handicapped my emotional development as a child.

Recently I was almost diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder at a local research clinic. The lady told me that if only I had longer episodes of depression I would have qualified. The thing is, I used to have longer periods of depression, when I was younger. She congratulated me on having "figured it all out", and having found a way to get by without it being an issue. As she said, "it's not really a disorder if you use it to your advantage". I wish a rough childhood on no one, but the experience was invaluable.

In the mean time I have a counselor who will help me work out the rest of my kinks and to help me better understand and accomplish the things I want to do with myself.

Gender Therapy: Day 107 Negotiating Identities

See Gender Therapy: Day 000 to learn more about my hormone-induced journey of self discovery. 

"You're so cute sometimes."

I haven't felt very masculine for a while now. I think it's been at least a week since I last posted. Instead I've been sporting some rather androgynous clothing, with the occasional dick thrown in for balance. My chest is hid pretty well under winter layers and my new haircut is killer. It is a thin Pompadour that can be slicked back like Macklemore's 'do.

Inspiration for haircut. It looks more plastic with product though.

Without gel it looks like a long set of bangs that will be swished to one side or the other. My sides and back are shaved and the only hair is on the top of my head. When slicked back I appear most masculine, or at the very least very queer, but when let loose it hangs to the side and gives me an extraordinarily feminine look. This is a common look among dynamic black women who usually sport a short 'do that will stay mostly vertical, or at least puffy and adorable.

My hair looks like that without gel. Except it lays flat, and down.

My female roommate gave me this amazing thick sweater which is both tight and flexible and hides a lot. It makes me feel sexy, very sexy, especially with my haircut and my big black boy boots. I'm not sure how others perceive me with it but it feels very European and conservative and adorable.

I also got some new boy clothes from my new transwomen friends. Well, at least one of them is a transwoman. The other prefers non-binary pronouns and I guess they would be more comfortable identifying as androgynous. I should probably ask. Anyway, they gave me some sweet t-shirts that are the appropriate sleeve length and collar size that I am most comfortable with. With my binder on I almost pass. Maybe an extra layer on top or underneath will help. I'll be grabbing another bag of clothes just one size bigger from them again shortly. I can't wait! I should probably invest in some more boy pants to match my new shirt set too.

The other day while I was waiting for a friend at a general store I was wandering for almost an hour. It was in a predominantly black neighborhood and it felt weird glancing at the door every couple of minutes, which was where most of the employees also hung out, near the cash registers. I'm pretty sure I looked suspicious for the first 30 minutes. Finally my friend showed up, also with a back pack, and they pointed him towards my direction immediately, as if they knew we were together. He came my way and told me how the employees mentioned his friend was looking for him, saying "Yeah, he's right over there", referring to me. Woohoo! I passed! I wasn't even trying that day, really. No binder, no packer, but I guess the winter coat and slicked back hair really helped.

I think the reason I haven't really been dressing full boy is because I've been somewhat busy and with the connections I've already made until the guise of my female identity, I didn't want to switch things on them immediately and challenge my own professional credibility (which is a big issue for trans* folks everywhere). For example my professional email is my female name, and it's kind of hard to keep using that email while I'm expecting everyone to use my male name.

Sometimes I'm seeing multiple people in a day, some people who know me as the female, some who know me as the male, and I don't exactly have the time or resources to switch up dress in the middle of the day to accommodate the people who know me as one person or the other. Sometimes still I'm networking through multiple people, some who know me as one thing, and some who know me as the other, and it's also hard to keep everyone from being confused. For example at my former school I am known under my female name, and it's a female school so that's that. I was connected to a bike organization through this identity and someone whom I work with at a similar bike-related institution knew me as my other identity. It was confusing for the person whom I just met and gave my female identity, and then being called out by this other person under my male identity. Fortunately this was only seconds worth of an interaction and they didn't interact with each other about the issue, but it was obvious that I had tits to the person who called out, "Hey Eddie!"

... Awkward.

It's hard to maintain a binary identity in a binary society when you feel neither male nor female, but when you have to present as one or the other in order to make other people comfortable and to not confuse anyone.

As far as sex goes, I haven't been triggered lately, which is good in that it means I'm becoming more comfortable with certain sexual techniques which in the past were used against me in traumatizing ways. It also means I'm more comfortable in general about sex, and my own sexuality, considering identity and sexuality and often very fuzzy things in the beginning years of "coming out", whatever identity(ies) one chooses to explore.

If anything my bed partner and I have been negotiating power dynamics. It's not terribly complicated thanks to our fluid sexual tastes. Over time I have been recognizing how much of a dominant character I am in bed. I prefer being the giver rather than the receiver, and I prefer to top than to bottom, to pin down rather than be pinned, to call the shots rather than to follow them. The only tricky part comes with the fact that we are both dominant personalities. We've gotten to a point where we negotiate who goes where, and when, and to do what. Usually we take turns being the receiver, acknowledging actively what we would prefer to be doing at that same moment.

Receiving is good for me to actively challenge my triggers and overcome them, but it challenges my core personality at the same time, which is directly related to my gender preferences. I'm pretty sure this is something many transguys go through, trying to negotiate their pleasure reception and their gender identity. No one wants to be left with blue balls, but not everyone wants to be bent over and fucked either. Considering most orgasmic pleasure is derived from a person's genitals, and considering a female bodied individuals genitals are much closer to their body than a male bodied individual, the whole '"receiving pleasure" thing is more often defined internally for females than it is for males, who may receive orgasmic pleasure internally or externally.

Deriving pleasure internally is a tough concept to negotiate with, especially when one's body dysphoria is so great as to consider genital reconstruction. I can only imagine what those individuals have to go through to just to get a little nookie. Jeez.

Anyway, my partner is an interesting person, very queer in a different way, and we get along in all contexts. However we are strictly friends and bed mates (cuddle buddies?) and have agreed to not pursue romance for the interests of not only our respective identities, personal and professional, but also because it's so much simpler that way. Less social expectation, less binary expectation, less stress for friends and families. What we have is a private affair and is, frankly, no one's business (save for my blog readers).

It's a liberating experience for me since this relationship gives me the freedom to practice walking and talking and fucking like a guy without the negative ramifications that come from romantic relationships. Usually when you get involved with a person you not only get involved with them, but also their friends and their family and everyone they know in a public sense. We are not public about our relationship, and therefore it is not restricted to the social expectations of all of those other people. There is no harassment about my gender, about my sexuality, about my future or my past, and about my partner either.

Negotiating this relationship is very different than the relationships I've had to negotiate in the past. We visit each other when we are available instead of trying to focus our schedule around each other, which is usually about once a week. We stay over when it is convenient and play when we're in the mood, instead of always spending the night and there always being an expectation for sex. In public contexts we are strictly friends, instead of partners, but close friends, and behind closed doors we are whatever we want to be. We role play, we take turns, we fantasize and visit the past and the future, we play pretend, we use toys, we tie each other up, we get serious, we slap each other, we wrestle, we stand we sit we climb we fall off the bed, we do as we please. I enjoy it immensely and find it quite liberating because I can be what I want to be without the scrutiny of a binary, concrete, socially expectant relationship. Because this is not a binary, concrete, socially expectant relationship. It is so much more fun than that, so much less defined, so much more creative, and private.

I often wonder how my relationships with my other friends reflects on my gender identity. I tend to gravitate towards straight guys and queer women, all of which are some degree of strong, dominating, fierce, powerful, and ultimately awesome. I tend to gravitate towards these people as friends, which causes me to wonder exactly what I find attractive in a mate. Do I want a strong mate, or a passive one? Do I want a dynamic personality, or a quiet one? I've had some really great experiences with a very introverted mate who let me do my thing and never challenged me but encouraged me to be myself and do as I please, but sometimes I like to be told "No." and to be given direction, and to be challenged. More on negotiating relationships later.

I will be going to Qigong later today, the single digit class led by a cute queer transman. For the last two weeks I have been trying to get a hold of the same LGBTQ center for gender therapy classes, but my emails have been received by no one. I wonder what's up with that. I will ask this guy again to see if I can get some direct contact with someone, since emails aren't doing really great. I have health insurance! I have money! Take it! Please someone tell me your professional opinion about my gender! I need some help! Give me hormones! Wahh!

Last week I went to the research clinic for my three month checkup. The research study that I'm enrolled in, in case you've forgotten, is a six month ordeal that studies the effects of hormonal contraception on women's immune systems. I learned it is a study funded by the Bil & Melinda Gates foundation and it has one location in the U.S. (conveniently where I live) and also in Africa. It's purpose is to find a link between contraception and the reception of HIV/AIDS, since there has been some other studies that found a link between one of the hormonal contraception methods and HIV.

Anyway, so I went to the clinic, got some vials of blood taken, had my cervix bitten and my endometrium taken tissue samples of, which was less painful thanks to the ibuprofen, got a few more months worth of birth control and got some money. All the while I was lead through the questionnaire and sample collection process by a cute 20-something research assistant. She has short hair and a similar affection for bicycling and she held my hand through the painful bits and had also been abroad for a semester to a random country. If I see her again in the next three months I'll be sure to invite her for a coffee and then a bike ride. My current partner won't mind.

While I was half naked on the observation table she mentioned my leg sores as well and recommended I see a dermatologist about these things. While we all agree they are the ripped-open scabs of summer time bug bites, they're gross enough to get checked out. I really don't want to see a doctor about it since I know they'll just give me some anti-itch, some antibiotics, and tell me to wait it out until spring. I don't want to pay for that. But whatever, I have insurance, might as well use it. We'll see what happens.

Gender Therapy: Day 094 Gender Dysphoria and Trauma

See Gender Therapy: Day 000 to learn more about my hormone-induced journey of self discovery. 


Anatomical update: I am on my fourth month of birth control and I have been swinging wildly between feeling femme and masculine. Right now my tits are HUGE and it is very uncomfortable. They are swollen to undeniably feminine proportions that are exceptionally hard to hide. In the mean time I found myself in a thrift shop the other day buying up fruity dress shirts, sweaters made for males, a pair of loafers, and trying on every single suit and contemplating purchasing a tailor job. Ironically I felt femme during all of this and delighted in feeling so.

I just finished watching Hedwig and the Angry Inch and feel a combination of repressed anger and sadness. The story of a forced sex change that has left a now-identified woman with relationship issues due to her botched genital makeup and the complex sexuality of her partner. A good watch if I do so recommend it myself. Also rock and roll. Also drag queens.

For many people gender is a sad and confusing thing, starting with misgendered intersexuals to transsexual folks of all kind who don't know what to do with their body, but are pressured to swing one way or the other. Gender is even more confusing for butch lesbians and femme gay men who feel pressured to behave and become the other gender, when really all they want is to be themselves and love the same sex. Gender is confusing for everyone, including straight people who find themselves attracted to someone whose gender is hidden, ambiguous, or in transition, or even in drag. Gender is confusing for parents, and friends, and politicians, and teachers, and firefighters and soldiers and librarians and programmers and coffee baristas, and it is confusing for me.

I have been following a blog called The Dirt from the Dirt written by an anti-trans activist who targets trans* identified individuals and discourages them from altering their bodies with hormones and surgery and instead to "change society". I have come across a blog similar to this in my initial research on the negative effects and confusing feelings around transition. The writer of which identified as a "very ugly female", and was neither proud nor ashamed of it, but accepting and was not interested in transitioning. The more media I find about these sorts of issues the more readily I find that older generations are more accepting of their "condition" and want for everyone else to bugger off while I find that younger generations tend to want to actively change their body to fit their mind. The writers of these anti-trans blogs are definitely older, while the video blogs of the same issues tend to be headed by young, feisty, and hilarious bloggers who love sharing their experiences and their advice.

Speaking of young feisty trans* folks, at the local LGBTQ center I inquired about gender therapy and group sessions only to find that they have trans* youth nights on Mondays! This is definitely a group of people I want to get in touch with and to go through this journey with. At the same center I finally attended that Qigong class; it was a small class in a small room headed by a charming transman and consisting of two transwomen, myself, and another whom I believe to be a transman as well. I went as myself because I forgot to wear my dick that day but apparently my roommate had tipped the teacher about the potential for Eddie to attend, and so when I revealed that I sometimes go out and about as Eddie, he recognized me. I felt inclined to say also that I would attend as Eddie from now on, not only for fun but to further explore my identity within a group I am comfortable practicing my alternative identity with.

Last week on Wednesday I participated in a bike training program aimed at inner city youth to give them a useful set of bike wrenching and riding skills at a middle school age. It is something I have been doing since about a year ago and the other volunteers are peppy environmentalists with a practical twist. The lady whom I recognized from the year before I kept contact with and reintroduced myself as Eddie on Wednesday. It took her a second to realize what I was saying and then she got the idea and introduced me to the kids and other (new) volunteer staff as Mr. Eddie, something which I delighted in. Some of the kids who recognized me from before couldn't quite place me. They had forgotten my name but definitely remembered my face.

That same night after the program I got to hang out with a wonderful gender fluid individual for the weekly femme queer night at the community bike shop. I learned about their story of transition and their former identity as a transwoman, relating to the details of their encounters of love and abuse, violence and mistrust and healing and identity. Gender is a confusing thing, but when you finally realize that neither gender is for you, that in fact sometimes one gender, both genders, an alternative gender, or none at all, is in fact the right thing for you, it becomes even more confusing.

Now, this individual struck me as competent and resourceful and their self identified mental eccentricities partially related to their messy emotional history, and I related to them in many ways as outcasts do, but the thing that interested me the most was their physical transition. Aside from all the mental garbage they swallowed about how important transition is, and all the societal pressures they encountered while trying not to stand out too much, they decided to not pursue surgery because they did not want to change their body. In fact they wanted to maintain their look while changing themselves on the inside, if that makes sense. They wanted to be treated a special and specific way while keeping their personality in tact, in addition to their personal appearance.

While they were on hormones for ten years and developed some unique traits of womanhood, such as a higher voice and breasts, they did not pursue surgery because of the twisted realization that they would not allow themselves to self-mutilate, because that was an internalized traumatic desire pressured by the violent demons held deeply within themselves. This is important to note because many people do dangerous things to themselves to try and reconcile some pain held deeply within themselves. Whether it is a commonly held anxiety about appearance or a traumatic incident that caused them to avoid specific kinds of people, places, things, we all have these things that push us to do things we normally wouldn't do if not for that pain, that voice, that trauma, that important person in our lives.

I myself am victim to traumatic influence which has confused my personal desires with survival techniques. While it is hard enough to figure out what is triggering I also have to constantly analyze where my emotions are coming from. Am I overreacting to this because it is reminiscent of the past? Or am I genuinely having an emotional breakdown due to stress? Am I avoiding a specific sexual activity because it is a trigger or do I just not enjoy it? Do I avoid this kind of person because they remind me of ghosts or do I just not like them very much? Do I dress like a man because I am afraid of being identified as a weak, vulnerable target of a woman, or is this desire innate and simply a more comfortable way of expressing myself?

It is a constant struggle to maintain my sanity in daily life when I live with the looming threat of an emotional lapse. These demons are real, and they affect us all, in their own unique ways. The other day in my sexual pursuits my partner triggered me. It was on purpose, and within a controlled environment, so I was pleased with the activity. I had a disenchanted look in my eyes and pushed them off, them asking if they should untie me and me silently nodding and curling into a ball. They patiently stroked my hair and hugged me and waited for me to fight off whatever they understood for me to be feeling, and I raced through my emotional history at lightning speeds, reliving chunks of unpleasant scenes and feeling trapped and betrayed and used and hurt. During the activity I had mild flashbacks and uneasy feelings, and after going through the motions of having been triggered I felt safe and confident and trusting again. It took untold amounts of time for me to bounce back and be willing to continue being sexual, but it was worth it and is something I want to continue to pursue.

More recently during a sexual activity I was given the reins and went through my exploits without conflict and felt amazing at the end, finally being able to recognize the opposite extremes of my triggers, both ends being based on how in control of the situation I am. Unfortunately the next set of days caused me to feel dysphoric again about gender, confusing how I want others to see me with how I want my partner to see me, and then what parts of me that I want to use during sex with what parts of me they want to use during sex. But that's for another post.

Gender Therapy: Day 082 Gay Media

See Gender Therapy: Day 000 to learn more about my hormone-induced journey of self discovery. 

"I'm fine with you being, whatever the fuck you are."

Recently I have felt more comfortable wearing my packer around, with and without my binder. It's very comfortable for me to wear something on the top of my groin. I've only weirded a couple people out when I took off my jacket and my chest became more obvious.

Also lots of trans* stuff has been happening. I went to a Queer film screening at a local book shop last night, I was correctly mistaken for a "bro" at the bus stop the other night, I found myself swiping gay magazines from the LGBTQ center in town, and over the weekend I met two lovely women in the beginnings of transition! That feels like a lot to me.

The transwomen were my favorite. Real geeks, programmers, introverts, shy but passionate, we stayed up late to talk about issues of identity and mislabeling, how to come out to misunderstanding family, and how to move to a more liberal town because of it. They reminded me of a younger version of me, not yet identifying as trans* or queer, but confused and awed by the idea of an actual transition! Actually presenting as a preferred gender to the entire world, taking hormones and contemplating body modification to improve passability, and imagining the day we will feel comfortable in our own skin. It was inspiring and thrilling and I felt like I knew a lot more than I did. I at least sounded like I knew about transition, as if I were actually in the midst of it (though I am not). We became fast friends and continue to interact online, their preferred method of communication anyway, and it is a happy beginning to a beautiful transition. Hard, as transition is, but only the beginning.

On Wednesday I ventured out of the house having used up all of productive paper pushing energies, expecting to end up contorting my body in ways I have not yet done before at a qigong class led by a transman. Instead when I arrived at the LGBTQ center I got a text from my roommate (the one who told me of the event) that it had been canceled. I confirmed with the guy at the front desk and wandered around a little, picking up magazines I am interested to write for and eyeing the basket of condoms. When you are involved with LGBTQanything, there are ALWAYS buckets of condoms. Always. And lube. Lots of lube. Unfortunately there weren't any female condoms, the rare delicacies they are, but it's still fun to throw condoms around the house and blow condom balloons for guests.

I got the bright idea to ask if the center took my newly purchased health insurance and left the building delighted that they indeed do! Back story: I had contacted this particular institution months earlier under a difference insurance company which in fact did not have a relationship with the LGBTQ center, and so I am scheming up all kinds of things to do with my government subsidized insurance.

At the bus stop one night, bundled up with my oversized snow coat and man boots, an ushanka covering over 50% of my head, I saw a young man exit the bus and roll over to the shelter asking about which buses had since passed. He shouted in my general direction, "Hey bro! Do you know if the 82 came? Oh! I mean ma'am, sorry."

To which I replied, "Actually I prefer bro." He took it as an invitation to approach me and start a conversation.

He started with, "So you like girls, huh?" I went along with it. "Does that mean you want to get a penis?" he said in a whispered tone, delighted with this secret. "Would you cut off your, you know, your chest?"

I had never been so offended yet amused before in my life. This man was probably in his early twenties, in a wheel chair, black, and missing his left leg. He looked up at me as if he had known me for a long time, glancing over to see my expression every so often. I gave him my attention from over my shoulder, trying to hide what might be detected as breasts. He pressed on and I gave him short sentence answers. "Yes. Perhaps. I'm not sure. Yeah, hah."

He went on talking about whether I take it or give it, referencing heteronormative sexual positions. I joked that he could probably do some pretty interesting maneuvers himself, not having too many legs to get in the way. He welcomed my own curiosity about how he lost it and his own sexual interests. It was a short lived conversation, rapid fire question and answer until my bus came. It felt more respectful than it actually may have been, him recognizing my gender preference and talking to me like a regular guy, as regular guys do, about women. That is something I actually really enjoy. Talking about women. So all was fair and enjoyable, objectifying women aside.

The last few days I haven't been able to catch my preferred ten hours of sleep; a couple work shifts here and there, some networking opportunities pursued via phone, coffee shop, and movie night. Last night I saw a documentary about LGBTQ films and was drawn into the content about trans* films, the short side note they were. It was at a bookstore that could have been called indie, selling first and second hand books, accepting book donations and serving vegan snacks. The film was projected to a basement full of people of all faces crowded enough to have a cuddle party and two pots of popcorn floating around. I set my container of mixed nuts off into the crowd as well, (I LOVE sharing food!) and when the film ended I realized I'm actually really tired and need to update my blog. I also need to look at that film again for reference to all the other great gay films I've been missing out on since the early 40's.

Gay media has always interested me. As has nudity and dance. The human form is amazing in all its glory, but gay material specifically speaks to me in a way far deeper than it may for the average individual. It was stated in the film as well, that gay films tend to not only speak to the LGBTQ community, but they represent the LGBTQ community, telling their stories and setting a script by which many LGBTQ members desperately cling to for guidance and comfort. Sex scenes especially serve a special purpose for those same folks, showing that something which has historically been shunned in conservative families and institutions and showing that it is normal and healthy and fun, and that it can, should and will be done despite criticism and skepticism.

Trans*ness has also been shown on the silver screen as something that people do, but I always feel like it is received in a very different way, as if it is something that receives constant flak from all sides of the universe, including internally. Often trans* people die in films, and are ostracized, or are disturbed and confused and hurting on the inside. While this may or may not be true for some folks, I have seen the opposite in my immediate community, finding trans* and queerness to be a rather unique and celebrated theme, and the individuals who self identify to be happy for their friends and family and uniqueness. And that is difficult, to separate reality from fantasy, to celebrate unique identity in the media and to appropriate expectations in the appropriate circles.

Trans* individuals are often thought to be a minority which are unhappy and who desperately seek release, either through taking destructive paths or immediately medical ones. I have found my life to reflect neither of these, although I am not actively seeking transition. I also find myself to be misrepresented in the media as confused and awkward and troubled, at least from non-queer producers and writers and allies. This frustrates me to a point where I look upon media with a different lens, analyzing it as if I were observing other individuals' lives, taking advice and interesting points where applicable, but dismissing the message as a whole as if it were somebody else's story, someone I would like to study but could not become myself.

I would like to take advantage of this gap between reality and fantasy and point out to everyone that every person is unique. Every gay person, every straight person, every queersexual, bisexual, pansexual, intersex, boy girl, girl boy, transanything, every person is different. What you see in the media is not what is true of every person who identifies as that noun. Even I am different than all other queer folks, and this blog is not representative of anyone but me. And because of this, I feel the need to explore queer topics, not only with myself, but with other people, to give them the opportunity to see a new perspective on a common theme, and to offer myself as an example of one way to go about being queer.