October 8th, 2007
I was discussing my upcoming surgery when someone mentioned bones being shaved. Well someone else was just walking in the room about then and inquired as to what we were talking about and if the surgery was 'cosmetic or medical'. This person was unaware I was having FFS. I initially told him what it was and that it was considered 'cosmetic'. But a moment later, I clarified by stating that to me it's a 'medical' action to correct the male face I was born with.
Yes, I know it seems cosmetic, but to me it's not. I guess my topic for today is perceptions. I'm getting rather accustomed to my gender role and feel comfortable in my expression of that. The more days that pass, of course it all seems more and more normal and natural, and this has made a huge improvement in my life.
I heard someone say once, that if you sat in a hot tub that was raised 1 degree each hour, how do you know when to scream that it's too hot? People also say that if you don't know sadness, you won't know joy either. What I'm trying to convey is what it was like to be me with my life. Assuming you're a cisgender person (means your gender identity matches your physical gender - I like to use it because it assigns a vague technical name to people who otherwise think they're normal), you wouldn't be able to grasp what it's like. No, I didn't wake up in the middle of the night screaming, nor did cry into my pillow every night as I grew up hoping my body would change. Ok, maybe I cried most nights for a year before I finally went in for counseling on this, but that's just when it got too 'hot'. But I spent 40 years presenting and behaving as a male.
Certainly over that time many of you saw me enjoying myself and having a good time. I was good in sports and had plenty of encouragement and role models to make me a man. I had what I considered to be a good childhood, a rewarding college life, and my adult life has had plenty of great times. But being at the stage I'm at now, I've having something to compare that too.
I hope you can sort of see where I'm going with this. In order to pull all that off, I had to box up my true gender and keep it hidden from absolutely everyone. So to me, this is normal. I can easily imagine everyone having a part of their life that they box up and keep hidden and never talk about it. I don't know what it's like to have my subconscious gender match my physical body. Cisgender people take that for granted and it's all normal. We all understand what is supposed to be normal, but knowing how it feels is something transsexual people don't know - at least not until there is transition. So for me, any bad day I might have now I can always sit back and say, 'at least I'm a woman'. That's a sure fire to lift my spirits!
Perhaps another time I might actually write about what it's like to have such a box and deal with it. I actually did have such a blog ready to go out the other night, but the software froze up and I lost it all after I'd finished it. I took that as a sign, that it wasn't quite ready to share. It does stir up some resentment in me.
So am I asking too much to want to fit back into society and be seen as just any other woman, and not a question mark? Am I being vain in wanting 'cosmetic' surgery on my face to be seen as more feminine? As I mentioned before, it's corrective surgery to me. Just like having genital corrective surgery or even having the proper hormones flowing through me. If you're a woman, imagine what you might feel like if you had testosterone poisoning for 40 years.
Oh yeah, it just occurred to me that I typed all this out and didn't once mention sexual orientation. That's another thing some cisgender people can't get out of their head. Somehow, they feel that a desire for men or women has to play a part in all this. Guess what- it doesn't! I recall the Larry King show recently where he had several transsexuals on the show. He kept going around the group making recaps of what they were and who they dated...'Ok, you are male to female and like women, and you're a female to male and like men, etc.....' He couldn't just talk to them without sexualizing them. So if you're trying to understand how sexual orientation plays a part in gender identity, it's not going to help. They are two different concepts that don't affect each other.
