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elialshadowpineAt this rate, I'm going to need a filter for this. Although I realized it technically falls under health issues since those are a contributing factor.
So between chatting at LJ, DW, and a trans/queer group on Fetlife I trust, I've gotten some interesting feedback. Some of this I want to copy, but for confidentiality, I'll only post my replies.
A few trans women on Fet suggested that what I am going through sounds a lot like trans issues. I am not comfortable using the trans label, because essentially what I am dealing with is being raised as male, punished for presenting female or showing any interests in coded female things, went through a sort of variant on the trans puberty issues because I had untreated PCOS from 13-22-ish. To bring numbers into it (not exact), cis women have testosterone levels around 80. Mine was close to 300. Cis male T numbers are in the 200-900 range (roughly). So, I was WAY WAY WAY above normal levels, and it has had permanent side effects. I mentioned previously about being misgendered; upon further thought, it happens more than I think. I have just learned to "pass", for lack of a better word, with clothing that shows off my cleavage. If I wear anything baggy? People assume I'm male. If I'm on the phone and don't use my "phone voice"? Same thing.
One trans person put it as, even though I was not assigned male as birth (AMAB), I was assigned male in childhood, and that has a massive effect. I'm just starting to realize how much so. She suggested that as terminology; another trans woman friend suggested "raised male against my will". I also like the suggestion of "genderfluid genderqueer woman", although that leaves out the childhood aspect. I think all fit, and I'm sorta weighing which is likely to be more acceptable. I am definitely not comfortable identifying as trans, although the umbrella term of trans* might be a possibility (since I believe it includes genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender, agender, non-binary, gender neutral, gender non-conforming, etc, under that label). Thoughts? (Esp appreciated from trans friends.)
I want to C&P a post I made there because I think I made some breakthroughs.
When I was very young, Mom was my primary caregiver. She socialized me as female, and I liked girly things. I liked Barbies and Disney Princesses and My Little Ponies and most of the stereotypical things that girls born in the 80s liked (though I was born in 85 so that only sorta applies).
Writing about this here has been very helpful. Writing the above actually made me think about things and realize that some points in my childhood actually tie in. My parents started having trouble in their relationship after Mom had my sister, when I was about 4 and a half. Mom was exhausted with pregnancy, work, and new baby (and to be fair, my dad actually did a LOT of the childrearing for my sister because baby!sister decided Mom was a milk dispensary and nothing more)... and honestly, it is about that point things really changed. Part of Dad's abuse was that he basically assigned me position of marital therapist at the age of 11, and so I heard... a lot of things that a child should never have to hear. But the relevant bit is this -- Mom didn't want to go on hormonal birth control. She wanted Dad to get a vasectomy. At the time, there was a study going around linking vasectomies and testicular cancel. IIRC from what I have heard of it there were a lot of signs it was BS, but Dad is... paranoid, to say the least. He was pissed Mom wouldn't go and get her tubes tied. Which started the Great War... (okay, I'm pretty sure things were building, but that's when, to my recollection, things really took off.) Mom was iron set on having no more children, which meant... my sister and I were It. (Never mind that my Dad had two sons from his previous marriage; they were Nothing to him.)
About that time was when Dad really started in on the raising me as a boy, and when the punishments for anything feminine started. I was no longer allowed to wear the fancy princess dresses my grandmother hand sewed for me. I was criticized for "walking female" and taught to walk like a man (and sit like one, and so forth). I was screamed at and slut-shamed to the point my Dad's face turned purple for buying with my own allowance a child's makeup kit and wearing it to be "like Mom." Seriously, if there was a stereotypically female thing and I did it? Abuse time. (It's probably a good thing that my femininity does not coincide with traditional gender roles, for the most part.)
The ironic thing is that when I got to be about a month from turning eighteen, my Dad started in on how unfeminine and unattractive I was. I refused to shave my legs, I didn't pluck or wax my eyebrows, I spoke my mind, I spewed profanity, and I "walked like a man." (BUT THAT'S WHAT YOU TAUGHT ME TO DO.) I was labeled a "feminazi bitch just like your mother who will be left by every man who'll have her. And men will keep leaving you, and you'll never know why. It's because you aren't a good Christian woman." So, having fulfilled all his obligations and become the son that he wanted so badly, it still wasn't good enough. And it's fucked me up but good.
It wasn't until I moved in with my ex-fiance and the people he lived with, including a Dominant femme, that I actually realized I liked being feminine -- well, the parts I like, anyway. I like presenting as femme, in Goth fashion, but at home, I don't have the spoons to play the part. There's where the genderfluidity comes in, I think; sometimes I feel female, sometimes I feel male, sometimes I feel female-but-not-of-this world, and sometimes I feel in-between. Female/female-but-not-here tops the list though, and it's probably more than 90% of the time I feel that way. So... non-binary but female leaning? Argh. Words! They are hard!
And yeah, I honestly... I don't feel "cis" really tells the truth, and I feel like it's something too important to me to just gloss over. There are certain assumptions that are made. I ran into a lot of trouble with the feminist community when I first started poking around there because my experience and most cis womens' experiences are so far apart it's not even funny. Like the oft mentioned feeling of needing to constantly be aware and on guard? Okay, part of that my Dad passed down from his Vietnam PTSD (even today I HAVE to sit with my back to a wall and able to see all entrances and exits) but part of it I just don't get. I mean, I understand on a logical level, but I never felt afraid walking alone at night. I may have come out char-broiled for sharing my experience (and I was not judging others; I was saying that I had never experienced that. According to them, I'm not a "real" woman. ~thinks~ would that count as transphobia? I've got my head worked up in so many knots.)
It's kinda amazing, though, how so much stuff I had accepted as "normal" just sticks out now. Like, WTF Dad, seriously? I'm almost 30, and it's taken me this long to figure it out.
Something someone mentioned in the thread, too, was that my previous endo had wanted to put me on spironolactone, which is an anti-androgen. Since, at the time, my med schedule would have made that difficult (my endo said that the 2 pills needed to be taken strictly twice a day, and that did not work with all my other meds being 3x a day), I didn't go through with it. But what the trans woman mentioned was that it could be, in my case, be considered HRT -- and that sorta fits. Because even though PCOS is something that plenty of cis women deal with, that with the combination of my childhood... it feels like more than another med to take, it feels like reclaiming my gender. It feels important. And more than words can really say. I'm not sure it would be the same if I hadn't been raised male, but with that factor, it feels... different, and important, and an act of strength and reclaiming/rediscovering who I am.
So, I'm not quite sure where to define myself yet. That's still a work in progress. But I'm making a lot of headway in realizing the depth of abuse that was done to me, and I'm seriously thinking I need to find a trans-friendly, abuse-specialized therapist, because the two are intertwined so much.
That is the current update on Nonny and her explorations of gender. :P Any thoughts or comments much appreciated. :) (Also, as it has been brought up, if folks have resources for femme as gender, I would be curious to see those, as it has also been suggested to me by a few people. :)
Part of me, though, is still feeling like I'm just doing this to be attention seeking and looking for a Speshul Snoflayke label... with my anxiety, I suspect that's something I'll deal with for awhile. Logically, I know there will be people who will roll my eyes at me and consider me that way, but I think it is more important to work through these issues, to whatever conclusion I come to, than try to keep burying it. I've been trying that for nearly 30 years and it hasn't worked, so evidently, there is a problem there.
So between chatting at LJ, DW, and a trans/queer group on Fetlife I trust, I've gotten some interesting feedback. Some of this I want to copy, but for confidentiality, I'll only post my replies.
A few trans women on Fet suggested that what I am going through sounds a lot like trans issues. I am not comfortable using the trans label, because essentially what I am dealing with is being raised as male, punished for presenting female or showing any interests in coded female things, went through a sort of variant on the trans puberty issues because I had untreated PCOS from 13-22-ish. To bring numbers into it (not exact), cis women have testosterone levels around 80. Mine was close to 300. Cis male T numbers are in the 200-900 range (roughly). So, I was WAY WAY WAY above normal levels, and it has had permanent side effects. I mentioned previously about being misgendered; upon further thought, it happens more than I think. I have just learned to "pass", for lack of a better word, with clothing that shows off my cleavage. If I wear anything baggy? People assume I'm male. If I'm on the phone and don't use my "phone voice"? Same thing.
One trans person put it as, even though I was not assigned male as birth (AMAB), I was assigned male in childhood, and that has a massive effect. I'm just starting to realize how much so. She suggested that as terminology; another trans woman friend suggested "raised male against my will". I also like the suggestion of "genderfluid genderqueer woman", although that leaves out the childhood aspect. I think all fit, and I'm sorta weighing which is likely to be more acceptable. I am definitely not comfortable identifying as trans, although the umbrella term of trans* might be a possibility (since I believe it includes genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender, agender, non-binary, gender neutral, gender non-conforming, etc, under that label). Thoughts? (Esp appreciated from trans friends.)
I want to C&P a post I made there because I think I made some breakthroughs.
When I was very young, Mom was my primary caregiver. She socialized me as female, and I liked girly things. I liked Barbies and Disney Princesses and My Little Ponies and most of the stereotypical things that girls born in the 80s liked (though I was born in 85 so that only sorta applies).
Writing about this here has been very helpful. Writing the above actually made me think about things and realize that some points in my childhood actually tie in. My parents started having trouble in their relationship after Mom had my sister, when I was about 4 and a half. Mom was exhausted with pregnancy, work, and new baby (and to be fair, my dad actually did a LOT of the childrearing for my sister because baby!sister decided Mom was a milk dispensary and nothing more)... and honestly, it is about that point things really changed. Part of Dad's abuse was that he basically assigned me position of marital therapist at the age of 11, and so I heard... a lot of things that a child should never have to hear. But the relevant bit is this -- Mom didn't want to go on hormonal birth control. She wanted Dad to get a vasectomy. At the time, there was a study going around linking vasectomies and testicular cancel. IIRC from what I have heard of it there were a lot of signs it was BS, but Dad is... paranoid, to say the least. He was pissed Mom wouldn't go and get her tubes tied. Which started the Great War... (okay, I'm pretty sure things were building, but that's when, to my recollection, things really took off.) Mom was iron set on having no more children, which meant... my sister and I were It. (Never mind that my Dad had two sons from his previous marriage; they were Nothing to him.)
About that time was when Dad really started in on the raising me as a boy, and when the punishments for anything feminine started. I was no longer allowed to wear the fancy princess dresses my grandmother hand sewed for me. I was criticized for "walking female" and taught to walk like a man (and sit like one, and so forth). I was screamed at and slut-shamed to the point my Dad's face turned purple for buying with my own allowance a child's makeup kit and wearing it to be "like Mom." Seriously, if there was a stereotypically female thing and I did it? Abuse time. (It's probably a good thing that my femininity does not coincide with traditional gender roles, for the most part.)
The ironic thing is that when I got to be about a month from turning eighteen, my Dad started in on how unfeminine and unattractive I was. I refused to shave my legs, I didn't pluck or wax my eyebrows, I spoke my mind, I spewed profanity, and I "walked like a man." (BUT THAT'S WHAT YOU TAUGHT ME TO DO.) I was labeled a "feminazi bitch just like your mother who will be left by every man who'll have her. And men will keep leaving you, and you'll never know why. It's because you aren't a good Christian woman." So, having fulfilled all his obligations and become the son that he wanted so badly, it still wasn't good enough. And it's fucked me up but good.
It wasn't until I moved in with my ex-fiance and the people he lived with, including a Dominant femme, that I actually realized I liked being feminine -- well, the parts I like, anyway. I like presenting as femme, in Goth fashion, but at home, I don't have the spoons to play the part. There's where the genderfluidity comes in, I think; sometimes I feel female, sometimes I feel male, sometimes I feel female-but-not-of-this world, and sometimes I feel in-between. Female/female-but-not-here tops the list though, and it's probably more than 90% of the time I feel that way. So... non-binary but female leaning? Argh. Words! They are hard!
And yeah, I honestly... I don't feel "cis" really tells the truth, and I feel like it's something too important to me to just gloss over. There are certain assumptions that are made. I ran into a lot of trouble with the feminist community when I first started poking around there because my experience and most cis womens' experiences are so far apart it's not even funny. Like the oft mentioned feeling of needing to constantly be aware and on guard? Okay, part of that my Dad passed down from his Vietnam PTSD (even today I HAVE to sit with my back to a wall and able to see all entrances and exits) but part of it I just don't get. I mean, I understand on a logical level, but I never felt afraid walking alone at night. I may have come out char-broiled for sharing my experience (and I was not judging others; I was saying that I had never experienced that. According to them, I'm not a "real" woman. ~thinks~ would that count as transphobia? I've got my head worked up in so many knots.)
It's kinda amazing, though, how so much stuff I had accepted as "normal" just sticks out now. Like, WTF Dad, seriously? I'm almost 30, and it's taken me this long to figure it out.
Something someone mentioned in the thread, too, was that my previous endo had wanted to put me on spironolactone, which is an anti-androgen. Since, at the time, my med schedule would have made that difficult (my endo said that the 2 pills needed to be taken strictly twice a day, and that did not work with all my other meds being 3x a day), I didn't go through with it. But what the trans woman mentioned was that it could be, in my case, be considered HRT -- and that sorta fits. Because even though PCOS is something that plenty of cis women deal with, that with the combination of my childhood... it feels like more than another med to take, it feels like reclaiming my gender. It feels important. And more than words can really say. I'm not sure it would be the same if I hadn't been raised male, but with that factor, it feels... different, and important, and an act of strength and reclaiming/rediscovering who I am.
So, I'm not quite sure where to define myself yet. That's still a work in progress. But I'm making a lot of headway in realizing the depth of abuse that was done to me, and I'm seriously thinking I need to find a trans-friendly, abuse-specialized therapist, because the two are intertwined so much.
That is the current update on Nonny and her explorations of gender. :P Any thoughts or comments much appreciated. :) (Also, as it has been brought up, if folks have resources for femme as gender, I would be curious to see those, as it has also been suggested to me by a few people. :)
Part of me, though, is still feeling like I'm just doing this to be attention seeking and looking for a Speshul Snoflayke label... with my anxiety, I suspect that's something I'll deal with for awhile. Logically, I know there will be people who will roll my eyes at me and consider me that way, but I think it is more important to work through these issues, to whatever conclusion I come to, than try to keep burying it. I've been trying that for nearly 30 years and it hasn't worked, so evidently, there is a problem there.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-07 05:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-07 08:51 pm (UTC)but i absolutely agree with you that you had a double dose of "this isn't normal cisfemale" going on. the brainwashing from your father and the PCOS had you going from both an emotional and a biological standpoint that the default should be male...then when you FAILED at being male (because dammit you got breasts and a female figure at puberty) your dad rejects you so you couldn't be male right. PCOS screws up your hormones so you couldn't *quite* do female right. and those hormones DO have a great deal to do with how a person reacts to their environments!
...TheEngineer was born with Issues. he had 1/3 of an undescended testicle that was removed when he was 4, and his father (damn the fucker) convinced him NOT to take hormone shots from age 11-16. so that fucked HIS body, how he developed, how he saw himself, then being broke/homeless/in graduate school gave him an eating disorder because he had no money for food...leaving him with food issues. he takes his shots now, but there are times when the way he thinks is more typically "female" than male. so yeah, brain development without the correct hormone balance going on is NOT the ideal!
between the time i was married to the evil ex and met the good one, i lived with a very lovely lesbian couple. so we were sitting around the living room one night (and i was painting my toenails) and they both came to the decision that if i was a lesbian, i would be an ultra-girly foo-foo femme if there ever was one. well...yeah. i'm Cat by nickname, and very much a spoilt little cat by nature. *snerk* femme is absolutely a Thing.
there is an absolutely perfect essay by a lovely dear person by the name of Elise Matthesen floating about the internets (about being boy, being girl, and being elf) but i cannot FIND the damn thing because of the semi-recent Ugliness that she found it necessary to report. that's clogging up the innnertubes. no, wait, HAH i defeated the innnertubes and found it!! https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.polyamory/ziBYRR9fTDo/hfy-jRUuAzcJ
(ps: alt.polyamory was where i met TheEngineer. *G*)
but seriously. the unholy liason of your dad's passive aggressive behavior towards your *mother* and your body not doing the things it was designed to do created this ISSUE that leads you into the "other" space.
and while i can look at the space marked "other", and listen and think "hmm, sometimes i feel a little bit that way", it's *not my space*. i'm a cis-female. i'm informed that my conviction that it is not the skin a person is wrapped in that makes them attractive to me (although pretty outsides are fun to look at) that really matters, but who they are as people puts me in the pansexual category. pretty sparkly femme. (or as my heart-sister put it "thank god you'll take care of the pink and sparkly so i don't have to fool with it")
we're all different. i like my labels because it helps me know who i am. other people don't like lables, or like you, don't easily fit in the labelmaker. but i'll be sittin here being hopeful you find the answers that make your heart happy, you know?
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-11 01:34 pm (UTC)Yeah, I really cannot say how much the right form of estrogen helped. It was like my body was finally right for once. I wonder if spiro will feel similarly. With my hormone issues being so fragile, I am hesitant, but I think it is something I should at least try.
Ow, I cannot imagine what the poor TheEngineer had to go through. That will fuck you up but good. :(
I have read that essay before. It is awesome. :)
Yeah, I have always felt more comfortable in trans spaces and I didn't quite know why. I don't know if this has been in the back of my head for awhile or what. I always worried I was trespassing so the spaces I would join are Trans/Queer groups, since I do count as queer. The one on Fet has been just lovely and terribly supportive to me, more than I expected. I have never felt quite like cis really felt right, but I just sort of shrugged it off as Speshul Snoflayking. I have a really bad habit of doing that...
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-08 04:30 am (UTC)Your dad is basically the evil opposite of what my parents did. I'd say that "Coercively Raised Male From Childhood" would describe your dad's bullshit quite tidily.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-13 08:21 pm (UTC)