Androgyny

The following was posted to a blog on 11-3-08:

This has been an increasingly revealing time in my life. Since the sudden and dramatic return of my cross gender feelings that prompted the creation of this journal, I've explored more deeply the roots behind my issues. Fortunately, I haven't had to do this totally alone, always having my loving and supportive wife by my side - a blessing I cannot be more thankful for.

A little background. When I lived as a female, I didn't do much to endorse my femininity, instead, I dressed very casually, rarely wore makeup, and normally just threw my hair up in a high ponytail or a clip. While this might have been one of the reasons I passed so well (I didn't go all super-feminine crazy as so many transsexuals do and so appeared much more natural), that wasn't my goal. I felt like being me and that didn't involve having to go to all that trouble. Honestly this is something that both confused and made my transsexual friends envious.

But that's not all really. As I've mentioned before in this journal, I didn't feel right when I passed 100%. When I was totally accepted as a female (the pinnacle of any MTF (male to female) transsexual's dream) I found it difficult to deal with it. I felt like I was being deceitful and lying all over again. It seemed that if living on the male end of the gender pendulum caused me discomfort feeling like I wasn't truly expressing the whole of myself, I started to get the inkling that swinging all the way over to the other side of the pendulum might cause the same problem.

To alleviate these feelings of disingenuous perception, I found myself actually telling people who were totally convinced I was a girl, that I wasn't always so. In a way, it made me feel a lot better - much in the same way as when I came out to others when I was male that I didn't feel like one. This of course is not commonplace behavior for a transsexual. I'm not saying that no transsexual does this, but based ony my experiences with those that I knew, they thought I was half crazy. I mean, I can see their point as for one thing; what I was doing was dangerous. Some transsexuals have to live with the fact they will never totally pass and deal with all the social stigmas and danger that come with that, so for someone who passed to actually expose themselves was something of a taboo.

This of course should have been a clue that maybe I wasn't as set on being 100% girl as I thought I was, but I was so caught up with the fact that I needed to adhere to a rigid two gender system it didn't allow for much wiggle room. I would either be a boy or a girl, and since being a boy wasn't working out, being a girl was the best choice, but I couldn't fight the fact that at times, I would wonder if I wasn't making the same mistake I made as a male (even if I couldn't explain why).

When I went back to living as a male (for strongly religious reasons coupled with the doubt I expressed above), I went back fully to the male spectrum, but realized that I couldn't live the way I had before. Ultimately I was changed anyhow; I had experience life changing events and could never go back to the way I had been before - not fully anyhow, but I made every attempt to be as male as I could. For one reason I felt guilt for the pain I had caused my parents and friends and that if I returned to their lives and didn't become the person they once knew as closely as possible, then I would somehow hurt them more. My reasons seemed good at the time, but they set me up for later failure.

I did maintain some sense of my former identity, but it was relegated to joking about my past and turning it into a big funny thing that happened the way that you might laugh at a friend who at one time was involved in a monstrous prank. Still, it was better than nothing, better than making them (and myself) face the reality that it wasn't a joke, nothing had changed - I still felt the same way - I just was feeling that way back in a male role.

Over the years I've felt this male role grate on me more and more, but I've had strength to just deal with it and push it off - escape into some game or some other addiction that prevented me from facing it. However even I knew that couldn't last forever and so recently decided to face it before it consumes me as it once did. I needed to find exactly what it was I really wanted - what I needed to feel like myself and to be happy.

In the past week I feel I've finally begun to explore the path that would lead to it. I won't go into all of the decision making processes that led to this, suffice it to say, it seems to me to be the right path.

Androgyny.
2. having both masculine and feminine characteristics.
3. having an ambiguous sexual identity.
4. neither clearly masculine nor clearly feminine in appearance

It seems this is what I really wanted all along. I don't want to be all male or all female but both and yet neither at the same time. Ultimately I want to be free of the stigmas of both the gender stereotypes. I want my female friends to not automatically exclude me from their traditionally femaley conversations, and I don't want my male friends to automatically assume I'm a freak for the interests I have. I want to be able to appreciate a nice looking guy just as I would a nice looking girl. I want to be able to wear my clothes however I choose, my hair long or short, my face shaven or unshaven. Of course, all of these 'wants' don't necessary mean I'll be a popular member of society, but I'm willing to accept it. I've done far more difficult things that society hasn't appreciated.

The more prudent might ask me, sure you want these things, but what about your career? Won't this adversely affect it? I figure it would, but then again, work could be like an 8 hour acting job I go to, a place I pretend to be what I need to be to get ahead, but once I get off work, the hair will come down, the stiff clothes will come off, and the masculine facade shed. I figure I can deal with this so long as I don't take the actor home with me.

I dislike expectations based on gender which can make it tough being a member of a church with such specific gender roles. I would love to be able to attend and even hold a calling in Relief Society (the female specific area of the church) just as I would like to hold one in the Priesthood as I do now. Its not that I feel oppressed or anything, I mean the church has its rules, and I believe they are dictated by God, and if He wanted them different then so be it. It's not my job to change the church, and I would never deign to do so, its just annoying at times constantly being reminded of the distinction of my sex. I don't feel I really fit in very well with the guys, but I wonder if I wouldn't have the same problem were I tossed in with the women. I guess I'm just gender-screwed. ;)

So to put a point on this, I'm gonna throw up the proverbial middle finger at convention and be as androgynous as I choose to be. If I feel like being more male one day I will, but then if I feel differently the next day, so be it. I'm not intending to throw it in anyone's face, I just want to be real and express and be appreciated for all aspects of myself - aspects I feel are valid, genuine and hold in them no malice or guile.