Okay, you win. Transsexing my body, but deep in my head, the right gender - and I don't like it.

[hundun]

I'm trying to follow Tim's fine advice about coming out: try a bunch of different stuff, see what works for you, find parts of your identity, and then see what you think of queer "norms."

Translasses have the option of presenting as visibly queer lasses. The advantage of this is that onlookers will be more likely to confirm their identity, as they'

Comments

[darthmaus]

Whichever way you go, you *are* breaking new ground, and that's going to be confusing and intimidating - but it's really admirable and you'll find the Amy you're comfortable being in there somewhere. She's just probably not lurking in any of the well-travelled paths.

And "masculine MtF" it puts me so far outside the range of what most people, even those into queer issues, see as intelligible, and pretty much drops me outside the range of common experience. I mean, what the fuck is a squishy (i.e. really really soft) butch MtF? That's... what the fuck?

That, to me, is the ultimate realisation that not only is gender not binary, it's not even a one-dimensional continuum - it's, like, three or four or maybe more. To be honest with you, of the non-broken non-screwed-up MtFs I've known, very few fit strictly into the "I'm a WOMAN! Therefore I must be and do, talk, walk, and dress all things that society defines as feminine in order to be accepted as such!" model - those are the screwed-up ones. The smart, together ones have custom-built their own gender, with varying results that may or may not involve significant elements of socially prescribed femininity - which seems to me to be exactly what you're doing.

I do NOT mean to imply that this is easy - I can't even imagine how hard it is - but I do believe that it's *right*. And surely if you articulate your identity and your reasoning (once you've had that experimentation time to figure it out for yourself, of course) the psychiatric panel will get it? There, I certainly have no idea - how much do these shrinks really understand the variability and mutability of gender?

Keep experimenting. You rock.

[darthmaus]

I totally agree - and that's exactly what I meant when I said that I know I can have no idea how hard it is to do as a trans person. I wouldn't say that I personally fit too many stereotypes of the "woman" label, but as I was born with it and never felt a need to question whether it applies to me (although I do spend a lot of time questioning what it *means* - but that's different) - so I have pretty much no idea what transfolk go through.

I just think it's sad that many MtFs are denied during transition and even afterwards by social/psychiatric/emotional forces the same right that I've been blessed with, to question what "female" and "woman" are and decide what they mean for me without having to prove that they apply to me - and it's really wonderful to see those who do have that courage. All women - everybody, in fact - should be able to do so, I think.

[hundun]

Multiple continua model - hoorah!