Not a Bed of Roses, Part II
am generally a cheerful person. I made up my mind to be that, with some chemical help, perhaps as much for a coping skill for an often dour and testy life partner. It's hard to pull off describing the hard parts of my journey as a result. Today I'm feeling down. It's for another reason, but I think I will use this to write about the harder things to deal with aboutt transition since for once I am down enough to talk about it.
It's ironic that the reason I finally came to understand I am FTM is because I was thinking how much I wish I had always assumed a male identity online. I have always felt that the men I work with on various projects do not take me seriously. In real life I'm way short, barely clearing 5 feet, fat and visually impaired, so I know patronization and dismissal well and know it when I "see" it. That I appear female caps that. On the Internet the first three issues are more or less invisible, but thanks to my use of my real name, Nan, online the gender difference never has been. If I had always presented myself online as Christopher I might have avoided that.
Trouble is that I didn't. Almost everyone who knows me online knows me as female. Taking on a male presentation at this late date rather than lifting the burden of condescension may well have heightened it. Most of the men I deal with on line are gay. I wonder if they see mee\ as simply a gay man wannabe... Lord knows there are plenty of those out there. No amount of my insisting that way down deep I am really a guy would change that. Someone I know said about MTFs that she resented their claiming femininity when they none of them have dealt with menstrual troubles, birth control, pregnancy or hysterectomy. I don't myself think any of them claim that depth of femaleness but are simply trying to be their real selves, but her attitude might well be reflected on the male side.
So it occurs to me that after dealing with not being taken seriously all my life, painful in part because inside I was really a guy being treated as a woman, I may now be setting myself up to be a joke. Not only in terms of being seen as a wannabe but also simpy and visually a joke. I myself have joked that if I had SRS (sex reassignment surgery) my only career option would be as a Mickey Rooney impersonator. I have thought that two of my goals are to be called "sir" in public and to be able to pass enough to use the men's bathroom. As I used to say, I can pass as a sweet little old grandmother, why try to pass as a short, fat man?
Even while lying in the thorns I still feel I want to, need to, be myself. That self is male. It's not a game I'm playing. I still wonder, and will continue to wonder, if JT thinks I'm just going through one of my sillier phases. I always have been eccentric.. though all have been sincere, genuine proclivities, not just fads or crazes.
I am still pretty isolated. I am working on changing that. I really want to talk to people who might know exactly what my fears are. It means so very much to me to be taken seriously, to set myself to be more of ridiculous is perhaps the scariest part of all this. This is the sort of thing that makes many people into separatists. They just want to get away from the supercilious looks and patronizing attitudes. I've had 60 years of rolled eyes, indulgent smiles, dismissal, so no wonder I am always waiting for it, looking for it. The fact is, more often than not, it's there.
It is partly my way of stressing my genuineness that has brought me to this understanding that my body may be female but my heart and brain are male. I know I will have to do all the work of being the truest me I can. Nobody said it would be easy. As the book title says, it's the hardest thing you'll ever do.