Taking the Plunge.....Again

[plix (imported)]

Lately I have been wondering whether I have been successful up to this point in my life. I suppose the answer to that question depends on how you want to define success. Well, if you want to define it in terms of financial prosperity, the answer in my case is clearly no. It’s kind of strange though because most people who knew me growing up predicted that I would be financially successful. My grades, especially in the first half of my schooling career, were quite high. In high school they did slip a bit due to declining motivation settling in, but they were still good. This sort of academic achievement would seem to increase the likelihood of financial success later in life, but I suspect the low motivation is why things didn’t turn out that way for me. But my low motivation is something that could easily fill a post of its own, so I won’t go further into that this time

But I’m not so sure that for me success is that simple. I still haven’t figured out exactly what I think success is, but lately I have wondered if perhaps part what I consider to be success is having a family. One of my recent fears is that a big deathbed regret of mine is going to be that I never had a family.

I have been looking at men who appear to be around my age and noticing how they are with their families and wondering if that might be who I am supposed to be. In Ohio I am surrounded by a lot of this since people out here tend to get married much earlier than people in California, and it doesn’t seem like there are too many single people my age. I notice how masculine-looking these men are and wonder if perhaps I am lacking something there as well. Men my age look quite a bit different from how I do, which is almost certainly a result of their bodies being exposed to T for a number of years and my body not having this exposure.

Of course I know I am a different person from that other me who I could have been. This other guy was never castrated and had T all these last eight years. I imagine he would be different in some ways. Of course he would look different. But I also think he could otherwise be different. He probably would never have moved to Ohio or even from one place in California to another. He may have found his way into a relationship by now (one that would have been right for his sexual orientation). He could be following a different career path. He would have crossed paths with people he will now never know and would not have crossed paths with many people who are a part of his life now.

But at the same time, I tend to think I am the me I was meant to be. This other guy does not exist except as a theoretical possibility that could have been but is not. It’s interesting to think about how one choice we make in life can dramatically alter the rest of its course, but since I believe that life plays out the way it is supposed to, I also believe that the choices we make are the ones we were supposed to make. Just why I made this choice 8 ½ years ago I don’t know for certain yet, but I expect the answer will become clearer to me as I grow older.

Back to my fears that I will regret never having a family. I have to admit it is looking less likely for me with the passing of each day. I am almost 30 years old now, and as I mentioned, it seems that most people my age are already married with a family. Complicating the situation even more is that I am not taking T. It seems less likely a woman would be interested in a man who has no T in his system, considering the changes in appearance and functionality that result.

Of course I am afraid I will regret it someday, but my guess is that it would not be wise to let that dominate my life. Surely there are other things that can contribute to personal success, and I need to figure out what else can bring me happiness and the feeling that I have been successful.

[tugon (imported)]

Plix, my friend, you do know you are the only one saying that you can not have what you want. I know you are unable to fertilize an egg but there are so many more ways to parent. You and I have both decided things about ourselves that limits us in our dreams. I am the first to say relationships can be tough. In all the time I have known you having one would bring you great joy. There are many unconventional relationships today that I wonder if they outnumber the conventional relationships.

There are some women that for multiple reasons do not want a macho man. They may have been victims of domestic violence, sexual assault or child abuse. I am not saying find yourself a fixer upper but you are some woman's dream. When you meet her and find comfort with one another life will be sweet. Unbeknownst to you 8 1/2 years ago you may have made yourself exactly the person for which your dream is looking.

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

More TG wisdom, indeed. It is wonderful to find that what one might think of as trivial, turns out to have been the world to someone your know, -or don't yet. Hang in there, man, she thinks the world of you.

[plix (imported)]

tugon and daifu-orchid: thanks so much for your kind thoughts!

Why is it, I wonder, that people always seem to think of me as gay? This is an issue I have dealt with for much of my life. Of course, back when I was growing up I did have a bit of fascination with telling people I was gay, so I would imagine that probably didn't help But it's not like it was something I was constantly telling people. It just happened a couple of times. Once when I was in sixth grade I told a male classmate that I was gay, and I will never forget the way his eyes looked after I said that - they were full of pure terror. I also told a few friends that I was gay in high school, and one of them told me that everyone had already assumed that. But why?

Later that same friend reminded me that it was widely believed that I was gay. I heard that a girl was interested in going to the prom with me under the assumption that I was gay. I would imagine she felt comfortable going with me because she thought I was gay and didn't think I was going to try anything.

This same assumption has carried over to my adult life. At the place I worked over the summer, one of my co-workers was talking about wanting to set me up with her nephew. I never said anything to anybody at this job about being gay. One of the rumors going around about me last year at my current job was that I am gay.

Just last week a 5th grade student I was working with asked me if I am gay. A couple of years ago a 1st grader came up to me and said, "My sister said you're gay." His sister was an older student I had worked with. From the look on his face and the tone of his voice you could tell that my alleged gayness was something he was very worried about.

It's strange because I'm not really flamboyant at all. In fact, I am pretty much the opposite of flamboyant. So what in the world could be causing people to think I'm gay?

The interesting thing is that when I am on T, I am exclusively attracted to women. Things seem to get a bit trickier when I am off T. I can sometimes, though not often, feel attracted to men. I am still predominantly straight but with a slight bisexual side when I am not taking T.

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

My superficial observation is that people assume someone is gay if he is different from their expectations of a hetro male in any significant way particularly if he is quiet and projects a "soft" personal image. --FLO--

[plix (imported)]

Uncle Flo: I would guess you're right

This isn't really all that surprising, but lately questions of gender have been coming up for me again. This seems to happen from time to time whenever I am not taking T.

Many of us know that my original reason for being castrated was because I wanted to transition to female. I went pretty far with that transition. In fact, I was only three days away from legally changing my name. I had filed my name change with the court and just needed to attend the hearing. A few days before the hearing I went to the newspaper I was running the announcement in, and one of the staff members there was the only reason I backed away from my plan. I was presenting female, although due to my fashion sense (one way in which I am stereotypically masculine, I suppose ) I looked more like a grandmother than a 20 year-old woman. I was also using my "female" voice, which was clearly a man trying to sound like a woman. When this guy was talking to me, he seemed to intentionally throw in and put extra emphasis on the word "sir" at the end of everything he said to me. Now this was a religious-based newspaper, so you couldn't expect him to approve of what I was doing, but I had hoped to be treated at least a little more respectfully.

I ended up going home and crying for an hour. I then went down to the courthouse, dressed as a man (and that time would be the last I would ever present as female), and cancelled the case. I accepted that I wasn't passable, and that even if at that point I still believed I was trans, it wasn't yet time to make the switch.

That guy remains one of the biggest jerks I've ever met in my life, but at the same time I do owe him a debt because he prevented me from making a big mistake.

Of course it wasn't too much later when I came to the conclusion that I am in fact not trans, and I abandoned all plans for transition.

In a recent post I said that I "probably" identify as male. What did I mean by "probably?" What kind of guy would say that he is "probably" male? Most guys know without a doubt that they are male, right?

One of the big reasons I don't believe that I can trans is because as a child I never felt uncomfortable with my gender. It was clear that I was different and did not fit in, but I don't once remember thinking that my gender was the issue. Sure, there were some less-than-manly incidents during my childhood:

- My grandmother tells me that when I was 3, we were shopping and I pointed out a girl's shirt and said I wanted it.

- I played mostly with girls during my childhood, and almost all of my close friends were girls.

- I had a Polly Pocket, and it was one of my favorite toys.

- I really wanted an easy-bake oven.

- I thought those Lisa Frank folders were very pretty and wanted one.

But do these things make me female? Of course not. While I preferred playing with girls and liked some girly things, I don't recall ever thinking that I was a girl or even that I wasn't a boy. I also don't remember jumping up and down while shouting "Yippee! I'm a boy!" But I would imagine that is true for most cisgender people - we simply don't think about gender much.

My first transgender feelings started when I was 19. I was browsing the Internet that summer and came across the transgender community. I started thinking "Maybe this is it. This is why you never fit in. This is why you felt uncomfortable as a child. It was because you are really a woman." Now I am not a quick decision maker. I generally prefer to think about my options long and hard before I decide what to do. But once I have made a decision, things get a lot different. I suddenly become very hasty with implementing that decision. There really isn't any way to stop me once I have decided I am going to do something. That is pretty much what happened with transition. I decided I was going to do it, and things fell into place very quickly. It wasn't long before I was seeing a therapist to get approved for hormones. When the therapist didn't work out, I called Dr. Kimmel and scheduled my surgery.

The interesting thing is that

just a few weeks ago (when I made the post saying I was "probably" male) I was regretting not looking more masculine. Now things have shifted, and I suddenly want to look more androgynous. I don't really want to look feminine, but I wouldn't be opposed to looking more androgynous than what I do now. I think a lot of this is because I want people to see what I feel inside. I want to be able to say "See? I'm not a normal guy, so stop expecting me to act like one!"

Of course deep down I know that I'm male, and that it is my gender expression rather than gender identity that is the issue. Since I am a man, people seem to expect me to think, feel, and act in certain ways, and I'm just not always comfortable with that. One of the things that really bothers me is that because I'm a man, I'm not supposed to enjoy working with children, and if I do, then I must have sinister reasons for it.

So what does this all mean? Does it mean I go back to taking T, since I generally don't worry about these things as much when I am on it? Of course not. I love being without T, and I'm not giving that up. Does it mean that I should pursue my desires for some degree of physical change? Probably not that either, since we know how things work with me. Next week I could be back to regretting the loss of masculinity again.

But why is it that I can only say "probably" male, and not definitely?

[Milkman (imported)]

Plix,

What a thoughtful, honest post... Maybe you should not try to force yourself into either of the standard binarny male, female roles... You are in between at this point as perhaps being a eunuch is all of the physical change you need

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

Not quite sure where this fits, but.... Generally I identify as hetero male, while on T. Occasionally in the past I have stopped the T while having urological surgery, and quickly noticed that others treated me differently. I was aware of losing the male skin grease and odor, and have often wondered how much that or the other maybe subtle body-language cues bring the differences in social interaction about. This raises the question that perhaps I function as two rather different people, one while on T and the other when not. So losing the nuts may bring a welcome change, but maybe one needs to consider that it may mean being a different person, not just a happier version of the man before?

There are Great Minds here to guide us through this homespun muddled psych, I hope...

[plix (imported)]

Milkman and daifu-orchid: Thanks so much for sharing!

Milkman: You bring up an interesting idea. Lately I have actually been feeling like I might be somewhere in between genders. A friend pointed out that I might be "genderfluid," and this is something I have been thinking about as well. We all know how back and forth I am with this sort of thing, and it possible that my gender identity doesn't stay in just one place. Being a eunuch has done interesting things to me mentally, but physically while it has done some things like skin softening and some body hair reduction, I still definitely look like a man, so I don't know if in the long term the physical changes will be enough, but a lot of it probably depends on what kind of answers I come up with for these gender questions I am having.

daifu-orchid: Yes, I think the hormonal changes I have experienced probably have a lot to do with why I am feeling this way lately. I also identified as a hetero male when on T (though I didn't adhere to traditional male gender role expectations and felt like I was more feminine than your average guy). Also, I recently started taking phytoestrogens in the form of herbs to see if it would help with some of the more unwanted effects of castration like low energy and cognitive decline (and yes, I'm aware this is a violation of my anti-supplement leanings ). Now, the trans community says that these things have no effect whatsoever, but you also have to keep in mind that generally it is someone with full T who experiments with them. I've always thought they would work at least a little better for eunuchs. Anyway, I think this gender questioning has increased since I started the phytoestrogens a few weeks ago. I'm basically wondering just how much these herbs might be messing with my mind. I guess I could stop taking them to see if I feel solidly male again, but I kind of like what has happened and would really rather not stop. Plus, I think the herbs might be why I have been weathering this time off work surprisingly well. I expected to be way more depressed than this. Not only I have not experienced any significant bouts of depression, but there have been times when I have actually been pretty happy.

I was recently looking at my kindergarten class pictures. Everyone except me and one other boy was smiling. I had a very serious expression on my face and my trademark look of sadness in my eyes - that same look in my eyes that I had in many pictures taken of me when I was growing up. I can't explain it exactly, but I just look at my eyes in those pictures and see sadness inside of them. I was looking at some of the smiling girls beside me and wondering to myself if I would have been smiling if I was a girl. I was wondering if I would have liked wearing the clothes they were wearing, if maybe they were who I was supposed to be.

I still don't think I'm actually female. For that to be true (and please be aware that I am not commenting on other people's cases, just on my own!), I think there would have to be some evidence in early childhood - some incident where I thought or said I was a girl. As far as I can remember, that just didn't happen.

But lately it has become clear to me that I am not a normal man, and it's reached the point where I am now starting to feel like I might be something other than male (even though I don't think it's female). Sure, there are a lot of feminine men out there, and they are still men. But where exactly does the line get drawn? Just how feminine can a man be before he becomes something other than male?

In my case, there are a great deal of feminine qualities. But it's not just the qualities. It's also that my ring and index fingers are the same length. It's also something I've talked about before, that being my tendency to always write from female viewpoints when I used to do creative writing. This felt more natural to me, and I just couldn't see

writing from a male viewpoint.

It's also that when I was growing up, I read a lot of books that were probably targeted to girls, and I felt connected to these female narrators. I remember once I was visiting my aunt and cousins, and my female cousin had the book "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." I wanted to read the book, but my grandmother wouldn't let me because she said it wasn't appropriate for boys, and I was very upset about that.

All of these things have me wondering if I can really be completely male. Is that possible? Can a man so strongly identify with the feminine, and yet still be wholly male? Another thing I have observed is that I relate much better to the female students I work with than to the male students. I once told a friend I work with about this (one who I trusted not to turn it against me), and she said it wasn't normal and that I had to be careful saying that. I told her about the subject matter that tends to make up the conversations boys have and that I couldn't relate to those conversations. She said most guys would not only be able to relate to that sort of thing but would also enjoy talking about it.

As I mentioned, I am taking phyto E and am now seriously considering taking the real thing. It scares me for a lot of different reasons, but at the same time it is something I want to do. But will my identify shift even more if I start taking E?

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

First-hand, I know only how T or no T changes me. I have never experimented with herbals, but understand that they are not expected to be as powerful as prescription meds from the doc. So do I think your identity will shift more? Probably with real E. Is it a good thing? Only you can decide after a trial.