Some of the events from my life I write about here I have described elsewhere. It has been important for me to re-examine some of this today because, for the first time in a long while, I have felt very lonely. I think this feeling arose because I am not well physically. My annual summer asthma attack has returned. Feeling physically out of sorts often leaves me vulnerable to self-doubt about my life decisions. This is not at all logical but there you have it.
I do not feel well, so today I do not notice the usual happiness I have experienced much of the time since I transitioned. That must mean there is something wrong with my decision to transition (I do not doubt my transsexual identity). My thought process is more convoluted than that, but that's the basic way it goes. Then I can feel adrift and alone. Once I come to my senses and realize what is going on in my head, I am fine. These days that usually does not take long. Today was a bit of an exception, although I am now back to a place of emotional stability.Writing about my life banishes these doubts when they occasionally come up, even if l do not feel well. Other things that help can include receiving a simple email greeting from a friend who knows me well.
When I was a child, I never felt that I was a boy. I never clearly articulated “I am a girl” and I cannot state that I ever felt quite that way as a child. Why not? I identify as a male to female transsexual now. Some gender researchers would say I am likely a ‘secondary transsexual’ because I did not insist I was a girl as a child and I identified as transsexual after the age of 40. A ‘primary transsexual’ would clearly know from a very young age that he or she was in the wrong body and insist upon being treated as they perceived themselves to be. Other investigators will insist there is no significance attached to the age at which one self-identifies as transsexual or transgender. I find this argument pointless for my situation.
On the other hand, if I buy into the view expressed in a paper by William Henkin (whom I cite below, several times it now turns out
) I may be more of a 'classical' or 'true' transsexual. Henkin here is describing one group of clients he sees: "“gay men” coming out as heterosexual women. This last category deserves some special attention because it is comprised of the male-bodied people Harry Benjamin identified as “true” transsexuals of the “high intensity” type for whom transition is both “urgently requested” and “indicated.” Relative to the rest of my transgender practice and experience this has been a small enough component to put in perspective the academic literature that claims, as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manualof Mental Disorders has repeatedly done, a ratio of 1:30,000 morphological males and 1:100,000 morphological females in the American population who are sufficiently gender dysphoric to seek what is still called sex reassignment surgery (SRS)."I always suspected, starting from early puberty, that I might be homosexual. I certainly knew I had some type of attraction to men. It turns out that many transgender persons experience life in the gay community as part of the process of figuring out their true identities. This is the path I have taken and for a time, after a 20-year marriage, I identified as a gay man. Even before I married, I told my future wife that I thought I might be gay. During our marriage, I was in agony over my erotic attraction to men. I never experienced sex with a man until the end of our marriage. My first experience having sex with a man was liberating but later encounters were nearly devoid of any type of fulfillment. So the gay identity never worked well for me and I had trouble understanding that. It was a gay therapist who first suggested I might be transsexual when I was seeing him because of this issue.. I had been out several years as gay by that point. Today, I am still physically attracted to men while I now identify as female.
The Henkin's paper is turning out to be a gold mine of information for me. He expresses the provacative view that some adults who identify as transgender may not have been trans as children: "But just as most people who question, explore, or confront transgender identity issues are not transsexual, so, clearly, there are many people who do not come out either to themselves or to others until they are adults, and some may not even be transgendered till then – although it is not at all clear to me whether some people in this position merely tried so hard to be the gender they were not that they hid it even from themselves for many years. Being transsexual is a very hard life road for most people.
Yet, while the dilemma is not as severe in adulthood when one’s ostensible power in the world is equal to that of other people’s, the issues that underlie it are the same as they are in childhood. Even in adulthood – perhaps especially in adulthood, when we are all supposed to “know” better – the relation between transgressive orientations and transgressive identities remains as confusing for most people as do the distinctions between sex and gender. This confusion is what Riki Anne Wilchins observed leads bashers to call transwomen “faggots”; it is probably what underlies the academic and clinical distinctions between sexual orientation and gender identity; and it is why we have not – yet – heard much discussion about sexual identity or gender orientation."
I certainly knew, on a child's level, that I had gender issues growing up. Nonetheless, Henkin's insightful comments on the difficulties faced by even mature adults when they probe transgender questions are relevant to my situation. His use of the terms 'sexual identity' and 'gender orientation' opens up new possibilities for understanding who I am. Considering how those concepts may help explain my own development and identity, particularly in light of the fact that I have not run across them before, will take no small amount of time. I am very interested in the interplay of gender and sexuality. I am finding, since I transitioned, that my sexuality may not be solely oriented toward men. This goes against what I have long thought and felt. This sexuality piece alone is a complex issue for me because I am still undeniably physically attracted to men. Somehow, there is something else going on in the background that leaves me attracted to women in a sexual way that is unrelated to any physical connection. More on this at another time.
There were a few times, certainly before the age of eight, when I told my parents variations on “I will not do that because girls don’t do that”. During those young years of development, I suspect this meant I had at least a suspicion on some level that I was, indeed, a girl. I can think of no other reason why I would justify my own behavior based on what girls could or could not do. It was not as if I was trying to get out of an unpleasant task by pleading ‘but girls don’t have to do that’. I was simply refusing to run around on a hot day without a shirt, for example. I had no sisters for comparison so I never felt that they were receiving preferential treatment that I then wanted for myself.
Conversely, I never refused to do somethng or be a certain way because 'boys don't do that'. It never entered my thoughts to try that as an excuse, for example, to get out of helping wash the dinner dishes even when I was much older.
After the age of eight or nine, I no longer refused to go without a shirt because ‘girls don’t have to’. Instead, I simply didn’t go around without a shirt. I would occasionally state “I am not like any of the other boys”. Comments like these would invariably be met with stern parental responses something like “Don’t ever say that, you are exactly like all the other boys”. I doubt my parents truly believed this. They had to have known I was very different although they may not have known what that really meant. Their immediate rebukes were likely intensified by their own perceptions that I indeed was different. They had no clue what to do about that but they ‘knew’ it could not be good.
In the article Coming Out Trans: Questions of Identity for Therapists Working with Transgendered Individuals (Trans Identity from the Queer Perspective) , by William A. Henkin, Ph.D. , © 2001, 2007 by William A. Henkin (http://www.ejhs.org/volume11/Coming_out_trans.htm), the author describes the difficulties with self-acceptance that gay and trans children face. He gives examples of children who are different from the majority in areas such as ethnic background. These children may be harassed and tormented on the school playground but they can go home to their families who assure them that they are really alright and loved.
Henkin mentions the work of educator Brian McNaught (sources are listed at the bottom) who points out that “If you’re a kid of almost any kind of minority at all, at least at the end of the day you can go home to parents who share your experience, and so can hold you and say, I know, Darling: I understand, and you can believe them and feel some little comfort that you are not alone: that a most important Someone understands you, and you have some hope and maybe even protection in the world.”
McNaught goes beyond this to state that if you are a gay or lesbian child you cannot tell your parents anything, even if you are tormented by other kids. You know your parents agree with everyone else. You are no good, bad, sinful and on and one because of who you are. The reassurance of a loving family is absent and you are left on your own with a secret you may learn to hide from yourself. You may go so far as to attempt suicide to hide your secret.
The situation for trans youth can be even more damaging. “If you’re transgendered, on the other hand, the secret you have that you can’t tell anyone is even more overwhelming than if you’re gay, because as soon as you say “I’m not a girl” or “I’m not a boy,” people point to your body, sometimes literally, and tell you you’re wrong about your very own identity. In the face of your still relatively innocent, trusting, and unencumbered awareness, the people you must trust and upon whom you must rely tell you that you are not who you know yourself to be. Especially when they derive from the mostly adult world of appearances, these assertions establish an element of identity conflict in the trans child unlike any other developmental identity conflict we know. (Except, possibly, in some cases of severe, persistent abuse that begins very early in childhood, such as those in which the abused child is forced or coerced to deny what happened to him.)
That is why coming out trans is not like coming out gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Where sex is concerned, including orientation, a person’s value may be questioned and demeaned, but where gender is concerned the person’s identity itself is indicted, and so it’s no wonder transgendered people have a suicide rate even higher than that of the gay population. (reference 4, below)“
[When I was searching for a new gender therapist in April of this year, I contacted a social worker who is an ex-ex-gay. He wrote me a very gentle note in which he said he realized it was much more difficult to come out as trans than as gay and that he had a great deal of respect for out transgender persons. I have come out as both gay and trans in my life. Until the last week or two, I did not agree with this kind man on the greater difficulty of coming out as trans. In fact, I have tended to downplay any problems I have faced in transitioning because everything has felt so right. For various reasons that I may go into at another time, I now agree with this therapist.]
On one level, I desperately wanted to believe my parents when they sternly informed me that I was just like all the other boys. They were the people I trusted most in the world and I did want their validation and love. Deep down, though, I knew they were wrong and I was not at all who they wanted me to be. If I dwelled on that difference too long or mentioned it too often, I risked losing the only support I had in the world. I had to hide from myself. I could never reconcile who I was with the person my parents unwaveringly declared me to be. There was no hope for happiness. Through my teen years, I often thought of suicide.
Of the few memories I have of the years before I turned nine, my fondest is playing with the girl down the street. We used paper dolls and played house. I was in heaven or so it seems looking back on that time. I have mentioned this time before and guess I was around 3 or 4 at the time. During this period, my father held down multiple jobs in order to bring in enough income to pay the bills and take care of a wife and three sons, of which I was the oldest. He was seldom home. There was a time when he was not away at work when he found me playing with my female friend. He dragged me away and soon after got me involved in playing some kind of ball game with the neighbor boys. As soon as my father left the area, I stopped playing with these kids. I never went back to joining boys in any activities, sports related or not, throughout my years living at home.
A clear memory from a time after I was forbidden (just now it has come back to me that my parents did indeed forbid this) to play with my girl pal, was being by myself on a swing in a city park. My family was off in the distance interacting with other people and laughing. I remember looking at the others and feeling horribly alone and depressed. I very much remember feeling I did not fit in with anyone. In those days, as I later found out, professionals did not believe young children could be depressed. I have experienced deep depression as an adult and I am certain I was a very depressed throughout my childhood. I have no memory of being depressed when I was able to play with my female friend down the street. Perhaps, though, at the age of 3 or 4 I truly was too young to be depressed. I don’t know the answer to that and I do not have time to look into it.
So, as I described above, I did not feel like a boy as a child. I stated this to my parents on a number of occasions in different words, even to the point of saying I would not do something because girls do not have to. There may be several reasons why I never actually stated “I am a girl”. The fact that my parents clearly disapproved and sanctioned cross-gender play may be part of it.
In addition, my own awareness that I inhabited a body that matched that for a boy may have confused the issue for me. I have always been a deep thinker and I would not be surprised if I was convinced that somehow I had to be a boy no matter what I felt like. My attraction to science education was in part based on my desire to describe and classify things. I could observe that my body fit the description of a boy child. It may be significant that my mother often said that I was such a deep thinker as a child that it frightened her. Most likely, I was so withdrawn from people that even if I were not a deep thinker, though I believe I was, it would have appeared to others that this was the case.
As I matured, I remained withdrawn and pursued solitary activities. Things like playing the piano, gardening and taking long walks in the woods with my dog “Princess” occupied my time outside of school. I was at peace with myself when I was alone.
I will delve deeper into the period where I have clear memories of my life, after reaching age nine, in my next post. For now, I will say that this during this later period of my childhood I felt even more alienated from boys and men. I stood by myself waiting for the school bus, unwilling to associate with boys my age. I knew I could not be one of them. I had a few male friends in high school more or less by default. They were not part of the ‘in’ crowd and, besides, I excelled in school and they appreciated my help with their homework. I never really related to these friends.
While it is therapeutic for me to write about my life, it is also emotionally draining. As I have stated before, bringing up memories unavoidably brings up associated feelings. I cannot do this kind of thing on a daily basis.
Life really is very good for me now and the present will remain my main focus.Specific references used in the sections of the Henkin paper I discuss:
McNaught, B. (1988) On being gay. New York: St. Martin’s
McNaught, B. (1993) Gay issues in the workplace. New York: St. Martin’s
McNaught, B. (1997) Now that I’m out what do I do? New York: St. Martin’s
4. An admittedly old reference cited in the paper: Transsexuals may be at higher risk than homosexuals and much higher risk than the general population to suicidal behavior. Fifty-three percent of transsexuals surveyed had made suicide attempts (Huxdly, J., and Brandon, S., 1981).