Who am I?

[Danya (imported)]

Yes, I forgot to mention non-functional testicles even though I'm sitting here with a pair of them right now and consider myself to be chemically castrated and hence a eunuch.

MrT's response is indeed very good.

-Danya

[mrt (imported)]

Even though Pauline’s question hasn’t been fully answered yet, I’ve been reluctant to post anything here that might detract from MRT’s brilliant post on the nature of the eunuch community. He’s captured it perfectly.

For Pauline, though, despite what Freud wrote, a eunuch can most simply be defined as someone who was born with testicles, but for whom they are now non-existant or non-functional. (There are a few complexities that could be added, but they are incredibly rare.)

Eunuchs make up only a small part of that vast diversity of human sex and gender that exists beyond "male" and "female." And, eunuchs alone are incredibly diverse, as MRT so well describes.

Sir... I'm honored by your statement. Thank you!

[Danya (imported)]

Getting back to the 'Who Am I' title of this thread, I want to bring up a few things I've mentioned elsewhere and tell about two dreams I had last night.

I've already stated that I now view myself as very much more male to female than male to eunuch or even male to eunuch with heavy feminine characteristics. Damn, this stuff quickly becomes complex and mind-boggling. Perhaps I'm just too easily boggled

Jesus mentioned to Jemagirl and me, while I was visiting the Golden State, that the Navajo have something like (and Jesus will correct me if I get this number wrong ) 11 gender states that are clearly defined and accepted in their culture. Marriage, or the Navajo equivalent, is permitted between any of these two of these gender identities.

The more I learn about Jesus, the more clearly I understand the great depth of his knowledge on gender issues. He talks about gender fluidity over a lifetime, mentioning how only advanced gender theorists are discussing this.

I've got to say, until recently I've been having enough trouble figuring my birth brain, vs. genital, gender. Adding the idea of my gender fluctuating is disturbing but exciting, too. It seems that, at least for some, brain gender isn't entirely set at birth if it can fluctuate over a lifetime. Maybe there are only some of us with the ability to shift genders along a continuum, over time, with relative ease and lack of brain-body dissonance. Certainly I can conclude that, if I accept (for the sake of argument) the idea of gender fluidity as something at work in my life, what matters for me today is less my brain gender at birth than what that gender is now.

This brings me, in a round about way, to the 'who am I' right now, today, question. While I was in San Francisco over the last 5 days, I did something that is normally difficult. I allowed myself to experience my emotions about my gender largely free from analyzing what it all meant. I wasn't entirely successful at this but I'll blame that on my scientific training .

Admittedly, I was starting out at the point of considering myself MTF. This was a feeling 'experiment', though, and I had to start somewhere! I found that my feelings about being female were even stronger and more positive than before.

That brings me to the two dreams I had in the middle of last night, one of which I've mentioned on another thread. I don't normally remember having many dreams, so this was unusual. It's likely I wouldn't have remembered either one if I hadn't stirred soon after the dreams because I needed to use the bathroom. Or perhaps it's because I had started to stir that the dreams happened! I enjoy this kind of speculation so I hope some of you are able to bear with me

The first dream was of my birth and the doctor announcing 'It's a girl!'. This made me very happy.

The second seemed to occur more in the time I was stirring to get up and use the toilet. In it, I'm lying on my back on the bed and watch as the remaining vestige of my male persona leaves my body, never to return. Again, my reaction to this was happiness.

After returning to bed, I quickly fell back into what turned out to be a very restful night's sleep. That is unusual for me.

I'm not implying that these dreams, standing alone, definitively tell me who I am. They are certainly additional, and I think important, emotional confirmation of the feminine feelings I've been experiencing.

I don't have time to go into other things I noticed from letting my emotions run wild. By the time I got home tonight from California, the more female I was feeling.

It is entirely possible that this female persona could be happily incorporated into some gender identity that is not strictly at the female pole of the traditional and out-dated male-female binary. Let's just say I am open to that possibility. If I were a Navajo, although Jesus noted their attitudes are changing with modernization, this might be a non-issue. It's more difficult when you are a 21st century denizen of a culture that still insists that you are either male or female. The fact that my educational background is in hard-core science further complicates things. I am a product, through lots of education and experience, of the very society that seeks to trivialize gender identities by reducing them to two.

-Danya