Gendering

[Anonymous]

Hi Kristina , I was constantly being caught crossdressing ,the eventual outcome was my biological father disowning me at 10 years old and my mother throwing me out of home at 15 ! Beleive me when I say they tried everything too stop me but it was an impossible task ! At 19 I had a great job and could be me ,but something terrible happened which turned my whole life upside down and I became a very aggressive alpha male for a decade ! Cross dressing was not part of my life till I hit my 30’s .
Cheers Ella-Kristine

[Anonymous]

My family consists of 4 brothers and as we are all a year or so apart, we all grew up in the same circle of friends and played in the same area. We all played the same type of sports and lived at the beach with a very large group of friends in summer. We also grew up in one of the roughest areas south of Adelaide. Our parents treated us the same, we listened to the same music and still do, we all boxed, all have a motor bike licence as well as car.
Although we are alike, we couldn’t be more different, my older brother is a sport coach and also a State Union Rep, my next brother down drives trucks and is very “Mr Macho Man” as he will still fight at a drop of a hat, my youngest is associated with an outlaw motorcycle group and works for them as a tattoo artist and then there is me.
I have been crossdressing since I was 8 years old, (found a girls sun dress at the beach and sneaked it home) I live as a female at home but work as a male (the only male clothes I own are for work)
They are all married with kids and have grandchildren, I am single (was married for 20 years, and partner new about me) and no kids. I don’t have a new partner after 2 years which they don’t understand and as my boobs are growing will have to “come out” soon.
I believe we are who we are, not from our environmental surroundings but what we are born with inside our minds. We may adapt out outer selves to “blend in” occasionaly by wearing male clothes on the outside but it is still that flowery summer dress on the inside as we walk down the street.

[Anonymous]

I think that I can reply to this thread by saying that yes, gendering is a factor in the way that you are brought up and does lead you into your future. Everyone here knows that I born male and yes, my parents raised me as such with things taught to me as they would be any other male child. The gendering part came into play for me in that I wasn’t ever taught to express my true feelings or even my thoughts so anything strange in my mind was something that I had to work out alone if I could manage to. I came to realise when I was young that if it was something different or weird (my thoughts/feelings) then I was better off trying to forget about it, which in hindsight was wrong but at the time I didn’t know what else to do.

I think that you have a good theory Christina, it certainly makes sense to me. I guess that I could say that if my gendering process allowed me to think and feel what came naturally then yes, things would have been very different for me all those years ago.

Peta A.

[Anonymous]

We are who we will be at least internally, influence of others is re enforced by society, and dependant on the will of the person being influenced. A sad fact I feel is we are rarely our selves even when we make the choice, we still suffer the veiw of others and we position our selves to fit some social structure or other weather we realise it or not.

I as a young boy always positioned myself against what was the in thing, took the side of those that were picked on and found an affinity with girls , when young all the wrong things for a boy, did not have any sisters or crossing may have started a lot earlier. As i got older i found my attraction to girls was heavily hinged on look, i was far to interested in their style hair make up etc not a manly interest, hide or suffer was the veiw of the world i had, true or not i don’t know. But i am rambling i think?

We should never take the experiance of others to make our own decisions because we only know the things they want us to know and what seems to fit may not at all, but we all do. So in the end i guess what I am saying is what we are and who we are will always be some what of a collage of our experiances in the world, and our freedom is within the boundaries of others we know gender identification included, untill we disregard what we have known.

Sorry hope i stayed on track.

[Anonymous]

What an interesting question.

At 6, I associated more with girls and didn’t like boys, but I knew I was expected to behave like boys. I preferred the games and clothes of girls.

At 15, I asked if I could be changed to a girl instead of a boy because I felt being male wasn’t right but was laughed at by my parents and their friends and learned to suppress any feeling of being born in the wrong gender.

At 21, I told my soon to be wife I wanted to be a woman but she thought she could “cure” me of this affliction.

At 27, I thought I would rather die of some incurable disease than continue to suffer the trauma that having to live the lie would bring.

At 24, 26, 30, 32, 37 I attempted and failed at ending this pain I continued to feel in spite of my life appearing somewhat perfect.

At 37, I divorced in order to become the woman I always thought I was but fell victim to the fears and pressures we bring upon ourselves in order to fit in.

Between 37 and 47 I struggled to fit in with what society expected of me as a male and had a string of “unsuccessful” relationships – including one where I truly believed I had met “the” one.

At 48, I discovered the real problem and started the process to correct it.

At 50, I am getting closer to Nirvana.

[Lisa_W]

Hi All

This is all very close to home for me and from my own experience & from what I have read very typical. I have a theory about it which I will expound upon later.

Around 8 I was wearing my mother’s underwear – no opportunity to wear dresses. At early puberty I repeatedly tried to freeze my male parts off. Unfortunately that was unsuccessful. But as one of my daughters said – she was glad that it didn’t work.

Then testosterone kicked in and like so many others here, I tried to be the alpha male etc. Married & had kids.

I never really stopped wearing female underwear & still do even though I am still working as a male. As others have said the boobs are hard to hide – thank heavens for double breasted shirts – 2 front pockets.

Now my theory. At the Pre-pubertal stage there is not much testosterone in our bodies & our feminine tendencies appear. However we are often forced to hide then due to parental pressure etc.
Post puberty the testosterone surge sublimates those feminine feelings. However there is still mental conflict. To resolve this we try hard to be the macho man.

Later in life – the timing varies – the testosterone levels drop. ?male menopause or natural decline in T which occurs with aging. then those feminine tendencies are physiologically allowed to re-appear. Now we are emotionally more able to cope with it (some don’t) and take the decision to transition. The tendency is there all our lives it is just overwhelmed by T for awhile. Where the tendency came from is another story.

I have too glibly down played the mental anguish that we all go through & the consequences to our families & our friends. We all could write chapters on that.

Well that is my theory & I am sticking to it!!

Hugs
Lisa

[Anonymous]

There are a few subjects that would be likely to interest/provoke a TR member to respond than this one. How many stories and counting…? even for one such as myself who occupies the fringes of the TR response bell curve- but having said this why else would I have joined this site other than to assuage the gender disorientation/worries that for many of us has profoundly influenced our lives. The whole concept of ‘gender’ is both wonderfully expressive and woefully oppressive. Gender is complex yet so very human; it both embraces and goes beyond the many genuine concerns with the fashion industry’s self-serving agenda that coercively channels a literal soup of ‘human variations’ into stereotypes at the expense of real human issues and questions. Not surprisingly though, within this realm everyone at some level delights in the sensuality, the expressive power of an image and the emotional excitement of suggestion that so tantalizingly moulds and defines our sense of ourselves and our values- all the loose ends so nicely tied up. It is though a double-edged sword that we eventually succumb to and inevitably fall upon.

Who wasn’t excited to see the latest Vogue (March gender article) for example, the faint hope that there is a place for each of us within the rainbow. But unfortunately the rainbow is never enough and here the problems begin because one open ended proposition leads to another and eventually we find ourselves doubting everything. The search for certainty and with it evidence of our reality through definition of what is our reality seems to be part of our makeup, both figuratively and metaphorically. The story of Crissie seems like so many others to confirm the length we will go to fit the image and then… all of us have to face the truth of the illusionary nature of socially constructed images- here I’m intentionally critical of both ends of the gender/image spectrum, that taken seriously can produce nothing but trauma. In all of this perhaps my observation is that the exception is almost always more interesting than the rule- and with this recognition there is both assurance and consolation. Having so delighted in the exception (Andrej or Crissie) the next step though too often dangerously looks for more… for some certainty as in “when is it too late”- (if ever) and here maybe we need to pull ourselves back a step in our desire to integrate, to find norms and to define boundaries. For many of us gender variants our minority status and the inherent frailty of humanity seems to demand both and… but it also equally affirms how difficult it is to see ourselves in the larger picture, …to just be ourselves and perhaps more problematically attests to the potential to lose ourselves within the norms that will never quite fit or answer our questions.

Sonya

[Anonymous]

Hi.

Most of you know i come at this differently .
When your brain is wired for both male / female does it really matter what your body is more so for me as i did not see male or female . both were the same . i was not forced fed male or female . i was just brought up as a kid & it was accepted i was a boy .

For me it had nothing at all to do with my suroundings fact is it was never talked about well why should it , as it was really just Mum & me oh yea no dad tho after a short time we had my grand Mum & gand Dad,

I never tryed to be a boy or gril as to dressing i was 11 / 12 & yes dressed up in front of 80 to 90 people & my Mumso whats the deal..none.
as to this tough he man type thing not likely i was to soft. even to fight back . i liked both boy & girl things so nothing odd there for me ether.
I had wondered why i was not like the girls tho even that did not bother me much .
I really was walking down the middle of the road as far as it concerns me .

It was there & thats all that mattered, i did not hide who i was . i showed compassion to girls / women i emphised with them & i treated them as they were my sisters not as girl friends as boys see it.
For me it was very different not as many of you here are. so my wireing was different then as it is now has it changed . not at all im still the same.
Did i have to be a part of socity only as others s saw me or was i seen as different . well as it was is i was seen both ways.
tho at the time i did not know. i was not really a part of socity i was a loner so did i fit in not really i sort of passed through & that really was it . i was not trying to or even try to be a boy/ male because i had no idear what a male was or ment to be. i did not have thet wireing. so how could i. & i did not try to be as many of you have being a male .
I was different & that was that as far as i was concerned. weird i was & i think i still am.
Nor sure if i can answer any better.

…noeleena…

[Anonymous]

I have been reading some of the posts here on the subject of gendering and cannot help wondering if age has a lot to do with the journey we have all travelled. I was born in 1951, things were black and white then, gay people existed but were rarely heard of unless there was someone in your family who was described as being a bit funny. Mind you paedophiles were described like that too, (“stay away from uncle Arther he’s a bit funny”). Back to the subject, I guess what I am trying to say is that over the last few decades community opinion has softened with regard to the fringe minorities, and with this anyone with a gender anomaly can pursue their ideal with a little less resistance from society. Even though I started Crossdressing at an early age, (thanks for the use of the wardrobe MUM) I still felt compelled to hide and do everything “abnormal” in secret. Unfortunately this secretive behaviour led to feelings of guilt and naturally a lot of purges ensued, but the desire or the drive to do this never waned in any way. Always even during puberty when women became the most important pastime for me and my friends, I still had some items of womens clothing secreted away somewhere. It has only really been with the advent of the Internet that I have become more aware and comfortable with who I really am, and really regret that I wasn’t born 30 years later so that I could live and enjoy the life that I believe I should have had, namely that of a transsexual.
I guess what I am trying to say is, that like it or not, no matter what we want to be, we are all shaped by society to some degree or other. Some are fortunate to have tolerant families and can pursue their desire at an early age but some of us were born in an age or situation that necessitated the need for secrecy and a suppression of our natural desires. No matter what anyone says I strongly believe that what we all know in our minds is the right thing for us to be, is as natural as the physical being that we were delivered into this world in!
Hugs Pamela!

[Anonymous]

I am aware that this may be, to some, a touchy subject as it touches ones sense of self. I will attempt to have the thread remain unlocked so I mean no offence to anyone who may read it. That said, IMO one cannot grow up in our Society without some form of gendering,( remember that we accept that there are more than two!) As soon as we are born, we are defined and the work begins ( doesn’t HE look like his father ) we are put in clothes ( either boy or girl) or ones that are deliberately designed to connote neither. The thing is that , like a coin has two sides though is still one coin, to avoid a ” fixed point” by going to the opposite , is still to acknowledge the original point.

One example that illustrates this is why women wear lipstick. Is it just coincidence that almost ALL colours of lipstick are some shade of pink? The redder the LS the more people recognize the sexual message it represents. To wear green or blue or black is merely a statement to avoid the sexual connotation and so proves the point. Many women I have spoken to agree that they can’t appear in public without lippy , it is a ” sexual marker ” or gender message, for women in our society, why else are the likes of WE be attracted to it? I know women who never wear lipstick but when pressed, will usually say that they don’t want to present the sexual message that it denotes ( usually to men). So , wear it or not, the gender message remains the same.
Noeleena, you state that at 12 you were “dressed up” ( as a girl I assume?) How did you recognize that they were girl’s clothes? It can only be that you understood the gender message, we have to know the opposite to know what we are! It is human nature . As for hard wiring from birth , how can we know that by looking within ourselves as it is the very “wiring” itself that is doing the recognizing and so must be ,at the least ,a subject for query?
I did not infer that we were ” force fed ” necessarily , though some are ! What I meant is that the gendering is so subtle at times that it is imperceivable . Just as a fish cannot recognize water as they swim in it , many of those who are brought up in their own gender have trouble seeing a possibility of being outside of their own reality. This is , I think why so many people cannot come to terms with our realities. It is those able to take a META view ( standing outside of themselves), that can truly have empathy for others.

[Anonymous]

On the personal side of gender
Reflecting on at the correspondence so far, a few thoughts come to mind and I will try to avoid being too inclusively philosophical. I personally didn’t interpret the original post as likely to disturb anyone as it doesn’t require anyone to judge beyond their personal experience as in the contributions submitted. We all benefit from the experience of others. Being a baby boomer and so on the fringes of contemporary norms by experience I find it quite interesting how others have worked within what are fundamentally age old issues that I for one don’t expect to change in any substantial way beyond fashion/fluctuating norms. (Sorry to dash your hopes and not that I agree with this outcome) Whether you have a feminine or masculine sensibility and all the variations in between are part of the dynamic diversity that makes us human, sensitive and curious about the formation of our consciousness. This is the essence of Christina’s topic.

While the sense of a gender identity would seem of primary importance I suspect it is more important what you do /how you manage the questions/knowledge that is of interest to others rather than any definitive conclusions provided by either society or science.

Here I think it is once again important to separate ‘gender’ from sex or even sexual orientation. Unfortunately this is easier said than done and continues to carry the burden of social stigmas/ conclusions that unfairly damage people’s lives as associations are jumped to with the minimal amount of understanding. I think it is this shadow of unfairness /inequality of representation that is offensive to most thinking people. As a transgendered person who has always loved Christina’s too pregnantly symbolic lippy (an object of desire from the moment I could reach my mother’s make-up table) it has of course been a struggle to find a balance in my life. I have been married twice with four children to whom I have felt as much a mother as a father. But the importance of the struggle was for myself a journey towards the capacity to love myself for who I am, not who I should be (in terms of image/associations/expectations).

One must be able to love oneself before one can love others. The pragmatic reality of this being that I have no intention to recast myself as an alternative mother to my children- there is in my case no need -besides the obvious issues of birthing what is the difference between a father and mother? (as Noelena suggests) It is how I construct and conduct my relationships with them that make them individually meaningful and through which concurrently I find the satisfaction of my ‘ internally defined gender’.

In my opinion gender and its complex subtleties are undeniably a difficult question but not an offensive one. In many ways I suspect the transgendered (I limit myself to my own experience here) like other minorities are unwittingly privileged/blessed by the contradictions in their life; in being compelled to reconsider who they are, its significance, and how it can find meaningful expression that becomes more than a burden but rather a contribution to their lives. Do you really want to be as mindlessly banal but gender secure as Marge or Homer Simpson? -Now that’s offensive!

Sonya

[Anonymous]

Hi . Christina.

I did a post last night then scraped it so been thinking how to answer . yes i was dressed as a girl . how did i know . I did not know they were just clothes nothing more . i ether hated them or liked them .

I hated so hated male clothes . I can not tell you why i just did & i still do tho not as bad. sorry im really struggleing with this

I have a mind blank okay or did at that time & yes still have,

from age 1 to 7. i only know what my Mum told me about & its begger all. I can not procsss the ? i have no background so the ? i cant answer, whats the difference between boys & girls .

Of cause later on i started to find out & yes Mum gave me a book on becomeing a man . & becomeing a female remember i could not read.. end of.

I looked at the pics i saw a boy oh yea those bits & the girl oh those bits . okay nice one . then i went out to play it ment nothing . not a tiny bit . it was a drawing a pic nothing more than that. you see i could not mind wise procsss it

I know youll all think im pretty thick well i was so with this background of me you may get the idear

Theres little bits i have tho i dont really know if Mum told me or i saw it

All i can say is & im sure its right i was under mediction for so long that may have cause d my allmost total mind blank ,

I cant get my info from the D H B were i was born or the other hospital
I know theres some thing , with out the records im at a loss,

& knowing my problems theres a reason why my mind was shut down.

Oh well thats my best shot,

…noeleena…