My transgendered life
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Original - Misc › Non-Fiction/True Stories/Autobiographical
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
3
Views:
1,211
Reviews:
4
Recommended:
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Currently Reading:
0
Category:
Original - Misc › Non-Fiction/True Stories/Autobiographical
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
3
Views:
1,211
Reviews:
4
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
This is a dramatization of a true story. I got permission to publish this by all parties involved. All names and Identities have been changed to preserve the privacy of all involved. And any resemblances are coincidences.
Chapter 2
Hello! I think I have some issues to clear up. So, here we go!!!
So a few terms to start us off. Sex and gender, they mean the same thing, yeah? No, they really don't. To make it simple and easy, look at it this way. Sex is what's between your legs, gender is what's between your ears. Gender is who you really are, who you think of yourself as. If you honestly never gave it any thought? Then most likely your gender matches your sex. If however, you have felt uncomfortable in your own skin your entire life, never fit into your perceived gender group, and have trouble recognizing yourself when you're surprised by a mirror, that's what it's like to be transgendered.
Ok, I have a female body, so to the average person, I am a girl….I gave birth to 4 children, so as you can see the entire cycle of a female bodied person. But for most of my entire life, I knew something wasn't right, I knew I was different, I knew I was a boy…. Then puberty arrived and the ugly truth was forced into my face, there was no doubt about it, all of those people who referred to me as a girl, were right. And I buried my feeling my inner knowledge of being male, buried it so very deep the only way it was ever expressed was in my clothing if left to myself in the store, and in my hobbies and interests. It bobbed to the surface at times, especially when The Dream would occur. Each and every time I would have that dream it would leave me kinda off kilter and depressed.
Several years ago, I started reading yaoi manga. Which is gay themed, so gay love stories written by women for women in Japan. When I ran thru all of the ones I could read for free, I went further afield and found gay literature written again by women, and then one blinding shiny day found actual gay love stories written by men, and I was hooked. I read and read and read. One story had a link to the authors blog, so I clicked the link, he had several blogs listed as ones he enjoyed reading, so I read them. I couldn't really understand why I was so attracted to the gay stories, and even more strongly the gay blogs, and then one day…. I read a post by a blogger that I had read for a very long time, and there it was staring me in the face. He is also transgendered, he is starting hormone therapy to become female. I began chatting with him, and even though the genders were reversed, everything he said was me, me, me!
That began a journey of re-self discovery, the unburying of my true inner self. Things that I had done in the past, suddenly made since to me. Why my hubby's friends always said that I was the most unusual woman they had ever met, and did I have any sisters! Ha ha ha!! Memories pop up almost daily, that now armed with my new shiny knowledge of me, explain why I did that, why I felt that way, etc. I had always hated porn, truthfully it bored me to tears, wasn't in the least exciting at all to me. Then a friend asked me if I had ever watched gay porn….no, never why? He told me to watch and let him know what I felt. I did, and I was bored no more! Now I understood what the hubby sees in porn! I told my friend and he very gently told me, you do know that your gay, right? OH?…….oh!
The reason I say that I am gay is that because i'm attracted to men. In our society a male who is sexually attracted to men are considered to be gay. I don't think of myself, my actual self as female. And here too I'm walking to the beat of a different drummer. Only around 10% or so of transgendered people consider themselves gay lesbian or bisexual, around the same amount of the population that are not transgendered.
I'm not a Stepford Wife by any means. To be very honest and truthful, I am the dominate person in our marriage. I am the one who rules the checkbook, and who is pressing for sex, my husband to most people doesn't seem to be submissive at all, is the submissive person in our marriage. The idea of living the rest of my life without him is more than I can bear. I won't live my life without him unless our life together continues to crumble as it has since my coming out to him in January.
Why does he have such a problem with me being a male gendered person? Or even worse a male bodied person? Because that would make him gay….. He has no problem with people being gay at all. Several of our friends have gay children and he totally accepts them. He, however does not want to be gay, could not deal with being perceived as gay, could not live with me as a man.
Am I mad at him for this attitude? No, not at all. I understand where he's coming from. My bi and gay friends all asked me if he messed around as a younger teen with other boys, and when I told them no, they were all very worried about how long our marriage would last. They knew that most men who considered themselves as 100% straight would have a very hard time dealing with the idea, the concept of living and loving a man in a sexual and emotional way. I thought at first that we would be the ones who could buck the system, we could be the ones that could find the magic key and open the door the happiness, but it's not looking so very good for us right now. I have to push him to hug me, to kiss me, and honey don't even ask about our sex life cause all you will hear are crickets….
I'm in therapy and hopefully she can give me some pointers on how to stick our marriage back together so that it will work again. At this time I have no plans on transitioning. Why? Well that would spell the end of our marriage for sure, and I don't want to lose the love of our children. Because I'm not real sure if they could deal with mommy becoming daddy……
The reason I decided to tell my story is because trans people are still very much misunderstood. If they are thought of at all, it's always the picture of a man in a skirt who is over dressed for the occasion, and has done a poor job on his/her makeup. And while quite often a stereotype is in place for the very reason is that it does fit a some of the time, there is so much more to their stories. Their pain, their anguish, of being tortured by the inability of being recognized as the gender they actually are. Many trans people live in fear every single day. They fear being beaten, fear losing their jobs due to massive bigotry, fear losing their loved ones, fear of using a public rest room. In many states after undergoing transition you can not change the sex on your important papers. So you look like a girl, you have a female name, but yet your paperwork all says male? Many people after transitioning lose their jobs and under go many years of unemployability.
That is why there are so many different gay rights groups fighting for ENDA to be passed. Enda is Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Because right now only 12 states have passed laws banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Yes, you read that right. In 38 states you can be legally fired for being lbgt. There are an additional 9 states that protect you from discrimination if you are lbg. Here is a link to wikipedia about ENDA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Non-Discrimination_Act
And there is mountains of hate flung at us from the christian right. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a listing of these "religious" groups that peddle in hatred of lgbt people. Three of these groups are considered hate groups! Yes, they claim to be christian, but peddle in hate to the extent that they are considered a hate group. How they can reconcile what the bible says about loving thy neighbor as thyself, and preaching hate from their pulpit is beyond my understanding. Here is a link to the Souther Poverty Law Center page on religious groups that work full time against lgbt.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2005/spring/a-mighty-army
I hope this helped clear up any questions that my previous writings had scattered around. If you would like to talk more about this subject feel free to email at my addy listed on my author's page.
So a few terms to start us off. Sex and gender, they mean the same thing, yeah? No, they really don't. To make it simple and easy, look at it this way. Sex is what's between your legs, gender is what's between your ears. Gender is who you really are, who you think of yourself as. If you honestly never gave it any thought? Then most likely your gender matches your sex. If however, you have felt uncomfortable in your own skin your entire life, never fit into your perceived gender group, and have trouble recognizing yourself when you're surprised by a mirror, that's what it's like to be transgendered.
Ok, I have a female body, so to the average person, I am a girl….I gave birth to 4 children, so as you can see the entire cycle of a female bodied person. But for most of my entire life, I knew something wasn't right, I knew I was different, I knew I was a boy…. Then puberty arrived and the ugly truth was forced into my face, there was no doubt about it, all of those people who referred to me as a girl, were right. And I buried my feeling my inner knowledge of being male, buried it so very deep the only way it was ever expressed was in my clothing if left to myself in the store, and in my hobbies and interests. It bobbed to the surface at times, especially when The Dream would occur. Each and every time I would have that dream it would leave me kinda off kilter and depressed.
Several years ago, I started reading yaoi manga. Which is gay themed, so gay love stories written by women for women in Japan. When I ran thru all of the ones I could read for free, I went further afield and found gay literature written again by women, and then one blinding shiny day found actual gay love stories written by men, and I was hooked. I read and read and read. One story had a link to the authors blog, so I clicked the link, he had several blogs listed as ones he enjoyed reading, so I read them. I couldn't really understand why I was so attracted to the gay stories, and even more strongly the gay blogs, and then one day…. I read a post by a blogger that I had read for a very long time, and there it was staring me in the face. He is also transgendered, he is starting hormone therapy to become female. I began chatting with him, and even though the genders were reversed, everything he said was me, me, me!
That began a journey of re-self discovery, the unburying of my true inner self. Things that I had done in the past, suddenly made since to me. Why my hubby's friends always said that I was the most unusual woman they had ever met, and did I have any sisters! Ha ha ha!! Memories pop up almost daily, that now armed with my new shiny knowledge of me, explain why I did that, why I felt that way, etc. I had always hated porn, truthfully it bored me to tears, wasn't in the least exciting at all to me. Then a friend asked me if I had ever watched gay porn….no, never why? He told me to watch and let him know what I felt. I did, and I was bored no more! Now I understood what the hubby sees in porn! I told my friend and he very gently told me, you do know that your gay, right? OH?…….oh!
The reason I say that I am gay is that because i'm attracted to men. In our society a male who is sexually attracted to men are considered to be gay. I don't think of myself, my actual self as female. And here too I'm walking to the beat of a different drummer. Only around 10% or so of transgendered people consider themselves gay lesbian or bisexual, around the same amount of the population that are not transgendered.
I'm not a Stepford Wife by any means. To be very honest and truthful, I am the dominate person in our marriage. I am the one who rules the checkbook, and who is pressing for sex, my husband to most people doesn't seem to be submissive at all, is the submissive person in our marriage. The idea of living the rest of my life without him is more than I can bear. I won't live my life without him unless our life together continues to crumble as it has since my coming out to him in January.
Why does he have such a problem with me being a male gendered person? Or even worse a male bodied person? Because that would make him gay….. He has no problem with people being gay at all. Several of our friends have gay children and he totally accepts them. He, however does not want to be gay, could not deal with being perceived as gay, could not live with me as a man.
Am I mad at him for this attitude? No, not at all. I understand where he's coming from. My bi and gay friends all asked me if he messed around as a younger teen with other boys, and when I told them no, they were all very worried about how long our marriage would last. They knew that most men who considered themselves as 100% straight would have a very hard time dealing with the idea, the concept of living and loving a man in a sexual and emotional way. I thought at first that we would be the ones who could buck the system, we could be the ones that could find the magic key and open the door the happiness, but it's not looking so very good for us right now. I have to push him to hug me, to kiss me, and honey don't even ask about our sex life cause all you will hear are crickets….
I'm in therapy and hopefully she can give me some pointers on how to stick our marriage back together so that it will work again. At this time I have no plans on transitioning. Why? Well that would spell the end of our marriage for sure, and I don't want to lose the love of our children. Because I'm not real sure if they could deal with mommy becoming daddy……
The reason I decided to tell my story is because trans people are still very much misunderstood. If they are thought of at all, it's always the picture of a man in a skirt who is over dressed for the occasion, and has done a poor job on his/her makeup. And while quite often a stereotype is in place for the very reason is that it does fit a some of the time, there is so much more to their stories. Their pain, their anguish, of being tortured by the inability of being recognized as the gender they actually are. Many trans people live in fear every single day. They fear being beaten, fear losing their jobs due to massive bigotry, fear losing their loved ones, fear of using a public rest room. In many states after undergoing transition you can not change the sex on your important papers. So you look like a girl, you have a female name, but yet your paperwork all says male? Many people after transitioning lose their jobs and under go many years of unemployability.
That is why there are so many different gay rights groups fighting for ENDA to be passed. Enda is Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Because right now only 12 states have passed laws banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Yes, you read that right. In 38 states you can be legally fired for being lbgt. There are an additional 9 states that protect you from discrimination if you are lbg. Here is a link to wikipedia about ENDA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Non-Discrimination_Act
And there is mountains of hate flung at us from the christian right. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a listing of these "religious" groups that peddle in hatred of lgbt people. Three of these groups are considered hate groups! Yes, they claim to be christian, but peddle in hate to the extent that they are considered a hate group. How they can reconcile what the bible says about loving thy neighbor as thyself, and preaching hate from their pulpit is beyond my understanding. Here is a link to the Souther Poverty Law Center page on religious groups that work full time against lgbt.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2005/spring/a-mighty-army
I hope this helped clear up any questions that my previous writings had scattered around. If you would like to talk more about this subject feel free to email at my addy listed on my author's page.