On the topic of S doubting herself and dissecting all her thoughts and wants and feelings, we’ve had more of that. Some significant part – perhaps a major part – of my feelings of needing to belong with women conceptually probably does bottom in feelings about _how_ women and men stereotypically are, rather than _who_ they are. The fear that comes unbidden would be somehow that if it was only the former, then somehow I could equally assuage my conceptual dysphoria by unlearning stereotypes and establishing myself as a feminine man, which would be a less costly path (for myself and my loved ones) than transitioning. Yet to the extent I even am aware of my emotions in the first place, it seems to me that this is a scary thought, that anything which keeps me away from “really” being (even a trans) woman is scary and painful. So the response itself may suggest something about my underlying needs.
I feel I should inspect things clearly if I can. Part of the whole idea of this, I realize, is that I am so tired of having to defend concepts to protect myself. I want to be able to just be open to the world whatever it might contain, to be able to live free without any need of bias in any assessments. That is one way of being true to myself as I always have valued myself. And for whatever reason, I genuinely feel that unless I am woman rather than man, with nothing keeping me different from those who are women, the world is somehow not tolerable to be fully open to. Accepting myself as woman withut question – even one so androgynous as I usually am – makes it possible to at least accept the world, either way.
This could still be something derived mostly or wholly from me navigating the memeplexes of gender (plus this odd nebulous part of being within the body and caring for the body or not which I can’t know to what extent it relates to my gynephilia or possible minor functional spectral properties). But if it was something I could circumvent by building an identity as a feminine man, or if I could decide to function as agender without changing my body or social position, then surely all the attempts I have made at that for decades now would have worked? I have tried this. It made things tolerable, it allowed me to cope and live and realize other areas of myself. But the conceptual anxiety of my mental fortress is there, and it really has grown worse over time.
As the last time I asked these questions, about two months ago, in the end it amounts to the same conclusion. I can’t know if I have no choice or not. It could be my prenatal hormonal environment skewed gross or fine brain structures so that I never could have been happy and anchored understood as a man. Or it could be that there were paths to get there, where different socialization processes had made me be fine with it. Either way, where and as I am now, I have a choice between a neutral existence bounded by OCD-like processes for keeping anxiety at bay, or a supremely uncertain transition path that may or may not let me just feel I am a person, not just some sort of cloud continuously encircling and judging and assessing the world, anchored in a utilitarian fleshly probe.
I’ve apparently tried to build life so that the costs can be minimized, aiming to reach a point where transitioning raises as few eyebrows as possible, hurts me as little as possible, hurts my loved ones as little as possible. If I can make such a low-cost transition, and take it step by step, trying each in turn – going into serious androgyny, then if I wish going out on the other side within femininity, then based there, be free to move in expression spaces as I wish, as femme or tomboy either way, this is what I want, what I will try. I know that I am not like some, for whom this is a choice between transition or suicide, nor do I match Blanchardian stereotypes of androphile young transitioners. There was no crossdressing at age four, as far as I know.
But what I do believe in is agency, and in taking control over one’s life and one’s place within social constructs, and in the supremacy of the will over biology. That ethos and pathos is mine, and alongside it, a need which I feel more and more keenly, a hope, a wish, a faith. Tearing up again writing this on the train, smudging my makeup. I will be the witch it is my human birthright to be.
lost in transition 