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I Know             by: Kim EM                 © 2001 All rights reserved

 

Who am I?

What am I?

I moved into a new demographic group this week, something I seem to be doing with dismaying regularity of late.  Well, okay, some of the changes aren't all that unwelcome.  For instance, this is the first birthday I'm celebrating as myself.   "He" seems to have stopped having them--  matter of fact, crises of confidence aside, "He" doesn't seem to show up anymore.  

It's my first birthday legally female, something I'd ached for for more years than I care to remember.  Before, even as recently as last year, for all the celebration of a birthday, there was the bitter knowledge that another year had passed while I was still just hoping and dreaming, and that I was still hiding my true face away from the world.   This year, for the first time, that's gone.  

I'm ME, Goddamnit!  For the first time, now and forever, I'm finally able to be ME!  

One thing I've spotted amongst T*-persons, they all have a tremendous inner need for validation.  Generally for a very long time they sensed something "different" about themselves from the mainstream.  For some, this difference has been an irritant since early childhood, for others it was realized in adulthood.  A lot of persons might even have not been able to define that "difference" for quite a while, merely knowing it exists.  

Eventually, though, they start figuring it out.  They have a need to dress as the opposite gender, privately or publicly... or they need to find ways to express themselves, one way or another, as the opposite gender.  In more extreme cases, the person comes to the realization that, mirrors notwithstanding, they ARE of the opposite gender from the one their genetics and physical appearance dictate.

Everyone has an ego, some more well-developed than others, but it's always there.   And every last person has a self-image they need to maintain.  EVERYONE.   No exception.  No matter how timid or down on themselves they are, no matter how much self-hatred they seem to express, there is that self-image, and the need to preserve it at all costs.

In some cultures, "face" is an important concept.  One cannot, for any reason, "lose face".  Okay, there are some cultures on the planet where "face" seems the paramount goal, but in reality it's every culture, everywhere, every person who needs to preserve their "face".

So (assuming we're talking about someone M-to-F here, to whatever degree), society and the world is telling person "A" that they are male, and should act male ("Take it like a man, damnit!"), and that a man is strong and important, and a woman is weak and less than a man...  Yeah, it's a bad, old stereotype, and it's still the message that boys get.  

And the person, on the inside where it counts, feels anything but "manly".   And what they feel like is something they have been taught is "less" than what they are expected to be.  They're taught that what they need, what they are, is a degradation of their selves.  

Even in popular culture, the message is there.  Crossdressers are faggots and fairies and sissies. People who've had "sex changes" are freaks and perverts.   And heaven forefend they should ever be in a position where they have contact with children!  Heaven knows what the degenerate might do!

Someone (our hypothetical "person A") sees all this, and gets the message.   They might believe it outright or dismiss it out of hand, but at some level the message sticks....  what they need, what they are, there's something horribly wrong with them.  Something they should be ashamed of.

Yeah, the message is horseshit.  So?

The popular image of people with gender differences comes from an era when people tried to put moral approbation on medical issues, if they even recognized them as medical.  

To vent on a tangent here:  Insurance companies still provide lesser benefits for people with "psychological" problems than they do for "medical" ones.   Why?  Aside from the fact they it's a way to cut their claims payouts, it's accepted because somehow psychological ailments are somehow "less worthy" than purely medical ones.  This ignores the fact that many-- most?-- psychological issues are caused by brain chemistry, not from moral failings.

Matter of fact, it's the rare insurance company that provides coverage for "treatment" of transsexuality.  Why?  Because they see it as something someone does voluntarily, frivolously, for cosmetic reasons.  Because in their arrogance they think that someone would transition and want to have their genitals corrected for reasons of sexual gratification.

And there's another club on the ego of someone who is "different". With so many blows to the ego, its no wonder so many transgendered folks have crappy self-images.   I don't except myself from this:

As wonderful as my parents were, I took lots and lots and lots of body blows from those around me growing up, sometimes in the literal sense.  From second grade onward, I was treated as "different" by the other kids in school.  I know a lot of the treatment stemmed from the actions of a certain teacher (thank you, Sister Lea) and kids picking up on the signals that it was okay to pick on me.  I never knew the nature of the difference, I just knew it was there.  Before the age of twelve I did have some clue (but not much more than that) about my gender differences, but after the events of Thanksgiving week 1967, I pretty much lost all that during my teenage years.   (You can find more detail on that elsewhere.)  

So, is it any wonder that, after being told repeatedly and forcefully over many years that I was basically a waste of perfectly good air, I didn't have a very high opinion of myself?  It wasn't until my sophomore year in college, where I was somewhere that nobody knew me or my past, that I didn't have that burden any more.

As I grew up, too, over the years I absorbed the message from the media that the transgendered (not that such a word existed back then) were freaks, fitting subjects for humor and derision.  

And in college, when I put all the pieces together, and figured out what and who I was, I was pretty upset with myself and the cruelties of fate.  Like I didn't have enough problems, I had this to deal with too?  I hadn't figured out that pretty much all the other stuff stemmed from this one source.

Once I had figured things out, putting things pretty much back to where they were at the age of twelve, then came the question of what to do about it.  Remember, I'd grown up with the messages that the transgendered were some sort of perverts, mainly meant to be the object of ridicule (Does anyone remember jokes about "making a trip to Denmark"?).

I'm sure there are people who are able and happy to crossdress in the privacy of their homes.  For them, I'd guess things aren't so hard, since they can do what they need at minimal risk of discovery and condemnation.  Anyone beyond that point takes a lot more risks.  And if someone isn't a crossdresser, but feels the need to transition, well, it's not just the risk of discovery, there's a guarantee.  

Parents will know, at what godawful risk?  Relatives, friends... and of course strangers who can "read" one as being physically male.  What will they think?  What will they say?  What, in God's name will they DO?

The fear is tremendous, even in 'normal' circumstances, but when one has spent the past nineteen years having the ego smashed flat, the possibility that what little support there is will vanish is just too much to bear.  

I applaud those who were able to get past all this and transition at an early age.   I couldn't.  I knew what was going to have to be done, and I just couldn't face up to the people involved.  After everything that had happened, it was just too much to be faced, the idea of telling anyone about it and opening myself up to further ridicule and scorn.

So I kept it quiet and did what little research was possible in those days.  In the mid 1970's, even a big-city library or university library had maybe four items that showed up in the subject catalogue as "Change of Sex".  There were no other categories at the time, and no Internet to get information, either.

Even those four items?  Usually there'd be one with an article that had at least a few nuggets of information, and the other three, despite being theoretically on the shelves were among the 'missing'.  Of the stuff that I WAS able to find, a disproportionately large part was written either by or about John Money.  At the time he was a respected researcher; nowadays he's considered to have been clueless and tragically wrong.

I was 26 before I was able to tell anyone about it.  He was my roommate and best friend, and later my business partner.  It took me the best part of an evening to be able to haltingly tell him, and, wonder-of-wonders, he didn't freak.  

Tom took the news pretty calmly, actually.  After the big build-up, as difficult as it was for me to force the words out, I suspect he thought it was going to be something much worse. ("You hid the body WHERE?")

That was at least a small validation.  I'd finally told him and he was still my friend.  Maybe it might be possible to open up just a little... not much, but....

It took me close to three years, but I finally had resolved to tell my mom.  As I've told before, there was finally the right place, the right time, and then I discovered that I just couldn't go through with it.  I couldn't face the possibilities of her disappointment in me.  As it turns out, I never did find the courage to tell her.

It all goes back to the question of maintaining "face".  After having been so universally disregarded and despised, and then having had things somewhat better when I'd reached adulthood, maintaining people's regard for me became all-important.   I couldn't face the possibility of going back to that place where everyone thought I was kind of strange.

It took me a long time to get over that.  Long time?  Yeah.  I came out to a few people, privately, in the late 1980's.  In the early 90's I got involved with a gender program in Milwaukee, went through all the sessions and groups and testing, and finally had a firm diagnosis (which, of course, only confirmed what I'd known all along).

I was married at the time, something that in hindsight was a mistake.  I was in love with her and she with me, but we both had issues, and in the late 90's things fell apart.  Yes, she knew about my gender issues, since before we were married, and at the time that was not a problem for her.  Later it became one.

In early 1994 I was finally recommended for hormones, and that's when Teri started throwing up barriers.  She started showing reluctance, and ultimately flat-out begged me to not go ahead with things.  To please her, and to avoid her disapproval I put the prescriptions aside and dropped out of the program, figuring that at best I'd be able to eventually resume, and at worst I was fated to remain in male form.

We broke up in 1997, and I started thinking about moving forward again.  By early 2000 I'd made my decision and started taking steps.  It had been roughly 25 years since I rediscovered my 'gender differences'.  Over the course of 2000 I started positioning myself for the transition, and in January 2001 I started living full-time as a woman.

To put it more simply, I wasted 25 years of my life trying to work up the courage to do what I needed to do, just because I was afraid of the opinions of others.  Parents, spouse, friends, total strangers; the opinions of all of them outweighed my need to assert my true gender.

I've had one friend tell me repeatedly that I'm better off for not transitioning early, as she did, because over that quarter century I was able to build a good career.  

I seriously doubt it.  Yeah, I made good money, and had stuff, but I was never happy.  How does the biblical line go about profiting the world at the cost of one's own soul?  And besides, now, at the end of the 25 years, what to I have to show for them?  Not stuff, that's for sure.  I've basically got my personal effects and that's about it.  I've got memories, some good some bad, and a load of experience in things that nobody wants.  The only thing I have of value to show for the past 25 years are my friends.

Truth be told, using 20-20 hindsight, I'd much rather have transitioned in 1975 and spend time struggling for a career.  The time spent as the person I should have always been would have been immensely better than the time I wasted wishing and dreaming.  

I know that, given the upbringing I had, the way my ego had been mangled throughout school, it was impossible for me to do back then.  As it is, it took me 25 years to undo enough damage from 2nd through 12th grade for me to finally move forward.  

So I spent the time from before my 20th birthday until my 45th cursing the fates, and watching the long years tick by.  Each birthday that passed I saw my dream dimming and the chances of my living out my life as I should diminishing. 

I just had my 46th birthday, and I finally was able to see a birthday where I no longer had to wait and dream.  This was the best and happiest birthday I've had in many, many years.  Yeah, my career has vanished, and this HAS been a tough year.  I know, though, that in the larger scheme of things, these problems are ephemeral.   Being myself, living as myself at last, this is something that will endure.   The problems of self image that had kept me away from myself for so many years are finally gone.

 

 

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© 2001 by Kim Em. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.