I'm still transgendered, FWIW

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s been nearly three months since I stepped over the threshold. In that time, I’ve learned a lot, I’ve experimented, I’ve been through a lot of arguments with my family (my daughter outed me to my mom, and my mom called me and argued with me), and my life still hasn’t changed drastically, because I’m still trying to figure out where I’m going with this. The actual fact of my life is, it’s kind of mundane and not especially interesting. I get up in the morning, have breakfast, brush my teeth, and go to work. I come home in the evening, have dinner, log on and play Doper for a while, and go to sleep. BFD.

I haven’t gone full time yet, nor do I have any idea when I will be able to, if ever. My transition is kind of stalled and I feel a bit frustrated at when, or if, it will ever get going. Or not. It might tear up my nice little life drastically if it ever did. My family is NOT cool with it. I’ve been seeing a therapist who encourages me to go ahead with it and will gladly authorize me to start the hormones once we’ve done 12 sessions.

I followed the late Kaitlyn’s gender adventure with rapt attention back in January. Still wondering WTF was really up with that chick. I have scarcely mentioned my transgender issues at all in the past 2 months. Partly I was reticent because Kaitlyn’s life was so fascinating and thrilling, and mine was so blah by comparison. Because she reported such brilliant success with transition, and I had nothing much to relate about it, because transition is too difficult for me to go ahead with. So I sat back and felt mildly embarrassed I’d even brought up the subject back in December.

No one single human being can monitor every SDMB event, every single day. Now I’m really embarrassed because it took one whole week before I noticed that Kaitlyn was exposed as a liar and banned. When I had so much of my online identity invested in the transsexuality that I shared with her. I felt I should say something, even in my low-key and fumbling manner.

In one of the Kaitlyn meltdown threads, Guinastasia offered a theory that my transgender coming-out was what gave the idea to Number Six to reinvent himself as the transsexual Kaitlyn, because I suddenly garnered a lot of attention when I came out. Although it always gives one an ego boost to see one’s name mentioned (thanks for the shout-out, Guin! my crush on you shines on undimmed by time or human tears), in fact I don’t think I got all that much attention. I pretty much shut up about transgender because I had no interesting story like Kaitlyn’s.

This is NOT going to be an “Ask the Transgendered” thread, because I’m still new at it, my story is maybe a little atypical and not especially representative, and I have no wish to call attention to myself for my gender identity, because frankly my reality is kind of boring. I discovered the TGboards where I can hash out my gender identity issues. Here at the Dope, I prefer to pontificate on linguistics, ask questions about ancient history, debate Islamic fundamentalism, Kabbalah, and Wicca, and indulge in ‘70s rock-‘n’-roll nostalgia. And bash Bush every so often! But I feel shy about my own inchoate gender identity, still struggling to get firmly established. This is my real life. This is honest. Sorry it’s boring, but that’s reality. I have no strikingly fascinating yarns to spin about myself. Just plain ol’ boring me.

2

But how do we know you’re not making it up? :wink:

3

That’s my entire point. My life is so boring, there’s no reason to make it up.

4

It’s the leveling mudanity of it all. That’s usually the giveaway that something’s real, because real things are often quite ordinary even as they are different.

5

Yep. There was a thread a year or so ago on the subject of, “Hey, gay people, what’s a day in your life like? How is gay marriage really going to cripple American culture?”

My god, the mundanity was just staggering…

6

I missed the whole other thing pretty much as well. Don’t know how that happens, or even exactly what happened. Anyway, enjoy the quietude of your relatively boring life, Johanna. Your linguistic abilities are more interesting than your gender role anyway.

7

Hello, Johanna, it’s good to meet you. To address the most interesting (to me, anyhow) aspect of what I now know about you, I have this to say:

The Shakers of Sabbath Day Lake, ME (where I grew up - Maine, not SDL) were not yet extinct last time I checked and may exist for yet a few more years because they’ve apparently broken with official doctrine and begun admitting a (very) few new members. Since the sect basically has no hierarchy, there’s no one to say they aren’t Shakers any more (I lurked for a long time before I joined).

What I’m trying to say is, there’s a ton of interesting stuff about you, it’s just concentrated in the knowledge and expertise you’ve earned through study and experience and hard work. Surely it’s okay (and maybe even preferable) that the TG thing is dull enough to stay in the background while (on this board at least) the rest of us enjoy a fellow poster who seems unfailingly knowledgeable, well-spoken, and kind to others. There’s no reason to affirm or deny or condemn that which just is, there’s only the imperative to keep learning new facts and new ways to understand them. Keep helping me out, and I’ll keep on telling really stupid jokes. Deal?

8

Why thank you kindly, The King of Soup, that’s right neighborly of you. You too, Shibb0leth. But what was that about the Shakers of Sabbathday Lake?

I’ve never been there, but coincidentally, I used to live a couple blocks north of Shaker Heights, Ohio. The Shakers are long gone from their, but there’s a park where they left some traces of their 19th-century existence. They dammed a creek and made the two Shaker Lakes. That was my favorite place to ride my bicycle as a kid. I used to love visiting Horseshoe Lake. I thought it was a beautiful nature spot. Imagine my dismay when I revisited there as an adult and found that they had drained the Shaker Lakes! :frowning: The former lake beds had become marshes and they put in wooden walkways for nature hikers.

Not sure what Sabbathday Lake has to do with me, but you were right about the Shakers intersecting my life in a meaningful way. You must be psychic.

As a Goddess feminist, I can’t help feeling sympathetic to Mother Ann Lee’s idea that the Second Coming of Christ has to be a woman. But she made a fatal error. No sex means no Shaker babies. Uh-oh. A recipe for extinction if I ever saw one.

9

Johanna, I am so sorry if I caused you any problems-I just noticed that because “Kaitlyn” mentioned it right after you did, that’s where she/he whoever it was go the idea.

10

I had no idea that entire thread was a lie and a hoax.

-sigh- And, I’m about the most paranoid untrusting soul I’ve ever met in my entire life. Can’t believe I missed that. I read that thread for days, over a week. Sheeeesh.

Ya never know. :frowning:

Johanna, perhaps mundane beats the heck out of dramatic? I wish you the very best with this, it sounds astonishingly difficult to negotiate on all levels of life. Would that your family remember that they love the soul within, not the body parts without.

Cartooniverse

11

No harm, no foul, Guin a rún. When you type my name, my heart goes all aflutter.

Cartooniverse, now that the dazzling but fictional Kaitlyn has departed, perhaps I will have a chance to emerge from her shadow. All I have to offer is a lower-keyed, contemplative, intellectual view of life. The TG allows further, wider vistas of human nature than were otherwise possible.

12

Are the TGBoards any good? I must admit that I’m reluctant to participate in most online transsexual-themed sites – for some reason almost all of them give me a creepy feeling that I can’t quite shake and that chases me off. Pretty much all the transpeople I have any sort of regular contact with are people I’ve met in other forums who happen to be trans.

I think being transsexual can become something of an obsession with some people and that it’s best to be careful to let that happen.

13

KellyM, the TGboards is the only such online forum where I feel comfortable and post as a member. I hope it stays that way. Such touchy subjects, and sometimes frazzled nerves. Knock on wood. It’s been pretty good so far…

TG an obsession? Well, you must speak for yourself, Kelly me love. As for me, it’s totally a major obsession with me. Of course it is, are you kidding? ¿Como no? But that doesn’t mean I have to keep broadcasting it all over Dopedom. Remember, I’m still new in this. It’s like being a convert to a new religion, as far as the enthusiometer reading goes. I’ve gotten familiar with this feeling several times over in my life. The mystical experience of being spiritually reborn, happens with reliable frequency. Despite its familiarity, it can still be overwhelming each time. I don’t talk here about my spiritual life much either, but I’m saying it just to tell you how it felt to acknowledge myself as TG, when it felt like a dam bursting, how much energy is released when a dam bursts and floods, it was that intense. At the same time I reflected calmly as though an impartial observer, “Well, here we go again, I guess.” I’m older now and have seen it enough times to reflect in tranquility even while it’s happening.

I know the initial enthusiasm will fade over time, it will come to feel like an all too weighty burden, as many more experienced Ts keep reminding me. The trajectory is familiar. But spiritually as well as gender-identity-wise, there’s something very real at the bottom of it all that makes you want to care about it. For real.

14

Or have you cleverly invented a lie so boring no one suspects? I can see it now, months of “Terrible news today-the refrigerator is broken” and “My bathroom needs regrouting” to get us to believe your tale. Then, when you’ve gained our confidence, it will be “A close relative has leprosy and rabies” or “I need money for a life-saving frammistanectomy”.

I’m on to you.

:wink:

15

Johanna, as Mark Twain said (if it wasn’t him, it should have been): “Show me a normal person and I’ll cure him.” Boring is good. Boring is real.

16

That’s me! Jim Jarmusch turned me down for a spot in Coffee and Cigarettes because I wasn’t exciting enough. :wink:

17

Uh. That should have been “best to be careful not to let that happen”.

18

How do we know that? It could have been your inner woman speaking!

19

Correction: Her inner WILDwoman.

aah-ooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo…

20

Aw, shucks. :o

So, are you still transgendered now? What about now? :smiley: