I yam what I yam
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2014 3:42 pm
I was totally chickenshit about coming out.
After 69 years as a teacher, academic, programmer, Marine, husband, father, publisher, magician, juggler and knotter (not in that order) and closeted CD, I finally told my son and announced it in a FB Note and on my blog.
I was afraid of what I might lose, of what others might think, or what I'd think of myself. Three of my four sisters but while neither of my two brothers congratulated me on coming out, neither did they slam me. Old girlfriends, some male friends, and a few ex-students also supported me. My new wife fully supported me and even encouraged me to dress more often. My parents had already died and I was effectively retired - nothing really in my way. So why haven't I transitioned?
Telling was a great relief, but it didn't change much. I've never wanted to be a girl for a moment, have no interest in transition, and while curious about my ability to pass, that feeling is about the same as my desire to see if I could make a living as a street performer. I learned that I could support myself busking, and so satisfied myself and no longer really care. And I'm satisfied with my image (that's my actual en femme picture here, up in the left corner), and don't need to prove it to myself any more. I could devote my remaining years to developing a feminine voice and movements, but why put myself to all that bother? It's like learning that wearing a wig, makeup, waist cincher, bra and forms, shape wear and hose is possible, and it feels good for a while. But all day? Hell no. It's damned uncomfortable, and comfort means a lot these days.
Having a periodic erotic obsession with dressing in women's clothing is quite different from feeling gender dysphoria. I grew up as a boy and learned to do boy and then do man quite well. I'm good at it. I also have an idea of what it is like to be a girl and to grow up as a girl (I'm a developmental psychologist and strong feminist), and I know that at this age I simply can't get there from here.
Every week or so I can (and do) suspend disbelief and play or pretend or assume a role for an hour or two, or while making love to my wife. But that's it, really. I can't be the ten-year-old seductress in my head - too many years, too much life already lived.
"You can't go home again." "You can't step in the same stream twice." You also can't actualize a fantasy from childhood that was never really true. You can only live it again, in your mind, (cue Leonard Cohen) for a while.
Meanwhile, there's my life to live - and (always, always) trying to understand myself. It's like taking a test to understand where on the curriculum you are now, so you'll know what you need to learn next.
Had my parents not subjected me to a series of electroshock treatments when I was 14, had they accepted that I wanted to wear girl things, I might have eventually transitioned. But they were who they were and it was twenty years before the sexual revolution and forty before the T was included in GLBT.
What's important is not that I suffered, but that I survived, and according to my own lights did well. Regrets? Not really. Some wistfulness about what might have been, but everybody has that.
The student asks, "If life is illusion and we are ephemera, why must I make up my pallet and clean my room?"
The master answers,"It's good that you've learned this. Now go make up your pallet and clean your room!"
After 69 years as a teacher, academic, programmer, Marine, husband, father, publisher, magician, juggler and knotter (not in that order) and closeted CD, I finally told my son and announced it in a FB Note and on my blog.
I was afraid of what I might lose, of what others might think, or what I'd think of myself. Three of my four sisters but while neither of my two brothers congratulated me on coming out, neither did they slam me. Old girlfriends, some male friends, and a few ex-students also supported me. My new wife fully supported me and even encouraged me to dress more often. My parents had already died and I was effectively retired - nothing really in my way. So why haven't I transitioned?
Telling was a great relief, but it didn't change much. I've never wanted to be a girl for a moment, have no interest in transition, and while curious about my ability to pass, that feeling is about the same as my desire to see if I could make a living as a street performer. I learned that I could support myself busking, and so satisfied myself and no longer really care. And I'm satisfied with my image (that's my actual en femme picture here, up in the left corner), and don't need to prove it to myself any more. I could devote my remaining years to developing a feminine voice and movements, but why put myself to all that bother? It's like learning that wearing a wig, makeup, waist cincher, bra and forms, shape wear and hose is possible, and it feels good for a while. But all day? Hell no. It's damned uncomfortable, and comfort means a lot these days.
Having a periodic erotic obsession with dressing in women's clothing is quite different from feeling gender dysphoria. I grew up as a boy and learned to do boy and then do man quite well. I'm good at it. I also have an idea of what it is like to be a girl and to grow up as a girl (I'm a developmental psychologist and strong feminist), and I know that at this age I simply can't get there from here.
Every week or so I can (and do) suspend disbelief and play or pretend or assume a role for an hour or two, or while making love to my wife. But that's it, really. I can't be the ten-year-old seductress in my head - too many years, too much life already lived.
"You can't go home again." "You can't step in the same stream twice." You also can't actualize a fantasy from childhood that was never really true. You can only live it again, in your mind, (cue Leonard Cohen) for a while.
Meanwhile, there's my life to live - and (always, always) trying to understand myself. It's like taking a test to understand where on the curriculum you are now, so you'll know what you need to learn next.
Had my parents not subjected me to a series of electroshock treatments when I was 14, had they accepted that I wanted to wear girl things, I might have eventually transitioned. But they were who they were and it was twenty years before the sexual revolution and forty before the T was included in GLBT.
What's important is not that I suffered, but that I survived, and according to my own lights did well. Regrets? Not really. Some wistfulness about what might have been, but everybody has that.
The student asks, "If life is illusion and we are ephemera, why must I make up my pallet and clean my room?"
The master answers,"It's good that you've learned this. Now go make up your pallet and clean your room!"
I have reached, well many years ago, I go out and it does not bother me to go out! I guess I am fortunate in that, for what its worth, I pass. Yes, I have been read, but it was my voice, so who cares!?