Neither

[Tracy W]

I hope I posted this in the right place.(blonde on a computer)
I've been reading and learning alot here. I'm trying to come to terms with myself, and this forum has been very helpful. I'll try to explain this the best I can.

I do not feel like a woman in a man's body. I would not want to be a woman. I do not feel like a man either. I hate to call myself a man. I mean, men don't accept me, they call me a sissy, flammer, etc, and women don't accept me, cuz I'm a "guy". I really don't fit in with any sex, or with any group. I really feel like a complete basket case. Even here I seem to be different.

I mean, most here seem to either want to be a woman, and others like to dress as women with all the trimmings. I don't 100% identify with either sex. I truly believe I am nuts. I have been called gay, I have been called maam in public without any "fem" things on. I have had gay friends of my wife and I who have said that I don't give any off any signs of being gay. My son is gay, and he and his friends are of the mindset that I'm not gay, but something "else".

I mean what else is there? A 3rd sex? Am I truly alone in this world? I know I'm lucky to have a wife that puts up with me and supports me, but I think this is all too much for her to do alone.

Sorry for blabbing, but I was just wondering what you all might have to say about it. I could use all the advice/thoughts there is. I am at my wits end!!!

[Virginia]

Tracy, as you are well aware we have only a few of your sisters here who are "qualified" counselors and I know they would tell you the same thing, initially. We try and help here, but we don't know that much about you yet.

You live in Germany. Raises a few questions, citizen, stationed there, what?
You are married and have a son so we know or assume "the equipment" works!
We don't know your age, or how you wife views all this or your son for that matter. Things like do you dress, do you dress infront of your family, do they accept "your alter ego?"

No, hon for a lot of us it isn't easy, but you do have one thing going for you and it is a good thing, regardless of how you or anyone else may view it -- you seem to know that you are different, that you possibly have what I refer to as "the gift." That is to experience and possibly project into your life both a male and female understanding of things.

You also seem to know that for some of our sisters, dressing is an end in itself, for others it is how they feel on the inside and that is how they wish to express it and nothing else. Others, ( I include myself) do not need to dress to express the feminine part of our existence, it shows up in how we relate to people. Others, are "Just passing through" on their way to becoming who they feel they were meant to be physically.

Again, I am not a counselor, but I think most of my sisters here would agree, you may need to seek counselling to help "find yourself." If you choose to pursue this, find a counselor that has dealt with "us." Some don't have a clue and can really make your situation worse.

Let us know what you decide and we will support you as best we can.

Virginia

[Tracy W]

Virginia,
I'll try to clear things up better. I'm 37yrs old. I live in Germany as a private citizen. I used to be military, but now I just live here because I love it.
Nothing wrong with the "equipment", works just fine.
The wife of course knows, and accepts me, but my 17yr old son has enough problems of his own without mine adding to them.(being gay at his age isn't easy) He just knows I'm different. I dont really "dress" so to say. I wear womens undies, womens jeans, the wife and I pretty much share clothes. Neither she or I like dresses. The kids don't see any "dressing" so to say, but they know we share clothes. I do have long hair, and wear ear rings in each ear.(not that uncommon here in Germany) Once in awhile, I will put make-up on when the kids aren't around. The wife and I don't think they are ready for that yet.

I can't say I have a "alter ego". Thats seems to be where I'm different. I almost feel 50/50 on the man/woman thing. Like I said, i just dont identify with either. I dont feel like either one.

I know everyone here has different mind sets. I hope no one thinks I meant anything negative about the people here. Far from it. It just seems that even here, I feel "odd" if you will.

Just searching for answers, and was wondering if any one else felt the same way.
Thanks,
Tracy

[Sylvia H]

Tracy,

Right up my alley. Im not sure my response would benefit anyone here, so you can PM or email if you like. You might look into some of the other groups that have forums on androgyny and other variants though. They have helped me come to terms with some of identity issues.

I find myself cycling between those modes you mentioned. It was a little unnerving at first and nearly impossible to verbalize. Probably the best thing to keep in mind is resisting the temptation to label yourself as one thing or another. Taking time to stand back and find the "bigger picture" as it were will help tremendously.

Near as I can tell there are literally billions of ways our brains can get wired, and some of us get more interesting arrangements than others.

There IS light at the end of the tunnel my dear.

xox
Sylvia

[DonnaT]

Don't fret Tracy, there are thousands just like you an the gender scale.

You are who you are, no more no less authentic than anyone else.

As for your son, I think if he knew more about you then he would become more at ease with himself. Just my opinion. I know a trans lawyer with a gay son and being open with each other has been quite a confidence booster for the son. YMMV.

[CJ]

Hi all,

Tracy,

As my sisters have hinted at above, perhaps there's another way of looking at things. In a way, we've all been "brainwashed" into believing there are only two possibilities when it comes to gender. This is probably due to the fact that we conflate gender with anatomical sex (or worse, with sexual orientation!). Unlike anatomical sex, gender does not admit of discrete units of separation; taking the (physically) intersexed into consideration, you could thus say anatomical sex is "trinary" (for want of a better term) but there are more--much more!--than three ways to "embody" and express gender. In a sense, we are all "pan-gendered"; i.e., we move around ceaselessly in a sphere of gender possibilities.

Here's one way to visualize it: whereas you can be more or less male or female along some line measuring anatomical sex (and this would make room for those, such as the intersexed, who fit at neither end of such a scale), you can look at gender as being some point within a sphere, the center of which is your own perception of yourself, the outer skin of which is the perception others have of you, the top half of the sphere being "traditional" femininity, and the bottom half "traditional" masculinity. (I say "traditional" because such notions are culture-bound.) In this sphere, you can float around and locate yourself wherever you feel a match occurs at a given point in time or period in your life. The beauty of this, I find, is that, like all else that pertains to our social life, it requires the input of both our own selves and the evaluation or judgment of others. Another plus: barring physical modifications (HRT, surgery, etc.), the anatomical sex scale remains unaffected by changes in the "gender sphere" while modifications on the anatomical sex scale certainly do have a profound effect on your position in the sphere.

Anyway, this is just one way of looking at it. Don't fall into the trap of boxing yourself in, Tracy, by confusing your position in the gender sphere with your position on the anatomical sex scale. People that haven't reflected on these things will believe that, as there are only two sexes (which, right there, is a first mistake), there are also only two genders (mistake #2). When you say you are "neither," what you really mean, I think, is that the culture you live in doesn't make explicit the possibility that there's more to gender than merely A or B. Gender is an A-to-Z affair... even if anatomical sex is an A or a B (or, as mentioned above, an A or a B or a C).

Good luck, Tracy, in your quest for authentic selfhood. It's the only one that matters; it matters more than gold and more than all the riches in the world.

Love,
CJ

P.S.
For those of you that want to have some additional fun with this spherical model, and although I know that sexual orientation has little to do with any of this, you can also divide the sphere left side and right, where the leftmost edge is heterosexuality and the rightmost edge, homosexuality. Again, a world of possibilities opens up.

[KimberlyS]

Tracy, quick reply for you and more later. I consider myself a guy that likes to wear a mix of male and feminine clothes.

kimberlys-cd
joe in a skirt

[Virginia]

CJ,

Honey you are an amazing woman!!!!!

Love you,

Virginia

[Jennifer M]

Hi Tracy,
Its as if I could have written your thread.I feel just as you do.I call it being bi -gendered but I think Virginia calls it by what it really is,a gift.I think it is so amazing for a person to be able to experience life as both genders.I sometimes try to imagine what being one gender is like and I cant.It sheds a little light on how difficult it is for someone to try and imagine what it is like to be both.Being bi-gendered sometimes causes me hardship and stress,thankfully we are here for each other when those times roll around and I think it happens to most of us here.They say nothing is free,maybe a little stress is a small price to pay for "the gift".

[Sylvia H]

That was a good spherical explanation CJ. (Did you graduate from the Space Academy? )

If I havent learned anything in 50 plus years, everything is more complex than it seems. But that is a good thing as it keeps one from becoming stagnant.

xox
Sylvia

[Jeannie]

Hi Hon
Just chalk it up to being Genderqueer. If the people in your life can't handle it,show them the door. Why make them feel comfortable at your expense? Hugs.

Love
Auntie Jeannie

[Sally]

Hi Tracy,

I’m an advocate for people seeing things as they really are and coming to terms with the fact that what is just is, and we should not believe that we don’t ’fit in’, because nobody fits in everywhere, but everybody fits in somewhere, it’s just a case of finding our own true niche.

Over the years I’ve been through all the mind probing and prodding by professionals and it’s made me a firm believer that we are the best judges of who and what we are. We know in our own mind what’s right for us and I believe nobody can ever look into another persons mind and know exactly what’s going on and what feelings they’re experiencing. You know better than anyone else how you feel and what your needs are and there are no hard set rules which apply across the board. We’re all individuals, and what you feel is right for you, but may not be right for someone else. I believe it’s very important that we try as hard as we can to ignore unpleasant jibes which may be directed at us by uninformed members of the public, and when you mention about a third sex, well lets not just stop at a third, because across the scale from pure male to pure female there is an indeterminable number of percentages of male/female, it’s a case of becoming comfortable with where you personally believe you fit into the scale, and feelings are neither right or wrong, because feelings are just that, they’re how you personally feel, and it’s that.which is right for you

I live full time as a woman because after half a lifetime I found that, that was the right thing for me, but for the majority of us it may not be right. I’ve also found it important to come to terms with what I can and can’t achieve, as I always say, never let your ambitions get ahead of the reality, and the reality is that I was born with the appearance and physical structure of a male, and although I’m permanently on a female hormone program, I will never ever be able to become a true female in all sense of the word, and it’s important to be able to accept these facts and build your life around them so that we’re happy in our own skin.

I also believe that most all people are basically good people with good intentions, and really we instinctively know this is the way it was supposed to be. Sometimes we may find that if we’ve acted in a certain way which we might think is ‘not good’ then that can violate our rule about being good, and the typical response is then to feel bad, then to try and hide our actions from others and indeed from ourself as well, which can be a form of self punishment, but really, we’re our own worst judges, and people can punish themselves if they feel bad about something they’ve done or tried to do, when really they should be feeling good about an achievement. I believe that a man or a woman should never feel bad about dressing in clothes of the opposite sex, or assuming the identity of the opposite sex, if that’s what they feel is the right thing for them to do, and as long as they don’t intentionally hurt anyone by their actions.

Unfortunately, the presence of unwritten moral codes is a major contributor to people’s feelings of guilt. These codes are basically a set of fixed rules which were established by someone who at the time had a position of authority, and were presumably set in motion to simplify things for people with less of an overview, to ensure they did what we may term as ‘sensible, or the right thing to do at the time’. These moral codes were also set as rules for behaviour which on average would enhance people’s lives, but sometimes good intentions turn out to be less so, and the idea can then become to control people’s lives by having them go out of their way to live up to arbitrary limiting rules, such as the rule which once was that men must not dress in womens clothes. These moral codes can often be positioned and give the effect that they were decreed ‘ by the Gods’, and this gives them maximum effect.

Moral codes are set fixed ideas, so they can never work under all circumstances, in fact they can be a way out of not dealing with things and not taking one’s own decisions.
This has probably been a long winded way of saying that you’re not a basket case, and when you say you feel different, what is it you feel different from? You’re you and the blueprint nature laid out for you from conception can never be altered. Maybe some things can be cosmetically changed for us, but the real basic foundations cannot, so it’s important we love who we are, because we can’t expect anyone else to have a good opinion of us if we don’t have a good one ourselves. Also, before we can begin to make other people happy, we first have to be happy ourselves, and that in part means not feeling guilty about who we are or what we do, because in the majority of us it’s not a conscious decision we suddenly made one day. I know I never sat down one day and decided to become a member of a suppressed, minority group, who I am is the way it was meant to be, and the same applies to you, so be proud of who you are and build your life around it so every day is a joy to behold.

I wish you well.

Sally.

[Absaroka]

It all makes sense to me. We don't fit in a box, we need our own box, and we each need a different one.

Absaroka

[Tracy W]

Once again, you all have amazed me with your thoughts and views on the subject.
I'm cursed with wanting to know the whys and how comes in life, and this forum is a big help.
Thank you all so much for the help and understanding. Your support is making my trip of self discovery easier.

A round for all of you

Greetz,
Tracy

[KimberlyS]

We don't fit in a box, we need our own box, and we each need a different one.

Absaroka, I agree with this. I use labels for others benefits so they know how to deal with me. But know at the same time that the labels I use for others to interact and deal with me do not fit me. They are just ones that others can deal with and relate to. I have come to accept that I am just different than everyone else and none of us are exactly alike. We are all different.