Hi Virginia!!
Thanks for the post. I have read and thought about it, and actually, in your own inimitable way, I think you do have an appreciation for the differences.
I see CD and TS as having a lot of the same problems, when it come to the necessarily secretive manner we hide parts of ourselves, and in how denying or burying that necessary part eats at our health and happiness. A MtF and CD also have similar problems in learning to pass, as you say learning to walk, sit, stand, hold a glass, eat, put together an outfit appropriate to an occasion, tasteful makeup and to know when it is needed and when it should be enhanced, and all the myriad of behaviors that tend to separate the genders socially. For the MtF that can be part of the process of unlearning a lifetime of behaviors that formed a persona to deal with the world, and those new behaviors will form a basis for the everday part of the rest of their lives. For a CD as you are describing yourself to be, they are a set of temporily used, learned behaviors that lets them present as a woman, I think.
For both groups, some have an easier time of it than others thanks to happenstance of genetics, and sometimes sympathetic and supportive family members. In most cases for both, there is guilt, fear of exposure leading to fear of unjustified disparagement on the job and socially, fear of unjustified violence, fear of losing the people closest to you on whom you may have depended for love and support, and fear of being percieved as a failure and for being less than you seemed. For each, testosterone can provide a message of defeat that wreaks havoc on the body, causing a loss of self image that is hard to overcome. And there we begin to find a real difference.
It's harder on a TS.
A CD can go in the closet and dress in private or find circumstances like social groups and friendly clubs where gender bending is OK whether blending, physical passablility, is possible or not. He might live out a life of relative satisfaction, sitting astride both "worlds", as you suggest, and getting what he needs from both. A kind of a hobby mixed with a compulsion, sort of. His happiness likely depends on the acceptance of this aspect of himself by his SO and family.
For a TS
needing to transition, it is more like breathing, and being unable to pass, to be herself is the same as a noose around the neck, gradually choking whats left of life out of her. I have only met a few other TS so far, but their stories are so very much the same. Most of my generation learned a male role out of self defense when they were young, trying to adapt and keep their teeth intact. Sometimes the role is only applicable to certain limited situations. (I was struck last night that the FtMs were doing the same thing I had done as a youngster, learning behaviors that were applicable to a male role, and I could actually appreciate and critique their efforts, comparing them to what I know. Perhaps not too oddly, they were often better at some aspects than I have ever been despite my experience, mainly because they are male between their ears and I'm not.) The TS in hiding may come to hate the role, the deliberately learned comments and responses that give them a social male persona. These become automatic through repetition, and they often come to hate themselves as that role. If they are of my generation they may hide it a long time, and it can result in a depth of unhappiness and depression that has the individual striking out, maybe hurting someone, usually emotionally and sometimes physically, (often themselves) trying to relieve a hurt they can't vocalize. They may have found someone to love, fathered children, like the person I spoke of above that has two she has put through college while pushing her own needs into the background. In the best of circumstances they tend toward selfless nurturing as parents and partners, traits often associated in our cultural mileu as feminine, rather than selfish. It is no accident that sites attempting to help TS make sense of it all actually have a large section on the concept of selfishness as a good thing for a person in their circumstances. I am so very glad that it seems easier for the younger generation of the eighties and the nineties, and we are seeing younger and younger transitioners. Parents are often not too accepting still, but there is more information and more overall knowledge, and more therapists with the needed skills, and even counselors in some of the large schools able to recognize the characteristics and steer them to help.
Throughout their younger years there is confusion and in the confusion there is emotional pain. A CD may dress up and hide it from his family for years, and feel guilt, and think about it some right after, and wonder what's wrong with him, and then push it aside and participate fully in the rest of his life. In contrast, a TS is a pretender, living a lie, trying to be what they aren't. They are always on guard, always aware of the little slips they make, and always checking their displayed behavior against others, as a learning process. Or they try to go their own way, they hide behind a wall of silence, non interaction beyond the absolute minimum, a mask of the inane or jokester, and/or sometimes take solace in drugs or alcohol, become a rebel, or if the school is good and large, they can take refuge in the artistic crowd, the strange ones, or the computer geeks. Often they live in denial, sometimes engage in dangerous, risk taking behavior; if the effects of testosterone are good enough, play physically demanding sports and take on the role of jock, build up their bodies while hating themselves and trying to bury what they see as a weakness. As adults, they become soldiers, policemen, firemen, especially the dangerous service orientation of firemen. They may have limited to no sex drive due to this confusion, and they often seem to be Don Juans, going from girl to girl, sometimes with sexual encounter, often not, but mostly as a mask, unable to really establish a relationship, though some do eventually as a sort of compromise, or due to actually falling in love. The one thing they are not, is comfortable with who they are pretending to be, no matter how long they do it.
Sooner or later, and that often in mid-life, there is a breaking point, a recognition that to live any longer the way they are is not going to be possible, and it is either expressed as transition, often losing everthing just as they feared, for the opportunity to be at peace, or their peace comes in an early death from heart attack or stroke, from stress, high blood pressure, and if some researchers are right, early cancer. Or it can be addiction to drugs to blur away the pain and then death, or other self destructive behavior, such as "a tragic single car accident taking the life of it's only occupant", or a bullet in the brain, an overdose of sleeping pills, hanging in the garage, and that I suppose ends in a kind of peace too, but of sad desperation. I think that end is rare for a CD.
And yes, therein lies the difference Virginia. A CD can come home, remove his girl clothes, and yell invective at the referee in peaceful happiness. A TS is never at home, never at peace, until they are themselves. And if that one is a FtM, he will join you in drinking beer and yelling invective at the referee, with gusto!
"It’s not given to anyone to have no regrets; only to decide, through the choices we make, which regrets we’ll have,"
David Weber – In Fury Born
Wow! Eye-opening stuff, gals! Excellent posts! Thanks to all.
Glad you found the posts of interest.