The Other Self who wasn't femme

[Beauty]

Hi,

It's kind of weird that Andrea brings that up because I've been on t-blockers a year and my strength has waned. I tried to move a love seat the other day with one arm. I just had to pull it a little bit towards me and I couldn't budge it. At first I thought I was just being silly, but then when I tried really hard I was like whoaaa. When I tried two arms and I couldn't move it either, it made me think about defending myself. It didn't make me feel more like a woman, it made me realize that testosterone's affect on the body is real. I ended up having to push the chair to get it where I wanted it.

I work out too, so I am trying to keep my strength up. I was on a weird angle, but I know normally or I guess I should say, when I wasn't on t-blockers I could have done that with one arm. I was just trying to move it a quarter inch. Weird.

Beauty

[Absaroka]

Yeah I guess I have a whole bunch of different personas all wrapped up in one. As long as they all stay friends....

Beauty she talks about this a lot in her book. The doctor told her when she started hormones exercise would be very important. Some months later she and her wife climbed Mt Katahdin. We are talking about cardiovascular and lower body strength here. Still she found it much more tiring. One more reson to have respect for all the women mountaineers.

Andrea

[Cathy L. Anderson]

Hi Anita,

Thanks for your post

I was eighteen before I figured out one of the male codes about fighting.

I think fighting and territoriality have much to do with our male subpersonality. That's one reason we are much more relaxed as females. The male holds his body constantly anticipating and aggression, attack, etc.

But if I got angry enough, a switch would flip in my head, and a whole new set of responses would come out. It was like being under the influence of a drug.

It is. Testosterone, adrenaline, maybe a dozen others yet undiscovered. This suggests that a strong male response may lead later to a strong female response--a rebound.

I no longer had access to that violent male side to protect me in times of emergency. I had to figure out new ways of feeling safe, because being Anita was a new way of being "me," and it didn't include those impulses that I had always counted on before.

So here is where alchemy can occur. Can you extract the adaptive elements of the male personality--successful negotiation of a crisis--without the bad parts (aggression), so that the skill is accessible outside of "male" mode?

Cathy

[Anita]

I think fighting and territoriality have much to do with our male subpersonality. That's one reason we are much more relaxed as females. The male holds his body constantly anticipating and aggression, attack, etc.

I've said before--when I'm out as a man, competition is the ocean, and I'm a fish. It's so prevalent that I don't even notice it until I go out as a woman, and suddenly the level of competition has changed! It's not gone--neither gender can get out of it completely. But the difference between the two levels is really apparent when I'm the one experiencing first one, and then the other.

When I first went out, I expected men would treat me with disdain, or indifference, or they'd just ignore me. That's what men can do, if they consider you no threat at all. But that's not what happened. I still got respect and attention, but it was a whole different way of being around
them. It's still one of the more amazing things about this whole journey, and one that I'm still learning about.

Testosterone, adrenaline, maybe a dozen others yet undiscovered. This suggests that a strong male response may lead later to a strong female response--a rebound.

At first I thought, no, it's not that simple. But you may be right. I do think that all extremes in our lives tend to move toward balance of some kind. In the case of gender behavior, we fight this process as men. To allow it to happen is not easy, and a high percentage of men don't let it happen.

So here is where alchemy can occur. Can you extract the adaptive elements of the male personality--successful negotiation of a crisis--without the bad parts (aggression), so that the skill is accessible outside of "male" mode?

That's certainly what I work on. Better verbal bantering is the only way I can see to do this. There has to be SOME kind of interaction going on during a crisis. I still don't know where I'm going to go with that. Women sometimes get really aggressive or even abusive in their language, to make up for not having the same physical strength. I don't want to get into that, either. I've dealt with the extremes of this; now I have to learn how to live more in the middle.

[Absaroka]

Thanks Anita for what you said. One of the themes in this forum is what does it mean to be male or female and how does it go beyond appearances and I think this is sometimes a good example.

I keep wondering how much is cultural. A big topic in parenting circles currently is how nasty teenage grils are to each other. Many feel that they are worse than boys. I don't know that I agree but there is no lack of subtle yet ruthless aggression.

Thats the middle class kids. I also lived for quite a while in a place where to tell you the truth, the girls were as tough as the boys. Rumbles between girl gangs complete with weaponry and so forth. It was pretty hard to believe at first for me. I imagine this sort of thing is just as stressful for girls as boys.

Andrea