Cheerful Megalomaniac » growing up

Thinking about Trust

Ryan — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 07:55:04 +0000

The nature of trust

Hugo recently posted about how to rebuild trust that has been broken in a romantic relationship. First of all, I am sincerely awed by Hugo’s willingness to face up publicly to what he has been… it gives those still journeying hope that there is a destination.

I find the topic of trust a very interesting one, and it is one that I am working at the moment.

Like Seren in A Distant Soil, I would turn like a flower to the sun, to the slightest hint of kindness or desire. That kind of behaviour, has gotten me into many a pickle. I trusted too easily. I was determined to think the best of everyone.

Over the period of 21 years, everyone in my life that I extended trust to, broke that trust. I guess I am a slow learner, that still as recently as a few months ago I was determined to trust. By the time I ended up in therapy, I was putting such focus on tiny interactions that I felt literally betrayed by the bus driver that drove my morning bus route when he retired. When the cafe I bought a bagel from every saturday closed I cried for hours. It was just silly. My therapist said that I had ‘abandonment issues’. I would often have dreams where someone I loved would chain me to a post, and then get in a car and drive away.

Those dreams began when my Nonna got married and moved away, when I was 14, and didn’t stop until earlier this year.

Often I didn’t even really trust someone, I was baring my throat to every predator that went by, hoping that one day someone would refuse to hurt me. I guess that vulnerability is nigh on irresistible, cos to date, there is only one man that has refused to fuck me over when given the opportunity.

Recently I’ve been spending quite a lot of time with people I *know* I can’t trust, cos often the certainty that they have already betrayed me is simply easier to deal with, than the idea that maybe a trusted friend may betray me at some point in the future.

A week or two ago I decided that this was a pretty fucked up tactic for relationships. Not to mention it was making me pretty angry. So from now on, its people that I trust, or people that have not yet completely fucked up their chances of me trusting them ever again.

Having a girlfriend is an interesting new experience for me. As is being in a relationship where there is mutual desire, and also respect. At first I found it really hard to deal with. I’m getting used to it though, and in fact, at the moment, I am really enjoying it.

One of my favourite things about my girl? She says things like “We should get to know each others friends!”

I love that. I’m so used to having relationships with no overlap between social groups, where my partners efforts have been to isolate me, where its always ‘just the two of us’, or him with his friends, and me with mine. I am already starting to meet some of Farida’s friends, and she mine. We are making efforts to spend time doing things that we can invite others to join in with, and to invite each other to our regular social occasions.

It’s nice to still have our separate lives, but its also nice to know that we can be friends with each others friends, and friends with each other.

That helps me trust her. That she is willing to talk about things, that she will listen, that she doesn’t want to hurt me, she wants me to say ‘no’ and ’stop’ and ’slow down’ and ‘I feel weird about this’ when I need to say it.

People that want to hear the word ‘no’, that care more about making sure I’m ok, than getting off, or falling in love, or having their ego stroked… these are the people that make my life richer, and these are the people I want in my life.

The Ten Steps to Sanity

Ryan — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 07:52:02 +0000

So I spent my New Years Eve reading Man Made Language, and Full Frontal Feminism. (I really must get around to reading some of the negative opinions of Full Frontal Feminism, cos I didn’t see much of a problem with it… but then, that is probably my white privilege showing)

This is the sort of dorky behaviour that got me labelled a ‘Square’ in high school. Alas, I have never been cool.

Anyway, I was thinking, as I read Full Frontal Feminism, that I wish I had discovered feminism when I was in High School. I read Kaz Cook’s ‘Real Gorgeous’ and loved it, and a bunch of stuff on gender, and was generally a smart cookie, so I kinda guessed that I was onto something. It would have been nice to have the reassurance that I was right, though.

I was battling day in and day out.

I remember arguing that the Bible wasn’t fair to women, but I was always shot down.

Why is Adultery was the only divorce-worthy sin? What if my husband never cheated on me, but beats me every day?

“Well, thats why you marry a good Christian man. He wont hit you.”

Why does it say that a wife should obey her husband, but not the other way around? What if I know better?

“One member of a partnership has to be able to make the final decision. Besides, your husband will love you, and want what’s best for you”

What if I am a lesbian? What if I keep liking girls?

“Ha ha ha… Oh, you have such a track record with boys, we don’t need to fear that.”

(My ‘track record with boys’ was two boyfriends… I had quite a ‘reputation’)

When I came up with solid examples of these ideas gone dreadfully wrong, I was dismissed, and it was pointed out that the parties involved weren’t 100% Christian, or were living in sin.

Because the woman that was being beaten by her non-Christian husband shouldn’t have married a non-Christian! Silly woman!

I was so confused, had so many questions, but no one paid me heed. Eventually to deal with the cognitive dissonance I threw myself into religion to such an extent, I just blocked out the conflicting information. I went through a period of being intensely pro-life, and anti-feminist. I figured I would just grow up, get married, and that would be that.

Damn it, why was it going to take Paul so long to graduate Medicine?

(See, I even had me a good Christian doctor to marry. We would probably be missionaries together, or something)

It will probably come as a great surprise to many of you reading this, that I actually planned on going to Bible College to study teaching. In preparation for my missionary-wife days, you see. I giggle when I think of it now.

Everything has changed.

Its happened step by step.

This is the handy 10-step map of my change from Good Christian Girl, to jumped up Trannie Feminist. I wrote it partially in l33t, cos I feel like a w4nk0r tonight.

1. No Babies. Not now. Not EV4. This womb be BARREN.

(No one actually believed me, even after I had stuck to that line for more than two years)

2. OMG Feminism is TEH WIN! I’ve been such a n00b!

3. Oh… my boyfriend is a dickhead. Maybe I wont marry him even though we’ve been living in sin. DUMPZORS

4. Wow. Girls are made of win! I still think so, after all this time. Maybe I am bisexual after all?

6. I am so not ever getting married. Ever. EVER.

7. Hmph. Girls are REALLY awesome. I’m such a dyke. LOLZ

8. WHADDYAMEENICUDTRANSITION??????

9. OMG OMG OMG I COULD TRANSITION

10. So am I a dyke, or a straight man?

Coming out bit by bit…

Ryan — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 06:56:06 +0000

So I officially came out as a Lesbian on my 22nd Birthday. I had been kinda out as a bisexual for quite a while, so it wasn’t really that big a deal to most of my friends. I don’t think that many of them understood the distinction I was placing on Officially Coming Out, as opposed to ‘my close friends know I dig chicks’.

I think that there is a difference between actually coming out, and just going about my everyday life knowing I like women, but not doing anything about it.

I seem to be catnip to the ladies since coming out. I went from getting no play at all, to having a few lovely ladies interested, and making some lesbian friends too. I am pretty sure that I don’t look different since coming out, but it seems that something about me now screams “RAGING QUEER”.

I have a girlfriend now, and things are going really well with her. She is a passionate activist, socialist, and brilliantly talented artist. She’s also doing her PhD in Anthropology. Over all, a gorgeous, zany, fun woman. She is also challenging, which is good, because it is forcing me to examine some area’s in my life that I would be willing to let stagnate.

One of the things that I have been extremely closeted about has been my gender identity. I’ve never bothered claiming that I am cisgendered, but I’ve never acknowledged that my gender identity is an important part of who I am, and needs to be examined. I’m in many ways a sheltered little creature, and so the existence of FTM Transsexuals had slipped under my radar until recently. Once I found out that they do exist I was left with the desire to get very very drunk. Once I recovered from a night of drinking port and sending embarrassing text messages, I had to actually think about what this meant to me.

I’ve been interested in gender for a long time, I heavily researched gender when I was in highschool… largely on the sly and using the schools PC’s which no doubt had net-nanny or some such installed. I expect that is why I never managed to find out much about FTM transgender people… also the literature is amazingly MTF-centric, to the point where I think that I can be forgiven for assuming I was a freak and that other FTM’s simply didn’t exist.

In my final year of high school, and first year of uni I think that I did every gender identity test I could find. They are largely crap that rely heavily on invalid stereotypes, but even knowing this I kept doing them until finally I managed to fudge my way through one enough to test as female gendered. The BBC gender identity test is pretty good, and if you are interested in how the tests work its well worth looking at.

When I was very young my mother took great pride in my “tom-boyish” nature. From an early age my friends were boys. I played a variety of imaginative games with them, and didn’t have much interest in stereotypically feminine behaviours, toys or games. I suffered quite a bit from penis envy, and it was my discussion of how I wished I had a penis that led me into the room of my molester.

By the time I became a teenager I was starting to absorb expectations of how I ought to behave, and my mothers attitude to my ‘tom-boy’ behaviour was changing. The few female friends I had ‘turned into girls’ much to my horror, and my guy friends didn’t want to hang out with a girl anymore. I was very lonely for a couple of years. I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t fit in anymore.

I think that when every one is a child, there is a certain sameness to us all that lets us play the same games. In high school a much greater level of gender conformity is expected. I watched Disney’s Mulan over and over, feeling Mulan’s pain as her father said “I know my place! It is time you learned yours!”

I was being told the same thing. It was time I ‘grew up’. My mother said that I wasn’t ‘Lady-like enough’. The women at church praised me for not dressing like a slut, but must everything be so boyish? All my clothes were charity, until late high school and soon I found that the composition changed to more feminine items. (The first three items I bought when I started buying clothes? Two pairs of cargo pants, and a blue polar fleece jumper the same as one of my guy friends had)

When I was 14 I got my first period. I was, as my mother put it ‘blessed with the essence of womanhood’. I was not impressed by this development at all, and it was about this time that my lingering depression became acute. When my figure started to develop I hid it under loose clothing as best I could. My period stopped when I started starving myself. This satisfied me, but I dropped weight and got more depressed. When I got too weak to continue my boxing lessons with Mr Gorman, the one teacher at my high school that didn’t think only boys could box, things got even worse.

I started researching all manner of things at this point. I was about 16, and one of the girls in my year had come out as a lesbian. I was really impressed by this amazing feat of bravery. I looked into gender, and homosexuality, but I was simultaneously submitting to the church’s teaching, and getting involved with the more radical aspects of the religion. I ended up pushing my confusion behind a wall in my mind, and trying to be the best girl I could be.

When I arrived at uni I was ready to test my wings, but an early heart break sent me scuttling back into myself. I fell in with a very traditional group of Indian people, and started dating one of them, who reinforced my hot-potch femininity, extending it, and developing it. He was quite effeminate, and in some ways looked at me as a doll that he could make into the woman he wished he could be.

I spent years in that relationship, then dumped his arse when it became clear that he was an emotionally abusive fucktard, and that I needed to move on. I discovered feminism then, and attempted to embrace my womanhood, which I had a fairly decent level of success with. A lot of my latent misogyny has been addressed and annihilated. I have learned not to hate my body just because it is female. I can acknowledge that I am a sexy, beautiful person, even if I don’t look how I think that I should.

However, the moment I found it is possible for a woman to transition to become a man I was on fire with excitement. I have had many thoughts about this. After all, as a feminist I don’t believe in gender essentialism, so how can I claim to be male, surely I am just a woman that displays characteristics which are labelled ‘masculine’ within the cultural construct of gender. Right?

I think my girlfriend summed it up best when she said that I am “haunted by a phantom penis”. My body doesn’t feel quite right. My breasts for example. I love them dearly, they are wonderfully attractive breasts. However, most of the time I feel like they are some kind of bizarre growth on my chest, and every now and then I will do something, and they will get in the way, and I will be somewhat shocked for a moment that I have breasts. When I am aroused I miss my penis. I really do. In sex dreams I am almost always male, although sometimes I am having anal sex with a male partner. If I am female in the dream the partner is always female.

Essentially I have reached the point of acknowledging that I am transgender, and that undergoing t-therapy and having top surgery is something that I should think about as a serious option, rather than throwing my hands in the air and screaming ‘too-hard!’

I need to work out more, I want to start running again, and weight training. Last time I did a weight training course I did myself serious damage cos I was trying to keep up with someone much stronger than me… I am really competitive. I can be a bit like a chihuahua that believes its a great dane at times.

I am also overhauling my wardrobe over the next few months. One of my fashion conscious friends said that I need to make sure that I maintain a ’sense of style’. This made me laugh, because at the best of times I don’t have a sense of style. I am more enthusiastic about the idea of building a wardrobe of guys clothes… jeans, trendy shirts, and blazer-jackets, than I usually do about clothes shopping for girls clothes. I unsurprisingly find it really difficult to find clothes that I like.

Oh, and I still love pink. In fact, I like it better now that I am not repressing myself. I don’t think I will ever be a fan of ‘Barbie Pink’ or that ‘Candy-pink’ they select for Game Consoles, but rose pink, and pale pink, and so on are quite attractive. Also, my Pink Doc Martens have a laser etched DEATHS HEAD MOTH on the side. Oh yeah, that is pretty awesome.

So, there we have it. I am out Queer. I am out as Transgender. I am helping to organise a protest for Civil Unions, and about to go on a Woman’s Rights/Queer Rights/Anti-descrimination/Anti-sexual Violence Activism rampage. I guess I better tell my mum. Wouldn’t do for her to read about all this in the newspaper now would it?