Topic 1: Gender Dysphoria, Gender Grief

[foundlostsoul]

cw for childhood suicide attempt (no method), childhood transphobia and homophobia

I posted elsewhere that I have a lot to say right now about what I'm going through. I'm gonna try and organize my thoughts by topic just not get overwhelmed. But I am so fucking sick and tired of gender dysphoria and internalized transphobia and transmisogyny and misogyny. I had a phone call with my mom, and she used the words "look like a real woman" talking about another trans woman's FFS (face surgery), and I've been reeling since. (My mom and I rarely talk. I'd be estranged from her if I weren't worried about her husband sending me unhinged voicemails and texts like the last time she and I had a conflict. That's a whole 'nother story.) But yeah, I look in the mirror and I see a monster. My most recent therapist -- whom I fired because she unexpectedly refused to give me an insurance-mandated letter of support for hairline reconstruction -- had asked me when the first time I thought I was a monster because I was trans, and I found myself unexpectedly telling her about my childhood suicide attempt.

But every time I look in the mirror, I see my broad shoulders, my narrow hips, my facial hair (which is currently grown out for electrolysis), and my brain just goes: "monster." Look, I know passing isn't a goal for all trans women, but for me, it is. But the worst thing is that I absolutely do have a body that a cis woman could have. I'm 5'6". I wear 34B bras and size 9 shoes. Yeah, I'm not goddamn Laura Croft or Tifa, but I can fit in tons of off-the-shelf clothes made for cis women and it's flattering on me. Yet, yet, I look in the mirror and I see someone who cannot possibly be a woman because her hips are too narrow and her butt is too small and her chest is to wide and her shoulders are too broad. And don't even get me started on my face.

It breaks my heart to think of little 10-year-old me sitting there being found my one of my parents in a moment of hesitation before making and attempt on my own life, knowing that I knew that I wanted to girl things and inhabit a woman's body one day. And it breaks my heart to know that one of my friends called the house landline (90's girlie here) when I was 10 to call me a f*****. If I could have fucking gone on puberty blockers then, if I could have gone on estrogen then, if that other child didn't call me home to yell at me and call me f*****, maybe I could have started actually, genuinely living sooner.

And I have to mourn the loss of the girlhood I was denied, of the early transition I was denied, of all the physical and emotional and mental pain I went through for decades hiding who I was so deeply, of the therapist who when I as an adult asked, "what if I"m a woman?" he laughed and said, "you're not a woman." Mourning all the physical and emotional pain I have to go through today to transition in my forties. The cost and pain of multiple surgeries. Mourning the loss of having the body I fucking should have had and that I will never, ever have and mourning being stuck in this shitty, disgusting body for decades all because just enough people called me f***** or otherwise made my life hell to believe I didn't deserve to be me, that being myself wasn't even valid.

(And it breaks my fucking heart that the current executive branch of the country I live in is actively trying to repress people like me meaning so many more boys and girls and children are being condemned to the same torture that I experienced. But this post isn't about them. This post is about me.)

 

[foundlostsoul]

Just to add to this discussion, it's amazing the places that this grief and mourning will show up. For me, flexibility feels Very Gendered. As a girl, I learned I should be flexible. Like, literally, being stretchy and bendy. (Despite the fact that I was raised to be a boy, I internalized a TON of messages about girls and women.) It's been a very long time since I've worked out, but I got back into doing some stretching today for the first time, and I wept. The twenty minute routine I was doing took probably over half an hour because of crying breaks. I left the final tears on my exercise mat when I was done because I'm dramatic like that. They're mostly dry.

 

[foundlostsoul]

I'm glad that the stretching unlocked all that. I feel like I can more readily move on now, at least until it all gets clogged up again.

 

[Lisa the Ferrociraptor]

As with that other thread you saw me in, i just want to express that i understand how you feel. I also have to mourn the childhood i never had, the girl i never got to be. And it's hard work not being mad that it took me until i was 29 to finally own up to reality. To have lost all those years i could have spent in the right skin, instead of the ill-fitting armour of manhood.

I also judge the person i see in the mirror as "not woman enough" sometimes, even though i'd never do that to any other woman. And i know the pain of having a supposed friend call you that word. I got called it by a guy i'd considered my best friend for 12 years. It hurts in a way that's kind of impossible to understand unless you've experienced it.

I'm glad your stretching seems to have unlocked something, and allowed you to cry your feelings out. It can be great, can't it? I still randomly burst into tears sometimes too, and it's awesome.
Thinking of you, and hoping you can continue to find your peace.

 

[Licorice]

Crying is so liberating, isn't it?

I was studying the Iliad with my students, and asked them to find some quotations that told us something about gender models in the Ancient World. One of the things they picked up on is that Achilles, the greatest of the heroes, is always crying. He weeps when Patroclus dies; he cries when Briseis is taken from him; he sheds tears of fury when Agamemnon disrespects him; he cries when Priam comes to his tent to ask for Hector's corpse back. He goes to sit by the edge of the waves and cries while his mother, the sea nymph, comforts him.

Our culture did a real disservice to one half of its population when it told them they were not allowed to cry. No one should ever be embarassed to cry. It's good for us.

 

[foundlostsoul]

Thank you for your kind and generous support and empathy and sympathy @Lisa the Goatgirl and @Licorice <3