I've been too busy with Real Life(tm) (And I don't mean the online game) to worry too much about transition any more. Oh, it's still going on. I still have to visit the Endo, and get my hormones straightened out. We're still experimenting there, as I'm not the standard model TS woman.
There's also some pubertal changes with the chest area still happening. Slowly.
Right now I'm far more concerned about raising my son, and about my PhD.
Here's a list of posts over the last year about my transition, or where I illustrate a point using my own experiences. It's rather shorter than previous lists, and I suspect next year's will be shorter still.
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/05/sex-and-brain.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/06/surely-everyone-knows-about-right.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/06/privilege.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/06/bigender-and-brain.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/07/ah-spit.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/07/todays-battles.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/08/nose-is-nose-is-nose.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/09/light-blogging.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/09/non-je-ne-regrette-rien.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/09/lucys-story.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/10/back-to-square-one.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/10/lebanese-bread.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/11/likewise.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/01/executive-summary.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/01/true-love-and-brain.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/01/letter-from-attorney-general.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-childhood-role-model.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-dont-more-animals-change-their-sex.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/02/human-being.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/02/todays-battles_26.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/02/blessings-contrasts-and-christianity.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/03/best-birthday-present-ever.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/04/another-piece-of-puzzle.html
Previous posts on my transition at Year Three, Year Two, and Annus Mirabilis.
To finish off, I'll quote something I wrote in BiGender and the Brain.
Up until age 5, I was a child. No real concept of gender.
At 6, I went to school, and noticed something was wrong. I was dressed as a boy, I looked like a boy, but I didn't think like "other boys". I still liked toy guns, and Meccano rather than dolls, but I was different.
At 7, I knew I wasn't a boy, but didn't know what I was. I thought boys were puerile, and girls too silly and sissy. A classic Tomboy in retrospect.
At 8, I got to play hopscotch with other girls, and I felt at home. They thought like I did, they cried like I did. I still didn't see myself as more than an honourary girl though. Even if my favourite toy car was Lady Penelope's pink Rolls-Royce.
At 9, more by a process of elimination than anything else, I realised I was female. Boys could just as well have been an alien species. Girls were just like me, in feelings and values.
At 10, I was in a boys boarding school then, and I was able to make up boardgames of astounding complexity when it rained. I had my own secret garden in the nearby woods, with flowerbeds I'd planted. I could sit and read amidst the flowers, and was terribly happy. It was then I picked the name Zoe, and planned what I was going to do with my life. I wanted children, a husband, the white picket fence etc, but also to be a Rocket Scientist and to travel the world, things that Wives and Mothers Just Did Not Do in the 60's.
Even though it had been obvious since age 7 that I’d never be “svelte” or “petite”, that I’d be the girl “with the wonderful personality”. I didn’t cry about that – much. And not where anyone could see me. I was more worried about the practical problems I'd be having when I started having a female puberty. And vaguely concerned that boys didn't interest me at all. I was no naive I thought that was part of the package of being a girl. Was I a defective one?
It came as a terrible shock when I learnt that boys and girls are born looking different, and that my body was boy.
I didn’t take it well.
Basically, I failed my SAN roll, and convinced myself I had to be a boy, no matter how I felt inside. That meant forgetting a lot, suppressing memories, but it was either acquire a minor psychosis, or sink into despair, depression, and death.
A part of me still knew, but that part was in a box in a safe in the hold of a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean on a planet circling a distant star.
I tried to be the best Man any woman could be. I did that for 47 years. It helped to be Asexual, mildly lesbian if anything. Sex was for having children, a form of cuddling and pleasing someone you loved, albeit a bit tiring after the first hour. Not something instinctive or natural.
3 comments:
"We're still experimenting there, as I'm not the standard model TS woman"
Are you saying there's variations of that :)
Love your work Zoe and of course your blog,you're an inspiration to us all
TBH, I've read nothing so far that suggests you aren't a 'standard model TS woman'. If you'd had all these tests then they would have surely discovered something as to why this 'miraculous' sex change is happening to you - e.g. pituitary gland failure, undiscovered testis-ova, etc.
All we have is guesses. The observed effects are real, the anomalies confirmed. The cause remains elusive, but is probably a combination of rare gene anomalies.
There are thousands of such medical puzzlements, some conditions even odder than mine. Do a Google on "idiopathic" and you'll find hundreds of conditions where cause is unknown. It's not that unusual.
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