A bit of a history and food for thought
Jul. 22nd, 2005 06:39 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
ottermama.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
transHere's a few things I have been dealing with lately, food for thought mostly, and a bit more of an introduction. Long, so behind a cut.
So in recent months, I've been questioning myself more and more about where I want to go in life as it pertains to gender and sex and relationships. Aside from all the funky label stuff that people often spend so much time on (self included, too), I have been wondering what I want to do physically with my body.
Being intersexed physically has always made me wonder more and more about my gender and the possibility of SRS or a form of it. Well before I knew I was intersexed (talking around ages 4, 7, 10, 13, 19) I'd known that I was different and had wanted to either be both a boy and a girl at once, or at the very least be a girl/mum. I was the only boy at my school who, at age 4, wanted to be pregnant and spent time with the girls being "one of the girls". This sort of behaviour continued on through elementary and middle school, though took on a few different forms, and was even suppressed for a while when it became socially uncool to talk about it. But I was still always considered "one of the girls" by whatever group of them I was hanging out with.
Around age 16, I found out about transexuals and later, hermaphrodites, and thought "Wow, how cool it would be to be one of those people! They have both parts!" Though watching some guys dress up as girls in my HS was kinda unnerving at the time, that turned out to be just a misunderstanding on my part. Kudos to those who had the bravery to do that! The problem I had was that I didn't know that it was possible to enter therapy for that sort of thing and didn't even know what it was at the time.
Finding out I was intersexed when I was 22 was a serious blow, and really screwed with my head for several years afterwards... and still does sometimes, to be honest. Using female health reasons when I couldn't go into work for this or that reason was a bit of a problem, my work didn't get it.
I worked at a plastics company at the time, one that did the mechanical engineering behind plastic, silicon, and carbon fiber parts. One of our customers was a place that made breastforms, and I remember going to do the setup of their machines several times and wishing I could go through their tubs of spares so I could find several pair to wear regularly. While I was scared of it, I couldn't get the idea of doing that out of my head and it bugged me to no end. About a year or two later, I realized that I could grow my own, and started to research how that worked.
I've been soul-searching over the years about this, and have since been put on a hormone regimen for health reasons, and have begun to grow my own breasts and feel a lot more "normal", as it were. That is to say, I didn't feel that as much was wrong with me as I'd been feeling most of my life. But being human, I still have issues with appearance, and being a 30yr old with nearly B cup breasts has made me wonder just how much farther I want to go with this. Do I want to consider a more drastic form of sexual change or do I want to be an intersexed guy with breasts, or what?
One way I did some soul-searching was in my online RP games, playing both male and female characters. My male characters usually went somewhere for a while but ended up dying out as far as how often I played them. My female characters just up and took off, with me enjoying all sorts of things from RP dating other characters, designing clothes for myself, etc... I even had one of them get married and have kids... that was a blast! I had so much fun with one of them, that I adopted her name to use in some real life situations, such as email addresses, ways I identify myself to some of my friends, both online and in person, even though both of those groups have seen pics of me... So far so good.
But no matter how much I enjoy using my female alt, there are things that I do like about being a guy. Not a lot of things, mind you, but there are some things that are advantageous... most of them sexual, I'll admit openly, some of them interpersonal. But I still have problems with my body. I absolutely HATE body hair... HATE HATE HATE it! I dun mind being on hormones so much, esp since I've been prescribed them, but I hate having big feet, fat thighs by heredity, large hands, and a semi-square face. I've actually been told I have nice legs, but I still have issues with them personally. But that's me being over-critical. Oh, and my facial hair. I can't STAND it!
But overall, my personality is somewhere on the midline, I'm finding. Of course, I take those generic internet personality tests, and have actually taken some at university research facilities, and I almost always come out about 50/50, or more feminine than masculine. Granted there are physical desires I have too; sexual desires and some just physical contact needs that are more feminine (I'm told, at least). And even more recently, polyamory (but I'll not touch on that this time.)
All of these things end up coming back to me questioning what I want to do with my body since I'm obviously not happy with it and am frustrated with costs of getting things done to it that I would like, but then second guessing myself as to if I really want them or not... I do know two things I want to do: I want to get rid of all my body and facial hair save for my pubic hair, and I want to continue to grow my breasts. But I don't know what I want to do more than that, as far as more drastic changes. I dun wanna get rid of my guy parts, but I've been wanting dual genitals for a long time, and that desire is getting stronger as time goes by.
So confusing... I know in an ideal world, I'd have been born as dual as is possible and prefer to be androgynous; being able to pass as male or female socially at my own choice. I still deal with the whole desire to have babies, which I know I can't do of my own body, but I can deal with that, as annoying as the whole biological clock thing is. I can deal with the hormonal cycles. I'm just finding myself more and more dissatisfied with my body as time goes on and worrying that the longer I delay making a decision on what to do, the more difficult it will be to find a solution that will help feminize what there is left to feminize. Esp at age 30.
Anyway, I dunno what I'm asking of you all reading this, I just needed to write about it, and felt that some of you might have felt similar things. And I've never really talked at length about what issues I deal with that brought me to this community. So consider this a bit of an introduction, I guess. Thanks for reading it.
So in recent months, I've been questioning myself more and more about where I want to go in life as it pertains to gender and sex and relationships. Aside from all the funky label stuff that people often spend so much time on (self included, too), I have been wondering what I want to do physically with my body.
Being intersexed physically has always made me wonder more and more about my gender and the possibility of SRS or a form of it. Well before I knew I was intersexed (talking around ages 4, 7, 10, 13, 19) I'd known that I was different and had wanted to either be both a boy and a girl at once, or at the very least be a girl/mum. I was the only boy at my school who, at age 4, wanted to be pregnant and spent time with the girls being "one of the girls". This sort of behaviour continued on through elementary and middle school, though took on a few different forms, and was even suppressed for a while when it became socially uncool to talk about it. But I was still always considered "one of the girls" by whatever group of them I was hanging out with.
Around age 16, I found out about transexuals and later, hermaphrodites, and thought "Wow, how cool it would be to be one of those people! They have both parts!" Though watching some guys dress up as girls in my HS was kinda unnerving at the time, that turned out to be just a misunderstanding on my part. Kudos to those who had the bravery to do that! The problem I had was that I didn't know that it was possible to enter therapy for that sort of thing and didn't even know what it was at the time.
Finding out I was intersexed when I was 22 was a serious blow, and really screwed with my head for several years afterwards... and still does sometimes, to be honest. Using female health reasons when I couldn't go into work for this or that reason was a bit of a problem, my work didn't get it.
I worked at a plastics company at the time, one that did the mechanical engineering behind plastic, silicon, and carbon fiber parts. One of our customers was a place that made breastforms, and I remember going to do the setup of their machines several times and wishing I could go through their tubs of spares so I could find several pair to wear regularly. While I was scared of it, I couldn't get the idea of doing that out of my head and it bugged me to no end. About a year or two later, I realized that I could grow my own, and started to research how that worked.
I've been soul-searching over the years about this, and have since been put on a hormone regimen for health reasons, and have begun to grow my own breasts and feel a lot more "normal", as it were. That is to say, I didn't feel that as much was wrong with me as I'd been feeling most of my life. But being human, I still have issues with appearance, and being a 30yr old with nearly B cup breasts has made me wonder just how much farther I want to go with this. Do I want to consider a more drastic form of sexual change or do I want to be an intersexed guy with breasts, or what?
One way I did some soul-searching was in my online RP games, playing both male and female characters. My male characters usually went somewhere for a while but ended up dying out as far as how often I played them. My female characters just up and took off, with me enjoying all sorts of things from RP dating other characters, designing clothes for myself, etc... I even had one of them get married and have kids... that was a blast! I had so much fun with one of them, that I adopted her name to use in some real life situations, such as email addresses, ways I identify myself to some of my friends, both online and in person, even though both of those groups have seen pics of me... So far so good.
But no matter how much I enjoy using my female alt, there are things that I do like about being a guy. Not a lot of things, mind you, but there are some things that are advantageous... most of them sexual, I'll admit openly, some of them interpersonal. But I still have problems with my body. I absolutely HATE body hair... HATE HATE HATE it! I dun mind being on hormones so much, esp since I've been prescribed them, but I hate having big feet, fat thighs by heredity, large hands, and a semi-square face. I've actually been told I have nice legs, but I still have issues with them personally. But that's me being over-critical. Oh, and my facial hair. I can't STAND it!
But overall, my personality is somewhere on the midline, I'm finding. Of course, I take those generic internet personality tests, and have actually taken some at university research facilities, and I almost always come out about 50/50, or more feminine than masculine. Granted there are physical desires I have too; sexual desires and some just physical contact needs that are more feminine (I'm told, at least). And even more recently, polyamory (but I'll not touch on that this time.)
All of these things end up coming back to me questioning what I want to do with my body since I'm obviously not happy with it and am frustrated with costs of getting things done to it that I would like, but then second guessing myself as to if I really want them or not... I do know two things I want to do: I want to get rid of all my body and facial hair save for my pubic hair, and I want to continue to grow my breasts. But I don't know what I want to do more than that, as far as more drastic changes. I dun wanna get rid of my guy parts, but I've been wanting dual genitals for a long time, and that desire is getting stronger as time goes by.
So confusing... I know in an ideal world, I'd have been born as dual as is possible and prefer to be androgynous; being able to pass as male or female socially at my own choice. I still deal with the whole desire to have babies, which I know I can't do of my own body, but I can deal with that, as annoying as the whole biological clock thing is. I can deal with the hormonal cycles. I'm just finding myself more and more dissatisfied with my body as time goes on and worrying that the longer I delay making a decision on what to do, the more difficult it will be to find a solution that will help feminize what there is left to feminize. Esp at age 30.
Anyway, I dunno what I'm asking of you all reading this, I just needed to write about it, and felt that some of you might have felt similar things. And I've never really talked at length about what issues I deal with that brought me to this community. So consider this a bit of an introduction, I guess. Thanks for reading it.
