(no subject)

[bob.livejournal.com]

Two or three years ago I was on a large dose of DXM (one of the active ingredients in cough syrup, a disassociative) and was curious about where they (the medical/scientific community) had gotten in the technology of sex change operations (what I call now SRS). After that I spent some of the summer reading up on transsexualism. At first I thought it was a scientific-biological curiosity. Eventually it wasn't. I moved beyond the physical aspects of surgery and the effects of hormones and started reading people's experience of feeling they were born the wrong sex for their gender, or however one might say it. I felt that I really hit unto something, much of what I read resonated with feelings I've had, with experiences I went through in childhood and more recently.

I went to some college counseling--psych grad school students, part of their degree process--which was okay, but it felt like I was explaining generalized notions of what transsexuality is rather than how I was going through it. So... quit that, started it again, quit it again.

This entire time I was struggling with drinking problems. One might say I still am. Started taking philosophy and psychology courses (instead of abstract, void-of-the-human-condition mathematics) this fucked with my sense of identity even more.

So yeah, dropped out of school, drank some more, got a horrible job at a fast-food place, where I found out that I am strange from the normal people that work there. Trying to chat with them about gender was like breaking some weird social contract. I was out to a few of my friends and got a "do whatever you want" attitude. The one vague talk that I had with my parents had the same aura.

I'm at a liberal arts school right now, a wide range of readings and discussion classes and the good sort of education where I actually need to think instead of just memorize. I've also observed a few lj communities (such as this one) relating to it all. More internet reading, blah blah.

Somewhere along the line, possibly further back that I imagine, I decided that it wasn't my maleish gender performance that annoyed me, it was the fact that there were these gender categories at all. This whole socially accepted/constructed/imagined think called "gender," I felt weird with any presentation. Rather, the real or imagined social pressure I felt to be a certain way annoyed me more than being that way itself. Did I mention I read a lot of Sartre? fancy myself an existentialist, whatever that means.

I don't believe in the soul, or any sort of human essence besides that which we create or choose. As I wrote in my journal:

Do what thou wilt, but where does [one's will or self] come from? It's the same exact problem with trying to talk about the big bang or a all powerful deity self-caused. Self-caused cause.

I'm about to explode.

It's difficult to reconcile the existence of emotions with that of free will. I'm hard pressed to say that we choose all of our emotions and mind-states (though I'm sure we choose some of them), but we probably choose how to react to many/all of them. This puts me in a funny place to think about gender dysphoria.

Has anyone read any articles or books on free will, gender and sexuality?