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Bloody complicated!

  • Posted on February 22, 2014 at 8:43 am

I want to move into talking about personal relationships on this blog, for several reasons. One is that this is the area most fraught with difficulties for trans people. During transition many of us feel our lives are too baffling for others to deal with, we ourselves are dealing with a liberation as well as a transformation, being the same, but being different to everyone else. It is a time of life-on-hold, and everything takes too long. And it’s lonely. Another reason is that others need to understand that relating to us need not be confusing, that the confusion isn’t in us, but in them too. Cis people need to learn that trans people are as loving and feeling as they are, not strange and to be distanced. A third reason is that relationships are like confetti thrown to the wind, and lots of questions are raised that we prefer not to have to examine anyway.

Hearts are broken all the time. Human beings change their preferences: someone turns up who is more attractive, more sexy, more exciting, reinvigorating. Your partner seems boring, inattentive, disinterested in you. Your significant other thinks it’s OK to have sex with someone else, you do not. You meet a soulmate while either or both of you are in a long-term relationship. What do you do? Stuff happens, people are hurt.

‘If only I’d got it right first time’, many would say. ‘Now I’m lumbered or I leave.’

I am old-fashioned. Yes, really. I took lifelong commitment seriously, I only had sex with the person I married, and I stuck with it – out of love as it happens, for over 30 years. And yet I too got hurt.

Fixed or fluid?

Of course I understand. Your sexuality is as likely in your genes as is your gender. It is a fixed identity, isn’t it? The truth is, I just don’t know. Don’t ask me! I used to say just that, when people asked my opinion ‘from a man’s point of view’. I still say it. When you have lived as I have, in both binary camps, nothing is clear cut any more. Everyone I knew was happy with me living ‘as a man’, thoroughly convinced, and enough were finding me desirable. They knew what I was; only they didn’t. I know enough older women who have taken to female partners after marriage, to know that sexuality is a bit more fluid than we would like to believe.

I, like many trans* people, wonder what my life would have been like, if when I started to realise I wasn’t like other boys, I had been free to be one of the other kinds in a wholly accepted way. What if I had been a desirable person and partner, not for appearing to be a man? What if I had entered marriage as I really was? What if I’d never had to be binary?

And what now? I have made, and experienced, such changes, and met such a wide variety of people, that I feel there is a fluidity in all of us, surrounded with sea walls so strong that the tides change nothing. Take away the social sea walls, and I suspect there would be a lot more freedom of expression in both gender and sexuality than we see.

But then you can’t ask me, because I cannot unsee what you may never have seen, and my view of the world is very different from that of the average cis hetero person, who simply doesn’t need to go beyond a binary view of life that fits adequately. I can no longer see the world as you do; it has changed dramatically. Would you like to see the world as I do? Or is it just fine enough to see it as it is to you?

Maybe we ask too much that you should stand in our shoes, even walk a mile in them too. I mean, why should you? Is it scary, to open up the possibilities? And why does it matter?

Relationships make us what we want to be

Relationships are complex things, begun, fostered and ended for many reasons. But all along we compromise hugely in order to create them; we need them. The trouble is, we find it easier to see a relationship in terms of what it gives us, than in the balance of what we can also give. Relationships help to make us what we want to be. They are props and acquisitions in many ways.

That sounds selfish doesn’t it? I think it probably is. And it means that not all relationships are right, to be maintained at all costs, because to be fair and creative and productive, they do need to be fully reciprocal. An article in The Guardian newspaper recently remarked that modern marriages are for more than food on the table and a shared roof: they are to enable us to explore ourselves and grow as people. Now that is scary. What if your dream girl or hunk (or lovely sensitive man) does grow, expand, develop and become more real? Is that what you want? Your dream girl has a brilliant career that brings here a strong social standing of her own, or your sensitive man ‘becomes’ a woman, or androgynous, or queer? Does that leave you dispossessed, as with a gadget that no longer works? (Is it still under guarantee? Can I take it back?)

So you bought the pepper mill that doesn’t grind too well, and you see the one that (at least when new) works a lot better for you …

We all have choices, and they are our own. We can see relationships in many ways. I’m not saying that we should not be honestly utilitarian, only that we should be honest. So here’s an everyday conundrum: two married people meet and fall in love. They want commitment, and feel that being together is where they should have been from the beginning. Which of them wants to be committed to another who plainly is (now) not committed, but ready to have an affair, even split and join them? I married you because you cheated (with me) … can I trust you, or are we simply agreed that we are happy cheaters together?

It’s funny how love can make you think more flexibly. If you want to. I just want to invite you to think about what you love, as well as who, in a relationship, and which matters most? And when you have decided that, whether you are prepared to say that to each other. Understand what you mean by ‘love’ and be clear that it is conditional. And be content that you can expect nothing better in return.

Is your kind of love a deal, or do you want something deeper?

Next: What to do with a trans* partner

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Be

  • Posted on January 4, 2014 at 10:18 pm

Sometimes (I wrote under a photo of a single swan) it is enough just to be.

That was over 30 years ago, a gift with love. Just a few years earlier, I gained a lifetime favourite song, ‘Be’ from the film Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. By now I was grown up, so the question of ‘What do you want to be?’ was getting a bit passée.

Being and doing

It’s interesting to think about the relationship between being and doing, Socrates thought so (to be is to do), as did Plato (to do is to be). And no, it’s not the Sinatra joke (do-be-do). Can you do anything without being? Can you be anything unless you express it by doing? I think the difference is that you can suppress actions that you feel would be natural, if only you felt free and accepted, and you can do things that aren’t natural in order to appear to be something you are not. And you can also make a show of doing something that expresses your being, as if it were exceptional, in order to seek permission to be.

I’ve read people who write about ‘doing’ trans* or queer, perhaps because they feel their sense of being is not resolved by pigeon-holing themselves, or because it is a stage in exploration: can they really be different? Can it really be that they are different?

I remember a quite distinct period of ‘doing’, of pushing the envelope, of seeing what fitted, what would happen, where it would lead. At first it was what I very much wanted to do, and felt very like expressing something I was, but felt a bit awkward simply because it was different. And there was also an element of wanting to be noticed. It was a real nuisance and disappointment after a day of ‘doing’ female to remove the nail varnish, but it was also a good reason to leave it on so it would be noticed. If it had really felt out of place with my being, I would have wanted to remove it. I didn’t. I wanted what I was to be seen by what I did. And I started to make more and more things noticeable, because I was desperate to be known for what I was, by having to explain things I was doing. I think it is a very common thing.

Doing and permission

But it isn’t just about being trans* or queer, or anything do do with sex or gender. It’s about our freedoms do be ourselves, to make life something of being, not of doing.

I remember ten years ago and more screaming out inside because I was in constant demand, but only for what I could do, not simply for what I was (as a whole person). And that was before I even began to understand my gender struggles. I wrote a poem at the time that expressed my life as being like a cairn, a way-marker. Everyone passing by was placing another small stone, making me useful, adding to my layers, my reason to be there for them. Whereas what I wanted most of all was to have bits of me taken, loved, valued, to add to their lives, their sense of being. It was a very powerful period in my life, and, looking back, a beginning of inner change that enable me eventually to find the freedom to not have to do, but to be.

Sometimes it is enough just to be? No. It is always enough just to be.

Doing as a free expression of being is not conscious doing, it is what others see as a result of you simply being. You don’t make it up, you don’t have to make it visible in order to gain permission to be yourself.

Tied in knots

Last night I was talking with a friend who had had one of those difficult family Christmases. Physically, she was literally tied in knots as a result. Unable simply to be in that company, she had done as much as she could to accommodate herself in the situation, and had come away with needing to do the right things to release herself from the knots: ‘I’ve got to get rid of all this contraction first!’ – and she had a method in mind, difficult, but sure to be effective.

I remembered this time last year, writing several times about letting go of a marriage, a love, something deeply attached. I was an orang-utan mother carrying a dead baby, being mother when mother was no longer the reality. And in the end, after too long, I realised it wasn’t just grieving, it wasn’t difficult in itself, I just had to know I was allowed to let go. No special technique, no esoteric method, no effort or strength – just to put down what I didn’t have to carry. If I didn’t want to.

I reminded myself and my friend that a simple fact of life is that we don’t owe anyone anything, and no-one owes us anything. We are born to parents because that is the only way in. We mostly grow up in a family, because mostly parents or carers feel our nurture is the right thing to do. But it doesn’t put us in debt, it just teaches us to do likewise or better. There is no debt system hanging over us. If we choose to be kind, to love, to be generous, to be free, then we can be. Can you think of anything better? Not out of indebtedness, but out of an expression of self.

This is doing as an expression of being. Not doing to see if we can be ourselves, or dare to be ourselves, or are acceptable as ourselves.

What helps us best to express our being? If we want to do that, the rest follows.

It isn’t a resolution for 2014, it’s a revolution.

Just be. Oh, and let others be who they are, not what you want or need them to be. Love them as they are. Some may love you as you are too, especially if all your doing is a free expression of your being.

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Straight talking

  • Posted on December 15, 2013 at 9:43 am

A week ago I was privileged to share time with a few friends to talk plainly about the more physical aspects of transition. I am still gobsmacked by the complete absence of clinical advice, guidance and care in this process. Google is our best friend, as indeed is YouTube. That also is scary, because in some countries and places Google is censored and YouTube belongs to Google, and the content we need is all about sex, genitals, gender expression and so on. Some things we really do need to see, and viewing late-onset pubescent breasts and a post-operative vulva is not just a curiosity but a necessity for us. It can all feel a precarious position to be in.

Care and share

Care itself is variable. I would hate to slate the NHS, because it is a doorway (and for me the only one) to full surgical treatment. But I also know that post-operative infection rates are higher than they should be, and that many people return for subsequent corrective surgeries because things weren’t right first time. This isn’t a criticism of the surgeons, more of aftercare, and the protocol differs between Charing Cross and private hospitals.

And still no word of an appointment to see the surgical team, only an answerphone call that wasn’t returned …

And so it was, 21 months after my transition that my breasts were seen by somebody else for the first time. No, nothing more than seen, but I wanted to know that my progress was normal, acceptable and OK. I learned what I needed to through comparison, and had some advice on good bras to buy for that bit of enhancement. Without embarrassment we talked about the surgical outcomes and about how a neo-vagina performs and compares. It is important. Surgeons won’t tell you that any more than the referring psychiatrists understand what it means to be trans.

And inevitably we talked about relationships: that is, family, friends and potential lovers, and how we find ourselves in a place, supported only by each other, with no support for the others to understand that we are a natural occurrence.

So it is all a mix of joy and frustration and slogging through doing our best, always hoping to be loved at less than arm’s length.

Straight talking

There has been another side to speaking this week. An earlier conversation revealed (or confirmed) that I am perhaps not exempt from sexist gossip or opinion in the more manual regions of my workplace. Why should I expect it? Other women experience the same, I just have another handle they can pull. Last night I walked in to play for a band I haven’t been with for maybe two years. Of course for some it was a double-take, others didn’t recognise me. But we are all friends, and great kindness and welcome was shown rather than curiosity or distance. But the male-dominated workplace can be different. Vocabulary, social place and expectation are all very different, and I have no pretensions about being the ‘odd’ person upstairs, the woman ‘who used to be a’, and maybe the T-word.

I don’t see them much and they don’t see me (it’s an upstairs-downstairs world). On Thursday I had to give a presentation about a project I initiated that will, hopefully, really benefit the whole company. It was to the whole company. Downstairs comes upstairs to hear from the MD the latest state of play in our fortunes and about major projects. I teetered on the brink of business suit style, looked at myself in trousers and jacket, and said no. I don’t need to bow to male privilege and presentation, nor to distract by being too pretty, so it was the smart skirt, blouse and scarf.

So why did I even think about it? The MD and another director weren’t smartly dressed, why should I even think about it? I guess it was in the back of my mind that I was going to be completely exposed in front of people who may talk about me but who don’t see me or work directly with me. I didn’t want to be compared with what a transsexual is supposed to look like. I wanted to leave an impression of complete normality.

The presentation went well, there’s a lot of hard work to do, and I fully expect that I was talked about rather than my project, and the place of my project might, by some, have been treated with less commitment than had I been a senior male manager. How can I not be treated differently?

A new colleague (very nice gay male) has seen a great deal more of the outside world in his first few weeks than I have seen in 18 months. I worry a little that I have been over-protected, or that I may be a slight embarrassment. I know that up until now, new colleagues have been told about me, to protect me from curiosity and misunderstanding. Very nice, but I don’t actually want this any more.

Honesty

All this boils down to straight talking and honesty. Let’s accept that transsexual people are not an object of curiosity, our issues are not about sex, and as people we are not somehow complex and troubled, except by the differing levels of acceptability by others. Here is something very simple and very accurate:

If I have a problem, it is only because you have a problem with me, and that problem is in you, not in me.

I believe that if I was treated as less anomalous, my clinical needs would be treated with the same seriousness as an achilles tendon, or an ear infection. Someone would look at my ankle or into my ear, would enquire about the outcomes of physiotherapy or the effect of my antibiotics, would be concerned with prompt treatment. These things would be spoken of between others with sympathy and concern, they could simply ask me how I am, how things are going, even with direct reference to the bits concerned. Maybe being trans is regarded like mental illness, unspeakable? Perhaps, with the added complication of some thinking their way under your clothes too.

But I think all I am trying to say is that the whole business of gender transition is only as bad as it is because as a society we have yet to talk about it as a naturally-occurring human condition that has nothing to do with ethics or morals or personality or anything other than the way we were born. We are not objects of curiosity, we are not dangerous or subversive, and we can speak for ourselves. But it is entirely reasonable to talk, dispassionately and with understanding, so that our lives can be better integrated.

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Truth and reconciliation

  • Posted on December 7, 2013 at 10:26 pm

The whole world learned this week of the death of Nelson Mandela. I’ve heard and read a lot of opinion, recollection, reflection and analysis over the last few days, some seeking balance about a man who refused to renounce violence. But no-one can refute or deny that here was a man who changed the world. It wasn’t just his incomparable role in dismantling apartheid, nor his fortitude through 27 years in prison, rather it was his ability to seek reconciliation rather than revenge, and working together rather than division. He became the paradigm for truth and reconciliation, to be used as a model elsewhere and into the future.

Beyond politics, beyond nations, there is a principle in truth and reconciliation that was unique at the time, but which speaks in many situations now.

I tried writing a letter. I rewrote it. I asked myself how much I was writing for myself, and how much for the recipient. My expression of care and concern: was it because I wanted to be heard, or because there was something that did need to be said? Was it my place to speak? Or even be concerned? Was it more my seeking to be understood, or genuinely to help the other, where understanding might be helpful?

It was quite a quandary, and in the end the letter went into the recycling. I wasn’t sure about the motive, and in the end it became a much reflected-upon telephone conversation. It was, I felt, much-needed communication with my almost-ex wife who, I felt, has not really worked much out in a deep way about my transition. I shall never know what it is like to be faced with having an unexpectedly transsexual spouse. She will never know what it’s like to face up to being transsexual. Between us we have very deep questionings about the nature of love and the role of the body in showing and sharing love. Some find it easy, some impossible, some in-between. I guess that’s us.

Truth

I guess we both know the truth as we see it. I feel utterly rejected and betrayed because the worst I did was understand the way I was born and adjust to it. The best I did was to love in the same way as always and hope to continue. But what was forced upon me was the deepest and most honest assessment of my identity, my self, my expression of life itself, and I fell into place, looking and sounding somewhat different from the husband-as-was. I shed fear and self-hatred but gained the agony of losing the love of my life.

She was never rejected, nor her love, but must have felt my rejection of the male role that defined her role, quite keenly. It’s not really for me to say on her behalf. I do know that my female presence felt competitive rather than complementary, and must have challenged her sexuality. But she was not obliged to dig as deep, as I was, into her furthest recesses, and I expect has surfed the loss in order to keep going. Don’t we all do that much of the time? Yes, it’s easy to over-analyse, but it’s also a lot easier to cope with things by skating lightly on thin ice, hoping to get to the other side.

We each have truths to face full-on, if we are to remain balanced people. Mine is to recognise that even the most in-loveness and commitment does not signify unconditinal love. I have to accept that the reality of human love truly can be entirely contingent and dependent on being what’s needed. Yes, I was to a sufficient degree wanted for my body more than my loving, for my means more than my self.

It’s a truth, and it’s hard for me to chew on.

Her truth is that if indeed I was born female with male body bits, as per my complete clinical diagnosis, then she was married for over 30 years to a woman. That neither of us knew this possibility is immaterial. The truth is that I have not become a woman, I am just a woman who is finally aligning her way of life and body to what she is.

It’s a truth, and it’s hard for her to chew on.

Isn’t truth a difficult thing sometimes? It won’t go away by not thinking about it, or by making excuses for prior beliefs, and the best thing you can do with it is to speak to it, voice it and embrace it. We have to change to fit the truth, because it won’t change to fit us.

So why am I blogging this? Isn’t it just a tad unfair to be the one who always writes, and about pretty personal stuff? These dialogues are very one-sided when I write them out, and maybe I am inventing what my wife is really thinking, presumptuously and unfairly. I don’t know, because she hasn’t expressed these things as I have. All I can do is try my best to imagine what it must be like (see also, from earlier days: Who does she think she is?).

And that worries me on her behalf, and I know that she will be no more alone as a spouse/partner of a transsexual person, than I was as an emerging transsexual person myself. For every one of us who is married, there is a spouse coming to terms. As transsexual people, we get to know each other, go for diagnosis and resolution. They have little or no real support or help, no reason to meet, and have less to invest than we do. They can walk away and rationalise it as they wish. We can’t, and that makes it different.

And yet we reach a truth that makes sense. We are leaving fear, self-hate and denial, and finding self-love and acceptance. They may never do that, and rather find themselves feeling diminished, self-doubting and fearful, or in denial.

That’s why I write – to observe and present these difficulties as issues to properly resolve rather than avoid.

Reconciliation

I have sent over-long texts, emails and letters. I have been overwhelming in my self-explanation and insistence that I, myself, me, am still here. That what is in my head and my heart, my soul – is unchanged. More openly understood and expressed maybe, but not different. Don’t I deserve to be loved for myself?

I try to be honest about my motivations, but yes, I have often written just hoping for a touch of that old love, affection and partnership. Wrong fishing line, wrong hook, wrong bait. Truth must precede reconciliation.

So what is reconciliation? It means no more nor less than bringing together again. I don’t expect anything more than friendship, but it does imply acceptance of truth and being able to step beyond old understandings and beliefs into a shared space.

And divorce? Isn’t that about irreconcilable differences? Or is that also about unwillingness to face truths? Our grounds, for pragmatic reasons of a gender recognition certificate, had to be those awful declarations about my unreasonable behaviour in wearing women’s shoes (among other things) and being seen in public!

No, somewhere beyond all that crap, I hope that there may still be the kind of friendship that only 30 and more years of shared memories and parenting can give. But we shall not get there unless the truths are faced. My plea therefore, is that attention be given to spouses, partners and relations to properly understand that having a transsexual partner does not change you, and that recognition of the underlying nature of another human being does not change their intentions towards you. At present there is absolutely nothing available. If you are diagnosed with a debilitating disease, there is support available for carers. It is respectable to be related to someone who suffers. Not so if that someone is transsexual. It reflects on you, makes you feel you must be something you don’t like or respond to (OMG – don’t even suggest that I may be bisexual, let alone lesbian!!). It is not obviously OK to tell your friends and family that your beloved is trans. (See my early poem: Not like a bone.) But it is almost exclusively the response from friends, that leaving a trans partner is the only reasonable thing to do. How can you explain? No pressure there, then!

For me, reconciliation requires the wholehearted recognition that I have always been a woman, unknowingly having the wrong outward appearance. It is also a wholehearted recognition that human love is not what we idealise, but is (perhaps most commonly) contingent on outward forms and meeting expectations.

The Mandela motif

To the last, Nelson Mandela was kindly, warm, smiling, human, both ordinary and somehow supreme. He achieved world-betterment through both truth and reconciliation.

Dear partners, wives and husbands of transsexual people everywhere: your truths may be unpalatable and force changes in the way you see yourselves and the world, but they are truths. They alone stand between you and reconciliation. You don’t have to want that, of course. But they also stand between you and peace with yourself. Whether you stay in partnership or not, there is no point in not being reconciled with yourself, and no future in not resolving your truths, between you and yourself.

Sometimes the world is just not the way you have been used to seeing it. Sometimes it is not black and white.

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Appearance and disappearance

  • Posted on November 2, 2013 at 4:31 pm

A man went to a tailor to buy a suit. He tried one on and looked at himself in the mirror. It was good, but he noticed the waistcoat was a bit skew. ‘Don’t worry’, the tailor said, ‘just pull the short side down with your left hand and no-one will notice.’ The man did this, and then noticed that one lapel curled up a bit. ‘Oh, that’s nothing’, said the tailor. ‘Just turn your head a little and hold it down with your chin.’ The man tried this, and indeed, all seemed well, except he noticed that the trousers were a bit tight around the crotch and a tad short in the leg. ‘No problem’, said the tailor. ‘Just pull the seam down with your right hand, and that will sort it out.’ The man added this adjustment, and yes, the suit was fine. He bought it and left. The next day, proudly wearing his new suit, with the required adjustments, he walked (a little awkwardly) through the town. Two women, sitting outside a café with their shopping, watched as he limped by. ‘Oh, just look at that poor crippled man!’ said one to the other. Her friend watched a while and then replied, ‘Such a shame to see someone suffer like that. But what a lovely suit he has!’

That’s a retelling from Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, which struck me suddenly this morning. The context is about women (especially), who lose their true selves in being what everyone calls out for them to be. It’s a chapter about folk narratives of having one’s pelt stolen when caught unawares, and about finding one’s way home again to your true soul-self.

It reminded me of something I told no-one until in therapy a couple of years ago with my PSO. Since I was a teenager, I had a frequent and recurrent dream theme, sometimes even in daydream, in which, whatever I was doing, I would be leaning on a walking stick, or on crutches. Time and again I tried to work out what it meant, and never came to an answer. Why should I, a fit and capable person, have this self-image, so persistently? Was it an issue of confidence, of self-esteem? What did the crutches represent? What prop was I using to keep myself going? What was the injury or disability? I wasn’t aware of an injury, there was no ‘bad leg’ in the dreams, just the stick or crutches. Was it psychological, a mental prop, something I was leaning on for moral support, some inadequacy? I never worked it out, there was never a moment of revelation or sudden dawning of understanding.

All I know is that I haven’t had that image in any dream since I came to understand that I was female in a basically male body.

In my first job, I chose to wear a 3-piece suit. In my last job, I was the last person in the organisation to relinquish the tie at work, as dress codes relaxed substantially over the years (yes, irony, if you read ‘The ties that bind’!). I still wore a smart jacket to work every day until the last short while. And my massage therapist (who has treated me for well over a decade) remarked how different I had always been, in being so conventional. I tried too hard, making the suit fit.

Women Who Run With the Wolves has been inspiring in dealing with the primordial self of returning to self, and I interpret my dream theme now as a life-long insecurity with living as male. Smart suit, shame about the limp.

Interestingly, I was having a conversation last night about similar issues. Knowing yourself, your gender, your sexuality, your boundaries, maybe even your morphic field (Google ‘Sheldrake’ on this if it’s new to you) is a real challenge, when you have been shaped by others’ social expectations all your life. Some of us will learn to stand up straight and see that the suit is awry. Others will realise that they can dance to a different music. But all of us have a greater self than we have been dressed as. In personal scope, I have found immense freedom and feel my personal energy and field (aura?) have expanded enormously. For all the trauma of passing through, I would never choose to be as I was ever again.

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