Man-mode, and the important actions ahead

I thought today I'd write about something I like to call "man-mode".

I haven't dressed up or tried to look extra effeminate for several weeks now. My facial hair just about passes as a beard (the moustache is a tad pathetic) and any evidence of previous body-hair decimation has been lost in the thickets that is my male-pattern hairiness. What a lovely thought that is.

Fact of the matter is, I haven't felt the need to make the effort. For everyone around me, this makes absolutely no difference. To steal a phrase, I am as God made me. What's going on in my head however is a different matter.

I think I have mentioned it before that shaving is unpleasant for me. Staring in the mirror, fighting my masculinity as it forces it's way out of my face, it's not something I enjoy. To do so, I need to have a little spark in my head that says "I can change this and I will be better for it". I won't lie, this often happens when I foresee a chance to show off and get a bit flirty. If I can put the effort in and get a positive response out of those around me, it's a massive boost to my usually deflated ego. Everyone likes to feel wanted, and when you are incredibly unsure about yourself the easiest way is to get affirmation from those around you.

In that respect, it could be seen as a bit shallow.

What would be healthier for my psyche, surely, is the ability to look at myself and say "it's not perfect but it's me"? I like that sentiment, I really do. Sadly though I cannot get there. I do not consider myself a vain person, and in all other external areas of my life I do not worry about how I look. Heck, any day for a laugh I'm usually happy to wear silly costumes and make people laugh: that's a good time in my books! Sometimes to get over the attention-seeking side of me, I have to distance myself from the thought entirely.

The corkscrew-problem I have here is that whilst in one turn I'll want people to make me feel better, but on the other I don't want to have to think about it at all. The concept of being comfortable in my own skin is so alien to me that I can only twist around the concept by being polar opposites: either highly concious or keep it in complete disregard.

And that is what man-mode is: it's when I have the outward appearance of being masculine because the discomfort of trying to address the problem has made me stationary - I dare not move from this way of being for fear of feeling worse. On good days, I just get on with things because the elephant in the room is in the dark. On bad days? I am unwell. Recently I have been acting a lot worse than usual. I see the kind of symptoms I associate with depression leaking through and try as I might disassociate my behaviour with 'the big problem' the thought of my gender is always lurking. Like a moldy comfort blanket I retreat to it and allow myself to feel worse.

So I'm going back to counselling. It's been a while, but this will mark the first time I've actually made steps to formalising the issue at hand: these blog posts being the exception.  People often debate whether 'states of being' like my own should be considered medical or not. All I know for certain is that it is heavily linked to my feeling of unwell and it's time I asked for assistance.

Expect a lot more posts as I reflect on the progress I (hopefully) make, and I hope you will keep on reading my ramblings!

Much love xx

Inspiration

I am long over due an update to this blog - something which my regular readers have either waited very patiently for or, more likely, not stressed over quite as much as I have. At the time of writing this however I am also grossly over due a long sleep before a busy day. Ergo allow me to apologise now for a sporadic and liberal application of care to my work as I simply want to get an idea down before my brain starts to metaphorically kick my back side into a lying down position.

My inability to come up with something for the blog is, humorously enough, the topic of this post. Possibly the one great thing about a writing project so personal to myself is that I can relate almost anything to transgender issues using myself as the conduit of passable reading material. Let me assure you before I get stuck in that I'm not taking the piss here. I genuinely have a modest sense of cock-sure arrogance in what I'm doing here and I hope you will indulge me! First though, allow me to leech off someone else's brilliance...

 This is a video of the film director Lana Wachowski giving a speech after she is given an award by the Human Rights Convention. It's thirty minutes long and entirely worth watching. In it, she quantifies and demystifies why she won the award without ever wholly trusting the point of being awarded it. That in itself is probably worth an award, but considering she wrote The Matrix, the feat is not wholly unlikely. More importantly though, with those same pen strokes that etch out a most eloquent form of "thanks for whatever this is", she uses the backdrop of her "coming out" story to illustriously shine a spotlight of brilliance on the unappreciated tale of almost all LGBT people growing up.

Watching her nervously but charismatically deliver her ode to being different in a world that pretends to be monotone, I found myself more-or-less nodding along to every milestone; the childhood frustration at understanding the limitations of binary standards, the closeted behaviour and outlets of expression, the deep ravines of depression when validation becomes a pinnacle of unattainable necessity and the hearth fire-warmth of those closest to you loving you for whoever you are: both regardless and all-encompassing of your character traits. In so many ways her story is not remarkable, and yet given the window into someone else's tale it is astounding just how much shit we survive just to be the people we are. In that respect I don't even think one could limit that revelation to those of correlating gender issues: every one can look inside and see a leather-bound tome of their life, and it's pages are detailed with grossly unlikely pictures that jut out from the pages like flags of incredibly oddity. Life is damn remarkable and I like to think that anyone who finds the drivel I pour out onto this site interesting, only does so because they've re-read their own story so many times that they briefly forget how fucking astounding their own life is.

So yes, the slightly cheesy point of this post is that my lack of ideas lead me to realise that there's no point being half-arsed about a self-absorbed writing project. In parallel to my issues, it's about time I crack on with writing more so that I might get to the golden nuggets of me. I spend so much time worrying about being crap that I forget to work on being better and building on the crazy foundations that make me the man/woman/thing I am today.

You should write something too and then we can all marvel at how cool it is to be messed up, brilliant, boring and exciting all at the same time.

With all my love
xx

Lonliness

Trying to convince myself I am not alone is very, very hard.

Logistically, it's clear I am almost always surrounded by people. I live in a shared house in a tight-knit community, and there are enough smiling faces around me that there is almost always someone to turn to.

But that's not the problem.

In the same way that my gender is a problem that starts in my head, connecting with others is a problem with it's roots anchored in my neuroses.

It would be easier to identify if I could pluck out single causes for this perpetual negativity. For example, if I could say that I don't have people I can identify with then the problem would be very clear. Without other people thinking alike then loneliness is an inevitable problem. However I do have friends in the same boat as me, and many more contacts too. Admittedly they are mostly female-to-male (women who want to be men) but there is plenty of overlap. If nothing else, having someone approach the same problem but from the other side creates for a great dynamic! Conversation because a co-operative exercise to share experience, empathise and speak with authority on relative genders. These people are few and far between but they're there.

Having a like-minded community isn't the problem.

Like I said, there aren't many trans people I know personally, so the next possibly problem would be not having many friends in general. That's what equates to loneliness for most lonely people! For me though, not true. I find it very easy to make friends! Almost always have done! As back story to this fact, I was originally deaf as a child, till I had surgery, and so learnt to talk and communicate efficiently much later than others. As a result as soon as I could talk I did so none-stop, as my mum can attest to: I would describe everything in details and was most happy when someone would sit down with me and just let me rabbit on. Nattering was about as hyperactive as I ever got! Throughout school I wasn't necessarily good at making friends, but approached the matter in a largely enthusiastic manner: presuming that everyone else was as keen to be friends as I was. Didn't always work, but for those with an open heart it worked very well! In secondary school I learnt the hard way that not everyone was as enthusiastic as me, usually via fists and stones, but I was able to integrate myself into many social circles through those who I could charm or entertain. I even got my first proper girlfriend aged fifteen, whilst also having a silly amount of friends and acquaintances and enemies!

Socialising isn't the problem either.

Which leads on nicely to my final proposal for why any normal person would feel lonely: romance. Trying to find someone who wants to date a man-woman-thing is not easy. There is a name for being attracted to the opposite sex, the same sex, either sex or any sex. I'm not sure however if there is a name for someone who prefers people who's sex depends on how they feel in the morning. It's not an easy state of affairs to live with! If there is, I don't think I've met them, and I generally just rely on meeting people with fluidity to their sexuality.

And that's just it, I HAVE dated a healthy number of people. (Note the word 'healthy', I'm not boasting here!) I can't really consider that the problem even if I am single at the moment.

I wouldn't like to really presume on my ex's mindsets, and I hope if they are reading they will excuse my generalisations, but I've generally thought that they were either bisexual, bi-curious or just considered my gender-bending on entirely non-sexual terms: able to 'deal with it' as long as it generally stayed away from the bedroom. However in all of those set-ups there's a certain amount of compartmentalising. It's not perfect, but compromise is a necessity whatever the circumstances of a relationship. To elaborate, I don't think it comes naturally to others to be attracted to someone with such a fluid state of gender. As such I have to be considered either male or female at any one time, not both. There are some people out there who try to view people without gender, but I'm 99% sure that there is an inevitable trip hazard* when it comes to sexual attraction. Not that I can presume anything.

In fact, it is probably that lack of clear ground which leads most heavily into this sense of loneliness. I am never wholly sure where I stand with others, with my friends, or even those closest to me. In fact I have a horrible sense that the logical conclusion is going to sound cliché, but without assurance in myself my ability to identify with others is limited. The problem I have is that it isn't just me who is unsure, but people around me too. People toy with terms of address when talking to me as much as I have to play around with how I talk about myself!

On one hand, I have no doubt that there are many more friends, nice communities and love interests around the corner. History has established a pattern. However on the other hand, I don't know for sure. And that's the crux of the matter.

Insecurity is a very lonely place to be.
Peace out.













*My computer spell-checker wanted to correct 'Trip hazard' to 'Strip search', which would of made that sentence wholly different and yet oddly perceptive!

Being playful

First and foremost, let me apologise if the tone or style of this post varies greatly from the last. Still getting the hang of writing about this! This subject though occurred to me during an exceedingly dull day at work.

At the moment, I have a bit of a beard going on. There's this common problem that male-to-female peeps seem to have, where by shaving becomes this source of great conflict. You want to shave because the hair seems unfeminine, but shaving means admitting it's there: you stare in the mirror, attack your body with a razor (and in my case shed your blood by accident EVERY time!) and hope you look better for it. Of course if you do look better, the feeling is wonderful! Transformation is the name of the game! But then you know it'll come back. That feel of stubble is a cruel master and can really knock your mood again.

The reason I mention it is that whilst I'm going through a phase of ignoring it's presence, my personality goes through it's usual comings and goings of unintentionally masculine and effeminate mannerisms. I'm just as likely to call someone 'darling' as I am likely to call them 'boss'. This can lead to some very odd unintentionally curious moments where gender expectations just don't gel together.

And it's kind of fun.

If someone suggests I am some kind of stereotype, or uses derogatory terms like 'sissy' or 'fag', I am liable to react badly. But equally, given the right circumstances, I laugh. If you step far enough back from life, most things have something funny about them. Our existence is a curiosity in itself, being the most ludicrously complicated way for amino acids to form themselves together for the sake of existing. (I'm not a scientist, I'm kinda skipping right over the technicalities here). I think it's healthy, and no compromise to my self-respect, to take a look at myself and say "you know what? I'm pretty odd." If I didn't, I don't think I would be able to deal with the strangeness of it all. I don't think anyone is wholly straight forward, and 'simple' people are often the hardest to work out! In that respect I don't see myself different from anyone else.

Sometimes I worry that by revelling in my oddities, I'm a bit like a young teenager trying to rebel against their parents expectations. It can come across as a bit immature. However the other option is to try an amalgamate myself into everyone else's micro-cultures, and that can get depressing. There's no black & white divide, and striking a balance isn't straightforward. Importantly though is enjoy being you, whether it's standing in front of the bathroom mirror or in front of your peers. It's the hardest thing to do when you don't know who you are, but at least know that your problems do not make you bad. Hell, they make you a lot more interesting and you might even get to laugh at life because of them.

I'm no doubt filled with hypocrisy, but this is just what I thought as I stood in my place of work today: as customers eyed me up and down trying to work me out, and I did exactly the same back at them.

So, what am I?

This blog is the hardest writing task I've under taken yet, simply because there's no escaping the personal nature of it. I can't project onto a character, dive into twists of surrealism or use humour to mitigate my point (without demolishing the point of writing in the first place!)

So I figured the best thing was to dive right into the deep end with the most obvious question: what am I?

As a child, I was just me. You can't be confused about your gender when you don't ever think about it. Or at least the only divide was in what I did on the playground. Without any obvious and tangible intervention, the kids at my school managed to be very stereotypical: boys played football and girls danced and made daisy chains. There was middle ground, and that was tig (or tag, either name was fine). Girls and boys played that, so that's what I played. However with no interest in football, if no one was playing tig then I was doing whatever the girls did. I'd actually joke about the fact I was doing 'girly' things, and I don't feel there was any kind of 'gender assimilation' there. Even if suggesting this early interaction was key to how I felt would be very easy!

What it did do however was cement that regardless of how I was brought up, which was fairly gender-neutral, there was definitely a difference between the two. Dichotomy was inescapable.

Fast forwarding to my early teenage years, I started being a closest transvestite. Oddly my gender was still a background thought, though it was there. Potentially, I could argue with myself that hindsight makes me want to rewrite my memory of the past to better fit how I see it now. However there is one significant memory that is so very concrete in my mind that it already serves as the bridge between childhood naivety and my current predicament: puberty was a massive disappointment for me and it scared me. I knew all the facts, but I had convinced myself that I wasn't going to become a man. Men were those big hairy things that lumbered around perplexing me. I was short and meek, and somehow this made me safe from big limbs and body hair. How wrong I was. Like a nightmare in the flesh, I can actually remember when I first saw the hair growing on my legs and it terrified me. Cross dressing sank so quickly into my interests that I barely connected the two, though I now suspect that it was a move to fight the on-coming affliction of manhood.

It wouldn't be till I was 18 that I would start opening up about cross-dressing, and in turn analyse why I was doing it at all. As I became my own person, with the sense of freedom that came with forging my own character and going to university, there was a mental space with which I could bring forth all of the thoughts about what was wrong with me. It'd be nice to say there was nothing wrong with me, but the turmoil within my head was not ignorable. I dealt with external problems simultaneously and very, very badly: resulting into a whirlwind of bad decisions and even worse clothing choices.

Importantly though, I started to see the connection between what I thought of myself and how I presented myself: whilst it was not always necessary, at times the most important thing to me was being more effeminate in appearance. Gender wasn't important to me, except for how I looked. The mirror, was not my friend. Harvesting compliments and confused looks in equal measure? A slightly askew version of therapy.

And now? I watch how I'm feeling day to day. Sometimes, I feel positively male. Other times, I'm a swirling maelstrom of angst because I am female and built wrongly. Those are the worst of days. Most of the time though, I'm just me. My gender is something I can take or leave. I might not always like what's in the mirror, but my happiness doesn't revolve around it. Like all people, I am quite capable of being a very different person depending on my mood. I could say I'm more than one gender at a time, but that seems more like a simplification (or complication for that matter) of the pendulous changed I feel from day to day.

I use many different labels for myself, when trying to explain my predicament. 'Gender confused' is great for expressing the troublesome shifts I feel with my gender. 'Gender neutral' is not accurate in my situation, and 'Gender fluid' suggests a sort of smooth transition which eludes me entirely! 'Gender Dysmorphia' however, is very apt. It's meant to mean that the person being described is at ill-ease with their body in relation to gender. By far this is the closest to the nauseating feeling of my worst days and the utter-disregard I try to give to how I look the rest of the time.

For anyone else who thinks they might be in a similar situation: call yourself whatever you like. That's not an uncaring suggestion either, I think there's something liberating in identifying yourself even if it's just a shorthand way of describing yourself to others. You are, after all, many many things at any given time. Man or woman is but a tiny sample of the things people can be. I'm not just queer, I'm geeky and pleasant and a shop worker and an academic and a dab hand with a spear (no really!) Be yourself, and don't be surprised if that's more than one thing, and sometimes more than what you initially wrote down. Just remember that you are an individual through and through, and that's pretty awesome.

Please feel to leave comments, pose questions and generally interact with me. Not only do I like people but I also like hearing what people have to say!