Song of Bernadette

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Vote all Blue

 

Tailor made

This blog focuses a lot on gender dysphoria because it makes people suffer. it is why I make the distinction between dysphoric and non-dysphoric people which is not meant as a separator for any other reason than to avoid people suffering the way I did.

Today we catch it far earlier and can treat it with a variety of methods. Something we used to be term gender identity disorder (GID) has been softened to designate a disconnect between expected gender identity and birth sex that we don't entirely have an explanation for.

The sooner it is caught in life the better life will be for those who have it. A tailor made formula can then be found which could be something as simple as a name change and manner of dressing altered. Should surgical solutions be needed later they can be reflected upon and considered at a later date when the person is sufficiently mature.

We are in a bit of a mess right now as gender variance becomes more understood by the general public. In the meantime some people will make decisions they regret while they discover who they are but then that is the price of liberating people to live as they desire.

A little distance

I can be a hard person to get to know because I learned to be cautious growing up. I can be very social but I don't trust people easily and so my facade will not always tell you what I am thinking because I am a very analytical person. Having had two major relationships fail did not encourage my ability to let my guard down easily.

What I like to do now is observe a little more from a distance and appreciate people for who they are without getting too close. I don't tell them I am transgender so there is always that line of concealment that exists keeping me safe from judgement and potential pain. I can be who I am without risking as much as I was once prepared to.

Thank goodness for my children who I consider my biggest gift. They have provided more meaning to my life and given me people to care about who love me unconditionally. They are both upstanding people and I am so very proud of them.

False equivalence

Love Betty Bowers and here she shows how Don Jr's idiocy has clear roots with papa...

Counterintuitive

Here is something very counterintuitive: the more one worries about "passing" (a rather regretable term) the less one succeeds. This is because the concern will cause insecurity in us which will be detected.

Everyday I see women of all shapes and sizes some of whom look quite masculine, but they aren't reflecting on their gender and seem perfectly relaxed in their own skin as well they should be because they know who they are.

The more one focuses on "passing" the worse the results will be because people look primarily for self-confidence and not perfection.

It took me a while to learn that one and eventually realize that our job is mainly to work on our psychology.

Invariably

Presuming you are over fifty, if I had asked you in your early twenties to predict what your life would be like, most of you would have likely gotten it wrong. The career you expected, the type of marriage you would have, etc would have been idealized portraits instead of what ended up being. Youth does not provide us the insight to realize that life has far too many variables within it that we cannot control.

Today it feels good to relinquish control because I have no need to force things any longer. I have learned where effort yields results and where it is wasted in futility. I think that living in the present involves a good deal of accepting things as they are while being open to organic change. We don't fight against a naturally occurring tide that simply needs to do what it must.

Accepting who I am was like this in that it involved stopping the urge to control things such that I could fit in. Finally I could drop much of the facade and let natural instinct guide me to where I needed to be to find both balance and calm.

Thus, whatever needed to happen, invariably did.

Two camps

There seems to be two camps within the group of people who feel comfortable using the term "crossdressing" for what they engage in. One group could be described more as a hobbyist who uses it as relief valve for their need for feminine expression. They want to "let the inner girl out" once in a while but  there is no serious questioning of core identity with the leading of a typical male existence being their desired baseline.

The second group are people who might have wanted to advance into another state were they not constrained by life circumstances in some way. They may have had some early childhood ambiguity about their gender but put it aside and got on with life only later settling for some arrangement that helped them deal with what could be mild dysphoria which was at least somewhat manageable through properly timed episodes of cross gender expression. Their arrangement is less than perfect but it would have to do if they were to avoid upsetting other aspects of their lives.

The reason I don't favor the term is because not only does it leave out female gender variance but it also does little to properly define someone. Plus it is saddled down with historical and often derogatory and derisive opinion regarding what life was like for some gender variant people at least a couple of decades ago. In other words, it is becoming an increasingly outdated label for what we now term gender non-conformance.

But how it differs from the gender variance I see with youth today is that it is largely done in secret with both camps wanting an immersive experience into womanhood (however temporary) and to regale in it until the desire is satiated for the moment. Everything is then put away again to return to a normal life which is, to varying degrees, deemed acceptable if imperfect.

12 signs

12 signs we are a mature adult.

"The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them he becomes an adult, the day he forgives himself he becomes wise" - Alden Nowlan

Agnostic

I have often said that if I can do it then anyone can which I still believe to be true. You couldn't find a person today more agnostic than I once was and yet I was finally convinced through meeting others, looking into every nook and cranny and reading everything I could get my hands on.

Therefore, no matter whether your impetus for gender variance is by choice or through no choice of your own (ie. dysphoria), it does not matter. Live your life proudly and out of the shadows like today's youth do because you only get one shot.

Dysphoria and sexuality

Gender dysphoria cannot be unglued entirely from sexuality because the latter forms an integral part of every human. If the brain does the thinking, then the genitals seem to channel a primordial sensuality through which joy can be expressed. 

Historically, when patients seeking transition were pleading their cases before gatekeepers they made sure to leave out any sexual overtones because they had been educated to think that sexuality somehow negated their feelings. Religious and societal prudence had left sexuality outside of boundary of heterosexual wedlock as perversion when the reality is that it can serve as an emotional release for many.

But the point wasn't whether some sexual energy was present but instead what was behind it. If the questioning of identity lay underneath it was worth exploring since the occassional sexual arousal could be seen as a manifestation of an underlying yearning which the brain was exploring and for which emotional release was sometimes required. Not all gender variant people need or want to medically transition but they all need to understand whether behind any sexual energy lies a much bigger portrait. Is it simply a pleasant reward which comes with playing gleefully with gender expression or is there much more? 

Blanchard got it wrong because he stopped at the surface after he found what he was looking for which was dysfunction, but today's clinicians dig below the surface to find that something more which ultimately only you know the answer to.