TG people??

[hungrycat]

Hi I know that there are other web sites that have information and forums for TG people but why do I feel that I never actually have a presence in society?

Its a hard question to answer but being gay is hard enough but when your TG you disappear into the dark.....

[Cainanite]

I wish I had an answer for you Hungrycat.

I'm not really TG, but I don't associate myself much with my birth gender. I don't really see myself as female either, for that matter. I know only a sample of what you must go through.

For me, it is all about the expectations. I'm expected to ogle females. I'm expected to crane my neck and care about cleavage, and pretty girls and all that crap. I'm not supposed to like to sew, or snuggle with cute kittens, or babies. I'm not supposed to cry at a sappy commercial, or get emotional to the point of tears when I have a confrontation with someone. All that is seen as feminine, and not allowed, because I look like a big tough guy.

When I don't fit that mold, then the assumption is immediately that I am gay. Now it is some hot guy I'm supposed to ogle. I'm supposed to care about decorating. I'm not supposed to have an opinion on what engine is best in a 1956 Chevy Hard-Top. But of course I don't fit that mold either.

People get weirded out by me, because no matter what I do, I always seem to be opposite to expectations. There is a constant pressure on me to be a certain way. I'm supposed to be one sexual orientation or the other. The truth is, I am neither. I'm just not ruled by what is or is not in my pants.

When I hear the comments of TG folks like yourself, I feel a lot of sympathy, because I go through the same stuff.

I'd love to have a life mate. I'd love nothing more than to have someone to come home to, to kiss and cuddle. Someone who I could be myself with. Unfortunately that potential partner always comes with the expectation that there has to be sex involved. I'm just not into that. Male or Female, I don't want sex with them.

I imagine it is much the same for you. Your body and mind is telling you you want something. You might want to be found attractive by another gay man, but he can't get past what he sees in front of him. He sees a woman, and it isn't what he desires. Or he expects you to be masculine, when you want to be feminine. Or, you might want to be with a straight man. And he can only see you as another man. It doesn't matter your femininity, he has expectations of who and what you are.

Or if you are attracted to women, but are a woman yourself. If it is a straight woman, then she is either is attracted only to men, and you aren't man enough. Or she is a lesbian, and you are too much a man for her tastes.

No matter who you seek, there is an expectation on you. I know how that feels. It can get really lonely at times.

There are times it is hard to be true to yourself, when the entire world is telling you to be what you are not.

For me, I am lucky to a point. I'm not judged by my appearance (much) when I go out, or when I am working. I look like my birth gender.

My problems come not from appearance, but behavior. My workmates want to talk about their sexual conquests, and I couldn't care less. They want to point out a hot chick, and can't figure out why I've got better things to do than stare.

Or if I am working with a female. They assume my friendliness, or striking up a conversation is me wanting to get into their pants.

I remember when I was in film school, and we were having a round table discussion on scripts. One of the female students brought up an idea, and got shot down by the class. I thought it was worth pursuing, and after class ran up to talk to her about it. Before I got three words out, she cut me off by saying, "I'm not interested in you. You don't have a chance with me. So, just leave me alone." It was the first time we had ever spoken outside of class. Where do you go from there, when they say something like that to you? I wasn't trying to get into her pants, I wanted to talk about what we were at school to talk about, scripts.

Eventually, this world will get better. We won't have to disappear into the dark. But it takes a long time to overcome prejudices. We are the generations that are going to have to work to make it better for the ones that follow.

If I've learned one thing, it is to be happy with who you are first and foremost. If you can learn to live with yourself, and are happy in your own skin, then everything else is just the frosting.

It can be tough to do, but if you need someone to talk to, we're here for you. Don't get too down on life. We're all in it together after-all.

[wannabesmooth]

Hi Cainanite, your post really spoke to me.

I've been lurking around the EA for a long time, never really having the courage to post anything but what you said struck a chord with me, and I wanted to let you know that.

I have to run now, but I guess a formal introduction is due, now that I've made my presence known.

Later.

[janekane]

I seem to have been born into the world of human society with an innate, intrinsic and incorruptible understanding of my absolute personal, human validity. No event, no combination of events, has ever been able to reach, much less touch or take hold of this understanding; and no event or combination of events has ever led me to find anyone else to be even a jot of an iota more or less valid than I understand that I am.

And yet... There have been people who, to the best of my discernment, are as though addicted to authoritariansim, and who have, as I have written elsewhere, treated me in the manner I regard as only appropriate for "stinking, putrid filth."

While I have never allowed anyone else to define who I am, it is helpful to me in what I experience as being my life work to be aware of how other people regard me, for that is my only way of understanding other people in terms of how I may be able to decently relate to people who are as though vehemently resolved to project their self-image (or imago?) "sense of non-validity" on to me as though I could ever be a competent scapegoat.

However it happened, perhaps in a way forever of mystery, it is as though I have an internal self-mirror that always checks out as being vastly less distorting than the way I find myself reflected by the lives of other people.

I cannot find a trace of a time in my life, since I became at all aware of gender, when I have not experienced my being properly transgendered.

Somehow, it never occurred to me to choose to enter the dark, and far less has it ever occurred to me to disappear therein.

Chaos theory might be one way to explain the most seemingly dastardly aspects of human society?

In my life, there is only one expectation that I have ever recognized. It is, "Whatever happens, as it happens, is necessary and sufficient."

I always, to some extent, expect what I am unable to expect, and have yet to be disappointed thereby.

Being transgendered is neither more nor less actually-normal than is anything else.

And yet, to the limit of my wits, I am unable to imagine a greater terror than total isolation.

[hungrycat]

One of my main issues in life has been that I am there more for others than myself where ever possible. Now I am going through this process of trying to find a likeness to myself I act more for myself than others.

I suppose the rules have changed ,and my need to see others is selfish.

But do you really get anywhere by being good? Is the desire to be good more than your self worth?
I respect people on how they behave in society and bad behavior brings out the worst in me.

How can I see myself if the image the world throws back at me is so distorted through society?

[The_Broken_poet]

One of my main issues in life has been that I am there more for others than myself where ever possible. Now I am going through this process of trying to find a likeness to myself I act more for myself than others.

I suppose the rules have changed ,and my need to see others is selfish.

But do you really get anywhere by being good? Is the desire to be good more than your self worth?
I respect people on how they behave in society and bad behavior brings out the worst in me.

How can I see myself if the image the world throws back at me is so distorted through society?

I'm only a noob on here but I will lend my 2cents
It seems that the "normal" people in the world hear the word transexual and they automatically assume that you have some kind of sickness
It is indescribable how much torture it was to be born into the wrong gender and live there for 16 years before I started hrt
But I'm a normal person
I didn't feel like it when I was a woman
But now that I have transissioned I feel like I belong in the world
I'm not a misfit anymore (thats just how I feel)
But I have fought tooth and nail to get where I am today
And by now all the people that used to give me hell either fear or respect me
And I'm okay with both
I wish you much luck and this may sound corny
But when you're down in a hole, there is no way but up

[hungrycat]

Hello Noob,

Its good to know that you knew young how you felt. I realised when I was like 30+ and its just mind bendingly difficult.

I suppose that I was always different and at first was resigned to the fact I was gay. When I was 30+ however I found that a feeling I had since childhood actualy had a phyical and mental effect on me like a light bulb. The feeling of a duelness to my self was overpowering untill I started to use hormones.

I have three tattoos btw.

Send me a message if you want to know more.

[cheetaking243]

Here's my experience with why TG people don't have any presence in society.

Starting in about 7th grade (1998-1999,) pretty much as soon as I started going through puberty and first understood all of the connotations of what it meant to be a girl versus a boy, I started realizing that I had a lot of feminine tendencies. For example, I hated the male fashion at the time: very baggy shorts that were housed until they came down all the way to the ankles. I liked shorts that only came down to the mid-thigh. I liked having girls as friends (not girlfriends, just friends,) more than having boys as friends. I hated the body hair that was starting to grow all over me, and shaved it off for as long as I could still use the excuse "It hasn't grown in yet." I pretended to be a girl in online chat rooms a lot because I felt like it fit the ideal bubbly personality that I wanted to express a lot better. And I LOVED having an unchanged soprano singing voice. I tried singing alto and tenor, but neither of those did it for me. So while the other boys all loved parading around their deepening changed voices, singing baritone and tenor and bass and being all excited because it was manly, I was knocking everyone dead with my shimmering pure high notes in the soprano range. And I loved it! People always complimented me on how beautiful it was. Beautiful. Being a boy, that was the only time in my life that I was ever able to do something that was truly beautiful. And I loved hearing that. I loved that feeling.

Back in those days, I was actually very open about it. When my boy scout troop played "Never never have I ever" at summer camp the next year, I said "never never have I ever pretended to be a girl in an online chat room." And I really didn't try to hide myself. I kept wearing my shorter shorts, and kept acting exactly the way that I felt was right.

And then, a little thing called societal expectations starting rearing its ugly head. After I told the boy scout troop my chat room story, they all started making fun of me for it. When I wore the shorts that I loved, the other boys in the school started teasing me with "Look at that boy with the Daisy-Dukes on." And when I sang using the unchanged soprano voice that I loved, while just about every adult or choir member complimented me on how beautiful my voice was, the other guys in my middle school laughed and teased "are you gay?" This all only got even worse as I entered 8th grade. Now even the girls in the Tampa Bay Children's Chorus were starting to get on my case about my shorts. "Come on, Charlie, those shorts are just as short as mine." And now the hair started becoming an issue, where people started asking me with a laugh "do you shave your legs?" and I had to hide the truth by saying "no, it just hasn't grown yet." When I admitted that I had a dream about being a girl on one of my favorite websites (their forum had a "what was your weirdest dream" thread, so I figured it would be harmless,) they spent the next 5 years making fun of me about it, and some of the old members still haven't stopped even to this day. (Whenever I get into a political or religious discussion on that site now, someone is bound to say something along the lines of "shut up, you had a dream about being a girl, weirdo, I don't have to listen to you.")

Finally, at the end of 8th grade, the teasing had reached such a point that I finally caved in. So starting in 9th grade, although I absolutely hated them, I started wearing long baggy shorts just like everyone else. I stopped shaving all of the hair off my legs, and had to settle for leaving about half of it there just so that people could see the hair and quit bothering me. And I completely quit telling people about it, and relegated the behavior to the safety of my own room. So while in real life I was putting on a completely-male persona and acting like your stereotypical male, at home I was absolutely screaming. I was tucking my penis with tape, shaving every single inch of my body that was under my clothes, writing angry bitter journal entries about how much I wished I was a girl, and writing stories where I poured out my heart and soul and got to live out my fantasies in the safety of my own little fantasy worlds. And yet, despite the fact that all of this transgenderism was going on while I was at home, not a single other person knew about it. if you were to ask any one of my friends from high school, even my absolute best friend, about me, not a single one of them would be able to tell you that I had any feminine desires whatsoever. Not even my own mother knew about it until well after I had moved out. It was absolutely agonizing to live such a double-life, and to be forced to hide who I really was, but I had to if I wanted to be seen as normal. (And if anything, this just made it worse and worse. I really consider 9th and 10th grade to be the two worst years of my entire life.)

So that is my experience with why transgendered people "disappear." There was a time where I was just being myself, and didn't worry about what other people thought because I only cared about who I was and what I felt like doing. I wore my shorter shorts with pride, shaved with pride, and sung soprano with pride. And I got made fun of for it at every single turn, until I was forced to give all such visible signs up and put on the face of normality. I'm willing to bet that, unfortunately, this is probably what most TG people do. They mostly just want to be seen as normal.

It took me ELEVEN years after that middle school experience to finally have the courage to start trying to be myself again... to realize that the problem wasn't me, it was societal normality, and that I could wear what I wanted and do what I wanted with my own body, and there was nothing wrong with that. But even now, I'm not open about it except on the internet and at home with my girlfriend. I'm still too much of a coward in that regard.

Anyway, my point is, society unfortunately does not generally accept deviations from so-called "normal" behavior very well when it comes to gender. So I'm willing to bet that a lot of us with transgenderish desires are willing to suppress it and pretend that it doesn't exist when we're just walking around in the outside world, out of fear of being judged and shunned. There's such a lack of understanding out there, it's ridiculous.

[The_Broken_poet]

Here's my experience with why TG people don't have any presence in society.

Starting in about 7th grade (1998-1999,) pretty much as soon as I started going through puberty and first understood all of the connotations of what it meant to be a girl versus a boy, I started realizing that I had a lot of feminine tendencies. For example, I hated the male fashion at the time: very baggy shorts that were housed until they came down all the way to the ankles. I liked shorts that only came down to the mid-thigh. I liked having girls as friends (not girlfriends, just friends,) more than having boys as friends. I hated the body hair that was starting to grow all over me, and shaved it off for as long as I could still use the excuse "It hasn't grown in yet." I pretended to be a girl in online chat rooms a lot because I felt like it fit the ideal bubbly personality that I wanted to express a lot better. And I LOVED having an unchanged soprano singing voice. I tried singing alto and tenor, but neither of those did it for me. So while the other boys all loved parading around their deepening changed voices, singing baritone and tenor and bass and being all excited because it was manly, I was knocking everyone dead with my shimmering pure high notes in the soprano range. And I loved it! People always complimented me on how beautiful it was. Beautiful. Being a boy, that was the only time in my life that I was ever able to do something that was truly beautiful. And I loved hearing that. I loved that feeling.

Back in those days, I was actually very open about it. When my boy scout troop played "Never never have I ever" at summer camp the next year, I said "never never have I ever pretended to be a girl in an online chat room." And I really didn't try to hide myself. I kept wearing my shorter shorts, and kept acting exactly the way that I felt was right.

And then, a little thing called societal expectations starting rearing its ugly head. After I told the boy scout troop my chat room story, they all started making fun of me for it. When I wore the shorts that I loved, the other boys in the school started teasing me with "Look at that boy with the Daisy-Dukes on." And when I sang using the unchanged soprano voice that I loved, while just about every adult or choir member complimented me on how beautiful my voice was, the other guys in my middle school laughed and teased "are you gay?" This all only got even worse as I entered 8th grade. Now even the girls in the Tampa Bay Children's Chorus were starting to get on my case about my shorts. "Come on, Charlie, those shorts are just as short as mine." And now the hair started becoming an issue, where people started asking me with a laugh "do you shave your legs?" and I had to hide the truth by saying "no, it just hasn't grown yet."

Finally, the teasing had reached such a point that I finally caved in. So starting in 9th grade, although I absolutely hated them, I started wearing long baggy shorts just like everyone else. I stopped shaving all of the hair off my legs, and had to settle for leaving about half of it there just so that people could see the hair and quit bothering me. And I completely quit telling people about it, and relegated the behavior to the safety of my own room. So while in real life I was putting on a completely-male persona and acting like your stereotypical male, at home I was absolutely screaming. I was tucking my penis with tape, shaving every single inch of my body that was under my clothes, writing angry bitter journal entries about how much I wished I was a girl, and writing stories where I poured out my heart and soul and got to live out my fantasies in the safety of my own little fantasy worlds. And yet, despite the fact that all of this transgenderism was going on while I was at home, not a single other person knew about it. if you were to ask any one of my friends from high school, even my absolute best friend, about me, not a single one of them would be able to tell you that I had any feminine desires whatsoever. It was absolutely agonizing to live such a double-life, and to be forced to hide who I really was, but I had to if I wanted to be seen as normal. (And if anything, this just made it worse and worse. I really consider 9th and 10th grade to be the two worst years of my entire life.)

So that is my experience with why transgendered people "disappear." There was a time where I was just being myself, and didn't worry about what other people thought because I only cared about who I was and what I felt like doing. I wore my shorter shorts with pride, shaved with pride, and sung soprano with pride. And I got made fun of for it at every single turn, until I was forced to give all such visible signs up and put on the face of normality. I'm willing to bet that, unfortunately, this is probably what most TG people do. They mostly just want to be seen as normal.

It took me ELEVEN years after that middle school experience to finally have the courage to start trying to be myself again... to realize that the problem wasn't me, it was societal normality, and that I could wear what I wanted and do what I wanted with my own body, and there was nothing wrong with that. But even now, I'm not open about it except on the internet and at home with my girlfriend. I'm still too much of a coward in that regard.

That is such a sad story
And I am sorry you got treated like that.
Believe me I know the feeling
All through highschool was a very bad time for me also
I can remember one time I was in the men's locker room after P.E.(by that time I was starting to transission and had already gotten my top surgery)
And one of the jocks saw that I was very flat in my groin area and started calling me "no balls Doug"
After a week of those insults I grew used to it and wend back into the locker room after P.E.
And the same jock was there calling me the same name. Two big guys came up ebbing me and held me while he pulled my shorts down.
Everybody saw that I wasn't a boy Down there and then came their insults "freak" seemed to make me the maddest and I just got blinded with white hot rage, I kicked back with my legs and caught one of the guys in the nuts
He fell down and I punched the second with my newly free hand
Then I pulled my shorts up and took a fighting stance (my dad made me take karate and Krav Maga [isreali art of self defense])
After I beat the crap out of the lead jock the rest backed down

That's how I got respect
By being (not exactly stronger) but tougher than anybody who came up to me
And I hope you all don't think I'm just a huge jerk who loves to fight
I don't
I hate to fight, but from the beginning of my time in schools I had to be 100 times tougher than the "real" boys or they would trample me (cause I'm a "freak")

[Mac]

Here's my experience with why TG people don't have any presence in society.

......................................

The world would be a much better place if everybody was free to dress and behave as they choose as long as it is not detramental to others. Breakdown barriers that separate us like sexually segregated activities and facilities. Establish a unisex environment.

[cheetaking243]

That is such a sad story
I kicked back with my legs and caught one of the guys in the nuts
He fell down and I punched the second with my newly free hand
Then I pulled my shorts up and took a fighting stance (my dad made me take karate and Krav Maga [isreali art of self defense])
After I beat the crap out of the lead jock the rest backed down

That's how I got respect
By being (not exactly stronger) but tougher than anybody who came up to me
And I hope you all don't think I'm just a huge jerk who loves to fight
I don't
I hate to fight, but from the beginning of my time in schools I had to be 100 times tougher than the "real" boys or they would trample me (cause I'm a "freak")

Yeah, I couldn't do this. I was always more of the type that whined "stop it!" and "shut up!" but couldn't resort to any physical aggression because I didn't want to get in trouble. (Because my middle and high schools were both in bad neighborhoods [despite being great schools, but this is just how Tampa sets up their magnet system], they had a zero-tolerance policy for fighting.) So mostly when I got made fun of, my default response was whining and complaining. So I guess it made me an easy target.

[devi]

I never used to consider myself as transgender even though I sure would have loved to have been with the girls which I was prohibited from doing per my dad and the belt. So for years I just did whatever I could with my life. Luckily I was denied from joining the military for and undisclosed physical imperfection at a younger age. I've never been much but I've always been able to get by. One day while at church I was singing as normal with everyone else. It's fun to sing in crowds. Nobody distiguishes voices in a crowd unless you start standing out. Maybe I started standing out. I don't know. I heard, "Mommy, why is he singing like a GIRL?¿?" among a few other questions. "Why is she dressed as a man?" another kid asked. And this got me to thinking, really thinking, deep thinking. I may have missed the sermon that day and I'm usually the only one, the one outsider, stranger, new guy or whatever who can tell everyone what the sermon was about when nobody else can remember. So my thoughts were this: Could it be that I'm really a transgender in disguise and if so then in which polarity am I actually the transgender? If it is sinful for a man to wear a woman's clothes and vise versa then could it be that I am really the sinful one for wearing a man's clothes when I really don't have the balls to do that. So that's when I started another tradition of mine: that is showing up at various churches around town, the more fundalmentalist the better dressed in drag. So here I am attending church where I would be condemned if they just knew. I did have to throw out a few white lies now and then if they started wanting to get to know me or where I lived and so on. However the question is then am I really, really in drag or not?

[mileyW4367]

Who said you don't own a place in society ??
Its just how you make yourself , why don't you mix up with the people like you ??
When you do , they'll give you respect love and all care.

[butterflyjack]

I'm a transgendered ,cross-dressing 67 year old man....I've found acceptance in the local congregation of U.U. church...I don't dress overtly..(no dresses, skirts, high heels), but, if you look closely, you'd see that I'm usually wearing all women's clothing...although it's ambiguous...I have a deep masculine voice and am a good looking man (so I'm told)...
I love the looks and feel of women's clothing...and I love their company...always have....It's only in the last few years that I've been slightly open about all this...There's a strong dichotomy between who I really am, and how i have to present myself...(grandpa, dad, brother, uncle). and it seems to be a real obstacle to how I'd like to proceed with the rest of my life (i.e. more womanly)...I push this issue a bit, and get some puzzled looks and questions...Hey..I cope...
The stories here are heart-breaking, and sometimes heartening....Do what you must to be happy...smooches Jackie

[hungrycat]

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for your words. Its nice to see a conversation that is productive in the forums. I can't stay long as I am way behind on my photography study...

I think I understand better why I dont see many people like myself about now. As I said before I have been rather self absorbed recently due to stresses and chalenges I have met.

I have come to the point where I am more female than male and its time to go back down the hill. I have had a stuggle up but now I'm looking forward to the easy path down.

Over the last few days quite a few people have called me madam or lady and normaly this would be a great thing for me as an ego boost. This time I made me think a bit deeper as to how I feel about the way I am at this point.

I hope that as time progresses I can show others that what I "preach" through how I live my life, that it is not somthing not to be scared of, and that others can be inspired too.

I was in the local coffee shop and often people are confused about the way I look (apart from the staff who are loverly) but it was only yesterday that a young girl sitting on the table behind me with her mother asked questions about why I was wearing makeup. The mother replied he looks a bit like archie thats all. Then the girl said but he has those (breasts) so he must be a girl ! However no reply from the mother this time...

Cheetaking243 Thank you for your words. They did strike a chord in my life when I was only interested in female clothes when I was at high school. Also that you felt similar about yourself in the way you thought about gender. My own thoughts about being gay overrode any other instints about being transgender at that time and it wasnt till alot later in life I realised why I felt that way.