transadvocate

Basically, I've handled it in the same way I've handled PTSD. From what I've seen, working with GD like one might work with PTSD helps. Judging yourself won't help. Be compassionate with yourself. Part of that is honoring what your limits are, having boundaries and engage in self-care.

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For me, working with either PTSD or GD looked like learning to be aware of what was going on emotionally inside my body. I took up a practice of vipassana because I found that trying to force PTSD or GD to be something other than what it is makes everything worse. Some do well with meditation while others connect to their body states in a more kinetic way (running, painting, etc). The point is that as I learned the contours of my pain, the less it seemed to be an enemy. As the relationship with my pain became less adversarial, the more I was able to tolerate, understand and work with it.

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For me, I was never able to command myself to feel differently - especially with something as visceral as PTSD or GD. I found that a great deal of my suffering was caused by my unskillful strategy of trying to force myself to somehow feel different. There's the stress of the what if stories I'd tell myself, the stress of "ugh, I freaking out again. WHY CAN'T I BE NORMAL!?!" and the stress of beating myself up for what I judged as emotional BS.

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Letting go of trying to control something like PTSD or GD through force of will and instead honoring the fact that my 'scars' were very real and that they can and do hurt from time to time was a lot like putting down a bag of bricks that I'd been carrying around. GD is part of the trans experience. There's no way around that. For me, self-care looked like being judicious with the people who I chose to invest my time and attention in. I needed to know that they would understand that I really did suffer terribly with GD and that it meant that I had to make accommodations for that reality.

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A skillful mental health professional, a support network, learning a way of directly working with GD via meditation, art, exercise, etc, learning boundaries and self-care is what helped me get through transition.

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I ride a big Harley, wear army boots way too much, am heavily tattooed and I almost never wear makeup. I can't remember the last time I wore a dress. My transition wasn't about my body. I was never a cultural woman 'trapped in a man's body;' rather, my innate subjective experience of my body's sex was and is female.

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There are some things that I do that are deemed female in our culture and I do it because I like it and not because I want to meet any standard of "realness." There are things that I do that are deemed male in our culture and I do it not because I'm trying to make some political statement; I do it because I like it.

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Gender masks are BS. I transitioned to be comfortable in my own skin and so that I could give up lying to people about who I am. I transitioned because the taste of personal liberation is sweet.I transitioned because I couldn't live another day living a life of dishonesty, aversion and fear.

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Having said all of that, I do understand what you mean. I was raped not too long ago and a couple of people reacted with the "well, this is what you wanted" shtick. At the same time, I was afraid of going to the Women's Center for help because I thought I might encounter a TERF who would exercise their need to be cruel on me when I was at my most vulnerable. I thought that maybe I should pretend to be more fem and lie about being trans when I went to the Women's Center. In the end, I rode my Harley up to the Center and was truthful because to do otherwise was to let the trauma take one more piece of myself.

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All I know is that it hurts to lie about who I am. It hurts to pretend, to occupy and operate a persona in the day to day world instead of meeting the world with my feet firmly rooted in my authentic truth - my authentic self. I can't help but balk at systems that try to contort who I am into a more "accepted" shadow of myself.

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First of all, it's important to define the terms I'm going to use in my reply:

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1.) Gender Orientation: One’s subjective experience of one’s own physical sex.

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2.) Gender Identity: One’s culturally influenced identification of one’s sex within the context of a social grouping.

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3.)Gender Expression: One’s situational expression of cultural ques which communicate gender identity.

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Taken together, this is what I mean when I say "gender." Since I have no idea what you mean when you say "feel and desire and think like a man" with regard to "gender," I probably won't be able to answer you adequately.

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As a rule of thumb, I support a person's right to do what you need to do in order to be happy, productive and grow as a human being. If you think you "feel like a man" and are happy with the way your body is, then I'm happy for you.

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Because asserting that the human body *is* its sex attributes is gender. There's a difference between saying that a person has XX chromosomes and saying that a body is its chromosomes. Sexing the body *is* a performance of gender. Sex attributes exist as a physical phenomena; how we contextualize that physical phenomena, apply that to human bodies, create norms, taboos and penalties around labels - both personally and within society - *is* gender. Understand, there is a difference between how you contextualize a body and that body. Your understanding only exists in your head, regardless of what combination of sex attributes a body might have.

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She's getting shit because in one breath she says that the labels and usage norms around those labels we use to contextualize sex is gender but the labels and usage norms around the binary labeling system she uses to contextualize sex isn't gender.

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She's appealing to essentialism. When you hear an anti-trans group assert that because our genes/chromosomes (terms usually mistakenly used interchangeably) make a body male or female, trans people therefore remain the sex they were assigned at birth, they are appealing to a constructed concept of the body. Genotype refers to the genes of a person and many TERFs appeal to this as an essential sexed substance to advance a system of behavioral norms.

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Leaving aside the fact that one can go from having XY chromosomes to XX chromosomes, the appeal to genes/chromosomes as a male or female essence that if present, defines a human body in our culture, is an appeal to essentialism. The presence of this a male essence means that the human body in question is itself male and that the (now male) body and society alike must now regard it in a certain way or face certain social consequences.

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When you hear an anti-trans group assert that because what is taken to be an acceptably long phallus was discovered at birth, a male sex was established and therefore cannot be changed, they are appealing to a fallaciously constructed concept of phenotype permanence. If a baby is born with a phallus - the phallus being the essence of a man - the infant is said to have been born a man. Like appeals to genotype, this essence is regarded as an ever-enduring locus from which a human body drives linguistic currency in our social system. If an AIS or trans woman has vaginoplasty, a TERF will assert that their sex phenotype has not changed because to admit this change is to admit that a body's sex attributes can change.

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In biology, phenotype is expected to change via genetic and non-genetic forces during one's lifetime. This view of phenotype is frowned upon by TERFs. In the Segen's Medical Dictionary, sex reassignment is defined as, "The constellation of surgical and medical therapies intended to physically change a person from one sexual phenotype to another."

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She's obtusely appealing to a standard she claims to reject: the gender binary is false; the MAAB/FAAB binary is tots real.

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Riki Wilchins sold out the trans community and teamed up with HRC to lobby AGAINST trans inclusion in ENDA during their 1997 meeting together in Sen. Harkin's office. Wilchins formed GenderPAC and was supported by HRC. GenderPAC was HRC's answer to It's Time America and NTAC. GenderPAC eventually stopped being a trans-focused organization, lost its relevance and shut down.

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This is a fairly good history:

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"There was plenty of blame to go around, not only for a Congress that didn't understand or care about trans people or the issues affecting us, but also for an activist community that centered almost exclusively on the interests and issues of non-trans gays and lesbians, often even displaying overt animosity and disdain for transgender people and our inclusion in the overall movement for American civil rights, most famously evidenced by the Human Rights Campaign's (HRC) then-president, Elizabeth Birch, who was quoted in the media as saying that transgender inclusion in ENDA would happen over her dead body.
With the creation of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) still years away, the only national organizations focusing directly on the issues of importance to transgender people were the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC), a grassroots transgender advocacy group, and GenderPAC (GPAC), an organization led by transgender author and activist Riki Wilchins, which started out advocating exclusively on behalf of trans people but later expanded its focus to a broader agenda of gender rights.
Both organizations hosted annual events in Washington, D.C. to lobby members of Congress on transgender-inclusive legislation, though GPAC was criticized for what many trans people believed was a much too cozy affiliation with the Human Rights Campaign. GPAC was accused of pre-lobbying against transgender interests at the behest of HRC and the Democratic Party leadership, going to Congressional offices in advance of Lobby Days events and telling legislators and staffers that while they could expect visits from trans people advocating for an inclusive ENDA, in reality activist leaders were fine with an ENDA that didn't include protections for trans people. While there was certainly plenty of circumstantial evidence to back up these claims, they were never conclusively proven."

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-juro/thank-you-barney-frank_b_1122240.html

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That last little piece "never conclusively proven" is BS. The (now) EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum is the person who outed HRC/Rikki's pre-lobbying efforts. Sen. Harkin's office confirmed that HRC lobbied to keep trans people out of ENDA.

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@TransGriot can give you the lowdown on everything that went on. I was on NTAC's board after all this went down, so the info I have is second-hand.

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From what I've seen, it can take years for the wounds of a painful breakup to scar over. It seems that telling one's self that one *should* be over it by now, that one has used up their airtime talking about the pain, that one *should* feel something different than what one authentically feels is to be about shame. Shame isn't usually productive in these situations. All it seems to do is make people feel even more shitty.

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I tend to be a proponent of radical acceptance. However I'm feeling is okay. Instead of trying to push it away through work, gaming, or some other activity designed to distract me, I found that it's more useful to give that part of me attention. Meditation helps (if one has is a practiced meditator, otherwise it can just be annoying) and "working with" an emotional state - being with it and expressing it in meaningful ways - seems to be useful. In my most painful moments, I've put it to paint and canvas, spent hours being present to the emotion and letting it pour out into art... which I then sold for cash :)

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The point is, I've not found it useful to wish to feel differently when I'd dealing with something difficult. Accepting the reality of how I'm feeling and working with the emotion - giving that part of my "spirit" time and attention, instead of trying to hide it or push it away - seems to be helpful. Sometimes sitting with the emotion in meditation is helpful and sometimes being kinetic - running, walking, painting, playing guitar - while being with the pain works best for me.

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For the record, I never dish out advice. I can only share observations and experience.

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