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What about the children?

  • Posted on June 20, 2015 at 10:48 pm

OK, so there’s a lot going on in my life still. My partner and I are stepping into another phase of not so much coming out, as realising that disclosure is a complicated package. Disclosure in this case is unwrapping the fact that we are a same-sex couple from two different countries and back-cultures, of very different age, where one of us is transsexual, a matter requiring explanation in its own right. That’s difficult when I am unfamiliar with German websites that tell a clear and factual account of what trans anything or everything means. I wouldn’t want to introduce any confusion over cross-dressing and drag and how I am. I even need still to explain to people in English that half the trans spectrum is what you do and half is what you are.

My crash course in learning German from the rudiments of 30 years ago will not equip me in time to hold that meaningful sensitive conversation with the other family …

The bigger problem may actually be our age difference. We have to acknowledge our own anxieties about the distant future, because the raw numbers are unavoidable, and temper them with ‘now’, and ‘love’ and ‘kindness’. It is an interesting perspective in its own right, because I suspect we both eschew the standard expectation of ‘meet in your twenties, marry and live happily ever after’. We both start from base-points different from this, we both look at our pasts and wonder why it took so long to get where we are, and want to do or achieve so much more. What we have now in each other is much more than falling in love, and we want to do something with it, not have to worry about decades ahead, nor have to explain our unusual combination as partners. We must use our time well, and make these the best years of our lives, because they are dynamic and good.

Whatever parts of our unusual partnership cause others concern (lesbian, intellectual, mixed-age, mixed-nationality, transsexual etc.) we should have no requirement to make anyone else feel comfortable with it. This theme has run through a lot of my blog narrative from the start. I have been very open in order to avoid misunderstanding, to inform, and to head off opinionated gossip. I have been an education, and now together, we are being an education. Bugger ‘what’ we are in any aspect – we have a deep respect and love for each other, and a great ease in living together. That in itself is more than many have. But whether it’s my ‘Midas touch’ description, or last week’s disingenuous interjection in the theatre, we are always among people who would prefer us to conform to their ideals, even if they say we are not problematic.

Which brings me back to the ‘think abut the children’ phrase that gets trotted out as some kind of moral protectionism, when all it is in fact is a human shield against adult prejudice and fixity. Whether the concern is about gender or sexuality, it matters for all those transgender and transsexual children whose status is at last being understood, and all those children who are educated and informed enough to know that being born non-heterosexual is not immoral. Gender and sexuality are not acquired and are non-contagious. People who are non-cis-heteronormative are not a movement or a lobby and we do not undermine society. And yet we are compared to nuclear weapons, blamed for earthquakes, and for violence in society through undermining the moral fabric. We are not actually liked for being the way we were born, because we challenge cultural ideals.

We are not the children our parents thought we were, so often. They, who were once children too, acquired an idea of what would make them ‘successful’ and applauded parents, and we may disappoint them. If we are very young, we place them in an awkward position with other parents and with their own parents and friends. If we are adult, we challenge their expectations of being proud parents, or perhaps grandparents. The core message to all of us is that we must listen to children and not assume we are right and they are too young to know. Further, that by impressing our negative views on them about sexuality and gender being a lifestyle choice, we are suppressing the truth and risk making them repressed as individuals. Children need no protection against same-sex couples, nor against transgender people. They need to know, so that they don’t repeat the same prejudice and fear, and are free to find their authentic selves. Only by doing so can they grow up as whole people, without the struggles that I and my partner are still facing as mature adults in family, peer circles and society at large.

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Getting there is half of it

  • Posted on June 7, 2015 at 11:32 pm

This weekend, amid a little chaos over furniture non-delivery – jobsworth delivery drivers who sat on a double yellow outside my flat, talking to me on the phone for ten minutes over not being allowed to unload on a double yellow – my partner moved her remaining belongings into our flat. Not a lot changed, other than a final underlining of how we live happily together. Life is very normal, and in Brighton, lesbian couples are common enough for us never to even think about it, and never to get so much as a sideways glance. Last weekend was spent travelling with a concert band, where I played three concerts and she took photos and carried kit. I think we are the first lesbian couple openly associated with the band, and we had a big double bed (comfortable and fun).

And yet, outside our world there is continued turbulence over the validity of same-sex love, and of the authenticity of my gender as a trans woman. This weekend so much has rumbled on over Caitlyn Jenner and much transphobia in the press and media. Defence, support, criticism, much-noted privilege of wealth and fame, and a deal of dismissal and even hate. Someone publicly transitioning (inevitable for any well-known or celebrity figure anyway) has stirred all the same feelings about gender dysphoria by people apparently quite ignorant of genetics, chromosomal variance, intersex and meaning of gender.

Again and again, gender dysphoria is dismissed, belittled as a preference, labelled as selfish, described as a transgression or a sinful attitude, and people like me who speak out are subversives in society. It seems I am part of a trans activist movement set to undermine society and the natural order. Not far out along the spokes of my social wheel there is discomfort and rejection, either of me as transsexual, or of my relationship as lesbian.

I played table tennis in the sun today in a public park, with my partner and a girl friend. We had a picnic and great fun relaxing the rules of table tennis. We took pictures of each other as we played, and looking back at them at home, I was filled with a sense of deep happiness. The natural girl in the picture was me; my partner was wearing one of my dresses; all three of us looked really happy. This time last year I was waiting for final surgery, and this year I am happy. Last year I was tail-ending gender dysphoria, and this year I feel complete. My sense of self is so different from my previous life that I have no doubts whatsoever about this course of transition. I feel resolved, and I feel I finally understand all my previous feelings about non-belonging in the world.

And yet public comment on the validity of trans identities remains so negative. I am a freak, I am misguided, feminists still say that because I never started a period in an awkward place, never got hassled by a man, never had my boobs gawped at or had those teenage years of sex and confusion, and never suffered reduced earnings for being a woman, that I am not a woman. Well, some of those things I have known, and quite a few women have never had periods, let alone embarrassing moments. At root are fixed thoughts and a determination not to understand, frequently with origins in religious teaching. The result is not objectivity but subjective insults and demeaning in a way reminiscent of racism. And because we seek explanations for our different sense of gender, follow the science or the sociology, we are told that we are making male and female gender essential, biological, immutable. (If we do not seek explanations, we are told it is merely personal and unfounded preference.)

I have anxieties about my widening social context, as it reaches beyond Brighton and even England, because here I do have the privilege of an accepting society, and have received very little to the contrary in the last two years. I know people discuss me as an example, and that not all want to understand, but at least it doesn’t rub off as rudeness. We still have a long way to go until people like me are considered unworthy of comment or remark, and people like me and my partner are not regarded in some way as undermining the natural order of things.

I have told the story of my own religious teenage years to my partner in recent times, and it seems a very distorted and unnatural view now. It wasn’t just prudish, it was obstructive, and led to a life of hidden self-hatred and guilt. Not just a few years, to be got over like so many teenage anxieties, but decades that affected me, my family, my marriage, and friends. I feel I could have been so much more. And why? Because of the power that religion holds in the mind and in this society. If ever anything held privilege, it is organised religion. I consider it a bogus privilege, held together by fear (what if there is a god after all who cares about my sense of self, and what might they do to me if I don’t truly believe these teachings? Best play on the safe side.)

People like me become a hate-object at worst, and an outsider at best, as a result of this thinking, even though those same religious teachings all seem also to promote love of fellow-creatures. And it is time we recognised the origins of hate of people like me. I am not to be distrusted, I am not subversive, and I am no threat to anyone. And yet there are places I could go where I most certainly would be an outcast, even in danger.

Meanwhile, I shall be happy, because I know that I am more authentic than those whose thoughts are grounded in manufactured and unexamined ideas past their sell-by date.

Being trans or having a trans partner, especially if you are the one to whom a trans partner comes out, is a huge disruption to life. It is life-changing to everyone involved, and where intimacy is affected, it can be immensely hurtful. It changes relationships because the expectations change, and whilst the trans person has come to realise there is no going back except to compromise – perhaps to hang on to a relationship – the partner really does not want to come to terms with changing the activities sustaining the relationship. Many life-changing events are more accepted and adapted to, because there is honour in braving the circumstances. There is no honour bestowed by society or friends in adapting a loving relationship to gender transition, not because the partner is mean or unloving, but because as a member of normative society, the partner is not equipped to move beyond gender perceptions.

Many transsexual people who undergo any degree of clinical intervention and are given a new lease of life in their identity freedom, go through a degree of re-examination of their sexuality. You have breasts? Who do you want to squeeze them? You have a new flat and hairy chest? Whose fingers do you want running through them? You have a vagina? How do you want to use it? We experience a certain sexuality fluidity at least for a short period of questioning. It doesn’t feel strange to do so, let alone wrong or immoral. It really is quite natural. But what it brings home to most if not all of us, is that love and trust come first. No relationship is worth anything without that. Preference finds itself. So thinking of ourselves as lesbian in place of at least a nod towards heterosexuality before, is not problematic. So sexuality per se is not ‘a thing’ to us; we just find it without fear. It is confusing, however, to realise that for ex-partners sexuality was ‘a thing’ and not open to adaptation. Love and trust did not come first, before preservation of sexuality. Is sexuality immutable? I wonder still, even though I know what my preference is. What I do know is that my gender identity is.

So whilst the media persist in connecting sex and gender, and as long as religion connects sex and sin, society will always have those who are unable to move out of the whole nexus of an established concept of normality within which people like me are making a subversive choice. Post transition people in particular will always have this unique experience of seeing both sides of sexuality and gender, from which we can derive a much more balanced attitude towards being a person.

Continue reading Getting there is half of it »

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Going quietly

  • Posted on June 2, 2015 at 8:19 pm

I missed three weeks writing this blog. Just being in other places, or too busy with life really. And not having sufficient reason to write something meaningful. In the meantime I’ve been nursing a sprained ankle back to strength, clearing out a lot of clutter and being more creative about space with and for my partner. I’m liking the whole idea of restarting shared life and not being the only one to make decisions about home-making. In fact I’m liking it so much, that all that happened last year is seeming like a very long time ago indeed.

Doing this as a grown adult rather than a twenties person is quite different. We know much more what to do, and why. We can make decisions, even think slightly radical thoughts about use of space and things owned too long. We can do things we’ve done before, and things we haven’t tried yet. It’s up to us. I like this freedom, to disagree, consider, agree, act. Freedom; a few years ago I was looking for freedom to be myself by changing, and at the time a lot of what I ended up being freed from felt a lot like other people’s decisions.

Freedom is a funny old thing, that we all want, and then find one person’s freedom restricts another’s. We then get tangled in words like ‘compromise’ and ‘expectations’. Our recent UK elections gave us a sense of pride in political freedom, to vote for whoever we liked. It’s a free country. Except that two-thirds of us who are entitled to vote did not get a representative government at all. I still regularly see social media posts from people who don’t feel free to be themselves, or, if they want to express themselves, realise that being free in one way means being rejected in another, bringing instead, restrictions.

I’m free now from a whole load of things I carried all my life. I’m even free of the system that enabled me to become finally free. And yet my obligations include a job too far from home, not exactly doing what I love, and not as rewarding as I’d like. I want to be free to learn something new and use it to benefit other people, not just earn money. In this respect I am not free. Earning is an obligation that cannot be paused. Hey ho. The answer, again, is for me to work out for myself, to do what matters most to me. I think I am in another kind of transition phase, from disruption back into gradual change, and getting used to walking instead of running obstacle courses. I’m walking, quietly.

It might seem I am walking away from some things. Where am I on Facebook, or Twitter? Very quiet. Meeting less frequently with other trans* people, and contributing less to online conversations, or even trans*-related blogging. I am even thinking about letting this blog drift off into poetry, and writing about writing instead. Why not? In some ways I really am going quietly, slipping back into a steady life, where I am happily loving and living and making a new social life. I don’t need to say anything much any more; my learning is different. I was invited last week to read my poetry at a local literary gathering in Brighton, and chose a set that had really nothing much to do with my recent transition. The theme was ‘place and permission’, reflecting on various things, from clearing a deceased relative’s house to observing life as a flat-dweller, to places with memories that stay with you, where you can’t really ever go again.

Did I go quietly, when I left my comfortable existence? No; not really. I was angry and noisy and preserving my dignity all at the same time. But I have gained a sense of belonging, to places and to people, that are some new, some just changed. This is still happening, so the poetry evening was followed the next day by a trip with a band I play with, for an extended weekend of outdoor concerts in Kent. It’s something I’ve often done, but this time I was going with my partner, for who it was a new and unknown experience. It was lovely, really lovely (apart from the weather not being as warm and quiet as it might). And of course we were a couple. Just quietly there with people I’ve known for ten years, but as the only trans* person in the band and now as the only lesbian couple too. It’s very reassuring to be accepted with question or explanation.

Apart from the ff parts, and sitting right in front of the timpani, it all went quietly.

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Dealing with disappointment

  • Posted on May 11, 2015 at 9:17 pm

I am not a political animal.

Now there’s a statement that is always followed by ‘but’! I’m not, really. I don’t feel informed, educated, well-read enough to stand on any platform. This morning, however, I have read through a number of articles and blogs that echo the sentiments and feelings I was left with on Friday, following the UK General Election. I shared some on Facebook, and despite knowing some Conservative supporters, I have as yet not seen any blogs celebrating or supporting the outcome, with any arguments for why we are in for a very good five years ahead. The outcome was unexpected, to say the least. Only one in four UK voters marked their ballot papers for a Conservative MP, and yet we have a (slim) majority government. That means between half and three-quarters of UK voters actively do not want this political party in government. And so the petitions are starting: do not abolish the Human Rights Act, do not further privatise the NHS, do not pass TTIP on corporate-protected transatlantic trade. Graphs and tables of who has fared worst from Tory policies over the past five years, and who has gained most. Who has slipped deeper into disadvantage, and who has become richer; why so many food banks now, and why so many working poor are branded as scroungers.

I seem to remember from my university degree days that the old testament prophets shared a common theme: justice and righteousness, against self-serving rulers and free market forces. And I am not religious either.

But. When I see how we are persuaded (and follow) so easily into comforts and convenience, and social decision-making handed to us while we sleep, I see that we have lost attention on society protecting the vulnerable. We are offered ‘the good life’ for being ‘hard-working families’, and yet fail to analyse what is really being said here. Who defines a good life, and in what currency? Who defines hard-working, and is it in terms of brain-power, slavish compliance with a corporate-market consumerist idea of being human together? Is it in terms of hours worked, how tired you feel at the end of every day? How do we define not just deservedness of great wealth, but deservedness of security and of decent food?

So yes; unpoltical and unreligious as I am, I fear for the direction in which we are being steered by this government, for the sake of those without security, or robustness of mental well-being, or in disadvantaging circumstances of health, location or age. Every minority group and every vulnerable group in the UK is now a bit more uncertain of how life is going to be in another five years time. Fear and uncertainty about those responsible for all our social well-being, those un-voted for and not representing them in any direct or chosen way.

It’s not fair. It’s not right.

What? Life? No. Nobody ever said it was.

Yesterday I should have triumphantly hobbled over the line after 26.5 miles for a charity walk. It was even perfect weather. My partner and I had done practice walks, bought new walking shoes and socks, Nordic poles, even and a windproof no-sweat jacket. We got sponsors for the charity running the event, planned, travelled, camped and prepared with colleagues. We walked maybe five miles together the afternoon before, and 100 metres from camp, I slipped on a grassy bank and heard a crack in my ankle. It’s only a tendon or ligament, and it will mend, but within moments I knew I wasn’t going to walk a marathon the next day. It isn’t about the pain. I can do that. It very much is about the disappointment. I couldn’t drive, I could hardly walk at all, and the day would be long. With extraordinary generosity, my partner decided not to pick the walk up half way, so as to not leave me alone. We made good of the afternoon, but we both cried, because we had really wanted to do this walk.

My first comment is not to reflect that many who suffer under our current political regime, and a strong western money-value society, suffer as a result of lesser an accident of circumstances – though that is often true. I was in a hard-walking group and living a good life when in a fraction of a second I was neither.

No; it was about my reaction, our reaction, and where it left us, not altogether different from how many will have felt as the election result materialised. Cursing and shouting and enumerating all the possible consequences, will not help. Initially my little secure world collapsed. My fragility was for all to see. And yes, I got practical: protect, rest, ice, compression and elevation (the PRICE first aid rule). That evening we made basic decisions so that the effects on the whole group were limited. The next day at the midway point we met up, and made further decisions. Not what we wanted at all, but there was space for real kindness. And by the end of the day we were looking at alternative walks for when my ankle is healed. We will do justice to those who sponsored us, and we will find our achievements and challenges in another way. I can’t dance for a few weeks: shall we commit to swimming instead? Can I get to work? Who can I ask? Today I feel more robust; uncomfortable and disappointed still, but feeling a bit more in charge.

A similar theme has marked social media about the election. We don’t have to sit by and watch things pushed out of our control. We don’t have to let the agenda be owned by people who do not represent us. We can act in small but coordinated ways. If we talk to each other, share ideas and motivations, assert our right to be heard, stick to the validity of ourselves as people, we can change the game. It isn’t going to just happen for us though, and it may never be as we expect or prefer. Life isn’t about the lily-pads being where we want. It’s about them being there with a route to hop across the water, even if circuitous.

I hope I have begun to learn this. My motto of ‘why not?’ persists. Gender transition is not an easy thing to do, and you need real courage to face up to the process and persist with it. It’s no good bemoaning that lily-pads have been swept away, or that you can only see one ahead. It’s no good dwelling on your inevitable losses. Yes, I’m preaching to myself. Life is what you create it to be.

And it can be very unexpected.

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Changing rooms

  • Posted on April 3, 2015 at 1:01 pm

I didn’t write last week; for the first time I missed. I had things that I wanted to fill my time instead, but in a way I feel I betrayed the blog itself rather than my readership. Hey, we all have time off. And times are changing, and it’s all about making room right now. Do I always want to write about being trans*? Actually, no. I don’t want to be invisible by any means, but I have said much of what there is to say for a while. I’m not an advisor, nor an expert, just experienced in transition. I feel very keenly for friends (local and via social media) whose journey is protracted and are still waiting for treatment. I feel the injustice of years of judgement before self-knowledge is acknowledged, and I follow all the debates about responsibility in being openly trans for the sake of all those who cannot avoid visibility. The world is still very far from accepting of trans existence as an equal status being human. But I am now nine months on from my final and very successful treatment, and observing what it means to remain different but to inhabit very much the same old world.

So what was I doing last week, to spend blogging hours differently? Actually, I was doing a 50 shades of grey 1,000 piece jigsaw. Sorry; much less intriguing really, it was a mainly monochrome scene in London, manufactured in Germany, which my partner received from her mother for Christmas, not an erotic experience! Jigsaws have great potential as well as being addictive, because they challenge pattern recognition, involve strategies, and create space for neutral conversation abstracted from the obsessions of working life. It was fun, and reminded me of happy times with my mother, when we were the only two interested in doing the Christmas jigsaw.

They are a great destressor too, because they require such concentrated attention, and both of us have had our recent stresses over work (she has too much to achieve and I have much too little), as well as thinking ahead to our future. Before too long we are planning to share our living space, rather than living in two places and alternately out of bags on each other’s bedroom floors. Life is a game of consequences, and we face more than some. My partner may hold admiration for the way I’ve travelled these past few years, but that doesn’t mean having a partner of different nationality, same gender, transsexual and considerably older is an easy thing to land on family, friends and colleagues! I am very aware that I am not an altogether simple addition to her life, and that we come to a place of increasing commitment from very different directions. We may fit very comfortably well and share far more in common than we could have expected but, as everyone, we gaze into the more distant future, where some certainties exist, a few challenges, many questions, and the choice of grasping opportunities while we can. It is a very different situation from the one I faced when I got married, young, inexperienced, naïve and very afraid of being discovered. I won’t try to speak for my partner, but what we have now is probably far from her expectations. And being unanticipated, not everything we think, or need to make our minds up on, lies on prepared ground.

We want to expand socially together, get to know each other’s circles, and I know that I have disappeared pretty much online in recent times. Social media was my lifeline for years, it was where I discovered I was not perverted but simply transgender, and found support and advice to set my life straight for the first time. I have needed to move away from social media again, and now to find a good role for it rather than an obsessive one. I think that together we can find new activities and social groups, gain confidence in making new friends, and make the most of the relationship we have. I find it exciting to know that life can continue to change and bring new experiences, and my motto remains ‘Warum nicht? Why not?’.

As we start thinking seriously about what it means to share a home, we turn to our things and where they will fit. For me, life is not what I have accumulated, it is what I can create and recreate every day. My things are just my things. Some have captured memories, some inspire, but many are just the skin I constantly need to shed, in order to grow. Some are simply useful, such as rather too many practical home maintenance spares and tools!

I am very aware that leaving my old life was not a denial of anything good I achieved, but a necessary separation nonetheless. Despite keeping the toolboxes, I had no trousers for years, I chose more overtly feminine things in order to create contrast, and I created a safe space where my intentions were obvious, and ambiguity or ambivalence were excluded. I bought many things cheaply because I was replacing so much at once. I did well, but it’s time to share the making of home again. I feel safe, with a very trusting relationship, and a security in my own skin that still delights me. My things, my rooms, can now belong to this, rather than define it. Maybe a better analogy is that I built scaffolding to support my transition years, and now I feel properly restructured and strong, the scaffolding can come down.

I’m sorry if you Googled this page based on trans* spaces, bathroom bills, and changing-rooms for trans women. I only meant to say that my living space is set to change again, for the better, and that I’m looking forward to it all over again. I have transitioned; I have moved over; and change remains a welcome thing because it is once more being led by love.

(And no stupid analogies about piecing my life back together again from a thousand scattered pieces!)

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