Understanding.

"I don't understand why he wants to be a woman. Why can't he just accept who he is?"
"He just needs to find a woman he likes."
"He should realise that it's not all fun and games being a girl. I don't know why he thinks it would be better."
"He must just have low self esteem or something."
"Maybe he had problems as a child?"

No.

I have not experienced any of these but I can imagine these sorts of reactions and the thin veneer of "understanding" people would project in order to be polite.

This is not rational or reasonable. The tide of my longing is so much deeper than I can express and while its strength waxes and wanes, it's always there. Unshakeable, ever-present, unyielding.

Where I stand these days.

I haven't posted in a long time, so I figured I'd share my thoughts on all of this at this point in time.

• There is nothing to feel ashamed of. This is simply a variation in brain composition/chemistry. Variation is natural, and key to the diversification of the species. Unfortunately some of us get the short end of the stick and end up with gene combinations that leave us unable to resolve that which our brains and bodies tell us we need. We haven't done anything wrong and we're not bad people because of it, it's just the way the cookie crumbled. There is no great mystery to understand, our brains are simply wired in a frustratingly different way than they would be under normal circumstances.
• There is nothing wrong with keeping this information to ourselves and only sharing it with those we feel should know. We don't have to tell anyone we don't want to tell. Ignorance can be bliss (for others) and, if one has accepted one's circumstances, there is not always a lot to be gained from divulging this secret. Reality is personal and is relative to each person. That said, if you need to tell people, or talk to someone about it, you shouldn't feel ashamed in doing so; just be pragmatic about the reactions you may get from those who've known you for a while.
• For many of us, current treatments will not provide what we want. Surgery will not produce anything more than a very poor facsimile of our desired selves and will be accompanied by a lot of social rejection, which is more than many of us are willing and/or able to handle.
• We have to accept that, for now, we can't have what we want. That's just the way it is. There's nothing to be done about it, and though we'll feel depressed and frustrated sometimes, we simply have to recognize those cycles as inevitable and know they will pass, like they always do, accept them and and get on with our lives.
• If current treatments won't provide what you want, then there are only two possibilities to achieve our desired outcome. Neither are guaranteed, but both are quite possible, in my opinion:
• Life extension technology is coming along very quickly and it's looking like, for those of us who still have at least 3-4 decades of life remaining, we may be among the lucky few who get to take advantage of it first. Google Aubrey de Grey if you're curious what I'm talking about. There are other discoveries taking place too. And given how far medical technology might advance in one or two hundred  years, if we're patient and are able to take advantage of early life extension technologies, we might be around to finally see the development of medical options give us what we want. Far fetched? Maybe, maybe not.
• Computer technology is also advancing very fast. What we have now is such a far cry from what we had twenty to thirty years ago, that when that some amount of time passes again, what we're going to be able to do will probably be quite amazing by today's standards. This means the potential for true virtual worlds that we can possibly enter and experience first-hand, as though we're there. True brain interfaces, interacting with all of our senses and projecting experiences that are indistinguishable from real life. If that can happen, escapes like Second Life will feel like antiquated jokes in the face of what we're simulating.
• Given that I can't have what I want at this point, and there is the possibility that I may be able to get what I want, or a close approximation thereof, in my lifetime, I figure I may as well just live my life, have goals and projects to keep me occupied, and do my best to have friends and great relationships with loved ones until I either get what I want or leave this life for whatever comes next (if anything). Wallowing in self pity isn't going to help me, and discussing this with people isn't going to get me what I want.

So there you have it. Live your life. This sucks, but it simply is what it is. No sense having a crisis about it. Hope for the best and keep yourself busy.

An Open Letter

Dear scientists who study gender issues,

Please find out why my whole body aches to be female, even though my mind has been wired like a regular male. It puzzles me that there has been no credible study on this issue thus far.

That is all.

Sarah.

Writing

I've always wondered if I could write fiction and it seems like a good way to explore my desires, so tonight I began to write the beginning of what I hope will be many short stories exploring the different forms my fantasies have taken. Here is the first part of the first story, the most common fantasy I've had, as I imagine it might play out if it happened in reality and presented in first person, present tense. I'll continue it in my next blog post.

“Awakened”

Wakefulness tugs at the corner of my mind, reminding me that I was asleep as some already-fading dream of random nonsensical events begins to dissipate. I’m not quite conscious yet but, like a slowly-brightening light, my self-awareness begins to reinstate itself, reminding me of where I am as I lay half asleep, dozing in the softness of my blanket.

The glow of warmth is comforting and my body is not quite awake yet. As I lay there on my side, the last remnants of slumber releasing their grip on me, it occurs to me that I’m noticing a soft sensation of hair draped against my lower shoulder blade and pressed beneath my ear and under my left shoulder, contrasting the texture of the fabric of the pillow case I’m half-hugging.

I begin to feel the beat of my heart, its rate increasing slightly as an impossible concept entertains itself momentarily at the edge of my consciousness and my attention shifts to an unfamiliar weight and pressure against and inside my pectoral region; a feeling that shouldn’t be there. Rolling just slightly onto my back as I move my hand up to investigate, a sudden realisation crashes over me like cold water and I shove myself into an upright position and reach for my face with both hands.

The skin of my cheeks is smooth, soft even. The familiar coarseness of the stubble that I normally expect above and below my top and bottom lips and on my chin is gone and the blur of some volume of hair invades my left and right periphery, coinciding with a soft sensation as it shifts over and against my shoulders and settles down my back. Barely a second has passed, yet the moment draws out as I feel the alien weights on my chest settle, my hands dropping to meet them, my heart rate increasing further.

I have breasts.

Ecstasy begins to form in the pit of my stomach. Still, only a few moments have passed.

My hands and fingers wrapped around the bases of breasts that shouldn’t be there and my head spinning slightly from the sudden change to my now-upright position, I press softly, experiencing the slight shift and give of tissue and noticing the slight tensioning of upper skin as I relax my hands and let the weight of my breasts reassert itself.

My breasts. I feel dizzy as the thought crystalises.

As I allow my hands to drop away, my right palm brushes against my nipple. With the caress of skin against protruded skin, a small spark shoots down through my body. A small, subtle not-quite-explosion hits me in a lower place, highlighting the absence of a normally-familiar firm sensation that has greeted me almost every morning since puberty.

But not this morning. My heart is pounding in my chest.

Hesitantly, savouring the moment that I now know is forthcoming, I slowly slide my right hand down the smoothness of my stomach as my left hand unconsciously returns to rest on the lower half of my right breast. Exerting a discipline practised through countless fantasised replays of this moment, I force myself to keep my gaze forward, raised slightly, so as to keep the first experience of what is coming isolated to that of my touch.

My hand pauses at my waste line, slightly below my navel, then proceeds to slide down; slowly and controlled. My finger continues, slower now, pushing over, parting and crossing soft, short hairs as I reach the base of the place where my skin should harden and hook back upwards.

Instead, as I am now fully aware that it will, my finger moves through- and past- a strange absence of what I have been used to my whole life. The sensation of a few moments earlier returns, this time like a dimmed light being brightened gradually then, as I approach the center of the missing shaft, the pad of my forefinger slides inbetween a crease of skin.

I tense and breathe in sharply for a brief moment as a million tiny sparks explode, emanating through my legs and abdomen before vanishing as quickly as they had appeared, goosebumps left in their wake.

Shaking ever so slightly, I push down a little further. The twin walls of soft skin, sparse, fine hairs adorning their sides, part as my fingertip slides into a softer, moister area of depressed skin.

My breathing is faster now and I vaguely notice that each breath in- each breath out- feels different; lighter, slightly more constricted, though not uncomfortably so and the sound does not have the hollow masculinity I’m used to.

My heart is racing as I turn my hand sideways, the pad of my fingertip rotating against the warm, sensitive texture of the skin and I pull downwards a short distance. My fingertip glides gently over a small, hardened bump and I gasp as another wave of pleasure, much more pronounced than before, ripples outwards through all of the surrounding muscles and dissipates into the farther regions of my body.

I pull my hand away, recalling the imagined version of this moment and the way I’d always played it out in my head, remembering that each moment was to be savoured and with that thought, the brimming ecstasy I'd been feeling over the past few seconds suddenly wells up within me, tears quickly forming sobs as what has been bottled up for years- decades even- now finally begins to release and I cry; deep sobs of raw emotion- relief, excitement, shock, gratitude and happiness with the ecstatic realisation that what I have dreamed of my entire life has finally been made manifest.

I am a girl.

A girl.

I am a girl.

My head is spinning with the incredibly welcome shock I’m feeling and, as the tears subside after a few minutes of uncontrolled release, I rub my eyes to clear my tear-soaked vision, take a few breaths to compose myself and make an attempt to begin investigating this new physical reality.

To be continued.

Expanding on the whole male brain vs female brain thing

Jack Molay mentioned my post over at Crossdreamers and it spawned a bit of discussion, which got me to thinking a bit more about the whole concept of the possibility of being a woman trapped in a man's body and mind. The post I wrote was not actually an assertion that this concept is correct or set in stone, but rather an idea I came up with after thinking about the topic.

If it's possible to be a "woman in a man's body and mind", it would suggest that there is a distinction between "self" and "mind", or that "self" is a multi-layered construct. Am I my mind? Or is my mind simply an expression of my conscious self, with my subconscious self sitting at a different level independent of my mind? And is my mind purely binary with respect to being male or female? Or can it have splotches of male and splotches of female? What if the male parts dominate areas relating to personal identity but are heavily tempered and contrasted by female parts?

Here are some of the unexplored reasons I have, at least up until recently, always believed myself to have a "normal" male mind:

1. I never had the thought "I feel like I am a girl in the wrong body" growing up
2. I have an attraction to women and not to men. I can remember having always wanted a girlfriend.
3. I am competitive and driven to win, to succeed, to achieve, which tends towards being a male trait
4. I sometimes feel what I can only assume is a masculine aggression at thoughts like winning a fight, defending my family and friends, and so forth
5. As a child, riding my bike and playing with robots and guns and blowing up toy cars was more interesting to me than playing with dolls and dress-ups
6. Clothes and fashion never really interested me hugely
7. I tend towards avoiding social activity rather than indulging in hours upon hours of arbitrary conversation, which women tend to enjoy. I'm not a complete recluse, but a small social circle and only periodic contact with them seems to be enough for me. Lack of social contact does drive me to depression though. Apart from the sole exceptions of my Mum and sister and my current partner, I've never been any good at holding down long phone conversations.
8. I love highly logical, analytical activities and write software and web applications professionally.

Now with all that said, it has occurred to me that I can deconstruct and debunk (to some extent) most of these beliefs:

1. Even though I never felt that I was a girl in the wrong body, I always felt a deep, unshakeable longing to be female, sometimes so strong that it would almost bring me to tears.
2. My attraction to women and my disinterest in men is in the context of being male, but has never involved a desire to have sex. At no point have I ever looked at a woman and had a sexual response to the thought of having sex with her. For some reason it never even occurred to me that this missing piece of the puzzle was significant until a couple of years ago when I first entertained the notion that maybe I have some form of gender-related issue and went online looking to see if any other men also had fantasies about being female. I've tried fantasizing about having sex but it really does nothing for me at all. My desire for a girlfriend, I think, always related to the need for acceptance and companionship. When I am really in the midst of fantasy, imagining myself as female, my interest in women decreases, though not completely, and my sexual desires and fantasies take on that of a heterosexual woman, including all of the "normal" acts that would occur in the bedroom. Missionary, oral, etc. I can even move past the "facelessness" that is common with the idea of man-as-a-validation-prop, and start to fantasize about being pregnant, breast feeding, getting married, meeting a nice man while out one night and later on making out and so forth. It is extremely important to remember though, that in this male body, none of that is a fantasy for me and repulses me even. I can't imagine trying to explain this to someone who has a limited worldview of these topics, because all they would extrapolate from that is that I have suppressed gay tendencies- and this couldn't be further from the truth. None of those desires and fantasies work unless I am genuinely female as part of them.
3. Upon further consideration, it occurs to me that though it may be not be the trend, many women are also very driven to succeed. I know more than one who are extremely competitive and hate to lose, either in games or in life in general.
4. I'm not actually sure the aggression I have felt in my life is exactly the same as what a lot of other men feel. I've never wanted to punch the wall or break things when I was angry (that seemed stupid as then stuff would be broken!) and it usually took a lot to truly make me angry. Strong emotions tend to push me very quickly towards tears rather than to anger and aggression, so I have always done my best to avoid strong emotions as I didn't want to look weak or feminine. My girlfriend has rolled her eyes at me more than once when, during an argument, I've been unable to say anything back to her due to trying to hold back tears rather than yelling or screaming at her. I can also remember as a child, throughout school, being quite timid and preferred to run from a fight than participate, let alone start one. The thought of using muscle to kick a bully down a notch would have never even occurred to me.
5. I have met girls who fall into the category of what some might call "tomboys" and were more interested in playing outside, building forts and playing with cars and didn't have much interest in dolls and pretty things. They never seemed to have a problem with the idea that they were female.
6. I've met seemingly-well-adjusted girls who aren't really interested in makeup or fashion either. That said, when I imagine myself getting to truly experience being female, the thought of choosing between different shoes to buy, seeing a cute dress in a catalog or shop window and trying it on and checking myself out wearing it, mixing and matching my clothes to come up with nice outfits that make me look more attractive and so forth actually causes me to feel a level of excitement that I don't feel when dressing myself as a male. I don't get any of this desire when imagining dressing my male body in female clothes though, as would happen if I had an interest in cross dressing. On top of that, I can really imagine myself getting a lot of joy out of trying out different looks with makeup and getting really good at doing so with practice, but again, not in this body. I need to be imagining myself as female to feel any of that and the thought of my male body being in the way is a serious obstruction to getting any pleasure from that.
7. I was socially "slow" growing up. A bit of a dork, I got picked on from an early age by other boys and frequently excluded from their games and sports, though I never knew why. I'm thinking maybe this exacerbated my slow social development and resultant introversion which caused me to develop the tendency to avoid social contact later in life. Girls' social groups tend to work differently and encourage social development, which leads me to wonder how I would have developed if I had been "me" but born female. It was only in my mid-20's after making friends with a bunch of other guys who were actively developing their skills at meeting and attracting women, that I started to really develop a solid male personality and belief set and started to figure out what I needed to do get anywhere with women. I think if not for this period of my life, I would still be a virgin with no self confidence and probably living alone and depressed, possibly suicidal.
8. Granted, women in roles such as software development and other analytical pursuits are extremely uncommon, though they do exist. I am a weird hybrid of programmer though, in that I have (if I do say so myself) pretty decent design skills as well, which is a somewhat uncommon match with programming skills. I can't say whether this has any relevance to my condition though.

So what do I have? A purely male brain with a messed up switch somewhere in the region controlling sexual attraction? A male brain "scaled-back-towards-female"? Or a brain with certain male traits which support a basic male self-identity, but female traits elsewhere creating internal confusion? Am I just a wimp behind the mask who wants to be a girl for no reason he can figure out? Or is something else the case entirely?

The one thing that would really help us figure all of this out to is to get an understanding of what drives the desire to be female. What is it in my head that makes me want to be female? Is it because part of me, under the hood, thinks it's supposed to be female despite being masked by a male self identity? Why do some men out there who fantasize about being female not actually want to be female but just recognise it as a frustrating fantasy, yet I can't help but think of the massive exhilaration, happiness and liberation I know I would feel if my wish finally came true, allowing me to live out a full life as a woman? Why would I willingly give up my career and being able to ever again see my girlfriend, my family and my friends if I found a way to become an genetic woman?

Why do I so desperately want to be a girl?

Maybe our (cross) dreams can come true?

I'll preface this short post by pointing out that what I'm suggesting may or may not happen in our lifetimes and that even if it does, it may be too expensive for many of us to afford and that waiting for it may prove to require more patience than most of us can muster. Still, it's a glimmer of hope and for what it's worth, there's still some interesting reading and viewing here.

First of all, immortality, or some version thereof, may be actually possible for those of us who are middle aged or younger. Before your eyes glaze over and you close this blog, never to return, take a look at the following article - http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2008/06/methuselah?currentPage=all - and then watch this video, which presents a realistic case for the possibility that immortality may be within our reach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTMNfU7zftQ

Aubrey de Gray has been making waves in recent years and has been interviewed and invited to talk to many news organisations and at many events, including TED, which is well known for providing inspiring and forward-thinking individuals a platform to present new ideas and insights into where we're heading, technologically and otherwise. The video linked above is very, very interesting and well worth watching. Now it is not my intention to suggest that I want to live forever, but rather for those of us who want to experience things (anything) that might be a little too far in the future than we'll quite get to given our current expected lifespans, it suggests the possibility that maybe we'll be able to extend ourselves far enough into the future to make those possibilities feasible for us.

Which leads me to the second point; our rapidly-accelerating medical technology. I just read an interesting post over at h+ magazine - http://hplusmagazine.com/2010/11/28/total-gender-change-within-decade/ - which pulled together a number of facts and assertions regarding the current pace of medical technology, as it applies to gender change, suggesting, perhaps slightly over-ambitiously with respect to the timeframe, that what we crossdreamers desire above all else, may in fact be a possibility in decades to come.

I don't know about you, and of course I have to take myself with a grain of salt considering I am still only in my early thirties and all of this technology is highly speculative, but if it does come to fruition, I think that if by the time I am 50 or 60, if I am able to extend my lifespan another 30-50 years and beyond in order to approach rejuvenation and advanced body rebuilding technology in order to experience that which I dreamed of my whole life, then I would gladly exercise the patience required in order to do just that. Of course I may be fed up with everything by then and ready for "the end", but the possibility of finally resolving this condition definitely excites me!

Are we broken?

Often I see assertions by transgendered individuals (crossdreamers included) that we are not defective, but rather we are simply subjects of natural variation. The problem with that argument is that natural variation is not automatically either neutral or beneficial to the individual in question. It is indiscriminately random. Beneficial variations can potentially give an individual advantages over others, such as with high levels of attractiveness or intelligence, or it can be detrimental to the individual, such as being born with a deformity or poor vision.

I think the reason people are so quick to claim that gender dysphoria is not a defect is because people don't like to feel inferior. They don't like to feel as though the universe has simply dealt them a bad hand, as it would mean that their strength of identity is challenged and that, however unwanted, other's pity of them might be justified.

I tend to look at natural variation and ask the question "is this variance detrimental or beneficial to the individual's ability to play out the physical role that evolution has designed us for as a species?" I can't help but think that this affliction that which we crossdreaming and otherwise transgendered individuals have to deal with does not serve any useful physical purpose whatsoever and whilst we can try to adapt and deal with it in our own way, I can't think of any true benefit that it affords us that might otherwise help me to see it as a neutral, if not beneficial, variation from the norm.

If it weren't for the fact that I have spiritual beliefs focussing on countless reincarnations as a vehicle to the continuing development of one's higher spiritual self, I would hard pressed to see myself as anything other than a momentary random defect in the ongoing generational waves of evolution.