rebis
08-15-05, 12:56 PM
While I bide my remaining time on the East Coast before returning to my West Coast hometown, I've decided to do some extensive journaling of my questions/issues/feelings regarding my situation with my Gender Indentity and how it relates to other self-image/sexuality questions.
This is something of a snippet from that process that I would curious to hear feedback on, to see if my feelings or confusions are/were shared by others.
I recently had a vivid memory of my first year of High School, which would be 4 years before my body would even begin to undergo puberty, spending my time finding new and different ways to avoid undressing for Gym glass (lest someone see my body and make fun of me) and wondering why I was so different from other guys my age who were obsessed with sex.
I even thought at one point that my lack of libido meant that I might be gay (which was an identity crisis panic attack for a sheltered, naive white kid growing up in a rich suburb).
I remember, later on, ignorantly thinking "I would rather be gay and live with the social hazing by my peers than be this confused and have no idea what I am, who I am, or who I want to be."
I realized, later on, that I ended up burying that whole conflict I was experiencing under a series of relationships with girls while in college. I was pubescent. I had a small but at least noticeable sex drive. And at that point, my lifelong pattern of developing crushes on girls now included enough 'mature sexual energy' that I was able to experience sexual intimacy, albeit later in the game than most people.
Now, in the tail end of my thirties following a divorce and an intimacy trackrecord that only includes 5 partners, that tabled confusion and uncertainty is back with a vengence.
I feel very much like I'm caught in the crossfire of a gender identity and sexual orientation complexity that leaves me with some tough hurdles to overcome.
I have always, looking back, felt like I had a very blended sense of gender.
Well, okay, that's false. I honestly feel like I have never had a distinct gender of any kind.
Being told you are a boy and feeling like a boy are, as it turns out, two very separate things. And my personal history helped me to understand how our bodies can either reinforce or erode our 'biologically suggested' sense of gender.
Prior to the age of normal pubescence, I was just a happy-go-lucky kid. Granted, I spent as much if not more time playing with girls than boys at that point (I just felt very comfortable playing, talking and hanging around girls my age while boys would run away or avoid or mock girls). I would have told you that I felt like a boy at that point, because my only sense of what that might have meant was that I had a boy's body (meaning I had a penis), a boy's name and my parents told me I was a boy.
When I hit 10 or 11, everything turned upside down. I had never had any extra body weight up until then, but that all changed. I began to gain weight disproportionate to my body and I began developing breast tissue. My energy levels decreased, I became less active and a lot more passive and quiet. Being both obese (which masks your body in curves and shapes that are not masculine) and in possession of breasts (a definite female characteristic) while not acquiring any male pubescent traits threw me into a very isolated world of "girls, boys, and then me" kind of place (although I wouldn't have been able to see it that clearly at age 11-13).
My obesity and gynecomastia have followed me ever since, and even though I did develop male pubescent traits (I was 5'6" and 245 my junior year in high school, and 6'3" and 300 by my junior year in college), I had never felt any kind of clarity in my sense of gender.
I have always been clear about my desire for and emotional feelings toward the opposite sex. I had crushes and little girlfriends as early as age 5, and have never had enough same-sex impulses to even qualify myself as 'bi-curious.'
Yet, the older I get, the more I realize that while I don't have the classic feelings of gender dysphoria (I am not actively or consistently upset or depressed by the contrast of my gender identity to my physical anatomy), if we lived in a world of magical reality I would probably choose to be a girl over a boy because I feel like I would be happier and better-suited to that sex, given my feelings and the character/shape of my sense of gender.
I also know, given my track record in relationships and my desires and attractions, that I am always drawn to women who express very masculine gender traits (aggressive over passive, competitive over supportive, demonstrative over emotive).
So ultimately, my 'coming out' and acceptance path includes accepting that I prefer to be treated and related to in the context of intimacy as a female gendered partner but within the realm of a heterosexual relationship. I also need admit the fact that I present as male-gendered and male-sexed to the world because I am not strongly enough conflicted by my gender vs. sex to seek an external solution to an internal complexity.
Where I go from here is a bit of a mystery to me, but I suppose knowing the road I've traveled may help me see the road ahead.
Thanks for listening,
Peter
This is something of a snippet from that process that I would curious to hear feedback on, to see if my feelings or confusions are/were shared by others.
I recently had a vivid memory of my first year of High School, which would be 4 years before my body would even begin to undergo puberty, spending my time finding new and different ways to avoid undressing for Gym glass (lest someone see my body and make fun of me) and wondering why I was so different from other guys my age who were obsessed with sex.
I even thought at one point that my lack of libido meant that I might be gay (which was an identity crisis panic attack for a sheltered, naive white kid growing up in a rich suburb).
I remember, later on, ignorantly thinking "I would rather be gay and live with the social hazing by my peers than be this confused and have no idea what I am, who I am, or who I want to be."
I realized, later on, that I ended up burying that whole conflict I was experiencing under a series of relationships with girls while in college. I was pubescent. I had a small but at least noticeable sex drive. And at that point, my lifelong pattern of developing crushes on girls now included enough 'mature sexual energy' that I was able to experience sexual intimacy, albeit later in the game than most people.
Now, in the tail end of my thirties following a divorce and an intimacy trackrecord that only includes 5 partners, that tabled confusion and uncertainty is back with a vengence.
I feel very much like I'm caught in the crossfire of a gender identity and sexual orientation complexity that leaves me with some tough hurdles to overcome.
I have always, looking back, felt like I had a very blended sense of gender.
Well, okay, that's false. I honestly feel like I have never had a distinct gender of any kind.
Being told you are a boy and feeling like a boy are, as it turns out, two very separate things. And my personal history helped me to understand how our bodies can either reinforce or erode our 'biologically suggested' sense of gender.
Prior to the age of normal pubescence, I was just a happy-go-lucky kid. Granted, I spent as much if not more time playing with girls than boys at that point (I just felt very comfortable playing, talking and hanging around girls my age while boys would run away or avoid or mock girls). I would have told you that I felt like a boy at that point, because my only sense of what that might have meant was that I had a boy's body (meaning I had a penis), a boy's name and my parents told me I was a boy.
When I hit 10 or 11, everything turned upside down. I had never had any extra body weight up until then, but that all changed. I began to gain weight disproportionate to my body and I began developing breast tissue. My energy levels decreased, I became less active and a lot more passive and quiet. Being both obese (which masks your body in curves and shapes that are not masculine) and in possession of breasts (a definite female characteristic) while not acquiring any male pubescent traits threw me into a very isolated world of "girls, boys, and then me" kind of place (although I wouldn't have been able to see it that clearly at age 11-13).
My obesity and gynecomastia have followed me ever since, and even though I did develop male pubescent traits (I was 5'6" and 245 my junior year in high school, and 6'3" and 300 by my junior year in college), I had never felt any kind of clarity in my sense of gender.
I have always been clear about my desire for and emotional feelings toward the opposite sex. I had crushes and little girlfriends as early as age 5, and have never had enough same-sex impulses to even qualify myself as 'bi-curious.'
Yet, the older I get, the more I realize that while I don't have the classic feelings of gender dysphoria (I am not actively or consistently upset or depressed by the contrast of my gender identity to my physical anatomy), if we lived in a world of magical reality I would probably choose to be a girl over a boy because I feel like I would be happier and better-suited to that sex, given my feelings and the character/shape of my sense of gender.
I also know, given my track record in relationships and my desires and attractions, that I am always drawn to women who express very masculine gender traits (aggressive over passive, competitive over supportive, demonstrative over emotive).
So ultimately, my 'coming out' and acceptance path includes accepting that I prefer to be treated and related to in the context of intimacy as a female gendered partner but within the realm of a heterosexual relationship. I also need admit the fact that I present as male-gendered and male-sexed to the world because I am not strongly enough conflicted by my gender vs. sex to seek an external solution to an internal complexity.
Where I go from here is a bit of a mystery to me, but I suppose knowing the road I've traveled may help me see the road ahead.
Thanks for listening,
Peter