Subversive Number 17 - Letters to the Editor

I just read the sniping from a few people against AOL and the restrictions imposed by being in the Gay and Lesbian area. For those of us who are fairly novice level computer users the accessibility offered by participation in AOL with it's easy GUI, which quite frankly came with the computer and was not personally selected, is wonderful. Not every one lives in some metroplex type area like Southern CA.

When you live in the boonies and think you are the only TS/TV oriented person within 1000 miles, to trip across the access offered thru AOL is fantastic. Apparently we owe it all to Melanie. I have found her advice and counsel useful, along with the information in the resource center, including hormone and surgical advice. I do not know where or if I would ever have found this data without the accessibility of doing it at home thru the computer.

Since this discovery, I have separated from my wife and gotten my own apartment, in another city. Changed my name and begun living full time as I always wanted too. Even the voice tape which was cheap at 20 bucks was useful to me and has given me the self confidence to realize that I can do this. I had my first date last Saturday and I understand the hazard of being too "easy". God, to be taken out to dinner and have someone else pay, being called ma'am by the restaurant people, and having car doors opened for you is indescribably delicious. I strongly wanted to give him something in the way of payback, but resisted. Note: this is after only two months on my own and 1.5 mos on 10mg of Premarin daily, augmented by B-maxi vitamins and aspirins. Thanks again to Dr. Melanie who actually gives better advice than the doctor/hack.

Still having trouble with my vocabulary however, want to relapse into hollering this is F****** fantastic. Definitely the best time of my life. Considering running for office in the next meeting of the local Gender Society, only about 12 regulars, but growing and so am I. In fact sort of sore most of the time.

Well, enough said I think I have made the point I wanted to make, that the accessibility offered thru AOL and the Sunday group over the past year has been wonderful for me and led me to make decisions knowing that contrary to my earlier beliefs and isolated location I may not have made without the support offered here.

Sometimes I lean toward run on sentences. I have to go look for little Luke out back. Thanks for the chance to sound off. Love Janet

I just read your piece on Skeletons in the Closet, and with all due respect (seriously!), I can't disagree with you more concerning how to approach a possible relationship. As someone who has been post-op for more than ten years, telling someone that you're interested in that you've got skeletons, is the easiest way to complicate a beginning relationship. I am all for honesty, but relationships take some time to build, and it's best not to complicate it from the start by throwing a wrench into it.

Although you seem to value what Otter and Keith and have to say on the subject, they have a bias. They can't help but speak from the perspective as someone who knows you. What I've found is that men don't want anything complicated in the beginning. They want (for lack of a better word) 'fun'. A first 'date' is not a commitment. Indeed, some men can be fully intimate with a woman and still not take the relationship seriously. (Unfortunately, it comes to often with territory.)

The one thing that helps me in dealing with new relationships, is remembering to keep the psychological baggage in the closet. There will be a time when you'll share that with someone, but that time will come when you know that other is truly the 'Significant Other' and not sooner. In the meantime, enjoy your life.

I'm sorry I've taken so long in getting back to you. But, trying to draft a reply to your questions, has turned out to be more complicated and frustrating than I thought! If my answers seem to sound non-specific, I apologize. Some things I just can't put into words, and this is one of them, but I'll try.

Yes, I can say that there are significant changes that take place, but they're changes that I can't ascribe any kind of measure to. I want to say that they've been significant (I know they have been), but like most things it isn't anything that I can grasp at and identify. It's so intangible that there's no way I can describe it. Like, my body for instance:

At the time of surgery, I had the body of a pre-pubescent girl; very small breasts, a large waist, and small hips, (and that was after 6 1/2 years of hormone therapy). Now, almost 11 years later, I find that I have the body of a young adult woman. My breasts are fuller, my waist thinner, and hips broader, and all in proportion. But what I find most amazing, are that these changes are continuing, and that my body continues to redefine itself. But isn't that true of women in general? Don't they continue to "mature" as time goes on?

Overall, I've come to believe that change is inexorable, and constant, and that change won't end until the day I die, and that realization doesn't bother me one bit. One good plus to all of this, is that I don't look at all my age. I turned 40 in August, and even though I've never acted like my age, I certainly don't look it either. Most people take me for 30, at the most. I attribute this good fortune to the hormones. I think, they had a rejuvenating effect when I first began taking them, and that my body hasn't caught up to where it should be chronologically. For my sake, I hope it never does. Am I the same as was eleven years ago? No, but if you ask any woman the same question they'd probably tell you the same thing. You know, it's little realizations that hit you, and once and in a while they coalesce into something profound.

One thing I can say about the physical changes is that I continue to enjoy them. I'm one of the few women who actually looks forward to having a gynecological exam. (strange, huh?) I do like my body. Not in a narcissistic kind of way. I just feel happy at being me. And isn't that the measure of a good self-esteem?

Maybe, that's what you'll find as time as goes on? So just relax and enjoy it. A lot of it will be fun.

If there's anything I can really pass on to you concerning change, it's in the emotional/psychological area. That is really a WHOLE BIG CAN OF WORMS, and deserving of more than just a footnote in this letter. So, expect a longer letter than this, in the near future.

Your letter and the thoughts therein came at just the right time for me. I am right at that point where you have to say "let's keep on going" or "enough is enough, its over already!"

I had originally thought that my big leap of faith was the surgery itself. Now, two years later, I had still not let go of the re-consideration of it all until about 2 1/2 weeks ago. Up to that time, I was still pondering the issue, working it over and over again in my mind.

Why would I do this? I am completely passable -no one ever knows unless I tell them. I am still with my "wife" of 18 years and our two children. I have a boyfriend I see every weekend. Why couldn't I let go?

I read "Orlando" about that time and it really helped pull things together for me. I realized that ever since kindergarten I had censored my actions and words before I engaged in them. For 36 years, I did it as Dave, trying to make sure no one ever knew who I really was inside. But surgery didn't put an end to that. For the last two years, I have been doing the same thing from the other side of the coin. I have been censoring myself to make sure I was acting feminine enough. But I still had that program running that filtered my own natural responses before I made them.

After Orlando, I saw this clearly, and finally put an end to it 2 1/2 weeks ago. I took the REAL leap of faith and went into work and didn't second guess myself for the first time since I was five. I found that a couple times my voice faltered, and a few times I ended up in a masculine pose. But after two or three days, normal feedback took care of that, and I was just as feminine as I had struggled to be, but THIS time, without thinking about it.

That, for me, put an end to the justifications I'd carried since age five about not being good enough to show my true self to the world at large. It also made me realize that I didn't want to host the Gender Conference any more. I was locking myself into a role that was no longer appropriate.

Its one thing to write email to gender friends. Its quite another to have to be "on" for 2 hours each week to answer the same questions: "how did it feel? how did you know? how did your family deal with it? how did you tell your friends?" Enough already!!!

I don't honestly REMEMBER all that stuff any more. I've moved so far away from it, I don't have the same empathetic insight to offer. Yet, there I was, still trying. Well, I know that now. So, I've already recruited a new host for the conference and I'll be retired by the end of January.

I'll still do The Subversive, because that is more business or career oriented. Gender is a love of mine as an area of study: I just want to move it under the microscope and out of my personal life.

Someone who just had surgery about 3 weeks ago sent me a letter asking me the same questions I had just asked you about what it was like farther down the road. I replied with my best evaluation. Then your reply arrived to me and I laughed out loud to see that you had written pretty much the same thing I had to the person that asked me: That the changes keep on happening.

But the key to accepting this is to finally stop analyzing yourself and simply enjoy and marvel at the changes. It was only a month ago that I was still looking to my successful physical appearance and outward mannerism to define myself as female. I knew (logically) that it really comes from the inside, but I still couldn't feel it.

But forces were at work, converging on me, that led me to finally EMOTIONALLY understand that I didn't feel accepted because I STILL hadn't accepted myself.

And that is what I sensed in your letter - a verification that self-acceptance was the key.

Its worked for me. For almost 3 weeks now I've been free for the first time in over a third of a century. (I'll be 41 in February, but also look about 30 - aren't hormones wonderful!).

As a nice capper to this, I had my first date with a guy who didn't know about my past just last night. We went to the movies and a coffee shop, and ended up doing some heavy kissing in his car. He has invited me over to his place next week to see some videos, and we both know what that means.

So, here I sit with wife and kids and boyfriend AND this new man in my life who doesn't know anything but Melanie.

Well, its complex, but its working for now. Still, the most important thing is my own self knowledge. Its like a limit line in math. Before transition, we approach it, never thinking we can cross it. We get right up to that line, have surgery and imagine that will put us on the other side. But it doesn't. Only when we make that leap in our own minds are we really on the other side. And that can happen before or after surgery. For me, it was two years after. Whenever, once it happens, you can rejoice that change continues and you will become more feminine every day that you live, as the body changes slowly and as the past habits and attitudes fade in the light of new experience. But that change doesn't mean you aren't there. It just means you're getting better.

I first want to tell you that I really enjoy reading the Subversive. I look for it whenever I log on to AOL.

After a sex change operation (M to F), do you still have a prostrate? I lost a friend to prostrate cancer recently (not a TV or TS). Anyway, I was just wondering.

I assure you that this is not a crank letter. I have been struggling for a couple of weeks thinking how I could ask this question. I don't know if I was afraid of appearing stupid or "sick" or whatever.

Yes, the prostate remains. This allows for both vaginal and clitoral orgasms in the post-op. The prostate creates the vaginal orgasm, since it is almost directly in line with the vaginal canal. Although I know of a number of post-ops who enjoy both kinds of orgasms (myself included) I do not know of any who reach climax during intercourse. Which, in fact, is fairly common to women in general. Still, since a clitoris is constructed from the erectile tissue of the penis, even a post-op without a prostate will be able to reach orgasm. As for cancer, it is my understanding that due to changing from a testosterone to an estrogen system, there is virtually no chance of a post-op getting prostate cancer, however in trade we get the opportunity to worry about breast cancer. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

A reply to the S.O. who wrote me asking if I had any advice on how to deal with a mate who is beginning transition. Specifically, how to stay together:

I'll offer some brief thoughts here. You may want to download back issues of The Subversive (especially the early issues starting with #2) as I have my transition diary published serially in there, month by month. The early entries deal a lot with Mary and myself and how we were working it out.

Basically, you seem to be on the right track - that is to say, your heart is in the right place. The thing to remember is, that place keeps shifting as you grow.

Originally, Mary never wanted to see me with a shaved anything, and CERTAINLY never in women's clothing. But she also said, "Let's take it a day at a time", and that's what we did. We discovered that the only thing that DIDN'T change over the course of my transition was our love for each other. Aside from that, EVERYTHING changed!

You see, the mind operates both in space and in time. Right now at this moment, there is a set of attitudes, hopes and desires called You. And it describes how you will respond to anything that occurs at this very moment. But a day from now, a week, a year - that set of attitudes will be different. We change from day to day.

We often think we stay the same because many attitudes do not change, or at least don't appear to from inside ourselves. Yet, the reason they haven't changed is that they haven't had reason to change.

When chaos enters your life, which is the nature of something like transition, all those attitudes you thought were fixed are suddenly called into question: Am I gay, straight, or bi? Do I really LOVE this person? Can I live with another woman? Or, from your partners point of view, Am I gay, straight, or bi? Do I really LOVE this person? Can I stay with her if she has a man in her life?

All of these attitudes might lead to disaster IF you had to exercise them all at once, right now. But you don't. In fact, some of them will NEVER come into play, and others not until later. By then, YOU will have changed. Your mate will have changed. The peculiar mix of thoughts and emotion that make up yourself will be a slightly different recipe.

And that is the key to making it work, if there is one: to take your time, don't force the issue, and NEVER, NEVER decide ANYTHING before you absolutely have to.

As Mary says, just take it a day at a time, and more things will work out that you can ever imagine.

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