[Long] Philosophizing the Philosopher

[Guest Draga]

Backstory

I grew up a semi-normal life. I grew up liking girls, being a boy, dressing in the clothes my parents gave me, eating the food put on my plate except anything green (cuz green foods are a trap set by parents right?), playing videogames and watching TV. I didn't really speak. I had a big brother and sister, twins, who mostly picked on each other. My mother was hardcore Christian and my father was in and out Christian/agnostic. We lived in a little house in a small town in the woods of Shirley, Long Island. My father worked for NASA and then moved to Grumman after I was born. I'd say it was a pretty typical, cushy life.

As I grew up I started to wear clothes that may not have been described as "boys" but definitely weren't typical for girls. I wore sweatpants a lot, and loose t-shirts 1 or 2 sizes too big. I wore pants that were a size too small because I didn't like having things to trip on and I didn't like wearing belts. I still didn't really talk.

School was overly easy and I tended to surpass the class in everything except history, which I never found to be important to learn. They said "you could be president if you learn history". Seemed like the kind of job I wouldn't want. I got my first bullies in 3rd grade. I was still top of the class and some classes I finished the workbook the first month just so I could slack off. Some teachers allowed this, but the students would bully me into doing work for them. Typical life growing up as a nerdy quiet type. I got picked on a lot for having short pants, they called me Floody and other stuff. I didn't understand, and it didn't really upset me.

In junior high I started flirting with people, I guess I was too aggressive because the other boys (and the snooty girls) would beat me up or verbally assault me for the way I dressed, the people I flirted with, the way I talked, or lack there of. I still didn't talk much. My parents at this point were going through a divorce because my dad cheated on my mom, and my mom ended up losing us in the divorce filings because she believed in capital punishment. (By mid highschool we stopped seeing her altogether, I don't know and don't care what happened to her) At some point I got expelled, I think it was my last year of junior high, for successfully defending myself against a group of bullies. I was placed in a BD school who's curriculum was roughly that of 3rd grade. =(

Come highschool, I was still flirting with people and I made my first friends in the outcast group at school and my first best friend was there with me (I met him in detention in 5th grade, not worth telling that story here). Friendships didn't last long because I was still too aggressive with flirting. I started wearing girls denim because it was comfy, not because I knew it was girls's. I was still attending the BD school in partiality until the end of my senior year, and refused to do a lot of the work except for tests which I always aced. Turns out that's good enough to graduate with, so happy days. Still, I didn't talk much, and only had like maybe 5 friends.

In college, I started making friends, I started talking to people, and I started liking boys. One boy in particular, and then it spiraled out of control. I started going to my campus' GSA, and talked about maybe being bi. For over a year I identified as bi. I found out my second year that I had mild autism, which my parents knew about since I was in elementary but hid from me. It explained a lot, and I went through social media to apologize to a lot of the people I had flirted with a bit too aggressively in highschool, and some who had been attending that college. I started talking to people. I asked my parents about my autism, my first word (butterfly, age 5, pointed to one outside the window but my parents said they'd never taught me about them, I mostly just watched discovery and TLC).

In 2009, only a few months after having come out as bi, I was dealing with a lot of emotions from dealing with being social and questioning my sexuality. I was crying every other day and mentioned suicide once. I was suspended from college and sent to outpatient psychiatrics and social training. I spent months learning BS reasons why I shouldn't be sad, and shouldn't feel pain. I finally graduated having learned the main lesson "other people are suffering around the world worse than you, and you should be happy you aren't them" as well as "never care about another person, only worry about yourself". I didn't really except this, but I lied to get back into college. Fortunately, the person who originally suspended me for "having emotions" and "being autistic, come back when you're cured" 'left' the school. Some tiny part of me hopes they were removed since I got a lawyer to sue her. XD Another rant for another day, it doesn't belong here.

Fall 2010, I returned to school. I still thought I was bi, and I was working around my autism. I continued taking philosophy and psychology courses, as I had done since my very first semester, and questioning not just myself, but the human condition and where I fit in. In 2011, I met and befriended the first transgender person I ever knew. I didn't know transgender was even a thing, I had thought cross gender and non gender binary physicality was a genetic birth defect. From knowing him, and his journey, and through his help with resources, I quickly discovered I was transgender. I managed through typical college-style experimentation to find out I didn't sexually like guys. I can still find them cute, but I remained confused with my transgender guy friend, because I wanted (and still do) a relation with him. By 2012, I had learned enough about my autistic triggers to repress and eventually dissipate most shutdowns, and I had begun practicing Paganism in mid 2011, meditation helped a lot with that too. Paganism was another thing I didn't know was a thing until I met other people professing similar beliefs as me.

Recent Past

Now in 2013, I have attended 2 MBLGTACCs and intend to go to one more with my school. I have befriended much of the staff and gotten a reputation around school. Most people know who I am, and while there are still hateful scary people whom I fear walking the halls around, the good friends I know would back me up if I needed aide outweigh those. Through discovering transgenderedness was a thing I went back through my history (much more than is written here) and discovered a lot of things about myself.

I discovered, sexually, as long as I can remember, that I have hated having a penis and testes. I would always tuck when I had to look in a tall mirror at myself, and I eventually developed a complete fear of my image in mirrors. I'm just now getting over that fear, but it persists. I have also recalled that the few times I was with a girl, I mentally viewed myself as a female, and 'tried to feel' sex like a girl. Once I had even inverted to see if I could self gratification like a girl (that experiment didn't last long for obvious reasons LOL). I discovered that I had developed crushes on tons of men in film, and they were the major reason I even watched those shows. I found out that I hated most guys, because I had grown up thinking they were brutes. I had viewed most girls as gentle, but in highschool I met my first tomboys and I always really liked them.

I told my GSA that I had taken a few months to review my entire life history, replaying back the years in my head via meditation and controlled dreamstates (a trick I picked up in my Pagan studies). I asked my friend for a reference to his provider, and the provider had seen the certainty in my eyes, and I explained my situation. I was put on trial dosages of estrogen. I was given options to back out. Many people were stunned and shocked I'd suddenly decided I was transgender. I tried to explain I always was, but in my mind it wasn't even an option until recently. As people saw me becoming happier and happier, it just became commonplace. I was a girl. This is what I wanted to be. But I still hid, and sometimes still hide, the deeper definition I hold to my heart.

Now

It's August 2013. At the last MBLGTACC I went to the polyamory panels, because it sounded like what I was. Able to love more than one person at a time, or be sexual with more than one person. But I wanted to be ethical about it, and I needed good references. I had gotten contacts but none of them replied. Recently I found a book by Dossie Easton and Janis Hardy which has turned my world around as far as my sexuality is concerned, and has given me new freedom to be myself. I can now go about finding love my way, and not hurting people in the process. I'm glad Poly was included at the last MBLGTACC and I'm making efforts to include it it the rainbow that is my school's GSA, which over the years has added allies, trans, asexuals, heteroflexibles, and other letters. The more the merrier I say.

But I still wasn't sure what my preference was. It was mere weeks ago that I thought to myself, I am homoflexible, if heteroflexible is a thing. I didn't know that was a thing, people who call themselves 90% gay, 10 % straight. But that doesn't really cover me. I don't like boys, but I'm okay with pre-op transboys, like my friend whom I'm still strongly attracted to. So I came up with my own term, maybe it seems like a jerky term but it's as accurate as it's going to get: Anti-Penis Pansexual. Penises have always weirded me out, especially my own but also other guys'. Guys are fine to look at, maybe even hot, but once the pants come off I get disgusted.

I recently in the last few months decided it was time to move on with my transition. I have been on hormones for a year and a half, but due to an abnormally high natural testosterone level and allergies to Spiro, and knowing the dangerous long term sideeffects of Dutasteride; I decided surgery was the best option. I had not found a GT who would see me for that first year and a half, since many found since I was already on hormones I didn't need it, but I DO need it for an eventual SRS/VcS. My provider did of course warn me there was no going back, as did the surgeon, but both saw I did my research and this was the best option and the best time as part of my 5-year life plan. I am now 3 days out of surgery and have no regrets. The pain sucks,but the relief is phenominal, and I can't wait until I can wear my first bikini without worrying about "sneaky nuts".

I have found with only minor disappointment that erections are still possible, but so far they aren't being nearly as inconvenient as they used to be, like in the morning. So if I end up with a bi girlfriend I'll be okay. For the last year I had refused to use it, even though I had an opportunity to do so, because it didn't feel right that I was able to make babies, whether or not I was sterile. I know how to mentally give myself full body orgasms, but ejaculation has always upset me. Now I can please myself and my lovers without all the boy aesthetics.

Anywho... I'm not all girl... I'm very philosophical and view myself as a nongender with a sexually female side. I've explained this to my provider, and my recently attained GT. We are exploring what this means for my future, to be making a switch to a female body, while refusing to get implants, and refusing to modify my behavior liek liking martial arts/MMA just because they might be typically applied to genders. I'm fighting for clothes to not define gender either, with my current retort to jerks who might bully me for wearing girls clothes (nowadays I wear girls jeans and plaid tops) with "If clothes defined my gender, how would you define a nudist?". If you have any questions, I would love to answer them, but for some questions expect either a paragraph or a deep philosophical explanation.

Edited August 12, 2013 by Draga
Request by poster

[VickySGV]

All children have a long and sometimes terrifying journey into adulthood, for people who qualify to be members here, it can be many times as horrible as it is for Cis gendered individuals though. Add in other issues that deal with our socialization skills, and the journey becomes almost an impossibility. Where other people are going on a highway which goes in an unwavering line toward the horizon, ours' curves, twists and turns in distances nearly at arms length away. We are not defective, we are not sick, we are not to be feared by others, or even worse, ourselves. There are resources available, and some of them may be in areas that are totally foreign to our earliest ideas of what our life "should be", but when all is put together we realize that the "should be" was another person's concept and not ours. You are exploring and mapping your own wilderness and learning how to survive and love it. I wish you Good fortune ahead!!

[Guest miss kindheart]

Hi Draga,
<<< hug >>>
Welcome to Laura's Playground.
Please feel free to come over and chat sometime.
The Chat room does require another registration that is separate from from your forums one.
Please read the chat room rules before coming in, and expect a short interview with one of the chat room moderators.
One of the things that they will ask you is if you read the rules.
We all look forward to seeing you.
vanna