The Gender Closet Conundrum

 I was an early maturer. My voice changed while I was in the 6th grade even though I was one of the youngest in the class. I also harbored the feeling that despite my obvious externals, I was female. This scared me somewhat as I feared being discovered. What if I walked like a girl? Actually not understanding the physical explanation for the different gait led me to think I had to be careful, I didn't need anyone discovering my secret and making my life more miserable than it was.

This feeling was with me throughout my teen years but what could one do in the 60's? I knew about Christine Jorgensen, but how could I become like her without resources? and besides I was 185 pounds and 6 foot tall by the ninth grade. Certainly not the proportions that one would want in a young lady. So on I lived with my secret. 

Fast forward to my early twenties. Just back from Vietnam and out of the Army I started having recurrent bouts of diarrhea accompanied by extreme cramping. Probably IBS-d or lactose intolerance, or both, but at the time I was left to put this together alone. I had several female friends at the time who would often complain about cramps as a part of their monthly cycles. Since my episodes also came on a similar time frame and having no one to talk to about it, it seemed natural for me to go back to my inner female and determine that these episodes were my version of a monthly cycle. I never shared that with anyone, it was my secret, but I did share some of this with a female friend who was very accepting and informed me that there were medical procedures to deal with what I described. I objected that I couldn't afford to run to Europe and she let me know that there were clinics in the US that dealt in these things. It was intriguing but the me that was living on a few hundred dollars a month could see no way to afford that kind of care so back in the secret locker everything went. 

It would be nice to say that I wasn't bothered anymore but that would be a lie. I would constantly be reminded of my situation. Married and with a child I would cry because I knew that I would be a better mother than my wife. Later with the birth of the internet and usenet I would discover more and in my 50's would try to breach the subject in therapy only to find my therapist didn't  really want to address it and still despite my age and learning quite passive about self care, I let it go and lived vicariously on line chatting with others, hearing their stories, and being sure I was right to stay in the closet as I heard of the exploitations, sex work and the fear of not passing that came with coming out.

But the dysphoria does not go away, it ebbs and flows and sometimes overflows even now in my late 70's So I see young people today expressing themselves and living their lives openly and often I am hit with jealousy instead of joy. Joy for them is what I know I should feel, I should finally just drop the pretense, but then my life is comfortable at last and I don't really waant to lose that comfort for a few moments of self expression.

So where does that leave us?

Growing up I frequently heard the statement, "Be a man." It made me wonder what was I then and what exactly was a man? I suppose it meant don't cry be tough and lead (another huh word), the truth was I did want to cry when I saw pain and hurtful activity. I did empathize with others and I secretly harbored a suspicion that a mistake had been made in my bodily makeup - The outie parts should have been innies. Somehow God had made a mistake and given me the wrong body parts. So there I was left to find out how to "be a man" when I didn't even feel like one.

And yes I did think about cross dressing, but when you are already 6 foot and 175-180  pounds at 14 well that didn't seem like a good idea. Indeed that idea of someone with a hormone poisoned body trying to pretend to pass as a woman ws never something that I could understand. I did understand, or so I thought, something else. I read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and encountered the notion of feelies. I envisioned myself sitting in a theater and being able to experience to feel as a woman does. It was exciting and liberating, it was also an incorrect reading as I discovered it was only emotional feeling like rage. Oh well.

Meanwhile back with my own feelings in the early to mid 1960's I kept my head down though I did read about Christie Jorgenson in Newsweek or US News  and later heard about Renee Richards.in the 70's  Those kinds of transformations seemed to require resources that I certainly did not have. So I went on and found myself making cinnamon rolls for the Campus activists and generally adopting a low key femininity. I did finally share my feelings with a friend in college. She informed me that one did not have to travel overseas anymore. Sex changes were available in the U.S. but of course it still took financial resources and a plan. I had neither.

If I had Caitlyn Jenner's money

 If I or anyone with long standing Gender issues had Caitlyn's money transition would be no big thing, but for those of us with out there are  years of testosterone poisoning to overcome. The truth is I could never transition and even come close to passing and I respect my feminine too much to be that clownish figure wearing a dress and obviously sending man in a dress vibes. 
For me years and years into hiding then not knowing how to come out without embarrassment and looking foolish, it is the woman inside me, the part that still guides the journey of life, that I honor and cherish. To try to transition awkwardly would not empower her or honor her not would it be anything but and affront to women I have loved and who have nurtured me. She lives in the quiet recesses of reality, she cries for the struggle of sisters everywhere even if those sisters would not recognize her. It does not matter. What matters is that the lives of women everywhere and their accomplishments and potential be recognized and celebrated.

I should probably at least use their them pronouns, but at 70 plus old habits cling and the thought of having to defend those pronouns just wears me out. 

The time for intervention is prepuberty or at worst early onset. In those cases there is hope in making a life that conforms and can be accepted without being a parody. Unless of course one has the resources to get the facial,voice box, hair and other surgeries required to come out of the chrysalis full formed like Caitlyn Jenner, and yet she then distances herself from her sisters pretends that her Republican friends don't want to erase who she is. It is enough to make one scream..

Pronouns: Why so difficult for older people? One person's answer

We hear you when you say my pronouns are . . . Some of us even recognize the freedom that you feel that you are getting in choosing your own. Some of us (many?) have wrestled with the same issues. So why do you get so much push back? It is really quite simple. After years of playing mind games with the little M F boxes on so many forms we have just given up and decided to go with the flow.

As a young teen I may have resented the changes occurring in my body. I was embarrassed and a little confused. I even thought that everyone else knew that I was not the gender that I was "supposed" to be. Walking I would ask myself, was my butt swaying and giving me away? Did I really feel like a "guy"? How was that supposed to be? What if I really was a woman? 

Then came Christine Jorgensen and the world changed. It was possible to change. That dream that I had of riding an escalator and arriving as a girl in the women's department of Kaufman's department store. That was a dream that fueled years of hope and anxiety. How does one change overnight? What do you tell your friends? Oh how deliciously wonderful and scary.

Premarital counseling brought out an odd fact that totally freaked out my fiancée . I scored higher on a feminine scale than she did. Then she noticed I liked my nails just a little longer than she thought were right for a man. She saw how I used my fingers, how despite their size they were the most obvious feminine part of me and as such something that was very dear and special. I did I hated the feel when they were trimmed back, it wasn't right. We did not last as a couple and I am pretty sure her eventual husband was a man's man who knew how to trim nails and didn't help out in the kitchen after meals with the relatives. (watch football? really?)

Meanwhile back in reality the boxes are still there to check. Years of wondering, experimenting, investigating. The Internet, actually something called the Usenet, beckoned. Suddenly there is private, anonymous contact with others. Of course some of those others were trolls, but some were not! How wonderful to be able to discuss those feelings, to explore the possibilities. Discovering that you actually know someone who had fully transitioned from Male to Female, but by then approaching 50 still wondering about those boxes but so used to clicking on the one assigned at birth. Then there is the realization that though my friend had made the transition, could I? Was the world ready for another 200 pound drag queen? My body ravaged by years of testosterone abuse was not such a pretty sight. The woman I knew would never be. 

Funny thing is that the boxes have ceased to be anything but a cause for reflection. Yes, it would have been nice to have acted on those feelings as a teenager, but as a 60-70 year old the memories of what could have been are sufficient. Life is too wonderful to have regrets and we have grown accustomed to our assigned life. Maybe next time God will get it right. And then the youth start with the questions, the demands to change and the age old dilemma of those who have been there and settled. You are upsetting our deal with ourselves. You are calling into question the decisions that we made based on the opportunities and options that we perceived in the past. And damn it you are calling on us to question ourselves. It is easier for many to act as if you are wrong than they. Forgive the gender distressed old people, you have put us back in high school, a place we never wanted to be.

In case you know me and didn't know

 It isn't personal. There is nothing to tell you right now. When and if the cancer spreads and I actually need treatment, you will know and if you are family you will know first. For now, No one reads this anyway :) fo you may still be the first to know!

Read the Doctor's Notes

 

I just took a few minutes to review my doctor’s notes in MyChart (online med records) Did she really say all of that? Honestly? My recollection of the discussion really boils down to “Cancer . . . cancer. You’ll be OK. Any questions? Great I’ll see you in 6 months.” When I read the notes I see all of these descriptions of treatments with side effects and so forth. Having read a lot on line already none of that seems new or strange, but did she really say that? Did I really hear it?

I am certain that there were two different experiences going on. One the professional who has memorized all of the required discussion material and gets it out as fast and fully as possible and then there is the patient who sits like a deer in the headlights. A third party might see the two operating without knowledge of the other, or they may see two individuals interacting appropriately. It doesn’t matter. I know she went over stuff and I know that I did not hear her nearly as well as she or I thought. So read the notes, be sure that you understand what the treatment options are and what the recommended plan is and then follow it.

How hard could that be? We as humans are capable of knowing and ignoring facts at the same time. I was working in a hospital ICU once when I heard a family member, a para medic at that, describing his wife's condition over the phone. I knew the situation and was impressed with his clinical and accurate description of the extremely critical condition. When he was through he assured the listener that "She's fighter, she's going to get better." All I could think was, did he not just describe a quadriplegic? How is she getting better? He knew her condition but he didn't comprehend her condition. Listen to the doctor, but allow the information to process, check it against some reality.

Dumb Luck is better than no luck at all

 So how did I get to a point that I was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer? There are damn few signs and those that are there aren't readily observed by the patient. It turns out that I was getting dissatisfied with the trends of BPH weak urine stream, going more often than I felt I should. Hardly a big deal in the scope of things but bothersome and it being winter in times of COVID-19 I probably could add general boredom and looking for an excuse to get out of the house. At any rate that is what put me in the office that day and why my doctor was giving me a little bit of "just why are you here today" when we got to the Digital Exam and her demeaner suddenly changed from he's and old guy who needs attention to OMG this is not a drill.

What I am trying to say is that regular checks are important. I had gotten a yearly health check as Medicare calls it just a month before and for whatever reason did not have the DRE. Why I do not know and I am certainly going to inquire. What I will say to anyone reading this is ASK FOR IT. Better a few moments of discomfort for early detection than finding out too late.