My Place
If you would have told me five three years ago,
That there would be moments,
Times,
Where I would be socializing,
Interacting with people,
The world,
Living life,
And absolutely, kompletely forgetting My Function,
I imagine I would have said something like “I wish ! “
Yet here,
Today …
At times,
I can honestly say that particular wish has come true.
It’s really an incredibly great, kickbutt feeling.
Though the reason I know it’s an incredibly great, kickbutt feeling …
Is because at some point,
I’m always subsequently reminded of My Function .
Which usually makes me appreciate what an incredibly great, kickbutt feeling I had been experiencing,
Now don’t get me wrong,
It’s not like being reminded of My Function is necessarily a bad experience,
It’s not …
My Function and I are on really great terms with one another,
And neither of us are the least bit bothered or embarrassed by the other.
(Ahem, well, apparently it’s more accurate to simply state that I’m not the least bit bothered or embarrassed by My Function. My Function wants to speak for itself later. 🙂 )
Also note,
That being reminded on My Function is totally different than experiencing gender dysphoria.
That latter, of course, being what one aims to dissipate by dealing with their Function in the first place.
And for me,
That was a complete success.
Gender Dysphoria BeGone – Apply directly to head. Gender Dysphoria BeGone – Apply directly to head. Gender Dysphoria BeGone – Apply directly to head.
Seriously, for those Viewers that have never had to deal with gender dysphoria, be glad … it sucks. And for those of you that have to deal with gender dysphoria, *hug* … I know how it sucks.
But back to the winding road leading to the point of this point …
In this particular instance,
I’m simply talking about being reminded of My Function,
And …
In a very specific, extremely rare type of instance:
First, being reminded of My Function from a friend or friends;
Second, the friend or friends are aware of My Function; and,
Third, the friend or friends have absolutely no problem with My Function, meaning that in such situations I’m usually reminded of My Function indirectly and unintentionally from my friend or friends.
Confused yet?
Yeah, I don’t blame ya, me too.
I’m still trying to sort out the experience myself,
Hence this post.
Amyways,
I’ll try to klarify:
Sometimes this whole sex change thing really feels incredibly Twilight Zone-ish,
Especially since I’ve transitioned and stayed around my hometown,
It’s as if I’ve went to a parallel universe where everything is the same,
Except I’m a girl.
Which is great,
Right?
Exactly what I wanted,
Right?
Well,
It is,
Phreaking really great ! 🙂
But at times …
Where the aforementioned elements are present,
I find myself experiencing what I call a My Place moment.
A sort of deja vu feeling,
Where I get caught off guard finding myself treated differently,
By people I wouldn’t expect to be treating me differently …
Solely because I’m a girl.
I’m put in “My Place”.
Now I’m not talking about inclusion or exclusion of group outings, events or anything like that,
I’m talking about interactions between people that in many ways is based on perceived societal placement,
Status.
Now as a woman,
I’m used to it in many ways,
And have no gripes about it …
It is what it is,
Just comes with the territory.
But in My Place moments,
It’s an utter mindphuck, hiccup.
Because for me,
From my perspective,
In those situations where I’m really comfortable around folks of past,
Nothing has really changed visually when I’m hanging out with them.
They appear the way they have always appeared.
And since I’m really not looking at myself,
I’m not visually aware of of my changes,
Making it easy for me to forget anything has changed,
Just be comfortable,
And lulling myself to a point where I expect to receive the same type of social respect, treatment …
I received before.
That is …
Until I’m put in My Place . 🙂
It’s usually nothing major by any means,
Sometimes it’s simply a guy talking to me like I don’t know what I’m talking about, doing the “Are you sure about that? ” thing that guys do to women all the time, implying we’re stupid. Something they don’t do to men;
Sometimes it’s overhearing a mean spirited, catty comment about me shot from another woman; and,
Sometimes it’s just being relegated to subservient tasks and omitted from tasks I would just have expected to be ask for assistance.
I’ll be the first to admit,
It always catches me off guard,
Sometimes feels like a cold slap in the face, and …
Occasionally hurts my feelings.
But personally,
I think it’s a great thing to experience.
It’s reflective of complete acceptance,
At least on a subconscious level,
By the friend and friends.
It’s just that because I hung out in the parallel universe before …
I’m able to notice the difference in this one.
I’m definitely adding it to my list of things that I think are pretty kewl about having a Function.
Though just for the record,
It’s still not as great a thing as being able to drink all night on five bucks ! 🙂
Hi Amy
Got a question for ya. In any situation you may find yourself and someone local to you shouts out your old name “hey Joe” quite innocently maybe addressing another person entirely, does that get any response from you now. Maybe turns your head or something. I have been full time for only 10 months but I feel I’ll never get rid of that automatic flinch response.
Still luvya
K
Were you intentionally going for the blonde stereotype with your answer to number one???
*gearing up for an ass-kicking*
*giggles*
“…plum based Czech whiskey”?
No poppy seed pasteries?
Well AmyLeigh, If I do a thorough answering of your questions before answering the rest of my Question 8 Press Conference questions, Shelby and Tara will kick my living ass … so I’ll roll these to the end of the Press Conference questions, but in the meantime, I’ll give some short answers:
1. For me, it’s just so much easier being myself. I don’t think about being me, when I was a guy, I was always having to think … what would a guy do in this situation? As me, I don’t have to think … (I left that open ended there for those of you who want to snark out on it. 🙂 )
2. I realize now just how much smarter women are compared to men.
3. Ummm, that’s a hard one for me to answer. I’m not sure if I feel sharper, quicker, capable of multi-tasking effectively because I’m no longer fighting the gender dysphoria every waking moment of the day, if it’s because of an impact my estrogen may have on me, or if it’s because of the elimination for the most part of the testoserone in my system so that I’m no longer thinking about sex every second of the day like guys do. I always explain to my girlfriends that ask … guys really can do more than one thing at once, because regardless of what they are doing, they are thinking about sex … if they are watching television, they are watching television and thinking about sex; if they are working the remote control, they are working the remote control and thinking about sex … if they are walking aimlessly, they are walking aimlessly and thinking about sex. We really need to give them a break sometimes because they do multitask in that sense.
4.My upper body strength. I knew that with the loss of testosterone I would lose upper body strength, but I really wasn’t prepare for how much. Grocery bags can really be heavy now … I am fairly weak and didn’t expect it to be the case. It’s a good thing I’m a Jedi.
5.At one of our recent family gatherings, my Uncle Dave made a very astute observation … “Geezuz girl, a lot with you may have changed, but your appetite sure as hell hasn’t. What is that, you’re fourth burger?” (Now just for the record, it was only my third burger, though I also had a brats, so he wasn’t far off). Apparently my appetite hasn’t changed.
Then moments after making that observation, I did a shot of whiskey with my Uncle Dave, Uncle Don, cousin Kermitt, cousin Connie, Baby Brother and cousin Marsha … so that hasn’t changed either.
But actually, I didn’t expect neither my appetite or appreciation of moderately priced Canadian whiskey or plum based Czech whiskey to change,
But I did fear that my great times with my family would change, though as you can tell … not only didn’t they change, if anything and if at all possible, they got better. My family, all of them, phreaking rocks !
Having seen both sides how bout answering the million dollar questions for all us wannabe chickens.
1. How is living as a woman different from living as a man.
2. How is being a woman different from being a man.
3. Does your mind work differently after years of hormones and how.
4. What changed you didn’t expect to change.
5. What didn’t change that you expected to change.
Hurt’s so good, don’it? 🙂
Creeps up on you at the oddest times I agree. An example from my life is when I’m at the mechanic’s and he’s giving me the LOONNNGGGG trying to ‘splain this to the girl version of what’s wrong with the car (like I care, just fix it, pleaz!) … or maybe its just to keep the cute chic hangin’ round for awhile, hmmmm (yeah, I’m goin’ with that one!).
Hug,
Stella
Does that happen often? or only when you’re drinking Coors Lite?? 🙂
Yeah, but who says I’m wearing any panties ! It’s darn hot out, ya know !!! 🙂 *snicker* *snicker*
…sounds like “deja vu”…with a panty-twist…
Well how do you like that … apparently even the editor gets their html stripped out of comments. That’s bantha nuggets. I’ll take care of that for me and ya’ll right now. 🙂
Yeah Marcia, I’ve struggled with this post, because I clearly haven’t made myself … clear. 🙂 It was a challenging one to spew out as it’s such a rare and isolated setting.
It’s not really referencing the differences between boy and girl treatment, I think I’m a bit more cognizant of it than most natals, ’cause I’ve seen both sides now, but it’s nbd and I really don’t think about it, if anything the fact that it’s nbd and I really don’t think about it just confirms to me in some ways this was totally the right thing for me to do.
If anything, what I’m trying to describe I think is a more advanced form of this post from a past episode. 🙂 And it’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing, it’s just a weird feeling thing. Thing. 🙂
I’ll do my best on that Amy. It’s gonna have to be early June as my Mom and brother are off to Europe for four weeks on June 26th. I get a new face, they get to go to Europe. Also, I find out next Wednesday if I will have a job after this year. The school district now knows my identity and we have a meeting to find out the plan, whether they will work with me or not. I’m scared to death but read to move on with all of this. So, maybe you can do one of those Jedi Mind Tricks of yours and tell them I’m not the teacher they want to get rid of.
Aims-
It seems like I remember a post you did a long time ago, when your function was just sinking in with your Mom, that she told you that sometimes being a woman was not such a great deal, and if I remember correctly, it was just this sort of stuff she was talking about . . . not being taken seriously, etc. My head went straight back to that post as I was reading this one (which is a totally cool post-very self-aware)
Part of me is a sad for the mistreatment, another part of me is not sad because it tells me you have arrived, you’re no longer in the midst of transition, you’re being treated like everyone else. Not that that behavior is acceptable and should not be changed, but that you arrived.
Nice to hear from you again-stay cool.
Marcia
Yeah, yeah, yeah … picking on my poor Coors Light !!! 🙂
Congrats on making the decision … your year will go faster than you can imagine and soon you’ll be totally phreaking out !!! 🙂 Hey … try to talk your mom into picking a date around next year’s Be-All Convention so I can hang out with you the Sunday afterwards hungover like I did with Stella, Shaunna and Erin this year !!! It was a hoot !!! 🙂
It’s a fine distinction, Shelby, I’d say it does hurt, but that I’m not hurt … if that makes any sense. 🙂 It’s just one of the consequences of sticking around here and this post describe a very rare type of occurrence … occasions where Joe’s life and my life overlap. I consider myself very lucky to have such overlaps and it’s a credit to so many of the great people in my life.
Though bear in mind, I’m not talking about making reference to My Function either, I love it that I have friends that are comfortable enough with me and My Function to make a timely, and as discrete as possible/necessary, comment when one is totally available … you gotta be able to laugh, heck, I take advantage of those opportunities whenever I can … but what I’m talking about are those times when I’m asked to help out in one particular way, but in another instance where Joe would have been asked for assistance, I’m not. It’s not so much Function related in the sense that I’m not asked for assistance in the later because of My Function, it’s chica related, I’m not asked because I’m a girl. That’s a good thing. And I don’t even notice that type of thing 98% of my life because most of my life is with people I didn’t have that type of friendship with in the past, so I don’t have any benchmark in how I’d have been treated before.
Holy Krap, Just when I had about given up on the Happy Fathers Day Blog, back she comes. We missed you girl. I like the reference to the stupid commercial which I have only seen on YouTube (Thank God). As for the rest of your post, well, I hope I can get there one day too. I always suspected there will come I time when life will return to normal, but right now I just don’t see it in my future, but I know it will come. It’s always good to find Your Own Place in the World and I couldn’t be happier for you.
I imagine drinking all night on five bucks is pretty damn cool. Of course, when you were buying your own Coors Lite it still didn’t cost much more than that. (Sorry, I had to rag on the Coors)
On a side note, you’ll be happy to know I have settled on Dr. Z and next week I am sitting down with Mom to find a date in early June of 2007. Since she’s picking up most of the tab and is my caretaker she gets some say in that. He quoted me $28,600 for the works.
Ok, what gives, what happened, I completely understand, but you still seem to be hurt.