Wednesday, 14 July 2010

Introductions and Background Stuff Part One

There a good chance if you are reading this you already know me, but just in case this becomes the hottest blog since umm... something. I shall introduce myself.

My name is Joe, well at least for now, that will change to Josie or Josephine in good time. As you've probably guessed I'm a guy who wants to be a girl, because you know that the cool thing to do these days right? In all seriousness though this is not something I've suddenly just decided to do, nor is it something I WANT to do. It's something I HAVE to do. I reached a point in my life just over 2 years ago shortly before my 30th birthday, where I realised things just couldn't carry on like they were or quite simply I'd be dead by now.

For me this means I need to feel comfortable in my own skin, which obviously means I intend to have surgery as soon as possible, which won't be soon at all but hey-ho. I don't really care about what people call me, or if they use the correct pronouns to address me. Although it would be nice if I am treated as a normal person, and not a total freak. It's unlikely to happen that way I'm sure I will face a certain amount prejudice and discrimination once I start transitioning because to be honest I am far from being a good looking man, so I'm not going to make an attractive woman. Although hopefully in time I will afford facial surgery which will help a lot.

So how do I know I should have been born female and not male? Well it's hard to explain because I've always known and so my memories are quite sketchy. My first recollection of something being not quite right was sometime shortly before I started school. I had a colouring book and on the cover was a little girl with long hair, wearing a yellow rain coat and carrying an umbrella. I was so fucking jealous of her, and I used to spend hours looking at that book and wishing I was her. Yes I know it was drawing, but I was about 4 OK? Now at that point I obviously knew boys and girls were different but I had no idea how, I didn't know the physical differences.

So my childhood? Well it wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs and I didn't have a wonderful perfect family like the Walton’s or something but it could have been worse. I have 3 sisters and a brother who are all much older than me 12+ years older in fact. I have never really felt able to turn to my family for help with this, we've never been a close unit that have shared our problems and talked about our feeligs or anything like that. So yes for a very long time I felt alone and confused. I was born with cerebral palsy which didn't help as I wasn't able to play the usual rough and tumble games kids play either so again I felt isolated from other children. Of course because I couldn't play rough games, I often ended up playing with the girls, which I enjoyed. I not really sure what happened but by the time I left the infants, this seemed to have been picked up on and I was discouraged and possibly even chastised for doing this and it was made clear I should play with the other boys and not the girls. No seriously, I can't remember most of this, but one thing I do remember, was one last day of term when you could take toys in. I took a plush bear in which was also a puppet(yes hand up the bum kind) and I was happily playing with some girls who had brought dolls and things in, and I remember the teacher taking it off me and making me go and play with the boys. I think that was the point where things became more confusing for me and I tried to suppress doing what I wanted in favour of doing what society said I should because I didn't want to get in trouble or be shouted at. I still didn't really know anything about how the genders were different. To me girls just wore different clothes, had long hair and played with different toys, but I had no idea why nor did I know why I connected better with them.

So I stumbled through junior school, not really knowing what these feelings were or why I had them. I'm not sure if at any point I ever did that 'LOL cute, I want to be a girl' thing that lots of kids do because they have vivid imaginations and it's just like saying I want to be a cat or something like that. I don't think I ever wanted girl’s toys, but that could have been because it was drummed into me by TV and everybody else. You are a boy you don't like My Little Pony, you like He-Man admittedly cartoon wise I watched both. I had He-Man and Thundercats toys but a lot of my favourite toys were the gender neutral ones. Board games, fuzzy felts playdough and Lego. I did have a Care Bear but of course I had Bedtime bear the one it was acceptable for boys to have, because it was blue and the TV advert had a boy with one.

Obviously next came high school, puberty and the realisation thinga were wrong. During puberty I began to resent and hate my body. I really neglected myself, and never received encouragement from my parents to sort myself out this just made thing worse and one of my regrets. I put on a lot of weight, and hardly cleaned my teeth and as the years passed I became too scared to see a dentist so my teeth are fucking horrible. Another thing on the list of things I need to face and overcome. A lot of my early teen years I don't remember much about. Yes I discovered wanking like any normal boy, but not in a normal way. I used to rub myself with my duvet while fantasising about being or turning into a girl. Basically if you name an attractive female character from a cartoon or TV show in the late 80s or early 90s chances are I've fantasised about being her.

During this time I first learned that changing gender was possible, but was frowned upon and ridiculed by society. Also I didn't relate to the people on the documentaries on TV. They were all old (at that time to me 45+ was old), and unfortunately didn't look much like women either, they were more made to be seen as objects of curiosity and ridicule. So I just carried on thinking thing would sort themselves out eventually and sooner or later I'd just be happy being male.

I don't really know how to describe my sexuality at this point. I certainly wasn't attracted to boys, but I didn’t really want to be WITH a girl either I just wanted to BE one. Eventually in my last year of high school I became very close to a girl and we started going out, for whatever that meant. I just really liked her company. Little did I know that this would become one of the most important relationships I would form with anybody in my life.

That’s it for now. It’s already tl;dr.

3 comments:

  1. You're so brave for writing this, I'm proud of you :) x

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  2. hey - well done on yet another big step xxxx

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  3. Love it hun, I think we had quite a lot in common growing up :) x

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