![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
becca_frost- May 16th, 12:45
I'm up in the Land of my Birth again, visiting my poor dear sick mother. Actually, she's not that sick anymore - just bored of being in hospital, mostly. Hopefully they'll let her out soon, but it depends of course on her being able to look after herself.
The good bit about coming up to visit is that I get a lot of time to sit on trains and think about things, which means that my private diary - oh yes, I keep one of those too - balloons in size. Every other Saturday, the entries go from almost nothing up to 800 words or more, as I sit on the train for an hour and a bit and make myself write about tough topics.
Today's was an interesting one: If I were 14 or 15 now, would I be looking to transition?
In a sense, it's an odd question to ask. After all, one thing that I'm very clear about is that I don't want to transition now. Although saying "I'm happy with myself as I am" would be bending the truth a little, I know that I don't have the kind of desperate yearning to be totally female which characterises virtually every transitioning transsexual I've met. The colloquial way that I'd put this is simple that "I'm happy having a cock". I don't look on my genitals as anything other that some bits capable of inducing fun when correctly applied.
So why does the question have relevance? To answer that, you have to rewind a bit. OK, actually quite a lot - I was sixteen in 1982, which gives you an idea of the era in which I grew up. Internet? Huh? Although I first used it only a few years later (when I went to college, just in time for the great switch from JANET addressing to IP addressing) when I was going that inevitable transition from boy to young man, the world was a very very different place.
I grew up in a medium-sized provincial town, which had one gay pub where "normal" people never went. As far as I was concerned, I was probably the only boy who liked dressing in girl's clothing in the whole town. Of course, I wasn't - but how on earth was I supposed to know that?
The only times you saw anyone genetically male wearing female attire, it was either Danny LaRue (god bless his sequins) or the comedy transvestism of the "Carry on..." films. Bernard Breslaw in a badly-fitting bra is not a role model designed to appeal to a young person growing up. In fact, the one thing that I remember of my experience of TVs on, erm, TV at the time is thinking quite clearly "I'm not like that. That's not what I am."
I was right - of course it wasn't. I was neither a camp entertainer nor a balding hairy giant in a too-tight nurse's uniform (although I did try the too-tight nurse's uniform, much later, and looked much better in it than Bernard).
So fast-forward, and imagine me, as I was then, but now. If that makes sense. I'd have the Internet on tap. I'd know that far from being the only tranny in town, there were hundreds of us. There's a local support group. Heck, the local constabulary even have a "Policy", a "respect agenda", yadda yadda yadda. In 1982, unless I could have persuaded them there was a "fancy dress" party, if I'd have ventured out dressed they'd have slung me in a cell with a drunken gay-basher.
I would, in other words, have found my community many many years before I actually did. In fact, in some senses, I still haven't found my community - apart from on LJ, much of the trans community I hang out with online is sex-focused, rather than being supportive. Or rather - a different kind of support!
And I think that I would probably have strongly considered transitioning as an option. I might have even pitched myself whole-heartedly into it, and ended up giving my siblings another sister - I was even more of a stubborn bitch then than I am now, and as anyone who knows me knows, if I really decide that I want to do something, I do it. Whether the system of counselling, evaluation and so on would have let me through the gate marked "transsexual" or decided that I really wasn't one, I don't know. I suspect that had I decided I wanted to transition, I would have been able to persuade any psychiatrist on the planet that it was the best route for me*.
But here's the thing: In a sense, I don't think it would have mattered whether I'd barged my way through that door or not. Transitioning would have changed my life, but I don't think I would have been any more or less happy in the end. The best moments of my life, the things that I've been lucky to do and have, the people I've been fortunate enough to know, don't revolve around my gender.
To give a small example: pretty-much since I was 16, the majority of my friends have been women. I've always been comfortable in the company of women, much more so than virtually any man I know. I've always been a good talker, but an equally good listener. As one of my lovely old friends (who later, to my amazement, became a wonderfully high-class escort!) told me "I love you, because I always feel like I can tell you anything." She's not the only one to have said that.
I've been more than lucky - I've been blessed. When I think of the life I have had... would experiencing it as a permanent member of the female half of the tribe have made it better? Yeah, it probably would. But I'm incredibly happy with what I've had. Asking for more wouldn't just be asking for the icing on the cake - it would be asking for the cake to be iced all over, when the cake itself has been almost too good to eat.
(* This isn't just an idle thought. When I was a teenager, I had massive problems with school, and managed to persuade a psychiatrist that I really shouldn't go any more. Now, when I look back on it, I suspect that the difficulty I had with school was really a deep struggle with the emerging male gender role that I was being dragged into... but that's another blog post.)
