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How many of ME are there? I ask this question because I've read several stories and comments of 'us girls' that separate our male and female selves. The most recent that comes to mind as an example is Nancy's excellent "A Different Kind of Courage." There Amanda is coming to terms with Lance Corporal Newly her alpha male protector.
We've all read some of the more outrageous theories about why we feel the way we do, but personally I've read little that addresses this almost split personality-like line between the role we present to the world, and the one we shelter in the privacy of our hearts. (Strange that this phenomenon is one where so many is telling the patient how they must feel, rather than truly listening to them.)
I came at this experience rather upside down and backwards than most. Although I sneaked into my mom's stuff as a kid, my family life gave me little privacy to explore. Then lack of prospects and other reasons after I finished school drove me into Uncle Sam's service which reduced that available privacy to absolutely zero. A long time escapee into sci-fi and fantasy lead me into Dungeons and Dragons and let me role-play out my feminine desires. Getting that feminine fix kept me sane through some very difficult times.
Losing that outlet eventually drew me into BCTS and after many, many years, dressing again. That is a novel in of itself but what is relevant about it is yesterday after dressing back down into drab, I started dinner for myself and my wife. While doing the normal chores of preparing our food, I was surprised to find myself doing things somewhat differently.
It wasn't so much as doing them in a feminine manner as performing them with a feminine attitude. Once I noticed it, like the mist, it quickly disappeared, but it certain has given me food for thought.
So my question for our writers and readers are there really two different personalities that is in conflict? Can we merge these two sometimes very different sides of ourselves into a true representation of our inner self? Is this something that is common?
hugs!
grover
PS: The whole multiple-personality angle thing is a little scary, but this seems to be different. It does makes me wonder! :)
Comments
Twins?
While the whole subject seems to beg to be phrased as two distinct people (and maybe there are, in some cases), that really is not the way I feel. At most it is a case of "the old me" vs. "the new me". The dividing line in any case is quite blurred as I wandered back and forth across the gender divide several times, and much of the time I was more or less asexual whether I was presenting as male or female. It helped that during much of this time I was in a college town where the last vestages of the hippie era were still hanging on.
It wasn't until I started spending time with my Norwegian family that I finally made the irrevocable decision. The day at the embassy when I applied for a new passport was crazy, and in retrospect I kinda wish I'd had a camera crew following me. "No, I don't need a renewal; and no, I hadn't let mine expire. There is just this little minor detail I need changed, if you'd just look at these documents . . ." The first woman I talked with kept saying "you can't do that" and I kept saying "but I have". After having had my old passport subject to intense scrutiny since it said I was male, and obviously wasn't (but I was, then), the whole day seemed like some strange dream or nightmare.
So, for me the answer is no, there were not two different personalities that needed to be merged, just one very ambiguous one. Strange days.
KJT
"Being a girl is wonderful and to torture someone into that would be like the exact opposite of what it's like. I don’t know how anyone could act that way." College Girl - poetheather
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Different Personalities?
I don't really think so, even though so many say that.
Having been through that, many times, and the real life test - though that's another story (It didn't work out for me, only because I discovered in time that it wasn't for me) I have to consider a lot of factors in this 'split personality' thing.
Now this is simply my own personal take on the thing. It isn't so much a split personality as facets of the same one.
True, the femme personna has in a lot of cases been either ignored or deliberately repressed. But all of it is an expression of one central personality.
The femme part may have been either ignored or actively suppressed, but it isn't anything at all like the classic 'split personality'.
The thing here is with most of us, that feminine part of our personalities is something we've actively worked at to hide for most of our lives. Thus the 'split personality' trope there. And to be honest, finally acknowledging that part of ourselves is like letting a completely new person show herself in what we do. So thinking and feeling that it is a distinctly different personality when that happens isn't all that uncommon.
The thing to keep in mind here is that even when the female persona does seem to be distinctly different, it is still part of you. Admittedly a part that has been actively suppressed that is now able to stretch out and actually interact with outside stuff.
Also, considering something like that as a separate personality is a defense mechanism we all tend to use at times. Just to keep ourselves sane.
So I'm not condemning the idea, or practice at all. I understand it all too well.
There is nothing wrong with it, or with using it. Letting that part of ourselves out is more often than not a true benefit healthwise and with our personal interactions with others. So my end take on that is -- Good for You! You've finally let her out to walk around and breathe.
That can't be a bad thing, can it?
Call it what you will, describe it in any way that makes you comfortable, but take what it gives you. Your lives will be so much richer for it.
Okay, my soapbox just collapsed, so I'll quit now. lol.
My Experience
We all have one body, one brain, one mind. We're all self-contained in a single package. So the only thing to consider is how we divide up that package. However it's divided, it's still one package. It's still you.
I've suppressed my feminine nature for most of my life. It was always there but I wouldn't let it express itself. I don't think that makes it a split personality.
Now that I've embraced my femininity, I'm trying to find a place for it in my life. I want balance, not domination of masculine or feminine. I want to take the best of both worlds and move beyond the polarization and bickering of "us" versus "them".
The main problem I have is dealing with my more primitive aspects. Fear and aggression war with curiosity and compassion. I find some aspects of myself to be mutually exclusive and end up swinging back and forth to accommodate them all.
Parts of my masculinity are incompatible with my femininity so I switch back and forth, and I give the two parts nicknames. My masculine self is named Wolfie and my feminine self is named Sprite. They are two very different parts of my personality but I wouldn't call them separate personalities. They interact and get along. Sprite keeps Wolfie on a tight leash when it comes to harassing small animals (heh) and Wolfie keeps Sprite on a tight leash to keep her from trying to buy out the stores. My parts all work together to create a complicated but single being: me. :)
I hope that helps.
Hug
- Terry
In my case - over the decades ...
I've hidden/suppressed Annette... And, it made thigns easier to do that, when I referred to the real me (Annette) and the public me as different people.
That said, I've recently discovered that my "hiding" was less successful than I thought... There's some correlation between times when Annette was most suppressed and I was most "distant" and the reverse, the closer to the surface I allowed me to get, the more open and affectionate and all...
So, I don't know whether the split reference helps or not... In some ways, thinking about myself that was helped me to burry this aspect of my personality (despite some, at the time, unrecognized side losses). At this point in time... I have no intention to ever let this side of me be supressed again. I'd rather be a complete person, than half a person. (Which means I have to accept the public face I've presented as well, and come to terms with that and what the result will be.)
I wish you luck.
Annette
P.S. I'm not ashamed of my male persona - it just isn't ME in most important ways.
Perfectly Normal
for people who are in early transition of TS folks. You want to explore the forbidden part of yourselves after so long suppressing that side that you ruthlessly delineate what is 'girl' vs 'boy'.
Once you figure out which is which, then you are free to traipse across the gender stereotypes as much as you want. I recently read a nice little young adult level book by Meg Cabot 'All American Girl'. In it the protagonist, Samantha, attends art class for the first time, and there she has to learn to draw what you see and not what you know. Learning a woman's role is kinda like that. Along the way you make mistakes.
Also, for people who has this fantasy of what a woman's behavior is like or what her life is about, will write stories that will not draw a person in as these stories tend to be banal or not to mention, weird.
Anyway, for those who are TS with no women role models to learn from, this process will take longer. Other folks never resolve within themselves what being a women means and as a result, struggles.
These folks find more comfort in a system that rigidly imposes their definition of what woman's roles are on women because then you do not need to confront the 'non-womanly' aspects of themselves. I can see why there are women who see an Islamic society as being alluring as the boundaries are so much rigid in that system as to what women can do or think.
Ultimately, a well transitioned TS will have their male/female aspects in balance and integrated in a WOMAN"S body.
Kim
Intertwining the genders
I spent many years knowing I was female, yet society around me wanted me to be male. In 1996 I had a new therapist who suggested instead of having split personalities (my conception) I needed to blend everything into one.
Strong order for a people pleaser. I went through angst, fear of ridicule, and isolation before i realized that I can be one whole person. I learned not to be ashamed of my femininity.
In 2006 I went to a class and discovered being me is essential to my not being depressed.
I now present as a female on a daily basis. so I can tune up a car. change the oil and tires. I can also sew, cook and do my own hair and make up. I have no male attire, so I wear blue jeans and a sweatshirt when working on my car. I can build things out of wood and yet cry at a sad movie. I'm a woman, but I am a woman that can do things for herself (if need be) I find letting guys do their thing to bolster their ego.
Jill Micayla
May you have a wonderful today and a better tomorrow
Jill Micayla
Be kinder than necessary,Because everyone you meet
Is fighting some kind of battle.