TG to Me
by Maeryn Lamonte
It's one year to the day since I published my first story on BCTS. By way of celebration, here's something a little different from my usual fare, also in response to one of the Melanie Ezell challenges (Who I am). So I went a little over the word limit on this one. Frankly my dears, I don't give a sh... hang on, that's not right... It is a bit of a disjointed ramble this, but I hope it sparks off a few ideas. Please remember in reading it that it is never my intention to be hurtful, and if there is anything in this offering that rubs raw, please accept my apologies and assurance that I never meant it that way. |
When I was very young, I used to play dress up games with my brother. No harm in it, all perfectly innocent. Mum gave us a couple of her old dresses and we'd wander around the house pretending to be ladies. My brother would probably kill me if he knew I was telling you this, but then you see he grew out of it. I didn't.
I won't go into details, but sometime in my tweens I started cross dressing. I'm not sure I remember why I did it the first time, but I think it may have been because I was bored. The thing is, the moment I did, something seemed to click into place. It seemed right in an oddly wrong sort of way.
From that moment on I entered into the whole emotional caterpillar ride. Ups and downs, no understanding of where the whole thing was taking me, wanting, needing desperately, to indulge the girly side of me, then feeling hopelessly guilty and depressed about being a freak afterwards. And always somewhere in there, that doomed romantic's hope of change, of metamorphosis.
One of the harshest things I remember is having to deal with it on my own. It's not exactly something you can share easily, even within family. “Mum, I like to dress up in girls clothes” or “Mum I want to be a girl”. Not your typical conversation starters are they? That may be why I got caught, possibly because deep down under all the fear and guilt I wanted to be caught, wanted someone else to know, to help me figure out what I was doing and why.
It didn't work out that way though. There are aspects of life which many people don't want to be real. Death, debilitating illness, starving children in Africa, having a homosexual or transwhatevered person in the family. A great many deal with these issues by pretending that they don't exist, by counting on the really low probability that any such thing will affect them and ignoring that such things go on. The problem is, denial works most of the time. The bigger problem is when something that you are denying jumps out of the closet and goes boo, you are utterly unprepared to deal with it. So it was that the few times I was caught, I was confronted with a look of shock and horror and slugs and snails and what the hell are they doing wearing a dress? Then denial kicked in, the person in question backed out of the room and somehow the subject was never raised again.
Later in life, when my faith really caught fire, I fought with everything I had to deny this part of me. The Bible doesn't have a lot to say about the matter. Just one verse in Deuteronomy which seems pretty black and white and condemning, and I took it as such for a long while. Guilt piled in every time I gave into my demons (no I don't mean literal demons, though who knows...?) and I continued to struggle. I tried sharing my secret with a few friends. People I thought I could trust not to spread it about. People I thought I could count on to help me face this thing. None of them did very well with the latter, but they were at least kind enough to live up to my expectations for the former. Things didn't get better, but at least they didn't get worse.
Then there were the girlfriends. Not many, but a few, where the relationship got serious enough that desire not to keep secrets overcame fear of the response. Of all the girls I told, I never found one who understood, or was prepared to try. Not even my wife. I get the feeling that women feel threatened by men who have a girly side, at least the ones I tried to talk to about it did. It's like I was invading their territory. “Why don't you just go back to being a man leave the girling to us?“
And so they passed., bright moments of hope of finding someone with whom to share, but then the spark would die leaving me back in the dark. Struggling all the time to fit in with the people I loved who couldn't face the idea that I had this thing about me — this thing they didn't want to believe existed. Struggling not to give in to those ever growing desires. Struggling to deal with the guilt when I ultimately failed. One thing I learnt over and over about skirts and dresses: a moment on the hips, a lifetime full of guilt trips.
It might have gone on like that for all my life had things not turned completely sour. In the space of a very short time, I lost almost everything that mattered to me. What happened had nothing to do with my gender issues, but that didn't affect the outcome, I still hit rock bottom.
Clouds and silvery linings though. A bit tarnished in this case, but I did gain a few things from the whole crash and burn thing. First, it seemed that no matter how hard struggling with my gender confusion was, life had new and imaginative ways of becoming a whole lot worse. Second, when you hit the rocks so hard you end up digging into them, you realise that going down the rabbit hole is unlikely to make things significantly worse, so why the hell not? Third, I realised I had spare time to go with the inclination, and so set out on a voyage of exploration.
It wasn't that I chose then to come out into the open or anything like that. By that stage in my life, putting me in a dress would truly have been dressing mutton up as lamb. I cared too much for my family and friends to inflict that on them and the world. No my exploration was internal. Research, thought experiments, questions asked of myself and answered.
“So,” I asked myself, “do you want to be a woman? I mean if you could have the whole kit and caboodle, would you?”
“Hell yeah! Well... maybe. Actually, can I think about that?”
I did a pros and cons analysis:
Up side: Pretty clothes, jewellery, long hair, getting to look and smell attractive. Getting to be friends with lots of other women without feeling self-conscious. Not having to worry about whether girls you're not attracted to might get the wrong idea, or that girls you are attracted to might give you the brush you off. Did I mention pretty dresses? Not having to drink copious quantities of alcohol, or be interested in sports just to fit in. Childbirth and motherhood.
Down side: Periods, PMT, Menopause, loss of physical beauty to old age. Pains of childbirth, stinky nappies, looking after kids, cleaning and cooking, dealing with the arrogance and indifference of men. Glass ceiling, patriarchal attitudes in the workplace. Loss of physical strength, awareness of vulnerability.
I know there's some stereotyping in there and, short of miracles, magic or mad science, quite a few things I could never have in the real world. Even so, the lists about balanced out when matching how much each one would affect me. In the end I concluded that I would accept the change, if it were offered, if it were complete. The approximation that medical science can provide with hormones and surgery would never be enough for me. I began to realise I wasn't a woman in a man's body to use the buzz phrase of the transgendered. I suspected that I would have been happier as a woman, but I was pretty sure that even as a woman I would want a bit of guy time
“So is it the clothes then?” I asked the second question. Was this just a fetish?
“Well, I guess maybe, in a way. They're soft and comfortable and beautiful and erotic. They make me feel different. Like I can relax and be myself, like I can be softer inside too. They also get me aroused and when I allow that arousal to run its natural course, the old guilt train comes trundling along leaving me with a sense that I've abused the whole thing, sullied the femininity of the moment, tarnished its purity (if purity works here). So no, it's not just an erotic thing. What eroticism there is actually detracts from the main thing it gives me. It's like there's two of us inside here; a guy and a girl. It's like the girl wants to get out, and the clothes give her a way of feeling real, of expressing herself. She doesn't want to stay out for ever, but she does need to a place in this life too.”
But what does that mean?
What exactly is the difference between a man and a woman? Ok there's the obvious physical bit, but it goes deeper as well. I needed to dig down, to understand exactly what was the difference between Protestants and Catholics (old joke, you see there were these two kids playing together in a tree house. A girl from a Catholic family and a boy from a Protestant one. The girl persuades the boy that they should get undressed, and when she sees what's between his legs she says, “So that's the difference...”).
Before you read on, please accept that the following as largely speculation and generalisation. It doesn't apply to everyone, not now not back then. It's a thought experiment, a following of trails in the wilderness, where the tracks fade in places. There may be truth in where I go with it and there may not. It is intended to prompt thought rather than dictate the way things are, and I would be so interested to hear your thoughts.
I started with evolution — Ok I may be preaching to the choir here (ironical metaphor) but evolution, as Darwin described it, does work. There is variation within species which leads to adaptation. How and whether the theory can be extended to explain how one species changes into another is a bigger argument and one for another time. As a mechanism for change within a species though, evolution works.
Let's take a stroll back in time to a point in human (pre)history when the two sexes were considerably more alike. A time when we lived in the trees. A time when we adapted to have opposing thumbs for grasping branches, forward facing eyes for binocular vision and large brains for judging distances, angles and the amount of muscle necessary to jump from one branch to another. A time when the outward differences between male and female were hard to see, unless you knew where to look for them, and the inward ones were likewise small.
Then something happened. Climate change, new predators in the neighbourhood, whatever. Our ancestors were forced out of the trees to start a nomadic life in open country. Adaptation changed our feet so they were better at walking than holding branches, our bodies so that we could stand upright (probably above the long grass), our tails until they were almost non-existent, shrunken stubs, no longer tripping us up.
The new environment, without branches to jump between, left our brains with little or nothing to do, and they most likely reacted by generating hormones to give us that niggling feeling of boredom. To counter it, we started picking up rocks and sticks and soon found that they could be used as tools and weapons. Our brains found new outlets in construction, communication and creative cruelty and started to grow again.
The brain became a major factor in our species, not only helping us to survive, but flourish. There was a problem though. The brain got bigger, but the hole it came out of didn't. We had to adapt further. Specifically the females in our species had to adapt.
Babies did their bit by not fusing the plates of their skulls until after birth, so they could squish all that grey matter through a ten centimetre diameter hole. The change in the women was more dramatic. Broadening hips for (slightly) easier childbirth, loss of muscle-tone and increased suppleness — more stretchiness if you will. As the brain grew in size, women had to adapt by allowing themselves to become physically weaker and accepting times of extreme vulnerability in their lives. They also had to accept longer periods of dependence from their children as the bigger brain took longer to figure out what it was for.
This resulted in social evolution too. Women couldn't protect themselves so readily as individuals, so took to banding together, supporting one another in times of weakness and vulnerability and accepting the same support in their own turn. Collaboration became a far stronger survival trait for women than competition.
Men carried on with their simple competitive ways, scrapping to find out who was the biggest, strongest, fastest, most accurate, cleverest, etc, then putting together a pecking order to reflect this. To live as a man meant stomping on anyone beneath you who challenged your position, whilst at the same time trying to climb higher up the social ladder, avoid the the stomping feet above you as you went. With an established pecking order it was possible to work together for a common aims like building a camp or killing a mammoth, but in the end the general rule for living was still “look after number one and try to be top dog”, because when it came to women, top dog got to choose first.
Women found things less simple. Having discovered the need for interdependence, open competition was no longer an option, instead they adopted a far more passive role in courtship. They would make themselves as attractive as possible, use nature and their own ingenuity to enhance, not only their own beauty, but that of each other. In that way they would be able to avoid fighting each other, whilst at the same time enhancing the cooperation and interdependence they were nurturing within themselves. As the men made their choices, time and generations would ensure that their offspring would become more attractive. It would seem that each of them had an even chance (ok, some more even than others), so in the end those chosen by the best of the men would have done nothing overt to put themselves above the rest. If they did, jealousy and anger would drive them from the rest of the women's groups to survive or not on their own, so over time evolution would ensure that only those who played fair and worked together would survive. With the choice being totally (or nearly so) that of the men, each woman could argue that it wasn't her fault that she had been chosen, and the essential supportive bond that strengthened them as a group would survive.
It was s a weird solution, as is usually the case when the fix evolves rather than is designed, and it didn't always run smoothly. There were always those who bent the rules, played the system, but for the majority who accept the new order, it worked.
So there you have it. Mental and emotional differences between men and women, derived from a few random thoughts. There's a little genuine evidence in there, but a lot of half baked speculation. Some of it is right, most of it probably drifts off track somewhere along the line, but in an nutshell it gives some degree of explanation as a general rule:
Why men are competitive, aggressive, bold, take what they want and fight for it if need be. Why they establish a hierarchy of worth and keep on batting at each other to ensure the right guy is at the top. Why the constant competition leaves them with wary relationships with each other, which only slowly build in trust, and very rarely reach any level of completeness.
Why women are collaborative, supportive, passive. Look after each other, protect other each from predators, both animal and human, by banding together in groups. Why they work together for the welfare of all and the protection of everyone's children, each individual helping the others to be the best they can be and letting the men take the lead, make the decisions.
So why do men make the choices they do? Well they are largely visual creatures, so tend to be attracted to what looks good. And what does look good to a man, or a woman for that matter? A mixture of attributes:
Physical body — small, slender, soft skin, large eyes, full lips. All signs of classical beauty; all features which are prominent in young children. The physical adaptation of the female form to be more attractive to men was and is largely to do with delaying the onset of age. There are also the gentle curves of breasts, waist, hips, calves, all mirroring some of nature's own attempts at beauty.
Physical enhancements — Look around at the world. There are things in nature that are designed to be attractive. Beauty that draws the attention of others, both in and outside of a species. Flowers have their vibrant colours, delicate and intricate patterns, soft textures, tantalising fragrances. All intended to attract birds and insects. Butterflies have elaborate designs in their wings, birds with iridescent and multi-hued plumage. All the basis for the embellishment of clothing, jewellery, body paint, hair design.
Skills — For those not fortunate enough to possess physical beauty, even when enhanced, there are still those things a woman can do that are pleasing to men. Cooking, sewing, more recreational/intimate skills perhaps.
Thousands of years have passed, but the basic instincts still seem to be there. The tendencies are hard-wired into us now. We can see them in the difference in the structure of men's and women's brains. Women have more developed speech centres, a more natural instinct towards making themselves and their surroundings beautiful, a natural tendency to stick together, to protect themselves and their children. Men are generally more aggressive, more self reliant, more goal focused.
And how does the hard-wiring get in there? Like everything else, it starts off with the genes which dictate how much of which hormone will be made and when, how readily our brains, or even our bodies, take up the different hormones. There are many ways that genetic variation can affect the sexual development of an individual. Overlooking, for now, the ones that cause physical inter-sexing, there have been studies that show this at more subtle levels.
In 2008, a group of Australian doctors made a genetic study of one hundred and twelve male to female transsexual volunteers and discovered that a significant majority had a longer version of an androgen receptor gene which, they suggested, could cause weaker testosterone signals, resulting in the development of more female-like brain structures http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7689007.stm . This is only one of many possible genetic variations that could cause similar differences in development.
How much of each hormone is present, how much it affects either body or brain, and how much each different centre in the brain will develop varies considerably. It's not black and white, but rather shades of grey. Masculinity and femininity are not one thing or the other, but rather opposite ends of a spectrum, and every one of us lies somewhere along it's length. Each of us has some male and some female tendencies.
Generally speaking, a testosterone drenched male body will develop a predominantly male brain, just as an oestrogen imbued female body will develop a female one, but this doesn't happen in every case. The same tendency to variation which set us off on this route of change, keeps working and these genetic variations affect how the brain is built. Ok, most cases you get female brains in female bodies, and male brains in male bodies, but it's possible, highly probably even, that a physically male or female body can grow a brain structure that is more like that of the opposite gender, or even somewhere in between.
Where does this leave us? It's difficult to say. Society still prefers to stick with that which is familiar and will always be wary of the different. As long as transgendered issues remain hidden, the vast majority of people will continue in blissful ignorance of the struggles that go on around them.
I don't know where to go with this from here. I would like to talk about society existing in a dynamic equilibrium between those who wish to change it and expand it to include new experiences and expressions of the human condition, and those who want to keep it as it is. I would like to say that the equilibrium is necessary because not all new expressions are beneficial to individuals or society as a whole, but that the same can be said for a refusal of change. Stagnation can kill a society as readily as degeneration into wanton forms of self gratification. My reticence in talking about such things is that it seems that when I have drifted towards talking about similar things in the past, it as brought up automatic shields form some of my readers, and many of them have spikes on.
There is insufficient proof yet to show that TGism is wholly or even largely affected by genetics or hormone imbalance, but the evidence that it does in many cases should suggest that being TG isn't something that an individual can help. I know I never wanted to be like this, and the few people I've known along the same lines have expressed similar sentiments. It would be nice to think that, since this is the case, a place might be made in society for those such as us. After all other cultures around the world accept and even revere the twin spirited.
For those most affected, there may be no answer other than that offered by the surgeon's knife. I can't comment, having no personal experience along those lines, but that there are those on both sides of the gender divide who feel the need to make the crossing suggests no alternative for some people.
For those of us that sit somewhere in the middle though, I would like to find an alternative. What poor statistics exist regarding numbers of transgendered individuals do show a disparity between the number of men and women who claim to be affected. I may have said something similar, so shut me up if you've heard me talk about this before (heh), but I believe that the tendency for women to be more accepting of each other allows them to express themselves in a wider variety of ways. For twin spirited women, it seems it me that they can let the bloke in them out for a bit by being tomboyish. I believe the reason there are more men with transgendered issues is that there is less acceptable outlet for a man to be girly in any way.
Men tend to be very restrictive about what they wear. Fun is poked at the Scotsman in his kilt because it is more like a woman's skirt than any acceptable piece of male attire in our part of the world, and as for those Greek guard costumes (you know the ones with the white skirts and stockings and long flowing sleeves?)... Men like to keep thing the same to level the playing field. After all, what is a competition without rules, and what are rules if they're not restrictions to make sure everyone is playing the same game. In the man game, men want to be the aggressors and accepted for their prowess more than anything else. To wear something colourful and attractive would be playing against the rules.
People with TG brains want to interact with society as though they were members of the opposite sex. For the physical male, there is a part that wants to find companionship and support from other women, a desire to look pretty and take the passive role in relationships. This is too different from the accepted norm for most men, meaning they reject it out of hand, often violently. It is also disconcerting for most normal women who are used to responding to blokey blokes, and can't accept that a man — instinct says all he wants is to get her in bed and impregnate her — would want to enter their circle of friends simply for companionship.
For the physically female there is a desire to be 'just another one of the guys', which works great until you discover that the guys don't see it that way. When that particular disappointment hits, there is always the group of girls to go back to for comfort and support, but then that would require them giving up the sense of self-reliance that is part of their male brain.
For me personally, I'm a fence sitter. Not through choice, but through the way I am made. I can see both gardens from here, and the shade of green varies depending on which one I'm in. While I'm being a bloke, I'm neglecting the girly side of me. If I were to be a girl full time, I'd be neglecting the bloke in me. I need to be both at different times, and that would be true whether I had an inny or an outy (no not referring to belly buttons in this case). On the whole, I still think it would still be easier for me to get by as a girl, because I could indulge the bloke in me as a girl more readily than the other way round. That said, the approximation to the change that medical science can currently offer isn't enough for me. What is enough comes from the discoveries I've outlined above. They're a bit meandering and disjointed, but even so they help me to understand the way I am inside, and that has given me an answer I can work with... sort of.
Since I acknowledged the girl in me a year ago, I've been more content in my life. She plays in my imagination and tells me such wonderful tales, and it is enough for both of us, more or less. I would love to live in a more understanding, more accepting world where she could run barefoot across the park, skirt streaming behind her, with no disapproving looks to tell her she is unwelcome. Perhaps if enough stories are told to enough people and well enough, perhaps I may be fortunate and see the beginning of that change.
In the meantime, Happy Birthday Maeryn, I see you.
Comments
I did have second thoughts about publishing this today
In light of the sad news regarding Bob Arnold. I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to put something out there that was a little self absorbed.
I didn't know him except through his stories, but I share the sadness at his passing.
Via con Dios Bob.
What better way to pay respect to his memory?
I'm very glad you posted this today; a hallmark of a passing and of rebirth and beginnings as well. Thank you.
Dio vi benedica tutti
Con grande amore e di affetto
Andrea Lena
Love, Andrea Lena
TG to Me
I see nothing at all wrong in posting your story, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
I'm not sure,
but I think Bob would not have been offended. Just from what he has written, it seems that Bob liked stories, and he would not have wanted them to stop. Just my opinion, having never really met the man.
I really enjoyed this. I kept sitting back and thinking, Yeah, she nailed it. Not that it changes much, but it's very nice to understand something as gut-wrechingly confusing as these strange feelings. It turns out that maybe I'm not insane after all-but then again...
Good work, Maeryn. Not bad at all for a one year old!
Wren
My point of view
There are just lots of factors that make men want to be women. In my case, I am not a pure XY but won't know exactly what it is until this fall when I hope to have the money saved to get a Kariotype test. The genetic Doctor I have says that he thinks I am XXY. We used to think there was only XX and XY but today we know that there are thousands of variations.
Another interesting factor is that the X gene has somewhere around 12 times the chromosomes as the Y gene, and the Y gene is losing chromosomes, so that in around a million years the Y gene will be entirely gone. That assumes a linear rate of loss. Of course Nature is fond of using exponential functions, so we could all be XX very much sooner.
In my own case, there is the previously mentioned XXY genetic combination, but there is another factor and that is the fact that there were no viable males in my life. The ones that were there were abominable people, fond of cruelty; the basest of men. Very early on, I decided that they were so disgusting that I'd never want to be like them.
In my 40 year Marriage, my wife's biggest complaint was that I was too feminine.
It is interesting to reflect upon how much time we all spend trying to conform to others ideas about how we should be.
Very nice disertation.
Gwendolyn
Happy Birthday Maeryn! = )
Now how do I get the cake to you, past that manflesh? Hmm...
...Aha!
Scotty, one CAKE to beam down.
...
...Energize...
(Sound of transporter beam)
Nom nom nom
Yumsies, ta muchly.
I can somewhat sympathisize
I can somewhat sympathisize with your story.
Conforming with society expects from a gender roles is very sucky imho. Most people just do it, I can't... I don't know, stuff that other guys just do instinctively I don't or I do wrong or some crap.
It's not that I'm exactly girly, far from it, but I just do girly stuff, like manerisms or behavior that you wouldn't really expect of a guy.
On the other hand, beeing a girl full time? I guess if I'd been born a girl life would probably be easier, since tomboyish behavior in girls is way more accepted than sissyish (does that word exist? ^^) behavior in boys. Therefore I can understand your reasoning. If one could be transformed by scientific or magical means, it might be worth it, but having to deal with the drawbacks of beeing a TG? Eww... Really not worth the trouble.
I guess you wrote what many of the non-TG queer or crossdresser guys here think. We may want to let out our female or girlish or whatever side, but society won't really let us. I have to admit I wouldn't want to deal with people knowing this stuff about me since they probably wouldn't understand anyway.
I have a bit of critic though:
Why men are competitive, aggressive, bold, take what they want and fight for it if need be. Why they establish a hierarchy of worth and keep on batting at each other to ensure the right guy is at the top. Why the constant competition leaves them with wary relationships with each other, which only slowly build in trust, and very rarely reach any level of completeness.
Truth to be told: there wouldn't be a patriachy or even a male dominated society if that was true. Sure there is some constant competition, but it exists for effectiveness. To ensure effectiveness you need competition... To keep competition sane you need a society that controls the competition.
Why do you think monarchy was established? To keep warlords from battling each other after their leader has fallen. To reduce the losses due to competition.
On the other hand imagine society without male competition... A female gathering where they talk about everything and try to seperate gossip from decision making. (In the worst case ;))
There is a reason why the so called patriachies succeded while the matriachies perished. Male competition is more effective and more flexible than female cooperation.
It is sad, but it is true. If you want advancement you need competition and this is something most women don't really like. I personally can somewhat understand it, I don'T really like competition either...
We need to give credit where is credit due though.
A history professor I once listened too told us that humanity was rules by matriachies until 10000 years ago. But matriachies perished with the advance of civilisation. I guess it was just more effective to have a leader and fight to enforce your ideas than to discuss it to death.
Lol I guess I derailed my own post a bit, but whatever...
Argh: I know what I wanted to say :D Rereading your own post can help ^^
I guess competition among guys leads to another form of friendship than friendship among girls. Some of my male friends are my rivals, some are just buddies I hang out with and some or people I trust with most of my stuff.
On the other hand I've heard girls bitterly complaining about their female friends. Something along the lines: "my best friend is only my most harmless rival." I guess among the female side of humanity everything ain't bright either.
My sister said to me, that nothing is worse than an all girl class.
Well whatever...
Thank you for writing this story which I can somewhat understand.
Happy Birthday and best wishes Maeryn
*hugs*
Beyogi
The effectiveness of patriarchies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxrWz9XVvls
What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
unfair
That was unfair and totally not my point.
Weapons are a byproduct of advance. Actually nukes are what stopped most warring since ww2. Or do you think the USA and the USSR would have stayed at "peace" without the threat of total anihilation?
My point was that competition increases the effectiveness of organisation and thus increases their assertiveness. As you should know the wellmeaning goddess of matriachy is a delusion and won't grant immortality and perfect health.
If it wasn't for modern drugs humans wouldn't live past 40 Years.
So it isn't all nukes.
To get back to history... I think that the increase of effectiveness became nessesary because humanity couldn't handle the population growth with their hunter and gatherer existance.
New solution were needed or starvation would be the result. The form of organisation that would be more flexible and more effective would survive. I guess that is why male forms of tribe/state/nation organisation enforced themselves.
That's just my theory, other people might argue that was only because of innert male meaness, but i think that's BS.
To conter your low blow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6HiydokKdE&feature=related
Best of KZ Aufseherin ^^
Argh... As I said in my previous post, I derailed myself, I actually wanted to write about the way that competition is the male way to improve effectiveness in organisation and doesn't nessecarily exclude the potential of friendship. It just complicates the relationships with the closest peers, but I'm probably preaching to the choir anyway.
Beyogi
PS: I probably dug me in deeper, but who cares :P
unfair...
...but I hope you'll admit very funny also.
I see your point, but I think we're actually both a bit wrong here. What you said about the competitiveness in men and friendships grown from rivalry and respect is a more complete description of male-male interaction than I managed. What you said about male leadership being more effective I think is not so right. It is more ruthless which is probably why patriarchies took over from matriarchies, but it is not necessarily better. Better would be a dynamic equilibrium between to the two views, balancing the male aggressive drive to improve against the female gentler, nurturing drive which allows us to be.
Laika's link to Dr Strangelove was well chosen because in October 1962 the world came to within minutes of global nuclear war. Nuclear weapons were never a good idea. The scientists who developed them realised this, and the largely male driven governments of the sixties brought us to the brink of extinction because of them. We need the tempering of the gentler sex in order to prevent things going too far again. We are not complete unless we have both sides.
Your response with the female SS guards was a valiant one, but I think only showed that both men and women as individuals can act brutally under the wrong influence. There are other examples from around the globe of both men and women behaving savagely under extreme circumstances. This behaviour doesn't have much to do with normal interactions between men or women, except in that it usually an aggressive (therefore usually male) and charismatic individual who incites a similar response in others, regardless of sex.
All that to one side, the focus of this piece was not so much are men better than women or the other way round, because that's a nonsense question. Men and women are different not better or worse, and rather than focus on pitting the two sexes against one another, I would rather focus on the best that is both together.
Within that, the focus of this piece was to look at TG as I see it - and I openly admit that my experience is just one facet of the whole - and ask whether there should be a place for TG in modern society (my answer - yes, because no-one should be persecuted for what they cannot help) and where that place should or could be.
Ok, a bit funny ;)
I agree with you here, as I said before I got a bit sidetracked with the political implications of the hirachy vs cooperation stuff...
Truth to be told, I don't really understand why society forces men into a that tight set of viable ways of behavior. What is the benefit of forcing men to be maskuline? Some stuff makes sense, but the uniformity as you put it is utterly pointless. It reduces the complexity of social interaction, but why is that a good thing?
Why do we have to supress our not so maskuline sides? I mean women can be tomboys too without it having major consequences for them... I don't see a practical reason for that.
On the other hand it does no good to try to supress gendered behavior, because it'll come up anyway. As you explained, some parts are just hardwired. I think this egalita-kindergarten stuff in sweden is such a pointless thing.
In my experience girls and boys were't that different as kids. The great divide is puperty. I remember that it really confused me when the girls who were my playmates suddenly wanted to be adult. Really really strange...
Well whatever, perhaps it was just me, but I never really saw the difference before puberty. Then I shouldn't do girl things and had to do boy things although I wanted to do both.
My personal conclusion is: gender sucks but most people have one :D
Yes it was unfair
And also it broke my cardinal rule-of-thumb about not commenting on comments to stories I haven't read yet. I was in a mood yesterday, and I responded to a reasoned lect- uh, argument with an "Oh yeah? Here's YOU- Nyah! Nyah!" Sorry Beyogi...
Of course male meanness isn't innate, or no more than female meanness is. But a lot of times when some of us go on about men, if we get a little careless with our generalities, we're really talking about not men as a group or an abstract or about the mechanics of history but our own experience with men in our own lives---there's often a lot of bad memories, a lot of hurt---and, considering that many of us live in a real world environment that is vociferously hostile to who we are, and that this may be the only place some of us can share our real honest inner feelings, then if we don't qualify it every single time in the interest of absolute and constant fairness, well tough tittie.
I think in balance I am not ruled by my occasional misandrist sentiments (borne not of what I believe in my mind but from more emotional parts of me, from memories of humiliations and mistreatments, hateful stares, verbal threats and actual beatdowns at the hands of men {way moreso than women}); any more than you're the misogynist you can come off as in your occasional careless, less than perfectly-qualified statements about women.
I think my stories strive to treat men in a fair manner, with understanding (to the best of my abilities); balancing the instances of bad and noble behavior, saints and idiots, sweethearts and psychopaths equally between male and female characters. And in one story in particular, written after I heard a girlfriend say the word "male bonding" as if it were something pathological, a sorry imitation of the far richer and more authentic freindships women have (which seemed a bit bigoted of her), I set out to write a story about a healthy and meaningful friendship between 2 male characters who are the last survivors of a biologically engineered plague. It's called THIS QUINTESSENCE OF DUST, and as you seem to be something of a science fiction & fantasy fan, I'd be interested to know what you think... ( http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/4779/this-quintessence... )
~hugs, Veronica
What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
S'okay
S'okay... I didn't take it hard ;) Made me clarify my statement so it probably was a good thing...
I don't expect fairness - lol who'd expect no sore feelings towards maleness on a TG-fiction side ^^ - but I guess I'll correct or clarify stuff when it is wrong.
Understanding is the first step to peace and tollerance and thus false or incomplete information isn't a good thing. I'm a politics minor and maybe it is just my hobby to think about why society works the way it works. Male bonding/organisation is a very important part to explain it. I guess I got a bit carried away while thinking about Maeryns input.
I can live with that... Resentments due to bad experiences are somewhat understandable and forgivable. There are more than enough stories here that describe happenings such as those you mention and a bit of misandry in comments is acceptable ^^. I haven't read any real misandry here.
Having resentments is human and not really not avoidable. I guess my bad experiences with some women show through in some of my comments, I try to restrain it, but obviously I failed. It's not that I hate women, I just have a hard time to trust women.
Everyone has their bad experiences and we can only try not to be dominated by them.
Lol, that story was yours... I read it some time ago when I was just lurking. But you're right, that actually was one of those that I have positively in my memory for beeing fair to men.
I guess I just love to have a good argument ;)
*hugs*
Beyogi
Link to above story...
I added a comment to the story on how to create a backwards "R" for Spells Я Us stories.
Cheers,
Puddin'
Hint: It's a Cyrillic (Russian, et al.) Capital YA. A lowercase ya makes a small reversed r, but it still looks like a capital letter: я.
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Interesting analysis
Including a healthy dose of cultural anthropology and genetics in describing your viewpoint :)
As for me, I don't visualise myself as having a masculine half and a feminine half - I'm a blend. I suppose if I spent enough time, I could break down my personality into masculine and feminine components, and I suspect the feminine list would be longer. But unlike many here, I don't visualise an "inner girl" wanting to get out and express herself. Having said that, the "outer bloke" is hardly a prize specimen of the species.
Let's take a few initial examples though.
On the masculine side, I'm a bit of a slob - household untidyness / washing up / laundry piles up until I need to do it, then I'll have a blitz. I'm not particularly fussy about my appearance. When I'm engaged in a task I really enjoy, I can get very single minded; but if it's a task I'm not so keen on, I'll be (very) easily distracted.
On the feminine side, I intensely dislike the concept of self-competition - the desire to somehow prove yourself better than everyone else, to constantly accrue ever greater assets (particularly if at the expense of others) etc. Sports cars? Too loud, too fast, too uneconomical - what's the point in a car capable of 250mph if it's never going to get significantly above 70mph and spend most of its life doing 30mph (urban environments)? Sport? *Yawn* Football - 22 blokes chasing a ball around a muddy field and don't care if its raining or snowing at the time. Never mind the ridiculous salaries they get paid, and their occasional lack of common sense when spending it or failing to take account of PR - surely they should know that it's not a good idea to turn up to a party in their flashy car (thus ensuring the media know they're attending), then to overconsume alcohol so when they stagger out of the main entrance at 2am...
Conformity - whoever came up with the idea for the standard office dress code must have been having a laugh. Regardless of how hot it may be, males are expected to wear full suits - and no doubt many would prohibit short sleeved shirts / removal of ties and jackets - which, although there can be some variation, all tends to be fairly limited. For females, there's an almost limitless choice as long as it's fairly presentable - suits (either skirt suits or trouser suits) tend to the exception rather than the rule. It's a similar thing when you see pictures of formal events - the females all wear a dazzling array of outfits, while the males generally look like black 'n' white clones. Violence / warfare - no thanks. Besides which, the underlying reason for most seems to be access to / control of resources, or in some cases bragging rights (think empires [Roman / British]: look how great we are - we own all this land!). Sure, "my god's better than your god" may be used as an excuse (particularly as a means of recruiting a militia without resorting to conscription), but if you control the resources needed to make stuff, you can make it cheaper than your neighbours, make a bigger profit when you sell the stuff, and consequently get wealthier.
Needless to say, when it comes to computer games, I'm not a fan of "Shoot-em-ups", give me something like Lemmings or SimCity 4 any day. My desktop PC runs Linux (which has about a 2% market share in operating systems), specifically the Mageia distro (so definitely not Ubuntu, which seems to be the predominant Linux distro, and the one most linux-related publications focus on). I have a "dumbphone" for a mobile (i.e. it's not one of the all-singing all-dancing ones that try to be a media player, camera and web browser rather than a device for making phone calls), my preferred musical genre is classical and my preferred radio station is BBC Radio 4 (so definitely not one of those pumping out highly compressed, badly autotuned "popular" music 24/7).
Anyway, I think that's enough random waffling for a comment, I'll now leave you to read something more worthwhile :)
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
po-tay-toe po-tah-toe
If you scratch the surface, you'll find that we're all similarly made up of masculine and feminine traits. It's what I meant by the masculinity and femininity being opposite ends of a spectrum. We all have male and female components to us, and it's the blend that makes us who we are.
For me the girl inside isn't some sort of benign split personality disorder, rather it's a way of describing how all the female aspects of my brain/personality affect me when they don't get expressed.
In this piece I talk about the feeling of boredom possibly being the brain's reaction to underuse, and in an earlier story (Santa Baby) I talk about the TG elements in my life being a little like one of the rarer things that David Mcclelland's achievement motivation needs theory explains, where a person has more than one high motivational need and so switches back and forth between satisfying one then the other.
The varying amount of development of each different centre in our brain may be related to the amount and degree to which we would naturally use it. When we use it less than it would naturally want, it sends out signals saying, "use me". This leads to stress when we can't find an appropriate context in the real world to do so, hence the concept of the girl inside wanting to get out.
I think I can relate to just about everything you describe above, though I would take issue with your first one. Being a slob isn't so much a masculine trait (quite a few very sharp dressing males out there, even within the restrictions of the male dress code, plus quite a few "who gives a shit" dressers in the female camp). I would say it's more a reaction to not being able to express yourself the way you want. If I could avail myself of options available to the women around me without looking like a complete plonker, I like to think I would make much more of an effort.
Still, thanks as always for your contribution. All grist to the mill, all taking my thinking that little bit further on. Maeryn and I (that is to say all of me - girl and boy bits included) appreciate it.
A heartfelt memoir, some anthropological speculation, a prayer
Well I finally actually read this instead of just firing off comments at random. Thanks for this thoughtful little screed. Maybe not the perfect explanation for everything but emotionally self revealing, perfect for this challenge. I make sympathetic noises and offer you a birthday banana. Meet me at the big acacia by the watering hole and we can discuss this further over some girly social grooming.
~hugs, Laika
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PS: And did I mention that I liked this? This story is da bomb!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtkg6lr746M&feature=related
What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Just to reinforce the idea of my nerdiness...
I just wanted to call you on the idea that our ancestry-al species were less sexually dimorphic. Our most closely related species are chimps and bonobos, but, basically we are apes. Chimps and Gorillas are more sexually dimorphic than us, males much larger than females, and gibbons are less, very similar in size.
I've read that mammalian sexual dimorphism is generally related to mating behavior. Species where the males gather groups of females and keep other males from (mating with) them, have evolutionary "pressure" for the males to become larger and fiercer. Species with pair bonding for life, lack a push for males to become larger, so they stay the optimum size for their niche, just as the females do; they end up the same size.
Chimps and bonobos have different mating behavior and bonobos have been observed to have two bonded (sexually?) females band together to stop a male from having his way with them. It seems that this and bonobos use of intercourse for greetings, to show affection and much else of their interactions, produce less evolutionary pressure for larger males. I think bonobo males and females are less sexually dimorphic than chimps.
I don't think there is enough paleological evidence, like fossil skeletons, to say very much about our ancestors' sexual dimorphism.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Ready for work, 1992.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Taking my time over this one
Firstly Renee, thanks for your response. I learnt a few things from your comment and a few more from diving into a bit of research over them. It's this kind of contribution that extends my own thinking and pushes me to adapt my own ideas.
Secondly, you may have argued against yourself here. You say that you want to call me on the idea that we were once less sexually dimorphic, yet you then go on to say that dimorphism is related to mating behaviour, that species where males gather and guard females have an evolutionary pressure for the males to grow larger. Doesn't this imply an earlier form before this sort of behaviour emerged when the males and females were closer in size? This is what I'm suggesting after a fashion, that certain changes, some physiological and some social, direct adaptations in each sex in different directions.
Thirdly you say that we are less sexually dimorphic than other apes. Since There is an aspect in which this is correct, because sexual dimorphism in apes is generally expressed in size difference. In this we are only about 15% different compared to gorillas at 50%. In the case of humans I would argue that there is a larger difference in form though.
To me, and I hope I'm not a lone in this, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of difference in appearance between males and females in other ape species. This may be due to individuals being more aware of differences within their own species, but even taking that into account, I don't know of a species of ape where the differences extend to features like no facial hair, prominent mammary glands, narrow shoulders and waist, broad hips, smooth and hairless skin and reduced muscle tone (I wouldn't want to arm wrestle even a female gorilla).
If we are to accept Darwinian evolution, even if only to explain variation within a species, then sexual dimorphism is a gradual divergence, be it of colour, size or form, and it implies an earlier stage of similarity between sexes. Whilst I don't expect my thoughts above to reflect much of the true nature of things once the evidence is gathered, I think they do a fair job of describing possible pressures that might lead to the divergence described.
I agree that there isn't sufficient paleontological evidence to decide the matter, which is why I included a whole lot of disclaimers. This is a thought experiment, a what-if to examine a possible route from the past. It needs evidence to support it before it can become anything more than conjecture, but it makes sense to me and offers a reason, not only for the differences in form and expression between males and females of our species, but also for the confusion that those of us who have GID experience.
Once again I appreciate your input, and if I have misunderstood anything that you said or argued off in a direction that misinterprets any of your comments, please respond.