A Rethink

Prehistory

"If someone had told me when I was 16 or so," I remarked to a friend while I was preparing to write this, "that one day I'd love shopping for groceries and would be casting longing glances at the beautiful but overpriced saucier they have on display at Sur la Table, i'd probably have slapped them."

I first became aware of the ideas of domesticity and homemaking when I was about 11 years old. The introduction could have gone better. In grade six, we were all required to take one semester of Home Economics and one semester of Wood Shop. Leaving aside my less-than-virtuoso performance in the latter, the former was taught by a woman who reminded me of nothing so strongly as a 1980s version of Cruella DeVille. Her name was Mrs Cochran (dubbed "Mrs Cocksucker" by many of the boys in my class). She had dyed jet-black hair, thick makeup that simulated the pallour of a hypothermic cadaver, and blood-red lipstick. She wore her shirt collars turned up so that they reached her ears. Her demeanour made one wonder whether she might be in the habit of eating small children during her prep time.

She also had a truly traumatic recipe collection. For the first half of the semester, we slogged through such culinary delights as bagel pizzas à la Velveeta and some sort of odd oatmeal-chocolate chip cookie concoction that, prior to baking, looked a lot like excrement.

That I remained able to be in a kitchen without getting palpitations and breaking out in a cold sweat is truly a testament to human resiliency.

The second half of the class was dedicated to seeing whether sixth graders would be able to learn to sew in the absence of any real instruction. In my case, the answer was no. Our project for this portion of class, spread out over the rest of the semester, was to make the world's most useless pillows. In addition to being understuffed and too small to provide comfort to anyone larger than a hamster, they were required to be in the shape of our last initial. It was the only time in my life in which I wished that my last name started with a letter other than H. In the end, most of the sewing on my project was outsourced to Mrs Cochran.

While that semester alone would have been enough to put me off things domestic for life, it was compounded by the fact that I was aware that such things were commonly (and disdainfully) called "women's work". Ever since I had become conscious of my own femaleness a couple of years prior, I had become increasingly aware of the degree to which women were getting a raw deal, and if "women's work" included learning crappy recipes from a vaguely vampiric woman with all the warmth of an underground carpark, then that was Exhibit A.

Things changed when I was 17. My German host mother, a professor of French at a local community college who was aware of my affinity for pasta, decided to make spaghetti one night. When I asked her what brand of sauce we'd be using, she was clearly amused. "You think we're going to have that jarred stuff?"I, who until that moment had no idea that anyone routinely made pasta sauce from scratch, spent the next hour or so helping her chop up garlic and onions, sautee them in olive oil, and mix in tomato paste and copious amounts of water. The result was delicious, and I felt quite proud to have been part of making it, though I was never quite able to duplicate the sauce. However, apart from the addition of balsamic vinegar (to which I was introduced by a friend I visited in Berlin that year), that single recipe was basically the extent of my interest in things culinary.

The Conflict Emerges

By the time I finally decided to transition, I had developed a very rigid, unnuanced brand of feminism born mostly of having spent twenty years living a male life. It was in that mindset that I began transition and developed my vision of what sort of woman I'd be. I was going to be the sort of woman who defied every stereotype. I was not only not going to do the traditional things just because they were traditional and stereotypical; I was going to not do those things specifically because they were traditional and stereotypical. I dreaded any kind of shopping that involved clothing and took more than thirty seconds including travel time, lived in a room decorated in an Early Self-Storage motif, bristled at the idea of anything resembling marriage, and steered clear of children to the extent possible.

Only a few weeks after I began hormone replacement therapy, however, I began to sense a change within me. When I thought about the apartment I had recently acquired the financial means to rent, I had detailed visions of the feeling of the place, and of the things that would give it that feeling. These were visions of a sort I had never experienced before. Unfolding, room by room (though I didn't yet have a specific place in mind) , was a place of warmth, of comfort, of coziness, of togetherness with my friends and my family, where we would spend countless evenings sitting around the dining room table, enjoying food I prepared and sipping wine, talking and laughing with each other all the while. In short, I was fondly dreaming of a near future in which I would do something at the top of my list of suspect activities: making a home.

Harmony

Here I was, almost five years after beginning my life as a woman, with a slightly more nuanced and experientially based - but still largely unchanged - view of gender and the world in general, feeling a resonance that was as deep-seated as it was shocking toward the world of things that I had long sinced declared taboo. It was the world of things that to me had always symbolised the societal subordination of women, and something that had suddenly begun emerging from inside me actually wanted to take part in it.

Now, slightly over a year after those initial stirrings, the home I saw in that first vision is where I live. Thinking back, it is quite hard to pinpoint which element of that is the most surprising, because there is not a single element that is unsurprising. I spent several hectic months going through every home and kitchen goods store I could think of looking for the perfect pots, pans, silverware, plates, bowls, coffee mugs, salt and pepper mills, microwave, dinette set, sheets, bookshelves, wall art, patio furniture, curtains, lighting, aprons, potholders, oven mitts, and accents. I have spent countless hours (with a good deal of help from friends and family) assembling and arranging it all until it was just so.

Even before the furnishing and decoration were finished, the other half of the vision had already begun to materialise. I started to have dinner get togethers - first with my sister, then with my best friend, then with my best friend, my sister, and one of her closest friends, then with my best friend and her best friend from back home. Every chance I got, I put on my apron and spent hours running about in the kitchen in the service of making delicious, convivial meals for those closest to me; as I had begun to realise, I did not intend this place that I had noticed myself calling a home solely as my space, but also as that of my friends and family.

The emergence of these aspects of myself, which seem to have been dormant until awakened by the change in my hormonal balance, has required me to revisit the foundation of my views. The basic premise of my feminism (which is most likely not limited to my own view) has always been to free women from the restraints that have been imposed for centuries. When I began to notice this dissonance between the way I had decided that that freedom should be attained and preserved and these new desires within myself, I had to ask myself: can something really be freeing if it bars one from acting on feelings coming from deep within?

After over a year of soul-searching, I have thoroughly rethought my entire approach. Ultimately, it is not the act of homemaking in whatever form that is oppressive; it is the socially imposed obligation. No one comes any closer to freedom or equality by suppressing him or herself, any more than decolonisation can be obtained by affecting an East London accent, playing cricket, and eating Marmite. Feminism, if it is truly to be a philosophy of liberation, must be based on each individual woman seeking out those things about herself that truly come from within and separating them from all the myriad things that patriarchal society tells her she should be. No one can truly be free or equal without first claiming the right to express his or her self, whatever that self might include.

On Michael Gurian's Boys and Girls Learn Differently!

Do male and female students have gender-specific academic needs, advantages and disadvantages? What does the latest research tell us about gender and the brain? How can we use the latest research on gender and the brain to optimise educational opportunities for our young people? Michael Gurian, holder of a BA in journalism and a Master of Fine Arts, has put together a book "rich in insight" and "innovation" (according to Gurian) to tell us all this and more!

In the tradition of such pop-psych bestsellers as John Gray's Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, Michael Gurian has put together a book long on categorical assertions, assumptions, and generalisations, and short on research, fact checking, and even basic proofreading. Despite his repeated assertions that he is reporting the existing "brain-based research" (a term to which we will return), Gurian's reference list is decidedly short on primary scientific sources, and correspondingly long on articles about studies published in such resources as USA Today. Gurian's attitude toward scientific research is perhaps best left in Gurian's own words:

The most difficult issue in doing brain and gender research comes up in this simple question, [sic] How do we know the difference is an accurate one? Every reader and every expert has a different standard of certainty. Some of my colleagues [sic] in psychology and education insist that there are no real differences between the minds of males and females, despite all evidence to the contrary.

This said, we know we are presenting a theoretical approach. In the end, you the reader decide whether the research and theory are accurate (!). If your intuition (!!) says yes to the theories, that yes carries the most weight. In the fifteen years I have been helping the culture apply neurobiological research, I have made sure to check a specific researcher's finding with colleagues' findings, multicultural sources, anecdotal confirmations (!), personal observation, and just good common sense (!).

Thus, in Gurian's view, the layperson's intuition trumps scientific data. This seems, I daresay, an odd approach for someone who insists, page after page, that his assertions are the product of "research". It is, however, quite appropriate for this book, considering that his citations to research are highly selective (and tend in the direction of heavily debunked ideological tracts and pop psychology).

At the beginning of the book, Gurian explains that his work is based on what he calls "brain-based research". This he defines to be the "coalescence" of:

1. Neurological and endocrinological (hormonal) effects on learning and behavior.
2. Developmental psychology, especially the effects of natural human development cycles on learning and behavior.
3. Gender-difference research, that is, research comparing both environmental and neurobiological areas of differences (and similarities) between boys and girls.

However, upon reading the book, an entirely different definition of "brain-based research" emerges from his (constant) use of the term. For example, Gurian criticises the work of Carol Gilligan and others, who, as he would have it, "studied American classrooms from a mainly sociological point of view, one that assumed gender bias against females throughout our patriarchal culture. [...] They found bias because it was there, and then they continued to find bias even where it wasn't." No word is wasted on the fact that Carol Gilligan is a psychologist, not to mention the author of In A Different Voice, the seminal work on female psychological development, who therefore fits within his second area of "brain-based research" (and is, in fact, a pioneer in it!). This he contrasts with "brain-based research", which would supposedly avoid "creating sociological conclusions that are, at best, incomplete."

This example, amongst many others, serves to elucidate what Gurian really means when he refers to "brain-based research". In addition to the criteria listed above, the observant reader discovers a few additional criteria that are never stated openly: (1) the "research" must support Gurian's basic premise that male and female brains are fundamentally different in ways that affect behaviour, and (2) the "research" must not be based on "political assumptions". Interestingly, extensively debunked political tracts such as The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers and The Myth that Schools Shortchange Girls (Judith Kleinfeld) are exempt from the second requirement. However, any study that suggests that there is discrimination against female students is immediately denigrated as "political research", "political advocacy research", "feminist research" or similar. Most of the time, however, any study tending to refute Gurian's viewpoint is not even cited by name in the text; all the reader hoping for more than one viewpoint can expect is a strawman-style reconstruction of what the study says according to Gurian.

This staggering lack of academic and scientific integrity aside, let us look at Gurian's "science", such as it is. The first difficulty the reader will encounter is the dearth of citations. Even with Gurian's "NOTES", it is not particularly easy to determine where Gurian derives the basis for a given assertion. There are no footnotes, or even endnotes, making it difficult to scrutinise his assertions without going through every single work he cites for every single claim.

Here are some of the highlights:
- Oestrogen lowers "self-assertion" and "self-reliance" in females (p. 21)
-Male brains have greater mass (p. 23) (This is patently false, and extensively debunked. The relevant studies have found that the difference in mass is accounted for by non-neurological connective tissue needed to hold the brain in place in the larger male skull)
- Progesterone is the "bonding hormone" (p. 28). Actually, oxytocin is generally considered to be the bonding hormone.
- "Scientific technology" has taken gender differences in behaviour "out of the world of speculation and made [them] fact"; this is not the tone one hears in the actual research.
- Females' earlier speech development is allegedly biological (passim). Nowhere does he mention the studies that indicate that parents talk more to infant girls.
- Females are "less able to separate emotion from reason" (p. 36) and "tend to accept emotive intuition as equally valid" (p. 53)
- Pursuit of a comfortable environment is a "universal female trait" (p. 37)
- "Higher-than normal estrogen level produces certain [unspecified!] intellectual disadvantages" (p. 37). It is simply irresponsible to make a blanket statement without immediately specifying both the basis for the statement and the alleged "disadvantages".
- "Amount of female hormone relates directly to success at traditional female tasks" (p. 37)
- "Focus on slender appearance for sexual attractiveness (fearing obesity)" is repeatedly implied to be a biological trait. It is rather striking that Gurian, who claims to have studied "thirty cultures", somehow failed to stumble upon the elusive group known as "African American women" (amongst many others), who have been found to have much more positive attitudes toward their own bodies than the middle-class white women who make up the majority of anorexia nervosa sufferers.

In short, Gurian takes common cultural stereotypes and generalisations and attempts to biologise them, whether or not there is any rational basis for doing so. Gurian never attempts to reconcile his assertions with contrary scientific data. For Gurian, who, it bears repeating, is neither a brain researcher, nor a psychiatrist, nor a psychologist, nor a physician, nor any other kind of scientist, the way to deal with contrary data is to attack it as ideological and unscientific, without ever engaging its substance. Nowhere do we hear about the studies that indicate that children are treated differently based on their gender from birth. Nor do we have occasion to wonder if enforcement of gender conformity might have any bearing on gendered behaviour. Absent are the studies that indicate that gender nonconformity is often harshly dealt with by peers and authority figures alike. Apart from the "exceptions" to the general stereotypes that are never elaborated on and seem to have been added as an afterthought, there is no reason to think that anyone ever deviates from the catalogue of gendered behaviours and tendencies that Gurian reiterates ad nauseam.

Not only is there hardly a whiff of gender-nonconforming behaviour in Gurian's work (with one interesting exception, to which I will return presently), key concepts such as gender identity are never even mentioned. Even differences in sexual orientation, at least, were mentioned once, albeit towards the back of the book with no elaboration or real discussion.

The one indication of gender-nonconformity in Gurian's book that goes beyond an afterthought is the following example:

Little girls stuff dolls in their T-shirts and deliver babies. Others carry on a pretend wedding. One teacher told us about a group of four-year-old boys who decided to stuff their shirts in pregnancy along with the girls and were told, quite logically, by the girls "You're a boy, you can't have a baby." One boy was sad enough to cry, according to the teacher, which inspired a spontaneous lesson on how boys and girls are different. (p. 100)

Unfortunately, we don't get to hear anything else about this "spontaneous lesson". However, two things quite relevant to Gurian's general assertions are worth noting. For one thing, this is about all we get on the subject of peers' and authority figures' reactions to gender-nonconforming behaviour. The peers immediately criticise the nonconforming play, and the teacher appears to reinforce the criticism. For another thing, what looks like a "boy" may not always be one. This kind of emotional reaction to being informed that one is a boy (a fact with which the average child is well acquainted) can sometimes indicate a deeper issue concerning a child's gender identity. In a book that purports to be about the "science" and "research" of gender, one might expect a few words to be dedicated to the now well-researched issue of gender identity and its impact on learning and development, but one would be looking in the wrong book.

There is simply not enough space to dedicate to everything wrong with Gurian's trip through the looking glass. There is just too much material. One could spend quite a while examining Gurian's "boys will be boys" approach to bullying and aggression, or write an entire article just examining his assertion that we should not be discouraging aggressive, domineering behaviour in children because domineering children tend to be physically healthier than the children intimidated by them. One could point out that his "innovations" divide up into things that are absurd and things that are not news to anyone who has spent any time studying education or child development in the past half century, or note that his assertion that there is no real discrimination against girls and women that isn't justified by their biology strikes a note we have heard quite often over the past millennium. But the fact is: this book isn't worth it.

Boys and Girls Learn Differently! puts me personally in a somewhat awkward position. I do not deny that there are likely biologically-based differences in male and female behaviour. I do not even deny that Gurian's claims are sometimes not entirely false. What I do dislike is his tendency to strip what science we have of its inherently tentative nature and present it as irrefutable fact. We may one day reach a point where it is possible to say what aspects of gendered behaviour are biological, but we aren't anywhere near there yet. Our understanding of the brain is far to limited to make the kind of breathtaking generalisations Gurian does. To make these claims as if they were facts, and to urge that education be built around them is more than just irresponsible; it is reprehensible. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and this book, in the hands of someone with equal or lesser knowledge than Gurian, is potentially an instrument of great harm.

The Inescapable and the Enjoyable

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I knew from a very early age that I was a girl; even before I could consciously formulate it as a statement, something in me knew. It was an inescapable fact, something that I just knew in more or less the same way that I always knew that I had to breathe air. It wasn't something I ever asked for or actively wanted. It was just another attribute that was just there, like my left-handedness or the breasts that started growing as I entered puberty. Independently of whether I asked for it or not, it was always a part of me.

Part of the attribute of being female was the fundamental need to live in a way that affirmed that part of my identity, rather than denying it and forcing myself into niches that I was neither inclined nor able to fit into. This need, like the knowledge it grew out of, was something that just was there. Like any other need, its essence was to be fulfilled, regardless of whether or not fulfilling it seemed like something I would like. Like it or not, it was a basic, inescapable need.

When your teeth reach a certain degree of dilapidation, you need to get a root canal. However, I have yet to meet anyone who claimed to have liked the experience.

You just do it in order to avoid the potentially worse consequences of not doing it.

And so it was with transition. After twenty years, I reached a point at which I knew that there was nothing more to be done with my life as it was. I had long put up with the ever-cycling crescendo and decrescendo of the baseline groan in my mind, never letting me forget that my life was wrong, false. What I needed to do couldn't have been clearer.

Five years later, I am filled every day with wonderment at the fact that, apart from being inescapable, my transition, my life as a woman, is also enjoyable. In all the years that I thought about it, needed it, longed for it, I had never once entertained the idea that I might like it. Perhaps it was too outlandish a thought to consider after years of a life that was anything but enjoyable. Perhaps it was due to the fact that, being raised as a boy, I had had the idea quite well drilled into me that becoming or being treated like a girl was an indignity of the first order. What I do know, is that it never crossed my mind even once that it would feel good.

But it does.

After years of enduring my life, now I find myself reveling in it. And that feeling continues to increase the longer I'm on oestrogen. I love the little things. I delight in the new softness of my skin, and in the way touch has become such a powerful sensation, capable of producing positive ecstacy at times. I love how my features have softened, and how now, instead of a prematurely old burned-out man, the mirror shows me a vivacious, basically happy young woman who actually looks rather young for her age. As I've felt my mind becoming steadily more and more feminine, I've reveled in that, too. I savour every new feeling, even the difficult ones, and every new sense. Where I once had rather superficial friendships where I spared no effort to avoid my true self being perceived, I now have deep, caring, intimate relationships, built on the understanding that we can tell each other literally about everything.

Just as surprisingly, I find myself right at home in the new world that I find myself in. It's a world where people don't seem somewhat wary and disconcerted by me. A world where small children I don't even know smile at me and say hi, and where I find myself thoroughly melted every time that happens. Even the men seem transformed in this new place. The men I knew before always seemed like complete jackasses. The incessant macho locker-room drivel they expected me to participate in, with the constant bragging of real, imagined, past, and future sexual exploits, always made me vaguely sick, even more so because I had to avoid the appearance of not being fully enthralled by the proceedings. Not so the men in my life now. I am experiencing a whole new side of men. The men in my life seem always to soften a little around me. They lose a lot of the annoying macho crap, and acquire a gentleness I never knew men were capable of. They hold doors open for me, amongst other sweet gestures, and, instead of weird high-fiving rituals, I get kisses on the cheek.

It's also a world where I have to be much more careful at night. Apparently I look rather less intimidating now. Like most women I know, I've had my share of night-time creeps and sociopaths who assume (incorrectly, I hope, though I haven't had to do a definitive test) I'll be an easy mark. A world where I am acutely conscious of my own vulnerability in a way I never was before. As my muscle mass has steadily decreased, I've become increasingly aware that just about everyone I have to be concerned about at night will be significantly stronger than I am.

Even the things that suck in this new world somehow seem more fitting, less grating than my life before. Somehow, despite ranging from unpleasant to downright unsettling, they are not accompanied by the undertone of not being mine, of being for someone else that I wasn't.

Being male, or having a lot of testosterone, it seems, is like driving down the street in a car, a big humvee monstruosity that could survive a collision with a solid concrete wall. In my life as a woman, I find I feel more as if I'm on a motorcycle. Smaller, more manoevrable, and with no doubt that the consequences of a collision will be devastating.

But I can feel the wind in my hair.

Six Words (a short story)

Six Words

It’s shortly after two o’clock. I’m standing on the corner of Erie and Madison, waiting nervously, hoping that this is the right day, that my trip will not be in vain. Four lanes of traffic speed past me. A jogger - practically the unofficial mascot of the neighbourhood – runs by, toward the busy, upscale shopping and restaurant district not far behind me. It’s not the first time I’ve pondered how surreal this part of the city is. Behind me, one of the wealthiest, trendiest neighbourhoods in the entire city; in front of me, one of the poorest schools in the state. I feel a warm May breeze brush against my legs, and brush a lock of hair out of my eye.

I’m here early – I hope. I don’t remember what time he normally left school, but it was usually some time between two and three. We don’t have an appointment. I can be quite sure he’s not expecting me. But I’ve come a long way to see him, and I’ll contact him somehow in the short time I have. I don’t know how he’ll react, or how I would react if it were to happen to me. I just hope he’ll listen.

1994. In just a few minutes, I have travelled back over ten years into the past, six years before I even came into being. I don’t know how or why I, of all people, was granted this opportunity, but the terms were clear enough. You have twenty-four hours. If you don’t do in those twenty-four hours what you set out to do, you won’t have another chance. Words I remember as if from a dream.

It’s funny how the mundane details of life never go away, no matter how bizarre the situation. What, I found myself wondering, does one wear to a rendezvous with one’s past? Apparently, dressy casual was the way to go. And so I stand now, in a knee-length corduroy skirt and a white short-sleeved blouse, my hair hanging freely about my face, wondering how I’d feel if I came face to face with the woman I would be in a decade.

I think back. What would be going on in his life in 1994? He’s just turned fifteen, and has only a few weeks before school lets out for the summer. He’s beginning the long withdrawal, trying so hard to be who he knows he’s supposed to be that he loses all contact with who he is. Intellectual and wiseass are the two bits of him that remain visible. The two things he knew he could express without fear.

It rends my heart to think of it. Knowing him, knowing the pain he only dimly perceived, all I want to do is take him into my arms and hold him, reassure him. But would it help? Would he even be able to take comfort in an embrace? He didn’t trust. Why should I be any different?

It’s 2:45 now. I note with a cringe that the coffee I’d totally forgotten about is now ice cold, like the coffee he always nicked from the teachers’ lounge. He hardly slept, came to school when it was still dark, and drank his coffee cold. A studied, stony stoicism that he was just beginning to cultivate, with tips from cop shows and bad movies.

Another breeze caresses me, bringing with it the sweet scent of the bakery just down the street. The first students begin plodding, sauntering, and running out the doors. Groups form, walkmans are turned on, special Metro busses begin arriving.

Any minute now.

I try to prepare myself, running my right hand through my hair, and adjusting my glasses. A deep breath as I focus my gaze on the central exits.

It’s him.

I see him walk through the exit door, his stiff, militaristic gait unmistakable. He doesn’t stop to talk to anyone. He’s just trying to get home, where he feels halfway safe. As he approaches, I note with some surprise the absence of eyeglasses, and remember that those would not come for another year or so. He’s wearing his customary jeans and drab flannel shirt, his hair hanging over the side of his face. I can hardly even remember a time when my hair didn’t touch my shoulders.

This is it. It’s really happening.

What am I going to say to him? What does he need to hear that he can only hear from me? Will he even stick around to hear me out? I know him well enough to know that he won’t be thrilled to be approached by some woman he’s never met before.

And what do I need to say to him? What do I need to say to this boy? Or will just introducing myself be enough to reassure him that life will not always be an endless cycle of hiding and repressing, of expressing a little of what lies inside in order to prevent the floodgates opening? Will that break through his resignation and allow him a little happiness in this time of his life? How does a conversation like this even start? Hi, you don’t know me, but, in about ten years, you’ll be me?

He’s about halfway from the school to the crosswalk now. I’m more certain than ever that it’s him. My heart is racing. Seeing him, coming this close to a past I’ve all but forgotten, brings a solitary tear to my eye. If I’m to say anything to him, I’ll have to come up with it quickly.

He marches across the street, past a small throng of kids sauntering by at an exaggeratedly leisurely pace, toward me. The impulse to run up and embrace him is now stronger than ever. I know I can’t do that, not right now, so I take a deep breath.

I suddenly realise what will attract his attention without fail. The one thing that might make him engage me. We are quite different, he and I. At this point, he is thoroughly immersing himself in numbness, filtering out all but the slightest residue of feeling from his consciousness. For him, his heart is a mass of neuromuscular tissue situated in the upper mediastinum, responsible for the regulation of circulatory activity. I have long since abandoned this stubborn literalism. My heart is what speaks when I open my mouth. But this one thing we have in common, our curiosity. I know what he’ll go for.

And so, as he passes, I call to him: Sag mal, wie komm ich eigentlich zum Graeter’s? He turns toward me, and I see that familiar glint in his eye. I close the distance between us, and rest a hand softly on his upper arm, smiling slightly. I search his eyes, and see what might be a sort of recognition there, and say the first thing that comes to mind:

Just know – this won’t last forever.

The Softening

I've changed my mind about certain things. On other things, my mind changed on its own, with a little help from the new chemistry. A shift like the one I have been experiencing gives a very clear understanding of how changing one or two relatively small variables can end up changing everything.

For the longest time, I hardly felt much of anything. An emotion had to be pretty intense in order to break through the filter I had in place. Between the ages of 10 and 25, I cried maybe twice. Even when I felt like crying, and really wanted to cry, I somehow couldn't. I generally felt rather out of synch with everything around me, and people often did not make particularly much sense. With the help of my mother, I acquired a sort of ersatz empathy that allowed me to work out analytically how someone might feel in a given situation, but like much of my interpersonal skills, they were a combination of rote learning and mechanical analysis.

The first indication that this might be changing came a week or so after I started taking hormones. After over a decade of being unable to cry at even the most devastating events, I suddenly found myself sobbing uncontrollably, shaking, over a song. For the first time since childhood, I found myself completely overcome by a powerful emotion that welled up inside me and suddenly released. It was one of the most wonderful things I have ever experienced, a feeling not unlike just floating out on the ocean and letting the waves move through you.

That marked the beginning of what could be called a generalised softening. Gradually, I found myself becoming more and more receptive, more able to perceive and experience emotion. It was around this time that I began to have the first real experience of empathy, of feeling with someone, picking up on their energy and resonating with it. I had never felt so connected with other people before.

With this new feeling of connectedness emerged a new style of interaction, a style of interaction so completely different from anything I'd ever done before that I couldn't help but find it quite shocking even though it came so naturally, leading to the following internal monologue:

Metacognition: Um, 'scuse me, was that just...was that just nurturing?
Cognition: Well, duh! Didn't you get that memo?

I experienced this most intensely with a friend of mine, with whom I'd long drunk coffee, worked on papers, talked, joked, and smoked. Usually, our conversations revolved around the cack that is literary criticism, or our shared disgust for Bush, Pinochet, and other less-than-flauntable products of the human gene pool, and my (famously rib-tickling) one liners on those and other subjects. We'd cultivated this relationship for about a year, and enjoyed each other very much.

We didn't see each other most of the summer. A couple of months after I started hormones, we got together for coffee and drinks. Mostly, it was as always. I helped her with a project she was working on, and we caught up on what was going on in each other's lives. Then, suddenly, on a random impulse, I said it: "You know, I think you're my best friend around here." She replied that she felt the same way about me. From that moment on, things changed for us. For the first time, I had really opened up to her and told her how I felt. Since then, we have kept getting closer. We actually entrusted ourselves to each other, and formed a bond like no other I've ever felt. Now, we talk about everything. We share in each other's excitement, each other's successes, disappointments, dreams, and big ideas, not to mention my cooking.

And then, there's the sensuality. One of the effects of oestrogen is that some senses become heightened. The thinner, softer skin, with its increased number of nerve endings, becomes more receptive to touch and temperature. Sounds and scents take on a whole new dimension, and even the eyes seem to see more. With all of this going on, I found myself perceiving space, and the things in it, in a completely new way. When I looked at things before, I used to just see stuff. A table was a thing I ate off of and occasionally left things on. Now, the same things have valences that I had never perceived before. A table isn't just a table. It's where I see memories being created even before I've sat at it, where I see friends, family, and myself enjoying food and wine, talking, and laughing. I find myself designing and trying to create warm, welcoming, cozy spaces. I feel a real connection to my living space. I was slightly shocked to find myself suddenly thinking of my apartment as a home.

My "philosophy" of transition was based, largely, on a lot of ideas that I had had since long before. I had no intention of acceeding to gender stereotypes just because they were "what's done." I was going to be the one who would thumb her nose at all of it. I had long since made up my mind that none of it could have anything but an imposed societal basis, that men and women were totally identical, and should be treated identically. Upon reflection, I think that it was more sour grapes than anything that led me to that conclusion. I'm not allowed to experience it, so it must be a line of crap anyway, and the only reason they're buying into it is because they've been internalising it since before they even knew what was going on. Thus, when my mom began insisting, when I was around 15, that I hold the door for (other) women, I indignantly refused. I thought it was the most demeaning thing I'd ever heard.

Cognitive dissonance is fun when it comes with a side of irony. Within a decade of that indignant refusal, I found myself on the receiving end of chivalry. In this, as in many cases, I've had to revisit my view of things. It turns out that chivalry is quite nice when guys hold the door open, provided they're not basing it on offensive or otherwise bullshit assumptions. While I haven't changed my mind about the general principle that one shouldn't follow stereotypes just because they may be "the done thing," I've found that certain things might have more to them than pure external imposition. The new feelings, skills, inclinations, desires, and needs that have emerged - often in complete contradiction to deeply held beliefs - must have some internal, likely partially chemical, basis.

Fast Forward (Ella y él)

In my last post, I started in the present, jumped back over two decades, and ended at the beginning of the story. In keeping with this less-than-intimate relationship with linear time, tonight's post begins over five years after the last one left off.

Ultimately, chronology isn't that important to my story. Except sometimes. What's really important is context. Context is practically everything to what I am about to relate, for my story is one of a complete change of context, what annoying "postmodern" types who occasionally make me want to reconsider my views on gun control would polysyllabify to de- and recontextualisation.

Last time, I decided to back up a bit to give a brief account of my twenty-year stint amongst the men, Cliff's Notes on a guy who went to Europe and never came back. Today's instalment is about who did return from that stay on the Continent, and the world she found herself in.

Thinking about the world I've found myself in, I'm reminded of a line from the movie Pulp Fiction. In the scene that introduces us to Vincent Vega and Jules Winfield, played by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, Vincent is talking about the highlights of his stay in Europe:

[VINCENT]But you know what the funniest thing about Europe is?

[JULES] What?

[VINCENT] It's the little differences. A lotta the same shit we got here,
they got there, but there they're a little different.

That's as good a synopsis as any I could provide. Looked at on a macro scale, my days aren't very different from his days. I sleep in to the extent possible, get ready at either an exaggeratedly leisurely or breakneck pace, go to class (or don't), work (or don't), take the bus, wait (and wait, and wait) for the bus, talk to friends, go home, watch TV, have dinner, stay up till all hours, and then repeat it all the next day. All these are experiences he had on numerous occasions.

But as soon as you shift the focus a little, it becomes quite apparent that this is not his life.

While he and I get ready in the morning (OK, afternoon) at roughly the same pace, he took one-third to half as long as I do. He had a lot less to do. Fifteen minute shower, tie back hair, pick halfway clean clothing off of floor, throw on eyeglasses, get backpack, and out the door. A simple, mechanical process, generally combined with swearing at having to be awake.

I wake up, snuggle in the bed for a little while, channeling the sort of positive, warm, cozy emotions that make me feel a little bit better about actually having to do stuff. I moisturise, brush my teeth, take the meds that allow me to have a normal female hormonal balance, step into the shower and savour the hot water. I get my hair untangled, wrap myself in a towel, vaguely approximating the world's softest and fluffiest strapless dress, and spend the next thirty to forty five minutes doing my hair. Then comes makeup, which takes less time, but more concentration, followed by the perennial question: What am I going to wear? The sheer range of options and possible combinations makes this a very complicated issue, and, when going through my laundry, I'm often struck at how surprising it is that I manage to get dressed at all.

Things are still basically the same once I leave my apartment. I get cigarettes and coffee, and wait for the bus. The what is the same, but the how couldn't be more different. The people at the convenience store and the café know me, and we have a little light banter going whenever we see each other. I know pretty many of the people at the café by name, and there's always a little small talk. He wasn't one for banter. He preferred to get what he came for and get the hell out. Conversations with people he didn't know well were to be avoided, and smalltalk made him antsy. He maintained the sort of studied monotone and expressionlessness in these situations that avoids extraneous connection. I generally smile at people, and enjoy a spot of conversation as I go about my business.

Not only do I interact differently; people interact differently with me. It starts with who they see in front of them. Looking at old pictures, particularly from the last years, I see a guy pretty much at the end of his rope. Someone who'd given up and just let himself go. Someone who had totally withdrawn and didn't really see much point in any of it anymore. While I can't speak for anyone else, that certainly doesn't seem to be what people see these days. In any case, they see someone that inspires them to use quite a few terms of endearment, someone that old guys seem to feel sort of paternal toward, someone that inspires a sort of protectiveness in guys in general (apart from the wide array of creeps the average city has to offer) , and that women feel comfortable opening up to.

As similar as our two lives are, the experiences that characterise the things we do every day are vastly different. He lived alone. He never deeply connected with anyone, and spent most of his life keeping up appearances and distance. He never felt much of anything. That part of him just faded away. He knew he wasn't really a "he," but had no real idea beyond speculation of what it was like to be a "she." I, on the other hand, have a very rich and fulfilling life. I have close, supportive relationships with my family, a best friend with whom I talk about everything, and am building a life for myself. I look forward to a future, and enjoy my present. Not only are our experiences different; our minds work differently, functioning on a different chemical basis (more on this later). We are, in one sense, two very different people with two rather different lives, who happened to have shared the same body.

How it all began

Hormones are interesting things. No one really understands completely how they work or what all they can do.

Over the past seven months, I've had a chance to find out for myself. See, this summer, more than four years after transitioning...

Perhaps I ought to back up a bit more.

I'm intersexed, which, in my case, basically means that my body is undecided. It's male enough that no one hesitated to raise me as a boy from birth, but female enough that I started getting breasts in grade five. From the age of nine, I knew beyond any doubt - some things you just know - that I was in fact a girl. I also knew, beyond any doubt, that this was not the sort of thing that one announces in a public forum, so I did everything I could to hide it. I knew that there were people who did what I knew I needed to do - when I realised that I had this problem, I ran to the encyclopaedia (how much of a dork was I?) - but I saw no way of doing it myself, so I did my best to keep it under wraps.

And I did a really good job of it. What happens in a situation like this is a lot like dissociative identity/multiple personality disorder. As a defence mechanism, you basically come up with an artificial persona that will allow you to function in society as a guy, despite the rather nettlesome problem of not actually being one, to avoid getting the crap kicked out of you. That artificial persona generally takes hold so well that it has a life of its own, and even you don't totally see through it. Mine was quite well researched - bits of every male character on TV or in movies or books that seemed to have any quality that I could identify with.

I totally resigned myself to the idea of living someone else's life for the rest of mine.

At twenty, it was now or never. I was thousands of miles away from my family, in a new place, with some actual privacy, and I realised that I had my first (and possibly last) clear chance of doing something about all of this. I transitioned within a couple of months of starting to think about it, and have lived as a woman ever since. My family - at least those members of my family that matter - have been very supportive, and are basically the only reason I've made it as far as I have.

Introduction: Have you ever wondered?

What if almost overnight, the entire way your mind works were to suddenly change?

What if you suddenly found your old, familiar internal monologue replaced by new thought processes, new feelings, new needs, new desires, new reactions, new ways of relating to people?

What if, in effect, you woke up with a new mind?

Welcome to my world.



Rod Serling, eat your heart out!