Why I think I live alone.

I think that being of female mind under it all while having to live as a male mind, is the reason I have wound up isolated from others.

It's pretty simple.

First hoop passed in change of my gender to female.

Tuesday was my appointment at the Howard Brown Health Center, a medical facility that specializes in transgender cases. The doctor's name was Alfred Torrence. He did a complete medical interview intended to determine if at this juncture I am suitable and medically ready to enter the passage to becoming a female. He said they never do a psychiatric evaluation because they do not consider the transgender person to have a sexual disorder. He simply asked me why I wanted to become a female and I gave him a pretty straight answer.

My taking Warfarin is an issue as hormone treatments will increase my blood's tendency to clot. I take Warfarin because my other doctors believe a clot caused my necrotic bowel of 2008. Dr. Torrence asked me if there was any positive proof that I had had a clot and I said no. This could be a game stopper.

Another possible issue is my liver, as it needs to be able to take some stress, for want of a better term me being a layman, caused by the hormones.

If these and all other issues turn out not to be game stoppers then Dr. Torrence will approve me for hormone therapy. This done, I will be given a lot of paperwork for changing my name and gender marker on some of the more important personal documents, these apparently not including my birth certificate as Illinois is said to give transgender folk a problem with it, One document the doctor mentioned was called a "safe passage". It guarantees to anyone concerned that I am legally able to use female public facilities, such as rest rooms. It was significant to me that all this paperwork can be prepared and completed immediately upon my approval for hormone treatment, rather than having to wait for some amount of time to pass for the hormones to start to take effect.

So the next step was blood tests and today I went in and gave blood for them. But at the end of the interview with Dr. Torrence he shook my hand and said I had passed the first hoop on the way to becoming a female.

Hard to say at this point what the odds are I will pass through the rest of the hoops.  No hormones would be a major disappointment, but even if that happens there's no going back to behaving like a boy. We'll see if my body is going to cooperate by getting itself approved for the next step.

There is one possible way to get some recognition of the gender change anyway, which is common law. With that I would just tell everyone I know that I'm making the change and what my name is going to be. It's not as solid legally, but it's certainly better than nothing. I don't know what all it would enable me to do.

On Gabriel Giffords

There is no doubt in my mind that my fate has been intertwined with some who have exacerbated my problems to the point of unprecedented, speaking anthropologically, duress. It has been my deed to survive and retain my love for others. My reliance on social security disability income is, however, not a part of what I call my survival, but a mark of low deposit of my character thanks to these persons of the exacerbation. I have no reason to believe they will continue to exacerbate my problems indefinitely.

I began work on my written autobiography on May 2, 2010. I am guessing that most of what I have written is news to my Mafia overlords. The shooting on January 8, 2011 of Gabriel Giffords has a certain random component in terms of time, and a certain structural component. I turned 60 that day. I have a certain tendency, therefore, to conclude that the Mafia allowed the shooting to occur in the interest of sending a message to the nation that that day marks a point of departure on which my reputation is to be granted a state of objection, which due to the secrecy of the deeds behind the exacerbation of my problems cannot readily be connected to the parties responsible. By pointing these things out I am putting a spin on events for perspectives to be taken and considerations to be given so that further events may be allowed to bring the parties responsible into better view. I didn't deserve to be treated as a misfit. Gabriel Giffords didn't need to be shot. One is plainly a national tragedy. One is a civilizational tragedy. Which is which? I think the answer is also plain. One doesn't allow a national tragedy to transpire unless an even greater tragedy motivates it. My continued reliance on social security is not without its costs.

Transgender's challenge to be physically active.

I am finding it a challenge as a transgender female to enter into broad-based physical activity. The issue is my choice of water balloons as breast enhancements, as they make me nervous about being too physical and risking that they will burst or fall out of my bra.

Not sure what I will do about this.

Reminder and discovery in becoming a female.

There are two principal stimulations for me to become a female: A) reminder effects, and B) discovery effects. All motives to remain a male are subsumed under some nature that is readily nullified by reminder effects, though the time it takes for this nullification varies from immediately to over the course of about an hour. Discovery effects are more basic and occur within a new universe as a female. They affect my bearing, posture, and nervous stability.

I am now within the definition of GLBT.

With my acceptance of myself as a transgender female I find myself within the definition of GLBT, or gay lesbian bisexual trnansgender. This is a fact. The common use of the term GLBT makes this fact politically active and merges my case with those of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, in ways that may or not be to my liking but nevertheless represent a certain reality that I have to deal with. Each of the four types has its own distinctive social milieu, but these are sufficiently related to one another that the GLBT term serves a definite social and political purpose and is not to be ignored. I don't get so much value out of categorizing myself as a transvestic fetishist, which I am. It links me to transvestites in general and does not have much political power behind it, or at least so far as I can tell from having to keep my condition a secret for so long. It also, the transvestic fetishism, is not commonly known as a subgroup within transvestites, and what is believed is that it isn't a type of gender identity disorder, usually. This makes it more trouble as a category for me than it's worth.

To wear or not wear false breasts.

I have a certain reticence about wearing false breasts. On the pro side, it feels good. On the con side, it strikes me as pushing the envelope in terms of cosmetic effects. In addition to these thoughts there is the matter of just how to falsify breasts. On a slim budget my only real option is water balloons in a large cup bra. What if they should rupture? Well, I got really large balloons, so for any given inflation there is more structural strength. Also, for a really large inflation I decided to double them up, one balloon inside another. Even so, there is a risk, and an accurate estimate of the risk is not easy. But even if they did rupture, it's only water and no physical damage would be done. It would just be terribly embarrassing. I don't know what other options there are, and how much they would cost.

There is something to be said for being patient for hormones to give me large breasts. But hormones may not happen if they find my liver won't take it. Then the balloons will seem my only option.

The effects of having lived as a male for sixty years.

Probably the most difficult problem I have now is that I look like a male in my face and have developed a vast set of reinforcements for expressing the male gender. I have seen that these lead nowhere, so it doesn't basically influence my decision making, but nevertheless it makes for a hard transition.

I didn't grow up with a constant desire to be a woman. My desire was for having sexual arousal and orgasms while crossdressing and the rest of the time I just went along for the ride, doing what was expected of me. But this produced a dysfunctional man, unable to realize his most profound desires. The key ingredient, of living as a woman and having female orgasms, was absent from the world that was given to me, and consequently I didn't have before me a set of choices from which i could assemble a wholesome career and family life. So what then happened? What the hell was I to make of all this? Part of what was given to me was that I was being loved and nurtured by my family, and being educated for a useful life by the educational establishment. My duty was to believe in this, and my psyche was considered by my parents to be less important, or they wouldn't have considered my unusual gender identity an obedience problem.

The educational establishment had one chance to rectify all this. As a freshman at Yale I recognized that A) I needed a good outside opinion, and B) I was in a place where I could get one. I went to the University Health service, got an appointment with a conselor without stating what it was about, and showed up not really knowing what I needed to say or ask for except to just state I had a history of crossdressing. The counselor, after I made this statement, said something that seemed compassionate but she didn't have any questions for me. I said I understood that she was telling me that crossdressing was not a problem. I was centered on that issue rather than the larger and more urgent questions of just what I needed to do at this point. My parents had instilled the idea that I was an obedience problem in this matter and if I could get the counselor to commit to a judgment that it was not a problem then it was not an obedience problem and I would be relieved of the need for self-chastisement. The counselor answered my statement by rushing in to say she didn't mean that crossdressing wasn't a problem. It was at that point that my memory of the session ends. I left completely unsatisfied with the outcome and without any idea where to turn next. So I turned nowhere and five years later was in a mental hospital after sufferring an acute psychotic break.

For this reason I consider that Yale did me a disservice by the remarks of the counselor I saw. My openness to counseling was quashed and I never attempted to get more help. Well, perhaps negligence is hard to prove here, I don't know. I'm just not happy about Yale and what it has done for me in life. But that said, what can I expect from them now? These days, not much. It's not a happy story. Maybe I'll come to better terms with it with time. I am able to see, though, that my displeasure with Yale is based in my male complications and my female identity is basically patient about his.

Considerable rethinking awaits me, that's for sure, if I don't instead just throw out the whole male bag and accept truth as a female.

A look from a great man.

As I was exiting the men's dressing room at Filene's Basement a couple days ago, having just tried on a skirt, a tall, handsome executive type guy was standing right outside the door looking at some men's clothes and he looked up right as I walked out and saw me and looked at me carefully and gave me a smile that filled me with confidence. I immediately wondered if he wasn't there as a store detective checking out whether I was trying on a skirt with good or bad intent, however, his smile certainly was approving in any case and I smiled back and took in the moment with great thankfulness for his gesture, coming as it was from a very attractive man.

The agent which led me to step on a nail

If it is true that my crossdressing began because of the trauma of stepping on a board with a nail sticking out of it at age five, then I can extend the line of deduction farther.

Perhaps I was steered to step on the nail by bees that were angry that I caught some of them in a jar filled with gasoline. They would have known full well that my aggression would have been altered by stepping on the nail. Aggression was exactly the issue with them. I don't know if they foresaw that I would become gender identity disordered. Being centered on aggression they very well might not have.

Anxious to have real breasts

For now I have to do the best I can, which is false breasts, and this gives me some comfort. But I am anxious to start hormone treatment and have my own breasts develop. That will feel ever so much better.

Gender expression and cosmetics

Expression of a single gender is almost as just as expression of the physical gender. Cosmetics bring a physical woman into line with some ideal of Woman. They play the exact same role in a transgender female, and this is an internal legitimacy for her.

At least that's the way it seems to me.