Friday 22 April 2011

Fear and self-loathing on the transgender trail

So for me I feel like I am held back by my own ideas of who I should be. I should just be who I want to be. Even when I have come to terms with my own trangenderism I feel like I need to validate it and set myself down to some hard limits.
I feel ugly. Yes. I feel fat. Yes. It happens. I should still be me.

I, like every other alienated teenager, love Hunter S Thompson. And like everyone else like me I felt that his writing really spoke to me personally and that I wanted my life to be lived according to his values, which seemed to me to be to just follow your passion; follow justice, look out for the little guy and try to cause as much havoc on the way as you can. But then he shot himself.
He gave up. I gave up. It’s a shit world when the man who knows its shit gives up on it. For a year I wished I could go back in time and tell him that it gets better. It always gets better.

Then, recently, I read one of his books I bought after he died; Kingdom of Fear. It was published after his death. And a line in it struck me, it was what made me feel closer to HST than anything else I ever read, it seemed to define a certain nature of his. I think it was also largely ignored. He said in the last chapter (compiled and placed there by his editor) that he felt that he was a grown man with the soul of a teenage girl. His lust for disaster and the chase of the bad boy could be traced back to that girl in his soul. This is how I felt, although my girl is less naughty and more insecure. She, me, is like the normal me. Insecure and worried and self-conscious. She doesn’t want to let anyone down even it means letting her self down. She will sacrifice a lot for the sake of others.

By this I don’t mean my family. As a dad (weird, but my notion of a dad is not like the normal idea. I fantasised my own father which means I can now be whatever I need to be) this needs to mean I provide support which I will always do. But instead of just hiding away my soul I should just let her out. She is more like me than anything else I let show, in fact she is me. She is all ME. No acting or holding back, she is let loose now and I hope to never have to reign her in. But man, o man, do I need to work on my self-perception. Anorexia is not pretty and I can never claim to have had it but I lost a lot of weight very quickly through not eating and as tempting as it is to do that again I think I'll just stick to cycling and running. Once I get enough self-control to drag myself out of bed in the morning I need to remember that the end justifies the means. By ends I mean an attractive woman and by means I mean leaving my nice warm bed to go and cycle around some boring old fields for an hour.

Either way. HST was Trans; it was why he chased everything and tried to fill the void in his soul. I also R Trans but I don’t intend to wait until I am sixty to really express this and then shoot myself in the head.
Fuck I’m drunk. TL:DR – Fuck you, fuck me. I am whoever I am. Also, I’m drunk. But meh, who read this anyway. From now on I’m going to get drunk at every opportunity and just let loose.


Next chapter of my blog will be how porn fucks everything up and makes you feel like a worthless piece of self-hating shit.

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Stuff

Well today was shit. I had a huge lift at work and felt great, but some things happened that crashed me down to the floor. I could barely drive home I was so low. But a friend on twitter asked me what was wrong (hi!) and I vented and felt a bit better.
I then came home and wrote for my novel (we all have one). I wrote 2000 words of steamy trans sex. If this gets published i fear it may end up in the porn section :\


I'll post up an extract when I have edited it.

I have more to say but less drive to say it.

Listen to this song, it always cheers me up for some reason:

Wednesday 6 April 2011

Damn it, fucks sake. Stupid doctors





Well that letter annoyed me.
This was my response from the doctor I saw when I went to go and talk to them about being transgendered. I don’t know about you but I find it dripping with ignorance and I also find it quite offensive. It doesn’t even offer the most basic of support that I would expect from the NHS.

Let’s have a closer look as to why I hate this letter.

|He doesn’t think that you have gender identity disorder as this is for people who require a sex change. 
  
1. How does he know this? I have never spoken to him or made any form of contact with him. All he has to go on is second hand knowledge of what I am going through as interpreted by another doctor who didn’t even fully grasp the idea of GID in the first place. I told her I felt like I should have been born a girl. Yes I am the cliche of a woman trapped in a male body. This is GID as I understand it. I told the doctor this much at least.

2.    Since when was it so black and white as to say you needed a sex change if you had GID. Also they are prepared to cut me off from further support just because I admitted that I did not fully know about how far I wanted to go with this. Of course I don’t know how far I want to go, I’ve only just come to terms with my transgender nature myself, I reached out for help.


|As I understand from our conversation you are not comfortable or confident with the fact that you are bisexual.

Right, this is not something I came to you about. I am very comfortable with my bi-sexuality and have been out about it for 4 years. So I find it very offensive that you should chose to focus on this as this is a non-issue. Just because I have never had sex with another man does not mean that I am not bisexual. I know what turns me on and I have been in love with other men. It isn’t all about where I poke my penis.

|If this is the case then Dr. Bakshi advised you to contact LGBT Group which stands for lesbian gay bisexual and transgender. Dr Bakshi couldn’t give me the exact details of how to contact them but he said it was self-referral and the contact details you can find online or in the Yellow Pages.

Now this is offensive. Not only is it condescending, it’s also inaccurate. The NHS has at least leaflets on this kind of thing as well as a whole host of support to offer. Not to mention the well-known groups such as Stonewall.  This feels to me that I am just being brushed aside. 

And I feel really sorry for anyone who might come to these doctors worried about their sexuality and will find no support. It’s not like being gay is a new thing. It’s not even a fringe thing any more. How can they not offer anything at all?

What I am going to do now? I am now going to request the letter than passed between the doctor and Dr Bakshi. I am going to see how accurately this represents what my issues were. I am also going to find out how I can see a competent doctor. Even if it means changing my GPs practise.

To me the biggest concern is how the proposed NHS funding changes will make this thing more common. My doctors have shown to me that they have no regard for people who are transgendered and I can imagine they are not the only one. So what if any services offered are cut, and people who are trans will have nothing to go to for help. That is a very basic way of describing it, I am not the most lucid of writers, but I think you may see what I mean. I don't mean this would happen across the UK, but certainly in small backwaters where knowledge of such issues is not very well known.