Discovery

A certain sensitivity, a certain ability to live in fantasy games, a softness and gentleness, but beyond those, nothing marked me out than being anything other than the boy I appeared to be. Not very forceful or aggressive and good at picking up social clues and being loving and caring, but, no, pretty much a boy. Mud and dirt covered endlessly playing war games, playing cowboys and Indians, playing chase and tag, playing football and cricket, damning streams to make waterfall, seeing how conquers could be made stronger (vinegar was a help there, or so I think we believed).

It was at the beginning of my teenage years that something must have been detectably different, perhaps some mannerisms, some way of being, something that was not quite male. Then began a time of periods of exclusion, of occasional ridicule for the way I stood or moved, of times of isolation. Not man-becoming enough to be included, but not emerging-gay enough to be shunned, or be be find solace in the company of those who were. Just a little odd, just a puzzle, as if no-one quite knew what box to put me in.

As a young man I was very knotted up and unhappy, socially incompetent, shy , introverted. I did have a few friends, both male and female, and felt very strongly attracted to the female ones, endlessly wanting romance, but, but, far too locked up in my shell to be brave enough to connect – and it was romance, not sex that I wanted most. 

Of course I wanted sex, desperately at times – the hormone drive was full on – and it was girls that I craved, but to be bowled over by some young woman who would make me hers, not merely to be laid. Not that I knew that clearly at the time – just confusions, uncertainties, longings. I wanted, more than anything else, to fall in love and to be loved. I wanted endless hours of holding hands under stars, of gazing into eyes, of giggling and chatting and wishing upon the moon.

As some of the more discerning of you may have realised, that pattern is so much more typical of the female than of the male; but as a young man I did not realise that I was a young woman as well, that these longings were hers, that she was shaping how I was as a person as much as the man in me was. That shock of discovery lay not long ahead.

It came in the first weeks of marriage. Oh yes, marriage. An older woman found me and did make me hers. I fell gratefully into her arms and into her life, well, into her life – she was not so interested in my falling into her arms. There was love, and that was what was important to me - to be loved. And there were already children, a ready-made family, and that felt good too. I took to being a parent and a family man quite naturally,as if it had always been meant to be so. I found a very naturally nurturing side in me.

Just with all of this new beginning, came the shock of discovery. In the very first weeks of marriage. My wife was older, experienced - she'd had many lovers. She noted that her new husband was responsive in ways that all of those other men were not. And there were many other men, so she knew that this was odd.

She was curious to know what it was that made her new husband sensitive to being touched in ways that the other man were not. My extreme sensitivity where breasts would be if I were a woman. My ways to being so softly responsive, yieldingly so, and, even more perplexing, my sensitivity to being touched over the pubic mound. When she investigated she found what looked like a small, but real, dip where a virginal entry would be on a woman. This she explored and found it to be an entrance, thickly covered with skin, not like the thin skin of a hyman, thicker, but an entrance none the less. One with those oh so familiar muscles around that she knew so well from herself. One that responded by opening and closing in just the same ways. Her suspicions aroused she set to and touched me as one would touch a woman, letting her fingers play on me just as she let them play on herself. My responses were extreme and exactly those of a woman touched in that way, even to the point of orgasm.

My cries frightened and confused her, so very clearly female - but the reasons for them frightened and confused her even more. Her husband, her man, who was quite clearly a man, and who was soon to be the father of her next child, was also a woman. It made no sense. It was too shocking.

I was absolutely and completely disorientated. My body had for a time become another body, mine, but not as I had ever known it. Responding, feeling, moving, breathing, wanting, experiencing quite differently. My identity was shattered. It lay in pieces and with it lay the illusion that I was normal.

I was not one person, a man as I had thought, as I had been brought up to be, as everyone, even doctors, had counted me as being, but two, interwoven in the same body, sharing the same consciousness, sharing the same flesh and bone. One, the man I thought I was, the other, a woman, hidden, secret, almost undetectable, almost unobservable, but there physically, so very much there.

So why?

So why? Why the naming of what I am? Why the “coming out”? 

 

So much easier to keep your head down and pretend; pretend what you have been encouraged to pretend, to perpetuate the myth, to pretend that it is just not so! After all, it made other people comfortable with their version of reality to pretend a complete normality; a version that did not contain such inconveniences as having to accept someone as being different. 

 

If I really reach down inside, the answer must lie in part in wanting some self-respect - to be known as who and what I am - and in part in wanting others caught in this in-between world to know that they are not alone. That it is the prejudices, misconceptions and ignorance of other's that is the problem, not what we are, as we are born, as we are made. That is not something we can be held responsible for. It is not something we have chosen. It is not something we do, it is simply as we are.

I am happy to be held to account for my actions. I am not happy to be held to account for the way nature made my body.

It is bad enough facing all of that prejudice without facing your own inward doubts and worse, the shame that you may come to feel because of it. That really does poison, the shame, it is quite toxic. It makes you not want to be you; but none of us, none one of us, have the choice of not being what we are. In the end you do have to come to terms with that, to accept, to be what you are. 

 

Note – I do say, “What you are” not “What you have become”. This is not about accepting what you have become because of your actions. It is not like standing up as saying “I am D and I am an alcoholic” as a step to changing to not being one any longer. This is simply about your biology, about that which is you right to your core. 

 

So, what is it that I am? Simple. I am a chimera.

First, take two foetuses in the very earliest stages of conception, twins, but when they are no more than the smallest bundle of cells. Then allow them to come into contact with each other. Something strange can happen to those two bundles of what are as yet stem cells – so adaptable and changeable at that stage – so able to become anything – they become entangled, they merge into one being. But one being with two distinct cell lines made from what were, for a time, two separate lives.

It may be that they are both males. It may be that they are both females. Chances are, if that is the case, they will pass through life never knowing that they are a twin being. But what if one is male and the other female? Think – as they grow, as they weave one in and out of the other, so some parts of the body will want to become male, others female. Some cells have the chromosomes that will carry male genes, Y chromosomes. Some cells will not. When that critical time comes when “maleness” is switched on – about 12 weeks – those cells, those with the Y, can respond to the call, can become “man” cells, can set out to build a boy. But the other cells, those that are XX cells, they are deaf to that signal. They carry on doing what they are programmed to do. They set out to build a girl. 

 

The result? A body that is both. A dual purpose, dual function body - well, sort of, at least in terms of structures. That is where the hormones come in. If there are enough XY cells then there may be just enough hormone produced to make them dominant, so the result is apparently male. It may even be functionally male. It may even grow up believing that it is male. It may even look like one - well, reasonably so. It may grow like one. Yes, it may even passes through puberty at the right time and become what appears to be a man. It may even function as a man – biologically.

So far so good. But – ah the “BUT” had to come. Those girl cells, those XX cells, they had not been idle. They had followed their instructions and build all the right bits to make a female, and even wired them up in the right way, only the hormones kept them quite about it. Too much testosterone – or androgen as it is sometimes called – not sure what the difference is if any, not that it matters – and too little oestrogen. Poor girl cells. Not triggered into full action. Not allowed to blossom. But what they have built, what they have become, is still there, is still alive and responsive.

What have we got? A heterosexual male who is also a female. Bazaar? Exotic? Confused and confusing? Try living it!

The pas de deux of shame

Shame is a destructive force, especially when it is re-enforced by someone you love, even more if they are your life partner. If you are uncomfortable and disconcerted by what you are, uncertain about what it makes you, fearful of how others may react, you are made vulnerable. It makes you doubt yourself. It erodes your self-confidence and your self-esteem.

If your partner's reaction is to be ashamed about that within you which they find difficulty in accepting, then they are caught in a double bind: they love you, but they do not love what you are. They want to have the one without having the other, but it cannot be like that. They will not face or embrace what it is they find distasteful within you, but you need it to be faced and embraced, very much need that to be so, to help overcome your own fears because of it - to know that you can be loved as you are. They love you, but reject that in you which they feel is shameful. Because you love them and value their opinion of you, you take on that shame that they feel and it drives you further into a more permanent and damaging shame. Such a poisonous dance for two.

But what if that which is being denied is what your core being is? What if it is about how you were born, how you are made?

Imagine being biologically both male and female in the same body, the one hidden within the other, but no-the-less there, very much there. Now imagine your life partner denies the existence of this and makes any reference to it, any illusion, any sign or mention completely and utterly taboo. Think how that might drive you into feeling shunned. Making you feel that so much as the least mention and you will be completely and totally rejected as an abhorrent object of unmitigated shame.

They have found some form of accommodation with it by exporting their difficulties, by denying that it is there. This puts the onus on you join their game of pretending that it does not exist - or facing being shunned.

That is the pas de deux of shame.