Being Open

How are you dealing with or handling this aspect of your life?

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Anne Bonny
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Being Open

Post by Anne Bonny »

Thing about being open, increasing your circle of friends and being around those who accept you is ... like this morning...suddenly Anne kept prompting me to change and of course I did a quick change to lingerie, forms jewelry pumps, dress, a bit of lipstick and fixed my hair. Now There are people I know who come over frequently and for whom I do not need to run hide and change back into male attire - what an awful thing to have to do, who can live like that? sadly many do....Problem is there are people who do not know because 90% or better chance they would have a cow! There are people in my life I do not want to lose who I can never tell. Well..perhaps never say never...but if for instance the Mother In Law and my wife's friend who drives her over for a visit knew my life would be so much easier. I being in my feminine gender and clothes would not have to run change should they drive up...just greet them and the visit would simply go on from there...no big deal at all. Yeah, nice dress, thanks... Gaw I just wish.

Or suppose hey need to run pick up some wipes and a new flapper for the upstairs commode...I do not have to change for that but self imposed limit on myself...I will.

So some of it is my own fault...some is people who are rock solid opposed to people who fall out of the binary but who we choose to keep for one reason or another in our lives because they are important to us. ...Not the Mother In Law that would just be trouble with my wife's large religious conservative traditional conventional values family....but I really do not care about losing them I just do not want any trouble. hiding is easier than fighting...pick the battles.

My older sister is also in that camp but I love her and want her in my life and want peace...so when she comes to visit next week...well...have to suppress my femm side if it comes. But who knows if an opportunity were to come up?

I am a gender fluid person...life would be so much easier if I could just decide to put myself out there and just continue to live my life. There is probably an attitude to gird up your gut...put your head down and go for it...so many who are younger do why is it such a problem for me? Don't really need a psychologist we do not need a specialist to figure ourselves out and to concur our fears and to be thrilled through and through at our own personal victories. I can do that I suppose...If I decide I might need some help over that hump then I can always do that...and I imagine going to the sessions as Anne would probably be good for me. Then who knows lazer/electrolysis, hormones? I don't know because being fluid I do enjoy being both ways so any further facial feminization or breasts or final surgery...probably not right for me...and I am 60..so if not now when and the clock is ticking.

But I am a fine person, a nice average and normal person I just happen to be non binary in gender.
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April Rose
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Re: Being Open

Post by April Rose »

Anne , have you talked to your sister recently about gender issues? Even in a general way? People's ideas, even conservatives, have a way of evolving as they age and have different experiences, and new information. If you haven't had that conversation since Caitlyn Jenner, "Transparent", 'TransAmerica", and "Boys Don't Cry", it might be worth bringing the subject up in a general way, just to see if she has had any movement, in light of the way the media has recently been dealing with the topic.

Did she support you in your career as a nurse? Is she actively supporting you in you role as caregiver to your wife? These are all signs that she might care about you more than any religious ideology, however rigid. Does she approve of how you've raised your sons? (They seem like fine young men to me.) The thing is, she may not have thought deeply on the subject at all; forcing the conversation might just start the process of changing her attitude. You are not asking her to give up her faith, after all.

I am not saying you should risk alienating her affections, but I think you can probe her limits pretty far without outing yourself. She'll just think you're a godless liberal, like me. ..OO.. I have lots of relatives I don't agree with; it doesn't mean I love them any less.
I am a vessel of the Goddess. Let me express my calling to a feminine life through nurturing love and relatedness.
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Anne Bonny
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Re: Being Open

Post by Anne Bonny »

The Sister that knows in email exchange let me know...

I had asked her if she had talked to my older sister and had discussed me which I said was fine but just wanted to know if she knew but I didn't know that she knew.

She told me no she had not discussed it and said something about my "preferences"....

ME: "Preferences" 60 years It is hard to accept if I have kept who I am to myself until I finally told Pat 7 years into our marriage. Society perpetuates with the aid of religion arbitrary definitions of what is "normal" but it is just convention. Those who are "LGBTQ" have existed as long has humans have been alive on this planet. A preference would be for chocolate cake...on the other hand I cannot have a preference about who I am on the inside, have always been and will always be. Just because I have had to project for convention in order to be accepted, to get an education, have a career, get married, have children, ...have a life...have had to bury from view half of who I am on the inside to keep up appearances just means that I had to deprive others from knowing or seeing a good part of who I am on the inside or my entire life would have been wiped away in an instant. with the internet it is clear, I am not the only one alive...of course society has just managed in every generation to beat us into submission so that we have had to keep who we are in absolute secrecy that is oppression. Society does not care to even try to understand they are not interested in the slightest and only want to perpetuate lies and myths and to use scorn and vicious jabs in the hope we will just crawl under a rock and not ruin their precious and false ideas about the world.

So yeah, just because I have kept part of who I am from view does not make it a preference. I suppose I could be lobotomized or put in an electric chair that would fix what society sees as abnormal so that we are kept from ruining the scenery.

I felt the need to back off and let her know that I was just being sensitive.

ME: Thing is I am exactly the same person inside that I have always been. Same personality, same values, etc...good citizen, moral...we are just like everybody else. I am a heterosexual male, with a variant gender, that is it. I still play it close to the vest....but Pat knew, G and J Know, You know, our sitter knows, the Hospice Chaplain, and social worker, Nurses, aids, perhaps even the neighbors? I am no longer required to tie myself into knots inside. I am free to be who I am in my own home, and if I choose any and everywhere. But it is easier to avoid swimming against the current of society. Hell of a life for people like me. I hope to find another woman who will be with me for the rest of my life and I hope she will be fully accepting with a wonderful attitude, a laugh and a hug, I deserve that before I die.

Well...didn't want to give the wrong impression...I have had nothing to do over the past 8 years but to think and to write about everything. I'm sensitive to words...and you weren't implying anything...I know that. Sorry. When things bother me I have to write about them...being alone with nothing to do...I would explode without an outlet. I picked up Jenner's book and was amazed at the similarities in a number of points...of course there are many differences...but many similar points...our personalities...in our upbringing...family...how this part of our selves has unfolded across our lives. But...I do not believe I will go that far...because I slide back and forth and I am comfortable with who I am. Ears pierced? Yeah...perhaps consider facial hair lazerization? But further I feel certain would not be right for me...I have the best of both worlds depending on where I happen to be at a particular time. Enough!

MY SISTER: You are so right that I didn't mean to imply any judgement ... was only trying to be discreet in my word choice. You know I am okay with you. I do not believe you have chosen this. It must be very conflicting but sounds like you have made peace with it. I always wish you happiness ... sending love, xxxx
PS I would have come over with xxxx, but xxxx & I are flying to CO to do a house check, since it's been over a month since we came home. Gives us a chance to get out some of the summer furniture and get a head start on property maintenance, before we return to CO for the summer beginning of July.

ME: Thanks

So Jist is that I now feel much much better in terms of acceptance from the sister that knows...I feel wonderful about it I mean as prior to this I was feeling as if ... well more like she really didn't accept me and knew because I had told her but that she did not want to know or to discuss it any further....which left me feeling...like she really did not accept me and I felt sad about it but after this exchange I feel so much better about it.

I also feel sad because I sense internally that My sons though they know just want to see Dad and so I never am any other way when I know they are coming and do not dress when I am feeling Anne inside...that is sad isn't it to feel that way. They say it's ok, yet I know it is not. Not sure I will ever get over that feeling inside. Since their mother has gone down with Alzheimer's it has been very hard because I am really alone and rather clueless without my wife there about parenting it has made it very difficult. I cannot really discuss this with them because well...they only knew I was my male side in there presence for the first 18+ years of their lives. And one is married with young children and I feel even more of a responsibility to be conventional especially when he comes over with them.

Funny how we are made to feel awful inside about who we are around certain people because of conventions, which society has brainwashed everyone with about what is and is not expected and normal reinforced by religion. Thing is though We should absolutely not feel this way at all because we are just who we are. Who we are is not immoral or perverted...who we are does not fit the lie the arbitrary conventions or norms of society but outside of that horrible lie we are who we are and we have every right to feel perfectly wonderful as much as anybody else feels about who they are.

Ideas in our head are sometimes awful things, aren't they?
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April Rose
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Re: Being Open

Post by April Rose »

Anne, I just want you to know I am not being glib about this. Life is complicated; life with family exponentially more so. I am in a similar situation with my son. He is open minded, and has seen me dressed without having a problem with it. But when I know in advance that he is coming over, I still change.
I am a vessel of the Goddess. Let me express my calling to a feminine life through nurturing love and relatedness.
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Anne Bonny
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Re: Being Open

Post by Anne Bonny »

We share this...ha. ok, makes me feel better then...thanks.
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Amanda R
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Re: Being Open

Post by Amanda R »

The issue of being "open" is two edged sword. Yes you have the right to be yourself and express your inner self and gender beliefs as you so desire without harassment or discrimination. However the people around you have just as much right to be turned off by your actions. Sadly this is a perfect world and we all know the world today is far from perfect. Prejudices exist regardless of their origin. It is simply human nature.

Part of the issue that exists, particularly within families, is after years of seeing you as a father, husband, brother, etc. and now you suddenly declare you are TG or gender fluid or whatever and show up in a dress and heels. In their mind they see you as that figure you were for years, regardless of how they try to accept you in your new role. I know my mother told me years later that even after accepting me as TG she had to fight the old images in her mind when she saw me as I was changing. She has accepted me as her younger daughter and was there for me all the way from my first therapy session to my GCS and beyond I know that in the back of her mind she can never forget that she was told she gave birth to a son.

I started by saying you have the right to be you but added the caveat that people have the right to accept or not. Even in the cases where they say they accept you go slowly for they will still have those images of you as they saw you for years in their minds. Allow them to adapt to the new you and see the person within is the still the same person.
"We may have all come on different ships but we are in the same boat now."
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Anne Bonny
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Re: Being Open

Post by Anne Bonny »

Thanks Amanda, The "new" me would only be "new" because I am not hiding my feminine when it comes ... but only with people who are in my inner circle. I do present Dad to my sons because I really do believe my sons want that, exactly Dad is who was there into adulthood and I do feel the obligation to consider that when around them I have no problem being who I know they desire to see...their father. If they drive up and catch me unannounced well...they know and when they do that I feel well...here I am! I may or may not change if they come in unannounced. My sister is more mature, and I am not sure how that would go... I mean years go by before I see her...but were she to encourage me to dress I might just do it but would probably be her brother otherwise. I do not often go out because I do not wish to swim against the current of our society...it is so much easier to just go with conformity...BUT! If I do desire to do so then I have every right to go out when the female is there inside. I have driven in feminine mode and have really only entered a store only a few times. I do assert seriously...and I absolutely would without any problem to go over to a female friend's home in feminine mode were I ever to have that opportunity if she is accepting and in my inner circle and knows and has seen me.

Yeah...We have to do what we feel is right, and I do understand those who have only openly known me as a male because I have hidden it much of my life would lead me continue to be who they have always known...then again...perhaps over time I could gradually begin to turn that some over time we have an absolute right to be who we are. I would not push that in some cases son's perhaps a sister...but over time a river flows where it will.
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April Rose
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Re: Being Open

Post by April Rose »

This reminds me of something Ralitsa once said; that what we need is NEW friends. That old friends and family have already formed impressions of us, and changing that becomes complicated.
I am a vessel of the Goddess. Let me express my calling to a feminine life through nurturing love and relatedness.
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Deidre Taylor
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Re: Being Open

Post by Deidre Taylor »

I tend to disagree with you April. I was discovered early on by a couple of my sisters and they not only thought it was great having a "baby" sister but it made things a lot easier growing up in a house with my mother and 3 older sisters. People can accept even if they have preconceived ideas if they want to accept. It is not a question of new versus old friends, etc. but rather having true friends rather than acquaintances.
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Anne Bonny
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Re: Being Open

Post by Anne Bonny »

That "want to" and being a "true" lifelong "friend" who is always going to be there... And "wanting to accept." Gaw...if only I could have that. I think those we tell assume our being who we are is something we only recently started doing. They are mistaken though because this is not something we do, but it is who we are and have been all or our lives. When I was too young to understand anything I may not have understood any feelings within as having some basis in a feminine gender...my interest in wanting to feel my grandmother's stockings on her leg...stepping into her pumps...it was not until the age of about 9 when I consciously made that step to put on a dress and some pantie hose I found in an empty rental house of my grandmother's that was between renters. Funny how assumptions are made that who we are is something we only started doing in the past few weeks or months because we have kept it all hidden.

Oh well...My older sister...she is beautiful for being 73 it is amazing...she recently had a face lift and she looks as she has always looked which is wonderful still has a wonderful figure...and was even hit upon by a famous football coach who was in her high school class...could divulge his name everyone would know who he is...nationally known. Huh he got up from a table and gave her a hug...next day had her enter her number into his phone...she did not enter her cell...said "What was I going to do? say no out there in front of other people?" Then in the evening she was getting ready to leave and he came over and asked her if she would like to go somewhere for a drink! She refused of course but her mind was all stirred up and she was talking incessantly about it. Talked with me and one of her sons, did some research, and with one of her female class mates who told her he is still married to his 2nd wife! So it was finally settled that his personality lifestyle lives a different moral ethic and that a Football/sports figure is not the sort of man for her, her husband had been a brilliant urologist and surgeon, a much better, man...intelligent, responsible and moral so if she were to find another man at age 73, it needs to be someone like that.

I for my part found conversations interesting we talked about dying our hair..hair care...finger length and she started up on toes and said she was curious about my big toe...I could not of course show it to her because it had a shiny coat of mauve! She talked about wearing a dress and the appropriate length and how she had not worn one in a year...talked about her calf length jeans and how she had looked all over for a second pair at a bunch of different Walmart's before finding one...talked about dancing and how her low heeled sandals had no buckle and hoping no one asked her to dance or that she would have to take them off she supposed because the sandals were a little loose.

Funny how we talked about feminine topics yet I was not able to tell her about my feminine side...she is conservative, religious but not obnoxious with it, but her values are those of her age group which had it's hay day in the late 50's, early 60's. I wish I could have opened up about my own inner feminine self occasional leanings.."fluidity" but I was quite on my masculine side rather firmly throughout, only once she was gone I mean I am currently dressed in feminine casual... Kind of agonizing wishing...kind of sad but someone I was telling told me that "You respect her too much" oh the hospice chaplain lady ...right the undertone being who I am is what wrong? Well whatever, but I am who I am, and you have to be able to use discretion and have enough sense that some people who you love, care about and do want in your life are not going to be those your feminine side can include in that circle of friends about you who offer love, acceptance and support.

Huh...I saw a youtube video by itv of a married couple where the husband is now the wife...and their loving marriage with their two young daughters carries on...I hope someday I can find a woman like that as I too would love to be seen as a wife well often and frequently with a seamlessness which would allow for the fluidity of my gender....sigh....
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