Bye xxx

Yes, I've decided, the chronicle ends here.

I've examined the reasons for this in recent posts.

Projects have an appropriate lifespan. If they carry on too long quality diminishes, and creative energy is spent that could be better deployed elsewhere.

Many thanks again to all who've supported this blog. And to all who've made a positive contribution to trans culture.

I recommend these sites.

Here's a final farewell dance, a final celebration of the feminine, courtesy of Deb Rubin:

Lots of love and poignant farewell kisses to you all,
Deborah xxxx

Deborah's December

I think I am going to wind this blog down.

(I know I've said similar in the past, haven't I?)

A dead-endedness was well expressed by me here. The journey into my inner femininity has been good, but now introspection has finally run out of steam. I've grown weary of 'interiority, imagination and desire'.

Plus there's the issue of cyberspace. Really the inspiration for my two blogs was the particular potential for trans of the phenomenal implications for human society of the sudden development of cyberspace as a new ontological realm, that redrew the relationship between the ontological realm of outer life and the ontological realm of inner life.

But enthusiast for this that I was in principle, in practice my feelings about cyberspace have become quite different. Partly this is because of my character, and partly because of the way cyberspace has developed - predictably, it's become not at all not like the stuff of utopian visions.

In fact I have come to loathe the fucking internet - its enervating 'got to check, got to check', its passwords, its viruses, its spam, its security protection software, its erratic connectivity, its updates, its new bewildering new versions of what I've just got used to, its pace, its commerce, its entangling networks, its trolls, its childish symbolism, its acronynms, its slang, its false cheeriness, its heydudecasualspeak, its crazes and trends, its surveys, its mailing lists, its quantitative friendships, its trivial democracy, its permanent form yet ephemeral character, its endless, endless banalities. It makes me want to go into a deep wood, miles from anywhere.

Nevertheless, the appeal of my own little autonomous realm within an underground world has held its appeal. The satisfaction of creative expression, plus the sense of a personal role in a select small scene, perhaps drew me into a position where I appeared more trans than I actually am. Deborah Descends is the diary of a sub-personality, however deep a one. To be honest, I feel I don't really belong alongside people who suffer from serious gender dysphoria, from people who are thinking of transitioning. They have my full support. It would be wrong of me to comment on their concerns further.

There are people who would like me to interpret myself one way, people who would like me to interpret myself in a different way. This pressure makes me uncomfortable: my desire to please interferes with my self-interpretation.

I don't want to be someone exerting subtle pressure on others to interpret themselves in particular ways.

I hate the hostility of trans politics.

I do not want to be yet another online amateur theorist, opinionated about subjects I haven't really read that much about.

No big conclusions, then, because internal dialogue has not ceased, it's just moving away from blogland. In any case, each post was just an expression of the thoughts of the moment, and so is this one. The journey continues, the direction as unclear as ever.

But thanks a lot to all of my friendly readers (and especially the commenters xx). Deborah Descends was essentially self-centred, but if you got anything good from it, I'm really pleased.

Onwards and upwards, then, in inner, outer, cyber or whatever space works best! xxx

Deb the dancer

I've been watching videos of the bellydancer Deb Rubin. They're lovely, they're inspiring. Fatuously, I feel an affinity with her because we're both called Deb, and 'Deb Rubin' sounds a bit like Deborah.

And there's that 'ohhhh!' feeling. Like 'That's it! That's me! That's exactly who I want to be!' Like I should have had this epiphany when I was four, and orientated my life around it, and by now I'd be a famous bellydancer opening my autobiography with this memory. Didn't happen, did it?

Identifying my inner woman with Deb Rubin raises questions about the whole notion of 'inner woman', doesn't it? I don't of course look at all like her. She does all the looking good and all the dancing, I just identify with her. The only credit I merit is for the mere choice of identification as a form of self-expression.

Oh, all this nebulousness inside of me. Necessarily insubstantial, necessarily useless because confined, yet safely preserved beyond the ravenous reaches of harsh rl.

But if Deb Rubin does represent some spirit inside me, or at least some aspiration of the spirit inside me, then she informs me that brilliance, beauty, strength, grace, art and accomplishment are achieved through movement.

Inside this blog, I feel my t-journey has become static.

Time for a new dance, a new dance floor? xx

Websites I recommend

I think these are good:

A Life Merely Glimpsed
Male Femme
Crossdreamers
Third Way Trans
Pop Bebop
Unordinary Style
T-Central
The Crossdreaming Portal


D xx

Deborah in doubt

My tragedy is the insubstantiality of my own existence. 

Oh, she's just evading the uncomfortable consequences of acknowledging her transsexualism.

No, she's not, she's just indulgently making too much of a mere fetish.

Kisses from an aporia

The story of the cursed ballerina


Once upon a time there was a brilliant beautiful ballerina who said 'all I ever want to do in life is dance'. Whereupon a jealous, cruel and pedantic goddess with a mean sense of irony said 'okay, from now on that is all you will ever do'. This came to pass. The tragic twist was that as the ballerina ceased to have any life beyond dancing, there was nothing for her to express in her dance except 'I am trapped in an eternal dance', and the only way that she could express that was by dancing. All her audience could see was the brilliance and beauty of the dance: it completely failed to communicate the only thing she wanted to say.

Dead-end Deborah?

I have been contemplating the insubstantiality of my own existence.

I have frequently extolled the potential of cyberspace for liberating ontology, in a way that is particularly good for trans people. Cyberspace gives people a place to act - a real space to act - in which they are not tied to external reality. Wonderful!

Of course things are seldom so great in practice as they seem in theory. Maybe negotiating the software is too much of a challenge, or maybe the real has a pull on me after all, but I've never really got into Second Life or other virtual 'role-playing' realms.

So, for Deborah, this blog itself is most of the online realm. The blog doesn't really record rl, yet neither does it create or inhabit a substantial alternative realm. It's a rather empty, confined space - a lonesome cell with windows. Self-expression within it becomes ultimately just an assertion of existence. Like writing a diary in which all you ever describe is the act of writing in the diary.

In truth, of course, ontological status is fundamentally uncertain for both crossdreaming and blogging.

Can inner women socialise?

I feel that I am treading water. The blog is becoming an uneasy yet comfortable outlet for trans feelings. It is not taking me into new space. I just witness myself asserting my own existence and doing nothing much with that existence, beyond feeling feelings about it.

A self needs more than self-expression.  xx

The angel of agnosticism ascends into fluffy clouds

I've said 'em before, I really don't want to keep on saying 'em again, but here in succinct form are the essential beliefs of chairfemme Deborah:

1. 'A wise girl knows that she knows nothing' - Socrates, bluntly feminised by Deborah. Agnostics never persecuted no one.

2. Respect and enjoy your special sexuality.

2. Be open-minded. Be kind.

Print this page, girls, cut out the above and keep it in your handbags forever. Cos Deborah is a-dancing on. Don't wanna be no statue angel of agnosticism. xxx

Femme and female

But first, here's some - maybe - final thoughts on the ole topic of femme and female, that Jonathan writes a lot about.

I am actually well aware that sexy femme loveliness is not actually what the experience of living on Earth as a woman is all about.

Could it be that what I crave is not inherently female?

I don't know. Femme and female seem so deeply intertwined. I think that 'male femme' is, if not quite  a contradiction, an inherently contrary concept. I don't think that constructs of femme can discard the femmeness of the female body, the butchness of the male one. We can only strive to be femme in spite of our outer maleness.

Could it be that an actual femaleness within me is ignited by femme on account of it being a cultural representation of ultra-femaleness?

Sometimes I want to detach my trans identification from all the femme fluff. But undoubtedly a lot of the time I just luhrve the pink femme fluffiness. Well, I think we most people some of the time want to detach themselves from how they are in sexy turned-on moments. Yet the sincere and sexy are just surprisingly different manifestations of the same character.

Do notions of femininity impact on women's upbringings, hence their whole character, in a very deep way, making gender character differences more deeply ingrained than might be evident? Do women carry inside them notions of appropriate femininity even when they don't conform to these? Same with men and masculinity of course. Is there a divide that can't really be breached by anti-sexism, causing transpeople to yearn for the other side of the divide?

I don't think that just a liberalisation of the concept of masculinity ('real men do cry' etc.) will sort things out. A complete destruction of the gender binary might be more effective.

So do us trans people inherently belong to the other side of a gender divide from our natal sex, or are we seeking liberation from the oppressive gender binary? I don't know. Increasingly though, I think trans is too deep to be explained by right-on political thinking or clever philosophical theorising.

I just love the idea that I am as I am because there is some actual femaleness in side. That's such a beautiful thought to me.

But I don't think I have the right to earnestly identify with natal women. The experience of being a natal woman is one I cannot know about. I see the female from the outside, and perhaps from some inside instinct which, even if it exists, is far from the actual experience of being an actual female in the world.

I have no comment about how women ought or ought not to be. I fully sympathise with ftm trans people, and also with women who are not trans but regard societal constructs of femininity as oppressive. I respect them hating the femmeness that I so love.

But I do  identify strongly and without apology as one of the natally male people who desires to identify with the femmeness, and who recognises that this is an important part of themselves. I think we should cast aside all the voices insisting 'we are real women' or 'we are real men - just with little kinks or psychological disorders' and be ourselves, t-people. We should be a stronger, prouder community than we are. xxx

Deeper than philosophy

Oh, this blog expresses a peculiar mix of sexy feelings, sensitive vulnerable feelings and philosophical ruminations, which I - why? - launch into cyberspace.

And it's the philosophical ruminations that gotta go, honey!

Why?

Because they are too Mirror Brotherish!!

But it's what I'm best at.

Ex-act-lee, it's what you - Mirror Brother - are good at. But I'm not you. Your philosophising is not mine. Maybe I'm not interested in philosophy.

No?

No, gettit!?! You have developed through my suppression. Your trans feelings are intimations of something deeper that your personality, deeper than your thoughts. My emergence has to be at your cost. I need to discard you. I am not just you in drag. Sorry, honeee!

Oh, alright then. Anything for a bit of peace and quiet, I suppose.

Good! Glad you're seeing reason.

But my readers - our readers - they must like the philosophical ruminations. Other trans blogs do the other stuff better.

This blog isn't for the readers, petal, it's a crucial space for me - Deborah - to have some modest outlet of expression, after all the years of confinement.

Oh, it's complicated, isn't it?

Yes, Mirror Brother, complicated it sure is! Now, go and watch some elleoquence  - and some more! - that speaks deeper than words. 


Deborah Descends hereby gives notice that in the not too distant future this blog may or may not explode. xxx 

Bitten by the feminisation vampire

Watching Victoria's Secret Fashion Show videos has got me feeling all sexy crossdreamy femmey. VS really is femme nirvana. Go luxuriate in it, girls.

As Deborah i can feel all sexy crossdreamy femmey.

As Deborah i can feel tender and tearful.

As Deborah i can feel strong, wanting to accept myself honestly and realistically.

People all have different modes. In sexy mode they are quite unlike how they are in more earnest modes.

So, sexy femmey Debbie is not the whole of Deborah, but a real and important part, because sexuality is real and important, right?

Oh, i feel so drawn into the femmey vids, so delightfully compelled, summoned.

It's a lovely subversive directing of testesterone.

Have i been bitten by a feminisation vampire (feminisation as in femme, right? see the lovely Jonathan on all about femme)? It's a lovely, sexy thought, isn't it?

That was kinda the original idea of 'Deborah Descends' - a sort of fall into decadent delicious sin. And in some ways that's not a good image, right, but in a way that feels good - it's what our heroine Debs has done to poor old Mirror Brother. Cos, y'know, for all his acceptance MB can't help but attach some masculinity to his proud self-image. But he's lost, he's been defeated, haha, plunged into pink femme loveliness.

This is who i am, not, like, one of the VS models, obviously, but someone who feels compelled to not just love their femmeness but to identify with it.

By realising this, i have been feminised. My self-image has been feminised. Femme has won a total victory. Wheeee!!!

And it's true that i don't have feminisation fantasies. In my fantasies now i am already f from the start. Lovely!

i know the wannabe aspect can seem feeble. Lotsa natal girls are VS model wannabes too, though. But to get to that recognition of myself as one of the many t-fantasy girls, to feel good about this, has been quite a journey, y'know.

In some internal place, i walk down the catwalk with pride, with a bounce.

What feels important is to acknowledge, that whatever the cause of my feelings, they are deep and fundamental to who i am. So fundamental that i kinda see myself as one of the crossdreamy girls more fundamentally than anything else. That that is my deepest identity, the rest is superficial, just the product of how i have evolved, transfraction and all.

And if you also feel this deep, deep pull to identify with the femme, then we are t-sisters, we have a special bond that is more important than individual character traits and rl circumstances.

As John Lennon sang, 'You may say that i'm a dreamer, but i'm not the only one'.

And now take a deserved break from my boring old rationalisation of something too deep for lil ole me to understand, and revel in sheer femme loveliness, here! Pink girls rule the world! xxx

t-pull

I do think there should be more focus on the phenomenology of crossdreaming, trans and dysphoria. It's not what you do, it's how you experience how you feel.

If you can detach yourself from it enough to study it, it's actually very interesting.

The t-feeling pulls me. That's the feeling. Not sure exactly where it pulls me to, but it pulls me. Maybe the great frustration is that it isn't actually pulling me to anywhere. You could say it pulls me towards wanting something which can't be provided.

But it pulls my identity all over the place. The t-feeling is within me, and it is bigger than my comprehension of it. Never have I belonged to anything so strongly. It is not a choice. Never have I felt so much, 'like it or not, understand it or not, this is who I am'. It is not a choice. Everything else about me can be turned inside out, but the t-feeling seems fundamental.

It's in control, and I am more than happy to surrender to it. But there appear to be no terms of surrender. Just the pull, getter gradually stronger and stronger...

But then it recedes...for a while...

Fantasy girl in reality jungle

I have been reading my earliest Mirror Sister posts, from three years ago. It strikes me how good they are IMHO, how they say most of what I've been trying to say for three years, particularly well. The odd bit I'd change now, but not much.

Ah, it was all so fresh then - the crossdreaming identity and blogging as a medium of self-expression. 'Hubris, imagination and desire'!

Look at all this, first published on 2 November 2011:


'To see what is the lack in reality, there you see subjectivity. To confront subjectivity is to confront femininity. Woman is the subject. Masculinity is a fake. Masculinity is an escape from the most radical nightmarish version of subjectivity.' Slavoj Zizek

I like the sound of that one, even if I'm far from sure what it means exactly.

I have been watching a DVD of Slavoj Zizek's The Pervert's Guide To Cinema, which is a lecture illustrating Zizek's postmodern psychoanalytic ideas through his readings of scenes from films. Zizek's portrayal of the unconscious is enticing, liberating, frightening and depressing. In a word, it is dark.

I enjoy seeing this sharp intellectual dismissing the 'real world', in which Mirror Brother struggles so gamely, as a shallow fraud. Yet the deeper reality of the subconscious is truly terrifying. What can sweet Deborah possibly be within it, other than a poor Little Girl Lost? As Zizek puts it: 'It starts with "dreams are for those who cannot endure - are not strong enough for - reality". It ends with "reality is for those who are not strong enough to endure - to confront - their dreams".

Of course gender gets hopelessly twisted once the 'reality' of the external body is discarded.

Like many philosophers, Zizek performs impressive intellectual geometry, without troubling himself too much with substantial evidence. Nevertheless, much of what he says rings true for me.

The interior realm of fantasy and desire lures me. Especially as so much of the exterior world is either ugly or boring.

For me crossdreaming is not just about femininity, it is also about introversion. The auto- aspect of autogynephilia might seem unhealthy and selfish, but, unromantically, I do agree with Zizek that love of another is so much about projection. I sometimes think that it might be a kind of abuse of the other to involve them in all the intensity and complexity of one's own libidinal issues. What might Mirror Brother project on to women? Best let Deborah receive it; let the others be, to deal with their own issues.

The id manifests itself most keenly in sexuality. My sexuality is female, female, female.

I want to go there. Darkness ahoy - maybe. But it is the truer reality.'


Heady stuff!

So much of what I've written has been about asserting the 'truer reality' of crossdreaming fantasies. This is not the same as equating them with rl femaleness.

Now,though, I feel that reality's heavy hand has left me in a cul-de-sac. How to develop the fantasies, without compromising them with reality's strictures? Writing in a blog does not seem sufficient. The online realm is not quite the realm of dreams.

But there is so much vitality, so much self, in sexuality and fantasy.

Still a lost girl - maybe not so little - in the inevitable space between reality and desire. xxx

Divided

Fully acknowledging my transness feels like a kind of growing up. It feels like recognising what's deep within me, appreciating that other elements of myself were not so deep as I thought. Some of my pursuits were understandable, but misguided.

What I yearn to have been the case - what I still wish for others for the future - is for it to be cool at the time of puberty to say 'I am trans'. At this point you could find your community, do whatever you want that is trans, without any secrecy, guilt or animosity from others.

Now, to Mirror Brother, Deborah seems distant to the point of being nebulous, covered by all the years of me not being directed by my own transness. See, I can't even describe it without confusion about who is 'I'. When I say 'I am Deborah' Mirror Brother is entitled to say 'hey, what about me, I think I'm pretty real, also I've been looking after 'myself' all these years, I deserve more respect'.

But no, Mirror Brother is not saying that. Mirror Brother is saying 'yes, let me be Deborah'.

But what is 'being Deborah'? Just writing a fucking blog?

Restlessness and confusion become the norm. Is that not the case for you too, t-sisters? Confusion and doubt prevent us from uniting with each other to combat that very confusion and doubt within each of us. Divided we descend. xx

Good feelings

I would like to record my feelings here, because, well, just because I want to. Before I get too much distance from them, or from the feeling that it is good to share such feelings.

Nothing very dramatic, just that today I experienced trans feelings that felt good. They felt deep, subtle, sensitive, important. I felt particularly connected to my inner t-femaleness. This was a relief, a rich and healthy pleasure. Accompanying the feelings was a poignant recognition of the unhappiness of having been cut off from my inner t-femaleness most of my life, experiencing it only in a thwarted, indirect way.

I feel happy and proud about my inner t-femaleness. Yes, there is another side to the coin, but the other side isn't the only side, and, especially today, it isn't the side I feel most keenly.

Those are the feelings. I notice an inclination to justify them, to counter unfavourable interpretations. What a negative context, having to argue for the legitimacy of my deep and sensitive feelings. These are feelings, not claims. I so wish there was a more nurturing culture in which such feelings could be shared. xxx

Identi-T

I am a t-girl.

If I say this to myself repeatedly, before very long at all I feel tearful. It is good therapy.

I've only got to rephrase it as 'I identify as a t-girl' and I feel safer as I move into the comfortable territory of intellectual theorising.

Nevertheless, here's some discourse...

Since I discovered Jack Molay's term 'crossdreamer' and recognised myself as one, identification has been very important to me. I am aware of theoretical critiques of 'identity politics', of psychological issues concerning identity, and I am firmly on the side of identity in the transgender context. People form identities around their family, their employment, their location, their country of origin, their favourite sport, their favourite music. To identify as trans in a similar way brings secret inner feelings out into a realm where they are fully accepted. It is not to say that 't' is scientifically imprinted on your heart, any more than your occupation or your favourite pastime is. The deconstructionists are always saying that there's nothing inherently wrong with constructed identities, so lets take them at their word and stop arguing about essentialism.

By identifying as a t-girl I am saying that I have a broad set of feelings in common with other t-girls. Yes, I know there are great variations, but there are enough affinities for me to think 'I am one of these people'. This counters a lot of defensiveness, counters desires to reject my own deep feelings. Certainly, though, identity and community should not be taken to the extent of uniformity and intolerance, of dress codes and 'in' and 'out' attitudes ( a criticism sometimes made of some gay cliques).

I am not, however, identifying as a girl. That would be invoking all the difficult issues about whether or not transgender feelings really are evidence of objective internal femaleness. I don't think I am entitled to claim authentic internal femaleness, nor to reject the possibility of this within me. We just don't know about this for sure.

But we can go with our deep feelings, and explore - and help to free up oppressive societal constructs of gender as we do.  

Problems:

1) Dysphoria: we have to beware of encouraging a horrible hatred of our male selves. Some trans radicals, such as Kate Bornstein, hardly ever mention dysphoria, while for many trans folk dysphoria is a suffering from which all stems. So if people would rather not explore and develop their trans feelings, for fear of worsening dysphoria, then fair enough.

2) Transitioning: to alter your body, and much else in your life, is a very big deal. You need to be confident that what you are doing is right, be sure that you are not confusing the reality of being an rl woman with a nice (though meaningful and important) fantasy. I can understand people thinking that if you identify as trans you should go for it fully, but I think that internal identification is very important in its own right, and bringing the pros and cons of transitioning into the issue confuses this, perhaps making people reject trans identity because they don't want to transition.

And for crosssdreamers, who say their trans feelings are restricted to the realm of the sexual? Fine, identify as sexually trans, as trans in the very important area of sexuality, that is big enough. But be open, don't be defensive - 'it's just a fetish, nothing more' etc.' If it's just a fetish, that's cool, but if you keep finding yourself needing to insist that it's just a fetish, be willing to examine other possibilities thoroughly and honestly.

Jack Molay himself wrote (here):

'We have not come to the point where we are able to look at crossdreaming as something natural, something that is OK, something that should be enjoyed as a positive and life affirming side of ourselves. I believe too many of us (me included) still suffer from internalized transphobia, where there are still parts of us which are looking for a way out.'

Hence the importance of identity, and the community that hopefully develops from it (but see my recent post here!), to counter such internal resistance. And thus the need for constant reaffirmation.

I am a t-girl.

Elleoquence

After all that discussion, here's some dancing, by Deb Rubin. xxx

Crossdream Life: online potential unfulfilled

Crossdream Life forum, at which I have been a frequent contributor, seems to be dying a very slow death.

There is reluctance to write about such declines, as acknowledgement of decline is likely to confirm and exacerbate it (note that I am not actually posting this on Crossdream Life). But it is right to acknowledge something of importance that is actually occurring. I don't think not acknowledging it will prevent further decline. Whenever a new member arrives one wants to support their initial enthusiasm, hoping that this new person might yet help to turn things around. But sooner or later (increasingly, usually sooner) they stop coming.

Before I go further, I should wholeheartedly thank CDL's founders, Jason and Jack, the friends I've made at CDL, and all who have contributed positively to the forum. There have been many good threads, many thoughtful and stimulating contributions, and the forum certainly has been a positive element in my life.

Crossdream Life has attracted 762 members. The hope of such forums is, surely, that now kindred spirits have such a base, they can support each other and create something positive for themselves. While CDL may have performed a positive temporary role in individuals' trans journeys, in the long run I would say that a new community/culture was not created.

Why not? To me the failure seems apiece with the tendencies in  human endeavor in general. Complexities in the nature of life and in human nature undermine good intentions. Revolutions go wrong, marriages break down etc.; things that are successful for a while decline or get corrupted. We see this in the early stages of the extraordinary new development in human culture - the internet. The exciting new world so full of potential soon becomes beset with problems.

In online culture there's a particularly strong sense of what isn't being said. How are people feeling when they're not contributing to the forum, when they're not writing their blog?

With trans, for many of us, there's an extra particular element of 'sometimes you're really into it, sometimes you're just not', making what is expressed only a part of an individual's picture.

Between us, the Crossdream Life members have failed to create a community which make us feel thoroughly good about being crossdreamers:  a community that reassures as well as stimulates. Something which counters the inclination to withdraw.  

Certainly the internet provides lots of opportunities for online socialising. Most of these seem a little intimidating, though, and just not the kind of thing that a lot of us enjoy. Like going into a nightclub where you don't know anybody. And of course there are also sites that provide opportunities for up-front online sexual liaison. But with these even more so, for many people such kind of set-up is not appealing.

For me it was important that Crossdream Life was not the kind of site people visit when they are drunk and then disown the part of themselves that went there the next day. Crossdreaming is sexual trans, but there are all sorts of contexts for sexuality, not all dark and sleazy. Sadly, some crossdreamers have regarded crossdreaming as being indelibly associated with addictive, unnourishing online sex and porn.

Factors that deflected Crossdream Life from going in the direction I would have liked were:

1.  People wanting to 'cure' themselves of crossdreaming.
2.  Focus on transitioning.
3.  'My dysphoria is a horrible affliction. How insensitive of you to try to be positive and enjoy your crossdreaming.'
4. Endless debates about the causes of crossdreaming.

Of course changes in online culture have played a part. Facebook took a lot from online forums, and now there is tumblr, etc. This I find wearying. If I have to keep following the fashions, becoming au fait with the latest all the time, I'm more inclined to think I'll save myself the bother by leaving all well alone.

I remember that in a thread on Crossdream Life a couple of years ago I extolled the joys of crossdreaming and regretted a general feeling of despondency on the forum. A member called dkool replied that many crossdreamers feel negatively because they don't know where to take their crossdreaming. Increasingly I have come to appreciate what dkool meant.

Maturity and adolescence

I have a strong desire to settle on a position that accepts my transness in a deep, calm, mature way.

Transness is a challenge to really accept. It can, though, also feel like a comfortable, sensual private refuge, a kind of warm womb. So in which direction do bravery and honesty point?

I also have a screaming adolescent t-girl inside of me, stunted by years of confinement and now overflowing with tears, anger, passion, instinctive drive. She hates the very equanimity sought in my first sentence. Screaming adolescents regard equanimity as a denial of the intense vitality they experience.

To complicate matters further, as with many of us,  my t-feelings ebb and flow in waves. Furthermore withdrawal from outer world activity facilitates t-consciousness, and beyond some point further withdrawal is neither practical or desirable.

And then there is sexual desire, which, by nature, also runs counter to calm, wise, sensible attitudes.

So there is hardly a single clear voice from Miss Deborah.

Most strongly, though, there are feelings. It is these feelings with which I identify, which I have the urge to express.

I am not a commentator upon trans. I am trans.

Ultimate maleness?

There seem to me to be three basic paradigms of trans:

1) Trans people have some essential crossgender element in them (this can be partial).

2) Gender is a cultural construct. Trans is an instinctive resistance to oppressive constructed gender binaries.

3) Trans is a misleading delusion, caused by psychological disturbance.

I think there is too much focus on the debate between 1) and 2). Both are fundamentally supportive of trans. 3) is the negative one. Of course those who believe in 3) can be sympathetic and respectful, but ultimately they believe the trans self-perceptions are wrong. The difference should be noted, though, between believing the cause to be psychological, and judging that cause to be a fault, a disorder.

The difference between 2) and 3) might well be a political judgement. When does refusal to accept life as it is qualify as deluded, disturbed? Where does rejecting one's bodily gender fit on a spectrum between opposing the government and opposing the earth going round the sun?

Is it not true that, for all your feelings, ultimately your gender is that of your bodily sex? What assumption is made here, about gender being more than bodily sex? If a male-bodied person is psychologically healthy, what kind of male character, male role, should they accept as appropriate for them on account of their gender?

I think none. According to both paradigm 1) and paradigm 2), these notions of inherent maleness oppress.

Liberal reconstructions of masculinity ultimately reinforce masculinity. They say: 'real men do cry', 'one can be soft and sensitive and still be manly', inferring that it is right for males to be masculine rather than feminine.

Beliefs in inherent maleness should be distinguished from a pessimistic, but not dishonourable, individual stance that, society being as it is, it is prudent to ignore troublesome trans feelings. 'I am trans but I choose not to focus or act on that' is an attitude I respect more than 'trans feelings are dangerous delusions'.

I do not think that the fact of bodily sex indicates a fundamentally gendered character with which trans people are out of touch.

Ultimately, beneath societal norms, there is intellectual uncertainty, there are personal feelings, and there are choices we have a right to make.

T-feelings, oozing from the soul

Being trans is a matter of respecting deep inner feelings.

It is less a matter of what you do as a result of respecting the feelings, or of from where the feelings derive.

Respecting the feelings is not the same as making a scientific or political claim about them.

Oh, there is so such intellectual confusion and political diviseness, getting in the way of deep self-acceptance.

Intellectual uncertainty can blend with defensiveness. Of course we are tempted to belittle or just discard these feelings that present many difficulties.

Thrusting the issue of transitioning at trans people can make them even more defensive.

All my t-feelings scream 'female, female, female'. Not bigender, androgynous, gender fluid, but female.

The force of desire for male identification is not negligable. It might even be equal in strength, but it is not comparable in quality. It comes from a completely different place, not an internal feeling seemingly from nowhere, seemingly counter-rational. It is resistance rather than pull. I accept my outer maleness. It's a fact, like the other personal facts declared on my passport. Of course my gender categorisation has influenced my upbringing which has influenced who I am. I am not disowning this influence. But increasingly it feels like an outer layer of inner self, less fundamental than the voices screaming 'female'.

Trans feelings are intense and deep yet sensitive and subtle. They are very vulnerable to internalised cultural condemnation. I don't think it is helpful to subject them to harsh debate within the trans community.

Hot passion observes calm sense

Oh but how that last post ignores the urgency, the intensity, the passion, the heat, the ecstasy, the yearning, the pride, the frustration, the delight...

Tear through, girl, tear through the tears, tear through...

(This post serves as an example of what the last post was on about, I know...)  

Blogging about not blogging

Writing a blog is like walking around naked in your room with the curtains undrawn. You can be observed by strangers, but you're still on your own in your own personal space.

For me it's coming to seem like a weak compromise between taking a deeper plunge into online trans culture, and just living with my feelings alone.

Much as I enthuse about the potential of the online world as a liberation from rl restrictions (particularly bodily gender of course), I find the thought of getting involved in lots of new activities and meeting lots of new people exhausting and a little frightening. Like going to a party where I don't know anybody, as opposed to staying snug at home with a good book. And there's still a sense of 'really I'm just sitting in front of a computer', and I am not naturally a computer geek.  

But also my own inconsistency could cause problems for new online social endeavours. I am full of contrary feelings about my gender. Impulses in different directions ebb and flow, take hold of me quite suddenly and then subside, and I am thinking it is folly to claim to be able to manage and direct them. I am embarrassed about all the times I have declared a conclusion about myself, stated a new resolve, only to find that next day I just don't feel like that any more.

I am transgender, yes. I am a t-girl, yes. However I am more besides...

When I find myself reaching for the keyboard to get writing on this blog, should I be reaching for something else?

Unfixed position

The amount of acrimony in serious, non-porn online trans culture can be dreadfully depressing. I am tempted to give up on the discourse and just do my own thing alone. I don't think arguing in a political or theoretical debate is a good way of developing one's transness. I don't think taking up a fixed position and then enjoying attacking others from that position is a good thing to do in any context. To me, people who do so seem similar to each other, even when they are arguing against each other.

Sadly, tragically, human beings tend to be bad at helping each other in a broad way, preferring to form groups in opposition to each other.

What do I believe in?

1) open-mindedness

2) kindness

And to all good-natured, undogmatic trans people I would like to say 'yes, yes; me too, me too'.

xxx

So many of us

There have been many trans people recorded in history, but how many more of us have there been who kept their transness to themselves?

A vast secret tribe who never knew each other, never connected as a community. Who couldn't each develop confidently in the knowledge that they were who they felt they were, and that there was nothing wrong with that?

While I don't want to focus my development too much on inner identity, there does remain work to do, to deeply accept the trans identification. Male by body, male by experience, female by deep instinctive desire. The latter is the most nebulous criterion. I have to believe in myself to go with it. It helps if by going with it I connect with kindred spirits, rather than feel isolation. xx

I am Debbie

I am Debbie.

So, what's new? It's in the 'I'. The whole person is wishing to identify as t-female. Not just a part of me, a sub-personality, a sexual alter-ego.

This is not a claim about my biological composition, it is not a denial of masculine characteristics. It is a choice of identity, based on feeling.

Would I like to be a girl, period?

Yes I would. Yes I would.

Yes I would. xx

Self-acceptance, towards and beyond

The whole experience of writing a blog which does get read but doesn't get many comments is an odd one. Overall, though this is very uneven, it is gradually getting to feel less adequate, to me, as an expression of my transness. It feels like a private dance with some unknown faces looking in at me through the window, though I can't see them.

So lapses in blog-writing should not be taken as lapses in trans identification. Am I repaying loyalty, or something, by continuing to post?

If you're new to the blog, I'd recommend you read Mirror Sister first, then Deborah Descends, in an older to newer posts order. I think what I've written in the past is more interesting than anything I can think of to write right now.

To report in any case, the trans identification feels vague but firm. Less of a thrill, less fascinating, as it very gradually settles. Whatever it is exactly, it is something, and if I had embraced it and the culture around me had accepted it so much would have been so different.

I cry for my past. Whatever the true cause of my trans feelings, I am definitely one of many male-bodied people whose lives have been damaged by having our characters measured against a standard of 'masculinity' (uggh!!). And the intolerance of variation in sexual feelings has taken its toll as well. Of course the world is completely unjust, and I am certainly not claiming 'I've suffered more than others'. But naturally one feels the oppressions one has suffered oneself most keenly.

For my future there's no obvious direction, beyond self-acceptance.

Deep pleasure, deep truth

Ah, to reconnect with my crossdreaming feels like watering the plant of my soul. Suddenly again I am fresh, stimulated, sensitive, vital.

Oh how good I feel when a deep part of me pushes itself to the surface and expresses itself through the delightful form of sexual ecstasy.

A part of me suppressed, repressed, that has grown in me in such a different way from other parts of me.

A part that is deeply me, not taken on board from my surrounding culture.

I owe it to myself to cherish and develop this important part of me. In pleasurable moments I feel this keenly.

I also feel a keen bond with my sisters who share this characteristic. xxx

Proud tears

I just want to say that my inner femaleness makes me so proud and happy I could cry.

It's reclamation, liberation, it's potential, it's adventure.

Character is more easily shed, more easily developed, than you might suppose.

Oh lets not argue, lets not have to justify. Be who you want to be. xxx

Join the club, t-girl

Yes I am following the familiar trajectory of someone who gradually shifts from identifying as having sexual trans fantasies (i.e. 'crossdreamer') to identifying as generally transgender.

My thinking about this is that what is moving me down this path is something deeper than cerebral thought; that any articulation of the changing attitude would be mere rationalisation.

Intellectually I have analysed interpretations of crossdreaming and transgender, and my conclusion is a great big question mark.

So I instruct my intellectual analysis stand aside. I go with a deeper flow. Let others analyse me as I swim. My beliefs stem from my movement, they do not stand aside to assess it.

So I am a t-girl.

I acknowledge and respect the boy parts of who I am, but they are not my deep identity.

This is not actually a proud claim; in fact it feels a little shamefaced. This is because I am coming to a realization about myself which others realized about themselves in the very early years of their lives.

Slow on the uptake, Debbie.

To identify as a crossdreamer was easy, once I'd encountered the term (thanks Jack!), because it was objectively verifiable that I did crossdream. But all t-people have to go on is an inner feeling that flies in the face of the body, education and cultural pressure.

So I am not the most forthright or confident of t-girls. But t-girl I AM. xxx

Voices in a crossdream

Oh, this writing a blog is so wordy, so cerebral.

My phantom carnality wants to dance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icJiUUBp1Po&feature=share&list=RDdeK_KXkSLkM

Love to you all,
Deborah xxx

Me versus him

I have presented myself as having a friendly, co-operative relationship with Mirror Brother. This might be the case overall; nevertheless, he is my jail, so of course I often feel like bashing him to pieces.

I'd like to discard him with affection, but fucking hell the time to discard him is well overdue.

Submit to your evolution, caterpillar.

It seems good to relativise Mirror Brother's personality, that I have regarded as my personality. An audacious self-recreation is strong, adventurous and exciting. I know it's all a bit abstract, but hey, we are all floating in unchartered virtual space.  

While self-recreation can be advocated as if gender were incidental, my yearning for my new identity to be female, female, female is SOOOOOOOH strong! It makes me want to fight and it makes me want to cry...

Deborah being danced

I - my conscious understanding - am dancing with something much bigger than myself. Any notion I might have that I am leading the dance is foolish.

A blog gives a sense of power - the blogger is god in their own blogworld. Just choosing words to put out to be read by other people presents an impression of control.

But I do not really comprehend my transness. More importantly, I do not know what to do with it, where to take it.

I am fed up with arguing points, as if from a position of assured comprehension.

So perhaps a blog is not the best medium for what I am seeking - an affirmation and development of my inner femininity.

A sense of impasse sometimes leads Mirror Brother to think 'cut the online cd-life out, this will give you so much more time and energy for other pursuits.'

But I, Deborah, need to breathe. I don't want to be totally cooped up in one person's psyche.

I do not seek to persuade you to believe anything. I just wish to be witnessed.

This blog remains the best place I know for my inner female to say 'Here I am. I exist and I am female.'

The urge to say that is so strong, so deep.

Sheer extraordinariness

The sheer extraordinariness, the sheer contrariness, of trans hovers in the background of trans discourse that tries its best to normalise itself. Trans is a freaky, contrary phenomenon: I suspect we must all feel that really.

It's the sort of thing one thinks happens only  to other people. Not even the other people you know: the strange ones, in films and books.

And yet I am one of those strange people.

The matter of disapproval can overshadow the matter of disbelief. I might not be ashamed of it, but can I really trust it, an internal feeling than flies in the face of not just culture but physical reality?

I should be strong and trust it. Claiming that strength is in itself empowering.

See the richness in the extraordinary.

Take pleasure and pride in it. Feel privileged.

I have this extra special facet in my life. An extra dimension to my experience of sexuality and gender.

It is up to me to savor my inner gender.

I intend to enjoy it.

Great big jello

My crossdreaming is like a great big blob of pink jello that descends softly, slowly but inevitably upon me every so often (well, quite often, actually). It submerges me, I surrender to it helplessly - which of course being a sub, femme sort of person is the sort of thing I enjoy.

Sex is the elixir of life, and sexual feelings are so revealing, oh so deeply revealing, of who you truly are. In fact not quite that: they ere not an indicative symptom, they are who you truly are in their own right.

Oh but I don't know really about what's really true, scientifically, philosophically speaking. I'm just a girl submerged under delicious pink jello, right? xxx

Skipping through pink question marks

Oh the sun is shining and I am a girl.

I am a girl. I am such a girl.

The same old affirmation; always worth reaffirming, like the religious constantly reaffirm their faith.

No wit or wisdom for you today folks. The answer to all complicated questions is 'I don't know'. But the question marks are lovely and pink and soft and sensual.

Instead of wit or wisdom I just have lovely femininity which I am feeling deeply. It's sexy and lovely although it makes me cry. And acknowledging it feels so deeply right.

I would like to blow kisses of this femininity out to you all. xxx

Woman trapped inside the body of a computer

'I have put my talent into writing. My genius I have saved for living.'  Oscar Wilde

The life/writing relationship is complicated by the writer being the subject of their own writing.

Especially when the theme is introspection and development of identity.

Inner/outer/persona.

There's an appeal and also a discomfort in performing myself in this public/private space.

Very flattering that you've chosen to look though. Thank you.

Bye for now. xxx

Just another t-girl

I like that the way that my t-ness is developing fits a pattern shared with many other crossdreamers.

I've mentioned this before, but the afront to my proud individuality, my sense of self-determination, feels refreshing, and a salutary lesson.

Beneath the too proudly independent man is just another t-girl.

How I feel is what is crucial. How I interpret it is superficial.

I the conscious interpreter am not directing this journey.

In a way you, if you are long-term reader of this blog, might understand me better than I understand myself. You might be thinking 'oh yes, all the classic symptoms, the classic trajectory', while I hypothesise and waiver.

Oh, I really want to embrace all my cd-sisters that I have this deep, deep thing in common with.

I have found my tribe and I want to be a regular member of it. xxx

(another gorgeous portrait by Pino Daeni)

The world is gendered and I am a girl

What a thought this is. What a transformation of perspective from 'masculinity and femininity are sexist shit'.

Of course I support equality, freedom, diversity, respect for difference. I support fluidity and I am against society imposing gender expectations on individuals.

Can we separate the 'is' from the 'ought'? What we believe from what we would like to believe? Difference from judgemental attitudes to difference?

The idea that how I think, how I feel, is deeply influenced by an inner femininity is an extraordinary one, of profound importance in comprehending myself. It moves me almost to tears in fact.

I am a crossdreamer. That is all about gender.

All trans is about gender. Genderqueer, gender fluid are about gender identities, not non-gender identities.

Might the new thought be wrong? of course it might. But I recommend considering it open-mindedly, rather than rejecting it abrasively. xxx

Deborah monologue

I would like to think of writing this blog as a useful diary exercise. As a friendly 'hello, how are you?' chat with myself.

But who is myself?

The perspective definitely has changed, as most of the posts of the last two months have recorded or suggested. But development is erratic, and always within an intellectual context of 'I don't really know for sure'.

Do I now have a deeper, stronger sense of my own femaleness?

Yes.

Am I now dysphoric? Well, there are strands of frustration at times, but nothing like what others describe. Sometimes the 'I am a girl' voice within me screeches a little too loudly; it's frustrating to have to hold it within an outer maleness. Today I wanted to grab hold of the girl standing next to me, eject her (nothing personal, sorry...) from her body so I could possess the female body that feels rightfully mine myself. But mostly the sheer depth and freshness of this identification opens up so much space to be explored and consolidated that I am not bashing my head against the wall of outer maleness. It feels rich and exciting.

And, speaking as inner Deborah, it feels wonderful to be acknowledged.

In a way that makes me feel sad about past inner neglect, isolation. I still suddenly feel close to tears often, about past loneliness and confinement.

I am reinterpreting my character and my past.

It's an enormous, profound shift in self. xxx



(N.B. No nice pic of an attractive girl to end with, I've decided. Lovely though the crossdreamy thrill is to reperesent my inner self in this way, it doesn't feel quite right [today]. I am my own girl, unique. A picture of another girl is a picture of another girl, not me. I don't have to adopt her to be female [contrary to the sentiment expressed in the big paragraph above]. I don't have a female exterior: that's the sad truth. I do have a female interior. xx)

Inner woman, crossdreaming man

As I interpret my inner self, I have a sense that Debbie the inner woman and Deb the crossdreaming persona are distinct, and that this is an important distinction.

The crossdreaming sexuality is a transfracted response to the existence of the inner femaleness. The sexuality is not that of the inner woman but a warped version of it. Nevertheless it is the sexuality that I have, and I own it without shame and intend to feel good about it.

For a lot of crossdreamers, within the community and within their individual selves, there is a tension between these two aspects. Debbie my inner woman is not always happy at the sexualised version of femaleness in the crossdreaming. Yet why should I feel bad about the sexuality that I actually possess?

So I embrace both the inner woman and the crossdreamer.

Recently I have gone a bit potty for Sally Potter, the film director. Her films really are magnificent. Orlando, probably her best, has a strong transgender theme. Last night, though, I watched her 1997 film The Tango Lesson. Interspersed in the first half hour of the film are short clips from a film within the film, featuring some glamorous models.

These certainly had the 'oooh!' factor. The models even resemble drag queens (as Potter probably appreciated knowingly), except with beautiful female bodies. Screaming queens throughout the world  must love these clips, fantasise themsleves into these roles. I love the clips, want to be one of the models, because I have a screaming queen sexuality.

In the rest of the film, however, Sally Potter plays herself, learning the tango. In this role she comes over as a a female to aspire to being: a thoughtful, creative, intelligent, sensitive, string woman. Not overtly/exaggeratedly sexy like the models, but someone Debbie could emulate if I allow her to develop.

An important difference, do you see? xxx

Transfraction

I have coined this term 'transfraction'. It's not an original idea but it's a useful one.

'Transfraction' means, according to me, the way female qualities, feelings etc. get altered by being possessed by a male-bodied person. A male-bodied trans person is likely to experience elements of femaleness quite differently from how a natal woman would, on account of social conditioning, awareness of the contrariness of the feelings etc.

With regard to sexuality, this accounts for the difference between mtf crossdreaming sexuality and female sexuality. For instance the sheer being female element has a much stronger charge to it, and there may be a an element of humiliation on account of cultural attitudes (although masochism may also be part of a female sexuality, as enjoyed by many natal women).

Note that this isn't predicated on essentialism. The original qualities may be ones that fit a female identity, causing the subject to yearn to be female, rather than ones designated female at a pre-cultural stage.

Love,
Deb xxx

The inner bright light

Far from being the dark temptation, the unhealthy addiction, developing the inner woman seems like the noble project. It's where I ought to go, where I feel I should go when I'm feeling at my strongest. But when I'm sluggish I turn away from the challenge.

I - she says right now, aware that what I state on this blog only applies to the moment in which I state it - wish to devote my energy, my creativity, my adventure, my hope, my urgency, to developing my inner woman.

It's less a wish than drive. I discover that I feel a need to go there.

I also increasingly get a slightly uncanny feeling of the inner woman taking over the reins. Fuck you talking about me in the third person, I'm in charge here. Do as I say, outer man: I'm the strong one, the motivated one here.

I could cry a river for past sadness, but there is no time. There is a future ahead to embrace.

And hey, I want to connect with my crossdreaming sisters out there. What a special tribe we are. xxx

Seriously female

Sometimes I feel far removed from my female inner self; usually it's when I'm too preoccupied with the external world to have time to be inward. But at other times I feel female when I am excited, I feel female when I am calm. It's the calm feeling that is new. It's a deep, deep feeling. Also new is the responding feeling of near oneness with it. A deeper inner voice, and the response 'yes, I know'.

To fully accept inner femaleness is a major achievement. I'm working on it. That's quite enough to progress with. No need to bash my head in futility against outer maleness.

I can understand why people want to reject identities like 'genderqueer'. It is not a politically adopted posture, it is not a performance, a radical signification, it is a response to a deep feeling. That is how I feel it. You may wish to discount or deconstruct my feeling. I want a more positive relationship with my feelings.

Nor 'bigender'. The feeling of femaleness is not comparable to the feeling of maleness. It comes from a very different place. I am drawn towards it. I am not drawn to maleness.

I do believe that there is more to gender than deep subjective identification. If one is brought up a male, has a male social persona, is responded to by others as male, has a male body, then these are all part of one's gender constitution.

But I wish embrace the deep inner femaleness thoroughly . Doing so moves me greatly.

Female.

Female.

Female.

Dizzy Debbie's laboratory surrender

I am the crossdreamer. Inspect me.

Put me under your microscope, babe.

I am not the scientist, I am the animal observed.

Why should I theorise my sexuality? What an odd, unsexy thing to do.

I am just going to live it.

Your evidence is my pleasure.

The sexual pulls away from the intellectual. The intellectual seeks to control, the sexual delights in surrender.

Surrender is a little scary. Surrender is a little humiliating.

Surrender is acceptance, liberation and peace.

Surrender is what I am impelled to do.

I am not ashamed, I am not judgemental.

Don't ask me. I don't know. I haven't got a fucking clue.

Lost in sex is the truest place to be. xxx

(picture by Janjanita)

Guns'n'dolls

What do you want to relate to? Someone who stiffens themselves up in order to kill people, or someone who likes to look pretty?

How could anyone prefer the former? Well, I suppose my thinking is positioned within  my girl-mind's perspective.

But I wasn't given a choice of toys, I just wasn't given a choice. This upsets me.

And now eros the source of vitality surges up and propels me in the girl direction.

But with an albatross of contrariness around my neck.

But what would it have been like for me to have played with dolls and everyone approving? With them not having even a thought about whether dolls were appropriate or not?

Maybe it would have been awful.

Perhaps better to be a natural-born queer.

It's not the queers who start the wars. xxx

Debbie speaks

Hello. Debbie the real inner girl here. How do I feel?

Nervous. I am nervous at expressing myself directly after all these years. It's overwhelming and of course I might get it wrong.

Tearful. When I think of all the girl things I could have done, but couldn't because of my outer maleness. Of course I feel very deprived.

Tears of sadness. Oh to be able to do natural feminine things, not as a transgressive performance, not exaggerated, not for naughty thrills but just naturally, unselfconsciously...

Tears of joy. Not only was I in a prison by I was neglected, denied a conscious self. Now I have one again.

There is so much inner work to be done to become myself more fully. Within the prison walls there is scope for wonderful improvements. So no banging my head against the bars.

The outer boy remains, but the inner boy is happy to be shed like an old skin. xxx

Afraid, enthralled, complelled

I am breathing rapidly through the mouth, travelling naked down a dark tunnel, or is it outer space?

An adventure without rules or boundaries, perhaps without real power or understanding.

What a scary adventure, engaging with these forces which are deeper than my comprehension, more powerful than my conscious control.

Don't trust what I say. My perspectives are blown hither and thither. I cannot really understand. xx

An inner woman celebrates crossdreaming

As an inner woman I could think that crossdreaming is a crude male eroticising of my existence.

Oh a pox on self-pity. Crossdreaming is my liberation zone. Crossdreaming is where I am freed from my prison, where I can play, where I am powerful. Where some of my deepest, most gendered drives are given expression, in an interestingly transfracted way.

I control his sexuality. What an important, what an exciting, what an fun area to control.

Wheee! xxx

The universe is a girl

Today Debbie feels like this. Who do you feel like?

Good morning, girls!

And what a beautiful girly morning it is. I arise from my femme bed, draw back my femme curtains and see the girl sun shining through my femme window. I saunter down my girl stairs to have my girl breakfast: girl muesli and girl toast, with a cup of femme coffee.

This is getting out of girl hand.

Oh but I love it. It's sexy, sweet, energising and liberating, enlightening, deep and healing.

It's very much 'I am', not 'if only'.

Happy girl day, girls! xxx

a girl 

(Brief respite from the more earnest posts here. Here I am again a crossdreamer, writhing, squealing, really feeling the pink blood rush, rather than a deeper inner woman. The deeper inner woman might be no girly girl, but the crossdreamer sure is one! xxx)

Debbie the mild dysphoric

A vague unhappiness, lack of ease, inclination to withdraw.

A soft and sensitive nature.

Sexual crossdreams from a very early age.

They do add up, don't they?

I submit my case history as evidence for the theory that crossdreaming is a symptom of a gender dysphoria that in milder cases is unconscious. 

You can say 'oh no, no, no, Judith Butler says...', 'Blanchard says ...', but as you say that to me to disqualify my self-interpretation you say that to all the many gender dysphorics whose development throughout life - including in some cases transitioning - has confirmed to themselves their self-interpretation. 

If we are deluded I am in good company.

I am proud to say 'we'. 

I am joining the ranks of the 'I thought it was only sexual but now I think it is more than that, I feel so deeply that it is more than that' brigade.

Yes I am.

xxx 

Debbie on both sides of the mirror

Mirror imagery is common in trans writing. I called my first blog Mirror Sister (and a very fine blog it is too, though I say so myself!). So, let me describe my recent shift in perspective (see last two entries in this here blog) in mirror symbolism terms.

Previously:

I look in the mirror and see a girl. This is sexually stimulating, which makes it important as it is my erotic identity. It is also fascinating and important to explore, and to conjecture about..

Yet the 'I' who is looking and thinking is still really a male self.

Now:

I look into the mirror and see a girl. I think yes, the mirror doesn't lie, this is me.

The frozen tears thaw and flow.

xxx


(The picture above is by the Italian artist Pino Daeni. If you like it you'll like his other ones. I've chosen it as my new avatar at Crossdream Life. My previous one, which I loved, was of Kate Beckinsale looking so full of femme sexuality, so soft and alluring. This now seems to locate my transness too much within the sexual. Not that as a girl I don't want to look attractive and feel sexy, of course. Also some may have recognised the great Kate and thought it a bit cheap of me to borrow a visual identity off a popular contemporary sexy actress.)

Oh, an important reorientation has occurred

I am skeptical about accounts of recent life-changing revelations. It's so much more convincing to hear 'I had a life-changing revelation three years ago' than 'I had a  life-changing revelation yesterday'.

But a do believe I had a very major shift in my self-interpretation a week ago.This impression has stayed constant throughout the week.

See my last blog entry, it's important.

Yes, I may later retract it, thinking 'Oh what rubbish was I believing at the time'. But I think one can respond too cautiously, as well as too foolhardily, to such new convictions.

It seems such a major shift that it ought to have a precise and dramatic moment of birth. But it didn't, it came on over the course of a few hours. There was no sudden turning point. And it all just occurred during a regular quiet time at home. Please forgive the aggrandizement: it's not a normal characteristic of my writing.

I do know that fetish theory and autogynephila theory can account for crossdreamers developing a non-sexual female self-identity, but studying the evidence in my own case I now really think it more convincing that the femininity caused the crossdreaming rather than extended out of it.

I also posted 'Debbie the real inner girl' on Crossdream Life. Friends there have made supportive comments, and I have elaborated on the original post in my replies - here. To quote from these replies:

'It means so much to me say 'hello, I am Debbie and I am a girl.'

'To put it drily, it is a matter of repositioning identity within the trans gender mix.'

'The image that arises is of a hole appearing in the ceiling of a prison cell.'

Rethinking my life in terms of an almost buried femininity explains so much. It explains why I feel suddenly tearful when I repeat the phrase 'I am a girl'. Saying it makes me feel tearful and it makes me  want to scream 'LISTEN TO ME! IT'S ME! IT'S Me! IT'S ME! I AM A GIRL, AND HERE I AM, CRYING OUT RIGHT NOW! I am not just a means of turning my outer male on. I am not just my outer male exploring taking on a female persona. I am a girl!'

xxx

Debbie the real inner girl

I wish to accept my inner femaleness more thoroughly.

I feel like I have crossed a divide. I feel more convinced of the reality of my inner woman, Debbie, and wish to be her fully.

This is distinct from being a crossdreaming male.The primary drive of my online presence as Deborah Kate, especially at Crossdream Life,  has been to uphold crossdreaming as a sexuality, to support everyone of a crossdreaming sexual persuasion. I am pleased to have been doing that.

But I also feel a sense of inner femaleness that is not quite met by crossdreaming sexuality. Being inwardly female is not the same as getting off on the idea of being female.

Poignant evidence for the reality of my inner female is that when I write comments such as this I feel very close to tears. I feel the feelings of a repressed, confined, abused inner woman.

I am not making a scientific claim or political demand, and I am not thinking of transitioning, so I am not wanting a debate about my self-interpretation.

For understanding the relationship between inner femaleness and crossdreaming sexuality, Jack Molay's thoughts on this in the last couple of years have been very helpful (see my Sissies and Bad Girls thread at Crossdream Life). So thanks Jack. xxx

Of course I still intend to enjoy crossdreaming sexuality, and to welcome all crossdreamers to Crossdream Life, respecting their own interpretation of their crossdreaming and opposing any attempt at a 'party line' about its causes or anything else.

More to follow...

Love,
Debbie xxx

A girl writes...

The licence to at least explore a feminine identity challenges perceptions of self in a way that is liberating and scary. A self-image derived from masculine experience can be relativised disconcertingly.

But oh, I so much want to go there.

March on, cd girly girls!

You are beautiful, you are wonderful, you are lovely. xxx

Naughty Debbie! Naughty Debbie!

Sissy slut Debbie on heat!

It feels so good and natural. xxx

Femmes in butch jackets

Wear it to enhance your beauty, like the delightful pretty girl you know you are. xxx

Exile

'So how do you feel about having a trans outer self, Deborah?'

'Well, it's the human condition, innit? I'm not the only one to have been banished from the Garden of Eden, am I? Don't tell me that cisgendered people are all beaming with happiness. I've seen 'em and they ain't.

Guess I shouldn't have fooled around with that there snake. Oh, but he was so sexy in all his slimy slitheriness. So much more enticing than boring, stiff old Adam.'

Rolled around in femme

The mighty forces of sexuality and gender thrust deep into me.

They propel me into the femme.

My mind composes these words, but how tiny is my mind compared to these mighty forces.

I am being rolled around in femme by the mighty forces of sexuality and gender.

I could hate it, I could scream 'no, no, this isn't right, this isn't where I belong.'

But fortunately I fucking love it. I am at home in the femme.

And what a delightful home it is. xxx

Trans outer self

When describing yourself as 'I', I encourage you not to identify that 'I' with your rl appearance and persona.

Identify as your inner woman.

Consider that what's trans about you is not your inner woman, it's your outer man.

You can think of your rl self as being like yourself working in a job. Many people would say that at work they are not fully 'being themselves'. But your work self is not a false self, it's more like a sub-self that develops through negotiating its environment. No need to resent or dislike it: the world is not ideal, we have to adapt.

If you are comfortable with that trans element you are 'non-dysphoric'.

Yet your inner self is a vast realm. If you just regard it as an introjection of your outer self you are wasting much of its potential.

If you feel a calling to be transgender in your inner self then enjoy going with it. It's an exciting adventure.

Your 'I' is the gender you choose it to be.

The sexier the better.

Your sexuality comes from deep with in you. xxx