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