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