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Old 02-24-2016, 06:57 PM
 
10,097 posts, read 9,973,431 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by geekigurl View Post
I'm going to post my story here. How I came to find myself. There is some stuff that my atheist brothers and sisters might not understand or agree with, as I am a progressive Christian. I mention this, because I want them to know that it isn't meant to offend, it's just part of my journey <3.

++++++

I knew at a very young age I should have been born with a female body. I could never put that into words, that concept at the time was not known to me. I was raised in a strict Christian environment, and having these thoughts were sinful, and the worst kind of wrong. At least that is what I heard in church. I internalized this sentiment, and it grew into a fierce hatred, most directed at myself. I prayed to God to make this go away. I prayed for that a lot. I couldn't be a girl, that was impossible, or so I thought. That hatred quickly over took me, and when I was ten I tried to kill myself for the first time, because I thought maybe I needed to do it myself, since God was not taking this away, or letting me die, I needed to do it on my own. So I tried to hang myself in my closet, but when I woke up later, the belt I used was hanging around my neck, and I was laying half in and half out of a box in my closet. I stayed there for most of my life, in that closet. Alone.

In my teens, I turned to booze and drugs. A lot of each. Nikki Six, a guitarist for Motley Crue overdosed a few times. At the height of my drug use, had he have known me, he would have told me to slow down and save some for him. It was that bad, but it kept me numb, which in turn kept me alive.

In my mid twenties, I think I was 24 or so I was at the end of my rope, again. I was tired of being strung out all the time, tired of trying so hard to "act like a man" and failing terribly, tired of dating other women trying to prove to myself that I could do it, essentially using them to try to "be a guy." They usually ended because I wouldn't have sex, the very idea of using that thing made me sick. So I was standing on an over pass one day, I was going to jump, the cars on the freeway below were going pretty fast, I figured it would be over pretty quick. I was finishing a cigarette when this uber preppy looking guy in this crappy red Nova pulled up. I mention these, because he looked so out of place in that car, it was kind of funny, like an 80 year old guy in a Corvette. His name is Bill. He's a great guy, I still consider him one of my best friends, even though we haven't spoken in years. We lost touch a long time ago, and I really have no idea how to find him. Anyway, he and his wife were driving on the freeway. He didn't even see me, but God knew I was there, and told Bill I was getting ready to jump, so Bill, and his wife Jayne (with that spelling, I'm telling you those two did not belong in that car haha) got off the freeway, and came to talk to me. I couldn't tell them why exactly I was going to jump, so I blamed it on the drugs, which was true, but not the whole truth. I wasn't ready to even admit it to myself. I knew that God wasn't going to let me kill myself, no matter what I tried to do, so that was my last attempt, I think. There were so many attempts really, it's hard to keep them straight chronologically, and the drugs kind of affected my memory, so that's kind of shot. I stayed with them for about a year or so, and got off drugs for awhile, but the pressure I was under was too much, so I relapsed.

I stayed doped to my eyeballs until I was 35 or 36, when I moved close to my Mom, she had uterine cancer, and I wanted to be close to her. She's doing really well now, we talk on the phone occasionally, but it's strained.When I was 38 I was tired of everything, life, trying to live up to everyone's expectations of me, and I begged God to take this from me or let me die. I knew that coming out would cause me to lose my family, which had been everything to me for as long as I could remember, I come from an incredibly tight knit family, we got together several times a year, we'd come from all over the country and gather at a state park, or Grandpa's house. I loved those reunions, and huge holiday dinners. Poker, football, food and beer, you know. I never got into drinking much, I hate hangovers, but most of my family members are drinkers. Socially, not alcoholics, you know. I didn't think I'd survive losing them. But something had to give.

I emailed a close friend, and came out to her, sort of to say good bye, I really wanted to die. I apologized for not being honest about who I really am inside, and for causing her pain. We were married about maybe 15 or 16 years before that. I may have been 24 or 25. It lasted a year. She's really the only person I've genuinely loved and trusted. Her name is Michelle. She wrote back about a week later, and told me that I was moving in with her and her family (Her husband, and boys), and she was going to help me come out and get through this. If I didn't come out, and live authentically, I didn't want to live at all. So I moved here, and got into therapy, and slowly started to come out.

I begged God for him to tell me his plan for me, and he's opened doors that I could never open on my own. Forgiving my Dad being one of those things. He was incredibly abusive when I was young. He used to beat me with a 2x4. I carried intense anger for him through most of my life, and one night I was on my bed smoking out my window (cigarettes...tobacco, not pot ), and I just started sobbing, uncontrollably. I had no idea why. I honestly felt like my heart was breaking. I was in a panic because I had no idea where it was all coming from, I realized later after I calmed down that it was 40 years of pain leaving me. It was just gone.

The hate and anger I carried with me through my life was gone, in that moment. It's as if God said I didn't need that anymore.

I came out to my Mom a few months later, she told the rest of the family, and they all agreed that they didn't want me home over holidays, they didn't want to see me. As much as that hurt, God led me through it. That footsteps poem comes to mind. He really did carry me through it. My friends also surrounded me and walked beside me too. Through that process, I slowly began to accept and respect myself, which turned into love. About maybe a year ago was the first time in my life I genuinely loved myself. Which in turn enabled me to love God more deeply, which of course deepened our relationship. He's guided me every step in the coming out and transitioning process. I know he is with me. When we talk, I feel him physically. I finally have the relationship with him, and Christ that I have always wanted. Growing up in the church, I had seen so many great people of faith, and I wanted what they had. I begged God for that, but until I was ready to be honest with myself, and live accordingly, my entire life would be a lie, and God can't move in a person's life, if they can't even be honest with themselves.

So that's where I am today, very much a woman, and very much a sold out Jesus Freak, and loving each new day that is given me. The pain of living in a male body isn't lessened, but I know God is moving me toward healing, and I can be patient, and know that my healing will be complete on his schedule, and he's handling it, it's all more than I can handle on my own, so I just let him take care of that. I saw my Mom last year, for the first time in three years. She came to see me. My family still doesn't want to see me, and I know it was hard on Mom to see me, but she did it anyway. So I know God is healing that too. But that's probably going to take awhile. It's ok though. I can wait. If I can at least talk to Mom on the phone every couple weeks or so, I can live with that.

++++++++++

What is this? What causes it? Why am I this way? Why do they have a white sale on Dr. King Day?

I don't know. I don't need to know. I just know that I'm a chick. I don't wear dresses, if you tried to put me in one, I have claws and I'll use them. I love my jeans and t-shirts and hoodies. I'm still a chick. I'm just Kristine. I don't "want" to be a woman. I just am. What is, is. I'm not "pretending" to be anything. I'm not disordered, or diseased or mentally ill. The first step toward HRT, and eventual surgery is intense therapy to rule out mental illness. I'm not sick. I'm just Kristine.
I don't think you're sick. I dont think you're diseased. I think that there's a narrative out there that wants to make sense of the complex thing we call a human by putting you in a gender normative patriarchal box to define people such as yourself. Just be you and be happy.
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Old 02-24-2016, 08:26 PM
 
Location: Anchorage, Alaska
3,840 posts, read 4,500,332 times
Reputation: 3088
I'm intersex: Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (XY Female with a mosiac of XX and XY chromosomes). It's really hard for me to define how I know how I felt like a woman, I just did. I can't explain it. I see where you're going, radiolibre - you're making the same arguments made by radical feminism vis a vis gender binary but...I just can't explain. I guess it would be analogous to trying to explain colour to someone born blind. I just...knew. Around the age where we become aware of our sense of self and gender I knew I wasn't a boy.

Granted, my personal situation is a wee bit more complex, being intersex but I was still raised male but never, ever, associated myself with males or their character traits, setting aside the fact that physically I didn't look like them.

Gender really is a complex study and I wish I had more to offer but I simply can't. I don't think anyone who isn't transgender can really understand how those who are feel. I can tell you this: it's not a choice.

Thank you for raising some interesting, and good points.
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Old 02-24-2016, 09:02 PM
 
24 posts, read 10,571 times
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It is a choice. Society may have laid down norms that you do not like..and it may be coercive. But so are taxes and jobs.

You choose to go to work whether you hate it or love it.
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Old 02-24-2016, 09:05 PM
 
13,289 posts, read 7,840,725 times
Reputation: 2141
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hyperthetic View Post
"The DNA-altering approach for permanently reducing homosexual and pedophile behavior in mice with a single injection could potentially reduce these sexual instincts by up to 90 percent believes Nasser Zolfaghari, PhD and assistant professor at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences."

Iran: New Vaccine Could Cure Homosexuality and Pedophilia World News Daily Report
Pedophile mice?
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Old 02-24-2016, 09:08 PM
 
24 posts, read 10,571 times
Reputation: 15
Love is love, bro
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Old 02-24-2016, 09:41 PM
 
13,289 posts, read 7,840,725 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hyperthetic View Post
Pedophile mice?
Did they breed a line of them for the research?
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Old 02-24-2016, 09:42 PM
 
10,097 posts, read 9,973,431 times
Reputation: 5225
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wynternight View Post
I'm intersex: Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (XY Female with a mosiac of XX and XY chromosomes). It's really hard for me to define how I know how I felt like a woman, I just did. I can't explain it. I see where you're going, radiolibre - you're making the same arguments made by radical feminism vis a vis gender binary but...I just can't explain. I guess it would be analogous to trying to explain colour to someone born blind. I just...knew. Around the age where we become aware of our sense of self and gender I knew I wasn't a boy.

Granted, my personal situation is a wee bit more complex, being intersex but I was still raised male but never, ever, associated myself with males or their character traits, setting aside the fact that physically I didn't look like them.

Gender really is a complex study and I wish I had more to offer but I simply can't. I don't think anyone who isn't transgender can really understand how those who are feel. I can tell you this: it's not a choice.

Thank you for raising some interesting, and good points.
Thank you for bringing this up. It should be noted that yes I do side with the radical feminists who challenge transgender theory but it should also be noted that intersex people such as yourself are not a part of the critique. The critique is mostly toward the promotion of the gender binary among chromosomal males, born male, raised male, that reduce womanhood to an immaterial essence. Sex is real and plays a part in a woman's lived experience. It shapes what it means to "feel" woman. Without that lived experience due to being born biologically a woman you end up enforcing old rigid patriarchal norms of men and women being fundamentally different in essense, i.e. woman are Venus, men from Mars, woman have different brains, etc.
Now when someone's chromosomes match their sex/gender, their anatomy matches their sex, everything matches, hormones played no part, all the scientific determinations point to you being male or female, all we have left is someone's word that they have an innate feeling that tells them that they're female or male. Instead of telling that person perhaps they're just not fitting the binary, today though the transgender activist reinforces the binary by telling them that they're either male or female and must indentify as either or.
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Old 02-24-2016, 09:49 PM
 
13,250 posts, read 9,872,112 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by radiolibre99 View Post
That's a whole other ball game. Those guys were men from birth, male chromosomes, and despite missing the most important anatomy; the male genitalia. The "feeling" is tied to their biological makeup as a man. Socializing them as women was unnatural for them.

There is no male or female essence. At least not anything immaterial that is not tied to biology. Transgender theory starts to make less sense as its premises start to get analyzed and the science behind it gets scrutinized.
But I'm saying it is tied to biology. Just like being a man was to the men they tried to bring up as girls.

It's biology that's beyond us to understand at this point. But whatever it is, those that experience it are just as much the sex they are driven to be despite all indicators to the contrary, regardless of the obvious primary characteristics, like the requisite number of xx or xy chromosomes and the "correct" genitalia. There's something driving that essence that goes beyond the obvious.

If prepubescent children feel it, and they do, then I think that's an indicator right there.

I think there is indeed a male or female essence. I think there's a layer to it that we are not conscious of, until it's at odds with everything we think we know to be true, and then we realize we know very little, really.
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Old 02-24-2016, 09:56 PM
 
13,250 posts, read 9,872,112 times
Reputation: 14296
Quote:
Originally Posted by radiolibre99 View Post
Thank you for bringing this up. It should be noted that yes I do side with the radical feminists who challenge transgender theory but it should also be noted that intersex people such as yourself are not a part of the critique. The critique is mostly toward the promotion of the gender binary among chromosomal males, born male, raised male, that reduce womanhood to an immaterial essence. Sex is real and plays a part in a woman's lived experience. It shapes what it means to "feel" woman. Without that lived experience due to being born biologically a woman you end up enforcing old rigid patriarchal norms of men and women being fundamentally different in essense, i.e. woman are Venus, men from Mars, woman have different brains, etc.
Now when someone's chromosomes match their sex/gender, their anatomy matches their sex, everything matches, hormones played no part, all the scientific determinations point to you being male or female, all we have left is someone's word that they have an innate feeling that tells them that they're female or male. Instead of telling that person perhaps they're just not fitting the binary, today though the transgender activist reinforces the binary by telling them that they're either male or female and must indentify as either or.
But that doesn't sound like what geekigurl experienced at all, for example. I don't think she had trans activists telling her at a very young age she should have a female body.

That seems to happen to enough very young children to blow that theory. They have no experience with activists or anyone else for that matter trying to influence them, especially if they hide it most of their lives.

It seems just a natural part of a spectrum to me.
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Old 02-24-2016, 10:53 PM
 
Location: Anderson, IN
6,855 posts, read 2,831,140 times
Reputation: 4193
Quote:
Originally Posted by radiolibre99 View Post
I don't think you're sick. I dont think you're diseased. I think that there's a narrative out there that wants to make sense of the complex thing we call a human by putting you in a gender normative patriarchal box to define people such as yourself. Just be you and be happy.

Thank you for your kindness, radio. Really, when I set out to find myself I just wanted to be comfortable. Being truly happy is just a really big bonus. I appreciate your comment.
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