Transmale/Biomale parenting in mainstream news

Andey (left) and Leaf Nunes with their son Antonio. "We're a gay male couple that got to have a child the old-fashioned way," said Andey, a transgender man. Leaf is biologically male, while Andey was born female.
(ABC News)

bathroom disclosures

My horoscope for today reads something like: Everyone can see how you're feeling today. The best idea is just to express yourself as you go through your day.

Funny thing about Wal-mart is that I'd never worked with so many people before, who were not much like me superficially but that tried to treat each other like family. In my two months at Shaw's, I never made even an acquiantence, and no one made an effort, either. At Wal-mart, people try to connect. They sometimes even act more comfortable with me than I am with myself. The most common example of this is telling me to smile. Somehow, if I am feeling shitty, no matter how much I try to keep to myself, some random employee will tell me to smile.

I hate being told to smile, especially when I'm feeling crappy.

Well, today, I had been feeling really low. Angry and low-energy and antisocial and depressed, for no particular reason. I know that I feel that way not because of anything happening in the present, but just because I've been through hell and feeling low is my body's way of slowly helping me heal. I expect to be depressed. I don't need to be forcibly cheered up, although I understand that that makes sense to some people.

So anyway. That first part of my horoscope was so true today, because my heart truly was on my sleeve and this woman, this other employee, could instantly see that I was depressed and told me to smile and be bubbly and that would make me happier. Hearing this I felt about ten times worse. The personell manager walked by and called me Ma'am, even though I've told her to please not do it. At this point I felt like I was about to walk off the job or hit my head on the wall.

I wandered for a few more minutes, and then went back to work. I felt my spirits lift a little, because it can be genuinely nice to interact with customers and help them, and this does cheer me up a bit sometimes. Then I had to go to the bathroom.

I usually hold it for as long as I can before I make my decision whether to go and which bathroom to use. This time I opted for the public women's room. I saw an elderly woman walk in, and then waited about ten seconds, the time I figured it would take for her to enter the stall and close the door. I try to get in and out of there without anyone seeing me. Management forbids me to use the men's room.

I timed wrong. I walked around the corner just as she was closing the door to the stall, and thus was facing me. Her mouth fell open and she stared. I usually just ignore things like this, and go about my business in a pissed off and put upon way. But for some reason, perhaps because she was staring and there was no one else there, I said "Hello."

She startled at my voice and started to explain that she had thought I was a boy because my hair was short, but then hesitated and became unsure of whether her second assumption was true, either. I started to talk to her.

"I have a lot of trouble with restrooms. It's because I'm so androgynous. Whether I go in the men's room or the women's room, I have problems. People stop, and stare and gasp," I told her. "If I use the women's room, especially, people are shocked and offended. I have had people call security on me."

She looked completely shocked. "But why?" she said. "Are you--are you a male--? Or?"

"No," I said. "I am, physically, female."

"I have no experience with this," she said. "I mean, I have heard about it on TV."

"I work here," I said, fingering my badge. "The management will not let me use the men's room in the staff office."

Again, she looked shocked. After a long pause, she turned to go into the stall. "Well," she said, "You just do your best."

Her words were still echoing in my head as I used the men's room later that day.


Again, she looked shocked, as if she couldn't comprehend that.

dream of my great aunt

I am on a beach, having a therapy session. Myself, my mom, my grandmother and my great aunt are there. My great aunt seems to be expressing fears for me; we are talking about my transgenderedness. Then, it becomes apparent that she is not talking about that at all. Instead, she is talking about herself: her own feelings of suicidality associated with my being transgender. Sometimes, she tells the therapist, she just wants to suffocate herself. The therapist is understanding and moves to come over to her. I debate internally over whether to go over to her as well, and I plan to have a sassy attitude and assert myself best I can. I distinctly imagine the way my foot tracks over to her, defiant, will look in the sand.

Suddenly I tune in again to what she's saying. She's turning to look at me, and says suddenly and in a voice dripping with anger, "And sometimes I want to take a chainsaw to her [sic] while she is sleeping." She seems utterly serious. She repeats her threat once or twice for good measure. And I decide to escape.

I run from the beach into a warehouse. It is large and dim, and filled with huge rolled up rugs and long, low tables. I run though the warehouse, trying to think of how to get away in the smartest way. I suspect that she can run faster than I. I escape the first room, but for some reason I decide to go back and create traps that will cause her to fall while she chases me. I place a slippery, loosely rolled under-rug sheet on the floor and hide under a table to watch for her. She doesn't slip much, but she does wheel around and start searching the room I'm in. I am hiding under one of the low tables, and I keep moving to keep my body in the shadows as she runs around the room. She reminds me of Wanda's Seeker in Stephanie Meyers' book The Host.

After a little bit, I see that I can't hide from her much more. It's too stressful, anyway, the fear that she will catch me and my desire to protect my dream body from the fear induced by her hurting or killing me. It seems like she sees me anyway now, but I'm not sure. I lock eyes with her and stand up. "Hey, I'm here." I say, and wake myself up.

Seduction, Dominance & Energy

I stumbled across a woman's blog today who is socially and intimately involved in a group which I had not heard of prior, called the Seduction Community. This network of "pickup artists" (men, generally), both online and in bars or "lairs," practices a set techniques aimed at helping them pick up women-- pre-scripted lines, dominance behavior, "female psychology."

It is not hard to see the positive and negative sides of the idea-- on the one hand, it corrects some erroneous notions that some men hold about women. The Seduction Community teaches men not to buy women things to try and convince them to like them. Good idea. On the other hand, it seems to espouse some appalling notions of the highest good in life as being the biggest player, the one who can sleep with the most willing females.

The whole issue, though, brings to mind something for me that has been tangentially on my mind for some time. As a girl child, I was socialized by my mother with a set of behaviors that serve me incredibly badly, and especially when it comes to dating and sex.

Like most girl children, I was taught to be polite. Polite at all costs. Polite and nice and girly and kind even when I felt uncomfortable, even when I didn't like somebody. Polite when an adult gave me a creepy feeling. I was chastised for rudeness, told repeatedly that I was rude if I didn't thank people, say you're welcome each time, accept invitations. This is the way, of course, that most of us are socialized; however, there are stark differences between the socialization of boy and girl children.

In a relationship, I was taught to be needy. of course, this was not said, this was not taught as such. But I was taught a particular type of insecurity about myself. When I got into a relationship with E., I learned about this trait of mine much more thoroughly. Five months into our "relationship," I realized my self esteem had fallen greatly. I was dating someone who slept with everyone in town, it seemed, except for me. I was tagging along in our relationship because I wanted to be wanted. And I was not. E., like some other people, based his need for someone inversely upon how much they need him. The more I needed him, the less he needed me. The less I needed him, the more he wanted me. I was deeply aware of this push and pull, yet he seemed utterly oblivious to it. Our continuum of need flipflopped by the day, or the hour. Neither of us were aware enough to stop it. Finally, we agreed to separate.

This neediness, it seems, is part of what the Seduction Community wants to help cultivate in women. What I am curious about is---is there a middle ground between needing and being needed, where a relationship is fun, a playful tug of war? Would that be an enjoyable game? That is to say, must we accept the paradigm of need (of dealer and addict, as Ruiz analogizes it) or can we transcend it entirely?

I guess I have been somewhat in favor of transcending it. It seems tawdry, a little, and unneeded. For awile, I have sought a "new paradigm of relationship," an elusive third option. Is this third option, of mutual benefit, a transcendence of the mental realities of needed and needer? Or is it a fine fluctuation between the two? And, if two people genuinely LIKE each other, is all of this rendered moot?

Seduction Community may help to empower men, and perhaps even help them to relate to women better, less desperately, with more balance. Yet, in its many practices, it seems to overlook that simple idea of mutual liking. Game playing CAN keep a partner off balance and interested for a long time. E. kept me off balance and made me THINK I liked him for a long time. But I eventually realized I did not. I was attracted to my own need.

With M., I put a fair amount of effort into our friendship at first, and did expend effort in making sure that I was coming on well, not overly needy, and guiding the depth and intensity of our conversations in a somewhat calculated way, yet it was not something aimed at seducing him. There is no reason for me to pursue sex or intimacy in this way.

Rather, I wanted to see if I could get a better picture of myself, and see what I was habituated into doing in a relationship. I learned a lot by breaking my habits. Something like the SC--or many other programs aimed at establishing social dominance--can be so valuable in helping you to see where your learned submission lies. Yet their real value is there--in the seeing--and not in your ability to adopt the "new program", the new habit, and become successful. That success is just as much a false image as the failure you were experiencing before.

With M, I have ceased my energy expenditure in guiding the relationship. I feel fairly lazy. I am not sure If I'm presently feeling a great attraction to him. If getting close to him results in finding that I genuinely like him, I believe it is worth it to expend a little extra energy.

Again and Again

I haven't written in so long. Not sure why. I've been hopping along in my little life, wal-mart, bus, internet, school. I took the time out this early morning to read my journal again, and realized I'd neglected to write for months. I do write in my paper journal, but without great depth or length.

I fear that I've lost some talent for writing. Is it a loss of intelligence or a loss of self-assuredness? Is it a simple effect of the fear itself? For it seems directly triggered by it. I do endure periodic rounds of fear that my medication is causing a loss of intelligence, but I must not pursue that thought too much more.

Wal-mart is dulling me, making me a flat fig-leaf. At first it seemed it was doing something to me, something deep and great, not by virtue of its own virtues but as part of a process guided by God himself. I was beginning to feel some kind of stirrings of a connection between the spiritual and political, something I had not thought so possible.

Martin has been obsessing me a bit. I can't figure where to place him in my mind, this man whose intelligence and gentleness of mind feels akin to my own, yet who the baser aspects of my mind struggle with daily.

Perhaps I could make this oath to myself: that i will allow myself to be at whatever intelligence level I am at; to not criticize or condemn my own mind for not living up to my idea of its potential. I know the struggle is not yet over, and still everything appears as if it is on one side or the other.

There is the constant urge to evaluate (Judge); to think this or that, to pair or contrast or compare; It is quite amazing to see the tangled threads of mind I have developed (through little fault of my own) over the past years. I strive for no judgment, but it is not hard to be a bit surprised.

My desire for him seems to eclipse my ability to be with him in other contexts, to overwhelm me; and since I tend to judge harshly for oversexuality it becomes a bit trying. Let it suffice to say that I am turned on nearly all the time while with him socially, but especially when I have been away from him for some time. I know there is no shame in having sex with myself and that is a solution of sorts.

For so long The Parasite has been harsh on many aspects of myself and others, and my mental environment has resembled, at times, a battlefield of pain and blame. So many things are difficult when they 'seem' like they ought not to be.

here on the island of misfit toys

My mother told me that I was going and fucking up my life yet again. Sometimes when she gets mad she abandons logic and begins to say things which I, in my best attempt at being impartial, find to be totally factually inaccurate.

Ruiz endowed me with this gift of impersonally taking things. I know, because of Ruiz, that nothing my mother said to me about me was because of me. The little itch-makers in my brain would have me bound to believe that it was because of me. The itchies really go for that stuff. Guilt, blame--complex, tangled webs of them, if possible.

I was blessed with two parents. My mother, at her core, is a vibrational strata of pure awareness, which is able to love without thought or condition. My father, at his core, is a vibrational strata of pure awareness which is able to love without thought or condition. However, acting within their respective mental frames, my mother believes that she wishes me to be protected from harm even if it violates my own wishes, and my father believes that he has utmost faith in my ability to thrive.

As such are my perceptions, I also imagine that my mother sees what she believes come true for me, and my father as well.

I, at my core, am told that I am a vibrational strata of pure awareness which is able to love without thought or condition...I believe this often.