Notes for a sketch - thinking on Mermaids

Small cafe, two middleaged women, A and B, sitting down at a table talking in Northern English accents.
A - So whats been happening whilst I've been down South with our Deidre ?
B -  Well Mr Jevons, him with the undertakers business in Thackeray Avenue, he died last week.
A - Should be a nice funeral then, unlike the job they did on our Gladys last year. Having the hearse pulled over for speeding was not what the family were looking for.
B - And Janet Amos is 'disappointed' with her young man.
A - How she ever imagined Bruce Smithson would have ever amounted to anything I really don't know.
B - And then there's Amy Braithwaite.
A - No better than she should be, in my opinion. And the way her eldest looks just like Adam Carter, a disgrace is what I call it. What about her ?
B - She's going around saying that she loves her children.
A - Well,somone has to I suppose. The spotty one,the eldest is what, 7 now ? And the twins are coming up to be 4.
B - Yes, but that's the problem. It isn't just saying that she loves them, it's that she's saying that they also love her.
A - Well I never, always thought there was something a bit wrong about the Braithwaites, but that takes the biscuit. There isn't something, you know....anything pervy with it ?
B - She says not.
A - But how does she expect anyone to believe it ? They're only small kids. They don't know anything at all about how love is. Of course they might have picked something up from Adam Carter's sneaking around but no, the whole thing is nonsensical. No child that age can have the remotest idea about what love is about. They don't know about romance , what men get up to with women given half a chance and I've never seen the Braithwaites anywhere near chapel when divine love is properly taught. I suppose it's that she can't seem to keep a man but it's a disgrace to manipulate children like that. I'll be having words with Tom Price what runs the town social services, they'll have to step in. What can a 3 year old possibly know about it, they're making associations they'll have to live with all their lives ? You'll be telling me they know their own gender next...

Who wears the trousers ?

So was out with a friend,shopping in Marheinekeplatz market ; there's a saturday and a sunday one, clothes, a few antiques , bicycles , a chess stall, all bits and bobs. And I see some trousers.
My friend goes inside the recessed stall and looks for some svelte nouveau vague style number.
And I look up at the trousers.
She comes out a few minutes later and sees I'm still looking at the trousers.
The thought processes had gone...
(1) ooh, large elasticated waist and baggy but a bit masc/faux masc in grey pinstripe. Nice but I don't feel that happy playing with masculinities,
(2) then thinking that they were short and straight not my favourite Erte style balloon 30's types
(3) having memories of a great pair of Oxford bags in black velvet worn in days of first London fashion/philosophy tribe membership. Between peak psychedelia and punk there were various such and mine, in those times, was the kings road exotics, dandy stuff but straight het with a psychedelic bent.
(4) still miss those London fashion languages amidst Berlin hipster/grunge
(5) and at that moment I attained a mini Satori
.
The background to this is that for a while I've been thinking of how my queer level gender identity is moving, as against my trans one which is fairly constant. A few years ago I felt by default I was on the femme side though, by reasons of age, a fairly vague one. I don't do make up but can be serious about style, a hard enough thing in itself for me even now. I find femme scenes tend to have too many status games to fit into easily, though butch rules hardly appeal. Though maybe these are local things to some extent.
So then moved to id as tweener but that didn't really fit either and finally getting around to thinking myself gender fluid in respect of the butch/femme boundary.
(Yes, am quite aware that butch / femme isn't by any means an overarching paradigm of queer and/or lesbian life but view them more as usefully constant map references).(Also that I could simply wear jeans and sweatshirt and still be 'me'. Don't like jeans, and whilst theres no precise dress code for a book shop manager like to keep clothes fun and relate to them as performative/iterative rather than much bolstering of any internal id).
And there it's stood because I haven't really found a way of expressing that, certainly in respect of playing with butch masc stuff too much. Didn't feel confident enough of going a straight soft butch look or particularly love the generic dyke sooooo *

Satori (enlightenment, understanding of the nature of interior being )

A lavender carnation.
Maybe I can find places as a female playing with some tropes of male dandy, somewhere at the intersection of soft butch and drag king. A kind of queering of queer. This was the siren song of the trousers. An expansion, rather than a change, but still a welcome one.
OK, a mini sartori but still a sartori even if I did start thinking of the bag of silk shirts I'd never quite got around to throwing out and a couple of old Kimono jackets and so on, five minutes later. Anyway this is the direction I'm setting off in,either because of inspiration or momentarily overcoming a blind spot, in the fond hope that I can mix and match sufficiently to avoid misgendering. Fine feathers  make fine birds, and whilst clothes don't maketh the woman they send signals, they help to locate within queer maps, they express and more importantly communicate a set of positions, a suggestion of languages.

*On rereading, a small voice inside is going, 'Sophie, should this really rank amongst your set of concerns now that you're of pensionable age ?'
I ignore it.
After second adolescence, I'm 21 with a book of someone elses memories up until 10 years back. And I'm a Berlin girl, so, wtf, I only live twice.

A neuro-hormonal approach to gender - back to basics

I'm not a biologist nor a neurologist but do see myself as coming from a background in cognitive psychology with a constructivist bent. 
Additionally would place myself as one of many seeking to study what consciousness is, from perspectives of altered consciousness.
Given that my gendered consciousness has altered considerably with the felicitous change in my liver to produce estrogens, my overall perspective of gender centres on the neuro-hormonal aspects. This isn't to deny that the gendered world isn't also iterative/performative but it is to assert that part of that performance is biased by hormonal soups that seem to alter us internally and externally in some major ways. And not to look at what congruities one finds, in terms of hormones affecting personality, cognition and much else, as the bars of a cage, but more see them in terms of the gymnastic variety.
For most trans people the administration of hormones is part of a process of completion. It sets off what often amounts to second adolescences, and brings on an endless variety of the deepest emotional changes and others that complete our various gender journeys, insofar as any end point is ever possible. For some, whose neuro-hormonal development was already great, they have little effect and are a small part of transition, whilst for those like me at the opposite end of such development, the effects can be overwhelming. Reactions can be immediate or span years. One point that should be made is that reaction to hormones should never be seen as marking being 'really' trans or male or female in some way. It's extremely sad to see how many of those who take on truscum attitudes or go intensely for autogynephilia diagnoses or even hang out with terfs, are those who have mentioned how little they react to hormones and pour scorn on any major or indeed minor changes . Transitioning is one of the hardest of things a human can do and getting through it whilst lacking the sense of authenticity that hormone effects sooner or later normally bring, if simply from the commonality with your gender and communication systems, must be extraordinarily problematic.I do believe that a better understanding of the relation of hormones to cognition and emotion may help such. Also find that too often those in transition with HRT are apt to look at doses and such to explain variations in their process instead of proceeding from an understanding of how the overall changes work.
I've encountered many trans people talking about the effects of  HRT , apart from the purely body feminising kind. Generally people seem to agree that the most important things are changes in adrenal systems, changes in attraction and changes in emotional being. There's a sexual side too but bearing in mind the example of Tiresias have tended to avoid any judgement as to that.  They may also mention spatial awareness - I've heard the lament 'I can't parallel park anymore !' many times - or say something about the vibrancy and colour of the world increasing*. On forums these things tend to be greeted with 'welcome to the club' responses. Possibly because of the nature of my change am aware of a couple of other things that aren't so common but are definitely a thing for some trans people. Main one is probably the alteration in cognitive structures in terms of what processes are easily consciously accessible and those which are firmly unconscious, a bit of an upside down sort of change. In general, as a man, found that reaching re ideas into the unconscious and I'd likely come up with reframings, new associations and the like. Those are now more conscious whilst reaching back and I have a sheaf of long logical arguments to throw into discussion, things more typical, in prior times, of my conscious activity.
Generally  people are concerned more about the emotional changes rather than the sensory ones. Personally find this much mistaken and deeply believe that it's in these minor alterations that the others are firmly rooted and derive their form. The underlying process that affects these and so much else on a gendered basis is, I believe, the arousal system, whose role in 'setting' consciousness is vastly underated.
But that's more than basic.
A general point that I don't believe in extensive wiring creating male and female brains. A useful analogy might be seeing the brain as a large house, lots of rooms windows and functional systems. To be male or female would translate as occupying distinct spaces and altering them with a light of consciousness. Within those rooms illuminated theres a degree of conscious development possible than isn't quite the case with dark rooms, conscious and unconscious. Otherwise the house itself is broadly the same and alters gradually along with internal and external experiences mediated by consciousness. Each house contains a number of spaces which can be occupied and retain slightly different modes of functionality, a limited spectrum. Would hypothesise that gay, lesbian and various non-neurotypical may be usefully viewed as occupying such too. In binary male female terms hormones can alter those spaces and importantly too the window glass possible to see by that determines major aspects of internal and external identities.
A last point which is possibly a little obvious but...the world does experiments. When self identified trans people take hormones a large number of them have significant and partially similar cognitive effects. When people come down with my sort of medical condition - which essentially converts testosterone to estrogen in most males with it - a few hundred thousand in all, the rate of such responses is about 0.0000001%. Brains that work well with estrogen nearly always identify as female.
Brains that work well with testosterone nearly always identify as male.
And, thankfully for trans people, mostly the reverse also obtains.
I guess this is really mainly another redux post but it rounds things up a bit.
Next time on this subject, testosterone and arousal systems I think.

*Personal disclosure - the first moment I was aware of my changes I was looking across at a set of bookshelves. They changed in hallucinatory style, my impressions of the quality of shape receding whilst colour moved to dominate the foreground, all this by reference to my former senses's balancing of these qualities. To this day, there are still the very occasional times I feel that perhaps this whole transition is all some silly illusion, usually when finding yet another place in memory I can't easily match with my present life. Then I habitually look over at a set of bookshelves and no, the world is very different now at the bottom of the rabbit hole. This may perhaps bias me in seeing the sensation/perception borders as somewhat more important than otherwise. Life combining being an experimental subject and an external observer at the same time isn't the easiest of things, even with practice.

Redux

 If I am starting up writing here again, possibly best to give a potted biog etc
I'm Sophia Emily Raphaeline, I run what some people think of as one of the world's great bookshops and others that weird place in Kreuzberg .

Cis life
Born in the fifties, hothoused as a child. My mother came from a northern UK working class community and had managed the feat of actually being accepted for university but other 1939 events disrupted such. Hence born to become a project pushed to a reading age of 6 when I was 2 etc etc*
Grew up in and around with strong counter culture values which hopefully still maintain. Went to an english public school, academically gave up on literature and did a joint hons phil/psych at London with sufficient further training to go into branches of cognitive psychology but instead went for occasional property projects and newspaper reading/producing for multinationals and govt. and various private lives. Most years were spent in long and short term straight, reasonably good sexual/romantic relationships with an RA slant, married twice. Buddhist and anarcho syndicalist if I had to come up with stuff for belief systems and of course an avid sf&f reader with suitable beard.
Started Another Country bookshop about 20 years back. It's an english language one in the middle of Berlin and one of the better known world bookshops, chiefly because whilst it might not have the best selection or cater to the more exalted canonical tastes it has a certain character of its own. Fame but no fortune since it's a not-for-profit.

Trans life
About 12 years back I was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis and given 3 years to live.
6 - 9 months in and my condition seemed a lot better, though irreversible as a basic. Now it's compensated, meaning that it's damaged and messing up with some stuff but generally consistently muddling through, though this can alter anytime.
1 year in and I changed, dramatically. I, along with 60% of those males with cirrhosis had been undergoing some feminising body features because often the liver damage takes the form of changing testosterone to estrogen. But then I went through an overnight set of changes in terms of perception and some rather basic underlying cognitive structures. 3 months later decided to transition and 3 months after that started. Of course there was a degree of choice in terms of manipulating hormones to try and reverse things, just that it felt  it would be something like standing up to an avalanche and telling it to stop.
I have some training and interests in psychology and in the far past would associate with others who were reseaching their own altered states of consciousness. So when I found myself in such a state I wanted to chart it, to understand exactly how something is impacting on me, treating myself as an experimental subject. So first I was simply checking that nothing had happened like a small stroke  checking myself in terms of physical capabilities and various tasks , puzzle cognitive abilities measures, creative activity changes, going through well worked routines. With few initial results. But every day I was waking up in a different and changing world, along with a deep sense that the changes they evoked in me were somehow purposeful.
Two weeks in and gender was a thing. Becoming everything. It felt like being retuned, like being realigned in some set of deep, fundamental ways. And it was a world where women were far more intelligible, far clearer to me than men. Because I was seeing things the way they were, running an operating system that seemed now aligned more and more with their's. So I had to change and did.
Part of the processes I went through then were like many other trans woman's, the struggle with passing, all the issues to learn in a woman's world. But part was a huge internal change and irrespective of identity have always tried to chart such. It's what I do, I explore, I make rutters, it goes beyond gender. Whilst it's still changing in unexpected ways, think basic neurological changes were mostly done around the four year mark, with social changes ongoing. I'd shed my connections to a personalised past, I changed name, presentation all the while staying at the centre of the community here. And talking to all around and trying to make sense not simply in questions put in terms of vagueness like 'am I a woman?' which for most cases is firm yes,but more around what am I now ? I was a man, now I'm a woman and a being with sufficient agency to use aspects of both from time to time, but all still taking shape.
Basically just another queer, genderqueer RA trans woman who sees transness in terms of being neurologically intersex, one of the hordes. But having the advantage of a rare perspective and training sufficient to explore that in detail, from a cognitive perspective. My pronouns are she and her, and zie and zir. My upcoming birthday will be my 10th, my 21st and my 66th.

Generally I blog about various things with a prime focus of seeing how my own narrative fits with others to understand the nature of transition. Not transition in the general performative way but the transition from testosterone to estrogen based neural systems and how and why these reflect in social gender structures.

*This I take as one of the major reasons why I reacted to hormonal change so violently. I see gender identity formation as first of all arising from the individual's awareness of commonalities with others of the same gender leading to an identification which becomes an integral part of socialisation that in turn helps that identity to be firmly fixed. Whilst I never identified as female, my hothousing made me sufficiently distant from others in terms of commonalities at that critical age that the gender identity process was somewhat attenuated in my case.Not that I ever saw myself as anything but male.

to be or not to be

Was questioning whether to keep the blog or not and thinking might restart...or not.
Still, to show I'm still alive....a pleasant review

Community standards

More and more it seems to me that explaining trans concepts simply in individualistic terms is a mistake. Can understand it in terms of trans narratives being hegemonised by queer theory, and obviously there's the UScentricity, but think it leads to very false constructions that needlessly complicate. Not to say they don't have some validity but by no means are they complete or satisfactory lenses through which to understand gender. For we are not simply isolated islands but pieces of a continent of gender, parts of the main.
I suppose the outstanding example is gender identity itself, as generally referred to within the trans community. Of course the idea that we have some internal gender setting is an appealing one in terms of narrative construction. And for many, hunting down the measure of their internal gendered self is a satisfactory and accurate way of thinking. But at the same time it's also an unsatisfactory fable, a constructed notion of 'real self' that's outside normal 'selfhood' identifications. It's the thread we follow through our personal labyrinths to our most authentic being, but viewing it as necessarily spooled on some inner reality of 'underlying self' seems to me a step too far. We follow a path, we are led by a sense of gender resonances, of authenticity within our various worlds, and it's only natural that some notion of original self comes to mind to explain that journey, but it isn't necessarily so. For example, one might alternatively, and probably more accurately for some, conceive that the questioning process charts a change from one unstable gendered set of neuro-hormonal architectures to a stable one, the dice finally coming to their rest. Or perhaps some of our inquiry itself provides an architecture for identity Whilst original self clearly has a meaning with trans people who have known their identity from first memories, for those of us who have had some questioning experience, it's a notion of perhaps limited value, outside of a mildly self-indulgent authentification.
Part of that sort of bias is simply down to individual and otherwise unknowable sections of possible interiors being posited as the only elements to trans identities. For myself I'm more interested in framing in ways that allow for more social elements, such as commonality. I don't think the main force behind my own personal transition came, at base, from some internal sense, more that it was clear and manifest that I shared an overwhelming commonality with women, that I was operating as a woman because I obviously shared a world with other women. That my 'identity' was female was a notion based on that overwhelming understanding of commonality. As to what the benefits of transition are, my own view is very tied to the notion of commonality and is summed by this the 10 best things about mtf transition . Of course 'identity' is rooted in individual cognitive architectures reflected in common reactions to the somewhat different characteristics of the evident world conveyed by differing neuro-hormonal states,but it also resides in common abilities to access modes of communication. Lacking testosterone and testosterone typical processing capabilities it isn't possible to access key elements of male/male communication, for example 'challenge' forms of relation. Lacking estrogen and estrogen related processing capabilities, communication involving higher measures of informational content, for example, are rarely possible. When dealing with my gender role in the world I'm not trying to assert my authenticity as an act in itself. I'm not posing in female garb to claim my ability so to do. I'm making a proposition to the world, that it would be better for others to treat me as female, to communicate with me that way, to make some of the more basic assumptions that go with that, because that way we can meet and engage in the fullest, best, most real way possible.
And here the notion of gender expression also becomes problematic. Of course we aspire to heterotopic social processes where each can express their individuality via iterative performance etc. But such expression is necessarily a part of a set of communication systems and engagements. Gender expression isn't  an act of abstract individual artistry, it's a projection of place within gendered systems. Authenticity lies in its being a nicely calculated set of messages that illuminate gender identity, the communication systems preferred and the commonality felt. Obviously that's if you're trans, queer expressions being more ludic and based on other parts of the gender elephant.
I suppose this is a long time to go without an example, so here's one I've been talking about with women friends. One significant change that I've been through is that towards babies and children. Talking to a friend a couple of months ago and she offered to post me her new baby pictures in a way that came over that she didn't really expect me to want to see them and I'm all YES, OF COURSE etc. Really love to be around my new god child. And like most women am highly interested in exchanging weird facial expressions with infants. With children it's slightly different, but still a huge alteration from when I was a guy. On top of that in my chosen family relationships I tend to be mostly in those where sister/daughter/mother type predominate as echoes in the friendships . Am I now aware of lots of maternal traits I used to keep hidden ? Is this my real basic identity as a woman coming to the fore ? For me those are simply inadequate questions, not that they don't have some value as descriptive notions but that they miss out on more important factors. For a fuller explanation I suppose I'll look at two things. The first would be the complex ways in which emotional engagement is magnified by estrogen based systems, that sum more data than any testosterone based one ever can.But in this instance I'd also look at social boundaries created by language.Simply I was never particularly interested in infants because they were never a possible part of my communications network (except with my daughter who I spent a sufficiency of time with as an infant to get a little past that ). Now my communication systems are altered, with body language being a far more significant part that ever before. And now infants, because of that, are people to talk with, admittedly on an elementary level but much, much more than ever before. They're a part of the way I define the community around me, and a part that clearly needs to be welcomed into the human community around them, the web and weft of the world of communication of view.
A few months after my massive hormonal change nudged me from male identifying to female in the space of a few months, I think if someone asked me how I knew I was a woman I'd answer in the following. That it was very clear for me that I wasn't male anymore, simply could no longer accept that because I could see guys from the outside and couldn't really talk to them anymore as I used to. That I seem to identify with female far more. And that I believed those visceral notions were a result of a changed set of cognitive processes that are typically supported by specific sets of hormones. And I suppose I might have felt that I could classify those visceral feelings as ones of commonality with women rather than men in every moment of every day. Ask me now and whilst I still feel those cognitive changes were the basis, I'd be more inclined to look to my daily experience as an immediate authentification. And that's an experience of interaction, of communication, of common endeavour, of the commonality that is sisterhood, of the ground that is a woman's world.

Camera ! Lights ! Action !

A documentary of sorts about my place, a few of the people who used to be around a lot, and me.
Trigger warning for comments re transition.
Fresh from it's run in festivals, Rome, Copenhagen and Cork - the Bookshop

Being RA

One pleasant thing in the last few months has been finding a term that vastly better fits me than an old one, hence I can say I've 'changed', in terms of self description, from poly to RA .
Looking back and trying to find any precursive stuff to gender transition, that's the thing that most stands out. It was something I first expressed in my late twenties and wasn't particularly about romantic relationships, which I'd always seen as ideally somewhat open, but more about friendships. I grew more and more dissatisfied with referring and categorising people around me into friends, acquaintances, partner, work colleague and the like. Not so much because I was desperate to change any such particular status but because that sort of taxonomy seemed for me to put a stop to how each relationship might develop and kept me comfortable but unambitious in the middle of such.
So basically I spent a few weeks going around apologising to 'friends', exchanging ideas and reiterating my conviction that I should try and avoid such relationship structures and sets of expectations as far as possible. And that I take as a prime RA thing, to constantly have ambition for every relationship around. Of course one can do that without actually calling it RA but it seems to help some sort of belief to counter any internal ranking or structure of self to the relationships around. I think that change was part of the reason why having a wide chosen family has been such an important part of my life since then.
I guess the main way I see that as a precursor is that it came mainly out of a dissatisfaction with the emotional possibilities normally offered by society. Post social transition and the complexity and satisfaction I derive from being with people around me has increased more than I could ever have predicted. And certainly they've helped me cope with many of transition's strains. I seem to have a few mother sister patterns, younger women who I look at partly as daughters but also as older sisters. Those are possibly the most supportive. But I'm lucky enough to live in the middle of a constant social stream where I can engage with a whole set of different people and a large spectrum of possible engagement.
And I think more than anything it's the rewards that come from greater complexities and closer engagements, that are my present reality that most give me the feeling of transition as a coming home...

Wordy stuff

I've been making this argument in a number of places over the last few months.
The feedback I've had is generally always positive, but it doesn't seem to raise sufficient controversy to be widely taken up, hence this post.
Basically I think it's a reasonable, common sense sort of set of definitions that could be useful in defusing various tensions within the community. Thus....

Trans - describes someone for whom transition from their assigned birth gender is an important part of their life. It could be a non binary one and it could be something hoped for in the future, experienced at present or happened in the past, but it should involve a transition that would be socially visible to the extent that you no longer fit within your assigned at birth category.

Trans* - describes someone who doesn't fit in the trans category, but nevertheless in one way or another is, in terms of identity or expression, transgressive of gender norms.

Transgender - is the combination of the two.

Adopting these definitions seems to satisfy the utility of dividing a group with potentially significant medical needs from others. It also gets away from notions of dysphoria, wrong body etc relating to interior events and moves more towards performative measures, but not via surgery, hormones etc which are equally problematic. And it cuts out many of the objections to cis as a word since even the most radical of Terfs are hardly going to assert that they transition.
All in all it seems simpler than present arrangements.

Feedback welcome.

Years end

Lots in process but the year has definitely not been good for self expression.
Things I want to post about soon are...
a cautionary tale about how transphobia was exploited against me in a really bad way
travels in terfland
how concentrating on gender expression elides gendered communication and why that's a BAD THING on the whole...

Otherwise it has not been that kind a year. My aunt and father both died leaving me the eldest in our small family offshoot. My best writing this year was probably reserved for eulogies.
The shop has actually been fairly eventful. The monthly queer/trans* event for creatives here, a mix of food, readings and a/v stuff has gone really well. Next year we go to every tuesday being either a hangout or a queer/trans* event. Have had a private view of the documentary which is odd. The problem is that it mainly relates to the shop community of 7 or 8 years back which is about as relevant to me as the later stages of the Austro-hungarian empire but visually it's great. See how it makes out at festivals. Also in the next weeks we transmogrify into a not-for-profit community benefit institution which means a few things get easier, eg less tax on beer, but we broadly carry on as usual since we've always actually been such in practice. And we're looking for another place that would fit in larger performance style things - at the moment we can get about 35 in but that's often too small, though we'll be putting a video stream through to another room as an overflow. Really a place with a 60 - 70 capacity would be great.
And also having more people helping out. The one who helped out most in the last few months is a 19year old swedish girl. Wonderful to be with a woman who I don't automatically view first as an older sister, like the twenty-somethings around.
Good and bad political stuff. Found it shockingly outrageous that so many europeans back off from the whole Ferguson stuff, as if to avoid the whole notion of systemic racism. On the other hand I've rediscovered a fair amount of community pride. The way people came together to demonstrate against the police and in favour of the refugees here and the actions after to help have been reassuring. Very glad to be severing ties with the UK too, in that way. The acceptance of vileness like widespread food bank usage, the rise of a fascist mainstream political grouping, the nonsense of austerity approaches, city primacy and asset inflation being left unchallenged, all convincing reasons to stay away from the place.
Identity/community stuff have a lot to work through. Started the year with playing at presentation a little towards the butch side but now more involved in understanding myself in a femme context. Working on some slightly more pointed performance pieces re trans identity too. (Have an interesting thing going on of sometimes doing the same thing twice in a month, once for the 'straight' storytelling evening and again for the queer one).
Loads of things I haven't been able to do because of family illnesses etc and having to go back and forth between the UK and here. Too many friends leaving, and not enough time to develop the newer ones.
One of the better things has been starting to listen to more new (to me) music. So despite some good things I'll express myself to 2014 at the turning of the year in a fresh way like this

Farewells

I suppose it happens to most of us, almost as a natural cycle. You start blogging anxious to share your story, but gradually the whole 'being trans' stuff gets less important and other concerns take over. Longer and longer time lapses between posts occur and enthusiasm drains to the point that one makes a farewell.
However , for me, thats a long way off.
It has though been a long and draining last 9 months of other farewells. Possibly there should be a phrase for it like 'putting the family to bed' to cover homes, hospices etc for older relatives and funerals. It's meant spending far too much time in a place I truly have grown to detest ( the UK ) to the point where I'm seriously considering applying for german nationality. And obviously it's emotionally hazardous to health.
It's also cutting ties by my disposing gradually of my remaining half share in a london flat, getting loans repaid, moving lots of personal stuff to Berlin, as well as pushing the Berlin agenda of changing to being formally a not-for-profit, starting a queer arts zine, looking at starting another shop, etc etc.
Seem to be having a run of interviews too - TAZ, der Freitag, a couple of online pieces and something for a health magazine. Paying forward...
Am also making a serious start on a book which will probably feature heavily in terms of blog posts here and possibly also using a vlog format.

As a kind of spin off from the forthcoming shop documentary, the following ad starring some friends...'Another Country'

Sweet Mnemosyne, 'tis thou hast ravished me

I feel quite strongly that one major stage of transition is coming to a close.
It would seem likely that this marks the end of 'looking glass' changes relating to conscious/ unconcious permutations.
I don't mean such terms as any kind of engagement with psycho-analysis, but rather with  everyday experience of consciousness. For most of us our self experience is of the eventualities of conscious engagement with information processing and with those which come from processes obscure to our purview. That's the only distinction I'm making .
For myself, my experience of gender change has been a transformation starting at the frameworks of arousal and perception, running through the changed possibilities of processing and finally coming at last in force to memory.
On a more basic level, the process is one of hormones and the plasticity of neurology combining to move towards a female norm.  With memory having such a strong gender dimorphic nature in terms of variant locations of the amygdala being used, it's likely to be one of the last to fall into line(?).
The last time I wrote about memory was http://sophias-choices.blogspot.de/2010/02/life-turned-sepia.html
That still applies, in that there's a distance. I'm no longer quite so sure about how different I am in that respect compared to other trans people. Sometimes wonder whether it's simply a more gradual process with others as hormonal change thoroughly affects them.
In other ways, though, memory is really very changed in a process I've been aware of for the last year and a half.
And it seems very atypical for anything to do with the aging process.
The most obvious phenomenon is an increase in detail. Every memory I encounter seems more vivid, more detailed than before. It makes no difference whether this is memory from before or after hormonal perception related effects, something I find hugely significant and will write more of at a later date.
And of course there's also a rise in the number of memories easily accessible. It's very difficult to quantify but I'd say between 10 and 30 times as many, leaning more to the latter figure. Talking to cis woman friends and a couple of times the notion of memory as a burden came up. I don't experience that yet but can definitely understand it. Love the way it also adds to both the motivation and richness in female/female life exchange meetings.
Retrieval itself, as a process, is also very changed. As a man it felt far more like using a search engine than now. Memories were organised far more in terms of placement within an abstract model of the world or its projected structure. It is something that makes me rather more scatty. Whereas before I'd tell myself to, say, remember something in the morning because it's necessary to eventually complete x or y with a fair confidence, now, unless x and y are visible and quite personal it doesn't always work.
Example. Someone asked me where a mutual friend lived. Didn't remember the address offhand and started to answer but very aware of a variety of memories clustered together and immediately accessible. Could picture the london A-Z clearly, the page I'd last looked at to get there 6 months before. Which the tube stop was, getting off the platform, getting on to the Finchley road and quickly turning off it, a restaurant about 12 doors along and parts of it's window display, a sleeping policeman, the slightly overgrown hedges of a side street as I turned right and the 5 or 6 blocks before the house and the scents and... It took an effort to concentrate on exactly what I'd actually say in answer. Before it would be name of tube stop, directions left, quick left again and the first main right, about 10 minutes walk, without even thinking.
Perhaps this is actually an intermediate stage and that retrieval will get more efficient the more used to it I get. Or it could be that it's more a question of getting used the that extra level of depth. Maybe also a coming in to focus.
The tie to personal narrative is very strong. Going back to specific memories gives a sheaf of others to a far greater extent than before.
Example. Forgetting my pin number at the bank, remembering a couple of digits but not all of it, to mild embarassment. Talked to someone about it later, mentioning that I was in the middle of a post on memory and she actually thought that might have something to do with it. Don't really agree much with that in this instance but can understand the feeling of memories now tied down by a number of associations rather than riveted by a more focussed placement that might be testosterone typical.
Recently saw a study on prosody helping fix memories for women, the rhythm and tone of the words themselves as factors. I suppose that ties in to the same notion.
But mainly I see the example as more related to mental rehearsal. Undoubtedly I spend far less time in the successive approximations and conditional constructions that typified my male consciousness.But when I used to be there it had a benefit of rehearsing the future, of naturally being armed with rehearsed knowledge of what was needed/expected And in the process do something which deepens channels of retrieval for the associated variables. In thinking of going to the bank I'd be brushing up against the necessity of remembering my pin number, my actions being part of an optimistically predicted set of events in which I managed perfect recall of my pin number and consummate a financial transaction.So, without that rehearsal, memories aren't readied in the same way and a consequent forgetfullness can easily be fallen into.
Is this a long winded way of saying I'm getting to be a bit of a ditz ? No, I think, and / or hope, that the processes of memory are finally coming fully into line.It's a question of balance.
I've never been one for spending much time thinking about the past. Don't take photos, never very much liked reminiscing, though for other reasons now.Thats changed somewhat, if only to the extent that I often want to try it out. My earliest memory of being about 18 months old  is, when I return to it, more detailed with colours and scents. Have two memories that I've chosen to come back to and try and see whether I can remember more - meeting someone 5 years ago and a college seminar on the axiom of choice from the seventies. So far, after about half a dozen tries, there's always more details to be made out.
It feels somewhat like a temptation I should ration, not least because I'm so rarely 'there' in older memories apart from a sensory bundle. 5 years ago and my own state is more clearly recalled but it's almost like a dissociated procession of images, a distantly viewed movie.
Because, I suppose, the joys of this sea change include living in a world grown so full of the lushest ambiguities, the capability of such finer distinctions, compared to what once was. And so much of that comes from the illumination of memory.
More prosaicly it's about memory becoming even worse in terms of everyday sometimes critical stuff, whilst having a wonderful garden of the past to work. But it is the past, only the past, and perhaps an overindulgence for my newly 17 year old heart. My 7 / 17 / 61 birthday party comes at the weekend, something I absolutely won't forget about before, and hopefully, for good reasons, not after either.

10 things I wish I hadn't known about before transition.

 I've had a very different and probably more supported transition than many other people and would make it clear that this list is strictly from a personal perspective. Others may find these things far more useful than I. 'Know one transsexual and...you know one transsexual'.                                                                                                                                                 
1. The 'be prepared to lose everything' one. Whilst I can agree totally with the sentiment I do have a problem with the way it's put over that the major things are family, friends and sexual orientation that are at risk.
If I have to think of one thing that I really wish I still had, it's none of those. It's banter. I really used to love male/male banter. Losing that was very difficult, in part because it was so unexpected but also so inevitable, given the change from testosterone mediation of arousal. Or more simply not getting that boost to general awareness that comes from simulated challenge amongst males, and not, therefore, to have the slightest desire to simulate aggression to continue that behaviour. But that dance of words I do miss.

2. The 'it's the hardest thing you'll ever do' one. The impression is that superhuman effort against heavy odds may well be necessary. And again the focus is on the outside world and it's acknowledgement of our being in our gender. It sets up a a presumption of hostility there that I find an unwanted barrier in itself. For the most part I've encountered acceptance and often a shared excitement in talking me through my adolescence.

3. The 'it's the hardest thing you'll ever do' one, again. The hardest parts for me were the parts where I didn't have agency. Pms can be difficult and periods, in so far as what happens to me emotionally about every month equates to such, have occasionally provided absolutely poisonous depressions. All the wonders of the new emotional world !
And then the times when internal adjustments needed to be made. A wave of sensitivity needing to be integrated and understood or a change in memory or sexuality or whatever.*

*Actually I do have one idea for helping the trans unemployment problem and recognising the efforts required to transition. Just give every trans person an earned Phd in gender studies after 3 years of rle. Because it truly is earned.

4.The 'maximum preparedness' one. I understood I really was female and needed to transition at the end of october and I had a fairly busy 2 month run-up to the new year during which I had to get female clothes, prepare to shave for the first time in about 40 years, learn something about makeup and everything from posture to voice. Prepared I was not. Of course my approach isn't necessarily desirable, but it is possible and I think it would have been a significant help to me to also be somewhat assured as to that. Needs must.

5.The 'I must have repressed it' one. It's not that I seriously ever considered this one but it has been a hypothesis I've kept alongside for far too long. Simply I'm a rather male woman born from a rather  female man by way of hormonal/neurological interraction. Because both of these things can change in small, but oh so significant, ways, over time, with me and others. Obviously there was a birth brain condition, otherwise this couldn't have happened, but that doesn't necessarily imply identity, repressed or otherwise.

6. Terfs and HBSers. I trust that's self explanatory.

7.The rules of presentation - the right things to wear, the right sounding voice,the right everything. I'm someone who has always lived in the heart of cities, chelsea and bayswater in london and now kreuzberg in berlin with intervals in köln, amsterdam and stockholm. I tend to think that most of the 'rules' about such things come mainly from a suburban mind set. I wear, like most of my cis friends, little makeup. I dress nearly entirely secondhand, and I live in an international community of friends. Our rules are extremely flexible, where they exist at all.
The best advice I've ever had about clothes came from a woman talking about how relieved she'd been to stop all that bullshit of wearing different outfits everyday. Words to live by. And not being concerned with the male gaze is liberating, though the butch/femme border I'm on is a narrow one.
With voice I'm profoundly happy not to have had vocal coaching.

8.The 'you start at sixteen again' one. I started at 10. I now identify as 16, though more properly 6,16 and 60. Soon enough it'll be maiden, mother, hag. I'm witchy enough for the latter, have enough daughter surrogates around to justify the middle one, and the first will hopefully be symbolically delivered surgically.

9. The 'passing' one. Someone misgendered me a few weeks ago. Basically because I still have a somewhat masculine face and at the time I was bundled up against the snow, and the guy hadn't seen or heard me. Does that happen to FAAB women ? Sure. At the start of transition I'd be distraught, now it's an annoyance. 'Passing' is a problematic goad that can stay well beyond it's usefulness.

10. The narrative. The one that talks about identity as something with no correlates, a mystic feeling rather than a rational identification of oneself as of a particular gender contrary to gross anatomical considerations. Because that would upset too many interests.
The narrative that centres the transsexual journey as the prime expression of being trans, with little rhyme or reason save to add the respectability and intelligibility of such a journey. The narrative that talks of a spectrum of condition to hold together a political grouping. The narrative with an implicit elitist structure. The one that doesn't account adequately for most of my gender literate friends. The tyranny of a fairy tale.

Assorted ghosts

In the window, prints and a copper hunting horn.
On top of the shelves. One buteo buteo (common buzzard) wings outstretched. A pair of brass oil lamps with glass shades and funnels and a pair of decorated edwardian chamber pots. Another buteo buteo perched over the entrance to the back room. A mason's ironware vase, another vase with flower decorations by my milliner grandmother, a set of encyclopedia britannica and a pink and black deco clock.
In the book / display cabinet opposite.An early art deco clock with dancing figures and an art nouveau bronze vase and a pottery pumpkin. A brass krishna,an art nouveau print, two victorian serving plates, a small studio teapot, a 19thC bicycle light, some repro scrimshaw, a staffordshire flatback and a strawberry shaped candle, for some reason or other. And a 19thC print, an 18thC chinese plate and other assorted pottery, a flat iron,a stoppered glass bottle, a brownie camera and a brick sized hunk of polished labradorite. And a bubblegum dispenser, an irridescent glass bowl,small deco teapot and cup,a printers block with the imprint of IT magazine, a jar of spectacles, a top hat with chess pieces inside, a photo book of the shop, various prints and a large b/w photo of the old me with a twenty year old blonde girl slung over his shoulder.
In the cabinet by the door a large plastic wonderfully kitsch figure of lakshmi with light and a fountain built in, and a printers metal photo of Beckett.
On the wall by the stairs behind my desk a number of pages from an already broken 19thC book on the history of illustrated manuscripts framed in plain glass.
Centre a large copper light fitting,early edwardian with torchere and lots of glass beading.
And then there are the books, the shelves, and the furniture I helped design, all in blues and reds and circus regency style.
Thats the front room of the shop,a haunt of my narrative memory.
So every day I can choose to see these bright ghosts it conjures around me.Finding the labradorite at the pavilion at hanovers world fair, getting the bicycle lamp from a little antique shop near Theresienstadt concentration camp on the way to Prague, being given the krishna by my second wife, buying the flatback from a small country auction,the blonde girl and I lovers of a sort and central figures in a photo book project, and so many others.On the other hand most come with memories of that different time when I was a rather different animal. That doesn't greatly trouble me now, but it's at a remove. When I remember now, memory has far more sensory details going back all my life, not just the last 4 years. Most of the objects now come with their own more detailed scenarios of purchase or reminders of other lives to this. But with those times before 4 years, it's kind of distanced, phantasmagoric, because I no longer have that much connection with the guy I was. Like looking through someone elses magic lantern eyes.*
By now there's a similar effect about the first year or so too, back in the early stages of transition. Looking back, from my lofty 16 year old self, on that awesome 10 year old I was that my hopes and desires are still founded on.
With the books there are so many reappraisals, so many reaquaintances to make. I am in so many relationships with them but it's complicated, to coin a phrase.
Travelled back to London recently and there, and here in Berlin too, meeting a few old friends from the dim and distant. By now I suppose all the women friends bar a couple from before have more or less made up their minds about what kind of animal I am. All treat me a female. All may have some reservations, slight or, in a couple of cases, amounting to outright denial, but most come as far as they're able, and that's most of the way and good enough for me. Though for that couple, being their ghost is still a little un nerving .There's always that wave of open acceptance to cherish from most though and really can't imagine any conversational subjects I don't share with them. And with newer ones they tend to have me fixed as a woman before they might find me to be trans so things are far far simpler.
Men are rather different. Older friends sometimes seem towant to catch a glimpse of that ghost of an older self peering out. Which is normal, but trying at times. And there's the awkwardness always of knowing what is expected of you as an old friend and absolutely not delivering on it and instead trying to substitute different output. Newer guy friends are in many ways more supportive. I do think men possibly are more appreciative of how complicated, how much work actually is involved in transition. It's guys who inevitably come up with the question 'and are you really happy now?' at the end of coming out stories,with well meant sympathy. Guys here happily do volunteer for stuff more, and actually have had more guys telling me how outraged they were at Julie Burchill than women, though several of both. Sweet but never was one for guys.
And I suppose there is additionally something spectral about those ways of looking at people. My life doesn't have very much of a trans component, don't think about passing anymore or learning the very basics of womanhood. Apart from surgery and tidying up some hair and final paperwork don't intend any further acts of transition, though obviously it's a lifetime process internally.
Still don't know about how I really want to meet the male gaze. Do mildly cheat it I suppose by apparently doing a librarian look, where a ghost of masculinity is part of the stereotype. But then I suppose I am a librarian much of the time anyway.
And there's the ghost at the party role that I'm vacating. Most of my life is spent in the shop as my living room and a small flat in the house above, and haven't had a lot to do with the queer or trans worlds, except for people passing through the place. Which is now changing. In less than three weeks the first womens queer / trans sunday starts. I'll be doing my usual friday cooking thing and serving at 2 and there'll be a vegan meal at 7 and I'm going to be highly invested in the results. We've got about 50 people interested and sending out messages to Ladyfest and queer berlin sites this week. The hope is a mix of social and serious, and of the different groups. Basically cis men and straight women are by invitation only, but hopefully not unwelcome for that. Otherwise lbtiqqaa/quiltba .
Like all groups here it'll be english language so there'll likely be predominantly american.  The trans crowd I'm not sure on. I've heard that a few times an independent e/l group of trans women has been mooted so hopefully some will come and try the place out. The queer feminist vegan sex shop around the corner has a lot of english speaking people passing through and we could maybe cooperate on some things. Most of my queer friends say it could be a real addition to the scene. There are many lesbian and queer hangouts and much english speaking but mainly bars and party places, unlike the gay scene where it's large enough to have more conversational venues. And I'll happily put energy into a queer reading group here, I know a couple of people who'd go for some activist things, not sure if there's a zine interest maybe, could link with the queer film archive using the back room beamer,etc etc.All the possibilities and, in Tartakower's words, all the mistakes waiting to be made.
*Has anyone out there read R.A.Lafferty's story 'through other eyes' ? Huge recommend for transition analogy.

Do think that if you're trans there's that other ghost thing that you're more closely aquainted with than the normal cis person. The borders of the ghost in the machine, the

another year

Looking back, it's been a good year overall.
Some major events - having a solid maybe for surgery, dealing with family problems, and lots of good meetings and consequent friendships ; documentary making progress, a couple of nice profiles published, shop book coming out in a few months after this years competition ran fairly successfully, well over a thousand meals cooked, several thousand quiz questions formulated and asked, and charity status in the works.
More important, maybe, an absence of things. Health problems persist but nothing truly problematic, walking perfectly normally in winter - enough to go out in the snow to my first LGBT demo. After a year or more of shocking those people I out myself to, I'm willing to believe I don't really have much difficulty passing. Makes for a more normal life, if anything about my life can be so called. And whilst I still think a lot about gender it isn't particularly a personal thing.
Of course that won't last. It's not that I'm unsettled in my binary gender identity, far from it. But the presentational/iterative aspects in queer terms haven't particularly been a concern so far. Next year I'll be having a broadly female queer/trans* sunday every month and probably other events too with film, discussion etc etc. I really don't have a lot of time to go out, so it's much easier if I bring a scene here instead. There are some enthusiastic queer women involved, who are also normal bookshop community people, and whilst there is a large queer/trans* scene in Berlin, the kind of laid back english language non cis male thing we're trying for should cover an existing gap.
For myself amongst other things it's a chance to explore myself as part of a community, at least in so far as orientation goes.  I am concentrating a lot less on what it means to be a trans woman and far more on what it means to be a queer one, at present.
Am taking on a number of other things, a spoken word monthly reading event, a straight sunday roast and a tea and philosophy day, as well as a couple of interns to help keep the place going. And before that all starts, in february, I'm taking holidays. One week of family, London friends and a shoot for an animation project, then a 10 day vacation in Berlin, actually going out to a gallery, event, club, or whatever a couple of times a day.
And before that I'm having my (second adolescence ) 16th birthday on new years eve, a symbolic transformation from naive introspective jailbait to something more hard edged, maiden to mother stuff when hopefully the pink sparkly unicorn will descend from the heavens and enlighten me as to how the rest of this womanhood thing goes. Or maybe not. Music will be goth, riot grrrl, classic 60's with a bit of east coast bias and baroque. And there will be fireworks. I will be wearing my red silk 40's style dress with red leather ankle boots and vambraces.
And the best of new year wishes for you all .

something sweet

About a month ago I had an interview for the 'Kreuzberger chronik'. It's a small giveaway thing that goes into bars and shops in the local area, has been going for years and is put out as primarily a labour of love, and hence has a lot of credibility with the residents of the neighbourhood. Certainly I felt a lot of satisfaction in featuring in it, a kind of local acceptance. Did sort of wonder at the time whether it would focus attention on me in a good or bad way, since it does talk a little about me being trans.
So I'm sitting at my desk last monday, half an hour before closing and this german guy comes in. He looks around the shop for a couple of minutes, asks, in a heavy accent whether all the books are in english, and then sits himself down on a seat in front of the desk.
He reaches into a pocket and takes out a copy of the Kreuzberger chronik, with a picture of me on the cover, and asks, somewhat superfluously, if it was of me.
I confirmed it and then he asked me whether I was a transsexual.
Now the guy was quite large with one of those kobold kind of faces one sometimes sees especially on german guys from the south, in his fifties, and overall a little intimidating, so my thoughts did go to the pepper spray I keep within reach as I answered that yes, I was transsexual.
Leaning closer he asked whether or not I'd had 'the operation'.
Getting aware by the smell of wine that he wasn't entirely sober, I said no, not yet, and started to unostentatiously to fumble for my spray.
Nodding, he leaned even closer, looked into my eyes and said, 'I had mine 5 years ago'.
So we talked for about twenty minutes, with my halting german and his rusty english, and he told me something of his problems, how lonely (shades of every trans man I've ever met)  life could be, a difficult relationship he was in, etc. And at the end he said he'd see me in a while, and I said fine, I'd look forward to it and he left. Only to return 5 minutes later having been to the florist on the corner and give me the biggest cabbage rose I've ever seen.
Really sweet.
And thinking about it that that is one of the good things about being out and approachable here. Because there isn't so much casual space for post transition people my age in the queer /trans world. And I've had several drop by here who seem to enjoy an exchange of perspectives. Because however well transitioned you are, however stealth, as many are to some extent or another, there'll always be some things that can only be fully shared with another trans person, and it's only an extension of my normal role of proprietress of an english speaking oasis to fulfill that function.
Sweetly satisfying.

schrödinger's cut

At present am involved in finding out whether or not the outlook for surgery might have changed. Essentially that means whether I can go for anything more than an orchiectomy. It's difficult because what I'm likely to be faced with is either a direct 'no', or a 'not at the moment',or a yes but the odds, re serious complications, are x.
Living with cirrhosis means that you're automatically put in a 'no unnecessary surgery' category. When I broke my leg a couple of years back I was told that there was a high risk of not being able to walk too far without a lot of pain, in a few years time, if they didn't operate. They impressed on me that they still really didn't want to operate and were very relieved when I went along with them. Bad coagulation,and the fact that most pain killers are liver toxic in some degree are the minor problems.  The possibility of infection is one of the potentially fatal ones. On the other hand my readings have been better than previously, though the underlying condition persists, so from what I've heard there might be a small chance of being able to have GRS.
So questions as to whether I want / need surgery and how much of a risk I'm prepared to take are hovering about my consciousness at present
Insofar as I had thought about it before transition it was with an automatic 'of course' answer to the former. It felt dissappointing to realise that my body morphing didn't somehow just include that detail. But the problems of getting it seemed insurmountable at the time, so I've tried to block myself from thinking about it at all until now. Haven't had total success with this. It goes with the mixed up thing of not having had body dysphoria until after starting transition.
To be clear, if the normal risks and expense and pain were what I could expect from a somewhat below  average healthy person of my age, then there'd be no problem at all and I'd happily sail off into a post op sunset. There are the obvious practical advantages - I really do miss saunas,swimming etc. Sexually it would be likely to be a significant  improvement, though at the moment having moved to more full body orgasms is quite...entrancing. Certainly I'd be more relaxed in any sexual situation if post op. Being bi with a main focus on women it's maybe not quite as important than if I was straight, but it would ease interactions.
Then there's the validation. Because I can always look back at that sudden shift of being, that seems to affect me less than most ts people, but it still is annoyingly there. There's the thing one can occasionally still glimpse, that shadow lurking at back of the mind, the one that whispers that maybe none of this is wholly real, that you're perhaps being indulged in some foolish play of presentation. To look down and always see a constant reminder that you're not as fully a woman as you could be does suck in that context. The one good thing about putting on weight is that that view tends to be mercifully truncated, as it were, and shrinkage obviously helps.
On top of that there seems to be something else : a body image confounded, or a neural map with strategically placed fuzzy zones, maybe. Or perhaps something that comes with a posture, the normal cultural specific ways a woman holds her body, which accentuate the de trop nature of a penis. Or maybe it is true, that feeling as your body changes in it's sensitivities, that surgical change simply allows for that process to complete.Telling the difference between these, however, is something I often find difficult to accomplish.
And then there are the motivations I don't have. I don't seek my validation as a woman in surgery. I don't see it as anything other than a climactic moment in presentational change. I believe that attempts to view it as anything different in kind to simpler forms of presentation are fundamentally nonsensical.That's not to say that many can't find it a climactic moment, but don't believe that that springs from the surgery itself as much as from it's place in the individual's narrative.
( For a variety of reasons I do think it's a worthwhile enterprise to establish correlatives, that are more than simple assertions of identity, as to elements that constitute male and female. I certainly don't see those as related to anatomy but rather to cognition. Because I'm neurologically intersex, something that embraces much of my consciousness, rather than wholly desperate for a superficial change in body form, for whatever motives.)
I don't see surgery as a personal completion and nor, thanks to geography, is not having it any bar to official changes. Certainly no-one who knows me more than casually is going to alter towards me through believing I'm somehow more authentic. Whenever I talk to cis women about the attitude that surgery should be a qualification of sorts, the reactions are simply disgust at the genital essentialism behind it. And joining in status games played by the older casualties of the transitioning process has zero appeal.
I think that not having GRS would be unlikely to lead to anything as dramatic as breakdown or suicide in my case. Older surgical essentialists of the most rabid kind will still have lived with the knowledge that they were mismatched with their body for a couple of decades before surgery. I've only done about 4 years so far. Depression, yes, I can see that as likely but in envisaging that I'm leaving out a key factor : whether or not there are reasonable spaces where accommodations can be made, positive possibilities. There, I do have a certain amount of room : it's hardly as if I've spent my life looking to transition and all it's ramifications. Not being bound to an emotionally highly invested image of myself as a woman does help.
On the other hand I do still feel that my present body shape constitutes a handicap of sorts. Internally, socially, in relationships, every which way I'm a developing woman with this single anatomical exception. If the situation does persist, I'm not sure how exactly that might impact on identification. Not so much in terms of gender but more in terms of relationships. From the viewpoint of a bi oriented woman, it would probably accentuate the attraction towards other bi oriented women.Anyway, whilst technically bi really don't see myself wanting a relationship with a guy. Within that sort of possible spectra of gendered relationship, ambiguous anatomy would certainly trend to being something relatively innocuous. The practical aspect of being non op as regards sex actually isn't particularly problematic for me. I always used to get more pleasure from my partners pleasure than the norm and that's now satisfyingly far greater still.
There's also the age thing. Anecdotally, at least, there does seem to be a growing percentage of younger transitioners who are happy in at least postponing GRS. Despite celebrating my 15th birthday this May, body age sadly trumps mind's second adolescence as a factor : and the possibilities of getting some degree of use out of this particular body mod, slim though they may be, are in rather too rapid decline.
When it does come to making any sort of decision will any of these ruminations make any real difference to how I feel ? Not sure...
On a more general level,I'm sure there are many who share problematic health issues relative to GRS. There's the fairly stupid myth put out by some HBSers and the like that there are only a very few conditions which automatically preclude surgery. And in a way they're correct, in terms of abstract conditions per se. In the real world though, there are many conditions which, if present in a more severe than average form, negate the possibility of surgery, not to mention  the situation of people at the intersection of various such problems. As a group, because of  the frequency of problematic and stressful lives and the frequent occurrence of IS type physical abnormalities, trans women are significantly more prone than the average to these sorts of surgical dilemmas. Minimising this group, or simply jeering at peoples 'excuses' for not having GRS is one of the most unpleasant aspects of voices in the trans blogosphere.
And finally, I wouldn't like to feel that I'm in any way supporting a specific standard narrative. I went into transition because I was clearly female, in terms of neuro-hormonal realities. From the initial self realisation I've sought to go from that primitive girlhood state to becoming a woman. I've encountered many changes both internal and external and I've tried to keep growing as well as I can. Because that process for me involves an attraction to GRS does not, and should not, in the slightest way invalidate the narrative of someone trying for similar processes who doesn't share that attraction. 
If a sister leaves for a desired trip to Thailand, I'm happy for her. If a sister is happy exploring life sans Thailand then I'm happy for her too.
Simple stuff.

Postscript. The above was written a couple of months ago. Initial indications are that my health surprises both myself and doctors in terms of readings. That means something like an orchiectomy or penectomy wouldn't be a problem. GRS might be different but still quite possible. Won't be sure for a while exactly how it works out, but for hours - make that days - make that weeks -  my first thoughts were about this subject rather than it being good health news generally.
And I think this will be my last post on operative status for a fair while. Never particularly fond of using those aspects of transition as material .With my specific uncertainty of status it's been rather difficult to read about others surgical journeys and consummations so I don't think I want to join in that myself.                         

Clarifications, honesties and fictions

I think I speak for many when I say that this post by little light was one of the most inspiring things I read last year. Fundamentally I do believe that honesty is a prime defining characteristic of trans people : that at least once amidst scepticism and hostility from others, allied with our own wished for doubts, we have been honest with ourselves about what we truly are. And, in whatever ways the world allows, we have acted upon that honesty.
Some clarifications then.
For myself, I have no doubts that I'm a woman.
I have some doubts about surgery which spring simply from the fact that I might not be able to have it, and consequent necessary ambiguities as to evading confrontation with that desire.
I have no doubts about transition. The thought of going back isn't anything that I concern myself with because it's simply too ludicrous to even contemplate.
Thinking further on my last post I'd say that a main area that perhaps I find most challenging is to find a personal formulation of how to iterate myself as a trans woman in a world grown strange through that knowledge of myself.
By trans woman I do not mean anything related to surgical status or to any doubts about being a 'real' woman. Rather, I take it as a term relating to history. On the one hand there might be the case of someone who was out at age three, got family, medical and general social support so that no real transition apart from a mildly delayed puberty and probable surgery ever happened. In such an instance I wouldn't see the term trans woman as having much relevance and certainly wouldn't see it as in any way dishonest to avoid it.
On the other hand there are those who have, to a greater or lesser extent, navigated through their own doubts and the male world to the congruence of transition. With such the importance to their lives of being trans as well as the importance of transition mean that they are more easily described as trans women. Of course the 'trans' is secondary, as with black woman, disabled woman, autistic woman, immigrant woman, mother, daughter etc etc etc. And equally if anyone wishes to simplistically call being trans a birth defect and permanently ditch that description, it's hardly an indictable dishonesty given the social enforcement of the gender binary. Like stealth, it generally has some fear component, and possibly a well justified one, given the figures for assault and murder, that can't really be condemned. Obviously it would be nice if such wouldn't universalise their experience and elevate it to sole authenticity, but, as one trans friend recently speculated to me, a high degree of narcissism may be a significant survival factor in transition.
Anyway, this is more of a personal post than a general one about labels, and the point is that besides these general considerations my particular narrative adds it's own spin on being trans. It's 4 years and a couple of weeks since I woke up different to the rather off beat male I'd always considered myself. Whilst social transition is important it's that transition, that tipping point and it's unravelling of male to emergent female circuitry, that is my significant trans identifier. In that way I'm transgressive not only of the gender binary but of the normal bounds of the trans narrative itself. And it's in confronting that, that the application of honesty becomes difficult. As transition goes, there's the negative side, the sloughing off of the male. I daresay that I'm reasonably typical in that sans hormonal reinforcement most of that vanishes away. But much of my intellectual life springs from more recalcitrant male bases and does need continuing critical analysis. My body language presently moves a little to be generally congruent with my socio-sexual identity - a somewhat butch area which is not so easy to navigate. (Can I be in any sense butch and experiment with wearing petticoats ? Questions, questions). More importantly, though, there's the question of knowledge gained through my (real) transitioning process. It's not a female or a male thing but something distinctly other. How to confront that knowledge, how to transfigure it in my life, these are the main questions that I'm still grappling with. It's not about presentation or being any given sex/gender and indeed I'm not sure if it really needs an iterative resolution at all. But it does seem to need some sort of resolution.
Sometimes I wonder whether all trans people are thusly caught in that bright moment where we learned our doom. Because that aha moment that we grasp and confront honestly isn't purely about our own identity but the world's. That our own reality shines hard and bright enough to cast the world as a shadowland around us, a trap of simulacra created through our lived knowledge.
A practical example might be this. I am someone who lives much of her life in a world of ideas. I can appreciate the changes in that mental life in some respects and be frustrated in others. It's really great to just sit back and think without needing stimulation of some sort to raise arousal levels.On the other hand the accessibility of certain categories of knowledge processes is lessened. In Nietzsche's terms, I'm less intellectually light-footed though hopefully not more german because of that. Basically I view that as a relatively normal consequence of new hormone / neurology congruence and a natural concomitant of the relegation of systematised weltanschauung from being closely tied to the day to day self and more part of reflective experience. But there's a dilemma here. A normal cis woman simply lives this experience and doesn't seek out cognitive habits to mitigate the occasional lessening of what could never be a part of her life. Am I undermining my own feelings of authenticity of gender if I do seek in those directions ? Of course there isn't theoretically any problem since the choices I make in this regard are a woman's choices. Practically though, that it also relates to the trans imperative to junk the rags of male life is part of the attempt to create a cis-like authenticity of unselfquestioned female being. But is it honest and authentic in itself ?
Putting it differently. As we wind our ways through the process of second adolescence that lies at the centre of every meaningful transition,we face the same issues as every growing girl.We explore our estrogenized capacities, we seek to find out what it really means to be a woman and the full capabilities we possess. If we shy away from this enterprise, if we simply say that it's really only some sort of passing intoxication,we run the risk of a life spent busy dying. But if we do enter into it how is it possible to avoid using the parameters gained through our first adolescence ? And if we try and ignore this factor completely through some artifice of innocence, what price authenticity ? 

I suspect that I won't be able to make this significantly more clear to myself until further advanced in process.

And then there are the fictions of the moment. Am presently reading through the 60 short stories, sadly not Barthelmic, that were submitted for the competition and confronting my fictive self in various guises. And then there's my rat of an ex husband who wants to use me for a version of the story that's her major project. Which of course I'll be doing. She may be a rat but her project is amazing, a retelling through different cultural matrices of a fairy tale through words art and performance. Take a look here for something awesome.

second thoughts

So I'm having second thoughts about my transition.
Not about my engagement with the process as much as whether the direction is as clear as I'd like. Perhaps it's in some way down to lacking presently for a surgical marker, and partly it's going through those initial weeks and months for a documentary at the moment and remembering how those first few months of confusion clarified and directions were set.And then there was this excellent article in(unapologetic) Bilerico . That hit home especially  for the coincidence of having just had 'Simulacra' as my U-bahn book.  Whatever, really just thinking over how I resolved identity and whether that resolution still holds.
After the first couple of weeks I was clear that something quite drastic and very related to gender were happening with me. My main aim was to try and ascertain just what exactly I was. It seemed axiomatic at the time that I couldn't just lose male history and identity, that whatever I was would come under the genderqueer rubric. There were a couple of months of going backward and forward and through genders, or so it seemed before the habits started to fade and the essentials of the male vanished softly and silently away.
More, though, there was an emerging picture of the process. I was a young girl in the antique surroundings of her deceased uncle's overstuffed mansion. And my process was to go through that place and change, keep, add or subtract through viewing his accumulation of objects, of habits, of pasts. And thereby try and define my capabilities and autonomy as a woman. Or at least that was the main one of a small number of analogies that I used.
And at that point of time, when that process was inexorably starting, thinking to myself about exactly where that transition might lead and what I might be at the end of it. That, in turn, led to how I saw transsexuality and genderqueerness as operating.
After about three or four months I couldn't really think of myself as anything but female and transsexual, it was only too obvious a conclusion. But there were still three ways I could see myself as being potentially genderqueer.
The first was simply by adopting 'genderqueer' as a more descriptive term than transgender or transsexual.
The second is a superficial performative thing. That we can never totally eliminate every last habit of movement, every quirk of that previously assigned gender. Being 'read' that way messages genderqueerness.
The third was more about what I might grow into. Maybe the male material would prove recalcitrant in some ways or the maleness of the experience might somehow contaminate. Maybe the very extent of transition allots a transgressive gaze on the world, a genderqueerness born out of too much knowledge.
In trying to resolve things on this third level, I came to the thought that whatever would eventuate I'd simply engage in the process as a female and nothing more insofar as I could help it. And even if I were to come to a place of genderqueerness in myself then the only way to do that was through being myself, a woman, and not by harbouring any theoretical reservations about that to hamper me.
Lately though, there is an undercurrent of ennui. It sometimes comes when I'm walking around and viewing the same patterns of the gendered world playing themselves out again and again. It's not any real feeling of alienated identity and any genderqueer identity remains inactive, excepting inevitable performance trivialities. And some iterative ones, if my present butch trending appearance is anything to go by. But thinking that this is part of the transness that makes me a trans woman - that vision of the binary in all it's multiple permutations, that hard won literacy of behaviour and understandings.Because to be simply a normal cis woman I'd have to give up not only much of my past but what I've learned through transition. I do see it as one thing unites us as trans women in that as we go through our transition processes, our transitioning eyes see the world in ways that no cis woman ever does.
It doesn't make me genderqueer. What it does do, though, is challenge my articulation of womanhood to reflect something of that, without needing any special social milieu to practice it in.
Something to live up to.
Fifteen year olds ( I've just had that particular birthday party ) think things like that.

voice and a first trans interview

I haven't exactly followed classical models in structuring the elements of my transition, and voice is no exception. Given the choice of going into some perfectly organised transition which I wouldn't necessarily live to get far into, or launching into it with little research a couple of months after deciding it was silly to think of any alternative, I went for the latter.
Haven't had voice lessons or practiced much, and it shows. In terms of passing it's fairly poor. I do have a problem in having perpetually blocked sinusses and hence female voice resonance is a problem. What I have concentrated on, reasonably successfully, is narrative emphasis as opposed to pitch. Women tell stories rather than compete for primacy of opinion; the reason for our use of rhythmic emphasis rather than volume seems to me to spring from that. I think I now tell stories better and if strangers initially find my voice overly low...well, I know women who are lower. And at least I've avoided coming over as totally empty-headed, the phase several trans women seem to go through by getting pitch and some basic rhythm right but not actually doing anything with it.
Also it seems to improve. Did one interview about a couple of years ago and hated it with a vengeance. This latest one I could actually bear to listen to without utterly cringing. Is it better for having evolved rather than sprung from artifice ? Goddess knows...
Usually interviews don't concentrate on or even mention me being trans. This one, just a podcast, went into it in some depth. Listening to it, or at least the edited version, and I could kick myself for things said badly or points going awry. Given that I might be doing rather more on the trans theme, any feedback from people able to listen through it would be very welcome.
With thanks to Ian...