Rather than “normalness”, something that strikes me as mandated social construct, a chmera that exists as a little conformed to ideal what happened to me after SRS was a gradual growth into ordinariness.
When Tina and I started the WBT post-op list we made it for post-SRS women because we didn’t want to continually relive the process of change.
It is exciting and driven for people going through it. Indeed some people feel a let down after it is all over with. People in process expect those who went through it to have words of wisdom and guidance to offer them in their struggles with the process. And we might if we choose to make being a guide or a counselor our life’s work or even our volunteer work. But for most of us time and distance from that period of transition means that about all we really have to offer goes something like this, “You too can do this just as others have. After SRS you will continue to grow until one day you discover you really aren’t much different from all the women who were born female that are part of your enviroment.”
There was a time when having had the operation made on special because there weren’t very many of us. Now it is rather common and we have to rely on talents or abilities to be special.
So many of our concerns are the same concerns everyone else has. Global warming, the economy, corporate domination of our lives. Aging, relationships.
Many of us are alienated from our families, some of us are happy, some of us suffer depression.
Some of us are in recovery, others have substance issues. None of these things are particular to us because of our medical histories but the social stigmatization due to that medical history tends to make our lives more problem filled than the lives of those who were not born with TS.
Women Born Transsexual 
March 28, 2009 at 5:47 pm
What is normal?
Why is it that whenever this topic is raised the sky rains red herrings for forty days and forty nights? Being normal in this context has nothing to do with your economics, your choice of sexual partner* (see foot note) the car you drive, your vocation, your politics, your religion, your family, where you live, what language you speak, yada yada yada…
Being normal means; after transtion becoming solidly a part of the binary and nothing more. One would think given the growing numbers of individuals who have taken the path that this would not be such a profoundly strange concept yet I have met consderably less than ten women of history in my life that I would consider “normal” as in, they are simply women… nothing more, nothing less.
As one of them said to me one day when I was talking about “our labels” as she suddenly looked daggers at me she said “Missy, I don’t give a shit about any of those damned labels, I’m a woman!” Coming from this woman it was as true a statement as saying the sun comes up in the east. She was so female it was undeniable! This woman once had an issue, she dealt with it and she moved on to became utterly and totally “normal.”
How many women have others here met who were willing to let the past go no matter what the price?Who were willing to let go of anything and everything that tied them to a past, How many were willing to do the painful and lengthy debriding required to move on to whatever their destiny was as “just a woman?”
Not many I dare say. Most will at some point will stop worrying trans issues like a dog with a bone and move into a sort of peace with their gender, to quote Susan ” one day you discover you really aren’t much different from all the women who were born female that are part of your environment.” but I would attach the caveat that their version of what it means to be a woman seems to always come with an innate outsider stance.as in yes I’m a woman,,, um, er, um, I mean I’m a “trans-woman.”
Its not easy to be normal… god only knows given the insane amount of shit we dealt with just to survive its small wonder that we are even here much less seeking for “normal” but on the other hand. To have dealt with so much shit why is it that the overwhelming majority prefer to stop short and remain in their ghetto of transness rather than to go the last mile and integrate into “normal?”
* Oh, the sexuality issue
I do NOT, repeat do not have any problem with ones choice of lover be it same sex or otherwise and I consider my lesbian friends to be “normal” in every sense of the word, but this is a blog about wbt and so in that context I do question how one can have “history and claim to be lesbian when they have never been with a man and never intend on going there! (obviously I am not speaking to you Susan!)
I personally don’t know a single WBW lesbian who is 100% gold star as in she that has not at least experimented with a man if not made love to at least one or several before she settled that she prefered women to men.
I know the first time I was with a man it erased any remaining doubts I had about who and what I was… As he positioned himself over me just before penetration it was clear. He was the man, I was the woman.
After that had I decided men were not for me I would at least have that knowledge of what it meant to be penetrated as do all my WBW lesbian friends… but to never have gone there… I dunno?
March 28, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Perhaps because “normal” has been used as a nightstick to beat us with since infancy.
Define “normal”?
BTW You aren’t the only one who has had a man fuck you. Some of us have had far more than our share. Including lead guitars and movie stars as well as painters and poets.
March 29, 2009 at 9:35 am
You do have a point there about “that” word… It was used as a stick to beat us with and it was used quite liberally on yours truly for years on end and I still have nightmares about it, so lets pick another word for this idea then shall we?
How about the one you used to head this piece, “Ordinary?”
Ummm you know I kinda have a problem with that one too as all the women I know who actually reached the other side are far from ordinary. They are to a one extraordinary women..
So what about going with um I dunno, plain? mainstream? Nope and nope, same thing… the women I know are far from plain and while they may be mainstream in many ways it goes back to they are all extraordinary women who walk ahead of the crowd…
Frankly normal fits the concept we are talking about to a tee, but given the laden secondary meanings it has besides that concept I’m totally open to just about any other term you care to use for the idea of being… “just a woman.”
I mean isn’t that what its all about after all? Isn’t that why we pushed back and in the midst of hell did what we were told was wrong, or undo-able, or immoral, or against gods will… Or as a hateful cousin of mine said in a country twang before he shut the door in my face “when you get right with Jesus you will know how wrong you are!..
I’m not the least unhappy with my life so I guess I’m never going to be right with Jesus now am I?
I digress, its a blonde thing.
The point is, few make the jump to womanhood and it seems fewer and fewer are even the least inclined to give it a go these days. Wander almost any tranny site out there and its all about “being a woman” but hey what’s between your legs has nothing to do with it. Or “Embrace your otherness.” be proud of NOT being a woman or a man
ummm… NO!
When I was a little one my dreams were not about living in some gender ghetto between the binary or being a soldier in the battle to create a third gender. I laid on the LR floor with my much older sister and fantasized about Ricky Nelson and how we were going to get married and have kids and live there with his mom and dad in the wonderful house where everything was perfect. ALl I wanted was to be… normal… to have that thing between my legs go away and let me be the girl I was…
Hey I was four give a little slack!
It would take me half a lifetime to reach that goal and cost me more angst and pain than any two should ever have to endure… Don’t I owe it to myself after all that suffering to make the grade? To go forth into womanhood head held high and let the past be just that, the past? Or should I carry that cross with me for the rest of my life until death alone takes it from me?
I think not.
March 29, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I realize more and more, that disconnecting from trans* related themes becomes important for me. Starting out quite active I learn that its no good for me to cling on that, and it only makes me an angry person even picking on the persons next to me. I have to move on before it consumes me.