Who Am I?

April 21, 2021April 21, 2021 by alexforshaw ♥ 3 Comments

Who do you see when you look at me? Who do I see when I look in the mirror?

The author’s shadow against an old brick wall in strong sunlight.

I could show you labels: mother, artist, friend, lover, autistic. They are all mine and I accept them as my truth but they are not my whole truth, not the whole story of who I am. So I will tell you a story about me so that you can come to know me and see who I see when I gaze into the mirror.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who had a fascination for the world around her. She would play in the woods and delight in the way the light fell gently through the leaves to lay softly on the ground. She would caress the trees and feel their days written upon the bark of their trunks.

She enjoyed school—well, it would be more honest and accurate to say she enjoyed learning although the actual environment of school left much to be desired—and appeared to thrive if all you looked at were her academic achievements. And, by and large, that’s all that anybody did look at so nobody saw her hesitance and uncertainty, the way she would wait to see which way others went before following so that she didn’t stand out.

She started collecting labels the way she would collect books and Lego: shy, quiet, deep, clever, moody, reserved, introspective, neurotic. Some she liked, others not so much, but they all had one thing in common; they had all been given to her by other people. She wore them, made them into a mask so that what people saw when they looked at her was what they expected to see.

Beneath her mask, inside her own head, she would sometimes wonder who she really was. She knew she wasn’t the person everybody else appeared to see, this mask that she wore out in the world, but she also assumed that if everybody outside believed that she was her mask then that must be true even if it didn’t feel right inside.

As the years passed, more and more of the things that made her uniquely individual became hidden under the mask, the better to meet the expectations of everybody around her: parents, teachers, peers. She was a square peg squeezed and pushed and forced into a standard round hole.

She broke down at 13. She knows why, what events led to it. It was easier afterwards to blame bullying rather than try to explain feelings and responses to a situation that would be alien to most others: she had learned by then that other people didn’t see the world the way she did and reacted differently. She entertained fantasies that she was an alien like Spock from Star Trek disguised as a human: she knew this wasn’t true but there was a compelling resonance to the idea.

I’ll leave this story here, its purpose served. There’s only so much you can learn from a simple story: it’s as much about the person telling it as it is about the character in it. Here’s the same story, told differently.

Once there was a little girl who grew up and became a woman, fell in love, got married, had a daughter.

Once there was a little girl who became lost, and everyone who she turned to for help steered her down the wrong path because they couldn’t see where she wanted to go.

Once there was a little girl who hid herself behind a mask for so long that the mask became a cocoon, while inside she transformed into a woman who finally stepped free the day the cocoon broke open.

Once there was a little girl who got broken and spent the following years picking up the pieces to put herself back together.

Once there was a little girl who was loved by her mother, and who loved her mother in return, and made up her mind that she wanted to be like her when she grew up.

It’s my story; I can tell it any way I choose. I’ve chosen to portray myself this way so that you can hopefully see me as I am, not as a collection of labels. I’ve not described myself directly; rather, I’ve guided you on a tour through a carefully curated slice of my life. I hope that you’ve learned a little about me, come to understand me in a way that I couldn’t achieve by simply describing myself.

Labels have their uses and their places, but the name is not the thing. Like in the famous Magritte painting, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” (This is not a pipe.) A depiction or description of me is not me. But hopefully it bears close enough resemblance that you’d be able to recognise me from it.

When I started writing this piece I had some ideas about what I wanted to say, but that wasn’t the shape that formed under my hands. What I’ve ended up with here expresses my thoughts in a more satisfying form than what I imagined: that’s the way my creative mind works and I’d not have it any other way.

Like my story above, my life is unfinished, and the shape it ultimately takes is not under my conscious control, but I trust my instincts to create something I can feel satisfied with at the end. I’ve experienced pain and despair, I’ve been broken and damaged by some of what I’ve been through. But I have passed through that: it’s done and in the past.

The shape that the trauma moulded me into can be changed by the gentler, kinder forces that surround me today. The mask I was forced to wear as protection can be taken off and left behind. I do not need or want to be defined by what was done to me: I am not a victim or survivor. I am an explorer, a seeker of what wonders the world has to offer. I look to where I am and where I might go, not the path I’ve already travelled.

Finding My Voice

March 8, 2019March 8, 2019 by alexforshaw ♥ 3 Comments

Looking back through my school reports recently prior to my autism assessment, I was reminded how seldom I used to speak to anybody. One of the earliest labels I acquired was shy, and my teachers in comment after comment expressed their belief that I could go far if only I would talk more. Or, indeed, at all in a lot of situations.

The contrast between that and my assessment report which mentions my tendency to talk too much and go into too much detail is remarkable. So what changed?

There isn’t one single factor that helped me develop my self-confidence. Rather, it has been a combination of changes in my life, the most obvious of which has been my gender transition. Since reaching the point where I’m comfortable with how I look, I’ve become less self-conscious which translates into a more confident presentation.

I’ve also, with help from my wonderful daughter in particular, got out of a toxic relationship where I’d been controlled. My new-found freedom has enabled me to get out and about, spending time with friends. Indeed, it has allowed me to develop close, supportive friendships, where before I wasn’t able to due to restrictions imposed by my former partner.

As my support base has grown, so has my confidence in my own ability. I’d been gaslighted for years, told that I was no good at certain things, that I could never manage on my own. I believed it, and so was trapped in that situation by my lack of self-esteem and self-belief.

It’s been hard to break away from that dependency, and I didn’t get out unharmed: the trauma of living in fear for my safety has left me with mental health problems. But even so, I am definitely better off than I was before getting out.

Most of all, I can be myself. It took a long time to get here, but I found out who I am. For years I tried to be the person I believed those around me wanted me to be. I wore a mask that had been designed by others, and it didn’t fit. When at last the chafing became unbearable, the woman who emerged from behind that mask into the light of day needed a little time to find her feet. To find her own voice.

And I have. A voice that draws from all my experiences, all that brought me to where I am today. My voice.

Changing Your Mind – Thoughts on TMS

April 11, 2016 by alexforshaw ♥ 14 Comments

Over the past year, and especially since the publication of Switched On by John Elder Robison, there has been a lot of attention around a therapy called TMS (or rTMS–Repetitive Transcranial Stimulation).

It’s something I have deep reservations about but others have written passionately and eloquently on the subject. What I want to consider is why somebody would choose to undergo such a therapy that literally changes their mind.

I’m no stranger to the negative feelings that arise when considering the gap between how I perceive myself and what I see when I look in the mirror: that’s a big factor in my gender dysphoria.

I also know first-hand how it feels to be teased and ridiculed for hand flapping, physical clumsiness, social awkwardness, unusual speech patterns and eclectic interests. I’ve had life-long difficulty making and maintaining interpersonal relationships, and I have times where I feel keenly the lack of people with whom I feel comfortable opening up about my problems and feelings.

I understand the drive to make physical changes to one’s body. After all, I’m in the process of seeking treatment to modify my own body, bringing it into closer alignment with what I see in my mind by erasing or concealing male characteristics and developing female ones.

There are two parts to my gender dysphoria. First there is my need to have other people respond to me as a woman, reinforcing my gender identity. Second there is my need to see my own body physically match the mental image I hold.

So as a trans woman I am actively seeking treatment to make changes to my body. This is in contrast to my feelings about my autism. Both my gender identity and my autistic identity go to the very heart of who I am.

The thing is, although I will happily modify the physical characteristics of my body I wouldn’t consider altering my mind. My neurology is inextricably tied to my identity: I feel that changing my mind would make me into a different person.

There’s a line there. I’ve put a foot over that line a few times, testing the water so to speak. I’ve experienced the effects of drugs that affect the workings of the brain: alcohol, marijuana, amphetamines, SSRIs (anti-depressant).

Some of them have positive aspects. For example, alcohol reduces my social anxiety. But there are negatives too: I make poor decisions under the influence of alcohol because it inhibits my self-control and risk-aversion: I’ve gotten myself into some dangerous situations as a result.

Speed (amphetamine) left me unable to concentrate, marijuana was relaxing but caused mild hallucinations and a degree of paranoia. The SSRIs reduced the intensity of my emotions, leaving me feeling numb: in the end I had trouble focusing and engaging with things in my life.

These were all temporary effects: my mind returned to its usual functioning state in time for which I was grateful. You see, I wasn’t myself when under the influence of any of these drugs.

I guess my point is that given the complexity of the human brain and the way its many regions interact it is not possible to adjust one aspect without affecting others. Just as a particular drug affects a small number of electro-chemical interactions in the brain with wider-reaching side-effects, so a therapy like rTMS that alters a small region must cause knock-on changes across the entire organ.

My opinion is that it is not like tuning an engine, a relatively simple system with a limited degree of interconnection and feedback between its components. It’s more like introducing a foreign species into an existing ecosystem. The effects can be slow to manifest, and predictions are error-prone due to the complexity and chaotic nature of the system.

There is no way to know what other effects rTMS would have. It might reduce my social anxiety, but even if that was all it did it would make me respond differently to people I interact with (like alcohol). And if my thoughts and behavior are changed then I’m no longer the same person.

I don’t want to change who I am: I’m comfortable with my identity as an autistic trans woman with all that entails. Changing my body doesn’t affect my personality, my thoughts: I remain me. Changing my mind makes me into somebody else. I would lose the essence of what makes me this particular unique individual, and the thought of that fills me with dread.

This leads me to suppose that for somebody to even contemplate such a thing they must not like who they are. Internalized self-hatred, blaming their neurology for what they see as their failings. It’s like body dysmorphia projected onto the ego, the sense of self. The antithesis of neurodiversity’s principles; an inability or refusal to accept one’s differences.

I see this as a result of thinking colored by the medical model of autism that sees it in terms of pathological deficits, as opposed to the social model which instead looks to society’s failures to provide suitable accommodations and acceptance as the causes of disability.

There’s nothing wrong with my mind: I have no reason to change it. I can’t say the same for the society I live in.

Rewriting History

December 2, 2015 by alexforshaw ♥ 2 Comments

“You were never much of a man.” Anne has said this to me several times since I transitioned; I know exactly what she means and love to hear it. From puberty onwards when I started to become aware of gender I didn’t identify with any of the male role models around me.

I couldn’t put a name to how I felt; I saw part of a documentary (back in the 1980’s) which I couldn’t tell you the title of. It was about a middle-aged trans woman but her circumstances were so far removed from my own that I failed to see any connection to my own life.

So all I had were people treating me as male. My mum bought me boys’ clothes, I attended an all boys school from age 11 to 16, I played rugby. Any comments on how I looked or acted were male-oriented, either praising my conformance to the stereotypes or criticizing me when my act was unconvincing.

In my teens when I was considered old enough to be left at home alone I would decline to accompany the rest of the family to rugby matches. Instead I’d wait for them to leave and then raid my mother’s closet, dressing in her clothes for an hour or so. I’d look at myself in the mirror and feel so happy seeing a girl reflected there. I used to dream that I could travel Alice-like through the looking glass, become that mirror-girl.

I hated my male genitalia. I’d dream of cutting them off but was always too afraid of the pain and risk of death to attempt it. I always avoided showering after games at school because I couldn’t even bear the thought of anybody else seeing those parts I hated so much.

It’s easy to look back from where I am now and wish I’d said something then, started my transition before my voice dropped and my hair started to grow out on my face, recede at my forehead and become thin on top. But I didn’t have the concepts back then to even begin to explain, and I’d have been terrified at the thought of trying to explain to my parents (who probably knew even less about such things than I did).

Obviously I can’t change what happened: the events of the past are immutable. But what I can change is how I speak about my past. I’ve completely stopped using male-specific terms to refer to myself at earlier stages of my life. I was a child, not a boy; I was in my 20s, then my 30s. It’s straightforward in the present: I’m a woman and that’s that.

In my own mind I consider myself to have always been female. I don’t consider that I was socialized as male: being autistic I never felt that I fitted in anyway and didn’t form many relationships with my peers. I was always happier when left to my own devices with a stack of books, box of Lego and my computer. I didn’t participate in playground games with either boys or girls; instead I’d be reading, building trains and space ships, or writing programs.

I don’t consider my gender to be defined at all by my interests; rather it is an aspect of my identity. I simply know it as a fact of my existence, exactly the same as most other people. My mind informs my reality. That’s the reason it doesn’t feel right to talk about myself ever having been a boy or a man. I’m a woman whose body turned out wrong. One small error led to the development of male characteristics and I need medical treatment to correct it.

I tried. I tried hard for years to live up to the expectations of those around me who saw me as male. But it felt false. It was a charade, never feeling natural. I was wearing a mask, playing a part. Pretending to be what everybody else thought I was. No more. I’m through with denying who I know myself to be inside.

The new job helps a lot. Nobody there knew me pre-transition so they all just treat me as who I am. There’s no reservation in behaving the same way towards me as towards any other woman in the office: it feels very natural and comfortable. I feel accepted as myself. It might be hard for somebody who’s not trans to fully appreciate the importance of this, how validating it is to know that I’m around other people who see me as I do myself.

Who Are You?

April 11, 2015April 11, 2015 by alexforshaw ♥ 1 Comment

I think a lot about identity — my identity. What terms will I use to refer to myself in my own thoughts and when I speak about myself? It’s something that has changed over my life and especially in the last few years as I’ve accepted that I’m autistic and finally come out about my gender.

Life isn’t static. We are shaped by our experiences, changing over time as we continue to grow and learn — about ourselves as much as the world around us. If we’re honest about it what others see is a reflection of our identity, multiple facets of our personality exerting their influence on everything from mannerisms to dress. But often what we present is camouflage, protective coloration to make us seem to be what we are not so that we appear to fit in with society’s expectations.

I know about this: I presented as male for most of my life, hiding who I was. But it became increasingly uncomfortable to live a lie, unable to be myself outside my own head. It caused some self-destructive behaviors and culminated in depression: it harmed me mentally and, as a consequence, physically as well. Honesty and openness have been good for me. My depression is now manageable without medication and I no longer suffer the negative impulses.

My transition has been the key to this. When I talk about gender transition what I am really describing is a change in gender presentation. My gender hasn’t changed: I’ve always been female. I just didn’t show it openly until recently. The thing about transition is that it’s not a binary switch from one state to another. It’s a process, a collection of changes that proceed at different rates.

Even changing my name is a process. Although from a legal standpoint it changed the moment I signed my declaration in the solicitor’s office, I still had to become used to it myself, to responding to “Alex” rather than “Ben”. I had to change the name in so many places, from driver’s license to medical records, from personnel record at work to email accounts. I’ve not yet completed this process: I still have a pension plan and a couple of credit cards in my old name.

Along with my name there is the important question of what words to use. Because gender affects our language so strongly it has made me think deeply about how to refer to myself, both now and when talking about myself in the past. Especially the past. It can be a little confusing, even for me, so I’ll go through it step by step.

I was born, obviously. I wasn’t “born a boy” though; I was born a girl but assigned male. Given a label, a letter “M” on my birth certificate, based on appearances. It was an educated guess by the medics and it turned out to be incorrect. Apart from my parents’ choice of name it didn’t affect me much in my early years: I wasn’t conscious of gender. I mean, I knew that there were boys and girls and that I was included with the boys, but I never thought about how they might differ. They were just labels with no more meaning than being assigned to one team or another in sports. I was definitely a late developer when it came to concepts of gender.

When referring to myself back then I have settled on avoiding gendered terms. I say “when I was a child” or “when I was growing up”. It’s more difficult when using the third person, but my preference is for something like “I went to school with Alex and was in her class for English”, using my current name and pronouns.

The other tricky area that crops up is when I describe being trans. The commonly accepted tropes, perpetuated by most media coverage, are that a trans person is “in the wrong body” or “wants” to be a different gender from that they were assigned. I see these as overly simplistic.

The way I see it is that I am not in the wrong body. I’m in my body: it’s the only one I’ve got and I’m quite used to it after more than forty years. What is wrong is that it’s a male body; its gender doesn’t match my mind. I think of myself as a woman with a hormone problem that caused me to develop male physical traits. It’s not that I want to be a woman, it’s that I am a woman who wants her body to appear female. These distinctions are very important to me.

To describe somebody as being in the wrong body is to suggest that there can be a separation between the mind and the physical body it occupies. It makes the problem sound like an ill-fitting pair of shoes, as if bodies were commodities to be exchanged at will, and trivializes the experience.

When I hear people say that I “want to be a woman” I get offended. This innocuous-looking phrase invalidates my gender identity, implying that the speaker does not view me as a woman. It suggests that it is a choice I have made rather than a core trait making me who I am. It suggests that being female is nothing more than a lifestyle, an occupation like being a scientist or a pilot. The word “want” also completely ignores the depth and strength of feeling I have about my gender.

So how would I describe myself concisely in alternative, acceptable (to me) terms? I’d say that I am a woman who was assigned male at birth, my body has male features which do not belong there, and I am compelled to change it so that it matches the image I have of myself in my mind.

Reflected in Others’ Eyes

March 18, 2015 by alexforshaw ♥ 9 Comments

One thing I said to people when I came out as a trans woman was that I’m still the same person. And indeed I do not feel like I’ve become somebody different at all. I do however feel less constrained, more free to express myself in a way that feels natural. I no longer feel that I’m playing a role, fitting in with what I believed people expected of me when I presented as male. It’s as if I had been confined, a square peg in society’s round hole, but by taking the step to be true to my own sense of identity I have been able to cast off the false act.

Some of the changes that Anne has noticed since I started my transition:

The first thing she said, which others have also remarked on, is that I appear much happier.
My gait has changed. I used to be heavy-footed, walking with feet splayed, and also what she described as bouncing. I now walk with my feet in line, placing them rather than “stomping”, and the weight is distributed more evenly instead of being mostly on the heel. In some respects it is similar to how I used to walk as a child, before I acquired “bad habits” (I often used to toe-walk). In fact I am now unable to reproduce my former gait as it feels too unnatural.
I am more expressive. She described my face as being more animated where before I had a flat affect. I also gesture more with my hands when speaking where before I would usually stick my hands in my pockets because I didn’t know what else to do with them.
I appear more sensitive and understanding. She told me I am more patient and responsive to her needs; I used to have a short fuse at times and would be snappy.
I’ve discovered color in my wardrobe. I’ve gone from wearing exactly the same black shirt and jeans every day to a variety of dresses, tops and skirts in different colors, never the same two days running.

I’ve also noticed some changes in other people’s behavior towards me since I started to present publicly as female. When I’m shopping the checkout assistants are more likely to engage in conversation. More people at work say “Good morning”, and I’m more likely to receive a smile; I’ve actually had more non work-related conversations at work in the year since transitioning than I ever did in the previous seven years! Even a few compliments on my attire, which pleased me very much since I try to make an effort.

Some signals have been more mixed: a couple of times I’ve noticed men speaking to my chest rather than my face! Not sure what they’re looking at: I’ve not much development there to speak of. Perhaps it’s just habit with them? On a brighter note I had a very positive encounter with a real gentleman last summer: I was driving to work one morning along the M4 when, while overtaking a pickup, something like a string bag full of straw fell from the back of it and lodged under my car. The driver of the pickup noticed this as I pulled in front of him and he signaled for me to pull over. I pulled onto the shoulder and he pulled over behind. We both got out, and without hesitation he walked to my car and practically lay down on the asphalt, reaching far underneath to remove the debris. I was most grateful and not a little surprised since I’d never experienced anything like this before.

All this is wonderfully validating and has increased my self-confidence. Together with discarding inhibitions it all contributes to a greater sense of calm and a reduction in my general stress levels. These inhibitions were to do with my internalized view of appropriate male behavior, a collection of rules I had acquired since early childhood. How I had learned I ought to act to avoid negative reactions: certain mannerisms, displaying physical reactions to my emotional states, even the way I walked.

Some of my inhibitions were a result of as well a cause of anxiety. Being on the receiving end of teasing or bullying will affect your behavior as you work hard to suppress the things you do that seem to be the triggers. Catching yourself doing one of those things causes a huge sense of panic: you stand there waiting for the expected hurtful reactions from those around you.

Societal gender roles have a lot to do with what is seen as acceptable by people in general. Presenting as male I had the advantage of privilege and the protections deriving from that, but only as long as I conformed to the expectations of that role. For me it was uncomfortably confining because I wasn’t able to be myself, but for such a long time I was too afraid of the reaction if I didn’t “play along”: I was trapped by my fears.

Now, presenting as myself, I don’t experience those fears. I do feel more vulnerable when I’m out and about which I believe is a result of no longer hiding behind a role, a mask. I’ve written before about how I used to feel I was safely hidden inside an avatar of flesh that was all the rest of the world ever saw of me. That’s gone now: what I show is my inner self, the person that was always there behind my protective wall of conformity.

Occasionally I regret that I took so many years to build up to the point of coming out, but that’s not how my life turned out. The simple fact is that I am here now and wishing things were different can never change that; it can only make me sad. It’s true to say that I am happier now than I had been for a heck of a long time and that’s worth a lot.

Reblog: I Am A Woman from Notes On Crazy

December 11, 2013 by alexforshaw ♥ 1 Comment

Nattily at Notes On Crazy is hosting a collaborative blog series called Point, Counterpoint, Actual Point. This is a series of posts combating doubts about who and what we are, a set of personal accounts of accepting ourselves as we are.

My own contribution can be found here, but make sure you check out the rest of the series. There are some excellent, informative, thought-provoking entries that are well worth your time to read.