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I wrote this little piece about ten years ago. I have taken it from my “archives” and reprinted it here because it addresses another facet of my personality and development as a woman who was born in 1955. It is as follows:
I have been a writer since early adolescence. That was when I began to express my fears, anxieties, and frustrations about my chaotic homelife, and just the generally chaotic business of growing up, by way of short-story fiction. I needed a strong, guiding figure in my life so I created my own “parent” in the fictional guise of Michael James Peters, a pediatrician who was at that time in his early 40s with a wife and six kids. I started out writing about his interactions with his adolescent patients, adolescent medicine being his specialty area, and left no area off-limits. (I seemed to be particularly fascinated with 16-year-olds contracting STDs. Considering that this was 1969, I was a little before my time!) I delved into a highly sensitive area when I created one of Mike Peters’ patients, a 13-year-old boy by the name of Randy Kelly who was in an abusive home and took Mike into his confidence. When Randy was assaulted by his stepfather and required hospitalization, it was Mike and his wife, Gloria, who stepped up to the plate to take Randy in as a foster son. (Can you imagine my mother’s horror when she discovered this story, penciled in a school notebook by her eighth grade daughter? The original draft somehow just *vanished!*)
I made many discoveries about myself through this writing over the years and let my therapist read some of those stories some years back. Since my own self-esteem issues were part of the therapeutic discussions, he asked me, “Why did you make Gloria this nonexistent character? What’s up with that?” This is what I wrote in response to that question:
In the original “Behind Door #3″ story, Gloria is a nonexistent character. All the interaction takes place between Mike (her husband) and Randy while Gloria typically sleeps through these major episodes. Bruce [my therapist] was the one who pointed this out to me. He observed that Mike is this strong, sensitive, professional, intelligent (and good-looking) man, and he’s married to this woman who apparently has no personality and no major contributions to make. Bruce asked me if I really thought that a man such as Mike Peters would be married to such a nondescript woman. He further pressed me to think about why I had developed her that way to begin with.
I thought long and hard about it and realized that I did not have a very positive impression of womanhood. I really didn’t have positive female role models in my personal life when I was growing up. I wanted to be exactly the opposite of my mother, as a matter of fact! My father was my supportive parent, the one I turned to for understanding, comfort and strength.
The social climate at the time I was growing up further reinforced my impression of women as ornamental rather than functional, as weak rather than competent. Of course, a lot of it was gleaned from television: the early sit-coms of “The Donna Reed Show,” “Leave It To Beaver,” “Ozzie & Harriet,” “Father Knows Best.” The husband and father was always going off to work at the office to accomplish great things and provide for his family, while his wife just stayed at home in her dress, high heels, and pearls and put wonderful meals on the table for her family to enjoy when they came home. If anything serious happened on the show, “Dad/Dear” had to be called in to the rescue to deal with the crisis.
The commercials, however, were the worst of all. Women fretted about such important things in life as “ring around the collar” and “ugly wax build-up” on their kitchen floors. They were devastated if their husbands complained about stale sandwiches in their lunchboxes because she didn’t use the right plastic wrap or their glassware came out of the dishwasher with water spots. My personal feeling was, “If this is what women do with their lives, just take me out and shoot me now!”
Likewise, my upbringing and my Catholic schooling reinforced this message that women were weak and dependent. Even though I was a straight-A student and began talking about being a doctor when I was about twelve, my mother would look at me like I had my head up my butt and advise, “You’d better take typing and shorthand, anyway….just in case your husband is ever out of work. Then you’ll have something to fall back on.”
Of course, the nuns thought it great when a Catholic girl had the noble aspirations to be a good wife and mother. Academic performance didn’t really count for much. The straight-A college preppies got no more encouragement towards career goals and personal achievements than their average counterparts in Home Ec and Secretarial Skills 101.
I realize that I did not like the messages I was getting about women’s roles in our culture. Unconsciously, I aligned myself with the male world where I felt more emotionally comfortable, where individuals were encouraged to achieve and succeed, where it was expected that one would show strength and competency.
It took me quite awhile to realize that women are strong, competent, intelligent people, too. That was when I consciously began to work on developing the character of Gloria Peters, trying to turn her into a woman I could be proud of. Of course, in the process, I was trying to change my own attitudes about myself and my perception of the female role…
First of all, I would like to publically (at least “publically” within the limited scope of this readership) acknowledge that I am following the blogs of some very incredible, courageous, and insightful women. Most of these blogs chronicle their journeys of living in the male role to transitioning to living as the women they have always felt they were. Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is a complex and multi-layered entity, and I won’t even attempt to discuss any of its facets with my limited background and education in the matter. I just know that these are people who have been given a complicated set of circumstances to deal with to the best of their abilities. I have appreciated the depth of these challenges and the painful decisions that have often been required for these individuals to move forward with their lives and nurture their sense of selves.
In reading some entries in these chapters of life, I have compared and contrasted some of my own experiences with my physical development as a woman and my psychological and emotional composition as a woman. My mind wandered down an interesting path the other evening as I read about one trans woman experiencing the changes in her body after she had begun estrogen therapy: the breast development, the redistribution of body fat, the softening of the skin, and the diminishing of body hair. I found myself envying that last change brought about by estrogen’s magic!
You see, I am a genetic woman, a cis woman, a person with XX chromosomes. I saw an endocrinologist when I was 14-years-old to evaluate my uneven breast development. I certainly didn’t need an endocrinologist to evaluate the problem of one young boob being bigger than the other. The fact that they started developing when I was 10-years-old and I got my first period a year later was evidence enough that my basic female hormones were present and doing what they were suppose to do. What this endocrinologist did note when examining me was the male distribution of hair on my lower abdomen. He seemed to think that that indicated a need to evaluate some hormone levels, including adrenal function. All that came back normal, and I never visited an endocrinologist again.
My attention at that point in my life was drawn to my excess of body hair, however. There was no question about it. I was a very hairy woman! I had all that dark, coarse hair on my lower abdomen where most women were smooth and hairless with perhaps just a bit of pale “peach fuzz” at best. The bush that grew beneath this “male hair distribution pattern” was also thick and unruly. My arms were hairy. My legs had a covering of dark, coarse hair from my thighs to my ankles. If allowed to grow, I had as much armpit hair as my boyfriend. Another fact that only I and those most intimate with me have ever known is that my clitoris is also on the “well hung” side, not this tiny nubbin that most women have. I mean, you positively can’t miss mine! In my early 20s, I had some hormone levels drawn to evaluate some menstrual irregularities and I really wasn’t at all surprised to find out that my testosterone level was right there at the top of the normal range for an adult woman. 80 was the cut-off. I was at 78. Still, everything else checked out satisfactorily and I was never diagnosed with any metabolic or hormone problems.
I’m a genetic woman but I don’t feel like a soft, smooth woman, either physically or psychologically. My preparations for becoming “soft and smooth” take me quite a bit of time. I pluck a lot of coarse hairs out of my chin, jawline, and upper lip every two or three days. My tweezers and I are intimate friends. I’m still shying away from facial electrolysis because I’m a sissy at heart. (I’d do it in a heartbeat if it didn’t hurt!) I shave the area around each areola because that area, too, sprouts a lot of dark hair. (Fortunately, I only have a couple of wispy stray hairs on my chest that don’t pose a problem.) I shave my lower arms. I don’t think my pits have ever really appeared silky and bare because I have such a heavy growth of dark hair that I have 5:00 shadow just some hours out of the shower. I shave my abdomen. I shave my legs from groin to ankle, a smooth condition that lasts me only until the next day when I’d have to do it all over again if my propensity to folliculitis didn’t discourage shaving that frequently.
I would give anything to have my own female hormones make me smooth, soft, and hairless but that has never happened for me. In my late teens and early 20s, my gynecologist prescribed a high estrogen birth control pill for me in hopes of “toning down” the body hair, but it didn’t really do all that much towards that objective. And then those pills were taken off the market due to health risks. Higher levels of estrogen cause a woman’s blood to clot more easily, putting her at higher risk for heart attacks, strokes, and deep vein thrombosis. Due to that risk and the increased risk of breast cancer, I can barely get a doctor to write out a prescription for estrogen to control my menopausal symptoms now. I’m taking a measley 0.3 mg every other day which is enough to control my hot flashes, and my doctor would like to see me off of that soon.
So, women come in all flavors, don’t they? We’re not all soft, smooth, and silky! There have been a lot of times when I have felt like a hybrid, an androgenous blend of male and female, outwardly female but aware of my coarser edges. It was the way I was made by whatever mix of genes controls these things.
Well, I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek because there really hasn’t been all that much going on for awhile, as evidenced by the rare entries for some time now. My last enjoyable evening out in a queer environment was the last Dildo Bingo held at Pi Bar and Restaurant in mid-November.
Since that time, I have joined an Internet group called Community of Married Women who Love Women (CMWLW). I have corresponded with a couple of women from the group, one not too far away in northern Iowa and the other in Winnipeg. However, I sort of got derailed with regular correspondence over the holidays and the stress of a toothache, root canal work, and some family hassles. I haven’t gotten back into the swing of that in this new year of 2009 yet.
However! Kinsey is going on a little adventure next month! Oh, yes, she is!!
I made a friend through this blog, and she has extended the invitation to visit her in her warm, sunny southwestern state. I actually would go even if she lived in Vermont, but the thought of some warmer temps right now doesn’t do my mood any harm!
Through her, I have also become acquainted with a couple of other women who are good friends of hers, and I would imagine that all of us will meet while I am there in mid-February for roughly five days (arriving at noon on Wednesday and returning to the frozen tundra Sunday afternoon.)
I think that the most noteworthy thing about this trip is that I have never done anything quite like this before. With the exception of having flown to both Pennsylvania and Ohio to visit family without my husband, I have never taken a trip of this distance without him. Recreational trips have always been with him, and considering I met him when I was 15 and married him at 17, there haven’t been opportunities in my adult life to do things without him. I have never just decided to purchased a plane ticket and go see some friends for a few days.
Well, I’m going. Dave is staying home while I’m gone. He’s not even away on business while I’m gone because I didn’t want him to be. I asked him to be home and he said he’d schedule around it. I want him home to feed the cats, bring in the mail and newspaper, scoop out the litterboxes every other day or so, and check to see if the plants need to be watered. For once — just for once! — I want to be the one throwing some things in a suitcase, getting a ride to the airport, and not worrying about a thing at home because someone is home taking care of all those things. I get to leave without having to find a housesitter and/or a cat nanny and trying to think of everything that needs to be taken care of before we leave on a trip together.
I am really looking forward to this. I’m looking forward to some “me” time. I’m looking forward to some “us” time with some wonderful women. I looking forward to enriching my friendship with these women. I’m just looking forward to having some fun and basking in the delight of female energy.
Thank you, my friend, for inviting me. I’m counting down the days!
In my post last month, Queer Friendly Spaces, I mentioned that our favorite queer-women’s bar, Pi, was in danger of closing its doors due to financial problems. I donated $100 towards the fundraising effort to try to keep the establishment open. Alas, this week I had my check returned from Pi’s owner, Tara Yule. She said in the enclosed letter:
It has been several weeks since the doors were closed for the last time at Pi. Though I have had long days remembering inspired moments and missing friends, I have been comforted by the collection of many touching stories and cards. I have received and been truly awed by the generosity that manifested itself in Pi’s final weeks. As can safely be assumed by now, Pi will not be rising from the ashes, at not those left in its former location. I can only hope that the spirit of kinship that was exposed in the last days of Pi can be maintained long enough to find its next backdrop. Not many people can say that their dreams have come true. I feel truly privileged to have seen it.
This is letter is to thank you for your individual contributions to Pi’s dream and to inform you that the fundraising has been officially cancelled.
Thank you for being a part of what happened.
Sincerely and gratefully yours,
Tara K. Yule
The queer women’s community here in the BiCities sorely misses Pi. There seems to be no place to go that has the same comfort and essence that Pi had. I hope that there will soon be a next “backdrop” for the LBT women’s community where they can feel at ease, have fun, share a spirit of comraderie in a way that only women know how to do. I’ll be on board with whatever efforts arise towards this goal.
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