This is Ian's "transgender exploration journal" which I found on the Wayback Machine. Ian is a fairy boy-dyke fag and the diary spans about a year from the end of 1998 to the end of 1999. Ian talks about identifying as a boy while not wanting to medically transition or pass as male.12/6/98
I got an idea last night that it would really fun to be a little boy. I mean, I never got the chance to, I was always being girlie, playing with toy ponys and running around in frilly dresses. It would be so much fun to run around in jeans and t-shirts with backwards baseball caps and climb trees and get dirty and wrestle with my friends. I want some cool action figures too. I think this would be really healing, like developing the rest of myself, get to do all the things I didn't get to do cuz I was a girl. Ya. Also, I've been feeling sorta stuck the past few weeks, limited in my wardrobe, and kinda situated at this point where i'm ready to jump in but I'm still held back by my lack of options. I think I'm just impatient. Like I wanna be this crazy gender ambigous person I see in my head, but it's gonna take me a bit to get there, and I don't wanna wait! Being a little boy, even if it's only in my head, will help for a little while.. so from a little boy I can grow into a teenager and from there an adult.
Very recently I felt a lot like I was going through puberty again, akward, not quite fitting into my body.. I think that maybe I jumped too soon, I assumed I could transition from the middle stage, when in fact I have to start from the begining to weed out the socialized parts of myself and develop completely anew. Cuz right now I feel totally stiffled, like I've made progress and now I'm stuck, and I totally wanna get out of this rut.
Sometimes I look in the mirror and smush down my breasts, thinking about getting some tight sports bras or some ace bandage.. but then I stop myself. I think binding would be fun for drag.. but to alienate myself from parts of my body, or think that those parts are wrong, is working against myself, is going to a place that I don't wanna be. I wanna love myself for who I am, what I look like, and I can change that appearance as much as I want, but I wanna be true to myself in the process.
1/5/99
Okay, I'm havin issues today.:P I just finshed reading 'Stone Butch Blues'.. so the wheels in my head are kinda turnin.
I feel so lost sometimes, so out of place. I mean, maybe I'm just too concerened with what other people think, too concerned with needing to belong.. belong somewhere.
I feel like I don't belong in the gendered world.. I walk around, wonder if people are glaring at me, I'm tense a lot, I know I'm different and I just wonder if they see it. I don't feel at home around other boys either, I feel like they're gona reject me at any moment, like they're thinking: "Yr not a boy, look at how girlie you are, why don't you just resign yourself to the fact that you're femme and stop pretending?".. I'm not femminine enough to be femme, and not quite butch enough to be boy. I feel like I'm in limbo, I belong nowhere, *I* don't even know where I belong. I know what I wanna be, I wanna be a lanky boy dyke with a flat chest and narrow hips..
I've developed this love/hate issue with my body lately.. I try my best to love my body, I think I should, but there's this part of my head that just wants me tits to be flat.. I want narrow hips, I wan broad shoulders, strong arms.. I'm so little and non-muscular, I have small girlish hips, femminine hands, and a soft voice that betrays me.. I've even thought half seriously about hormones, but it's weird, it's like.. I want both. I'd like to be a boy, but I don't wanna give up my girl either, I still love her even though she's not who I am right now. I feel like I wanna slip into a new body for awhile, well, most of a new body, I really don't have issues with what's in my pants.. though I do think it's rad that tranny boys can jack off;P I don't feel like an FTM though, and I don't have the comfort of saying "this is the way I've always been, I always wanted to be a boy, I've been a boy my whole life.".. cuz I haven't. I identified as girl until 3 months ago.. ANd I think that I don't fit as a full out tranny boy, I don't wanna make that leap, I wanna be a genderfucker, but a gender fucker that could wakeup one da and be a drag queen too. I dunno, I guess maybe I'm ust non-commital. I guess I'll figure it out eventually. I really wanna be ambiguos, but I'm scared of being ambiguous, I'mscared of the dangers involved. I don't wanna pas as either, but I wanna be called 'sir' along wit an occasional 'ma'am'..
I just don't know what the hell's going on in my head anymore.. I'm having a tranny idenity crisis, trying to transition and see where I fit.. but I don't feel like I'm ever gonna fit, I think that's my insecurities talking, part of me thinks I'll always be femme.. like it's this wierd mental charicture I have of myself that personifies all my self-conciousness.
and then there are the split seconds I wonder if I'm crazy... the words gender idenitiy disorder ring in my head.. sometimes you just get so confused and backward that you think 'hey, maybe they're right, maybe I am nuts'.. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not insane, I'm not a genetic malfunction, I'm not trapped in teh wrong body and there's nothing wrong with me.. It's these reassurances, and the sompany of other trannys that keeps me sane.
But still, I fear for the future.
1/12/99
The tongue slips, it doesn't connect with the mind..
Everyone sems to be changing their names lately!:P Myself included.. Is it Danica, Dani, Aidian.. Star, Scott.. Andrea, Drea, Billy.. Becca, Skylar???? Yikes! I mean to call everyone by their chosen name(if I know what that really is half the time).. I introduce myself to people and I don't know what name to use.. I refer to my friends and whatever the hell name slips out, there ya go.. I try to remember their new names, and they do the same for me, but it doesn't always work.. As if my life weren't confusing enough!
Also, pronouns are a big headache. My trans friends don't fit the word 'girl', 'she', 'her'.. yet I find myself reffering to them as that cuz those unisex pronouns are hard to fit in yr brain... If they identified as FTMs, it'd be a piece o cake, 'he''s easy to remember.. they aren't FTMs, but whenever I refer to them with a female pronoun I feel like such a shit.
The Boy Dyke and the Femme:
I'm so tired of this stereotype. Butches and femmes go together, that's what everyone assumes, that's what everyone buys into. Like when I say 'I like butches and boy dykes', it's like: 'wow, that's unique'. Why?? or oh, I love this one: 'You're a boy dyke and you don't like femmes? but isn't that the point?' Like ya, I tailor my gender idenity according to who I'm attracted to. The stereotype just gets old, and god damm it I'm a boydyke fag and their ain't nuthin wierd about it. I wish there were more boydyke fags around.. not just daddys, but like other boys too. *sigh*
2/6/99
The name bandit strikes again.
I decided recently that I'm going to change my name to Ian, both on and off the computer.. I'd been useing billy on the computer mostly for a couple months, but it sounded so bad with my last name I just couldn't handle it. Ian is the name that I would have been given had I been born bio male. I've already gotten a little bit of shit fer changing my name again, and some of my friends don't seem to even try to call me the new one.. but I'll get there. :)
3/29/99
Well, I really don't seem to write in this thing much, ah well.
I've been pretty comfortable with myself lately, not as insecure, a little more sure of who I am. Irecieved some flack recently for supposedly not being a 'real' tranny because I was not born IDing as a transsexual. I think it's ver limiting to exclude the deffinition of trans to only those who wish to alter their bodies or become members of the 'other' gender. It excludes those of us who have not always been non-traditionally gendered, and those who do not wish to alter their bodies, or even to ID as the other binary gender. Those of us who are not transsexuals are seen as not serious about being trans, just using it to be cool and different. I take trans very seriously, I haven't made my life any easier by coming out as trans, believe me. I think to build solidarity as a movment we muct be inclusive, not make it an exclusionary club. I felt trans long before I knew what the word transgender meant, it's one of those things where you have no word to describe yourself and so live in silence with how different you feel inside. I also did not decide to be trans as some scapegoat from female opression. I didn't feel likeI belonged in the female gender role, that's what was wrong. I went through a lot of confusion, depression, and self-analizing to come to the point where I am now. It's hard for me too because I feel trapped into not going too far, like if I cross that gender line I'll never be able to do the thing I love so dearly, act. So my steps have been baby steps, taken gingerly. I'm slowly becomeing more and more representative on the outside of how I feel on the inside. My gender is gradually comeing to the surface. It's so hard though, living in a gendered world. I'm trying to find strength and be true to myself no matter what.
?/?/99
Well hey there. I haven't written in this thing for ages.
What I've been thinking about lately is concerning the femininity I do exude. It's very fairy-boy-like, I tell you, if I was a bio-guy I'd be a raging queen. I have these impluses sometimes, like wanting to try on a baby-blue cowboy hat or something, that I feel limited from doing. This is because if I wear things considered "feminine" I won't be boy-ish anymore, an identity I've gotten quite attatched to. If I was a boy wanting to wear those same things though, my boy-ness wouldn't be called into question. One of the sucky things about being a fairy boy-dyke fag. There's a line between preforming your own gender for yourself and doing it for other people, however. And it's a line we must all walk, and decide how far we're willing to go for the sake of other people before we start to compromise ourselves.
11/9/99
I'd describe the way I've been feeling lately as... kind of like I feel mentally intersexed, I dunno how else to describe it. I'm a boy, but I don't wanna pass as "male", I don't want everyone to take me as male. I wanna be a tranny through and through, but I hate the fact that the way I look makes people read me as a boyish dyke, my transness isn't very obvious. Well, unless you're looking at my crotch on the days I'm packing. I never bother to bind either, I must confuse people. :P
For holloween I went as a handsome devil.. and I must say I look quite good with a goatee. I'll have pictures later.
On another note: I saw "Boys Don't Cry". It was extremely sad, very emotional. It hits so much harder when you totally understand what Brandon was going through and how he was feeling. The joy and the terror of passing.
The rape and murder scenes were also extremely graphic. I closed my eyes though part of them. Luckily I had my boy there with me though, so we just griped onto each other the whole time.
