Sorting Gender / Identity


© Li Sam Writing. All rights reserved.

After I scrapped labels that suggest who groups of people are, I found myself quite empty handed. It suddenly appeared to me that all we are in society and in relation to others is based on labels, and if I scrap all that there’s nothing left … like, do we even exist?

It took me a long time to realize truths about myself in this process of changing gender. And struggling with these truths affected not only me; people I came across daily and everyone I knew were very much affected, too.

At the time I didn’t know how I could straighten out this confusion. Who was I really? How could I understand and explain what was going on?

In my search to meet others whom I thought were like me, I became more and more aware that I didn’t fit in with the people I found. They were cross dressing, and I met them in venues that were safe places where they could meet in groups, relax, and enjoy themselves. But this separate issue of coming out in public, in the daylight, was something quite different. It was really scary, like the ultimate challenge—quick out and quick back in again while dressed like a woman. This challenge is something most of these people wouldn’t find relaxing and enjoyable. At the time I wasn’t sure what I felt, but deep down my soul must have been considering coming out permanently, for real.

While I was dressed up for that first event out, I felt quite frustrated, I have to admit. But once I stepped out of that hotel where I’d gotten dressed, my whole body relaxed, my heart slowed its pace as well as my breath, and everything about me came to be easy. Unlike what I’d heard from others about coming out in public for the first time, for me it was like my body took me for a joy ride, showing me around for the first time. I felt none of those fears I had heard and read about from others.

Not only did my lack of fear set me apart from others like me, but my behavior did, too. Before this first coming out I didn’t know anything about how to behave like a woman. My only preparation had been visiting a speech therapist once, to try to understand what makes a voice sound like woman’s, and that’s all. Everything else involved in appearing like a woman came naturally to me that first day. I didn’t put on an act (I didn’t know how even if I’d wanted to), and yet I felt appreciated as I was, with no strange questions, comments, or doubtful looks sent my way at all.

Afterwards back at the hotel, I perhaps should have felt surprised, but I didn’t. My body and emotions had reacted in contradiction to how I thought I was supposed to feel. So, something within me had overridden any fears that I might have had, and instead I was provided with peace, a peace in my body and soul that I had never felt before.

This peace returned whenever I let go of my preset thoughts and didn’t pretend to be what I wasn’t. And it’s still with me today as I’m writing this. What’s also strange is that the peace I felt also affected my family and other people I knew, so something was happening that had a huge impact on my wellbeing and my ability to relate to people, allowing me to socialize like never before. So, this pleasant, new feeling of and about myself, my new self awareness, became my reference from where I could begin sorting through gender.

As I understand it, gender is very much about self-perception, those pleasant feelings brought to you by the way you present yourself. Those feelings are like a guiding path to follow. Those are the feelings you need to make yourself truly happy and alive.

To me those feelings come from within, and I think of them as originating from my heart. We know about heartache and broken hearts, but we rarely know or speak about a happy heart, or joy. Based on my experiences meeting myself, I’m pretty sure that our hearts are gender-wired one way or the other, as if they represent the soul and thus make us alive.

So this “me”—my soul—is the person, the individual that I am. All the emotions I feel and the bodily expressions my emotions take are my true self. To me, if we are true to our selves, then emotion comes first; we act because of our emotions, not the other way around. If we do something contradictory to our true selves, then we feel sad—and that’s not just a thought—we feel it all over, in our hearts, stomachs, breath …. Well, you name it and we react and behave accordingly.

Our souls are searching, developing, and along that line of sight, or (if you prefer) on the other end of the rope, is where “you” are—it’s where we meet.

But in-between there’s something we need to sort out first, before we can tie this chapter and the previous chapter together to create an understanding. That in-between illustration looks kind of strange, and it is indeed strange that gender and gender identity, the true selves we are, may turn out quite different than expected. And by “different” I don’t mean the opposite gender, necessarily. Instead, gender itself may turn out to be quite different in its meaning, becoming the base from which we can look at life from this emotional direction.

If you know about yoga, you might agree that it’s very similar to this emotional understanding, in a lot of senses. For example, a yogi might tell you to:

“Open up your heart; scan your body from the crown of your head to the souls of your feet.”

“Observe your breath; note the transitional points, and feel relaxation.”

If we in the same manner scan our emotions (the soul), observe, and note how we (our bodies) react, and if we then try to maintain our awareness of that relaxing feeling, being at ease with ourselves, then we’re getting closer to an understanding. Finding balance and harmony in our souls helps us indentify and find meaning in our lives, including the emotions we need to feed and nurture. There are things we need to do to live, to come alive, and emotions are the beginning of the circle; it’s where we get a push enabling us to revolve.

Just eating, putting nutrition into one’s body, is about surviving, whereas the event of eating, enjoying the food and the company and the meal, is what inspires us and makes us want to continue with our lives and do it again. The conditions that make us eat are not hunger alone. You very much need to feel that pleasant feeling of eating, too, including the joyful process of preparing the meal and then relaxation afterwards.

If you are not true to yourself emotionally, if you shut out everything else about a good life other than surviving, then your stomach will be full but your soul will be starving. Your soul does affect your body, and eventually, as almost happened to me, you will die from emotional starvation instead. You need to feed yourself emotionally; otherwise what’s the use of living? You need to find those other conditions that make you want to live—those pleasant, positive experiences. If life gets boring, what do you think will happen, then?

So please, open your hearts, and I will try to guide you through. The following three pages will explore this process, and each section will do so more thoroughly.