Pathways To Womanhood
This morning, autumn morning, I leaned against the back door frame, cradling hot coffee, warming my heart and looking out over our early morning yard. How I love it here!
The overbough of the olive tree framing a colourwheel of morning glory, nasturtium, oleander and yellow daisy. The wiregrass glints in the morning sun and dew sparkles the fretted leaves of parsley and thyme in our herb garden. I look in vain for pussies come to visit. Oh! They will still be inside their homes, snuggled down on the back of the couch peering through lace curtains at a world still too cool for their pampered likings. But I know they'll come eventually; curling their furry fox tails around my stockings, plaintively begging for milk! Please, Miss!
As I stared idly at the mossy brick path turning the corner to the side of the house, I became aware of its linear pattern leading me on irresistibly in its chosen direction. I seemed to have no choice but to follow its lines and breaks up to the back steps and around the corner to...who knows what awaits!
Oh! This was one of those zen moments, haiku moments! Ahhh! I purred, Significance!
I did a lateral mind shift and thought of Professor Susan Greenfield's passionate ravings about the brain and also, in the same moment (because I always link these two), about my assertion that a transsexual woman's claim to womanhood originates not in some essentialist, suspended-in-the-ether, mystical "womanness" that exists beyond time and body and society but rather in the pattern of neurological structural and functional meanderings that are laid down in her brain from before birth and on into early childhood and beyond.
A neurological pattern that is similar to the neurological patterns of non-transsexual females in many significant respects and which includes the much-touted bed nucleus of the stria terminalis - the supposed neurological seat of our gender identity. I believe this female-typical neurological patterning leads the child who will become transsexual woman to identify with other females (whose outward behaviour stems, at least in part, from their own neurological patterns), to find resonance with the behaviours and interests and the expressions of the thoughts and feelings of other women and girls. And because of this deep-seated identification with the females in her world the transsexual child cannot invest the same degree of commitment to learning male behaviours and thought patterns as male-identified children do. Consequently, the male behaviours she learns as survival techniques or just through sheer frequent exposure reside precariously in an outer assumed male persona which has only tenuous links to her core sense of self.
Now I think that once the base neurological structure and functioning is established, probably through a combination of genetic predisposition and hormonal levels in utero, there takes place a building upon the base structure in the same way that a crystal formation will grow by replicating upon its initial structure and in the same way that forensic archaeology builds up the likeness of a person's body from their exhumed skeleton.
Of course the transsexual child can be exposed to all sorts of behavioural and societal and physical elements in his or her environment so the subsequent neurological structure and functioning can be of any shape and style. This I think helps explain why some transsexual children say, "I am a girl (or boy)" and others say, "I want to be a girl (or boy)", why some transition at 20 and some at 80. And why some people will have surgery and live completely as the sex they identify with and some people will take less complete steps to express their inner sense of being female (or male) or may do so only on occasion.
No! I don't believe there is some essentialist, suspended-in-the-ether "true" transsexual any more than I believe there is some essentialist "true" suspended-in-the-ether man or woman. We are, all of us - transsexual and non-transsexual, an incredibly convoluted, interwoven, ever-changing hybrid of nature and nurture, "male" and "female".
So, what does this have to do with my mossy brick path? Well, if I have a neurological pattern of female and I live in the close company of other people (mostly non-transsexual) who have the same female patternings I am going to be led down a path of recurring, persistent thought, feeling and behaviour which will lead me as irresistibly and as "naturally" to womanhood as any female.
Is a gumnut a gum tree? Is an acorn an oak? No! But each seed contains the blueprint or roadmap that will, given the right conditions of air and water and food, lead irresistibly to it growing into and upward to being a tall and upright and fruitful tree.
At the age of four and a half I stared out at a world that beckoned me to its female and feminine side. Can we really believe that children of four and five could be so perverse or so bloody-minded or so warped as to contrive this; to maintain this, in some expressed or hidden form, for their entire lives? Surely something more fundamental and integral and natural to their being has taken place. Something expressive of the extraordinary capacity for diversity and survival inherent in life.
I could have no idea that at that time I was on the pathway to womanhood. A long and, at times, perilously convoluted, pathway but one which, nevertheless, has led me surely and irresistibly to this moment.
Click on the Link below to read an article about Professor Susan Greenfield
The overbough of the olive tree framing a colourwheel of morning glory, nasturtium, oleander and yellow daisy. The wiregrass glints in the morning sun and dew sparkles the fretted leaves of parsley and thyme in our herb garden. I look in vain for pussies come to visit. Oh! They will still be inside their homes, snuggled down on the back of the couch peering through lace curtains at a world still too cool for their pampered likings. But I know they'll come eventually; curling their furry fox tails around my stockings, plaintively begging for milk! Please, Miss!
As I stared idly at the mossy brick path turning the corner to the side of the house, I became aware of its linear pattern leading me on irresistibly in its chosen direction. I seemed to have no choice but to follow its lines and breaks up to the back steps and around the corner to...who knows what awaits!
Oh! This was one of those zen moments, haiku moments! Ahhh! I purred, Significance!
I did a lateral mind shift and thought of Professor Susan Greenfield's passionate ravings about the brain and also, in the same moment (because I always link these two), about my assertion that a transsexual woman's claim to womanhood originates not in some essentialist, suspended-in-the-ether, mystical "womanness" that exists beyond time and body and society but rather in the pattern of neurological structural and functional meanderings that are laid down in her brain from before birth and on into early childhood and beyond.
A neurological pattern that is similar to the neurological patterns of non-transsexual females in many significant respects and which includes the much-touted bed nucleus of the stria terminalis - the supposed neurological seat of our gender identity. I believe this female-typical neurological patterning leads the child who will become transsexual woman to identify with other females (whose outward behaviour stems, at least in part, from their own neurological patterns), to find resonance with the behaviours and interests and the expressions of the thoughts and feelings of other women and girls. And because of this deep-seated identification with the females in her world the transsexual child cannot invest the same degree of commitment to learning male behaviours and thought patterns as male-identified children do. Consequently, the male behaviours she learns as survival techniques or just through sheer frequent exposure reside precariously in an outer assumed male persona which has only tenuous links to her core sense of self.
Now I think that once the base neurological structure and functioning is established, probably through a combination of genetic predisposition and hormonal levels in utero, there takes place a building upon the base structure in the same way that a crystal formation will grow by replicating upon its initial structure and in the same way that forensic archaeology builds up the likeness of a person's body from their exhumed skeleton.
Of course the transsexual child can be exposed to all sorts of behavioural and societal and physical elements in his or her environment so the subsequent neurological structure and functioning can be of any shape and style. This I think helps explain why some transsexual children say, "I am a girl (or boy)" and others say, "I want to be a girl (or boy)", why some transition at 20 and some at 80. And why some people will have surgery and live completely as the sex they identify with and some people will take less complete steps to express their inner sense of being female (or male) or may do so only on occasion.
No! I don't believe there is some essentialist, suspended-in-the-ether "true" transsexual any more than I believe there is some essentialist "true" suspended-in-the-ether man or woman. We are, all of us - transsexual and non-transsexual, an incredibly convoluted, interwoven, ever-changing hybrid of nature and nurture, "male" and "female".
So, what does this have to do with my mossy brick path? Well, if I have a neurological pattern of female and I live in the close company of other people (mostly non-transsexual) who have the same female patternings I am going to be led down a path of recurring, persistent thought, feeling and behaviour which will lead me as irresistibly and as "naturally" to womanhood as any female.
Is a gumnut a gum tree? Is an acorn an oak? No! But each seed contains the blueprint or roadmap that will, given the right conditions of air and water and food, lead irresistibly to it growing into and upward to being a tall and upright and fruitful tree.
At the age of four and a half I stared out at a world that beckoned me to its female and feminine side. Can we really believe that children of four and five could be so perverse or so bloody-minded or so warped as to contrive this; to maintain this, in some expressed or hidden form, for their entire lives? Surely something more fundamental and integral and natural to their being has taken place. Something expressive of the extraordinary capacity for diversity and survival inherent in life.
I could have no idea that at that time I was on the pathway to womanhood. A long and, at times, perilously convoluted, pathway but one which, nevertheless, has led me surely and irresistibly to this moment.
Click on the Link below to read an article about Professor Susan Greenfield
posted by Paula at
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