dresses – Beeshive

Happy Pride Month?

As I’ve said, I’ve never really taken part in pride, and I really don’t identify with it.

I guess part of it has to do with the environment that I grew up in.

Military communities were isolated. And by isolated I mean that the Canadian Armed Forces had control over the types of people that were allowed to live in the military communities on base.

By way of filtering recruits, the Canadian Armed Forces could control the political leanings of those living on the bases. And it should be of no surprise that these military communities were very conservative and right leaning.

The thing is, when you’re living within these communities, especially if your exposure to the outside world is very limited, you come to see the political leanings of these communities as being “normal”.

Yes, Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 did no apply to children living on base, it only applied to members of the Canadian Armed Forces. But as has been indicated through various studies, members of the Canadian Armed Forces often had a problems with separating their military careers from their home lives.

As the civilian social worker that dealt with my family noted during various home visits to our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, Mr. Gill orders his children with simple commands and answers their questions with yes or no replies and the children don’t question these decisions.

Being in the Canadian Armed Forces, Richard was nothing more than a cog in a machine that demanded his servile obedience. His was not a position to question. His was a position to do as he was told. And like many men who are stripped of the authority in their lives, he made up for this lack of authority by exerting his authority on those he could.

When it came to me and my issues from Canadian Forces Base Namao he was not going to question the authority of Captain Terry Totzke. If Captain Totzke said that I was a homosexual, that I was exhibiting signs of homosexuality, who was master corporal Gill to question this?

When I’ve talked to other base brats about how things were on base I get this Pollyannish rose coloured view of what things were like on base. This usually comes from former brats that didn’t have “issues” and therefore weren’t exposed to the underbelly of life in the “company town”.

I have encountered a few former brats that don’t participate in any of the social media groups for base brats. They want nothing to do with acknowledging their past. And I have an inkling that the brats who don’t want anything to do with remembering their pasts as base brats vastly outnumber the number of brats that celebrate their past as base brats.

The number of broken and dysfunctional families that lived on the bases was probably a high percentage, especially when you look at how the recruiting process would naturally filter out more liberal minded recruits. The military communities were rife with homophobia, racism, misogyny, victim blaming, victim shaming.

Another matter that played into the sterility of the military community was the fact that military housing could only be rented to members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and that these members had the ability to decide who could live in these houses and who couldn’t. If a service member wanted his spouse out of “his” PMQ, she was booted off the base by the military police. Same thing for his kids. As long as provincial law allowed for it, the serving member could give his kid the boot. The age that a child can live on their own varies from province to province. In Ontario a 16 year old can move out on their own.

I’m not sure what the rules are any more, but in my day living on the bases, 18 was the absolute oldest a base brat could be. Once you hit 19 you were expected to get off the base. There were exceptions to this rule, care givers could live in military housing so long as it was to look after military dependents, persons with disabilities could live on base past their 19th birthday, and students obtaining a higher education could continue to live on base until their 24th birthday.

As you can imaging, there wasn’t a lot of diversity. Everything was sterile. Everything was the military mindset.

Queer kids just learnt to stay in the closet.

Queer kids learnt that they were defective and a national security threat.

Kids on base learnt that there were no victims, that it always took two to tango.

Kids on base learnt that compassion was a liability.

Living on base there were no “others” like us.

Living on base we only had exposure to adults that passed the requirements of the Canadian Armed Forces recruiting agents.

Our view of the world was shaped by the monochromatic views of the world espoused by these serving soldiers that passed the conformity tests.

You know all of those soldier that have been implicated in hazing rituals over the years? Yeah we grew up amongst those people.

I lived on the base that was the home of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. We grew up amongst the mindset and the racism that lead to the death of Shidane Arone in Somalia.

All those sexual assaults that occurred in the Canadian Armed Forces? Those were committed by men of the Canadian Forces, many of whom were our fathers.

The misogyny and homophobia that were rampant in the Canadian Armed Forces back in the day? The men espousing these views were often our fathers.

I grew up in a community that allowed everyone up the chain of command to escape responsibility for the murder of Shidane Arone and allowed a lowly private, private Kyle Brown, to be made the scape goat for the whole sordid affair.

I grew up in a community that allowed sexually abused children to be blamed for the abuse they suffered at the hand of members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

I grew up in a community where the chain of command could determine who was a victim and who wasn’t a victim.

I grew up in a community that had the legal power to investigate itself and its members for sexual assaults against children.

I grew up in a community in which officers with no legal training and no legal background could summarily dismiss service offence charges that had been brought against their subordinates.

I grew up in a community in which a 3-year-time-bar applied to all service offences, including service offences of a purely civilian nature.

I grew up in a community which claimed criminal code offences related to children as service offences to be dealt with solely through the military justice system.

I grew up in a community served by such a compromised justice system that it was dismantled and restructured due to horrific miscarriages of justice.

So no, in the end I have nothing to be proud of.

16 days

Okay, so it’s day sixteen of estrogen.

I’m currently on patch #3, tomorrow will be patch #4

Things seem to be mentally more clearer.

Not better, just clearer.

Make sense?

Didn’t think so.

A co-worker asked me if I was still contemplating M.A.i.D..

I don’t see anything changing at this moment.

In fact the BC Human Rights Tribunal directed my complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

2027 is still awhile away.

In a way it’s my desire for M.A.i.D. that has given me the freedom to transition.

As I’ve said before, I really wanted to transition since the ’90s. But the fragility of employment along with the absolute lack of family support meant that transitioning was always going to be a far off desire.

When I could no longer control my desire to transition and I changed my name I made the fatal mistake of going after my babysitter from Canadian Forces Base Namao.

That put me 14 years even further behind.

So it’s either transition now or never.

And I chose now.

Body changes so far?

I’ve noticed that some fat seems to be moving around.

My desired muscle loss hasn’t happened yet, but it will.

My long sought after breasts haven’t started growing yet. They are puffy though and their texture is starting to change. So I know that something’s brewing.

I’m off for the month of June, but I’m hoping that when I go back to work in July that I’m sporting a noticeable pair of bumps.

Surgery to help things along?

Nope.

I’ll be happy with whatever estrogen has in store for me.

I have no intentions for any type of surgery except for removing things.

Day Two

Nothing much to report here.

I’m on day Two.

I don’t really expect to see any results for a couple of weeks.

Mental changes should start showing up first.

Physical changes should be showing up in a few weeks.

Facial hair should be the first to slow down, followed by hair on the other parts of my body that females typically don’t have increased hair growth at puberty such as their backs or their chests. Arm and leg hair will slow down but not by much.

Muscle loss should be coming up shortly after that.

The neat thing is I’m off work for the month of June for my annual vacation and this is when most of the new changes will start to come into effect.

When I go back to work after my vacation there should be some noticeable changes.

I’m hoping that after my first three months on 50 ug patches that I can look at something stronger. But this will depend on the results of my blood tests.

As long as nothing goes out of whack and as long as my body processes the estrogen properly I can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t be able to step the dosage up.

One thing that I didn’t anticipate with transitioning is that blood tests will be a frequent requirement. For the first while they’ll be monthly. This is just to make sure that my androgen levels are decreasing like they should and that the estrogen is not harming my liver.

< 24 hours to go.

Okay, so I have less than 24 hours to go before I go see my nurse practitioner tomorrow to start on Hormone Replacement Therapy.

Many years I have waited for this.

Always something in the way.

Work.

Ghosts from my past.

A 13 year battle with the Canadian Armed Forces.

Have to take things one day at a time.

Transitioning is hard enough, but thankfully I’m no longer a military dependent.

If Captain Terry Totzke tried to destroy me because of the homosexuality that I had exhibited when I “allowed” myself to be molested by the babysitter and Captain McRae, just imagine what would have happened if I had told Terry if I felt like I should have been a girl.

My father’s disdain that he exhibited towards me after the CFB Namao fiasco and the absolute silence he directed towards me after I sent him the letter in May of 2008 explaining why I had changed my name tells me exactly how Richard would have reacted to me as a kid if I had declared that I wanted to be a girl.

And the fact that the community that I lived in and grew up in was governed by Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 should explain to you that growing up as a trans kid on base would have been absolutely impossible and not tolerated in the least.

I honestly don’t know what things are like on base these days. I moved out of the house when I was 16, and except for two months in 1990 I have never lived on a Canadian Armed Forces Base since.

Sure, the Canadian Armed Forces have attested that things are different these days. But they’ve been saying the same thing about their flawed military justice system since the days of Somalia, and they’ve been saying the same thing about sexual assaults in the military since the ’80s.

The Canadian Armed Forces is the penultimate “old boys club” and they’re used to getting what they want and they don’t and won’t tolerate what they don’t want to.

DNA TESTING

On another front:

I honestly don’t know what to expect from this.

My mother is potentially Chinese on her maternal side and Quebecois French on her paternal side, I expect to see some of that. How strong the Chinese ancestry will be is anyone’s guess. I never met my maternal grandparents. And Marie never spoke about her mother other than to say that she died young from an epileptic seizure in the bathtub.

On my father’s side I expect to see Cree ancestry and some Irish. My paternal grandmother was Swampy Cree and my paternal grandfather was Irish.

It’ll be interesting as mammals share more of their DNA with their mothers than with their fathers, but the father’s DNA controls the expression of some genes.

All humans carry the mtDNA of their mothers. That is the mitochondrial DNA of our cells come only from our mother, which they got from their mother, and so on and so on.

As I said, it will be interesting to see what my lineage is.

Also, I’m curious to see how many half siblings I have.

And how many extended family members there are.

Now, bear in mind this will only be as successful as the number of relatives that have also completed a DNA test.

So, May will be an interesting month.

Saturday May 4th, 2024.

People have asked if I have ever been involved with any type of queer support groups in the past.

No.

No I haven’t.

I don’t do well in groups.

Never have, never will.

I’ve always been on my own.

In Toronto as a kid I would always sneak down to the Pride parade but I would always enjoy it from the periphery.

Even though homosexuality wasn’t an outright criminal offence in the ’80s, the police were still mostly of the old school.

And of course there was the fear that I’d be caught in the vicinity of one of these parades or events.

I guess that I was carrying around the teaching of Terry.

I went to a few pride parades in Vancouver during the ’90s. Again just watching from the periphery.

What I always loved about the early parades was how “in-your-face” they were. It’s like the participants in the parades were wiping off all of the shit that society had thrown on them and were throwing that shit right back in the face of society.

But then the double aughts came.

And the pride parades started to become more corporate, more generic, and less offensive.

2006 was the last parade that I went to watch and the last pride event that I went to.

To be honest, pride events were never too appealing to me because of the overt presence of alcohol.

When my doctor and I first started discussing my desire to transition into something other than male he proceeded to give me a list of groups that I could join.

The thing is I don’t want to join a group.

I have been on my own all of my life.

I function better on my own.

I can’t see myself willingly becoming part of a group.

So…… off I go on yet another adventure.

Transitioning from male to not a male.

Anyways, time to head off and get my nails done.

I’m thinking something of a hot pink shade this time.

This time next week.

Well, this time next week things will be a bit different.

At this point next week I’ll have had estrogen coursing through my body for just over 24 hours.

And for the first time in my life since I was about 12, I’ll be experiencing diminished levels of androgens.

Tiresias transformed into a woman
by Pietro della Vecchia

“Take a little trip back with father Tiresias
Listen to the old one speak of all he has lived through
I have crossed between the poles, for me there’s no mystery
Once a man, like the sea I raged
Once a woman, like the earth I gave
But there is in fact more earth than sea”
From “Cinema Show” by Genesis from their 1973 album
“Selling England by the Pound”.

The goal of this is not to become a woman.

The goal of this is to get as far away from being male as I can.

XY syndrome is a life altering disease and humanity should be searching for a cure for the defective “Y” chromosome.

Through my entire fucked up crazy life there have always been a few constants.

The first is that I’ve never felt like this body is my body. It’s always felt like it has belonged to someone else.

As I said in other posts, since I was young I was always certain that I was going to have breasts.

When I hit puberty and my hips didn’t widen it felt odd. I know it’s hard to explain, but starting at puberty and even existing to the very day is the odd sensation that my hips are not where they should be.

And the junk that I do have has always felt foreign to me.

And even though genetically I am a male, men have always been a source of fear for me. I have never felt okay around men. And that was well before CFB Namao.

Yes, I did often make pleas to the imaginary friend in the sky to make me into a girl when I was younger.

And there were times as a kid that I wanted to be a girl so badly that it was eating me up from the inside out.

Through my teen years and my 20’s and my 30’s I had always but my desire to me a woman off as being a side effect of the sexual abuse on CFB Namao or my involvement with Terry.

But, as I got towards my my 30s I began to realize that my desire to be a woman and the feeling that I was in the wrong body was not shaped by the sexual abuse on CFB Namao or my involvement with Terry.

These feelings and these desires have been with me for as long as I can remember.

I really hope that things go as smooth as I want them to.

If I don’t have any bad reactions to the androgen blockers and the estrogen I’ll be very happy.

I can’t help but wonder what my brain and what my emotions will be like with the removal of androgen from by blood stream.

What will it feel like to have estrogen flowing through not only my body, but my brain as well.

Will my way of thinking change?

Will my view of the world change?

If everything works out fine I’m really hoping that I can go for bottom surgery. As I’ve said before, I just want to get everything removed down there.

I don’t want anything added to or created.

No penis

No testicles

No scrotum

All gone

Nothing but a smooth scar closing everything up down there.

A small hole to pee from.

But nothing else.

The male curse will be gone.

Banquished

Never to haunt me or traumatize me anymore.

Hopefully the male craziness and insanity are washed away from my brain.

Scooting

I’ve had a Segway scooter for the last year and a bit.

It’s been a fun little vehicle.

I gave up my driver’s licence a couple of months ago just right after I got rid of my motorcycle.

I don’t drive, and I can’t see myself ever driving again.

The last car that I owned was back in 1998.

Except for renting a car in Montreal when I visited Montreal in 2014, I’ve never driven.

Motorcycling was fun, but depression was just too strong of an adversary.

I bought the scooter more out of curiosity than anything, I wanted to see how practical it would be. Well, it has been very practical.

At 90% charge it will give me about 80 km of distance on one wheel drive in eco mode. Two wheel drive and sport mode will eat the batter up faster, but still I get good decent travel from it.

It’s not a small scooter, it weighs 45 kg. which with the suspension makes for a very smooth ride.

The wheels are a good size and width.

And the brakes are awesome, especially with the DC injection braking turned on. DC injection is where the scooter motor controller applies a constant DC current to the windings instead of a chopped alternating current. This causes the permanent magnets to repulse off the magnetic fields which causes the wheels to slow down aggressively.

The sad thing though is I am limited as to where I can take the scooter. And I don’t mean by riding restrictions. I mean due to the complete lack of secure parking for non-automobile vehicles.

one little lock and one little bike rack

For example, I used to be able to ride over to International Village and lock my bicycle up in the secured parking lot adjacent to the parking attendant booth.

Once the mall owners put in automated parking they eliminated the secured bicycle racks as there was no one there to monitor them anymore.

Mall management suggested that everyone simply lock up outside. Sad to say that bicycles and scooters don’t stand a change locked up outside in Vancouver.

But, as long as I can keep an eye on my scooter, it’s all okay.

It’s easy to say that I’m paranoid, but portable grinders with cutoff wheels will make quick work of any u-lock on the market.

Another trick up the sleeve of bicycle thieves is they’ll throw a second lock on your bicycle / scooter so that you can’t ride off, but they can come back in the early hours of the morning to take their time.

And even if the thieves don’t steal your ride outright, they’ll grab parts off your ride and render your ride useless.

Bicycle paths are decent in Vancouver, but this is a city that is still well within the grips of 1950’s Eisenhower Car Culture.

Bicycle paths take up less than 0.001 % of the roads in Vancouver, but to hear car drivers whine and cry you’d swear that cars were banned from the city streets.

And no, “gas tax” doesn’t pay for the roads, at least not municipal roads. Municipal roads are paid for and maintained by the citizens living or renting in the city or businesses operating in the city. Everyone, tenant or landlord, pays property taxes to the city the live in and thus everyone living within a particular city pays for the roads and infrastructure in that city.

Another reason why I gave up my driver’s licence, and why I would encourage anyone else who doesn’t drive and who has never used their licence for driving to give up their licence, is that the number of driver’s licences in circulation are used by automobile lobbyists to push government to spend money on car drivers. The more licences, the more drivers, right?

Vancouver, because of its location in the lower mainland, has a massive amount of car drivers that are just passing on through. Yet these drivers expect the roads that they don’t pay for to be maintained as per their expectations.

Things would have been much worse for Vancouver save for the “Stop the Highway” movement from the ’60s that stopped a major freeway from passing through downtown and through various minority neighbourhoods in a plan to eliminate these neighbourhoods. Freeway building back in the ’50s and ’60s was seen as a way to cleanse “urban blight”. Urban blight was a code word for racial and ethnic minorities.

There really isn’t any place that I can’t go on my scooter. I ride over the Lions Gate into North Van and West Van. I go down to Richmond on it. It’s especially nice when going out to FedEx or UPS to pick up parcels as there isn’t any connecting bus service between the Canadian Line and the parcel pick up locations.

I can’t get a straight answer from Amtrak as I would really love to take the scooter down to Portland and Seattle when I go down for visits.

I would have loved to take the scooter to Iceland last year. Sure, Iceland has rental scooters available all over Reykjavik, but they generally have no suspension and have a very rough ride that’s painful on long trips. And yes, Iceland is the ideal place to grab a scooter to head off on the trails outside of the city.

Unfortunately the size of the battery in my scooter means that shipping it by sea in a shipping container is about the only way it’s ever going to get over to Iceland.

$$$$$$$$$$$

The only thing that I get a chuckle about still is from the owner’s manual for my scooter.

Apparently you’re not supposed to ride this scooter if you’re older than 60 or you’re wearing heels.

Is M.A.i.D. behind me?

As I responded to Zuzu, no, I haven’t given up on obtaining Medical Assistance in Dying.

Transitioning is something that I want to get off my plate.

It’s like a dying child using “Make-A-Wish”.

Transitioning, or more appropriately, nullifying my male gender is something that I had wanted to do all of my life.

I have never identified as a male.

I didn’t ask to be a male.

So, at least I’m going to take some big steps.

Start off with the androgen blockers and the estrogen replacement.

I will lose a lot of my muscle bulk, which is good. Mentally my body has always felt much smaller that what I physically am.

Next step would be orchiectomy and then the penectomy.

And that’s it.

The genitalia that I’ve always considered to be foreign is gone.

The body that I have never identified with is gone.

The body that I will have will have the breasts that I always felt were missing. They won’t be much to look at, but at least they’ll be breasts.

The hips that I have always felt should have been wider with the iliac crests for me to rest my hands on will never be there. Male puberty was a long time ago, and some things can’t be undone.

No labia majora, no labia minora, no clit, no vagina, no cervix, no uterus, no ovaries.

A female?

No.

A male?

Thankfully no.

As I discussed in a previous blog post, I never thought that I was giving off signs as to my gender issues, but nonetheless others have picked up on it. These were usually men who were certain that I was gay due to some effeminate traits or signals that I wasn’t aware that I was giving off.

Unfortunately I will now have another faction of people to deal with.

There will be women out there that will despise me.

You’ve never had a period!

You’ve never experienced growing up knowing that you could be raped at any moment.

You’ve never had a pap smear.

Yep, sure.

I’ll never get to become pregnant and have children.

The raped part?

Sure, technically in Canada rape was not a crime that could be committed against boys. But I did spend 1978 to 1980 getting penetrated by my babysitter. I would go on to be sexually abused by men, some of whom were in positions of authority.

If anything I am only following the whims of my genes and my DNA.

I am firm believer in the nature side of the nature vs. nurture debate.

Yes, the male brain and the female brain are identical in build. Autopsies, MRIs, fMRIs, CT scans, EEGs have shown that for the most part male and female brains function the same. But what these scans and tests can’t yet detect is the wiring of the brain.

The human brain has to have some instinctual information hardwired into it otherwise every human born would have to learn the basics at birth.

Breathing?

Instinctual

Swallowing?

Instinctual

Latching on to your mother’s nipple?

Instinctual.

Women don’t have to learn from other women how to engage in sexual intercourse just as men don’t have to learn from other men how to engage in sexual intercourse.

“So how was Henry last night? Did you have sex with him?”
“Oh, sure I did, if you can call it that”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he kept rubbing his flaccid penis against my ear”
“What?”
“Yeah, he said that no one had shown him how to get an erection and he didn’t know how to make his penis hard”
“But why your ear? Don’t you know where his penis is supposed to go you silly girl?”
“My mother never showed me, so I thought that it was supposed to be my belly button, be he told me not to be silly.”

Sexual behaviours are basic instincts. Every human is born with instinctual level knowledge as to how their genitals work.

All humans begin their first few weeks not as a blank slate, but as a fetus that appears to be female from the outside.

This is why most clinics will not tell the parents the gender of their child, it’s not that they don’t want to, it’s that until about 12 weeks its almost impossible to do with anywhere near 100% certainty.

Prior to 6 to 8 weeks all fetuses have labia and all fetuses have vaginas, and all fetuses have a clitoris.

Over the next few weeks things will begin to change.

All fetuses have a pair of gonads in their lower abdomen.

If the fetus has XX chromosomes the gonads will descend into the pelvis where they will become ovaries.

If the fetus has XY chromosomes the gonads will develop into testes and they’ll descend to down to where the scrotum will eventually be.

The timing of the development of the gonads is critical as the gonads will drive major changes in the fetus.

If the gonads become testicles, they’ll start to secrete androgens, one of which is testosterone. The labia majora will close and fuse together, this is why males have that ridge in their scrotum. The labia minora will become the penile raphe. The clitoris will become the glans of the male penis.

If the fetus is XX, the gonads will become ovaries which will secrete estrogen and other hormones associated with female development. The genital features that are in place already will continue on with their development. The uterus will form as will the fallopian tubes.

There is a very interesting condition that occurs when a fetus has XY chromosomes but has Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome or AIS. This whole topic is well beyond me, but basically due to a genetic coding issue the androgen receptors on the cells in their body are unable to bind with androgen molecules.

These people are born with genitalia that looks female. And nothing is suspected until their teenage years when they fail to develop secondary sexual characteristics and they fail to start to menstruate.

A blood test or a tissue test will show that instead of being XX, their cells are all XY. They have no uterus and they have undeveloped testicles in their abdomen.

Other gender variations arise from XO, XXY, XXX, XYY. Even “normal” XY and XX can have a multitude of variations due to variations of genes on other chromosomes.

The idea that there are only two genders if fucking laughable.

The above paragraphs deal with gender. The next few paragraphs will deal with gender identity.

I am of the firm belief that gender identity is hardwired into the brain along the same time the gonads form into either testicles or ovaries. Your brain has to be wired to be able to use the various parts of your body. To say that the human brain is formed as just a billion random neurons with no purpose is laughable. Every human brain, barring genetic defects, has the same sections that preform the same functions.

There has been quite a bit of research done into the development of the human brain so far as it relates to gender and orientation.

Much like the genitals of a fetus require androgens to interrupt the development of female genitals the human brain as it turns out is destined to be “female” unless it is masculinized by exposure to androgens.

Can an XY male that doesn’t suffer from AIS identify as a female?

Why not?

If the human brain is supposed to become masculinized with the exposure to androgens, is it not possible that timing issues or hormone levels or even hormones from the mother’s bloodstream have affected the fetus’s brain?

Is there a brain test or a brain scan that will detect this masculinization to see if it occurred at the right level to fully modify all of the original female wiring.

Nope.

You get people like me who feel like the junk they have is not what should be there.

You get people like me who don’t fit the masculine roles that we’re supposed to fit.

But back to the topic of M.A.i.D..

I want medical assistance in dying because I am tired.

I am burnt out

Will transitioning change my desire for M.A.i.D..

No.

But at least I will for once be able to be comfortable in my body.

What’s next?

Well, now that M.A.i.D. is off the table until 2027 I’m going to pick up on an issue that I wanted to deal with prior to 2011 when I sent my email to the Edmonton Police Service.

I don’t really think my complaint with the BC Human Rights Tribunal will have much effect on the government, at least not in the short term.

And I don’t expect to hear anything from the DND and the DOJ until at least 2030. They’re gonna want to ride this matter out for as long as possible.

In 2008 I legally changed my name.

This was done for two reasons.

The first was that I had decided that if Richard wanted nothing to do with me, then I wanted nothing to do with him.

The second was that at the time I was considering undergoing gender reassignment.

For all of my life, up to that point, I had never felt like I was a male.

I never connected with “male” things.

I loved dresses as a kid and feminine things. Once I got my first apartment in New Westminster around 1994 I started buying dresses on the sly and wearing them in my apartment.

As a kid I used to get the shit beat out of me on CFB Downsview ’cause I acted like a girl or walked like a girl or cried like a girl, etc.

The teachings of Captain Totzke were still fresh in my head that I had been sexually abused by the babysitter because I enjoyed having sex with boys.

But then in 2011 I had to go and try to get justice for what the babysitter had done, so that derailed my plans.

And maybe that was a good thing in a way.

See, I had fallen into the same trap that most of society has fallen into and that is there were only two genders. If you’re not a male, then you have to be a female, and vice-verse.

As a kid I had always wanted breasts. I was so certain that I was going to develop like the other girls, but that never happened.

I was around 12 when I realized that I wasn’t going to develop breasts. And I was fucking devastated.

I had always felt that my hips should have been larger, but they never grew out.

And on top of that I had Captain Totzke drilling into my head that I was a “homosexual”. Which wasn’t clearly explained to me what that entailed, but it was bad apparently.

So, I never really knew what I was.

Didn’t enjoy relationships with women, but I didn’t enjoy relationships with men either.

So………….

After having been kicked and beat by the Canadian Forces since 2011, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect.

And reflect I have.

I don’t identify as anything.

I’m not male.

I’m not female.

Not gay.

Not straight.

I’m nothing.

And I’m cool with that.

So, I’m going for an appointment with my physician in April.

Even though I don’t identify as a woman, doesn’t mean that I can’t have breasts.

Breasts will work nicely with my wardrobe.

And as I’ve said, I’ve always felt like I should have had breasts.

I’m pretty sure that I will enjoy having breasts.

Hips?

Nope, not at this stage of life. My pelvis has been exposed to androgens for too long.

The junk I was born with?

Never have liked it, it’s always felt like it never belonged down there.

What do I plan to do?

Well, the first thing will be to start on anti-androgens and then start on a estrogen.

Due to my age I more than likely won’t be able to oral estrogen, I’ll more than likely have to stay with dermal patches.

The nice thing about going on estrogen is it will reduce my muscle mass. My body has always felt foreign to me. The mental image that I have of my body is much smaller than what my physical body actually is. My body has always felt like it belonged to someone else.

If the anti-androgens and the estrogen have the effects that I desire, then I intend to go for orchiectomy. That is I intend to have my testicles removed. Castration basically. Absolutely no more androgen production.

And then a penectomy. That is, the complete removal of my penis.

But no, there will be no vaginoplasty. I got fucked enough as a kid, I don’t need anymore penises inside of my body. Besides, as I said, I don’t truly identify as female. It’s just I don’t identify as male.

And I want to get rid of my male junk.

How will I pee? Good that you asked.

Same way that guys who have had penectomies due to cancer urinate. My urethra will be connected to a new opening and I’ll urinate through that.

What will I look like? A Ken doll…….with a scar.

Isn’t that a bit drastic?

No.

As I’ve said, I have always despised the junk between my legs. It’s always felt like a punishment.

So, I get to get rid of it finally AND I get to have the breasts that I always wanted.

In 2008, just after I legally changed my name, I sent my father a letter explaining why I had changed my name. I was very clear with Richard this was something that I wanted to do and that he was losing a son that he didn’t want and was gaining a daughter that he wouldn’t have wanted either.

I guess this is why he told the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service in 2011 that he knew that I had changed my name, but that he didn’t know why I had changed my name.

He knew why I changed my name. I guess that having a homosexual son was bad enough, but now having a gender non-conforming son was even worse.

I had called him during the 2011 CFNIS investigation. I asked him for help with the investigation. Not once did he return any of my calls. And he plunged the proverbial knife into my back in 2011 when he gave his statement to the CFNIS in 2011 in which he denied the babysitter looked after my brother and I and in which he denied that grandma was raising my brother an I on CFB Namao.

So yeah, I guess his gender non-conforming son was an insult that he wasn’t willing to wear.

I do wish that he was still alive.

Just so that he could see me in my dresses, with my breasts…….. that would have been priceless.

But Bobbie, you have no hair!

Yep, that’s cool. There are a ton of awesome looking bald women. With tattoos to boot. In fact, the reason that I started shaving my head back in 1990 was Sinead O’Connor. She looked powerful with her 0 buzzcut.

One thing that I do wonder about, what would things have been like had I come out as gender-queer and gender non-conforming on a Canadian Armed Forces base when I was a kid back in the ’80s?

Sure, the civilian world wasn’t that too receptive yet, but the civilian world was far more accepting than a Canadian military base would have been.

Would I have survived?

Or would I have quietly disappeared either at the hands of my own father or at the hands of another member of the Canadian Forces disgusted by a person like me being “out” on the base.

If I had told my father or even Captain Terry Totzke between 1980 and 1987 that I identified as a female, I think I would have encountered a tragic conclusion.

Anyways, enough about the past, I’m looking forward to my April appointment.

Tuesday January 24th 2023

A few days ago I was riding down in the elevator in my apartment building with my Segway scooter.

About 1/2 down another tenant got into the elevator with me. He had his scooter too.

He’s a guy that I’ve seen before. He has a Segway Ninebot. I have the Segway GT.

“Wow man, that’s an awesome scooter!”

Yeah, seems okay so far.

“Dude, that’s not just a scooter, it’s a GT”

Yeah?

“I bet it goes fast?”

I’ve still got the speed restrictor engaged, won’t go over 32 km/h

He has a puzzled look.

I bought this one because it’s heavy, so it eats up the bumps in the road and doesn’t bounce all over the place. I also went with this one as it has a large battery pack, can go long distances, and it can haul my fat arse up the hill without dying halfway up.

And I could see the familiar look coming over his face that said “why the fuck did I even try to make small talk”

I can’t make small talk. I never have. As a kid I was always told to shut my fucking mouth and mind my own fucking business.

I learnt as a kid to not brag, as things that I bragged about were usually the first thing that Richard would destroy when he had a meltdown.

And that’s the thing with me. I don’t get any enjoyment out of things. And even if I do, it’s not long before the self hatred and the self doubt kick in.

It first happened with the motorcycles that I’ve owned over the years. I get a motorcycle, ride it for a season or two, and then lose all interest in it.

I started figure skating back in December of 2006. Hadn’t ice skated since the spring of 1980 on CFB Namao. Won’t get into the story of how I ended up at the West End Community Centre with a pair of rental skates on my feet, but within weeks I was into figure skating.

I had completely forgotten how much I used to love skating. And at first I was trying super hard. Learnt forward and backward 3-turns, brackets, and counter-turns. Crossed Step forward and backward. Mohawks. Scratch spins. I could do a nice Arabesque. And I could do toe-pick work.

What I couldn’t do was anything that involved jumping.

And if there’s anything that figure skating instructors hate, it’s people who are afraid. It slows the class down.

I figures skated with regularity from January 2007 until I had my heart issue in August of 2012. After my angiogram said that my heart arteries were open and unobstructed I was given the okay to resume regular physical activity.

I started skating again, but no where near as frequently as I had done prior to my heart issue.

I stopped skating somewhere around 2017.

I liked skating, but the one thing I really hated was when people would complement me. I know it sounds weird, but it always sounded like the complement was done out of sympathy or was out of sarcasm.

When it became clear that jumping was never going to be something that I was ever going to be able to do I went more towards the dancing side. It’s often said that those who can’t figure skate ice dance instead.

I dancing was enjoyable as long as no one else was around or at least no one who was a figure skater or professional ice dancer. I always thought that these people were looking down on me, so it made it very uncomfortable for me on the ice.

I’d often pick some music that had a nice rhythm and use the rhythm to dictate when I would change a move.

At first learning to respect the toe-picks and the tails and how to skate and make moves without catching either was challenging, but it became much easier with time. I got to the point that if I did inadvertently catch a toe-pick or a tail I could catch it and convert into another skating position.

My fear of the opinions of others , my very negative self image, and my inability to enjoy life has affected almost every point of my life.

I do not enjoy electronics

I do not enjoy computers

I do not enjoy mechanics

I play dumb. I play dumb a lot. Playing dumb means that I don’t have to be put into any embarrassing situations.