This is kind of an addendum to the previous post. I just couldn't fit it into the flow.
Here's yet another wonderful thing about transition—I find that I am much less likely than my guy self was to be insensitive and thoughtless. I was guilty of plenty of that, however much of a "sensitive guy" I was. Just ask Sweetie. I think it just comes along with maleness.
It's not like that stuff goes away all at once, miraculously. I can still be insensitive and thoughtless. I can speak carelessly, without thinking. I can still forget that others might be feeling as vulnerable as I often feel.
So sometimes the direct hit on the bow can be a result of my having fired phasers first. I don't mean to. I'm not a phaser-firing kind of woman. But the controls are still too accessible, and I have to be more careful.
It's usefully humbling to be reminded that I'm not perfect just because I've liberated myself from male baggage. Learning lasts a lifetime.
More Beautiful You
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That is so true Sis, as much as I have female in me the male aggressive side still reaches to be heard and seen. How often I have tried to stop it before it happen and low and behold the damages are done.
So it really is the male hormone that still lurks in the body and it will take time to rid that from each of us.
Some of us have that aggressive side to deal with. I never had much of that. But the careless, thoughtless side definitely still gives me problems, even though it's not what it used to be.
And I don't think it's all hormones. We have learned behaviour, and even when you want to unlearn it, it takes time.
Gosh I actually kinda envy you both right now. Yeah, I know, that sounds derentis. Sorry, crazy. When I was pretending to be someone I really wasn't, I drew upon the icons around me to "present" this confident, self assured, powerful and dangerous person.
Somewhere along the way, probably in the constant beatings I, "he" took on my behalf, the warp core breached, and well, you know what happens then. "he" could be commanding (after all part of his programming was Jim Kirk) and then some, but aggressive? Not so much, or really at all.
Now? I've been on this five year voyage of developing a spine. Just enough to keep folk from walking all over me. Just enough to be able to look someone in the eye and say "You're hurting me, STOP!" Gotta tell ya, that was harder than transition. I wish I was kidding. I'm a full on, take on someone else's pain so they don't have to deal with it themselves empath. Sense and Sensitivity is learning for me how NOT to fret everyone else's pain down to the point where I'm hurting myself.
I could maybe use just a little aggressiveness, in the self defense variety. Oh, wait, no. That would be assertiveness. I'm working on it.
Sense and Sensitivity. Yeah, having the sense to pull my head out of the lion's mouth before he can bite me, and not being over sensitive to his need to bite me at the expense of my own head.
Great series of posts Veronique. Yeah, sensitivity? I still kick myself every time I don't put the accent over the e in your name. I'm a bit of a mess sometimes.
Hi Sam. I lacked aggressiveness too, and still do, but I've learned how to be assertive when I have to be. As for empathy, some are more empathic than others. I am quite empathic, and you say you are as well. That's not magic, just an ability to perceive the emotional state of others. Those who are very empathic have to learn how not to let that overwhelm them. I know that as a counsellor, empathy is essential, but I have to retain the ability to stay slightly apart so I can help the other person and not just share the person's pain, because we can't actually take that pain away (and it probably wouldn't be right to do so anyway). It's something we can learn.
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