Dear Janus:

In your very first post on Dec 30 2015, you shared that you were sexually harassed and bullied in seventh and eighth grade. You wrote about it: “This lowered my self-esteem and made me adopt some negative views about myself such as that I am not athletic, not smart enough, not pretty enough, not healthy enough and especially that my weight is too much…”- notice: you listed not being athletic as the first item on the list of your negative views about yourself.

On May 20, July 14, & Sept 1, 2016, you shared: “I worry about not being a good enough athlete since I am a girl… I wonder if my guy friends think less of me b/c I’m a girl and I begin to think I’m not as a good of athlete…. I realize there is still an inner bully within that keeps telling me to be the most perfect I can be, to be the most athletic,.. I have wanted to be athletic since seventh grade when I was bullied for athleticism“.

From an online source: “So what’s an athletic or rectangle shape, anyway? * You’re not particularly curvy * Your shoulders and hip measurements are nearly the same * Your waist isn’t very small or well-defined, but rather straight up and down * Your weight is fairly evenly distributed throughout your body”- in other words, to look athletic means to look masculine, like a boy/ a man; not feminine like a girl/ a woman.

Notice, I am not saying that a girl should look feminine and a boy should look masculine. What I am saying is that biologically and according to what is traditionally accepted and expected in society ( the society that you grew up in), a girl/woman  looks curvy, having a smaller waste, having breasts and thicker thighs, less muscle, more fat, and a boy/man looks more rectangular, no small waste, no breasts, no thick thighs, more muscle, less fat.

For a long time, you tried to achieve looking masculine (like a boy/ man) by losing fat and building muscle: “I have been busy toning my body and I am limiting junk food like cookies.. I haven’t eaten fast food or pizza for two years and also haven’t drank soda or eaten chips in three years… I haven’t had a donut in 6 months.. I haven’t eaten a bagel (200 calories) in since months… I am currently 115 pounds and 5’ 5”… If I do eat something unhealthy even if it is very moderate, I always have a workout to cut the calories… I also managed to bench press 50 pounds and also do 5 pull-ups.. I can run 10 miles in 50 minutes…I am a bit irritated b/c I didn’t go to the gym on Friday or Sunday, but I did do a three mile run on Saturday in 10 minutes which burned 200 calories. Also on Monday, I ate a chocolate chip cookie, molasses cookie with chocolate fudge and a fudge graham cracker brownie… I realize that my height 5′ 5” and I have become 120 instead of 118.. Oftentimes whenever I am sitting, I want to be up and working out b/c I feel as if the calories are adding up” (2016)

*115 lbs. at 5’5 = 19.1 BMI, which is at the low end of normal weight for an 18-year old, much closer to being underweight than to being overweight.

On May 15, June 13 & Sept 19, 2017, you shared: “I feel like controlling my body by being anorexic makes me more masculine and also hides the insecurities I have. One insecurity I have is that I am not strong enough to be a male and this results in me feeling anxious if I miss a day of exercise because I fear I’ll lose muscle mass… I was filled with self-hatred because I felt I had lost control over my restriction with food and my body wouldn’t be masculine enough so I would work out to the extreme and eat little for days to burn off the calories“.

By Dec 2017, in addition to trying to lose all feminine weight (fat) and building muscles, you were also wearing a chest binder. Its function is to flatten the female breasts: “Wearing a chest binder helps…  hiding my chest... the chest binder (is) not making my chest flat enough… I have started to wear looser clothes in case my chest binder doesn’t hide the ‘bumps’ of my chest. My chest causes me the most anxiety… I wish my chest would be flatter” (Dec 7-9, 2017).

June 13, 2018: “Sometimes I feel like being anorexic will make me skinnier and make me look more masculine and I think about what it would be like to die from anorexia and silence my inner critic’s voice. I think ‘What if I made myself so skinny that my chest would be extremely flat? What if I died trying to be a man, would that make me happier than the life I’m living now?’ These thoughts often scare me and make me feel numb and at times I cry. I’m scared of anorexia, but I’m more scared of not.. looking masculine so it feels like two sides war with each other”.

Fast forward a year to June 3, 2020: “I have been having muscle aches and pains and sometimes feeling just really tired… I have a sharp jabbing ache in my hip bone… I tend to run a lot… I think that the stiffness in my hips is the soreness from running. Other times I think that the sharp jabs of pain… is from my full binder that I use to bind my chest and hips to make them look more masculine…  I used trans tape to bind my chest and also wore a binder over it…. wrapped it on too tight because after a while I could feel it digging into my sides and when I went to remove the trans tape, I had some cuts and my chest was feeling sore. So today, I currently have soreness on my chest and the sides from trans tape”.

November Nov 27 & Dec 21, 2016: “My inner bully will say ‘look at all these people, they are all saying you are worthless. you are weak as a girl. why don’t you change?… it keeps saying to me ” you are ugly and fat, go exercise“-

– sometime during our communication, we named your inner critic=> inner bully. Your inner bully wanted you to change from a girl to a boy. Clearly, you’ve been hating yourself for being biologically a girl for a very long time. It is not far from the truth to say that you’ve been trying to kill the girl in you for a long time: (1) by starving her and over-exercising her to the point of malnutrition, exhaustion, aches and pains, and (2) by taping and binding her chest and hips to the point of cuts and sores.

On Sept 1, 2016, you wrote: “I have wanted to be athletic since seventh grade when I was bullied for athleticism, but once I achieved it, I still didn’t think I was perfect b/c I wanted to be smarter.. I want to find a way to live happily on the inside, then when I feel happy on the inside I can reflect it on the outside“- I don’t think that you can make yourself happy on the Inside by changing your Outside: I don’t think that you can make yourself skinny enough, muscular enough, flat chested enough, and rectangular enough to be happy on the inside, because the Inner Bully resides in the inside of you and it is loud and hateful: it will always find something to harshly criticize you for.

Notice: I am not saying that you should gain weight and stop exercising, or that you shouldn’t wear a LIGHT chest binder (closer to what a sport bra). I am not saying that you should dress feminine.. What I am saying is that going to the extremes of an eating disorder, over-exercising and wearing a binder on top of tape- for your chest and hips WILL NOT SATISFY the inner bully.

Jan 12 & 17, 2017: “These days I feel like my inner bully has taken 55% of me and the other 45% left is someone I don’t know anymore. I feel I have lost myself“- further find that someone-you-don’t-know, and get to know and love her.

Jan 17, 2017: “There are two sides of me warring with each other, one side that wants to follow the labels and another side that wants to break free and live as my soul“- think of the “someone I don’t know” (above quote)  as your Soul. Consider your soul as neither feminine nor masculine because it is neither male or female, cisgender or transgender, binary or non-binary.

Notice that through the years you moved away from traditional, binary labels, but you adhered to other labels, non-traditional non-binary labels,  but still labels, still confining. Free yourself from any labels and you will find your soul.

April 16, 2018:  “Also at my college, I have been using the name Janus because he is the Roman god of new beginnings and transitioning“- think of Janus transitioning from Labels to Soul. Think of a spiritual transitioning vs a physical one.

Dec 7, 2018: “Wearing a chest binder helps with the dysphoria, but putting it on sometimes makes me feel dysphoric because I feel like I’m just hiding my chest and the insecurity of possibly having the chest binder not making my chest flat enough sometimes contributes to dysphoria”-

– the solution (chest binder) is temporary and after the temporary relief.. it is not a solution at all: instead, it contributes or adds to the problem. Same as undereating and over-exercising… temporary relief followed by adding to the problem.

Notice: I am not saying that you should not exercise or that you should eat whatever you feel like eating. Neither am I saying that you shouldn’t wear a LIGHT chest binder, such as a sports bra. I am saying that the extreme solutions you tried are not solutions.

Dec 9, 2018:  “I know testosterone will help redistribute the fat in my body and help build more muscle so my chest will look flatter. I will also have a lower, deeper voice and grow facial hair that will make me feel more masculine… Mastectomy (top surgery to remove the chest) usually requires a transgender person to be on testosterone for six months or more… The recovery for top surgery is six months”-

– will your Inner Bully be satisfied with the amount of muscle, hair, deeper voice and flat chest that hormones and surgery will provide, or will it still harshly criticize you? Will these extreme “solutions” solve anything or just add to the problem?

“Some of my transgender friends that have transitioned are happier with their lives“- maybe they don’t have harsh inner bullies. You are not the same person as any other person, regardless of labels. You have things in common with any other person, and things that are different.

Sept 18, 2019: “There are times when I feel like I’m a fragmented person and although I have a sense of self, it doesn’t feel complete. I feel like I’m trying to complete a puzzle for who I want to be but I’m not sure if I have all the pieces or if the pieces are really there“- I think that a spiritual transitioning, or spiritual transformation will put together all the puzzle pieces for you, so that you are finally  at peace.

Dec 28-31, 2019: “The stress and anxiety has lead me to working out intensely and following a strict diet and being anorexic because I want to look more like a guy and not have any curves on my body and I worry about myself“- you see how applying the same “solutions” year after year… lead to no solution at all?

Jan 25, 2020: “My gender dysphoria seems to have been getting more prominent“- like I said, see above.

Feb 21 2020: “My gender dysphoria has been getting more intense lately…I feel shaky, my throat hurts and my heart races most of the time… the anxiety is quite intense and I always feel like I’m unsafe like there is someone who will hurt or criticize me“- the same old, same old “solutions” are not solutions at all.

March 17, 2020: “I withdrew from my classes on March 8th due to intense anxiety“.

May 8-22, 2020:  “Lately I’ve been having some panic attacks where I’m just crying and shaking… being afraid of myself and to escape those thoughts I start to work out a lot until I start to see shadows in my vision… and I find myself feeling like it would just be better to just let go and just fade away… I currently have stomach cramps and chills, and still feeling dizzy. I had thought that this would be the end and I was prepared to go, taking one last look at the world, but I’m grateful that I had strength to reach out because if I hadn’t I might have fallen asleep and not have woken up“-

-I am grateful that you reached out and that you are alive!

June 1, 2020: “I just feel lost in gender dysphoria and anxiety. I feel like I just want to understand the world, be spiritually fulfilled and alive within myself, be out in nature and enjoy the simple things“- you said it, “be spiritually fulfilled” within yourself. The spiritual transitioning I am referring to does happen within oneself.

August 10, 2022: “Sustainable agriculture is fascinating helping with soil health“- a spiritual transitioning will sustain you and it will help your health.

“A lot of the conventional agriculture uses tilling that destroys top soil… as it removes soil nutrients“- over-exercising, under-eating (malnutrition) /binge eating, chest tapes and harsh chest binders, these have been destroying you!

“loosening the soil. Then the soil is loosened and a tractor is used… to make the fields ready for planting“- loosen your attachments to labels: the traditional and the non-traditional, and ready yourself for the planting of a spiritual transitioning.

“Sustainable agriculture also helps with providing and managing resources well so that they are still available for future generations use” – a spiritual transitioning will avail your resources for present and future use: you will no longer use your energy in extreme ways (over-exercising and exhausting yourself for a long time), but in moderate ways .

“I feel that sustainability is important since the earth is a beautiful planet that needs to have resources protected“- and I feel that a Janus Sustainability is important since Janus is a beautiful soul, and her resources should be protected.

“I can learn about the living things in the environment and also environmental science provides me tools to go outside and explore“- you expressed your love for the outdoors so many times, throughout the years; so working outdoors is very fitting to who you truly are: a beautiful soul.

anita

Dear Janus:

I read your two recent posts very slowly this Sunday morning and today I have a better understanding of what gender identity  means than I ever did before (I’ll get to it later in this post). When I read your posts in the 87 page of thread over the years, in my mind, I was reading the accounts of a young person’s struggles with significant mental health issues that were getting- over the years and while you were identifying as a transgender- worse, not better. So in my mind, I connected being transgender with mental illness.

Here is a bit to show how your mental health issues were getting worse: In 2016, you were “limiting junk food like cookies“. In 2017, you “would work out to the extreme and eat little for days to burn off the calories“. In 2018, you were “scared of anorexia, but.. more scared of not.. looking masculine“. In 2019, you were “working out intensely and following a strict diet and being anorexic“.  In 2020, you were “having muscle aches and pains… a sharp jabbing ache in my hip bone… soreness from running… sharp jabs of pain.. from my full binder that I use to bind my chest and hips… panic attacks… work out a lot until I start to see shadows in my vision… stomach cramps and chills, and still feeling dizzy“, and with all your awareness of gender identity and being helped by the LGBTIQ community’s resources, including a gender therapist, your “gender dysphoria has been getting more intense” (Feb 2020), and you were “lost in gender dysphoria and anxiety” (June 1, 2020).

And so, I figured that you were not well served by the LGBTQ community because your most serious issue was mental health. Today, Aug 21, 2022, having read your two posts from yesterday, I see that you made a lot of progress during your July 2020- July 2022 break from your thread:

You wrote yesterday: “I had long held toxic masculinity beliefs that I had to be strong, athletic to be a guy… I fell for an idealized version of what it feels like to be a guy…  I realize that guys don’t have to be muscular or strong, they can cry… Throw(ing) my health away to fit into what I felt was toxic masculinity wasn’t great. Being trans is about living in myself, being authentic, challenging societal boxes that don’t fit my gender identity. I feel like I’ve come quite a long way towards growing and understanding myself and learning to embrace things“-

-this means then that you are no longer hurting your body by putting it through the extremes of (1) calorie restrictions and over-exercising, (2) wearing trans tapes and binders that are so tight that they leave you bruised and sore, right?

If this is the case, I can now look at what gender identity is when significant to severe mental health issues are not in the way. Having read your account of your gender identity related experiences since elementary school, I got a feel for what gender identity means. For example, when you cut your hair short and the mailman called you “sir“, and you felt “elated like something fell into place“- it gave me a feel for what gender identity means. The elation was about the mailman seeing you the way you saw yourself: a guy.

Having read today that you felt like a guy before you were sexually harassed in the 7th grade, led me to understand, for the first time, that your gender identity issue was not the result of being sexually harassed. That sexual harassment in school hurt you so much because, as I understand it, you saw him as a fellow-guy and thought that he too saw you as just another guy, but alas: he saw you as…  a girl.

In the last two years of improving mental health, you understand that to be a guy does not mean to be an athletic and physically strong, so you are not driven to work out as much as you did before so to develop and keep muscles, and you are not driven to keep your body lean by restricting and over-exercising etc.. Your own definition of what it means to be a guy changed, it loosened.

I looked at the National Center for Transgender Equality website. It explains things very clearly. It refers to gender identity as a person’s “innate knowledge” of one’s gender. For some it is male, for others it is female and yet for others, it is “neither male nor female, or.. a combination of male and female“.

“There are a variety of terms that people who aren’t entirely male or entirely female use to describe their gender identity, like non-binary or genderqueer… People can realize that they’re transgender at any age”-

-as a matter of fact, I don’t remember ever feeling comfortable being female. In my own mind, I identified with being a male ever since my early 20s, if not earlier. But I didn’t hate myself (for having been labeled female at birth and onward) as much as you expressed hating yourself. I just didn’t like being female. Most of the time I wore jeans, loose and comfortable clothes and sandals, little to no makeup, no high heels, and I kept my hair very short for many years. I did act girly, did not feel comfortable around women and felt relatively comfortable around men. I suppose I can label myself genderqueer with a tendency toward male. I think that the reason behind my gender identity being way more male than it is female, is that I didn’t like my mother (a woman). She was very dominant and abusive in regard to me. Maybe I wanted to be stronger than her, so to set myself free from her, and so, I identified with the gender considered stronger (male).  You shared that you don’t like your mother. Maybe you wanted since early on to be different from her, and different meant being  guy (?)

Back to the website: “Gender identity and sexual orientation are two different things. Gender identity refers to your internal knowledge of your own gender… Sexual orientation has to do with whom you’re attracted to. Like non-transgender people, transgender people can have any sexual orientation…

“Being gender non-conforming means not conforming to gender stereotypes. For example, someone’s clothes, hairstyle, speech patterns, or hobbies might be considered more ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ than what’s stereotypically associated with their gender. Gender non-conforming people may or may not be transgender… Similarly, transgender people may be gender non-conforming, or they might conform to gender stereotypes for the gender they live and identify as”-

– I am definitely a gender non-conformist.

“The belief that someone’s gender identity can be changed through therapy runs counter to the overwhelming consensus in the medical community. Telling someone that a core part of who they are is wrong or delusional and forcing them to change it is dangerous, sometimes leading to lasting depression, substance abuse, self-hatred and even suicide. Because of this, a growing number of states have made it illegal for licensed therapists to try to change a young person’s gender identity (laws apply to those under 18)…

“For some transgender people, the difference between the gender they are thought to be at birth and the gender they know themselves to be can lead to serious emotional distress… Gender dysphoria is the medical diagnosis for someone who experiences this distress. Not all transgender people have gender dysphoria… Many transgender people do not experience serious anxiety or stress associated with the difference between their gender identity and their gender of birth, and so may not have gender dysphoria.

“Gender dysphoria can often be relieved by expressing one’s gender in a way that the person is comfortable with. That can include dressing and grooming in a way that reflects who one knows they are, using a different name or pronoun, and, for some, taking medical steps to physically change their body. All major medical organizations in the United States recognize that living according to one’s gender identity is an effective, safe and medically necessary treatment for many people who have gender dysphoria.

“It’s important to remember that while being transgender is not in itself an illness, many transgender people need to deal with physical and mental health problems because of widespread discrimination and stigma. Many transgender people live in a society that tells them that their deeply held identity is wrong or deviant… Many transgender people – especially transgender people who are accepted and valued in their communities – are able to live healthy and fulfilling lives”-

–my thoughts: transgender people, like cisgender people, suffer from all kinds of mental health issues, some that are not related to gender identity. Therefore, it’s important to NOT ASSUME (1) that ALL of a transgender person’s mental health issues are the result of their gender identity issue and related social discrimination, and (2) that all of a person’s mental health issues will be resolved following physical transitioning.

I am guessing that this very topic is explored during the psychotherapy that is prescribed to transgenders as a condition to physical transitioning.  Amazing, Janus. I understand so much more today than I understood yesterday, thank you for your part in teaching me!

anita

Dear Janus:

I will reply to you Wed morning.

anita

Dear Janus:

Hugs back to you. I think that I told you before and I’ll say it again (in regard to the first of your two recent posts, which I read slowly and attentively): you have an amazing skill and talent explaining a topic clearly and thoroughly!

It so happens that in my social circle there is a father whose preteen child identifies as trans-male and insists that their father uses the pronoun they. The father respects his trans-male preteen’s preferences, but is somewhat troubled about it all. I talked to him before and mentioned you and what you taught me. When I talk to him next, I will be able to explain more and maybe help him understand better.

Binders and tapes read like very uncomfortable, especially when the weather is hot and humid. I didn’t know of puberty blockers until you mentioned it. I just read more about it in Wikipedia: “Puberty blockers, also called puberty inhibitors or hormone blockers, are medicines used to postpone puberty in children… Delaying or temporarily suspending puberty is a medical treatment for children whose puberty started abnormally early (precocious puberty)… for children with idiopathic short stature… (and)  sometimes prescribed to young transgender people,  to… allow patients more time to solidify their gender identity, without developing secondary sex characteristics. If a child later decides not to transition to another gender the medication can be stopped, allowing puberty to proceed“-

– The last sentence in the above quote, the one I italicized, I think that it mean that puberty blockers may be prescribed for preteens who identify as transgenders but who do not suffer from gender dysphoria, so to prevent possible gender dysphoria?

“I feel that you are a gender-nonconformist. Since you don’t hate being female but you enjoy being with the guys more than the females. I feel that everyone has a degree of gender polarity since gender is a spectrum“- a spectrum indeed and I am not on any one extreme part of the spectrum.  I think and feel that you are correct: I am a gender-nonconformist.  If I ever talk with the preteen I mentioned, or if I ever talk with (I would like to) the adult trans-woman who frequents a place I frequent, I will identify myself as… a gender-nonconformist, sounds totally cool!

“My gender therapist gave me a book titled ‘healing the shame that binds you’ and it talks about how shame can be passed down and entrenched in generations … “- I read the book too  and it was a most meaningful book to me at the time.

“In my trauma, making not the best of decisions, repressing emotions, dissociating from the world“-  this makes me think of a quote from the John Bradshaw’s book that you mentioned: “Hell, in my opinion, is never finding your true self and never living your own life or knowing who you are.“

“I’ve let go of some of the shame from being hurt and things and forgave myself“-  excellent! You came a long way since you first posted in this thread, back in Dec 30, 2015, 9:20 pm (your time)!!!

anita