Rejection, Guilt, and Self-Hatred (3)

※Translated by DeepL Pro only. Translated on March 10, 2021, by Deepl Pro automatically.

Mineno Amari (then known as Mineno Saito)
Date of assessment update: June 1, 2011

This is a true statement of my feelings when I first came out and started living as a woman in December 2010.

One of the writers who read this text said that I was like a monk in training.

I was unable to receive any physical treatment for my severe heart disease, so I had no more dreams or hopes than most people with gender identity disorder, and I was searching for a path by continuing to talk to myself.

The result has been a very happy life, although there are still some inconveniences. Since I started out with no expectations, I am grateful for everything in my life. It is like a miracle that I have lived here without experiencing anything particularly unpleasant. For the past ten years, I have realized that Japanese society, aside from the legal system, is filled with so much love.

Unfortunately, I have yet to discover (1) and (2) in the text. For the time being, I would like to post (3), which I was able to find, here in its original form as a record.

Of course, society and laws have changed a lot in the past 10 years, and my thoughts have also changed more flexibly. I would appreciate it if you would laugh at this as a record of the writings of a beginner with gender identity disorder 10 years ago.

This is a reprint from a public text that was posted on a blog that is now closed.

----------------

Rejection, guilt, and self-loathing (3)
　This is a continuation of Rejection, Guilt, and Self-Hatred (2).

　In this article, I would like to think about the self-loathing that GID (Gender Identity Disorder) people suffer from.

　If a person is a party who does not feel self-loathing or has overcome it, then GID may not be nearly as painful for him/her.

Please note: This article contains some talk about sex. Also, it's very long.
　
　
Self-Hatred

　When I was four years old, I innocently wanted to be a Pink Lady. I was longing for the Pink Lady that I saw on TV every day.

　However, when I think back to that time, I don't think I was thinking about whether I was a man or a woman yet. I was already in the junior kindergarten class, and there was not much difference in the uniforms between boys and girls, so I was not thinking about my gender. So, I guess I thought I could be a Pink Lady. Nowadays, it would be like thinking that I could be a member of AKB48.

　Then one day, a shocking incident happened to me.

　One day, I had a shocking experience: I looked at my album. I took the opportunity to look at my album from the time I was born. Maybe I had seen them before, but I didn't think much about it. It was a shock to me to see it, because I thought I could become the Pink Lady. It was a world of "What the heck is this? world. The sight of the ugly baby, so far removed from my own self-image, was so horrifying that it sent chills down my spine. ......

　After that, it was over. Every time I looked at a picture of myself, every time I looked in the mirror, the ugliness of my appearance brought me to tears of pain. My younger brother, who was said to be very similar to me, was forced to dress like a girl at that time, and he looked very cute, but anyway, I just couldn't stand my appearance.

　I don't like my face, I don't like my voice. I didn't like my face, I didn't like my voice, I didn't like the ugly clothes the boys wore. I hated everything. Furthermore, at the age of five, I was made to realize that I was a man and could never be a pink lady, and I was also made to know what kind of path I would have to take in the future, which made it even harder for me. The huge difference between my self-image and the one I had envisioned, and the imposed image of the future that I could not accept, almost destroyed my ego to say the least. Even so, I managed to keep myself together and tried my best to fulfill my assigned role. ......

　As I grew older, the various parts of myself became more and more painful. Some of my cruel kindergarten classmates thought my face was weird, and I thought so too. I wondered why I didn't have any childlike cuteness in my appearance at all. My hands were also kind of wrinkled and I looked like an old person. It was really painful to go to the barbershop and have my hair, which had been growing so long, shaved. My voice was low and I was in pain.

　In any case, I always hated myself.

　In elementary school, even though I hardly did any exercise at all, I suffered from the fact that I was getting bigger and bigger, probably due to heredity, and I suffered from the fact that I was gradually growing shin hair, and most of all, I hated my ugly face. I used to self-deprecate myself by making my big nostrils look even bigger and more puffy so that people would make fun of me. I was still not very good at having my picture taken. In my senior year, I became very distressed at my inability to fit into either the male or female groups, so I spent my lunch breaks alone in the library (for some reason, there was always no one else in the library). (For some reason, there was always no one else in the library.) I was caught doing this, and to top it off, I was even harassed by the underclassmen who lambasted me for being weird (I managed to get over it by ignoring them thoroughly). After school, I went home and studied for my entrance exams without anyone at school knowing about it. I really thought that I would be killed if I went to the local junior high school. Even so, I never thought about not going to elementary school, and I went to school quite well. But honestly speaking, there was no way I could like myself in this situation. People didn't like me much, and I didn't like myself either.

　In junior high school, I hated the school orchid (I really wanted to wear a sailor's uniform), was shocked by my familiarity, and never wanted to ejaculate again (although I did masturbate without ejaculating sometimes), and so on. Even though I was growing as a man, for some reason I couldn't accept it honestly and it led to self-loathing. It was a vicious cycle. As for the voice change, it seems that I didn't do anything special, probably because my voice was always low. I was in a dormitory room for 8 people (there were 80 people on the same floor), and naturally I didn't fit in well, and I was floating around. However, I was very much loved by the dorm mothers.

　As I became a high school student, I felt more and more sexually uncomfortable, and my self-loathing also became stronger. I was given a private room in the dormitory. I was the only one in the room, which was nicely furnished with a carpet and a desk covered with a cloth, and I would rub my boobs every day, hoping that my boobs would grow bigger. ...... (laughs). At school, some students treated me as "the kind of person" and harassed me, which was not always fun, but the school was relatively free and individualistic, which helped. I had at least a few good friends. After I got hooked on the novel "Anne of Green Gables," I started to go into my imaginary world by myself whenever I came back to my private room, and I was even allowed to join a national club called Buttercups. (Incidentally, I would later learn that almost none of the women at Todai had read "Anne of Green Gables", much less made it their favorite book. ......) I think I masterbated to a certain extent, but I could only do it as if I were a woman, and I never ejaculated. I had no choice but to live my life as a man, and I took it for granted that I would do so. I knew about Maki Carousel and Peter (Shinnosuke Ikehata), who was a senior at La Salle Junior High School and whose teachers often told me anecdotes about him (although he did not have GID), but I thought that they were able to do such things because of their unparalleled beauty and that I would never be able to do it. I thought it would never happen to me. It was a time when the concept of GID was not even known yet.

　When I was preparing to apply for college, I heard from my teacher (during a smoke break in class) that it was actually possible for boys to apply to national women's colleges, and I seriously considered it. I was told that those who had actually entered the university in the past had done so as a test case for social significance, and that after entering the university, they were mentally unable to keep up and eventually quit. However, in the end, I applied to the University of Tokyo as usual and was admitted. As soon as I entered the university, I thought to myself, "What a waste! There were only four girls in my class, and the boys seemed to be more intense than in high school, making it even harder to fit in. However, I soon made a very good-natured male friend and managed to get by, but for one year I couldn't even join a club. What I was doing was, first of all, researching how to become a man. I read a lot of books on psychology and studied the differences between male and female psychology, and how sex works (although I didn't really understand it at the time). Psychologically, I learned that both men and women have masculine and feminine characteristics, and when I took a psychological test, I found that I was extremely feminine, so I rationally understood that I was a man with strong feminine characteristics, and that this was okay because it was not unusual for some people to have such characteristics. The concept of GID was not yet known in Japan, and I did not see it in any specialized books, so I did not know about it at the time, but anyway, I think it was very important for me to understand rationally that there are men like me. While I was learning this, I was also invited to join Buttercups, an almost exclusively female club with a very wide age range, and I found that I could get along with them without feeling uncomfortable at all, and I really enjoyed it. (Although I was treated as a male student at Todai, I was more interested in being a friend of the same gender, and I was never made aware of my gender.

　As my understanding of myself increased, I felt more comfortable and gained some confidence, and finally joined an art club in my second year of university (because I felt comfortable with the loose atmosphere and the fact that there were many women). After that, I went to law school and met my current partner, which changed my world.

　However, many years have passed since then, and I still have feelings of self-loathing about my appearance and voice.

　As for sex, when I lost my virginity for the first time after graduation, I was so shocked that I thought I had done something very wrong. I thought I had made a terrible mistake, seeing as I felt nothing as a man. I just couldn't bring myself to have sex with a woman (in that sense, I guess I still haven't properly lost my virginity). I didn't want to have sex again, so I didn't for about a year and a half. After that, I became more like a genital donor for sexual massage (almost exclusively cowgirl position). However, I learned to enjoy the feeling of togetherness, so it was no longer something I disliked.

　Once you realize that you have GID, and you start to cross-dress as MtF (in this article, I use the term cross-dressing to mean dressing as the opposite sex of your legal sex), and you start to live outside the home, the feelings of self-loathing can be very troublesome.

　For example, in my case, I am still a man, but I am simply a man dressed as a woman. I'm noticeably taller than most men, and I have a large face and a thick neck. My profile looks like a Galapagos tortoise, which gives me a complex. My body is also very masculine, with broad shoulders and an inverted triangle shape. My voice is nothing but a man's voice. So, no matter how hard I try, a man is still a man. And yet, there is a desire beyond reason to dress as a woman and live as a woman. If the image you have of yourself and your actual self are far apart, it can cause self-loathing. Even if you have managed to cover yourself with your skills and training, and you are out and about thinking, "Okay, I can handle this," when you suddenly look at yourself in the mirror, you will be shocked to see that you are not as feminine as you thought you were, and you will often instantly fall into self-loathing mode. Then I lose my confidence and feel stuck for a while. Before I go out, I feel so anxious that I keep checking with my partner to see if there is anything wrong. I've told you so many times that you're not crazy! Also, when I see a beautiful MtF or pure woman (Junjo), I feel ashamed of myself and feel self-loathing, and when I see someone who is not a pure woman, I feel depressed and feel self-loathing, thinking that I am the same anyway. It's really stupid, isn't it? It's really stupid, isn't it?

　So far, I've mostly written about my personal experiences. I apologize for the length of this article, but I hope it has given you some idea of the feelings of self-loathing that GID people have.

　I hope I've given you some idea of the feelings of self-loathing that GID people have. From here, let's try to generalize a bit more, and even think of ways to alleviate them.

　To put it simply, feelings of self-loathing, not only in GID, are caused by the difference between the self-image you have of yourself and your actual self. We feel disgust and negativity towards ourselves that are different from our self-image and look bad, and this leads to a state of complete loss of self-confidence. The self-image that had been the source of self-confidence crumbles away, and the actual self looks even worse than it really is, and the mind feels as if it has hit rock bottom. Self-image is not limited to physical appearance or other tangible things. The higher your self-image, the wider the gap will be, and generally speaking, the more suffering you will experience.

　If it were easy to do so, there would be nothing to worry about. However, it is helpful to make an effort to put a certain stop to your self-image so that it doesn't get out of control too much.

　On the other hand, what if you try to make your real self closer to your self-image while not changing your self-image too much? This can be very effective, but if the target self-image is too high, it can lead to depression or even death as a result of trying too hard.

　Let's try to be a little closer to the situation of people with GID and think of specific ways to alleviate it.

　In the first place, GID itself is self-loathing itself. At any rate, the image of one's own sexuality (self-image) that one's mind has in mind and the actual body have become misaligned. It is GID that suffers greatly from this gap. Therefore, alleviating the feelings of self-loathing is almost synonymous with reducing the suffering of GID, or in other words, treating it. However, in this article, I would like to focus not on the current treatments for GID (especially the physical ones), but on the level of daily thinking, or on the question of how to alleviate the feelings of self-hatred that still persist even after completing the current so-called GID treatments. I'd like to think about how I can make myself feel better, even if I'm still stuck (or sometimes fall into it). This is because I have a heart condition that makes physical treatment almost impossible for me, so I have to get over it by just using my own mental attitude. In a way, it is similar to a person who has already done the physical treatment and has nothing else to do physically (although there are many differences).

　It doesn't matter what stage you're in right now. It doesn't matter what stage you're at, because you're going to suffer from self-loathing regardless of what stage you're at, and even if you're a world-famous supermodel, you're not immune to mental suffering, as you can see from the fact that many of these people have become addicted to drugs or alcohol or have attempted suicide.

　First of all, what I think is most important is to know yourself, to know what GID is all about, and to look at your body as objectively as possible.

　For example, let's say you take a bath. If you are naked and casually look in the mirror, you will be disappointed to see that your body is exactly the same as a man's body. When I'm not looking at my naked body (in other words, most of the time in my daily life), I tend to think of a better self-image, but the reality of my body is harsh. So when we let our emotions get the better of us, it tends to lead to self-loathing. So I instantly start thinking like this. Of course, if I don't feel like I'm about to fall into self-loathing, I don't think about it every time.

　Oh, my body is reflected in the mirror. I'm still a man, but I've lost weight and I'm starting to look more toned. The inverted triangle looks like an athlete's body. But if I go too far, I'll probably lose too much subcutaneous fat and look less feminine. But still, I'm tall. But then again, the Junjo who was working the cash register at the supermarket yesterday was much taller than me. She was so cool. She seemed to be well-liked by the other cashiers. I want to be like her. I'll try to imitate him. My shoulders are also wide (especially when compared to my hips). But the Junjo I saw at Sonipla today was a little shorter than me, and her shoulders were about the same width, but she was able to cover it up with her clothes. Of course, her hips and waist are different from mine, but if she were to wear a normal dress, I bet her shoulders would stand out. I'll have to take a look at how she dresses. If I put on the silicone pads I bought last time for my hips, I think the balance will be almost the same.

　That's how I think about it. Then, before you know it, your negative feelings will disappear. Your interest shifts to the rational technical theory. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but I think it's possible because people with GID will always be thinking about the technology for cross-dressing more or less every day. The content can be anything, to be honest. I think a rational and (hopefully) positive analysis will suppress the outburst of backward-looking emotions.

　Other times, for example, when I come home from a day out in cross-dressing, and I look at myself in the mirror or in a photo and feel negative and almost self-loathing, I try to think: "Wow.

　Wow. I was going out in this because I thought it would look good on me, but when I took a closer look, I realized it didn't look good at all. ...... I don't know how I got through the day in this. I'm sure most of the people I observed didn't even move an eyebrow, so maybe the third party's image of me wasn't as bad as I feel now. So what the heck. I'm not a paid model walking on the stage. Well, maybe I'll try a different arrangement next time. Even if it was a failure, failure is the mother of success, right?

　You may feel like I'm quibbling, but I think this is the extent of it. Instead of simply thinking positively, try to lead to the next step as much as possible. Instead of trying to dismiss your emotions as something wrong with you, try to put on a slightly cooler face by letting reason in.

　How about when you are out in the open wearing cross-dressing? I do this in a couple of ways.

　One is to look at myself objectively with the same kind of thinking as above, and let the negative emotions flow away. The other way is to think of yourself as an alien who is a bit of an idiot and not good at transforming, or as someone who dresses like this on purpose to carry out some kind of mission. Either way, a little bit of rationality, a little bit of looking at yourself from a distance, seems to stop your emotions from running wild.

　Another way to ease your mind is to instantly remember an experience (even if it's just verbal flattery) where you were accepted or complimented for being cross-dressed as you are now. Also, the fact that you are going out in cross-dressing means that you must have had some kind of confidence (or a mind that can tolerate the way you look today), at least when you went out of the house. If I had no confidence at all, I wouldn't have been able to go out unless I was dragged out with a noose around my neck. So try to remember how you felt at that time. Not everyone in front of you right now is throwing stones at you. If that's the case, then you were right when you went out there. There's no need to be scared. There are definitely people in front of you who will accept you and let you go. So it's okay. Think of it this way. (Of course, if you are in danger, please run away. There are many other ways to do this. (Of course, if you are in danger, please run away.) There are many other ways to deal with the situation, even the classic way of thinking that the people in front of you are potatoes is quite useful. Anything goes, as long as it doesn't harm others or make them feel extremely uncomfortable. As long as you don't end up in a state of self-loathing outside and can't move at all, you can go to .......

　It's a long story. I'm sorry for the length of this article, but it seems to be very thin. In fact, I don't really have an answer or methodology that I think is the right one.

　Finally, there is another way.

　It is to become a narcissist to the fullest extent.

　I think you have to be a narcissist to some degree to be a GID trans, but this is a way to actively use it. It's a kind of reaction to the exact opposite direction of self-loathing.

　You need to praise and love yourself on a regular basis, and be so intoxicated with yourself that you don't even notice who you really are. You need those times too.

　If you can maintain that state, you will be invincible whether you go out or look in the mirror. You don't have to listen to anyone's opinion. I don't care how people react to me. It doesn't matter what people around you think. And in fact, even if you are wearing a narcissistic cross-dressing in Japan, you are unlikely to get into any kind of danger (but don't forget the sense of danger). In the end, the person who gets out of the habit wins. Walk down the street with your heart on your sleeve. Post about it on your blog. Of course, please be careful not to do anything criminal or annoying (other GID people will look at you negatively, and it may lower your standing as a GID person. There is virtually nothing I can do to stop someone from being a narcissist, so you do it at your own risk).

　) This is something I do only occasionally, but it is useful to be able to do it this way. When you have to go into a place that is completely away from home. I try my best to persuade and coax myself, and temporarily build up my mind into narcissistic mode (when the spell is broken, I recover in a rational way, as described above).

　However, there is a drawback. If you overdo it, you may end up going in strange directions. It's also not the best way to live a peaceful life, buried in seclusion. Since you don't care about what people think, you may end up like a snowball rolling down a snow-covered slope, with no end in sight (it's called positive feedback). If possible, it would be good to have someone whose opinion you are willing to listen to (called negative feedback). Don't become a narcissist so much that one day you suddenly wake up and realize who you really are, and you can't stand the drop and become depressed or lose your life. It may be the happiest thing if you stay in a moderate state and never wake up until you die.

To those around people with GID

　I think there are times when people with GID ask me over and over again about my appearance and whether I look funny. You may even think that it is annoying or annoying. However, if you can, please continue to affirm the person in question. Most of the time, when they ask that, they are already at the edge of the cliff, just before they fall into self-loathing. It may seem like a ridiculous ritual that is repeated every now and then, but many people would be helped if you would just go along with it. The other way is to strike first. Before they ask, flatter them and praise them for their good points. Even if they know you are flattering them, it usually makes them feel a lot better.

　People with GID are usually very prone to self-loathing. In other words, GID itself is a form of self-loathing, so saying or doing anything that encourages it can have an immense destructive effect on the sufferer. If you say or do something to encourage it, it can have an immensely destructive effect on the person concerned. Even a small thing to an ordinary person can be life-threatening with just a few words if it hits the right spot.

　However, we all want to be strong in our hearts.

Lastly

　Today, I have been thinking about the inexplicable suffering of self-loathing. Self-loathing itself is a normal human emotion, so there is no need to eliminate it at all (everyone has it to a greater or lesser extent, and ultimately, it cannot be eliminated). So, please don't become self-loathing and feel bad about yourself.

　I hope this is somewhat helpful to you.

　In the next article, I'd like to think about how to alleviate rejection, guilt, and self-loathing by blowing them all away in an instant. But I'm human, so I'll start suffering again soon. Still, for some people, it may be possible to avoid dying.

#gender identity disorder
If you liked this article, why don't you support us?
Feel free to support the creator and recommend the article!