My thoughts on same-sex marriage.

Okay! a can of worms this one is right?

The U.S supreme court ruled a few days ago to (essentially) legalise same sex marriage, something gay/lesbian activists have been advocating (“fighting” if you will) for for decades.

I have thoughts, feelings and opinions on the issue, it’s my right to.

Many people may not like my thoughts feelings and opinions and that is ok, they don’t have to, but this IS my blog and so it’s my place to add my opinion to the internet discussion.

With that said, I’d ask that if anyone is actually inclined to investigate my opinions (and hey! it could happen), then before people condemn me for them (if they reflexively disagree on an emotional level), that they truly read and consider everything I’m trying to say here.

The first thing I want to say is that I believe all love is and should be treated equal. I respect any human's right to love whomever they choose, regardless of race, sex appearance or any other factor what-so-ever.

Everyone needs love, both to give and receive it.

With that said, I don’t think marriage is solely about recognising to people's love for one and other.

Marriage is NOT just a piece of “paper” and NOT just a concept supported by various religions and churches.

Marriage is very much a legal concept that is tied heavily in with socio-economics.

Marriage affords things like tax and financial benefits.

SO! with that in mind, I think one must broaden their view of social “equality” (for every human, including heterosexuals and females) before same-sex marriage and its repercussions can be fully understood.

I watched a video on youtube last night in which a gay man stated that “no-one looses as a result of this ruling” (I gather by “looses” he meant: suffers a disadvantage of some form in life).

I think only time will tell, but! my personal suspicion is that the female sex and anyone who is in a heterosexual union will (probably without realising it to begin with) suffer in the long term, from a socio-economic stand point.

Why? 

Because females aren’t “equal” to males in a socio-economic sense and by many, also aren't considered "equal" on a societal level . most of us don’t (and can’t) do equal work, and most of us don’t get equal pay, and males cannot have babies, and therefore do not get or need the supposed concessions females are generally afforded (most of which are the REASONS females aren’t treated equally)

SO! a legal union with all the economic benefits marriage affords, with none of the financial and economic disadvantages that come with (at least one partner) being female, will afford a married all male couple a clear financial and economic advantage over any couple or legal union where (at least) one partner is female.

Thus, women "loose" overall, and gay marriage actually moves society closer towards inequality.

So some will say: “ok, just pay females equally, and give them equality”.

To do that in the manner most would need for it to be officially recognised, would mean trying to circumvent our biological reality as a species.

I own a business of my own. If I’m to employ someone to do a particular job, I have to pay them out of the money my business makes from the labour the employee provides me, combined with the resources and labour I provide by myself. 

If I employ a female, the I have to budget from that same amount of income, to continue to pay her if she needs maternity leave to have a child, yet I’m NOT able to sell her labour in order to make that income, so I also need to pay someone else to provide that labour in her stead. I don’t have to consider that if I employ a male.

It is simply more expensive to employ females than it is males and there is NOT endless money in the world and I do not make endless profit (no business does, although some seem to go close).

Biological reality means that females simply cannot perform equal work to males, I wish it wasn’t the truth but it is, that’s NOT my fault, that is nature.

SO! to pay females (seemingly) equally to males means that males need to do (even) MORE of the hard work and earn LESS money for doing it

Here’s a newsflash! males (statistically speaking, most of whom are heterosexual) already do the most and the hardest of the work in the world.

I’m not talking about business men, or white collar workers here, I’m talking about men like my boyfriend. I’ talking about the blue collar workers, plumbers, mechanics, electricians, truck drivers, the hard PHYSICAL work (including the stuff that is most detrimental to a persons health)

Those guys already work the hardest, and they already are underpaid for what they do, If you make their socio-economic position worse by reducing the worth (socially) of what they earn from the hard work they do, then soon enough they’ll have nothing to loose in life. they’ll revolt, and they’ll take back the balance of power (socially) that they had/have, and they WON’T do it using a legal system that betrayed them, they’ll do it by force, because that is what nature gifted them.

And then nature and biology will show “society” exactly who IS in charge.

And that will NOT be a very “fun” time to be female or homosexual.

I’m all for equality, I think that until now, with the recognition same-sex marriage, we’ve been pretty close to as “equal” as we’re able to get.

That doesn’t mean we’re all treated “the same” in the world (but then we aren’t all the same are we? do you truly want to be the same as everyone else?).

And that comes from a woman who most people believe (or would argue) is actually just a gay man who went "to far". If I end up married, then the legal recognition of gay marriage can only help protect my marriage if people try to question it's legitimacy.

I STILL don't think the time was right for it.

Accountability and regrets

To transition, to change sex, (on a personal level) it’s a pretty big thing!

I’d go so far as to say “huge” (at least that’s my opinion)

There isn’t really any aspect of your life, of who you are and how you feel that isn’t effected. It’s very hard, very “trying”. I think that if you can make it through without help, there isn’t too much the world can throw at you that you shouldn’t be able to manage.

   

Being as honest as I can be, I needed it.

I NEEDED to do it, I felt it was the only way my life might possibly become survivable.

With that said, I was absolutely terrified.

The whole time.

I was terrified of a million things, but most of all, terrified that it wouldn’t “work”, that I wouldn’t “make it”, that after everything I still wouldn’t be a “girl” (there are different contexts that I’m applying there, when I talk about being a girl, what I mean mostly by “girl” is simply: who and what I believed I was) and that I’d end up having to kill myself anyway.

What I did, in many ways was due to desperation.

My physical and legal (and most of my social) “transitions” were largely completed within two years.

For a girl in her twenties (IE post puberty), with no kind of support at all from anyone, with very poor (or exceptional in the “male” sense) genetics and who’s pretty much unskilled and under-educated, that is quite a feat (those who’ve been there will understand).

Having to make life altering decisions when one is young, alone, afraid and desperate (and without any means), is not always such a great position to be in, you don’t really get to feel (or be) very “safe”.

And yet I’m confident that I’m not the first to face that situation and I’m also confident I wont be the last.

What it teaches you is accountability.

If you understand (and can master) accountability, you should not end up having (too many) regrets (at least in theory)

Accountability is important, and not just partial accountability, complete accountability, for everything you do, every decision you make, and every thing you say.

The world is a very unforgiving place for women.

I think the hardest aspect for me, was my family. That’s not to say that the rest was “easy”, (all of it was damned hard!!) just that, for me, family was the hardest part.

I AM a strong person, I’ve learned to be cynical and I put on a very hard “front”, but (if you can get to it) I have a very soft heart. I loved and still do love, my family so much that my heart actually aches at the thought.

At the time in my life when I felt I needed them the most, they treated me like I was dead, like I wasn’t even present.

It took some time for me to understand that that was because to them, I actually WAS dead.

From the inside of me looking out, nothing had changed, I didn’t feel as though I was any different than I’d ever been.

BUT! to them, from the outside, looking AT me, and looking IN to me, the person they believed they knew the person they'd always envisioned me to be truly did disappear completely, replaced by a girl they didn’t believe they knew and that they’d never met.

Like being given a grown daughter or sister in her twenties, that they’d never met or knew even existed.

How do you know what that person is like, what her interests are, what her sense of humour is?

Do you have anything in common with her?

In their mind there are no memories of this girl through childhood, no “happy” or “sad” to look back on, no emotions, there’s no “attachment” at all to this new person, at least so they think. Blinded by hurt and grief, all they (think they can) know, is that this girl took away from them someone they loved dearly.

It’s understandable then, that rather than be loving, supportive and understanding, that instead they might choose to HATE everything, even the very sight of this person.

And so I learned soon enough (despite loving them) to build a life for myself alone and away from them, even whilst constantly feeling and carrying hurt and pain from their rejection.

I still feel the hurt over everything with them on a daily basis.

Many transsexual born girls/women I’ve corresponded with who go through this kind of situation end up cutting their family out of their life completely.

Many resent their family, (their mother especially) for their rejection, and lack of understanding and support, and the abuse they suffer as a result.

Add to that the fact that it is guaranteed family will NEVER ever recognise the TS as a female, and it’s not really hard for me to see why they do that.

For a time I did the same too, no contact. I needed to, to get through it all, I was suicidal enough without adding their hurt and anger to the mix.

A few years on and we talk, they’ve met my boyfriend and we travel up the coast a few times a year visit them. They’ve been to our home twice and met BF’s family.

I still feel like we’re strangers in some ways, things aren’t what they where and that hurts even now, but I keep trying anyway.

SO!

I’ve mentioned before that my Mother is not in great health these days. she’s now insulin dependant, she has Crohn’s disease and bad osteoarthritis among other things and so she lives from a wheelchair and spends most of her days in a recliner.

My younger sister (by a year) is generally my mothers carer. She lives at home with my parents, she moved back to their town and in with them, nearly two years ago. She’s never really held a steady job for very long, it’s not really her style, and her and my older brother are still pretty dependant on my parents financially.

Interestingly, I’m the child that was “doomed” to be a failure and embarrassment, and yet I turned out to be the first one who’s managed to support herself and find and hold a steady relationship/partner and get a life together.

So my sister has recently found a new boyfriend, and found some employment, and that has meant she’s been away from home for a few weeks and hasn’t been available as much to look after my mother. As such mother has been struggling, isolated, lonely, depressed and suicidal.

I traveled up during the week, took her to her doctor and then brought back home with me and have had her here with me for a few days taking care of her.

When we’re alone together we seem to end up talking about the elephant in the room, me, “us” and our relationship.

She brings it up nowadays, I stopped bringing it up a while ago, I decided it wasn’t likely that things would change and that if I wanted any kind of relationship with them, that I needed to try and get past that and NOT have it be the only thing we share.

Her own feelings of mortality at work I guess.

Looking at my life now, she’s come to understand (finally) that I’m not “joking” I’m not changing, I’m not going back, and that perhaps I wasn’t lying about my life, who I am and what I believe.

She still denies she ever suspected anything about me, but she conceded this week that maybe things weren’t what she remembers them being when I was a child.

She said she feels guilty, worries that I have a bad or harder life because she didn’t help me when I was a child.

Say’s she’d have been different if she’d “known”.

I guess she can’t let go of the feeling that I’m angry with her.

I was for a while, but being angry did nothing to help me and nothing to change anything, so I let it go, and moved on, and tried to get a relationship back on track with them.

Bringing our history back up only brings back the hurt, sends me back to bad times and makes me want them back out of my life.

I love my entire family, and I wish our relationships could go back to how they once were.

But I don’t know if or how that can ever happen, actually, I don’t think it ever can, that’s what my gut tells me, but in spite of that I still can’t let go.

Sad do you think?

I know that how things are with my family is my biggest regret. I don't know exactly what I could have done to change it or for things to be/have been different, but I wish I could and I wish they where.