The Year I Thought I Was a Man (And Other Things With Phantom Penises) - Taboo Tuesday #2

WARNING: This is in no way an account of someone who actually suffers from serious Gender Dysphoria. This is an account of someone who feels a tingling in her nethermostbits sometimes and thinks it might secretly be a ghost penis. If that is of interest to you, carry on.
---

I don't pretend to know many things, but for 22 out of 23 years of my life I could definitively say that I didn't have a penis.

2010 just wasn't my year.

This bullshit should have been a sign.

To really understand the rest of the story though, you're going to need a quick recap of 2009...

In 2009, I was 17. 

Or medically speaking, somewhere between a Katniss and a dirty, hairy feminist.

That year, my mom either confused a bottle of pills for a Pez dispenser or committed suicide.

Jury's still out... side the cat door, playing with butterflies!

THEN, my dog died, my other dog died, my grandma died, AND they reduced the size of Girl Scout cookies.

Oh you think that's cute, little girl? Well I'm going to Caramel deLight your fucking house on fire.

Then it was 2010... and things got weird. I graduated high school (as the momless little wretch I was), 

Immediately after, my dad up and moved away from beautiful, perfect, sunny Santa Barbara to highly questionable Los Angeles. There, I began my freshman year at USC as a nondrinking, nonblonde, nonfootballplaying virgin.

AKA: The Life of the Party.

I honestly can't count the number of parties I went to my Freshman year at USC on my fingers.

That's because I don't have zero fingers.

I can, however, count the number of friends I had. 

That number is one. 

His name is Todd.

AKA: Dad.

Thursday night I would pack my suitcase full of dirty laundry, have Todd pick me up, then return to USC on Tuesday with clean clothes and pilfered toilet paper. 

Cause I'm addicted to that sweet, sweet two ply.

It was, admittedly, pathetic, and I was 99% sure that life was ruined forever. Thus began my daily, debilitating anxiety spiral. 

But to really understand my daily, debilitating anxiety spiral, you need to understand my first panic attack...

Let me paint the scene for you: I was nine-years-old, and I was watching the 1982 film "Tootsie." (Where Dustin Hoffman pretends to be a woman and makes questionable career decisions.)

AKA: Becomes a woman.

So yeah, that's it. I had a panic attack. 

For a couple years there, my anxiety was pretty bad, but I learned to manage it so that by the age of 12 I could give speeches and pee at school (usually at different times). Life was pretty sweet. Then I started college, and the anxiety came flooding back.

This time though, the anxiety manifested itself in bizarre ways. Instead of simply getting the usual symptoms: racing heart, looming dread, sweaty-dirty-hairy-feminist arm pits... I started to also fall into obsessive thought patterns. 

And I don't mean "obsessive" like...

OMG I'm obsessed with the Avicii band!1!1

I mean it like, the second you wake up you start thinking about one single thought, then you think that thought all day, then you finally get to go to sleep where there is reprieve... until you wake up and start thinking that same fucking thought again until you're sobbing and literally hitting yourself in the head to try to rid yourself of the same goddamn thing over and over again.

By about November, my obsessive thinking had hopped around a few topics before settling on one highly unnerving certainty.

That I was secretly a man.

My obsession with being a man began after reading an article about a trans-woman who committed suicide. Suddenly, as if I was a bomb and my wick was lit, my head exploded.

Every waking second I argued with myself about how I had to be a man and how very horrified I was about it.

I didn't WANT to be a man... I desperately, needfully hoped that I wasn't a man.

But the evidence seemed so clear. My handwriting had always been masculine, I had enjoyed Power Rangers and Blink 182 as a child... I never even liked pink!

I'm not exaggerating when I say that more than 90% of my waking hours were spent obsessing over whether or not I was truly a man.

Eventually I built up enough courage to ask Todd. 

Todd was fairly certain I wasn't a man.

Cis scum.

So I argued with myself -- day in and out. After arguing one point so thoroughly, for hours and days, I'd eventually tire myself out or come to some sort of half-assed conclusion ("well there were girl Power Rangers..."). Then the madness would start all over again. 

Was I a tomboy because I was counterculture, riffraff youth? Or was I a boy whose name should be Tom?

Was this early Photoshop an expression of my Freudian desire for a "little me" -- or was it simply a hilarious image of a tiny Quinn brushing a giant Quinn's hair?

Do I really think Logan Echolls is attractive? Or do I want to be Logan Echolls?

But I mean, who doesn't?

If I wasn't a man, then why would I ever question it? I MUST be a man!

I couldn't remember how to get to class, because as I was walking, I'd be obsessing the entire way there. Instead of beautiful daffodils, I'd see giant, pollinating stamens. I'd get to class and instead of listening to the lecture, I'd be feeling for my Adam's apple. When I'd get home, I'd look up the specific size differences between clitorises and micro penises. 

I honestly don't know how many of my classmates had any idea of the debates going on in between my ears.

Once at the computer again, I took every. possible. test. there is to determine one's gender. And let me tell you something... that shit is not always the most reassuring.

After approximately all the quizzes, my answers were all over the board. At this point I had absolutely no CLUE what my gender was. Because of this, I regularly sent Todd many, many messages:

Todd was not amused, and soon only worsened my concerns by refusing to answer my questions. I realized I was pushing away my only friend... and so I needed new friends. Friends who understood me. 

There was only one place to go. It was a dark place, I had heard terrible things, but these were the only people who might be able to help me.

I joined... the message boards.

Pretty much I joined every message board dedicated to gender identity. I then spammed the hell out of them with questions about how to know whether or not you're a man.

These people were no help. Apparently they just KNEW whether or not they were men.

Through the message board I learned many, many things about gender identity -- or, as I preferred to look at it, zillions more things to obsess about. I would read articles and personal stories about coming to terms with one's identity... and I would find some way to manipulate them into my own life. Among these things is something that haunts me to this day.

One thread, one lonely, probably-helpful-to-some-people-but-fucking-horrible-for-me thread talked about the sensation of a phantom penis.

Moments after reading it... I felt a tingle. Then, to my horror, that tingle turned into a itch. That itch became a jiggle.

There it was. I had my very own phantom penis. I could feel it, flopping in the breeze. The only way to get rid of the awful, tickling sensation affixed to the front of my nethers was to stick a hand down my pants and ensure that Free Willy hadn't jumped in there.

This wasn't so bad. Todd gave me weird looks, but I'm pretty sure he understood. My roommate might have had the wrong idea, but that bitch drank Aloe, so who is she to judge? No, the worst was when I was on my way to class. I'd get that little tickle, which would start to itch violently if I didn't stick a hand down my pants within minutes. 

I'd like to think I was subtle, but frankly, I think most people noticed when I slipped a palm down for a quick cupping. 

The looks I got implied that touching your genitals in public is always inappropriate. 

So anyway... now I was constantly, mentally and physically tormented... but my new message board friends were supportive (if not a bit too chatty about this whole 'gender identity' thing), but for some bizarre reason people refused to label me. They suggested I do some soul searching or some shit. 

I don't need a soul. I need to know if my penis is real or not. (I tried jacking off my phantom penis once. It resulted in me feeling like a dumbass.)

After a few weeks (or was it days? hard to know when you only think about one thing nonstop -- time isn't so useful anymore), one kind lady suggested that I check out a "Pure O" message board instead.

I believe she posted it to my question about whether or not I could be a female child trapped in a gay man's body, trapped in an adult woman's body (I felt that this was appropriately explaining my seemingly significant ennui).

After reading about Pure O, I excitedly realized that that is exactly what I had.

To keep it brief -- Pure O stands for "Pure Obsessional Disorder." It's a form of OCD--

Not the "I HAVE to clean my sock drawer or I get SO annoyed. Plus I HAVE to wash my hands after I even TOUCH dirt." OCD.

--where your compulsions are thought-based. My understanding is, you obsess about something, and to complete your ritual, you have to argue an unarguable point with yourself as a compulsion, which you'll in turn obsess about, creating a never ending loop. 

People suffered from sexuality-based Pure O, relationship Pure O, pedophilia Pure O, murder Pure O. Basically your loops last the longest if what you're obsessing about is something that you would be most unhappy to learn about yourself. 

Like, if you're scared you will murder your Todd, then you will obsess about it, making you more scared, making you obsess more... and there's no PROOF you won't murder your Todd, so it never ends.

My greatest fear was apparently becoming a man. (Even more than murdering my Todd, because I only thought about that for like a week.)

This self-diagnoses was relieving, but it didn't relieve the thoughts. I continued to obsess. I continued to research. I continued to talk to friends who had undergone their own gender transitions. 

I realized I might need professional help.

Long story short: enter the German psychologist who I was afraid was making me a lesbian.

God damn it Germans, not again!

Second long story short, the Sauerkraut had me create a list of the things I found most frightening regarding my obsession (beginning with watching TOOTSIE and ending with dating a real man). 

I had to complete this list. 

I'm not going to get into every item, but I will say there was an awkward occasion when Todd had to take me to Macy's to try on men's clothes. 

It turns out that I, a (then) 5'3", 100 lb female, did not fit into men's clothes.

Todd and I had to shop around the little boy's section, to my humiliation. I picked out cargo shorts, skateboarder shirts, and backwards cool-kid caps. I scampered off, side-eyeing every stupid little boy that got in my way. Safe from prying eyes, in the dressing room I tried on an outfit that probably would have been worn by one of the surfer kids I had a crush on in elementary school.

Needless to say, I did not think the style suited me.

Blah, blah, blah, I finished (most of) my list and here I am today -- a woman without a penis (though when I get anxious, I still get a bit of a tingling down there).

I have finally reached that once seemingly impossible point of knowing my own gender.

Some time after, I started to feel better and later learned that most of my anxiety was relieved after I stopped taking birth control pills. It turns out that I had high testosterone all along.

It also turns out that my "am I a man????" obsession (along with the dozen others) was a part of an overarching obsession about me thinking I would commit suicide, like my super dead mom. 

But I'll talk about that next week in my blog:

The Year I Thought I'd Commit Suicide

 (Like My Super Dead Mom)

---

This blog is probably very confusing. I apologize about that. Feel free to ask me questions on Facebook or in the comments. I will answer them with utter Taboo Tuesday honesty.

Tweet