The Gender Tourist

I re-wrote the title of this post several times and I'm still not quite happy with it. I hereby reserve the right to re-title this in the future once my thoughts take better form and add context to the subject. With that said, there have necessarily been many stages of coming out as I have journeyed along this path and for the sake of the current situation I want to review them almost as much for my own understanding as I do for late developments. Introducing (exposing?) Allie to the world has taken many forms over many years and always has led to greater understanding and self acceptance for me (and occasionally for others).  Some have been accidental, some unexpected, some filtered and some planned and then ultimately the most recent unplanned (but not entirely unpredictable) exposition which has led to this posting. As with the rest of this blog so far, I'll begin chronologically because its the only way I know (even though I suspect for blogging purposes getting to th

Somewhere around age 10, my parents got a letter from the school advising that there was going to be a presentation on sex ed. We've all probably been through similar experiences and mine was no different with relation to the school's approach. But I do have very distinct recollections of "The talk" that was prompted by this letter. As I look back with an eye towards self-examination I can see that this moment in my life was probably the first time I began to realize that I wasn't fully aligned with the proper gender group. My mother and I sat down and she attempted to explain the differing sexual physiologies to me. I think the responsibility fell upon my mom to talk to me, because my dad was at work during the opportune moments; but also perhaps because he was always exceedingly uncomfortable with opening up and sharing any kind of personal or sensitive emotion or context. Not that he was a prude; he just always was guarded and never really shared or talked ab