My life story (abridged).
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Hello, my name is Mae Ditty. I was born in 1991 when little was publicized regarding gender variant individuals, and few people were knowledgably accepting of nonbinary-gender persons. This public ignorance, coupled with my nonconforming genitalia, presented my birthing doctor a difficult and dichotomous dilemma: to alter my genitalia and report the resultant sex or to leave it alone and notate the abnormality in the medical notes.
It was around the time that my first semester of the first year of middle school was ending that I began to sneak out at night, for walksies, to clear my muddled mind. And it was during one of these walks that I ambled to a park and sat on an empty swing, to swing and swing in spite of me because ‘nobody else is here’. When along came a spider who sat there beside me and asked why I was there. Except I really didn’t know, so I hung my head real low and said, “Really, I don’t know.” So I kept swinging, but then I got to thinking, “She’s here; maybe we can talk.” And although I couldn’t muster anything but a stutter, words started pouring out: “Am I a boy? I want to be a boy, cause that’s what my ID card says; I’m confused.”
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About a week later, we were hanging out, and while she was walking me home, she gave me a bag. “Here’s your man-pills. Make sure you eat a lot, sleep a lot, and hide them really well. But, could you do a favor for me?” I nodded, “When you get the chance, bring this box to the address written on it.” I nodded again, we parted ways, and I did what she told me during lunch the next day, because the place wasn’t far from school, and I never ate during lunchtime anyway.
She was right to leave me, though. My work had been prostitution, which—had she known—would undoubtedly have convinced her to hate me. But, without her, I fell apart. I thought about her and cried. I looked in the mirror and cried. I reminisced about the past and I cried. Without eating, only sleeping, I cried and cried about everything.
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And make changes I did! I immediately confessed to my squad leader and platoon leader my problems, and they in turn relayed my problems to the noncommissioned officers of my unit, all of whom—enlisted and not—were beyond kind and accommodating. So I researched extensively how one could be transgender within the military, because, with superiors like these, I was certain that I could do it.
Hello, my name is Mae Ditty. I was born in 1991 when little was publicized regarding gender variant individuals, and few people were knowledgably accepting of nonbinary-gender persons. This public ignorance, coupled with my nonconforming genitalia, presented my birthing doctor a difficult and dichotomous dilemma: to alter my genitalia and report the resultant sex or to leave it alone and notate the abnormality in the medical notes.
Though I do not know the doctor’s reasons, he opted to the former, thus my life was forever altered. And although I was confused by my genitalia growing up, I did not learn to question it until I was about 11, and my dearest classmate – god bless his heart - sneaked an adult magazine into school and I saw for the first time in great detail what normal genitalia looked like.
And, though I did not mention it to anybody, I was utterly confused. Why did I have two buttholes? It just didn’t seem right. So, not knowing where to look for more nudity, I turned to the library and quickly found in medical texts images of bestial nudity. And there it was! No animal had two anuses. I was a freak! Unless, I ruminated, animals had different digestive anatomy, which seemed entirely probably after researching the cow’s four stomachs.
So I asked the teacher, “Miss Matthews, do animals have the same—down there—as us?” And she replied, “Why yes! At least the mammals do.” At this point I was too severely embarrassed to continue this line of questioning, so, “Okay,” had to suffice.
There I had it, a more-or-less definitive proof that I was abnormal which doomed me to a year of awkwardly using the bathroom stall in a severe effort to evade the prying eyes of other boys. At least, I thought they were prying; don’t all guilty individuals experience paranoia of some sort?
Yes, the guilt of being different was a thorn in my side that would thrive and persist even up to recent years, but that’s got little to do with twelve year old me. Twelve year old me was in middle school one wintry weekday, sitting in on a class about sexual education. This, of course, coincided with President Bush the Second’s wonderful idea to censor sex ed. classes, but I had the wonderful coincidence of being pupil to the radically hip substitute teacher Mr. Smith for this particular class. And Mr. Smith, having been the radically hip guy that I just said he was, was resolute in his goal of properly educating the youth to a brighter future regarding sexual health, wellness and awareness.
Indeed, he completely deviated from the established course and explained to everyone that what is ‘down there’ is absolutely healthy and perfectly normal, regardless of how others or we may view it, and how—because we were virgins—we should not worry about such things as HIV and herpes, because such things require contact to spread. But, he cautioned us, that other complications, such as yeast infections and rot, may still occur if we do not take the time to tidy up, and that we should therefore do our due diligence and wash from head to toe regularly. Yes, he taught to us many things: the ins-and-outs of condoms and birth control; the highly anticipated process of puberty, its symptoms, and its struggles; and finally, the anatomy of the different sexes to include what’s in-between.
Glory; halleluiah! Finally, an answer to my questions. What was I? In-between.
Unfortunately, the class ended soon after he’d covered anatomy, and due to his substitute status, I never did see him again. But hey, I had my answer! I was normal; I was in-between.
But, so then, why was nobody else in-between? I went to the library to investigate more mammalian genitalia for answers, but the only answer I could find was “not many”.
So, like most irresponsible people do with their problems, I put it out of my mind. I was a boy just like every other boy, just like it said on my library card: M is for boy; so I was a boy, end of.
It was around the time that my first semester of the first year of middle school was ending that I began to sneak out at night, for walksies, to clear my muddled mind. And it was during one of these walks that I ambled to a park and sat on an empty swing, to swing and swing in spite of me because ‘nobody else is here’. When along came a spider who sat there beside me and asked why I was there. Except I really didn’t know, so I hung my head real low and said, “Really, I don’t know.” So I kept swinging, but then I got to thinking, “She’s here; maybe we can talk.” And although I couldn’t muster anything but a stutter, words started pouring out: “Am I a boy? I want to be a boy, cause that’s what my ID card says; I’m confused.”
At that, she stood up and stared at me for a while, then laughed. “Well you’re not very tall, and you don’t look very tough, but I might know someone who can help you. My name is Vicky. What’s yours?”
I don’t know why my response was immediate, but it was, and it was, “David.” She smiled, turned around, and started walking away. I stared. She was a few meters away when she stopped, turned around, and asked why I wasn’t following. So I said, “Oh,” and tagged along. She told me about her friends, how cool they were, how I should meet them, and how they spent their time. Me, I just listened a lot—I wasn’t very talkative at that age—and she seemed fine with that. Eventually she asked me if I could keep a secret. I nodded, and she told me that she didn’t really like her parents, followed by a lot of stuff that I didn’t really understand.
My watch beeped because it was 2am. So I told her I had to go home, and I did. But as I was walking away, she went and caught up to me, and then just followed me home.
I never did see her during the daytime, though I did spend a lot of time thinking about her during the day; we only ever saw each other during our after-hours walks, and they really did seem to be ours now, because we always seemed to run into each other during them.
We got along really well, and one night she invited me to hang out with her friends. So we walked to an unfamiliar neighborhood and knocked on an unfamiliar door; an unfamiliar adult answered and told us that Eric and Gary were downstairs. So we descended into the basement, where there were two boys playing video games. “Who’s the squirt,” one of them asked, whereupon she kissed me on the cheek and said, “This is my boyfriend, David.”
“What is he, eleven?” exclaimed the other boy. “Twelve, but he’s cool.” “Whatever,” and they went back to playing video games. “No really! He’s very mature for his age. I bet he can even beat you in Super Smash Bros.” He laughed. The other one, the one not laughing, Gary, popped in Super Smash Bros and winked at Eric. I was terrible at video games though, so I lost.
Nearly a year had passed since I met her, I was thirteen, and my questions about my manhood were pretty far from my mind, until Eric—then fifteen—the oldest of any of us, began to beef up. We all noticed it, but nobody really said anything, so I assumed that it was natural. But it made me feel really insignificant. I hadn’t grown a single bit, where everybody around me had grown. Why was I the only scrawny short kid around? So one day, when she and I were alone, I asked her about it, and she was shocked that I didn’t know. He’d been using steroids. So I asked, “Could I use them too?” At first she laughed, but then she realized that I was serious, said sure, and asked if I had any money for them. I didn’t. But she said, “No problem,” and that was that.
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About a week later, we were hanging out, and while she was walking me home, she gave me a bag. “Here’s your man-pills. Make sure you eat a lot, sleep a lot, and hide them really well. But, could you do a favor for me?” I nodded, “When you get the chance, bring this box to the address written on it.” I nodded again, we parted ways, and I did what she told me during lunch the next day, because the place wasn’t far from school, and I never ate during lunchtime anyway.
They guy gave me an envelope, told me to keep it, and so I gave it to Vicky later that night. She said thanks, reached into the envelope, pulled out some money, counted it, smiled, and gave me a twenty. Such was my initiation to a gratuitous allowance, the underground, and a lot of pointless fights which, turns out, the testosterone made me really good at.
It wasn’t until after Vicky dumped me that I started to feel weird about my appearance again. My genitalia was more distinctly male, my voice clearly more masculine, but something was wrong, and I wasn’t even swallowing the testosterone anymore.
I scheduled an appointment with a sympathetic doctor, paying out-of-pocket, to see if he knew what was wrong. He looked me over, did the whole breathe in breathe out thing, checked my reflexes, and then checked my genitalia. “Do you recall any work being done on your genitals?” he asked. I said no, because I didn’t, and then he sat down. “There is scarring down there near your anus which indicates either a long-persisting venereal disease or some past trauma. Have you ever been molested?” Another definitive no, because I had never been molested. “Have you ever heard of the term ‘intersex’, David? Because it is highly likely that you were born with some mixture of both features,” he paused, “If you’d like, we could run some blood tests to find out more. Of course, they are fairly expensive, and you may need to ask your parents for help.”
I immediately refused the doctor’s proposal, both for blood work and for my parents’ help. In hindsight, I wish that I’d accepted his proposal, but hindsight is 20-20 and what’s done is done. He was really polite about my refusal though; he backed off about it immediately and simply asked how I wanted to proceed.
Really, I didn’t know how I wanted to proceed. I was just really angry that nobody had told me. Why had nobody told me? In an effort to quell my emotions, I focused all my energy into meditation—something I’d been taught at an early age—and fighting. I fought so much, every chance I got, and people got scared of me. ‘Which is fine for me,’ I told myself, and kept telling myself until one day I found myself, sixteen years old with failing grades, no familial support, and a swelling mass of negative emotion and regret. So I decided I’d set a goal: I held my hand over a map of the US, eyes closed, dropped my finger onto a location, searched the nearest university in that area, repeated that process two more times, and therefore steeled myself to attending Purdue, Embry Riddle, or the University of Michigan in descending order of importance.
Two years of immense focus later, I received a letter in the mail – Embry Riddle with a nine-thousand a year scholarship. Shortly after, I received another letter in the mail – Purdue with no scholarship. Then I promptly accepted the invitation to Purdue. I would become a Boilermaker and excel where my father had failed, the School of Electrical Engineering. And succeed I did. I worked concurrent to my studies, yet maintained a GPA above 3.0 and even met the love of my life all in the first year of studying.
Her name was Rachel. And every moment that I wasn’t studying, in class, or working, I spent with her. And, more than three years later, despite my joining the military and despite my many flaws, we were still in love. But, her biological clock was ticking; she wanted kids, but she would not conceive outside of wedlock, and—fearing her eternal soul—she would not wed an Atheist, which I was, am, and suppose to continue being.
She was right to leave me, though. My work had been prostitution, which—had she known—would undoubtedly have convinced her to hate me. But, without her, I fell apart. I thought about her and cried. I looked in the mirror and cried. I reminisced about the past and I cried. Without eating, only sleeping, I cried and cried about everything.
I increased my workload and tried to forget. I failed all my classes and I tried to forget. My grandpa died and I tried to forget. I ****** so many people just trying to forget. But I really couldn’t. My dad was schizophrenic and I could not forget.
Something was wrong, not just in the past, but in the present, something with me, and I could not fathom what. And somewhere in my despair, I figured on helping other people. Maybe, by helping enough people, I could help myself. So all the money that I’d saved from prostitution, in Paypal and in bills, I spent it on other people. I launched a huge campaign, renting housing for over six-hundred homeless across the US, fitting four to every two room apartment and paying it forward for the entire leased year. But, even when the money was gone, I didn’t feel much better. It still hurt to look in the mirror, to reminisce, to even get out of bed. So what was wrong?
I threw out everything I owned, except my computer, except my video games, except my bed, except some of the things that reminded me of Rachel, except some of the things that reminded me of family, except my cat toys, except a lot of things. All these things that I couldn’t bear to get rid of, and the thing which saw me hesitate the least were my clothes. I found that I despised them. Bags and bags of clothing at the dumpster I threw, every last top, bottom and undergarment just had to go—except the fetish wear. At first, I reasoned that they were for my job. Then I reasoned that they were mostly gifts from clients. But then, then I realized that they were the only clothes that I legitimately felt comfortable in, and my mind swelled with thoughts of self-loathing and disgust.
Eventually I remembered how helpful that doctor was all those years ago, so I counted my pennies and booked an appointment for a doctor.
Doctor’s appointment came up, and I choked out that I seemed to like womens’ clothing, as something for me, not them. To which his immediate response was to ask if I’d sought mental help. Thinking back, this was incredibly rude of him, but at the time it seemed nothing but insightful. So I sought out a counselor, booked an appointment, and told her my problems. Eventually she confessed to me that my problems were nothing she was prepared for, and so recommended I see Lou Ann at Purdue.
Despite great discomfort with even the thought of confessing my problems to another stranger, I agreed. She made an appointment for me with Lou Ann and the very next week Lou Ann and I sat in a room together for some thirty minutes of silence followed by an hour of passionate bawling confession, at the end of which, she asked me to sign some consent forms and made me an appointment to go meet Dr. Wang at IU Arnett.
A few days later, I found myself in Dr. Wang’s office. Turned out that Lou Ann had already forwarded him all of her notes on me and that she had sent me to him to get information about Hormone Replacement Therapy, a medically supervised process during which a patient’s hormones are gradually replaced with those of the average female, where the intent is to help transform the patient’s body to better match her own self-image. This, for me, was unprecedented. I had never even fathomed that this was possible, much less what I desired. And I did desire it. But, I was scared how this would play out with being in the military, and therefore explained my worries to him.
He comforted me with the notion that many females maintain the male PT standard within the armed forces today, and that it would take many months for my hormonal changes to be visible to others, thus affording me much time to make changes. Then, with a firm confidence that I would do what needed to be done, he prescribed me an excess of hormones, informed me how I should take them and at what dosages, and sent me on my merry way.
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And make changes I did! I immediately confessed to my squad leader and platoon leader my problems, and they in turn relayed my problems to the noncommissioned officers of my unit, all of whom—enlisted and not—were beyond kind and accommodating. So I researched extensively how one could be transgender within the military, because, with superiors like these, I was certain that I could do it.
But my ambitions were cut short by Army Regulation 40-501 paragraph 3-35b which to this day reads
“[Gender Identity issues] render an individual administratively unfit rather than unfit because of physical illness or medical disability. [Gender Identity issues] will be dealt with through administrative channels, including AR 135–175, AR 135–178, AR 635–200, or AR 600–8–24.”
There was no getting around it. Realizing my gender more than likely meant discharge without full honors, and discharge without full honors would be career-ending for most anybody who aspires to make anything of themself. This outcome, of course, was unacceptable. So I talked to my superiors about it; they talked among themselves. And eventually they concluded that it would be best for me to leave nothing to chance and handle the discharge paperwork themselves so that I could be given a proper medical discharge.
And, many months, more appointments, tons of HRT doses and a name change later, I opened my mailbox to find my discharge papers. Of course, it had my birth name on it, and in retrospect I should have had that changed while I still could. But still, it represents to me a sort of trophy, in fewer than twelve months I built myself from the bottom up into a better person, a happier person, a more splendid me than I ever could have imagined in any of the years I’ve lived prior to this splendiferous, remarveloutastic year of personal growth.
Even so, after so much change, there is much yet to achieve. So, this May the fifteenth, I am moving back to Alaska, back in with the rents, with high hopes of restoring familial bonds and saving money for the gender confirming surgeries as well as the college tuition, which, when both coupled with a fulfilling job, I feel will complete me so that I can begin completing others, one adopted teenager at a time.
Of course, through all this personal growth I’ve realized that I could never have made it from those pits even to where I am now without the loving kindness and help of so many people, so now I ask for just a little bit more—whatever you can spare—to help me finish my journey that I may begin to help others on theirs.
For those of you who want to help, here is the link to my page: You need to login to view this link And know that even if you're not inclined to make any donations, you can still make a huge difference by sharing and getting my story out there.
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