Thank you so much for openly sharing your experiences, Steve, as it speaks so
much the impact that sexuality/identity/inner being feelings has within the
greater community to help us get a deeper understanding of all of the pieces
that are missing within society, as well as within Constellations around this
topic.
Your understanding of the polarities even within the medical approach to
transgendered issues is an important one to note. I
believe there are many people who can relate feeling like they are a different
gender than what one was born as. I can, absolutely, relate on this level and
I’m not sure if it’s from the way society views a girl/woman, meaning that I’m
supposed to want children, wear pretty things and not cross the boundary of
hanging out only with guys, believing that it must mean that I’m sexually
flirting with them or interested in them for something more instead of the
reality that I prefer just hanging out with guys more so than hanging out with
ultra-femme women who only talked about kids and shopping and other things that
make my eyes glaze over.
So all of this to say that I believe this feeling that precedes the operation
is something that many of us have within us – the yin/yang, social expectations
and perceptions, hormonal issues, etc. However, many do not discuss this
feeling in terms of being transgendered or transsexual, yet it’s actually
internally much more common and normal within many of us. It’s the brave person
to actually decide to physically make the changes in order to feel comfortable
in his/her own skin that allows each of us to grow in the courage to truly be
oneself or to want to interact in the world in a way that matches one’s
internal feelings.
Yet, in the community, it definitely can shift relationships in a drastic way,
and finding ways to integrate the person transitioning and all relationships to
come to inclusiveness and acceptance on all levels is important for full love
to flow.
Warmest regards,
Heather
From: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Eimear O'Neill
Sent: Sunday, July 07, 2013 1:27 PM
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ConstellationTalk] Re: New genders
Your words reach me Steve. I so appreciate the depth and the heart in your
understandings of systems.
Does that mean I will follow your understanding blindly for the rest of my
life? No. What feels good is that you welcome response. It is not from on high.
I do not do Hellingerisms, Freudian slips, or Holy Father anything' any longer
without my Holy Mother, Cosmic Life-giver, and Star Origins. Radical
inclusivity means this is beyond human gender and sexualities as we have
currently decided they are constructed! This is also both/and fully rooted and
told in our bodies, in our biological realities as they unfold in relationship
with others, with all our relations. Women bear human life, men seed it.
Selecting which sperm are taken into the ovum arises at the membrane of the
ovum as far as we have some understanding of these things. We will get to know
more about that.
Transformative understandings become deeper and more interesting, ever more
truly erotic and life-celebrating, as it goes on becoming ever more inclusive
and recursive.Those on Constellation Talk know that we deal with in
constellations work is more than about humans' current ways of handing emerging
genders and sexualities. The wave of transformation in human conscious that we
are presently riding, is a rogue wave. Tumultous. Rapid and disruptive at
multiple deep levels in our functioning together as a species on one planet.
This goes beyond any human binary ways of talking about women or men as if they
were "the opposite gender" rather than the "other gender". This feeds into our
future, into our vision of care-taking together, of care-giving, peace-keeping,
peace-building, knowledge and education, visionary leadership and connection to
larger Spirit together. Then we are then more in our healing roles, more fully
sharing this planet as one earthed community. Dynamic, co-creating... and in it
for the long haul....... doing what Joanna Macy calls "acting our age" at 67
billion years old.
We need to keep a loving gaze on those patriarchal loyalties that hold men and
women in thrall to cultural norms and fragmented in their emerging selves, to
free them further from spiritual , political, tribal or corporate empires bent
on exclusionary principles or the principle of extermination of the other. This
is killing our very survival in diversity. Primarily these are a small tiny
number of humans from many peoples whose intention is to serve human profit no
matter the cost to the peoples, species, or living forms destroyed in doing
that. Constellations work is in transformation. Let us put loving intention
into working together lovingly, each from our own places within the wave... all
emergent selves moving into other ways of being together. It is following life
to do so.
With appreciation for all in the web of life,
Eimear
On 2013-07-07, at 9:23 AM, Steve Vinay Gunther wrote:
As the son of a ts person (my father), I have pondered this a great deal.
None of the constellations I have done regarding my father have revealed
anything specific about the origins of his 'gender dysphoria', but then, that
wasn't what I was trying to explore in them.
Whatever mandatory 'counselling' is required for people considering a gender
transition tends to be quite shallow, with no systemic orientation at all.
And the whole transition process is conducted by the medical profession as if
its just one person going through the transition, where of course its
actually a whole family, a circle of friends, and often a workplace where
that person resides. This lack of a systemic sensitivity or interest is very
damaging for the whole system, and everyone involved, and usually results in
the fragmentation of relationships.
That aside, its true that our constellation work is very much grounded in the
biological facts. And in this case, my father is and always will be my
father. It was his maleness that I came out of.
So the first constellation I did on the subject of his transition was
culminated by a beautiful line which Pytor and Otteline gave me: 'You are my
father, and you will always be my father, and I bow before your fate'. I
still remember that line on a regular basis. Its kind of like honouring order
and weight, while giving precedence to new systems.
And the social context for transsexuals is very difficult - they basically
have to choose a binary because thats how our world operates. But in fact,
they are not really someone of the opposite gender, no matter how much they
may identify with that. They are, in my opinion, a transsexual, something
which involves a unique holding of the two polarities. Without space to do
that, and perhaps even find some kind of integration, the only option seems
to be a split: 'I was a man, now I am a woman'. Thats certainly the path my
father chose, and now considers his male self to be another person, separate
from her current identity. She literally cut that part of herself off.
As a son, of course, I want him/her to hold both truths. But its too much,
and its up to me to hold both those truths. I am in contact with many
children of ts' and they all have similar struggles.
If you are interested, you can read an article I wrote more than a decade ago
for the Australian:
http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-August-1997/gunther.html
I get a letter every few weeks from a child of a ts who has read it, and
reaches out for support - theres not many resources out there.
Well, this is a fascinating topic, and I am interested to see where else the
discussion might lead∑
Vinay