Gender Identity?

MT, Cooka...I get you.  I've had reconstruction, but I now have that short hair that looks like my choice (I'm also nearly 6 ft tall, so I hear that Cooka).  I think you're awesome for not letting it get to you, but it does make me angry that people think it's okay to say those things to a woman.  What asses!  

I have chosen not to do the reconstructive surgery athough I am getting tired of being told I am in the wrong bathroom, or thats the womens bathroom but you can use it. Thinking seriously of making a t-shirt that says If I am in the wrong bathroom then so are you. The person that told me that that was the womens bathroom was a guard at a rest area in Alabama. I'm expecting one day to be arrested or at least detained at say Wal-Mart for using the womens bathroom and someone complains.

Interesting, I always associate hormones or physical traits with sex rather than gender. So while I could have breasts, fully producing ovaries etc., I could still blur the lines of my gender by dressing a certain way (pork-pie hat, etc.) I guess I think of gender as just one more way we identify in-groups or out-groups. Even without my breasts or hormones, and with my height, I could don some foobs and a wig and get a very good response from men who would see me as female gendered. I think I would also get a good response from women who would view me as 'appropriate.'  Right now, the pool of people who will consider me part of their in-group is smaller...but quality versus quantity, yes? As for sex, I do wonder about the influence of all this on my pheromones and other things that are hard to measure but also impact social interactions. My hormones were always a little problematic in some ways, but even so, I miss them. I have found ways around that though (but I am still a newbie), and for now my more superficial social interactions are more interesting to sort through.  I think for me, feeling sex-y has been more closely tied to feeling confident in my gender rather than my sex. The type of people who view me as attractive now are the type of people I want to attract...I am very "feminine " in many ways, and people who recognize this in me don't need breasts or long hair as a signpost to figure it out.

I love the analogy of the shadow, really had to stop and chew on that a while:)

I keep trying to get a grasp of what the difference between sex and gender is, and I'm not getting it. To me they are the same thing....

I think it would clarify things if we knew each other's ages and whether each of us has only recently gone through treatment, or is truly completely menopausal or not. I see a lot of posts by women who assume they are postmenopausal once they haven't had periods for a while, and the technical medical definition is 12 months without a period, but there is very little evidence to support that as being true postmenopause. It hasn't been adequately studied, and they have found that some women who retain their ovaries have significant hormonal influence as far out as a decade after they have stopped having periods.

Everyone worries about physical appearance to some degree. My nose is bigger than I'd like, and the chemotherapy has affected the appearance of my bone structure of course and my teeth over time. The only other issue related to appearance is in regard to weight, which was never a serious problem until menopause and slowing of metabolism to a crawl. Even then, and even though it took 6 years to shed the weight I'd never had before that was gained from being sick and stuck doing treatment for so long, I was able to shed it. As the metabolism slowed even more, it all came back even with the more extensive exercise and strict dieting.

I look feminine despite the weight, but I feel totally without gender and nonsexual, like a 5-year-old, and it is completely foreign territory for me. I tend to wear pretty overalls a lot because I am self-employed and work at home, and they are comfortable. I wear eyeliner and touch up my eyebrows because they disappeared with treatment, but I wear no other makeup. I wear feminine earrings and rings and a necklace.

My husband and I have been married for 39 years, 40 this fall. It is like living with a brother not a spouse.

In answer to your question, Outfield, no. Psychologically, since some of my work is in the medical field, it has been very traumatic that the very people who provide some measure for me of what sex and gender might be, including my PCP, act as if the loss to me is of no consequence at all.... as if I never had any gender or sex to begin with anyway.

A.A.

Alaska, I am 48. When DXed, I was 47 and not yet in menopause. Since DX, I have experienced chemopause, had a BMX, then had my ovaries and most of the uterus removed, and a week ago I started femara. Oh, and I have a HUGE nose by the way and a fairly masculine face.

I see a difference between sex and gender, and my first response on this thread was really more about the gender thing.  But I see the sexuality issue is a huge one and the thread has veered that way.

I am 46.  I was 44 when diagnosed and was perimenopausal then.  My hormone levels are measured regularly and show me to be emphatically menopausal - very, very low estrogens and very high (>100) FSH.  I haven't had a period since the day after my first chemo infusion, 7/22/2010. 

I find my lack of sexual desire very similar to the lack of appetite I experience when severely stressed or depressed.  It's a more powerful feeling than simply an absence of desire. 

I think my hair had more to do with my sexual identity than anything else.  I was upset with my short hair, which I realize some here keep theirs short anyhow, but you gotta understand mine was to my waist and I loved it.  I had a thought or two about how my hair, when it finally grew out a few inches, that it was looking sort of "butch," and while again I know some want to look that way, I did not.  Missing a boob, perhaps it's that I only miss one, which did not phase me, and in fact I haven't tried to hide it in any way with a fake one.  Now, I am 61 years old, went thru menopause ten years ago, drove me crazy in my mind, but the body, you see, makes estrogen anyway, just not as much.  I still felt female to male attraction plenty, I feel so close to my husband, I still feel my heart skip a beat when watching a romance movie. 

But I will say this.  After menopause, I lost some energy, and I knew I was not as driven by sex drive as my younger sisters.  But chemotherapy, I'm telling you, that took me all the way down.  What a shattering experience.  Took a while to get over that, left me with a form of post traumatic stress disorder, and THAT will take away everything you got.  It was only a couple months after rads, my last treatments, that I sort of realized how disconected from life and from myself I felt.  I took a long break there, to regain my footing.  Soon I was able to leave the disaster area that is cancer behind. 

Now, back when I had regular menopause, I didn't take anything like hormone replacement, I come from the "natural" hippy generation, and didn't want to go thru menopause any other way.  Of course, that change in estrogen did cause me to lose my mind.  This is why, when cancer visited me and treatment was done, and they gave me the pill to reduce estrogen to zero on account I'm estrogen positive, it drove me insane all over again, so I could not take that medicine anymore.  But like some of the others here, tho I dress casually, I still like a pretty scarf, I still put on a little makeup, simple jewelry, and my hair... oh, my hair is the most important thing to me.  I even bought some sparkly hair pins a few days ago so as to pretty up my incredibly silly looking short hair.  I did gain some weight during all this, so perhaps once I peal away that protective barrier, I'll begin to feel more vulnerable about being minus a boob.  Well, I reckon that's when I put a fake one in there somehow, like duct-taping some foam to the inside of my T-shirt?  Ha!  GG 

greenfrog,

We have to find the humor in it wherever we can, or we really suffer!

But your male friend is more accurate than not, and that is what I have tried to describe. A bc pal of mine with a dx similar to mine chose to do Herceptin without chemo, and she is only 4 years younger than I am and has had no loss of her sense of gender. She was already menopausal at time of dx, whereas I was premenopausal. A major difference between us is that she has not lost any of the "impetus" (which I believe is hormonally based) that drives her in ALL aspects of her life -- not just sexuality or gender.

I think that there is a tendency for medical providers to think of hormonal levels as only affecting sexuality, when they actually affect all aspects of sensuality.

The loss of total sensuality is what is so difficult to describe. It does affect gender and sexuality, but it is global, and not limited to just those specific areas of concern. I don't know how to "put it back".

greenfrog,

It is very precious to meet someone who has the understanding of the global loss involved. It is a loss of sensuality in toto, as opposed to depression due to cancer. It mimics depression. It is similar in that hearing music or experiencing other artistic endeavor is so muted by the loss of hormonal balance required to support it.

What is so remarkable to me is that people trained in medical theory who understand and accept that hormones drive sexuality, and who even understand that excess hormones can drive aggressive behavior, are so completely determinedly blind to the understanding that the lack of hormones has a similar effect on the thought processes and behavior. It is inconvenient for them to recognize that with current standard treatments favoring overtreatment as a method of saving the minority (who are primarily young and under the age of 50) they are also creating the likelihood of a majority who have lost function like you and I.

Two-thirds of those who have bc are diagnosed with it at age 55 or over.