Can’t I just be a man?

There’s a whole load of similar questions that I could ask:

- Why do I want to be a woman, can’t I just be a man?

- Can’t I just cross dress in secret and that be enough?

- Why socially transition, can’t I just keep Nicola for weekends?

- Why change my body with hormones, can’t I just wear breast forms?

- Why surgically transition, can’t I just keep things as they are? 

I started off thinking about things people might say if I came out to them and then at each stage of the process. A sort of anticipatory “handling objections” list, like you would in a sales approach. Although it would be a pretty weird sales call! 

But this has got me thinking and I realised that I need to be able to answer these questions to myself. Each of those questions is important and relates to a step along a journey, each a major escalation on the last.  If I ask myself would I like to start that journey, and take each of those steps, and all of them to the end, my feeling is: yes to all, but I’m afraid to actually go through with it.

Perhaps it is better to try and answer the opposites, what is the alternative to taking the step, and do I want that? 

So I guess the alternative to transition and becoming a woman is staying as a man. Ok, there’s non-binary and gender fluid and lots of other ways to be, but for the purposes of this thought experiment, let’s keep it reasonably simple and not create too many options. 

Hence: why can’t I just be a man?

Well I suppose I can. After all, I am currently living as one, and have done all my life, so why not continue doing that?  It’s certainly easier, doesn’t involve massive upheaval or potential negative consequences. It’s sort of fine, in as much as it isn’t terrible or something that I can’t tolerate. Nor do I foresee anything that is going to make it intolerable. After all, if I have dreamed of being a girl for thirty five years and managed to carry on being not a girl all that time, there’s no reason to think that I won’t be able to continue getting by.  

Which all sort of suggests that the answer to the question must be: I can just be a man. 

Do I want to? Not so much.  Does the idea of being a man forever inspire or excite me? No.  Can I think of any aspect of being a man that I love and want to hang on to? No. 

Thinking about it another way, if some how I was magically transformed into a woman, would I want to change back? No! Can’t think of any reason why I would.  

Being a man is just a bit “meh” and uninteresting to me. 

Am I getting to any kind of useful conclusions here or just rambling? I have managed to be a man for a long time and can probably carry on doing so. Bet you’re glad you’ve carried on reading this far for that great insight.

Except that I haven’t actually been “a man” really.  I have been ostensibly male, but all the time hiding that I feel differently. 

And that’s my reality. I appear to be a man to the world but that isn’t who I am. I can continue to present as a man for my whole life but that is never going to make me one. So I wouldn’t ever fully be myself or be fully engaged with my life because it doesn’t feel like me. For me to “be a man” would be just as much a “transition” from where my inner feelings are now, as physically becoming a woman would be.

I have worried that I can “just be a man” and my only real answer to why become a woman is “because I want to” and that doesn’t feel enough or something that I can rationalise and explain so isn’t valid. But I am now realising that it is enough and it is valid. 

This has been a difficult one to write and get my thoughts straight on.