This journey has been long and all the time, I am learning about myself.
There has been a whole lot of self doubt and questioning and going around and around the same loops. But I think it’s all coming together and making sense now.
I’m now clear that it isn’t clothing. I’m not as I have sometimes worried, just a cross dresser who has got carried away with the idea and thinks he’s trans. Wearing a skirt is nice, but it doesn’t mean anything on its own.
Nor is it about female embodiment fantasy or autogynephilia. Sure the idea of boobs is nice but I have found that the more I normalise thinking of myself as a woman, the less I think about the physical aspects as an end in themselves and more just as a thing that I will have because that’s normal for women.
It is far more important to me to be able to fit in with women, be one of the girls and be accepted as one of them. Wearing a skirt by myself doesn’t do that. Some of the happiest times of my life have revolved around close female friendships and where I have been able to be part of a group as an “honorary girl”, the highest honour I could hope for.
The heart of my transness is not how I look but how I am perceived and accepted.
It was easier to be part of female groups when I was younger and at university. In older adult life it isn’t so easy to find a way in. But even if I can, there has always been a limit. I have only ever achieved partial acceptance because for all that I might behave as one of the girls, they know that I’m not really and there is always just a hint you’re not really one of us. And in later life it’s harder still because there’s always going to be an assumption that a straight man befriending a woman has an ulterior motive.
Also, on early acquaintance presenting as male means that I am read as male and assumptions are made. But that is not who I am.
Do I need to transition to have female friends and be part of their groups? Not necessarily. But although I can have some of those experiences and relationships, I will always be at least partially an outsider.
If I socially transition and can be read as female, then maybe I can overcome the assumptions that go with being seen as a man and be more readily accepted for who I am.
Do I need to medically transition to do that or could I just do it through clothing and hair? Maybe, but I would still be conscious of my male body and others would know. The emotional changes that different hormones cause will also allow me to be more genuinely female. Plus the feminising effects enable me to better pass and be read as female.
Is it necessary then to go the whole way with surgery? I really think it is. I can’t fully be a woman with a male part. And how can I be fully accepted as one if I still have one. That fear that men are only after one thing must always exist somewhere in women’s minds if I still have one. And I respect women’s rights to safe women only spaces. I don’t think that I could feel comfortable changing at the pool and the gym, or in the ladies loos if I still have a penis. And I don’t want anyone to ever tell me I don’t belong here because of it.
So I can rationalise it. I am a woman and genuinely a woman and not for other reasons. I need to fully transition to be able to comfortably live as one. It all makes sense now.
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