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4 February - what does this mean?

I wrote yesterday that a bit of playful role play with a friend had turned rather serious and she had hit me with some difficult questions that I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to. 

Naturally I immediately fell into yet another cycle of “this is all impossible, I should give up this whole trans nonsense idea, what was I even thinking?”! 

No surprise there.

Anyways…

So the thing she said that I couldn’t deal with was “what does that mean?”  

It hadn’t really occurred to me that some of these things need to be explained. I know what I mean when I say I feel like a woman inside and within the community of trans women I talk to online, they do too, so I take for granted that it is understood.  

That isn’t necessarily the case though for non-trans people.  People who don’t obsess about their gender don’t really think about what it might feel like to be the other, or even what it feels to be the gender they are, because they just are and don’t question it.

How do I explain what it means then?

I don’t really feel like a man.  What does that mean?

I don’t relate to or want to have masculine characteristics. I have no wish to be manly or dominant or strong or unemotional and certainly not misogynistic or chauvinistic or aggressive. I know that is not all men, but it is definitely not me.

I don’t feel comfortable with groups of men and I don’t fit in, or have much to say to them and sometimes male conversations are uncomfortable for me. 

By contrast I feel totally comfortable and at home with groups of women, feel like that is where I fit in and I can make conversation naturally and feel part of it.

My closest friends have always been female, but I envy real female friendships which can be even closer. I yearn for that.

Simply, I always wished I was a girl. That just fits who I am in a way that man doesn’t.  

I still don’t feel like I can articulate it properly, particularly defining something by what it is not doesn’t really work. I need to work this out.


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