Back in February 2021 I wrote a post about whether I needed to be a girl or to be like a girl. Leaving aside the rather depressing fact that two and a half years have passed and I’m no further forward, how have my thoughts on this developed over time?
Although this is sort of related to the “am I trans enough” question, “to be a girl or to be like a girl” was how I characterised it in my mind and when discussing my feelings with my ally friend. The question is not exactly the same as “am I trans enough”, it starts from a premise that I am trans, but what do I need to do with that.
Back then, I was trying to figure out whether being like a girl was enough for me, or if I needed to become a girl. This framed it as two simple(?) options: be like a girl was sort of like I am, a not very masculine male with occasional female presentation; whereas to be a girl meant transition.
As I put it in that post:
To be a girl, I mean going the whole way and transitioning. To actually fully become female. Or is that I want to be able to be like a girl when I want to be, which does not involve major interventions and change, just being able to dress sometimes, grow my hair, have female friends and be seen as “one of the girls”.
Where my thinking has developed is in realising there are many more options within those options.
I could be like a girl and continue in secret, or allow some people to know and present female with them whilst remaining secret from others, or I could be out but fluid and present female sometimes in my life but without transitioning as such.
On the being a girl front, there is social transition, medical transition and surgical transition.
It is far more complicated than just “do I want to be a girl or to be like a girl?”
I knew the answer back in 2021 (and 1991 to be honest), I wish to be a girl, which means to transition, but I was too afraid to do it. Still am.
In 2021 I used the phrase “to actually fully become female” in reference to transitioning, which I guess meant I was viewing it as needing to do everything, including the hormones and reassignment surgery. Although transitioning doesn’t necessarily mean all of that, it is only the total physical change that feels right for me. Something else I knew in 1991, when I first discovered that a “sex change” was possible through a tv documentary, I knew immediately that was me, but I was too afraid to admit it or do anything about it.
If I had my “fairy godmother wish” or magic button or however we like to describe it, I would without hesitation be a cis woman. That should tell me everything about what kind of transition I wish for.
I can’t magically become a cis woman however much I wish for that. The closest I could get is to transform my body with hormones and surgery. To socially transition without changing my body doesn’t feel enough, and to only partially transform it but retain male parts feels somehow worse. I know different levels of transformation are still valid and right for the people that choose them but I think I have always equated transition with reassignment surgery in my mind and that is what feels right for me.
Can I identify why I feel that? I’m not sure. I think when I first learned about a “sex change” as a teenager, I took it that there was a process that goes to surgery and that was what you do, so I internalised that assumption. Also, having grown up in the eighties when opinions on everything LGBT were very negative, I had internalised the idea that cross dressing was wrong and “transvestites” were something different from transsexuals (forgive the old terminology) and very much seen as men in dresses. The fear of being found out as some kind of “queer” at school in that era is what has kept me in the closet my whole adult life.
Those aren’t the reasons I wish to transform my body. My wish is to be a woman and to feel what it feels to be a woman. And that means I need my body, as far as is possible, to be a woman’s body.
I started wearing bras to get some sense of how it felt to be like the girls, but it could only give me part of it, because I couldn’t feel what it is like to have breasts, which is the thing that I really longed to feel. The only way I can ever experience that is through hormones. If anything in my trans experience could be considered “simple” then it this: I wish to have real breasts of my own, therefore I have to take hormones to medically transition.
The language is difficult here though, am I talking about a want or a need? I definitely want to have breasts, but can I really say I need them? I suppose if I am transitioning then it very much would be a need, but from where I am currently, not really, I can carry on without. So I would say I wish to have breasts, it’s more than just want, but in my current context, not a need. Or maybe the words don’t matter? But everything feels like it matters.
Anyway, having said that my wish for breasts is an easy clear cut thing, the wish for reassignment surgery is not quite so obvious. Do I want/wish for/need a vagina? I wish I were a woman and that’s what cis women have, so yes, it’s a need in that context. Also, cis women don’t have a penis, and I feel strongly that I would be incomplete and feel wrong to have breasts and a penis. So maybe it isn’t so much that I wish for a vagina as that I wish to not have a penis? I wonder if this is because I can’t even imagine what it might be like to have a vagina, so I can’t relate to it and so can’t feel a positive draw towards that? I can comprehend why not having a penis would be right, mainly to be “not man”, to feel comfortable to access female spaces, and also so underwear and fitted clothing is appropriate and comfortable, but I simply have no concept of what that would feel like. I suppose another part of it is that I am solely attracted to females, so don’t envisage that I would ever have intercourse and so there isn’t a compelling reason for getting a vagina if I’m not going to “use it”. But somehow I still want or wish for (and maybe need?) reassignment surgery.
It’s really quite confusing being me, I know what I want but don’t really know why, and even though I know what I want I still can’t do it and am afraid to admit it even to myself. Although I have alluded to some of these things in previous posts, it still feels scary to explicitly state some of these things.
Is there any kind of conclusion to be drawn from these ramblings?
I wish to be a girl.
At least that question is answered. And I know that means transitioning in every way possible. So that is clear too.
Am I going to do it? That is still unknown.
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