Monday, July 8, 2013

about body image and trans feelings and trying to write another essay for the Jim Collins grant

I wanted to write about this essay I'm trying to write for the Jim Collin's Grant, and some about  the intesity of trans feelings, and about seeing some pictures recently that were taken of me in college.

I looked really feminine. Alot more so than I realized. I looked alot like I do now. I wasn't hiding this whole trans thing quite a deeply as I thought.

And then about my appearance. I don't think I'm shallow but looking like a woman is really really important to me, or at least believing that I do. I mean, us trans women sometimes get shit on about obsessing with our appearance and posting a thousand pitures of ourselves...but then again we've lived a significant portion of our lives being called men, and being told how masculine we look, and even telling ourselves that. It's not that passing is the end all be all, but our sense of gender really is.

I mean, if I were to here things like "he's really a man" all the time, or even just constantly being "he'd" I'd probably suffer from some form of depression. Actually, I think I did back when I did. 

I mean when you transition you have a stage of gender euphoria when you first allow yourself to express yourself as the gender you identify with, but it wears off after a while. It stops being something special, it's just how you dress and who you are. If after all of that, and even maybe years of expressing who you are through the clothing you wear you still have everyone misgendering you...it takes someone really strong. I mean for a trans woman to be called "he" is basically saying to her that you think that deep down at one of her deepest levels you think she is a fake. And since our gender is such an essential truth to who we are, something that we are willing to risk our lives for, it really really hurts.

I hope that someday we live in a society where neough people understand gender that it is easy to dismiss someone who says "that's really a man," but right now we don't. If that was something I heard all the time, or chose to hear all the time, or thought I heard all the time...I might just be a little suicidal.

I mean, it actually really affected me hearing that a trans woman my age, who I saw at Babe's regularly, and who I'd spoken with a couple of times, had committed suicide. I don't know her well enough to say what her reasoning was. Or even speculate. But I do know she dealt with the same condition that for the grace of God didn't take my life, and I wanted to write something about it.

I write this blog to give a sense about who I am as a person. I write it both so that people who are in the same place I was before I transitioned can read my experience and so that people who aren't trans, maybe can know that I'm a real person. I don't live my life in costume. I really am female, and being trans can really hurt.

The final thing I want to write about is this essay I'm in the process of writing for the Jim Collin's foundation. Basically I need to explain who I am and how surgery is in my plan for the future. Basically why do I want a vagina.

Okay, yes. I do want to have sex, sex that I'm not going to feel somewhat disconnected from, uncomfortable with, and for the most part dissapointed with. I know I need a vagina for that...

But I don't want to write 800 words about wanting to have sex. That will make me sound like a perv. 

I will feel complete, it will relieve an awful lot of discomfort I feel in my body. I'll be more comfortable at the beach, or at a pool, or at a club, or hell wearing blue jeans in the kitchen, anywhere it occasionally comes untucked. It will make things a lot more comfortable without having to deal with all the secondary issues of tucking all the time...not that it is painful to tuck, but it does get uncomfortble holding it all between my legs when it is supper hot outside. It'll be nice to be able to make out with someone and not have to worry about it poping out, I mean, not that anyone I ever make out with doesn't know but it kills my mood when that thing is present.

I don't know. It isn't really an easy essay to write. 

If you're a woman...why do you need a vagina.



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