Anyway, I've been inside all day. First thing that I came across on Facebook was Cathy Brennan's blog which is really sad to me.
It's sad that to her I, and every woman the same as I, are just men with some sort of delusion or kink or whatever. It's sad that she doesn't recognize the legitimacy of my lived experience, and that she is totally unopen to the experiences and insights of anyone with an experience similar to mine. It's sad that she is so adamant about her views on this matter, something which cisgender people cannot really understand, that she has to be extremely outspoken about it and use all her skills as a writer and lawyer to "prove" to everyone else that we don't exist.
I can't imagine that anyone who takes the time to get to know me can possibly think of me as anything other than a woman. I just can't imagine it.
But there's no point in arguing with someone who is so set in their belief.
I read one entry where she argued against points made by a trans woman, about the legitimacy of the trans experience. I didn't read a whole lot more.
I wish I could share with her, and everyone else my experience with this but I can't. It's just something so out of the realms of cis experience.
Basically what I took from her argument is that her opinion is that trans women are men who want to be or think they are women and that we do everything we can to fit into some mold we have in our head of what a woman is.
It isn't that at all.
It's almost like my identity as female is secondary to my experience of it.
Like, the reason I was taking estrogen nearly a decade before I finally transitioned. I've always wanted a female body since the moment I was born, hell, probably since I was conceived, but it wasn't about wanting to be female. For a lot of my life that was just a vague sense, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. It wasn't that I wanted to look like a "woman," it's that my waist waist always seemed too thick in proportion to the rest of my body, my chest always felt too flat, my skin always felt too course, my frame too muscular. I don't want a vagina to "be" a woman, I want a vagina because I don't have any clue how to relate to my penis, because when I think about sex, in my mind I already have one and I have never known otherwise. I wear skirts and make-up and my hair long and my nails painted because I like it. I feel comfortable like that. I feel authentic. When I'm out in public, or at home I'm not trying to pass, I just am.
In my mind I've always been female, even when I was unaware of it. It's why prior to transitioning I very often preferred to be alone, so I didn't have to play a role.
She thinks I'm trying to be something...I'm not.
I'm not trying to be anything.
What dawned on me, when I was struggling with prejudices of my own which were very similar to Brennan's was. If I look the way I feel most comfortable looking, if I act the way feels most natural to me, if I have the body that feels most comfortable and right to me, I fall into that category of woman.
I don't look, act, feel the way I do because I want to be a woman. I look, act, and feel the way I do because this is just who I am. If I am authentic to myself, I come across as a woman, I look like a woman, I act like a woman, I have the physical features of a woman, most rational people are going to agree that I am a woman.
At the very least, it is very rare that anyone thinks of me as a man. I most certainly am not a man...not in any sense that anyone experiences a person as being a man. And as people generally assume that my genitals match their perception of me, or rather, their perception of me is more similar to how they perceive a female with female genitals than to how they perceive a male with male genitals, I would say that makes me pretty legitimately female.
But I'm not going to base this argument on how people perceive me, because I have been perceived many different ways.
I am everything you would expect a female to be had she been reassigned male against her will at birth.
But she'd never understand that, nor accept that, nor acknowledge my experience, nor value my opinion. So there it is.
Then of course Facebook now has more options for people to choose for gender, which is great! and I'm really excited about it, and a judge in Virginia has just ruled that the state wide ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional!
We've really been coming a long way really fast. When you think of how far we've come in 10 years it's really amazing.
Likening trans rights to gay rights, there was a time when people didn't view gay people as actually existing. I mean existing as in "this is who I am", not "this is something that I do."
Back when I was a closeted trans person I used to refuse to fill in a gender when it was asked for.
People tend to think of transgender and transsexual as verbs. I "transgendered," or I decided to "transgender" but if reality I didn't it just is. I am a trans-female, and ultimately, though I did choose to seek treatment for a condition that I had, I didn't choose the condition.
On Facebook I'm going to keep my gender as female because that is how I identify. Boring and binary I agree but that's how I identify. I identify with other female bodied and feminine people, and "trans" isn't so much a part of my identity now but a part of my past and a part of my experience.
I sought treatment for a medically recognized condition that I had and it has been very successful.
Basically though I do still require surgical intervention, that isn't the biggest part of my life.
It's all too complicated to really explain anyway.
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