I'm a Ms.

I received a generic form letter the other day. It began "Dear Mr./Ms. [last name]". I took my thumb and covered up the "Mr." I looked at this amended version, and it made me smile. Dear Ms. [last name]. It was just... right.

I'm a Ms.

I find this surprisingly reassuring. Every now and then I'll get these sudden doubts about my identity. I'll think, What if I'm actually just a feminine man? What if this is all just about the clothes? What if I'm just trying to delude myself into thinking I'm female to avoid the stigma that society puts on men who like skirts? What if I medically transition only to figure out I'm not a woman after all and spend the rest of my life dealing with transition regret?? Aaaaaaahh!!!

But the difference between Mr. and Ms. has nothing to do with masculine or feminine. And it has nothing to do with clothes. It only has to do with male or female.

It's just another sign that I'm headed in the right direction. Even if I still don't know where I'm going to end up. :)

The fear of needing to

"Wanting to be a woman isn't what I'm scared of. Needing to be a woman scares me juiceless."

I read that, or something like it, on a crossdressing forum back when I was first beginning to try and make sense of this stuff. The speaker had recently begun crossdressing herself, and she, like I, was recovering from a case of fundamentalist Christianity. Her words, and the fear they represented, stuck in my mind.

Do I want to be a woman? Maybe, but I don't want to need to.

I sat on the edge of my bed, paralyzed. It was last Sunday and there were a bunch of errands I needed to get done. I was dressed as a boy. At that moment it seemed like the only reasonable thing to do would be to laugh, Ha! I look like a boy, better fix that!, make myself up as a girl and be on my way. The thought of doing anything else seemed completely insane. But I couldn't go as a girl, and I couldn't bear to stay a boy, so instead I just sat there. Eventually I started crying. Then I got angry: Why am I transgender?! I never fucking asked for this!!

Do I wish I'd been born a girl? No, not really. I'm happy to have had the experiences I've had as a boy. I'm grateful for the perspective that being trans gives me. I don't hate my body, though there are some changes I might consider. Most importantly, I'm happy with the person that I am, and that's not who I'd be if I'd been raised as a girl.

Do I wish I were "normal" boy? No, not at all. I love my femininity. I love that I love heels and skirts and nail polish, and I would never want to lose that part of me. I just wish I could enjoy that stuff while still being comfortable as a boy— lots of crossdressers do, after all. Or I wish I could switch my gender on when it's convenient and off when it isn't. But gender doesn't work like that.

Do I want to be a woman? More than anything I just want to have some say in the matter.


[EDIT: In the time since I wrote this post I've come to realize that some of the terminology I used is problematic. Especially, I should have written "assigned female at birth" rather than "born a girl." But even so, I've decided not to change it because it reflects the understanding I had at the time.]

I'm not really a "boy" anymore

It hasn't yet been three months since I started this blog, but I've come to feel differently about my gender in that short amount of time.

In my introductory post I referred to myself as a tomgirl, which I defined as "a boy that likes girly things." At the time I sincerely hoped that I could be comfortable as a male so long as I got to twirl about in a skirt every now and then. But now, more and more, I'm beginning to recognize that this is probably not the case. Identifying myself as a boy, even a "boy that likes girly things," just doesn't feel right to me anymore.

At the same time, I'm pretty sure I'm not a girl either. At least, not fully. Or if I am, I'm not ready to face it yet. So I've started thinking of myself as "non-binary, tending toward female." That's a lot more complicated, and takes a lot longer to say, than just "boy" or "girl," but no one ever said gender was simple, right?

(Well, actually people say that all the time, but... they don't know what they're talking about!)

The blog's subtitle still reads "the diary of a tomgirl." I may change that at some point, though I'm pretty sure "the diary of a non-binary person who tends toward female" would only compound the awkwardness of the blog's already impossible name! We'll see what I come up with...

Feeding the gender-dragon

My location on the gender spectrum doesn't really change: I always feel like more of a girl than a boy. However, the strength of that feeling can vary widely. Sometimes my "gendered-ness" is no more than a quiet, nagging whisper: present, but able to be ignored. At those times, presenting as a boy doesn't bother me too much, and I'm able to get on with life. But sometimes, it's a deafening, piercing shout. It drowns out everything else and demands to be heard. And that gets awfully frustrating.

The past four or five days have been really bad. I haven't been able to focus on schoolwork (I had to skip a small assignment) and I've been having trouble paying attention in class. Lately it seems like gender, and my sense of discomfort with my male-ness, is all I can think about.

Sometimes having these gender feelings is like living with a dragon. I have to satisfy the dragon's hunger or it will devour me. So I say to it, "Look gender-dragon, I bought you some frilly pink panties. Now will you leave me alone?" And if it's content with that I can breathe easily for a few days. But soon enough it gets hungry again, and each time it wants more.

The first thing I did when I figured out I was trans was to shave off the scraggily beard I'd been sporting for two years. That in itself brought me a huge sense of relief. Then it was makeup, then clothes, then breastforms, nail polish, shaving my legs.... And it makes me wonder, when will it finally be enough? When I'm out to everyone and can crossdress most of the time I want to? Or will I have to go full-time and change my name? What if it takes electrolysis, HRT and surgery?? Needless to say, I don't want to mess around with those last three if it's at all possible.

Roar!
(artwork by John Bauer)

I don't know why I have these feelings, but I do know some things I can do to help. As much as I detest it, I should probably get in the habit of shaving every day: that really does seems to make a difference. The same thing goes for wearing makeup, too. I think it's bullshit that our society has decided 20 minutes in front of a mirror each morning is an indispensable part of "feeling like a woman," but whatever: if it helps to assuage my gender stress, it's probably something I should do.

Earlier this month I read the book She's not the Man I Married by Helen Boyd, which, as you can probably tell, is about how her husband's trans-ness has affected their lives. (And come to think of it, that book also uses a dragon as a metaphor for gender, though in a different context). I quite liked it, but I have to admit, at least part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was simply that it allowed me to live vicariously through Helen's husband, Betty, who has been much more able than I to explore and express her own femininity. That's probably not the healthiest way to read a book.

The other reason I liked it was that Helen writes from a very feminist perspective. Before I knew I was trans, I thought I was such a good little feminist because I had no interest in fulfilling a traditional male gender role. I thought to myself, "If I, as a man, would rather stay at home and cook and clean and raise the kids, then I should marry a career-woman." And that was that. But when I learned I was transgender, I started to wonder: what if the reason I want to cook and clean and raise the kids is not that I'm an open-minded man, but simply that I'm a woman?? I was appalled. Had I suddenly gone from defying traditional gender roles to reinforcing them? After that there existed some tension in my mind between feminism and trans-ness. The trans-inclusive feminism in Helen's book helped me to see that being trans doesn't make you a misogynist, and being a feminist doesn't make you a transphobe.

I don't always...

I don't always wear girly sleepwear to bed, but when I do, it's an absolute joy waking up the next morning. There's nothing like starting off your day in the right gender! ^_^

The only downside (and it's a pretty big one) is that it makes having to change into boy clothes right away that much more miserable. Lately I've come to realize that my crossdressing is not simply about the fact that I like dressing as a girl; it's also about the fact that I hate dressing as a boy.

(happy sigh) :D

This past week has been good in some ways and frustrating in others. I'm starting school next week, but I decided to quit my job last week (ie, a week early) so as to have some free time in between. During that time I was able to dress a lot more freely than I usually am, since my roommates were, for the most part, at work during the day. This was wonderful, but it forced me to revisit a bunch of questions that, in many ways, I'd rather not have to deal with: would I dress full time if I could? would I transition if it wasn't so scary? am I, in fact, a girl in the wrong body??

When I first accepted my trans-ness and started trying to figure out what it means for me, I asked those sort of questions a lot. They caused me a great deal of stress and not a few tears, but I eventually reached the conclusion that I'm fairly happy having a boy body and transitioning is probably not right for me. Today I'm less certain about either of those things.

The freedom I had this week also forced me to face the fact that I will have to come out to my roommates at some point. It will drive me insane if I have to keep locking myself up in my room any time I need to dress and someone else happens to be home. My roommates are good guys and they're totally not homophobic or anything, so I think they'd be okay with it, but even still, coming out is always hard.