I don’t have many trans girl friends. After this blog entry, I’ll probably have less.
That’s ok. The ones who hang on know that I am all about the search…and dare I say it? Less about the result.
I have been in-and-out of my trans identity for a little over 30 years. I am out to everyone – family, friends, co-workers, past employers (future employers would depend on the field). I identify happily as gay, even though most gay men become very confused about my identity and who I am. I view my identity as a biological and genetic event, so my labeling method is reliant on scientific classification.
After 30 years, I am still learning on a daily basis. I ask myself tough questions, every morning before I get out of bed, during the day, and before I shut my eyes. Identity, much like a lifetime’s culmination of experience – and how we process those experiences – is a dynamic organism, constantly evolving, shifting, growing with periodic fumbles of self-doubt. Can anything of permanence be achieved without constant interrogation? I don’t think so.
For Sex Reassignment Surgery, Johns Hopkins, along with many physicians use to require the patient to undergo 1 year of living as the targeted gender. This is called the Real Life Test. When I first heard about this, one part of me thought it was a nuisance. The other part, the devil’s advocate in me, reasoned that there may be something there. After decades upon decades of hearing other girls’ war stories about SRS, it’s become apparent that it is a very pragmatic, rational, and wise step to take, especially when someone is about to commit to a lifetime of being a gender she or he had no previous training to be. I don’t mean weekend-warrior it for a year. I mean 24-7, 365 days a year. Public bathrooms, dark alleys, job-hunts, shaving, dating (the legion of men who are not out or are in plain denial), and yes, for lack of a better word, sweaty tits on a hot summer day. For the latter reason alone, I stay at home on hot days, even when my house is on fire.
Much to many acquaintances’ chagrin, my first response to anyone’s declaration of embarking upon the SRS journey is “wait: have you thought this through and through?” The friendship usually ends there. Most who stayed in touch, but charged ahead and did it anyway -opting for the Thailand route, thereby bypassing the 1 year of RLT- have reported less than scintillating results. I have been doing RLT for over 2 years. I understand the ones who have had a misaligned self-perception all their lives when it comes to gender, this entry is not about them. What I’m talking about here are newcomers who woke up one day and decided they’d try a new gender (to maybe get a new lease on life) like switching to a different brand of Tobasco sauce. Many transgirls view transitioning as the Holy Grail of legitimizing one’s female-ness. It’s as if a dude became more of a man after he committed to two years’ subscription of Maxim magazine.
If genetic women are all about feelings and cerebral matters (as our popular romanticization of that sex leads us to believe), and men are about visual confirmation, then it becomes a syllogistic trap: real women could reaffirm their femininity in their minds. It’s only men who need the physical, visual proof.
A few who have considered my thoughts and held off – are today, glad, albeit disappointed a little – naturally – at not having taken the path most traveled. My advice was very simple: “Stop imagining what the life you MAY be acquiring will be like, and think about what you ARE giving up.”
Daytime talk shows, always delighted at poking fun at transgender guests, shortchange themselves when they bring out those who have transitioned, and realized it was a mistake, and want to reverse the operation. Transgirls who are considering the operation should mute out the heckling audience and pay close attention to what these girls have to say. The issue is particularly complicated, because statistics have a way of “hiding” the truth. Those who successfully integrate into “everyday” society will not ‘fess up for fear or ruining their assimilated identity. This means the unhappy campers give a skewed presentation of lives led happily ever after. (check out this link if you’d like to read about some accounts that have less than happy endings: A Warning to Those Considering SRS
I’ve been thinking about it carefully for thirty years, and to this day, I still ask myself “is this really what you want, permanently? Or are you misleading yourself down several forks of simulacra?” The controversial term Autogynephilia – “a man’s paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman” is one of those things that fewer than most trans girls would like to admit to. While I don’t want to take away from the group of people who experience ZERO arousal at wearing women’s clothes(I personally think they will have better chances of transitioning successfully)- I think the possibility of Autogynephila as motivation certainly exists for a large segment of tgirls. For those of my gentle readers who are coming across this word for the first time, all I ask is, “consider it as a possibility.”
1) If being a woman is so important, can you become a woman, and dress in boring, buttoned up shirts and pants for the rest of your life, and still be happy?
my answer: “I have never been happy in buttoned up shirts and pants, so i’ll be equally grumpy both ways. no contest.”
2) Can you go without sex and still feel content just “being a woman.”
my answer: “Yes. I am perfectly happy being a woman living with a man and looking after him, even if there was no sex involved.”
3) If you are dating a man, why is it so important NOT to be considered “gay?”
my answer: “It isn’t. I like being gay. I tell everyone I’m gay. I’m happy being gay. (does a double positive make a single negative?)”
4) If you knew you were going to a desert island after your sex change, and you will live the rest of your life away from society and any human contact…would it then still be important to be a woman?
my answer: “Yes. I do what I do because I feel comfortable being in my own skin. Someone once charged that I was an exhibitionist. I am loathed to be paid any attention to when out in public. I would never pick fame over happiness or money. Having said that, if I’m going to a desert island, I’d probably trade my SRS funds for a lifetime’s delivery of Pizza Hut and just let myself go.”
5) Is there something you can do post-op, that you can’t do now?
my answer: “I have no intentions of going through SRS or hormones, but even if I did, the answer is still no. If the gov’t suddenly determined that I couldn’t get SRS and I originally wanted one, I can still get by doing everything I am doing now. That means, I’ll be dating men, considering settling down, (hopefully adopting) and wearing boring women’s clothes that would make an octogenarian wince.
These questions, and variations of them, are some of the angles with which I approach transition to untangle whimsical associations and get the clearest picture I can of why I arrived at the decisions I have made.
Recently, I have to say, I am coming very close to a decision. I don’t want the operation, since I have no issues with the plumbing code. But to go through life with minimum friction, legally, and physically, as a woman, is a situation that is long overdue. If anything, it is financial stability, not indecision, that stands in the way.
I hope this helps. If there is one person who has read this, and delayed transitioning just by one minute, to get a firmer conviction that she is going down the right path, then I would have done my duty.
Now, go ahead and unfriend me. I won’t take it personally.
