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Who are we?
The years of agonising about who you are; the nights laying awake trying to understand how you could feel the way you do, be the way that you are. Knowing that society will disown you, fearing for your safety, fearing for your own self. Knowing that you can no longer do it, knowing to keep trying; lying to yourself is slowly killing you. That you would rather end your life than continue as you have. The self doubts initially; the worries and fears of losing everyone and everything you love. The determination even if it cost you everything you have to do it, or you may as well kill yourself. The first tentative steps, the growing determination to see it through. Fighting through a system designed to prevent you from succeeding; succeeding anyway. The joy of seeing yourself in a mirror and no longer hating yourself. Being happy, loving yourself for the first time in your life.
We don’t wake up one morning and decide we’re transgender. We have known something was amiss about ourselves for a very long time, many of us our entire lives. We have agonised over what it means, argued with ourselves, tried to fit in within the gender norms of society, and yet, we never can. We never can because our minds, our thoughts, our way of thinking is so alien to our physical bodies.
Its not a choice; we’re not given any choice in the matter. Who we are is not between our legs, it’s what’s between our ears. We would prefer they both matched, but they don’t. We would prefer not to endure a constant barrage of hate thrown at us, but we do. We would prefer that our bodies matched our minds, but they don’t. And whilst medical science cannot magically change us so everything matches the way it should, it can help us change enough so that we can manage to lead a relatively normal, happy life. Medical science can change us enough so that rather than hating ourselves, wee can love ourselves. That’s all we want.
We are raised as our assigned gender at birth, we have no choice in the matter. We wear boys clothes, attend an all boys school, more than encouraged to play sport, developing a team spirit for when we are dispatched to selected killing fields as cannon fodder. We are expected to develop into fine young upstanding men, marry and produce children for doting grandparents.
I have on occasions considered who am I? What am I? What drives me? And I ask myself will I ever discover who I really am, and really does it matter?
Irrespective of what others categorise people in our community, I slot myself in as female transsexual, in mind heart and spirit. I take enough pills, drink more than my fair share of potions to consider hormones, and the surgeons scalpel is beyond thinking about. What I am I will have to be content with. I’m too old, too weary and just wish to be me. Of course this written mainly from the perspective of male to female persons, but the content equally applies to females to male persons.Much is written by me from my own mind. The other bits, not sure of the author but I have no wish to be accused of plagiarism.
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9 Replies
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Hi Liz, I want to make comment on this heartfelt post and I will shortly. But I need to respond now just to say wow!
So impressed.
I may never meet you but please know I can empathise with you and you are in my thoughts.
Geraldine -
Liz, I agree with much of what you say but a few ” I ” statements would have made it that bit more realistic. Many of us do not fit your description, I came at things gradually as I matured and dealt with my duties to significant others.
I knew early what I enjoyed and what I wanted to do but it took a long time to know what I was. I also agree that perhaps we have no choice of what we ARE but disagree about how much we can choose what we do about it.
Earlier in my life I made clear choices about how much I showed of my Trans side and more recently have made a clear choice about how much I care about what others think of me and what I want to wear and how I want to present myself to my Society. EVERYONE does this.Our personality is just another ” costume” that we don to try and express who we are, however confused that may be in our own minds and those of the audience who receive our ” display”.
I remarked today that, though everyone is flat out expressing their inner self, many at the same time condemning those whose presentation is different from their own.We can never know for sure EXACTLY who we are. We are so heavily influenced by our life’s journey, chemical state of mind and the world about us that we can only ever make an approximation at an ‘ I’.
The solution I think , is to just do what you are currently wanting to do ( within bounds of course) and try and muster the guts to carry it off.
Simple really??
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Powerful stuff Liz which resonates completely with me. Even the cannon fodder reference. When I joined the cadet corps at my all boy school I was promised a commission in the next war!
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Liz, I’m not TS so perhaps my thoughts aren’t relevant to your situation. Hopefully in a positive sense they might have meaning to you.
Accept who you are and care less about what people might think or say. I really doubt that our fears or expectations are well founded in any event. An outward and genuine confidence and presentation fosters encouragement of diversity. There is no need to apologise.
Secondly, I regard myself as very fortunate to have a side of me that belongs in the femme world. It’s not a curse it’s a blessing. Embrace it and enjoy, and don’t let yourself become melancholy.
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Hi Christina, I do feel I must disagree with some of your comments. I think Liz’s observations and thoughts are perfectly realistic, perhaps within her, certainly my own, experience. And yes, obviously we don’t all have the same experiences, such is life.
Her comments about a slow awareness and not necessarily realising what we actually are can indeed be a slow one, sometimes this can take years. I have known two people who just felt wrong and it wasn’t until middle age that they realised what they were.
Like you, if I have read you right, I started early but had no idea to what extent this ‘dressing up game’ meant, how much it was embedded within me, the need to present a female. I never saw my personality as a costume, I’d like you to expand on that as, to me, it reads like you can chose that. I can’t, never could, I am always me.
I agree we are influenced by society, very much so.
But ‘simple’? I have to assume that was an ironic comment as it certainly isn’t.
I do wish we could catch up sometime, I would love a deep and meaningful with you,
regards.Christina wrote:Liz, I agree with much of what you say but a few ” I
” statements would have made it that bit more realistic. Many of us do not fit your description, I came at things gradually as I matured and dealt with my duties to significant others.
I agree that perhaps we have no choice of what we ARE but disagree about how much we can choose what we do about it.
Our personality is just another ” costume” that we don to try and express who we are, however confused that may be in our own minds and those of the audience who receive our ” display”.
I remarked today that, though everyone is flat out expressing their inner self, many at the same time condemning those whose presentation is different from their own.We can never know for sure EXACTLY who we are. We are so heavily influenced by our life’s journey, chemical state of mind and the world about us that we can only ever make an approximation at an ‘ I’.
The solution I think , is to just do what you are currently wanting to do ( within bounds of course) and try and muster the guts to carry it off.
Simple really??
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Claire, I apologize for lapsing into my counsellor background in finding statements like ” you feel , you just want” etc, a bit jarring. Sorry to you Liz as well. However,when the teller of the story means ” I feel, I want” it feels disingenuousness to me when I hear ” YOU”. I do feel though that Liz’ story does not fit all of our members and not me.
I did start as a 5 year old, being a child left at home with sister and Mum, I believe that I was effeminated in the original sense of the word in that I was made feminine( to some degree) by their influence. I am not, however an effeminate person in the sense of being “girly”.
I do not know for sure but think it reasonable to assume that some of us are born with a propensity to femininity but also believe that many Trans folk are products of their upbringings ON TOP of any natal predisposition. Many people have the same type of experiences as I did but don’t turn out Trans, affirming my point ,I think.What annoys me is the idea that if one is not dysphoric or lucky enough to pass, then somehow one is less authentic in some way. Authenticity , to me, only comes with the honesty and open expression of one’s inner nature, not just some claim to ” I was born this way”. To me, that is a copout in so far as not taking responsibility for the way you WANT to be in life and , as I just saw Eddie Izzard saying on YOUTUBE ” owning the space”.
You may not see your personality as a costume but it is! You cannot use the word “personality” without accepting it’s original meaning of the mask in Greek Theatre, the PERSONA. We all have one whether we accept it or not.
To me , there is no issue in saying I want to be womanlike and then CHOOSE to follow that path. It does not demean me or make me weak to choose to express that feeling, quite the contrary. To follow the ” road less traveled” makes me stronger than those who may wish to demean me. They are the weak ones in the personality stakes if they follow the accepted path in life and not are really being who they WANT to be. We who dare to go out “en femme” in public, ALL know how tough we must be to do so! Even after years of it, there is still that bit of tension when we do so ( is that why we persist??).
I am happy for others to have an opinion different to my own but I believe that we also need to have rugged debate of our ideas if we want to express them publicly.
I also would enjoy a wine and a chance to delve!!
And yes, the SIMPLE comment was tongue in cheek though in reality we have only limited choices at any one time, one step at a time! -
I must say that I had trouble following your post Christina. One thing did stand out though:
Christina wrote:We who dare to go out “en femme” in public, ALL know how tough we must be to do so! Even after years of it, there is still that bit of tension when we do so ( is that why we persist??).You seem to have fallen into the same trap as you suggest for Liz, i.e. you haven’t used the word “I” for your experience. I don’t find it tough at all. Enjoyable, stimulating, rewarding but certainly not tough. Folk in the community are really quite accepting.
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I relate very strongly to what Liz has said and I still have mornings when I get up wondering why I’m like this. However, by and large I accept myself for who I am: a trans-woman.
I deliberately and consciously thrust myself into the public spotlight in order to live my values, political and personal. I’m fed up with hiding who I am. It was also a case of getting to the edge of the cliff and saying “Right, this is it! I’m launching into the unknown and I’ll either fly or go splat into the rocks below” So far, my aerodynamics have been pretty good.
That said, I believe that gender variance is a continuum, or a spectrum, and that therefore not everyone wants/needs to be full time publicly en femme (or en-garcon as the case may be). Nor do we all need to be “passable”. What I stand for is for us to be whoever and whatever we are without fear of prejudice, discrimination and abuse.
Michaela Sherwood
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Michelle, you got me!
However, I have heard boxers, frontline soldiers, all sorts of ” tough” guys, state that going out publicly in a dress was the toughest thing that they have ever done.You are fortunate in being able to do so without effort. For me, growing up in a very male dominated group, admitting to being a ” poofter” ( in their eyes) would have been near impossible and I still find it challenging but no longer painful to go out in feminine attire.
As for the “I” statement issue, I did not intend to scold as such but rather to point out that saying ” I ” makes a statement of one’s feelings. Using ” you” which puts a distance between one’s true feelings and the words, though commonly done, it is quite incorrect when one actually means ” I”. So in conflict situations, saying YOU is seen as a form of attack, saying “I” is a statement of one’s feelings.
