“But when I met you, you were such a girly girl.”
My stepmom leaned across the dining room table and told me this urgently, as if she was offering up incontrovertible evidence that I couldn’t possibly be transgender.
It was a fair enough assertion. From the moment I was born – the first girl in a close-knit family of male cousins – I effortlessly fell into the preformed mold of femininity: I grew up in a bedroom with pink carpet and a four-poster lace canopy bed; I loved dresses and Barbies; my favorite game to play with my brother and cousins was house; by the time I was in fifth grade I had an absurd amount of make up, and the sleepovers I hosted always involved a make over. I can say that all of this was authentically me; but that is not what I told my stepmother.
“I was compensating.”
As a gender-different person growing up in the arms of Livejournal comment threads, I learned pretty quick that when talking to cisgender people – parents, friends, therapists – you sometimes have to bend the truth to be taken seriously. I vividly remember sitting on the lumpy sofa in my therapist’s dark office as a senior in high school, telling her brokenly that I had felt trapped in the wrong body for as long as I could remember. Constricted by the DSM and the WPATH Standards of Care, most healthcare providers (especially in my conservative hometown) look for a particular checklist of experiences and feelings before diagnosing a person with gender dysphoria. I knew, before walking into that office for the first time, that I didn’t meet the majority of the criteria for the diagnosis but I also knew – yes, at the age of eighteen – that transitioning to male would make me happier. I could not and cannot explain how: my gender identity has always been an amorphous and unstable mystery. As of this writing I feel closest to what I would call masculine agender (that is, I don’t identify with any gender, but I feel more masculine than feminine.) A few weeks ago I was adamantly identifying as a man with a transgender medical history, and several months before that I embraced my genderqueerness.
Unfortunately, because our healthcare providers are the gatekeepers to transition, those of us who do not fall neatly into the boxes of the diagnostic checklist have two choices: prepare for an uphill battle or become storytellers. I learned all the key words and phrases that I needed to drop into my initial therapy visits, the stories I needed to concoct that would convince my therapist to write that all-powerful letter instructing my physician to prescribe hormones. I told my therapist an out-and-out lie (which I don’t endorse!) because I did not have the words for myself, much less for her, to explain why the prospect of living as a man felt right to me. Telling my truths, I feel sure, would have found me ten years down the road still trying to explain to a therapist that no, I am not a female-to-male transgender person but yes, I need to medically transition to male to be able to live my life.
There was some understanding in my mind that I was not after life as a man, whatever that means. I have been medically transitioning for over four years and I am still not read as male. One look at me and people either start excessively dropping the “ma’am” bomb or asking how old I am (as if I’m twelve rather than my twenty-three years.) I tell baristas to call me ‘Jim’ because I have gotten back one too many coffee cups with ‘Jane’ scrawled on the side. Last month a nurse, processing me for some blood work, paused in her data input and said, “I’m sorry, but I have to ask: male or female?” Holding my wife’s hand in public means running the risk of passersby making loud comments about lesbians. Kids stare and sometimes ask the question their parents are all thinking: is that a boy or a girl?
It does not bother me. (Any embarrassment I feel is, I think, a manifestation of what I’ve been told I should feel.) I did not embark on this ludicrous journey to become one of the guys. I still cling to my more feminine mannerisms enough that more than one person has made assumptions about my sexuality. I’ve started growing my hair out – much to the chagrin of relatives who would like to see me able to pass as male even a little – and mentioned to my wife yesterday that I miss wearing headbands. Almost all of my friends are women because I relate to them, not to mention most men are too crass for my tastes. I very much enjoy the label of husband but my wife and I share the pants in our relationship. (Or perhaps there are no pants.)
I do not know what my gender is. I do not know how to explain it, even to myself. And yet, mired in uncertainty, I made the decision in 2010 to start bimonthly self-administered testosterone injections, undergo a double mastectomy, and sit before a judge in an empty courtroom in order to change the name and gender on all of my legal documents. Frankly, I would be amazed if, after reading to this point, not a single person thought me nuts or at least wondered if I might have some regrets.
I do not, not about this. My transition was just another milestone, like getting my driver’s license or graduating high school: a tedious but necessary obstacle that opened up my future. I frequently daydreamed of my future as a kid and while I certainly never pictured this, as I made my way through high school the path to transition just naturally opened in front of me. I don’t really see my coming out and transition as a Big Deal, but I know that it must have been to everyone else in my life. How does a child who was perfectly content as a girl grow up to be a man? Even those who are familiar with transgender people know that there is some amount of internal struggle that leads to transition. Some sort of sign that this had been there all along.
On this one point, I agree with my stepmom. I had been a girly girl, and happily so. I can only assume that I could have continued on and maintained some level of contentment with my life. There isn’t an easy way to explain why I transitioned or to describe my gut feeling that it had to be done. I’ve only begun to come close to understanding my gender identity by expanding my understanding of gender: that is, by accepting that gender is not a binary. When I transitioned, I think some part of me did so because I thought my options were either male or female, and I have a stronger pull towards male. I know now that although I use male pronouns and check the ‘M’ on forms, I am not necessarily a man. At least, that’s not how I identify today.
I’ve begun to notice posts circulating online by people with similar gender experiences. They tend to run in the vein of “it is okay that you feel this way; your gender identity is valid.” Words of reassurance that I could have used five years ago. I have never been completely honest about my identity for fear of retribution: would my transition be delegitimized and seen as an act of extreme self-mutilation? Would my parents seek legal action against any healthcare provider who had “enabled” me? Would I be committed to some institution?
The fear is real. Even in the trans community the traditional trans narrative tends to be held up as sacrosanct, and those who challenge it are ostracized for somehow polluting the reputation of normal trans people, people who have always known, people who will transition to fill the appropriate gender roles, people who feel alienated from their bodies. In no way do I mean to deprecate the experiences of these individuals. Put simply, anyone who finds themselves at odds with the gender designated on their birth certificate has a rough time of it. As a matter of fact, I envy these “clear cut” transgender people because at least they have certainty, whereas I am adrift in a sea of ill-fitting gender roles, performances, and labels.
I don’t know what gender I am, but I do know that the little girl who dressed up as a princess for Halloween three years in a row and lugged four dolls with her everywhere until she was eleven was me. I was active in the Girl Scouts for six years and those years shaped me into who I am today. My childhood undeniably belonged to a girl but I feel no disconnect between those memories and the moments I am living right now. Beyond maintaining my scraggly beard and looking for the men’s room, “being a man” doesn’t really enter into my daily reality. I will carefully avoid my past when talking to casual acquaintances, but otherwise I find myself easily weighing in on discussions about menstrual cramp relief or the misery of being a seventh grade girl (a nightmare, for the record.)
I haven’t figured out how to tell my mom and dad that they didn’t lose their daughter and they didn’t gain a son: I am the same sum of my likes and dislikes. My adolescence got me a little turned around and I went from shaving my legs to shaving my face, but it is really hard for me to objectively say that I have changed in many other ways. I like the way bracelets look on my wrists. I am intensely self-conscious about how my hair looks, even on the best days. I am trying to figure out how to get paid for reading fanfiction. In short, I have always been and will continue to be my confused and – above all – happy self.
We probably crossed paths on LJ, although five years ago trans activity there was already begining to die down.
I relate SO HARD to this. “Masculine-leaning androgynous” is what I called myself for years, hoping it would be enough — but at 35(!!) I’m finding out that yes, I do need to transition, not-a-dude-but-definitely-not-a-ladyness nonwithstanding. I’m glad you found your path so much sooner than I did.
Thank you for sharing this. It’s somehow very validating, even though my lived experience with gender is very different from yours.
This was wonderful, and thank you for sharing it. It hit home for me in a lot of ways, and I really appreciate seeing more and more AFAB trans narratives that don’t center around always knowing, or being a male child (not that there is anything wrong with that!) It’s just that those stories dominate the community, and make it difficult to share ones that don’t follow that same trajectory.
While I identify outright as male, I was a girl. I was raised as a girl (a tomboy, weirdo girl, and I thank the universe every day my parents just let me do my thing), and my childhood was that of a girl. And that’s still deeply important to me, because it informs and shapes the man I am and the man that I keep working towards being.
Yeah! I take undue delight in blowing my friends’ minds by casually saying things like, “When I was a lesbian…” — just because I’m a queer dude now, that doesn’t erase the years I spent as a lesbian. I never even considered thinking of myself as a boy, growing up, and I’ve been coming out (from being stealth) just because otherwise I could never talk about any part of my life pre-2010 — and even out, there’s such a strong expectation that I’m supposed to pretend none of it was real, or happened to the real me, or could possibly have made me happy.
I did this recently to one of my bosses at work, and it was so hilarious. I’m not actively stealth at work, it’s just not something that ever really comes up in conversation. But I was telling him about how I was using my vacation time to volunteer at a week long summer camp for homeless LGBTQ youth, and he somehow segued it into talking about a former coworker of his who “used to be a girl,” to which I replied, “Oh cool, me too.” And the face he made trying to process that information as quickly as possible killed me.
I’m still working on being more open about my life prior to my transition with people who didn’t know me then. It’s bizarre, but I feel very lucky that I’m in a place where I can talk about my life as a girl.
One of my best friends in life is a trans woman who didn’t really realize that she wanted to transition until she was in her 20’s. She does now report some body dysphoria, but she was quite content with a gender identity as a teenage boy.
So yeah, it does happen.
The spectrum of the human experience is astounding. Thank you for sharing this!
This is so interesting and well-done, especially the part about your story and stories like it being seen as “inconvenient” to the trans community, because they doesn’t fit the “normal” narrative. This in particular is so well-put: ” As a matter of fact, I envy these “clear cut” transgender people because at least they have certainty, whereas I am adrift in a sea of ill-fitting gender roles, performances, and labels.” Even though it’s a totally different thing, it reminds me of the feeling of being bi and not having a “light-bulb moment” re: sexuality — e.g. this kate leth comic http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-03/enhanced/…. We’re told everything about identity is an either-or option, so it feels so weird to be like, “I…don’t know, though. Maybe neither? Maybe both?” etc.
Ah, gender feels. I have been raised as a girl but present very masculine. I feel sometimes like my gender presentation has to overcompensate for the way people read my body – if I didn’t have parts that cause people to ID me as female, I think I’d butch it up less. I’m secretly a femme-y boy but people read me as a butch-y girl and that’s confusing/inconvenient. I like florals and pinks but in a masculine way. I can limp-wrist all day. I am very fussy about my hair/appearance. But I hesitate before wearing more feminine men’s clothing because I know I’ll be read differently by others and it’s frustrating. I find myself bro-ing it up more often because it elicits a more affirming response from other people.
(ugh I can’t get over how many people in this thread are BASICALLY ME. it’s been long enough now that my wardrobe is full of lavender shirts and SCORNFUL GLARES for the fools who mis-read them, and I hope you too will ascend to a new plane of fabulosity that no bro can ever touch.)
I’m with lawrence, I hope you can ascend the peaks of fabulosity! Because I too was in a very similar position before I began ID-ing and being read as male all of the time, and it was really frustrating.
Me too!! When I tell people that accepting that I wasn’t female allowed me to finally embrace and explore stereotypically “feminine” things, but from a more “dudely” perspective (even though I eschew any male labels), the blank looks start. I have to revert to, “I’m not femme, or a boy, but if I were to fit in the binary in terms of identity or expression, I’d be a femmey boy.”
It’s ridiculous, the hoops you have to jump through so that other people will allow you to be who you are, and the way they lose their minds when you don’t fit a familiar narrative.
Thank you for sharing that, James. I am so thankful for The Toast, where I can come to read stories like yours. The ridiculousness attached to identifying as non-binary is something that confuses the living crap out of me. I get that people like to think in convenient binary opposites, but, not least on an emotional level, I do believe that everyone needs to be able to identify as the person they feel themselves to be. You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops or please everyone. I feel like that’s a case of people making others miserable in order to hold on to their own, limited/comforting/overly-simple perceptions, and that’s just all kinds of wrong.
Call me naive, but I’ve long hoped for a move towards a more fluid society where there was no need for anyone to slot themselves into a series of pre-assigned labels so that others would know “who” they are (and all the categorization that goes along with that). It doesn’t seem like that’s happening yet, but I really hope to see it in my lifetime.
Oh man, I have never felt such a strong sense of identification with someone else’s narrative. I think you described my childhood bedroom. I’ve ended up in a slightly different place– I do pass for a cis dude now, which always startles and vaguely saddens me, but only because the trans part of my firmly-established dudeliness is important to me– but that feeling of needing to pretend that you’ve ‘always known,’ that you were secretly ‘overcompensating’ just because you enjoyed a girly childhood, that’s achingly familiar. And part of why I’m so glad to have so many wonderful non-binary friends in my life now. Thank you so much for sharing.
This is great. Thanks so much for sharing, James (and all you commenters!)
The last few weeks leading up to right now I’ve managed to work myself into a panic over having this published. Which is nonsense because this is The Toast.
Thank you, everyone, for reading my experience with gender and sharing your own; as polka_stripes said, the spectrum of the human experience is truly astounding!
For the record, I have deleted no awful comments from pending, but I would literally delete anyone who said anything that wasn’t THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR STORY, U ARE AN INSPIRATION TO ME bc of how little I care about free speech.
this made me cry a little bit, i’m not gonna lie.
thank you, the toast, for existing. and thanks james, for posting this in spite your weeks of worry/panic (totally justified — all people exposing themselves to the terrible world of internet comments are SO brave in my book)
Thanks for sharing your story. I really believe that every story detailing an experience different from the standard small number of narratives we’re told to expect, opens the world up that little bit more and moves us closer to a society-wide understanding that there’s more, not only in heaven and earth, but in people, than we could dream.
This is so, so good and I’m so glad you chose to share this with us.
“Frankly, I would be amazed if, after reading to this point, not a single person thought me nuts or at least wondered if I might have some regrets.” When I got to this point I was really glad I had the window seat on the train. Combining Sia’s new album with reading this brought me to tears. Thank you James for giving words to my experience and feelings.
I can relate to much of this. I’m MAAB and have zero social dysphoria, but I’ve known for years that I’d be much more comfortable in a sexless body. I want surgery, but I’ve done my homework; I’ve heard the horror stories and I’m all too aware of WPATH’s enforcement of the gender binary. Even if I wanted to do it, bullshitting my way through the screening process wouldn’t work because I don’t want to feminize my body; just demasculinize it. I sincerely hope ICATH takes off, and soon.
This is wonderful, and matters a lot to me, and all I can say is thank you so much for writing it.
“I haven’t figured out how to tell my mom and dad that they didn’t lose their daughter and they didn’t gain a son: I am the same sum of my likes and dislikes…In short, I have always been and will continue to be my confused and – above all – happy self. ”
I just wanted to say that I found this incredibly beautiful and I sorta feel like, if I were a parent and I had a kid who said that to me, I would just be like…*oh*. I get it now. And then give you all the hugs. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Thank you for this James; wonderfully written and really moving. Some of it I can really relate to, but this especially resonates as my BFF is starting to explore their gender identity. I want to send them the link, but if think they find it a lot easier talking about it online with other trans folks than with possibly the only RL friend who knows.
JAMES jesus your writing is still the best. THE BEST. I can’t tell you what a treat it was to see this marvelous piece show up here.
I blushed a lil bit
<3
This text is really thought-provoking for me. Please, all, be a little patient with me as try to write down what I’m thinking about.
I wonder why all these procedures and requirements exist before a person can get hormones or surgery or whatever body change they feel they need and if/how this process could be improved.
Now I get that those are serious changes and you’d want to protect people from making a terrible mistake about this. I think this is, in principle, a good idea.
So, if you are a psychologist who thinks in diagnoses, you’d want to identify “typical cases”. Which I admit is kind of stupid, but it’s also how psychology works. If you can identify the “typical transgender” person, then you know you have a transgender person, so treatment is a go if they want it. If the person doesn’t fit your category, then you know nothing. So is treatment something they need or a horrible mistake?
I mean, you could just take their word for it if they tell you they feel they need to do this. Obviously!
But sometimes it may be complicated. I remember reading an article in a newspaper about a case where a young teenager wanted.. I don’t remember, hormon? and someone.. people.. ??? suspected they were not, in fact, transgender, but influenced by their mother to identify as such. So that’s a situation where I think a psychological “expert”, with all the horrible power that status gives them over people, would be a good person to ask to find out what is really going on with that kid. Only, from what I read, they handled it quite badly. There was an interview with the kid who reported being asked what kind of toys they preferred, dolls or cars (or something like that), which was completely stupid in the teen’s opinion. So then there’s that, being given the role of expert doesn’t mean you necessarily have any f-ing clue about what you’re doing. I mean, there’s standards about how you work obviously, but if the theoretical background on what you’re trying to find out is lacking (read based on stereotypical assumptions and over-simplified narratives) you’ll end up asking about girl-toys or boy-toys. This is what makes people who don’t really fit your diagnostic criteria have a hard time or, if they figure out how this process works, just feed you the stuff you wanna hear, like James decided to do. This situation is, of course, bad and no one should have to ‘trick the system’ in order to get what they need.
So how to resolve this and find a solution that works for all? I feel kind of stuck between the (medical)-society-has-a-responsibility-to-protect-people-from-what-might-be-a-bad-idea-for-them and the FUCK_OFF_THEY_DON’T_NEED_NOONE_TO_TELL_THEM_WHAT’S_GOOD_FOR_THEM and the-experts-don’t-know-it-better-anyway positions. Is the solution more flexible criteria about the indications for body-changing medicine or is the whole process of evaluation intrinsically bad?
Why should a shrink have the final say over what genitaila or other secondary sex characteristics anyone has? Only the person living in/with that body should have that right. Anything else is just creepy. We don’t require this kind of intervention for most other needed medical procedures.
I’m glad to read your story. Thank you!
I wanted to post to say that not everyone has to lie to do this. I found a great therapist–even in Ohio–who understood the non-binary thing and was using the latest WPATH standards which have room for us. Didn’t have to lie. She saw her role not as gatekeeper, but as someone who could help me know this was the best thing for me and could assure others that was true. A chance to think about the consequences…and then she shaped letters to convince more binary thinking people like my surgeon. Helped me find an endocrinologist who understands I want a low dose of T and might stop.
Just wanted to put it out there that the future is arriving even in Ohio.
I'm glad to read your story. Thank you!
I wanted to post to say that not everyone has to lie to do this. I found a great therapist–even in Ohio–who understood the non-binary thing and was using the latest WPATH standards which have room for us. Didn't have to lie. She saw her role not as gatekeeper, but as someone who could help me know this was the best thing for me and could assure others that was true. A chance to think about the consequences…and then she shaped letters to convince more binary thinking people like my surgeon. Helped me find an endocrinologist who understands I want a low dose of T and might stop.
Just wanted to put it out there that the future is arriving even in Ohio.
As a cis bisexual-identifying lady who occasionally wonders what it would be like to have a penis, thank you for this article.
I have struggled for years to understand the trans community. I just lack the experiences that many trans people have had. But this article resonated. I’ve been reading about sexuality and gender and body dysphoria and all kinds of related things for years, and got some trans/queer/all-over-the-map friends in college, and that helped, but I feel like it only just clicked right now. I feel more understanding and more able to be supportive where before I stepped back or mouthed platitudes to my trans friends. Thank you.
I almost cried at this because it fits me so well. I currently identify as a masculine agender person, I want to transition but I am afraid to because I don’t feel completely male, or might suddenly realize that I am female after all though I’ve never really identified as one before.
I’m kind of in a spot right now. I grew up female and was happy as such as a child. Periods and boobs freaked me out and I hated them, but I guess all girls do. I started developing facial hair and a more boy like face in my late teens and I freaked because I’m girl but my body suddenly went boy. I didn’t want to be seen as a freak, though I wonder if I was suppose to be a boy instead of born girl. Half the time I felt like a mix. I guess my mind, in an attempt to slip farther into a depression, started rejecting gender all together. Add a decline in health and I had no time to worry about gender.
Now I’m questioning again and I don’t know what I am. At some point I started feeling more and more like a feminine guy, the stereotypical gay guy, but my body was female. I want more and more to be a male, even if I am a male with an inner female. It confuses me to no end.