Born This Way

Image from Vonecia Carswell
on UnSplash. 

 I had no choice; I was born with gender issues which I would have to deal with my entire life.

It is also International Women's Day, so in many ways, the gender issues I did deal with intersect with each other. Along the way, I have received pushback about saying I was a woman at all which I understand. At first, the transphobes attacked me with the old broken argument that I could not be a woman because I could not birth a child. I simply pointed out, many females for whatever reason cannot or choose not to have children. Their choice certainly does not make them any less of a woman.

So, how can I claim Women's Day as my own? Mainly because I worked so hard to gain my transgender womanhood and it should be included with every woman everywhere. At the least, I can provide unique perspectives on my life. Trans women everywhere are fighting now for their very right to exist as women and should accepted as such. In fact, I had some good news-bad news from the VA where I obtain my gender affirming hormones about my future availability of the meds. In my Veterans Administration LGBTQ support group meeting yesterday, the moderator passed along the good news about the long reach of the current felon's administration. The good news was there would be no changes to transgender care, but the bad news was, it said for now. We all know that is not good news. In the meantime, I received my new shipment of estradiol patches this week along with three refills which are plenty to hold me over to my next endocrinologist visit in the early part of May. 

Back I go to the subject at hand. As I always mention, transgender women never had the girl's workbook to benefit from. We never had on hands advice or guidance from our mothers or from the other girls around us. We were left on the outside looking in. What it meant was, we really had to hit the ground running when we came out into the world, we had a lot to learn. Lessons in femininity were often swift and brutal. As I survived mine, I earned my way into celebrating International Women's Day and you should too. 

I sense from the comments I receive here on the blog; I have a wide range of readers from weekend cross dressers, all the way to post operative transgender women. The only point I am attempting to point out is, no matter where you might be on the gender spectrum, you still matter. None of us have a crystal ball telling us the future. For you cross dressers, sooner or later, you may have the chance to open your closet door and live a life you possibly just dreamed of. As I found out, never say never is a good quote when it comes to a possible later in life gender transition. Along the way also, I learned I had tons of knowledge of the world I could offer to other women. Because of my life masquerading as a man, I have a leg up on demystifying the male world for other women.

Even though transgender women may be the underdogs in the overall women of women, we belong in celebrations such as International Women's Day because we were born this way.