Real Life Impostors

JJ Hart at Key Largo.

 At various times in my life, I have suffered from impostor's syndrome when I was out with other women celebrating a girl's night out.

While I was overjoyed to be invited to the events and considered them to be a rite of passage to my transgender womanhood, I still could not shake my underlying feelings of doubt when I was allowed behind the gender curtain. 

As I went through the process, I began to wonder if all human beings go through a form of impostor syndrome in their lives. What I am trying to say is no woman is born a woman. They are socialized through life to achieve the status of women since they were born female. Men also go through the same process. It's the primary reason I had such a difficult time leaving my male past behind because in many ways I had made it to manhood which was miles away from just being another male. I needed to start all over again to travel to my gender goal of transgender womanhood. 

In the meantime, my confidence was building that I had as much right as the next woman to be at special functions. I had just arrived at the same point the other women did by using another path. I was aided also when I calmed down and began to contribute more to the group. I found I had more in common than I thought in this women's only space. Even though, I most certainly did not birth a child, I could bring up my own daughter and grandkids who I was so proud of. I just needed to flip the gender script to relieve myself of any possible impostor syndrome feelings. 

It wasn't just at the girl's nights out when being a gender impostor took a hold of me. Another prime example were the nights when I felt I was doing everything right. My fashion, hair and makeup all were on point and yet there I was wondering what I was doing there at all. I was devastated when I had come so far in my feminine presentation, just to have something else stand in my way. It took me awhile, but I worked my way through it all and put impostor syndrome in my rear-view mirror.

On the increasingly rare occasions when I encountered any resistance from the public, I finally came to the conclusion they were the true gender impostors. It was very clear to me why men left me alone as they were so insecure in their own sexuality. On the other hand, most cisgender women were more secure and not afraid to reach out to me. Especially interesting to me was the interaction I had with the lesbian community. Most of the lesbians I had a positive experience with had past encounters with men, so I was not so far from a person they would consider knowing. I learned quite early in my experiences in public, the various levels of the lesbian society. In fact, my first date with a man was with a very masculine lesbian on his way to becoming a full-fledged transgender man. Many times, the more masculine the lesbian, the more interest they showed in me. They were certainly not gender impostors.

Real life gender impostors are everywhere in this increasingly hostile world. We don't need insecure people in power using transgender women and trans men as crutches to increase their own power.