Gender Participation Trophies

 

Image from Vicktor Forgacs
on UnSplash

In the gender world, there are very few participation trophies available to anyone for simply showing up. But are there?

Early on, before I decided to allow the public to award me participation trophies, I let the mirror do it and they were always right. I was an attractive girl when I wanted to be and there was a trophy for me to hide away with my belongings, or at least for me to mentally hide away from prying eyes.

In the meantime, my male self was attempting to win as many trophies as he could because he was not very good at athletics or whatever else he was trying. As hard as he was trying, total success seemed to always evade him. What happened was, both my binary genders experienced deep frustration, and I felt less as a person.

It was not until much later that I began to be successful and win a few participation trophies, specifically as a transgender woman. Her success though just created more problems for me as he feared she would take over completely, and what would become of all his hard-earned male privileges. There was a life at stake and could not be taken lightly. No cheap shiny participation trophies to proudly place on the gender shelf of life.

After I had learned the basics of blending myself into the world as a woman, I needed to be careful of the trophies which were being presented to me. I learned the hard way; not all women were forthcoming in their friendship and acceptance in their world. Many days with other ciswomen in the world. I thought I had won a participation trophy, only to have it passive aggressively pulled away. Quickly, I learned to be more careful. Life just wasn’t as easy for me when I had left the male world I was used to, and all aggressiveness was a frontal blow you could prepare for or retreat from. As with everything else, my life as a transgender woman was going to be more difficult than I thought. There would be no more running home to the mirror to hide. If I wanted to obtain more gender trophies, I would need to journey farther and farther out of my gender closet to do it.

The first inkling I could came on the night when I was drinking with a group of single professional women at a nearby TGI Fridays venue. As the bar area quickly began to fill up with women, nobody said anything out of the way to me, and I felt as if I fit right in. As a woman. I had known in advance to dress professionally, which helped me to overcome the fear I felt. So, I fit right in. When I safely made it home that night before my second wife did and removed my makeup, I gave myself a participation trophy. Mainly because, I knew I had crossed a line I could never go back to. My cross-dressing desires were much more than just a simple, innocent past-time. I knew deep down I wanted more as I pursued my own transgender womanhood.

More meant going back to Fridays and establishing myself as a regular, as well as other nearby competing venues which were happy to serve me and take my money as a trans woman. For the most part, I was compiling more trophies than I could count as I did more than surviving in my new world, I thrived. I learned too how difficult I would have it, if I continued the gender path I was on. Now, each trophy was harder and harder to get because each time I received one, it seemed the stakes were higher and higher. I was risking my twenty-five-year marriage, my family, friends and job, and I deeply felt the pressure.

At some point, I knew I would have to decide to throw out all my old male trophies and move on, but I was afraid to do it. I compared it to looking down at a steep gender cliff and wondering what would happen when and if I fell. All the trophies in the world would not save me but only real-world friends would.

Fortunately, I had those friends who had found and accepted me and made my gender landing very soft. In essence, all those new friends were initially trophies I cherished completely. They turned into the real thing over time, and I was able to carve out a life. Then I could throw out all my female trophies for good and live a realistic, genuine life as a transgender woman. My trophies became as fake to me as most of the people I met along the way, and I was able to throw them all away.