Gender Professionals

 

Image from Alysha Rosly
on UnSplash.

On occasion, I can just sit back and observe other women. Through my observations, it has occurred to me that some ciswomen are better at being women than others. For example, they walk straighter with their shoulders back and are proud of their femininity.

It has also been my theory that all females do not have the right to claim their femininity or the right to be called women just because they were born that way. Transgender women in particular know that becoming a woman can take many paths and we have can claim our own womanhood when our gender workbook is filled out.

Does it make us gender professionals? No, not in its own right but it does give us a leg to stand on when we are out in the public eye just trying to live our lives. It could be argued that transgender women and trans men must be better than our gender counterparts to get by and stand a chance of becoming gender professionals.

The question could be also, what does being gender professional really mean. I am only one gender conflicted person of course but for me to understand what a gender pro really meant, I needed to go into the world and live it. First, I tried to go to gay venues to see if possibly I was attracted to other men, or would they be attracted to me as a transgender woman. They were not attracted to me in any way and considered me no more than another drag queen on their turf. Which I wanted nothing to do with. Next, I tried the few lesbian venues I could find in the Dayton, Ohio area. There were three, and I found I was hated in one, had a neutral reception in another and was warmly accepted in a third. From the experience I mainly learned the different levels within the lesbian community and was it possible to work my way in at all.

The third and final venues I ended up at were the big sports bars I frequented as a man. In them, I was surprised to learn how quickly I could establish myself as a regular if I did not cause any trouble, learned to smile and then tip well. I learned too, to try to carry myself as a gender professional. Leaving no question of who I really was. I had to learn also carrying myself as a gender professional was completely different from being a gender professional. It meant I could carry myself well if I was wearing a fancy sweater and slacks, or my favorite team’s football jersey with a pair of jeans and boots. I discovered, more than anything else, I needed the confidence to do it and the rest of the world be damned if they did not like me. I was just having fun in the world as my self and taking advantage of all the fashion perks of being a woman.

Even with all the learning I was doing at the time, I still made learning from the ciswomen around me a priority. I figured they held the secrets that I needed to complete myself as a professional woman. The times to talk and communicate and the times to keep quiet and shut up and learn come to mind. You might say, I was exploring all the nuances of being a woman and trying to improve myself at the same time. I was fortunate in that almost all of my friends came from the lesbian community, so I came up with a unique view of the world. Especially around men which I learned did not validate my womanhood.

As you can tell, pursuing my quest to be a gender professional overtook much of my thinking. There was so much happening when I met my wife Liz, and I started to accompany her to her meetings she went to for various reasons. What happened was I had no choice but to expand my horizons again and meet a whole new set of people. When I did, I fell back to all the lessons I had learned about communicating with strangers. Not as a transgender woman but as just me.

Most Importantly, I had built back a portion of the self esteem I had lost as a gender professional growing up. I lost the inferiority complex I had put myself through during the rocky days of coming out earlier in life. Believing in myself for the first time as a transgender woman was all it took to get me by and enable me to become a true gender professional.