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| JJ Hart on Mt. Washington |
What angers me more than anything else is when some hater or gender bigot says we transgender women or trans men ever had a choice about who we were destined to become in life.
In my case, at least, deep down I always knew I had
something wrong with me. Even if I could not quite put my finger on what the
problem might be. It was not until I got the first glimpse of myself in the
mirror in pretty girls’ clothes did, I know for sure what my issues were. Then,
the issue became what I was going to do about it. At that point, I had no
choice but to continue doing was I was doing. Cross-dressing in front of the
mirror. Being the pretty girl in my mind was just too much to pass up as I
worked continuously towards improving my makeup skills and to do what I could
to acquire more articles of women’s clothing which actually fit my fast
growing, testosterone poisoned frame. I was the last person to see the results
of puberty as a positive development.
As I learned in my latest LGBTQ support group meeting
yesterday at the Veteran’s Administration, the legislative bigots have
effectively blocked the use of puberty blockers for all young Ohioans. One of
the lesbian mothers in the group was seeking blockers from her doctor because
her young daughter had started puberty at the age of ten and she wanted it to be
put off for a couple of years. The group member was told no, they could not do
that in Ohio anymore. Yet another win for the Republican majority in the house
legislature who felt they could overrule a parent’s choices.
Back when I was young, no one knew what puberty blockers
were anyhow and we all went into our tweener years with no choice at all to how
our bodies were going to turn out. The only positive I saw from the changes I
was going through that I had no choice over were the extra muscle and size I
was adding which helped me to keep the bullies away.
When I began to go out in the world as a novice transgender
woman, I began to discover I did have other choices when it came to becoming what
it meant to be myself. It all started with what I would wear fashion-wise to
fit in with all the ciswomen around me and then expanded to how I would
interact one on one with the world. It was all so new and exciting that the
world was a wonderful blur at that time in my life. I could pick and choose if
I wanted to go casual in my jeans and sweaters or professional in my pants suit
and heels when I went out. Depending on where I was going of course. All my
choices gave me feminine privilege choices I had so envied for so long. The only
problem came when I needed to go back to my old boring male world. I was
depressed for days.
The most important thing to note is, all along I never did
want to go back to my exclusively male life where all I did was work, drink and
watch sports. I had the unique choice to attempt to carve out a female life,
and it felt as if I was taking the right path in life to do it. But if someone
was holding a gun to my head and telling me I had no choice but to give up the
new life I was leading, I would have said go ahead and shoot me. That is an
example of how powerful the true lack of choice about my gender was with me.
Unless you have had the transgender experiences I have had,
I don’t really expect many other people to understand. But I do expect them not
to try to take away my right to live my life the way I want. I used to think
that was part of being an American was all about until the transgender
community was barraged last year alone with over one-thousand anti trans bills
across the country. Through it all, many of those seeking to wipe us outthink
we had a choice to uproot our lives and change completely. No more spouses,
family friends and employment we were used to, because we had a choice. We did
not want to change our lives so completely, we needed to.
As I look back at over fifty years of upheaval in my life
due to transgender issues, it is obvious to me that I never had a choice.
Regardless of what the bigots said, and they should not be able to use the
choice word against me in potential anti-transgender laws everywhere.
Choice is one of the issues all trans women and trans men
share. We all have the powerful drive to succeed, and it will never go away no
matter how hard the haters try. We have always been part of the fabric of the
world and always will be. The difficult part is that we follow our paths to stay
on the course until we get a resolution we can live with.
In the meantime, survival is not a bad way to go until you
can not take it anymore, then depending on where you live, a cautious peak into
the world might get you by until you can do more. Sometimes, you can check with
nearby LGBTQ organizations for resources near you. Many of which are on-line to
help you find an outlet to talk with others with similar gender interests.
Even though you never had the choice to live your life the
way you wanted to, where there is a will, there is a way to live out your
gender choices on your terms. You just have to find it to begin to truly live
out your own choices which you never really had.
