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| Image from Dwayne Joe on UnSplash. |
Gender is a huge deal in our society in America and around the world. You can’t go for a minute on the news or social media without someone pointing out how powerful their gender is.
Plus, just consider how many “gender reveal” parties that
are going on these days before the child has a chance to choose for themselves.
And I won’t even get into intersex children which have to with whatever a
doctor decides about their ambiguous gender at birth. How confusing can that be
to overcome later in life.
Regardless, gender is a big deal. We are expected to abide
by the results of what our genitals are telling us. Not regarding at all what
our minds are screaming at us, that something is certainly wrong with what we
are being told. For me, it was being shoved into a dark hole with no way out.
Mainly because I was born as the eldest son into a very male dominated extended
family where women ruled from behind their men. Maybe that is where I learned
the hard way on my own, what it meant to be a strong ciswoman. In her own way,
mom held the family together in many ways that dad did not as for years, he was
busy being the main provider in the family. Leaving me to wonder what I could
ever do to follow in her footsteps.
It took me years of experience of being a cross-dresser,
then a transwoman to decide which direction my life should take me. Towards the
masculine side I was born into, or the feminine side which I kept leaning towards
in so many ways. My male gender kept pulling me back to a life which I had
become comfortable in and just did not want to let go. More precisely, it took
me five decades of searching to finally decide which life I wanted to lead. The
one I was currently comfortable in, or the new exciting life I felt so natural
living. A homecoming of sorts.
I write often of my experimental gender years when I did my best
to learn if I entered the world of ciswomen for good. Since I did not have the
feminine upbringing, they did, I had many surprises. Some good, some bad but
the bad ones brought with them an opportunity to improve. That was when I found
how big of a deal gender was with some people while others just seemed to take
it for granted. Such as the gender haters such as TERFS who women who fanatically
guard their femininity like some sort of mean gatekeepers who want to keep all
transgender women out. Fortunately, in my life, I have only encountered evil
TERFS who resented me for just wanting to cross the gender border and live as a
transfeminine person. I learned to ignore them and they eventually went away
and left me alone.
Then, we cannot ignore the effect of the ultra-masculine and
feminine athletes of the world have on the youth they have looking up to them
all the time. It is more apparent during Pride month when baseball teams
attempt to honor their LGBTQIA+ fans by wearing rainbow themed uniforms and
some teams protest. Can you imagine that
happening in the National Football League where over the years, only a few
players have come out as gay. Percentages dictate there are more (even transgender
players) who are still in their closets in the NFL. Whatever the case, it is obvious
gender worship overcomes hero worship most of the time with young fans. At
least with the lucky fans who do not have any gender issue problems like I did
when I was young. I knew I could never play professional football but as a
fallback, could I ever become the woman I dreamed of.
As I continued to attempt to find my way in a new world, I
did not know how many stop signs I would encounter. First of all, how I looked
then as I improved my feminine presentation, what was I going to do about how I
was moving about and communicating with the world. All the way to using the
restroom of my choice (women’s). Sure, I was scared to enter women only spaces,
but I learned through careful observation that I could use the restroom I
wanted to if I was careful to follow all the rules. Which I could write a whole
other post about. To put it briefly, the greatest majority of ciswomen I faced
in the restroom were just there to do what I was doing, and it was no big deal.
They were just going where their gender had always told them to go. I had never
had that luxury, so I needed to learn what they had always known. My gender
workbook had no chapters on using women’s only spaces.
It was also important for me to get out of the gay venues I
was always going to and test the world one on one as myself. There was no way
to tell if I could ever be successful as the person I dreamed of if I was
always only perceived as a drag queen. I knew it would be difficult for me to
be mistaken for a ciswoman in society, but I hoped I could make it as a successful
transfeminine person just getting by in the world. The more I lived in this new
world, the more I knew how big a deal it was to me and I tried even harder.
Mainly to become the friendly outgoing woman I always wanted to be. Going back to
my young male days.
I discovered too that I had a huge sense of accomplishment
when I was able to carve out a new life for myself. Mainly in the straight
venues of the world, I used to frequent often when I was a man. It was all I
could ever ask for and so much more.
Gender turned out to be the biggest deal of my life.
