WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO BE A FEMALE?
I hear it asked a lot.... mostly by people who are not dealing with Gender Identity Dysphoria. I should clarify it a little, since I do hear or see the reference in passing on multiple occasions.... It's the verb "want" as in "why someone would want to
be a female". I see the vernacular a lot and I really do believe that
from the vantage of one who is not dealing with GID, understanding the
difference between "want" and "am" are really almost impossible to
extrapolate out or differentiate.
The "am" part is not visible to anyone else but the person dealing with the GID....so it looks to everyone else like "want". When I speak of "am" - I speak to the fact that I am a woman. I happened to inhabit a body that is male. Without meeting me or having known me, it is another impossibility to see that either. It would make perfect sense if you did. you would have seen prior, a person who looked effeminately male by body design and features and who acted, emoted, talked, behaved and in all respects exuded typical female qualities which other, natal women had, and continued to express of me.
I didn't want to change anything. I didn't want to transition. I just didn't want to suffer living a life that was like a 45 year acting role as a character I never was and as a character, in the guise of a male, who was oddly looked at, perceived and misconstrued as all sorts of things she wasn't...... "Oh, he might just be gay", "He has a very effeminate way about him", "He isn't like most guys". Sure, I could and did shrug it off, but I lived, associated and had relations with fellow human beings as a guy and I had no idea how to relate after four decades. It was always alien.
The great experiment as living as my true self only verified for me and was resounded in chorus by so many others, so many natal women who never knew me before as anything but the woman I am....and that I was, to them, a woman. There is no want to live my life as a woman....far from it. I just realized I had to live my life as who I already was my whole life.
Believe me, it is so much easier to relate to the world in a way that relates back to me without contest or question and to experience kinship with others in ways that I finally just feel like I have, after 49 years being gone away, just arrived to the comfort of home. I'm home...... That's it.
The "am" part is not visible to anyone else but the person dealing with the GID....so it looks to everyone else like "want". When I speak of "am" - I speak to the fact that I am a woman. I happened to inhabit a body that is male. Without meeting me or having known me, it is another impossibility to see that either. It would make perfect sense if you did. you would have seen prior, a person who looked effeminately male by body design and features and who acted, emoted, talked, behaved and in all respects exuded typical female qualities which other, natal women had, and continued to express of me.
I didn't want to change anything. I didn't want to transition. I just didn't want to suffer living a life that was like a 45 year acting role as a character I never was and as a character, in the guise of a male, who was oddly looked at, perceived and misconstrued as all sorts of things she wasn't...... "Oh, he might just be gay", "He has a very effeminate way about him", "He isn't like most guys". Sure, I could and did shrug it off, but I lived, associated and had relations with fellow human beings as a guy and I had no idea how to relate after four decades. It was always alien.
The great experiment as living as my true self only verified for me and was resounded in chorus by so many others, so many natal women who never knew me before as anything but the woman I am....and that I was, to them, a woman. There is no want to live my life as a woman....far from it. I just realized I had to live my life as who I already was my whole life.
Believe me, it is so much easier to relate to the world in a way that relates back to me without contest or question and to experience kinship with others in ways that I finally just feel like I have, after 49 years being gone away, just arrived to the comfort of home. I'm home...... That's it.
As I like to put it...
ReplyDeleteIt's more of a need to have a body that reflects how our brains want to identify the body. I'm lucky that I can live in both modes. Yet, I can see the signs of a possible need to transition evolve, as I might have repressed a hell of a lot for over 50 years.....
M