I wrote this for Medium in response to challenges that angered me. I thought it might resonate here with some people.
I'm Not Like Other Girls
Ok let me start off by saying that my life has been stained by the advantages of male privilege. There I have said it and it is now out in the open.
In addition, I have been medically diagnosed as transgender, clinically proven. That is not up for any debate.
Finally, in the current, generally accepted gender vernacular, I am a transwoman.
So off we go. Am I really a woman or am I just a guy with a few bits removed? Given that no one can give me a definitive answer to what a woman is other than the militantly classic and massively ignorant argument that "your chromosomes and your genitalia are the only things that decide your gender" argument, I am going to say with total confidence that I am a woman.
Relax, I am not saying that I am like you if you're a woman or the women in your life if you're a guy. I am different and I am ok with that.
Just like you can state your gender with absolute authority because you simply know, I can state with equal authority that I also just simply know my gender.
Having gotten past the "I think therefore I am" argument, I now want to deal with the "you are just a man trying to be a woman" retort. I agree to a degree. Yes, I was raised as a male but it was always brutally enforced against my deep, internal sense of my female gender. It's like forcing a left-handed person to write with their right. It can be done but it never, ever feels natural.
The next challenge is the "you are acting like a woman based on how men see women which is a completely false sense of womanhood" old standby.
Oh, come on, that just leads back to "what is a woman?".
Of course, my life experiences are going to impact my vision of who and what I am and of course I will overcompensate in expressing my femininity. I have been forced to express a false masculine image all my life. At my age I want to maximize my female experience, both good and bad, for whatever time I have left.
So, I am not like the other girls.
I am the product of the classic mixture of nurture and nature, with a humorous gender twist thrown in by nature. In the end, I am defined by my life experiences and my gender identification, just like a Kurdish woman soldier is different from a Manhattan mother, from a Syrian female refugee, from a French runway model, from a starving Ethiopian girl, from a Mid-western farmer woman, from a Dallas police woman, from a Catholic nun from a black, Indian American Vice President.
On the female range of gender expression from too feminine to too masculine, who has declared that they have the right to pick it for me? Who claims to have that power over my life, the remnants of an obsolete and ignorant society that once pigeon-holed me for a lifetime in the wrong gender? Thankfully society has finally begun to accept the humanity of my gender and given me the hope to finally be who I truly am. The last thing I will allow is a flat-worlding, gender Nazi force me back into the binary cell I have just escaped from.
So please forgive me if my gender expression fails your gender test. Give me a little time to adjust.
I just got out of jail.
