QuoteWhat does it mean to feel female?
That is a question I was asked a LOT when I was young and began protesting my 'assigned sex' but I didn't really have a clear answer then. The answer didn't evolve until a year or more post-op and didn't become crystal clear until decades later when I read "Why Gender Matters" (by Leonard Sax).
There is no "feeling female". What there
IS is common experiences, things we have in common with others of the same gender.
As a child, my sense of being female came from commonalities with other girls, things like preferred forms of play and a dislike for loud or pushy behaviour, early development of linguistic abilities, preference for non-conflict, and concern for others. I understood and could identify with girls and felt one of them but had nothing in common with boys.
Through later childhood and my early teens, a growing sense of being excluded (to some extent) by girls was very distressing - I had always been excluded by boys - and I became very isolated.
Within a short time after SRS, like a year, I began to see my childhood differently. I always
WAS a girl and, seen in that light my responses and my problems were totally understandable for a young girl trapped in an untenable situation. Integrating into women's life was a snap! It just meant letting go and relaxing into being myself, unguarded and uninhibited.
Through the 40 years since then the vast majority of my friends have been women (cis women) and we have talked about everything imaginable. In that time I have come to understand that the biggest factor in feeling like a woman is in shared experiences, both the good and the bad. With the exception of periods and childbirth, there is little difference between my life and those of my friends.
In my humble opinion, "feeling female" is about where you fit, the place in life where you fit in comfortably and naturally.
