Heyyyy Sis! Ugh. Sigh. I wanted to say I've been stealthily lurking since '94 but I don't think SP is quite that old, I just recall my first internet excursions were around that time and of course ALL I EVER searched for was evidence of other girls like me and I remember Susan's Place from the beginning as the healthy place in contradistinction to most of the sites glittering darkly in the beginning...
Hi! my name is name Stephanie Kay, my pronouns are She/Her, and I'm a transgender woman. Lemme confess right up front that I know everyone believes I'm crazy. So be it. I've let go, I've come out, I am officially transsexual now. OMFG. Saying that out loud provokes so many colliding feelings and cascading thoughts, and I really want to share some of them with you, and my hope is to untangle at least a substantial fraction of the knots that persist, especially now that I am out, loud, and proud, flying the flag for all to see, all the time, finally, after sooooo many years looooong in hiding. I ask you to please forgive my convoluted style—-I'm not the type to operate in straight lines nor to contain the flood of associations which tend to spill. She's a messy girl, this one, 'n eccentric ol' lady, yes bitch, and a divine emanation of the Goddess, there's just no helping any of it. I rebel against complying with any of the ever-shifting kaleidoscopic systemic fantasies of order and control and category that comprise the propaganda maelstrom, this so called consensual reality that serves the lucky and the few.
I identify as a woman recovering from 50 years of testosterone poisoning. I mean the unfortunate organic processes of my own body which meant I was shoved at birth into the male pole of the binary, as well as that which saturates this entire civilization submerged in, and deformed by, a thousand generations of violence synonymous with masculinity.
I came out 9/14/18 and started HRT 11/1/18. I've known I was a girl since I was 6, if not younger. I was all alone with this knowledge and I barely survived buried under a mountain of Fear & Shame, twin engines to propel me on a downward spiral of pathetic self-sabotage, self- loathing, self-destruction, I never stood a chance, this traumatized little soul, and yet, here she stands before you, in all her disheveled glory. I am like a gorgeous freight train and oooh honey you can watch me go by, you can come along for a ride, but you sure as hell ain't gonna stop me no more!
Most of my life I felt like a girl pretending to be a man. It always felt ridiculous, and it always felt terrifying. It just kills me how I wasted a half a century building this absurd butch persona and had to compartmentalize all my high femme longings and how I missed the opportunity to love myself when I was young and pretty. I'm doing it now without reserve, without apology. It's wonderful--gender euphoria! The thing is, now I have a whole new host of struggles. I've turned myself inside out.
I'm amused (and mortified) that everything of which I was once most ashamed and afraid to fully express is now the only manifestation of my inner life that I want to embody, and conversely I am really embarrassed if not disgusted by my previous avatar on which I expended so much effort creating. I'm genuinely mystified that my ruse convinced everyone! It took many, many years of study and practice, because as a kid, my sensitivity, and softness, and natural sissy queer qualities were there for all to see and trample upon and it hurt tremendously, to be ostracized, humiliated, picked on, beat up, told I'm wrong, molested whatever, and while it feels like I never actually got tough, I eventually succeeded in faking masculinity so well that I forgot who I was anymore. I feel like those guys from the FBI who infiltrate an outlaw biker gang or the mob and like go in so deep they become virtually indistinguishable. When I was younger I was constantly gendered female! And how embarrassed I'd feel because, well, systemic misogyny! And finally after turning 40 I turned myself from an underweight long haired rock 'n' roll art school kid into a powerful weightlifting beast and rocketed up the bro ladder to the point where there was no masculine space (barring that of genuine outlaws) in which I didn't feel fully capable of holding my own. And I really wanted to die.
So I figured before I relapse and overdose accidentally on purpose, before I commit suicide, why not THIS. My whole life it was something I did instead of who I am. I had internalized all the horrible messages from society, that trans women are to be pathologized, sexualized, marginalized, demonized, dehumanized, objectified, a pervert, a deviant, a mutation, a failure, a joke. When I was a little kid and felt overwhelming desire to dress up like all the other girls, I knew I would get killed, or worse! for admitting this. And although I was very lonely, afraid and ashamed, I noticed absolutely ever shred of light that signaled I was not alone, no matter how rare, how distant, how strange and unusual and extreme, transsexuals existed, and I recognized myself, and I felt the fascination, the magnetic attraction, the irresistible pull. Every movie mention, film character, television program, newspaper item, literary reference, scholarly text, psychoanalytic theory, pop culture example, song lyric, magazine image, radio broadcast, snippet of speech, whatever form she came into focus, no matter how framed, I knew she was me. I could never let it be so, though, sadly....I'd internalized the transphobia, the transmisogyny, the entire culture of sexism, awareness of men's (and many women's) contempt for the feminine, so deeply that even after I moved to New York City and encountered fabulous people in real life, I couldn't let go, I was too scared. My envy, my longing, at the sight of every gorgeous version of the femme vision, (trans especially, obviously, but ya know cis too—cue the learned male gaze as cover up-) , my heart jumped and my belly flipped, and I'd double down on the fragile mantle of manhood claimed. Back then the distinctions weren't as clearly cut as they are today, and the girls didn't seem concerned as much with proper language. They were tough working girls, OG activists, femme club kids, drag queens, transsexuals, transvestites, female impersonators, crossdressers, even the downtown fashionistas, art school fairies, freaks, and glam rockers, all signal all noise—-I respectfully resist the urge to list ALL the outré and passé slang I remember!
Gosh I so much wanted to join the parade back then in the '80s/90s but I was a coward and instead worked it all out privately, desperately, the gory details of which strike me as best left for another time. I was a teenager and I'd hang around on the fringes surreptitiously, I wanted to be around girls like me yet they all seemed so powerful and I was so weak, and I'm pretending my proximity was an accident. I'd find myself near Sally's Hideaway, Club Edelweiss, I'd go to Lee's Mardi Gras Boutique, and her bookstore in midtown, Patricia Fields, the deuce, Florent, Save The Robots, The Vault, Mother, The World, Limelight, Pyramid, Jackie 60, et cetera, I read all the books, all the papers, so slinky not slinky, it's all so embarrassing really to reflect back at how intimidated I felt, how much I hated myself, how disconnected, how lost I was....
I'm sorry, Girls! Too much bla bla bla. Ugh. Just wanted to say hi, I'm sick of lurking, I wanna join, be a contributing member here at Susan's.
IRL, finally, entering LGBTQ+ spaces I've met a ton of wonderful young queer trans non-binary people who really helped me to accept myself and not feel so tortured by hegemonic beauty standards, and cis passing privilege, and what a woman is supposed to be and not supposed to be, and yet, still, I seem to feel incessant contradictory desires to both reject the pressure to conform and long to never be misgendered on sight, i.e., pass. It'd be lovely to have a few more transsexual women in my life, especially older women who get where I am coming from, because I find I get frustrated with the effort required to make it all happen, at my age, closer to the grave than the cradle, yet feeling undermined by my emotional immaturity, financial insecurity, general state of underachieving mishigas of existential despair, lingering grief, and rage. Like a friend said: honey you're in puberty and menopause simultaneous. So be it. Pay no mind. Carry on till tomorrow. One day at a time I get myself dolled up however femme I want, however wild I want, iconoclastically iconic, and be as visibly queer and trans as possible as much as possible. I see this as an epic spiritual act, sociopolitical as well as personal, an amends to myself, and a duty to all the fierce trans women that came before me and all the babies that are her now, and coming soon, and I can feel my power finally, and I am here for it. Here for Her. I exist. We exist. We always have, we always will. Love, and thank you, nice to meet you xoxox
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