Transgender Author: Why I Decided To Become A Woman
First Posted: 03/ 5/2012 12:52 pm Updated: 03/ 5/2012 12:53 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/transgender-woman_n_1311562.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/transgender-woman_n_1311562.html)
Excerpted from "Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders" by Joy Ladin [University of Wisconsin Press, $26.95]
What's so bad about being a man?" my wife asks me. I've been living in the house for months since shaving off my beard and mustache and starting to wear androgynous but female-marketed clothing. At first, we talked compulsively, night after night, for hours at a stretch. Now, though we hardly ever discuss anything but household business, there are moments—the habits of a lifetime are hard to break—when we still find ourselves trying to talk our way across the chasm of gender.
"What's so bad about being a man?" My wife has repeated this question for months. Sometimes her tone is joking, almost lighthearted. Those are the times that hurt the most, when it seems for a moment as though our marriage is still intact, as though we can laugh together through my transsexuality the way we have laughed through every other crisis. She waits for me to go along with the joke, to clap my forehead theatrically, as though the light has just gone on, and say, "Hey, you're right—being a man isn't that bad" so that we can fall into each others' arms and reunite in the joy of renouncing the terrible mistake I'm making.
The author of the piece make an important observation for those of us who are married and are parents:
In the deepest sense, I was living my life for others, and isn't that the way it's supposed to be? Years of parenting turned this lie—I was as selfish and self-centered as anyone, despite the hollowness of the self I was centered on—into a semblance of truth. Like most parents, I had to ignore my own needs to care for my childrens'.
After decades of practice, I had a well-prepared repertoire of male gestures, tones, even conversational topics that I could trot out as the occasion demanded; I had become expert at translating my smallest impulses into an acceptably male idiom. As a man, I was a father, a husband, a teacher, a writer. As a woman, I was nothing....
In the name of being a husband and father, I had turned gender dysphoria from a chronic discomfort and occasional crisis into a system of torture. For years, being a man had been a habit. Now, being a man was a matter of constant self-denial, a desperate failing effort to control the rage for transformation that seemed to be all that was left of me.