I am transgender. Like almost everybody else, I have a strong and enduring gender identity. Unlike almost everyone else, my gender identity is
opposite my physical sex. I doubt that other transpersons will find anything unusual in my story. Anyone else, though, might find it unbelievable and if so, I can hardly blame them -- gender dysphoria is a mystery to me, too.
This goes back as far as I can remember -- in my case, before kindergarten. And now, sixty years later, nothing has changed. Now, like then, people expect me to express myself as a male. But I've
never had any interest in playing that part; I don't have it in me. What I do have within is a female self and
she needs to be expressed.
My worst experiences with gender dysphoria were back when I was entering puberty. The thought of having an adult male body made me sick to my stomach. (I wanted to go through puberty, just not
that one.) As far as I knew, I was the only person
ever to feel the way I felt. In those days, there was only one choice: to be carried along by life, deeper and deeper into manhood, making sure all the while that my true self... my female self,
never showed. Confiding in anyone, or asking for help, was inconceivable.
A few years later, I ran across the concept of transvestitism. Not surprisingly, considering the times, it was portrayed as a bizarre mental disorder - shameful and disgusting. Whatever. But what could I conclude other than that I, too, was disgusting? In any case, the distinction was lost on me at the time, but my issue was different: gender
identity. What I wanted... what I still want... was to live my life through a female body. That, and to have the same freedom to express myself as anyone else of female gender, including through clothing (which sounds natural to me, not disgusting.)
As an adult I worked in male-dominated fields, everyone around me exhibiting, and championing, male behavior, and expecting me to as well. For a long time, I put a great deal of energy, enthusiasm and hard work into my career. But as the years passed, I grew tired of trying to flourish in that culture. Gender dysphoria certainly did not ruin my career. But the dysphoria did keep it from being as successful and enjoyable as it could have been. No surprise there.
How strange it is for one's gender and sex to be different at all, let alone
completely different. I know that most people would say that for me to assert myself as female is to ignore reality. But from my perspective, expecting me to play the part of a male, and to come alive and to feel fulfillment by doing so, is to ignore reality. And to almost anyone else, this sounds entirely psychological in nature. I see it, though, as a physical problem: I am female, so why is my body male?
Sometimes I feel stupid for this mattering to me so much. But it does matter. It's about being able to be genuine, and being able to convey something of my soul into the world. It's about feeling like a part of the world, on the one hand, or feeling like some kind of alien, painfully out of place, on the other.
My gender dysphoria has been remarkably consistent over the course of my life, being among both my earliest memories and my most recent thoughts. Being retired now, I no longer feel compelled to hide my female self; instead, I want to openly embrace and explore her. I want to enjoy being her. And ideally, I'd like to experience what it's like for my physical sex and my gender to be the same, like it is for almost everyone else.
My wife, known in these forums as @Moonflower , has known about this for many years- almost the entire time that we've known each other. Her full support has never been in doubt. She is the strongest and freest of spirits. She is my Shadowfax, my Demian. Bob Dylan could have been thinking of her when he wrote:
Quote
"In another lifetime she must have owned the world,
or been faithfully wed to some righteous king who wrote psalms beside moonlit streams."
