Gender? Sorry, I’m all out

I think a lot about gender. For those who know me this is unsurprising. For those who don’t, I’m trans, non-binary too. I use they/them pronouns because although I can never stop thinking about it, I’d rather avoid the concept of gender completely. Now, transgender is the commonly used term to describe a person who’s gender doesn’t align with what they were assigned at birth. Though I prefer the more old fashioned term, ‘transsexual’ myself for a number of reasons.

The first reason being that I find it deeply amusing how uncomfortable it makes cis people, as well as a surprising amount of queer people. The second being that I don’t really think ’transgender’ captures the way I feel about myself. Its important to note early on that I have no qualms with those who do prefer to identify with transgender. Gender and a persons relationship with their body are highly personal, and I don’t think that my attitude and identity is more or less correct than another persons. I don’t even think there is an objectively correct lens to view this through, these thoughts are merely indicative of my attitude towards the whole thing.

Being trans

So why don’t I view myself through the lens of ’transgender’? Sure, I don’t align with what I was assigned at birth, so I fit the technical definition. However ’gender’, is generally used to define the social role one takes, and the general characteristics a person presents to the world in order to signal to others what gender (or lack of) they are.

The reality is that when I popped out, I was assigned a sex, based on purely physical characteristics.

Penis = boy. Vagina = girl.

Truly ground breaking stuff here I know.

The medical staff weren’t making a guess at my future social role and gender presentation, they were going off a very short checklist of physical characteristics.

Fast forward a few years, and I feel a bit funny about this whole sex and gender thing. Dysphoria’s a funny thing, it can lay dormant for a long time and then BAM, hits ya all at once. But I’d never really felt like any gender to be honest. Perception of me changed depending on what I wore, my hair style, facial hair length and any number of other factors. Not much different from today really.

What I did decide to do was to start HRT, and go through the process of ‘transition’ (again, a term I use purely because it matches a base experience without really capturing my attitude towards transitioning to or from a state). When you take cross-sex hormones, some wild shit happens, your whole body changes, every single part of it including the way you think and feel. Importantly however, the way I viewed my gender did not. In aligning my body with a more androgynous format though, a whole bunch of my secondary sexual characteristics did. My cells operate differently than they did before, I would genuinely consider my biological sex having shifted far more radically than my gender.

So really I think transsexual is a more fitting term for myself. I don’t view myself as ontologically a man or woman. I’ve never really identified with the experience of man or womanhood in a way that made me desire to be one or the other. The reality is that I view HRT in a similar way as I do to getting tattooed, I want to be able to control the way my body looks to the best of my ability for not much more reason other than its mine and I can. Also it gave me killer C cups.

Being Trans vs Doing Trans

I do often find this alienating, transfemmes understandably don’t often hold the same view of themselves. Many trans women I know have a very concrete self identity and assurance in their womanhood, a necessity when having to constantly fight for its recognition.

Surely there must be some common ground? We have very similar experiences with the medical system, and have taken similar steps to change our bodies.

Torrey Peters said in an interview something that has resonated with me since: ”For me, there’s always been a question of being trans and doing trans”. I’ve never felt like I’m doing trans in a way that seems to align with many of the other trans people I meet. I’ve never really connected with the stories of many trans awakenings, of transition experiences, or descriptions of transfemininity.

I never feel like I’m doing trans right, and after six years of it I don’t think I ever will.

I hope one day I’ll learn to sit with that. ”To be a woman is to perform” and I never wanted to audition.