Deniers beware.
My therapist asked how I’m able to not let other people get to me when they don’t respect me. Specifically, my gender identity. The answer didn’t roll off my tongue. In fact, it didn’t even come that session. It came to me as I drove from her office to work.
Sitting in my penis mobile of a pickup truck, I thought to myself. I thought that I’m not all that different from them. I’m not all that different than a religious zealot, the bigot on the bar stool down at the corner bar or the pastor preaching hell, damnation and brimstone.
I know with every fiber in my body that I’m right. Nothing you say about my DNA, my chromosomes or anything else you might throw at me will change my mind. People have said to me that I’m not biologically female. That I am a man who wants to be a woman. I’m not even going to argue that position. I don’t have to, their opinions aren’t important to me. I know what I know about my own mind and my body. I know that 14 year old boys don’t sit in their rooms and try and figure out why they don’t have a vagina.
I guess my point is, I am what I am. I refuse to argue about it. If you feel like you can’t accept that, that’s on you. You can keep it to yourself, you can tell me how you really feel. I’m surrounding myself with my true supporters. I don’t want fake people. To some people, I’ll always be viewed as a man. No matter how kind the hormones are to me, no matter what surgery I have, I’ll never be a real woman to those people. I can’t convince them, no more than people could once be convinced that the world was round.
Likewise, I’ll always look in the mirror and wonder what could have been. A key hormone at a certain timing in the womb? Who knows. I do wish in somewhat equal parts that I could either be happy with the body I have or have been born with the correct body. It’s not as much about gender identity to me as much as being comfortable in my own skin. So despite the fact that I’ll always have shoulders that are a little too broad and hip bones that fused themselves long ago, I’m still very much a woman. No matter the irrevocable damage that years of testosterone poisoning has done, I will persevere.
Now, it’s 6 o’ clock in the morning. I should be asleep.