“Femininity”
When you look at it, it looks like just a word — and yet it’s so much more. It is, to me anyway, power in and of itself. I ran from it, repressed it, feared it and denied it pretty successfully for something over 40 years.
And yet, its power ultimately pulled me in.
I am a child of 1970, when being trans was deeply pathologized and often considered dangerous to your health.
I am a child of a conservative Christian upbringing where being trans was seen as some kind of abomination, even a personification of evil.
I’m also a child of humanity. And being that child of humanity, eventually the humanity of who I was caught up to me. The deep repression of my true self was peeled away, and the woman I am began to be exposed.
In some senses, it was like a peeling off the layers of an onion to find my womanhood and femininity at the center. It was something like dropping an egg on a hard floor, where suddenly I was exposed.
I think it is intensely important for each of us to find our own balance of femininity and masculinity. Because what is right for me may not be right for others. It might be in the ball park, and then it might be nothing like it.
Whether or not a woman displays more or less femininity is not the power of it at all, though. No, it’s far more primal than that. The power of femininity is in its wearer owning it.
When I came out as trans, the idea of my femininity was in so many ways a new and dangerous concept. I think at some level, I had it in my head that I was less feminine and perhaps closer to an agender or non-binary identity. But I was surprised.
Femininity snuck up on me. I put on makeup, ostensibly to hide my shadow. But it was more powerful than just hiding this part of myself: it was also joyous. Putting this product on myself and seeing femininity shine through…it was powerful.
It snuck up in clothes, in my choosing them and wearing them.
Dresses, skirts, stockings — they all powerfully impacted me and made me feel more feminine than I ever thought possible. Feminine clothing continues to make me feel free and powerful and more womanly than I ever thought possible.
I suppose in a sense, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Maybe the empowerment I find in femininity is in direct contrast to the powerlessness I felt in the repressions, the denial, and the shame of my identity, and the bullying and taunts of childhood.
Feeling, knowing, experiencing and making space for femininity is where I find my strength. In a way, it is my superpower.
