You’ll Never be a Real…

One of the most disheartening things any Trans person can hear is that they will never be a real man or woman. What’s unusual about this is that I can understand why a person would assign arbitrary rules to what makes a person “real.” Since birth we’ve had a binary crammed down out throats and we’ve been told that thinking outside that box is wrong, or worse; sin. The reason I understand it is because that’s the same mentality that kept me from admitting my truth for 39 years. It’s the reason I felt ashamed of my gender variant feelings, the reason I over ate, the reason I wore a macho persona, the reason I abused alcohol, the reason I’ve abused myself, the reason I’ve attempted suicide, and the reason I’ve been silently suffering since childhood.

What I don’t understand is the need to make a person feel like garbage for trying to live their truth. As I’ve said before, if you can’t say anything nice, you shouldn’t say it at all. This highlights a very defined boundary that some people have no issue crossing for the purpose of making their personal beliefs known. But if the manner in which I live my life is bothersome to you, what’s the advantage in goading me into a dialog. I am even less of a burden if you just keep your opinion to yourself. In this, one becomes compelled to ask the question, who is more obsessed with my transition; me, or the observer?

Transitioning has opened my eyes to how we perceive gender in general, and with that juxtaposed against this idea that we can never become a real man or woman, I am inclined to ask some very…