(Been bad about posting this week. Sorry!)

I’ve been thinking a lot about situations where my behavior or interactions or presentation will be functionally the same before and after transitioning, but where there’s still a large emotional and/or perceptional shift. For example, while out with friends over the summer, I jotted this down during the cab ride home (in the interest of full disclosure, I was not exactly sober at the time):

There is a subtle, yet fundamental difference between being catty (with ‘the girls’) and being an asshole (with ‘the guys’).

In all fairness, ‘the guys’ that I’ve hung out with aren’t exatly the assholish type, nor ‘the girls’ really the catty type. But I’ve noticed a few times recently when out with friends in girl-mode that there’s been a subtle shift in my interactions with the men and women in the group. And I think there probably is an actual difference in interactions, but I think a lot more of it is based on my own emotions and perceptions of the situation and me feeling more comfortable in girl-mode than I ever really have in boy-mode.

Which brings me to what I really wanted to talk about: being perceived and/or thinking about myself as a heterosexual man versus a gay woman.

I’ve never really thought of myself as male, or as a boy, or as a man. But I also didn’t really think of myself as a girl growing up, or as a woman now. In fact, only very recently have I felt anything like being ‘trapped in the wrong body’ as estrogen as given me a basis for comparison for how my body could have developed. Rather, while I knew that ‘boy’ was not right for me and ‘girl’ felt like it would be right, I had always been concious that I wasn’t a girl.  So, as is my nature in all walks of life when I haven’t actually tried something, I was really hesitant to say “I am a girl” but rather said or thought things like “I think I want to be a girl” or “I feel like I should have been a girl.” I particularly like Julia Serano‘s phrasing, “It’s like my brain expected me to be a girl.” (Quoting from memory, so that may not be the exact line.)

But I’ve always found women more attractive than men, both before and now during the transition. Likewise, while going on hormones sure as hell has changed how I experience sex/sexuality, it hasn’t change my sexual preferences. (I’m speaking here of who I’m attracted to, not what I enjoy doing with them…)

(As a side note, when I first went on hormones, my therapist did say it was possible my sexual preference might change over the course of the transition. I like her a lot and think she was telling me what she understands to be true, but my suspicion is over the course of the transition some trans people realize their sexuality has already been this or that, rather than having it actually change.)

So I’ve recently been examining how it feels – particularly since G got back – to think of myself as a lesbian versus a straight man. Again, I never really thought about myself as a straight man, but I also never really thought about myself as a lesbian, other than in a ‘maybe someday that’s what I’ll call myself’ sort of thing. The long and the short of it is that it feels good. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t like the potential negatives I’m opening myself and G up to by ‘coming out’ as a couple, but I do like the way thinking about us as a lesbian couple makes me feel about myself and my gender.

Which, I guess, is a good summary for me of transitioning as a whole: The specifics of the changes are often not the imporant part (although sometimes the specifics are nice, too) but it’s the way it makes me feel that’s important.

-R

One Response to “Pithy title about men and women”

1. M says:

   September 23, 2008 at 2:20 pm

   Don’t underestimate our friends we are catty and assholes.

   Reply