I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked “Why (or When) did you decide to become a man?” In the beginning, I felt angry when someone asked this. I’ve since realized that they are asking because they have a need to understand, they are asking for education. Turning my initial anger into seeing the opportunity to give a positive response has helped enlighten the minds and hearts of many.
I did not “decide” to become a man. Transgender is not something you wake up one day and think “Gee, I’m tired of being a girl, I want to be a boy from now on”. One cannot “become” transgender, one is born as transgender. Somewhere in the whole scheme of genetics and biology, a female-bodied person comes out of the womb, but in all other aspects, that person is male. Same goes with a male-bodied person, who knows within their hearts, souls and minds that they are not what their bodies are reflecting.
Going further with this, some people are born as “Intersex”, with parts of both male and female organs/anatomy. More often than not, the “choice” of which gender role this child will live is given to the parents, who in many instances make the “wrong” choice. The child is raised in the gender role forced upon him or her, sometimes to the extent of having “corrective” surgeries to reinforce this choice. When the child comes to an age of thinking on their own, many times the forced gender role is not the true gender identity.
The term “transgender person” means a person who does not fully identify with the gender they were assigned with at birth. I was born in a female body, but have never thought of myself (identified as) a “female”. Yes, I lived in a female “role”, since that’s what I was expected to do. But it didn’t happen without its consequences. As a young “girl”, I fought wearing dresses, I hated purses and gloves and patent leather shoes. As I got older, I became shy and embarrased about my body, and tried to hide it by wearing clothing that came up to my chin and down past my ankles. I couldn’t look in a mirror, (ever, for years) because that person looking back at me was NOT me. It was a strange, “ugly” person who I didn’t know.
I played with GI Joes, not Barbie. I had Tonka Toys, and race cars. I made up a name for myself, a boy name, because I couldn’t relate to the female name I was given. When my sister and I played together, we were “John and Julie” (not her real name, but the actual name of our “game”). I was the Man, the Protector, the Strength, the Husband. I “took care of” Julie. We went on our imagined journeys across the oceans and escaped into our world of fantasy. I put on my dad’s clothes, she put on my mom’s dresses and shoes, and we faced the challenges of our lives as the “married’ couple we thought we were.
Outgrowing this phase of our lives, I went on to live the next twenty-odd years in a non-typical “female” sort of way. I realized early on that I was bisexual, but in order to enjoy women, I found I had been given a label, I needed to “identify” as a lesbian. I lived in a few “lesbian” relationships over the years, but I was never comfortable with others labeling me “lesbian”.
I was NOT a lesbian. I knew that. I didn’t relate in any way, shape or form to the other lesbians I knew. I was often told through the years (usually in anger or disgust) that I sounded like, and thought like a man. Inside, I jumped for joy, because I KNEW I was a man, but something was dreadfully wrong on the outside.
It wasn’t until I was around 44 years old that I finally heard of the term “transgender”. Looking into it and researching deeper, I realized with an overwhelming sense of awe, excitement, peace, joy and happiness that THIS was my “problem”. I was simply born with the wrong anatomy, and with the help of science and medicine, I could become outwardly the man I had always been within.
I can look in the mirror now (too often, I’m told) and really SEE myself, I can smile and laugh and be proud of the person I am. There is no longer shame, there’s no anger, sadness, loneliness, despair. There is simply the knowledge that I am a valid human being, my body has been aligned with my mind, and for that, I am grateful.
Being transgender is not a choice. “Transitioning” physically into one’s true gender is a choice. There’s a huge difference, and I’ll talk about that another time.
Seize the day!
Michael
Hi Michael! How are you? Just to let you know that I will include your name in my research paper and your blog “Being Transgender is not a Chioce” I hope you don’t mind. I am thinking about maybe publishing my paper in this web page when I am done with it. Well, let me know what you think. Thanks!
Thanks Mabel. As long as you give proper credit for any materials of mine you use, I’m glad it can be useful to you. Michael
Hi again Michael!
oops! I just realized that I already mentioned the title of my paper =p
Hi Michael!
Thanks so much for your reply. I really appreciated it. Actually, I will write a paper for my Queer Film class at UTEP about how beauty affects queer people: drag queens and kings, transgendered, and bisexuals. Thanks to your very well explained reply, I can understand better a transgendered perspective about how you felt. In your situation it was like even tough you were happy for who you are, your physical appearance was not reflecting that idea, like if you were always hiding something. I was wondering, how other transgendered people might feel when they do not think that changing their physical appearance is necessary?
Hi Michael! My name is Mabel Villa. I was requested in one of my classes at The University of Texas at El Paso to join a blog and begin a discussion. So, I will really appreciate if you can answer me. I really found your blog very interesting. Actually, I am writing a paper on how beauty affects drag queens and kings, transgendered, and bisexuals. I got interested in your blog because I believe that physical appearance shouldn’t matter, what matters is who you are, but in your blog, you are saying that how you look was really important. I would like to understand this more. Thanks and have a good day Michael!
Hi Mabel,
You’ve asked a good question, and I’ll try to answer the best I can coming from the perspective of a trans individual (which is all I know LOL)
I wrote about looking in the mirror for many years and seeing a strange “ugly” person. I couldn’t look at this person in the mirror, this person wasn’t ME. It wasn’t so much the physical attributes, because realistically, I wasn’t “ugly” – I just FELT “ugly”.
I SAW “ugly” because that person I saw in the mirror didn’t match how I saw myself. That person staring back at me was a “shell” and I felt unattached to that shell. When I looked into that person’s eyes, I saw … nothing…. blank… emptiness.
And that hurt deeply, emotionally and mentally. I couldn’t understand how other people saw me, because I couldn’t get past seeing the shell.
It wasn’t that I spent my life feeling “ugly”. I just didn’t feel RIGHT. So in not feeling RIGHT, I felt wrong, so therefore, I LOOKED wrong. I FELT unattractive, so therefore, I WAS unattractive (illogical reasoning, but common amongst trans people).
Once hormones began having their effect on me, I began seeing LIFE inside that vacant shell. The hollow emptiness (that I saw) in my eyes began to take on substance, and there was LIFE. As the physical changes to my facial features, and my body began to align with the way I FELT, I began to see “beauty”. I began to see a person who was smiling and full of life and dreams and possibilities.
“Looks” should not matter. Whether one is tall, short, thin, large, hairy, balding, pointed nose, or webbed feet, the looks don’t make the person. But the looks DO affect the person’s outlook on life and on themselves.
We’ve all heard it dozens of times in our lives, “until you can love yourself, you can’t love anyone else”. And for a transperson to be able to love themselves, sometimes it takes the miracles of hormones and surgeries to help them in that journey of self-love and self-discovery.
What I’ve been saying all along here, to sum it up, is that looks ARE important to a transperson – for themselves, inside, how THEY perceive THEMSELVES. Once they can love the person they see, others see a beautiful person too.
Hi Michael, yes, this seems the general feeling of most transpeople I know. We have a considerable number of people with intersex conditions in our organisation and some of them never had the chance to put things right as their parents had decided for them at an early age: they had no choice. Unfortunately quite a few had got it wrong too. I really glad things are going well for you mate. Robyn