Slicing and dicing
This is my official 140th article for Medium. I continue to slice and dice myself and my need to transition with my amazingly sharp emotional Ginsu knives. I seem to do that very well. Obviously I have an innate talent.
If I finally fully transition after all, what will I write about?
As I stand here clicking my heels in my ruby red sneakers in my private gender jungle, I marvel that I still have tolerant readers willing to subject themselves to my seemly endless stream of gender dysphorian rants and grand delusions of gender. …
I have been fighting an endless battle trying desperately to not physically transition. It is a battle I am losing a little bit every day. On another transgender support site, yesterday, someone described me and my situation to her wife:
“I wish you could see what I see here; a smart beautiful trans woman who is trying to reconcile her love for her wife with the need to be the woman she so clearly is.”
It ignited in inside me a series of explosions…again. I always react when I am told I am pretty or beautiful. I reacted even more…
Every day I keep passing women and secretly wishing: “I wish I was her.” I have been doing it all my life and never thought anything was odd about it. It was as if my subconscious had given my male consciousness a free hall pass to feel that way without any kind of guilt or shame while recognizing that my repressed female gender needed to be given a few moments a day to breath.
It was always brief and never obsessive. My female gender and my male socialization had found a way to coexist for decades.
So what changed?
To…
July seems like the perfect time for a Christmas analogy
I believe that the later you transition in life, the more life you carry into transitioning. It’s a bit like Marley’s Ghost in A Christmas Carol. The longer the life, the longer and more ponderous are the chains we carry into our transition.
In addition, each personal history changes the path of that transition. We all have our own ghostly chains that no one sees but us. That is why we all can’t entirely match up our transitions as if they were following straight lines that paralleled each other. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) is the perfect description of the…
But That Is Like Wishing I Wasn’t Six Foot Tall
A Prism & Pen writing prompt: What I Love About Being LGBTQ!
I wish I wasn’t transgender but that is like wishing you weren’t left-handed or that you were shorter. Wishing is not going to change reality.
I am transgender and I am six foot tall.
To deny that is like trying to deny the earth is round, and I am definitely not a flat-earther. If I did deny, my life would be a lot easier but I would be abdicating mature adult responsibility for my actions and thoughts.
I just can’t do that.
But I do wish I wasn’t transgender. My life would be immeasurably easier. I wouldn’t have to fight…
Respect of the Struggles of Woman
I am a trans woman. I am in the process of transitioning. I still have a penis. I think it is incredibly selfish and insulting for any trans woman to parade or simply expose their penis inside a woman’s locker room or ladies room. It shows an amazing lack of sensitivity.
I do not have any facts of what specifically occurred in the ladies locker room in California but the perceptions and interpretations of the facts have led to another firestorm between the extreme transphobes and the militant trans community.
I hate extremes.
The world has not advanced enough that…
Take the time to learn, be patient and listen
I feel for the parents of transgender children. I feel for the spouses of transgender individuals as well. What a confusing world to be thrown into. They are cisgender and don’t even know what that means.
How can they possibly understand the rest?
To be a cisgender person is the simplest thing in the world, your gender identification and your biological, physical sex, match. Nothing further to think about, it all fits. Everyone is cisgender, right?
No, one of the most important people in your life is not. They are transgender.
To be transgender is to know that your internally…
Meet you at the swap meet
I originally wrote this after 18 months on HRT and never thought that I would technically be in the same spot 18 months later. The delay has been caused by personal, professional and COVID needs. I have tweaked it a little but the lament is still basically the same.
To a medical student they are just another piece of anatomy. To a cisgender person, they are just another signpost of gender and sex. To anyone who is transgender, they are the cause of extreme anguish and pain or the Holy Grail of a life-long dream.
I am transgender, and right…
On Catholic hypocrisy in Poland
The LGBTQ community continues to fight for rights state by state in the US. A trans school child can now go to the bathroom of their own gender identification according to a ruling the US Supreme Court handed down on Monday. We have a long way to go yet but progress is progress. Even if it is two steps forward and one step back at times.
My background is that my mother was born in the US of Polish Catholic immigrants. My parents were married in a Polish Catholic church here in New York City. I was raised Catholic with…
You might as well try and stop a locomotive
The power of gender dysphoria constantly amazes me. You might as well try and stop a locomotive in motion with your bare hands. I know. I have tried for five years.
It has humbled me.
If you had a severely bleeding wound or a sharp, intense internal pain, you would have the common sense to seek medical assistance. With gender dysphoria there is no outward manifestation. You are left to try and self-diagnose the most complex part of a human being: our brain and then unravel the vast complexity of our thoughts.
Good luck.
I failed miserably and I thought…
Emma Holiday
After decades of denial I finally answered the question “What’s wrong with me?” The answer is “Nothing”. I am transgender and I am OK.
