Not bad for a machine! — Anyone who is transgender is sensitive to how they look and how the world sees them. Both they and the world can be amazingly cruel judges, whether you are looking in the mirror or if you are being looked at…

I have had gay and straight cis friends who have told me how courageous I am when I admitted that I am transgender to them. I am not. I am driven by gender dysphoria to simply be who I am and not what was told to be. Gender dysphoria is…

The thrill of being transgender. — If you are transgender, you need a great therapist and a great cardiologist because transitioning is not a ride for the faint of heart. Once you realize that you are on a track, you begin to realize two things, you won’t go off a cliff and you are not alone…

Banging my head against my personal wall of gender ignorance. — As I look back now, I am stunned by how incredibly clueless I was of how deep my gender was buried. I now appreciate the level of denial that Society was able to indoctrinate me with. I swallowed their gender propaganda, hook, line and sinker. I always thought that I…

Or some pigs really will be more equal than others — In his classic political satire Animal Farm¹, author George Orwell used the pigs to describe people who betray everyone’s trust for the pigs’ powerful and selfish needs. Well, the pigs are back. In far too many states in the US and in far too many countries around the world, the…

There is no linear answer to why we are transgender. Believe me for five years I have exhaustively searched, like many transgender people, for the answer to: WHY AM I TRANSGENDER?’ I now simply say “I just am.” It took us centuries to learn so many things that are taken…

Their ignorance feels like constantly being beaten by a club. — As a transgender woman I find it so frustrating reading, hearing and seeing such concentrated attacks on the transgender community. It feels like I am watching people clubbing baby seals. I feel the blows myself. Where is the threat? The only way my rational mind can wrap around it is…

Transgender women just want to go there to safely pee, not to attack other women. — What makes a lady, a lady? According to the Pemberley Group: “A lady displays self-respect, class, appreciation, and etiquette. She does not allow her mood to affect her manners. Being a lady doesn’t mean that you should be snobby or stuck up, but that you should have dignity, consideration, and…

The transgender skill of combining the best of being born female and being raised male. — For 60 years, ignorance allowed me to believe my gender was male. For the last five years I have been trying to figure out what I am. My writing here on Medium has been a travelogue of my painfully slow transgender journey. It feels so painfully slow because the path…