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Breasts and Penises
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 now I have both.
I am a transgender tweener, sitting between two binary sign posts, waiting for the courage and the commitment to cross into the irreversible, my true gender wired before I was born.
I was born with a penis in the 1950s, the product of militantly binary society. For the next sixties years my penis, testosterone and deep male socialization dictated my gender…until my gender executed a Shawshank Redemption-like escape. Like the movie I have had to dig through a 25-foot-deep cement wall of denial, crawl through a mile of deep emotional sewerage to finally emerge in a raging river filled with conflict, fear and confusion but with a new determination to finally be me.
I have been on female hormones for over 18 months. My chest, according to the Victoria Secrets on-line bra calculator, is 40D. In disbelief I confirmed it on other sites. The funny thing is, no one has noticed. To the world I am still a gray-haired, 64-year-old white guy. No one ogles my breast. No one ever looks down. No one even cares.
I go into a men’s room and I still get to pee standing up. My penis is my right to entry. It’s a non-event.
It has been a strange…
