I am not a freak

I am on my 18th month on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). I am still not sure whether I will fully transition but it seems like the inevitable outcome. My personal life and the pandemic have colluded to slow that decision-making process, so in this neutral gender zone I have been trying to purge six decades of binary brain-washing and it’s not easy.

According to Wikipedia, transphobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes, feelings or actions toward transgender people or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence, anger, or discomfort felt or expressed towards people who do not conform to social gender expectations. The toughest type of transphobia is the one that is inside the head of someone that is transgender.

I have personally felt, and still feel to some degree, that fear, aversion, hatred, violence, anger, or discomfort is within me as well.

It is not pretty.

It tears you apart from the inside out…and then you have to hear the same ugliness from others. They include family, friends, the media, politicians and religious zealots. It’s a stacked team against me. Every time I hear a transphobic statement, it reverberates through my soul. I feel the pain. I feel my vulnerability. I question, yet again, am I doing the right thing, am I hurting others unnecessarily, am I hurting myself, will I be happy, what am I, am I a freak?

It is a nasty internal world with unquenchable emotional fires raging throughout my waking hours.

The world continuously feeds my doubts.

Fortunately, my reality comes to the rescue. Cisgenders don’t endlessly question their gender. I do, all the time. Cisgender males don’t dream of their world without their penis. I have since I was five years old. Those are tougher facts to face than the antiquated opinions of a society that relies on a pure binary system to explain gender. My facts eclipses societies perceptions.

I am not a freak.

I have allowed that perception to be my own for too long and it is wrong. I am part of a community that has been forced to hide in shame as if we did something wrong, as if we are not worthy to exist in society. It is a natural misalignment that occurred when my brain was wired female prior to birth and my body developed male.

The world is not flat and the world is not binary.