I read a piece from Hollie a couple of days ago. she was responding to an awkward but incisive innocent-sounding question in a comment: "What makes you think you're really a girl?".
Such a simple question. yet one that strikes at the heart of our insecurities. When your whole edifice is one that would be readily attacked by so many people, to hear it from closer to home is something of a shock. Hollie wrote that she considered it might be an attack before realising that it was a fair question and answering it.
Having read her piece I think it's a question all of us should ask ourselves at some point. Because in doing so we make ourselves stronger when someone else asks the same question.
So then Jenny, what makes you think you're really a girl?
An interesting question, indeed! It would be very easy to get down into the weeds on this one! Self identification vs public perception? What makes a butch lesbian think that she's a woman? Obama's mom was white, what if he had chosen to identify as such? Very difficult questions to answer! I think that personal identification must win every time. If we start letting the mob define who and what we are we are all in very big trouble!
ReplyDeleteThat is an interesting question, and difficult to answer.
ReplyDeleteOne might as well ask a non trans bloke what makes him feel he is a man...
Except for the deep knowledge inside myself that I am a girl, that has been there for as long as I can remember I can only offer one more item of evidence :) When looking in the mirror in male mode I know the reflection staring back is me, but there is no click of "that's me". When Stacy looks in the mirror their is.
Stace
It would give me much pleasure and satisfaction to hear much younger trans women answer that question when the distance between one's maleness and one's feminine side is so short. It seems that with younger people realizing that they are trans at an earlier age and transitioning, it is not as hard to discard their male character.
ReplyDeleteBut for those of us who have been waiting in the wings, so to speak, to cast off that male person we have been trying to be for all our adult lives; that question is particularly important. Most of us have know that our bodies didn't match with who we saw in the mirror, but we forced ourselves to do what we had to for us to survive. Like getting married, fathering children, joining the military among other things; we eventually realized that we didn't know about our possibilities we could take for ourselves until recently is giving us opportunities to take for feminine selves.
As I have learned the transition stories of others I realized that time for me is on the short side of life and it has become now or never. Oh I may have slipped of the subject but I do not need anyone to tell me who I am, I am a girl because I say that I am.
Sarah
ps trying to type using only one eye is challenging. Just had cataract surgery this morning. am doing very well. Thank you!
If I were asked this question, the only truly honest answer I could give would be the simplest, and probably the most unsatisfying to the asker: I just am.
ReplyDeleteThere is no quality that I can point to about myself which tells me I'm female... no characteristic about me which is exclusively reserved for females.
I just am.
Whoa, sorry, been busy these last couple of days. Better late replying than never though.
ReplyDeleteIf I could truly answer that question I'd probably have got a lot closer tot he root of my condition. I just am too. Yet I'm not for reasons I've covered elsewhere, and I've got the stubble to prove it. Bummer, innit.