GenderBendy

Still more new rightness

Two and a half years into her transition, Elizabeth gradually became aware of a feeling of natural ease in self which she had never experienced before in her life, unless it was in the first few years, as a tiny child...but that was beyond memory. Time rolled on, as ever, but somehow now there was room which had never been there before; room to breathe before speaking, to feel before acting.

For all the long man-impersonation time, she now understood, she had acted on peremptory impulse out of a defining sense of anxiety. What would a man do now? I must do it instantly! Life had been speech before thought, action before centeredness.

It was ironic that for the past nine years she had been telling hundreds of radio trainees to breathe. But then, who needs the teacher’s lesson more than the teacher herself? And how could so many cis-gendered people still seem so unhappy, if they had always felt this natural and free? But then, one who has found peace through seemingly endless struggle will naturally treasure that peace more than those who have always known it.

The new rightness threaded through every part of her life. At work, in conversation with needy or vulnerable volunteers, she found herself more able to pause and then respond in a way which might help. At home she experienced a new, specifically maternal sense of tenderness and pleasure in the raising of her still-growing teens. In performance on the stages of life generally she found herself capable of a deeper level of self-trust in the moment than ever before. Thus aspects of her true personality began to show forth more clearly: a fundamental impulse to nurture; flashes of extroversion, sauciness, and flamboyance; a recasting of the old man-steel strength in whip-thin willow.

Of course she still sometimes said and did things she regretted, but less than ever before. The joy of her long unclenching ebbed and surged, but over time it continued to well up inexorably, engendering ever new and deeper senses of rightness.

Overdue blurt update

Blurg...blogging backlog...too much to narrate coherently without writing a novella...slave to notion that everything must be recorded...the dammed flow of observation, musings, and purported wit rises up the walls of the mental reservoir, threatening to overflow...the walls bulge.

Weary of writing “I, I, I” all the time, Elizabeth switches to the third person. An arguably pretentious move, but it gives her more practice referring to herself with female pronouns, which she needs, as her confidence that she’s really managing to pull off this woman in the world thing wavers from moment to moment.

Elizabeth applied last month for a job at Hannaford, checking groceries for the summer, or bagging, or anything...she really needs to supplement her income. At first she thought she wasn’t even going to get an interview, because the woman behind the customer service desk gave her one of *those* looks (hooded eyes, tight mouth, stiff shoulders). Elizabeth persevered, calling twice to follow up, and got an interview. The woman who interviewed her was warm and talkative and hyperactive, and called her “sweet,” and Elizabeth really couldn’t tell if this woman could tell that she was trans...no double-takes, no slightly-too-long stares, no care with pronouns or the like. Elizabeth left with high hopes...but then the regretful message on her voice mail...polite, with a good reason carefully spelled out. And it turns out once there’s something about you which people might react to with prejudice, there’s always that question - is it because I’m trans?

Another recent consumer-life hassle centers around a smarmy eye doctor who has given her a bad prescription for new glasses twice now, the correction as off as the original try. Is he just burned out, as he seems, or is it a passive-aggressive response to the fact that she’s trans?  She realizes she’s being suspicious, and she thinks of a person of African descent she knows who takes every minor setback in life as evidence of pervasive racism, and swears she never wants to become like that person...but how? Just roll with the bullshit? Stay noble and calm and not sink to their level and let the assholes do their worst? Their worst can be be really bad, she knows...history has shown.

Then there’s the thorny question of money. Elizabeth is actively planning at this point to get Sexual Reassignment Surgery in the next year or two. It is not covered by insurance, and generally runs about $20K. And that’s not all...she also wants Facial Feminization Surgery, which runs more like $50-60K, and is also not covered by insurance. Where is this $80K supposed to come from? She could liquidate her retirement savings, but that would mean swallowing the penalty for early withdrawal, and of course no more retirement savings. She could sell her house, but that would disrupt her own life and the lives of her children, and leave her without even the modest equity she has managed to retain through divorce and other reverses. Borrowing the money doesn’t seem to be an option, because it turns out lenders won’t accept mobile homes for collateral unless you own the land underneath them too, and she doesn’t. She has one lead on a company that might still...that’s one glimmer of hope. And then there’s always appealing to relatives, but oh, my, how terribly awkward that feels...and meanwhile, she’s going slowly but steadily deeper into debt, just to live. That second part-time job grows more and more important, but it’s so hard to find.

One bright spot: Elizabeth’s dentist, a friend, has offered to give her enamelplasty to feminize her smile. Boy teeth are bigger and squarer than girl teeth, and just a little artful rounding and shaping here and there could have a subtle but significant effect. He really seems to know what he’s doing - prides himself in his denture work, which is quite an art, it seems - so she’s going ahead with the procedure. She plans to post before and after pics.

And, at some point earlier in the month, Elizabeth passed the first year anniversary of starting hormones. That has been going well. Her whole body has grown slimmer and softer, most of the hair below her neck has faded away, her face looks significantly thinner and more feminine (actual cheekbones!), and her new baby breasts comfortably fill an A-cup. She is happy about the changes, but she has also begun to yearn for the return of sexual feeling...not the old way, though, never again the old way...hence the growing feeling of urgency around the need for SRS soon.

Still very much in process: electrolysis (another expense); and voice work (slow progress, rather than any breakthrough).

Having typed for an hour more or less at speed, Elizabeth decides to post immediately, without the usual meticulous rewriting and copy-editing. Blurt it out, put it up. Save the exquisite craftswomanship for next time. And so, she thinks, off it goes. (But it should come as no surprise that the next day she can't resist coming back and tinkering.)

Ache? NEED.

Yesterday a friend was quizzing me about the surgeries I am considering, Sexual Reassignment Surgery and Facial Feminization Surgery. He wanted to know which I wanted more. I said I was planning to get the SRS in the next year or two and the FFS maybe after; but then I also admitted I couldn’t look at the before and after pics on the FFS sites most of the time, because they got me aching for it so badly. It seemed obvious to my friend: “follow the ache,” he said, and I was all flummoxed and felt I had failed to express myself, because that wasn’t right. But I wasn’t able to say right then that I also ached for the SRS.

I couldn’t say I ached for SRS because mechanisms of self-preservation are engaged...it feels dangerous to let myself feel the full intensity of my desire. An imperious NEED roils just under the surface of this reasonably sane functionality I have managed so far to hold together. I NEED that surgery to feel whole and real and natural and free. There is no way in hell I am ever again using the vestigial appendage for what men use it for, so until I can get it altered, my sexuality and my love life are on hold. I’m stuck in the in-between place, and I fucking hate it.

There is also this: to face the NEED is to face, again, the fact of how late I am getting to all this...how brief my time of comfort in physical womanhood will be. I have lost so much woman-life. It’s tragic, is what it is. Fuck.

And, I am afraid.

But, I am not going to get even the little bit of time as a sexual woman I can reasonably look forward to unless I do my homework, face my fear of awful complications, scrape together or borrow the money, pick a surgeon, and go under the knife. There is no other way but forward. It’s time to face the need and grief and fear, and take steps.

What I would do if the surgery wasn’t available, I don’t like to think. Self-destruct somehow, probably.

In her ground-breaking book on the transsexual experience, Conundrum, first published in 1974, Jan Morris wrote about looking back on SRS after the fact:  “...nothing...has shaken my conviction, and if I were trapped in that cage again nothing would keep me from my goal, however fearful its prospect, however hopeless the odds. I would search the earth for surgeons, I would bribe barbers or abortionists, I would take a knife and do it myself, without fear, without qualms, without a second thought.”

Yep, that’s just about right.

The conundrum of male privilege

“Do you think that as a trans woman there are still some aspects of male privilege that have shaped you?”

My friend Anne asked me this question last week, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It’s an excellent question, and I’m grateful to have been asked it. What has been the effect on me of having lived the first 46 years of my life as a man? What of that still lingers? With what consequences?

Thank you, Anne, by the way, for the value-neutral “shaped”...so much better than, say, “skewed,” “spoiled,” “corrupted,” “ruined,” etc... :-p  There are people who would say that having lived as a man makes me a worse woman, or no woman at all, so I would also like to allow the possibility that in some ways having lived as a man might make me a better woman, too.

All those years I spent impersonating maleness, I was not self-aware as trans. Very early on I pushed my femininity down so hard and deep that I could not directly experience or express it. Still, from elementary school through the first year of college I struggled to find a mode of boyhood I could inhabit. I was gentle and emotional. I wore my hair long, often triggering gender confusion in others. I was routinely bullied and shunned. Childhood was lonely and difficult.

Things got better in college. I cut my hair, grew a beard, and threw myself whole-heartedly into my masculinity project...and I found it easy, in part because I had begun to discover the many compensations of being taken for a man. For example, I took full advantage of the privilege of moving through the world without fear. I went for long runs and bike rides in remote places late at night; I travelled and camped alone. I was as oblivious as any other young male-bodied person to the dangers all female-bodied people face.

Other privileges:  as a sexual being, it never even occurred to me that I didn’t have to worry about being abused or getting pregnant. As I made my way through school and on into the world of work I accepted without a thought that I was taken seriously as a student, as a job seeker, as an employee. In my daily interactions with others I felt entitled to press my point, to interrupt, to oppose others. I found it unremarkable that in a group enterprise my idea often ended up being what we were all working on. I developed and expressed a high opinion of my own qualities - intelligence, creativity, talent, self-knowledge (ha!) - and there was no one to gainsay me, at least not based on my apparent gender. All these privileges I took for granted.

No doubt at times acts and words of mine suppressed or silenced female people around me. I hope it didn’t happen often, but then I wouldn’t know, would I? Fortunately I was raised a good feminist, and so have less to reproach myself for than I might otherwise have.

When I came out as a trans woman, some of the privileges of masculinity evaporated immediately. My sense of safety is gone. I am vulnerable both to those who would do harm to women, and to those willing to act on their transphobic or homophobic impulses. (Once they’re beating the crap out of you, it is not going to do any good to explain to them that you’re not actually a drag queen.) Note that one of the effects of hormones is significant loss of muscle mass and strength, so I can’t count on being able to defend myself physically any more than other women.

With regard to social power, as people begin to accept me as a woman, I have discovered how hard it can be to get a word in when some male person is holding forth; I have found myself in a subordinate role in groups of which men have taken charge; I have been addressed with condescending banter from guys who would have formerly addressed me seriously, as an equal. It is most educational.

There is a disturbing twist to this part: When these moments happen, I feel affronted or devalued or silenced...and at the same time I cannot help feeling a little spurt of joy, because I know I’m really being seen as a woman. Once, back when I was putting on fake boobs and hips and dressing up and practicing walking in public, I got cat-called in an alley in Ogunquit by some unseen man. “Hey, hot mama!” he shouted, and even as I thought “asshole,” I also smiled and put an extra little swing in my hips in response. Hmm. Thoughts, anyone?

What I have retained from my male-time is, I think, I hope, mostly internal and mostly positive. Changing my public gender has not changed the fact that I am accustomed to being taken seriously by the world. I am still willing and able to stand up for myself. Having experienced being both masculine and feminine among others, I am both aware of and empowered to respond to the abuse of social power. I am self-confident and sure of my own strength (most of the time).  My psyche, free from the scars of rape or abuse, feels basically sound.

On the other hand, life as a trans woman involves a deep feeling of insecurity. Once I staked a claim to manhood, and the world capitulated. Now I have staked a claim to womanhood, and the world has said, mmm, maybe sorta, but maybe not so much. Most of the time the joy of my release sustains me in the face of society’s ambivalent welcome; but when my confidence is low I find myself worrying that the world is right. Have all those years inhabiting masculinity somehow made it impossible for me ever to be a “real woman”? This persistent anxiety can bring me to tears.

Of course all those years living as a man shaped me. How could they not? If things about me still seem male in ways that confuse or offend people, all I can say is, I don’t like it either, and I’m sorry, and I'm working on it. As for having learned to love myself and to be forceful in the world, I cannot see these traits as bad.  My path turns out to be complex and sometimes perilous, with no clear end. I need all the help I can get. So while I am not done - and perhaps never will be - seeking ways to manifest these strengths in ways which more purely express my innate femininity, I am definitely keeping them, thank you very much.

Unprofound whinging (sorry)

I’ve been planning to write about the hearing last week, and I will soon, but at the moment I just need to whinge. Apologies...I know it's boring...please don't feel obliged to read another word.

If this is a medical condition, as I begin to think it is...if I was truly just born with the wrong body...that’s not fair. Everybody else gets to live a normal gendered life, and I get stuck with a fucking penis. And a beard and 6 feet tall and booming deep voice. I’m female, goddamn it! I’m not supposed to look or sound like this. It’s not fair.

And it took me so long to figure this out. I just turned 49 years old. I’m getting old. I’m going to die. I get another twenty years if I’m lucky, 30 years with some incredible good fortune...and none of that as a girl. None of that as a twenty-something woman. None of that as a thirty-something woman. I’m already well along through middle age. Except for my perky teeny-bopper breasts. *Eyeroll*. I am this awful mishmash of old and new. My self is inharmonious. Discordant. FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Love seems impossible. I’m going to die alone.

Yeah? Everyone dies alone. It’s a solo gig.

Ah, a flicker of defiance.

I’m here. I’m living this moment...this sucky missing my kids got a cold sore feeling emotionally drained yucky situation waiting for me at work tomorrow don’t know what to do with my miserable pathetic self moment. And how much of that has to do directly with gender? Some...but not all that much. This moment would suck just the same if I was a woman-born-woman. Ha! So there.

I am ordinary in my suffering. That’s a comfort.

LD 1046 would legalize discrimination against trans people

I'm off to Augusta...will report later! Text of the testimony I'm offering below...wish me luck, and please, if you want to help, contact your state rep and senator and urge them to oppose this awful bill. Thanks!

Written testimony of Elizabeth Bunker in the matter of LD 1046; Judiciary Committee hearing, Augusta, ME, Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Good Afternoon, Senator Hastings, Representative Nass and members of the committee. I am Elizabeth Bunker from Wells, and I urge you to vote “ought-not-to-pass” on LD 1046.

Thank you for accepting my written testimony; I would have liked to testify in person, but my son has to be at band practice at Wells High School by six o’clock with a dinner under his belt, so I could not commit to staying until my turn to speak.

I am 49 years old, and I have lived in Wells for ten years. For the past eight years I have been employed full time at USM as the Program Director of the Community Radio station WMPG. As a professional sideline I construct crossword puzzles. I am an involved parent, sharing equal custody of my two teenagers with their mother, alternating weeks. In my spare time I blog, practice the piano, and play chess. And, I am a trans woman. That is, I was born with a male body, but my sense of self is and always has been female.

About two years ago I decided to do something about this mismatch, and began the process of gender transition. A few months ago, as part of that ongoing process, I started living full time as a woman. And (to share an instructive anecdote), as part of this moment of social transition, I switched locker rooms at the USM gym.

I did so with the full knowledge and support of gym management, and it turned out to be absolutely no big deal. A couple of private changing stalls had thoughtfully been installed in each room (trans folk are not the only ones bashful about their bodies), and that was the only accommodation I needed. In the months leading up to the switch, as I grew increasingly uncomfortable in the men’s room, I simply changed and showered in the stalls; and now, until my physical transformation is complete, I’m doing the same in the women’s. Nobody sees me undressed, and there have been no complaints. Nobody even seems to notice me.

I wanted to share this anecdote with the committee because I think it offers a real-life example both of how easy it was for my employer to accommodate my needs, and of how unfounded the fears are which seem to be behind this bill. The law which this bill seeks to subvert has been on the books for six years, and nothing bad has happened. Trans is a perfectly normal thing to be, and trans people are not trying to get away with anything...they just want the same freedom as everyone else to change their clothes and relieve themselves where they feel natural, comfortable, and safe.

In sum, LD 1046 is totally unnecessary; and, since it would establish an alarming precedent of exceptions to the legal protections provided by anti-discrimination law, it is also downright dangerous. I urge the committee to squash this ill-conceived, backward-looking, and prejudicial legislation now. It is fundamentally unfair to trans people, and it would make truly terrible law. Thank you for the opportunity to add my voice to the debate.

So not done

The ache is back. It went away for a little while after I changed my name and went full time, back in December. For a few months, reveling in having claimed womanhood in the world, I felt at ease in my skin in a way I had not done since before my initial gender revelation in ‘08...or maybe ever. For the first time in my life I felt as femme as I wanted to feel.

The respite is over. Once again I begin to squirm on the pin of my resurgent, imperious drive to inhabit femininity in voice body mind sex soul culture society life, every instant for the rest of my days. I begin to think that the name change and social transition were the easy part. Overt, dramatic, exciting...I got lots of nice attention and support. And there was nobody to say, maybe you shouldn’t. There was no question in my mind or anyone else’s. They were clearly natural steps to take, and aside from the intrinsic risk of bigotry, safe.

The work I still have to do is less public, which means less positive feedback and support, and it’s all laborious, and some of it is expensive. Some steps, already begun, continue: hormones, electrolysis, voice - so far I have not been able to find a voice which sounds even a little like me to me - and the social part too...I still have almost everything to learn about being a woman in 21st century America. But I also face the question of surgeries: Sexual Reassignment Surgery and Facial Feminization Surgery. Here there *are* risks, and also people around me saying maybe I shouldn’t.

Well, actually there’s no question in my mind about SRS. I am not repulsed by my current genitals, but I have no use for them either. They’re wrong, and fixable, so I’m going to fix them.

FFS is the real puzzle. I have many lovely friends who say such nice things...you look so pretty...you already look like a woman...I don’t think you need facial surgery at all...and it’s wonderful and warming. But on the other hand, just today, despite my usual care with clothes hair voice carriage and mannerism, four different people have given me “he” or “him.” Two of them were friends, and when I gently corrected them they both looked at me blankly, not understanding...they weren’t even aware of what they had said. I am still a man to them.

FFS is risky and expensive and loaded down with thorny issues of gender norms and the old bad gender binary and the barbed complexities around the concept of beauty and out vs. stealth...but I just want it. I want it with the same adamant will which made light work of 40 years of self-negation; so my anxiety about money, already chronic, ratchets up another notch. I can’t even afford my simple pared-down-to-absolute basics life, let alone major surgery, but I have to find a way. I have to find a way, or perish trying.  

In sum, I’m not done, or even close to done, transitioning, and oh my, is it hard work. <Big sigh.> OK, let’s get going on this...one step at a time...honor the process...*trust* the process...when you practice patience, all times are soon. Oh, but patience is hard too.

Getting ready to travel female

Next Monday I am flying to San Francisco for a week’s vacation. I need it. I can’t remember the last time I stepped away from my multiple grindstones of two jobs, gender transition, and single parenting to just breathe and feel and play a little.

Now the “F” on my driver’s license really comes into play for the first time. At the security checkpoint the info on my ticket has to match the info on my state-issued ID, so I actually have no choice but to travel female. Honey, not a problem! :-) Once again I am grateful that with Zack and Alice’s help I was able to get that F marker. (With the change of administration in Augusta their connection to get that done no longer exists...alas, a sad step backwards.)

I was also able to get a new picture on my DL last month by “losing” my old license and, when I went in to get a new one, requesting a new photo (for a $5 fee). Good thing: the difference between that old photo and how I look now could easily have been enough to make some ICE functionary want to talk to me in a back room. I might raise some eyebrows at the full-body x-ray scan machine, but I hope I have as much chance as anyone else of getting where I’m going without extra hassle.

This trip is stirring mixed emotions for me. I am excited and anxious, naturally, to be introducing my new self to various members of my extended family and family of choice who last saw me when I had a full beard...but I also had a hard cry this morning because I’m not going home. Both my parents have been dead for decades now, but the pain of losing them still resurfaces. It’s a polished and antique grief now - an heirloom - but just as poignant as ever.

Another thing: I find I still need to shout “I deserve to live” some more times before I can truly feel that it's true. I’m not done yet, it seems, being a terribly sensitive little girl castigating herself for failing to be a Man the way Mommy wanted, and it took some real emotional work to claim the right to give myself such a substantial treat as this vacation. I am a good girl, and I deserve to live! I am a good girl, and I deserve to live! Oh, Sweetie, shh, shh...it’s all right... I am a good girl, and I deserve to live!

Though I am living full-time as the woman I am, there is still plenty of good flowering left to be done. This trip feels like a healthy next step. I just hope I haven't completely forgotten how to relax... :-p

From ecstatic to blasé in two years - First Event 2011

On Saturday I dropped in for the day at First Event, one of the major trans-gatherings that happens each year in the U.S.; it takes place each January at a Marriott in Peabody, MA, an hour’s drive south of my house. 

The First Event two years ago was the first time I ever wore women’s clothes in public, just a few months post-revelation, and it was an epiphany - one of the most intense experiences of my life. The second one, last year, was not quite as big a deal, but still, in those undercover days, a rare and exciting chance to go deep femme for *two whole days*. [Posts from last year here: getting ready (including a descrip of the first year), first day report, second day report]. This year I wasn’t even going to go until I mentioned it to my friend Jamie-Lynn and she agreed to come.

The day did yield a number of interesting moments:

Shopping for earrings in the marketplace, which was mostly focused on the needs of M to F crossdressers, I found myself passing by rack after rack because everything was just too over-the-top glam. I finally found a pair I liked at a little consignment table...quirky silver danglies featuring a variegated blue-and-grey stone bead. It was only when I got home that I realized they were clip-ons. (I still like them.)

In a panel of facial feminization surgeons, the frighteningly egotistical Dr. Z bustled in late and then hijacked the session to attack the work of Dr. O, considered by many to be the preeminent FFS surgeon in the world. He had slides of what he said were some of Dr. O’s patients (closeups of naked skull, the forehead skin clamped back), and was explaining how the work was fundamentally flawed. Dr. O was not there, but his devoted assistant Mira was...Mira who, in a session last year, told us reverentially that Dr. O is a Michelangelo. She stood up and interrupted Dr. Z’s tirade. He overrode her. She muscled in again. I left at that point - I hate that sort of conflict - but Jamie stayed, and told me after she interrupted to ask a question, which apparently derailed the battle...good for her!

I also had an interesting encounter with Jennifer, who was in the audience with me in a session. She asked a question, and her voice work was superb...a gentle, natural-sounding, and attractive womanly tone...so I began to observe her. She was about my age, height, and build, and had not, so far as I could tell, had facial surgery, but she snapped strongly femme. Her hair was soft and full and attractively styled; if it was a wig, it was a more natural-looking one than most around us. Her clothes were elegant and understated. She had a woman’s mobile face and quick soft smile, and she held her body folded softly in on itself, arms and legs crossed, spine pliable, head lowered diffidently. Her eyes also had a tendency to flit down.

I approached her after the session and introduced myself. The first thing she said was “I’m sorry.” I was impressed by how feminine that was, and at the same time my inner feminist wanted to lecture her: “Honey, don’t apologize for yourself!” She shared voicework hints with me with which I am experimenting today: put your hand on your chest as you speak and make sure there is no buzz in the chest-cavity at all; visualize your voice as floating in the air out in front of your nose; and record and listen to yourself (yeah, yeah...I know that’s key, but I hate doing it.) My overall impression was of a person whose femininity is just shining out of her, completely unmannered and unselfconscious. She was inspiring.

And, there was the panel of trans youth with their parents. There were two trans girls and three trans boys there, ranging in age from 12 to 22 or so. It was the little 12-year-old trans girl who captured my attention. She had a child’s version of Jennifer’s natural femininity...to all appearances a pretty young girl in a baby-blue girl’s top, her long brown hair held back with hairpins just behind her ears. She was sitting next to her mom and paying close attention to all that was said, completely at ease, smiling often.

As we heard each family’s story in turn, I felt tears start to come. I had to leave for a while. It was the love and support of the parents on the panel which reached me the most. I so ache sometimes for my mother’s love...for her to know me and love me as a girl...and I can never have that. I could have been like that little girl, supported by her parents, planning an early and complete transition. I could have had forty more years of life as a girl and woman. It’s not the first time I’ve mourned these losses, and I don’t suppose it will be the last.

Jamie sat with me and gave me hugs...she was great. And it was fun sharing the conference with her...telling her backstories, pointing out VIP’s, listening to her network with the activists at tables in the marketplace, and just gabbing in the car on the way down and back. In the short time I’ve know her, she has become a dear friend.

So that was First Event 2011. The main insight from the day: I have come a loooooong way in a fairly short time. From ecstatic to blasé in two years...how ‘bout that.

A new normal

I put on a man shirt today. That’s unusual...I’ve been going through a long phase where I’ve wanted all my clothes to be feminine all the time, even the ones (underwear, socks) which people can’t see. But I was going out to shovel snow, and I wanted something warm which actually fitted, so I pulled out the soft heavy dark-blue cotton pullover with the zipper V-neck which I used to think looked somewhat feminine on me. It was so nice to have the shoulder-seams sit right, and the sleeves come all the way down to the bumps at the base of my palms with no tugging. Then I looked in the mirror and saw a female person wearing a man’s shirt.

What a sweet moment: my face, my hair, my body, and more importantly, how I was holding myself and the look in my eyes, all struck me as markedly more womanly than the last time I was able to objectively see such things. I work hard every day on femininity, trying new ideas, reinforcing old ones, laboring to internalize new habits in dress, movement, gesture, expression, speech, and affect...but for long stretches I can’t feel any change. Underneath, though, slowly and inexorably, I am changing, and today I got to perceive it. Yes.

I have felt intensely different for a couple of years now; different both from the man I used to be, and from the great majority of all you conventionally-gendered people in the world. The emotional upheaval of the name-change and going full-time recede into history, and now, all of a sudden, I feel a new kind of normal. It’s the normal of a person changing from a man to a woman who has gotten over all the gee-whiz, and who, while metamorphosis continues, just wants to create and work and nurture her kids and enjoy her friends and plan for the future and open more to the possibility of finding love...in short, to live her life. This is me now: an ordinary woman becoming.

Doesn’t matter that people are still unthinkingly reverting to “he”. Doesn’t matter that so many things about me are still so masculine...my face, my build, my voice...my glasses, for crying out loud. The world’s slowest magic trick is working. Behold, I will wave my magic wand and change from a man into a woman! Heeeeeeeh....[five years go by]....eeeeeey presto! Tada! :-)