"It's easy to feel like transitioning will solve all of your problems."
This final semester has been a good amount of pain in the butt. I calculated the hours that I am out and about and found that 46 hours a week I am working and schooling. Add an extra 14 hours worth of commute time and I am preoccupied 60 hours of the week. That's a full time job and a half.
School is almost over and I'm studying for finals, putting together large project assignments, and working three times the hours I expected to at my new job. I've missed several nights of sleep just trying to stay on top of assignments. The extra company and encouragement from my roommates has been helpful in keeping my morale high.
Unfortunately the house hasn't always been peaceful. Last week was probably one of the most stressful that I've had in a long time. My brother came up here two weeks ago to stay with us until he can get himself together. It's an extra expense and another person to get used to but he's brought excitement into the house with his interdisciplinary topics. Last week my two lovely roommates, my brother, and myself had a house meeting to solidify some rules for subletting. One room is normally set aside for a temporary resident (such as my brother) but after some intense discussion and disagreements, one of the permanent roommates has decided to downgrade to sublet and leave at the end of the year. This leaves two temporary rooms and only one person of familiarity. This also changes the dynamic of the relationships, one close relationship being torn and the other needing to grow stronger. It's stressful to have this sudden change in the middle of everything else going on.
Speaking of transition, I've found it is very easy to idealize turning into someone else when the person you are right now is in turmoil. I've always looked to the males in my life to see how they handle stress, finding they prefer to hide under rocks and avoid eye contact. I find myself preferring this method. By myself I have more room to think and express myself. Unfortunately it also brings intense loneliness and resentment towards happy social people. Though once my issues are resolved I bounce back refreshed and social, energetic and creative, ready to start new things.
This is different from a female's usual group therapy, whereas in stressful situations they clump together to talk about their problems and find solutions. I always found this to be overstimulating and unhelpful since other people's opinions of my problems mostly do nothing but come off as judgmental and make me feel bad for having feelings. Maybe they'll have a useful tidbit here and there but the rest of the time spent dissecting the issue I always find uncomfortable. Often the suggestions don't so much propel me into action as they do place me in indecision and self-consciousness.
Speaking of indecision, during these stressful months the weather has been very cold for the fall season; two snowfalls and I am hiding my female body under a snow jacket and a new pair of men's boots. It has been satisfying to avert the male gaze and to practice a low pitch when I interact with strangers. At times I wish I had worn my packer and other times I wonder if I need more facial hair. If I don't speak sometimes people will give me a male pronoun.
Identity is how others perceive you. As much as you try to create an identity for yourself, your success is determined by others, for example my voice giving away my anatomy. As much as you want to express yourself, it is another person who will receive your messages and interpret how you feel, the reason I prefer to work problems out alone. If you want to be a man but look like a woman, you will be identified as a woman in man's clothes. If you want others to expect you to be rugged and courageous and manly, but you sound sensitive and meek, you will appear feminine. As much as people try to break out of rigid social norms we still use stereotypes to interact with each other. Socials norms present a predictable space where strangers establish trust. When these norms are broken they create an unpleasant and sometimes unsafe environment. Unfortunately this discourages a lot of people from interacting because breaking social norms is very easy to do. And although we may feel pleasant and honest, it is our appearance from which people perceive us first.
For the past few years all I could think about was how turning into a man would solve all of my problems. I feel like a man, I think like a man, I know how to act like a man, why can't I be a man? Well, with such a feminine body, I look like a woman in a man's suit; and being a man in a woman's body is still too foreign of a concept for people to understand, much less trust or accept. Meanwhile my ambiguous androgynous identity makes people uncomfortable. They feel like they don't know how to interact with me, and quite frankly, I don't know what they want from me either. Then on the other side of the spectrum acting feminine is tiresome, it feels uncomfortable, and it feels wrong. At the end of each day when people hold me to a certain standard of femininity that I fail to meet, I feel like I am a failure and an abomination. I feel like less of a person and someone who should just be smudged out of society, because I am not presenting myself as the sexy woman I could be.
Fuck that, by the way.
Transition is a solution many people have taken to better align their identity with their feelings. The chemical changes and body modifications that have created countless passable individuals have inspired many others to try too. Gender reassignment surgery is as accessible as ever; a year of therapy, a lifetime supply of hormones, and the option to chop off or add parts to your body. Some people are unsatisfied but the majority of trans* people seem to do alright. Today there is a nice little social trend in trying to make trans* folk feel more comfortable and accepted. Even if they don't pass many trans* people are still treated as the gender they want to be treated as.
This desire to transition surfaces every so often, this time recently due to stress. My internal justification system insists transitioning would be amazing and give me the social satisfaction I would want. Just imagine not being treated like a walking vagina, it says. The statistical frequency of unattractive people challenging your martial status is less often! It's true too that people wouldn't gawk at a guy's hairy legs or shortness of hair. It would be assumed that I am confident, competent, and strong first instead of second, as is expressed in commentary that suggests my anatomy should cause me to be otherwise. "Damn, girl!" or "You're one smart cupcake!" or "You're pretty strong for a woman."
Ugh. Shut up.
The one zinger that my brain loves to idealize is the potential interactions with women. Usually my tomboyish nature causes most women to dismiss me as some unattractive hipster adolescent or otherwise uninteresting. If I am wearing something unique maybe I turn into an interesting person, someone whose brain they pick until they can properly place my personality and move on. The number of women actually interested in other women is a small pool of people. (Speaking romantically interested. Or sexual.) But the number of women interested in men is, well, much larger. Having said that, I have a statistically better chance of interacting with women who would actually be interested in me by identifying as a man. Instead of coming off as a genuinely awkward nerdy girl, which is unattractive on a number of patriarchal levels, I would come across as a genuinely awkward nerdy boy, which is exceptional fashionable right now.
But, then, sometimes women interact with me because I am female, because they feel I am not a threat and someone whom they can relate to and interact with. (Lies! Damned lies!) And then when women do interact with me, and we do click, it makes me feel like gender doesn't matter all over again. Like it's not what's in my pants that they care about, but between my ears.
That's great and all when I'm looking for friends, but that makes it hard to find a mate! 99% of the time I am friend zoned! There are not enough women who like women and even if they were lesbian or bisexual or pansexual it's hard to identify them anyway since most have been socialized to not directly reveal their interest! (Unlike guys!) Sneaky lipstick lesbians. Supposedly only 10% of the animal kingdom is gay, which means barely 5% of the population is a potential female partner for me, and then break that apart by geography and culture and personality compatibility and you might get <1% of the population interacting with me with romantic or sexual interest.
But as a man you've got a whopping 45% of the population to work with. When geography is an issue there are plenty of dating sites marketed to you. When culture is an issue you've still got plenty of encouragement to have exotic flings. When personality is an issue you can still have the whole world pat you on the back for having committed yourself to a heterosexual martial institution. That's what marriage is today, right? (I'm kidding. I'm not a misogynist.) But still, being a man, maybe when a woman talks about their boyfriend they might do so with a suggestive look in their eye instead of a matter-of-fact blink. Or they would giggle at my jokes as more of an invitation than an exchange of friendliness. Maybe they would treat me as a potential mate instead of a strange girl wearing man shoes.
Maybe in a perfect world there would be enough people of various romantic and sexual interest for gender to not be a requisite. Maybe one day I might feel comfortable in my skin talking to people. Maybe I won't be teased for being female or being expected to act a certain way based on my anatomy.
Maybe.
My perfect world is devoid of gender. Why can't we just drop the formalities and interact with each other's thoughts without fear? This is so stressful.
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