| My Trans Identity How I got here, and what it means to me... |
Finding my identity.. First off, I'd like to say that finding one's identity is an ongoing journey in iteself, and one that I don't believe ever ends. That said, here is a little bit about the struggle I've had in trying to find an identity I'm comfortable with. As I said in my bio... I grew up as, and was perfectly happy being considered, a tomboy. It was an 'acceptable' label, a fun, lighthearted nickname which basically meant I was a girl who acted like and/or looked like a boy. This was fine and worked out just great, until I was about 12 or so. Then I was suddenly too big to be crawling around on my hands and knees in the mud, and too masculine to fit in. It was around this time I was becoming self conscious about my hair, my clothes, my manorisms, and above all, my body. Although it didn't mean much to me then, or at least... I never gave it much consideration. I was written off as another ackward teenager, one who would grow out of my 'phase'. I never really thought about identity during those years. I never second-guessed my sexuality. I was a girl, just not like all the others. I had a boyfriend, so what if he was effeminate and not like most boys... we were happy together. In the 8th grade, I joined the wrestling team. It was ok, and not even that weird to me though, because there were two other girls on the team, and one was a good friend of mine. It was around this time I started to hear words like "dyke" and that people really started to notice how different I really was. It wasn't until about two years later however, that I really began to struggle with my identity, or the way I see it, the way I felt about myself. I was finally coming to terms with my attraction to girls, and I was finding acceptance in the gay and lesbian community. In October of 1998, I started my first relationship with a girl, and by default... I came out as a lesbian. At the time, I was content with that identity, or label. In my own head, I was a girl who liked girls. So that must have meant I was a lesbian, because by then, that was the only exposure I had to go by... So I lived for awhile as a butch dyke. A fairly happy one at that. Slowly, my lesbian relationship began to have its problems, and eventually after about a year, we split up. I recall that during that relationship however, I made mention (somewhat jokingly) about being a guy, or becoming a guy. I was met with intolerance and downright ingnorance. "I couldn't love you if you had a penis and were hard and muscular, I like you as a soft girl." So I laughed the thought off as well... In a short while though, I had another girlfriend. As soon as we got together, she too began to explore her masculine side... and we were a very stereotypical lesbian/dyke couple. But I was starting to have problems letting her touch me intimately... I was increasingly apprehensive about undressing around her, and sex became rather one-sided. She began to resent that I would not let her 'please me', and she regretted me not being comfortable enough to be naked around her. Needless to say, that relationship lasted about 3 months. So it was within a few months of all this that I gained my first knowledge of transgenderism. Or, Transsexuals... I remember looking at a picture of Loren Cameron in a special edition of the Advocate, and reading the caption. I read, and re-read that damn thing several times before looking at the picture more closely. I could not believe that this MAN had once been a woman. I examined it very carefully, running my eyes over every detail until I was able to see the faint remnants of his chest surgery scars. I showed the picture to my dad, he didn't believe it either. Then, at the PFLAG National conference, I met James Green, another ftm. I began to consider things I had never considered before. What if really could have a goatee without being the 'bearded lady' I had ambitions of becoming in the 7th grade. What if I really wasn't a lesbian, and my attraction to girls wasn't that simple. It was then that I really started to question my identity and how I related to the world... To be continued.... |
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| Identity: 1. the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another 2. condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is |