Identity Babble
I was rereading this post just now because it was linked on Tumblr and I realized, not for the first time, that I have never identified as transsexual even though according to most people’s definitions, I fit it. I was assigned female at birth, lived as female for the first 21 years of my life, but identify as male and am taking hormones (and eventually will have surgery) to help both physical and social dysphoria.
I can’t place why I don’t use that word for myself. I just call myself a trans guy and that’s been my term for as long as I’ve been questioning myself and living as myself instead of who I was born as. Maybe it’s because I coped for years by detaching myself from my body and thinking about its specifics as little as possible. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have particularly strong physical dysphoria at first because of that. And maybe it’s because I subscribe to the school of thought that says a body is whatever the mind inside it calls itself. Men have male bodies, whatever anatomy a given person has. Women have female bodies, whatever anatomy a given person has. Nonbinary people have nonbinary bodies. And so on and so forth.
Another part that I’m not quite as happy to admit is that I tend to associate the term transsexual with people who completely fit the established binary and associated sexuality, presentation, and the like. And that’s just not me. I’m queer and have femme tendencies - I might want to act like a knight in shining armor, but that doesn’t mean I have to look like one or only end up with cis women like the stereotype goes.
So I’m a transgender guy, a boy in the making, a constantly changing prototype. And I don’t know how to explain this to people who ask me to explain the difference between transgender and transsexual. It’s not like I can link them to Ira’s guide when it’s face to face.
Hopefully this makes sense. I’m babbling because it’s getting late and I’m on pain meds while doctors try to figure out what’s wrong with it. But I'll talk more about that another time.
Apologies to those who saw this on my Tumblr too, I felt like crossposting.
This entry was originally posted at http://prototypical.dreamwidth.org/490804.html
I can’t place why I don’t use that word for myself. I just call myself a trans guy and that’s been my term for as long as I’ve been questioning myself and living as myself instead of who I was born as. Maybe it’s because I coped for years by detaching myself from my body and thinking about its specifics as little as possible. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have particularly strong physical dysphoria at first because of that. And maybe it’s because I subscribe to the school of thought that says a body is whatever the mind inside it calls itself. Men have male bodies, whatever anatomy a given person has. Women have female bodies, whatever anatomy a given person has. Nonbinary people have nonbinary bodies. And so on and so forth.
Another part that I’m not quite as happy to admit is that I tend to associate the term transsexual with people who completely fit the established binary and associated sexuality, presentation, and the like. And that’s just not me. I’m queer and have femme tendencies - I might want to act like a knight in shining armor, but that doesn’t mean I have to look like one or only end up with cis women like the stereotype goes.
So I’m a transgender guy, a boy in the making, a constantly changing prototype. And I don’t know how to explain this to people who ask me to explain the difference between transgender and transsexual. It’s not like I can link them to Ira’s guide when it’s face to face.
Hopefully this makes sense. I’m babbling because it’s getting late and I’m on pain meds while doctors try to figure out what’s wrong with it. But I'll talk more about that another time.
Apologies to those who saw this on my Tumblr too, I felt like crossposting.
This entry was originally posted at http://prototypical.dreamwidth.org/490804.html