Thank you everyone who has commented, it has really meant a lot to me. For everyone following this I am sorry it keeps getting longer, at first I thought it would be two parts but now it is three, and I still haven't reached the end. The next part will contain my peak trans moments and conclusion, and hopefully that will be it. Thank you for your patience. When it is done I am going to take your advice and put it up on a blog.
So, I was transgender. It explained so much! I went back over my life and fit it into this narrative, and suddenly instead of being a complex mess that could never be resolved there was a roadmap to follow, fellow travellers, a cause to fight, a reason that was not my fault that explained my fucked-upedness, and a light at the end of the tunnel. I began constructing my new identity.
I chose new usernames for myself in all my online hangouts, and left behind my old ones. People who I had known wondered where I had suddenly gone, and this split from my previous self felt good, like I was putting a line under my past and moving on (I’m sorry). I tried out saying “I am trans, and I think…” and the response was great. Suddenly I was being listened to and not insulted. All the positive attention felt wonderful and my confidence began to improve. I also tried out “I am a guy and I think such-and-such is misogynistic”. It was amazing, everyone was so nice and respectful to me, and I really thought I was doing some good, showing women that there were some guys out there that understood and were supportive, and demanding better from other men by my example. How naive and ridiculous I was being! Yet all the steps I took felt like stepping into my own, finally being recognised. The social response was the best I had ever experienced and encouraged me that this was what I really wanted. I did not think to myself “You are in libfem circles and are being treated so great because people think you are either a cis man or trans, and they are generally nicer to those groups than to women”, I thought people were responding well to me because I was ‘finally being my true self’ and this made me more pleasant to be around. I thought this was further evidence that I was treated badly and had difficulty before because I was hiding from myself and people could subconsciously tell, and were uncomfortable with me. This made me even more determined to never go back.
Of course constructing a different identity and passing myself off as something I was not, and becoming more and more sure of my new identity through positive feedback, was very easy online where nobody could see me, and I could mostly pick and choose what interactions to have.
I had kept my hair shoulder length, in a style that I was told suited me, but I had never been interested in it and always found it a nuisance, so I felt liberated when I had it all chopped off. I had worn nondescript, frumpy clothing, trying to draw as little attention to myself as possible and hide my shape. Now I started looking at all the practical male clothing that I had always admired. I measured myself and bought some things on ebay, but was dismayed to discover that no male clothing fit me. XS was still too big, and the sleeves and torso far too long. I contented myself with wearing clothes made for women in a unisex style, for now.
I was on a high, everything was working out great and had felt so effortless, which must mean it was falling into place and meant to be (rather than meaning it had required no effort)! I started looking around for trans groups I could join in my local area. Finally I would be meeting new people, and I would be armed with a script of what to talk about, rather than having to bridge a yawning invisible gap between us as I had felt before, and tiptoe around my traumatic past. I could be honest and open with other trans people about how I had got to where I was in life, and they would understand, it was part of the narrative.
I found two local groups and decided to try out both, after a lovely encouraging phone conversation with one of the organisers. They were so welcoming and understanding and kind! I felt immensely grateful and excited, like I was on the verge of rescue.
I ordered a binder online and tried again to find male clothing that would fit me. I discovered that boy’s tops age 12 fit my body, but the arms were too short, and boys jeans age 13 were the right length, but I needed to wear a belt so the waist fit. I brought this up in online communities of transmen and they commiserated with me and offered tips, none of which helped with the fundamental problem of me being a five foot female with a large chest trying to fit into clothes that were not in any way designed for my body, but it felt like I had support. Like we were hacking a system together and finding out how to make it work for us, it was bonding.
Binders hurt, but I was so used to discomfort and this discomfort was on my own behalf and by my own choice, not because I felt like it was required of me to be acceptable, so my pain felt like an accomplishment. My binder was a secret pressure, a constant reminder that I was getting away with something. I have concealed goods under here, and they are not for you! My breasts were no longer public property, available to the gaze of the world. I didn’t have to see them or have them get in my way, I could not forget I had them but I could prevent anyone else from knowing. The pressure of my binder was a comfort, holding my shameful secrets in.
I shortened and masculinised my name, and felt a pang of regret. I like and identify with my name even though it is obviously feminine, it has strong meaning. My new name sounded a bit trendy and awkward, but it was unisex.
The beginning of my association with the trans groups was great, I went every couple of weeks for several years. They were composed primarily of transwomen in their late twenties through to late forties, a few older crossdressing men, and a couple of female partners who came for moral support. Occasionally transboys in their teens or very early twenties would show up, but they would sit meekly in corners, not speak up much, and wouldn’t stay around for long. There were regulars and a lot of people who hovered and dropped in occasionally.
I was nervous after having not socialised for such a long time, but it felt like I was making connections and meeting people, so I put any twinges of discomfort down to nerves and being rusty, and resolved to try harder to be more confident. Looking back my instincts were occasionally screaming at me, but I had been taught to disregard them my whole life, and see them as a sign of my own weakness and lack of generosity.
Still, I did genuinely see the transwomen as women, there was no doubt in my mind. I let my guard down around them in a way that I don’t among groups of men when I am outnumbered. There is always a watchfulness in me in those situations, I always know where the exits are, have excuses to leave prepared, and keep an eye on the atmosphere and whether anyone is behaving in a sexist way.
After a while though, when I knew people a bit better and had got over my nerves and initial excitement, certain things began to bug me…
Michelle wouldn’t talk to me. At first I just thought she was shy, but she would glare at me, whisper behind her hand, and smirk at me. I couldn’t understand what I had done to make her dislike me.
Rachel was over six foot and very broad, she would talk over me, her voice much louder than mine, and when she sat next to me she would gesture emphatically and elbow me in my bound chest, or smack me in the face. She never seemed to notice, and I shrank back as she expanded to take up all available space.
Pat was an older crossdresser, he was well spoken and looked like a twinkly grandpa. He reminded me of Ian Mckellen, who I like. He sought me out because, he said, I looked lonely. The first thing he did was asked me if I was under-age (I’m in my thirties). Soon, he was telling me all about how exciting it was to finally be socially acceptable, how he now went by ‘they’ because that was the modern fashion, but only amongst us. He wanted to tell me all about pansexuality and enquire whether I was. He invited me to a festival for ‘people like us’, which I declined and turned out to be a sex festival. When he returned he regaled me with tales of how freeing it was to sunbath nude, have orgies, and how they even had very patient and loving sex workers of all genders there to “initiate nervous little boys like me”. He would bring clothes with him to change into, and these would be very flouncy or tight skirts, baby pink fluffy sweaters with pearls, evening gloves, red satin, fishnet stockings, incredibly high stilettos. He would glow with pride when he wore these and ask me, as the only boy, to escort him on a little walk around to show off. He would totter and lean heavily into me, and the others would wolf whistle and tell me what I cute gentleman I was, and they wished they had one like me. This was admittedly creepy as fuck, but I was being benevolent and all my training about looking after elderly relatives had kicked in. He seemed like a harmless old free love hippy type, and I didn’t know how to get out of it with everyone else encouraging him and saying how adorable it all was. I had never heard of autogynephilia at this point.
Ryan was a very angry young transman who was heavily involved with trans activism. I friended him on social media and he filled my feed with extremely unwelcome misogynistic jokes and screeds against misgendering. I asked him if he had ever experienced this and he hadn’t, everyone had been very supportive, but “our trans brothers and sisters are dying out there!”. I wondered at such a young person, a teenager with a very un-nuanced view, giving speeches about how much he had been through, being the face of a movement, and all these adults encouraging him. He had experienced no worse than anyone else as far as I could tell, but somehow it was rendered noble and exceptional, worthy of attention and outpourings of support because he was trans. That hit a little too close to home.
Megan was kind of prickly, she seemed very friendly at first and said a lot of unsolicited encouraging things about how I totally passed and there were plenty of men my height if I just looked around, and plenty of men with fine bone structure, big eyes, and large, uh, pecs. My treacherous mind said “yeah, but all those features together at the same time?”, and I began to feel dysphoric about those things for the first time. It turned out we liked some of the same music, but she shut me down when I tried to bond with her over it, and spent most of her time giggling and whispering with Michelle, or obsessively checking that her foundation covered her 5 o’clock shadow.
In fact passing became a much bigger pressure, now that I was on my way to doing this properly. My new friends behaved indulgently towards me, pointing out and making a fuss of every little thing I did that they viewed as masculine. I once brought them cupcakes in a shoebox, and they tried to reassure me that plenty of men loved to bake, and fell over themselves laughing because the shoebox was a sporty one. I was baffled, but apparently that is such a man thing to do. I felt sort of embarrassed, sort of included, sort of patronised, sort of amused, it was a confusing mixture of emotions I couldn’t make sense of.
The more that everyone acted as if we all passed as our target gender already, the more I realized how untrue it was. It was a group delusion that we all reinforced to support each other, and because we had our safe space, we were protected from anyone saying otherwise. It began to feel like us against the outside world, which was an oppressive place that would threaten our identities. No one would really understand us but each other. My dysphoria increased, and the somewhat flattened chest the binder could produce was no longer good enough. I began monitoring everything I did and said through the filter of gender, it was exhausting. I began watching men and trying to copy them, which I never had before. I felt worse and worse about my body as I compared it more directly to actual men, and found it very different. I restricted my eating for the first time in an attempt to lessen my curves.
I tried to voice my growing unease, but my friends commiserated with me about the horrors of dysphoria and convinced me that I needed to start my transition. They gave me lots of warnings and horror stories about gatekeeping, and armed me with knowledge of how to be demanding and shop around until you got to see a doctor who would do what you wanted. I already deeply distrusted doctors and was scared. I didn’t know why I was scared, I was just generally in a state of not feeling safe, and attributed it to the usual trans narrative. I must be scared because the world was out to get trans people like us.
I decided I needed to investigate what it meant be trans a lot more thoroughly, because it was becoming a serious reality in my life now, and I had to be sure.