I'm going to do something that probably very few other people would dare to do, which is to publicly list the reasons why I sometimes doubt that I'm really trans. I'm probably willing to do this because my whole gender journey has been public anyway. And because other than a few select people, probably the one who doubts my transness the most is myself. If I tell you all the things that go through my head, maybe you'll make it clear to me how baseless my doubts are. At the very least, I won't feel like I'm deceiving people or hiding anything, because you'll have the whole story in front of you to judge for yourself.
So. Sometimes I think I can't possibly be trans because...
My brother is trans. What are the chances of that, two siblings both being transgendered? Doesn't this only happen to like 1 in 1000 people? Besides, he was trans first. I'm just a copy cat. Odin only knows why I would choose to follow him down such a difficult path, but surely two transgendered brothers can't be for real. I can't really be trans.
I didn't figure it out till I was 28. I don't mean I waited till I was 28 to start transitioning because I wasn't sure. I mean I honestly had no idea I was transgendered until last summer. I'd toyed with the idea of being genderqueer in college, but discarded it, and honestly believed I was just a very unfeminine cis woman until last June. And I never felt any intense body dysphoria until last summer, either. I mean, I think most cis women hate their periods, and I'm sure many find their boobs inconvenient, so that doesn't count. How could it come on so suddenly? I can't really be trans.
My dad doesn't believe me. And you'd think I could ignore this and go on my own path, but I live with my parents, and it's pretty difficult to construct and maintain your identity when a person that you see every day insists on tearing it down. Even without saying anything. I just know, that no matter what I do, he's not convinced, he's not going to view me as a man or as his son. I'm defeated before I even start, so why bother? I'll never really be a man.
It all happened too quickly. In less than a year, I went from blithely living as a cis woman, to taking hormones, legally changing my name, and contemplating surgery and changing my gender marker. This is the sort of thing you're supposed to angst over for years. Surely, three short months isn't nearly long enough to make the life-altering decision to take cross-gender hormones. I don't know what's driving me to make these decisions, but I can't possibly be certain they're the right ones. I can't possibly really want to be a man.
It's too hard. Never mind that I have to stick needles in myself every week or force myself into a binder every day, but I've had to turn my life upside down by telling everyone I know to call me by a different name and gender, by barging into men's restrooms, by fundamentally altering my identity as a parent. And now I need to save up thousands of dollars for surgeries; and even if they wind up being covered by insurance in a few years, I'll have to lose work hours - lots of work hours - for the surgeries themselves and post-surgery recovery. And I run the risk of everything from being beat up in the bathroom to not being able to get housing or change jobs. Why the hell would I do this to myself? I can't be trans; I don't want to be.
It's impossible - I have a female body. And that's internalized cissexism speaking, but damn, it just won't die. The thing is, I would never say or even think this sort of thing about any of my trans* friends or family. They are who they say they are, unquestionably. But myself? Come on, how could I be a man, with this body and 28 years of living as female? I'm deluding myself; I'm trying to be something I'm not. I can't be trans and I can't be a man.
And yet every day I get up and put on my binder and my male clothing; I go to work and I hope people are seeing me as male; I rejoice when I get called by the right pronouns and cringe when I hear the wrong ones; I use the men's bathroom cause it would be even weirder to use the women's; and I feel like me all day long. I do what I want, I wear what I want, and I try not to let anyone else define me.
If only it were so easy, though, as just doing what makes me happy...
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