Transgender?

(Originally written August 14th, 2012)

The word transgender can be an umbrella term. It encompasses not only crossdressers, but transexuals (pre-op and post,) transvestites, intersex and more.

It has taken me a long time to understand the difference between sex and gender, but I suppose it simply boils down to physical versus mental. I have a penis, sex = male. No questions or complications. My gender, though, is something that I have only begun to think about in the past week. Yes, I am heterosexual and love to check out girls, but as David Torrey Peters so humorously puts it, I am also schizophrenic. Yes, I am looking at your ass, but I am also wondering how I would look in your jeans.

Does this make my gender any less male? I don’t know. Scientifically speaking, yeah, it probably does. Comfort-wise, I’m not sure where I stand – yet.

There is nothing wrong with considering one’s self transgendered. I can easily say that categorically, in the broadest use of the word I absolutely am. I just don’t feel ready to say it out loud, or in a questionnaire.

Society, guilty as usual, makes it hard for a hetero crossdresser to give up the ever powerful male gender. Am I comfortable with otherness? Becoming a minority willingly is not always an easy choice. How do people react when you tell them you’re transgendered when your sex is clearly male? What kind of awkward position does that put my heterosexual girlfriend in? If I continue to outwardly identify as male gendered does that mean I am ashamed of being a crossdresser? These are questions I am not quite ready to answer, however I willingly and somewhat proudly admit they are approaching.

I will continue to read and learn about others who have faced similar situations and through their expression I will hopefully be able to discover my own. Until then, however, I will continue to ponder these questions and explore the concept of gender so that soon I may better understanding my own.