I first learned about gender transformation when I was age 14, around 1970. Newsweek magazine had a long and riveting article on people who had had their sex changed, including celebrities like Christine Jorgensen, Renee Richards, and others, along with one close- up of a husky bearded man born a girl. There was also allusion to the film Myra Breckenridge, starring the decidedly cis-het Raquel Welch in the role of transsexual Myra, whose greatest ambition is to completely destroy the modern American male as he is currently (or at least, was in the late 60s) constituted, a deracinated, selfish, narcissistic infant.
So much about the article totally galvanized me -- seriously, the words on that page gave me a delicious, frightening tingle. I was doubly shocked to learn that a. such a thing was possible and b. that I was so excited by it. Why did I care that such a thing was possible? Was it of some personal significance to me?
Really?
For years after (yes, more than fifty), that article would remain in the back of my head. When I made my first timid forays into the land of dress-up, and conjured my first fantasies of experiencing love as a woman, something felt so inexplicably right that …
That I knew I had to be losing my grip, on either my mind or my soul. Or both.
I couldn't be a girl. There was nothing girlish about me, at least nothing I thought made me stick out. Except that some kids in my environment could spot every little lissom motion, every absent-minded flip of my by then quite long hair, my ways of speaking, walking, sitting, standing, breathing … even the way I carried my books. (Across my midsection and chest, almost hugging them. Just like any girl.) Damn brats probably grew up to be full-time gaydar instructors. They would call out every one of my effeminate displays for even more of them to key in on. And the bullies would close in.
To find out that it was now medically possible to be transformed into a woman was both the best and the worst thing to happen to me. I began to call into question everything I thought I was certain of about myself.
Such as, first and foremost, that I was normal.
And in those earliest days, I thought that being somehow a girl inside was worse than having two heads, or being … a homosexual.
Was that what I really was? One of those twisted, deviant, disgusting people (if one could even call them that)?
Did Jesus love me anymore?
That was a scarily crucial question for me all of a sudden, especially as I had found an outlying tribe of the Jesus Movement as well, and was engaged in what I suppose I thought was self-instruction in the Bible. (Already I was stymied by clear contradictions and blatant illogical in almost every chapter of that book; I was, and still am, unable to even come close to the mindless purity of the good follower. And yet, in some not clearly understood way, Jesus and how He feels about me remain of importance. I left the movement that bore his name, but maybe I haven't left Him.)
All through my young life to that point (and certainly after) I had been absorbing nearly subliminal messages that men who loved other men, and especially men who endeavored to look like women so as to attract other men, were freaks, aberrations, abominations, and did not deserve to live. So don't become one. Don't even think about it.
Somehow, deep in the bones and blood and marrow of the world I knew there was encoded the message: I was not right, and my Maker no longer loved me. I fell into a couple of years of grinding depression that of course no one close to me noticed; it took me years to get out of that hole.
For years I shoved away any intimation of the thought that there was anything remotely female in my being. And then came a period when I could shove no longer; I started improvising, and later sewing, costumes of all kinds, which I wore in the dead of night for no one but me. It was my rebellion, my release, my revelation. And I reached something like self-acceptance …
And then I realized I was treading water in crappy jobs, and had little of anything in my life except my strange private couture and the ridiculous, worthless writing I was scratching out in those years. I came to attribute my stagnation to my girlish self-indulgences, and put away womanly things.
I became a man. Because it was what I was supposed to do.
I actually went back and forth with the whole woman issue through another three decades, including two marriages and three attempts at career change. Every return swing of the pendulum of my life brought me to commit another purge of everything feminine that I owned, except for books and art. (I do draw the line somewhere.) Both my wives, Martie and Macy (who were genetic or, if you prefer, “real” women), were very supportive, and tried to understand when I was swinging back toward girl phase, as well as when I cycled back to my masculine self. But at the same time it wore on each, and I know was what brought each marriage low.
It was never, not for a moment, my intention to use either woman … but I did all the same. And each wanted to help me get back into the male role and make me happy in it, just as much as I wanted those things. (Or at least, believed I wanted them.) I suppose I might have been able to jump off the pendulum as it brought me back toward manhood, but in practice, if you will, it just never worked like that. At least, not for me.
Can I really describe what it's like in the end, to finally say enough already, I know who and what I am? Can I describe the final puzzle piece that clinched the deal for me?
No. And no.
You'd think that after fifty years, I'd have found the words to get across to someone utterly unlike me what it means, what it feels like, to know you're a woman inside. What sentences might I have crafted to convince this reader, who has nothing in common with me, that my feelings are genuine, and should be considered and respected?
To that I respond, there must be over a hundred million words already written by writers far better than I, all describing sexual climax, for male and female. Almost none of it, to my mind, accurately conveys the experience. All the same, people who have known it, and even those who really have not, think about it endlessly, all the time. No one disputes that it is a very real thing, powerful and precious.
And no one should dispute that the same is true of one's gender identity. It is powerful, deep, and not to be alleviated. That feeling has only two possible responses: transition, or die. It has been said many times, there are two cures for gender identity disorder: gender confirmation, and death. I do not like to think of gender identity variance as something requiring a cure; that I, despite my ownership of male genitalia (until recently), have long been certain I was a woman has never meant I am diseased or disordered. Just a tad different from some other people. The surgery I've had is more like what physical therapists would call an adjustment: working the tissue into shape in a way more congruent with my authentic self. Kind of like when somebody finally fixes the kink you've had in your neck for ages. Feels amazing, right?
That's what gender transition has been for me. That nagging pain and pressure is gone. I feel great, and right, as a woman, every day. And on top of that feeling is knowing I was right about one very important fact in my life, for five decades: who I am.
This girl. Right here, right now. This is me.
Love your courage to expose yourself to the world. Such a Confident woman with a Great Outlook on life.