| On March 8th 2018, I celebrated my fifth International Women's Day as a woman. I just turned 68, having lived a majority of my life as a man. I began my transition to life as a woman in 2005, finally reaching towards the woman I've always been. There is often a tension between trans women and cis women because we, as trans women, have lived a portion of our lives being read as male in our public and private lives. A friend once told me "A woman is made of chances, rejection and her will." I've had long conversations with my spouse since I started living openly as Trisha. Entering a space I was never able to access as a man, I've learned more about womanhood in the last 12 months than I ever had in the years before. We talk about our breasts, our hormonal cycles, the way men speak to us, every part of being a woman which is invisible to men. What I discovered, aside from a wealth of important knowledge, is that none of us as women feel "real." All of us are self-made women, guessing and choosing from an endless list of standards to judge ourselves by.
My spouse and women that I've talk to have expressed about feeling unhappy in their bodies, just like I do. Are we thin enough? Are our breasts large enough? Do our lovers really desire us? Do we care if we're not conventionally pretty, or judged by what people see in our faces? My cis girlfriends talk about feeling unhappy in their relationships, just like I do. Do their male partners really respect their agency? Why do the men they love only want to be their friends? Why do their male co-workers never listen to them in meetings? If they move in with their partners, are they losing themselves? My spouse has talked about feeling unhappy with her power, just like I do.
My learning in the last year is that womanhood is a state of constant resistance and doubt. We are judged by our bodies, told what we should look like and how to perform our sexuality and desire. We are punished for breaking rules, for speaking up, for asking for more and for daring to push back at men. We are trained to doubt our capacity, to question our worth, to make ourselves smaller and smaller to appease masculinity and to never voice what we need. We are shown impossible examples of womanhood, we are asked to be more while being forced to be less and we are the ones who bear the weight of the emotional and physical labor in our relationships.
Does my being identified as being gender dysphoric deserve to be a "woman"? Am I real? Yes, because I struggle under the bounds as my spouse and other women. I struggle under different weights as well, related pains but unique in their application to my transgender body. I perform my femininity for the world or I risk being called a fraud. My gender is judged in every moment. My right to enter a public washroom or try on clothes is constantly challenged. In love and intimacy, I'm a second-best woman who must undergo painful and violent surgeries in order to be seen as real. I carry the burden of misogyny, sexism and femininity while also educating and explaining trans womanhood to a world which doesn't care to understand.
There was a moment in my transition, shortly after my name change was processed, where I realized I didn't care anymore how the world saw me. The essential struggle of women since the birth of feminism has been the right to control our bodies, to make decisions about our lives and to be free to decide what kind of women we will be. Every woman is distinct in what that will mean to us, based on our cultures, faith, race and economic backgrounds. What is central to my womanhood is central to all women.
My will and determination to live the life I know is right for me. That is the battle I fight alongside all woman — that we are allowed to determine our lives independent of men and their power. Many people, women and men, may never see me as a real woman because of my body or the gender I was assigned at birth. I think they are wrong, but I accept that nothing I do will change their minds. I live in the body I have. I celebrate the woman I am. I do the work I choose to do. Every woman has to make these same choices, whether or not the world sees us as beautiful or values our contributions.
This fundamental DESIRE to be the woman I am is what I love .
This past March 8th I attended for the first time I attended a woman's conference, and was greeted as being a trans-woman: and thier acceptance for what I cannot change in the world, resistance to what I can change and, above all else, fierce joy to walk in this dangerous world as a woman I am as real and human now as I've ever been. The only difference between who I used to be and who I am now is the love I feel when I look in the mirror. Finally, after so many years of hiding, the face I see looking back is the face I've always seen in my mind. That is worth every moment of doubt and heartbreak I've lived through where no one can take that away from me.
Trisha
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