Boxes

I don’t think it’s particularly constructive to spend a great deal of time putting people in boxes like someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder stacks pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters in individual towers from left to right, according to value. I’m not really going to demonize people for trying to put me in boxes, given the fact that they spend at least as much time doing it to themselves and each other, but I feel as though I’m probably more sensitive and resistant to it than average.

The problem with the boxes we all create is they don’t always make as much sense as they appear to at first. Things that have nothing to do with each other get put into the same box. Either/or thinking excludes everything between ‘either’ and ‘or.’ Half the time ‘either’ and ‘or’ aren’t even opposites to begin with. Gender identity and sexual preference are constantly abused in this way.

If you’re a heterosexual woman, you’re expected to be exclusively into men. Lesbians are expected to be exclusively into other women. It works the same way if you’re male. Bisexuals are assumed to be confused,  greedy, or not half way out of the closet.  In reality, all of this is fairly fluid, subject to countless variables. I really only identify as someone who does whatever I want, but that’s just too confusing for most people. I don’t tend to refer to myself as “gay,” “straight” “bisexual,” or “lesbian” for any other reason than the convenience of others. Sometimes I’m guilty of using black and white terminology to end boring conversations.

If you’re physically transitioning from one sex to the other, a lot of people just take that to mean that you’re also becoming heterosexual, and even that heterosexuality is a primary motivation. My primary attractions are to men. That’s just how I roll. It isn’t written in stone somewhere. I didn’t sign any documents.  If I express attraction to another woman, let alone act on it, some people act like I just shot at them. It’s hilarious sometimes. If anything, there has been some increased fluidity in who I'm attracted to since beginning hormone therapy. Increased. Not new so much.  A lot of things I’m more sensitive to now aren’t really so specific to other people’s genders. And those things were there before all this to some degree or another. The fact that my sexuality in general isn’t totally one-dimensional is something I enjoy. An increased openness to experience is also something I enjoy. Plus, it gives me something to do.

As someone transitioning from male to female, I’m expected to be almost a caricature of the stereotypical, hyper-feminine woman,  as if that’s all it means to be a woman. Yeah, because that’s why I’m spending thousands of dollars doing all this--because I care so intensely what everyone thinks of me, and just want to “perform” that much more efficiently. Ironically, transgender people are big offenders in this area. If that’s who you really are, great, but I think a lot of people are probably trying to make up for lost time and end up overcompensating, not understanding why I don’t do the same.

For instance, I usually use makeup pretty much the same way most other women who wear makeup use it. I’m a jeans girl. I don’t have a dress and heels on every time I leave the house. I’m not demur. I’m not submissive unless I want to be (sometimes, but this sort of thing could be a whole separate blog entry). I don’t defer to men when I want to do something. I pack heat and happen to be a good shot. I’m good at math. I’m a computer geek. I love gory movies. I like to fuck in inappropriate places. I’m still me, just more so than I was before starting this process.

Gender is at the core of who we are. A sense of our gender and the genders of everyone around us is one of the first things people develop. Most people never have to spend a great deal of time thinking about or questioning it. But if your body doesn’t match with your brain, you will think about it a lot. My transition is not motivated by my sexuality or a desire to perform some stereotypical role. It’s something I need to do to become fully me, instead of half of me.