Here's a Simpsonized, feminized version of me, courtesy of simpsonizeme.com. (In other words, this is how I would look if I were a genetic woman and a character on The Simpsons.) It's general enough so that you can't use it to identify me.
"Life is very difficult. Once you understand that, life becomes easier." --Gautama Buddha
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." --e.e. cummings
So, who am I, and why do I think my page is worthy of being added to the canon of all the billions of web pages out there?
I'm what some people call a male-to-female transgender person. I don't like that term for myself because it implies that I've changed from male to female, when the only change I really made was coming out to myself and the people closest to me. I don't present as female--I just don't have the body for it. If you must call me something, you can just think of me as a person with a female brain and a male body.
I can't tell you my real name or where I live. If you need to think of me as having a name, call me Sarah. It's what my mom would have named me if I were a genetic girl. There are millions of people I could be. I could live next door to you, for all you know. I could live in any of the 50 states, from Alabama to Wyoming. You can think of me as living in whatever state the Simpsons live in.
Here's a Simpsonized, feminized version of me, courtesy of simpsonizeme.com. (In other words, this is how I would look if I were a genetic woman and a character on The Simpsons.) It's general enough so that you can't use it to identify me.
All right, now that I've introduced myself, more or less, I guess I should tell you what this page is all about. This page is dedicated to every person whose gender identity and biological sex do not match, who chooses to go through life presenting as their biological sex, without public crossdressing, hormones, or surgery. We may fantasize about it, but we recognize that we are, and will always be, just wannabes. And we are just fine with being wannabes. We're in good company; it is estimated that between 75% and 80% of people with strong cross-gender feelings never change their bodies. Of those who do change their bodies, only 40% ever get sex reassignment surgery.
Psychologists often find it useful to categorize personality types. For example, some use the metaphor of two types of children: Those who want to be astronomers and look at the stars safely from the Earth, and those who want to be astronauts and see space in person. Most transgendered people you hear about were, and still are, the astronaut type. They want to boldly go where few men (or few women) have gone before. Whereas I'm the astronomer type. I don't think the astronomer type is fairly represented on transgender websites. And so I created this site.
We've read about all the dangers, both physical and psychological, of transitioning (changing one's physical appearance from one gender to the other and learning the new gender's social role), and we have decided that such a thing is not for us. I don't need to become a girl because in a lot of important ways, I already am. The point of this site is that whether you're male or female comes from what's in your heart, not what's between your legs, or even how you present yourself.
Like most girls, I find male culture and its beliefs, values, and customs quite alien and feel at home in female culture. For example, have you ever read the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor? I love that series. It's about the life of a girl from when she's little (in the prequels) to when she completes high school (that book will be written in a few years). I read a comment by a girl talking about her male friend who had read the Alice books and not understood them. She said to him, "Well, of course you wouldn't understand them! They're so deep into a girl's mind, I'd be surprised if you did!" I read them and understand them as well as any girl would; in fact, I could not tell you what a guy wouldn't understand about them. It's guy books I don't understand. I used to think there was no such thing as male and female cultures, that the female perspective was just the way things are, and that most men just felt they had to pretend they felt differently. I thought I was either too stupid to learn proper male behavior or some kind of super-advanced gender-neutral person. Like Americans who say there's no such thing as American culture, I was unaware of my biases. When I finally saw the truth, everything just fell into place. (More on that later.)
Transgenderism
When I first learned what "transgender" was back in 2006, I read every scrap of information on people like myself I can get my hands on. So far, everything I have read includes some physical alteration--plastic surgery, hormones, "sex reassignment surgery," etc. The literature out there would make you think all of us are just itching to change our bodies. But some of us will never attempt anything like that. I think it's important that people know this. I fully understand the desire to change one's body; after all, if there were a spell that could change me into a biologically female version of myself, I would have it cast on me without a moment's hesitation and never look back. But no such spell exists, and the closest thing we have is such an incomplete transformation, and so dangerous that I'm not even going to bother with it.
The sex change is presented as a kind of cure for being a woman in a man's body, or a man in a woman's body. This, I believe, reflects the view that it is a disease that needs to be treated with medical intervention. I've been told that for some, the discomfort they have with their bodies is so severe that the only alternative to transitioning is suicide. These people clearly need some kind of help, and transitioning can be good for them. However, for many of us, it's not so severe; we can live our whole lives without transitioning. As we see it, having a gender identity that isn't the same as one's biological sex is not a disease, any more than homosexuality and left-handedness are diseases. We don't hear much about gays and lesbians looking to be made straight, do we? In fact, many people are horrified about the thought of trying to cure homosexuality. And who was the last left-handed person who went to a doctor to try to become right-handed?
By the way, it's interesting that many transgendered people speak out against genital surgery on intersexed babies (babies with both male and female genitalia) on the grounds that it forces them into one gender or the other, while simultaneously wanting genital surgery for themselves. If intersexed babies shouldn't be "cured" (some of those babies have gender identity problems as they get older), why should transgendered people be "cured?" Why is being transgendered so bad that anyone with this condition must be cured at any cost, while being intersexed is a condition that doctors should just leave alone?
I don't think of being transgendered as something I need to be ashamed about or try to cure--which saves me a lot of trouble. I don't have to worry about going to a bunch of doctors, taking a bunch of drugs to look more female, or passing. I just present myself as a feminine man, and people either accept that or they don't. Obviously, society is more accepting of a feminine man than a male-to-female transsexual. In 31 states, it's still perfectly legal to fire workers for being gay or lesbian, and in 39 states, it's legal to fire someone for their gender identity. One male-to-female transsexual is killed every month. (Since there are an estimated 50,000 male-to-female transsexuals in the United States, each one has approximately 1 in 4,000 chance of being killed within the next year--50% more than being killed in a car accident!) Violence against either group still isn't classified as a hate crime in federal law!
There are three aspects of gender dysphoria (unhappiness with one's assigned gender): Physical dysphoria (unhappiness with how one looks), social dysphoria (unhappiness with how social interaction goes), and identity dysphoria (how much a person's self-perception is that of the opposite biological sex and how they feel about being grouped into the gender that is "wrong" for them). These three are separate and not very highly correlated with one another.
For me, more important than physical appearance is the social aspect of gender. Some say they can't be "one of the girls" unless they can pass as female, and this becomes a case in favor of transitioning. I know from personal experience that this limitation is greatly exaggerated. I've noticed that women generally treat me the way they treat each other (for the most part; nothing's 100%), for good or for ill. And you know something? I really like it. Most guys would hate being treated as girls (which is why there are female-to-male transsexuals). For example, I had a friend who used to know a guy who had grown up with a bunch of big sisters who brought him into their games, but he hated it because they treated him too much like another girl. Whereas I love it. As long as I get to take on the female social role, my male body becomes a minor annoyance. I don't even notice when I'm the only person in a group with a male body, unless I can see them treating me differently because of it (and, unfortunately, that has happened too). But in a group of men, I feel like an impostor in a male body.
Oh, sure, it has its downsides. Straight women don't think of me as boyfriend material. But when I think about it, I wouldn't be happy with them anyway. I couldn't stay in a relationship with someone who expects me to be a man. I'd get sick of it pretty quickly. My advice to any woman in a man's body who wants to date: Tell them about it when you think the relationship is starting. If it scares them off, it's best to scare them off sooner rather than later. The only thing worse than not being in a relationship is being in one where your real self would be hated; as Andre Gide said, "It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not." And do you really want to spend years in a relationship only to reveal one of your biggest secrets and then get dumped for it?
Yes, this male body gives me some problems, but some genetic women have those problems too. I can't get pregnant; neither can some genetic women, not even with in vitro fertilization. I look awful in women's clothes, but I once met a genetic woman who looked like Fred Flintstone (I am not making this up!), and she looked worse in her dress than I would. The clothing so coveted by transvestites is going out of style anyway, so I don't really worry about it. (It's also interesting to note that some women choose to dress in a more masculine manner in order to avoid unwelcome male attention.) I don't like my body, but quite a few genetic women don't like their bodies, either. Take a look at women next time you're out and notice how masculine some of them look. In fact, some people start out appearing as girls, with female primary sex characteristics and everything, and physically masculinize at puberty; these people are genetic males with 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, and are relatively common in some populations (1 out of 90 genetic males in the Dominican Republic!). There are a lot of childhood experiences common to girls that I'll never know, but some genetic girls were denied such privileges as well.
So, Why Does It Matter?
This is an important question. At one time, I would have asked the same question myself. I used to think there was no such thing as "female culture" or "male culture;" I had a vague idea on an intellectual level that there were some differences, but I thought the feminine perspective was just the way the world is, and that men just thought they had to act differently. People would say, "Women tend to [fill in the blank]," and I'd think, "Yeah. Doesn't everybody?" Like Americans who say there's no such thing as American culture, I was unaware of my biases. It's always a good thing to be aware of your biases, so if you talk to someone who doesn't share your biases, you can understand each other better.
If you really let in the fact that you're a woman in a man's body (or the reverse), you can let go of unreasonable expectations of yourself. I'll use myself as an example: I've always noticed that when I see pretty women, I don't have an overwhelming desire to have sex with them. (However, when I see one who's really pretty, I wish I could switch bodies with her.) I thought maybe something in my brain wasn't working right, or maybe it was a defect in my genital organs, or something. I often wondered what was wrong with me. Sometimes I even wondered if it meant I was gay.
Then I read this thing from Prof. Lynn Conway's site. She talks about how a lot of male-to-female transsexuals who are attracted to women before they become transsexuals think they'll be lesbians afterwards.
Ah, but girls don't turn on when looking at men the way guys do when looking at women. Girls are not so "outwardly visual" that way. They don't look at someone and get aroused and want to go touch and caress that someone. Instead they are more "inwardly sensual", getting turned on by affectionate advances and flirtatious behavior of others, and turning on inside by the approach of others who desire them! The female turn-on when sensing male attention can [be] very powerful, and can get a woman feeling really "hot" inside.
This is so me it's amazing. It's such a relief to learn that I don't have some kind of sexual disorder, but that how I feel is normal for women.
Here's a quote from I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris:
"Men tend to see the physical as more of an experience," a good female friend once told me. A girl's point of view is very different, she explained. "Kissing and 'making out' mean something very deep and precious to a woman," she said. "It is our way of giving our trust, our love, our heart to the man we love. It leaves us very vulnerable."
I used to think the feminine perspective on this (like with everything else) was just "the way things are," and that anyone who disagreed was just stupid. It sounds so silly when I put it that way, doesn't it? You can imagine the misunderstandings I used to have with guys, even the friend I had back in middle school (see The Early Years).
When I was 21, my mom and I were shopping, and I saw a shelf full of Cabbage Patch dolls. I looked at them longingly, wishing I could play with one, but scared of what might happen if I broke the rules. My mom could tell how much I wanted one, so she encouraged me to go ahead and get one. So I did. For years, I collected baby dolls. (Then I got my guinea pigs and didn't really need the dolls anymore.)
I was ashamed of the fact that I enjoyed playing with them, not because of my biological sex, but because of my age. But then I read that lots of transgendered people have extensive collections of toys appropriate to the gender they've always known themselves to be. I read about a female-to-male transsexual in his late 30's who wished he could have had a childhood as a boy; to make up for what he never had as a kid, he had an extensive collection of Star Wars toys. I felt a lot better after that.
It All Falls Into Place
If I acknowledge that my brain is female rather than resorting to the "sensitive guy" model, things fall into place so much more easily. Why do I understand women so well when I don't understand men at all? Why do I feel like I'm walking around in a Neanderthal's body? Why don't I stare at women and get overcome with lust like most straight guys do? Why is there absolutely nothing that makes me "feel like a man?" Is there something wrong with me? Or am I some kind of super-advanced gender-neutral person?
The answer, it turns out, is neither: instead, I just have a female brain. For those of you who know a little science or philosophy (or saw the movie Contact), it's Occam's Razor: All else being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best.
It's a bit like when it was discovered that the Earth and all the planets orbit the sun, instead of the sun and the planets orbiting Earth. Before, astronomers assumed that the planets had not only cycles around the Earth, but smaller cycles called epicycles as well. The epicycles were added because the planets don't go around Earth in a cyclical orbit. This made their calculations very difficult. Even when they finally went through all the painstaking work of making astronomical charts, they weren't accurate enough to be valid for more than a century or two, and another generation of astronomers had to start the painstaking process all over. But then everything fell into place when it was discovered that the planets all orbit the sun. There was lots of opposition to the idea that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but eventually it was accepted.
In the past, if I observed a difference between men and women, I'd just say, "Well, I'm the exception. This proves that gender roles are B.S. anyway; I'm above such nonsense." Or I'd wonder if it's one of those things I missed because of Asperger's Syndrome and thus needed to catch up on. (If you don't know what that is, check the Wikipedia article.) But after a few years in college, I started seeing, more than ever, that I got along better with women than with men. The feeling that I was a girl in a boy's body never went away, but I thought it didn't matter; I thought I would have to eventually learn to conform to the male gender role. After all, I wanted to get married and have kids. I could already see that girls didn't want to date me because I didn't fit their idea of "what a man should be."
But lots of things happened in The Later Years that changed all that.
Conclusion
This may be a lot to absorb for you. But all it really takes is a slight expansion of the notion of male and female. The way I see it, a person's body is just one of many components of who they are. Neither male nor female is better or worse than the other; being female is better for some people, being male is better for others. Some people are sort of in-between. Don't confuse them with someone like me. I have a clear gender identity; it's just the opposite from my biological sex. Whereas these people don't really have a gender identity one way or the other.
So, if you take away one message from all this, let it be this: You can be whatever you want to be. If a different body is essential for your happiness, go for it, but if you do, please understand the risks. If you're fine being an honorary woman (or man), changing your body isn't for you, but fortunately, this site can help you.
May you be happy in whatever body life has given you.