"Why do I have feelings, when my feelings have always been denied?" -- John Lennon
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb." --Benjamin Franklin
After high school, I worked with kids for a few years. It's not a good job for anyone in a male body, especially one who really loves kids. I learned what it's like for women in male-dominated occupations: you have to do at least twice as well as anyone else just to be thought half as good. There's also the danger of being seen as a molester just for accepting hugs from children. To make a long story short: It didn't work out, so I left that line of work. This made me see that there were some real limitations as to what I could do, just because of this body.
I joined the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval re-enactment group. I had lots of fun learning how to do medieval activities. During the time I was part of it, I got into a brief relationship with an older woman who turned out to be like those predatory men who pressure young girls to go further than they really want. And I reacted just like many of those young girls; I liked her and was willing to go along with this because she wanted it, and I was curious and excited about making out (that's all we did, thank God) for the first time--and then I felt violated afterwards. I met a similar older woman about a month later, and I just wanted to be her friend, but she wouldn't respect my boundaries. Four months after I started, I left the SCA for many reasons (the biggest being graduate school), but fear of sexual predators was a big one. I didn't recover for almost a year. But I did get over wanting a girlfriend so badly. Years later, I decided on a life of celibacy, for many reasons.
This experience taught me a lot. I saw that whatever problems that relationship had, there was one thing I liked: she took on what's considered "the male role." I saw how much I liked that. I'd thought maybe I could be cured by getting into a relationship--I'd hoped I would take the "proper" male role and leave behind this whole girl-in-a-boy's-body thing. Like gay men who try to make themselves straight by getting into relationships with women, I saw that I would never get cured. It was supposed to make me feel more masculine; I'd heard that being close to a woman does that to a lot of men. But all it did was heighten my feelings of femininity. In spite of all this, I still tried to see myself as a man with more of a feminine side than most.
Graduate school changed all that. It's a LOT of work; almost every waking moment is spent on schoolwork. To make matters worse, 80% of the students in my class were male. When I got to talk to the girls, it was like meeting other Americans while stranded in a foreign country. My mom and I lived in France for a while when I was 11 (it's a long story, beyond the scope of this site), and while I learned to speak French within four months, I was still really, really happy to talk to anyone who could speak English; in the small town where I lived, we sometimes went days or even weeks without meeting another English-speaker. When I was talking to these girls, I had the exact same feeling as I did when I'd meet an English-speaker in France. Did you ever see The Frisco Kid, that Mel Brooks movie where Gene Wilder's a rabbi and he's traveling, and he sees some Amish and thinks they're rabbis, and runs up to them and yells excitedly in Yiddish? That's how I felt.
I saw, more clearly than ever, that I see the world from a feminine perspective, and that this perspective isn't "just the way things are." What really sealed this was when my parents and I were watching Roseanne. It was the episode where Jackie (Roseanne's sister) is pregnant because of her ex-boyfriend (it happened before they split up), and her ex wants to be part of the baby's life, even going so far as to threaten legal action. I said, "If she doesn't want him to see her baby, she shouldn't have to let him. It's her body, her choice." Both my parents disagreed with me, on the grounds that her ex is the baby's biological father. For me, that carries absolutely no weight; the one I call my dad is not biologically related to me. Thus, Jackie's ex should have no more rights to the baby than any other person. We discussed the matter for a long time. My mom asked me how I would feel if I had a girlfriend and the same thing happened to us. I simply said, "That would not be my baby. I would have to raise the baby in order for it to be mine."
My stepfather finally said, "Are you so identified with women that you can't see something that could affect you?" To which I replied, "Um, yes!" Then I talked about how I felt talking with the girls at school, that it was the same as when I got to talk to English speakers in France. My mom had a brilliant insight: "And if the French looked different from Americans, and you looked like the French, you'd wonder why you weren't more like them." I said, "Right." She then came up with the concepts of "Girl-land" and "Guy-land," and explained that because she raised me on her own (we didn't meet my dad until I was 16), I've learned "Girl-land" cultural ideas. We've all found it really useful. I finally understood all this in a way I never had before. After a lot of discussion on the topic, I finally saw that the ideas, values, beliefs, and everything that I had taken for granted were mostly believed by women. For the first time since I was little, I could see that I was neither too stupid to learn "proper" male behavior, nor too smart to care about it, but rather, saw things from the female perspective.
I find that I can accept myself much more easily if I don't try to repress all this. If you're like me, I hope you can, too.
UPDATE: In 2010, I made the decision to become Catholic. It's the best thing I ever did; by accepting that God had very good reasons for making me as I am, I have come to feel much better about my situation. Read my blog and my "Transgender and Catholic" page for more info. If you'd like to experience the happiness I have come to experience, please e-mail me. I'll be glad to talk about theological matters with you.