About A Girl
by Teri
Here it comes. Disclosure time. After two years of depression, elation, allusions, deflected inquiries, and increasingly peculiar pictures on Facebook, your questions will finally be answered. It hasn't been fun keeping secrets from my friends all this time, and to those of you who have worried about me, I apologize for keeping you in the dark. It's been a necessary evil while I figured things out for myself. But now I've reached a point where keeping silent no longer makes any sense, so I've decided to write this as a way of finally connecting the dots, filling in the gaps, and letting everyone know what's really been going on with me for the last two years.
I'm transgender. I was born with a male body, but I have a female gender identity. It's something I've dealt with for as long as I can remember…mostly by trying to pretend that I wasn't. Growing up is hard enough as it is, but I also had to deal with growing up in a way that felt completely and utterly wrong. But I managed to cope. I pretended that I really was a guy from skin to soul, and actually ended up doing a pretty good job of it. I made plenty of friends, did well in school, and even had a few girlfriends. But it all felt hollow to me. Every time I looked in the mirror I was unsatisfied with what I saw. Every time I tried to have a relationship my gender issues kept getting in the way. I felt like I was living a stunted existence.
Something had to break, and in February of 2005, I finally admitted to myself that I was transgender, and that continuing to run from that fact would only make things worse. Of course, by acknowledging that, I had just cast my entire future into doubt. How was being trans going to affect my family? What about my friends? My job prospects? My chances of having a family of my own? I didn't have any answers at first, but after months of soul-searching, meeting with a gender therapist, and late night conversations with my parents, I finally laid most of my fears to rest. Shortly before graduation, I decided that the only way for me to be at peace with myself was to transition from male to female.
Time for a little education.
To understand transgender people, you need to understand the concept of gender identity. It’s an unfamiliar term to most people because it’s something that the vast majority of people never even think about. The gender between your ears is the same as the one on your birth certificate, and that’s that. For transpeople, things aren’t so simple. There’s a disconnect between the way that we see ourselves and the role we’re expected to play by society. When we inevitably end up acting in like ‘tomboys’ or ‘sissies,’ we end up getting ostracized by our peers. To make things even worse, during puberty we end up changing in ways that make us feel like our own body is betraying us. Lynn Conway, a famous engineer, professor, and transsexual woman herself, sums things up nicely: “For those who are strongly transgender or transsexual, living without having a properly assigned gender produces a nightmarish separation from the dance of life. Whether it's dating, finding love, courting, marrying, raising children, and generally doing all the little everyday things that continually celebrate one's own gender, the transgender are often left stranded on the sidelines, to watch as spectators. Or worse yet, while feeling ugly and ludicrous in their social appearance, they are forced to "act out" empty of all feeling a role that is alien to their inner nature.”
Thankfully, there’s a cure, or at least a way for trans people to live reasonably normal lives: transition. It’s a process that tends to get glossed over by the media as ‘getting a sex change,’ equating the optional surgery at the end to the process itself, but this not only trivializes the experience, it misses the point. Trans people don’t just go out and ‘get a sex change,’ as if they were getting a facelift or a boob job. Transition is an extremely long process, with a duration measured in years. Typically, transition begins with seeing a psychotherapist for an extended period followed by hormone replacement therapy, allowing the transitioner to gradually slip into the gender role they identify with. Think of it as a second puberty, only this time with professional supervision. It’s usually only after someone has been living in their desired gender role for a year or more that they opt for sex reassignment surgery (SRS). The surgery is really almost an afterthought, the icing on the cake, if you will. A lot of people don't even get SRS, seeing it as unnecessary or too expensive.
Which comes back to me.
I've been in transition since the summer of 2005. I've had electrolysis to remove my facial hair, I've been taking female hormones for almost a year, and I've spent dozens of hours in therapy. The physical changes that have occurred have been striking, to say the least. My skin has softened, I've lost a great deal of muscle mass, my body fat has shifted into more typically feminine locations, and my face has taken on a more feminine shape. To be honest, I actually have trouble passing as a guy now. But far more subtle and far more satisfying have been the psychological changes. I feel freer now. For the first 21 years of my life, it was as if I had to filter out everything about me that wasn’t masculine in order to fit in. It took a lot of the color and spontaneity out of life. But now I'm starting to get rid of the filter, and finally meet the world on my own terms.
I've also just started what trans people call "going part time." In other words, while I still go to work as a guy, most of the time I present as female. It gives me a chance to get used to things and work out the kinks in my presentation without putting my job at risk. In a couple months when I’m ready, I'll meet with my boss, let my coworkers know, and make the change at work.
So, in keeping with the fact that I'm not really a guy anymore, I'm changing my name. I've tossed around quite a few possibilities, but after talking it over with my parents I've settled on Teri. So from now on, I'd appreciate it if you'd call me Teri instead of Andrew and use feminine pronouns (her/she) when referring to me. If you slip up, it's no big deal; I'll just give you a little reminder. The wrong pronoun can end up outing me in some instances, though, so I do ask that you make an effort. I know, it'll be a little weird at first. I’m still the same person, though. Just think of all this as a new take on an old friend.
And now it's time for me to step off my soapbox. If you have any questions that I haven't covered in this ridiculously long post, please, don't hesitate to ask. And one more thing: thank you. While not everyone was in the loop over the last couple years, my friendships with all of you have still been a huge source of strength and support for me.
It really is amazing. Life is just so good now, and it gets better with each passing day.
Teri
