Often when I search on the internet about transgender, I find myself turning off. What I read and what I know about myself seems to be at odds. That it makes me question if I am transgender or not. But I know am I am transgender for the simple reason that my gender identity is female and my sex is male. So what puts me at odds with what I read and makes me question myself about being transgender?
The first one is the idea the definition I often read about being transgender is being born in the wrong body. This something I believed to be the cause for the gender dysphoria I felt all of my life. But I have realized that my body is not wrong. There is nothing wrong with having a male body and having a gender that is female. I can still be me regardless of which sex my body is or more importantly what sex my body appears to me or others.
That is something that was really hard for me to grasp and accept. After all there isn’t a lot out there that I could find that lead me to believe that I could be myself regardless of the sex of my body. That to be happy what I needed to do was to correct my body so that it would match my gender. It might make me happy in the short term, but in the long term I would still be miserable. That is because I never took care of the problem that was keeping me from being happy.
That problem was not my body, but in my mind. Actual there are several problems in my mind that I need to address. The first one is the idea that I cannot be me in a male body. Sure there are things about having a male body that hinder me from being me. But it doesn’t stop me from being me. What I have to learn is to address things in a way that allows me to be me. May not be ideal but sometimes all you can do is do the best with what you have. That is a lot better than sitting on my hands doing nothing and bitching about it.
The second thing that I need to address is be more accepting other people in regards to myself. Realize that everyone has their perception of myself based on whatever they use to make that perception. For that reason be more accepting that a person may have a different perception of me than I do. That what really matters is not so much they see me as I see myself but that they are accepting who I am regardless of their perception and expectations of me based on that perception.
Which brings me to third thing. That is if it wasn’t my sex or gender then it would be something else. I think that is something we all struggle with as an individual. Being ourselves in a world where people focus on one aspect of ourselves and expect us to be something we are not based on that aspect. Could even be assumptions that people make about ourselves because of that one aspect. Assumptions that people would see to be wrong if they got to know us. Something I see in my own based on other aspects of myself that have nothing to do with sex or gender. Something I see with how other people are treated because of those aspects of themselves. So for that reason I am facing the same struggles as everyone else in the world, just specifics are different.
