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this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Yes I had this debate with the husband. I am sure if I'd been born in a male body it would have caused me distress, I've always known I was, well, female, it fits and I didn't grow up in a gender-divded household, kids were just kids, my mom made us all do the same things, she didn't really enculturate us. He thinks that it's just because I did have a girl body and if I had been a boy I'd have been happy with that but I don't think so.
One of our (many) kids is F-to-M, presents boy, wants to be a man when adult not a woman. I was honestly surprised when he told me because my conception of womanhood is so broad I had just thought they basically had the fashion sense of a styleless 40 year old lesbian. Both the youngest ones preferred to bind rather than bra, and the older of them is girl still so that didn't raise any sort of flag either.
But anyway - I have had plenty of opportunity in my life to think about this stuff, in a lot of ways. It's all been brought to the surface.
It's pretty easy for transmasc folk to fly under the wire because a lot of the cultural stuff on the girl side of things have been broken wide open. It's more widely regarded as sexist to try and force women to conform to all the trappings of traditional womanhood than it nessisarily is the other way around. I know a lot of binary trans women who wish they could just wear shlumpy hoodies and jeans and go out without a full face of makeup and have short easy to manage hair like cis women do but then everybody who doesn't know them doesn't pick up on the visual cues they need to make the assumptions to take the steps to gender them properly.
I feel like the concept of gender being wholly performative is really bullshit. You can see it a bit in the specific way misgendering stings? It's like it's the verbal equivalent of someone pointing our some sort of injury or a deformity that you've learned to live with. You can forget it yourself most of the time by just focusing on things if other people aren't constantly pointing it out but it's such a bloody drag when you realize people are noticing and focusing on that. The performance aspects of gender are just the protective shell of that innate feeling rather than the sorce of the feeling itself.
I agree with this. But there are only those three layers, right? The mind, your inner self; the body and the masculinity/femininity performance outward part.
I strongly agree it's easier for me to be sort of androgynous in the outward aspect and still be mostly seen as who I am, simply because my mind and body are aligned womanly. I can not give a shit about being feminine and still be seen as womanly (though I am old enough to remember when that wasn't true, and got bullied plenty for not presenting feminine). That is so (and still) much harder for men. So much harder. And yes I understand so much harder than that for trans women. If a male bodied person who is a woman isn't doing the dance of femininity I don't see a woman, unless I know them, right?
Still would say honestly that it's the biological nature of being a woman I enjoy about being me. Living in the body that gave birth to other people, and the sexual response. Beyond being physically embodied at all, which is obviously lucky. Even if I had to be a guy I'd want a female body. My trans son doesn't seem to mind having a female body either, periods and all, it's more about the outside to him I guess.
It's a little different for everyone. Sometimes it's more based in joy than pain or if things don't get in your way or you have active plans to change it's easier to live with them as a temporary nuisance. Sexual organs are often fairly low on the priority list because the surgeries around them can be a bit scary given the recovery regimen and with ftm bottom surgery you have to decide on what you specifically value in regards to function because nothing is perfect and it's a little more difficult to be enthusiastic about something that feels like a compromise. It's also scary in the way you could potentially make a choice out of the ones available and later on potentially wish you chose a different surgery option.
With hysterectomy as well if you aren't fantastically rich and can afford suragacy you have to give up on the idea of kids. So a lot of the biological concerns are very wrapped up in practicality and once you have a strong sense of where your values and what your overall life planning are the compromises make sense and become tolerable.
The HRT aspects are usually the bits that folk find relieving on the FTM side of things because you get more of the trappings you get to see and experience while you are out walking the world. The deep voice, the facial hair and the way fat redistributes itself on the body. A lot of people find that feeling of revelling in the things they enjoy about being in their body which allows you to focus on the good and dismiss the stuff you don't like.