Once upon a time in one of my transgender groups, someone asked: If you’d been born in a body of the other sex, would you still be transgender? On its face, I’d assume that binary transgender people would generally say no, they’d be cisgender, they’d be happy with the anatomy they had, and that nonbinary people would generally say yes, they’d still be transgender.
I don’t recall how many people matched that assumption, but I didn’t. I believed then, I believe now, that if I had been born with a woman’s body, I’d be a cisgender woman. I can’t be sure, of course; there are so many other factors involved in gender. But I think it’s more likely than not.
I struggle often with this question: Am I a transgender woman who is trying to find a compromise by presenting as nonbinary, or am I a nonbinary person who is willing to be identified as a woman, but not as a man?
This is a difficult enough question to wrestle with without the complications that Autism raises.
I’ll focus on clothing.
I want to wear clothing that’s comfortable and that reinforces how I see myself. I want to wear clothing that doesn’t get me noticed. Those two things are incompatible.
I don’t like to be noticed for being “weird”. I don’t want to stand out from the crowd. This is partly inherent to Autism but, even more so, it comes from trauma of being bullied and ostracized for being weird throughout my childhood and even into my adult years.
So wearing clothes that will get me noticed in a judgmental way, doing anything that will get me noticed in a judgmental way, is a source of anxiety for me.
At the same time, wearing clothes that reinforce the way in which I know my culture sees me is a source of anxiety for me.
The choice is: Which anxiety is less painful? Usually, at least historically, it’s being seen as a man. I’m used to that one.
I don’t know how long I’ve felt uncomfortable being seen as a man; for most of my life, the options I knew about were “Go to great lengths, including major surgery, and still be seen as a freak” and “Just suck it up.” And, as a deeply masked Autist, I didn’t really know enough about myself to explore the options.
And I feel like, without a drive to make myself look like a woman according to the expectations of society, I’m stuck anyway. I won’t be welcome in most women’s spaces; certainly not restrooms.
There’s the Autism again: I’ve spent my life masking, and now I want to spent my remaining years being as unmasked as possible. But I don’t want to have a woman’s body, not so badly that I’m willing to undergo medical steps to get there. So my only reason for doing so is to mask for the comfort of others. Again.
I want to be accepted as a woman, or at least “more woman than man”, but I’m not interested in putting on a mask in order to do so. I want to be me, I want to dress as I see fit for myself, and I don’t want to be judged for it.
But… that’s not happening. So I’m left with multiple frustrating choices.
I’ve tried to live within a compromise: Don’t push on being accepted as a woman, but push on not being forced to be a man. This seems to me to be a reasonable compromise, and yet, I’m still judged for it, and judged uncomfortably for it. Some people judge me more for it than for just being a woman.
Abrupt end for now. More later, I’m sure.