We hear you when you say my pronouns are . . . Some of us even recognize the freedom that you feel that you are getting in choosing your own. Some of us (many?) have wrestled with the same issues. So why do you get so much push back? It is really quite simple. After years of playing mind games with the little M F boxes on so many forms we have just given up and decided to go with the flow.
As a young teen I may have resented the changes occurring in my body. I was embarrassed and a little confused. I even thought that everyone else knew that I was not the gender that I was "supposed" to be. Walking I would ask myself, was my butt swaying and giving me away? Did I really feel like a "guy"? How was that supposed to be? What if I really was a woman?
Then came Christine Jorgensen and the world changed. It was possible to change. That dream that I had of riding an escalator and arriving as a girl in the women's department of Kaufman's department store. That was a dream that fueled years of hope and anxiety. How does one change overnight? What do you tell your friends? Oh how deliciously wonderful and scary.
Premarital counseling brought out an odd fact that totally freaked out my fiancée . I scored higher on a feminine scale than she did. Then she noticed I liked my nails just a little longer than she thought were right for a man. She saw how I used my fingers, how despite their size they were the most obvious feminine part of me and as such something that was very dear and special. I did I hated the feel when they were trimmed back, it wasn't right. We did not last as a couple and I am pretty sure her eventual husband was a man's man who knew how to trim nails and didn't help out in the kitchen after meals with the relatives. (watch football? really?)
Meanwhile back in reality the boxes are still there to check. Years of wondering, experimenting, investigating. The Internet, actually something called the Usenet, beckoned. Suddenly there is private, anonymous contact with others. Of course some of those others were trolls, but some were not! How wonderful to be able to discuss those feelings, to explore the possibilities. Discovering that you actually know someone who had fully transitioned from Male to Female, but by then approaching 50 still wondering about those boxes but so used to clicking on the one assigned at birth. Then there is the realization that though my friend had made the transition, could I? Was the world ready for another 200 pound drag queen? My body ravaged by years of testosterone abuse was not such a pretty sight. The woman I knew would never be.
Funny thing is that the boxes have ceased to be anything but a cause for reflection. Yes, it would have been nice to have acted on those feelings as a teenager, but as a 60-70 year old the memories of what could have been are sufficient. Life is too wonderful to have regrets and we have grown accustomed to our assigned life. Maybe next time God will get it right. And then the youth start with the questions, the demands to change and the age old dilemma of those who have been there and settled. You are upsetting our deal with ourselves. You are calling into question the decisions that we made based on the opportunities and options that we perceived in the past. And damn it you are calling on us to question ourselves. It is easier for many to act as if you are wrong than they. Forgive the gender distressed old people, you have put us back in high school, a place we never wanted to be.
