So where does that leave us?

Growing up I frequently heard the statement, "Be a man." It made me wonder what was I then and what exactly was a man? I suppose it meant don't cry be tough and lead (another huh word), the truth was I did want to cry when I saw pain and hurtful activity. I did empathize with others and I secretly harbored a suspicion that a mistake had been made in my bodily makeup - The outie parts should have been innies. Somehow God had made a mistake and given me the wrong body parts. So there I was left to find out how to "be a man" when I didn't even feel like one.

And yes I did think about cross dressing, but when you are already 6 foot and 175-180  pounds at 14 well that didn't seem like a good idea. Indeed that idea of someone with a hormone poisoned body trying to pretend to pass as a woman ws never something that I could understand. I did understand, or so I thought, something else. I read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and encountered the notion of feelies. I envisioned myself sitting in a theater and being able to experience to feel as a woman does. It was exciting and liberating, it was also an incorrect reading as I discovered it was only emotional feeling like rage. Oh well.

Meanwhile back with my own feelings in the early to mid 1960's I kept my head down though I did read about Christie Jorgenson in Newsweek or US News  and later heard about Renee Richards.in the 70's  Those kinds of transformations seemed to require resources that I certainly did not have. So I went on and found myself making cinnamon rolls for the Campus activists and generally adopting a low key femininity. I did finally share my feelings with a friend in college. She informed me that one did not have to travel overseas anymore. Sex changes were available in the U.S. but of course it still took financial resources and a plan. I had neither.

If I had Caitlyn Jenner's money

 If I or anyone with long standing Gender issues had Caitlyn's money transition would be no big thing, but for those of us with out there are  years of testosterone poisoning to overcome. The truth is I could never transition and even come close to passing and I respect my feminine too much to be that clownish figure wearing a dress and obviously sending man in a dress vibes. 
For me years and years into hiding then not knowing how to come out without embarrassment and looking foolish, it is the woman inside me, the part that still guides the journey of life, that I honor and cherish. To try to transition awkwardly would not empower her or honor her not would it be anything but and affront to women I have loved and who have nurtured me. She lives in the quiet recesses of reality, she cries for the struggle of sisters everywhere even if those sisters would not recognize her. It does not matter. What matters is that the lives of women everywhere and their accomplishments and potential be recognized and celebrated.

I should probably at least use their them pronouns, but at 70 plus old habits cling and the thought of having to defend those pronouns just wears me out. 

The time for intervention is prepuberty or at worst early onset. In those cases there is hope in making a life that conforms and can be accepted without being a parody. Unless of course one has the resources to get the facial,voice box, hair and other surgeries required to come out of the chrysalis full formed like Caitlyn Jenner, and yet she then distances herself from her sisters pretends that her Republican friends don't want to erase who she is. It is enough to make one scream..