'What sort of woman do I want to be?'
'What sort of woman do I want to be?' | Life and style | guardian.co.uk
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Living 'as a woman' was just a starting point. As soon as I entered the NHS pathway and began the real life experience I had to ask myself: "What sort of woman?"
Establishing this involved rethinking my relationship with the vague social construct of 'masculinity', and separating those traits which had been a facade to help me 'pass' as male before transition, from those integral to my character. Simultaneously, whilst I knew that changing my body carried no obligation to adopt any socially gendered behaviours, presenting as female made it prudent to at least consider my ideas of 'femininity', and how 'feminine' I wished to be.
I wrote when discussing 'passing' that gender roles are like languages, with men expected to 'speak' (or perform) their version of 'masculinity', and women 'femininity'. Those who don't talk like natives invariably stand out. Transsexual women weren't raised with femininity as their 'language' (or to express themselves in a 'feminine' manner) – and in a world that often warns those born male against any display of femininity from a young age, and in which those adjudged to get it wrong can be ruthlessly attacked, this can be a problem.
Unlike languages, which have concrete rules, gender is often defined as much by what it isn't as what it is, and learned by doing. Beginning transition, I thought more about what it meant to be a woman, and the social inequalities that may come with being female-bodied, than what contemporary society deemed to be 'feminine'. The two were not inherently linked, and focusing too much on appearance and demeanour seemed to me a red herring.
In clothing, I naturally leant more towards 'femme' styles, which just meant that I tended to wear dresses and skirts on formal occasions more than trousers. Otherwise, I considered gender presentation primarily when I was told to – this feedback gradually changed the way I dressed and behaved. Just as my peers had criticised me pre-transition when they deemed my demeanour insufficiently masculine, so my female friends now advised me when they thought my clothes or conduct inappropriately 'unfeminine'.
Of course, femininity is not solely about external things – clothes, cosmetics or posture – but by definition, they are the most obvious manifestations of individual attitudes towards gender roles, and getting them conspicuously wrong can have real social consequences. I was fortunate enough to make my worst aesthetic errors in my early twenties, before I started transition, and when I began living as female full-time, I was cautious, doing most clothes shopping with friends who I knew would tell me if I fell into the trap of dressing too young or too old for my age, or in noticeably outmoded styles.
I was particularly wary of this because of the stereotype that persists about trans women (and not just in reactionary circles), criticising us for conforming to conservative models of femininity. Besides mentioning that it rests on the assumption that 'femininity' is reactionary in itself (which Julia Serano, for example, debunks), it's worth considering how this functions on a practical level: many transsexual women are most visible when they start transitioning, becoming less conspicuous, and thus unnoticed by those looking for hyper-femininity in order to reaffirm their prejudices. Gradually they find a style that suits them amid a number of conflicting pressures.
When made by women, this particular attack tends to come through hostile generalisations made in purely theoretical realms – I've never had such a critique expressed to me personally by any female I've met. Often, these writers (such as that cited above, from the 70s) oscillated between blaming the gender identity clinics and their patients for the way they believed transsexual women to present themselves. However, they are long behind the contemporary reality: in the past, certain GICs did make rigorous, rather conservative demands of their patients' gender presentations, but they've gradually moved beyond this. (Incidentally, have you ever heard anyone, male or female, criticise a transsexual man for conforming to masculine stereotypes by, say, wearing jeans and having stubble? No? Me neither.)
In any case, these theories became academic soon after I started living as female: the abuse from men if I overplayed my femme appearance caused far more concern, coming as street harassment with violent undertones. The thought process behind what I initially cast as transphobia but soon recognised as hatred – and fear *– of femininity was so transparent that I could picture it as a flowchart:
Unavoidably, this also changed the way I presented, but with experience, I found modes of self-expression for different occasions that felt right for me. I won't say "I feel feminine" or "I feel like a woman" because, besides the nebulousness of such statements, it would put me in league with Shania Twain, which would just be awful. Instead, I'll simply say that at this point, I feel perfectly happy with, and proud of my femme identity, having found my position on the social construct of femininity amid so many conflicting pressures: the same process that any other woman goes through, whatever conclusion she comes to – only some years later.
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For those of you who haven't been following this, it's a regular column in the Guardian by a bloke who's currently becoming a woman. It's pretty engaging, in a Jerry-Springer-for-the-chattering-classes sort of way.
If it was just a matter of flipping a switch I'd change sex right away - everything would be so much more convenient. In fact, if it was that easy I'd probably flip back and forth just for the hell of it and to freak people out.
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Not what I meant, though - and you know it.
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