Many people seem to associate being trans with wanting to change some aspects of one’s body. While that is something that some trans folk want, that’s not the case for all, or necessarily even most. Or at least not in any way more than cis folk (we’re all inundated by the media’s ideas of what “perfect bodies” are supposed to look like). But I am someone who would very much like to change some aspects of my body, and that’s what this chapter is about. Be warned: I do discuss genitalia somewhat graphically.
Growing up, I was given many of the same misrepresentations of transwomen that I’m sure most of you are familiar with. The young me was under the assumption that transwomen were campy, sexualized women, difficult to distinguish or completely indistinguishable from crossdressers (though I never imagined that they were one and the same – *that* assumption that people make never crossed my mind). The idea of why someone would want to change their body made complete sense to me, but I thought that the process by which they changed their bodies was limited to a plethora of intensive surgeries. I even remember seeing part of a documentary (actually I think it was an extended preview of a documentary) about transwomen that talked about them going through this “socialization” period where they “learned how to be women,” mostly secluded from the world. I don’t think it’s any wonder why I never associated any of that with myself growing up. I wasn’t like those portrayals – I was already a girl, I’d always been a girl. My body was just being really stupid and not looking like it was supposed to, but I didn’t need anyone to “teach me how to be a woman.”
I also remember hearing phrases like “a woman trapped in a man’s body” and that was so removed from how I ever felt. What seemed more like my situation were depictions in science fiction and fantasy stories of people whose bodies became transformed under some circumstance, or who had the ability to shapeshift. In particular, I was obsessed for several years with the Animorphs series of books (by K.A. Applegate). In the series, the main characters are able to “store” the DNA of various animals by touching them for a few moments, and then can transform into those animals at will (though there are some restrictions). They’re able to do this with the help of alien technology and they use their abilities to fight off invader alien parasites that live inside humans’ brains. What really made my imagination go wild was when it was introduced into the series that they could copy the DNA of another human, too. One of the characters gets stuck in hawk form (the consequence if you stay transformed longer than the time limit). He eventually grew to enjoy his new form, and I had the fantasy of gaining the powers, copying the DNA of another girl, then transforming and getting stuck. Would I have given up awesome superpowers to have my body look the way it was supposed to? Faster than a heartbeat.
Another book that I loved was “Mail-Order Wings” by Beatrice Gormley. In this story, the young girl protagonist orders wings from an advertisement. When they arrive, they allow her to fly, but the side effect is that she can’t remove them, and she starts transforming into a bird against her will. It was similar to how I felt: like I had accidently tried something and got stuck with parts I wasn’t supposed to have. I was scared, but I loved how the protagonist in the book had the courage to fight against it and eventually help herself and the other children who had made the same mistake change back. I wanted to be strong like her, and I wanted to figure out how to fix what had gone wrong, but I didn’t know how.
There were others, of course, but the point is that literature and film showed me people who felt like I did, and they all had solutions to their problems that felt natural and weren’t represented as fake or external. Contrast that with the descriptions I was given of trans women, and I felt as if there wasn’t a possible natural solution for my own problem. I felt like everything was hopeless, and this feeling spiraled down into depression.
At the same time that I was getting all these media signals, my parents were still intent in trying to indoctrinate me with their religion (Christianity). There’s nothing wrong with believing in Christianity (or any other religion), but there is something terribly awful about trying to force a mind to believe something against their will. Well, I never really believed in “God,” but I sure as hell tried for years upon years. I would pray each night before bed and each morning, and my prayers only concerned one thing: that I would wake up, and that my body would be how it was supposed to be, that everyone would recognize me as having always been female, and that I could just forget that all the awfulness had ever happened. I knew that that answered prayer was really the only possible thing that could ever convince me of the existence of god. I even kept praying for years after I had given up on trying to believe (I was unwilling to let go of any chance I possibly had of making my dream a reality).
I also had this weird fantasy where I really wanted to have a twin. But this twin was always a girl and always an identical twin. And I externalized some of how I was supposed to look onto this fictional twin of myself. Of course I’d be able to talk to her about the awful feelings I was dealing with, and with her help I figured I could probably conquer the world and fix all of my issues. But she never appeared, either.
I should probably explain what I mean by “how my body was supposed to be.” I never understood the genitalia I was born with. Penises never made sense to me, and I was always incredibly embarrassed by mine any time I would think about it. Before I had ever heard of the word “vagina” or ever looked at or understood that people had different kinds of genitalia, I knew that mine was supposed to be different. As I grew and started to go through puberty, I was totally lost about what to do with my penis, but I knew intuitively and instinctively what to do with my (theoretical) vagina. It just made sense. One of the things I have always prided myself on is my ability to pleasure my female partners using my fingers and my mouth, and one of the reasons I believe that I get extra pleasure from the experience is the fact that I am doing to them what I wish someone could do to me.
My first sexual encounter was similarly awkward. As awkward teenagers, things were bound to have some level of awkwardness, but I’m pretty sure I took the amount of awkwardness to orbital heights. We first started messing around by doing what we termed “clothes sex,” which was essentially just like sex, except no penetration, and pants (usually gym shorts) were on for both of us (toplessness, however, abounded). And my first instinct was to do it with my legs spread apart, which worked out fine for both of us during “clothes sex.” But when we moved on to regular sex and I tried to approach it in the same way, legs spread apart…it didn’t quite work. I’m sure anyone who has been sexually active understands what I mean. Moving beyond the awkward positioning, we finally figured out how to make it work (legs in for me, legs out for her), and then it became awkward as we tried to figure out how to move. None of it came naturally for me. I don’t know if others have the same experience or not, but it wasn’t easy, it felt weird, my body wanted to do things that were the opposite of helpful to the experience, and I found it to be the most difficult thing in the world to even “get off.” While I’m certain that media portrayals of first sexual encounters skew out perceptions of how awkward most people are, I feel like the majority of people probably have at least a rough instinctual awareness of what to do with their parts. Some of this probably stems from my demisexuality, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier chapter, but for many years I just assumed that I was missing any trace of instinct when it comes to sex.
That is, until I had a sexual encounter where I was able to do what was natural. I’ve always preferred to be the one lying down during encounters. It just felt more natural to me. And with a partner approaching me as if I had a vagina, and allowing me to act as if I had one, I know exactly what to do. How to angle my hips, where my legs naturally go, etc, etc, etc… I’ve never wanted to stick my penis into things, but I don’t think I can begin to describe how much I want to be penetrated. And not like just any part of my body penetrated. I want to be penetrated in a very particular spot, a spot that currently doesn’t have a place to penetrate. I’m sure you can surmise, but this leads to all kinds of sexual frustration.
In the same way that I felt like I was supposed to have a vagina, I always expected to develop breast tissue. And now that I have, I can tell you that it feels exactly how I wanted that part of my body to feel. The fat distribution on my body is of a “typical female” at this point, and I also notice other little ways that my mind has always been expecting my body to look like this. How I stand, walk, and even sit down are more naturally accommodated by my body now than before I started transitioning. I’ve heard an “explanation” for this phenomenon (which others certainly experience, too), likening it to Phantom Limb Syndrome (the thing where people who have lost a limb still sometimes “feel” like the limb is still there). Phantom Limb Syndrome happens because of what is called your brain map. A brain map is essentially the tool your brain uses to know where all your body parts are at all times. For a demonstration, put your arm behind your back, but not touching your back. Now do something with your fingers that doesn’t cause them to touch any part of you. You still know exactly where your arm is, and exactly what your fingers are doing, don’t you? That’s because of your brain map. My brain has always thought that I had parts typically considered feminine, and it expected my body to develop other typically feminine body parts and fat distribution during puberty. All of that was part of my brain map. When something happens that clashes with the map, there’s a dysphoric sensation (the same kind that happens when someone experiencing Phantom Limb Syndrome experiences a sudden realization that their body is not the way the brain thinks it is).
So that’s “how my body was supposed to be.” And I wanted to reach that place naturally, as my body should have done. And that’s why I was not a fan of the idea of extensively changing my body with surgery. There’s nothing wrong with people who want to do so for their own bodies, but it wasn’t what I wanted. So when I first happened upon HRT (hormone replacement therapy), and I read about what it was and what it did, I was overjoyed. Mentally I said to myself, “THIS! This is exactly what I wanted!” Sure, it would have been better if it had just happened to my body without outside influence, but HRT essentially changes the hormonal balance inside a person’s endocrine system, effectively allowing the body to develop as it would have if such a hormone balance had happened during puberty. I wasn’t going to have to get breast implants to have breasts; my body was going to grow them on its own! And of course all the other body changes, too. I had never been more excited about the prospect of something than I was during those first moments of reading about what was possible. It was like being told at your husband’s funeral that he hadn’t actually died in combat; they’d found him and he was alive and coming home in a few weeks. Everything that I had thought about the world was suddenly new and wonderful, and I was about to burst.
The important part to remember is that none of these things have anything to do with my gender. I could have experienced all of it and been a guy, or been any nonbinary gender. Wanting my body to look a certain way does not define my gender, and my gender doesn’t determine how my body is supposed to look. That’s part of why things like “I’ve always been a girl” make complete and utter sense; your gender is not how you look. Your gender is a part of who you are, and while it can get a little sticky to define exactly *what* gender is, there are certain things that can clearly be said to not be one’s gender. The fact that I’ve always been female is a fact, and the fact that I’ve always felt like I was supposed to have body parts that are traditionally considered female is also a fact, but those two facts, while they influence each other, have no cause and effect relationship. Many transwomen love having a penis, just as many intersex people (both trans and cis) love their genitalia. I’m sure a nonzero number of cis women would actually prefer to have a penis (but have everything else stay the same), just as a nonzero number of cis men would probably prefer to have a vagina. And, of course, that’s not even getting into all the nonbinary folks who variously want to change certain parts of their body and at other times don’t want to.
And, in my personal opinion, all of those people should be allowed to have their body look and feel how they want it to look. It’s not about vanity – it’s about using medical science to improve a person’s quality of life. It makes complete sense to us why a person who has lost their limb would want to grow that limb back, and we understand why that person would use prosthetics to come as close to that goal as currently possible. It’s the same thing. The body is not the mind, but that doesn’t mean that a mind can’t want to reside in a certain kind of body.
a trans-parent perspective 