Transgender Eye for the Biologically Female Gal - I. Feet

I have decided to start a new regular segment on my blog about my friendships with transgender people, how they have enriched my life and helped me see things in new ways. My first transgender friend came into my life about 20 years ago. She was a very educated, politically leftist person. She felt very alienated as a man. She was already living as a woman when I met her. I couldn’t even imagine her as a man, even though she had not had surgery at the time. She didn’t seem to like anything about the male world. She had always felt she was female inside. She just wanted to go through the long process of making it permanent, physically and psychologically. I had a very deep, intense friendship with her, the kind I don’t seem to be able to form with biological females. She eventually had surgery, and then she decided she really did not want to have much to do with males and decided she would be a lesbian. This woman was very intelligent and idealistic, and this was all part of her decision to go through a gender change.

Until recently, I had only met transgender people by accident. But I finally decided I like them, so maybe I should seek them out. Well, I looked through the profiles on my computer and found someone I thought sounded like a really neat person, and I e-mailed her. Now I’m in another intense friendship with her, even though it is an online friendship. I thought it would be a good time to write about it every so often, how it is changing my life in a positive way. Since she is partially in the closet about who she is, I won’t use her real name. I will call her "Valerie."

Valerie would like to live as a female all the time, but that is impossible. So she lives part of the time as a male. She has always felt, however, that she is female inside. She is taking various steps to become more female physically. I don’t think she is considering surgery at this point. I could talk about her for pages and pages, so I guess I’ll just have to pick out one insight at a time. Today, I thought "feet" would be a good subject. Valerie is very interested in how her feet look. She keeps her toenails in good shape, paints them, and loves the way they look in women’s shoes. A couple years ago, I went through the feet phenomenon with my sister. One of her friends took a great interest in improving the appearance of my sister’s feet. I did some thinking about my feet at the time. Now Valerie has me really thinking about it again.

I also am obsessed with my feet, but in a completely different way than Valerie. I am a long-distance runner, so my feet are obviously very important to me. I’m interested that my feet don’t hurt so that I can keep running. I could care less about whether my toenails are polished. My feet would probably look extremely ugly to Valerie. I’m just concerned that the toenails don’t completely wear away so that I get blisters and can’t run. Unlike a lot of women who want many pairs of sexy shoes, my only concern is having a good enough running shoe that I can run far and not hurt myself. When I have to worry about getting a job or going to church or the like, all I care about is wearing a pair of shoes which looks somewhat presentable. I usually hate them and wish I had my running shoes on!

Maybe the subject of feet sounds petty, but I find that trifling female concerns take on a new importance when I discuss them with male-to-female transgender persons. The small female things I take for granted become things I am thankful for when I see another human being longing for them, someone who can’t have them easily, because she is female but was born in a male body.