Transgender Friends - Part 4
This is a continuation of the story of my first significant encounter with a transgender person. I posted Part 3 several days ago. As I’ve said in a couple installments, my attitude had to be that I know nothing. One thing I could have mistakenly assumed was that my friend was just a person who could not bear to admit she was a gay male, so she had to go through a gender change and surgery just to live out her dream of being with men.
But since I knew nothing, I assumed nothing about her sexual orientation. In fact, she had had a serious relationship with a woman. I believe the relationship had broken up for several reasons, one of which that her girlfriend was extremely heterosexual and would not be satisfied without intercourse. They had remained friends. But my friend started to talk about being attracted to men. So I was pretty sure she would date men after surgery.
WRONG! Earlier I talked about what it must be like for her to finally be living in the gender she felt she truly was in her mind. Well, at one point, we had a talk about what it had been like for her to live as a male. Naturally, I could never completely understand that myself, never having experienced it. She told me how alienating, how drab, how lonely, how gray her life had been as a male, how she just could not relate to typical heterosexual males. She decided after surgery she wanted no part of that former world, and she decided she was a lesbian.
There probably aren’t many people who don’t understand the feeling of wanting to pick up, leave, and start over in a new city. I think we can all relate to my friend’s feelings in that regard. She wanted to move away from the city in which she’d undergone her gender transition and start over. She moved to a new city and got a new job. She did eventually have a lesbian relationship. She came back to visit. Then she moved to a new city of her choice and found a job there.
I lost touch with her over ten years ago. But the same questions remain. How does she relate to the fact that for 30 some years of her life she was in a male body, and now she is in a female one? Is she out about it or not? If she is out, does she identify as a female, or does she identify as transgender? If she is not out, how does she handle embarrassing questions about her past and present from people she doesn’t know? This too, is something those of us who aren’t transgender can never completely understand.
To be continued…
But since I knew nothing, I assumed nothing about her sexual orientation. In fact, she had had a serious relationship with a woman. I believe the relationship had broken up for several reasons, one of which that her girlfriend was extremely heterosexual and would not be satisfied without intercourse. They had remained friends. But my friend started to talk about being attracted to men. So I was pretty sure she would date men after surgery.
WRONG! Earlier I talked about what it must be like for her to finally be living in the gender she felt she truly was in her mind. Well, at one point, we had a talk about what it had been like for her to live as a male. Naturally, I could never completely understand that myself, never having experienced it. She told me how alienating, how drab, how lonely, how gray her life had been as a male, how she just could not relate to typical heterosexual males. She decided after surgery she wanted no part of that former world, and she decided she was a lesbian.
There probably aren’t many people who don’t understand the feeling of wanting to pick up, leave, and start over in a new city. I think we can all relate to my friend’s feelings in that regard. She wanted to move away from the city in which she’d undergone her gender transition and start over. She moved to a new city and got a new job. She did eventually have a lesbian relationship. She came back to visit. Then she moved to a new city of her choice and found a job there.
I lost touch with her over ten years ago. But the same questions remain. How does she relate to the fact that for 30 some years of her life she was in a male body, and now she is in a female one? Is she out about it or not? If she is out, does she identify as a female, or does she identify as transgender? If she is not out, how does she handle embarrassing questions about her past and present from people she doesn’t know? This too, is something those of us who aren’t transgender can never completely understand.
To be continued…
posted by Theodosia @ 2:52 PM
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