Member-only story
Transitioning from male to female in the world is an very specific way to understand the basics of gender power. By power I mean gender privilege. I know it didn’t take long for me to experience the loss of my male privilege’s.
First of all, learning to present as well as possible as a woman was sort of a double edged sword. Of course being able to get out of my closet and live feminine was a new, exciting yet scary experience. And, being able to be accepted as a woman in a group of men taught me several immediate lessons. One night, somehow, I don’t remember why or how I became part of a conversation between myself and three other men. Immediately and predictably I was ignored and my opinions discounted simply because I was there to start with and feminine in looks. I thought at the time, so this was how my life was going to change more dramatically than I thought when I began to feel comfortable as a transgender woman in public. Then, there were the times I was approached because I was transgender and appealed to a certain kind of man. Sadly, many times I faced only fitting into a sexual adventure with them and nothing else which never appealed to me.
I think overall these days many men are panicked about being men in the classic sense. Perhaps it is part of the reason an overwhelmingly amount of old white men are attempting to erase any or all of the very few transgender…
