Beware: rambly post ahead.
I often tell myself that I would have made a terrible guy, had I been assigned “male” at birth. That I would have been totally macho and shitty towards women. That I would have been one of those guys who just “didn’t get” feminism. That I would have been a total asshole.
You know why? Because I was all those things anyway, even though I was saddled with a female body. And I got away with it like no man could ever… because I was considered female and therefore “allowed” to. Not always, of course. People called me on my shit. But not often enough. Why? I guess it’s because people expect women to be really shitty to each other in creatively shitty ways.
Oh god… and the mom-shaming.
I was never kidding when I said I would take a punch in the gut over having to go to a women-only event. Of course, I’ve had fun when I went… many times. Of course, it’s not as dramatic as I make it out to be… but the underhanded/passive-aggressive comments directed towards me are actually the least of it. It’s the sense of not belonging. Of being in a “safe” space that is not meant for me. That I am an interloper. That no matter how hard I try to “pass,” I still feel like a square peg. Women, to me, were always They, and They scared the crap out of me. I couldn’t figure them out, and when I tried to figure out how to be more like them, they got really shitty towards me in return. Could they tell I was different? Was this normal behaviour?
And so part of me really wanted nothing to do with women and woman-ness. And, as I mentioned above, I retreated into macho-asshole thoughts. Who cared about feminism? It had nothing to do with me.
But then I gave up—I gave in and listened to my dysphoria. I decided that it wasn’t too late for me. That I could start presenting as male… online first, then work up to physical transformation. And I started to examine my feelings towards women now that I no longer had to mimic them. And I started paying attention and really learning about women and their struggles. I started listening to them in a way that I never could when I was pretending to be one of them, in a way that never reached me when my walls were sky-high and a mile thick. I could see all of my experiences in a different light when the pressure was off to be one of them.
So… would I have been an asshole had I been assigned “male” at birth? Probably. Every guy is, without knowing it, because of the way society is set up. Like… think of this quote by Atwood: Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
It took me being on the inside, trying my hardest to “pass” as female, to experience things that actually, in hindsight, make me a better person… stuff that I was too preoccupied to understand at the time but now make sense.
I get it now. I mean, I don’t get all of it. No one does… and there is major room for improvement, which I plan on working on for the rest of my life. But, I think I am a better man for having been a woman. I really do.