The earth-shattering joy of becoming female before the State, the Law, Society

I’ll do one better.  Not becoming.  But being recognised as having been born this way.  Readers will know that this trans woman doesn’t think her birth in a male body was an accident or that God made a mistake.  But the feeling that it wasn’t right for me has always been there.

And leaving aside the social pressure, and the certainty that society is uncomfortable with trans people, and that we are “freaks” to many, the fact that the law allows us to change our designated sex is so socially affirming, it is hard to play down the impact.

In some places, one can amend passports or driver’s licenses by a simple act.  But there are always traces, the threat of being outed, someone deciding to humiliate you, or make you feel bad about yourself.  When I went to my first BDSM club and was signed as a woman, I still had to give an ID card which showed me as a man.  How could I like that?

I am grateful to a social and political environment that made it possible for me to change my sex.  Not just physically, but legally.  I happened to have been born in a US state (and not all do), which allows an unfettered change to one’s birth certificate.  In other words, the state I was lucky enough to be born in, but never once lived in, has just given me a new birth certificate.

I was meant to be born in Japan.  But my next older sibling nearly killed my mother in childbirth.  So, she left Japan by ship because she was afraid of flying with me inside her, and sailed to San Francisco before flying the rest of the way to where her parents lived, to the same doctor who had given birth to my older sibling, all so she could not die, and not kill me.  

It was very cold and snowy.  Do you remember winters before global warming?  She used to swaddle me tightly (is this where I developed a love of bondage and an ability to just completely shut down and trust my rigger?) and place me on the doorstep in a bassinet.  I know that this is shocking to people—baby theft and all.  But the house was set back, and high, with steps up.  In retrospect I would have been more worried about foxes or other wild animals coming out of the woods across the road.

She did it to “toughen me up”.  Yes, let’s make a man out of a newborn baby.  Or better still let’s do that, and then let’s really fuck with him and dress him like a girl.  Just like a doll.  Sorry Mom!

First Aside

[My sisters who visited me recently noted that I have pictures of my mother on the walls.  That I have a painting of her, a proper portrait, and a glorious shot of her when she was young.  They are stunned that she would be anywhere on my walls given our dynamic and the things that she did and said to me.  My estranged bestie said the same, even going so far as to turn one of the pictures down.  They are right.  It is confusing.  I don’t understand it.  But she’s dead.  And the mommy I want was a mommy that I never knew.]

Second Aside

[I don’t know that I would ever really be able to indulge in this need for a mommy in its sexual manifestation—that I like to cuddle and wear diapers—with a partner and not have consequences.  I did have one partner for a long time who I loved deeply and who was not only indulgent but turned on by it…me in diapers was a guarantee to have me go down on her and to worship her body for as long as she could take it.  Little words of encouragement were enough reward for me.  I know there are many men who are turned on by chastity.  A diaper seems to have done the same for me.  This is on my mind because when I look at a provider, a Sex Worker, and see if I wish to see her, I look for references to this in her posts or website.  And it isn’t that I want to do it with her, to play in this way.  But there is something deeply reassuring about them not judging, of showing mercy, of being able to hold space for that energy, even if we never go there.  I pick up on it anyway…I don’t need the accessories, but if she has the warmth, then that is enough.  I don’t know why I got onto this.]

The Significance of Being Born Female

Bless US President Obama, who added ‘gender identity’ to the categories protected against discrimination.  The US trans legislative history that came before makes for grim reading, which can be found on this Wikipedia stub.  Although protected at a Federal Level, the peculiar nature of US law is that States can do differently.

There is a social and legal relevance to what I have been able to do.  My birth certificate now says ‘Female’. That means that I begin the long process of changing all of my documentation.  It is not as easy in England, and ironically, it will be my US passport and US birth certificate to change my British documents, even though Britain is far more my home.

This is also important because the threat of having rights taken away recedes dramatically when all paperwork and history can be brought into line.

The legal test in my US birth state is to refuse a birth sex change only if there is a “demonstrable State interest in doing so.”  When I prepared the paperwork, I was kind of blasé about it.  It was just some administrative hurdle.  But after having gathered sworn statements from my doctor and endocrinologist, from my therapist, noting that I had forever altered my biology and taken “irreversible steps” towards becoming the sex that I sought to change my birth certificate to, I was a little torn up inside.  I carried the sheaf of documents with me for several days, all over New York City, not quite ready to post it.  I had such butterflies in my stomach when I did.

I got onto a first name basis with the clerk in the statehouse who was going to handle it.  She said, “we’re a little backed up, running about a month behind.  There’s just so many.”  I love that I have so many brothers and sisters who are taking this step with me.

I gave my biggest supporter’s address.  I didn’t want it to go to some post office box.  I wanted her to get it, and to tell me.  Only she wasn’t home.  She’s on a trip, and today, she arrives to spend a few days with me.  I love her.  My children know that.  She knows that.  They said to me, “we can’t wait until she gets here, so she whips you into shape.”  There is nothing like the presence of someone who you adore and who you wish to please, to bring out the best in you.  I was intrigued by this.  “What, so you notice a difference.”

“Totally.”  They’ve already told me that she’s “more mama than mama.”  It’s just as well that she and I are not suited to each other, because her friendship is becoming the most anchoring one I’ve got.  It’s funny how that is…that a friend can be more of an anchor than a spouse.

One of her children is coming too.  It was one of my children that let me that her child had gone home for a few days.  I texted.  “Is there a letter for me?”

“Yes, one.”

“Can you open it please?”

“Sure.”  They sent a photo of the envelope.  It was postmarked 4 days after my real, original birthday.

“Be careful opening it please.”

“OMG!  Congratulations.”  And then I got a photo of my birth certificate and for sex, it just said Female.

I screamed.  I ran around the house.  I shouted.  My children came out of their bedrooms. [What is it with kids and always hanging in their bedrooms?]. “What?” they asked.  

“I’m a girl,” I cried out, and held up my phone, “I’m a girl.”

“Congratulations Papa!” they joined in as I hugged them and kept jumping and running around screaming.

I have been having such a bad run lately from the divorce and the hateful behaviour of my wife, and what I can only describe as a discriminatory environment in the UK family court system.  But this was triumph on an enormous scale.

My children have observed that showing up to court hearings with pockets filled with “magic rocks” (crystals) is clearly not helping me.  But I disagree.  The most important shrine in my house, with all of the magic I have in me, has to do with this transition process.  And the echoes I feel in my body and in my spirit, and how so many people have come forward to congratulate me and to wish me well is blowing me away.

And yes, the changes in my body and my brain make my life as a man seem further and further away.  I haven’t been a man for quite some time now.  Every day I feel more and more a woman.  There isn’t a day that doesn’t go by where I don’t marvel at the power of our hormones to change absolutely everything.  They are a guiding key to ever cell in our bodies.  Every damn cell.  Every cellular process.  Everything a cell does is impacted by our hormones.  Hormones are more powerful than DNA.

The next really big milestone is looming in the near future.  For me, my future vagina is a watershed, one of the last hurdles that stand between me and comfort in my body.  There are some other “minor” surgeries in the works, one before, the other six months after.  Next year I will have to test my ability to resist addiction.

The certainty of surgery was part of what made it important to fix my birth sex.  I didn’t want to talk out of the hospital with a document that says I’m a man.  I don’t want to walk in that way either.  Even though I knew it would feel momentous, I had no idea really what it would feel like once it happened.  There are things that build resolve.  Kind of like little nudges that get you take a leap into the unknown.  My birth certificate is just such a thing.

It also makes me feel that I can own being female in a way that I didn’t before.  I will wait just a bit longer to start using women’s bathrooms, wait until my day-to-day identification is changed.  License, passport, etc.  But the floodgates have opened.

I have never felt more like a woman than I do now.

Growing Ease with my Children

I hate to admit it, but I was a very stereotypical, aloof, authoritarian British father.  The kind that admired a man who wore suits on the weekend.  The kind that wore a necktie to work every day, long after it was no longer the fashion.  The kind that wore cardigans around the house.

Lady me is so much more present and alive for them.  Apart from being more fun to be around, what I am going through is liberating for them, but also for their friends.  Some of their friends have had the strength to come out after seeing me and knowing me.

One of my siblings has come out.  This helped.  My sisters have opened their arms to me after initial wariness.  So many women have taken me in without hesitation, without compromise, as one of the girls.  And that means it no longer feels “real” or that it is something that is happening, it just ‘is’.  A small example is a mix of straight and gay women that I am on a group chat with, and the topic got onto bra fittings and bras, and a bra party.  I didn’t know such things existed.  Whether I join or not isn’t the point.  What matters is that the door is open.

I was once asked what I wanted the most in life.  I had to spend a long time thinking about it and working through it.  When I finished, the essence of it was to be in community with women.  Nothing else mattered.  Nothing else matters.

I feel like a cat snuggling into some plush, soft cushion, where that is a parallel of my body, and the place of my body in my life, and my life in society.  There is this great settlement process taking place.  It is hard to express this feeling of being okay in your own skin after a lifetime of not.

And I am deeply grateful for the voters and the politicians who decided to stick their necks out and say that amending a birth certificate was a critical part of curing gender dysphoria.  The birth certificate.  The official registration of my existence.  No longer male.  Never was male.  Oh my.  Bliss.

And to all the idiots who think that we do this so we can wait on-line to pee, or so that we can be discriminated against, or have a lifetime commitment to a pelvic wound, or a lifetime commitment to taking pills…well…

Despite being broke I took my kids out for a pre- New Year’s cocktail last night.  The town was hopping.  I’ve had this dislike of being stared at.  I don’t ever know if it is because I am striking, or if they can’t believe their eyes, or if they think its weird, or that I’m a freak.  Its hard to read a blank stare.  But by the time I had crossed the room, gone up to the bar, come back outside, spoken to the server, I had smiled deeply at every woman who looked at me until she smiled back, and by the time I sat back down with my kids, every woman in that place was smiling at me.  And the transformation of a face that goes from blank stare to the warm embrace of a conspiratorial smile is sheer joy to behold.

My children’s newfound comfort and openness around me has led to some wonderful banter.  But I am not sure how I feel about the nickname that one gave me as we were jokingly working through potential names for my future life… ‘Sugar tits’.  It’s true, though, that my boobs are beautiful.  And they really are like a teenager’s.  I’m going to have to start doing some exercises to keep them this way!

P.S. I am relishing what is happening to my body and my brain and letting it flow.  I savour ever moment I can get.  But I also have a real fear about where the tide is going with the rise of the far right in Europe, of the increasingly anti-trans rhetoric of both main political parties in the UK, and of the threat that the Republicans have made to trans people.  I worry deeply that the window for changing a birth certificate as I have might change, that insurers and employers will once again be allowed to discriminate against people like me.  This translates in my case to a focus to get all the paperwork sorted, and to get my surgeries done.  I don’t know what I would do if I were somehow denied or thwarted along this path.

Thank you for listening.  I can’t help but think that having a reader is like having a friend.

P.P.S.  Pronouns do matter.  Up until now in my life I have been very laissez-faire about this.  I went to “they” but was okay with male or female labels.  Not anymore.  I have moved to female pronouns and an acceptance of ‘they/them’ but have taken to correcting people who gender me male.