Why on earth wouldn’t I want to live the rest of my life as a woman? It’s like getting to have two lives.

Being transgender is a special gift, wickedly and deliciously complex.

Because we can.  To hell with stigma.  I accept that as a trans person I may be talked about, sniggered at, judged, excluded, all kinds of things.  But this is nothing to the accumulated weight of being female in our society.  And frankly, the chattering classes are not my friends.  They don’t need to be.

A very wise friend of mine recently remarked to me that the people in our lives are in our lives for a reason.  We can pass a lifetime with people just outside the orbit, even several times over, and never meet them.  There’s a reason for it.  The wacky therapist who I had to fire believed that this applied over lifetimes as well.  That we encounter the same people over and over again as our souls find themselves back in physical presence.  I rather like the thought of that, even if I am troubled by how central that places “us” at the workings of the universe, when I prefer to think of us as oh-so-very small.

Shedding the male

My penance continues for having been male…I have rationalised that the origins of my submission stemmed from a number of things: a lack of positive male role models in my life, an acute sensitivity to the plight of women in society, a yearning for the beauty of femininity and a kind of nostalgic pain for not being a part of it…by being submissive I both apologized and increased my chances of being accepted or smiled at by women.

This worked well until adolescence and my life was one giant world of submission, nurturing, and joyful relations with women.  When I hit and passed through puberty, all these ugly things happened to my body.  What they did to me physically was nothing compared to what they did to me psychically.  They removed the most important source of spiritual nourishment from my daily life, the succour of the indulgent female.  Tainted, now, by sexuality.  It’s hard to describe how much I hated that.

Is it any wonder that this turned me into a submissive, and that this energy became sexualised?  Not to me.  Not anymore.  So too, I experience my submission falling away as my masculinity is not only no longer felt, but more importantly, no longer perceived.  Women are once again “safe” around me.  I mean this in the sense which I alluded to in my story about the mechanic who fixed my car—that somehow there is always at least the suspicion that a man has an ulterior motive, that they just want to find a way into your panties.  And while that was never my motivation in the sense that it was intended (though I might have wanted to be you if I was attracted to you), I know enough about men and how they think to know that is exactly what ever man I have ever known is really thinking.  And this applies no matter whether you have sent vibes out or not.  What a burden.

I have spoken only lightly about being an infantilist, an adult baby, a diaper lover.  This fetish was with me from my earliest waking memory.  It is one of the facets of my submission, the rejection of adult male sexuality, of that whole mindset of “getting into her knickers”.  My particular version of that kink was about innocence and when it played out in real life it was all about warmth, softness, cuddles, human connection.  I was never so very much into the accessories…perhaps a nappy, yes, as nothing feels quite like it, but even a whiff of the scent in baby powder was enough to trigger me.  

That particular fetish would come and go over the years, but I feel that it is more definitively gone than ever before, I suspect never to return.  And my submission seems to be a fellow traveller for it.  In other words, the “purpose” of this fetish [and yes, I absolutely believe that our kinks and fetishes serve a very deep and essential psychic and spiritual purpose that it behoves us to understand], was advertising a rejection of adult male sexuality, of predatory behaviour…it was my way of saying, ‘I’m safe.  I’m not like that.’  

Of course, a great many adult women lament how their men are ‘babies’, but I don’t think they mean it in the way that I have meant it here.  In fact, in the ways that most women mean their lament, it is my opposite.  I keep a clean house, I don’t whimper, I am strong and solid and supportive and nurturing and take life’s blows with positivity.

But also, when I was a teen, and courting girls for the first time, I did find what has become a bit of a trope, in that they didn’t like submissive men.  I have since discovered that this is not the case.  That a great many women love us dearly and wouldn’t have it any other way.  And submission is absolutely not to be confused with a lack of complexity, and more importantly, a lack of agency.  If anything, the submissive people, truly submissive (and I mean not just in the bedroom) people I have come to know are profoundly strong, because in order to accept our own submission we have to do the work.

Just a quick aside on consent.  This is what sex education should be about.  Moral education.  Ethics classes.  We need to teach our children that consent is the be-all and end-all of human relations.  Without it, we will never replace the entitled male and all the toxicity that results from it, if we don’t teach that consent is sacred.

Before ever meeting a dominatrix, or let alone an FSSW, this concept was not one that even figured in my vocabulary.  For shame.  A product of society.  If there is one gift that stands above all others in my interactions with these beautiful people, it has been this.  And please, know this.  The experiences I have had with SWs have been massively enhanced by having learned about enthusiastic consent.  When you enter into a pocket of time and beauty with an SW and the container that holds you both is one of consent, respect, and boundaries, it gives her the freedom to fly.  And when she flies, there is nothing more spectacular to behold.  

No waterfall, no rainbow, no thunderstorm, no murmuration of starlings can offer the wonder of a woman in the full throughs of sexual expression and freedom.

We may wonder what the divine feminine really is.  No doubt it is many things.  But I have met it.  And little by little I meet it more and more.  Every day.  It is energy.  It comes to play when you are receptive to it, when you respect it, cultivate it, and don’t seek to bottle it.

Why not just keep going as a man or as an androgyn?

I want a woman, as a trans woman.  I will always be non-binary as a fact of birth. Nor will I ever pass, but I reject ‘passing’ and the desire to pass as just another tool of patriarchal suppression. I will never reject my misandry, and there is no chance that equality will be achieved in my lifetime, and therefore it is a spiritual and political stance.  I do hate men.  I hate what the patriarchy and privilege does and has done to society.  And although its particular crushing of my self-expression has resulted in something far more beautiful, nobody should have to go through this. The cost of male supremacy in a social context is toxic for everyone.  The ones that don’t realise it are already dead.

Please don’t misunderstand.  I have some wonderful male friends.  Friends with whom I have broken bread, cried with, laughed so hard until I thought I would pop…I don’t see the particular interfering with the general.  My friends are keepers.  And how they have stood by me, gone out of their way to show solidarity with me, publicly even when it cost them, shows that I have been gifted with a delicious bunch.

I had dinner with a man I don’t much care for.  He was one of a number of people present, the others being either friendly acquaintances or rather close.  He asked ‘why’?

“I’m bored.  I’m going to cut it off because I’m bored and I want to do something different.”  That shut him up!  There is a grain of truth to this.  Why not?  Life offers so much.  It can be so much richer.

And yes, I hate tucking.  I don’t want to look down and see that bulge.  I want it smooth.  I want to wear a bikini and tight-fitting trousers and be me.  But there is something way more existential about this, related to all the divagations above.

Why am I no longer submissive?  Why has fetish me stopped needing an outlet?  Because as a trans woman, I can finally relate to women as someone who is inherently unthreatening.  I don’t need to advertise anymore, don’t need to apologize, don’t need to sexualise my submission.  Because who and what I am is categorically un-predatory, is categorically minority, is categorically a part of an underclass.  We talk so often about the privilege that one gives up when surrendering manhood, but this is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the honour of being received as a sister.  And I mean nothing.

Our sexual selves, the things that turn us on, the way we connect through the erotic, is one of the most spiritually and physically important parts of our lives.  For the first time in my life, I can contemplate being fully present, being without shame, and simply connecting with another person through touch.

And of course, technically, I guess that as a trans-woman, being with a woman makes me lesbian.  And lesbians do approach each other.  Women are approaching me.  I am going on dates.  But something is different also in my mind about a date.  Maybe it is just the flush of optimism, but not having an agenda beyond emotional intimacy, seeing it grow and develop between two people, can just as richly “end” in friendship without going all erotic…and that’s wild and wonderful.  And it works both ways.

I am developing the most splendid friendship with a woman who quite unabashedly said she wanted me.  I don’t want her.  At least not yet.  But I do love kissing her.  She’s a great kisser.  But I also don’t want to expect anything from her, nor her me.  And this gets at where my kinky self appears to be heading.

I am developing ‘mommy’ energy.  It’s very weird, and I will watch it with fascination, but I am feeling very protective and nurturing towards several women who have come into my life recently.  And I have also been introduced to a lifestyle domme, and am curious to see what might happen, if anything at all.  But I think there is one woman who stands apart from all of these.  She makes the air vibrate when I am near her.  She is a player in the corporate world, a true power.  And the weirdest coincidences of all?  She has the same name as ex-Mistress, the same initials, the same nationality—weird.  She doesn’t look anything like her though.

Who couldn’t love life in all its richness? When I envisage my future, and see it manifesting, I see the divine feminine coursing through me; I see myself fully embodied as a slave; I see so much professional and personal success…and all of this thanks to coming out.

Goodbye male me; hello miss, I’ve missed you all these years.