As a trans woman I am more of a man than at any other point in my life

When I say this to people, something that has dawned on me recently, I always get a laugh.  But it isn’t for laughs.  It’s true.

Of course, superficially, this is nonsense.  I most definitely lost male brain in July of 2022.  I lost any potential for the male gaze the day I started on hormones.  Yes, by some bizarre coincidence, it was US Independence day.  Yummy. And little by little, my physical aspect is changing to the point of being recognisably female for those who trust their eyes.  Of course, the surgeon’s scalpel will hustle things along.  I will also be changing my legal gender markers soon enough.  Or not soon enough.

“Resisting the female urge to be the man my father never was.”

Friend

But am I female?  It’s hard for me to say ‘yes’.  It feels a privilege I have yearned for my whole life, and one which is now coming to fruition.  But to take that privilege, to give myself that label, is something which doesn’t feel right.  There are many people who do not accept trans women as having a female experience.  And in truth, it must depend in part on the age of transition.  I have swaggered through life and felt the ease of being a male.  I cannot deny the legacy of that privilege in my bearing, my expectations of society, my voice, my willingness to speak up, stand up, be heard.  I am sure that my years as a man have helped me to become a trans woman.

Every day I feel more female, as if to say one can know such a thing.  I scarcely knew what it meant to be male.  No sniggering please.  Of course I didn’t.  But insofar as we live gender through the eyes of society, then how we are perceived plays a huge part in our own identities.  “The comfort of strangers” is such a resonant concept because when we are with people we don’t know, both our true humanity and aspects of our deep selves can come out and play freely…until we know each other well enough and put each other in our respective boxes again.

But I surely do know how different everything feels.  Physically.  Emotionally.  Spiritually.  And the weirdest thing?  Social placement, the box that I get put in, seems to fit better.  Will I ever be a woman?  I don’t think so.  Will my body look [more] female, have external markers which signify woman?  Yes.  But my cumulated lived experience will still be predominantly male or transitioning, for a long time.  Only, I do feel that I was born for the second time when I decided to come out, for from that moment, I haven’t not been out.  This will be more true once I have changed my anatomy.

The work that I do with my favourite therapist, hypnotist, healer, shaman, lioness, budding dominatrix, is one of self-alchemy.  Joining the parts.  Parts work.  She is a holistic healer and is one of many who has asked me to forgive my male parts.  She is not completely with me on my physical journey, even though she is on my spiritual journey.  Violence against the body is how she sees it.  “Your soul chose this way to manifest.”  My reply remains, “I’d be dead if I had to go on as a man.  And I’m not finished here.”

She added a book to the top of my reading list.  And it is one hell of a long reading list which just gets longer.  Ex-Mistress started by dictating what I should read and I still have quite a bit of the stack to get through.  Why am I still reading those?  Because they were chosen for me, for development in areas that I love and that she in her wisdom determined were good.  And they have all been excellent.  My Queen has given me a longer list…and yes, this paragraph is an insight into the intellectual BDSM world which I seem to inhabit with greater and greater joy and comfort.

Star Child, not to be outdone, immediately, and quite literally, placed two books on top of all the others.  One of them was taken up straight away.  A book on Buddhism.  The other, well, it has become a kind of cat-and-mouse game…and a symbol of how one does not submit to just anyone.  There can be only two people in that slot—the Self and one Domme.  And there is a kind of sacred bond there, where the Domme spurs the Self to grow.  I know that not all Dommes are like this.  But I wouldn’t see any other.  And it is the same with friendships.  And yes, even family.  Nobody gets a free pass.  If they aren’t supporting you and healing you, then they are toxic, and shouldn’t be around.

But my favourite therapist put a book on the top of the list, and I moved all others aside for that.  I will review it soon enough.  But I am reading for a third time now, something which I never do.  Not because it is difficult to understand, but because it requires reflection, self-work.

Well, in part thanks to that book, I awoke with a powerful epiphany.  My path of alchemy of the self, of all things, of my life journey, is to become female.  It is exactly my dharma.  The purpose of my life can only be enabled, accessed, lived, by stepping into this.  And that realisation has made everything fall into place.

I am a baby.  Not the baby that a woman refers to when she laments, “all men are babies,” meaning that they are emotional dwarves, bullies, weaklings, unable to care for themselves.  No woman wants to be her partner’s mother.  Well, not all.  Some do and bless them and bless the lucky males or females who find themselves with them.  But I suspect that even in those situations, the baby in the relationship is a rock.  How am I baby then?

I am seeking to approach love with the innate, natural, without agenda, boundless feeling of a baby for its mother.  And yes, with a partner, there is absolutely lust and carnal desire.  But for that to exist, there has to be a childlike wonder at the marvel of the person.  Letting go of all the noise and thought of a relationship, daily life, and to approach and love someone without guile, without conditions, to just feel…a feeling that is at once enveloping and envelops.  I know they can feel it.  I know I can too.  Somehow stepping into my femininity has allowed me to see this more clearly, to feel it, to give it, to explore it, to admit it’s existence.  And it has even coloured my friendships—all for the better.

Perhaps as a legacy of my upbringing which included liberal doses of emotional abuse and owing to the unique profile of the ADD person as being hyper-sensitive, trust has always been couched in layers of suspicion and wariness.  I am skittish, have always been skittish when it comes to “letting people in”.  But through the lessons of my Queen and the life I live, an ability to trust is coming to the surface.  And in this sense, I am a baby.  To trust first brings out the best in people.  Let us assume that we are all divine and wait for someone to disprove it. 

Yes, we are human, and for that we can apologize, but we can also seek to grow.  BDSM has shifted for me away from being a sexual practice to an Existential and Spiritual Practice.  When you trust people, they feel it, and they do their best to step into it.  The same for when we are trusted.  When that trust is not given freely at the start, that speaks of the wounds of the other person, and it is a shame, for it soils us.  When you encounter someone who doesn’t trust you, and if you can feel it, you can and should speak to it.

I know that minorities feel this.  It is embodied in micro-aggressions which start from someone’s skin colour, someone’s beliefs, someone’s sexuality.  Difference is enough to diminish.  And that must be called out.  When I think of the debt we owe to those of African descent in our society, who have born the sharp edge of hate for so long, who pioneered trans rights by speaking up in the 1950’s, who kicked off the gay rights movement, and without whom, civil rights as we conceive of them today, would not be possible.

My debt of gratitude flows deep and becomes emotional when black women (and yes, it is very often black women, without prompting, without any ask on my part) see me, help me, recognise me, embrace me, talk sweet to me.  Just some stranger.  Talk about alchemy.

What is a man?  Surely not a dick.  I know that some of the women that I almost date have gotten their heads around having sex with a trans-woman as a kind of half-way house towards lesbianism.  The love of getting fucked is pretty universal it seems in the cis female population—and should be in the cis male population too…it most certainly is in the trans population.  And yes, a dick is useful for that.  But dildos don’t have baggage.

No.  What makes a man a man is solidity.  Constancy.  Purposefulness.  Strength.  Not physical so much as emotional.  And this strength is not the same as female emotional strength, which is strong in its complexity.  No.  Male emotional strength comes in its simplicity.  It just is.  Loyalty.  Faith.  These are character traits which I believe represent the best of men.  And thankfully, I have begun to meet men like this.  Most of them are younger, and the new generation rising has so much more going for it than my generation seems to.  They are progressive, engaged, more enlightened.

We are entering the Age of Aquarius.  A few nights ago, a woman I was dancing with put her head on my shoulder and told me, “we are entering the age of women.  Can you feel it.  It’s time,” and I felt all of her relax into me and let me carry her, spiritually, emotionally, and on the dance floor.  And as we danced our bodies moved together with the suppleness of vines, feeling the rhythm, writhing in unison to the beat, sweating, delirious, in celebration.

What else is a man?  You won’t be surprised to hear that a man, a real man, is submissive to a woman [apologies to any gay men reading this and wondering where they fit.  I am not qualified to opine on the dynamics, but I have found at least from a performative sense that gay men are more masculine than straight men].  May I phrase this differently?  That the masculine shows its strength through service to the feminine.  Submission.  The feminine is giver of life but requires the spark and container that the masculine provides.  Both are necessary.

Maybe a man is just confident.  Grounded.  In the self.  That’s what it means.  And that’s a pretty nice feeling.  Kind of odd it has taken me coming out as trans to figure that out, and not without even more irony, I know it will be truer after once I am post-op.

The alchemy of the self is powerful.  I guess that is what this post is about.  Reconciling our dark and our light.  All the dysfunctional bits: seen, embraced, absorbed.

I had this hang-up when I was younger and wanting to feel and be a baby.  I fantasised about it even whilst fucking.  It was a rich and enriching landscape.  And one that provided much pleasure to me even when on my own.  But in one relationship with a woman who loved this aspect of me and incorporated it into our sexy time and to every other time.

“Come baby,” she said as I came through the door of our flat, taking my hand, and leading me upstairs.

“Yes?” I asked, admiring her butt held in a taught pencil skirt as she scissored her way up the stairs.

“Shh.  Babies don’t talk.”

She led me to our bedroom.  Her thing for soft pink light “because everything looks more beautiful in pink” bathed the room.  But I could see all the paraphernalia on the bed, the accessories and I was instantly gone to the place where she was taking me.  She stripped me and applied cream and powder, and that heavenly feeling of having a nappy pulled up between my legs and taped tightly into place washed over me.  And then it was her turn.

She led me to the bathroom where she had drawn a bath.  There were candles and scent.  It was delicious.  And in silence, for the next hour, I bathed her, worshiped her body, tended to her, took care of her.

After, we cuddled, drifting in and out of sleep.  And at some point in the middle of the night, she tore my diaper off and we fucked like animals.  The scratches and bite marks she left on my body were with me for days.

But a diaper is like a cage.  A form of chastity.  And a woman has urgent needs, perhaps even more urgent than a man.  They must be tended to.  And so, a wise man learns to take care of those needs above his own.  To ensure that she is always pleasured.  Because without it, she is free to go.  And a man needs what a woman gives more than she needs what a man gives.  He needs her acceptance, and that is something beyond price.  It is life itself.

I spoke of the masculine providing a container for the feminine.  And that is true.  But it is a container of this world, the physical world.  The container that a woman provides through her love and acceptance, is from another world, the spiritual world.  It is existential.  Without it, a man is diminished, his light is dim.  Men seek to control women because they are afraid of this power.  It is this power which is life itself.

Society is constructed in part around male fear of this power.  But it is inescapable.  As we shift into the Age of Aquarius, the enlightened man has come to understand this, and lives it.  His reward is freedom, a carefree existence.  He may sally forth into the day knowing that the affection and acceptance she bestows upon him.  And what does she get?  Respect.  Honour.  Grace.

Loving to wear diapers gave me the wisdom to use my hands and tongue, and to connect with love and respect.  As the fetish left me, and my need for the paraphernalia vanished, something else has emerged.  Just how beautiful it is to be a baby in the sense I mean it here.  To feel innocent love.  To assume the best of everyone from the outset.  To trust.  Yes, everyone disappoints, fails.  All of us.  That means we learn the next lesson too—forgiveness.

Of course, there are people who are neither capable of trust nor forgiveness, and that is a shame for them.  Let them go.  They may find their way, but the only way to help them, is to let them go.

Being submissive smacks of the nickname that my reflexologist likes to tease me with: “doormat”.  Of course I am not.  Only in a ritual sense.  At times, she explores.  She will command me to do something trivial, usually to do with food.  It is always worth seeing the wicked smile and hear the flash of laughter when I comply without hesitation.  She enjoys it.  She discovers her power.  This is her Wanda moment (an obscure reference to Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs—the most terrifying book ever written for my submissive self—when you get what you want and you discover that loss of control can also mean loss, period).

In order to survive in life I have had to compartmentalise.  A healer and shaman I worked with recently told me specifically that I need to learn to contain my slave and submissive self from other parts of me.  That in order to be a healer, to be strong, I need to set this aside, and to be able to control that.  Right place; right time.  So I am learning to do this, particularly as I practise healing.

Whereas I used to approach healing from a place of submission, I have begun to step into my full power, setting aside all submissive tendencies, and embracing the Empress, the Warrior, my masculine.  I don’t think I could have done this without the changes going on in my life for being transgender.  The decision itself and all that flows from it, has only given me strength.  I have half-joked that I wish to become a domme…and yes, I think I do.  In certain ways.  But I am still a slave.  That much I know.

Have a nice day.