Why I am not non-binary anymore

When I first published this blog and began writing about my experiences with gender, and coming to terms with my own, I described myself as non-binary.  That was a fudge.  A little lie I told myself to make my truth more palatable.  To me.

To call myself a woman was a privilege I was afraid of taking.  I know that many of my trans sisters don’t have this hesitation.  And one of the dearest people in my life, I shall call her my big sister, by default calls everyone “they”, removing gender from language…she saw me and allowed for me to exist as female.

I was so afraid of calling myself female, of stepping into that, even if it was the thing I most wanted.  Ever since I was a little boy.  I am okay with accepting that I was a little boy.  I was.  And the little boy grew up and became a man.

I am okay with that too.  I don’t regret my life at all.  It has been beautiful.  There is a bittersweet beauty to being transgender that is very hard to explain, but one which I would not want to trade, for even though it often hurts, it produces such a rich kaleidoscope of feeling.

Had I transitioned when I first knew it was possible, when it shifted from being something that a little boy dreamed about every night when he fell asleep, that he could wake up a little girl, I would have been so happy.  That a click of the finger might have changed me.  Even years of prep.  Hormones, surgery, a special condition in life.  

In so many ways, that would have been preferable.  So much emotional agony would have never been felt.  More importantly, being non-binary would have never been a part of my vocabulary.  I became non-binary because being female felt inaccessible.  As if I didn’t deserve it.

And anyway, even with hormones changing every aspect of my person, the vestiges of my male anatomy put paid to my feelings of being female.  Even though many others extended me the courtesy.

I can remember the moment pre- coming out that I decided, “if I am going to be a woman, then I will live entirely and completely as a woman.”  And that informed many of my decisions.  It was part of rewiring my life.  And now that I have taken this very real and permanent step to change my sex, my legal existence, my public persona, I am confronted with this as more than a choice at this point.  It is a fact.

Trans women are women.

This post isn’t about definitions or degrees, to make the argument about when someone stops being one sex and becomes another.  It is simply to say that I am not non-binary anymore.  I never was.  It was a rest area on a journey, a hut we stop at below the summit.  A persona I inhabited briefly so as to seem less ridiculous to others mainly, as it was hard to explain to someone that I was female when I was still in transition.

Of course, I still am in transition.  Am likely to be in transition for the rest of my life.  Such is the richness of sex and gender and sexuality, that it can be a never-ending process of discovery.  It shall be.

But so much of my online presence was constructed around being a boy, an effeminate boy, a girlie-boy.  A non-binary trans person.  But it no longer fits.  And I need to update the branding to match the life.

I am a woman now.  And I am likely to go down the throat of someone who misgenders me.  I am likely to just argue or fight when someone doesn’t give me woman.  Sometimes I forget, ‘did I hear that correctly?’ or the situation is so complex and fast-moving as when I entered the seat of British Christianity last week for a ceremony and the 60+ year old stale male and pale usher misgendered me by calling me ‘sir’ when I crossed the threshold in pink velvet high heels and mint backless gown (don’t worry, I was wearing a pink silk scarf to cover my back)…my hair and makeup were done.

I would have and should have called him out on it, but there were hundreds of people behind me and I wasn’t sure that I heard correctly.  And anyway, given how jarring it was to be “sirred” when I was so obviously not a sir meant that I would have likely been over-the-top aggressive.

But part of me says, ‘yes’, I want to be like that.  I am not a doormat.  I will be awkward.  I will be in your face.  And I am this way by showing up as me.  Very inconvenient that.  Forcing people to confront their own prejudice.  But it isn’t enough.  And it is exhausting.

Trans women are women.

I wrote about some experiences as a dominatrix.  And generally, I have found the community of Sex Workers to be just about the most inclusive.  But sometimes you meet people even in that community who don’t get it…a topic of a future post.

As a dominatrix in a cis-male hetero-normative fantasy, I am skating a line of real discomfort.  I know that there are many men who fetishize trans people.  I don’t want to date men anyway, so I don’t really much care, and I am okay with them being my clients for this same reason.  It’s just work.  

But surrounded by natal women dominatrixes and straight men, I felt compelled to be as performatively feminine as possible.  I found myself needing to be seen as a woman.  So, I dressed as obviously female as possible, so there was no mistaking my body…and that meant wearing a harness top that exposed my breasts, of lounging by the pool in a skimpy bikini…all of this despite my voice.

The importance was in my body, showing the unmistakable signs of how female it looks.  The idea that skimpy can be a form of armour is very powerful.  It was very clear.  It advertised that I am unmistakable female no matter how deep my voice, no matter my past.  It was also overtly sexual.  It was power sexuality, as if it so say, “look, desire, but don’t even dream of touching.”  And the context for it was perfect.  A high protocol slave event where the male clients were not allowed to look at us, to address us unless spoken to, and had to be beyond respectful at all times.

It was liberating to watch these ladies face sit on bound men, but I held back, not wanting to test that limit, to see if they would desire it.  But I wanted it.  And plus, I know how good my pussy smells.  This will be an adventure for another date.