Who I Am Is Not What Is Between My Legs.
By: Emma Holiday
Tags: Gender, LGBTQ, Creative Non Fiction, Transgender, Society

It took months for me to power through decades of denial and deep male socialization to begin to accept that the profound emotional agony I was suffering from was a condition and it had a cause. I was suffering from gender dysphoria (GS) and it was caused by a conflict between the gender my brain was wired in utero and the physical sex organs I was born with. I was born transgender.

For 61 years I had no clue other than an increasing internal confusion that grew, over my lifetime, into a painful and inescapable mental anguish.

Since I was professionally diagnosed as suffering from gender dysphoria and being transgender, I have become acutely aware of the precarious position that I now occupy in a very binary gender world.

Who and what I am to myself as well as to family and friends is no longer simple and straightforward as it once was. After 64 years I am a gender outsider.

The vast majority of the world is cisgender, people whose gender identity matches their physical sex. Most have no clue that they even are cisgender. It is not part of their dictionary and outside their conceptual understanding.

Most people automatically assume that cisgender describes only heterosexuals but, in fact, technically, gays and lesbians are also cisgender. Their gender and sex are in alignment. They are different from heterosexual cisgenders because they are only sexually attracted to the same sex.

That may explain why so many gays and lesbians attack people who are transgender. Instead of being allies, some refuse to accept our gender/assigned sex misalignment as if it is a direct assault on their own identity.

How can anyone see my internal gender when it doesn’t match the outside wrapper? How can anyone accept that my gender is not my genitalia? The physical world combined with a binary world is a tough combination to fight. The odds are not in my favor.

Yet I have no choice but to enter the arena in a David and Goliath fight for my life, to have any chance at peace and happiness in my lifetime.

I have had a very tough time reconciling my male up bringing with my suppressed female gender. My sex was clearly evident to myself and to those around me. Testosterone and heavy male socialization completed the picture. I have subjected myself to vicious, self-criticism and constant attacks against my sense of self-worth. I need to transition to just stop hating myself.

In this brutal process of self-examination, I have made a wonderful discovery, my male and my female parts actually get along just fine, that the person that I am is made from the strengths of both experiences. I like who I am.

Who I am is not what is between my legs. It is my heart and it is my soul and they belong together with my reflection in the mirror. How I show them to the world is who I feel I need to be.

It is my expression of my inside, out…finally.

Emma Holiday

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I have tied all of my stories to the above thread.

Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.

My writing has three specific goals:

1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.

2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.

3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.