Hard To Explain

The hardest thing for a transwoman to explain to anyone who isn't transgender, especially cisgender women, is why you want sex affirmation surgery, or commonly called sex reassignment surgery and in some countries gender reassignment surgery.

Surprisingly, it's even hard to explain to some post-transition women who have had the surgery, especially if they had it years if not decades ago. But not because they don't understand the thoughts and feelings, but because they often don't believe you.

These are two different responses. Cisgender women, and I borrow this term from the transcommunity and the feminist community because it's used to distinguish females by birth according to their genes. This definition, however, excludes intersexed and mixed gene women, something almost always overlooked by those two communities.

But that's another issue. The issue here is explaining why you want "the surgery", because they always ask and never understand. They usually just feign some feeling with kind remarks or express some judgement about courage, but it's really just verbal candy.

The hardest thing explaining why you want the surgery is because our bodies, especially our sex organs are innate in our being. We can't think different that what we instinctively know which is our sex and gender.

So someone who says their body doesn't match their mind seems odd to others. While people simplify it to being their sex (male, female or intersex by birth or genes) doesn't match their gender (man, woman), that's really inadequate and defies the whole person.

The truth is our sex and gender encompass both our body and mind, both inextricably intertwined in our brain and throughout our body. We are both sex and gender from the top of our head to our toes and everything in between and inside.

We are, as they say, but we also know that the vast majority of people never feel any different from what our society has decided is normal for a boy/man or girl/woman, where it's physical, mental and emotional.

But that doesn't include, or more often forgotten, is gender indentity. It gets lost in the words because people can't explain it except to say they know who they are, and why they never will understand when people don't have that same feeling but one where there is a conflict.

And try as you can to explain the biology of it, that's it's not completely genetic, but it's more in the development of the fetus in the period between the time the body is sexed as male or female and the brain is gendered as boy or girl.

This occurs in the 3-6 month period where the whole array of genes, hormones, chemicals, enviroment, ad infinitum mix to develop the fetus, and where the sex and gender develop changes direction from what we might expect.

And from birth to childhood, the child doesn't see what others sees about themselves, but sees confusion within themselves, in their families, among their firends and in the world. All they know is that something feels wrong.

It's later in life, often in their older childhood, they realize the "wrong" isnt' themselves, their identity, but their body. They know who they are, and they know their body is wrong and what's between their legs is wrong.

And that's what can't be explained by the person or understood by others asking the questions about or wanting to know why they want the surgery. Sometimes the best you can do is ask them, "If you woke up tomorrow in the body of the other sex, with those sex organs, how would you feel and what would you do?"

But it really doesn't get them to understand even when they just say, "I'd get surgery to change it.", because they still don't know the feeling from birth to the day of your surgery and the life you have afterward.

It's also because they don't understand it's not just about the physicality of the sex organs. It's about everything associated with them, from what's expected of you as defined by your sex and not your gender, to how you're expected with others.

They don't know how innate it has been to feel wrong and to want to change it and all of that. They only know what they innately feel about themselves and know the what would be wrong in thought, but never in their mind, their heart and their soul.

They know themselves to be women because of their body and mind hasn't known anything else, as transwomen has known all their lives and simply want to feel whole as any woman innately knows. And why, despite all the talk about transitions, it always really is about the surgery.

And that's the hardest thing to explain, wanting to be whole. It's about the freedom to express your wholeness without having and fearing something to hide. You are as any woman has known since birth. And maybe that's the only thing other women understand.