Gender Identity: Perspective of a transwoman

By Kana

This is written from the perspective of someone who is a transwoman. The people mentioned are all fictional but it is based on facts on the following articles.

  Karunakaran, K., Subbiah, M., Palanisamy, S., & Padmanaban, V. (2016). Comparative Evaluation of Sorption, Desorption, and Degradation of Quinalphos and Carbofuran in Two Soils of Southern India. Journal of Health & Pollution, 6(11), 24-32. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025345

  Jankowski, M., Trivedi, D., Bradburne, C., Houde, M., & Lydy, M. J. (2021). Influence of sediment particle size on the bioavailability and toxicity of chlorpyrifos to Chironomus dilutus. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, 214, 112099. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2021.112099

My name is Christina Anderson and I am a transwoman. When I was born, I was assigned the sex “male” and was born with a male anatomy. When I was around seven, I started feeling a little strange and uncomfortable being addressed as a “boy” because even though I looked like one and was in a male body, it didn’t feel quite right to me. Ever since I was little, I’ve always liked pink and girlie stuff and doing the girl things but I always tried to hide it because I didn’t want everyone to think that I was weird and different from anyone else.

When I hit puberty, my body became more and more masculine, which made me even more uncomfortable with myself. And the more I tried to hide my true identity, the more I became introverted and guarded.

When I was 15, I decided to tell my parents about how I felt. It took me a really long time to come out to my parents because I didn’t know how they were going to react and I was afraid they wouldn’t accept and love me this way. Fortunately, my mother was very encouraging and supportive of me and my choice, however, my father was not very pleased when I told him that I wanted to live as a woman. He is a very conservative person and an extremely religious Catholic who believes that you have to live with the body that God has given you and be proud of it. He couldn’t understand how I felt and didn’t want to believe that his son was not “normal”. I was so devastated when he said I was no longer his son and gradually stopped talking to me. He even said I was a disappointment. That’s when I realized that people would look at me and treat me differently just because of my unique gender identity and, being a transgender in this world, I knew that my life wouldn’t be easy and I was going to be judged for the way I identified myself.

Now I’m in my twenties and my friends are so understanding and I feel lucky enough to be surrounded by people who accept me and acknowledge me for the way I am. And I changed my name to Christina from Chris.

But I still get stared at a lot for my appearance because I haven’t had a gender-affirming surgery, so I look and sound like a man but am dressed in a female way, so I attract a lot of attention when I go out. The reason why I haven’t gotten the surgery is because I don’t believe that someone’s gender should be indicated by their looks, anatomy, or hormones but it is about how you feel and that is the most important thing that matters. Also, it costs a lot of money and I cannot afford it. And I’ve always questioned this idea that you’re not really either a man or a woman if you don’t have the anatomy that indicates you are either a male or a female.

And because of the way I express myself, sometimes I feel discriminated against. For example, I didn’t get a job interview because they didn’t like that I was dressed as a woman and that I was a transgender. They didn’t tell me that was the reason for not hiring me but I assumed that was it based on the look they gave me when I told them about my gender identity.

Also, another thing that is troubling to me about being a transgender is when I use public restrooms, I don’t know which one to use but currently, I use the ladies’ room because that is how I identify myself. Sometimes there are all-gender restrooms, which make it so much easier for me and I wish there would be more of those for people like me.

Even though more and more people have become open-minded and accepting of those whose gender identities differ from their biological genders compared to 10 years ago, which is when I came out to my family, still non-cisgender people like me are facing many problems and go through a lot, because a certain amount of people are opposed to non-cisgender people, showing hatred towards us.

Because I spent so many years struggling to find my true self and be honest with myself, being rejected by my own father, now I am fully aware of the importance of being respectful and appreciative of each person and their opinions and ideas and acknowledging them for who they really are, despite their race, nationality, sexuality or anything. It is important to try to get to know someone as one individual and understand that everyone is unique and beautiful in their own way. And I really wish everyone could see that.