The Perfect Gender Transition

I woke up this morning needing a good cry. I let it happen, because I’m glad of being able to feel emotions after a life of numbness. That said, this article is likely to be a bit raw. Forgive me.

I cried this morning because I’m transgender. I was born genetically male, but inside, I know I am a woman. I’m slightly more than four months into transition, and I hurt. On this fifth day of Transgender Awareness Week, I am very aware of my transgender experience. Great Goddess, am I ever keenly aware of being transgender!

Can you show me where it hurts?

I am a freak. I am a monster. I am half-out of my sex and half-into my gender. I am fat. I am ugly. I am hairy. I need a shave — on more than my face. I am a disjointed grab-bag of body parts, with newly developing breasts and a congenital penile birth defect between my legs. I disgust myself for being less than I want to be, but too cowardly to become who I am. There’s so much to do, and I do not believe I am woman enough to do it.

I know at least one person further along in transition will comment “Don’t worry, Amethysta! It gets better.” Sure, it gets better. I know women and men who have transitioned successfully. I envision someday — in the not-too-distant future — I will join their ranks.

I’m one of the lucky ones. Yes, despite the insults I pile upon myself viciously and cruelly, the reality of my situation is crystal clear in my mind.

I am one of the lucky ones.

My wife did not leave me when I began to transition. She held me this morning as I cried. My son continues to love me. He has brainstormed new names to use as “Dad” becomes less applicable.

My hairline is not receding. My jaw is not square. My eyebrows are not bushy. My lips are still plump at my age. Unlike my face, neither my orbital ridge nor my trachea requires a shave. Perhaps most important in Western society, I possess the financial resources to change what I feel I need to change.

What isn’t a woman?

None of what I described above will make me a woman. Not my hairline, not my newly developing breasts, not my lips. I wrote elsewhere about watching young transgender women tear themselves apart as they trade gender dysphoria for numerical dysphoria, bemoaning hormone blood concentration levels or a lip that appears millimeters too thin. I have watched older transgender women strut with pride over a vaginoplasty that “looks, smells, and tastes” authentic.

None of this makes a woman. No surgery, no makeup, no voice training — nothing — will make any one of us “become” a woman.

At some point, the magic of plastic surgery will fail, the wonder of hormone therapy will wane. We will reach a limit. Whether the limit is financial or — in Michael Jackson’s case — biological, there is a hard stop to how much modern medicine can do. At some point, reality will force us to accept that what we’ve got is as good as it’s going to get.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we put ourselves through the pain of surgery, the dysphoria of judging ourselves and finding ourselves lacking? Because gender is a social construct, and in order to feel like the men and women we are, we bow to society’s view of our gender.

We endure society’s snickers behind our back, the look of horror in society’s eyes, because we need you. Despite the violence and hatred we face as transgender men and women, we crave your approval, we grovel at your feet in hopes that we “pass” and, in return, receive slightly fewer snickers behind our backs.

That is why I cried this morning. I wept for myself, for my transgender brothers and sisters, who know ourselves when nobody else in the world does.

One week of awareness, brothers and sisters? One week of self-righteous corporate publicity lies of support? One week of cutesy Twitter posts from celebrities who jest at scars that never felt a wound? One week of mealy-mouthed platitudes in exchange for a lifetime of fear, guilt, and pain? Fuck them all.

Beginning to Heal

I have not known the value of a good cry for most of my life. It has become more obvious the past few months. When I finished crying, I took a hot bath with Epsom salts and lavender oil. I found a bit of clarity in my thought and remembered an entry I wrote in my journal within days of applying my first estrogen patch.

At the end of 2021, I had a severe mental breakdown. It took more than a week for me to speak clearly and articulately again, to walk downstairs without clutching the banister. Because of this experience, I began to explore my gender identity again. This time was for real, to determine if the woman I forced down for so long was the cause of my mental health issues. I wrote in my journal about who I believed I was, who I wished I could be. With my wife’s support, I realized that I could not suppress the woman, that I must transition or lose myself entirely.

My early days of transition were tumultuous. Given my comments above, I suppose I should acknowledge that these days are tumultuous as well, but looking back, I see amazing progress has been made. In those early days, I gave myself a piece of wisdom to which I have returned every time I stumble.

I told myself that nothing can make me “become” a woman. I am already a woman. I may not look like society’s view of a woman. I know I will never look like Marilyn Monroe, no matter how much I wish I could. As I result, I must dig my femininity out of myself.

The perfect gender transition

As I have changed in the last four months, I feel emotions and pain that I could not feel before. I wear nail polish on my fingers and toes and feel pretty. My hair is growing out, and I wear clothes that make me feel more feminine. Estrogen therapy has helped fill out my face and my body. Tonight, I will have my first makeup lesson. Even now, just a little, I am able to reach my hand to The Reflection in the mirror and touch my Self (and not just in a Divinyls kind of way, although that changed as well).

The wisdom I gave myself four months ago was that I will be content when I look in the mirror and see enough of myself to accept the rest of myself. After years of seeing a stranger in the mirror, when I see enough Amethysta to let go of the snickers, the humiliation, the life of shame and guilt, I will have effected a successful transition.

I see enough of myself to accept the rest of myself.

I observe this credo in my brother Logan Silkwood finding masculinity in his makeup. I observe this credo in my sister Kitty Whitemore finding joy in the act of being alive on a golf course. Is there any greater gift we can give ourselves than to look honestly at ourselves, to throw away the chains of gender roles and expectations society hands us, and to accept that right here, right now, we are beautiful?

I have dried my tears. It is time to move forward.