Venus Boyz: Living In A Body That Is Not Concurrent With Who You Are

No one has ever asked me why I chose to be a woman; if they did, I would give a disapproving look and probably disregard the question. I have lived my life in a body that I can accept and as a gender that I can accept. I never have had to take a stand and prove my gender or prove to people why I was living in society as part of the female gender. I am a woman. I can take multiple paths in my life to find acceptance, and I do not have to choose my peers based on their ability to accept the gender that I have chosen. The "Venus boyz" are strong, much stronger than I am, but they still hold onto vulnerabilities bestowed upon by society. People are curious: they are ignorant, they want to ask questions and they should, but only with the intent of wanting understand rather than judge and disapprove. A person who doesn’t identify with the two most common genders is a victim of assumptions. However, having to prove why you have chosen a nontraditional gender, or have chosen to be genderless, causes questioning. No one should have to explain why they are the gender that they are and why they chose that gender. Regardless of the confidence one  holds as a member of the transgender community, one is  put down for the questions one cannot answer and should not have to answer. Choosing who you are is not actually a “choice;” instead,  it’s a feeling from within that is too hard to ignore. You can choose to try and ignore the person that you identify with inside, and live unhappily yet safe from our judgemental society, or be your “authentic” self inside and out. However, it is this close-minded society of which we live in that is making it impossible for anyone who identifies with a gender other than male or female to feel any comfort in being who they are. For example, a man who undergoes a sex change and becomes a woman does not choose to be a woman. Instead, she has chosen to listen to her inner feelings, which tell her that she is a woman and to have the sex change that allows her anatomy to coincide with the person that she is within.

I have chosen to identify as a woman because of who i feel like within. Fortunately, my identifying gender matches my anatomy, and therefore i am accepted as my gender by society. However, if something were to change within me, suddenly making me feel like i was no longer a woman, there would be a disconnect between “me” and the anatomy  of my body. It is hard to imagine whether i would choose to live in a body that doesn't fit who i am because of the rejection and ridicule i would receive from the conventional, outdated world that we live in, or accept the painful intolerance from the majority society based on the idea that i could feel at peace with myself, my identity.

I want to be clear that although i clearly have issues with the amount of discrimination that goes on in the world towards the transgender community. There are so many people, especially young who have liberating minds. They are the ones who have taught be the most; they show me that this world is a possible candidate for change through their ability to be open and accepting of all people.