What is a transsexual woman?

To me, a transgendered woman is someone who feels that she is fundamentally female (gendered), despite having been labeled as male since birth and raised as such by her parents. A transsexual woman is a transgendered woman who takes every step possible to align her physical form (her physical sex) with her soul, which includes medical, social and legal actions in most cases. Why do some people feel this way? I don't know. There are studies going on right now that suggest certain brain structures may be congenitally "female" in a transsexual woman's brain, or that a transsexual woman's brain may become feminized by certain hormonal conditions in the womb. These explanations seem likely to me, and seem to fit with my own lifelong natural tendency toward and identification with female identity. Some have asked, "How do you know what it is to be a woman?" and I can only reply with the question, "How does any woman know what it is to be a woman for anyone but herself?" We can never enter the mind, soul or body of another person and know the world from inside their experience of life. In the most factual sense, even the closest twin sisters in the world can only guess from what they see and communicate to each other, and from what the world communicates to them through speech and action, that their emotional, mental, physical experience of being a woman is the same for both sisters. In that same way, deducing from what I've seen in the past and what I see now of other women and they way they move through the world, and by comparing the feelings I've heard women express to my own feelings, I have confidence that I am a woman.

Though some were better at suppressing its expression than others in early life, with most transsexual women I have known, their gender was always a part of their soul and other people recognized it. And once they decided to transition socially, medically and legally, people recognized their womanhood on an instinctual level. Whether they were a plain, frumpy old lady with white hair, extra weight and no fashion sense or a hot, sexy young club chick. Whether people could tell immediately that their body had spent a long time under the influence of male hormones, or they were the softest, most delicate gazelle of a girl. They were obviously giving 110% in an effort to join the community of women, and people who met them for the first time knew at a gut level that they should be addressed as "Ma'am", "Miss", "she" and "her".

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What most non-TS people think about transsexuals

To put it simply, the average person in America falls into one of two categories:

Gross! I think transsexuals are:	"I'm really cool" and I think transsexuals are:
sick mentally ill perverted sexual deviants prostitutes gay	Funny Clowns Good at doing my hair, nails and makeup Outrageous!!! OMG LOL! Hot enough to sleep with as long as no one knows gay

A small percentage think we're cool club friends, but they wouldn't really introduce us to their jerk conservative brother or pals at the office. There's no way they'd set up one of their friends with us, unless he was a perv or... OMG that would be the ultimate prank! LOL! Wait till I tell him his date's actually a man... No, wait, that's not cool...

An even smaller percentage think of us as women, although if pressed they will say that we came to it differently than most women. This seems about right to me. I'm not eager to adopt the sometimes-mentioned "asterisk" next to my womanhood (She's a woman* * transsexual), and prefer it to be a piece of my history that is not favored above more relevant and current achievements. What if women who could no longer reproduce were asterisked, and referred to as nonsexuals? It would technically be accurate in some ways, and would apply to tons of post-menopausal women, or those who suffered from various illnesses or congentical conditions. But it's just not done, because it would be rude and cruel, and I'd like the same consideration. I'll never deny that I took the long way around to womanhood, but it's obvious to me that I am undeniably here now. And I'd rather not chat about that long trip when there are so many cool things going on now to talk about.

Many people attempt to dismantle or invalidate our identities with medical or history based attacks like these:

• Your DNA is male, so you are male - This always makes me laugh, because the majority of people who say it would do well to even tell me what the letters DNA stand for. Fewer still could name the parts of a DNA molecule, or what they theoretically do. Science is only now beginning to map the human genome, and we are ages away from understanding the complexities of what each little pair of GAT and C mean for the human that is made from this blueprint. And in any case, these people have assuredly not had a DNA test done on my DNA, so they really have no idea what my DNA says, even if they knew how to understand that information. I don't even know... I've never had an analysis done. There are several diagnosable genetic circumstances which can cause sex variations, and probably many others that we simply do not know how to diagnose yet.
• You were born a man, so you will always be a man - No one is born a "man" or a "woman". They are examined and assigned a gender based on visible external characteristics. The people who say this were assuredly not present at my birth, and I often wonder about the sophistication of OB/GYNs working in Nashville, TN in the 1970's anyway. Who knows what may have happened to me in the womb, what may have been diagnosable at birth, what things these doctors may have missed. Certainly the person attacking my identity does not know the answer to those questions.

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