Your Unifier Allies

Though I was born into a girl’s body, I always felt like a boy deep down. My family was conventional. My father worked; my mother took care of the children and was completely dependent on him financially. He often treated her disrespectfully and with cruelty, as if she were weak, overly sentimental and only nice to look at.

As I got older, I saw men like him ruling the world. So I rejected my father, the patriarchy, as well as the boy in me. In absolute solidarity with my mother, I would be a girl, no matter how painful or wrong it felt within. Without realizing it, I spent the following years using every ‘masculine’ muscle I had to idealize and fight for all things ‘feminine.’ I envisioned and worked for a world where women were the leaders. I became an activist and speaker, empowering women world-wide with my ideals. I also became financially independent and bartered with ‘the big boys’ for rights and privileges, on behalf of women everywhere.

Privately, though, I was an emotional wreck. I alienated my romantic partners constantly with unfair and cruel accusations and an insatiable need for emotional processing. The truth was that deep down I was fighting for one thing: acceptance. But I couldn’t even give that to myself. I was too weak to share, much less own, how I felt inside, or how I wanted to live my life. I had zero trust that my romantic partners would still love me as a man. No trust that the world would ever accept a freak like me. I was convinced that if my feminist community discovered how I really felt inside, they’d no longer see me as a leader, but as an outsider, maybe even an enemy.

When the pain of hiding from myself was too great, I decided to drive to a transgender support group, in a town where I’d never be recognized. I sat in the back of the room, and just listened. My own story was told, over and over again, by different people. Because of their courage, I found myself: my pain, longing, loneliness… and overwhelming fear. At the end of the meeting, someone came up to me. To my shock, it was someone I knew. I expected an attack, but instead, I was given the most tender embrace. In that moment, I knew I’d find my way back to me, and that I wouldn’t have to do it alone.