Understanding My Trans Journey

I’ve signed off many posts on my blog with the sentence “The journey continues.” It’s time I expounded a bit on the meaning behind that.

Recently, I was reading over some old journal entries on my blog, and found my “egg crack” moment announcement. It’s dated 13-Mar-2009. 15+ years ago I acknowledged to myself that I was transgender. Before that I spent a couple of years calling myself two-spirit, in honor of my now late wife’s Cherokee heritage. During that time, I named Janet on 20-Aug-2008.

It’s common for gender non-conforming people to go through a period of deep self-examination. During that time, they may try on various identities to see which one fits best. When that identity truly fits, we settle on what we will call ourselves. I am a transgender woman. There are many other labels / identities available to us now. Most are considered to be under the transgender umbrella.

So maybe you are wondering why we choose to label ourselves at all. By doing so, we can find and join a community, which is vitally important to a newly out person. It helps us to understand that how we feel is not unique to us, or “sinful” or “sick”, as so many would have us believe. We benefit from community support and knowledge. So yes, assigning a label has value.

It’s been quite a journey. Yes, I suppose that all makes me an “elder.” I’m 66 now. It’s unusual to find many trans people of such an age. This is largely because being trans in the past was a lot like being left-handed in the Middle Ages.

Gender non-confirming people, like we southpaws, have always existed. They can be found throughout history, in every culture. No, the terms we use now didn’t exist.

At various points in history, what was known about us was obliterated by hateful bigots. Yes, Nazis, But also European colonizers who forced indigenous people into their narrow understanding of gender and sexuality. As I noted above, indigenous people of North America have long accepted gender non-conformity. That was largely forced underground by Europeans.

This is but a short overview of the history of my journey, and of my community. I hope you find something of value in my writings. Regardless, the journey continues.

Tags: trans, Trans Elders, Trans experience, Transgender