2022-01-15 04:23:36 +00:00
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:PROPERTIES:
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:ID: 300b7d95-990c-4f61-99ca-42e6b7123c2c
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:END:
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#+title: Gender Performance
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Similar to many other trans women, I put on a strong performance as a man, or
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what I thought a man ought to be. Not so much by hypermasculinizing myself (I
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never felt particularly masculine in the first place, didn't see the point in
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trying to appear so, and didn't care enough to put in the huge effort needed to
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2022-01-16 05:04:52 +00:00
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try), but by trying to play the masculine role I thought I was [[id:9936dbb9-cc93-4b81-977c-97643c62d1f7][meant to fill]]. As
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2022-01-15 04:23:36 +00:00
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a boyfriend, as a husband, as a [[id:69e5f8cb-0e60-451c-8906-1749b6fd6c7a][breadwinner]], and as a bit of a prick. Maybe
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that's part of why it was so crushing when I lost my job in 2009. I felt
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useless, emasculated, unwanted, and broken. It was in that low period of my
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life, while I was stuck in my apartment alone while Jen (just my girlfriend at
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the time) worked to pay our bills, that I really started exploring and finding
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2022-01-16 05:04:52 +00:00
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comfort in [[id:3c4bf0f6-46c3-4c8b-8f16-98795488f815][Closeted Cross-Dressing]].
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2022-01-15 06:09:31 +00:00
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Jen would say I acted like a whole different person when I was presenting as a
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woman back then. That never sat right with me, I felt more like myself if
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anything. Perhaps that was coming from her having only ever known me as the man
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I was trying to be, the performance. How could she know the real person
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underneath, even if it was still just me, when I'd only just started to shed the
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costume?
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