Old news by now, I have always felt different, me and (at latest estimate) 1.35 million others in the United States alone. knowing why I felt different was scary, but not life shattering. What bothered me the most was not my wanting to be female. It was not wanting to only be female.
Everything I read kept telling me that people like me were 'women trapped in a mans body' or the reverse if born with female genitals. The stories told of others, dying to become the opposite gender. They could barley stand to remain in the gender they were in.
This actually made me feel more inadequate than feeling transgender. I could not even get a mental disorder right. I wanted the female gender, but I could not convince myself that I wanted to give up the male. I felt isolated, not really living in the non-trans world, not not really good enough for the trans world.
Now that transgender has sprung into the limelight, there are a few new voices in the noise. Voices that I recconigse, voices that sound like mine. Trans people, not happy with the binary definitions of the majority (the trans majority,the majority of a minority!)
We may be few, or many, but we are starting to be heard. We were never upset that we were not the opposite gender, we were upset because we had to be any single gender all the time.
There is a time to wear fishing waders and a time for dress shoes, for me there is a time to be male and a time to be female. And I'm so glad to know that I'm not alone.