" I am different " Seems like like a perfectly reasonable statement. Caitlyn Jenner said as much last night accepting an award for courage. We all are different and you don't need a PHD to justify that.
But his sticks me as one of those little lies we tell ourselves. I watched a Frontline show on PBS last week called ' growing up Trans'. It featured several teen and preteen transgender kids and their parents. The focus was how society's attitude toward transgender children had changed.
The focus of this documenary was how these children expressed that they were not the gender they felt, and how they were on the path to correct that issue. But overwelling they expressed how much they just wanted to fit in, to be 'normal'. Even after transitioning. One 13 year old Trans girl with a group of new friends, expressed discomfort when her friends, all early teen CIS girls, spoke of having children. This made her uncomfortable because she knew she would never give birth.
Later, a transitioned man of college age opines that 'How could I feel like a man at 10, when I just now know how a man feels?'
All the Trans people spotlighted expressed, at some point how they wanted to just fit in, to feel 'normal' like everyone else.
What we really want is not to be different. We want to be just like everyone else, everyone we relate to.
T he subject of this documentary, and it's producers need to understand that trying to feel 'normal' is never going to work.
I am different
We are different
These words mean way more than we think.
i am not a CIS man, nor am I a CIS woman. I am Trans, and that is different.
I will never be a CIS woman, and can only pretend to be a CIS man.
So I have to embrace who, and what I am,..
and I do.
I am different.