I'm just going to take it a day at a time and see where life takes me. When I was younger, I jumped into it and try to force everyone (read: my father) to accept it, which was dumb.
I’ve dealt with this issue all my life, and still have no real way of judging what works best. Yes, we need to be true to ourselves. Yes, we need to respect other’s boundaries. The two needs conflict, and there has to be balance if it’s going to work at all.
As a musician, I read about Bob Dylan. Dylan would bring his guitar to a party, set up in one corner, and dominate the room with his act, whether anyone was interested or not.
I never wanted to do that. I found that forcing my music on people never seemed to bring any rewards. However, many musicians owe part of their success to doing just that—getting in people’s faces, both visually and sound-wise. After awhile, people just give in—“Oh, that’s kind of catchy.” I myself have learned to like artists that someone else (a roommate, a step child) insisted on playing over and over.
I've paid a price for not wanting to force people to support me. This can easily be compared to wanting to present our femme sides. It might just be wanting to wear one item of clothing, or it might be the full presentation, with wigs, makeup, and forms. Whatever it is, there is always the conflict. You say, “I need to do this.” Dad/wife/child/boss says, “I can’t handle this.”
That’s the basic set-up. After that, there are all ranges of compromise, fighting, separating, or working together. But it can be tiresome to live this way, as many of us can testify.
I can see why it’s tempting for others to label trans feelings as a ‘choice’ that we make. If they do that, they have a stronger argument for why we shouldn’t do any presentation. We’re just being selfish—if we were respectful, we’d just ‘choose’ not to dress up.
Well, no, it’s not that simple. I see the anger in my girlfriend’s family. They believe it’s a choice, and so for her to continue to choose to be selfish is just beyond their understanding. She was never selfish before, so why is she insisting on this brand of it?
I can point out that she is very self-less in almost every other area of life, so maybe this is different from what they think it is. I have occasionally said that there’s confusion about what ‘choice’ means. We do have to choose whether we’re going to suppress the feeling that draws us to women's clothing—that much is choice. But we didn’t choose whether or not to
have the feelings.
