What it means

A few months ago when I started coming out to friends and family as transgender I was asked "what does it mean to you to be a man?" I was dumbstruck because not only did I not have an answer, but I had honestly never considered the question before. The first answer that came to mind but I did not say was "It means I get to be myself." Certainly a question so big and broad deserves a bigger answer than that, so I just said I didn't know.

Very few days have passed that I haven't thought about that question and what the answer is to me. What does it mean to be a man? I imagine that most of you reading this have never thought about what it means to be one gender or the other. You were born a gender, it matched who you feel you are and you ran with it. You were treated as you felt you should be treated, the expectations of you matched the expectation of yourself. And most importantly, when you looked in the mirror you saw someone looking back at you who was familiar and matched the image of you that you have in your head. I was not so lucky.

Most people never think about the things that make sense to them. We just accept them and go on with life. We don't think about how our hand moves when we write, it just happens because that is what it is supposed to do. The hand was trained to do work that way without a lot of conscious effort. Acceptance of one's gender role in the world is much the same. If you are born female and have a female gender identity then you pretty much grow up thinking about girl things and it all just seems normal and natural. (yes, I know that is very sexist and stereotypical and wrong, but this is difficult stuff to explain). Can you describe what it means to you to be the gender you are WITHOUT listing things that you are able to do because you are that gender or rights that are afforded to you because you are that gender?

I have always felt that I was a boy pretending to be a girl for the sake of those around me. Things that I enjoyed doing and exploring were denied to me because they were not things for little girls to do. Now, yes, I lived a somewhat rigorously defined childhood where everything was separated into boys and girls and maybe that was part of the problem. But, I don't think so. When other 5 year old girls were asking for princess dresses and barbie dolls for their birthday, I asked for a football uniform and a football. My comforting thoughts before falling asleep at age 7 were not about unicorns and daisies, but about how I could have a penis so that I would be recognized as a boy.

For me, I have always been a man, but the world has never seen it. As I transition, I'm not becoming a man so that I can be one, I'm transitioning so that you, the world, will see the man that I have always been. I am becoming real and visible so that you see what I see when I look at myself. I have never been confused about my gender, I always knew, but I was told I was something else and I tried to be the something else. That was confusing! If I could stay the body I am, and use the name I was given and have strangers on the street see me for who I really am, I wouldn't need to transition. But, because even my own family can't see the real me, I have to transition. So, honestly, what does it mean to me to be a man? It really does mean the ability to be myself in front of everyone, to stop pretending to be a girl for the sake of others, to live my life with honesty and be treated appropriately for who I really am and not made to feel shame because I'm different.

I am becoming Aaron Christopher so that people will see me for who I am. Not because I care about a name, a marker on my driver's license, the clothes that I can wear to my brother's future wedding, or anything else that I can do without making a change. But, I've found that even when I wear men's clothing, when you don't look at the marker on my driver's license, when you don't ask my name, you still assume that I am female, and I'm not. I never have been. So, to become male means that you will see me for who I am and will more appropriately expect the person you will be meeting.

Your challenge: In the comments below write what it means to you to be the gender you were born to be.