One thought I had while reading this was about the evolution of my own relationship to my femme identity as I went through transition, and during the year or so immediately afterwards. I remember when I first started transition (before hormones even) I had imagined myself as the kind of high femme woman who mostly wore skirts and wouldn’t go out for groceries without at least lipstick and eyeliner. It’s funny because in the long run I realized, yeah, I am femme… but not like that. Femme to me is first of all more about how I carry myself… and I can do that perfectly well in a tank top and jeans. And looking back on it, I think I just thought that because on some level I thought that’s what society would expect of me… or at least, I thought that’s what the part of society that was most likely to accept me would expect of me.

But in the end, ‘low femme’ will do just fine for me ;)

The funny thing is, I was really lucky: I mostly avoided all the shitty gatekeeper stuff… and somehow I still told myself the above, at first. Looking back on it, I don’t completely understand why that was.

And in a way, that touches on another point, which is the question of privilege amongst us trans women in relation to transition. There are a lot of times when we debate these things amongst ourselves, and there will be those who are late-transitioners who will point to early-transitioners as being very privileged. Well, there’s some truth in that, but it’s not that simple. In my case, I will acknowledge I waited until during my later graduate years to transition, because I was terrified it would end my path forward in science (in hindsight, these fears were exaggerated, but not wholly unfounded either). But in any case, by the time I started transition, I practically had my PhD in hand… there has to be some kind of privilege in that, doesn’t there?

Of course I realize that if I had transitioned much, much earlier, I could have actually had at least a late teenage girlhood… but then I probably would have lost my family, and I don’t know if I could have survived that.

And anyways, when I went to the library and searched for books back in my teenage years… I didn’t find anything, not even awful gatekeeper books lol. In fact, I wasn’t really cognizant of the fact that meaningful transition was even possible until probably late college years.

In any case, this low-femme, early third-corridor transitioner will look forward to your next piece :)