I Feel for All My Sisters — Those Who Embrace AFAB and Transgender Ones

When my first husband and I applied to finance our first car, we were denied. He was in graduate school, working part-time, and I was working as a Special Education teacher. When the banker called to tell us we were denied, I said,

The Equal Rights Amendment had recently been ratified in Texas, where we lived.

The banker told me he would check and call me back.

He called back within a few minutes and approved the loan. They obviously hadn’t taken my income into account until I reminded them they were legally required to do so.

Ironically, Texas, where I was born, was one of the first states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and enact laws giving women full equal rights. Prior to the ERA, women couldn’t open bank accounts or buy houses or cars without a male partner or parent co-signing.

Fifty years since it was introduced, the ERA still has not been fully ratified by a majority of the states in order to become a Constitutional amendment.

My experience buying a car as a young woman in the U.S. is just one story. It has never been easy to be female in this or any society.

So it is tragic and fascinating that men and certain women denigrate the choice of transgender women. As if any male would lightly choose to swap that life for one of any female.

Where is the benefit?

Please understand, I love being female. There are things about being my gender that I enjoy. Compassion and the ability to relate to others, for example.

I like the shape and feel of my body, and understand why hetero men and gay and bisexual women are attracted to feminine curves and soft skin.

Even as I age, those attributes are enjoyable to me. Do I wish I had the completely smooth skin of my youth? Yes.

Do I still love my shape and body? Also yes. Even as I face a DCIS breast cancer diagnosis, I am grateful for my breasts that fed and nurtured my son.

Still, I have fought every year and decade of my life to be respected as a woman. In business, in education, in social settings, in political discussions.

Besides being disrespected and condescended to, most of us women have been sexually objectified much of our lives. There are times, I’ll admit, I’ve enjoyed being a recipient of the male gaze. Many times.

However, I was first objectified sexually when I was still a child of twelve. A lot of us were. Being sexually objectified as a young girl is confusing and upsetting.

Children assigned male at birth, who feel they are female, will likely experience the same sexual attention when male puberty is paused, and especially after female hormones are given. Female hormones cause secondary sex characteristics, such as the development of breasts, and softening of the skin.

Would any pre-teen or teenager willingly choose to be objectified sexually as female, unless truly knowing they are, in fact, female in the wrong body?

Would any older person, assigned male at birth, willingly choose to be objectified, discriminated against, and disregarded intellectually and in society unless they felt in their bodies and souls that they are female, not male?

They wouldn’t.

Why would they?

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This post was previously published on New Choices.

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