
Like many trans women, I’ve worked for years to be taken seriously as a woman. But there’s a challenge: unlike many trans women, my gender expression is fluid, so I’ve chosen to live in the world as both genders. That means I also sometimes have to speak with authority as a man. Can I do both?
There’s an expectation in our society that people who belong to a particular category can speak from experience about what it’s like to belong to that category. This is true up to a point: lived experience is important, and some people can describe situations that are common and bring attention to them. But there are limitations as well: everyone’s experiences are different, and someone who can speak about some common experiences in their category have no authority to speak about others. One of the biggest challenges is that we may not even be aware of the limitations of our own experience, let alone those of other people.
Trans women are women, and have many critical experiences that are shared with women who aren’t trans. I’ve been patronized, catcalled, groped on the dance floor and sexually harassed on the street. I wear clothes, makeup and accessories that are marketed to women, and I’ve been to stores full of cute clothes and haven’t found anything that fits my body. I’ve also found solidarity and support with other women.
Other trans women share even more experiences: they may have similar levels of estrogen in their bodies, they may have bodies that resemble typical women’s bodies in other ways. They may be romantically and sexually attracted to men. But they don’t share some experiences that are typical of women, like menstruating and being potentially or actually pregnant. Of course, even some non-trans women don’t share those experiences.
This means that, generally speaking, trans women aren’t in a good place to talk about what it feels like to have a uterus, or to be in elementary school as a girl. Trans women who don’t take estrogens can’t really speak with authority about what it’s like to have the kind of breasts that grow with estrogens. We can be the messengers for others, but we can’t speak from our own experience.
When I decided not to transition to living full time as a woman, and not to take hormones or have surgery, I relinquished any right to speak about those experiences. At the same time I chose to continue living as a man for most of the time, to keep living with testosterone and the way it shapes my body, and to have experiences that are common for men. 29 year later I’m still satisfied with those choices.
I now have decades of experience living as a man, and I have things to share about those experiences. I have a lot more experiences as a man than as a woman, just because I’ve spent a lot more time as a man. I’m worried that talking about my experiences as a man will invalidate my experiences as a woman in some people’s eyes.
And yet I still have those experiences of life as a woman, old experiences in my memory and new experiences that I have on an ongoing basis. They don’t disappear, or stop happening, just because I’ve also have experiences of life as a man. And they don’t get invalidated just because I talk about my experiences as a man.