Depraved? Deprived?

We are misunderstood

Deep down inside us there is good

West Side Story....  Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

It has been almost a year.  Lots of things have changed, including my hair color.  I just returned from a transgender conference,  the Keystone Conference, in Harrisburg Pa.  It was my first, which I went to on the advice of my hairdresser.   But it really got me to thinking dark and dangerous thoughts, the enemy of complacency.

When I look in the mirror I see what you see.  Most of my life that was a man, but I am not a man and therein lies a dilemma.  You saw a boy then a man, so you treated me like a boy , then a man.  And therein lies confusion,  gender confusion. 

Now these days,  I look like something else.  I don't think there is an accepted name for it or at least a polite one.  I have small but pronounced tits on my slender frame and I have a penis surrounded by grey hair, though my hair on top of my head is long and brunette.

Now I know having just attended a transgender conference which is how to get the best information about feminization of the body,  that if I had a great deal of money,  I could look in the mirror and see a woman. But i am not a woman despite feminizing myself.  So therein lies the dilemma.   At least in a world that says
"There are men and there are women, and that is not a choice anyway.  We already chose for you,  How?  Look in the mirror."  I say I am not a man and I am not a woman.

And of course, there are people quite a bit like me who say, we have been mis-identified.  a woman living inside a shell of a man, or a man living inside the shell of a woman.  And I do not wish to contradict them.  Finally for the first time in human history you can choose ( if you have the cash), and if you are willing to in some sense obliterate your past. 

I know in my estrogen soaked heart why so many have accepted these conditions. And I know in my estrogen soaked brain,  that in revolutionary times when conditions are overthrown there is unavoidable pain and anger.   

And so I  say ... fie upon it,  the boxes to check,  the bathrooms to choose,   I am not in the wrong bathroom, or the wrong body.   I am in thrall to bad ideas which I acquired from you,  you cis-gendered privileged smug strawman.   I am depraved as you have amply pointed out in a thousand subtle ways, but now I understand.
I understand because heard the voices of young transmen, young transmen who have little money hence little representation in the vendor areas in Harrisburg.    I am depraved because I am deprived.  It is only a question of saying what exactly I am deprived of.  I can label it.  Gender Identity.  But what the hell is that?  (to be continued results of the survey I gave in June)