The other night I was in an argument with my wife about a miss between us during a shopping trip. Without going into details, I responded harshly to something she did and it hurt her feelings. As we drove home, she told me that it hurt her because I usually choose to be harsh to get her to comply, rather than guiding her with softness. She was right. To me, the ability to gently direct through softness is a hallmark of femininity, and as a transgender woman early in her transition there is nothing that I would like more than to find and express my femininity naturally. Her remark was an arrow to the bullseye, and I spent most of the night crying after that.
My buildup to transition occurred on a number of fronts, but one important to this discussion was my role as a manager at a small startup. I was responsible for the workload of ten people, assigning tasks, doing daily and weekly checkins, and informing my supervisors of progress on our work. I found myself growing more severe as pressure from my supervisors increased on me and my team. The month I started questioning my gender, I had pushed the team through three weekends of work to deliver a functional MVP for a trade show. I was stern, cold, and relentless. And it worked, I got results - at the expense of my own self-worth and the confidence of my team. At the same time I was beginning to hate seeing my frown in the mirror and hearing my deep voice on calls.
This is cliche, but I started playing Animal Crossing in my off hours that winter to blow off steam. It was relaxing, beautiful and low-effort. Most importantly, the game’s expectations of me in terms of social interactions were forgiving and based on reciprocity. While making friends with the villagers of my virtual island, I discovered my love for running around the island in dresses they gifted to me. With teal hair, funky sunglasses and a midi dress, I felt like I could take on anything. I got really into experimenting with feminine outfits and so of course I had to try on the real thing from there.
I could see the contrast between my video game island and how I treated my virtual neighbors there, and bringing down the hammer on my staff at work every day. I wanted out. I wanted softness, and I wanted to have it everywhere. I wanted to carry it within myself. I wanted femininity in behavior, in thought, and in form. After a few more months I quit my job to get my head straight, and began a phase of intense gender questioning through learning and experimentation.
Since I first recognized myself as trans, certain social groups and contexts have helped me find my softness in femininity, but I still have a long way to go. I’ve been an active participant in a local transfeminine support group for nearly five months now. At first I was scared of attending - I was worried that I was going to be seen as a fraud, and honestly I had some transphobic feelings of disgust around non-“passing” people that I hadn’t confronted. These feelings vanished the first time I sat in a circle with the other members of the group, and I felt a burden lifted from me. I could sense a palpable charge of femininity in the room, and it was kind and welcoming. It felt easier to be open with my feelings there, and people hugged each other as we concluded. Returning home after the next several meetings became bittersweet, because carrying that softness home and into my daily life has been hard for me to do on my own. I feel a sense of belonging and security when I’m with my support group, and it takes effort to sustain those feelings with confidence when I am without.
It’s been 10 months since I started gender questioning, and 6 months since I made the choice to start my transition. Although these timelines are extremely short, I find myself worrying every day about whether I will succeed in finding and expressing the femininity in myself as my primary way of being. I worry that I have damaged myself - or been coercively damaged - beyond recovery by the masculinity I tried to live for 33 years. But I know that to do the work and attempt that softness every chance I can get is how I’m going to make any progress at confronting that thought, so I’m trying.