Author | Sarah Maywalt
Sarah Maywalt is a trans comedian living in New York City. She does a written version of her “Ask a Tranny” youtube series as a special gift to Posture. Feel free to ask her a question in the comments section below or via email at [email protected].
One of the most common questions I’m asked is: “Why would you want to be a woman?” Strangely, it’s most often asked by other women. That confuses me. I figure other women of all people would be qualified to come up with a decent reason.
I like to turn the question around on the women who ask it. Why do you want to be a woman? Most often they will say, “I am a woman,” or “I don’t want to be a woman. I didn’t have a choice.” Bingo.
I don’t “want” to be a woman any more than any other woman. It’s not my choice. The question doesn’t make sense in context. I do think there are plenty of advantages to being a woman, but that isn’t the point.
Maybe women mean to ask, “Why did you start living as a woman?” That’s a valid question. I am trans. I was living as a man. I had to decide to transition. It was a hard decision, because transitioning is terrifying, expensive, difficult, and leaves you in the closest thing our culture has to an untouchable social class without raping or killing someone. In many respects, my life is quantifiably worse after transition. I’m unemployed. I’m mocked. I’m occasionally threatened. I can feel that the world’s opinion of me has changed for the worse.
I could’ve continued to live as a man and avoided that, but that would have been worse. Before transition, I felt an ache of regret, loss, envy, and sadness buried in the base of my chest. This tumor of grief would constantly smolder like I was mourning the loss of each day I lived a lie. I could forget about it if I were distracted, but it never went away. The tumor grew as I got older, and more regret caked onto it each year. The pain became unbearable. I had to do something. Transition seemed like a better option than suicide, and if transition didn’t help, suicide would always have my back.
Today the tumor is in remission. The regret and loss of 32 years of childhood and young adulthood to a lie that was forced on me at birth does not vanish in a year or two. The tumor is still there, but it’s bearable, and it gets smaller and more bearable as time passes. All the outside forces trying to punish me for flouting society’s arbitrary rules didn’t come close to causing me as much pain as that tumor did.
That’s why I changed. I couldn’t take pretending to be a boy any longer. I have my theories about why transsexualism exists, but I don’t know for sure. I can only say that it does exist. My need to act and be seen as a woman was very strong—so strong the yearning never rested. Life as a trans woman is hard, but it was the far lesser of 3 evils. I can understand why some people just choose to end it all, though. The stress is unbelievable.
Asking why I transitioned is a good question, but I get the feeling even that’s not what women are asking when they ask “Why would I want to be a woman?” My mom, for instance, never really asked the question, but she said, “I don’t understand why you would want to become a second-class citizen.” I think that gets to the core of the matter. Maybe the question is really, “What’s so great about being a woman?”
If that’s the real question, why don’t these women change? They can. I did.
Don’t take this as encouragement to change your sex. If you’re a woman, it’s way better to live that way. I don’t care how bad you think being a woman is. I can tell you from personal experience that as a woman, living as a man is hell on Earth.
It’s funny. I always aspired to womanhood. From my perspective, there is no shortage of wonderful things about being a woman. I lived in envy of cisgender women, and I still do in some ways. I continue to fight for simple acceptance, and I’ll never have the ability to have my own children, for example. There are disadvantages to being a woman, but being a man has its own problems, especially if the strict male gender role doesn’t come naturally to you. My point that any crap someone gets for being a woman should not stop them from being happy with themselves. I’m so glad I get to be myself these days.
And that’s it. I’m happier living as a woman, because I’m a woman. There are a lot of problems for a woman like me, but it’s better than being a man or committing suicide. Now if I can just delude myself into believing that I’m a beautiful, wonderful person, maybe I can start to approach that nirvana known as sanity.
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @SarahMaywalt
