Getting into Gender Character

Hiding from the world when you are transgender requires constantly getting into character. It’s what an actor does on the stage, except I have to do it all the time. I have become a method actor in the extreme.

Classical actors know they are playing a part, and once the camera stops rolling, they step out of character. For method actors, the world becomes their stage and more often than not they stay in character day and night, whether or not they are being filmed.

Well, it’s exhausting.

When you are transgender and you haven’t come out, you overlay your gender character over your gender reality in order to survive. You started when you were a child. Over time the character dominates your reality. You forget who you are and, at some point, you become the character. You lose yourself in the role life is forcing you to play and your reality never comes up for air.

You finally hit critical mass when your brain, responding to the grueling fatigue of constant acting, says “ENOUGH!” and hits the alarm button.

That’s when your gender dysphoria kicks in. As time passes and you try to continue in character, the alarm bell gets progressively louder and louder until it is screaming 24 hours a day, every day, all day.

Yet you stay in character…why?

Like old clothes that are comfortable, they have memories attached, they are an old friend. You throw them away and then pull them out of the trash, again and again. They are your safety blanket.

At some point you need to let go but you continue to desperately hold on to your role because you are afraid that world won’t accept the “you” behind the role. No one knows that you’re in character and you are really good at the role but, like being a child actor on a long-running sitcom, both you and the role are getting old. It no longer works. With gender dysphoria screaming in your ear, it is time to take off the costume and stop the acting. You need to simply move on and enjoy being yourself, who you really are. It is time to step off the stage and finally step out of character.

You need to walk out into your world as you.

Emma Holiday

Please also read:

I have tied all of my stories to the above thread.

Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.

My writing has three specific goals:

1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.

2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.

3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.