The Battle Between Tangible Sex and Intangible Gender

A lifetime of passing as male

I pass really well as a male. It has been the role of a lifetime… until now.

I have my male binary rhythm down pat. I have never missed a cue. I say, do and act all male. This has been a lifetime sitcom.

I am so in character.

I am so convincing that guys do bro hugs with me in bars without fear of being called gay, and women flirt with me even though they know I am married.

My male gender to the world has a clear tangibility. I confirm it to every guy standing next to me at the urinals. The fact that I am a father caps it. No one challenges it. No one in my life doubts I am a guy.

I have my male binary rhythm down pat. I say, do and act all male.

Except that I am not male, I just hide well. I have had to do it to survive. I didn’t want to be hated by loved ones, rejected by friends and family or spurned by society. I accepted the male role because my physical sex forced me into the role dictated by society.

My writing seems to convey that I am female. I write from my heart. Yet everything I do in my daily reality tells everyone around me that I am a guy.

That is the crazy thing that is seeping into my brain, that I am only passing as a guy and that I am not a guy at all. Sounds simple from the outside but inside it’s like ringing a gong of rational understanding. It makes so much sense to me now but it took years to finally believe it. I am acting a male role for others.

I feel like the first sailors who sailed over the horizon expecting to fall off the edge of the earth and then didn’t. You don’t trust what just happened because you were trained that it didn’t exist.

I am tired of my male role. It’s not me but it will always be a part of me. My body may look male but my heart and soul is totally Emma.

So, I am trading in my daytime EMMY for best male in a sitcom for an Emma. The emotional pay is better.

Emma Holiday

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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.