Ginger HawthorneA couple years ago, I wrote about coming out as bigender. Since then, I’ve learned more about myself, faced more of my fears, rejected more of the harmful stereotypes that kept me from accepting myself as a transgender woman. This my story.
Like nearly everyone on the planet, the people around me have always expectations of what kind of person I would be. They called me a boy, gave me a name that would be expected of a boy, dressed me in clothes and cut my hair in ways that boys would usually wear, gave me toys they thought boys would like. When we talk about being assigned a gender at birth, it’s hard to overstate how pervasively that decision affects our lives.
For the most part, I didn’t really mind, but I also never really enjoyed my gendered experience. I liked being able to spend time with my friends and have common ground to talk about, so I was happy enough to accommodate the expectations people had for me. But I also learned, very early, which things were “for boys” and which were “for girls”, and I also learned that there’d be consequences for not adhering to the right set of expectations.
You see, I grew up spending six days a week in a Baptist church. Not one of the cool Southern Baptist churches you see in the movies, but one of the super strict midwestern Baptist churches that people don’t seem to like to talk about. I went to Sunday school and two church services on Sundays, standard five-day school week Monday through Friday, and a bonus church through the AWANA program on Wednesday nights. I had limits on the types of clothes I could wear, how long my hair was, the works. For example, I wasn’t allowed to have any hair in front of my ears, so if I went too long between haircuts, I’d have to constantly tuck wisps of hair behind my ears in order to avoid getting in trouble.
So for a while, it was pretty easy to conform. With so few options, I didn’t really have to think about it much at all. I just did as I was told and moved on with my life. I didn’t hate it, because I literally knew nothing else. The only other childhoods I could compare myself with were part of that same small bubble, so I had no idea what I could’ve been missing.
That much was true for most of my time in school. I transferred to public school in fourth grade, but I still lived in a small midwestern town with more churches than bars, so I still didn’t see any other genders or presentations. I started learning that there were other people out there who lived different lives, but religious indoctrination taught me that those people were evil, dirty sinners who would corrupt me if I so much as learned anything about their lives. Much less talk to them or let them into my life in any way.
I went into adulthood having internalized all of this, locking me into rigid ideas about gender roles and sexuality. As a side note, when conservatives complain about indoctrination, they’re willfully ignoring and excusing the indoctrination they’re responsible for themselves. They absolutely see the hypocrisy, they’re just convinced that theirs is right and everyone else’s is wrong. See also: colonialism.
I’d heard of certain cultural explorations of gender, like RuPaul or the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I didn’t allow myself to indulge in them. So my first personal interaction was when a friend of mine described his relationship with a woman. I had assumed they were just like any other couple, until he said, “I’m a gay man, and so is she.”
Looking back, that turned out to be a pretty awful thing to say, and they ended up getting divorced after a few years of marriage. But what stuck with me was the idea that gender maybe didn’t have to be as rigid as I’d thought. These were people I already knew and valued, and their concept of gender had no impact on me. That was enough to convince me that my preconceived worldview was overly simplistic, but I still didn’t do any self-reflection.
Then my egg cracked, and I started thinking a lot about these topics, including how my childhood indoctrination impacted how I viewed the world and treated the people in it. I started doing a lot of religious deconstruction and a lot of gender reflection. I interrogated myself and realized I did want to try some new things to see if I could finally find a way to feel comfortable with myself and my body. That story also covers how I got to my first skirt, but then things started to get really complicated for me.
Initially, I was happy just to wear skirts. They’re cute, they’re comfortable, and I just felt good wearing them. I considered myself a man who wore skirts, and that’s completely valid on its own. Long skirts, short skirts, flowing skirts and tight skirts. A lot of people would compliment me on my “kilt”, and I’d proudly correct them with, “thanks, it’s a skirt!”
But I wanted more.
My wife had some clothes that would be close to my size, including some dresses. I liked wearing her skirts, of course, but the dresses were another story. The first time I tried one on, it fit fine but felt a little off. Then I turned and looked in the mirror and I nearly vomited. I was absolutely disgusted with myself, and I had a panic attack trying to get the dress off. I honestly felt like I’d be stuck in it forever, and I was just terrified.
My wife helped me take it off, and for a while, I wrote off dresses completely. I tried to be content with skirts, but it still wasn’t enough for me. So I tried on my first pair of heels. I started small, a boot with a 1-inch chunky heel. Nice and simple, I figured if I couldn’t handle that, I could just sip there. But I loved it and once again felt like I wanted more.
So I found lots of clearance shoes in different styles and heights, eventually finding a pair of 4-inch stilettos. I would wear them around the house with a pencil skirt to help keep my steps in a straight line, and after about a month, I was comfortable walking around in the stilettos.
But now I was pretty sure “a man in a skirt” wasn’t gonna cut it for much longer. I used to say “I’m a man, but I don’t belong to the group called men”. I didn’t know what to do with that at first, so I considered myself a cross desser. Again, no shame in that, but it only got me through for a while before I felt like it didn’t quite get there for me.
What I ended up realizing is that I was still trying to force myself into the constraints I grew up with. Calling myself a cross dresser allowed me to separate my behavior from my identity, so that I didn’t have to face my deeper, truer self. I was afraid of what I’d find and what I’d do once I did.
After a lot more therapy and a lot more reflection, I decided to accept my femininity as fundamental to my identity, instead of just being some behaviors I was choosing to enjoy. But I still clung to my “man”hood, so I came out as bigender. This was an important step for me, because I finally started to expand my identity beyond what I was always told I should be.
And I really enjoyed this section of my journey. This is where I tried dresses again and found some I could enjoy. I found some cheap wigs on Amazon to play around with and found a couple that I liked wearing. In fact, I enjoyed exploring my femininity so much that I started to really question where my masculinity was coming from. Was it from me? Or was it just residual from my childhood expectations.
And that, honestly, is something that I think every single person should ask themselves. Most people can probably do it fairly quickly and be happy with their cisness, but until they’ve really examined it, I don’t think they can claim it with the intensity that I can. And if they can go the next step and actually explore other gender identities, I firmly believe they can finally find true joy, even if it’s in the same gender they started with. But until someone has experienced dysphoria, I’m not convinced they can ever truly experience euphoria.
Anyway, after more self-interrogation and a lot of therapy, I realized that I only considered myself any kind of a man because I was always told I was supposed to. There wasn’t really any part of me that wanted it. And I had gotten to the point where I no longer cared to appease the people from my childhood enough to justify neglecting myself and my gender identity.
So I came out again, this time as a trans woman. I got a new name, started using she/her pronouns, abandoned male clothing altogether and started hormone therapy to help make some physical changes to my body. That brings me where I am today: a trans woman named Ginger. I may still be in for more changes in the future, but I feel better about myself than I ever have, and I’m excited to live the rest of my life with joy and love for myself.