Feeling Like a Woman

This morning as I got to the building my office is in, a guy was a few feet in front of me and stopped to hold the door open for me. It stood out for me because this still doesn't happen often for me. Most of the time guys just hold the door open for me if I'm right behind them, not far enough behind that they'd have to stop and wait.

Though it may not get people to hold the door for me, I feel more like a woman lately. This is something I've just started to feel in the last few weeks. For a long time, I still felt like a man dressing as a woman. Now, I'm starting to just feel like a woman. It doesn't feel like a special event anymore to dress as a woman; it just feels natural. Instead of feeling like a woman, I should probably say I feel like myself.

When I speak to undergrad clsses, I'm often asked a version of the question "What is different between being a man and woman?" It took me a while to find an answer to this question. At first, I would talk about how I didn't want to give in to stereotypes, saying that I didn't want to say being a woman let me wear clothes I like more or to be more emotional. Then I realized why it was so hard for me to answer this question: I don't know if I ever really knew what it meant to be a "real" man. It's not that I was a man and now I'm a woman; I've always been a woman. It's just that the outside now matches the inside! This answer always surprises people becuase I think they expect me to say that I don't know what it means to be a woman.

Whether that makes me a woman or not, I know that I'm happy with who I am!

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