# Courageous, really?

# Courageous, really?

There is not another way to see it, my life has been turned upside down and inside out since coming out. Acts of coming out are often seen to be courageous, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels more like navigating an abandoned unmapped mine field. One false step and an explosion occurs.

That explosion is, of course, metaphorical. But it could be almost literal in the sense, that real people, real actions, real feeling and real pain are involved. That explosion also can be totally internal, but again, real pain and real feeling are involved.

Just like a real minefield you never quite know when you’re treading on safe and when you’re treading on exploding terrain.

Coming out as a trans woman for me, was not so much an act of courage but an act of truth. An act that of truth that couldn’t be avoided any longer, it couldn’t be repressed any longer, it had to be pursued.

But consequences. Wow, huge and in truth unanticipatable. There were some consequences I could see, and consequences I couldn’t and honestly it’s a day by day proposition.

In recent weeks the idea of trans women having male privilege seems to be the focus of the times. But to be perfectly frank, for me, this is such an irrelevance for my day to day existence, that, whilst it is an interesting topic, the bearing it has on me navigating life, maintaining some level of mental health that allows me to go about my days with some purpose, is less than minimal.

Sure, I can reflect on it, 40 odd years living as if I was a man, I am sure, often, I benefitted from that. But was it privilege, I don’t really know, I don’t think I can know. You see, I never was male, I acted it, I pretended it, but I wasn’t it. But I repressed it well, I did, I wasn’t femme, but perhaps not as well as I thought, because the go to victim of bullies I always was.

What I can say with absolute clarity, is, that, even with all the effort I went to to repress the truth of my gender, I never ever once felt like a man. Not a single time. I didn’t feel it when I married, I didn’t feel it when my children were born, I didn’t feel it when my marriages failed.

To me it seems this question of whether or not I was a beneficiary of male privilege just has no bearing on my life.

My life is subsumed by the reality of what it has been like coming out. To pursue that act of truth. And I don’t regret that pursuit and I don’t believe I ever will. But it has been extremely costly.

In coming out, I have lost my marriage, I have lost that day to day life with my children. You just can’t know how much that means to you until it’s gone.

If I am honest with myself I guess the truth is that I was absolutely blindsided by my former partner parting ways with me. I really believed, on the basis of wonderful accepting person I knew her to be, that she would accept my coming out.

I never of course thought it would be an easy bump-free ride, but I did think we would make it through. But we didn’t. And that was shocking to me, devastating to me, the thought of it still brings me to bouts of tears on a daily basis.

I wasn’t courageous, I was just following truth. I had finally, listened to my inner self and heard it. I had finally allowed myself to believe it and once that was the case there could be no other course of action than to own it, to come out and to live it.

And so I live it, negotiating that minefield each day, living my life for the first time as truly myself. Each day seems to encompass risk so great, and yet impossible not to pursue life as I now know it.

Whilst feminists debate each other about whether or not trans women like me are benefits of male privilege I go about my day, wondering how many episodes of micro-aggression I will endure, how many times I will be misgendered, whether or not I will be dead-named, and perhaps the most potent of all, how will I be accepted by those I interact with.

I will walk through shopping centres, supermarkets, local streets, always, with that lingering fear of being beaten to a pulp for simply existing. When I run the local streets and bike paths, will I be set upon for daring to be who I am.

So please, go ahead, debate, discuss and consider the idea of male privilege and trans women, but whilst you do, please try to remember that we are actual real living breathing people who fear for our physical safety every single day of our lives.