"Living as"

I like the expression "living as a woman" because it suits me and describes what I am doing. I am a transgender person who is socially living as female and am treated as such by society. For me it need not go further.

I needed to do some very deep diving into sex and gender theory to end up describing my situation. For I wasn't someone who dressed up for fun but then I didn't hate my current physical body to the point of needing to change it. For a long time it felt like i resided in a no man's land (pardon the pun) and the psychology needed to catch up after decades of denial beginning in childhood.

I understand that chromosomes and genitalia do not define who we are. That definition resides in our minds but for me adopting the mantle of womanhood was less pivotal than finding a method to treat my lifelong gender dysphoria which I undertook in earnest as an experimental process of trial and error beginning in my mid 40's. Something had to be done and after some hospital gender identity clinic treatment, a few years later I began to blog as part of my continued therapy.

Someone who has fully transformed their body to the extent that describing them as other than a woman would seem spiteful, has certainly earned the right to call themselves one. For to be a woman is mostly about adopted role and identity within society rather than one's birth sex. You walk the talk and take the good with the bad that living openly as your chosen gender in society brings with it.

As for myself, I needed a different descriptor which would suit me because I fell just shy of someone for whom medical transition was mandatory and "living as" seemed to finally fit the bill and it did.