The labels we shouldn't need, and why we need them.

I have been thinking about writing again for a long time.  It is one of those things I wish I had more time for, like learning to play the piano, or climbing mountains, or ... sleep.  So why the sudden boost to start a blog?  Well, recently my life has been taking off in directions I have never dreamed of, or would have dreamed possible a few years ago.  Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of the agonizingly slow transition process I have come out of my cocoon, and have begun to spread my wings.  At first floating around in the warm sunshine of my accepting and affirming  UCC church community, to getting more involved with my local community, and more recently the breeze has taken me across the country to visit loved ones and friends I had only ever known in cyberspace,  to Miami for conventions, and just last week to the halls and floors of the Florida state house of representatives and senate to fight for justice and equality.  ( which was super cool by the way ) anyway... I will get to the point of why I started writing again.

In a few short years of wrestling with myself and what this whole being trans thing was about, I have gone from having no idea who I was to becoming quite an expert on myself, and learning quite a bit about the spectrum of gender diversity in the process.  I moved beyond the safe place of only talking openly about these things with the people that were having the same experiences, to socializing with accepting people in the world at large who want to be helpful and politically correct  but having not gone through this type of transition really don't have much of a clue what its really like.  So I agreed to tell my story to a small group, give them a small lesson on the basics of the trans experience, and open it up for an hour or so of questions.  The remainder of this post and probably a few to follow came from a few of those questions that made me really wish I had several more hours and/or had studied for the test a lot harder.

The question that inspired today's topic was one about a little acronym that we in the Trans* community made for the rest of you out there and that is
"CIS" , pronounced like "sis" and taken from the words Comfortable In Skin.  It is simply a term that means that a person has no issue with the gender they were assigned to at birth.

So  why make another label?  After all, we go to great lengths to get the message out there that a transgender woman is every bit as female as every other one,, and likewise for a trans males dudenes, and all those non-binary people ... well you will have to talk to them about what they prefer.  That is a whole 'nother topic.

I identify myself as a woman.  I don't want to have to discuss my transness in every conversation  so I don't walk around with a "T" on my head.  In fact one of the few times I have publicly declared " I am a transwoman" was on a subcommittee floor in the Florida state House of Representatives, fighting for my right to be able to pee where I'm supposed to.  I am the sum total of my life's experiences though so if you become a close friend to me I will end up telling the stories of my past just like they happened.  I've lived half a life in secret for far too long.

So when we are having a conversation about our childhood or you are reminding us that we are lucky we don't have to deal with the messier aspects of our periods, remember that it is hard for many of us to deal with the fact that we will never be able to carry a child and try to use CIS instead of some of the following...

CIS person:  " I was born this way"

Me :  so was I, I just didn't know it right away

CIS person " I am a REAL boy/ girl "

Me:  Am I plastic??? there is absolutely nothing fake about me

CIS person: I am a "normal" woman / man

Me:  okay this one might have some merit.. some of us are a little strange, but isn't everyone? I am no more or less normal than you.

So to the CIS person that says " omg you labeled me?" I say this,  we acknowledge that we were probably socialized differently than you, we may have spent half our lives in denial or just not understanding who we really were, and when the inevitable questions about our past come up we cringe as we have to say the words that make our skin crawl or gloss over those details that we hoped would never come up again but nevertheless were part of what shaped us into the fine people we are today.

Thank you for reading to the end of my rant and stay tuned while I work on the complicated subject of dating

XOXO and just be you.

Joanna Bell