Over the summer, I struggled with gender identity issues—though I hate to describe it that way, both because it sounds like I’m pathologizing myself and because it felt less like a “struggle” and more like a long-needed exploration of some aspects of my identity that I’d heretofore neglected or perhaps repressed. I talk to some friends, did some research, and eventually “came out”—if that’s what it was—to a few people. Towards the end of the summer, I felt fairly certain that I wanted to be—would be happier as—a woman.
One night, a friend from out of town visited me, and we got into a pretty heated argument about gender identity. At the center of this argument was a simple question that he posed to me: how was it possible that I “felt like” a woman?