A Life In Many Genders by Kalil

Cohen

power residing there. And with these new interests, I slowly became more aligned with people I knew who were on similar journeys of self-discovery. I began to seek out spaces to be with others sanctifying the monthly rhythms of their bodies, most of whom identified as women. And for the first time, I didn’t feel like an alien in these spaces. As a genderqueer, yet male-appearing trans person, I felt accepted and respected as I talked about the spiritual empowerment I had found in my womb and my moon cycle. In these circles I found a shared narrative of defamation and degradation of the bloody potency of our bodies.

Through this process, the question of gender expression emerged to the forefront of my life once again. Still faced with the inadequate constraints of the gender binary and the social reality of being seen as either male or female, I began to reconsider my options. My priorities had shifted, and rather than wishing to demonstrate my non-femaleness as clearly as possible, I now wished to be seen as a person with a womb. And if "female" was the clearest word that most people could summon for such a person, then so be it. My appearance shifted gradually, more slowly than my first transition, as I felt out the significance of this gender reorientation in my life. I began growing my hair out, shaved off my mustache, and welcomed more purple into my wardrobe. For the first time in nine years, some people called me "she" when they met me, and it felt nice and a little daring. As I slowly followed this thread of transitioning my gender presentation, I felt closer to my body, more able to convey my spirit to the outside world.

Next, I started wearing prosthetic breasts made for women who had the same double mastectomy surgery I did, mostly for breast cancer. I tried to lilt my testosterone-lowered voice up a bit, into a more androgynous range. These shifts opened the door to exploring how it feels to have the female aspect of my being recognized by strangers, acquaintances, and friends – to be genderqueer on the other side of the binary gender line. With my hairy legs, no make-up, and the same androgynous wardrobe, I didn’t appear more feminine, just more female. For me, this had a different meaning than it did ten years prior, when I was last seen as female. This time, I was able to reinterpret what people were seeing as not my “womanhood” but my “womb-hood”, not my femininity but my capacity to create life, to connect deeply with the moon, to chart my own fierce emotional and spiritual pathway. Of course, most people have no such complex thoughts when they see a “woman”, but by reclaiming these aspects of my identity for myself, it no longer mattered as much what others could see of me.

This was my first real foray into womanhood. Even though I was socialized as a girl, I never experienced adult “womanhood”. I went from girlhood to a genderqueer adolescence, to a transgender adulthood. At puberty I only felt disconnected and let down by my body, without any way to experience an empowering sense of womanhood. This is partially because I did not see a pathway toward embodiment that reflected my genderqueerness, one not madeup and lacy, objectified and disempowered. But it is also because of our cultural disconnection and dismissal of wombs, the power of bleeding, and the potential to physically grow another human. While the feminism of my youth embraced the notion that women could do and be anything, it did not include a spiritual component or a way to understand the sacredness of my female body. And yet, this newly defined womanhood was inevitably rife with the heartbreaking limitations of being truly understood and seen in the world. And the misogyny I experienced in the “woman” box is just as painful as it was the first time around.

After three years of proactively choosing to be seen as female in the world, I shifted into a more inbetween appearance by removing the prosthetic breasts I had been wearing. This one small change caused some people to start calling me “he” upon meeting me once again, while others continued to use “she”, and some people began to avoid using pronouns altogether, or to ask my preference. This current reality of having different aspects of my gender and selfhood being seen by different people feels like the closest I can get to being fully understood or visible to dominant society.

This is a given in casual encounters where someone will never know how I identify or what those identities