I’ve been thinking a lot about a word I hate: “man”. Especially in reference to me. I don’t hate man as a concept, but I do hate to hear/read myself referred to as such. All my life, I’ve heard “be a man” or “what a man you’ve grown into ” It gives me the squick every time I hear it, and for so long I didn’t know why. Part of me just thought it meant I didn’t want to grow up, that I wanted to always be a kid. It certainly helps explain why I still love my “stuff” (toys/comics/games/etc.).
Now I have a better understanding of why I always hated it, but there’s so little I can do about it in my day to day life. It pains me to spend such a large part of my life presenting like this.
I hear the term “boy mode” used a lot, and I feel too old to let it apply to what I have to spend so much time as, but at the same time, I absolutely detest the idea of “man mode”.
So here I am, spending my workday “in disguise”, though I’m slowly letting bits of myself slip through. I’m not trying to hide the changes to my face, and I’m not trying to obfuscate the changes to my figure.
But I still l wear loose fitting button down shirts, so it doesn’t show too much. My hair is purple now, though it’s still too short and thin to look feminine.
I just want to be me, but I’m still so scared. I can’t afford to lose my job, because while I’m confident I could find something elsewhere, that becomes much less certain as a trans woman in a red county/state.
