beyond trans?

[butter-n-sugar.livejournal.com]

The other day I was thinking about my status as a person who is sometimes stealth and sometimes not. And it got me to thinking about the way transgender is such a complicated word with so many layered meanings. And i came away thinking that i felt like medical and mental transition had allowed me to change my gender and that maybe I didn't need to use "trans" as part of my identity anymore. As a person who is not trying to live in the in-between space , who is not andro , who is solidly male in the world and in my mind being transgender only makes sense when I relate myself back to the dyke community.

that's when i bumped up against what is (for me) the most difficult part of this process. Now that I have been living as male for 10+ years and passing 100% for 3+ I want people (especially women and dykes) to treat me as a man and to some how magically forget that i was ever anything other than who i am now. i know that i can not change their actual though process and nothing that they do is ever threatening or even upsetting, it's just that i can sense that they are still holding on to that older outdated image/idea of who i am. I don't think there is a solution for this problem,since it's mostly an internal process for me but it does give me things to think about.

i feel so at home in this male-ness, it makes me wonder was i always male internally just experiencing the world as a person who is being perceived as female?

ya i'm just a bit introspective.... :)