When The Last Piece You Hold Doesn't Fit To Complete The Puzzle

"One more push" the doctor says as a woman is laying on the hospital bed and her husband, partner, or significant other is standing beside her, supporting her, as if a cheerleader on the sidelines encouraging their team to make a mark on the scoreboard. The woman is exhausted and just when she feels she can't go on any more out comes a healthy, beautiful, baby that she has been carrying for approximately nine months; but then looks of confusion are on every ones face and the mother wonders "what's wrong with my baby". The doctor says well nothing but we don't know what it is. How does a parent deal with this type of reaction and then how to process what to do, for the best interest in the child. A female with an enlarged clitoris, or, a male with a small penis? These are not questions that are asked about the infant but rather about the adolescent, or the adult that is about to engage in their first serious relationship. I have heard of these gruesome stories about vaginal mutilation and that the doctors make the decisions for these infants when they have no voice to speak up for what they want. Parents try to make the best decision possible for the future of their children, because there is nothing worse than a child that is teased and ridiculed for something they had no control over. Female masculinity happens more often than what most are admitting to. When I was ten years old I was the biggest tomboy on the face of the earth. I had an older brother and surrounded by boys in my neighborhood. I had no choice but to join them, because I sure couldn't beat them. I was not known to be intersexed nor am I today. I was just a girl that likes to participate in boy activities if I wanted to live a normal life and be a normal active pre-teen. It wasn't until I reached junior high school that I started making other female friends and when I turned eighteen that was when I actually started wearing more feminine looking clothes and doing my hair and makeup, and actually looking like a female, or what society considered a female. I can remember over hearing my mother asking my brother if he thought that I was a lesbian because I never talked about liking any boys or all I did was play softball or basketball with them and that was it. Needless to say that if my mother had only come directly to me, I would have told her something like this. "No mom, I'm not a lesbian, I like boys very much and do find some of them to be cute. But they are more interested in having sex with me rather than knowing exactly who I am on the inside, and I'm just not ready for that." If that conversation would have gone on then the conversation of whether I am having sex or not (when the doctor put me on birth control to regulate my menstrual cycle) wouldn't have come up either.Why is that we always have to go by societies rule book and not just do what comes naturally. The last time I checked the only one that has the right to judge me for the decisions I make is Jesus Christ himself. Nobody in society laid upon a cross to forgive me so why should we have to go by what society says. What someone’s perspective on what is normal and what isn't is vague and changed day to day. We are supposed to be privileged and unearned advantage, to live in a country that is so diverse, yet is run to be so structured. Just because the majority of society says that something is not normal, does not mean that everyone else needs to follow suit. "Each person should have the right to choose between pink and blue tinted gender categories, as well as all the other hues of the palette. At this moment in time, that right is denied to us. But together, we could make it a reality." (Feinberg, pg. 1) Why can't we just be the female or male that dwells within us without having to conform to society? This does not make any sense living in America, LAND OF THE FREE, and still living by societies play book. The doctor that turned away Feinberg because he assumed she was a troubled person should be banned from working in any hospital, as I am sure that this is against the code of ethics according to the doctor’s board. Whatever happened to bedside manner, and you cannot tell me that this would be the first that he has ran into anything that he seemed to be "unusual" in his site. Trans liberation gives us a broader spectrum of ideals to live by that allow us to be truly who we are and not what society dictates to us that we are.

"Your individual journey to express yourself is shunted into one of two deeply carved ruts, and the social baggage you are handed is already packed." (Feinberg, pg. 6) "This movement will give you more room to breathe-to be yourself. To discover on a deeper level what it means to be yourself." (Feinberg, pg. 6)