Confirmation

There are so many ways to refer to the surgery I will be having: sex reassignment surgery, gender reassignment surgery, genital reconstructive surgery, and one that has been my favourite for its lack of baggage, feminizing genitoplasty. I've changed how I've referred to the procedure in this blog more than once.

The literature I received from the assessing psychiatrists uses the term gender confirming surgery, and thereafter GCS. It's not the first time I had seen that term or a variant. Earlier in my journey, I used to think it was pretentious, just like the rewritten histories of those trans women who insist that they were never male.

I gain understanding as I work through this process. At least I like to think so. Certainly I have had to revise my thinking on a lot of things. Sometimes I have had to eat a bit of humble pie, and I hope I always learn from my mistakes. Now I'm thinking that I like the phrase gender confirming surgery. At this point, that's what it feels like to me. I am a woman in all ways except that one physical aspect. Surgery will confirm, and tell the bureaucratic world, what I and many others know to be true already.

Maybe even the self-revisionists are right. I now know that I was born with a brain that was different from the norm and that did not fit well with my body. In that way, I was female all along, just overpowered by testosterone, society, and my own ignorance, shame, and fear. I will not invalidate the first 50+ years of my existence. There was much good during that time, including the best relationship anyone could ever ask for. I did not think of myself as a woman. My femaleness was only in fantasy. Now the fantasy has become real. And I'm still amazed.

Bring on the confirmation! And on that subject, I'm hoping I will have more news later in the week, after a very important duck gets into line.