They Don't Talk

by Enny Viar

 

I was a new woman. As of June 2000, I had been living in the gender opposite of what I was given at birth. My adjustment was a bit slow, and frustrating at times. Oh, how I sometimes really just wanted to slap on a pair of old jeans, not shave, pull my hair back, or even cut it off, and just be "natural" - the way I had been for twenty eight years. It was natural, but it wasn't right.

I had started a new position at work only a few months prior, but had been with the company for over four years. The company – for all their talk of "equal opportunity" and "tolerance", it was still a "good old boys" business. The men led and the women followed. I had been a man; I had led. I was now a woman. Could I still lead? While I had side-stepped the institutionalized discrimination that prevented other women from getting promoted, would I still get the respect I had earned?

When I first began my transition to the female gender, there were the rumors, the talking behind my back, and of course the expected derogatory homo/trans-phobic commentary. So far, I had learned what it was like to be a transsexual, but I still had no idea what it was like to be a woman. Wasn't that what this "real-life test" was supposed to be all about? I knew that being a woman was more than just the way I walked and talked, smiled, dressed, and even thought. But as of that time, I had not experienced anything socially to make me feel any different than I had as a man. Only a few of my clients, who did not know me as Aaron, treated me as a woman, and that treatment was to usually say that a woman had no business being a Linux systems administrator. To everyone else, I was just a guy who showed up at work one day with breasts.

While the company policy of tolerance didn't allow any overt discrimination because of my gender expression, it was quite a bit different socially. For example, I was no longer invited to join in "Quake" tournaments or any other reindeer games. The invites to after-work parties and dinners were suddenly not coming my way anymore. The only people who would talk to me about anything other than work were the lesbian switch chief and gay network administrator. And during one the first times I ventured to the main office after transition, the head of my department said, rather bluntly and with little tact, "It looks like you're getting tits." I didn't know what to say. I just blurted out something about sexual reassignment surgery and ran out of the room to avoid further embarrassment.

In October of 2000, I ran into Brad. I had known Brad for years, we started with the company at about the same time. He and I had run a project together, he the manager and I the lead supervisor. We had gotten drunk together, hung out after work together, and worked side by side for almost three years. When I took my new position in another department, he and I had lost contact a bit. We had not seen each other at all since my transition. We didn't associate much after I had transferred, as I didn't particularly care for him nor him for me. I thought him to be too dim-witted and prejudiced to be in power. He probably thought I was a smartass who acted a bit too 'fruity' for his pebbles. He had been the boss before, but we were now equals. And I had changed quite a bit since I worked for him.

At this impromptu reunion, Brad and I greeted one another, and exchanged a brief, polite conversation. He told me that he and his wife were expecting a child in a few months, and that they were really looking forward to his transfer to the new office in Florida. During our conversation, we made small talk, and he didn't mention my gender related changes at all; it was about work and my girlfriend. I felt relieved for that, and felt that perhaps he was seeing me as a person, not as a sort of freak. However, when he talked, all of his talking was directed to my breasts.

His staring wasn't really overt, and perhaps a woman who had been through this many times would have never noticed, but since I had done the same thing many times before, I knew his game. The first thing I felt when Brad began to do this was discomfort; I felt as if he were undressing me, that I was a sex object, and not a colleague or old friend he had not seen in months. I wondered if I had flicked some magical switch in his head that made it OK for him to stare at my body parts, as new to him as they were to me. I didn't say anything to him at the time, but I did tell the story to a few people, and it became a bit of a joke around the office. However, soon after, I realized something that I hadn't before: for the first time in my life, I had experienced something the way any other woman would.

A "real" woman told me of this happening to her, at around the time her body began to develop in Junior High. A classmate had been talking to her in the same way. After about five minutes of his staring, she gave the boy an annoyed smirk and told him, "They don't talk." As she tells it, he ran away embarrassed like a man with toilet tissue stuck to his shoe. It seems like part of growing up and becoming a man is to ogle women. While a man gains a small bit of pleasure from the simple act of staring, I'm sure that most women find it as degrading and disrespectful as I felt.

Since that time, two and a half years ago, I have had many other experiences that have increased my confidence, or what I call my "inner femininity". Most of these are pleasant, and I'm sure a lot of women have gone through the same things. I've spent hours fussing over my wardrobe, been flirted with and asked out by "regular" guys, and I've experienced the joys of hormonal mood swings. I've also been whistled at, patronized at electronics stores, and cried at Lifetime Original Movies. You take the good, you take the bad.

My journey into womanhood is coming along quite nicely, and I grow more and more comfortable in my chosen role each day. And while I know that Brad really didn't think of me as a woman at the time, there is something about that moment that gave me a feeling that makeup, dresses, hormones and a pretty voice could never give me – I felt like a woman. A degraded and disrespected woman, but it was a start.

   

   

    

*********************************************
© 2003 by Enny Viar. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, and compilation design) may be printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of StorySite and the copyright holder.