Admittedly, there was a time in my life that I literally tried to study how to be a good man. I even wrote a paper in college about what I thought defined a good man. I took the stance that I couldn’t relate to manhood because I had my own definition of what being a man meant. I felt entirely separated from the way men experience the world. In hindsight, I was trying to describe my gender identity within the confines of the one I was constantly told that I was.
As it turns out, once I realized that I was not stuck trying to define my own manhood, but that I could in fact define and describe my own gender identity, I also realized that my internal sense of who I am is a lot closer to being a woman than I would’ve ever imagined.
I don’t feel like I’m “male to female,” I just feel trans because my gender identity goes beyond (transcends) what I was assigned.
Religious adherents aren’t defined by their past beliefs. Nobody ever describes converts as “Atheist to Christian” or “Christian to Deist.” Their past beliefs may influence their present understanding of religion or spirit, but their understanding of who they are has changed.
I prefer to describe my “old gender” as AMAB – assigned male at birth – because maleness was a role and identity that was assigned/thrust upon my unsuspecting tabula rasa, but it’s not one that was authentically me.