In “Femininity," Freud describes the limits of psychoanalytic knowledge of the female as follows: “psychoanalysis does not try to describe what a woman is — that would be a task it could scarcely perform — but sets about enquiring how she comes into being.” I was born “male" (whatever the contingencies of that term may be), and I lived my childhood largely (at least visibly) as a boy. But I grew up to be atrans woman.[…]
At one point, she spoke of "boys who played the flute in school bands," and I suddenly realized that to have been a boy who played the flute in school bands was a mark of distinction: that to have been that kind of boy included me in a very special and wonderful "sisterhood." I will never again give in to shame about being a flute-playing sissy. I'm proud of the sissy I was, and thetrans woman that sissy became. (And I will try, as well, not to be ashamed of the adolescent with hir collar turned up trying so hard to be tough. S/he was struggling hard to survive, and s/he used whatever tools s/he could find.)
