I don't want to be treated "as a woman". I'm not a simile for a woman. I'm not a metaphorical woman.

I'm a woman.

I'm both not "choosing to be a woman" nor do I regret being a woman. I was taught it wasn't okay to be a woman, and so I tried so hard for decades to not be. I tried to be who they told me I was supposed to be. I failed.

Some say it's cisnormative of me to say my womanhood is innate, but tough tiddy. I tried to not be a woman, not because I don't want to be but because they made me afraid of being a woman.

But I couldn't make the womanhood go away like they wanted me to.

I'll call that innate, thanks. I don't expect everyone's gender has to be innate, but mine is.

Does that mean I think that "woman" is a fixed, universal type? No, it's a category society uses.

But I know that the category is one that I'm a part of, and that trying to divorce myself from that category was an endeavor that I undertook for 4 decades, and I put more skill into that than most cis people have to marshal for anything in their lives, and I still failed.

And I'm *glad* I failed. I wish I'd been able to see earlier that the endeavor was harmful and doomed to failure, and that the alternative, of accepting who I am, is so much better.

GCs like to go on about "why say you're a woman when you should be proud to be trans?" I'm proud of being a woman, female from birth and fuck-you-very-much if saying so makes me "cisnormative" in your disapproving eyes, AND I'm proud of being trans.

I love being a woman. I love being trans. Both.

I'm revolted I live in a world that's so incapable of accepting that both can exist. And in my case, exist innately.

I'm not vaunting the cisnormative binary. I know full well the binary doesn't include any of us, no matter how binary or how conforming anyone is.

I know even in a world where that did include me, it wouldn't include other trans and nonbinary siblings, so fck that, regardless.