Am I “one of the guys”?

For now, within the group of people on this ice-climbing trip I’ve been treated & referred to as “one of the guys”, with explicit references made to me as a “guy” and lumped into the “men” when a comment was made about bathrooms at the crag. 

In many ways, I am “one of the guys” and these comments and general dynamics are affirming and somewhat reassuring. But they’re also baffling and quite confusing, I’m continuously asking myself, “Do they really think I’m a cis guy?!?” 

I find it impossible that they can think of me, or see me, as a cis guy. 

Because I’m not a cis guy. And I’m sure that if they looked a little closer, if they paid a little more attention, they’d realize that. There’s so many clues — and many go beyond, and are more important or deeper than, the physical aspects. If they saw me in leggings or if/when we go to the hot springs together and I show up in my Speedo, that will leave no doubt to the details of my lower-body, to the fact that I don’t have a penis — something I’m very happy about & proud of. But there’s so much else that I think could be noticed already, mainly in how I behave. Yes, I have a very masculine vibe, as my climbing buddy (who’s my main connection to/on this trip) said and definitely in these groups dynamics I’m tapping into & showing those masculine vibes in a pronounced manner. But there are inevitable moments when some group dynamics lead to female/male gendered roles and I — sometimes instinctively, sometimes intentionally — behave differently from “the guys” while also not quite adhering to the female role. I fill some gap in between, almost like an “extra kind or gentle man”; some action or phrase on my side is definitely something that a cis man would not say or do. And it’s not that a cis man wouldn’t do it because he’s incapable or “naturally unable” to do it or say that: he wouldn’t because he wouldn’t have been socialized to do it or say that. 

But I was socialized as a woman. So I know how “the other side” feels. I know what it feels like to be the only person, or one of the few people, in the room without a penis, without testosterone flowing through their body. I know what it feels like to be surrounded by guys talking all their bravado — no matter how kindly or friendly, but still taking up all the air in the room, often not even realizing it (like these guys here, who are truly “nice guys”). 

These past couple days climbing and sharing dinners with this group of people have been interesting (once I finally got the courage to face whatever might happen), affirming, baffling, confusing. It’s as if I were living a new life, or living life as a new, or different, person: almost as if I had lived the first half of my life as a woman and now I were starting to live life as a man… 

I can understand both sides — which is one of the beautiful, and hard & challenging, gifts of being trans.

But I don’t belong to either side wholly and I so wish there weren’t sides at all. Because saying that I lived the first half of my life as a woman and now I’m starting to live life as a man is so reductive and not a truthful, or complete, representation of my experience nor of my identity.