My Dick is a Pussy

My thoughts have been preoccupied of late.

I was having a conversation with my talented girlfriend the other night about the courses we take in life. She was talking about the value of choices which lead to a particular struggle, and the importance of the knowledge that comes when one's spirit is formed around that struggle.

It got me to thinking about my own life choices, particularly around engendering myself in my early years and how I've chosen to express (supress) my gender for the bulk of my life. And, I came to the conclusion that my choices around attempting to perform an empowered femininity and femaleness have, over the course of my lifetime, actually been necessary in forming my conceptualization of what it means to inhabit maleness and manhood. Simply put, I wouldn't be the type of 'man' I am today if I hadn't walked the path of feminine girl and womanhood. Those choices which I have previously felt were an acquiescence of my being and my soul, which have cumulatively felt like a betrayal of my trans masculinity and boyhood, have served a very important purpose of maintaining the ferocity of a gentle spirit informed solely by what it means to live as a pussy centered being.

That's right. My pussy has informed my manhood. Growing up and walking through the world trying with every cell of my molecular being to claim my femaleness as my own despite what has been assigned to me, has meant that I have a deep appreciation for the power of femininity, womanhood, physical embodiment and what it means to carry the weight of misogyny and sexism on my body and in my soul. I am now embracing my choice to try for so many years to make my femaleness work for me, because it has given me the gifts of a struggle of living in the world in a way that I never could have, had I expressed my transmasculinity consistently throughout. I had to carve space for the kind of being I wanted to become, but that being was purely informed by my ownership of my wholeness as a complicated female subject. Every choice I've made about how to transition and how to move through the world now gendered as male, has been lit by the fire of my battle with patriarchy as a female subject.

I am not cock identified, I am pussy identified. Even my dick is a pussy.

Men are consistently, implicitly, and overtly rewarded every second of their lives for performing stereotypically masculine aggressive behaviours. They are constantly under threat of being perceived as pussies. This is evident in homophobia and transphobia. Men who take up space, who take over space at others' expense, who consistently play into the legitimization of their own power by the choices they make in terms of how they dress, walk, emobody themselves physically, emotionally, and in how they non verbally interact with others, will always be validated in terms of their manhood in everyday life. We see this in gay male communities where Butchness is rewarded and Femmeness degraded and devalued. We see this carried over into trans male communities in terms of the stereotypical narratives, understandings of gender, and ways of displaying masculinity that have taken precedence and gone unchallenged. Trans men who enact these masculinities and behave badly are rarely held to task by their brothers or siblings, and continue to reap the rewards of admiration and desire for this masculinity. The same can be said for traditional Butch masculinities in queer women's spaces.

I don't believe in the state of being or having a pussy as a receptive, submissive, bottomy, failure. I don't worry about the huge gap between my thighs as waiting to be filled with a symbol of my empowerment for me to swing forth and clobber those around me with. I don't need to widen my stance, throw my head back, swagger like a cowboy, or dominate others, especially queer Femme women, to embolden my manhood. I have a cock but it is surely outweighed by the power of my pussy. This power of the pussy is something more men could benefit from intimately understanding within their own being. My strength in my gender is informed by my absence of *true maleness* as a categorical biological necessity, and by my rejection of patriarchal manhood.

I am my own man. And my pussy will swallow you whole.