Being a Gay Man in a Woman's Body

In the book, Everyday Heaven I wrote of feeling like I was a gay man in a woman's body. I recently stumbled upon others who have written the same and the comments they received showed how those who don't experience this simply have no idea.

Now, what I do know is I am female, and I'm ok with having a female body, its a body, its mine. I haven't wanted to have a male one, even though I have dressed up as a man and love to wear a man's jumper, jacket or hat. I did the whole drag thing twice, complete with mustache and it was fun. But I'm not a drag king.

I'm face blind and grew up meaning deaf with health issues, Exposure Anxiety and autism which probably delayed development of gender identity and bonding.

My autie-spectrum father was like Gene Wilder in Willie Wonker, so hardly a male stereotype. Bipolar as it gets, he fully embraced his sexuality and would have made a fab Elvis impersonator (he often leapt onto the snooker table to girate and sing as Elvis proclaiming, in good ol' bipolar fashion that he WAS Elvis). Though I was a pretty girl, he treated me as genderless and I think I really appreciated that. Not once did he make a point of me being pretty (yay) nor ever comment on how lovely I looked (double yay). He chased me with snot on his finger, taught me to wash cars and how to check spark plugs and change a tyre. I was part of rough and tumble and whilst he showed virtually no bonding or attention to my brothers, his attention to me was both enthusiastic and 'androgynous'.

I felt my rather Aspergerian mother was like Tilda Swinton mixed with Glenn Close; a strong, determined, fairly masculine character. She valued hard drinking and fighting. I feel she was a 'boy mother',one who bonded best with 'the boys'. She also had a thing about having a 'doll', a girl, and I felt that in her world a girl was owned, like a doll, pliable, and something to be shown off, dressed up, sort of like owning a nice boat. Like my mother, I can't stand fuss or gush so I was not really cut out for the role. So, the gender roles of my parents were somewhat confusing.She valued hard drinking and fighting. I feel she was a 'boy mother',one who bonded best with 'the boys'. She also had a thing about having a 'doll', a girl, and I felt that in her world a girl was owned, like a doll, pliable, and something to be shown off, dressed up, sort of like owning a nice boat. She named me 'Donna' from out of a Spanish dictionary she was reading (Aspergerian hobby?) because it meant 'female', so I'm literally defined by my physical gender. But, like my mother, I can't stand fuss or gush so I was not really cut out for the role.

I experienced little human contact in my first 6 months so not surprisingly identity of any kind was late arriving. I was cared for by welfare sisters from age 6 months to 2.5 years during the day but was sexually abused by a friend of the family when I was about 2 and it was also around age 2-3 that I developed a male persona. I think I developed to feel strong and detachable from abuse I couldn't stop or control.

I developed a female identity since age 4 with my original one quite neuter as I can remember 'finding' this 'girl' in the mirror after returning from the park where a girl had taken me into her home. So I can remember the contrast of feeling neuter and this reflection posturing girlishly. I then kept this female identity to appease my mother's need for a girl to 'show off'. Looking back, I think it's a theatrical persona which would have fitted in well in the theatre.

My strongest family bonding was with my custodians, my paternal grandparents. She was an exuberant, warm, bag-lady type grandmother with as much artism as autism and a quiet, private, solitary but warm grandfather. They lived with us and I lost both age 4 and a half. I think from early on, I didn't trust women and I have never really liked the emotionality of their voices much. I prefer more stable, lower voices and more practical actions but I have a distaste for bullish men. I feel better with gentle men.

At school, I always felt odd with girls and felt better instructing them or relating via objects rather than relating directly. I didn't fit with the boys who didn't accept a girl in their play area unless it was for kiss-chasey. So I spent much of my school yard time hanging from trees, swinging from bars, walking along lines, listening to the sound of gravel and running a stick or my hand over the wire fence. By the end of primary school I had 3 friends, one of whom realised even at age 11 that she was a lesbian.By the end of primary school I had 3 friends, one of whom realised even at age 11 that she was a lesbian.

Further abuse in my teens by a visitor to the house probably put the nails in the coffin on getting into the 'girl' thing and homelessness and being itinerant from my teens to twenties meant domestic prostitution to men I felt little for didn't help one bit.

At 13 I tried to get others to call me 'Lee' and refused to respond to 'Donna' but nobody would comply and in any case I ended up being called 'Don' and 'Donny' which wasn't so bad, and I've grown into the name 'Donna' now, it's just a name, a word, and it sort of rolls.

I was impossibly late developing sexuality (not surprising but even harder if you're also autistic) and my own style tended to fluctuate somewhere between eccentric and androgynous - from dungarees and army pants to vinyl, zippers and chains and some gypsy/hippy thrown into the mix.

In my 20s I had a few minor crushes on men and my first crush on a woman. But I couldn't at all cope with sleeping with anyone I loved. I resolved that by having a three month sexual affair with an alcoholic who I would barely allow to speak to me and insisted he shouldn't get to know me. I felt very male about that.

I fell deeply in love with a man when I was in my 20s and I felt female about that. But I couldn't combine the physical and emotional even though energetically akin to each other, perhaps because we were.

But from my teens through to 30s I didn't befriend straight men, only gay men. I felt akin to my gay male friends.

At 32 sexuality seemed to emerge in all its splendor. Of course with no ability to read facial expression or body language, this had to be negotiated with utter bluntness. And what followed was a splendid time with an androgynous man whose own issues meant I was left wondering.

Next came the best sex of my life to that point - with a woman. She was 21, I was 33. She was punky/androgenous, with the whole Doc Martin thing with cropped hair, tattoo and piercing thing going. We spent 3.5 years together, attended Pride Marches, had two cats and a dog like many a lesbian family and I felt male in that relationship and comfortably so. I felt I loved like a male, with its practicality and lack of sentiment and as a partner I was strong and giving which I'm sure was part of its downfall... I was too good a 'husband'.

After leaving her I spent some months alone then I got with my husband, a warm, gentle, quiet somewhat Aspie techie man to whom I was instantly compatible and attracted. We've been married almost ten fab years, and it was me who proposed, and I felt good about that. Yes, I felt male about that. I have my female moments and I do dress up rather fem sometimes even if I feel 'in drag' but he wouldn't mind if I wore a hessian sack as long as I was comfortable. I can admire how I look as a woman, but on the inside, I'm the woman who likes to give herself short, home cropped hair cuts, wear caps and fingerless gloves and still miss my duffle coat.

Gender identity and sexual orientation are part of who I am and come from a combination of my personality traits, my genetics, my brain chemistry, my early developmental experiences. I'm a dag, an artist, a professional, a friend, a sister. I'm also monogamous genderqueer bisexual living in a straight marriage who generally feels like a gay man in a woman's body. That may sound odd, but we're not all wired up the same, we don't all fit neat boxes, we are what we are. What matters is that we can love and be loved as ourselves.

Donna Williams, Dip Ed, BA Hons.

Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.

Autism consultant and public speaker.

Ever the arty Autie.

http://www.donnawilliams.net

http://www.aspinauts.com