The above is the woman I wish I could have grown up into from my birth. Sadly, I was born with an incorrect chromosome, and I do not look that much like the lady in the picture. At least, I had a career bordering on a "Wall Street" Career, but with less risk.
About 14 years, I was afraid to go out in public dressed as a woman. Would I look enough like a cisgender woman to NOT draw attention? What about sounding enough like a cisgender woman? And, would I be dressed appropriately, and not stand out? So many questions, but most of them involving learning how to function as a woman without having lived my whole life as a woman.
People don't think much about boys and girls are molded from infancy, through adolescence, and on to young adulthood. Boys have been taught to be competitive, taught that femininity is something less than innate masculinity, taught that they always have to prove their masculinity. Where girls would play with Barbie Dolls, boys would have G.I.Joe "Action Figures. Girls were expected to learn homemaking skills, as if their path in life would be like Donna Reed's role in her eponymous show.
The reality of male performance vs. female performance is much more subtle. In WW2, we had many "Rosie the Riveters". But as soon as the war ended, women were mostly relegated to household roles. By the time the 1960's came, America (and the world) was hit by a major change that would liberate women - the availability of the birth control pill. No longer could many women suffer the social, economic, and medical risks of pregnancy if they weren't ready to do so. Women were often free to be as sexually active as men!
Once women had sexual freedom, other rights were much easier to fight for. Why should a woman need a male guardian to have credit cards in her own name? Why should women be assumed to be in the secretarial pool (or other female dominated jobs)? Women fought and won their rights with decades long struggles. Much of this happened in my lifetime And I likely would have been taking the pill, so that I wouldn't have a career interrupted by an unwanted pregnancy. (Sorry, Pope Leo, I don't believe in the papacy's claim of "the banquet of life" as an excuse to risk getting pregnant.) If I were a cisgender female, I would likely be as childless as I am now.
Now, we have a government which, if it got its way, would return us to the 1950's with all of its evils. Hopefully, we'll be able to stop this in November....
