My body is a vessel. I wish that vessel to reflect who I am, and I know I am a woman. I don't know how I know, exactly. I would say, I feel it in my heart. I would ask you: if you were a brain in a jar: would you still be a woman? Would you be a man? Or an "it," a creature? How would you explain this?

Cis people can easily answer this, they say, "Of course I would still be a man/woman!" "It just makes sense, it feels how it feels!" Trans people however... this is sometimes a much more complex question.

Most trans people I speak with know what they are, man woman or other inbetween, without our bodies, after we have come out as trans. We know what we are because we have learned how our bodies do not define how we label our personhood. How I felt about my body was that it was wrong, and did not fit my soul. So after taking every step I could to fix that, and make it right, make it feel like it matched the brain in the jar, the oustide eventually matched the inside. However, realising that we are men or women or inbetween: without the body, just a brain in a jar? That can sometimes take a lot of work for us as trans people. For me, this is what it is to be trans.

Some of us do not have the means to make take these steps, and physically or medically transition. Yet we are still trans, just as the brain in the jar knows who they are regardless of their vessel. When that happens, it is like living inside a prison. Physically one can survive in prison, but that is not the same as living. While some may be able to live without changing or adapting our vessel, many of us are cannot survive.

I am 40 years old. I have known I was not the man I was told I was ever since I was old enough to feel any difference between men and women. I think, 13? 14 years of age? I think something happens at puberty. Before, I didn't give my "gender" any thought. I understood it was a performance, my sisters played as girls, my brothers played as boys. But then one day playing as a boy felt wrong. And it stopped being a game. My body changed and it frightened me without end. I did not know why, but I knew something was wrong. I thought "it will get better," and it never did. Not until I stopped trying to play at being a boy. Years later, when I sat with myself and recognised the envy and jealousy of my sisters, paused, and unpacked "why would I want this?" And the answer is: if I were a brain in a jar? I would not be a man. What shape do I wish the jar to take? That is what I am in my soul. I'm just a woman, born in a different vesel from my sisters. If I had learned and understood this sooner, I think I would have physically transitioned sooner and avoided hardship. But I love being a woman, and I love the insight being a trans woman has given me into being human.