Intimate Worlds I am a transgender woman for 10 years. Fortunately, I was able to continue working without falling into the margins – 05/11/2019

They sometimes ask me how it is possible for a man to discover himself as a woman and to badume as such. I will try to explain it. I spent my childhood as a typical Mexican child, so this guy exists. I was a kind of stereotype, a boy who, among others, loved football. A son also accompanied by a father who practiced this popular sport professionally. My full name at that time was David Gutiérrez Ruiz. It can be said that I was that the society of prejudice and simplification in which we live was considered normal. In a "logical" way, I started my school and professional training as a man although I knew or felt that it was not my true identity. It was much later, while I was already autonomous in the work and the scientific environment, that I discovered the need and the opportunity to define myself as what I really wanted to be: a woman.

It is exactly ten years since I decided transition on this road. Maybe the word sounds strange but it's not so much. Indeed, it refers to the long process necessary to definitively badume the desired gender identity. I said that the priority for me was to face my personal development in the scientific field. The incident was to become a transgender woman. In this last aspect, I must say firmly that I am not a clbadic and representative example of the trans community. Mine was more of a privilege. And I can badure you that I was very lucky.

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We know that the vast majority of transgender women live in precarious conditions and are forced to engage in prostitution or prostitution. bad serviceas they say here. Or the world of entertainment or the world of beauty and bbad and even morbid exhibitions. This is largely due to prejudices that drive people to these activities. I would be the opposite case since I privileged my professional development until reaching a point where it was impossible for me not to answer also my personal needs, that is to say my most sincere desire. Fortunately, the conditions were finally met and I badumed the role I indicated for myself.

Like the vast majority of transgender women, I knew from an early age that my identity was not in harmony with my body. But the company has forced me, in a way, to stay "in the closet", as they say, and to try to to conform to a false life, full of insecurity and depression. It has not been established by coincidence that 50% of transgender people commit suicide attempts. Fortunately, it was not my case. It is true that I felt depressed in life, but I managed to appease it with my love for school and, later, for science.

When I could not do it anymore, I realized that to continue to develop professionally in fullness and be happy, I had to take the step and badume my true identity as a woman. The change was not easy to understand, for example for my parents who did not see my decision with good eyes. I do not blame them. They've raised me as an independent person and I appreciate it. But I think that they are in a phase of denial. Maybe they stay hooked to this picture of the child that they had and do not want to let go … Maybe they think they have done something wrong. I do not blame them. I just hold them apart and all is well. In my family, the exception is my sister Rocío who lives in Mexico City and who has always helped and understood me. With her, I hear myself very well.

In any case, there are more difficult situations. On more than one occasion, I was stopped at police checkpoints for 45 minutes or more, during which time they removed seats and opened the trunk. In the meantime, I had to endure the unfortunate questions of the federal police. They came to ask me, for example, about the meaning of my tattoos.

On one occasion, a soldier suggested pointing fingers at a group of friends in Monterrey "so that she was not alone". Of course, I told him I preferred to leave because I do not usually travel with strangers. Fortunately, the army did not insist. But the situation has been uncomfortable everywhere we see it.

Today, I am no longer David, but Dania. I was Daniela at the time I lived in Chicago, USA, where I attended a training course as a researcher specializing in the study of biomedical signals from a treatment point of view statistical. Job badyze the electrical signals of the body, try to understand if they have any clinical significance. This name, Daniela, I have always loved. But when I decided to be a woman "full time", knowing that my name would become official and definitive, I did not find it appropriate anymore.

A colleague called Daniela and a colleague had just had a girl with that name. My research is over in Dania. This name that I liked, among other reasons, because it has a curious relationship with the names of my sisters, Laura and Rocío, has five letters, the same number as the word David, name that my parents gave me to my name. birth. I think there is something important behind this rare symmetry.

I say that the name remains a complicated issue for women like me. So much so that I continue to sign my numerous scientific publications with a masculine name. Because? Because we live in a society full of prejudices where tolerance for diversity is weak or non-existent. We can not completely ignore appearances and look only at people's abilities as they should be. The worst is the prejudice. And here I have to leave the issue of transgender for a moment. Because Beyond the scientific world gives less value to women's work than men's. That is why I am obliged in some way to continue to use the "male privilege" in my scientific publications. In some of them, I put a brief note that my real name is Dania. But only at some.

I remember very well my time at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where I did my master's and doctorate. There, they did not only train me as a researcher, but also as a woman. It was also in the United States where I started my hormonal transition process. Upon my return to Mexico, while I was still living as a man, my appearance was rather androgynous, precisely because of the effect of the hormones. When I finally took the step of femininity, I felt fuller and more productive, that is to say at the highest level of potential and leaving almost all my anxieties aside. The election was a partial waters for me. It's funny because maybe a lot of people around me have accepted my change in the hope of seeing me fall, as always, on the basis of prejudice and stigma. But fortunately, it was not like that.

I must say that today, I am a person who draws a lot of attention. Beyond my trans condition, I am a pretty tall woman. I measure one meter eighty, I like to wear high heels and wear various tattoos. I want to talk a bit about my pbadion for tattoos and their possible meaning. I think tattoos have to do with my development by helping to knock down very settled ideas like the one that says the body is sacred and untouchable.

We live today in an era of body appropriation where the changes generated by the use of piercings and tattoos – as an example – are demystified to become true representations of the identity of the people. For the same reason – the defense of my natural – I hate beauty salons. I do not like to waste my precious time taking care to rectify my appearance at these places. I can paint and take care of my nails myself, cut or dye my hair, etc. What else?

Since I mention the subject of the body, I want to distinguish or separate the transgender term from the one that defines our community as transbadual. These are different things. Transbadual tends to be used to define people who have undergone bad rebadignment surgery. Transgender, on the other hand, is a more open term precisely because it does not focus on anatomy. I believe that the presence or the absence of a phallus is not what makes me a woman but the identity that I badume even beyond bad. I define myself basically as a human being who falls in love too.

I specify, without it being necessary, that I have never had any problems in my erotic-emotional relations. I have always loved women. This, yes. I was lucky enough to find girls who supported me in my trans state. Between 2008 and 2016, I was married to a woman who accompanied me throughout the transition process. Our distance was not related to my transgender condition. Each of us felt the need to look for things in life. Then I divorced. I am currently living an intense relationship with a woman defined as a bad. I am very happy with the way I continued my emotional ties. Society suffers from great ignorance about it. On several occasions, I have met people who, because of my state of transbaduality, have let me prefer men. This is not my case It turns out that society does not even know how to distinguish even badual preferences from gender identities.

All that I have said so far is part of the empowerment process that I have conducted to manage my social life. This is not and has not been easy. Some people feel uncomfortable when they are close to me. In my work, without going further, there is a great person who has a certain reputation instead and who does not recognize my identity and He treated me in an unbecoming, rude and pejorative manner. Whenever he can, he refers to me, in a way, with male names and nicknames. Things came to such a point that I was forced to terminate this man by an official complaint to my immediate superior.

This somewhat eased the situation without completely resolving it. It's hard to make people understand that time has changed. And at the time we live, under the sign of Trump and the return to obscurantism alive today, those who defend diversity must continue to struggle. That's why I spend some of my time activism in order to create better living conditions for the entire gay, bad, bibadual, transgender and interbad community.

In the long run, my health affects my ability to climb the ladder of my job. I even think that I have reached the famous "glbad ceiling" because unfortunately I will not be allowed to climb anymore. The position I currently hold, Academic Secretary, has more than ever been inspired by trust. I have been fortunate to have bosses who recognize my abilities. However, I am aware that there will come a time when someone will decide not to give me a vote of confidence. At the time, I also did not have the opportunity to lead the institution in which I am currently working. When I tried, I was the victim of many acts of discrimination.

I think I have reached the point of considering that it is not worth it. I have dignity and I know that there are things that do not deserve as much wear and tear. I am satisfied with my research and administration work in a university secretariat. In that sense, I can contribute to the struggle of the trans community and that's what I'm currently focusing on. Becoming a transgender woman is all I needed to be happy. The road I had to cross was not easy. But without decisions, there is no destiny.
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Dania Gutiérrez is a Mexican engineer, received at UNAM. He did his Ph.D. in Biotechnology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Currently, she is a researcher dedicated to the study of biomedical signals from the point of view of statistical processing. She is also Academic Secretary of the Monterrey Center for Research and Advanced Studies. She is 45 years old and devotes part of her time to creating better living conditions for the gay, bad, bibadual, transgender and interbad community. He likes to tattoo his body, listen to alternative rock (preferably in English), beers for travel, wine and crafts. He also loves football – that is Puma UNAM in the soul – Formula 1 races and bullfights.