Girl enough for government work

This was meant to be another post entirely, but that will come later I guess.  
This post should really be a book, but it's not one I want to write, so please excuse the great dis-service of omission I'm doing to this topic.  If you want to know more, there should be enough here for you to go hunting for it on your own.
You know how to google right? 

I can't think of any good analogy for how odd a situation being trans put you in.
Most people don't spenda great deal of time thinking about their own internal sense of gender.
Having the feeling that you're "in the right body" is hardly something you'd notice, let alone care to think about in any depth.
The favorite narrative for trans people, at least as far as the rest of the world goes, is the story of the little boy who is adamant that he is, in fact, she*.
The child who knows who they are and cannot be persuaded otherwise.
The media likes this story because it's neat and tidy and you can sum it up with the phrase "I always new I was born in the wrong body"
Cis people, as a group, like this narrative too because it's unambiguous.  It's clearly about someone else and that means they don't have to worry about it affecting their lives.
Also, when the story features the assertions of a child, then no one has to worry about motives.  A four year old can't understand gender and sexuality inter-relate so it makes being transgender more wholesome.  It removes that idea of trans people being motivated by sexual deviancy from the picture  and so creates a wholesome narrative fit for a tear jerking human interest piece.
Everybody's happy.

Well, except all of us trans folk who don't fit that narrative.

Prior to the 1950's (and through them into the 60's for most people) the most you could expect as far as treatment went if you were trans was a stay in a mental hospital ans perhaps some electro shock treatment or if you were really lucky, a lobotomy.
After Christine Jorgenson's sex change and subsequent cases, the doctors who were willing to treat such patients, along with psychiatrists, developed a set of standards that had to be met in order to receive treatment.
Aside from the onerous requirement for "real life experience" ie. being forced to live in drag for a year before starting hormone therapy, trans women were required to be "sufficiently feminine".
What that meant was conforming to the standars of behavior deemed appropriate by white male academics of the 1960's.
If you wanted to receive medical treatment back then, by go you'd better act the woman you claimed you wanted to be.
Which set us up for a terrible collision with second wave feminism.
Radical feminists during the late 60's and 70's didn't believe in gender as anything other than social construct.  Trans people's assertion of an internal sense of gener was at odds with feminist theory of the time. The presence of a bunch of "men" claiming to be women and acting in ways so stereotypical that they were at odds with the women's movement's bra burning agenda of the time were not well received.
In fact they were vilified.
Pro gay rights legislation that was being passed at that time, under pressure from radical feminists, included language that to this day is the reason trans people are second class citizens in many areas but most crucially, in health care.  The work done by radical feminists to exclude trans people from the gay rights movement has literally been killing us for the last 40 years.

Trans Narratives don't help trans people.  Except for the lucky few who's life stories match up with whatever narrative is most acceptable at the time, these narrative ar really only for the benefit of those people who need to categorize and control us.
For those of us who don't fit the narrative perfectly, we often spend a lot of time worrying whether we're "trans enough".
Even though I have no difficulty in tearing apart the hateful arguments of radfems, and the even less coherent but equally hurtful opinions of the religious right, I still internalize a lot of that gender policing.
I still find myself worried that my friends will decide I'm either trying to hard or that I'm not girly enough to be a "real" girl.
I often have to correct myself to say cis-girls rather than normal or real girls.
Changing my body to be inline with my mind is relatively easy.  It's expensive, extremely painful and it is anything but quick, but it has a clear beginning , middle and end to it.
By contrast, the changes that are taking place in my brain as the hormones slowly rewire my corpus callosum and change how I relate to, and experience my emotions will never be finished.
Some days I just feel like a girl.  That is, I'm aware of the absence of concern over my transness.  For a few minutes here and there I experience what I asume it must be like to be cis.
To be a natural born citizen.
But most of the time I'm reminded that I'm an immigrant i n a country known as Woman.  I still have a long way to go before I get my naturalization papers.
Only those of us who have the determination to force their will upon the world at the youngest age, who match that convenient and socially acceptable narrative, if they're really lucky, will ever get a shot at being seen as true citizens.