Playing Catch Up

A retreat is being organized for the girls.
It's a spa trip.
Hot tubs, sauna, old pool etc.
I love these things, or at least I'm pretty sure I would if I ever got to go.
With out fail, every time I see a girls only spa day being organized it is actually a cis girls only event.
This is generally not something the organizer is specifically intending, it's just that women's only spas that allow trans women to use their facilities are virtually non existent.  If they do there are often weird policies that make us wear swimsuits top and bottom because apparently unless we're post-op, our breasts are offensive to "real" women.
I've spent my whole life being kinda bummed out about being excluded from a whole range of bonding experiences between women.
It's hard to write about this without sounding bitter.
It's hard to write about this because honestly there's a lot of normative experiences I can never make up for and that fact makes me feel permanently othered.
I don't know if sitting around talking with a group of cis women will ever be without the feeling of being a fraud, listening to shared experiences I missed, feeling embarrassed to offer my opinion in case someone should point out that my experience is less valid for coming from a trans woman.
Having my identity's legitimacy be permanently in other peoples hands sucks.
The thing is, I really did miss out on all this stuff and I find that embarrassing.
I feel ashamed for having not been there through my childhood, teens and twenties.  I feel that I have no right to offer my opinion on matters of womanhood.

"What if I get it wrong!?" I think, "I mean, it so kind of them to let me join in at all, I'd hate to have my female credentials revoked".

Sitting on the porch chatting with two ladies, one of whom is a friend. The other lady, who I've just met is a doula and the conversation turns to all the thing one can do with a placenta. She stops to inquire whether I'm comfortable with the topic.
I'm not, but it's for a very different reason than she might think.
The thing is, she has no idea I'm trans.
She's inquiring to make sure that a conversation about simmering, dehydrating and encapsulating placentas isn't going to gross me out.
I'm thinking "I have no right to be here, being a part of this conversation, pretending like I could ever really share in this."

My friend comments later on it.  She's sympathetic, saying that it hadn't occurred to her how hard that sort of thing must be, to have to second guess the meaning behind so many things.
She's right.
It is hard.

Maybe a decade from now this will be easier and I'l feel less of an outsider, less of a fraud.

Meanwhile the post has gone up.

Spa night.  Sorry, no boys allowed.

"What about trans girls?" I ask
"well, it's a cool place, pretty much anything goes.  Just no peen" I'm told.

Wow, great.  So I'm cool, I just have to leave my genitals at home.  Thanks, there's another shared experience I don't get to have.

N.B.
It is of course a proven fact that the penis is dangerous.  Unlike firearms, which need a human to use them in a harmful way, the penis itself is fundamentally a threat to all women.  Living with one is just a nightmare.  The constant fear that at any moment it might sexually assault someone is a constant concern for me and the single most pressing reason why I must have my vaginoplasty done as soon as possible.  It's only been by the grace of god that the damn thing hasn't hurt anyone yet...
/snark.