On Being Transgender: My Advantage as a Companion in Second Life

[Emma Florentino]

“…I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts…”
T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

“I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all.”
Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now”

Tiresias strikes two snakes with a stick, and is transformed into a woman
by Hera. Engraving by Johann Ulrich Kraus c. 1690. Taken from
Die Verwandlungen des Ovidii (The Metamorphoses of Ovid).

I have lived most of my life in a disguise. I suppose that’s the polite way of saying it. The harsh truth is that for the first 50+ years of my life, I was living a lie. But no matter: I’m living my truth now, living the life I was always meant to live, and being the person I was all along. I didn’t become a woman; I simply decided to live openly as who I always was.

But that’s just background. The point I wish to make is that having experienced life from both a male and a female point of view,¹ I am in a unique position to understand and counsel both men and women. This, I believe, gives me a certain advantage as a Companion: the ability to see life, love,and emotions from, as Joni Mitchell put it, “both sides now.”

¹– This is a simplified view of a complex issue: for the longest time I experienced life from the view of someone who was socialized male. Since my transition, I now am treated as one who is female.