Feministing has an interview with Pauline Park, who was the first openly transgendered person to be grand marshal of the New York City Pride March in June 2005 and currently is co-active chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy.

I liked Park’s approach to self-definition:

[F]undamentally, I don’t feel the need for hormones or surgery to define myself as a woman. I identify as a male-bodied woman, which is a fairly radical concept even within the transgender community; I don’t see the presence or absence of a penis as defining what constitutes a man or a woman. I bring feminist consciousness to my activism and my perception of who I am….

There are a lot of transgendered people who believe that they need to alter their genitalia to be who they are, but I don’t. I’ve never felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body. I do feel like a woman inhabiting a male body. Although that may sound like a subtle distinction, it reflects a fundamental difference in thinking.


as well as she defined her mission:
I see my work not as being about helping a small number of post-op transsexuals fit more comfortably in existing boxes, but rather, helping all of us break out of these boxes so we can all live lives free of discrimination and violence related to gender identity and expression.