Masculine, Feminine, Other

One of my favourite musicians, Jerry Garcia,
was often quoted as seeing his life, himself,
his experience, as 'being the butt of a cosmic joke'.
But he was a rare creature who lived a short life
in terms of years that were abundant in experience. 

I find being 'the butt of a cosmic joke'
is the nearest I can get to describing
what it might to like be both impelled,
to change gender whilst being barred
from going through with process. 

I know the shopping list: see the doctor,
see the specialist, take the hormones,
do the two years of therapy, wearing the clothing
of your new gender long before the surgery,
and amid that settle the legal and financial changes
that follow from living in a society that for ease' sake
prefers gender to be fixed, now by biology, because
there is now there is a science for it, where formerly
gender was assigned by outward appearance and gender roles. 

From 'whites only' to Hippies use the side door'
there is nothing new about exclusion notices.
But rarely have women on their own set out
who and where there the notices should  be applied.

then by wars and empires that created rules
that worked out on the ground very differently
from how the creators of them could foresee.

Rules that are part of a history that nobody can now accurately quote.

So where once recreational drugs and musical creativity
were the way of unpicking the rigid codes of gender,
the sense of wanting to change your gender has now followed.
Now trans men and women are acting out the sacred roles
as outsiders they act out being 'the butt of the latest cosmic joke
that eternity played on us in real time' where they get distant orders
that exclude them from normal society, the same way that between
1970 and 1974 hippies and freaks had to follow the sign
'Hippies use the side door' to get in their nearest masculine drinking haunt.