Friday, January 26, 2007
poison in the well
Someone at my work she'd me today, and it threw me for a bit of a loop. I was coming in the door, all bundled up against the ridiculous cold, and was so intent on getting upstairs to the library that I didn't notice that the guard working at the welcome desk was new, and trying to ask me for my ID. Then I heard one of the guys who works in the building say "It's ok, she works in the library."
Which didn't really register with me, I just turned and noticed the guard and said "I work upstairs," and he waved me through.
But walking upstairs I had a WTF? moment.
First, I was frustrated with myself for not doing something. For once, it wasn't that I didn't have the guts to confront the situation, it was just that it happened so quickly, almost in passing, that I didn't have a chance to address it. As I stomped up the last few stairs I started reviewing alternate scenarios in my head- maybe going over and introducing myself to the new guy, "Hey, yeah, my name's Eli, I work in the library" and saying something funny but pointed to the facilities guy "How're you doing, man? Did I hear you call me she? What's up with that? You forget to drink your coffee this morning?"
Because honestly, it's not really okay for him to call me she, and I can't think of why he would...it hadn't occurred to me that he thinks of me as she. He has known me the whole time I've worked here, so I guess he drew his conclusions when he met me and hasn't bothered to re-evaluate.
Which leads me to the second thing which is that in some ways, it's throwing me for a loop because it's making me wonder again about how much I've really changed over the past year. I guess I've just assumed that the people at my workplace either have read me as male from the start and either assumed that I'm doing some kind of late bloomer puberty thing, or haven't really noticed...or thought I was a dyke but then realized that I'm a dude now. Because duh, obviously, I'm a dude.
Except now I want to call myself on some shit because what is it that makes me think "Duh, I'm a dude?" I've got some definitively masculine secondary sex features, like a deeper voice and sideburns/stubble, and a flat chest, and more masculine proportions (broader shoulders, etc)...but not only is it in some ways against my politics to automatically assign those as dudely features, it also makes sense that, gradual and in some cases subtle as they've been, not everyone has noticed or understood the mechanics of my transition.
If there are folks who've read me as male from the start who haven't said anything about my sudden post-pubertal appearance, then it makes sense that there are folks who read me as female from the start who haven't really noticed or had the shoe drop about my more physically masculinized appearance, and so still call me she.
And if I'm annoyed that they used to automatically call me she because I used to have breasts, if I follow that reasoning, I can't be annoyed that they don't automatically call me he now because I have sideburns/flat chest.
On the other hand, I think that there are enough deliberately masculine cues in my appearance to warrant at least some thought about the matter. I'm pretty sure that most of the people in this building call me he, whether because they know they're supposed to or because they themselves see me as he (or both, I suppose). I'm all about not making gender/pronoun assumptions based on bodies, but I'm also in favor of the being sensitive and picking up on cues to try to be respectful of a person's pronoun preferences.
Blah. So I'm trying not to be resentful about this pronoun slippage on the part of this guy (because harboring resentment is like drinking poison and expecting your enemies to die! a piece of Nelson Mandela's wisdom that I heard for the first time the other day and haven't been able to stop thinking about). Getting to that realization has got me thinking that it's just not that big of a deal if one dude, whom I interact with once a week or so when he's changing the lightbulbs in the library, thinks I'm a she. Don't sweat the small stuff, right? The small stuff can be really oppressive when it's constant- a continuous, day-in, day-out stream of invalidation is a pretty crushing negative emotional burden to carry around- but right now, when I'm in such a good place, one small moment of someone else's mistake stings only temporarily.
And hold on, that's an important thought right there, that bit about it being someone else's mistake. Big lesson learned for me, and it's part of what's been such a good thing for me about this transition- I can finally accept that people who aren't seeing me for myself, people who call me she or refuse to respect me, are making their own mistakes. It was really hard for me to accept those mistakes as external to myself when I still felt like my own body was a mistake...I think it takes a different kind of strength and conviction than mine to be able to reject the short-sightedness of others without making any sort of physical changes. Now that I'm happier with the steps I've taken (mostly physically, but also mentally) to make things right with myself, it's easier to not care so much about what other people think.
Still, I do wish I'd been quick enough on my feet to correct him and affirm myself. or something.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
man of disrepute
So, the lesson I learned on Friday is that three days is no longer an acceptable amount of time for me to go without shaving. It has been okay in the past- three days worth of my stubble has just meant that I'm vaguely scruffy, in a can't-quite-put-your-finger-on-it kind of way that becomes clear once I shave and my face returns to smooth clarity. But I think two days is my new limit before I start to look pretty gross, since my beard, such as it is, grows fastest and heaviest on my neck, and sort of fades upward from there. It's coming along nicely along my jaw, but hasn't made significant progress up my cheeks, nor certainly to my upper lip yet. So I end up with weirdly dark neck stubble, and a vaguely fuzzy face, and dude, that's just not cool. So definitely shaving every other day from now on, until the day comes (next spring? summer?) when I think things might be solid enough to try actually growing out a reasonable beard.
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It's funny, a year or so ago I used to watch other guys all the time, trying to get a feel for what they were wearing, how they were moving, interacting with the world. Not quite taking notes, but definitely evaluating and learning and comparing their masculinities to my own, theirs (presumably!) having been taught since birth and practiced for years, whereas my own much more nascent manhood still felt like it needed some work. I don't do that so much now- much more comfortable moving in my own skin, thanks in no small part to my chest surgery- but I do subtly (I hope!) evaluate other guys and their facial hair. Up close I look for growth patterns and bald spots, or the line where they've ended their beards on their necks, or the angle at which they've allowed their sideburns to fall down their cheeks. Everybody has something slightly different going on, and it's interesting to observe...even without my personal stake in it, it's neat to see the different choices that people make about their own grooming. I'm trying to remember, too, that patience is not just a virtue but a necessity, that I've been at this less than a year, that I'll be bearded before I know it.
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Yesterday was apparently 
, and I missed it! Alas. I'm vehemently pro-choice, and I think it's important and elucidating to examine some of the connections between reproductive freedom and trans health. Both have so much to do with self-agency, and control over one's own body in a medical setting. I'm not arguing for total deregulation of abortion or medical transition, but actually, I'm uncomfortable with the semantics there. I don't want to see regulation but rather support and infrastructure. I think the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care are useful when used as guidelines and to support and inform people- both trans folks and health care providers. It doesn't seem to me (though I've never had one) that abortions are very often a good option, and so I think appropriate information and counseling and access to birth control methods and information is necessary. Abortions are often a needed option, but they seem a hard choice for anyone to need to make, and I wish that reproductive rights weren't so curtailed and stigmatized (why aren't there free condoms easily available in high schools, for instance?) such that abortion is made more necessary. Likewise, I don't think that the SOC should be used as set in stone thresholds that trans folks have to prove themselves by- that sets up gatekeeping along too many lines of identity (for non-binary or transition-track or 'classic transsexual' trans folks) or access (for folks who don't have the time or money to find a therapist and an endocrinologist and an amenable judge, all in the right order) or body (folks who don't pass frequently enough to make a "real life experience" necessary, or who don't want to modify their bodies in the way prescribed by the SOC). That said, transition is (perhaps I should say can be? Let's just say that mine has been) tumultuous, and at times difficult, and it's been useful to have support and information and an infrastructure, some of which has been provided to me by the folks at Callen Lorde who use the SOC as guidelines. So, yeah. Infrastructure and information good, denial of access or free choice bad.
drawing the line
Been thinking more about the "women and trans only" policies that I mentioned a few days ago, fueled by some of the interesting comments y'all left for me.
Anonymous number one- even before but especially after you wrote "So if the dick is equal to oppression, who gets to check who has it and who doesn't?" I was thinking about that line of thinking, which is basically the foolishness of basing an ideology around lines drawn through some sort of supposed biologically based binary. The myth of the binary sexes hasn't been debunked as thoroughly as that of the binary genders, perhaps because of less awareness of intersex issues, etc and because of even stronger taboos about discussing the range of body variation that falls within normal (and 'abnormal', too, I suppose, though a) that's a really loaded, potentially hurtful term and b) it seems to me that the line between normal and 'abnormal' is no less arbitrary than the lines between all the shades of 'normal). But seriously, yet another reason why the "women and trans only" thing doesn't sit well with me. My cock is welcome but some other guy's isn't? Carry that line of reasoning any further and it starts to get real disrespectful real fast, but if you don't carry it any further at all, well, then it's about as silly as it sounds.
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Anonymous number two, I've got a bone or two to pick.
First and foremost, I think either I was unclear, or you totally missed my point. When you say "are men really still the patriarchal, evil "other" to you?" I go "Huh?" because that's precisely what I was trying to say. "Men" as some sort of homogenous category does not resonate well with me at all, particularly when it gets glossed as uniformly evil. So I think we're in accordance there. However, perhaps the miscommunication began through my determination to throw out there that I do believe in the patriarchy (much as I believe in fairies, but with less handclapping). That is to say, I do think that there is such a thing as institutionalized sexism, and while I might not call it evil, I think it's pretty darn crappy, and I know that while it affects and is perpetuated by all of us to a certain extent, it gets instilled pretty heavily in people who are raised as male, such that non-trans men who don't do some pretty thorough soul-searching/consciousness raising often exhibit (knowingly or not) some pretty crappy attitudes and behaviors. So yes, I do think there is a "patriarchal other" that I'm trying to keep that way- as an other. I'm committed to my feminism, and I want the patriarchy to remain an other. I don't want to perpetuate patriarchal practices, I want to break them down. As a man.
Which is what leads me to the touchy bone of contention, which is that I have to admit I'm not a big fan of the language you're using here. When you say things like "you know, for a transguy, you've got some rather misandrist attitudes" I get defensive, because it sounds to me like you're questioning my male identity. What I hear is "if you're actually a guy, you wouldn't be dissing guys like this!" Now, hopefully, this is a miscommunication on my part, being excessively defensive, etc, but I want to throw it out there that I didn't like that language, because I think it's perfectly acceptable (downright critically important, even) for guys to critique the patriarchy.
Which leads me to this last little bone, this word "misandrist" which, to quote the Princess Bride, I do not think it means what you think it means. Inconceivable! ahem. sorry. Perhaps you mean feminist? Misandrist isn't a word that I'm comfortable using as a simple counterpoint to misogyny, because misogyny has the weight behind it of institutionalized sexism (aka the Patriarchy) which pointedly privileges men, masculinity and maleness (albeit specific permutations thereof). There is no corresponding systematic privileging of women and femaleness, and so I don't believe there can be such a thing as 'misandry.' Personal prejudice against men? Fine. Sure. I'm sure it's out there and it probably does correlate with feminist principles at a rate higher than chance. But discrimination = prejudice + power, and the word 'misandrist' sounds too much like "feminazi" for me to be willing to accept it.
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I'm sure there's plenty more (and comments welcome- I mean no disrespect, Anon2) but it's time to go home now.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
of men and transmen
I got an invitation in my email inbox today, inviting me to what looks like a pretty fun event, put on by a queer dragking/performer whom I don't know well, but admire. She may even be coming to a party at my house tomorrow night, actually- perhaps I'll discuss my issues with here there, if I can get my thoughts in some semblance of order.
My issues are with the parameters established for attendance at this event. The email reads as follows:
I would like you to attend [the event] if you are a woman/trans-person or genderqueer....[description of funny, queer event]....Additionally please note non-trans men will not be allowed to attend.
And I have to say, that right there puts a big huge kink in my decision about whether to attend.
There are a lot of events/spaces that advertise themselves as open to "women and trans only" and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I want to respect the right of any group to gather in solidarity, without the presence of potentially oppressive outsiders. I also want to refuse to be a party to discriminatory/exclusionary practices. I don't want to go somewhere I won't feel welcome, and I don't want to go somewhere I won't feel respected, but I don't want to lose out on a community I feel strong connections to.
These questions and inquiries are the shifting boundaries of what've been called the "dyke/FTM border wars" and
Being invited to a space that's labeled as being for "women and trans only" makes me feel like there's a line being drawn in the sand, and I'm automatically being placed on one side of it without my say in the matter, a side that I'm not sure I belong on. I resent the line being drawn in the first place, but I especially (painfully) resent being placed on the female side of the line, a place that I don't belong, as I think I've been working pretty hard to make clear. As my friend Jacob said once while we were talking about this, he doesn't want to go anywhere that's making that distinction, because of the gross implications being made that basically are either 1) trans guys aren't real men, so they can still come or 2) real men have penises and penises are yucky, so they can't come, or some variation on such a theme.
I think I understand that the point of refusing admittance to non-trans men at this event is to try to make it a safe space for the performers (and audience members, I suppose). I also think I understand that what they are really trying to do is keep out the things that would make such a place feel unsafe, like sexism, misogyny, homophobia. And I also know that those things tend traditionally to be vested pretty heavily in non-trans men. The hegemonic man takes up a lot of space, whether he admits it or not.
What I don't like is the simplistic (dare I say transphobic?) implication that it's transness, as it's understood by the creators of this event, that separates the wheat from the chaff, the feminist transguys (or, too often, the safe and safely emasculated "tranny boys" - though not at this event, since I know the performers to be smarter and more respectful than that) divided from the pigs of the patriarchy.
It reminds me of being in my psychology class last semester, being righteously indignant about an experiment that the professor had conducted, trying to determine what individuals can guess about the knowledge of the general population- that is, even when they don't know something, can they accurately predict whether or not other people are likely to know it? Running a condition where he wanted to ask people about something they would know, he was asking women about the names of cooking utensils and men about the names of car parts. I, sputtering with my frustration, tried to call him out on a sexist experiment. He, looking at me, half confused half condescending, said "Do you deny that there's a correlation between gender and certain set of knowledge?"
And no, I couldn't, because (as his experiment determined), more women do know the names of cooking utensils than men do, and vice versa with the car parts.
What I should've said was something along the lines of no, but I don't think the correlation is strong enough or reliable enough to be used as a supposedly neutral variable. It's the supposition that women are in the kitchen and men in the garage that gives that correlation it's strength, along with the matching assumption that you can tell from looking at a person whether they grew up in the garage or the kitchen.
Likewise, in this situation, I can't quite deny that lots of non-trans men are jerks, and take up a lot of space, and can, consciously or not, contribute to an unsafe space for performances, especially with mostly queer, mostly female performers. This particular event has non-so-subtle sexual overtones, too, which can heighten the tensions between the Man and the Other, as we're being set up to be in this context.
But y'know (I hope you know. don't we all know by now, please?), every non-trans man is not the last bastion of dastardliness. Plenty of transmen are pigs. Plenty of women can take up space, be obnoxious/hurtful, or contribute to an unpleasant atmosphere.
It's much easier to put "women and trans only" on your fliers than it is to say "this event is committed to being a safe space for queer, feminist people and ideas. Sexism, misogyny, or any other oppressive or aggressive attitudes will not be tolerated" and then enforce it. It's hard to try to enforce something like that, especially if everyone in the community isn't stepping up to take responsibility for it, having not made their own anti-oppression commitment, or finding it easier to just decide that women and trans people are okay and non-trans men are bad.
And, while they're at it, to assume and decide what it means to be labeled as such. "Genderqueer" persons are invited, but "non-trans men" are not. So, are genderqueer folks with penises allowed to attend or not? Are we breaking down to an underwear check, with all of the ridiculousness that encompasses? Genderqueer and trans person is too often used as code for "person with a vagina" and all of the assumptions that go along with it. Various famous music festivals (cough, cough) have their "womyn-born womyn only" policies that strike me as hurtful and misguided, and based on these same assumptions about what it means to be a woman, what it means to have been raised a woman, what kind of experiences one has when one is raised "as a woman" and what that means about potential camaraderie, allyship, friendship.
I was raised "as a girl" and I had a pretty different experience than most women do. You could argue that it's because of my queerness, but I had a pretty different experience than most dykes do. I have some common ground, sure, but there are a lot of chasms gaping between us, too, and why ignore those chasms when you're making such a big deal about the ones between you and someone with a dick?
*sigh*
Anyway. "Women and trans only" is not the place for me.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Gimpy the second
well, I was too optimistic about the prospect of another pain-free shot. I got one in the right thigh last night and it was fine all night, until midmorning today when the cramping started, and now it's once again stabbing pains through my quad whenever I flex it. It's not so counterintuitive that my leg should protest the addition of 1 ml of thick viscous fluid into muscle that doesn't really have room for it, but dammit, I am not excited about this limping business.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
yowch be gone
Going downtown to get (yet another) shot tonight, leaving work a minute or two early to try to make my 6:20 appointment. This'll be the third shot in my thigh, as a sort of prep for the possibility of starting to self-inject soon. The word from Callen Lorde is that they're still working out the protocol for authorizing self-injections within the first year of HRT, so I may have to wait til my T-versary (April 10th) before they'll actually let me run away with my own bottle of oily hormones and a fistful of sharps. In the meantime, I'm watching carefully how she does it each week, and trying to imagine that it's my own hand guiding the sharp pokey thing into my leg.
The first shot I got in my right thigh, as you may recall me yelping about, was extremely and unexpectedly painful for almost three whole days after I got it. The second shot, in my left leg, which I got two weeks ago right when I got back to NYC, was almost totally painless. Very mild soreness around the injection site, as always, even in my butt, but nothing like the cramps and tightness and stabbing pains of the first leg shot. I'm hoping that tonight will be another painless shot, establishing that first one as a fluke, but I'm nervous, since it's back to my right leg again. Maybe my right leg is just resistant? I'm going to ask her to do it higher up on my quad, since I think that's part of what helped the left leg be less painful.
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It's really starting to sink in that this could very well be a life long process for me. There's talk going around of hormone pellet implants, that would slowly release over a period of months and obviate the need for shots, but they don't seem to be hitting the market anytime soon. Unless I quit T, I'm going to be jabbing myself cyclically for a good long time. I'm okay with that- it's a small enough price, after all. And even as this is becoming routine, even occasionally annoying and time consuming, getting a shot hasn't quite lost its luster yet. I'm still in slight awe of that tiny bottle of viscous goo.
It's hard to concretely connect that bottle to my own body. Part of the seduction of this transition for me has been the naturalness of it all. My hairs and muscles and husky voice have come upon me slowly and, though I've been scrutinizing every minute of transition, I've still had a pervading sense of normality throughout it all.
I know that a lot of transguys are frustrated and/or saddened by the 'necessity' of transition. They feel themselves men (or boys) and they want the rest of the world to know it, and they want the bodies to match. They don't want the transition process, with all its awkwardness and pauses and tensions and uncertain waiting.
For me, I've felt very much like this is normal in every way. I know intellectually that I'm inducing this masculine puberty, that it's the golden oil slipped into my muscle every other week that's making all this happen. But it feels to me like I couldn't be any other way, and it's a reassuring, solid comfort.
I feel very normal, and not at all a stranger in a strange body, as I'd once worried might happen. This body is mine and if anything, since I'm happier with it and prouder of it, I'm MORE connected to it, and it's more mine than it's ever been. But because I don't feel strange, I don't really feel like I look or sound much different than I always did. When I look in the mirror, I look like me.
Now, I have to remember that I used to look in the mirror and not really think I looked like me. and sometimes I'm jostled into a comparison, by finding an old picture and forcibly realizing the significant changes in myself.
Also because I think I still look like me, I don't really mind looking at old pictures of myself. I've looked basically the same- boyish/effete/slightly butch in varying proportions- since 9th grade, and even prior to that there was only a very brief period in middle school when I did the long hair/tight shirts thing. Those are the pictures that don't really look like me. My little kid pictures, though one could say they show a little girl, definitely show me, and I'm proud of them. I feel very glad and lucky that I'm comfortable with my photo history.
Pictures when you can clearly tell I have breasts (such as those from my short lived naked parade organizing days my first year of college) weird me out a little now, since it feels so normal not to have them. But other than that, and the few weird lipstick/long hair shots from 7th and 8th grade, I feel like my historical self rings true with my current self. Take a picture of the bow-and-arrow-crazed kid swinging from a treehouse and a picture of me now, in my tweed, tiny silver earrings glinting behind fuzzy sideburns, and the evolution is obvious. Who else would that kid have grown up to become?
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In other news, I've started using some new stuff, Palmer's Scar Serum, on my chest as of last week. I noticed that my nipples were looking really dried out/flaky, and I ran out of Mederma sometime in December and hadn't gotten any more, so I thought it might be time to try something new. It's a bit oily, so that it stays sticky on my chest for a while, but even in the week that I've been using it I can tell that it's keeping my scars and nipples nice and moisturized, and I think it's going to do good things for them. It's got five different ingredients- vitamin 8 (something like 24,000 units), cocoa butter, shark liver oil, something else, and onion extract, which is also in Mederma. Too soon to tell for sure, of course, but it's definitely making my scars happy, and they continue to fade, in fact are downright white/clear in spots, so I'm excited about that. I've taken some recent pictures- I'll try to post them soon.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Happy Holidays
I'm home for the holidays, without much internet access, but so glad and thankful to be home surrounded by my loving family. Merry Christmas to all!
Monday, December 18, 2006
gym vole
Got out on my fire escape for a little while on Sunday, it was so nice and warm. Or eerily, unseasonably warm, I suppose. Still, felt good to be out in just a tank on a mussed, lazy, unshaven sunday afternoon. Later that day (see below) it got cool and very blue just after sunset. It was hot hot in my room- overactive radiator- so it felt good to lean against the chilly glass. You can see my scars are fading.
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I think I'm emerging from what was a rather sedentary autumn, and thinking that it might be nice to hit up the gym for a while. I'm starting to get just a touch of a spare tire 'round my middle, and while there's a big part of me that thinks I'd look just fine as a hairy little cub of a bear with a cute little belly, there's also a part of me that wants to see if (now that I've got all this lovely testosterone slapping muscle on my frame) I couldn't make something of a musculature for myself this winter. There's no good reason not to go to the gym- no time, maybe, but I spent less than an hour there today, and I feel good about it. It'll give me more energy, too, I hope.
I try not to be self conscious when I'm there. I don't worry about being read as male- my flat chest/sideburns/etc pretty much take care of that for me. I'm still conscious of the fact that I don't look like most of the guys there, though, in terms of body shape. I'm still short, wide-hipped, soft edges where plenty of them (and not just the studly hardbodies, but the relatively ordinary looking guys, too) have hard edges.
Didn't have any worries with the locker room- just kept my boxer briefs on and figured that no on would look too close and notice the lack of a bulge. Though that didn't stop me from (as I often, perhaps comulsively sometimes, do) rehearsing things to say in the event that someone not only noticed but actually mentioned it to me. "Traumatic childhood prank gone awry...don't really want to talk about it...just promise me you won't ever mix firecrackers and a wetsuit, okay?"
It helps to get out of my head sometimes and remember- as was especially evident at the gym, once I really looked around- that everyone else is equally trapped inside their own heads, and generally are NOT constantly measuring and evaluating and judging me. I may be a slightly pudgy, short dude puffing away on the elliptical machines (and the only guy on the ellipticals!) but that's fine. No worries.
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This gym-going might be part of a bevy of 2007 self-improving habits. Learn how to self-inject, start doing my shots weekly; go to the gym, get some muscles; start washing my face with something so as to try not to look quite so much like an acne-riddled teenager; keep shopping at farmer's markets and cooking with the seasons and eating nicely; give away clothes that are too big or too small for me; learn how to trim my sideburns into something a little more interesting than these standard rectangles- perhaps finally grow out those muttonchops I've been threatening?
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Last but not least, I'm going to leave you with a pair of silly, exhibitionist items.
My voice has been dropping again, and you can check out my last few exceedingly goofy voice posts [click here] Also, I believe I said something about belly hair? Not that you can really see it, and not like I was tryng to be all Casanova in open white shirt, and not that I can actually believe I'm actually photographing my body hair for internet consumption, but...there you have it.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
the gimper
This past tuesday I got my shot of testosterone at Callen Lorde, and instead of getting it in the butt as usual, the nurse injected me in my right thigh. We'd been talking about injecting , and coming to the clinic to get my shots as opposed to maybe starting the process of self-injecting. As it stands, the party line for the youth clinic is that you need to come in and receive your shots from them for the first year, after which you can be trained to administer them yourself and do them at home.
There are plenty of reasons to self-inject, not least of which is the ability to control one's own dosage schedule, as well as avoiding the necessity of going down to C-L every other week and waiting in the office for my appointment. It's not as much of a hardship as all that- only takes me 30 mins to get down there from home or work, and when everything's running smoothly it's only a 15 minute interaction. However, it is an extra trip to Chelsea every two weeks on top of my usually weekly visits to see Amy, my therapist, whom I see early enough in the morning that the clinic isn't open to give me my shot at the same time. Also, the clinic is perpetually busy and running behind and overbooked, which means getting an appointment can be difficult, I can only be on a biweekly schedule, due to said appointment scarcity, and I often end up waiting 45 minutes in the waiting room for a 7 minute clinical encounter. Which can be frustrating.
So this Tuesday, while we talked about that, the nurse said she'd inject me in my thigh, since that's where they teach patients to self-inject. Apparently it's a three-part tutorial, where the first time they go through all the motions slowly and deliberately, showing you each part of the process (how to draw up the T into the syringe, how to swab down, where to place the needle, etc) but still do it for you. The second time, they let you try it yourself, but still step in to guide when necessary. The third time, they have you do it all by yourself while they watch to make sure you're doing it right, and if you are, then you pass, you get needles and your bottle of T and you're sent off into the wild blue yonder with instructions to come back every once in a while for old time's sake (and bloodwork). She also told me that they teach you to inject in the thigh since you can't twist around and see your butt very well by yourself, and so there's a greater danger of doing it wrong and hitting a nerve or something equally dreadful.
So she had me sit down, and jabbed me in the right thigh, and it was fine! The first time I've ever seen the needle actually going in, and it was easy- she moved it slowly slowly towards my leg, and carefully stucj it in, pulled back a bit to make sure she wasn't in a vein/artery, then plunged the T in. Kinda neat, and totally painless...I didn't feel a thing at all.
Sweet! I thought. The butt is reputed to be less painful, but while plenty of my butt shots have stung a tiny bit, this shot hurt not one whit.
Famous last words.
Getting on the subway a few minutes later, I noticed that I could feel a little bit of cramping in my thigh, felt like normal muscle soreness, as though I'd worked out too hard the day before. Nothing too bad, though, until the next day when I woke up and my leg was afire with crampy stabby pain. It actually seemed to be lower than where the injection had gone in, and was weirdly centered around my knee. In fact, it felt scarily similar to the pain I'd had a few years ago when I busted up my knee playing basketball and had to wander around with a brace and crutches and a prayer for my over-stretched medial collateral ligament.
I don't think intra-muscular shots can affect ligaments, so I don't think it was anything troublesome, especially since there was no redness or swelling or heat. I'm pretty sure that it was just the T painfully being absorbed by my quad muscle, which is in no way used to having a viscous, slow-disolving liquid forced into and through it, and that (since the quad is what makes my knee work) is why it hurt like the devil to bend my knee all day Wednesday, and hurt like the dickens all day Thursday, and hurt only a tiny little bit on Friday. Today, Saturday, it doesn't hurt at all until I bend my knee alllll the way back, like I'm stretching. Wednesday, when it was the worst, I stuck a heating pad on it for most of the night (and Ben brought me ice cream) that that helped.
Still, I don't know what that was all about, exactly, but it sucked. A lot. There is no way that I'm going to deal with that much pain every other week, let alone every week, which is what I'd planned- if I switch to self-injecting, I'd like to try going weekly. I know plenty of guys self inject into their butts, and they don't all have nerve damage, so it must be possible to safely do. And I know plenty of guys inject into their thighs every week without crippling, limp-inducing pain for three days. Maybe it's just the first one that hurts the worst? Maybe that was just an unlucky shot?
Also, I've been reading about more and more guys switching to subcutaneous injections, so just under the skin instead of all the way into the muscle. It's a lot easier, since you don't have to go as deep, and you can use shorter, thinner needles, and there are more possible injection sites. It's also newer, so less understood/tested, with possible unknown effects, as well the possibility of less effective absorption.
I dunno. Maybe I want this to be easier than it is? I don't want the hassle of going to C-L for shots, and I want to be able to do them weekly, but I don't want the sort of pain that came with this thigh-shot method. Hopefully, easier ground can be reached.
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That being said, I haven't done any of the sort of body part breakdown of T effects in quite a while, but needless to say, everything is still as expected and going well. Maybe if I can get my belly hair to show up on my camera I'll post a few shots here. Lucky you!
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
flesh and blood
A little piece of community parlance that's recently been getting very much under my skin is the term "bio-" as a prefix, as in the term "bio-boy" to distinguish non-trans men from the trans folks. I know it's common usage, along with "genetic girl" and other (often alliterative) such terminology, but it really annoys me, similarly to the way that I'd be annoyed if someone said "Wow, Eli, you look like a real guy now that you've got such bushy sideburns!" Invalidating and hurtful, right? I am a real guy. I am real.
Likewise, I'm a 'biological' guy, too...I've got a body, and everything that goes with it, and to distinguish me from other men by calling some of them 'bio' makes me feel a bit like a freak, and I don't need it. All of our identities and bodies are medicalized anyway...where do you think the lines come from the demarcate men from women? They're not as firm as everyone would have you believe, and I know that all masculinities are constructed, so I don't need to feel like mine is a cyborg variety and others have the "real" deal when that privileges non-trans men in a way that I'm at all comfortable with.
I'm not saying that lines cannot be drawn- I'm not asking anyone to turn a blind eye to the differences between my experience and that of a non-trans man, or to try to pretend that we're the same, when we're not, and I wouldn't want to be.
I'm fine with terminology like trans and non-trans, and I quite like (no doubt because of the neat chemistry allusion) transgender and cisgender, like the cis and trans bits of molecules that align in different ways to create different substances. And I'm pretty okay with xx-guy and xy-guy, though I think dividing us up by our chromosomes can be an odd thing when most folks have never had their chromosomes tested. I assume that I'm xx, but I really don't know, for sure.
I just don't like the use of bio-guy because it sets up a dichotomy that posits me as non-biological, so not-real, not-alive. I am very much alive.
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Likewise, a frustration with folks who admire trans folks and feel the need to preface the compliment with their non-trans status, as though in a misguided attempt to make it a better compliment. I'm thinking in particular of various online communities (of which I may or may not be a member *ahem*) that exist essentially as vanity exercises, like ftmundressed or what have you, wherein transguys post pictures of themselves (in this particular instance, in various states of undress) and then other folks can comment appreciatively.
While I'm under no illusions as to the self-aggrandizement and ego-boosting that these communities are essentially centered around, I do think they provide a couple of useful purposes. I don't know if I can speak for all transfolks, but I have to say that there's a lot of negative self-image shit that has come along with being trans for me, much of it bound up very specifically in my body. Pretty much the only self-esteem issues I've ever had have been explicitly connected to being trans, and so a little ego-boosting now and again can be a good, soul-nurturing endeavor. Level the playing field, a bit, you know? Some positive feedback to combat all the negative stuff that is generated internally and also fed through society's representation of transness.
Also, it's a great thing to see other trans guys looking happy and health and sexy- it's a great way to get a good idea of the breadth of transmasculinity, and the possibilities and options of transition, and get some reassurance that being trans doesn't equal unhappy, ugly, unsexy, busted. From a research-into-transition options perspective, it's nice to see what T or surgery or whatnot has done for other guys, to make my own process less mysterious/daunting.
And it's just a great all-around reclaim our bodies as sexy and positive instead of varying degrees of uninhabitable, which seems to be the party line that most trans folks start at.
Although it's worth noting that there is a whole other set of issues that I am trying hard not to develop around being part of such a community- namely, feelings of inadequacy with regards to being "trans enough", or having had the right kind of surgery, or whether my sideburns are coming in as quickly or thickly as the next guy, etc. It's a little ironic, perhaps to come away with more and/or new insecurities from a group that theoretically is for the good of my self-esteem, but there are moments (his scars are less noticeable than mine! he's got such awesome abs! he's so well-endowed!). Usually, though, such moments are few and far between, and the body-positiveness of such places shines through in a great way...particularly because the feedback is almost always enthusiastic, plentiful and very positive.
Which leads me nicely back to the place where I started off on this whole thing in the first place, which is the annoyance that flares up when a non-trans commenter gives feedback along the lines of "Wow, you're so hot! I'm a gay bio-guy, and I'd totally jump you in a second!"
I'm sure said commenter meant well, but what I hear is "i'm surprised, because despite the fact that I've been led to believe that trans guys are really just unattractive mannish women, you look enough like my idea of what a real man is supposed to look like that even I, an actual man who's usually attracted to other actual men, am attracted to you! because I can pretend that you're really a man!"
which is, y'know, probably just me being too sensitive, but also...c'mon. can't you just say he's hot, and leave your own gender out of it?
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these thoughts are leading me to other thoughts, which maybe I'll have time to return to in the future- some about discussions I've been vaguely party to about people variously known as 'transsensual' or (ick ick ick) 'tranny chasers.' As first reaction is that there's nothing wrong with my trans status making me more attractive to someone, but I have no interest in my transness being the sole reason that someone wants to date aka fetishize me. But certainly it's a topic that could use a lot more inquiry.
Also, while I'm chattering away about bodies and vanity and self-esteem, have I mentioned lately how happy I am with my physical self? I mean, now that I've gotten the big stuff taken care of, I've got time to notice/whine about the little things, like my acne, that are annoying or make me feel unattractive. But I want to put it out there that I feel awesome about myself and my body these days. I haven't had a body-based freak out in months (if you don't count the Evil Nipple-Tweaking Milkmaid incident from Halloween), and for the first time in my life I consistently take stock of myself and am pleased with what I find. I look good, and I think I look good, and that feels...well...pretty good.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Doctor's Orders
Anyway, he left me a message saying that he wants to talk to me before calling her back, so that he knows my boundaries, and what he can and can't and should and should discuss with her, etc. A very pro-active, thoughtful and respectful thing for him to do, and I'm very glad that he did it. I feel duly empowered.
The trouble is, I'm not sure what to tell him.
I've got an inclination to ask him to say whatever it is he thinks will get me my 300 bucks from the union. Trouble with that strategy is that I've really got no idea what exactly would be the most effective strategy.
One way would be to pretend I'm female, and that I needed to have a "reduction" done for some sort of medical reason- backpain and history of breast cancer are the two most common ones used. That would be pretty much fraudulent on every count, though, since I'm not female, had no back pain due to my breasts (unless you count from hunching/binding to hide them), and have no history of cancer (thankfully).
I could also try to present it as thought I'm a non-trans male with "excess" breast tissue that needed to be removed...gynecomastia, I think, is the usual term. Which is more accurate in some ways, since I basically did feel that I had excess breast tissue that wasn't appropriate for me as a male, and so I had it removed.
But there's also the fact that I'm pretty sure Dr. Brownstein filled in the form with "transgenderism" as the reason for my surgery. I'm not certain, though, since I foolishly had him fill it out and send it right back to the Union, rather than through me so I could see what he put.
That right there might have doomed me, since most health insurances as a matter of course routeinely deny anything that's associated with Gender Identity Disorder or Transgenderism or any such diagnosis. Which is frustrating, if you think about it, seeing as how insurance companies (and other authority figures) often require a diagnosis in order to grant any sort of validity, but then turn right around and exclude anyone with those diagnoses from insurance coverage or non-discrimination policies like the ADA.
So, what to do, assuming that the union knows that I'm trans? (which, well, duh. not just Dr. B's form, but also the fact that I changed my name from Emmalyn Cassandra to Elliott John, and also the fact that my original membership form says F but all my stuff now says M, etc- and a note on that, now...sometimes I wonder if maybe it wouldn't have been easier to lie more on some of my forms when I was often being read as male but before I had the ID to back myself up. I often wasn't asked for ID or, even when the telltale F was presented, it was often overlooked. sure, I would've been perjuring myself, but really, it would just have been preemptively telling the truth. and it might've saved me some trouble now.)
I think there's two approaches we can take- there's what I think of as the Classic Transsexual Model, such as it is...so, talk about how it's Medically Necessary For Transsexuals To Have Chest Surgery, and how I was in Intense Emotional Distress, and this is a Necessary Step in the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care, and I had to do this for my own good. so I could be Normal.
which, while it has elements of truth in it (I do feel more normal now than I have in a long time), is also a fucked-up narrative that I feel a little icky for taking part in and perpetuating. I don't know that I was in intense emotional distress (though this might just be my penchant for downplaying my own troubles talking), and I certainly don't believe that it's necessary for all trans folks to have surgery and/or follow the SOC in order to be respected and believed and validated in their selves and identities. And I think it's dangerous to perpetuate that model, and why it may be dangerous to have trans health regulated by the insurance industry...we may end up with slight victories (insurance coverage!) at perhaps great cost (only if you fit the appropriate rubric!). Such as the policy in NYC about changing one's birth certificate...the Board of Health (bastards!) voted down the recommendations to allow less rigid guidelines about what's necessary before issuing a new birth certificate, so as it stands, trans bodies (our own physical bodies) are being regulated by the state- no new birth certificate unless you've drastically, expensively, and who-knows-how-successfully modified your genitals, according to THEIR notion of what's necessary in order to be a transperson. Not even what's necessary to be just a "man" or a "woman" but still, because they won't issue an entirely new document but rather an 'amended' document, a "transsexual" as defined by the state. Urk.
But, back to me and my union.
You can see why I'm wary about participating in/perpetuating these "medically necessary" notions, but at the same time... I do believe that this chest surgery was a medically necessary procedure for me, as part of my own personal medical transition. I really needed to have surgery in order to feel whole (ironic! scars signify not absence or loss but gain of self!), and I believe that surgery costs themselves should've been covered, as well as time out of work.
I'm not fighting on the surgery itself front (oh I wish, though!) but I am going to fight this fight about time off of work.
Sooo....I think I'm going to ask Dr. V to say that I'm a ftm transman under his care, that he's supervising my transition, that chest surgery was a medically necessary part of my transition. If they need to know if it was causing me pain/distress, then yes, it was.
--
I hope this works. I'm tired of fighting. Though I better not be, since I'm sure this ain't my last fight.
I'm wondering if this is going to affect my chances/opportunities to have a hysterectomy one of these days. Hopefully not. Not that I'm sure I want to have a hysto, but it seems like probably an inevitability, given everything I've heard about PCOS and endometriosis and the effects of long term T on one's bits, and the ever-diminishing likelihood that I'll ever be able to use those bits for anything ever again, so why not get rid of 'em?
It seems so long ago, though it was only August- I'm straining now to remember details, like the day of, getting back to the hotel still wearing the anti-clotting stockings, and trying to stay awake through a Project Runway marathon. And my new blue pajamas that I wore for days! and the flowers that Rochelle sent me the day after surgery. (see left for picture proof, with bonus hotel room background)
And how I was hunching over for a few days afterwards, keeping one hand on my chest, semi-convinced that things would just...fall off, if I straightened up or took my hand off my sternum. Though now I think maybe it's just that the binder was a little loose, and would slip, and make me worry. (as evidenced to the right, with bonus cable car in the background- yay, San Fran!)
And the first peek that I got at my chest, back in Portland, holding the binder away from my chest, and my worried feelings about looking...well...ravaged. Bruised/taped/scabby. It was a bit scary that first night I saw it, honestly. I didn't want to admit it for the world, of course, because being scared sounds like regret and not for one second ever have I regretted this. But I was for a while worried and scared and wondering "what did I just do to myself?" when I couldn't life my arms and everything was sore and swollen and different.
It seemed like it'd take forever to get better, but now, barely four months later (four months nearly to the day, actually), I feel fine and fantastic- fit as a fiddle and ready for love!
youtube!
Haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet, but there's a video on YouTube with Jamison Green and Calpernia Addams, apparently talking about coming out, etc? I'll give a review later, after I get a chance to watch it.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vPBLYBIo0uw
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Transmania
Wow, seems like everywhere you look these days, trans folks are in the New York Times! Seems like there was a slew of articles a little while ago, about birth certificate changes, and my friend Ray being profiled...and I remember back in August or some such, there was a Sunday Styles article called "When Jane Becomes Jack" or something similar, and then now today there's this article, about young children with non-normative gender identity.
I'm delighted and pleased to hear that parents are being supportive of their children- I'm all in favor of supporting gender diversity. It's also making me think about myself and the gender of my childhood. I certainly felt supported throughout my upbringing (thanks mom!) as a very boyish child- I wore dresses sometimes without much fuss, I think, but I also had my hair cropped very short for most of my life. Until middle school, when I went with the flow for a while and tried to "be" a "girl" by growing out my hair and wearing more form fitting clothes, etc.
Makes me realize a couple of things, though- for one, I didn't have a very strong gender identity when I was a kid. I knew I liked to be the knight and not the princess, but I didn't have strong "I'm a boy!" or even "I'm not a girl!" feelings until my teen years. (Which I speak of so distantly, but were not in fact so very long ago!) I guess, like my sexuality, I just didn't think about it much until it became an issue. It never occured to me to argue with the world, which told me I was a girl, in part because being a girlchild wasn't very oppressive for me- I still felt like I could do whatever I wanted, wear my hair short, be the knight, etc.
Any feelings of difference I had separating myself from my peers felt like they were due at least as much to my intelligence and nerdiness as to any sort of gender issues...though I certainly did get my share of "are you a boy or a girl?" on the playground.
Someone posted on an online forum recently something along the lines of his slow discovery, as he has more and more experience with public manhood, that his female history and experience as a "girl" was very unlike the experience most girls and women have. That really resonates with me.
I don't claim a lifelong masculine identity because the fact is, I wasn't proclaiming my maleness from childhood. I was very boyish, and something that's helped my family, I think, has been being able to reflect on my childhood and think about "what a little boy" I was.
The way I see it, I was a kid (and in my world, that meant being pretty genderless, though as far as it goes, I was a boyish kid) and then I was a dyke, and then I was (and still am) a queer guy. I started thinking about my gender pretty much as soon as I started thinking about my sexuality, though not so publicly. I realized I liked girls pretty suddenly at about age 12, and it was one of those things where I had a realization, and then the more I thought about it, the more it seemed reasonable. I like girls. Awesome. I must be gay!
With my gender, it was very similar- just took a lot longer and was a lot harder, in no small part because being trans is in a lot of ways a lot more complicated than being queer. At least for me, being gay was something I could readily latch onto. No sweat. Being trans was something enormous and mysterious that I had to wrestle with for a long time to really figure out and go forward with.
Someone else wrote on that same online FTM forum about feeling like their old self had died, was gone. And I know a lot of families have feelings of grief, feelings of losing their sons/daughters who become these new, differently gendered people. I don't feel like any part of me has died, though- but nor do I feel like I'm "still the same person inside!" as the opposite line of thinking often goes.
Who the hell is the same person at 21 that they are at 13? That's when I started thinking about my gender. I feel like I've grown up, I've discovered thing about myself, and I'm expressing myself more clearly and honestly. I don't feel like I'm a new person, just a changed one.
This post is meandering, I'm not sure where. Childhood! Neither the same nor new on the inside! I had a childhood, not a girlhood or a boyhood!
Since this isn't a particularly unified line of reasoning, I guess I'll go back to the article one more time, to Kenneth Zuckerman's assertion that most kids grow out of their non-normative gender behaviors and identities. (Just a throwaway- I saw him speak once, with Judith Butler. It was a validating moment for me, genderwise, as I realized that I wanted to think like her and look like him, and so this was probably a good decision after all.)
I'm not sure what to make of that. I don't think it's necessarily a good thing for kids to grow out of non-normative gender behaviors. If anything, I grew into mine. So is the moral to take away that not all gender nonconforming children are/will be transgender adults? I'd like to think that more gender nonconforming children might be a good thing, regardless of any potential trans futures. Children with strong gender identities (normative or otherwise) should be supported in them, and children (like me) who are just carrying on being themselves (normatively gendered or otherwise!) without much thought about it should be supported, as well. The future should not be seen as absolute, either way...we should recognize that gender identities are flexible and fluid and certainly aren't fixed by childhood.
