GenderBendy

Quite the gala evening

Last Saturday night on a freebie ticket from a friend of a friend I attended EqualityMaine's annual awards dinner at the Holiday Inn in Portland.  I wasn't sure how toney this event would be so my outfit combined formal and more casual elements:  the gorgeous green brocade top Sis Sus gave me, over my still-new-and-dark jeans, over those reliable old standbys my Walmart open-toed black pumps...plus the new pink pink scarf, my most dangly dangly earrings (and a few other pieces of jewelry), and full but (I hope) classily subdued makeup.  My hair is long enough now that I can just wear it loose to good effect.  I specifically wanted to look not dressed in drag.  I was going for straight elegant femme, and I believe I came close to pulling it off.  Yay!  :-)  As it turned out jeans were underdressy, but not too bad. 

Anyway...

The crowd was all ages but skewed 35 and older, prosperous-looking, and overwhelmingly white.  It quickly became apparent that there was a lot of money and power in the room.  (Someone gave me a tip on how to pick out the most influential people...they're the ones not wearing name tags.)  I did not realize until this party how formidable a voting bloc and fund-raising force the LGBT community has become.  There were a couple of dozen state legislators in the room, and a philanthropist or two as well. 

The gender balance was 50-50, and there were lots of touches of cross-dressing (Father Dawn looked particularly sharp in her shirt and tie)...but not many fully cross-dressed as I was.  Which brings up the main question I had going in:  how much T was there going to be really in this LGBT evening?

There was some.  Once or twice specifically trans causes or issues were mentioned.  The bulk of the evening, however, was given over to looking back at the ballot fight for marriage equality, and forward to the next round of that fight.  Now, I whole-heartedly support the rights of any two people to marry who want to...but I also feel compelled to point out that this is more purely an L and G issue than a T one.  To take myself as an example, one very possible outcome of my narrative is being a woman in a committed relationship with a man, all nice and mainstream.  True, there is a confusing variety of definitions from state to state of what constitutes a "man" and a "woman", and I might also end up hitched to another woman, so I definitely do still have a personal stake in this issue.  Just not quite so inevitably as a gay man or lesbian.

Meanwhile, "gender expression" still appears much less often than "sexual orientation" on the lists of reasons for which the nation's multitude of organizations, companies, municipalities, governments, etc. will not discriminate.  I was not legally protected, for example, from being fired for being trans when I worked recently for the U.S. Census.  In important areas trans rights lag behind those of gays and lesbians, and I didn't hear much about that.

That said, I found the evening inspiring.  I felt moved by the individual narratives of some of the award-winners, and marvellously buoyed by the intense sense of community and mutual support in the room.  So, in sum, while I didn't quite feel that I had arrived in the bosom of a new ready-made community, I certainly felt welcomed and included, and had a great time.

Two more fun insights:  Femme mode turns out to be useful for avoiding people I've known as a man and don't want to talk to...one such looked right at me and didn't recognize me at all.  That was good for a secret smile.  And, I not only enjoyed, as I always do, going out dressed as a woman; I also enjoyed going out not dressed as a man.  What a revelation:  I may never have to wear a suit and tie again as long as I live.  Wow.  I can so live with that.  :-)

Some emotional heavy lifting

Thursday afternoon at work an antsiness I had been feeling all day intensified into a need to get away from everyone, to be completely alone.  I went for a walk and after a bit found an empty dark classroom auditorium.  (It's vacation this week).  I sat in the back row and tried to meditate, but I was feeling too agitated; then, exhausted, I napped for about an hour, undisturbed; then I woke again and thought, "I'm not done...I need to remember something," so I curled around the awful empty ache in my stomach, hugging my chest to my thighs, and let my mind go back, searching for the source...and remembered a backpacking trip my father took me on when I was about six.

I have thought and written about this trip before, in pre-revelation counseling, and I have always felt that something emotionally shattering happened during it, but I could never figure out what it was.  Now I think I begin to understand.

Perhaps it goes something like this:

First of all, even before bringing gender into it, I was too young.  He took me up into a huge empty dark place in the mountains when all I had ever known was the lights of home, and I was terrified.  But he had singled me out for this trip - my brother, a year younger, had been deemed too little - so I understood that I was expected to be strong and brave, and I did my best to hide my fear.  We ate dinner as the sky went dark, hung up our food because of the bears, and then it was time to sleep.  When I was in my sleeping bag he told me he needed to go away from the tent for a little while and asked if I would be all right, and I said yes, and he went...and I thought I was going to die. 

I waited and waited, and I heard noises, and then (I swear this is how I remember it) I looked out of the tent and saw a ghostly white figure moving in the dark, and I didn't know if it was my father returning or an emissary of death.

Then he was back. 

I needed him to comfort me, to touch me, to hold me, but he did none of these things.  He did not sense my terror..and I think perhaps in that moment I grasped at some fundamental level deeper than words that he could not see me.  He could not see the girl I knew I was.  He saw me as a boy, expected me and wanted me to be a boy.

And of course like any little girl I loved my Daddy with all my heart, and wanted more than anything to please him...so perhaps that was the moment I made up my mind to be a boy and then a man.  For him.  Because I loved him.

Or something like that.  I am wary of pat psychological reconstructions.  Still, there is a lot here which feels close to truth.

In the empty auditorium, as I worked my way through some version of the above, sobs wrenched out of me.  Anger and pain and sorrow and guilt all mixed together were oozing out deep down, a black emotional sludge from long ago.  It hurt hard.

But then later, washing my face in the mirror, I looked in the mirror and thought, "I forgive him.  And I forgive myself."  Easy, just like that.

Who knows how much of this is accurate or lasting...but it does seem telling.  I thought I was going to die that night in the mountains; and I thought I was going die again when my car's transmission failed on the highway, right around the time I reached the age he was when he died; and it was right after that I wrote in my journal, "I just want to be a girl." 

Too tidy?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Why didn't I die?  I was supposed to die.  Why am I alive?

I don't know.  No reason.  I just am.

So.

So, now I'm going to do what I want.

A tale of two roofers

I wanted to find a good local roofer to fix the damage to my roof from the storm last month, and I had seen that other houses in my neighborhood had been damaged and fixed, so, a couple of weeks ago when I was out walking and saw the owner of one of those houses getting out of his car I called out a "good morning" and he came to talk with me.

He was a young fellow, solidly built, a touch pugnacious but polite.  When I explained what I was looking for he told me that his guy was good but was going to be out of town for the next couple of weeks (odd thing to know about a roofer, I thought...maybe they're friends), but that he had the card of the guy who did the house next door.  I copied down the name and number from the card, thanked him, and continued on.  Then, as I passed his house again a little later, he came back out and gave me a slip of paper with the name and number of his guy after all.  I thanked him once more, shook his hand, and came home to Google the names. 

I checked the name from the card first and found a business listing for a contractor at a local address.  I checked the other (an unusual name, so it was unlikely there were two of them) and found no business listings.  Instead, I found the that second roofer was affiliated with the KKK and had, in my local area, been convicted and had served time for threatening to kill a black man.

So.  I have a neighbor who might be friends with a guy who traffics in hate.  This does not mean, I keep reminding myself, that my neighbor shares his possible friend's views.  Still, I keep feeling anxious about how femme I might have seemed to the man.  I was dressed entirely in man-clothes, but there was still my long dyed hair, plucked eyebrows, and jeweled ear studs.  If he drew a conclusion it was probably that I'm gay, rather than trans...but if he is a basher I know this distinction will not matter to him at all. 

I have not seen or heard anything from my neighbor since our conversation.  It was the first time in three years living in the neighborhood I had talked with him.  He doesn't seem to be around much.  There have been no words, no actions, no threats.  But I am afraid. 

I didn't truly understand when I was a man - I don't suppose most white men do - that the absence of fear is a privilege.  The possibility of violence will always be with me now, because I am trans, and because I will be a woman.  My friend Deb gave me a good word...she said I need to become wary.  I hate that, but I see that it is true, and I am learning. 

One thing though:  I refuse to be ruled by, or silenced by, my fear.  I will be prudent and watchful...I am going to start locking my house, for instance...but I am determined neither to flee nor to live in terror.  I decline to cower.

Easy to say that...hard to do.

Needless to say, with regards to getting my roof fixed, I called the first guy.

Radio pronouns

Back in January I came out at work, which is WMPG, Portland's community radio station, where I am Program Director.  Response from station volunteers to my announcement has been uniformly supportive, which is wonderful. 

This week we're fund-raising, which means I've found myself on air with various different volunteers, some of whom I don't see very often, and in the course of our begging for donations two of them have called me "she".  (In my coming-out e-mail I said male pronouns were fine for the time being.) 

One of those two was an old friend who likes to make a point of things, so I felt sure his "she" was deliberate (and kindly meant).  

The other, though, was from a volunteer I don't know well, and it came fleetingly and unstressed in the full flow of her begging, without facial expression or body-language of any kind, so that I really felt that she had used the word unconsciously...and the only reason I could think for her to do that is that she has at least begun to accept me as female.  It's not the first time I've been surprised by how quickly some people have just switched my M to an F in their minds.

It's funny, though, the timing, because, while I still want to be a woman just as much as ever, for the first time in many weeks I feel free of the drive to get there as fast as possible...I think because I've got it all lined up:  a medical team I trust, children seemingly reasonably comfortable, everyone at work already getting used to thinking of me at least in between.  So now I linger for a bit in what is left of my old maleness, holding off on hormones, honoring the slow passing away of a good old self.

I'm glad that maybe my gender issues can take the back seat for a while.  My daughter is graduating from high school this spring and going off to college in the fall, and that's a big transition.  I haven't been ignoring her, but fair to say I've been preoccupied.  I very much want to be fully present in every minute I have left with her before she heads out into the world to begin her adult life.

And, there's a practical reason for staying male for a little while longer:  I've just gotten hired by the US Census to count transient people, and I'll feel a lot safer doing that with my hair pulled back and a Red Sox cap on than in my current workday earrings-and-scarf combo.  :-)

Bits and pieces

I fear my last post built a little suspense which I have since failed to provide the release for...apologies to anyone who was on tenterhooks.  :-)  My sister was visiting from Colorado over the weekend, and then fund-raising started at my radio station (that number again: 874-3000), so I've not had a second to post again until now.

The setup was, I proposed to change into full femme mode in the bathroom at my work in order to be on a panel at a trans conference taking place across campus, then walk back and change again after.  I did it, and it went all right.  I got one scoff-and-eyeroll, but also some smiles and, my favorite, a truly blasé response from the work study students.  There really does seem to be a generational difference:  people my age and older often seem uncomfortable with my gender non-conformity; people under 30 tend to just roll with it.

The panel was interesting because our audience was mostly health professionals - nurses and counselors and such - and it was clear from the questions that most of them had very little understanding of what it means to be trans.  I'm finishing a query letter and book proposal which I will soon be sending out, trying to get an agent for a memoir, and I find myself feeling newly motivated by the sense I brought out of that session of just how much basic education remains to be done.

While she was here my sister took some pictures of my face for me...front, three quarters, and profile, hair pulled back, no makeup, muscles carefully unsmiling...so I can send them to a woman in the UK who specializes in photoshopping what you could look like after facial feminization surgery.  When I have my before and afters, I will post them here.

My most recent development:  I suddenly found myself today coming out to Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now!  I had called her to record a pitch for our fundraiser, and she remembered me from previous similar conversations and asked about the name change, and there I was stammering my explanation.  She offered congratulations and best wishes, which was very kind of her.  Who knows what might come of that someday?  In any case, yet another proof is one was needed (it wasn't) of my newfound lack of shyness.

One more thing I've been wanting to record here...a couple of weeks ago now my daughter decided after some trepidation to tell her friends at school about my trans identity.  She was a little surprised, I think, at how well it went.  As I understand it one of them laughed, one just nodded, and the third asked a bunch of questions.  Then they gave me a wonderful gift:  another new name to add to my growing collection.  She texted me:  "They've decided to call you Madame Deeve."  With their permission I have changed the spelling, and whatever other name(s) I also end up using, I will proudly answer from now on to Madame D'Yves.  Isn't that elegant?  I love it! :-)  Thank you Sarah and Cheyenne and Sam!

Full femme debut at work today (just for a minute)

There's a transgender conference happening on the USM Portland campus today, where I work, and I have agreed to be on an "ask a trans person" panel.  It's from 1:30 to 3pm.  Originally I was going to take the whole day off to do this, but why?  I don't need all day to change any more...I don't even need an hour.  And I'm totally out at work.  So yesterday I asked my boss if he minded if I changed here at the station before walking over, and he said that would be fine...

...so later today I'll be taking half an hour in the bathroom to shave, do my makeup, put on my skirt and top and pantyhose and heels and jewelry and scarf (not necessarily in that order), and then I'll step out into the hall and get my coat and purse and walk out the front door and across campus. 

Yeah, I have butterflies, but not too bad.

My one unanswered question...should I prep my coworkers, or just appear on the scene?  To prep might be to make too much of it; to just appear might make someone more uncomfortable.  I am pleased to feel that I can trust myself to make the best choice in the moment.

The Breath Before the Plunge

My appointment last week with the endocrinologist went well.  I like him and trust him, and he's ready to write me a prescription for Estradiol as soon as I'm ready to ask for it.

I'm not ready.

I ache as much as ever to be a woman...but this feels like a big step, The Big Step, in fact. The moment of commitment.  Once I start taking those pills the closest light will be up ahead, at the far end of the tunnel, and, knowing myself, I know I will move deliberately forward until I reach it.

So, I pause...and find that I feel drained, exhausted.  Time to rest for a little while, if I can.

While I rest, I continue to grieve the passing away of my old male self, especially at the moment with regard to parenthood.  I have been a good dad, and I will always be the best parent I can be, but I still feel a loss, and I think my children must too, if not now then sometime.  They have called me "Daddio" since they were small, and I love that...I couldn't bear to ask them to stop...but a point will come when out in the world at least, around other people, it won't make sense any more.  A new label will need to be found.

Not yet.  I feel a need to linger now, close to the gender-divide, but still on the male side.  I don't know how long...not just a few weeks, but not years either.  At some point in a small number of months, I guess, it will feel right to call my endo back and set hormone-treatment in motion...and then the rest of the journey will follow.

Meanwhile, work, children, writing...life.  Let's see, what needs to be done next?  :-)