GenderBendy

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!

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?  :-)

Momentum

Got an electrolysis appointment next week to begin to finish beard-removal.  Got an endocrinologist appointment too, to talk about hormones.  Had a counseling appointment with my children, and my counselor said at the end she is completely comfortable taking their word that they are fine with my gender plans.

Furthermore, I'm going to be prominently featured in an article in the Phoenix coming out next Wednesday (with a photo of my current gender-ambiguous look), the same day that I'm Deb's guest on Lesbian Radio on WMPG.  I'm going to be very publicly out next week.

What is this:  an attempt to make myself do something I'm not actually sure about, by telling everyone, so I have to go through with it? 

No.

Every time I try to doubt, that implacable answer comes back.  I want to be a woman. 

And, it appears, no one is going to stop me.

It's the endo appointment that scares me.  As early as next week I could be taking my first estrogen pills.  Will I do it?  I want to, but I'm afraid...and also sad about the slow passing away of old male self.  I made a good man for a long time.  I wish I could have gone on being that man.  He wasn't real, but he was worthy...and he is worthy of being mourned, and I am mourning him.

I can always wait a little while before taking that first pill...and I think I do want to try to do that.  (Shh...don't wake her up...)

Yeah, there is this sense of dual self sometimes:  I feel like the wary parent of an exceptionally emotional and willful child.  Parent-self does feel feminine, but does not need to insist on that; child-self is all girl, and ready to throw a tantrum at any moment:   IMAGIRLIMAGIRLIMAGIRLIMAGIRL...  I hope that, as my inner parent continues to learn to better nurture and direct the energy of my inner child, and as my inner child continues to learn both to trust my inner parent and to govern her own passions a little, my one deeper self will begin to emerge...as whole and complete a woman as I can be.

There is an outcome here which I have hardly dared imagine, but which begins to really seem possible:  I am a convincing natural woman in the world, and in love with someone who is in love with me, and I've not hurt anyone, and I'm happy.  And now since my daughter has company over, I'm going to have to go into the bathroom to cry.

Steps

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday, which I had made weeks ago because of the persistent redness on my neck from my first electrologist.  That was just to get me in the door, though...my real reason was to take her measure as a possible transition-ally.  When I broached the subject she told me she has had other trans patients, and was matter-of-factly open to working with me, if very brisk...she was running an hour late and wanted to try to catch up with her schedule, I think.  I asked if she was going to be around for a while...some of the doctors in that clinic are just passing through...and she said yes.

She asked if I was on hormones yet, and I said I wasn't, and she asked if I wanted a referral to an endocrinologist, and I opened my mouth and said "yes."  I had been thinking of waiting until summer to start hormones, but that's just an arbitrary plan from back when I told my children that I was planning to transition.  And even if I do go see this endo soon, it doesn't mean I have to immediately start taking the pills.  Still, I'm moving toward that first consult, and that is a step.

After the appointment I fetched my children, who were hanging out at the music store (they're on vacation this week) and took them home, and when we got here I really wanted to be dressed femme.  So far when they are here I've felt OK about going back into drab for them, but this time I asked them each separately if it would bother them if I put on slightly more feminine comfy-clothes than they were used to seeing, and they both made faces (twisted mouth, eyes averted) but said OK, so I went into my room and put on the soft white hip-hugger pants with the flare below the knee which Ardis gave me, and the black scoop-neck sweatshirt with red and white flowers crocheted on it.  Plus I still had the mini-aubergine earrings in I had already been wearing, and one of my new Rayon-disguised-as-natural-fiber Indian scarves, and I took off my stocking cap and let my hair fall forward...and we had an evening.  After the first few minutes there was normal conversation, joking...I think they were both a little uncomfortable, but it went all right. 

A big step actually.  I've been pondering for some time how to take it, and in the end, as with coming out at work a few weeks ago, I found myself in a moment which felt right, and acted. 

I have a new question I ask myself these days, not just around being trans, but in all my interactions with others:  What do they need?  Not, what do I want in order to feel I have been helpful, but how can I really help them?  Right now I think my children really need the opportunity to safely express what they are feeling.  I have offered them counseling in the past, and they've declined.  Last week I made an appointment with my counselor for this coming Friday and told my dear offspring that I want them to accompany me. I really want to get them talking, and I am, I hope, prepared for them to express hurt or fear or anger or sorrow...if these are feelings they are feeling.  If they do, I expect I will feel very bad, and it will no doubt slow me down...but I don't think it will stop me.  I can't think of anything non-catastrophic which could stop me now.

Fashion experiments at work and home

Thursday at work I wore the soft blue androgynous top and matching stocking cap and the mini-aubergine earrings...moderate dangle, no sparkle.  Catching my reflection in windows and such, I still looked like same the old Dave everyone's used to.

Yesterday I left the cap at home and let my hair fall loose and fluffy over my ears.  I also wore my favorite antiquey-chandelier earrings - significant dangle, moderate sparkle - and a short soft-and-fuzzy wool scarf in gender-neutral light tones, and when I caught my reflection, I was snapping more femme.  It's the hair, mostly...that's such a powerful gender-signifier...although it would look much more femme if I had neatly styled it rather than just roughly patting my bed-head into shape. 

Nobody said anything, except my dear friend Deb just before I left...she confirmed my impression that I was closer to the center line.  It doesn't take much, it turns out, to waltz right up to it.  A touch of lipstick would bump me across.

I wish my hair were thicker... :-(

Anyway, this morning when I woke up I lay in bed pondering the question I ponder every morning:  what to wear?  ...and with some trepidation I decided to go with the same hairdo and earrings, plus the super-fuzzy lamb's wool sweater with the big gold-and-white buttons which my children have already seen me in. 

Why trepidation?  Because my son is still uncomfortable with my femininity, so I have been keeping it under wraps at home, at least with regard to appearance.  I've never held back on how I hold my body and move, and I'm letting my voice wander as it wants across the gender divide, with sometimes curious results.  But out of respect for his ambiguous feelings, when he is around I have maintained consistent drab (man-clothes).

At the same time I'm agonizing all the time about how to talk to him.  We have a close and loving relationship, but we don't converse very well.

So, my dressing choice this morning was actually a parenting choice.  I have elected to wear what I want to wear - what I wore in public yesterday - and to let him deal with it as he sees fit.  He's up...I can see him at his computer from where I sit at my computer...and we've had some light chat, about coffee and so on.  His eyes were elusive...but then they often are.  I feel self-conscious, bashful, and vulnerable, but I'm going to play it out. 

Maybe he hasn't even really noticed.  And even if he has, maybe he doesn't care.  And even if he does, maybe small steps like this will impel conversation, and that would be good.  Anything's better than a Talk.

[Note added 5 minutes after original posting:  my son just noticed my earrings.  "Nice earrings," he remarked.  "Why thenk you," I replied, striking a pose.  "They're my favorites."  Then he started joking around about something else.  Yay!  :-)  Once again I re-learn what I have already learned so many times before, that the subtle setting of tone is at the very center of parenting...and that this can not be faked or forced.  Their moods resonate to mine like unstopped guitar-strings...]

An astonishing gift

Earlier this week my older sister Sus sent me a couple of photos she took of me in 1979, when I was 17.  It was on a winter's day at the Los Alamos, New Mexico ice rink.  When I saw the first picture, the full-body shot here, I burst into tears. 

Oh my, I thought, that's me.  There I am.

To explain why these pictures have affected me so deeply, I need to mention again that I only became consciously aware of my trans identity a year ago.  When these shots were taken I considered myself, as did everyone around me, to be a boy. 

True, I did wear my hair long from about age 8 on.  At the time I couldn't explain why...it came out of a wordless feeling of defiance.  By age 17 I had stoically endured almost a decade of taunts, presumptuous observations, and double-takes in bathrooms.  I had heard hundreds of times "you look like a girl"...but I never consciously agreed with that observation.  If pressed for a reason, I made something up about counter-culture non-conformity.

In retrospect, my unconscious response was a contemptuous, "Duh...I am a girl."  

Why couldn't I see that?  Why couldn't anyone see?  Not once in my first 46 years did I ever look in a mirror or at a photograph and see what seems so obvious here--a truth so plain and yet so strange it remained invisible to me, and to those who loved me.

These pictures are for me a proof I have still felt I needed of my trans identity.  Coming to this knowledge so far along in life, naturally I have doubted, I have second-guessed...has this really been true since the beginning?  It was all so long ago, and I have done and felt so many mannish things.  I have mistrusted my memory and accused myself of wishful thinking, of bending the truth to fit what I have feared is actually just a wild whim or a phase.  But look...look at the natural girl I was, without even trying.  There I am, shining out, as my sister put it, through the boy-flesh. 

And, hey...I'm pretty.  I was taught that it is wrong to care about that (something I want to write more about some day), but I do, and not just for memory's sake.  It gives me hope for the future.  When I transition, I do so want to be a pretty woman...and for the first time I feel I might have a chance at that.  My heart leaps up at the thought. 

If that's shallow, so be it.  I was there, and I am here, and I am real...and I do feel that I deserve now to step out into the light.

With all my heart, Sis Sus, thank you.

Engaging Senator Nass

I was out this morning (in male mode) as a volunteer for the No On 1 campaign, asking folks at the Cornish Apple Festival to sign cards pledging to help preserve Maine's new law allowing same sex couples to marry by voting against the people's veto of that law which will be on the November ballot.  I approached a distinguished-looking gentleman of late middle age who was standing watching the crowd.  He had a conservative haircut, intelligent eyes, and a superior expression.  He agreed to give me a minute, so I went into my spiel.

"Hi, I'm Dave, I live in Wells, and I'm a volunteer with the No On 1 campaign..."  I got no farther.  He interrupted and told me that he was Richard Nass, my state Senator, that he had voted against the law, and that he would be voting for the "repeal," as he put it.

We're trained to move on if someone says they're a "yes" vote, but this guy was my elected official, so I stayed and engaged him.  I asked him what his objection was.  He had the practiced politician's slipperiness.  He lectured me on the theory of people's vetos, as though the existence of a provision in our state's constitution allowing them meant that all such measures should pass.  He told me he had taken an active role in extending civil rights to non-married couples, as though the playing field has been completely leveled (far from it.)  And he talked about the burden to the state of taking care of "all these children." 

The unspoken prejudice behind this last point seemed clear:  that gay and lesbian couples can't be good parents.  As a trans-parent I found that personally offensive and called him on it, or tried to.  I tried a couple of times.  He wouldn't answer, dodging neatly into tangents about policy.

I found myself really wanting to reach this guy.  I asked him if, as his constituent, I could tell him where I was coming from on the issue.  He said I could, so I told him that I had been married for 16 years as a man to a woman.  That post divorce I'm living in Wells and that my children live with me half time.  That I'm trans and may someday become a woman.  That I'm still attracted to women and may someday want to marry a woman again.  And I asked him, if that happened, if he thought I would no longer be a fit parent, to my own children, to her children, to children we might have together.

He did not answer the question.  Once again he evaded.  By this point I wanted to get away, so I shook Mr. Nass's hand, thanked him for his time, and walked off shaking.  He was standing with another man and I heard one of them say to the other as I passed out of earshot, "Yeah, there's a lot of them here today," and the word them had that unmistakable tinge of smug dismissal it can so easily be given.

I was feeling upset so I called Levi, the campaign coordinator who was leading our little group of canvassers, on his cell phone and asked him to come talk me down.  He came and sat with me on a porch.  He listened to me vent.  He was supportive and helpful...but he also couldn't help smiling a little, watching me struggle to come to terms for the first time at a personal level with the complacent bigotry of the privileged straight white male elite.  What was hardest for me to stomach was how impervious the man was:  ensconced in his comfortable world view, secure in his power, and behind his courteous front clearly contemptuous of me, having in an instant decided who I was. 

I continue to learn what it is to be "other."  It is not pleasant learning, but definitely valuable. 

Besides being given a useful lesson about people and politics, I gathered 21 signatures, identified a new volunteer, changed (apparently) at least one person from a "yes" to a "no", and munched my way through a huge Rome apple so fresh off the tree the dusty bloom was still on it.  All in all, a fruitful morning...ba-ba-boom.  :-)

Uncurling the hand

No new post for more than a week, but that doesn't mean nothing has been happening.  Rather the opposite.  I spent the last week working my way through the new height up the beach of my most recent wave of femme-ache.  Last time I posted I trembled on the edge of telling my children this would be my last year living as a man.  Now I've settled back to a healthier-feeling, more centered place...resolve undiminished, but wary of excessive urgency; practicing mindfulness through meditation again; and, rather than pushing forward, simply trying to hold myself open to the next stage of metamorphosis, whatever it might be, trusting it to happen when it is what must be.

I continue to wrestle with the question of how to balance my needs with those of my children, and this un-driven openness to change seems the best answer.  A deadline by which I will be living full time as a woman frightens me, let alone them.  It provokes anxiety and stress, and anyway, it's stupid...so much can happen, too many variables...how can you set a plan and then follow it blindly in such a complicated situation?  You can't. 

Conversely, I find I am unwilling to resolve to wait, no matter what, until Son14 is out on his own...the want is too strong.  I have discovered, it seems, at long last, a limit to my impulse to self-sacrifice.  That said, in the end I might still end up taking long enough to get where I'm going that he will never have to explain to puzzled vice-principals that his dad is now his other mom. 

No, best is to wait, stay open, stay busy, and concentrate always always on loving them, parenting them.  Whether I am a man or woman or in between, they need me.  And what I have found is that, by setting no deadlines, I avoid having to have Talks...instead, through living with me and through the moments of conversation and awareness which naturally arise, they are witnessing my process, participating in it.  I don't have to Tell them anything.  They are smart, observant, open-hearted children.  They can see for themselves and ask when they need to and, in the end, find their own answers.

And I find, I don't feel required to feel guilty about that, even though it could be hard for them.  I am as I am.  I did not choose this.  I resolve only to attempt to walk the path before me with as much grace as possible, trusting my children to find their own peace in their own time.  And, to always love them, with all my heart...but that doesn't require resolution.  I do love them will all my heart, naturally, helplessly, and I always will. 

Resolve, earrings, and bowling

I have made up my mind: I intend to transition, and I am moving circumspectly but deliberately toward that goal.

The femme ache tracker turned out to be useful only to a point...what I came to realize as I updated it each day was that the way I had set it up, the only way I was going to decide to transition was if I was in constant emotional agony from having to stay male.  What about a positive, life-changing decision freely and joyously made?  This past week, I made such a choice.  It's an emotional decision, more feeling than words, but clear for all that:  I am a woman...I feel no maleness left in me...and I am going to make my outside match my inside.  Not because it will kill me if I don't, but because I want to.  Because I want to feel right in my body, at long last.

As you can see if you care to look in the sidebar to the right, I have changed the name of the tracker.  It no longer tracks ache, but resolve.  I'll keep updating it daily, and I'll be honest if my feelings cycle back again down into doubt and ambivalence...as impossible as that seems to me at the moment, fresh from the crucible of my deliberations...

So once again I find myself planning a talk with my children.  I restrained myself, with effort, this past weekend, counseling myself to patience.  The soonest I would propose to start living as a woman full time would be next summer, so I have plenty of time to ease them into the idea even if I don't stretch the timeline out.  Still, a talk soon would be a good idea, I think...can't let them fall too far behind.  And having had one talk go well, I'm not quite as braced for disaster as I was the first time...and I know the value of friendly ears and minds in the rehearsal and planning stages and will make good use of them again this time.

I roll my eyes at my own compulsive caution...but it is my way, and I embrace it.  I want to come to my goal knowing I did everything I could to help them through an evolution which must seem to them bizarre at the very least.

And then there's the fact that I've mentioned this blog to daughter17...hi sweetie, if you're reading this let me know...we need to have a talk.  No!  Ya think!? 

On a lighter note, I'm going bowling tonight in full femme mode with the Maine Trans Net crew...after an  excursion to the mall to put at least one pair of dangly earrings on a credit card...my six weeks of training studs are up tomorrow!  Yay!  :-)  It will be my first time dressed at the mall, and that's supposed to be a big right of passage, but based on how well I've been passing I expect it to be routine.  I'm a little more nervous about the bowling...anxious about encounters with rude men...but I'll have my boys there to protect me... :-)