GenderBendy

Night thoughts

10p
"Bonne nuit," l'infirmière a dit. "Good night," said the nurse, making it a gentle teasing command as well as a courtesy, and she turned off all the lights and closed the door. The orderly tiptoed in five minutes later to empty the bulging catheter bag, as Lisa had expressed carefully light anxiety about its fullness to the nurse. She had learned fast to grab her chances to ask for what she needed and to do it in ways least likely to piss anyone off. The art of being a proactive patient...tonight it had also earned her oatmeal cookies for a bedtime snack, the time to brush and floss and have the kidney tray of spit be emptied after, a third pillow, and the hand-cranking of the old-fashioned hospital bed back to flat.
Lisa had also made the split-second decision to answer the "any pain?" question with a no, trading comfort for clarity of mind. Time for more one-finger typing - her chosen coping mechanism. But then, feeling sleep come on, she set the phone aside, confident that she would be awake again before daylight, and in fine condition to do justice to her chosen title.
***
1130p
Stent, dressing, drain, catheter, ice packs: like being fucked by a frozen robot. Lisa gave in and called for pills. Oxycodone, a semi-synthetic opioid with a moderate to high risk of dependency. So be it. The hard stuff while she could get it. Waiting for the warm wash of the drug she tried an experiment: nipples still wired to anything down there? They had been before, especially the right one...future lovers take note. Hmm...hard to tell so early, but not nothing. Definitely not nothing. Who said being fucked by a frozen robot couldn't be hot?
***
330a
Morphine dreams...Lisa jerked awake when she heard the patient in the next bed bark "house!", whatever sound she actually made. And she thought: so, I guess I'm really a woman now, huh?
No. Not in any way I was not before, anyway. In fact, since the operation I have been feeling more mannish than I have in years. I feel like Dave again. What the fuck is up with that?
Partly circumstance...the lack of opportunities, weirdly, to see myself in a mirror...unisex gown and the difficulty of shaving...being with a sister whom I see rarely enough that this is the first time I have felt that we were sisters together. But, also, now that it is absolutely clear that I am not and can never again be physically male, I feel free to act more male again. I was groping for this idea in my last post when I wrote about turning to the world with love in a new way.
I still plan to get the perm and second ear-piercings I planned for the weeks of recovery, both as treats and as visible signs of change to give folks something else to talk about besides my genitals. I'm not done playing with femme yet; but there may yet be stone-butch daddy times ahead too, or who knows what.
What I have done this week, it turns out, is engage in a radical gender-active form of body modification. The penis and testicles had to go. The new parts could turn out to be lots of fun, but they do *not* define me. Rather, they position me at a safe and natural starting place for further gender inquiry. If I am genderqueer, which is entirely possible, maybe the only reason I couldn't say so until now is because I needed to approach it from a fundamentally femme stance.
I am still so not done.

Genderqueer conversations

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with three fascinating people who identify outside the gender binary. Jules, Lyndon, and Taffy challenged my preconceptions and broadened my perspectives about gender in the same way that I hope my transsexualism challenges and broadens my cisgendered friends' and relatives' preconceptions and perspectives. Our conversations resulted in an article in the summer 2012 edition of Out In Maine, which can be viewed here. (Note this link takes you to a browsable on-line mockup of the magazine; the article starts on page 24.) Happy reading! :-)

Three years and counting

December is my darkest month. That was true before any of this gender business surfaced, and it’s still true. I always feel sad in December because my parents are dead and gone, and this year I’ve made a quick hard start to the annual holiday blues.
     
Besides just missing them, I want to show my parents me. I want to say to each of them: all that time, you had a daughter instead of a son, and neither of us knew it. Can you love me? It would have been the hardest question I would ever have had to ask in my whole life, but I still want to ask it. I never get to do that. Never.

A dark phrase recurs in my life: “No love for you.” I find myself saying it when I miss my parents, when I review my tragicomic romantic history, after each rejection on match.com, and when I look in the mirror and fail to imagine a masculine person I could love who might be able to see past the leftover bits of my physical maleness and love me back.

Does this purported possible partner have to be a masculine person? No...but I can’t see how to love another feminine person, because I fear her wanting me to be the masculine one, which is what I did for all those years, to my enduring pain. I don’t know if I can ever go back there. But, on the other hand, why not? Wouldn’t it be better if someone loved and wanted the whole me, including the 45 years of life as a man, which will always be part of who I am?

I. DON’T. KNOW.

I’m fucking confused, because I don’t feel any different. I feel like I felt when everyone in the world including me saw me as a man. So how am I not still a man? Or is self in essence genderless, and gender a cloak we put on when we turn to face the world?

I’m in another patch of wishing this had never happened. Not doubting...there’s no doubt. But I’m fucking sick of it. I want to stop being trans now. I want to not have to work so hard at just presenting myself to the world every day. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKF CUKF CUFKUCKUF CFKUCK UCDFKU CFKU CKLFU CLKFU XCKFU DXKFU XDLFKUS  DLFKSDUFLKLkdf get the idea?

Anyway, guess what? I’ve been self-aware as trans for three years. It was at this dark time of year in 2008 I wrote “I just want to be a girl” in my journal, from which all else has followed. I was going to work up a peppy and clever summing-up post about that, but the above is what came out instead.

There *have* been some positive developments recently. After some bureaucratic hassle I got my new passport the other day, with my new legal name and an “F” for gender. That means I can keep my consultation appointment in a couple of weeks in Montreal, in preparation for SRS this coming summer.

Also, my daughter, home from college for the holiday, told me she has started calling me her mom when she’s talking to people about me. That’s so lovely...but on the other hand, she also still calls me “Daddio.” The “Daddio” issue just sucks. It’s what both my children have always called me, and it is a word full of history and love, so I can hardly blame them for hanging onto it, but every time they say it I feel shoved back into an old bad wrong box, and it makes me wretched.

Here’s my big three-years-and-counting insight: I’m not done yet. With day-to-day living going well and my surgery scheduled, I’ve been feeling like I’ve completed something, or at least arranged for the completion...but really, everything is still in process. Helping my children come to terms, the search for love, hormonal changes, the search for a voice I can stand, electrolysis, the question of whether to get facial surgery (which I’ve been aching for again)... all still incomplete, all still happening.

I’m so fucking tired...but, here I still am, surviving a day at a time, writing, working, persevering...enduring. There is joy. I know, because I remember feeling it. I can’t access it now, but I feel pretty confident that it will be back. Meanwhile, I endure. Happy fucking December.

Out of a flame war, pandemic love

Last night my 19-year old daughter Madeleine posted on facebook some whimsical wordplay based on terms she is trying out to describe her sexuality. She has already claimed “pansexual,” (which I also am coming to prefer for myself), meaning attracted to people based on who they are as people, regardless of biological sex or gender; and she’s trying out the word “demisexual”, meaning not tending to feel sexual attraction except to a person with whom one has first become emotionally intimate (which I also like for myself...I hope you don’t mind, dearest, that I’m co-opting your words). “Demisexual” is a new-minted word, courtesy of the asexuality movement, for an old-fashioned idea: sex as an adjunct to, an extension and expression of, love. So Mad’s line was that she’s a “pandemic romantic,” which, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s funny.

A few of her friends posted light-hearted comments, and then one particular friend, whom I will call X, posted this: “‘Pansexual’ is an orientation. ‘Demisexual’ is not. Neither is ‘romantic’. Just sayin'.”

An escalation ensued. Points got misunderstood, feelings got hurt, and what could have been a substantive conversation about the complexities of identity quickly turned personal. An hour and 40-some posts later, several people had posted things they are probably regretting today (if they’re done fuming), my daughter had defriended X, and various friends both in cyber and real space were giving her hugs in commiseration for having been the unwitting trigger of, and scorched figure at the center of, a doozy of a flame war.

This incident has helped me crystallize some thoughts about sex, gender, and queer identity. First of all, I respectfully disagree with X. Demisexuality and being a romantic *are* both orientations. In fact, in a way, they are more radical orientations than the L, G, and B of LGBT, because, just as pansexuality challenges the unquestioned assumption behind these letters that gender matters, they challenge the unquestioned assumption that sex matters. They are a “none of the above” option. They say: “If I, whoever I turn out to be, should happen to want to go to bed with my sweetie, whoever my sweetie turns out to be, it will be because I love my sweetie and my sweetie loves me. Love is different from sex and knows no gender, and love is what matters most to me.”

I am *not* saying that LGB folk don’t understand or care about love. Completely not. But queer culture does seem to me to be as obsessed with sex as our culture as a whole is. I don’t really have a problem with that, though as a person who cares less about sex than love it makes me feel marginalized at both cultural levels. And I could hardly blame people fighting for equality for their sexual identities if they felt threatened by the idea that sex doesn’t matter. I do have a problem, though, when it becomes politically incorrect to speak of non-sexual or only-incidentally-sexual love.

And, I *am* saying that the emphasis on traditional concepts of gender inherent in the definitions of L, G, and B sometimes feels inimical to the interests of us T folk. My dear LGB friends: I thank you most fervently for the enormous amount of help and support you have given me in my gender work, both individually and, by fighting a version of the same fight first, on a global scale. I have learned and benefited from your struggle. I stand shoulder to shoulder with you against the forces of prejudice and hate which so seldom distinguish between us. And, I enjoy your company, feel at ease with you, and am so grateful to have been welcomed in under the big LGBT umbrella. But, alas, all that said, I do also sometimes see you as part of the gender hegemony against which, all my life, I have struggled. I will never self-identify as gay, lesbian, bi, hetero or homo, because all of this terminology fails to challenge and continues to perpetrate the bad old binary concept of gender. Until I come up with something I like better, I am a pandemisexual romantic trans woman.

May I invite you to join me and Mad in seeking new ways of talking about ourselves and each other which celebrate the diversity, complexity, and subtlety of gender as thoroughly as we have celebrated the diversity, complexity, and subtlety of sexuality? And could we all, please, get at least part of the way back to the charming old-fashioned notion of speaking reverently of love?

Exegesis 2011

Happy New Year in Paris! (Midnight is a relative concept.)
What is it to be a woman?
To feel the being of others.
Such a simple thing.
And when a woman is alone?
Then gender doesn’t matter.
New year, new life, same as the old...
Or no, not quite.
Change has direction, darling.
I love you.
It doesn’t matter who you are;
I love you.
It doesn’t matter who I am;
I love you.
It doesn’t matter what happens next;
I love you.
Now is now is now is now now now now now now now now now..........

Leaping vs. metamorphosis

OK, so I’m a woman...so now what?

Ha! Not so fast, sweetie...you’re only on your way to being a woman, if you’re ever going to get there at all. Remember what Kate Bornstein said post-transition: she still wasn’t quite a woman, but she definitely wasn’t a man. That might be the reality here too.

And, we’re not even to that point yet. Maleness lingers. There’s the whole voice conundrum, for  example.

Yeah, well, I’m working on that. I don’t like how I sound yet, but it seems important not to rush finding a new way to talk which feels like me.

And there’s the vestigial appendage.

*That* is another problem for another year.

OK, fine...but what about still going with male pronouns and works-either-way initials at son15’s school?

I am happy to do that for him. I’m still “Daddio” to him and his sister, and will be as long as they care to continue calling me that. Same deal with male pronouns. I’ll correct anyone else, but my children can say what they want.

I’m not just holding back for them though. These days It’s a relief when I’m alone and I get to take a break from thinking about gender. If I have to interact with anyone else then I feel have to put the femme on, and sometimes I sigh taking that up again. It’s real, but it’s a pain in the ass sometimes. I do like spending a whole day alone, not shaving, letting my voice do what it wants, just being.

And when the children are here, I find I don’t need to worry much about gender either.  I don’t feel compelled with them as I do with everyone else to push, push, push the femme markers all the time. They are my family, and I can just be with them too.

Which means, they get to see my real transformation, which continues to unfold slowly and for the most part without my conscious awareness, just as it has from the beginning. Changing my name and declaring my womanhood at work were leaps which needed to be made, and I am relieved that have made them...but they were leaps ahead.  Deep metamorphosis takes a long time.

I keep thinking of a time-lapse of a flower unfolding...sometimes slow, sometimes just a little less slow, but never forced, never abrupt. That’s my real process. When I’m just being myself I’m still an in-betweeny sort of person.

So, I guess what now is: keep metamorphosing, gradually, patiently, forward into the leaps I've made.

Not exactly calm, no...

I am learning that when I feel this agitated, it means I should be writing. So what do I have to say?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!, that’s what.

My name change becomes official in eight days. What the fuck am I doing? And I’ve written the draft of the e-mail to send out at work after, saying, “OK, from now on, I’m a woman!” WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING?

Only what I have to, it seems. Fuck.

See, there’s a part of me...the rational, conscious-thinking verbal part...who doesn’t actually care that much about gender. Speaking from that place for a moment, if I may: I am so tired of this. It’s boring, thinking about gender all the time. I hate all the fuss. This whole transition thing sucks.

Then there’s the other part...let’s call her the fierce girl-soul of intense burning flames of boundless desire to LIVE! Tapping into her (my) feeling-stream for a moment:

...imagirlimagirlimagirlimagirlimagirlimagirlEIGHTDAYS!imagirlimagirl
imagirlimagirlimagirlTHISISSOMUCHFUN!imagirlimagirlimagirlimagirl
imagirlimagirlimagirlimagirlHEYIMKINDAPRETTY!imagirlimagirlimagirl
imagirlimagirlimagirlIAMSOINCREDIBLYHAPPYRIGHTNOW!!!:-D:-D:-D:-D:-D
imagirlimagirlimagirlimagirlimagirl....

Yep, that’s me. They’re both me. And may I just say, it surely does get squirmy in here sometimes.

Well, there’s this anyway: rational thinking self just wants this to be over; and Ms. intense essence of femininity Goddess-within just WANTSWANTSWANTSWANTS!!!! So down deep both facets agree and want to move in the same direction.

Which means, it’s gonna happen.

The rollercoaster is really starting to buck now. There are some fearsomely high hills just ahead...I can see them. So, OK...hold on, Honey, here we GOOOOoooooo....

Halfway

I believe I have come to the halfway-point in my transgender journey. Up until now I have felt myself to be man becoming a woman; but now I begin to feel myself to be woman leaving behind being a man.

It has taken me two years since my initial revelation to get here. I started as a man experimenting awkwardly, tentatively, in secret, with lipstick and stockings and such. Now, here in the middle, I am a gender chameleon, my names various, my voice uncertain, my body and look and manner morphing swiftly from day to day.

I could sound all noble by saying I've been taking it slow for the sake of those around me (especially my children), and that *would* be true...but mostly it has just taken me this long to figure out even part of what the hell I'm doing. Also, I've been pacing myself in hopes of avoiding freaking myself out.

So far, this has (mostly) worked. There was a day recently when I came close to the edge. I began to feel physically ill at work...nauseous, weak, short of breath. It was partly stress and exhaustion, I think; but it was mostly emotional. I bailed abjectly from the rest of my workday and drove home, bawling in the car at my dead parents, particularly my mother: "Would you love me? Could you accept and love me?" That was a rough moment.

But, I've also been having lots of really good moments too. The other day I was out walking in the sun, feeling fine, sitting right down on those hips, back arched, shoulders back, head high, working that loose swinging sexy woman-walk, and there was my shadow keeping me company. I couldn't see my man-face, my thin hair, my wide shoulders and narrow hips, my 6’ height...I could just see that I had a girly silhouette and groove, and it made me happy. :-)

My name-change and the beginning of living full-time (both pending) are not an arrival; they are the tipping of a balance. In another three or four years, that's when I'll be done. Beard gone, horomonal changes complete, femme voice locked in, genital and facial surgeries endured.

Someday, I really do believe, I'll present so completely and naturally as a woman that people meeting me for the first time will find it hard to believe I was ever a man. "She's tall, I agree," they'll say, "but everything else about her is so feminine...I just can't see it. Maybe the hands...that's it."

Best not too think too long about that...it sets the ache going. One step at a time, Darling. Honor the process. When you have learned patience, all times are soon. <deep sigh>...yes.

 

Pretty much done with man-clothes

One morning a few weeks back, getting dressed, I looked at the thick waistband of my jockey shorts and thought, I don't wear these any more.  So I put on one of the few pairs of cotton panties I had acquired up to that point, then stopped on the way to work and bought a couple six-packs more of basic knickers, and it's been girl-underwear ever since.

A few days later, I more or less retired most of the rest of my male wardrobe.  I haven't taken big bags to Goodwill yet, but I have been dressed as a woman for the last couple of weeks, and it is my plan to go on dressing as a woman for the rest of my life, from here on out.  The only time I am still wearing man-clothes is when I go running...and I'll fix that too at some point.

The thing I didn't figure out looking forward to this moment was that I could wear shorts and tops and shoes which, while definitely from the women's clothing half of the store, would appear as basically gender-neutral out in the world.  I thought it was going to be man-jeans and man-shirts until one day it was skirts and blouses.  Androgyny-play, yay!  :-)

Turns out many of my women friends shop routinely on the man-side of the store, and hardly any of my acquaintance of either gender dress very femme at all.  A few weeks ago I went to a play in a dress and heels and was the only woman in the audience wearing a dress or heels.  Getting into dressing femme begins to feel like rediscovering some arcane lost art...Japanese Tea Ceremony...

An advantage emerges of having come out as trans early in the process.  Now everyone around me knows about my gender work, and basically gets along fine with however I am presenting.  On Friday I did push over the line, with the frankly femme white top, big earrings, and hair soft and full with an elastic headband, and saw my friends and coworkers' eyes flicker as they figured out how to deal...but it was OK.   I was still wearing it all when I got home, and waved at a couple of neighbors who stared back, so I'm coming out now in my neighborhood...I used to fear, now I just don't care...people deal.

That's the most important thing I'm learning.  People deal.  Meaning, they just don't care that much.  I mean, think about the big things I've learned about some of my friends lately:  life-threatening disease, sexual orientation, matrimony...and none of these pieces of news has moved me to more than easy condolence or congratulation...I'm as self-centered as the next person...and I take comfort in knowing that you're the same.  So thanks for bothering to read all the way to the end.... :-)

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.  :-)