GenderBendy

First Event wrap

I'm home from my second day of First Event, the big trans-conference north of Boston, and I'm still flying.  For two days in a row I got to be myself, and toward the end of the second day, yesterday, I really began to let go into that.  Just a few times so far as I feel my way forward into femininity - and yesterday afternoon was one of them - I have suddenly noticed that I'm talking high and light and fast and expressively, that my voice is more full of breath than it ever is in man-mode, that my hands and in fact my whole body are uninhibitedly involved in my expressing myself, and that a big girl-smile is stretching my mouth wide, because I feel like smiling, I just can't help it.  In those moments I feel the quick warm feminine joy at the center of my being just beaming out of me, and I feel free.  That is such a lovely feeling.  :-)

There were way more people at the conference yesterday, Saturday, than there had been on Friday, including a goodly number of people in their teens and twenties, and many more trans men than before.  The look of the crowd at mixed trans events still makes me smile: tall big-boned women with fabulous hair, and short soft-featured crew-cutted boys in jeans and t-shirts.  We look so different, but in conversation and friendship I find that the sharing of the journey usually seems to eclipse the relatively minor matter of which direction you're going.

By conference end I had had three private consultations with three different plastic surgeons about FFS - Facial Feminization Surgery:

Dr. O is the patriarch of this select fraternity.  He favors thorough reconstruction of the bones of the face, and his results are startling, sometimes to the point of making you look like a completely different person...but, always, an entirely feminine person, and sometimes strikingly attractive.  I can't deny the seductive pull of his work, but I'm concerned about a few things...he dictates rather than collaborates, and he also told me my ideal weight at 6' is 30 pounds less than my current 180.  Who says I have to be skeletally thin to be an attractive woman?  Hm...I don't think I'm the first person to ask that question... :-p

Dr. B. is young, relatively unknown, and hungry.  He offered to cover my airfare and lodging for trips to California to be operated on by him.  He favors a less invasive approach - more soft-tissue, less bone - and he seems less completely bound to an underlying unquestioned assumption about what constitutes beauty.

Dr. M., who also does genital surgery, radiates competence.  He was pleasant to talk with, and seemed to strike a good balance between offering professional guidance and listening to my concerns.

I didn't talk to Dr. Z, because going to him seems to constitute joining a cult.  I don't want to be a Z-girl.  And I missed the chance to talk to Dr. S, but I will definitely talk to him, too, because he's based in Boston, in easy driving distance.  All the rest of them are in Arizona and California...lots of air fare...

And price?  Ah, yes...I'm still waiting from quotes from the other two, but Dr. O's estimate:  $45K, plus another $13K if I need a face lift after, which I probably would. Whee.

Best moment of the day:  a compliment from a stranger..."You take up space in a womanly way."  Typed out like that I guess it looks rather odd, but in context I took it to mean that to the speaker my over-all presentation was coming across as strongly femme...a validation of my ongoing effort to become a woman from the inside out.  Of course I gushed my thanks... :-)

Worst moment (not bad, just mildly yucky):  being one of only four members of the audience for a presentation about dealing with the media by a hard-faced trans man who edits a GLBT newspaper somewhere out west, and observing that he was making good public-speaking eye-contact with the other three people in the room...by appearance, a boy and two girls all in their twenties...and carefully passing over me each time.  It reminded me of the way I have sometimes felt pointedly ignored by activist Lesbians when I am in man-mode.  Whatever.  I left.

I dressed in man comfy-clothes when I got up this morning, just because I'm used to them.  Ordinary life beckons once again...and that's almost a relief.  When you have learned patience, all times are soon.

Zap!

So a family friend offered me a deal I could actually afford on laser beard-removal, and two weekends ago now I went and got my face zapped.

I had read a lot of conflicting reports about how effective laser really is, and before Ardis's generous offer I was scared off by the prices, so I had steeled myself for the long slow painful (and also expensive, but with the expense more drawn out) process of electrolysis.  I tried a couple of different electrologists and liked the second one, but it was slow and it was painful, and I looked like I had rope burns from a suicide attempt, and the healing was very slow...there's skin on my neck which still gets red six weeks after my last treatment.

Laser is also painful, but it is quick.  So quick, in fact, that I had to keep asking Ardis to slow down because I was hyperventilating.   It's a scary machine, at least the first time.  I had to wear special goggles to protect my eyeballs from getting fried, and no one else was allowed in the room, and when she zapped skin close to my eyes I saw a flash even though I had my eyes closed and the goggles on.  There was also a smell of burning hair, which added to the drama.

I was a mess, saturated with anxiety and anticipation.  Part way through I felt tears welling up and had to ask Ardis to stop so I could sit up and bawl for a minute.  I cried because until the moment came I hadn't known if I would really go through with it, and the fact that I had was another addition to the growing body of evidence about just how serious I am about transition...I really don't consciously know the depth of my desire to be a woman very clearly, and have to consider evidence like a concerned friend.  I was also mourning the passing of one small part of the man I have been.  No takebacks on this.  A lot of my beard is now gone, never to return.  I'm going to be clean-shaven for the rest of my life, whether I become a woman or not.

Considering how much this relatively simple step shook me up, what am I going to be like if I ever get to the big final no-takebacks steps?

On the way home after the treatment, something was wrong with my right eye.  The taillights and streetlights smeared and shifted every time I shifted my gaze.  It was caused, I now suppose, by the edge of the mal-adjusted metal goggle-cup pushing hard on my eye through my closed eyelid--something I was to freaked out to say anything about when it was happening.  The problem cleared up by morning.  At the time though, driving through the dark, still reeling emotionally, I could only assume with a sense of dread and loss that this eye-damage was permanent, that it was the price I would have to pay for getting rid of my beard.  And I thought, it doesn't matter.  It's still worth it.

Two weeks later, there are no dark hairs on my face which are growing.  There are still some dark hairs, which will need to be zapped when they start growing actively again...the laser missed them the first time because they were dormant...and there are grey hairs which the laser doesn't touch which I'll have to go back to electrolysis for...but still, after one treatment, my shadow is noticeably lighter.  I even fancy that my cheeks and chin are a little less heavy, the skin settling down a millimeter or two without all those follicles in there to thicken it.

Lighter beard, no sideburns, hair getting long, eyebrows plucked, new ways I've been practicing of letting my lips rest softer and fuller, smiling more...sometimes now even in plain man mode when I glance in the mirror I get a femme flash back.  I really am moving into the center space between the genders now.

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.

Didn't go

In reference to yesterday's post: I didn't go.

There was a practical reason...Deb had something come up...but there was another reason too.  I just couldn't make the wig look right.  Either wig, the conservative dark brown one or the red-gold tranny-mane.  I stood looking in the mirror, and they just seemed fake and ridiculous.

The thing is, my own hair is getting long enough so that when I brush it forward and fluff it up, it is starting to look markedly femme.  It doesn't quite snap yet....it's not quite long enough, and the fact that it still grey gets in the way...but it's close.

So when Deb canceled, I ended up sitting at my kitchen table playing internet chess with beard-cover makeup on, my hair brushed forward, dangly earrings, and femme jeans and an androgynous top.  No shapewear.  No lipstick.  No shoes.  And when I got up and posed in the mirror in the hall, I saw a different femme look beginning to emerge for me...not in-your-face cross-dressed, but the natural earthy-crunchy tall skinny woman I might someday be.

That's the look I want the next time I go out.  Except for overt drag for fun, I think I may be done with strutting my stuff in wig and fake boobs.

Hey, if I keep growing my hair out and start coloring it (my next big treat, I think), and keep getting rid of my beard (and may I just mention, electrolysis hurts), and start wearing clothes which are subtly more femme, and if I continue to allow myself to relax into moving and acting and talking and feeling just a little more femme all the time, as I have been doing...if I keep doing all those things, I may just change by imperceptible degrees into a woman, right in front of everyone's eyes.  Maybe even without hormones and face surgery.  Those steps could just cement it.  And then with or without clothes and makeup--even dressed in my old man suit--I would look female, because I would be female, all the way through, from my innermost soul right out to my skin.

I didn't go out yesterday, but it was not a return to that old cell.  It was a step forward in a new long slow process of becoming a woman from the inside out.  That's how it's going now. 

Dressing over that seems as out-of-order as painting the house while you're still framing it.

Pronoun gaffes

My children have a thing they do called the "awkward turtle"...you put one hand over the other, palm to back, and waggle your thumbs on opposite sides, like a turtle swimming, and it symbolizes a deeply uncomfortable social moment.  Recently I've had a couple of awkward turtle moments around pronouns.

One was with Kennedy, an F to M acquaintance of mine.  I met him through a support group, and we talked a couple of times and formed a mutual liking.  Then he showed up at my work one day as the head of a team of people who had come to do some cleaning as part of a time-dollar barter trade.  The other people on his team were using female pronouns with him, and that confused me.  My mistake was to assume that they knew each other; thinking about it afterward, I realized I had overheard comments which made it clear that they had only come together that day.  But in the moment I heard "she" and "her" and when he came to say hello I asked haltingly something like, "You do live as male, right?  Out here in the real world?"  And he sort of faltered for a moment (Awkward turtle!) and then rallied with apparent effort and said heartily, "Yes, of course!" 

Sorry Kennedy!  I squirm, I squirm!

Then there was a social gathering at a coffeehouse put together by MaineTransNet, the remarkable little non-profit group which had also put together the support group where I met Kennedy.  When I showed up in full femme mode there were already about ten people there, in various stages of transition in both directions.  One was Dal, whom up until that time I had only seen in a MaineTransNet video...a fully transitioned transwoman.  She was physically large, especially through the shoulders, and the way she was sitting and talking, taking up half a couch and filling the room with her voice, the first vibe I got was masculine, so when she said something I agreed with, I said, "He's right!  I mean, she's right...beg pardon!"  Squirm squirm...awkward turtle to the tenth power...ow, ow, ow...this one still makes me blush...

Sorry Dal!  Please don't hate me!

Later we talked face to face, and I got from her face and manner the true femme feel which will ensure I use the right pronouns from now on.

And then, just to provide a little perspective from the other side, the other night I was at a training for trainers in Maine's No On One campaign (Google it!), and I introduced myself as trans and was feeling femme, and when someone used male pronouns with me, it grated.  You mean "she," said my internal voice...but I did not speak aloud.  I let it go.

I begin to perceive that if I am going to transition, I am going to have to grow a thicker skin along the way...which, thank goodness, helps me forgive myself for messing up with Kennedy and Dal.  

Live and learn, right?

Squirming

There is a part of me which is already absolutely bent on transition.  To speak in that voice for a moment:  I am a woman.  My body doesn't match.  I've put up with this for 40+ years, and I have had enough, more than enough.  I want it all:  laser, hormones, vaginoplasty...and if I need it to feel fully feminine, extra surgical help with face and breasts.  I want it.  I did everything right.  I deserve my reward.  Give it to me.  Now.

It is not quite right to say that my inner child is throwing a tantrum.  I find the inner child idea useful, but only up to a point.  I am not a child and a parent, two separate beings.  I am one being with childlike and more mature aspects, just as I have feminine and (apparently at least a few still) masculine aspects. 

In any case, to continue to use the model I have chosen, whatever its shortcomings, there is another part of me which says:  not so fast girl.  Slow down.  This is a big decision, with no take-backs.  Be sure.  Be careful.  Honor the process.

I hear that last one.  This is a process.  One does not decide to switch genders overnight.

And the other concern I still really feel is:  think of the children.  I only told them last week the first thing about me being trans...even if I didn't need the time for myself, which I do, I need to give them a chance to catch up.  But on the other hand I begin to learn a new thing, which is, it is no more healthy to put your children's needs ahead of your own (which I believe I have sometimes done) than it is to, in a marriage, put the perceived needs of the relationship ahead of your own (which I also did, and look what happened).

Another fresh insight:  to get my body changed to be more like a woman's does not necessarily constitute instantly fleeing all the way to the far end of the spectrum, an idea which has troubled me.  I can still play in the middle approaching from that side.  I can re-cross-dress if I want.  Thanks to Kate Bornstein's provocative book "Gender Outlaw" for help figuring that out.

Let it be noted that as soon as I got home from work tonight I took off all my clothes and changed into blue lace-trimmed panties, my William Morris print stretch capri jeans, and the absurd yet fetching puce maternity-wear cotton T.  No shapewear, no beard concealment.  I just didn't want male clothes touching my body. 

Hm. 

Second 5 on the femme ache tracker tonight...

Bracing

My night out went fine, thanks for asking.  Two sweet moments among many:  by chance I bumped into Christine, my counselor, just outside her office, and she completely failed to recognize me; and later I made my first retail purchase ever in femme mode, a bottle of dark pink nail polish at a supermarket.  (That same polish now lends my nails, longer than they have ever been in my life, extra strength as I type.)

The highlight of the evening was the peer support meeting at MaineTransNet.  There were six of us there; three transmen and three transwomen, in various stages of gender transition.  I love that it was balanced.  I've heard and sometimes observed that there are gaps and frictions between these two trans communities...but at this one little new struggling non-profit at least, I have always felt that trans is trans, and that the emotional universals of living the gender-untruth, coming out (or not), deciding to transition (or not), and going through with it (or not) far outweigh the relatively trifling detail of which direction you happen to be moving.

I feel a strong affinity with my new FTM friends...perhaps because they're working so diligently to be male, and I did too, for those 42 years.  There's a weird flip-flop there, because that part was my problem and for them it's the solution, but still, I resonate to their stories.  Also, toward some of the younger of my new boi-friends I feel a nurturing impulse...like I'm their surrogate trans-mom.  How's that for gender-bendy?  :-)

Tomorrow I'm going shopping again, with my new girlfriend Christina the Fashion Lesbian; and, on Saturday, I'm mulling which of two MTF-dominant social gatherings down Boston way to drop in on...the fairly staid social club one, or the tight skirt karaoke bar one. 

...and all the time, underneath, I'm bracing for next week, when I plan, after months of preparation, to have The Talk with my two children, Daughter17 and Son14.

Interesting times.

Transdar on

I'll be out on the streets of Portland (Maine) today...watch for me.  I won't be dressed outrageously.  Jeans, my favorite purple top, flip-flops with sparkle in the cork.

The reason I mention it is not because I think we'll meet...it's a big world out there...but to nudge your transdar switch to "on".

You start noticing things.  That strikingly tall woman with the broad shoulders and the big hair stalking down the street...could she be?  This skater-boy with the cherubic face in the bus kiosk...could he be?  If you practice good trans-etiquette it doesn't matter, because the first rule is, treat folks as they present, but it's still fun to wonder.

A new thought occurs...perhaps the kernel of the embarrassment around meeting people of ambiguous gender is not about reading them.  Hey, I expect to get read.  No big deal.  Bound to happen.  No, the squirmiest scenario is getting it wrong.  What could be worse than venturing, "Excuse me, are you trans?" and the answer being an affronted NO?

Something to ponder:  How do you politely ask one if one is trans?  If you ask at all...but why not?  'Tisn't shameful.  It has to be an appropriate question from time to time.

Introducing...

Hi, my name is Lisa.  I spent the first 46 years of my life living as a simple ordinary man.

Then, last fall, shortly after passing the age my father was when he died, and having just narrowly avoided a major accident on the highway, I suddenly realized that my internal sense of self is, and always has been, feminine.  Surprise!

Since then, I have been working to understand what this revelation means for me, my family, my friends, my work...my life.  I have been crossdressing, and have started going out into the world in femme mode when I can.  It feels amazingly good.

Will I end up transitioning some day?  Hormones, surgery?  That's an open question at this time.  (Check out my femme-ache tracker under "Pages.")

Currently single, will I end up with a male or female partner?  Likewise an open question.  (One or the other would be nice...)

What I do know:  trans is real, and affects the lives of many, and there's a lot of confusion and ignorance about it.  Hence, this blog.  It's me wanting to say "Lookit me!", of course, but it's also my entry into activism in this cause by which I have been chosen.  I want to do all I can to make the world a safer, more welcoming place for transfolk of all kinds.

If you would like to read an on-line article about my first few months post-revelation, it is here.

So I hope you'll stop by again for juicy installments of my continuing saga, for (I hope) thoughful discussion of aspects of gender, and for connections to the world of trans.  Thanks for reading!