The What

A mental health break

I know it’s been awhile since I last posted. And I was going to try to come up with some deep gender insight this week based on all the thoughts swirling in my head. But instead I decided to be honest about why I haven’t written.

It’s been a tough couple of weeks for my mental health. I have the interesting challenge of living with a combination of anxiety, depression, ADD, and OCD. I’m what you might call “high functioning” which can be useful but also means I often forget to engage in the type of self care that would keep me that way. But I have been trying to do more of that. To give myself a break from the chaos of unpacking my new home, to get off social media for a bit, and to do things like playing video games and watching TV with a new cat in my lap.

But it is hard to overcome the various external and internal messages that can trigger debilitating anxiety and depression. Last week I had a few days where I was really struggling with the “not enough” messages. I felt like I wasn’t good at my job and it was only a matter of time before they figured it out and fired me. I felt like I wasn’t a good partner and soon my partners would realize I’m actually really boring. And one day didn’t feel like I was trans enough to wear a dress so I wore a more masculine outfit which then caused me to later feel like I wasn’t trans enough because I wasn’t wearing a dress. It was an overwhelming day!

During that time I KNEW logically that those messages weren’t true. I get validation at work all the time that I’m on the right track and I’m good at what I do. And I know my partners love me and are choosing daily to be with me. And I’m writing a whole frickin’ blog about how “not trans enough” is total bullshit! But yet…

Luckily my therapist reminded me that those feelings are OK to have, even if they aren’t true. And that those kinds of doubts are even part of the official physiological diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” that I am submitting to insurance. Periods of transition and intense gender exploration can bring those more to the forefront and make them louder. But that doesn’t make them any less false.

I’m also in this place where the horribleness of the world (and particularly the U.S.) is really getting to me. I know some of it is that I’m just more aware now of the reality that most people have been facing their whole lives. But I still have a hard time figuring out if I feel depressed and despairing because the world is so terrible or if the terribleness of the world is just emphasized and oversimplified because I’m depressed.

So I’m here sharing this with you to remind you to take those vital mental health breaks. To engage in self care in a radical way that allows you to go back out into that terrible world with enough energy to face it. It’s not selfish to take care of yourself because without that you wouldn’t have anything to give back. It’s like putting on your own air mask before helping the person next to you.

One way I’ve been doing self care is by beginning to read Jeffrey Marsh‘s new book, How to Be You. It’s very affirming to read and I’m getting lots of ideas for new posts which I’m sure you’ll see soon. I’m also very encouraged by how much positive feedback I’ve gotten on this blog. After only a month and 8 posts, I’ve had 950 views from 370 readers. Thank you all for being there for me and listening to my ramblings. Until next time!

Today’s Outfit

I hope to write more later this week but for now I just wanted to gush about how comfortable my outfit is. Today I’m wearing Walking Cradle flats, cool patterned socks from Sock Dreams in Portland, my partner’s jersey knit skirt, a comfy sleeveless turtleneck blouse, and my partner’s sweater (it sure is handy to date a femme who is the same size in some things). It is so comfortable I’m not even sure how it’s legal to walk out of the house this way! It is seriously comparable to my pajamas. People who have never tried skirts really are missing out on how freeing they can feel. And I used to think good jeans were the standard of office comfort!

The week of skirts

I’ve never been able to wear skirts for an entire week before. Both because I didn’t own enough to not repeat and because I didn’t feel comfortable doing that at work before. But with the support of my boss and the acceptance of my team, I bought some additions to my wardrobe and wore skirts to work for 5 business days in a row.

Didn’t like the hairy legs without the tights
Long and flowy
A very comfortable full length skirt
Outfit for a casual summer Friday
Sleeveless turtleneck with a sweater
Finally back to sweater weather

I was really nervous about wearing skirts at work, especially the first time I met with the researcher I support. He has responded well to my gender fluidity at work but he is a middle aged white doctor from the rural midwest. But I have felt supported here and encouraged by my amazing partners to continue pushing boundaries and exploring the more feminine side of my gender.

What I’ve found so far is that I’m most comfortable in long skirts and I have a fair amount of discomfort and nervousness about wearing anything above the knee, especially with my hairy legs. Yes, I could shave but with how fast my hair grows that takes a big commitment. I have shaved them before and I love how it feels but not as it grows back. I did shave my chest for the first time this week to see if that made me more comfortable in feminine blouses that might expose some hair. I found that when I looked in the mirror like that it didn’t feel like me. It exposed my very masculine distribution of belly fat in a way that felt like it emphasized my dysphoria.

On the shortest skirt I ended up wearing tights which was a very professional look but wasn’t comfortable physically and didn’t feel like where I wanted to be gender-wise. Luckily fall weather has started here in Seattle so now I can go back to wearing sweaters which give me a great androgynous look.

Sex And Gender Are Actually The Same Thing (but bear with me…)

“Biological Sex” is just as much of a construct as gender and the two are intertwined too much to have separate dichotomies.

I particularly like this line:
“Trans inclusivity should redefine our understanding of gender and sex so that trans people are able to fit seamlessly within them (or better yet wouldn’t need to if the notions can be discarded entirely), not to have trans people straddle narrow, arbitrary classifications with certain parts of their personhood on one side of a line and certain parts on the other.”

Lane's avatarAndrogyneity

As you read the title, you may be overcome with indignation that this article is going to be a gender-essentialist rant. You’ll be relieved to know that it’s quite the opposite. My intent in writing this is to point out some serious misconceptions perpetuated in ‘trans 101’ and cisgender allyship resources, which end up doing much more harm than good for transgender people.

Anyone with an entry-level understanding of trans issues is probably familiar with the phrase “gender and sex are different things.”

While the idea of treating sex and gender as unrelated factors may result from an attempt to validate and support transgender identities, it actually perpetuates harmful cultural beliefs about the validity of sex assignment and the static nature of biological sex, which remove agency from trans and intersex people to define their own bodies and experiences. This way of thinking does nothing to combat (and in fact…

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The power of categories

Gender terms cloudTransgender

Genderqueer

Nonbinary

Gender non-conforming

Transfeminine

MtX

These are all terms I use to describe my gender. There are dozens more already being used and more being created every day to describe and categorize the diversity that we experience in real life. I’ve heard many people criticize identity labels and say things like “why do I need more boxes to fit in” or “I don’t like to label myself”. And while I’m not trying to invalidate their experience, I want to share a bit about why I love labels and categories, especially for gender and sexuality.

I think there is a lot of power in words. Words give us access to intellectual concepts and and language can be incredibly freeing when it is allowed to evolve and grow along with a society. For myself, I didn’t grow up with the concept of gender being anything other than what you were told at birth and it existed as an assumed binary. I didn’t know that trans people even existed until well into my teen years and I didn’t learn about terminology outside the basic LGBT acronym until I joined a highly controversial GSA-style group at my conservative Evangelical university.

Even once I had concepts for transgender and genderqueer, I didn’t really understand that there was diversity within those categories. I knew I didn’t want to be a woman (or at least didn’t think that was something I could access in any way that was meaningful to me but that’s another whole post) but I didn’t think I could be genderqueer either because I thought that meant I had to be androgynous in the sense that I couldn’t have any visible genderedness about my body. So for many years I identified as gender non-conforming for lack of a better way of describing my blurriness.

But as I began to add terminology to my gender toolbox I also began to see places where I might fit. It took until another trans person I was dating suggested that maybe I was genderqueer before I felt like it was something I could dare to explore. And even then it took almost a year before I felt comfortable claiming my place within the genderqueer and trans identities.

Sadly, a large part of that was due to my tendency to self-police my own gender and allow the “not trans enough” feelings to guide me. But I also didn’t understand that not everyone of a particular identity label has to look or feel the same. The key to unlocking my gender was grasping that these are merely categories, useful for finding other people like you but also for pushing the boundaries together of what it means to not be a cisgendered person.

Once I accepted that I didn’t need to desire surgical or hormonal transition above all else and that I didn’t need to lose all of my features that people ascribe to a specific gender (like my beard) I was able to accept that being trans just means not identifying with the (binary) gender you are assigned at birth. I was trans because I was not cis. I am genderqueer because I exist in a blurry space outside of the well-explored binary boxes. I am nonbinary because I don’t want to be a man but I know I’m not a woman. I may have been assigned male at birth but I can transition to be “X”. I can be feminine and have a beard.

So don’t let identity police get you down and tell you what you can or can’t be, especially not based on appearance. And don’t listen to those little shoulder devils whispering doubts in your ear about “being enough.” Claim the categories and terms that work for you now and don’t get hung up on how you might feel about your gender next year. It is OK to evolve and grow. It can be a step in your journey or it can be your final destination but either way it isn’t “just a phase.”

Unexpected affirmations

I promised myself I was done posting for today but I just had the most amazing experience walking down the street in my very genderqueer outfit. I was heading to get coffee with a friend down a back street in Seattle on a scorching hot day minding my own business with my headphones in. Suddenly I see a guy across the street calling to me and waving me his direction. I’m skeptical but he seems friendly so I head to find out what he wants. Turns out he’s the shop owner of LICK Pure Cream and wanted to take a picture of me because my fuchsia and purple outfit perfectly matches his shop. He pulls out a pink waffle cone and fills it with blueberry chai ice cream on the house and asks to take a picture of me for Instagram in his iconic yellow chair. He even asked my pronouns. Sometimes life really surprises you!

**** Update 2017 – Sadly LICK went out of business so you can’t go meet the wonderful owner there anymore. ***

Also, I wanted to gush about how happy I am to finally have found some heel boots that fit! I’m size 13W in women’s and it’s nearly impossible to find anything, much less something both comfortable and stylish. But these David Tate shoes arrived from Zappos last night and look fabulous so I geared my outfit today around them.