The What

Gender euphoria through singing

Last weekend I went to my annual favorite event of the year – Geek Girl Con. There were lots of great workshops and panels about various fandoms such as Captain Marvel and about inclusivity in geek culture. But the highlight of the weekend for me was the Steven Universe Sing-Along.

I sat in a room packed to overflowing with kids and adults of all kinds who were all singing their hearts out to what is now well over an hour of collected songs from my favorite cartoon. And I realized as I was sitting next to a friend’s adorable kid that the way that I sing them is pretty unusual. I am all over the vocal range depending on the song. Some I sing very very low in my deep bass voice. And some I sing in their original alto or soprano ranges.

Being able to have such a huge range in my singing voice (and do it well) is such a euphoric thing for me. It is probably one of the biggest signs that I’m nonbinary because I love hitting the low, rumbly notes and I love singing way up high above even the tenor range. That ability has come from a lot of privilege around access to vocal lessons and coaching but it’s also from a lot of hard work to expand my high range over the years. And now that is all paying off and I get to sign just about anything I want (other than stunt soprano stuff).

I’m now in my second year of singing with an all-gender LGBTQ focused chorus. And it is so great to be in a Bass section made up of so many diverse genders. Where men aren’t even the majority some of the time. And to look across the faces of my choir and feel like I am with my family. There are so many loving and supportive people and they have shown up for me time and time again outside of choir too.

I am so glad that I’m singing again. And I’m really looking forward to the GALA Festival next July.

Nonbinary beyond a third gender

What do you think of when you imagine a nonbinary person? Hopefully if you’ve been reading my work for awhile you know that doesn’t mean slim, white, and “androgynous” as in indeterminate.

You may think of it as a third gender. But I believe it’s really important to make the distinction that it isn’t a unified single gender. It is a broad category that we use in a colonialized Western culture to define ourselves in opposition to the boxes we were given.

In many ways, it is a temporary placeholder word that we are using to gain recognition. A way to make it obvious to people who have never questioned gender that we aren’t the same as them. Genderqueer was another umbrella term that many of us originally adopted to describe ourselves in opposition to “traditional” genders.

Ultimately these are all simplifications that we use for the benefit of cisgender people and as a shorthand so that we don’t have to explain ourselves to everyone. If you were a fly on the wall in conversations that enbies have among themselves, you would see that we are an infinitely diverse group. We exist in hundreds of genders that exist in far more than a spectrum between masculine and feminine.

The language is still evolving to accurately describe the various aspects of our identities. And words mean different things to different people. But I hope what you take away from reading about my experiences and others is that we are not a single gender. We are an experience!

The queer dilemma

I feel like one of the constant queer dilemmas in figuring out your identity is whether you want to “do them or be them” (or the demisexual equivalent, date them or be them). When you get your first glimpse of queer representation or that gay awakening moment, it’s sometimes hard to tell if you are attracted to that asthetic or person because you want to become like them or whether you have pants feels for them. 

For me, that moment came in my teen years when I first heard in the sex ed books I covertly read in the public library about people with both/all kinds of genitals. Sadly at that time I wasn’t reading anything by actual intersex or trans people so the terms I learned initially were highly problematic but the idea still stuck with me. That it was possible to have both a vagina and a penis at the same time.

It wasn’t long before that idea had seeped into my imaginations and people with hybrid genitals dominated my teenage fantasies, both waking and dreaming. For a long time, even after I started transitioning, I thought that was my goal. Two years ago, I tried researching whether it was possible and at that time there wasn’t anything published about it yet so it was only theoretical. Last year, I discovered two surgeons who had started offering a penile preservation vaginoplasty which gave me the chance to think about it seriously.

Now I am planning for my “classic” vaginoplasty and I couldn’t be happier about it (other than that it’s not soon enough!). I don’t feel any confusion or serious doubts anymore. But as I have thought about it more and why I thought I wanted more nonbinary genital options for so long, I’ve realized that it’s because I’m very attracted to that kind of body. The people I find hottest in the world are the folks who have a penis and boobs on the same body. And I’m so glad that the many people I’ve met who want that body now have more options to achieve that.

Statues

Reinterpretation of the Tres In Una statue by Paul Richer

Micah Rajunov and Scott Duan, eds. ‘Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity’ (Columbia University Press, 2019) Expanded Review

An excellent review of the book I’m published in!

lejhouston's avatarDr Lloyd Meadhbh Houston

In late June I reviewed the anthology, Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity, for the Times Literary Supplement. For reasons of space, I had to cut much of what I wanted to say about the collection, so I thought I would post the extended review here to give a fuller sense of why I believe it is such an important resource not just for gender-non-conforming people, but for anyone seeking to understand gender more fully.

If you’re interested in the topic and want to learn more, I’ve also included some useful links relating to non-binary identities and trans issues more broadly at the end of the piece.

Micah Rajunov and Scott Duan, eds. Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), pp. 304

Few fields of identity are as widely misrepresented or wilfully misunderstood as those gathered under the label ‘transgender’ – the umbrella…

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Gender Euphoria

I write a lot about the work I’m doing to transition but sometimes I forget to talk about how amazing the results are. So here are some things that are giving me gender euphoria right now.

I finally found the perfect haircut for me that blends the curly femme with the aggressively queer. And I love looking in the mirror because of it.

Every once in awhile I catch a wiff of how amazing I smell. I still haven’t gotten over how nice it is to smell like a girl and not like a gross sweaty boy.

I’ve reached the point in facial hair removal that I only have a couple of small patches to shave every other day and I can’t stop touching my nice, smooth face.

And have I mentioned how awesome it is to have boobs? Because there is nothing that makes me happier. My body is finally starting to feel right and filling out my dresses properly without help is a big part of that.

I’m planning on starting lessons next week to feminize my voice but I’ve had a lot of people tell me recently how androgynous it already is. When I heard myself on the recording from my surgical consult I was honestly amazed myself because I apparently have been slowly and subconsciously changing my inflection over the last few years and my friends are right, it is much higher than I perceive it. It’s fun to see how surprised people are when I tell them I sing second bass (the lowest part) in choir.

And speaking of choir, having a place where I can sing and not having that be gendered is a glorious thing. I love my choir family and I couldn’t ask for a more supportive group of people.

I’m sure there’s more but I’ve probably rambled enough.

The Bathroom Dilemma

I know this has been written about ad nauseam, but I hate binary bathrooms. It is so stressful to need to pee and have to make that choice. Do I go in the men’s room and risk potential physical violence and awkwardness, or do I go in the women’s restroom and risk verbal harassment and awkwardness?

Up until recently, I had been going with the men’s room as the safer choice. My experience of the men’s room is that men tend to keep their heads down and avoid eye contact and conversation. And especially when I had my beard, I didn’t feel like I could safely go in the women’s room without creating a ruckus.

But now that I’m starting to be read more consistently as a trans woman, I am feeling increasingly awkward about going into the men’s room. I’ve only been brave enough to go into the women’s room a few times so far though. I’m scared that my voice, which I haven’t trained to be feminine yet, will make people upset.

That is part of why I am planning on going to to all the government offices tomorrow and changing my gender marker on my ID. I will feel slightly more like I have a right to be there if I can prove with my ID that I belong. Which I know is ridiculous.

The problem is the worst at work where we have 2 gender neutral restrooms on my floor (the only ones on campus) but they have been increasingly full when I go to use them which is very frustrating. We don’t have that many trans people here so I know that it is mostly cis people using them because they like the privacy. And since I work at a company that is mostly women, I know that I’m much more likely to run into people in the women’s room than in the men’s room and I don’t know how people are likely to react to that, even in my department where most people have a working knowledge of trans people from a research perspective.

Last night I planned a community event and I purposefully chose Optimism Brewery because they are renowned for their gender neutral restroom design. They have a row of floor length stalls with urinals and toilets marked instead of genders in an open room layout. Ideally they would also have a separate family size restroom for people who have cultural requirements for more privacy but it is still better than 99% of the places around here. It was refreshing to not have to make that binary choice, especially after I had a couple drinks.

Gender neutral single stall restrooms are great but we aren’t going to be truly accessible as a society until we do away with binary restrooms altogether. Until then, I’ll continue being uncomfortable almost everywhere I go.

PS – Did you know that you can report where there are gender neutral restrooms and search them on a database through the Refuge app and website? You can even mark if you need to pay to use them and if they are accessible to wheelchairs. So please contribute to map so that people like me know where we can safely go.

Queerness and Gender intertwined

My queerness is integrally tied to my gender identity and it’s not a coincidence that I accepted both parts of myself at the same time.

As a kid, I found myself deeply attracted to lesbians as soon as I discovered them. There was a period where I was worried that I was somehow fetishizing people and being like those gross men who get off on watching lesbians kiss while simultaneously being misogynistic and homophobic. But I realize now that like most of my attraction to women, I can’t untangle my desire to BE them with my desire to date them. In my teens I desperately wished I had been born a woman so I could be a lesbian because at that point I still didn’t know that trans women existed.

For a long time I thought I couldn’t be gay because I was attracted to women and I didn’t have examples of bisexuality or transness in my life. And even when I started to realize that there were some men (like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine) that I was attracted to, I thought I couldn’t be bi because I was married to a woman. There was always some “good” reason that I couldn’t accept my whole self.

So when I finally discovered nonbinary people when I started dating again, I immediately glommed onto them for the same reason. I both wanted to be them and to date them. Now, 5 years later, I find myself dating 5 people, all of them nonbinary. Turns out I just really like people who do gender intentionally. People who have thought about it enough to make a conscious choice about how they present themselves. Which is why I like the term femme too. It means an intentional choice to present in a feminine ways as a queer person rather than just taking the role that society shoves you into.

The thing about sexuality is that there isn’t a lot of terminology that isn’t gendered. So much of homosexuality and heterosexuality is defined by “opposite sex” which doesn’t really exist. Even the term Bi on the surface can be interpreted to mean only 2 genders. So I initially defined my sexuality as pansexual because I was attracted to women, nonbinary people, and occasionally men. Now I’ve gone back to using the term bi for myself because I think there is value is showing people that being bi doesn’t mean you need to exclude nonbinary people. Most bi groups define it as attraction to more than one gender (same gender as you and a different gender). 

Early on, I also latched onto the more generalized term Queer because it kind of sums up both my gender and my sexuality. As I find myself now being more woman than not, that inner kid in me still has this strong desire to claim the term lesbian for myself too. But it’s not entirely accurate. I am too queer for a monosexual label. I’m genderqueer, I’m sexually queer, and I’m just socially queer too. There’s no single box that can hold me but to me, that’s a beautiful thing. I can find people that share some of the same labels with me by using that language and add more adjectives as necessary to fit the situation. I’m not an either/or person, I’m a both/and person. 

I’m not gay as in happy, I’m queer as in fuck your binary.

Selfies are hard

Dysphoria is hard ya’ll. I took a selfie yesterday after my haircut that everyone agrees is objectively hot and at the time felt like a really good photo of myself. But today when I look at it I have a hard time not focusing in on how much more prominent my chin looks now that my upper cheeks are widened by my first jaw surgery. It gives the illusion that I’ve lost weight because my face comes more to a point but to my dysphoric brain, it seems like it REALLY comes to a point.

Luckily, I’m going to have my chin reduced slightly during my second jaw surgery, probably in December. It is nice to know that there is potentially an end in sight to this source of dysphoria. And I am chugging away on laser hair reduction which is slowly making that source easier to handle. But it is still frustrating to have my day derailed by those obsessive thoughts.

Next up on my to-do list – call my top two surgeon choices in San Francisco to set up a consult for my bottom surgery (vaginoplasty).

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I just want to be seen

So I was watching BoJack Horseman this morning. I’m in Season 5 at the moment and I was watching the episode “Free Churro” where BoJack is at his mother’s funeral and is giving this very bitter eulogy based on his childhood trauma. But at the end there is this moment where he says something about how we all just want to be seen and the saddest part of his mother’s death is that he no longer has the opportunity for his mother to see who he really is. And even though I was only half paying attention, I start crying. And I’m crying again writing this out. Because ultimately, that’s what is most important to me too. I just want the people in my life to see who I really am. Not see my body or the person they thought I was based on how I was born. But the woman I truly am. And my mother is the person who I yearn to see me the most.

So when I talk about the pain of being misgendered by my family, it’s not actually about them making a mistake. It’s about the fact that when they do that constantly, it feels like they don’t actually see who I really am. They still think of me as the boy they thought they were raising. They probably still think this is a phase or that I have been corrupted by liberal society or something. And they can’t seem to successfully convert their brains to seeing who I truly was all along.

I have largely given up on my dad. I don’t think we will ever see eye to eye. But I guess I still hold out hope for my mom. And more than almost anything in my life, I want her to see who I am. I want her to embrace me as her daughter and give me her approval.

In my family, there is a middle name that started with my grandmother and has been passed down three generations in the women. It is my mom and my sister’s middle name and since in many ways, our family is not so secretly a matriarchy, it is a very important symbolic name. As I think about changing my name to make my chosen name my legal first name, I have been thinking about what I want my middle name to be. And a large part of me is drawn to choosing that name because of the symbolism. But I feel like I need to be given permission to claim that heritage and while I have gotten that from my aunt, I still feel like I need my mother’s seal of approval. And I know it probably won’t happen as long as she doesn’t see me as I am.

Most of my trans friends don’t have that relationships with their families anymore because they have either been rejected by their parents or they choose to distance themselves because of the pain that being constantly misgendered and deadnamed causes. But I keep trying to invest time into my family and I remain close to them even though it is painful because I want that closure. I want to be seen. And I truly hope that before my mom descends into alzheimers, that I get that moment with her.

Biological “sex” isn’t real

I’ve written many time before about how the concept of biological sex as a separate concept from gender is artificial. And how asking it on forms as if it determines everything about me medically is inaccurate. But I want to revisit the topic because it is really important. MANY cis people, both men and women, use this as a prop for their transphobia and make arguments based on biological determinism. When really, it is just based on internalized oppositional sexism, misogyny, and homophobia.

The main argument rests on the idea that your X/Y chromosome mix determines everything about you. But that is just a prop for our pre-existing binary thinking. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that chromosomes were first identified at a time in Western history where people were already socially trying to reinforce gender roles based on a patriarchal lens. And even they acknowledged that there are 5 “sex” chromosome combinations.

When you think about it, the only genetic difference between people with XX and XY is in 1/8th of 1/23rd of your genetics which works out to 0.5% of your primary genetic code. Half of that if you consider the recently discovered epigenetic component which is shaped by your environment and experiences in life. There are far more differences on other chromosomes than there are based on the Y.

And in reality, our genetics are only a small part of what makes us who we are in life. If you are really going to claim biological determinism then you need to look at the whole biology of a person. Which includes how their body was shaped by hormones in the womb, how their brain developed, and how their body has changed over time. And there are already studies that show that in many trans people, there are key areas of the brain that are more similar to their gender than to their chromosomal peers.

There is also recent data showing that bloodwork values on trans people taking hormones closely match their hormonal peers after only 6 months, regardless of the concentration of the hormones. So it brains and blood match and hormones only play a small role, that only leaves genitals.

The existence of intersex people due to natural variation in human biology already proves that genitals aren’t binary either. And with modern medicine, we can fundamentally change the shape of your genitals to the point that the average person can’t tell the difference between a neovagina and a natal vagina if that is your desire. So really, what is our excuse anymore? You can’t claim socialization because many trans people fundamentally experience their childhoods and lives differently. It really just boils down to oppositional sexism, misogyny, and homophobia.

So cis people, next time you hear an asshole say that they would never have sex with a trans person, or a TERF say that only cis women belong in their communities, press them as to why. Help them uncover their homophobia and transphobia. The burden for undoing that shouldn’t lie on trans people. We shouldn’t let jokes about “discovering someone used to be a dude” slide. Because those are just as much a part of rape culture as jokes about how women should dress.

And remember, just because you may hear at a Trans 101 training that sex and gender are different doesn’t mean that all trans people agree. Send them this blog and remind them that their argument isn’t based in science.