The Why

Inheriting a fixer-upper

I just scheduled my jaw surgery to do the first part of correcting my bite for mid-May. It’s something I’ve been dreading for the last 10 years since my dentist identified the root problem. And I’ve been surprised at how many emotions around surgery are coming up for me now that it is an undeniable reality, not just about this procedure but about my plans for bottom surgery.

My original plan was to get my jaw surgery out of the way this year and then go in for vaginoplasty next year. And in the interim I was going to meet with the surgeons I was interested in when they were in town for Gender Odyssey. But now I feel like that plan has come crashing down around my ears (like most plans have in my life).

I found out a few weeks ago that my jaw surgery is so intensive that they need to split it into two separate procedures with a year of expanding my top palate in between. So now I have another surgery on my face to dread but at least I have jaw feminization included to look forward to. Unfortunately that means I have to rethink my whole plan around bottom surgery.

To complicate things further, I found out that Gender Odyssey isn’t in Seattle this year and they aren’t doing a conference for trans adults this year anyway. So now there’s no opportunity to meet with them that doesn’t involve investing in travel. I feel like I need to decide whether to try to attend Philly Trans Wellness where I might meet some potential providers (although not my top choice – Heidi Wittenberg), or whether to travel to San Francisco to meet with them directly.

And trying to figure this all out while I’m also undergoing intensive laser hair reduction on my face (I put electrolysis on hold for now because it was too slow) just feels like so much. I feel totally overwhelmed by how far I still have to go before I’m done with all these medical procedures and honestly I’m feeling pretty despondent and hopeless about it all.

I just want to fast forward to a point in time where I feel like my body is my own. But instead I feel like I inherited a fixer-upper house that needs major repairs to be livable and every time I fix one thing, another breaks. I know that all these surgeries and procedures aren’t going to fix everything but I still have to rest my hopes on life getting easier once I’m past it all. Because without that hope I don’t know how to keep going.

This is one of those points where I really wish I had been born with a brain and body that matched and I didn’t have to go through all this work just to be myself. And sometimes it feels like I should just throw in the towel on life and give up. Don’t worry, I don’t actually have plans to do so but I can’t say I haven’t thought about it.

Anyway, I don’t know where all this is going right now other than hopefully forward even if it takes a painstakingly long time to get there. I know I wouldn’t be able to keep wading into the fray if it wasn’t for my partners and friends so I am very thankful to all of them for keeping me going. I know things have to get worse before they get better but I really hope I turn that corner soon.

2 year blog-iversary

Today marks my 80th post and 2 years since I first launched this blog with the intention of creating more representation of the joys and struggles of being an AMAB feminine nonbinary person. It is also the 2 year anniversary of when I first started presenting as feminine full time thanks to a new job with a supportive team. However my journey towards being conscious of my gender first started almost 10 years ago when I began discussing gender with a college support group. It has been 4 years since I went on my first date with another nonbinary person who helped me realize that the definition of genderqueer was broad enough to contain my complexity. And over 3 years since I came out publicly.

The experience of writing a blog has been surprisingly wonderful. Before this I never considered myself much of a writer and certainly didn’t do so for fun. I did it mostly for myself as a way of documenting where I was at in my thinking along the way. But also in the hopes that some young baby-trans person might stumble across it and find it helpful in framing their own thoughts and seeing themselves represented. I never imagined that more than a few close friends would be regular readers. And I certainly didn’t in my wildest dreams guess that 2 years later I would have gained over 50 followers and had 13,000 views by 6,700 visitors.

Now, thanks to my writing here, I will soon be a published author with a chapter in a nonbinary anthology. It has also helped me become a stronger and more self aware person and started many conversations that I hope have pushed people to think about things in new ways. Thank you to all of you who have supported me in this journey so far, especially my spouse and chosen family. I couldn’t do this without your continued encouragement.

Not a man

How do I know I’m nonbinary? Well the truth is I don’t. All I know for sure is that I’m not a man. I tried to fit that role for 26 years and I have plenty of experience to show me that it didn’t work for me. I tried being a masculine man, I tried being a gender non-conforming man, I tried being a sensitive man, I tried being an emotionless man. And it just doesn’t fit. So am I a woman or am I nonbinary? I don’t really know but what I do know is that binary gender expectations and the idea of “opposite sexes” harms all of us regardless of how we identify so I’m perfectly content to fight for nonbinary representation even if that’s not where I end up someday.

If you’re trying to figure out if you’re nonbinary, I recommend starting with Sam Dylan Finch’s articles on Everyday Feminism like Help! I Think I Might Be Non-Binary, But How Can I Know? 

Trans Day of Visibility

I know I’m late on this one since Trans Day of Visibility was Saturday, but since it was a big weekend for my interfaith household (Passover and Easter) you’ll have to forgive me. I was busy cooking up a storm and cleaning house; basically all the wifely duties involved in Seder. But I did want to talk about why visibility is both important for me and complicated.

Diverse visibility is what allowed me to discover who I am and the lack of visibility is what held me back. As I’ve discussed before, there were many signs as a kid that I didn’t fit the masculinity mold. But the biggest reason I never figured out who I was back then was because I knew absolutely nothing about trans people or nonbinary identity. I grew up in a subculture so isolated from the diversity of the real world that I didn’t even know any out gay people much less terminology around gender. And even as I started to enter queer spaces in college, I didn’t see how I fit into that picture since the only trans people I saw at that point were more binary focused in a way I didn’t think I could access. So I just called myself a gender-nonconforming ally for a long time.

And as I started to re-explore my identity again in my mid-20s, I knew then that there was some level of queerness because of my affinity for queer and trans people but I couldn’t see myself in the people around me who were mostly either assigned female at birth androgynous or transmasculine. Eventually someone who I was dating gave me the push I needed to consider how broad a term genderqueer can be and how that could apply to me. And as I began to look harder for representation of assigned male at birth genderqueer people, I discovered people that I finally felt like I fit in with like Jacob Tobia, Alok Vaid-Menon, and Jeffrey Marsh.

And that’s why I started this blog. So that people on a similar path to me can see themselves represented and some of the steps I’ve taken, the fears I have, and the reality of nonbinary life. I don’t want anyone to assume that I can speak as a representative for any demographic but for my voice to add to the diversity of identity and opinion out there online.

And that brings me to the downside of transgender visibility. Too often the voices of people with the most privilege like Caitlyn Jenner are the ones that get boosted. And believe me when I say that Caitlyn DOES NOT speak for the majority of trans people. And when cisgender people write about trans people, they often twist the narrative to fit preconceived notions of transition. So if you really want visibility, boost the unfiltered voices of a diverse spectrum of trans and nonbinary voices.

I am visible every day. It is impossible to escape the hypervisibility of being me in a very cisnormative world. But visibility only does me good if people are actually listening to what trans people say and not just telling the same old misinterpretations of our actions and intentions. So if you are reading this blog and listening to the stories told by my trans siblings, thank you. I appreciate that you are seeking the source and learning along with us.

To be or to love

My deepest truth is that I have never been able to disentangle my desire to be with women from my desire to be a woman.

I have always been most comfortable in the company of women and had a hard time connecting to masculinity. The only men I have been able to get close to are the ones who are more effeminate in their interests and presentation as well. As a kid and as an adult I frequently find myself being the only non-woman in a classroom or workplace, especially since I work in a career path that is 95% women. And now, as I prepare to take feminizing hormones, I find myself having to come to grips with that fact once more.

For the past few years I have entertained the fantasy that I am queer enough to date across the full gender spectrum. But if I’m being honest with myself I can look back and realize that beyond the trends of convenience there is the sad fact that I just don’t connect as deeply with masculine people. As much as I love my transmasculine siblings, I don’t have the same chemistry with them as I do with femmes. And I always feel terribly awkward around cis men and out of place in gay male culture.

I’ve frequently joked about being a lesbian to cover up the fact that I desperately wish I could truly be considered one. And when I think about transition, this is really the biggest thing that draws me to doing a more binary route. My femininity has always been about how I relate and want to relate to women, not about my relationship to men. Which I think is why I’ve always been drawn to feminist circles even when that was highly taboo for my culture.

As terrible as the world is around us, the part that saddens me the most is the bigots within our own movement who seek to exclude people like me – the TERFs (Trans Exclusionary “Radical Feminists”). I can kinda understand why the world at large has a hard time wrapping its head around me and how I defy categories. But for a group of people who spend so much time thinking about gender and the constructs surrounding it to pretend like it is so impermeable that I can never cross that threshold really does hold me back. I desperately want to be included in everything as “one of the girls” but I know that no matter how hard I fight, I can never pass enough to do so.

I am so grateful for my friends who have made conscious efforts at inclusivity. I recently was invited to a gaming group that a friend expanded to include women and femmes. And every time someone lumps me in with a group that is primarily women I get warm fuzzy feelings. Does this mean that I am a trans woman and genderqueer is just a waypoint on my journey? I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is that I can only take it one step at a time. I am excited to start estrogen and see what effect that has on my brain and my body. A lot of the things people talk about experiencing are already commonplace for me like the readily accessible emotions, the frequent crying, and the mood cycles. So if I am already like this without hormones, what will that look like? Who knows. Maybe I will eventually become the lesbian I’ve always dreamed of being.

Societal Expectations

So much of my brain energy, especially lately, is consumed with thinking about what I really want because I want it and what is just because society expects something. For example last month I went back and forth quite a bit, as I often do, on whether I should grow my hair out to look more feminine or keep my curlyqueer cut with the close buzzed sides and long top. I ended up going short again because I know how to manage my curls that way, it takes less time, and I feel like myself that way. But I still question whether I would like myself with longer hair if I could get through the grow-out process or if I just think I need that so I am less likely to be read as male.

Do most people think about societal expectations this much? Or just feminists? Or just trans people? I don’t even know what is “normal” anymore.

Why the beard?

I don’t actually have a good answer to that even though I think about it a lot. At this point I guess the beard has become so much a part of my identity that I can’t imagine life without it.

It’s hard to recall what my thought process was around growing the beard 10 years ago. I started off with a goatee when I was 18 after having a fake one in a Shakespeare play. Ever since puberty I hated the way my face looked with my jutting cleft chin. Hiding my chin was definitely high on the list of priorities but it probably had something to do with trying to claim some semblance of masculinity. Also a convenience factor since by 17 I was shaving twice a day to go to evening events without visible hair. I took great pride in being one of the few in my dorm who could grow a full beard in the space of a month for No Shave November though it took until 21 for my cheeks to not be patchy.

Oddly growing a beard was a point of big contention with my family. My dad and mom both thought beards were symbols of hippies and rebels and that I wouldn’t be respected with one. Also some religious reasoning that I can’t recall. But I managed to come up with a long list of historical and biblical characters with beards and trace the societal perceptions of facial hair across American history to show that the clean shaven look was a legacy from WWI and II and the negativity had largely faded. So maybe part of it was me trying to be a rebel (in a weirdly conforming way).

Now my beard is so important to me that I avoided researching hormone therapy for a long time because I was mistakenly under the impression that I would lose my ability to grow it on estrogen. But even if I imagine a full surgical and hormonal transition (not something I am planning) I can’t imagine myself with a face I like sans beard.

I’ve only fully shaved twice in the last 10 years and I definitely don’t plan on doing it again without medical necessity. But who knows what hormones might do to soften my face. Maybe there is a future where it’s not necessary. But I’ll probably still choose it.

“Socialized male”

In my mind this is one of the most transphobic things you can say. Right up there with “so you were born male?”

I found this great quote in an article talking about hormonal cycles that really resonates (though it is from a binary perspective).

Trans women are not men who decided to become women, we are women who were forced to live as men until we could find a way to express the truth of who we are.

I don’t understand men, or know what it’s like to really be one.
Because I always knew I wasn’t.

Not everyone has always known that they were trans; I certainly didn’t. But neither was I “socialized as a man” in the same sense that a cisgender boy is. Yes, I have some insight on what kinds of things are said to boys to enforce masculinity. But my experience of them is uniquely shaped by my nonbinary gender.

When I was taught about what I was supposed to be, I didn’t hear them as things that I could actually achieve. Masculinity was this unachievable standard that I never felt like I could reach, even in the times when I thought I wanted to. But more importantly, masculinity wasn’t something I really wanted. Even the “sensitive men” in my life who didn’t display toxic masculinity had some indescribable maleness that I admired but more like in the way that I hear cis women describe attraction to men.

I’ve tried many times to write down what I think masculinity is outside of the hegemonic hypermasculinity. But for each quality that I name, I can think of a woman who displays it just as well or better without compromising her femininity. So I don’t have an easy way to tell you what I felt like I was missing that made me not fit as a boy/man. But I always knew I didn’t fit, couldn’t fit, and deep down didn’t want to fit.

What I’m doing here

I’ve never been much of a writer so I hope you’ll pardon any mistakes and infrequency in posts. But I believe in the power of seeing people like you and feeling like you’re not alone. So I’m putting myself out there to share a bit about my nonbinary “transition” such as is is and my thoughts as I seek to become more fully myself every day.

When I search things like genderqueer fashion or androgyny I usually don’t see myself or anyone like me in the results. We’re in a new frontier when it comes to gender identity – not that there weren’t people like us before, we just didn’t have the wealth of language to describe it or the visibility. But as has happened with homonormativity, it seems to me that the AFAB dandy has become the fashionable icon of androgyny and masculine-of-center presentation is the default assumption. Not that there is anything wrong with that look, in fact I think it is very attractive on many people. But I don’t see myself represented and I don’t see many AMAB femmes visible in mainstream queer culture. That’s part of why it took me until I was 26 to realize that I could be genderqueer and that my beard and my body didn’t exclude me from being nonbinary.
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There are a few notable exceptions and visible figures who I look up to and admire -people like Jacob Tobia, Jeffrey Marsh, and Alex Drummond. I appreciate them being the pioneers of fashion and making the world a safer place for me through their openness and vulnerability. I don’t want to become a public figure like them but I do want to share in that vulnerability by putting myself outside my comfort zone and showing a bit more of what my daily life is like as a bearded genderqueer.

So that’s why I’m here and starting this blog. I’m not special and I’m certainly not as confident as most people think I am. I often struggle with not feeling queer enough or trans enough. It takes a lot of bravery to walk out the door into non-queer spaces wearing a dress and a beard. I am pretty much guaranteed to garner stares wherever I go, even in Seattle where we have a high density of trans people. And that attention, even when it’s not malicious, is exhausting. Simply going to the grocery store dressed as myself takes a lot of energy and I don’t always have what it takes to do it in every space.

So to everyone else out there who struggle with the same things I want you to know you are not alone. We are here and we are genderqueer. But that isn’t easy and it’s ok to be kind to yourself and it’s ok to hide your gender in unsafe spaces or even because you don’t have the energy that day. You are trans enough, even when you’re not presenting how you feel like you should.