Boob update

2 years and 1 month into hormones and my boobs are still growing! At this point I’m solidly a C-cup but they are pretty conical and haven’t rounded out so I don’t really have cleavage yet. Other than the shape and distance from each other, this is about what I was hoping for. It makes me so happy to see them in the mirror or my peripheral vision!

For my fellow trans health nerds who are wondering, I started by ramping up to 6 mg of oral estrogen sublingually spaced throughout the day and eventually backed down to 4 mg where I am now. I never added spironolactone (an androgen blocker) because my testosterone disappeared and never came back. In February this year, my estradiol level was 139 pg/mL (cis woman range is 12-498 depending on cycle) and serum testosterone was only 13 ng/dL (cis woman range is 8-48).

Do Trans Women get Periods?

Do Trans Women get periods? Absolutely.

As someone who is on my period now, I can tell you that it is very real and it sucks. I am ready to burst into tears at a moments notice and I could definitely bite someone’s head off right now. I’ve been tracking my mood cycle lately to confirm that it actually does follow a monthly pattern and my app was spot on this month. And it is synced up with my nesting partner so I knew it was that time without even asking her.

Do we bleed? No. But if you try to point out how “lucky” we are are some BS like that, I will slap you. Because that is a really sore point for someone like me who wants nothing more than to be pregnant. But I also know that it is unlikely to be possible while I am still young enough to do it because while uterine transplants are absolutely medically possible, they are only given to cisgender women.

The period is mostly caused by being on estrogen but I have always been sensitive to monthly cycles. Years ago before I had admitted to myself that I was trans, I noticed that my mood cycles were related to where my partner was on her period. But now that I am on estrogen it is a whole lot more emphasized.

And in case you think I’m making it up, you should read what other trans girls say.

Going Through the Motions

Being in transition for me feels like everything in my life is temporary. For the past 2 years I’ve been taking all these steps to try to feel like a normal human. This week is my two year anniversary of being on hormones and I’ve also had my braces for over 2 years now as I get my bite corrected. I’ve been getting hair removal all over my body and preparing for bottom surgery. I’m been doing all the necessary things to treat my gender dysphoria and address other medical problems that I’ve been putting off for when I had good health insurance. But all these things just feel like going through the motions in hope that on the other end I can rejoin the real world and live the life I actually want.

Many days I feel like a ghost, like an interloper from another plane of existence trying to navigate a world that isn’t built for me. I feel like I can interact with the real world but I’m not a part of it yet. Like I need to somehow “earn” my way into that life by doing all the right things. And in the meantime my life feels ethereal and temporary, like it could all be washed away by a really bad day.

And now with all of the Seattle area on lockdown for this COVID-19 pandemic, life feels even more temporary. It’s hard to make plans not knowing how long this will last. And scary to know that my surgery date could be effected.

It’s not that I’m afraid of dying; in fact that’s partly the root of the problem. I don’t feel any attachment to living because most days I feel like I never actually have. I’ve never fully lived the life I want as the person I want to be yet so I have no stake in protecting that. The only thing that keeps me going is the hope that after all this transition work, I can actually have that life. I don’t know if it will be better or feel more real, but it’s the only anchor I have to reality right now.

And now that I’ve lost a lot of my routines and physical interactions, even more of my life feels unmoored. I feel like I’m adrift in a world that is panicking and chaotic while I sit here at home mostly feeling numb. I keep saying that I’m ok but if I’m honest I’m not really. I’m spending most of my time dissociating by playing video games to fully immerse myself in a different reality. A reality where I have achievable goals and can actually go out and kill the bad guys and save the day. Don’t get me wrong, the video games are essential to my survival right now. But they are also part of this temporary feeling where the real world isn’t real to me.

I’m not sure when these pandemic measures will all end but I keep holding on to the hope that I will still be able to have surgery in August. And that surgery gives me some grounding in my body and in the real world. Because I do want to live. I just don’t know how to yet.

Barely surviving

I’m going to say some things that might sound scary but let me be absolutely clear that I have no plans to commit suicide or anything drastic like that.

 

I’m sick and tired of barely holding on to life. I’m exhausted from just surviving and it’s hard to see a path to a place where I’m thriving.

Now I know part of that is my seasonal depression talking. I’m on three meds now to try and control it but the best I have at the moment is “not as bad as it was.” I’ve tried messing with them but it’s a dangerous proposition when I’m in the midst of it. The last dosage change I tried put me at too high a risk for suicide for me to continue.

And part of that is the mental and physical exhaustion of being disabled. My back and neck always hurt and that background pain is draining. And then there are periods like the weekend I just had where a seemingly simple task like assembling and hanging a medicine cabinet puts me in 24 hours of acute pain. And it’s demoralizing to know that you can’t even do basic things anymore.

Another part of it is trying to exist in a world that wasn’t built for me. Our westernized society still doesn’t know how to be inclusive of trans folks even on the most basic level. Even queer community makes it hard to be recognized if you are outside the binary gender construct we all take for granted. And when you can fight for decades for the most basic human rights and have those stripped away in just one politician’s term, it’s pretty demoralizing.

But the biggest part of it is the dysphoria I have around how my body is gendered. I have been on hormones for 2 years now and it has helped a lot, but I still can’t look in the mirror most days and see myself looking back. I see a face that looks hopelessly masculine to me, and I hear a testosterone shaped voice come out of my body that can be fun to perform with but still feels like a form of drag to me.

I want so badly to be ok with the body I was given, but that’s not how dysphoria works. I can do all the body positivity building I want and all that helps with is my weight. There is still a misalignment of who I know I am, and the body that others see. I walk around daily in a shell that causes people to make assumptions about who I am. And even when those assumptions are right, it usually means they are focusing on the wrong things.

At this point I feel like I am just barely clinging on to hope that bottom surgery will alleviate enough of this feeling that I can relax even the tiniest bit. I don’t know for sure if it will, but I also don’t know if I could keep going if I don’t try. So for now, I survive.

First surgery prep laser

I had my first laser hair removal session on my genitals today to begin prepping for bottom surgery. I’ve been dreading it all week because it is so extremely painful when I do it on my face that I assumed it would be even worse on such a sensitive area. But I was pleasantly surprised. I don’t know if it’s because the numbing cream works better on the thinner skin (it did last longer), or because it is a wider dispersal laser head but it was a breeze and over really quickly. It honestly hurt a lot less than waxing or sugaring.

Turns out the worst part of laser down there is the shaving. It is a pain in the ass (literally) to try to get it all and the aesthetician still  had to clean it up. I recommend having a friend or partner help you shave. The other part that sucks is the insurance approval process which took me three months of pestering.

But session 1 is finally over. I have 6 more months of doing this every 6 weeks and hopefully it is enough for surgery. I’m also going to finish laser treatments on my face since I had to stop because it is expensive to pay out of pocket ($300 every 6 weeks). But the stubborn hair patches that have come back are giving me too much dysphoria to keep waiting.

84499459_10157817476009360_8496163687717928960_o

My skeptical face as I wait for the numbing cream to work

Insurance delays

Medical and insurance gatekeeping of essential gender affirming treatments is exhausting!

It has taken me 3 months to get all the approvals from my insurance lined up so that I can get genital hair removal, an essential step before bottom surgery. This is despite them claiming in their own documentation that these procedures are covered for trans people. And before I could even begin that approval process, I had to get 2 letters from psychiatrists, one of whom had to be PhD level.

Because of this nonsense, I’m not going to be in ideal shape for surgery by August. Hopefully my surgeon can successfully remove the rest with follicle scraping while I’m under.

Oh, and the only way I even got insurance to finally respond was by having my HR person at work badger the insurance company on my behalf.

My decade in review

I started this decade still thinking I was mostly a man and mostly straight. I had just gotten married in what I could already tell was a terrible relationship and I stuck with it for 6 years because I thought that I would never be loved for who I actually was. And because of that, I put all my gender and sexuality questions on the back burner for over 5 years.
 
I’m beginning this decade with a new name and a much clearer picture of who I am. I’ve finally recognized why I was always different and claimed the complicated womanhood that I always had. I have built a stronger queer community and found more love than I could have possibly imagined.
 
Transition and self exploration are hard work. But with my gender confirmation surgery coming up in 7 months, I feel like the hardest parts are almost over. If I can make it through this year, I will hopefully have some relief from the intensity of dysphoria that has been in the background since puberty.
 
There is light at the end of the tunnel and I know that I’ve made it this far because of the many people who have supported me and made this corner of the world a safer place to be myself.

The Trans “Fad”

Lately I’ve noticed more and more cisgender (non-trans) people and businesses putting up Trans Pride flags and being very vocal about trans rights. And maybe that’s my bubble because I’m in Seattle but it seems like the national dialogue has really turned to focusing on trans people. Which is great, but it also feels dangerous to me because I feel like we’re “in vogue” right now and being treated like we’re a fad. And honestly that makes me suspicious of people because I never know when I’m going to fall out of fashion and I don’t necessarily trust people in it for the novelty to actually show up for the hard work of defending us.

So let me put something to rest – there is no “gender revolution.” And trans/nonbinary people are not a new phenomenon that suddenly started popping up in the last couple decades. I’m not trans because I want to rebel against gender; I was simply born this way. The same way that gender diverse people have existed across cultures for millennia.

Our language may have evolved and trans-ness in the US and Western society naturally looks very different than in other cultures. But people like us have existed for as long as we have had a concept of gender. It is only because of modern religious puritanical ideas and colonialism that we have lost sense of that. Western culture has literally erased gender diversity from our memories across the globe. Even in the early 20th Century there was a wealth of medical research and trans culture in Europe that was all burned by the Nazis prior to WWII.

Yes, the age of the internet has changed what that looks like. Trans people can now share culture around the world in a way that allows us to quickly evolve new language to describe our experiences together. And we can find the support we need to come out even if our families and geographic communities are hostile. But this gender diversity has always been here and we have a long history of transcestors to prove it.

So you can believe our experiences or deny them but it doesn’t change reality. Take advantage of this period of cultural awareness to get a glimpse into our lives when we invite you to. But please don’t treat us as new or different. We may be relatively rare but so are redheads and left-handed people. And we don’t like being put in a fish bowl any more than they do.

And if you’re going to put Trans Pride Flags on your profile or house, please realize that you can’t substitute that the real work. If you want to make the world better for us, start looking at your workplace dress codes, bathroom policies, insurance plans, and hiring practices. Fight against gender-essentialist and binary gendered language. Advocate for trans inclusive communities and ostracize the “feminists” in wolves clothing that seek to exclude us or deny our authenticity. Donate money to help us navigate the bureaucratic systems that are still in place that prevent us from accessing accurate government IDs and gender affirming healthcare. And lift up the voices of trans people of color.

And whether you are trans or cis, remember that our language is still evolving and what is correct today or for one person may not be true for everyone or for all time. Don’t police gender non-conforming people who use terms to describe their own experience that you may find disturbing or “problematic.” I’ve seen too many marginalized people be ostracized from trans community because they don’t know the right things to say to fit in. In particular, support the straight trans women and the HIV positive trans folks around you because they face the most discrimination, both in and out of LGBTQ+ community.

We are not a fad but we are marginalized people living in a cis-centric society. The modern world is not built for us but together we can change that if you are in this for the long-haul.

 

Nonbinary vs Gender Neutral

Nonbinary or Genderqueer are not the same thing as Gender Neutral.

There are people who describe their gender as neutral but for the most part, people usually have a lot more nuance than that. Gender neutral is a good way to describe pronouns like they/them or xe/xir, but it isn’t a good way to refer to nonbinary people unless they have explicitly said that.

My gender is anything but neutral. For me, it is relatively stable and not fluid, but it lies solidly in the realm of femme with a twist of tomboy. I am both a woman and a nonbinary person because my gender is queer and defies a single category. Queerness at its heart is about breaking boundaries and holding the tension between seemingly disparate concepts.

I see your categories and reject them because they don’t reflect my reality.

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.