An Open Letter to Shoe Designers from Transfeminine People

Dear shoe designers and purveyors of footwear,

On behalf of transfeminine people (and the many cisgender women) with larger feet everywhere I want to implore you to make all your shoes in sizes at or above 13W. As someone assigned male at birth (AMAB) and someone who is tall and sturdy, my feet are not the delicate appendages you seem to think all women should have. I need my shoes to not only be long and wide, but sturdy enough to support my weight (see Kinky Boots for reference).

Sadly, whenever I search for anything remotely cute, I see a plethora of options size 9 or below, a few up to size 11, and the rare unicorns of shoes that come in size 13 but are too narrow for my feet. I know I am not alone in this. When I talk to others in my community – people who are transgender, intersex, tall, gloriously fat, or just blessed with nice supportive feet – we all share the common curse of limited shoe options.

If I search any shoe store online, I come up with only a page or two of results. My recent searches of DSW, for example, come up with single digits in each category for 13W. And God forbid I try to go into a store to try anything on; DSW gave me a blank stare when I asked where size 12 and 13 were. The only place I have ever seen my size on the rack was Payless Shoes where they don’t have a sign for my category but I might find a few ill-fitting, uncomfortable options on the end of the isle. Most of my shopping involves looking for obscure shops on Amazon.com and hope they come with good return policies.

Based on my friends group and family alone, I know there is a huge untapped market out there for larger shoe sizes with wide options. So please, when you invent all those cute heels, pumps, flats, and boots, scale them up and put them on the market for us. We would be eternally grateful.

Sincerely,

A shoe-loving genderqueer

Explaining Genderqueer To Those Who Are Not

As usual, Micah nails it on the head. This is a great way to explain to a cisgender person what it is like identifying as something other than what you were assigned at birth.

micah's avatargenderqueer.me

A reader writes in about her struggle in trying to understand genderqueer as an identity. How is it distinct from gender roles? What can she do to respect her family member’s process? How can she understand it?

I have a cousin who has recently come out as genderqueer. She and I were best friends growing up, and naturally I want to understand what her experience is like, but I just don’t get it. (I also don’t know if I am allowed to refer to my cousin as she/her anymore.)

I can understand feeling like you should be a different gender from what your parts are, or from what you were raised as, but I don’t understand what it would be like not to feel like either gender. Is it about the social constructs around what society tells you that girls and boys/men and women should be like? Because I understand…

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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.

A cautionary tale

I’ve spent most of my life making decisions because I wanted to please others, make life easier for other people, or be likable. It’s been a consistent theme for me that has shaped so much of who I am, including why I am an administrative assistant today. My job is all about making someone else’s job easier. In the nonprofit world, that can be a good thing because I’m working for worthy causes and helping others use their talents. But in most areas of my life, it isn’t serving me well and ultimately it really isn’t helping other people in the way that I think it is.

I spent my childhood trying to live up to the standards of a fundamentalist form of Christianity.  It had very gendered expectations about my role as someone who was supposed to grow up to be the patriarch, decision maker, sole bread winner, and father. I tried so hard to live up to those images and in my various attempts I fell prey to some aspects of toxic masculinity. By the time I was 18, I was a poster child of obedience and conformity. I went off to college able to debate with the best of them on the apologetics of Calvinism and prepared with a stack of books about creation “science” to argue with my “liberal” Christian professors.

But I came to the realization at 18 that even within my closed circle of Evangelical friends, I was a real asshole and unpleasant to be around. In attempting to please my church and my parents, I had turned into a judgmental person stuck in black-and-white thinking. Because I wanted everyone else to like me, I resolved to change… or at least to be less vocal about my judgments and take more time to listen.

Luckily for me, my choice of an Evangelical liberal arts university gave me the opportunity to grow and change in a non-threatening environment. Within 2 years I had transformed into a liberal pacifist and thrown my conservative history behind me. But I hadn’t stopped trying to please other people. When my best friend expressed romantic interest in me, I ignored the warning flags about her personality and dove head first into an all-consuming relationship which found me married before my junior year at only 21.

I spent the next 7 years doing everything within my power to please her, bending over backwards and almost completely losing myself in the process. She was controlling, manipulative, gaslighting, and emotionally abusive. She used my self-abasing tendencies to her benefit and had me convinced that her opinions were right on everything. My feelings were unimportant. Under the guise of wanting me to “fulfill my true potential,” she molded me into the type of person that gave her the status of a successful married professional that she wanted to be in her life.

We had the beginnings of a sexual relationship when we first started dating but that all but ended once we got officially engaged. We didn’t have intercourse until 5 years into the marriage and she used that as a dangling carrot, always something in the future to be working towards if I did the things she wanted. The only reason we ever even tried it (very unsatisfactorily) was because she knew she was losing me. As a sexual person I was deeply unfulfilled in our relationship but whenever I would voice that it would become all about her.

Slowly she trained me to basically be her servant, fetching anything she wanted and meeting her every need. She demanded massages which began as an exchange but eventually became something I would just do for her. Even when I was working 10 hour days she would still expect me to come home and do all the cooking and household chores. I passed this off as a positive thing because we didn’t have gendered roles in our relationship, but really it was just abusive.

When I would try to talk about my needs and desires they were pushed aside in favor of her needs. If I used emotional content in a conversation my feelings were dismissed because she only believed in logic (until her repressed feelings would inconveniently bubble to the surface in which case I had to sooth her). I was always set up to fail when we argued because she had training as a debater. In public I was the dutiful husband and we were the “power couple” at our church, but in actuality, I had no power.

Despite all that, I didn’t talk about my problems to anyone else because I didn’t want to burden anyone. In my attempts to make others’ lives easier, I allowed mine to become a living hell of consuming depression. I would pathologically avoid being alone with my feelings because they would lead to very dark places. There were times I think that the only thing that kept me alive was that I didn’t want to die a “virgin.”

I tried so hard to volunteer and do good things during that time but I was unable to really be effective because I hadn’t taken care of myself first. And because daily life took so much work, I put my own self-discovery on the back burner. All my gender feels turned into a festering anxiety in the background.

After 5 years of a very unhappy marriage and couples therapy, it was so clear that things weren’t working that we were having serious conversations about divorce. But I was still so stuck in the model of meeting everyone else’s needs before my own, including not disappointing my parents who didn’t approve of divorce, that I agreed to stay. I did finally prioritize one thing though. It was important to me that I have a sexually fulfilling life which was never going to happen with my wife. She wanted any outside relationships to be a sex only arrangement but that’s not what fulfills me. So we compromised and I was “allowed” to pursue polyamorous relationships under some very strict rules and in secrecy.

Through reading resources on polyamory that focused on the importance of knowing your boundaries and finally seeing models for healthy relationships, I slowly began to come into my own and prioritize myself little by little. This resulted in a backlash at home as my wife could see her perfect arrangement slipping away.  But I was able to see the world outside the bubble I’d been isolated in for the first time and find people more like myself who were comfortable in their gender and sexuality.

When I finally came out as genderqueer and pansexual, she wanted me to keep it secret from all but a few confidants because she didn’t want to have to answer questions about my gender or her feelings about my sexuality. That was what finally started to break down my mental block around divorce and got me thinking about what it might look like to truly love my life and myself. Still, I was so afraid of being unloveable that I stayed in a marriage where love was conditional on my continued silence and suppression of my identity.

Polyamory isn’t easy, especially when you are starting out and have a lot of restrictions placed on you. My wife would yell at me if I was 3 minutes late coming home from a date and she wanted me to tell her everything that was wrong with the people I was dating and why she was better than them. But after a lot of dating attempts that never made it past the third date, I began dating a wonderful woman who encouraged me to voice my needs and set boundaries. It started out as a casual relationship with no expectations but within a couple months it was clear that I was in love.

That brought things to a breaking point in my marriage. I was starting to be happy and learning to say no to unreasonable requests and my wife couldn’t stand that. After 4 months in that relationship she changed tactics and was suddenly interested in sex. But it came with strings attached. She wanted me to choose between her (and a straight monogamous life) and polyamory.

Luckily by that point I had done enough self-work that I was able to connect with my feelings and consider what I actually wanted. My therapist asked me to focus on the sensations in my body as I imagined my future in both scenarios and immerse myself fully in the feelings of both options. It took an agonizing few weeks as I wrestled with that decision, getting pressure from my wife the whole time. I will forever be grateful to my girlfriend who stuck with me in a fairly new relationship through that uncertainty and allowed me to make that choice for myself.

In the end it was clear what I needed to do. As uncertain as my future was if I left, I knew that I would be forever unhappy if I continued to give so much of myself up to be in that marriage. Leaving was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but it was also the best decision I ever made. I moved in with my girlfriend, temporarily at first, but I took steps to make sure that I didn’t fall into old patterns of pleasing others at my own expense. 18 months later it still takes a lot of work to undo those old patterns, but with the memory of those experiences still fresh in my head, I keep at it.

My life now is radically different, not just because of my lifestyle, but because of how I am treated by my partners and how I treat myself. No longer do I accept relationships where there is an unsustainable imbalance of emotional energy or physical labor. All three of my long term romantic relationships require investment, commitment, and a good deal of energy. But because I know what my limits are, where my boundaries are, and how to say no, I have the ability to do far more for others than I ever was before. That means seeking out relationships with people who also value consent and prioritize their own self awareness. It also helps that none of us rely solely on one person to meet all of our needs. We each have other relationships, both romantic and platonic, that support our emotional and physical needs. We have all structured our lives together in supportive community where vulnerability is valued and intimacy is not feared.

Now my life is my own. No one owns me no matter what happens, no one can tell me what I feel or who I am. And that is why it is so important to me that my gender isn’t about who I’m in relationship with (and how they define their sexuality). I won’t let it be simplified or hidden to make things easier for other people to understand or be more comfortable with. My gender is complicated and it can feel like it makes things “difficult” for others (and for me) but not living as my fullest self causes far more harm to myself and ultimately to my ability to actually help others. The airline announcements are true – you do need to put on your own oxygen before helping the person next to you.

What is gender anyway?

There has been SO much written on what gender is from a theoretical or definitional standpoint so I’m going to skip the theory and go straight to my experience which is the only thing I’m qualified to speak on anyway.

Gender for me is less about presentation and outward appearance and more about a framework for explaining my experience of the behaviors and expectations around what it means to be a man vs a woman vs being me. We live in a binary world where regardless of what diversity there actually is in behaviors and ways of being for men and women, there are still expectations of what it is “supposed” to look like. Moving away from those expectations helps everyone in my opinion. But after a lot of thinking on it, I believe that even without binary expectations, my nonbinary gender would still exist as a way for me to explain just HOW different my experience is from the norm. Categories may feel restrictive to some people, but for me it is somewhat freeing to have a place where I fit.

My genderqueerness started as a mental scaffolding for me to explain and create structure around my experience of the world LONG before it resulted in any outward changes. As I gained more language around gender, that scaffolding grew and took shape. Without terminology, it was merely a swirling mass of confusion for me. That is part of why I am a big advocate of language that evolves and grows to meet the needs of a society rather than strict and static definitions. Without this new language, I think I would still feel lost in that void.

I believe that gender more about your own internal experience than it is about how you are externally perceived. Things like gender presentation and clothing can be helpful in signalling to people how you would like to be treated (not that it is frequently respected) but more often than not, especially in this unexplored middle area, I think it can be a barrier to people claiming their gender identities. I see many people in closed groups and discussions talking about how they don’t feel like they can “be nonbinary” if they don’t want to or can’t access an androgynous appearance. I know those feels and it held me back for a long time. So I’m here to say “to hell!” with that model of gender!

If genderqueer or agender or genderfluid or one of the numerous other new words to explain the uniqueness of nonbinary/trans experiences feels like it fits or explains things for you, then try it on. Take the time to think and feel about the description and explore the diversity of ways other people are using it. One person or site may be using a very narrow definition that you can’t see yourself in (like genderqueer for me at first) but I bet there are already people pushing and expanding the boundaries of that new category. And you could be next!

If man or woman describes your experience then great! Life may not be easy because both have a heavy burden of expectations, but at least you don’t have to fight to be recognized. If they don’t fit, then leave them behind and find the real you. You owe it to yourself to be authentic. Other people can fight you about it but rest secure in knowing that you alone are the expert on yourself.

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!

Infinite Love

So I want to talk about one of my biggest barriers to coming out and living as my truest self. The fear that nobody would love me. Hardly a unique phobia and certainly not specific to being trans. But it can hold you back if you let it.

I first started exploring my gender in college when I began accessing language to describe my experiences. I think that trajectory would have led me to coming out 5 years earlier if it hadn’t gotten sidetracked by getting married at 21. It’s a long story and off track for this blog but besides getting married too young we had a multitude of other problems that were apparent pretty early on in my 6 year marriage. And all of those problems meant that my personal growth got put on the back burner.

The biggest thing that contributed to me getting in that relationship in the first place and held me back from letting go of it when it wasn’t working was my fear of being alone and not finding someone who would love me for being me even as much as she did. When I did finally discover myself as a genderqueer pansexual, my wife asked me not to come out widely because she didn’t want to answer questions about my identity and sexuality. That alone should have been a sign that I wasn’t actually loved for who I was but yet I clung on for another 4 months before I got the nerve to leave. All because of this irrational yet common fear.

What I found beyond the confines of my straight, monogamous, ciscentric marriage was a world of infinite love and a community where I could be accepted both for who I was now and for who I would be tomorrow. I found my way through OKCupid and Meetup.com groups into the vast, semi-secret world of queer polyamory.

For those not familiar, polyamory is a form of ethical non-monogamy focused on informed consent of all partners involved and centered around the idea that love is not a finite resource to be hoarded but an infinite pool that only grows when love abounds. Time is of course the limiting factor and everyone has a practical limit to the number of authentic relationships they can juggle, whether that is friends or intimate partners. But in poly I found both friends and partners (and many shades in-between) who are unafraid to use the word love, who can open up the vulnerable parts of their hearts honestly, and who embrace my identity, even when they don’t understand it.

Today I have an amazing fiancee who I live with, two wonderful girlfriends with partners of their own, and a multitude of friends and lovers in community with each other. All of us encouraging each other to be ourselves and love ourselves as we are.

I’m not going to pretend it’s a magical fairyland with no problems or transphobes but beyond the heteronormative veneer you see in the press, the poly community I have seen is the most accepting place I can imagine. And more importantly, I learned that it’s ok to be “picky,” that I should and could be loved for who I am, and that I don’t need to be everything that one partner might need.

I’m not saying polyamory is for everyone or that it is the only way to find love outside the binary. That’s just an important part of my story in finding access to the idea that love is not finite. The key detail here is that you can find people who love you for who you are and you don’t need to compromise your identity to be lovable. But that fear of loneliness and the concept of love as a scarce resource are barriers to finding that happiness.

Live your life proudly and boldly as your truest self. I believe that is the sexiest thing you can do. And when you do that, people will want to be around you and you have a better chance at finding someone who loves you as much as you hopefully love yourself. When we hide who we are we lose our best shot at authentic relationship with other human beings.

Sure, you may lose some “friendships” that you never really had in the first place. But I bet you would lose them as soon as something serious happened in your life anyway. And there are real and tangible dangers to being out and visible. But find the places were you are safe, the communities where you can be real, and do exactly that. Be REAL, authentic, vulnerable, and honest. Once you start letting go of the idea that you aren’t deserving of love (which can be a lifelong process) then you can find it.