Identity

Trans Day of Visibility 2022

Today is Trans Day of Visibility and while not all trans people want to be visible, I am very happy that I am. A lot of people are sharing before and after photos but for me, there never was a true before and after. I have always been trans, there were just phases of my life where I didn’t have the language to access that part of my authenticity. From a young age I was very gender non-conforming and I adopted that label quietly in college at age 20. It wasn’t until 2014 though that I finally began to see myself as Genderqueer and falling under the Trans umbrella thanks to help and advice from other genderqueer folks. At that time I was still trapped in an abusive marriage so I couldn’t come out publicly. But in 2015 I finally escaped and with that freedom, claimed the first parts of my true identity openly.

My path to coming out was slower than many people because I was so scared of not being accepted for who I really was. When I first learned about trans women in college, I didn’t think I belonged in that category because I could never “pass” and I thought that to be a woman meant you had to be primarily attracted to men. I didn’t have access to the kind of tomboyish, lesbian-leaning gender and sexuality that I needed. Even when I came out in 2014/15, I was afraid of even attempting to be treated as a woman because of all the negative self-talk about my body and ability to change those features. So for many years, I kept my beard as a way to hide the parts of my face that were most dysphoria inducing.

Slowly by 2018 though, I accepted that I am a woman, even if I am a gender-nonconforming, nonbinary tomboy, and I started to take the medical transition steps that I needed. I started hormones 4 years ago this month which is one of the best decisions of my life. My body quickly began to change shape into the beautiful curvy shape I am now. And in October 2018, I finally took the scary step of shaving off my beard and facing the long uphill battle of hair removal.

Now I am nearly complete with my physical transition. I am still trying to get insurance coverage for the last remaining hair removal I need to be able to stop shaving occasionally but my surgeries are finished and my body finally reflects what I want to see. I am so happy that my face has softened and rounded out and that my breasts have filled in and give shape to my clothing. Getting here was a long hard path but now I get to reap the reward and enjoy myself more. I still have mental health challenges, but I no longer feel ugly all the time and avoid looking at myself in the mirror. I appreciate the body that I have, even if it took modification to get here.

Thank you to all the people that have supported me on this journey, both emotionally and financially. Being trans is hard and expensive at times but the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow is definitely worth it.

Me today in March 2022
Me in 2016 before my physical transition

Reflecting back on my beard

Last night I came across this photo in my Instagram history and I had one of those rare moments where I thought “Wow! That beard really was great sometimes.”

Caleb board portrait

To be honest, when I look at this photo I see an absolutely gorgeous queer person that I would date in an instant. But the problem is that it doesn’t look like me and never really did. What I see in the older photos of me isn’t the same person that I actually am inside. I may as well be looking at an old friend that I’ve grown apart from.

For a long time I despaired of ever getting my appearance and identity to match which is why I didn’t take any steps towards medical transition. I think now that I’ve done a lot of hair follicle removal and my facial features are changing, it’s getting closer. But I still have a hard time focusing on my face in the mirror.

My final jaw surgery, which includes some feminization of my chin, is in 3 weeks. Hopefully once I heal from that and get my braces off next year, I will be closer to who I am.

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!

What it takes to change your government gender

I received my new Drivers License today which means that I’m officially a doctor certified, government recognized woman! It also means I’m done with phase 1 of changing my name and gender marker. But you wouldn’t believe how complex the steps to get there can be. Here’s what it takes in Washington.

First I had to research the process and figure out which dependencies were built in so that I could get the necessary documents at the correct government office in the right order. Then  I had to go to my doctor to get the required letters and signatures.

Step one was going to the local County Courthouse and filing a Petition for Name Change which had to be submitted by 11 am if I wanted a same-day hearing and I had to pay $215 in cash to get the 4 certified copies I would need later on. Then I had to come back at 1:15 to have a judge have me attest on the record that I wasn’t changing my name to commit fraud or escape debt. Then I waited around in the lobby while my documents were processed.

Once I had the name change, I was able to submit my passport renewal in the same office but I nearly made the mistake of filling out the renewal form because that’s what the online steps indicate if you say you are changing your name. In order to find the correct steps you have to find the deeply hidden page on how to change your gender which tells you to submit the application for a NEW passport (Form DS11) in person and means you can’t use the online wizard completely (you have to tell it you don’t have a former passport and then correct it by hand after you print) or submit by mail. I also had to be prepared with a new passport photo which cost me $15, a letter from my physician certifying that I had medically transitioned, and pay $145 in the form of 2 checks to submit along with my previous passport which means I can’t fly abroad until the new one arrives.

Then I proceeded to the local Social Security office where I waited for an hour in a crowded lobby full of armed officers to submit my Application for a Social Security Card showing the correct gender which required me to show my court order along with another copy of the letter from my doctor certifying my medical transition. Luckily that process was free.

Then I proceeded to the Department of Licensing to update my Drivers License only to find out that to update an Enhanced ID (necessary for flying soon), I needed to wait for the new Social Security Card to arrive in the mail. So I came back a week later and waited in line a second time to submit yet another Change of Gender Designation Form with my physician’s signature along with another copy of the court order and a $10 fee.

Luckily for my Birth Certificate, I was able to mail in the Request to Change Sex Designation on a Birth Certificate for an Adult which had to be notarized but luckily doesn’t require a doctor to sign anything now in Washington. I did have to pay another $20 by check if I wanted to get a copy however.

All told, this is how much effort it took:

  • Research Time: 3 hours
  • Number of Offices: 4
  • Wait Time in Lobbies: 2 hours
  • Cost: $425

Now I get to move to phase 2 where I contact all the various places that have my old name such as banks, medical providers, online accounts, etc. to get them to update my name and gender as well. I’m exhausted just thinking about it!

If you would like to help support my transition costs, you can donate at https://www.gofundme.com/f/haven-gender-confirmation-treatments

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.

Gender euphoria

The flipside to the gender dysphoria I often talk about is that sometimes when I’m feeling really good about my body and identity I experience the glow of gender euphoria.  Today is one of those days I feel sexy AF! I’m loving the outfit I’m wearing and how it emphasizes my gorgeous legs. My shirt makes it look like I have great breasts and it shows just enough chest to make me feel good. And I’m wearing the shoes that never fail to get compliments. Some days it feels great to be me.

2017-08-08 08.11.562017-08-08 08.21.14

Am I really Nonbinary?

gender-questioningIn between all the politics, I’ve been spending a lot of mental energy lately thinking about the most difficult question in my life so far. Am I nonbinary because that is who I truly feel like I am or is it a compromise because I don’t feel like I can access womanhood in the way I want?

At times I definitely feel a very strong sense of a gender that is clearly not masculine or feminine but exists as a tangible middle ground. Very genderfull instead of agender. And as I’ve said, there are things I like about being in the middle such as having a beard.

But there are definitely parts of me that at times can feel very strongly that all I want to be is a woman with everything that goes along with that. Since I was a teen I’ve consistently wished I could just snap my fingers and make that happen. But the reality is that I need to make a choice. Do I want that badly enough to accept all the costs, challenges, and risks of medical transition?

What I do know is that I have a lot of fear about the path towards that and still not feeling like it is enough once I’ve gone as far as money/science allows. What I want more than anything is the ability to bear a child. But even assuming they were willing to do uterine transplants on trans women, that still would require a C section and a whole lot of money. I want to have breasts and the kind of chest that I can be proud of in the mirror. And I want a vagina and a clit and the ability to have multiple orgasms. But every time I think about what it would take to get there, I question how badly I want those.

First of all there is the money part. How can I justify spending that much money on myself when there are so many urgent problems that need solving? But I know that is a double standard because when it comes to other people I’m all for helping them get that surgery. Secondly there is weathering the awkward part of transition where I haven’t gotten there yet but it’s too late to turn back. And then of course there is the social risk because I’m pretty sure I could never pass even if I wanted to. And now more than ever that is becoming a dangerous thing.

A few months ago my plan was to start a hormonal transition in the next couple years after having a baby with my anchor partner. That would permanently give me feminine breasts as well as at least temporarily allow me to see how I like my brain on estrogen along with the softer skin and more feminine distribution of body fat (less belly, more hips). But now I feel very unsure about doing that until a certain demigogue is out of office. I still have the ability to hide as pass as male if I need to which would be much harder once I start down that path.

Part of why this is weighing on my mind more is because of politics certainly. The world is a very unsafe place at the moment for a trans person and it feels like a lot of doors are starting to close making me feel more claustrophobic and without the options as accessible to my explorations. And part of that is probably my upcoming wedding. When I imagine myself in a wedding dress I have a hard time imagining that in my current body. That moment more than any is where I wish I was less hairy, had a smaller frame, had hips, and most of all, some cleavage to speak of.

This weekend I’m going with some trusted friends to try on some wedding dresses. I’m trying to brace myself for the dysphoria that is almost certain to arise. I’ll try to report back how it goes and maybe even share some photos.

For now I know I don’t need to have answers to these questions. But I sure am getting tired of shedding tears over them so often.

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.”