This Word You Keep Using...

A post in which I complain about would be allies, and abuse italics and bold type.

So the other day, while buying supplies for a dress I was making I ran into someone I know.
This person isn't a close friend, but certainly consider them a friendly acquaintance and someone who I know well enough to be surprised when they attempted to compliment me by saying how much better I look than the other trans person they know.
They then went on to gender police further by basically saying that people like me (i.e, people lucky enough to pass as cis gendered) she can understand but that basically, she couldn't see why someone who didn't pass would want to transition.
When she started talking about another friend, who is a trans man,  she misgendered him and when I corrected her she went on to justify her position by saying that HE was a sweet guy, but that SHE made a poor man.
Because clearly, a trans individual's success or failure at being the person they are totally hinges on the aesthetic concerns of cis gendered people.

This whole interaction was so soaked in cis privilege that it made my head spin.  I did my best to be polite and gently correct her assumptions, but in the end I just wanted to buy the things I needed, and not get into a lengthy educational debate while both of us were at work.
I made nice and left.

And then, a couple of hours later, because it was still eating at me and because it had made me dysphoric to the point that I kept seeing a guy in the mirror, I tweeted and posted on facebook about it.
Or at least about the "you look so good! way better than that other tranny..." part of it.

Most responses I got were unconditionally supportive and of the "I can't believe that happened" or "I'm so sorry you had to deal with that" variety, but a few were of the "well at least she was trying" and "you just need to educate her" kind.

And you know what, I agree, the whole time I spoke to her I kept calm and cheerful because I didn't for a second think she was trying to be hurtful, but it's NOT. THAT. SIMPLE.

The thing is, what she was doing was attempting to be nice to me [a trans person] without giving up any of her [a cis person] privilege.
By telling me I'm "one of the good ones" as it were, she was tacitly admitting that trans people make her uncomfortable.  That's fine, she's allowed to feel the way she feels and I appreciate someone who's brave enough to say "hey, I'm kind of weirded out by trans people" because even if they aren't trying to do anything about it, at least their self aware on the matter.
Where this becomes a problem is that she's not just telling me, "some trans people make me uncomfortable because of how I'm used to thinking about gender" she's then adding "you understand don't you?  I mean, the ugly ones make you uncomfortable too right?"
She's asking me to be complicit in her transphobia, and even more unpleasant is that it isn't just a request, because it's couched in the terms of a compliment about my appearance, it's a bribe.
It's saying "if you agree with me that those other trans people are awkward/ugly/a bit strange, I'll extend to you my cis privilege."

So really, no, she's not trying to be nice.  Whether she knows it or not she's being divisive.
She isn't supporting me as a trans person, she's supporting me IN SPITE of my being trans.

Now, to any of you who ever find yourself saying, "well at least they were trying" or "you just need to educate them" here's the thing.

You're doing exactly the same thing, you're asking for permission to keep your privilege.
You're telling me "I don't want to have to police cis people, can't you do it for me?"
No, I can't.

I spend a lot of time in respectful conversation on this topic.
I'm a huge advocate of education and of cooler heads prevailing, but I have neither the time nor the energy to make every instance of transphobia I encounter a "teachable moment".
Thats WHY I'm complaining to you about this, I do it in the hope that you'll learn something, and that maybe the next time you see someone you know saying something dumb, you'll take the time to set them right for me, because there are an awful lot more of you than there are of me.
When you dismiss the harm caused by other cis people with "well, at least they were trying", you're not giving them the benefit of the doubt, you're absolving yourself from responsibility because just like me, you don't want to have to deal with it.
Except  unlike me, when you walk away from those situations, you have the luxury of forgetting them because they don't remind you that you're different, they remind you that you're "normal".
I don't need to give cis people the benefit of the doubt, that's what privilege IS, it's the fact that in that sphere, you automatically have the benefit of the doubt.
The day when you no longer have it, I'll be more than happy to extend it, and we'll all be a lot closer to equality.

Witnessing Anger

I tend to think of myself as being pretty privileged.
I'm white, educated, and for someone in their thirties, my transition has gone remarkably well.
But..
I also grew up really poor.
My parents were hippies and had moved to southwest Wales to be artists and keep animals.  Part of the whole back to the land movement and all that.
When I was born they were in the midst of remodeling an old welsh mill house  which had no indoor plumbing and was heated by two coal fires.
There were Goats and chickens and a lot of mud.
They were doing ok at it though and between two active capable adults progress was slow but steady.
Then when I was five my mum got cancer.
The details of that aren't terribly important but the end result was that my dad became her full time care giver and the family income was reduced to the UK's disabled living allowance.
My mother never recovered enough for my father to work more than part time and that meant it was impossible for him to get work that paid well enough to improve our financial situation.
Earn more money?
They cut your benefits.
It's a catch 22.

So we were poor.
I remember being furious at a friend on time because he spread "too much"jam on his toast.  His utterly bewildered look said it all, and hot embarrassment took over as I tried to explain my outburst.
Didn't he know you were supposed to ration Jam?

I've been thinking a lot about opportunities I've missed in my life and I'm pretty angry about it.

I grew up poor, I was depressed and withdrawn as a child.
As a teenager I developed substance abuse problems.
I was diagnosed bi-polar and have spent my entire adult life dealing with the effects of that.
I was lucky enough to have well educated parents and lots of books, but the strains that poverty and cancer placed on my family meant that my parents simply didn't have the resources to help me in the ways I needed.
Constant periods of mania and depression have meant that I lack the sort of self discipline and ability to organize my life that mentally healthy adults typically develop. I have 32 years of bad habits that I need to unlearn.

These are real problems which have had real consequences for me, but people don't want to see anger.
I didn't want to see anger in myself and I believe that was a major component of my repressing my being trans for so long, and my depressive episodes.
The thing is, anger needs to be witnessed.
Anger is a restorative act of the self, we need our anger to help us re-establish our boundaries after our selves have been hurt, but anger is not a weapon, and should never be used as one.

One of the biggest problems I'm struggling with is the amount of anger I feel.
When I've tried to express it to people, to state how furious I am about what I've missed though misfortune, people always want to silver line it.

"Be proud of what u have done, don't concern yourself with what might have been"

"Everyone plays the coulda-shoulda-woulda game. The truth is, you have no idea what that other path would have brought."

While these sort of statements may be true, they're also totally dismissive of my emotions.  
I'm not asking to change the past, I just want to have it acknowledged that these things were not benefits.

Not having access to adequate mental health care is not a character building experience, it's a shitty thing that no one should have to deal with.
Self rationing your intake or preserves at age 11 is not a life lesson in making do, it's a poverty that severely limits your potential.
Living 32 years in the wrong body wasn't a convoluted set of preconditions perfectly timed to allow me to blossom in some optimal way, it was crappy twist of genetic fate that lead to over 20 years of severe depressive episodes.

We cling so strongly to our sense of self that we use our attachment to it to casually dismiss our own suffering and the suffering of others.
When I started transitioning I was still deeply attached to the sense of self that I had lived with to that point, but I have changed. I've changed so much in how I think, how I feel and how I relate to the world around me that I can't consider myself the same person anymore. That person is gone and they will never exist again and I'm GLAD!
The idea that I should be "happy" about the bad stuff because I'd be someone else without it is crap. I've already made that change once and let me state categorically, what was lost was not worth saving.
Better starts produce better outcomes.
I can't change the past, but I have every right to feel angry about it because if I don't, if I silver line it, I'm going to let it happen again.

We need to learn to witness and honor anger in ourselves and in others, recognizing it for what it is and not seeking to douse the flames too quickly simply because we fear getting burned.  
Other peoples anger is about them, not about us. In making it about us we poison it's restorative properties, just as we do to ourselves when we allow our own anger to become fixated on things outside of ourselves and we lash out.

Emotions are powerful things and they can be extremely dangerous. It's easy to understand why all societies have sought to suppress them. They are not the part of us we think of as I, they precede I and cannot be brought to account through dominance of the mind, rather they are messengers which call us to action and we dismiss them at our own risk.
The message will only keep getting louder the longer we ignore it.

Transition Video

Here it is, My 1st year of transition.


Making this video has been both exciting and scary. IT's something I've been wanting to do for a long time, but the scary part is that I now have every reason to expect that I'll be receiving a whole lot more hate mail. I think I'm mentally prepared for that, but honestly, who knows? Up until now I've received nothing but love and support, my tiny readership here is comprised mostly of friends and family and until this morning I had yet to receive a single personal attack. But here goes, time to finally venture out of the shadows I guess. Wish me luck!

Catch Up Part II

Last nights post was written while I was angry, hurt and feeling very alone.
This is the less angry more sober follow up.

[please note, I am speaking specifically to my personal experience as a binary identified trans woman.  i am writing this piece in the their person as a tool for distancing myself slightly from the emotional content of this topic.  I'm not trying to speak to all trans, or even all trans feminine experience, but I rust that my feelings on this topic will be at least somewhat familiar t many trans people]

Being trans means feeling out of place a lot of the time.
The absence of shared formative years with the genders we identify with often leaves us feeling like perpetual outsiders and makes it hard to feel authentic in our interactions with cis gendered people.
The thing is though, it's often far less true that we fear.
The myth of a shared girlhood of, is just that.
Every time i get the courage to talk to cis women regarding their experiences as girls and young women, I'm constantly surprised (I don't know why at this point) to learn that they too have often felt like fakes and frauds in the presence of peers who seemed to have the whole girl thing down pat.
We've all sat awkwardly to the side at one point or another while  the more confidant amongst us stole center stage and then used that platform to make the geeks, nerds and the congenitally shy feel even more awkward.
The only real difference is that for cis women, feeling of inadequacy when it come to "being a girl" aren't routinely used to deny them their identity and sense of self.

I've written before about feeling like a failure as a parent, and especially as a mother. I was genuinely surprised to discover, in conversations I had with other women that this was an incredibly common feeling, especially in the poly community where being a mom, yet not being the birth mother is a more common situation.  Even those mothers who did have their own pregnancies reported feeling like a sham and a faker in the face of all the things society tells us a mother should do, feel and be.

I can't help wondering if those people who would deny trans women their identities on the premise of "lacking a shared experience of girl hood" are not, in fact, the same women who felt most ostracized during their own formative years.
If gender is nothing more than socialization, then all those girls who were so "good at it" can have their femininity dismissed as a by product of patriarchy.  In the denial of an internal sense of gender identity, womanhood then becomes biological essentialism and their own insecurities over feelings of failure to live up to societies gender roles can be wiped away with righteous anger.
We weren't ostracized, we were fighting fighting gender constructs the whole time.
Ironically, when it comes to shared experience they probably have more in common, in many cases, with those trans women who's identities they would deny.

In the end I do believe (obviously) in an internal sense of gender.  I also believe that most of the experiences that we deem masculine or feminine are no more than socialization, and if we could all get over our fear that we're not doing t right, if we started to talk more and share our experiences more, we'd find that man, woman, non-binary, cis or trans.  We have far more in common with one another than we have holding us forever apart.

Playing Catch Up

A retreat is being organized for the girls.
It's a spa trip.
Hot tubs, sauna, old pool etc.
I love these things, or at least I'm pretty sure I would if I ever got to go.
With out fail, every time I see a girls only spa day being organized it is actually a cis girls only event.
This is generally not something the organizer is specifically intending, it's just that women's only spas that allow trans women to use their facilities are virtually non existent.  If they do there are often weird policies that make us wear swimsuits top and bottom because apparently unless we're post-op, our breasts are offensive to "real" women.
I've spent my whole life being kinda bummed out about being excluded from a whole range of bonding experiences between women.
It's hard to write about this without sounding bitter.
It's hard to write about this because honestly there's a lot of normative experiences I can never make up for and that fact makes me feel permanently othered.
I don't know if sitting around talking with a group of cis women will ever be without the feeling of being a fraud, listening to shared experiences I missed, feeling embarrassed to offer my opinion in case someone should point out that my experience is less valid for coming from a trans woman.
Having my identity's legitimacy be permanently in other peoples hands sucks.
The thing is, I really did miss out on all this stuff and I find that embarrassing.
I feel ashamed for having not been there through my childhood, teens and twenties.  I feel that I have no right to offer my opinion on matters of womanhood.

"What if I get it wrong!?" I think, "I mean, it so kind of them to let me join in at all, I'd hate to have my female credentials revoked".

Sitting on the porch chatting with two ladies, one of whom is a friend. The other lady, who I've just met is a doula and the conversation turns to all the thing one can do with a placenta. She stops to inquire whether I'm comfortable with the topic.
I'm not, but it's for a very different reason than she might think.
The thing is, she has no idea I'm trans.
She's inquiring to make sure that a conversation about simmering, dehydrating and encapsulating placentas isn't going to gross me out.
I'm thinking "I have no right to be here, being a part of this conversation, pretending like I could ever really share in this."

My friend comments later on it.  She's sympathetic, saying that it hadn't occurred to her how hard that sort of thing must be, to have to second guess the meaning behind so many things.
She's right.
It is hard.

Maybe a decade from now this will be easier and I'l feel less of an outsider, less of a fraud.

Meanwhile the post has gone up.

Spa night.  Sorry, no boys allowed.

"What about trans girls?" I ask
"well, it's a cool place, pretty much anything goes.  Just no peen" I'm told.

Wow, great.  So I'm cool, I just have to leave my genitals at home.  Thanks, there's another shared experience I don't get to have.

N.B.
It is of course a proven fact that the penis is dangerous.  Unlike firearms, which need a human to use them in a harmful way, the penis itself is fundamentally a threat to all women.  Living with one is just a nightmare.  The constant fear that at any moment it might sexually assault someone is a constant concern for me and the single most pressing reason why I must have my vaginoplasty done as soon as possible.  It's only been by the grace of god that the damn thing hasn't hurt anyone yet...
/snark.

The Cure And The Cause

I snap awake at 4:55 am.
I'm lying on the fold away bed at a friends house because last night I had a few to many and decided it would be better if I didn't drive home.
I do a quick body check to determine if I'm still drunk and a sense of shame and failure washes over me. The sense of post inebriation dread that I'm all too familiar with.
I lie here thinking about how when I woke up yesterday I felt so good.
I could feel the possibility stretching out in front of me.
Yesterday I got up when I woke up, made myself breakfast, wrote and exercised and, for the first time in a couple of months, I had direction and the energy to do something with it.
And now I feel like I've thrown it away.
I could have not had anything to drink last night, could have gone home after the movie and unloaded all the sewing equipment from my car.
I wonder if I'm an alcoholic.
I know I drink too much.
My family has a history of alcoholism and I'm asking the question so that probably means I am right?
I have a couple of friends and family members who have been worried about my drinking for a long time and I resent it.
I resent the fact that they're so sure I am an alcoholic and I'm afraid they might be right.
I also resent them for being the type of people who just don't like drinking much.
I'm sick of hearing the condescension in their voices as they express their concern.
"You shouldn't drink" as if it's just that easy.

 I think it would be a much easier conversation with someone who likes a drink as much as I do.
Not being drunk, but the taste, the smell, the complex social history, the joy of combining flavors into something mysterious and wonderful, the whirling romantic hedonism of it all!
I'm in love with the Moulin Rouge inside myself and I don't want to give it up.
Alcohol isn't about getting drunk for me, it's about everything else.
Getting drunk is an unfortunate side effect.

I used to enjoy it, being drunk, but after a while I started to regret the lost days.
Now I'd like to be able to stop at tipsy.
But that's my problem, I'm not very good at stopping.
I've used it as a crutch for such a long time, it's hard to break the habit of just having another drink.
I was incredibly shy as a child.
My discomfort with my self, something I was sure others could see, made it hard to interact socially with other kids.  Once I reached puberty that was compounded by having to come to terms with the idea that I would always be a boy.
Fortunately by then I'd already found alcohol.
I think I was ten the first time I got intentionally drunk.
Our neighbors who lived in the old woolen mill down the drive from my house were having a curry night, a big pot luck feast of indian food.  There were two families who lived in the mill, and they had friends and their kids staying plus my parents so there was a mess of kids and adults and dogs and music and Wales has a fairly permissive attitude towards giving children alcohol.
In a situation like that it's pretty easy for a kid to ask for a small glass of wine, and then perhaps a bit of cider from another adult and pretty soon all the parents are a bit drunk themselves and stopped paying attention to how many drinks you've had and boom!

I'm lying on the sofa in our living room explaining to my sister, who is seven, that the room is spinning and I can't stand up properly.
She thinks it sounds awful, I think it's amazing.
From that night on I get drunk at every opportunity that presents itself.
I start smoking weed just before my thirteenth birthday, try mushrooms at fourteen (they grow everywhere in wales), I've taken Acid, speed and E by the time I'm fifteen and it's all just so easy.
When I'm high strange new worlds are opened up, and the prospect of being cool becomes a reality.
Drugs are cool.
So I get good at drugs.
I become an expert at rolling joints, and that one skill (and a few pints) allows me to fit in anywhere.
Well, at least amongst those of my peers who are into the drugs scene.
In Southwest Wales in the early '90s, that's pretty much everyone and everywhere.
As good as I got at rolling joints, alcohol is always the premier.  In terms of being able to forget just how anxious I felt it has always worked better than anything else and has been the one intoxicant I've never really left behind.

After I started transitioning I found that the fog, the physical pain, the fear and anxiety all started to lift.
I'm more social and less intoxicated.
Well most of the time.

My stomach churns and I don't know if it's the gnawing fear of failure or simply the hangover.  I know I can be better than this, do more, accomplish more.

Drugs and alcohol have taken me to some amazing places, moments so magical so full of wonder that I fell in love with them, but none of those places last and the drugs stop taking you there.
I'm still in love with those places, with the ritual, with the glorious hedonism.  I don't want to give up being a romantic, in fact I want more of that in my life, but the thing that used to take me there is holding me back.

Am i an alcoholic?

I just want to be able to have one or two drinks a couple of times a week and leave it at that but that is so very hard to do.
If I'm an alcoholic at least half of my friends are too.
Those of us who like drinking don't want to admit we might have a problem because it alienates us from each other to do so.  The friends I have who, like my sister, just don't feel the inclination to drink don't appreciate all the things aside from getting drunk that I'll miss if I'm have to go T-total.  There may be sympathy there but there's no empathy and the feeling of being judged means that I lie to them and to myself to avoid that judgement.
I don't know if seeking some real help or intervention would work because I'm not convinced I'm an alcoholic.
I don't want to quit drinking, there are too many aspects that I enjoy about it.
I just want to drink less but no one seems to find that idea acceptable because apparently if I can't do that on my own, then I have a problem the only solution to which is that I quit altogether.
Is it impossible to believe that my drinking problem is not built upon a chemical addiction, but rather a habitual pattern founded on years of self medicating for anxiety?
Speaking of which, my hormone levels are low.  I know this, and I know that when my estrogen level is back where it should be I'll have more energy, feel less depressed and have better impulse control.
I can moderate my drinking perfectly well when I'm in a good place mentally, I know this because I've done it before, but when I'm feeling depressed I find it all to difficult to stop with just the one.
I can't honestly say whether it's the drinking that holds me back from achieving my goals or whether it's depression and anxiety that hold me back and also make me inclined to drink too much.
How do you ask for help to overcome a drinking too much problem?
Can I just get some help learning to moderate?



If reading that left you feeling thirsty, here's a cocktail recipe I created.

The Tyler Durden

2oz Gin (Tanqueray, Hendrick's or New Amsterdam)  

1/3oz Dry Vermouth

1/3oz Monin Rose Syrup

Habanero pepper ganish

Shake the gin and vermouth as for a dry martini and pour into a martini glass

Sink the rose syrup into the glass

Garnish with three paper thin slices of habanero

Afterward

I got up, grabbed my things, drove home, unpacked the sewing stuff from the car, sat down and wrote this.  I'm about to exercise and eat breakfast and dammit if I'm not going to achieve the things I had planned today because it's only a few more weeks until I can get my hormone levels re-tested and increase my dosage and I know I'll feel a whole hell of a lot better once that happens.  I'm not going to waste the time in between now and then.  

Oh, and if you see me out, maybe remind me to drink a glass of water and wait a while before I have another Manhattan?

Body Shopping

I thought, just for shits and giggles, I'd total up my costs of my transition.
It turns out that being handed the wrong body is pretty expensive to correct,especially if you wait till your thirties to start correcting things. If I'd had access to puberty blockers then Voice feminization, tracheal shave, laser hair removal and Breast Augmentation would all be unnecessary.
Oh well, on the plus side I've been incredibly fortunate in how well my body has responded to hormones and the lasers have worked really well so I'm very well aware of just how lucky I have been.
Especially given that I was almost 33 when I started HRT.

So in no particular order, here's the whole shopping list.

Gender Confirmation Surgery - $28,000
This is the big one.  GCS is a major invasive surgical procedure with many months of healing required.  I'm hoping I'll be able to get this done in the next two years as I'm not getting any younger and my healing time and recovery will only become more grueling as time goes on.
I'll be going to Dr. Suporn in Conburi Thailand for this procedure.  The actual cast is around $22K but I'm adding the costs of flights and a two month stay in Thailand for recovery.
Fr the curious, Dr. Suporn uses a different technique from most surgeons in that scrotal tissue is used to form the vaginal canal instead of penile tissue. In my opinion he is the best surgeon performing this operation in the world today.
For those of you interested in further reading, here is a description of his methodology.

Yesson's Voice feminization surgery - $10,000
Yeson Voice Center in Seoul, South Korea have pioneered a method of raising vocal pitch via a safe, reversible and minimally invasive surgical procedure that you can learn about HERE.
The basic idea is that a small incision is made at the top of each vocal fold and then both vocal folds are sewn together at the point of incision with a permanent suture.  The tissues then grow together at the site of incision and effectively shorten the vocal chords.
This is the only voice procedure I would ever consider having as all other procedures are very invasive and carry serious risk of permanently losing ones voice.
For those of you who know me and have heard me speaking you may be wondering why I'd bother with this and it's true, my speaking voice is passably female.
The thing is though, I can't sing anymore.  I really, REALLY miss singing and I consider it the single biggest sacrifice that I've had to make.  The other aspect, and this is equally important, is that n a day to day basis, my voice is the one thing that drags me back into a sort of met awareness of my being trans.
Every time I speak I have to think about how I'm modulating my voices pitch.  I want to be able to forget about it.  I want to be able to never have to think about how my voice sounds again.  Well, unless I'm singing or acting or doing something like that.
I honestly care more about this surgery than any other and if I could only get one more procedure done this would be it.  It killed me to make the decision to spend my savings on getting an apartment and covering my living expenses because I wanted to get this surgery done so bad.
Time to get rich and famous because this one HAS to happen ASAP.
The $10K is the cost of surgery and a week in Seoul plus the plane ticket.
Serious bummer? I'll have ZERO ability to speak for two weeks and very limited use for two months.  It will be totally worth it though as I've heard the results from a very dear friend of mine who underwent the procedure and it is frankly amazing.

Breast Augmentation - $10,000
Not much to say here.  This is one I can live without but dammit, if I'm doing everything else, I want bigger boobs too!

Tracheal Shave - $3000
I got this done at the end of the summer.  The doctor mad a small incision under my chin and then proceeded to shave away the cartilage of my adams apple until it was no longer prominent.  It has worked very well an the scar is healing up nicely.

Laser Hair removal - $2400
I've been getting regular hair removal on my face and neck since last october and it has worked amazingly well.  I've had pretty much perfect results.  I'll probably go for a couple more rounds because I'm fussy but I now have less facial hair than many natal girls I know.
Oh, and it fucking hurts!  Don't let anyone tell you different.

Rhinoplasty - $5000
Like the BA, this one is me wanting to make everything exactly how I want it.  It's unnecessary but if I can I will.

All of that for a grand total  of $58,400!  Yipes!!! that is spendy.  Makes your gym membership look like a bargain don't it!

Oh I almost forgot.  Because healthcare won't cover any of this, I also get to pay out of pocket for my hormones and testosterone blockers

Estrogen - $35/Mo
Spironolactone - $25/Mo

It's not a huge amount, but it adds up.