So much done, so much to do

Jul28

I look back over the last 15 months and realize how much I’ve accomplished internally, as myself in coming to grips with myself. The externals haven’t changed as quickly as I’d like but I’m coming more and more to grips with who I am and where this road is leading. And I’m happy despite being shunned by some of the people I loved most in this life. I’m sad at the same time but I know that I have to be true to myself, that I can no longer go on living the lie they expected me to live, solely for their sakes. And that if me being honest and authentic drives them away, I will mourn that loss but not let it deter me from finding myself.

There are days I look in the mirror and smile at what I am beginning to see. There are days I look in the mirror and despair. The thing that gets me most often still is the facial hair. I can’t do much about the male pattern baldness other than see how much grows back under HRT but the facial hair I can address and now it’s a waiting game. I want to have the funds for two consecutive trips to E3000 in Dallas saved before I start with them because then I can save at a rate that will keep that process moving forward regardless of other events. And I’m almost there. I need to start thinking about scheduling a first visit with them.

I also keep delaying doing my eyebrows or getting my ears pierced. I’m not exactly sure why. I know I am procrastinating on those things. It’s probably fear or public rejection and I need to work through that.

I can pull on a wig and I like everything I see, except those eyebrows and the facial beard shadow. I really think that addressing those will make me feel a lot better about myself pretty quickly so from here it’s a matter of resolving to do what I need to do.

And as an addendum to my prior post, about how we as a community can’t “go back”, I would add the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

I aim to treat everyone around me as kindly as I can. But I will not stand idly by while someone tries to suppress me or those like me. When I see trans youth thrown onto the streets by their parents and hear their stories of being unable to find housing or work and being forced to choose the world of drugs and the sex trade, my heart breaks for them. And anyone who says they deserve that fate is someone I’d rather not know anyway.

As a community, we can’t go back

Jul20

Recently, a transgender child in Maryland was profiled in a few news stories, showing the positive aspects of affirming a child’s gender identity. And shortly after these stories appeared,  a hate group (the American Family Association) began publicly urging that Tyler’s parents be prosecuted for “child abuse” by allowing their child to confirm his gender identity.

Generally, people are accepting but the small yet loud groups like AFA cause problems for those parents who are simply trying to allow their child to figure themselves out. Yet there are some people who, as trans themselves, believe that we don’t need to be publicly visible or politically active. Yet these small minorities have successfully, for years, denied equal human rights to gays, lesbians, and bisexuals as well. And now that we’re more publicly visible, we have become the latest bogeyman of the radical right.

Further, that genie can’t be put back into the bottle. The old way of doing things, sliding under the radar, whether we think it was better or worse, does not matter any more. We can’t go back. More and more health professionals are dealing with more and more transgender individuals who are not choosing to live lives of depression, fear, and mental anguish. And this means that more and more of us will be visible. So the argument that people should have done this or that or gotten this step done before that step (none of which is consistent with advice from medical professionals) is simply an attempt to walk backwards to a time when trans folk were just less visible. And that is not going to succeed. We’ve been noticed by the haters.

We now have two choices – allow them to strip us of rights, to prosecute us for daring to be ourselves, or we fight back. If your position is one that says we should not fight back, legally, politically, and socially, then your position has become one of passively allowing them to try to strip us of our rights, and you are exhibiting signs of internalized transphobia. You’re afraid of who you are, of being seen for who you are, and so you side with those who would dehumanize you.

I’ve met trans folk who identify as right wing Republicans. They mouth and say the same things as these “social conservatives” about everything, including GLB people, except themselves. Somehow, they’ve convinced themselves that they are different, special, and won’t be targeted, dehumanized, and attacked by the radical right. Yet the evidence is right there, in all its public glory, that the radical right is now very aware of those of us who are trans. They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to give up. They are going to keep pushing now until we win these legal battles clearly and authoritatively.

Some trans folks can pine for the “good ole days” when we were mostly not noticed. But we cannot go back. It’s not going to happen. So choose and choose wisely. Either fight for the rights of all trans people, including yourself or be prepared to see yourself ultimately outlawed and criminalized. Because, as the evidence above demonstrates, that is exactly what these people want to do to us.

A Realization

Jul5

My spouse has been out of town for several weeks visiting family elsewhere. And during this time I came to a startling realization – I am as alone today as I am when she has been here anytime over the last few decades. To be honest, that loneliness has been my own fault, due to the wall I erected around me to keep me safe from the world. It has only been in the process of beginning my transition that the wall has begun to come down. I won’t kid myself and claim it’s all the way down nor do I expect it to ever be all the way down. But now, unlike before, I am actually letting some people see inside that wall for more than just a tiny glimpse.

Realizing that I’ve hidden behind this wall all these years makes me also realize that I’ve not truly lived life but instead existed day to day. I need to reach out more, exist less, and live more. Learning to do that will undoubtedly come in fits and starts. This is one of the things that I suspect older trans folk discover – learning how to not hide from ourselves. It also makes me wonder what a relationship would be like if I could be truly open and honest with someone. At my age, I don’t expect to be fortunate enough to find out but I’ll never say never.

I am also finding that my outlook is slowly changing, from one of a “glass half empty” to a “glass half full” perspective. Part of this is, I believe, the effects of estrogen on the brain and finally getting the right “fuel” rather than the wrong fuel. The random rage episodes seem gone. I worry less. And I am thankful for more small things than I ever remember being.

This makes me miss my mother even more. Was it just last December that she was taken away from us? I regret never being able to come out to her. I really believe that she would have understood and been accepting, after getting over the initial shock.

All of this makes me wonder how much more my perspectives will change as time passes and I become more and more at peace with myself finally. I hope the last 30 or so years of my life are more than the prior 30 years of mere existence.

Go, go, Spiro!

Jun25

Late yesterday afternoon I got some excellent news. Through the first nine months of my HRT, my endocrinologist and I have struggled with getting my T-levels down into the proper ranges. They are still not there yet but wow, in two months I dropped from 253 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL) to 74 ng/dL. I have always had low testosterone just barely above “normal” in the 250-350 range. Optimal is considered something like 400-600 and even 1200 is still considered within “normal” for males.

For females, I’ve seen the “normal” testosterone range (yes, females have testosterone) quoted as 15-70 ng/dL up to 30-95 ng/dL. So I am either right at the edge of normal or within normal female T-level ranges now.

That coupled with the last two months seeing more reaction from HRT than the prior 7 months and… I’m excited, really excited finally. I am actually beginning to see change. I just hope it keeps coming and doesn’t stop!

Every trans person who chooses to transition walks a unique road. They all bear similarities but none are the same. For me, I almost feel like HRT began 2 months ago when we finally started getting a handle on the T-levels. Oh there was some change before that but minimal and then it didn’t advance after the first few months.

I just hope that my ship has finally begun to set sail.

A Rant, at Transphobic Transgender People

Jun24

Elsewhere on the internet I recently saw the following loaded question:

I have been told by numerous people and have read even more comments from those who object to the terms Cis, cisgender, cismale and cisfemale.

My question for those who use the terms, why should someone be allowed to ID another group without their consent, and not care if the terms may be offensive to the person or many in a group, then turn around and expect that offensive terms towards them never be used and demand the right to self-ID?

Given that cisgender, cismale, and cisfemale originated as completely clinical terms, I failed to see how these could be offensive. Further, the original question is a strawman, because self-identification is not the only way people get identified. However, in the spirit of participating, I went looking.

First, as to origins, I found this:

Cisgender has its origin in the Latin-derived prefix cis-, meaning “on this side of,” which is antonymous with the Latin-derived prefix trans-. This usage can be seen in the cis-trans distinction in chemistry, or in the ancient Roman term Cisalpine Gaul (i.e., “Gaul on this side of the Alps”). In the case of gender, however, cis- refers to the alignment of gender identity with assigned sex. The terms “cis” and “trans” were used by Seymour Benzer in genetics,in his analysis of different senses of the word “””gene” in 1955-7[9] to represent two forms of mutations, when both on same chromosome or on separate chromosomes or DNA strands. Benzer distinguished the muton (smallest unit of mutation) from the codon (smallest unit of coding), and the recon (smallest unit of recombination), from the cistron, or gene analyzed by crossover.

German sexologist Volkmar Sigusch may have been the first to use the term cissexual (zissexuell in German) in a peer-reviewed publication: in his 1998 essay “The Neosexual Revolution,” he cites his two-part 1991 article “Die Transsexuellen und unser nosomorpher Blick” (“Transsexuals and our nosomorphic view”) as the origin of the term.[14] He also used the term in the title of a 1995 article, “Transsexueller Wunsch und zissexuelle Abwehr” (or: “Transsexual desire and cissexual defense”).

So it is immediately obvious that cisgender/cismale/cisfemale are terms not developed as social taunts or insults. They were coined by social researchers seeking to distinguish non-transgender people from transgender people in an attempt to understand gender identity. It is also easier to say than many of the alternatives. Given that it has never had a negative intent that I can find, this word is nothing like “tranny” or the n-word applied to people of color, both of which are intended to be offensive, insulting, and demeaning.

Also consider the following thought: “the most useful thing about the word cisgender is that it *avoids* value judgments like calling people whose physical and psychological gender are the same ‘normal’.” This avoids automatically painting transgender people as ‘abnormal’. This is brilliant and a good thing because it removes value judgments from whether a person is trans or cis. They simply are biological conditions and neither one is “wrong” at all.

I found this comment at Transgriot and I liked what it said:

“If we’re going to make the point that being transgender is an everyday biological/medical/social condition, we had to have some word in the vocabulary that describes most of the people walking Planet Earth who are not trans.

It’s the same concept that underpins why gay people call non-gays ‘straight’.”

Hence I kept looking for the evidence of it being “offensive”. And lo and behold, I began to find who finds “cisgender” to be offensive.

In a discussion of the term cisgender, I found this comment:

“…to identify the term as a neologism coined by radical homosexual activists.”

Radical homosexual activists? Who uses language like that? Radical right wing extremists, that’s who!

And this comment:

“I’ve ONLY ever heard it used as an insult. I’m very surprised the article doesn’t touch on the subject, I’m sure many other normal people (sorry, ‘cis’ people) have only ever heard it as an insult too. Most of the time with the reaction of “what the shit is ‘cis’? You hate normal people so much you have to invent new terminology??”

Note the automatic assumption that a clinical definition of gender normative individuals must be because of “hate”. Note the automatic assumption of privilege in that only the cisgender community gets to name “others”.

So who posts narrow minded crap like this? Radical right wing extremists who want to deny that transgender people even exist and who want to legislate us out of their reality. The same people who don’t want transgender anti-discrimination laws passed. The same people who constantly try to pass absurd bathroom laws hoping to force a transgender woman into the men’s room (where one prominent Tennessee politician promised to “stomp a mudhole” in such a person).

There is one other group that loudly objects to the term cisgender. That group are the radical feminists who, just like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, insist that transwomen don’t really exist. They are often referred to as “RadFems” and they call themselves that so it’s not a term we are inventing for them. These people object to anything that attempts to recognize or legitimize transgender people. Some of them have even petitioned the United Nations demanding that anything related to discussion of transgender persons be stricken from UN debates.

These are the kind of people who object to cis as “offensive”. Am I going to give a damn about such people? Only insofar as how I can muster good and honest people into silencing their bigotry and removing the enactment of their hate from our public lives. This also suggest to me a bit about the kinds of people that the original questioner seems to try to associate with and find acceptance from – radical right wingers or RadFems. Good luck with that as a transwoman!

Finally there’s been a lot of additional discussion at the forums where this originated. There’s been some wild leaping to conclusions too, that anyone who argues in favor of the term cisgender is “trying to redefine trans as normal”, something I disagree with completely. What the cis/trans discussion does, as stated above, is remove value judgments from the discussion.

And that is the center of all this, isn’t it? Oh, by the way, please read Zinnia Jones (I love Zinnia’s writings!) take on this: “Cisgender is not a slur, John Aravosis.” She says so much more and so much more eloquently.