Last night, after the Company’s performance at the Workshop, some of the other teachers and I went back to SP’s house with SP, SB, and MM for some wine and to talk about how things had gone. JP had come to the performance, so we talked for a while about what she thought, what we thought, what went well, what didn’t, and so on. I’d already come out to SB a while back, and she was (of course) awesome about it. She and I had talked about a lot of things relating to gender and politics and life (in fact, some of what we talk about prompted me to begin trying to keep this record of my experiences during my transition). We also talked about how I can explore my transition through art, and possibly use the Workshop to do that, but that’s a conversation for another time…

Anyway, I’d been thinking of coming out to SP and MM for a while and, as the evening was winding down, I decided to go for it. Since I’m comfortable with both of them – I’ve known MM since I was about 13 – I didn’t really have any precursor, but just launched into it. SP and MM were, like most everyone in my life thus far, totally supportive and – like the good artistic intellectuals we are – had lots of interesting questions about gender and my experience relating to it.

Partially because of this type of conversation, and in part because I’ll never not be a student and have been absorbing all the gender theory I can, I’ve been thinking about my relation to gender quite a lot. (The whole trans thing doesn’t hurt, either.) So they asked specifically how or if I’ve felt different since going on hormones about a year ago. And I said going through puberty at 23 generally sucks, even if most of the changes have been ones I definitely want.

(Side: We did have a good time laughing at what the extreme of that would be: being mad at my parents all the time, slamming doors for no reason, etc.)

The only change I’ve really been unhappy with is a loss of strength, as lifting my body weight at the Gym is now just a bitch. But I also talked about emotional changes, saying I don’t feel different about things (my likes and dislikes haven’t changed) but how I experience feelings is different: everything, good or bad, is heightened and more raw.

I also said that I really like approaching things from an intellectual standpoint (shocking, I know) and being able to pinpoint where a feeling is coming from is really important to me. Since going on hormones, I’ve had to deal with a lot more emotions that seem to come from no specific source, and sneak up on me. Not really mood swings, but just not understanding where a strong emotion will come from and really having to work back to figure out why the hell I’m feeling what I”m feeling.

It was at this point that these three women all started laughing, as have a lot of other women I’ve come out to. It was good-natured laughter, definitely “with me,” not “at me” or anything. But I think it’s interesting that that’s been such a common response. Don’t really have anything else to say about that, but part of my goal of keeping this journal/blog/record/whatever is to note my experiences during my transition how they came about.

So there.

-R