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By Rebecca, March 20, 2010 12:26 am

I spoke to a high school health club on Friday – the one who emailed me the questions I’ve been answering the last few days – and had a really good time. They weren’t too knowledgeable about queer/trans issues, but I much prefer well-intentioned and open-handed ignorance to feigned understanding… And they were all willing to learn, which counts for a lot in my book.

Most of the chat was pretty expected, with me going over my (abridged) life story and transition, talking about how hormones have changed my experience of emotions and sex, and so on. I did have one student ask, “So, if you did get…the surgery, and you like women…how would you have sex after?”

One of the other students waved her fingers in front of his face, which made me laugh. I also directed them to Early to Bed, which is actually only a few blocks away from their school. I hope, for the sake of his current and future partner(s), that he learns about the options available beyond penis/vagina.

Continue reading 'Talking to high schoolers'»

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By Rebecca, March 17, 2010 11:14 pm

• Do you feel like your personality has changed at all?

Yes and no. The important things have not changed. I still find the same things funny, the same things sad, my politics haven’t changed, my taste in music hasn’t changed, and so on. At the same time, I think being more emotional – presumably a combination of hormones and being more comfortable with myself in general – has let me be a little more open and  a little less closed off.

Specifically, I used to think of myself as someone who could do a great poker face. That is, if I didn’t want my emotions to show, they didn’t. But on Monday of this week, one of my coworkers asked if anything was wrong (I was, indeed, stressed). I asked it if was that obvious, and she replied, “Yeah, you kind of wear your heart on your sleeve.”

I ultimately think this change is a good thing, but it’s taking some getting used to. It’s difficult to think of yourself, and the image you project to the world, as one thing and realize it’s really something else.

• How do you feel about transgender persons getting married?  Do you want to get married?

I’m not totally sure what the first part of this question is asking. I think any two consenting adults of sound minds should be able to get married. Or, hell, more than two: I don’t think polyamory is for me, but I don’t see why I should tell others they can’t practice it. So I don’t think someone being trans, (or pre-, mid-, or post-transition) should have anything to do with it.

As to whether I want to get married… Yes, I think I do, eventually. Hopefully the right gal will sweep me off my feet.

• Continue reading 'Questions on being trans, from highschoolers (pt 3)'»

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By Rebecca, March 16, 2010 11:09 pm

• How did you know you wanted to be a girl? – what influenced your decision to transition?

That’s a tough one to answer. How did you know you wanted to be a girl, anonymous questioner? (Or wanted to be a boy?)

For me, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a girl that I knew I wasn’t a boy. I imagined being a girl was better, I hoped it was right for me, and I wished I were a girl. But I wasn’t positive that it would be until I did it. Maybe a good analogy would be the question, “How do you know you’re hungry?” Well, because you’re hungry! It’s a state of being, something you know you are or you aren’t. I didn’t know I wanted to be a girl because I liked dresses or makeup or dolls. I knew it because it was true.

• What do your family and friends think?  Did anyone give you moral support in making your decision?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am spoiled, blessed, privileged, and thankful that my friends, family, and coworkers have been so supportive during my transition. I’ve had people (family, mostly) react in a confused way, but I’ve never had anyone who was important to me act in a negative or intentionally hurtful way.

My experience, however, is the exception. It’s (unfortunately) not the rule. But I’d like to work toward a world where my experience – of the people important to me being supportive and enthusiastic of my transition – is the norm.

• Continue reading 'Questions on being trans, from highschoolers (pt 2)'»

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By Rebecca, March 15, 2010 9:37 pm

I’m speaking this Friday to a high school GSA in my neighborhood. One of the students at the class I spoke to in October is leading a group at the high school, and they were interested in having a trans speaker come.

She just sent over a list of questions the students had compiled, and I figured I’d answer some of them here, as a way to think about them before Friday. I think I’m gonna single out the easy questions in this post, and may cover some of the more in-depth ones later… It’s interesting to see what issues and topics high school students think are worth asking about.

• What restroom do you use?

I use whatever bathroom fits with how I’m presenting. For over a year, now, that’s been the womens room. Before that, for about a two year period, it was either the mens room or the womens room, depending primarily on what I was wearing and how I was thinking about myself. Before that, it was the mens room.

• Are you attracted to men or women now?  How is sex different as a woman than as a man?

Still attracted to women! And the protected posts are mostly about how sex has changed over the course of the transition (see the ‘About Me’ link at the top for info on getting the password.)

Continue reading 'Questions on being trans, from highschoolers (pt 1?)'»

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By Rebecca, March 4, 2010 5:06 pm

As I look forward to continued writing and performing, I’m brainstorming about interesting metaphors for transitioning. I previously worked with the constructed myth of Ares and Aphrodite, about a child who was assigned the wrong gender by the gods. Likewise, in my most recent piece, Trans Form, I used a physical box full of costumes and props as a metaphor for the emotional weight of pre-transition life, and of the complicated and confusing natrue of transitioning. I’d like to play with both of those metaphors more, but I’d love to find some other avenues to explore, too.

Things that spring to mind, or that I’ve used in the past:

• Caterpillar/butterfly (a bit obvious)
• The Little Mermaid (from Trans Form)
• Cooking – a recipe for transitioning, with instructions on ingredients/baking time/etc
• Being trapped or constrained
• Puppetry or being a puppet

Anyone else have some interesting transition metaphors? I’d love to hear ‘em!

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By Rebecca, February 28, 2010 4:13 pm

Another tenant in the building where I work came into our office recently. She was asking about our upcoming production, so I gave her the info and encouraged her to come if she’s able. She thanked me, but as she was leaving she turned and said, “You’ve really blossomed this last year. I wanted you to know how beautiful you are.” I smiled, thanked her, and said polite goodbyes.

I need to get out of that office.

I appreciate where she was coming from, and obviously what she said was better than the alternative. But I hate that I’m working somewhere I haven’t simply chosen to be out, I’m inherently out by my long history of working in the same building.

I’m assuming I’ll be out (eventually) at whatever job I’m at. But there’s a difference between choosing to tell someone about your history, and having them been there for it and possess insider knowledge, regardless of how much disclosure you’d like to offer.

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By Rebecca, February 26, 2010 2:04 pm

Why do I continue and continue to beat myself up for not transitioning earlier? For not speaking up louder? For not being more insistent, more forceful? In the past week, I’ve been told by both my doctor and my therapist that I really couldn’t have transitioned much earlier. That, starting hormones at 22, I was pretty close to starting them as young as I possible could have. That very few people start hormones at 18, and that very very few doctors will prescribe hormones younger than that.

That, realistically, there’s a very slim chance I possibly could have transitioned earlier than I did.

And yet, I keep beating myself up about it. Regretting that I don’t live in the fantasy life I constructed for myself, of going to school as a girl, experiencing adolescence as a girl, growing up into a woman. And I realized it has a lot to do with my own sense of agency, or lack thereof.

Continue reading 'Agency'»

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By Rebecca, February 19, 2010 4:01 pm

I saw my therapist, Laura, last night, and we talked about my feeling stuck; that I’m unable to get past grieving for the life I ’should have’ had if I’d transitioned earlier or not transitioned in the first place. I was also thinking about something from Questioning Transphobia:

In other words, we need to see the woman in the pre-transition photo of a trans woman, the man in the pre-transition photo of a trans man.  That, and only that, will help begin to dissipate the painful and fraught relationship so many of us have with photographs.

Queen Emily was specifically talking about photographs, but I think expanding the idea to the rest of my life makes sense, too. That is, from my comment on that post, “It’s much harder to view my history and experiences prior to transitioning as an integral part of who I am now; as a foundation upon which I’ve built up rather than a weight which drags me down.”

Continue reading 'Holding a mourning ceremony'»

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By Rebecca, February 10, 2010 12:53 am

Something has been bouncing around in my head. From Picture Frames, a post from Cedar’s blog Taking Up Too Much Space, written in response to my show Trans Form :

What I realized, when I heard [in Trans Form] about the photo albums, and the pictures on the walls of her [Rebecca's] parents’ house, was that these were the memorabilia of an occupation, held onto and commemorated by its collaborators (witting or unwitting). Yes they represent a historical “truth,” a “past” one does not want to “deny”–but so do guns and chains and whips and bombs, and you don’t see them in the family photographs. Well, not if you were on the receiving end, anyway.

That concept, viewing photos or keepsakes of my past as “the memorabilia of an occupation,” finally clicked with me today.

This past weekend, my dad and I were talking about my depression. I was saying that I regretted not transitioning earlier, and he was saying he was sorry for not doing something when I was younger. Seeing something, noticing my unhappiness and its cause. And he said that, with the more tangible problems my older siblings had, it was easy to see me – with good grades, friends, a voracious apatite for books, no small skill at playing piano – as the ‘normal’ child. The child who didn’t need ‘fixing.’

And I realized, as Cedar indicated, that where we find ourselves today is not simply a result of the “truth” of history. It’s a result of how that history is viewed.

Continue reading 'Escaping an angry photograph'»

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By Rebecca, February 2, 2010 1:33 am

Once upon a time, I wrote about how my old name may or may not be like He Who Shall Not Be Named. I had said to a friend, jokingly, “You can say my old [male] name! It’s not like it’s Voldemort.”

I’ve been thinking about that idea since then, and of the power of names. And I realized that I don’t want people saying my old name. A coworker of mine, who met me after I was living full-time as Rebecca, knows my old name because she gets the office mail and random catalogs and things occasionally arrive in my old name. I was telling a story to a friend that needed to use my old name, and felt uncomfortable when I got to that point in the story.

I’m starting to feel a bit claustrophobic in my current job, where I’ve been since before I transitioned. And in a building that I’ve been coming to for classes and to teach and work since I was nine. In the city where I grew up. Surrounded by people who knew me before I transitioned.

I also don’t want to totally cut myself off from pre-transition life, from the friends and family and memories. But I’m floundering right now, having a hard time keeping my head above water, and I’m wondering how much my surroundings have to do with it.