A recent piece I performed at The Encyclopedia Show.
I have a question for the audience. By a show of hands, who here was happy with the changes they experienced during puberty? There’s no right or wrong answer, I’m just curious. Now, by a show of hands, who was unhappy?
I was unhappy when puberty hit. Miserable, actually. On-and-off suicidal. I’m transgender, which means I was assigned one gender at birth (male) but identify as another (female). So when puberty hit, around thirteen, I began developing in all of the ways which are normal for boys: Hair started growing in places I didn’t really want hair to grow (namely, everywhere), my voice dropped, I didn’t grow boobs or get all curvy, I discovered how great masturbation is, and I was slightly irritable, angry, or depressed for the next seven years; any normal boy’s puberty and trans girl’s nightmare.
The things happening to my body felt totally foreign, and not simply because puberty was changing my body from a child to an adult. They felt foreign because my body was changing from a child to a man. Continue reading 'Delayed Puberty'»
As a child, I would fantasize about not being trans. Not that I’d fantasize about “really” being a boy. Rather, I’d imagine what life would be like if I were “really” a girl. I dreamed about developing along with the other girls, growing breasts and body hair and geting my first period. About sleepovers and braiding hair and bikes with streamers on the handles. I didn’t imagine a wholly different life, in a different city or with different parents, simply the proper life; the life I should have had. The life I deserved. Too much normality is boring, but I was dying to feel a bit more like everyone else.
I’ve revisited this question from time to time: Would I wish to not be trans, if given the opportunity? I wrote a story about that question last year. I should try and expand that story, since I sort of dodged the actual question. Because the short answer is, I don’t know. If our lives consist of diverging possibilities, the roads not taken, every day takes me further down the road of being trans. Put another way, every day makes my identity as a trans woman a bit more concrete, a bit less theoretical something to consider for “the future.” The future is here, I’m considering The Surgery. Being not-trans, a cis woman, might make my life prior to transitioning more enjoyable, but it would effectively reshape my life since I began to transition into something unrecognizable. Continue reading 'The Queer Body and Healthcare'»
Originally posted at In Our Words, and reposted with permission.
March 1998, from March 2012
Dear Rebecca,
Can I call you Rebecca? I know you haven’t told many people that name. It’s one of the names mom and dad chose for you before you were born, one you’ve been using in your head since mom mentioned it while working on that genealogy project with you. I know it’s a private name for you right now, but things change. I promise they do.
This letter is coming from the year 2012, fourteen years in the future. You’re thirteen, I’m twenty-seven. You’re exploring your identity on the Internet, trying to figure out what “transgender” means and whether it applies to you. I’m writing about my identity on the Internet, trying to explain to others what “transgender” means and how it applies to me. And, from that perspective, I wanted to write you this letter.
Don’t let anyone tell you who you are. You know who you are. You know what you are. Doctors and therapists and family can help with that journey, but that can’t decide it for you. They also can’t do it for you. I know you’re dying for someone to step in and take the lead, to transition for you, to tell you what to do. And you’ll find doctors and therapists who will help along the way. But no one does it for you.
Put another way: it doesn’t get better. But you will make it better. Continue reading 'It Doesn’t Get Better (But You’ll Make It Better) – A letter to my younger self'»
Part One of this writing exercise is here.
No fair! My feet didn't come with a flower!
Below the waist. My feet, like my hands, are slightly bigger than I’d like, hairier than I’d like, but I can’t really complain. They’re not huge, it’s occasionally obnoxious to find shoes in my size but never impossible, and hair removal has thinned much of the worst growth. I still have some patches around my ankles that I need to shave when I shave my legs, but no body is perfect. My legs rival my chest and face for the most dramatic success of hair removal. I shave my legs, much more in warm months, but don’t grow the same thick brambly forest that I used to. As of today, I haven’t shaved my legs in at least a month, and while they’re hairy compared to my shaved-this-morning face, they’re night and day compared to when I was in high school, pre hormones and hair removal. My legs are, like my arms, places of strength. I don’t run – it hurts my knees – but I bike and walk and swim and climb ropes and trees and lovers. I’ve been working on strengthening my hips, something a physical therapist said would help my knees, but don’t have much to complain about.
At the same time, my legs and arms have shrunk the most over the course of my transition. I joke that, since going on hormones, I’ve gone up two cup sizes without gaining any weight. All that mass, my previously mentioned boobs, had to come from somewhere – lots of it came from now-departed muscle mass in my arms and legs. I’m still stronger than lots of my girl friends, who knows whether as a result of testosterone or simply genetics, but decidedly less strong than I was before hormones. I’m not complaining, however, other than the occasional struggle at circus or the gym. But no pain, no gain. Or something.
Continue reading 'Body Map, part two'»
My parents aren’t perfect. I doubt any are. And, yet, I feel pretty lucky to have them. I’ve talked about my coming out experience, and how – even though my parents responded with love – I wish they had responded to my coming out with understanding. With the knowledge to say, “Yup. And this is what we do about that.” I wish there had been things like summer camps for trans youth, or conferences for their families, or books for parents, or any of the things that have really come to light in the last decade or so. At the same time, I feel lucky and fortunate to have the parents I do.
I was reminded about this when my mom sent me a link to a Chicago Tribune article titled Study: Family ties cut suicide rate for LGBT youth. In fact, my parents responded on a similar script to what the article suggests:
[One of the study authors] said parents can make a difference. It’s important parents respond with love and acceptance from the moment their child tells them he or she is gay, and that’s true even if parents need time to process the information.
“You can say something like: ‘I’m glad you shared that with me and I love you no matter what. This is new for me and I have to think about it, but I want you to know that I loved you before you told me and I love you now,’” he said.
Continue reading 'Thanks, mom and dad'»
Here’s what I’d like you to do:
- Cut open my penis.
- Remove the spongey erectile tissue. Make sure to leave the nerves and blood supply intact! We’ll need those!
- Invert all that stuff up into my pelvic cavity.
- Use that tissue and blood supply to make me a brand new clit.
- Shorten my urethra – won’t be standing up to pee anymore!
- Take the extra scrotal tissue and shape me a good labia.
Perfect! Now that’s what I want to see when I look in the mirror. Continue reading 'Cut it open. Push it up.'»
This past week I was at Butler University in Indianapolis, performing Uncovering the Mirrors and leading a workshop around trans issues. Everything went really well, and I met some great people. All in all a very good trip.
During the workshop, however, something came up that I had not previously considered. Specifically, someone asked about how trans youth are (medically) treated. I said that it varies, but that there’s an increasing use of hormone blockers to delay puberty. This allows a twelve or thirteen year old to age a few years and – hopefully – be able to make a more informed decision about transitioning. In my I-am-not-a-doctor opinion, it’s a good compromise: simply doing nothing can result in spending thousands of dollars to undo puberty, but launching fully into hormone replacement therapy opens the door to a twelve year old realizing they weren’t really trans at thirteen or fourteen.
Ultimately, I said to the questioner, there isn’t a perfect solution. Once a child realizes they’re trans, it’s a matter of picking the best choice from some bad options. Which, to be very clear, doesn’t mean that being trans condemns an individual to a life of misery. But it does, as far as I can see, necessitate some tough decisions and a difficult journey.
The questioner then posed something that has been bouncing around my brain this past week: Could allowing fifteen and sixteen year olds to be making informed consent decisions about their healthcare lead to the criminal justice system saying they were able to make informed decisions about crimes, and should thus be tried as adults?
Continue reading 'Trans youth and informed consent'»
With help from the peanut gallery. This is a mix of FTM, MTF, and general silliness, so don’t try to overthinkg ‘em. Feel free to suggest more in the comments!
I really transitioned to get into bars for free, without having to pay cover.
I really transitioned because I heard there weren’t enough women in science, and I wanted to do my part.
I really transitioned so I could drink sweet pink drinks at bars without being judged.
I really transitioned because when I paint my toes pink, I want to be a boy with pink toenails!
I really transitioned so I could wear tight pants all the time without looking like a member of an 80′s rock band.
I really transitioned because I wanted to save on car insurance.
I really transitioned because the clothes are *way* better (so i still wear BDUs and t-shirts most of the time)
I really transitioned because I was born on Stonewall Day.
Exclusions. Covered expenses of the Plan shall not include … procedures, treatments, equipment, transplants, or implants, any of which are … for, or resulting from, a gender transformation operation. – 215 Illinois Compiled Statutes 105 – Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan Act
It’s unclear whether the State of Illinois has defined – through statute or the courts – what specifically “gender transformation operation” means. But it seems pretty safe to assume that the surgery I’m currently considering would fall under its purview. Surgery in which the “spongiform erectile tissue of the penis is removed, and the skin, with its nerves and vascular system (blood supply) still attached, is used to create a vestibule area and labia minora, which then are inverted into the neovaginal cavity created in the pelvic tissue.” That seems pretty gender transformative to me.
What’s interesting about the Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan Act (or the ICHIP Act) is what other injuries, procedures, and categories of coverage are excluded. Gender transformation operations (item 14.iv on the list of exclusions) is lumped in with cosmetic surgery (item 1), anything which exceeds “reasonable or customary” cost (item 4), injury due to war (item 9) , services that are “not provided in accord with generally accepted standards of current medical practice” (item 14), contraceptives (item 19), weight loss programs (item 21), acupuncture (22). Interestingly enough, the act itself does not, as best as I could find, mention abortion or early termination of a pregnancy, but the ICHIP website stil says such services are excluded.
Continue reading 'Some exclusions may apply'»
First, an update on my firing from last October. I had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency who makes sure employers are being all equal and such. I just got a letter from them saying that, because Neal Math and Science Academy hadn’t responded to the EEOC’s inquiry, the EEOC would be investigating the complaint themselves.
I talked to my lawyer, who said this isn’t great news – that would be if Neal decided to cooperate with the EEOC from the beginning. But it does mean that the EEOC hasn’t forgotten about my complaint, and hasn’t (yet) said it’s not under their jurrisdiction.
In other news, my dad sent me a Chicago Tribune article about Dr Schechter, a plastic surgeon in the Chicago suburbs who does gender reassignment surgery. This is very interesting to me, since the only folks I’d found doing surgery were decidedly not in the Chicago area. At the same time, the fact that I haven’t heard of this guy makes me hesitant – all the doctors I’ve been researching are well-established, with reviews online over at this site. The article also says Schecther works with the Drs Etner, who I’m not fans of.
Has anyone heard anything about him? Positive or negative?
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