Hopefully won't end up in police custody like she did, tho.

I talked with my therapist recently about ‘the rest’ of transitioning. I don’t mean The Surgery, although that’s something which is still on my mind, I mean moving from actively transitioning – changing my name, going on hormones, fretting about levels, watching my boobs grow, constant hair removal – to simply living as a woman. (As if living were ever simple, for anyone.)

More specifically, I said I’d been having trouble getting motivated lately. Sure, I could spend extra time doing my makeup, extra energy wearing a skirt, extra effort walking in heels. But I’m never going to look like Mexico’s beauty queen over on the right (using her as an example simply because she came up when I did a Google Image Search for ‘beauty’) so why not just throw on jeans and a t-shirt?

Laura, my therapist, smiled and said that’s part of what being a woman is all about.

Except I’ve become very used to the idea of transition as moving toward something: getting hair removed, growing breasts, buying a new wardrobe. The idea that I’ve arrived (or am close to arriving) at status quo, at whatever ‘normal’ is going to be for me for the foreseeable future, is battling it out with internalized transphobia and, more simply, internalized desire for the unobtainable female ideal.

On good days, I’m able to remind myself that I’m not only attractive “for a trans woman” (whatever that loaded statement means) but simply attractive as a woman. Touring this summer demonstrated that; it may not be that all the girls wanted me, but enough did to be a boost to my confidence.

On bad days, however, I feel stuck. As if I’ve reached my asymptotic height. And while convincing myself that transitioning was possible has helped keep me sane for so many years, I now need to put the breaks on that line of thinking: there is a limit to how I’ll look, determined by genetics and biology. I’m never going to be 5’6″ and 120 lbs, or have a 36-26-36 figure.

But that’s OK. I’m working on it being OK.

Not much of a man by the light of day

One of the oddest experiences of my transition was going off hormones to deposit sperm. (Almost three years ago!) It made me feel – perhaps more than any other single situation – as if I was balanced on a knife edge between ‘man’ and ‘woman.’ I wasn’t a woman (the thinking went) since I was at a doctor’s office attempting to deposit sperm. And I wasn’t much of a man (the same train of thought concluded) since my sperm count was so frustratingly low the doctor couldn’t get a viable sample. It was an agonizing paradox, of sorts: If my sperm count was high enough for a successful deposit, the hormones weren’t reshaping my body in the way I wanted them to. If my sperm count wasn’t high enough for a successful deposit, the hormones were working but I’d have to stay off of them even longer, in hopes of getting my sperm count up.

Either way, I lost.

Since then, I’ve had many occasions where I felt uncomfortable being too ‘girly’ or to ‘manly,’ and have been unsure of how to navigate my way through. I’m reminded of a time, a year or two ago, I was bringing home groceries with a friend. I was attempting to carry way too much, and she laughed and yelled, “You’re not a man any more! You don’t have to do everything at once, so take two trips!”

Then, when I was in the hospital getting my gallbladder removed last year, my mom brought me a care package in the hospital. In it was some girly magazine with makeup and clothing tips, one of those thick glossy things you’d buy in the checkout line at the supermarket. I tossed it aside, not because I didn’t want to look at it, but because I was convinced I’d somehow be perceived as a girl if I did so. My friends who came to visit, the nurses, the doctors, they’d know I was a girl! (As if the boobs, name tag reading ‘Rebecca,’ and being referred to by female pronouns didn’t tip them off.) My roommate, of course, waltzed in and picked up the magazine, saying “Oh, can I read this when you’re done?” (So much for that worry.)

A constant worry throughout my transition has been that I’ll do something ‘wrong,’ whatever that means. My makeup will be applied incorrectly, my clothing will be hideously mismatched, my taste in movies or books or decorating style will be embarrassingly pre-teen to make up for the adolescence I feel I missed.

Slowly, though, slowly I’ve realized those worries are roadblocks rather than sanity checks. Instead of guiding me toward sane and reasonable choices, they’ve guided me away from exploring my at-long-last female identity. I’m comfortable and confident in my ability to dress myself in pants and t-shirts, but I enjoy putting on myself in tights (or leggings? I can never remember which is which) and a dress. Which means – in a lesson I keep relearning every few months – I should try to do that more! (Duh!) Likewise, while it’s easier and less stressful to go out sans makeup than figure out if my eyeliner application was even and appropriate, I like how I look with a bit of makeup. So the only way to make that experience less stressful is to do it.

And then, lo and behold, enjoy the compliments I receive when I put a little more effort into my appearance.

Because I’m not much of a man. I was never much of a man. I was mediocre at being a man, hated getting on suits and ties, and have only resisted reveling in my femininity because I’m scared of doing it wrong, not because I don’t think I’ll enjoy it.

Which is a silly reason to stay away from something.

So, suggested my therapist, why not focus on something positive? What’s something I like about myself? Well, I think my boobs are pretty great. So I’m going to focus on that.

I think there are worse ways to walk through life than saying to yourself, “I have amazing boobs.”

What’s one thing you like about yourself?

Am I allowed to read this?

While I was in the hospital, my mom brought me a little care package. It had a stuffed bear, a silly coloring book, and a copy of Glamour.

The stuffed bear lived next to me on my bed. The coloring book was, well, colored in. And the Glamour was put into my bag of things, hidden away from sight.

It’s not because I didn’t want to know about “25 Times I’m Irresistible to Him (And Don’t Even Know It).” Or “My Top 10 Tricks for Sexy Hair!” Or even “59 Cute, Casual Outfits That Look Good On Everyone.” I mean, who wouldn’t want to know all those things?

It was because I wasn’t sure if I would be looked down upon for reading it.

Would the nurses think I was immature? Would my friends think I was silly? Would my visitors think I was….girlie?

I realize, in retrospect, this was a stupid thing to worry about. Particularly in the hospital. On morphine. Soon to have surgery. I’m pretty confident I could have openly been reading porn (or even, heaven forbid, Sarah Palin’s book) and no one would have been willing to judge me for it.

More to the point, I think it’s kind of silly of me to worry about weather the people in my life think I’m being too girlie. But it is something that I sometimes worrying about – some small hint of my years of  male socialization crying out against being perceived as feminine.

I’m trying to fight it – to acknowledge what I want, even if it makes me worry about how I’m perceived.

And I feel particularly silly in retrospect, because I brought it home and my roommate immediately said, “Ooh, can I borrow that?”

This morning, after lugging myself to the bathroom, I looked in the mirror to see something of a stranger. First, because one of my roommates had put my hair into two braided pigtails last night, before I went into surgery. I’ve been way to lazy to remove ‘em, so they’ve stayed the last 24 hours. Second, because the IV fluids, coupled with little food, have given me a simultaneously gaunt and water-bloated look. On top of that, I haven’t really bathed all week, so my color is way off and I’m all blotchy.

Most obnoxious, though, was the little soul-patch beneath my lower lip, a  remnant of my facial hair that the laser removal hasn’t been able extinguish.

My hospital stay has actually been pretty gender-affirming. As usual, my dad has “he”d and “him”d me tons more than any of the hospital staff. My mom or I would usually correct him right after. It’s also the hospital where I was born, so they initially had me in the system with my old name and gender. But the staff very quickly and efficiently changed those on my records and wrist-band, and one staff person actually apologized they had even taken as long as they did. Bonus points, Evanston hospital!

All of my nurses and aides and doctors have similarly used “Ms. Kling” when referring to me, which has amused me to no end. I also had fun when the anesthesiologist asked me if I could be pregnant. “Nope!”

“Oh, you’re on the pill?”

“No – I don’t have a uterus or ovaries.” I probably didn’t need to be so snarky, but I was tired and cranky and he didn’t seem thrown by my response.

So I’m more than a little bummed that I looked into the mirror this morning to find such a stark reminder of my transition. My arms and legs have  slowly regrown their hair this week during my hospital stay, but enough has been removed via laser that what does regrow doesn’t gender me in the same was as I think my facial hair does. And I know it’s not tons of hair, and lots of women do have a patch or two of facial hair. But it still wasn’t what I wanted to see when I already feel so icky and sick.

On the up side, I should be leaving tomorrow. And I’ll just need to schedule an appointment to get that last little bit of facial hair zapped, once and for all.

Maddie at xoros.net recently wrote a post, Passing Fallacy, on the idea of passing. That is, being perceived as the gender you are presenting as, rather than your assigned-at-birth gender. I really like where she takes her definition, though:

[passing] is a struggle to over ride what others impose and imprint on you in order to win the right to assert one’s self image, one’s self. It’s trying to win the right not to be made to feel like a failure, an othered, degendered oddity. It is trying to be “convincing” enough (read – meet enough of their stereotypes) that people are prepared to accept what you say. Rather than just listening to what you say.

That idea, of passing being an issue of whose reality ‘wins,’ is the main reason I try to say “perceived as a woman” rather than “passing as a woman.” Because it turns around passing and makes it about what it really is: a problem created by the gaze-er, not the gaze-ee.

Maddie continues on a similar line, and ends her post by saying

Therefore I would like to suggest that the phrase “failed to pass” be replaced with “failed to be accorded a basic level of respect”.

While talking at a high school last week, one of the students said, “Wow, you really look like a woman.” I told him I appreciate that, as I knew he intended it as a compliment, but went on to say that comments like that can be unintentionally (or intentionally) hurtful.

I turned to the teacher and said, “Wow, you really look like a teacher! If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you really were one.” Everyone in the class laughed, but I hope I got my point across that comparing someone’s identity – as a woman, as a teacher, as a member of a religion, as whatever – to a “real” member of that group hurts. It’s belittling. It’s, as Maddie says, disrespectful.

At the same time, I think passing in my own eyes is keenly important to my confidence in my identity as a woman. That is, I’m still working on perceiving myself as a woman, even when I know those around me do perceive me that way.

The easiest example I can think of is going to the bathroom. I feel incredibly awkward in the bathroom when I’m around other women I know (and, to a lesser extent, women I don’t know) because I don’t perceive myself as a ‘real’ woman in that situation. My coworkers don’t care. My friends don’t care. I’ve had a friend who I’ve known over a decade ask if maybe I was depressed because I was PMSing (and had to remind her I don’t menstruate). I “pass,” and the people in my life afford me the respect of treating my stated gender with just as much weight and “reality” as theirs.

But I need to give that reality weight in my own eyes. To continue to travel down a road toward my own self-respect.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do toward that end is flip around my usual daydreams or mental wanderings. My tendency is to imagine how much ‘better’ things would be now if I’d only transitioned earlier. But, recently, I’ve been trying to look at my life from a different perspective: what would 8-year-old me think of my life? What about 13-year-old me? 15? 18? Even a year or two ago, what would I have thought of my life today?

That starts to give me a sense of joy about where I am today, a sense of wonder at how far I’ve come. I’m not able to keep that positive emotion for long, but occasionally I can catch it, like a guttering flame.

That’s terrifying.

Ignoring the reasons dating is scary for everyone, I’d like to talk about two specific areas I’ve been giving a lot of thought.

First, I’ve been in the same relationship since before I started transitioning. And before that, I really didn’t date. I had a girlfriend, H, near the beginning of high school (who recently got married to her now-wife in Vermont, natch) and hooked up with one girl between H and my most just-ended relationship. Since hitting puberty, I’ve seriously kissed maybe three people. (I’m not counting spin-the-bottle bullshit kisses.)

This certainly wasn’t because of a lack of interest. I wanted to be with someone, yes. But I had have self-esteem issues, and wasn’t am not good at picking up on others’ interest in me. Looking back at when I was presenting as male, I’m guessing this was at least partially because I had no idea how to romantically interact with women as a man, and absolutely no idea how to romantically interact with women as a woman. (Which I wasn’t presenting as, anyway.)

And now I’m single, but with this weird time-jump where I feel just as awkward as I did at 15, but now presenting as a woman. A woman with what feels like no flirting/courting/dating history or experience.

I’d imagine this general idea – of not feeling like you know how to flirt or date – has to do more with my having been in a long-term relationship and less to do with my being trans. I think being trans heightens it, but I think being trans heightens a lot of issues that everyone feels to one extent or another. But I can’t help echoing my constant refrain of “I wish I’d transitioned earlier,” because my fantasy-world version of adolescence involves me having some dating and romantic experience…

(My fantasy-world version of college and post-college also involves me not having to transition while in a relationship and not royally fucking everything up to begin with. So yeah.)

My second big issue is that, well, society isn’t know for its huge acceptance of trans people. In particular, ‘chicks with dicks’ are one of the most reviled groups under the sun. It’s true that, being out and being interested in women, there’s less of an opportunity to be a victim of trans-bashing. But that’s not horribly reassuring.

To be totally blunt, I’m just getting out of a relationship that was sexually comfortable in no small part because the relationship developed as I was beginning to transition. So my discoveries about my body – about changing sexual experiences and preferences – were also being made with an aware and supportive partner. But now I have this body, and am incredibly conscious of how possible it is I’ll be rejected for it.

I wonder what the hell I’m thinking getting out of a relationship with someone who does love me. I wonder who out there could possibly be interested in dating someone like me. I have 25 years of training telling me that not only am I not sexually desirable, I’m sexually abhorrent.

The first issue, a lack of dating experience, I’m hoping to solve by trial and error. One of my big attempts at self-growth over the past year has involved being more honest and direct, and I don’t see why that can’t apply to dating. That is, say what I want out of a relationship rather than play stupid games, and ask when I don’t know what signals I’m getting. Obviously much easier said than done, but I don’t think it’s an impossible goal.

The second seems less simple, and is much more a confidence issue. I don’t really consider myself someone worthy of love, so expect others to view me that way. (That was a fun sentence to write…) I’m hoping that actually trying to get out there and date will help, but the realist cynic pessimist in me worries that it’ll justify my fears instead.

As I said: terrifying.

*By “on the dating market” I mean that I’m neither in a relationship nor thinking of myself as ‘off the market’ due to relationship complications that I won’t get into.

The advanced high school class at work is going to be in a performance this spring. (Not the class I’m teaching – the class at my full-time job. The class I’m teaching will also be in a performance this spring, but that’s not relevant to this post.) We’re buying costumes for them, but need everyone’s measurements before we can do that.

Since I was in the office during their class, I walked down the hall to ask for the measurements of the one girl who still hadn’t turned her’s in. I handed her a tape measure, but she turned and said, “Aren’t you going to measure me?”

At this point, 23 years of male training popped into my head: About how you’re never supposed to touch your students. (She isn’t my student, but that’s not really the point.) About how you’re never supposed to touch your female students. About how you’re really amazingly never supposed to touch your underage female students.

And, of course, about how I don’t actually know how to take measurements.

Making me feel more uncomfortable were the demographics of the class. It’s a high school circus arts class, consisting entirely of girls, all of whom have been taking circus classes for years and almost all of whom look way too adult for their 16 or 17 years. And all of whom have bodies that I would have killed for when I was their age, and still might be willing to commit some lesser crime for, today. Maybe a nice spot of arson or larceny.

I turned to the instructor: “Can you measure her?”

The lead instructor looked at me, and told me she didn’t know what measurements were needed for the costume.

Ugh. “Neither do I,” I told her. “I’m just the messenger: we need one more set of measurements, and I was told to get them.”

The dance teacher came in, thank heavens. I called, “Hey, can you take her measurements?”

“Sure. What do you need?”

Again, “I’m just the messenger. These are the last set of measurements we need.”

The dance teacher was able to get everything, although each measurement was followed by, “What else do you need?”

It became a game of call-and-response. “I’m just the messenger! I don’t know!”

“What else do you need?”

“I’m just the messenger! I don’t know!”

At last, the measurements were done and I could go back to the office. But when you’re already feeling down? Let me tell you, nothing’ll kill your confidence like having to get the measurements of a really fit teenager.

It was already kind of an emotional conversation, so it was only a slight surprise to me when tears started down my face, as I replied, “Do you really think I have a choice about being out?”

I live within five miles of where I grew up. I keep up a relationship with my immediate and extended family. I work at one job where I’ve taken classes since I was 19 or 20, and another where I’ve taken classes since I was nine. I have two roommates, each of whom I went to high school with. The vast majority of my friends have known me since before I started transitioning (in one case since I was maybe three years old).

To keep all of that – and I do want to keep it – means that I inherently have to be out about my status as trans. When such a history exists, the option for stealth living diminishes greatly: I’d need to refuse to acknowledge my trans-ness with people who did know, cut off contact with people who couldn’t handle that, and not acknowledge it to new acquaintances.

I meant all that when I said “Do you really think I have a choice about being out?”

But being out doesn’t necessitate doing a solo performance about my experiences as a trans woman. Or sharing that part of myself via this blog.

I continued explaining my thoughts to my friend, saying that I still don’t feel like I’m perceived as a woman. I don’t feel like a woman. Accurate or inaccurate, I assume people are going to know I’m trans, and judge me for it.

And so claiming that trans identity – being Loud and Proud, as it were – is a way of preempting that derision. Because if I acknowledge it first, if I pretend it’s something I’m OK with, then it lessens the ability for others to use my trans identity as a weapon to hurt me.

I’m pretty sure, intellectually, that most of the people in my life who have known me since before I transitioned do perceive me as a woman. And that, when meeting new people, they perceive me as a woman, too. But I’m still trying to perceive myself as a woman. I wholeheartedly agree with gudbuytjane that the concept of passing is an oppressive force. That…

Passing is a system used by cissexist cultures to control trans people, to ostracize, and to justify violence perpetrated against them. Although passing is presented as a trans endeavor or desire, the truth is it is a system for cis people to identify trans people and to alert other cis people to their presence.  Whether used to mollify trans people with suggestions that other cis people don’t know about their trans status, or to shame them because other people do, it is centered in the cis person’s perspectives and assumptions.  It is the constant reminder that in the power relationship between cis and trans, cis dominates.

But I’m still struggling with internalized transphobia. How do you deal with not living up to your own standards of ‘woman,’ of not passing in your own mind’s eye?

Last night I was talking in my kitchen with a different friend, while my roommates were holding a party in the living room. She and I were catching up, and so not really interested in the noisy, drunken revelry happening down the hall. I was saying I’d been having a rough time of things, and she reminded me about all I accomplished over the past year-and-a-half: living full-time as Rebecca, completing one successful solo show as part of an evening of solo shows, and one successful single-billing solo show all by my lonesome, getting a raise, and so on.

Her deluge of compliments literally left me teary-eyed, and not from joy. Even with a list of accomplishments that, objectively, I know is amazing and something to be proud of, I still fall so far short of my own unreasonable standards for myself. Professionally, personally, artistically, intellectually, appearance-ally. (OK, I made that last word up.) So far short that the very act of being complimented drives me to tears.

I’m working on getting past all that, working on actually being proud of myself. And I fake it pretty well, because few things are more awkward than having someone compliment you and denying the compliment (let alone bursting into tears).

But it’s slow going.

A lot of the material from this video came from this post. I’m still working on getting the rest of the video in some semblance of order… Would people be interested in seeing the whole thing (I’d need to break it up) or is a ‘best of’ clip video acceptable?