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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 2, 2010 9:16 pm

I was at my mom’s Sunday night (see the previous post on yumminess) and she said she’d been thinking about mother-daughter things for us to do together. She felt like we’d missed out, and wanted to make up for lost time. She surprised me by saying she’d been thinking about tattoos, since I hadn’t told her about my thoughts. But I guess a friend of hers (my mom’s age) and her daughter (my age) had gotten tattoos together as a bonding exercise, and it had gotten my mom thinking.

She said she’s not really excited about getting a tattoo (although we both joked that, after the amount of hair removal we’ve done, the pain of a tattoo can’t possibly compare). But she did say she had been thinking about getting another piercing on each ear, and that we could do that together (each get a second piercing) as a bonding experience.

Continue reading 'Or maybe another piercing?'»

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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 9, 2010 11:47 am

I just got off the phone with my dad. Both of my parents have been calling me pretty much every day, since last Wednesday when I told them how difficult things were for me right now. I’ve been getting a bit tired of having the same conversation over and over:

Mom or dad: How’re you feeling?

Me: The same.

Dad or mom: Are you feeling any better?

Me: No, not really.

(Yes, I know they mean well and they’re asking because they love me.)

I was expecting a repeat of this and, indeed, the conversation did start that way. But then my dad mentioned how a J – a friend of my dad’s and a reporter in Chicago – had been telling my dad about Christina Kahrl. Christina is a trans sports writer in Chicago, and I met her at a Broadway Youth Center event a few months ago. Apparently, J was saying he’d be happy to set up some sort of meeting for me with Christina; my dad was calling to ask me about this and see if I might want to talk with someone who has “been there.”

It seems like a little thing, particularly in contrast to my dad’s continued difficulty of calling me Rebecca, but I was really surprised and touched by the offer.

Continue reading 'Family can surprise you'»

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By Rebecca, January 26, 2010 11:35 pm

So all that anger I’ve been talking about? Turns out my mom has been thinking about it, too.

I went to my mom’s on Sunday night for dinner, and was trying to figure out if I wanted to bring up the anger toward her that I’ve been thinking about. I knew I wanted to bring it up eventually, but it had been a difficult weekend and I wasn’t sure I had the energy to go there.

After dinner, though, my mom said that she’d been thinking a lot about the example she and my dad set for me. See, I never saw them fight. And, in recent talks with my mom, apparently they never really did fight. Part of the reason I have trouble with anger, I’m coming to realize, is because I have no framework for it in my life. My experience has been: everything’s fine, everything’s fine, everything’s fine, my parents are getting divorced.

And, apparently, that wasn’t because my parents were going to great lengths to hide their anger from me. They just suppressed and repressed it to the point where they barely were able to acknowledge it themselves, let alone express it to each other or show it to my brother and I.

Which leaves me really not knowing how to deal with anger. I don’t know how to express it, and I don’t know how to handle anger directed at me.

Continue reading 'My mom is awesome'»

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By Rebecca, January 16, 2010 12:16 pm

Trigger warning. (A link explaining what “trigger warning” means.)

Earlier this week, Little Light posted is a dream a lie if it don’t come true / or is it something worse. The post is now behind a password but I did have a chance to read it before it was password protected. The thoughts behind password protecting the post are here, and no, I don’t have the password, and don’t know how to get it. I’m going to write about the post anyway, as  best as I can remember. I apologize if any of the details are wrong, but the general gist is accurate.

The post was about someone Little Light knew, a trans woman we’ll call Alice, who suffered a serious injury and was hospitalized. Alice had been on hormones for a few years, and was living full time as a woman. She had not undergone The Surgery, but was happier for living as Alice, as herself. After being injured, Alice ended up partially paralyzed, unable to care for herself, and unable to communicate without extreme effort.

Alice’s doctors decided – despite clear evidence that Alice identified and was presenting as a woman – that forcing medical staff to use ’she’ around someone with a penis would be too confusing. They instead used ‘he’ and Alice’s former, male, name.

Likewise, Alice’s family decided – despite clear evidence that Alice identified and was presenting and as a woman – to take her off her hormones.

Continue reading 'The stuff of nightmares'»

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By Rebecca, December 27, 2009 3:10 pm

My mom and I had our yearly family Hanukkah party on Christmas Eve, with close family friends. (We’re off by a bit – so what?) We have the party every year, although usually not on Christmas, and are only allowed to bring gifts that didn’t cost any money. This began years ago, when all the parents were pissed that all the children were obsessed with expensive presents – the families agreed we’d still give ‘real’ gifts at other parties, but this party wouldn’t be about money. This quickly turned into a contest to see who could give the most ridiculous gifts, and every year gets sillier and sillier.

Last night, one of the gifts I got was a little ball-and-net kit, with a small basketball and a suction-cup backboard and net. The gifts are usually (loosely) thematic based on something about the person and what the giver thinks of them, and this gift seemed kind of unrelated to anything about me. I noted this, saying, “Oh. Well, this seems more like something for my older brother, but thanks!”

The gift-giver – the husband of a high school friend of my mom – said, “I didn’t want you to forget your roots.”

“My roots?”

“White boys can’t jump…?”

(Awkward pause.)

Aaaaand moving on to the next gift.

Continue reading 'Totes awks'»

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By Rebecca, October 21, 2009 1:52 pm

This is an excerpt from the script I’m working on for Trans Form, which is going up this December. Enjoy!

I’m fourteen, sitting on the chair in my therapist’s office.

I started going to therapy by choice, because the year before, at thirteen, I still couldn’t get past the panic attacks and separation anxiety that had kept me from sleepovers and overnight school trips and sleep-away summer camp for as long as I could remember. The pattern was always the same: I would get excited about staying at a friends’ house, at an overnight event at the Museum of Science and Industry, at whatever. I would go, convincing myself that this time would be different, that this time I’d be able to make it all night.

But as we started to get ready for bed, the panic would creep up. For those of you who have had a panic attack before, you know how it feels. To everyone else, it was a very physical sensation, a creeping along my arms and legs to my core, to my center. My blood would start to rush, tears would inevitably spring to my eyes, and if I didn’t go home, if I didn’t get away from whatever mundane childhood experience was driving me to a panic, I’d go into fullblown hysterics.

Finally, the summer after seventh grade, when I’d missed most of the seventh grade weekend trip to Wisconsin because of a panic attack, I decided  I would go to the eighth grade trip to Washington DC. So I started seeing a therapist. We worked for months on controlled breathing, biofeedback techniques, ways to divert my focus from panicking.

But the trip to DC is in the past. (I made it, by the way, and haven’t had problems being away from home since.) Now, I’m fourteen, sitting in the chair at my therapist’s office, across from my parents, about to come out to them.

Continue reading 'Coming Out'»

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By Rebecca, September 16, 2009 8:44 pm

Today my mom gave me a necklace with “Rebecca” in Hebrew letters. (Not Rivka, the Hebrew version of Rebecca, but ‘Rebecca’ spelled phonetically in Hebrew.) I think she was a little hurt that I wasn’t as excited about it as she was, so I said, “It’s beautiful, I just have a complicated relationship with Judaism.”

Oh.

I wish I could have been more excited for her, because I know how hard she’s trying to support me (and how much she enjoys buying me girlie things with “Rebecca” on them like she did with my old name when I was a child). But I don’t always know what to do with a “Rebecca” puzzle. Or keychain. Or Hebrew necklace.

Meanwhile, I talked to my dad tonight, for about 4 minutes. I’ve been meaning to call him all week, and was trying to summon the energy to do so. I’m actually really sorry he called, and I probably shouldn’t have answered the phone, because I had neither the energy nor inclination to have a good conversation. I could (should) have told him more about the new girl we’re hiring at work, my raise, my little trip this weekend to Wisconsin, and asked more about how he’s doing. But I always end up feeling like my words go in one ear and out the other, anyway, so it’s hard to find the energy.

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By Rebecca, September 2, 2009 9:38 pm

This post will be about my vacation and time back since, so feel free to ignore it if you’re not interested in any of that. Sorry for the not-amazing picture quality, but I took my little dinky digital camera rather than having to schlep my DSLR.

Continue reading 'Vacation photos!'»