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'»
This post is a little personal, rather frank, and took some effort to write. If you’re not interested in hearing my thoughts on having a penis versus not having a penis, and on the possibility of having sex reassignment surgery, you probably shouldn’t read on. Consider yourself warned.
My identity as trans hasn’t really centered around genitals. Sure, I’ve fantasized about what I’d look like without a penis from a pretty young age, but my concept of myself as a boy or a girl didn’t pertain exclusively around what is or isn’t between my legs. I’ve never really though about surgery as something I’d want to do, or would feel like I needed to do.
Likewise, I enjoyed being sexual (alone or, ideally, with a partner) prior to starting my transition, and I never felt like I was forced into a ‘male’ role by having a penis, even though that may have been how things looked to an outside observer. Even as hormones have changed how I experience sex and feeling sexual, I’ve continued to enjoy those feelings – and managed to feel feminine – penis and all.
Lately, though, I’ve been thinking more and more about the possibility of having surgery…
Continue reading 'The Penis Game'»
When I was a child it – I must have been 6 or 7 or 8 (certainly younger than 10, for my family had not yet moved for the first time) – I remember playing a ‘make belive’ game with SB. I don’t remember the specifics, mainly just running around the park behind my house, going ujp and down the small hill and playing on the playground. I think we were searching for something, or hunting for something, or being hunted by something. Perhaps we were spys?
I do remember that, at some point in the make belive, I was transformed into a girl. SB had to rescue me, but I don’t think ‘rescue’ meant ‘transform me back,’ just ‘free me from the bad guys.’ I remember it being important (for some pre-puberty, gender-affirming reason) for me to be naked on the bed in my room, my penis tucked between my legs in a hairless V.
I told him not to tell his mom, but he told anyway and I was told that was not a good way to play and being naked with each other wasn’t OK. (At least, that’s what i remember being told, so many years later.)
But the part that was actually important – not the nudity but the gender – was never mentioned. I don’t know if he even told his mom about that part, or if she told my mom. But in retrospect I feel like yelling at my in-the-past-mom, “The point isn’t that I didn’t want to be clothed! The point is I didn’t want to be clothed and have a penis!”
-R
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