Category: Understanding Transitioning

On Being Trans Professionally

What does it mean to be an out trans professional?

What does it mean to be out, to be authentically yourself?

I’ve talked a lot about how I feel about my situation. I’ve written about what’s happened to me along the way. I’ve written about how I’ve had to become a person who could not just survive but thrive, mostly painfully and generally long after I should have.

Being out is a state of vulnerability. That doesn’t imply a negative connotation, vulnerability is how we grow. It does mean opening up to the possibility of being hurt. I’ve talked before about how ones gender identity can be used against them in numerous ways, but being out is giving that power to others, there’s times that it hurts. There’s times that people will use it against you.

Being out means being vulnerable with others, being open for your own sake and sanity, and not having that openness reciprocated. It means being kind to yourself when others are not.

The reality is that anyone you work with, whether you work in a large or small organization nor whether you deal with the public or not, likely doesn’t have a profound amount of experience with trans people. If you’re lucky enough to work alongside other trans people then maybe you’re the exception, but for most folks you’re looking at being a lightening rod for people’s concepts on gender.

Gender doesn’t specifically refer to transness, or your gender identity, but people’s entire concept of gender, their feelings towards gender norms, their feelings on sexism, their feelings on sexuality and plaster that on to you.

So it’s tough, you’re navigating the expectations of others in a very real way. While likely also navigating your own issues.

In my experience coming out, living authentically, and dealing with my issues has opened up a Pandora’s box of underlying feelings and shortcomings. From a lack of emotional constraint, on account of the not having feelings before, to a lack of developmental milestones that express themselves in unique and interesting ways.

So the short answer to being trans professionally is that it’s complicated, it’s not bad, in fact it’s quite good. It’s difficult to manage the wall of expectations, the weight of bias and judgement that follows you. For which it takes a tremendous amount of patience, it also comes with the talents and skills that come with looking yourself to the depth of your soul and denying everything anyone every told you about yourself. Talents and skills that most people won’t have.

So it’s hard, and difficult, but so is being trans, and the upside is so much better then the alternative.

On Feeling Again

It’s been awhile. A lot has happened, and a lot doesn’t change.

It’s a little ironic that the last post I made was about coming off hormones, because that would go on for another 6 months. There’s a story to tell there but one for another time. I am back to feeling again, and yes, that it’s hormonally supported.

It’s weird to come back to this, for the last, two years now I haven’t felt I’ve needed an outlet. The irony being it was probably the time I needed it most.

I started writing again yesterday. It’s not good, but it’s not meant to be, just the inkling of a silly story. It came out though, and it felt good to create something. I’ve often had a difficult relationship with creation. There’s something very vulnerable about creating something, and also very final. Once something is done it’s an enduring reflection of you in that moment. I would imagine being an artist is a little terrifying in that way. Your life is spent creating reflections of you to find later. Moments to cringe and moments to regret.

Probably also comes with a strong emotional memory though, times to remember, and times to share. That’s probably why I have such a difficult relationship with creation. Hell this blog is the closet I’ve come to any kind of enduring creation and it’s anonymous.

Which I guess comes around to why am I even writing this. I truly haven’t logged into this since I wrote my last post. It was interesting to see that some folks were still finding what I wrote. I hope what they found gave them comfort.

I started this out of a point of pain. Coming out for me was hard. I went through the hardest part of my life through that and this was one of the few outlets I had. Taking that pain and sadness and hurling it into the internet for someone else to deal with. I think I hoped someone would see it and save me. I was pretty desperate.

So I may or may not continue writing this, but even this has felt nice. Which is the point I wanted to make the whole time but kept getting distracted. Maybe I do have a lot more to say.

Feeling is the most wonderful and terrible experience of my life. Coming out gave me the space to feel, and in those early moments most of what I felt was pain. That was at least something more then anger. Out of that eventually came more space, and more emotions. It’s not easy, most of them aren’t usually pleasant, but I’ve tried to learn and grow from them.

I still have a complicated relationship with feeling. I very much struggle with expressing myself. I’ve discovered my emotions can be… strong I’ll say. I’m often caught off guard by the reactions to my feelings. If coming out taught me that I had emotions, then being out has taught me that I must guard them. That the openness I had dreamed about when I was young wasn’t as possible as I may have wished.

Just because i crave connection doesn’t mean the person I’m connecting with can handle what I’m feeling. It’s a hard lesson to learn. and one about boundaries and assumptions and all of that mess.

So for now, I’m back to feeling, for better or worse.

I Came Off Hormones

Around Christmas time my wife and I decided we wanted to start a family, and since I had the other requisite component I made the decision to come off hormones. So far it’s been fine, it’s a weird experience. I don’t know what I expected but I don’t feel like I did before coming out. It’s a different experience.

It has made it harder to express myself. I thought at first it was because things have been kind of better lately that I didn’t feel as much of a need to write. It’s really become apparent that I just don’t feel as much of a need to externalize my feelings, because they’re far more deep seated. Testosterone is a weird hormone. I’ve been joking lately that  I don’t know why we trust men with any real decisions because they’re so hormonal and emotional.

It’s true though, I don’t cry as easily, I don’t feel as strongly, instead I just get moods that don’t end. If I’m upset I’m upset forever if I’m sad there’s no quick way to release that. You have to wait until it either subsides or hits some kind of critical mass before you can deal with it. Testosterone makes your emotions seem fuzzier, more distant, less pressing. Yet far more controlling. There’s less flexibility to deal with your emotions once they’re actually at a point they can be dealt with. Sure you can suck them back in and restrain them but then how much longer will they fester?

It’s harder to relate to people, I find my empathy has returned to a more intellectual empathy, it’s less sincere, I don’t feel the emotions alongside the person. I can read them, I can feel them, but not as strong. In that way I feel like I’m back in the closet, only this time I’m feigning an emotionality that I don’t feel as strongly.

I look forward to going back on hormones. I do miss them. There’s a simple elegance in feeling, dealing, moving on. Instead I’m stuck festering and stewing on how I feel.

I Still Don’t Hate my Penis

One of the most looked at posts I’ve ever made is I Don’t Hate my Penis I don’t really know why. Maybe hating your penis is something that resonates with folks, or the fact that I don’t hate mine is controversial.

But I wanted to have a bit of a penis appreciation post right here. If you’re not comfortable with that, then please stop reading, I don’t want to trigger anyone’s dysphoria here. Or make anyone more uncomfortable then they currently are. If you’re along for the ride though, it’s going to get personal up in here.

Often transness is reduced to very medical terms, it’s often a discussion of surgeries, of characteristics. Which is totally okay, but sometimes it would be nice to be positive about one’s body. It’s mostly bad, but it’s not all bad, I know positivity coming from me, very off brand.

I like my lady dick, which for all intensive purposes is just a regular dick, maybe a little smaller then usual, definitely smaller then it was pre-hormones, but a dick nonetheless.

And that’s A-okay.

Maybe it’s a result of my trans experiences, maybe it’s just a flaw in my worldview but I’ve never made the connection that genitals = gender. Maybe it was a product of my time, it’s not like anyone was talking about this stuff almost thirty years ago, so I got to grow up thinking whatever I wanted about it. Sex and gender have always been fairly separate in my own head. Which has come in handy. It’s got me in the situation I am now.

The scarier thing, and I know it’s scary because I’ve scared people by sharing this fact. Is not only do I not hate my penis, I even like using it. I was at a conference recently with obviously still gendered gender neutral bathrooms, which is a story for another day. The point I’m going to make is I pissed at a urinal for the first time in a long time, and I’m not going to lie, I kind of liked it. There’s something powerful about peeing while standing in five inch heels. Not an every day necessity, but on occasion, hell yeah.

Another point in the penis-euphoria section… It still works, and I use it.Here’s some fast answers to some of the questions I get.

  • Does it work the same?
    • No
  • Does it feel good?
    • Yes, but in different ways. For example it’s not a prostate heavy orgasm, as there’s very little ejaculate.
    • I also ‘arrive’ more then once now.
  • Can you have sex?
    • Yes, you don’t need a penis to have sex.
      • Also yes, I can still have penis-vagina sex, don’t have the staying power I used to and sometimes there’s some discomfort afterwards, but I am able to ‘get it up’ and use it.

I’m sure there’s more but those are the big ones, yes my endocrinologist was amazed when we talked about this, so this is not a particularly well understood thing. The only thing I can think of is that since I don’t really have any genital dysphoria that there isn’t really a block on having an erections. Erections are part mental and part hormonal, so there’s not the hormonal support, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

So there you go one trans woman’s opinions on her penis. Solicited or not it’s here, and if you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask.

 

Remembering Without Wallowing Pt. 2

This isn’t a post that I thought would get a follow-up, but it’s interesting how our perspectives change. As I come up to the first year since coming out completely and socially transitioning and all of those big milestones There’s a few things I find interesting, and some new challenges to deal with.

If you’d like to read the first part it’s here: Remembering Without Wallowing

One of the most interesting parts of this is the fact that I now have a life lived, as a woman. Which needless to say is a very interesting experience.

Before transitioning all of my memories had one thing in common, they were coming from a male presentation, a life that didn’t feel like it belonged to me, but ultimately that maleness always changed the tone of something negative.

I remember going out to buy clothes before my first day of school in Junior High. My parents must have had some extra money, because it was the first time my mother had ever shown any excitement toward me spending money, and she wanted me to ‘find my style.’

It was really a free range offer to express myself. The problem? Expressing myself as a man isn’t something that really works well for me. So an experience that should have been foundational and important, and really could have been a good memory was ruined by the maleness attached to it.

As a tangent, I bought clothes that looked incredibly similar to what most of my friends wore and was made fun of for it for years. I didn’t emulate, I copied, and it showed. I learned to be slightly unique after that, still male, but a unique one, it wasn’t really my own expression or related to anything I felt. I just needed to be different, to be overly male, to fall into easy stereotypes. The best way to hide is to be so obvious no one notices you don’t belong. Yeah, I wore dress shoes in high school, and button up shirts.

Anyways, getting back to my point. I have the interesting challenge now of addressing my life and my memories, of a life that does feel real. Of decisions I’ve made and am not only accountable for, but really don’t have an excuse.

Memories are a weird thing. They don’t always mean the same thing to you twice. I had no intention when I started writing this to tell the story that I did, but it fit where my head space was. Really, it’s a good story, at the time it was terrifying to me, expressing myself was dangerous. If only my mother had of known that pain and difficulty it caused me, but I know to her it’s probably a good memory. It was one of the first times I’d really had the chance to be more mature, and make my own choices. It was likely an important milestone for her as a parent, and could have been a good one for me.

If I can describe my experience as a trans woman growing up, it’s that dichotomy. My transness took away even the good memories because I wasn’t in the moment and I wasn’t experiencing what I was supposed to be. Those foundational elements of your life are always wrong, they don’t quite fit who you are. That’s the hardest thing about remembering the past is the parts that are good, but weren’t good for you.

That’s a good memory, and I need to learn to appreciate the goodness in it. Even if it doesn’t feel good immediately, I need to learn to focus on the good.