Under Radarz.

It's been too long. Too long! Though, honestly, not a ton has happened on the gender front. I went to my friend Samuel's Gender Bender birthday party last week repping as many genders as I possibly could: doc martens, tights, booty shorts, ripped up 70's t-shirt, lacy poet blouse, blonde wig, drawn on mustache, and a fucking ton of glitter. Plus a clip on earring with an empty vial of testosterone dangling from it. One person "got" the significance of the vial and I got to briefly do the "how has it changed you?/that's so fascinating!" song and dance, but otherwise i somehow still generally passed as male. One group of dudes said, "How did you get your hands on a vial of testosterone?" to which I ambiguously replied, "I have my sources." One of the guys suggested, "From your weightlifting days?", and I said yes.

I went to San Fran with Gracie for Thanksgiving and hung out with her wild and amazing family. I also made a lot of martinis for a lot of aunts, and ended up charming a lot of them with my mixology skills and my good-natured slavishness. I was definitely playing the Jack McFarland to many Karen Walkers. Only Gracie's immediate family and a couple of lesbian aunties knew my deal (though with the frequent hot-tubbing there may have been some raised eyebrows I didn't catch,) but everyone was at least polite enough to not say anything.

The lesbian aunties did keep saying, rather cryptically, "And you're so BRAVE!" I've discussed this meme with others, including other trans men, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it's nice to have the occasional struggles of transness acknowledged, instead of just getting massively awkward personal questions. But then it seems a little presumptuous. This isn't exactly a choice of mine; calling me "brave" feels a little like saying, "congrats on not committing suicide, having an irrecoverable nervous breakdown, or otherwise failing at life more than you have!" But the intention is good, and I don't really mind, and morbid as it is, it's a little nice to be congratulated on not being dead.

Perhaps needless to say, my politically-correct compulsion to be pansexual has passed with the falling leaves and the pumpkins. At the same time, I realized the other day that perhaps I don't want a relationship at the moment. I'm applying to grad schools, I'm busy as hell, I'm frighteningly content to read The Sun and watch documentaries and make curry and hang out with my cat. The whole throwing myself at people in the hopes that one of them will be intrigued game has become a bit exhausting. Here's hoping I end up in a metropolitan area with cool boyz.

Female Trouble

So many things to report, I'm sure. I'll start of with the physical, as usual, though there haven't been so many significant changes in the last month. Facial hair continues to march boldly onward. I look at pictures from a few months ago, and I notice how I've come to look more masculine about the face (regardless of any glitter) than I did then. My jaw is more square, etc.

I got my DUI out yesterday, after (TMI warning) three weeks of especially ridiculous cramps and constant blood. I had kind of a funny Planned Parenthood experience, as usual, in which the nurse practitioner asked me all sorts of fairly irrelevant questions (the ever popular "...so, bottom surgery?") and didn't know anything about the battle royale that is testosterone vs. hormonal birth control. I already feel a return to the sharpness of mind (not knocking the alternative) that I associate with my preferred T-heavy hormonal balance, which is nice and comforting. But perhaps expect a return to me muttering curses under my breath at cars.

I'm a little over a week away from my one year testosterone anniversary, so I feel I should put together some sort of State of the Union. Expect that in a week or so.

Once again, as is my apparently yearly tradition, I'm in an intellectual quandary about liking/being liked by women. I realize it's possible that anything I fret about to this extent isn't worth pursuing; I should just do what feels comfortable and leave it at that. On the one hand, I know I'm a faggot: I love men and I love being with men, and I love what it means to be man into men. When I am pursued by a woman I feel disoriented, if you will. On the other hand, this isn't to say I don't feel interested, or intrigued, or various other things one feels in a romantic/sexual situation--I just lose my bearings. I'm realizing this is especially true now that I'm a guy, and more-convincingly-a-guy to others. The concept of being involved with a straight woman baffles me--I never learned how to do it, and I generally disliked the girl/guy dynamic when I approached it from the other side. Am I expected to be the big spoon all the time? How am I supposed to initlate action without seeming like an invasive creep? Is it weird if I talk about faggoty shit? Do I even count as a faggot anymore? Am I just another dude? Is there anything terribly wrong with that?

I'm beginning to realize that I'm so fiercely (not in the Christian Siriano sense) faggoty because my ability to be a gay man has been so hard won (no pun intended.) There is a part of me, I admit, that feels like being gay--well, being "queer" in identity (as in having a varied and "radical" and decidedly non-hetero gender and presentation), yes, but "gay" in orientation, as in just into dating men--ties a nice little bow around my otherwise messy sex/gender life. Sometimes I get exhausted and sad trying to parse this all out, and declaring my orientation at the very least to be relatively simple makes me feel like I have some modicum of control, or even, dare I say, normalcy.

But then who am I to be so hung up on gender? Shouldn't I be open to women in the same way I would hope the boys I like would be open to trans men? Isn't a gender just a set of signifiers, and isn't there enough overlap of signifiers between genders as to render the specific label, at least in this case, a bit irrelevant? Can't I just buy into that old bi/pansexual maxim, "I fall in love with people"? Is it entirely necessary to consult a sociology textbook every time I get smiled at by someone who doesn't have a dick and a moustache, to use my friend Joey's phrase?

Who's to say. Clearly there's not a real answer to this nonsense, but this is what I've been thinking about lately. That, studying for the GREs, which are totally bilking my mellifluence.

Sad/Amazing, Hot/Sprung

Last night Gracie and some friends of hers from California and I sneaked into Cougar Hot Springs. I'd never been, but I fucking love it up there (which is to say up the McKenzie.) The stars are so incredibly bright and the air is so delicious. It had me seriously considering giving up this whole library science dream in favor of working as a park ranger of some sort. And this isn't hyperbole; I think the answer (or one of the answers) to me being pleased and happy with my life involves being surrounded by trees for several miles in any direction.

The hot springs ended up being quite the social occasion; we ran into some of Gracie's other friends there who were camping up the road, and about 20 minutes after we got there who should show up but Jessica, Cordell and Pat, swigging whiskey and smoking their menthols in the steam like hipster snow monkeys.

But where is the trans-relevance in this? It was weird being naked in front of so many people. It was weird having just met Gracie's friends, and not being out to them as far as I know, and then suddenly taking off my clothes and revealing myself in that way. Nothing horrible happened, and no one said anything--no one used female pronouns, even--but I still felt a self-conscious, and I still got a slight feeling that people were uncomfortable or at least a bit surprised. Maybe it was even stranger since I couldn't wear my glasses in the steam, so I had the peculiar feeling of being seen while not being able to see anyone else.

The experience made me anxious for top surgery. There's a certain level of acceptable discomfort I have with my chest, but at this point, and generally, it doesn't bother me too much in the short term as long as I keep it bound down. But being not just unbound but naked in front of people, even in a dark/foggy situation, was kind of a mind fuck. It made me realize that, though I've gotten pretty good (with the help of hormones) of appearing male, the basic shape of my body is as it was, which was surprisingly frustrating.

So I had the thought of, "If I got top surgery, I wouldn't be having this problem." But then I realized, of course, that my lower business isn't going to change (or rather, given the current expense and modern technology and my own personal reasons, I'm not planning to change it) into something male-appearing in a standard way. This gave me the sad realization that I'll probably never be comfortable at a hot springs again: where once I felt like my body was awesome and babely, now it's something that needs an explanation, something that is inherently challenging, something that makes me slightly defensive. And this just made me feel sad and doubtful and frustrated and like I've fucked up my life.

Angry Mood Swings and "You, sir, in the glitter and the kidskin loafers!"

Last Friday I took a shot a day earlier than I was supposed to since I was going out of town for the weekend and didn't want to bother with losing an $80 vial of golden boy serum to an uncompromising TSA chump. Maybe it's just that visiting Las Vegas made me a ball of nerves, but since the shot (and since coming back) I've been either a bit of a downer or a seething pile of vague rage (, I'm speaking in hyperbole to a degree, you must understand; I'm not actually that angry, just more angry than I usually have been, which is to say angry at all.) Granted I haven't done anything violent--just a lot of very forceful housework (you should SEE our refrigerator!) but I'm getting tired of it. I almost miss my depressive anxiety over this new active impassioned kind. It only gets worse, too, because I get frustrated with myself for being mad, and then it just turns into a feedback loop of listening to country music and scrubbing dishes and yelling, "I mean, COME ON!" Any thoughts on how to be calm? I've never had to work at it before.

There were some amusing passing bits this weekend, I suppose. I had a nice 100% success rate of airport clerks and officials calling me "sir" even as I was handing them my ID with the big F on it. I've always said I would start using the men's as my default bathroom (I usually only use it if the place seems especially queer-friendly) if I ever got hassled in the women's, and lo and behold I got a dirty look as I was putting on pink liquid eyeliner in the ladies' room in the Vegas airport when I first got in. I did use the women's a few more times since that incident--some guy was taking FOREVER in the stall at Caesar's Palace and I didn't want to wait around to sniff the outcome of his labors--but when I got back to the airport in Vegas, I boldly strode into that gross, frightening men's room with all the confidence of an effete pubescent teenage boy.

A brief PSA: I'm at the point in passing where I don't want to talk about it when it happens. It's less and less of a surprise or an accomplishment in and of itself, and when you say "That waitress totally said "he" about you!" or when you give me a knowing glance when I get that "Sir" in line at the airport, it just makes me feel self conscious and patronized. I know it may seem like a double standard since I have this whole damn blog dedicated to chronicling the minutiae of who sees me as male and how often, but I'd like you to trust me on this. I don't want anyone to walk on eggshells with me and never ever mention my gender either--that would be silly--but maybe try to keep it in the realm of actual conversations about gender, and not just bring it up all the time, if you could? Kind of nitpicky, yes, and I'm very lucky to have people around me who are excited for me to pass, but if I can't peeve here where can I?

Odd Angsts

It's been far too long, I know, since I've posted last. There has been plenty of gender-related sillyness.

I was involved in a top surgery benefit show for myself and two other trans men this past Friday. It didn't exactly go as smoothly as planned for a number of reasons, but we made a few hundred, which is a start at least. I'm tempted to whine about what went wrong (and whine especially about the phenomenon of a lot of friends not showing up--I'm sorry kids, this wasn't just a Pegasissy show, this was a chance to support my transition and show that you cared about this struggle; not to be lame, but I'm a little hurt) but it's not so productive. Oh well. I suppose this is what happens when you invest yourself emotionally into something that happens at a bar (though the bar in question, Cowfish, was exceptionally gracious and kind in letting us use the space for free.) And a lot of things did go perfectly fine. A co-worker of mine came with his partner and seemed pretty amused by it (by "it" I mean my maudlin performance in a "chill wave Roy Orbison" outfit and my participation in the fashion show segment wearing a blond toupee and a bridesmaid dress with nipples embroidered on the front.)

Speaking of bar incidents--and I'm not going to into it in depth here--but I had a crazy anti-trans experience with the staff at John Henry's a couple weeks ago. Briefly, a friend and I got our IDs checked for gender by a bouncer when we were trying to use the bathroom. Pretty fucked up. If you want strong drinks for cheap in Eugene, just go to my house. JH's doesn't need your business, and you don't need their bullshit.

Let's begin properly with the physical changes. My voice dropped down a little more after my shot last week, though I'm still trying to work it out. My voice does this thing where when my voice first drops, it actually sounds pinched and high because I'm still trying to resonate it in my throat instead of my chest. I'm working on this. I think I might start attempting to actually talk from my chest and not be a totes squeakbox all the time, just as an experiment. I am slowly acquiring sparse but definite sideburns, and I keep shaving 'em in the hopes that they will one day blossom into something reasonable. My increased hirsuteness (not to be confused with hir cuteness) is, while not necessarily troubling, a bit of a marvel to me. Today my endocrinologist mentioned how lucky I was to not have gotten any acne, though I was a tad alarmed earlier this week when two zits appeared on my face simultaneously, an occurrence more or less as rare as conjoined twins.

Testosterone-fueled emotions continue to be a wild and interesting ride, but one I'm lately more able to predict and get a handle on. I've had occasion recently to feel irrationally possessive in a way that is perhaps stereotypically male, and though it kind of put a damper on my night at the time, I've since worked it all out. My post-T emotional patterns--I'm just going to politically-incorrectly call them my "male" emotional patterns--are kind of a double edged sword, if you will. I find myself feeling things like possessiveness and rage that I hadn't previously experienced, at least to this extent, but somehow my left brain has been freed up too in a certain way, so I can, increasingly successfully, step back and dissect the venom out of the raw emotions and figure out what I'm actually angry about (which is rarely the thing that sparked my anger in the first place.)

It was in one of these dissection sessions that I realized I'm not totally out of the woods as far as being completely satisfied with this trans business. I like to believe that, now that I'm just over ten months into this testosterone stuff (!!!), everything has stabilized and I'm totally home free. But I realize I'm still pretty self-conscious and nervy about this sometimes. I keep trying to write about this in detail and then realizing that my personal insecurities don't need to be on the internet. Ugh.

From The Tumblr pt. II: Butch->FTM->WTF?

Another question from the Tumblr, this time touching on the perennial Butch/FTM border wars, and on the many meanings of little girls in cargo shorts.

Anonymous asked: so i'm totally pro-trans, but as a butch dyke, it rubs me the wrong way to see people using their non stereotypical gender conforming behavior as proof that they must actually be a boy or girl as the case may be. i played with trucks as a kid. i hate wearing dresses. but that doesn't mean i secretly want to be a man. it means i'm a butch. i have had so many people tell me that i'm not really butch, i must be trans, but i like my female body. i fear butches are disappearing or being pressured to transition to fit in. i feel like that takes credibility away from people who actually are trans. I guess my question is what do you think of this?

Now, a good, meaty question, and good meaty issues! Forgive me in advance for not addressing everything brought up by this inquiry.

First, I’ll clarify my below post: I didn’t mean to come off as “I played with such and such and therefore I am such and such.” I meant the recitation of my childhood activities more to challenge that binary notion, or even the notion that the gender(s) we exhibit as children will predict or determine how we will identify as adults. By and large, my girlhood was just that—a girlhood—but the nostalgia I have for my three story Victorian dollhouse doesn’t make my manhood any less valid. I was trying to describe, with these mixed signifiers of Barbies and legos, that I existed in a kind of ungendered/multigendered ether as a kid, and didn’t put much thought into my girlness or boyness until later.

I am with you on the notion that gendered behaviors or preferences do not have the same implication for every person who performs them (ie. hating wearing dresses does not equal being a boy, or even a boi.) As an effeminate man (my giant silver rings are clicking against each other on my red-nailed fingers as I type this) I know this all too well. I like to wear dresses sometimes, and lipstick, and stilettos, but this does not make me a woman (even if I was raised as one) and it doesn’t mean that I want to be a woman: it means that I simply am a man who does these things. I think we’re at the point in pop gender theory where people agree that sexuality and gender are separate things, but the differentiation between gender (still too often essentialized to man/woman) and gender expression (femme/butch/androdyke/genderfuck/queen/etc/etc) is still too hard for some people to parse.

On the issue of butches and transmen specifically: I’m uneasy about the idea of “people who are actually trans.” I think deciding who is really trans and who is really butch or genderqueer (engaging in “ftm/butch border wars,” if I’m recalling my Judith Halberstam right) is as specious as deciding who is “actually a man” and who is “actually a woman.” Everyone’s reasons for transitioning, or for being a confirmed butch, or for living a conventional heterosexual life, for that matter, are different, and none of us wholly match the platonic social ideal of our gender. I also like to think there is room for fluidity—that a butch can take hormones and still be a butch, if one so chooses.

I don’t think it’s a zero sum game, and I’m not sure that the sudden visibility of transmen means a decrease in butches. I think we can support each other’s struggles (and celebrate each other’s lives and accomplishments) without diminishing our own or fearing the others. I personally have the greatest respect for butches, for the strength it takes to live in our culture as a masculine-appearing female-bodied person, and for what it takes to stake your territory in what we are told is an ambiguous space. So kudos to you, anonymous butch dyke, and keep askin’ questions!

From the Tumblr: "Did you always know?"

So, I've started a tumblr account called Render Me Boobless, which is a more focused chest-surgery donation push and general depository for pithy man-boob silliness, as well as a way to thank donors with amusing youtube videos. There's a question/answer function on it I've dubbed "Ask The Transfag," and recently I got a bite. The anonymous asker asked, simply, "Did you always know?" Here's my answer:

Kind of a personal question, but let's just imagine for a moment that you plan to donate plenty of money to the surgery fund to the right of this post, and that I'm willing to shill my unusual psychological development for a few dozen dollars you're my therapist. This is always a question (the question?), and it has variable answers. I was a pretty androgynous child in a lot of ways--yes, I was a Girl Scout and dressed as a fairy princess for Halloween (exactly), but I also loved Legos and action figures and usually preferred shorts to skirts (though I had a pretty serious spandex obsession.) While I definitely--and outwardly--fell into the spectrum of how young girls are expected to behave and appear, I don't think I had the same concept of myself as a girl that other girls had. In playground games of Girls Chase Boys I would generally run alongside the boys cheering them on in getting away from the girls (#storyofmylife.) But I didn't realize in a meaningful way that gender variance existed or was something with a name until later, and didn't start identifying with it until I was 10 or 11, and even then in a fairly rudimentary way. I didn't consider transition or living as male as something that interested me until high school, and I didn't give it serious logistical thought until maybe three or four years ago. So there's really not just the question of "did I always know," but of what it was that I knew, and when.

But perhaps more importantly, how relevant is the answer to this question? I hear the question of how long I've "known" with pretty great frequency, more or less at a dead tie with surgery questions. I think it stems from a fear--and even just a benign, fascinated-unsettled fear--that perhaps anyone can transition, that someone can look entirely normally-gendered one day and then POOF (so to speak), one can wake up a trans person, Orlando-style. Knowing when trans people realize that they are different (and, ideally hearing the "ever since I was a small child" answer) calms this fear. It keeps trans experience neatly separate, and keeps it from infecting the stable and conventional gender identities of others.

Did you always know you weren't trans?

Dancing with Bro-dawgs

On Friday I went to a half-ironic toga party (in plainclothes) with a certain number of ordinary-bro types in attendance, and they not only read me as male but danced on me really hard. And I mean really. I always like going to parties where I don't know anyone and dancing like a maniac. Who needs beer? Which isn't to say that I didn't get semi-wild, but not nearly as wild as I could have, and the dancing was truly the focus.

I had the interesting experience, at that same party, of outing myself as queer but not trans. I was talking to a nice amiable straight dude I'd just met who was complaining about girl troubles, and I started some sentence, "Well, I'm mostly gay, but..." I'm pretty used to the track a conversation typically derails onto when I mention I'm trans ("OMG surgery/parents/childhood/sex life/i have this trans friend/rupaul's drag race/i wouldn't have guessed!!!!!11!1), but the "I'm a queer (implicitly cisgendered) dude" track was new. First he asked me how I knew I was gay, which was easy enough, but then he proceeded to tell me all about sexually experimenting with boys as a freshman, which was both hilarious and titillating. Moral of the story: it was novel to be a different sort of novelty.

It's strange and amazing to be at the point where my appearance doesn't automatically out me as trans. And, now that it's not a given that my gender is up for grabs, I find myself being a little stingier with it. I'm becoming of the mind that my gender (and my gender history) is more or less my business (I say as I write on the internet), and that if I'm going to be outed I should be the one doing the outing.

I'm not totally sure how I feel about this impulse. Before I began to pass in a steady way, I assumed I'd want to be out and proud, as it were, as trans forever, both because it feels (or felt) like a big part of who I am, and for the political reasons of visibility and making breeders uncomfortable. It's not like I would ever be in the closet about being queer, or insist that I be the sole arbiter and teller of that information. How weird would it be if I told one of my friends, "Hey man, don't tell anyone that I'm gay." Real weird.

But then, as we all know, gender identity and sexual orientation are different beasts, and the ways people react to the revelation of each are beastly in different ways and to different degrees. When someone outs me as trans--and not in all situations, but in certain ones--it puts me in a lousy othered position. But is resisting this othering shitty in its own way? Am I just lapping desperately from the fountain of male privilege now that I've gotten a taste of its Keystone-flavored ambrosia? Maybe a little bit. I'm still struggling with this. What are your thoughts? Is my being stealthy about my gender a matter of self-preservation and autonomy, or is it the wimpy way out of the capital-S-Struggle? Am I just catering to a transphobic society that negates my humanness when I keep my mouth shut, or am I merely being choosy and keeping myself safe?

Manlier and manlier, bicuriouser and bicuriouser.

So tomorrow is eight months on my delicious golden boy serum, and I seem to be doing fairly well with it. Physical changes are continuing to progress, but in a subtler way, perhaps due to my DUI, perhaps simply because it's kind of just more of the same and it's not all as new as it initially was. I'm shaving my sparse stubble basically every day, but it's getting semi-full enough that if I don't shave, I don't look like a total teenage boy, just a sparsely scruffy man. But personally, I like shaving. Beard-inclined types are always telling me something to the effect of, "You want a beard? Take mine! I hate it!" Perhaps it's because I'm such a Russell-come-lately to the facial hair game, but I enjoy it. I've even contemplated getting a straight razor to further my anachronistic foppishness, but it seems a little premature.

In passing, I seem to be now firmly in the passing as (incredibly femme/babyfaced) male mode. The other day as I was unlocking my bike downtown a panhandler asked me, "Excuse me, ma'am...oh, sorry, sir..." which felt good. When I'm showing my ID people have been commenting on how young I look, and a girl at a party thought I was a freshman and seemed a bit shocked to learn my real age. The older convenience store clerks usually say something like, "You'll be glad you're so babyfaced when you get older!" Of course this babyfacedness will probably pass away in the next few years as the T continues to kick in, but I guess I'll relish this while I can.

My reception in queer spaces has been interesting. I was pleased, though, a couple weekends ago when I somehow was lured into doing the gay night bar circuit, that I seemed to be read mostly as male, even if I was wearing blue velvet pants and stilettos. I found myself outside John Henry's with two conventional-gay college boy types who offered me cigarettes as we mutually bemoaned the fag-to-dyke ratio. There was a handful of rather boring twink types who flirted with me, one of whom said I looked like Elijah Wood, which I suppose is true to a degree in this context. At the same time, certain lesbians were up on me on the dance floor, too, though they could have just read me as a fun dance partner.

Some of Ben's Vegas friends came to visit this weekend, and one of them felt particularly (and vocally) frustrated that his gaydar didn't function in Eugene--many of the straight men in our crowd are on the hipster-androgynous side, and the out, or visibly out, queer men are few. Though I don't expect (or necessarily want) a clearly delineated and readily self-evident straight/gay social dynamic, I thought he had a point, and it made me pine slightly for a queerer peer group. For most of my life I've been more or less cool being "the queer (or bi or lez or trans) one" among my friends, and have been of the mind that the non-sex/gender commonalities I share with my friends (scrabble, books, music, beers) are more relevant than the queer ones. But could I maybe have both? Not to complain; things are generally pretty lovely these days. But I can't help but feel, in my recent forays into the Local LGBTQ Community, that this (at least those I've met by and large) isn't my community much more than the comparable straight one is.

And at the same time as I throw myself into, and revel in, being capital F Fabulous, I take a bit of pause. Maybe I do like girls a little bit, and, I've lately realized, despite conventional wisdom, mentioning ex-boyfriends or recent (male) conquests is kind of anti-flirting when it comes to the femaler sex. And yet I'm not exactly comfortable being a straight dude, or being seen as a straight dude--nor, let's be serious, is it really possible.

A Few Mostly Funny Bits

So the performance at OUT/LOUD went really well, I think. At about the third song or so I had gained some acceptable level of confidence (the power of playing a harmonica and having people actually cheer for you) and the rest was basically a party. I was also very pleased to meet and hang out with Katz of Athens Boys Choir, whose song Fagette was instrumental in affirming my identity as a fem transman, and perhaps most importantly is hilarious and contains the line, "I'm a pansexual, got my hands on the manual, a smooth Jew, a bar mitzvah party animal."

After the show I went to Ben's Judith Butler-themed birthday party, though I mostly just hung out in the garage and drank champagne with the usual types, plus Samuel, arguably my favorite person to frequently sport a skirt and a full beard. Amusing passing anecdote: One of the OUT/LOUD volunteers, whom I've known as a party acquaintance since maybe September, or in any case before I started hormones, said to me, "It was funny, one of my friends said she thought you were a transman!" I did a total double take, and said, "I AM a trans man," to which the rest of the kids chuckled semi-awkwardly and she kind of blushed. I asked her, perhaps a little too forcefully, "What did you think I was?" She kind of shyly sputtered out, "I just thought you were really femme!" It's strange to me to be consistently read as a man, even by people who should, perhaps, "know better." Even though it's what I want (in a lot of ways it one of the main points of transitioning, to get others to see you as the right gender) it takes some getting used to.

I'd also like to look at the statement, "My friend thought you were a transman!" Does this strike anyone else as a strange thing to say to someone? There's some judgment in it: "My friend noticed that you're short and barrel-chested and have a relatively high voice, so she made this assumption about your medical history!" or, "My friend heard from someone that you're trans, but I've known you for a while and haven't picked up on it myself, and it would be such an outlandish thing if you were!" Would you say to someone, "I noticed the way you were limping, and I thought you might have actually had a disability!" or "I heard you were of Puerto Rican descent, how nuts is that?" (I know race/ability/gender aren't all the same thing, but for the sake of an example.) What if I'd been a butch woman? What if I had just been a very femme ordinary dude? Would I have been justified if I'd been insulted? "Looking like a tranny", most notably on the mtf side, is a pretty common insult, even among otherwise sensible people, and even among certain circles of trans people who are wanting, for whatever reason, to be stealth. So, not to pick on this specific person and what she said, but there's more to "I thought you were trans" than meets the eye, so to speak.

At the same time, I can't say I'm not a bit pleased that this girl didn't think I was trans. I guess I just kind of assume that everyone knows I'm trans at all times, at least within my social circle, that they refer to me as, "Yeah, Russell, you know, the trans one?", that I kind of have a sign around my neck about it. I know this happens to a degree, and I don't exactly have a problem with it: I'd rather it not be the main thing people know about me, but I don't not want people to know. But I just feel a little proud, I guess, of my friends for keeping it under their trucker caps to a degree.

"IUD, SIS, stay in school, cuz it's the best"

Sorry to be remiss about blogging. There have been all sorts of happenings and distractions that needn't be aired in as silly a blog as this.

I've had a few humorous passing/not anecdotes in the past couple weeks, but they're mostly slipping my mind at the moment. I got "Hello sir...ma'am?" on the phone at work, which I ignored.

There's been a whole bonanza (I really wanted to write "banana") of furor, at least by my Emily Dickinsonish standards, about the whole Pegasissy at OUT/LOUD thing. I can't say it's not strange having pictures of my face all over town, or having a stranger tell me how great I am when I'm standing in line for a hot dog at the fashion show (which did happen.)

These times are strange times, and I'd like to place at least some of the strangeness on hormones. I recently acquired an IUD, which I've started calling a DUI in front of acquaintances with whom I'm not in the mood to discuss my uterus. As in, "I got a DUI last Monday and I felt like garbage for the next two days, and I still feel a little shaken about it." Which I do.

After a relatively pleasant seven months of being able to forget entirely that I'm in possession of a uterus, I was reminded quite solidly of it last week. So there's that dysphoria, and the strange misplaced instinctual sadness at being rendered physically incapable (if temporarily) of making a baby--not that I want one in the least, but even when you're hitting snooze on your biological clock it still wakes you up before you drift back to sleep--plus the perennial, lonely "Why am I going through all of this when I'm only sharing my bed with the cat and a pile of books?" Of course, there are good reasons. Though the Mirena has low levels of levornorgestrel (=ladymones) and on the one hand sounds counter-intuitive for my purposes, it wards off endometriosis and certain types of cancer, and doubly ensures that I don't bleed, and generally keeps my baby bag not seen and not heard. Even if I'm not putting it to the test at the moment, it lasts for 5-7 years, and I'd rather know I'm all set in the not accidentally getting knocked up department than have to wait a month to set another appointment once anything does come up.

But it's still jarring to have to think about these things, and to have that tiny extra boost of lady hormones in my system. I've been doing that thing I hate where I have really strong, devastating emotions that I know aren't especially useful or reasonable, but there's nothing I can do to make them disperse in a timely way. But perhaps this is less about being a trans man and more about being a human being. Let me quote Blink-182 when I say, "Well I guess this is growing up."

I know this is getting long, but I need to do a little meta-blogging: I'd like to address how personal this blog can be, and justify it a bit. The reason I'm doing this, besides to amuse my friends and bolster my cult of personality, is to rep and describe my trans experience, or rather a trans experience. We all know that there's a disproportionate number of images like this and this of trans people, and not enough like this. Even kind understanding open types who want to see trans people as something not strange and off-putting may not know where to turn. I don't like to spend every moment Being a Transsexual, and this blog is a way to do my part in educating the masses in a pleasantly compartmentalized way. Which is another reason for the over-sharing. By describing my shots and my uterus and my physical changes and hormonal roller coaster in depth, I'm hoping that the curious details of transitioning will all become common (at least within this small readership) knowledge, and you, dear reader, won't be tempted to ask an unsuspecting trans person how big their clitoris is, or how long they've felt this way, or whether they like to be penetrated, next time you meet such a person at a dinner party. Because, frankly, unless you would feel comfortable having similar questions asked of you, you probably shouldn't be tossing them around. Just throwing that out there.

Tranny for Money

Last night I performed as the local act with the Tranny Roadshow, a "trans person performance art extravaganza" that was coming through town. I played four songs: a Mag Fields cover that seemed especially pertinent, the always-a-hit Unicorn song, the Presidents song, and Party and Bullshit. It was the debut of Pegasissy with "male vocals," which was interesting and a little more frightening than I had anticipated. I found myself getting really nervous before the show, and involuntarily so. I'd practiced the Mag Fields song plenty, and was really excited to be singing it in the real live Stephin Merritt key, but I was nervous and I basically lost those few notes at the bottom. But people seemed to like it. I got a really good response for the Biggie cover, where I change all the n*ggas to faggots (or breeders, in the case of "when breeders wanna flex, who got the gat?) and bitches to butches and honeys to homos, but after that my set was over.

I realized that this is was the first time that I'd performed at a specifically trans event, or, really, any kind of explicitly queer event, or even (correct me if I'm wrong) with other overtly queer people, now that I think about it. I think I was a little disarmed by it. Everyone in the audience was there to see trans people perform, and EVERYONE IN THE ROOM KNEW I WAS TRANS, which I don't know, was a little frightening, or embarrassing. As I've said before, it's not because I'm ashamed of being trans or anything. It's nerve wracking enough to play a show in front of 150 people, but, I realized, the situation is kind of made psychically worse when the audience has a special interest in what your genitals look like, and is probably scrutinizing your chest for lumps.

I also got asked to play at Out/Loud, the UO's queer womyn music fest. It's kind of a last minute thing, but I guess I made such an impression that they just *have* to have me. I'm playing right before Bitch, of Bitch and Animal. I'm sure all my middle school dyke friends circa 2000 would shit their pants. I'm also playing at a queer neighborhood happening called A Gay In The Park in June,

I feel kind of odd about the timing of all this. Was I not queer enough before I transitioned? Do they just need a transfag to round out the bill? Not that I'm complaining; it will be totally wild to play in front of an actual audience on an actual stage (note to self: bring a flask and/or a couple of valium.) There's also the whole "Queer Womyn" thing. Apparently Out/Loud is for "queer women and allies of queer women's music," and I suppose I am the latter, though it hasn't been my scene in years. I've never really felt comfortable in queer women's spaces. When I was first coming out a bisexual with long hair and goth makeup, none of my older dyke friends were really taking me seriously. I remember a group of butch 17 year olds actually saying to me, "You'll never be a real dyke." Not that I am a real dyke, but maybe I'm still nursing the bruise of that first exclusion and dismissal. It's just funny to finally be enthusiastically invited into the queer womyn club now that I'm a man.

Pure Hilarity and Fashion Blogging

So at work I somewhat frequently, maybe every few weeks, have strange homeless men come the door and try to talk to me for no real reason. They always kind of look at the signs around the doorway and say something like, "Yeah, peace and justice, I'm all about that!" Sometimes they want someone to listen to their stories, or their conspiracy theories, but mostly they just want someone to pay attention to them. This is all well and good, but it's not my job. I'm a goddamn office manager.

Today seemed like it would be one of those days. The guy called me "babe" when I opened the door, though I thought I was beyond that. Ugh, I thought, here we go again. He asked me about some flier on the bulletin board, and as I was explaining he must have rethought his "babe" position, and asked me "So, you're a woman, right? You're a girl?" I said no. He said, "You're a man?" I said, yep. He said my hair made me look like a woman and it was confusing, and I shrugged and said I guess so, though I think my new haircut is more masculine if anything, if pretty faggy. Then he said, kind of slowly backing away, "I mean, I believe whatever it is you do, consensually, is your own business, I mean hopefully not your business, but your own affair." Then he gave me a little Asian-style bow, said, "Best to you, brother," and left. There's a certain power in being able to frighten grown men with your gender.

Further on a personal note, I'm single again, which means I'm learning, yet again, how to flirt with people, or rather with whom I should reasonably flirt. Strangers at bars are becoming more likely to think I'm actually for realz a man, which is in most ways good and in some ways bad. My solution so far is to flood all concerned parties with whiskey until all gender is incomprehensible.
Also, I had the thought to add some style/fashion element to this blog, or at least to draw attention to Trans Style Icons. I'm going to call this segment "X_dressing", as in "cross-dressing," though the Style Icons won't necessarily be cross-dressing, just being trans people with wicked style.

I think there's an assumption that trans people, and especially trans men, are bad dressers. It's true that we face certain unique challenges. When I, and a lot of people, first came out, I felt pressure to wear undeniably masculine clothes to give myself an undeniably masculine image. This translated into unflattering pants, too many t-shirts at once to disguise my chest, and, I'm a bit sorry to say, trucker hats. For transmen with girlish figures (and statures) it can be hard to find men's clothes in the right size--I'm usually exiled to the little boy's section, which is good if I'm wanting to buy t-shirts with motocross racers on them, but bad if I want quality dress shirts, or anything not Mom-approved. And so, any trans man who moves beyond the valley of the over-sized dress shirts and chinos deserves special recognition in my book, or in my blog.

And so here is my love for Dean Spade of the Sylvia Riviera Law Project and Seattle University and what he does with clothes. Look at that cardigan. And those shoes. And the shoes-tie-glasses hat trick. The portly butch in the background is taking notice. Are you?

It's a persistent challenge, especially without the aid of standard male hormone levels, to put together a look that gets you read as both male and a total fox. Dean Spade does this, and does this consistently (to say nothing of his amazing activism and for low-income/POC trans people.) If we could all be such babes.

A model gay and a bad transsexual

My passing has gotten out of control, as in, I'm consistently read as a dude lately. When I go out shopping with Ben, it's always, "How are you boys doing?" It's funny, too, the way people, and usually women, treat you as a gay man. There's this kind of chummy will-and-grace-ness that I think I kind of like. It makes a lot more sense to me than the sisterhood chumminess I used to get. I'm also realizing that I find it refreshing to be gendered in a clear way at all. For the past two years or so, people often didn't quite know how to address me, and I didn't know how I would be addressed or read. It's such a relief to have an agreed upon gender again, even if it is in itself a somewhat liminal one.

And, frankly, a fun one. Even if the underlying implication of being treated like a gay best friend by strangers is, "You're non-threatening, sexually neuter, not a real man," and even if the interactions tend to be pretty superficial, I like it. I like that people can feel safe enough to let their guard down around me a bit. And, truth be told, I'm not threatening, and I'm not a "real" man in a binary traditional sense, so, there you go.

I'm singing Pegasissy songs a full octave down. And actually recording again! Hopefully the new CD will at least be ready by the time I perform with the Tranny Roadshow (!!!).

Last night I was in a dismal mood, drinking wine and popping hydrocodone and smoking weed, and I gave myself a little miniature shot of T off the schedule, just as an unwise pick me up, half hoping it would jolt me a little out of my emotional throes (which it did) and half simply wanting to inject something. I think this officially makes me a "bad transsexual" and by rights means that I should get my reasonable human being card revoked. Being on T (and, maybe, being 23 and increasingly burned out on this pseudo-James Dean business) has given me a strange perspective on my usual emotional self-destructive thoughtless style. My brain is working in such a way that I can really see what I'm doing wrong, and why I do what I do, and what the sensible conclusion is. It's like I gained an extra conscience, or a boost to it. I haven't smoked a cigarette in two weeks, and besides yesterday have been pretty good about other substances. Of course, just because I can intellectually understand my little addictions and little despairs doesn't mean they affect me any less forcefully. Except for crying. I've cried exactly once (not counting tearing up slightly at Dot's funeral) since starting T, and it lasted about thirty seconds. I've even tried crying, but couldn't manage to do it. I ended up just making a face like this.

Goddamn Time!

It's about time I posted something, because there have been things to report. I'll try to remember faithfully.

On the business end (always my favorite), my T dosage has been upped. I was taking .5 ccs of 200 mg/ml testosterone cypionate every two weeks, and now I'm taking it every ten days. I had my first ten-day shot on Sunday, and it seems to have preempted my mood dip quite nicely. I don't think I can recall a time when it was so relatively easy to get myself out of bed on a Monday morning.

The past few shots I've kind of wimped out and only put the needle in halfway--though it didn't hurt as much, it bled more, leaked a little oil, and didn't give me as strong an initial rush. This time I went for it and really jabbed myself, with seemingly better or more complete results. The bad thing: over the past few months I've lost what Ben called my "lady butt", meaning that my ass is now more muscle than blub. And, I've learned, muscle bruises way more readily. It's Tuesday and my butt cheek is still way bruised. TMI? Probably. Just don't slap me on the ass between now and Thursday.

Andrew laughed at me when I said I was stubbly, but I think it's legitimate. A few days ago Molly put "Kiss Molly" on the list of chores for the day, and when planted a wet smack on her cheek, she said I was stubbly. I trust her.

A few weeks ago I made some unhealthy party decisions and ended up outside Burrito Boy with some mostly ridiculous people, eating a bean and cheese I was barely coherent enough to order and chain smoking at 5:30 in the morning. Some total dolt of a hipster (who I hear is an outrageous closet case, to be anything but discreet) was asking the two girls in our party whether they'd be more likely to go for vaginal or anal fisting, in a theoretical way. When I chimed in (vaginal, at least to start off, because of the natural lube), the dolt was incredulous: "What would you know? You only have one hole! Would you, like, take it in your URETHRA?!" I was on the verge of explaining his folly when Ben made the wise suggestion that it was neither the time nor place. I guess it's a kind of triumph of passing when a drunk hipster adamantly denies that you have a vagina. I'll take what I can get.

In the (pop culture) news of the queer, I read an amusing and interesting article with Heather Cassils, the Canadian performance artist and genderqueer hottie with whom Lady Gaga makes out in the music video for "Telephone." If there weren't enough reasons to love Gaga, when Heather called out the camera men on their drooling over "girl on girl action" as not being tasteful or accurate, Gaga asked how Heather identified. Good to know that she loves the tranz as well as the gayz.

R U Still in 2 It?

After a perfectly stellar weekend, weather-wise, it's back to grayness. I guess that old groundhog knew a thing or two.

I had some stellar passing times this weekend, in a revealing muscle tee with minimal binding, no less. I went to order new contacts at the mall wearing tight american apparel jeans, my floral print docs, and my Harley-Davidson Muscle tee with James Dean's face on it. As I said, stellar weather outside left me scantily clad and wicked femme. And I was "sirred" by the salesperson! How about that?

Recording is coming along slowly. I think I need some time (or some extra takes, at least) to get used to where my voice is. I haven't quite dropped down so much that I can sing my old songs an octave down, but I can't quite hit the high notes on the old versions any more. Bring out the capo and make due, I guess.

Also, um, Mogwai? Still a great band.

Oh, gosh, really?

Nothing big lately, just a steady increase of mannishness, in the standard uberfem way. The neckbeard part of my beard--that is, the part that that would look especially terrible if I neglected it--is coming in with terrific force. Otherwise, still fairly babyfaced. So, unless I want to look like a teenage metalhead virgin, shaving it is.

My voice is getting pretty relatively deep, I think. It's hard for me to gauge sometimes. I'm going to start recording the new Pegasissy album this week, so I think I'll get a better sense of where my voice is when I hear it compared to it's former version. Needless to say, I can no longer sing the Roy Orbison song "Crying" like I used to.

I still am not actively passing too much, I think. Yesterday a giant Rastafarian street person stopped by CALC insisting that he was a member and stating that he was looking for lost relatives "in the philosophical sense." He asked my name, and when I said Russell, he said, "But that is man name! What is your woman name!?" I just said it was my name, and that I had to get back to my lunch.

I'm certainly a teenage boy in a lot of ways these days. My emotional responses to situations are different, and I half don't know what to do with them. I am more likely to get "pissed off", which is to say likely at all. At the same time, I realize that I'm being angry and short[-tempered], and usually calm or apologize myself out of it pretty well. Plus, I'm finally figuring out what I want to do when I grow up. For the past few months I've been leaning toward faggy high school English teacher, though as of last night, I think it will have to coincide or even be superseded by bartender. I had a realization that I should really stop worrying about having a respectable career that helps the future of tomorrow when all I want to do is stay out late and make drinks.

If anyone reading this is in the mood for a counselor, trans-related or not, I just want to give another resounding shout out to Jordan Junechul Shin. She is hilarious and pure awesome.

Marginalia

All kinds of gender business, I'm sure, but I'm going to keep this post marginal.

-I went to a Dress As Your Spirit Animal party as a cougar, complete with short skirt, blond wig, and visible cleavage. A very drunk girl felt my boobs and immediately fell over into a pile of broken glass.

-Ben and I went to the Gateway Mall to see a movie but ended up just wandering and taking in the madness. It's getting to the point in my transition where I actually look like a guy, more or less, and was slightly worried about harassment, as we were kind of holding hands and generally looking like a couple (as a side note: so fun to have a date at the Gateway Mall for the first time in years. He won a stuffed pikachu for me at Tilt!) On the way out, a three year old turned to her mom and said, "Mommy, he looks like the Jonas Brothers!" It's most likely that she was talking about Ben, what with his sweeping brown hair and leather jacket, but in the official version that I'm telling, she was referring to both of us.

-I actually for real have to shave every day, which probably means I should stop borrowing my roommate's razor.

-I think that's it.

Drooling Over ___

Sorry there haven't been posts and posts--it's just been a slow time in gender news, I guess. The holidays--as my boss would say, "Christian holidays and the Gregorian New Year"--came and went with little trans-related to-do. I mostly did a lot of drinking and lazing around, rather, more than usual.

Today is shot number seven, and just in the nick of time. I need to talk to my RNNP about getting shots every 10 days instead of 14. A few days every other week I turn into a Bennington student again. Ugh. I thought I'd received my diploma, and thereby my ability to get through a day without multiple naps.

My legs are getting frighteningly muscular. As in there's a muscly part that juts out just above my knees. Are these glutes or something? Hamstrings? I'm lost. Alternately, my masculine gut is on the increase, though I can actually feel muscles under it, for once. I may have to stop dining exclusively on egg sandwiches and Chinese food.

My voice is getting actually pretty deep, and consistently so. Give me a call and marvel, if you haven't talked to me lately.

At the same time, I don't know that I'm passing much more than I did. Or maybe I am and am not noticing. I guess I am in little ways. I was biking to work today and I checked out some guy, or really his outfit, as he wasn't much to look at, as I rode past. Instead of the usual flirtatious-smile-back, I got the slightly-frightened-sup-dude-head-nod. Success?

I've spent today drooling over the website of Dr. Christine McGinn, who offers ftm mastectomies for a mere 6,300 smackeroos. This is a price I could be comfortable with, and her results look pretty fine. Also, she is kind of a babe. And her website is covered with butterflies. How can you not trust that? Anyone want to put me up in Philly this summer? Michelle Zauner, I'm looking at you.