Rebirth

When I was a child, my mum made us go to church at least every other Sunday. It was mostly for appearance's sake, and I absolutely hated it. It was long and boring and hot and I had to dress up girly and nice and pretend to be a gentle, well-mannered young lady. It sucked. What made it even worse was when there was a baptism. They were usually a surprise and we'd show up expecting an hour and a half to two hours of skull-crushing boredom and then there'd be a baptism that would easily tack on another half hour to forty-five minutes. But one thing sticks out in my mind about all those baptisms that seems relevant to this particular day.

Transition Isn't Destructive

It's been my experience that most people I've come out to have been pretty supportive when it comes to starting to use the correct name and pronouns and treating me as "one of the guys" - the social part of transitioning. But the one thing that consistently seems to make most people uncomfortable is the physical transition - the actual medical intervention that will help me change my body into how I really feel. People tend to see it as destructive - that I will be "cutting off" my breasts, that I will be "destroying" my body's estrogen in favor of pumping it full of testosterone, that I will be "mutilating" my genitals to make them how I want. But it's not that at all. All the medical interventions are reconstructive. Just like refurbishing a building, some things will need to be removed to update and improve the building. To me, my current chest feels like an asbestos-laden back room that needs to be completely torn out and rebuilt. Yes, the process is somewhat violent. There's the cutting of flesh and spillage of blood and removal of parts. But those parts are malignant - maybe not physically, but emotionally. It's hard to explain to cis people how it feels to have a body that you can't identify with and you can hardly stand to look at. I don't see some parts of my body as anything more than a type of tumor. I even have minimal feeling in certain erogenous zones because of my brain/body disconnect. Sometimes I find it hard to believe how much better I feel when I hide these parts with binding or augment them with packing. I think it's just the shock of having my body finally be closer to what I feel it should be. It's healing, it's wonderful and I hate how I feel if I'm not doing it.

My Coming Out Letter

This is the letter I emailed to my parents after getting some questions from them about why Facebook was using male pronouns on my profile. I had changed my gender but told Facebook to hide it, though it still changed my pronouns. I am posting this because I think I did a good job and want to share it with people.

Seattle, Packers and the TSA

Seattle (no, I didn't get to go to the Space Needle)

This past week (Wednesday through Friday) I was in Seattle/Redmond, Washington for what was supposed to be a job interview on Thursday. I was advised before I flew out that there might be snow and was asked if I wanted to cancel. Since I'm not a pussy, I said no, that I'd fly out anyway and see how things went. As it turns out, Seattle is extremely ill prepared for snow and has basically no ability to plow anything so the six inches of snow they got were pretty apocalyptic for them. My interview was canceled for Thursday and rescheduled for Friday so I spent all day Thursday wandering around Redmond Town Center browsing their array of stores. I got a call Thursday night saying that my interview had been canceled Friday too and that I should just go home and they'd reschedule in a few weeks. I had dinner in the hotel restaurant with some other Microsoft candidates and then went back to my room to make some plans for tomorrow since my flight wasn't leaving until 10PM. Since Seattle seems like a very trans-friendly, sex-positive kind of area I decided to check out some of the sex shops online. I found one called Babeland that looked like they had a pretty good stock of FTM trans gear and decided to go look for a packer since I'd been wanting one for a while but wanted to get to handle them hands-one before making a purchase.

How I Became Known as Adam at Work

So I got a job at an on-campus food place last week and the hiring forms required me to put my legal sex (it actually said sex, not gender) and name. Since I haven't had my name or gender marker changed yet, I had to put down female and my birth name. My managers and co-workers had no idea about me being trans besides me presenting and in a work uniform of a t-shirt and baseball cap it's not all that obvious anyway. My name tag was printed for me, and it had my birth name on it. I finally mustered up the courage to peel off my birth name from the tag and print a sticker that said "Adam" instead for my name tag last Thursday after my shift. I didn't work again until yesterday and passed without any issues but my co-workers and managers still called me by my birth name and pronouns. My manager even called me "sister" and I cringed but it was in passing and I didn't have an opportunity to correct her.

Christmas in the Closet

This is my first holiday season being out to myself, my friends and my brother. My parents, my sister and the rest of my family is seemingly oblivious to the fact I'm trans, despite me presenting all the time and constantly challenging them when they say something blatantly ignorant and bigoted especially related to trans people. I would think that they would start to wonder why I know so much about the transition process and trans issues in general, but they seem to ignore those little tells. Anyway, tonight we had our Christmas Eve dinner and the topic got turned to transgender people by my dad. In the resulting discussion, I learned that my family believes the following:

• Being transgender is "just a phase"
• Transgender people shouldn't be protected by law
• Transgender people (and other LGBT people) recruit impressionable children to "follow them down their path"
• No transgender person stays transitioned, they all eventually revert to their birth sex
• Being transgender didn't exist before the 1980's
• Transgender people, after having many surgeries, look like "monsters"
• Boys wearing girl clothes is wrong, girls wearing boy clothes is wrong
• Boys should play with boy toys, girls should play with girl toys
• People transition just to get attention

I challenged them. I explained to them why everything they were saying was wrong. I tried to educate them. But the bullshit just kept coming. I wanted to scream in their face that I was trans and that they should close their fucking mouths and open their eyes. I wanted to flip the dinner table over, and punch them in the face until their hatred stopped. And then, I just wanted to cry. I wanted to cry because I can't believe I am related to people that are so ignorant and bigoted. I wanted to cry because they don't know I'm trans and because I feel like I can never tell them because of all the things they said tonight. I wanted to cry because of all the other closeted LGBT folks that are probably eating family dinner at home right now dealing with the same kind of thing.  

I want to come out to them more than ever now. Rip the bandaid off, get it over with. Sit back and watch the fallout. Start over. I think they will come around (they will have to, if they want to continue to have any kind of relationship with me). For now, all I can do is keep trying to prep them as much as possible by educating them about trans issues and hope they can look past their hate. It will get better.

Two Worlds

As I start to come out and transition, I find my social experiences to be split into two (mostly) separate groups. Most people (my family, co-workers and some of my friends) know me by my birth name, and use female pronouns when they refer to me. A select, different group of people know me as Adam and always use male pronouns when they refer to me. This group is very small, and right now pretty much confined to other LGBT folk but I am gradually expanding it. Crammed in between the two groups lies CV and my closest friend. CV mostly uses my birth name and female or neutral pronouns and my friend avoids using either name or pronouns for the most part.

I am not sure exactly how I feel about this. Some trans people are really offended if you refer to them by their birth name instead of their chosen name or use the wrong pronouns. Some don't care as much. Because I am so early in my transition, I don't really expect much from anyone as far as getting my pronouns right. I think when I am further along, like when I start T or get my name and gender marker legally changed, I'll be stricter about it but I don't correct people now. Most people in public get it right (at least as far as I know), and I'm more happy and surprised when they get it right than annoyed or upset when they get it wrong. I don't feel like I pass very well, because I haven't come up with any really good binding or packing solutions and alot of my clothes are still somewhat girl-cut though I tend to wear everything big.

It's probably weird, but I cringe inside whenever my parents refer to me as their "daughter" or use female pronouns even though they have absolutely no idea I'm trans. I think it's because I know that soon I will have to come out to them and that's going to be really hard on them. When CV calls me my birth name or uses female pronouns, I'm not really a fan, but I know it's new to him too and I don't really blame him. It doesn't upset me, and I don't find it disrespectful to my identity. He and my friend have known me for a while, and met me before I knew I was trans and I know there's going to be a transitional period for them as well. I'm just getting used to people knowing who I really am, as I hid it for such a long time, and it still feels awkward for m insist on male pronouns and Adam, even though that's what is most comfortable to me. I don't know if me being a submissive has anything to do with it, but I find it really hard to demand anything of anyone else.

I hope it gets easier as I transition and I expect it will especially once I have officially changed my name and gender marker. But for now, I'll just have to be content to live with two identities. Like some kind of inverse Hannah Montana.