Category: LGBTQIA

Denying the existence of transgender and nonbinary people is not ‘scientific.’

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Folks often ask for shareable versions of the threads that I write on social media. In this new series, “Twitter Roundup,” I’ll be compiling threads worth saving! This thread focuses on the ways in which the social sciences are overlooked when talking about the existence of transgender and nonbinary people.

A gif that reads, “When people tell you who they are you believe them.”
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Hey, friend! Before you go…

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This blog is not sponsored by any fancy pants investors that are trying to sell you stuff.

It’s funded by readers like you via Patreon!

Every donation counts. Help keep resources like these accessible to everyone that needs them! And help buy me a cup of coffee, because I write a lot of these blogs after work, late at night, so I could definitely use the caffeine.

When they misgendered you at your memorial.

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There were drains hanging from my chest when I made the first phone call. Not even two days before, I was under the knife, having a surgeon — an artist — remake my chest. These are scars that you will never see.

“Hey,” I say softly into the phone. “I think you should come over. I’ll explain when you get here.”

When I hang up, I straighten my spine and I slap myself across the cheek. Our friends are coming over, and I remind myself that I can’t crumble, not now. I’ve never had to disclose that someone is dying, to shatter the world as they knew it with a single sentence. I guess because I was the one that was usually on the brink of death.

This was not the thunder I wanted stolen from me.

There’s a knock on my door, and the words are falling out of my mouth before I can think of how to say them. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “Cris isn’t going to make it.” We hold onto each other for dear life, the drains pressed between us, filling with my blood.

The color is already gone from my face; I’m waiting now to see your ghost.

/

You are difficult to contain. A neuroscientist, a poet, a drag queen, a teacher — queerness, for you, was simply your way of being in the world, the shimmer held in every cell in your body.

“They” as a pronoun was the most natural thing in the world, because I can’t imagine how “she” or “he” could hold everything that you are, that you were. They, as in, “I hold the contradictions and make them beautiful.” They, as in, “I wear my trauma as drag and spin it into gold.”

I never understood how anyone could look at you and not see “they,” or hear the mirth in your laughter and not believe it to be sheer magic or mischief, or look at your delicate hands and assign you any essence other than “everything.”

Everything, the totality.

You were the scientist who loved astrology. You were the poet who could seamlessly reference Grey’s Anatomy without missing a beat. You toiled in a lab with mice by day and wore eight-inch heels and glitter on a stage at night.

You moved between worlds, always chasing something — the secrets you found studying zebrafish, the catharsis in lip-synching pop songs in gay bars — and I fear that neither one was enough.

You could find the wisdom in a Kelly Clarkson song and in the DNA of a jellyfish. I remember thinking, I’ll follow this queen to the ends of the earth.

If only you had let me.

/

Your memorial is organized by email. This is, I think, the first time I really understood what it meant to die as a millennial. You’re just a few months shy of your 30th birthday, but if I think about that for too long, I want to set the whole world on fire.

It was foreshadowing, I realize, when you told me how your novel was going to end, just a few weeks before you died. How the characters, realizing the world is irredeemable, decide to burn it to the ground so something new can grow in its place.

You lit the metaphorical match in your bedroom on a Sunday afternoon, and I still don’t know if it was a smoke signal or a death wish. I’m not sure if you knew, either.

My whole world burns down with it. Your remains nourish the ground underneath me. Grief is a brutal and unforgiving teacher, offering lessons I never asked for. Your tombstone is a mirror reflecting back all the ways my story could’ve ended just like yours.

Your mother makes me promise that I won’t end my life like you did.

I have to grow in your place now, become something new.

You used to tell me that no one understood trauma quite like we did, like it was a language that we spoke fluently, sometimes morbidly and always earnestly. In that way, I’ll never stop hearing your voice.

/

Your graduate advisor responds to the email about your memorial. Gently, I remind him of your pronouns.

I think back to all the conversations we had about what it was like to be a transgender scientist — struggling to be seen, carefully measuring how much of yourself you could be and how much you had to hide.

Sometimes, over coffee, you’d admit to me, “I’m so tired.” The resignation in your eyes was like the dimming of a thousand stars at once.

Your advisor snaps back so harshly that the wind is knocked out of me. “That’s the side you knew, but Cris, the young man I knew, had many sides,” your advisor lectures.

How can you call it “sides” when you never asked to be deconstructed? When it’s the world splitting you apart, never allowing you to be whole in the first place?

How could he speak of you as though everything you were in life — all the magic that moved through you — was simply too inconvenient to acknowledge? How can you take a prism and demand one color?

I’m trying to find the words to explain to him how painful misgendering is, but my rage is boiling over — not just at him, but at a world that was never good enough for you, determined to take the beauty of your queerness and grind it to dust underneath a heavy heel.

I tell the professor that he should be ashamed. He calls me a “hectoring, self-absorbed, pompous twit.”

The aftertaste of the same poison that killed you is sitting on my tongue. The taste is familiar, metallic, and cold. I remember the anguish of being invisible, how it eroded your spirit, how it clipped your wings into pieces that neither of us could stitch back together.

Without wings, there was nothing to break your fall.

/

When a transgender person commits suicide, it’s almost always murder in slow motion.

When you cut a flower at the stem, no one is surprised when it wilts. When your petals fell, I tried to hold onto them as long as I could. The world might know you now as a statistic, but I knew you as you breathed and bloomed.

The morning memorial begins with a passionate plea about pronouns from a trans femme you knew, and I’m silently grateful for her courage. But I’m left trembling when I realize that you never lived to see the day when your life didn’t require a disclaimer — instead, your death now required one, too.

The professor gives the closing remarks. He stumbles over his words.

When he misgenders you, he tries to correct himself, stuttering. The pain in the room is palpable, a living reenactment of the pain you held in your last breath.

When he refers to you as a son, your mother — in a moment more powerful than my words can hold — adamantly corrects him.

“My child,” she says.

Her child who, after being flown to New York for a final time, would be turned over to ash. “I blew glitter over their body just before they were cremated,” your mother tells me.

And this is how you left us, anointed by the shimmering breath of your mother.

It was one final gesture to remind you that, while the world may not have seen you, we still did.

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If you’re suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, the Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386, or reach the Crisis Text Line by texting “START” to 741741.

Hey, friend! Before you go…

cropped-heartThis blog is not sponsored by any fancy pants investors that are trying to sell you stuff.

It’s funded by readers like you via Patreon!

Every donation counts. Help keep resources like these accessible to everyone that needs them! And help buy me a cup of coffee, because I write a lot of these blogs after work, late at night, so I could definitely use the caffeine.

Photo by h heyerlein on Unsplash.

My parents and I survived my ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.’ This is our story.

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Yes, it’s true.

I am a survivor of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, otherwise known as ROGD.

And if you’d talked to my mother back then, you would’ve gotten a very panicked account of how abrupt my coming out was.

But my story isn’t hers to tell.

(She, by the way, would totally agree with that statement. This is why she isn’t posting about me in online forums or participating in “studies.” Also: Hi Mom, love you.)

And while I wish I had the Perfect Transgender Narrative™ to convince you of my validity, I don’t. I didn’t always know I was transgender. I’m not even sure exactly when my dysphoria really started.

But if you knew my story, you might realize why that makes sense.

I was a sheltered kid growing up in suburban Michigan. And while I’d been bullied for being “weird,” and always felt like the “black sheep” wherever I went, I knew literally nothing about queer or transgender people… much less “gender dysphoria.”

There was no context to place that sense of isolation into. It never occurred to me that gender was a thing I could have feelings about, and I certainly didn’t know that I didn’t have to identify as a girl if it didn’t exactly fit.

Having an older brother that was so close to me in age, my androgyny wasn’t exactly odd, either.

I figured it was a natural product of being so close to him. We shared our toys as kids, played video games for hours, and my many interests — ranging from the stereotypically “feminine” to “masculine” — made me gender-ambivalent at best.

If you’d asked me how I felt about my body as I got older, I would’ve said I “felt ugly.” When asked to describe myself? “I’m just weird.” There was no other vocabulary available to me, because my world was incredibly, incredibly tiny.

Even if I did have some sense of dysphoria, I didn’t have the ability to place where it was coming from.

I was a kid with obsessive-compulsive disorder and ADHD. As such, I was in a constant state of anxiety and agitation growing up. When it became unmanageable, I would get really depressed.

In other words, emotional overwhelm was a constant in my life. Teasing apart where any of it came from wasn’t a simple process.

It only became more complicated as I got older. When I was a teenager, I developed an eating disorder and then found myself in an abusive relationship. The disconnect from my own body from there only became more intense. I was numb to it in so many ways.

Gender was not my concern at that time — simply surviving my mental illness and that relationship was all I could muster.

But thoughts about it started to surface, slowly but surely. When I began considering taking on a more androgynous appearance, and started questioning gender in my late teens, my abuser told me that I “wouldn’t be attractive anymore.”

My self-esteem was already so diminished. His comment made me feel so deeply ashamed for ever having considered being anything other than hyperfeminine and cisgender.

So I didn’t just tiptoe back into the closet… I leapt back in.

At first, I put any kind of gender-related thoughts on the highest shelf in a locked box. I couldn’t handle the idea of destabilizing my life in the way that transition — and by extension, ending that relationship — would’ve triggered.

There just wasn’t room for questioning my identity at that time in my life.

Between my OCD and my traumatic relationship, I was repressing the hell out of any gender-questioning thoughts. I didn’t have the emotional capacity, resources, and support to work through it.

It wasn’t until I got out of that relationship and started therapy that I could begin to untangle everything.

As I started to better manage my OCD and heal from the relationship that had destroyed my self-esteem, those questions about gender start to find their way to the surface again. I begin to wonder.

And I started searching online.

That’s when I really began questioning if some of my earlier feelings about being out of place — especially among girls my age — meant something.

I wondered if being disconnected from my body might be connected. I wondered if being drawn to androgyny (and the little things, like enjoying playing as “boy” characters on my favorite video games) might have meaning, too.

And I’ll be honest, I didn’t know for certain if those aspects of my earlier experiences did or didn’t have a gendered significance. Very few of us do in actuality, because identity is complicated, and gender is, too.

Not to mention, my history was very complex and painful. The thing about dysphoria is that so much of it is very abstract. Feelings aren’t as crystal clear as a lot of cisgender people seem to suggest.

Dysphoria isn’t this obvious neon sign that appears from the minute you exit the womb, especially in a society that does everything it can to make transgender people totally invisible to begin with.

We often don’t know where our feelings are coming from, especially if our backgrounds include trauma.

Which is why changing circumstances externally — our clothes, our pronouns, our names — can be so important. We do it to see how our feelings change so we can better understand what caused them, and more importantly, what we can do about them.

So I came out as genderqueer when I was 19 years old. I felt uncomfortable continuing to identify as a “girl” when I was having all these questions about my identity and my body.

I cut my hair, started changing how I dressed, started binding my chest, and began to imagine what my future might look like. I wanted to see if I would be happier or more comfortable in doing so.

For my parents, though, we’d never really had a conversation about my gender. What they saw was their teenager going off to college and catching something quite an awful lot like “rapid onset gender dysphoria.”

Except instead of the internet, it was that dang liberal arts school corrupting me.

But it became obvious, with each step of my social transition, that something magical was happening — I was coming out of my shell. I was happier. I felt a little more adventurous. I felt a little more at home.

I sat with myself and I said, “Okay. There’s something here.” I knew there was because with every change I made, I felt a little lighter in a way I never had before.

I soon learned that a disconnect from your body or self, disordered eating, anxiety, and a sense of isolation can all be a part of the transgender experience we call “dysphoria.”

It seems to be something a lot of us share. And more importantly, when some people transition, those experiences improve or even go away entirely.

When I finally understood that a gender transition was making me feel better and brighter… I was thrilled. But I was also hit with waves of very acute, very new gender dysphoria.

My internal reality was solidifying, but my experiences as I moved through the world weren’t aligning at the same time. That gap became more and more stark — and much more painful.

This was the “rapid onset.”

And if you talk to transgender people, a lot of us have the same story — we know our truth, but it also magnifies our pain. There’s the new distress of realizing that no one else sees it but us. The pain of invisibility.

While you are becoming the person you are meant to be, you simultaneously become invisible to the rest of the world — even to the people you love.

That is traumatic — and it can come on gradually for some people, and quickly for others, depending on when you came to understand your identity.

I knew who I was and I wanted that to be recognized. But it wasn’t. And the more erased I felt, the more pain I experienced.

I found myself focusing more and more about the aspects of my body that kept me from feeling seen. I’d never felt comfortable in my own skin, but now I had a better understanding as to why — and I had a clearer idea of what needed to change.

That’s when I started considering hormones.

At 22 years old, I was now growing impatient and miserable. I didn’t share these things with my parents at first, though, out of a fear of being rejected. They were your typical Midwest “ranch dressing” kind of parents — they knew very little about what any of this gender stuff meant.

But I came out to them anyway.

They were, in the deepest sense of the word, confused.

But more than that, they were terrified, because they’d never once heard me talk about questioning my gender. For them, the pain I was describing was sudden and life-altering.

And, yes, “rapid.”

But it wasn’t the dysphoric feelings that were necessarily new. It was the urgency to address them that was new — because I learned there was a solution, a path I could finally take.

That urgency made the dysphoria feel stronger. But in all likelihood, it may have been there in some form all along.

But either way, it hardly seemed to matter when it began. I just needed to know if testosterone could help me. And if it didn’t? I could always stop.

So I held my breath, emailed my parents, and told them what I was prepared to do. And my mother especially — while she was terrified about what would happen next — did what every parent of a trans youth should be doing: she stood by me.

Rather than looking to change who I was, or digging for evidence that I was delusional, or blaming somebody else in my life… she pumped the brakes. She moved through her fears and came out on the other side of that as my biggest supporter.

And being supportive didn’t mean that she wasn’t afraid. It didn’t mean that she didn’t have questions, doubts, or worries. It didn’t mean that she understood everything that I was talking about.

What it meant was that she had the courage to walk through those fears with me, and do everything she could to support my own happiness, even if the path was totally unknown and even scary to her.

My mom didn’t see my coming out as a fluke, nor did she see my transition as a threat. She saw it as an opportunity for her to grow.

And while she stumbled and wasn’t always graceful, she did everything she could to be there for me, no matter what.

Screen Shot 2018-09-08 at 11.46.18 AMWith my family’s support, I began my medical transition. I won’t lie — I was scared, too, at first. I wondered if I could be mistaken. I wondered if it was my OCD playing tricks on me. I worried that maybe trauma had led me astray.

But after years in therapy, and multiple gender specialists weighing in, this was the conclusion we had all reached. It was worth a try.

I’m grateful every single day that I took the chance. And I’m just as grateful that my parents were by my side, supporting me through it.

I started hormones, I got top surgery, and with each step, there was a light in my eyes that wasn’t there before. I came alive. I was happier, more confident, and the emotional overwhelm that seemed to buzz around me my whole life slowly began to fade.

As my parents saw this unfolding, even they couldn’t deny what was happening. I was finally calm. I was optimistic. And most importantly, I was ecstatic.

And one of the greatest, most unexpected gifts of my transition?

My mom (who I will freely admit, like most teenagers, was not my favorite person growing up) became one of my best friends.

Even as my mom struggled to understand me (and still does sometimes), that has never once been an obstacle in her loving and supporting me.

My parents are proud of their gay, transgender son. I know this because they don’t hesitate to remind me.

And looking at their example — two people who really couldn’t have been more unprepared for a trans kid — is what still gives me hope, even as proponents of this pseudoscience try to undermine and invalidate trans youth.

Hope even for the parents that participated in the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria “study,” who may someday learn that their fear is worth embracing — that it’s an opportunity to grow, to love, and to listen.

An opportunity to better know this wonderful person that they brought into the world — to see, for the very first time, what lies in their heart, and to prove to them that they’re still worthy of love exactly as they are.

My parents embraced that opportunity despite all the grief that came with it. And when I ask them why, their answer to me is always simple: “Because we love you.”

We didn’t always know that I was transgender or that I even had gender dysphoria. But when my parents look at me today — and they see a happier, healthier adult — none of that really seems to matter anymore.

I hope that one day, we’ll live in a world where parents of transgender youth, no matter how “rapid” their coming out, will get to experience that same joy, too.

That moment when they look at their kids, brighter than ever, and finally understand that the journey is absolutely worth it.

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selfcare

If you’re suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, the Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386, or reach the Crisis Text Line by texting “START” to 741741.

 

Hey, friend! Before you go…

cropped-heartThis blog is not sponsored by any fancy pants investors that are trying to sell you stuff.

It’s funded by readers like you via Patreon!

Every donation counts. Help keep resources like these accessible to everyone that needs them! And help buy me a cup of coffee, because I write a lot of these blogs after work, late at night, so I could definitely use the caffeine.

Beard hacks, finasteride hell, and 5 other things ‘trans masc’ folks might not know about.

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Every so often — especially in transitioning — I’ll have one of those “why didn’t someone tell me this sooner?” moments. Because we’re in the age of information, I think a lot of folks in the transgender community just assume we already have the information we need.

But in actuality? Many of us don’t.

I’ve found that when I share some of what’s surprised me, there’s always a decent number of trans people who are also hearing it for the first time. While transition is a process of discovery, I can’t help but feel that life would be a hell of a lot easier if we did a better job of sharing what we’ve learned with others.

This article, then, is a mishmash of some of the clever, enlightening, or flat-out surprising things that I would’ve appreciated being told at the beginning of my transition.

As someone who is genderqueer — and more or less moves through the world as a “trans guy” — a lot of what I’m sharing here will be more relevant to folks on the “trans masc” end of the spectrum, though I do think there’s a little something here for everyone.

Not everything here will be life-changing information by any means, but I hope that at least a few things here will be helpful to someone who needs it.

1. There are (sneaky) ways to make your facial hair look less weird.

If Oprah gets to have her own “favorite things,” so do I, right?

If you read literally any guide about how to “pass” as a trans guy, they’ll tell you to shave your face. And as someone who had the misfortune of having much of their facial hair grow in thick but blonde (thanks, Dad), I get the impulse — my facial hair isn’t exactly uh, impressive.

The problem is, that little bit of facial hair? It’s often the deciding factor in whether or not my barista is going to misgender me, you know? So as counterintuitive as it may be, my beard has to stay, no matter how ridiculous and patchy it may look. Whenever I’m without it, I’m more dysphoric, and misgendered a lot more often.

We live in the age of makeup though, my friends. Drag kings have got this down to science, and I was fortunate enough to learn that there are ways to make your facial hair a little more… cohesive.

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Glossier’s “boy brow,” aka beard magic.

Drag kings often use mascara to create something of an imitation beard, but there’s actually an even better option for those of us who already have some facial hair and just need it to, you know, make itself known.

The brand Glossier (who hasn’t asked me to plug this or paid me to promote it in any way at all — I’m just eternally grateful that it exists) has a brow pomade called “boy brow” that helps make facial hair appear fuller, darker, and more filled in.

It’s subtle, but for the blonde hair on my face that refuses to show up, this has been a miraculous discovery.

I am never misgendered when I apply this to my face. It’s intended for brows, but it clearly has some benefits for trans folks like myself who need a little more “oomph” with their facial hair.

Observe the magic in action:

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Half of my face without “boy brow” (left), half where it’s used on my facial hair (right).

I’m personally using the brown shade that Glossier offers because it looks more natural on my face, though it does come in black as well!

If you look, you’ll notice that (1) I’m able to connect my sideburn completely, (2) my mustache is darker and has a more noticeable shadow, and (3) my beard has a lot less patchy weirdness to it.

I don’t necessarily apply this to all of my facial hair on a regular basis, but I did it here (apart from the parts of my face, like my cheeks, that I already shave regularly) just to give you an idea of what it would look like on each part of my face.

And it makes a lot more of a difference than you’d expect!

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The full effect, both sides! This is after a night out, so it lasts, I promise.

When I started doing this, a lot of people asked if I’d increased my testosterone dose, and no one was the wiser.

Not to mention, the misgendering really plummeted. All those “passing guides” that told me to go for the clean shave? They might’ve benefitted from knowing that this stuff exists.

But most importantly, I’m more comfortable. There’s this weird idea that using makeup to appear more masculine is somehow an unacceptable thing, but for me, it’s helped with my gender dysphoria and it’s changed the level of confidence I feel when I step out the door.

So before you shave your whole face in dismay, please know that this could be an option for you! Drag performers have been using mascara and brow pomade for ages, and it’s worth a try if having facial hair makes you feel more comfortable.

2. If you can’t find an LGBTQ+ therapist, you might be looking in the wrong place.

Real talk, having a therapist that’s in your own community makes a huge difference.

And you might be rolling your eyes and saying, “Well, OBVIOUSLY, Sam.” But I’m reiterating this point because I’m blown away by just how much of an impact this has had in my experiences with therapy.

Healing within your own community is a distinctly different thing from doing this kind of work with someone outside of it.

For the last year, I’ve been doing online therapy with a transgender and queer therapist. And that connection became even more important to me when, at the beginning of this year, one of my close friends (also transgender) died by suicide.

Having a therapist who knew what it was like to lose someone this way, and understood from a place of lived experience what queer grief is really like, became an invaluable part of healing for me.

I do know that therapy isn’t accessible to everyone, and it can be difficult to find a transgender or queer therapist on top of that.

But with the increasing accessibility of trans and queer therapists through online platforms like Talkspace (I wrote about this here), it’s worth investigating if you have the means. Some of these platforms even offer financial support, so click around and see what you can find!

3. Learning self-massage was the smartest thing I could’ve done for top surgery recovery.

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am not athletic and am, by and large, a very sedentary person (which is a nice way of saying that I’m a couch potato). But when I discovered a local yoga class that used “therapy balls” to teach self-massage, I was uh, intrigued.

Because after top surgery, I was wound so tight that a massage sounded like exactly what I needed.

After top surgery, my body was kind of a mess — more than I’d really expected. A few months out, I still had very little range of motion. I had built up scar tissue and lumps and knots — especially on the sides of my chest, in my pecs, and between my shoulders — that I was convinced would be there forever.

Surgery is bodily trauma, you know? Even if it’s entirely wanted and amazing, we still have to heal after all is said and done.

So I started learning self-massage with therapy balls (my instructor uses the book “The Roll Model: A Step-by-Step Guide to Erase Pain, Improve Mobility, and Live Better in Your Body” by Jill Miller, but I’m sure there are others). My hope was that it would help me recover a little faster after surgery.

It definitely worked.

After a few weeks, I had regained full mobility and range of motion, including in my arms and shoulders. I am now even more flexible than I was prior to surgery. A lot of the built up tissue is entirely gone. The kicker? I’m only six months post-op at this point, and even my surgeon was amazed by how quickly I was able to recover.

A lot of people, as it turns out, use therapy balls and self-massage to manage chronic pain, as many of the exercises can be modified to suit virtually any body. Many of the techniques are exactly what a physical therapist would do with you in recovery — the only difference is that you’re using a tool to apply that pressure to yourself!

Google it, friends! Please! It’s something you can easily do at home, and while everyone’s body is different, finding ways to restore your range of motion after a major surgery is super important.

4. Binding your chest for a long time can affect top surgery results in some people.

Okay, I know, this should be common knowledge by now… but it definitely isn’t.

Apart from the documented (and expected) issues with binding — including pain, shortness of breath, overheating, that sort of thing — I actually didn’t know that binding could impact surgery results.

First of all, a disclaimer: Binding is critical and essential care for trans people, even with all risks taken into account. The relief it provided me from dysphoria isn’t something I would trade, even given all the nonsense I had to put up with during the years that I was binding and after.

But in the interest of transparency, I do want people to know that one of the lesser-discussed effects of binding your chest is the breakdown of breast tissue. Again, many of us know this, but we take on the attitude of, “Well, I’m getting top surgery later, so what does it matter?” (Hi, I thought that, too.)

But what I was surprised to find is that binding my chest impacted my top surgery results later on.

For those of us who go on to get a mastectomy, our tissue being broken down can affect our post-op results. Speaking for myself, as someone who opted to get nipple grafts, it became more difficult to construct them because that tissue was softer and broken down.

This means that some of us might notice that our nips look a little less distinct from the tissue surrounding them (in other words, they can wind up flatter than they might appear on cisgender men).

I am still thrilled with my top surgery results, but I think I would’ve opted for top surgery earlier had I known that the longer I was binding, the more that breakdown could affect the cosmetic results.

I was binding for about six years, so that obviously had a huge impact on the extent to which I experienced this. But it’s helpful to keep in mind if you’re trying to decide how long you should wait for surgery, or how often you should bind!

5. Testosterone exists in other forms besides injections.

I am realizing that not everyone knows this, so I’m including it on this list because I think it’s important. Time and time again, I hear trans folks saying, “I can’t start T because I don’t want to do the shots!” Lucky for you, there are options!

There are pills, though they can be kind of harsh for our bodies. More commonly, folks who are averse to giving themselves shots have the option of getting testosterone as a patch or in gel form.

I personally tried the patches and was allergic to the adhesive (fun times!). I have been using the gel for over two years now, and it’s terrific. It’s basically like hand sanitizer that’s a little thicker and has testosterone in it, and you rub it into your upper-arms and let it dry every day.

Super simple. No needles required!

6. Finasteride isn’t always safe — especially for trans folks with preexisting mental health conditions.

I talked about this quite a bit in this blog post, but it bears repeating. There has been some speculation that finasteride (otherwise known as proscar/propecia) can lead to suicidal thoughts in some people who take it, and some studies are showing that there are elevated risks of self-harm and depression when taking it.

It’s usually prescribed to slow down hair loss, which makes it a pretty common prescription amongst trans folks. But the reality is, its impact on trans people specifically hasn’t been studied much at all.

So, story time.

The only two times I’ve ever been psychiatrically hospitalized for suicidality came a few weeks after starting finasteride, with those episodes subsiding only after I discontinued it. I have never in my life experienced this level of depression and suicidality that I experienced while taking finasteride.

This is anecdotal, but there are many reports of others who experienced similar side effects that the World Health Organization is monitoring at this time.

Because all of these studies have only been done on cisgender men, we don’t actually know how it could impact transgender people, who are already more vulnerable to mental illness and suicidality.

All that said, what this means is that trans folks (or really, anyone) taking finasteride should proceed with a lot of caution! If you notice any increased depression or suicidal ideation, make sure you let your clinician know.

7. You can have gender dysphoria without realizing it.

I wrote about this at a pretty nauseating length in my open letter to truscum, but I’d like to highlight it a little bit here (and speak to, you know, the rest of us who aren’t transmedicalists), because I think it’s important information:

No one else saw me as ugly or ever said I was, but it was a feeling I couldn’t shake. I felt like, no matter what I did, nothing made that feeling go away.

I just thought it was a stupid teenager thing. Except that “stupid teenager thing” didn’t go away and I became a self-hating, uncomfortable, gross-feeling adult.

If you had met me when I came out in 2012, you would’ve said that there was no freaking way I was transgender. I knew I was miserable and I knew I hated how I looked, but “dysphoria” wasn’t a part of my vocabulary yet. While it had always been there on some level, I didn’t have any way to interpret what it meant.

And this isn’t an uncommon experience, trust me. Plenty of trans people come out and are still learning how to describe their experiences. For those folks, it’s sometimes much, much later on that they realize there was some dysphoria happening for them. Sometimes the label comes first — and that’s valid.

I didn’t grasp how severe it was for me until after surgery. Only when my dysphoria was considerably diminished did I understand just how heavy it was to begin with.

. . .

Some people also experience dysphoria only in the form of dissociation, or a state of unreality, numbness, or disconnection. They might not connect this to their gender at all, because it’s not an emotional state they can necessarily identify so quickly in the first place.

For trans people with other mental health challenges, trauma and mental illness might interfere with their understanding of their gender, and dysphoria becomes attributed to other causes (I also wrote about that here).

In other words, our brains work extra hard to try to protect us, which can make self-perception [of dysphoria] as a trans person a little wonky.

This is something that we, as a community, aren’t talking about nearly enough! Dysphoria is a very complex experience, and while we might not initially recognize it as such, there could be as many unique experiences of dysphoria as there are trans people.

So if you’re not sure that you’ve experienced dysphoria? That’s okay. Maybe you have and maybe you haven’t — or maybe you’ll understand it a little better with time. Your experiences are valid no matter what.

Transitioning is a learning experience, to be sure. Thankfully, it’s one that we can support each other through.

That’s why I love hearing from all of you in the community.

What are some things you wish you’d known sooner? What has been the most surprising part of transition for you?

Until next time,

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It’s Pride month. And for some, their idea of celebrating Pride is telling asexual folks that they can’t identify as queer. Nothing says “happy pride” quite like being pushed out of your own community, right?

I first came out as asexual to my close friends when I was about fifteen years old.

While friends excitedly shared their stories of making out underneath the bleachers, I had yet to feel even an iota of desire towards anyone. Everything I’d heard about “urges” in health class sounded made up to me. When I mentioned this in passing, my (very wonderful) best friend asked me if I’d read anything about asexuality.

What he told me made sense — I just didn’t want it to. I wanted to be like everyone else. What teenager doesn’t?

I felt like I was missing out on an important experience that I was supposed to be having. So I did what I figured I should do — I went out and got myself a boyfriend. I thought if I gave it a try, maybe a switch would flip in my brain. Instead, I hated kissing him so much that I started avoiding him at school. I pretended to have colds to dissuade him, but he stopped caring.

I broke up with him a few weeks later.

Maybe it was just that particular boy, though, I thought. When I found myself developing romantic feelings towards another boy in my grade, I figured this was my best shot at becoming a “normal” teenager. If nothing else, at least I’d know what everyone else was talking about.

But as that relationship went on, I again felt pressured to keep up the charade. The sexual relationship simply felt like the cost of admission — if I wanted emotional intimacy and romance, I had to offer something in return, didn’t I? I forced it. I desperately wish I hadn’t.

This is what “normal” relationships look like, I reasoned. This is what we’re supposed to do.

Like many asexual people who enter into sexual relationships this way, I lost any sense of boundaries and autonomy. I can’t articulate — maybe because it’s too painful — what it feels like to not have ownership over your body, simply because you feel it’s owed to someone else. I didn’t want to lose my partner, and I believed that as long as I kept pretending, he would stay.

I was in that relationship for three years until I finally couldn’t do it anymore. I walked away convinced something was wrong with me.

Should I be dating women? Was gender dysphoria making it too difficult to be close to people? Was I just depressed? I thought about the passion I’d seen in movies and read about in books, the fantasies and hookups my friends described over drinks, and I felt like a piece of me was missing.

When I met my partner Ray seven years ago, I was enamored. They were funny, brilliant, generous, patient, and quickly became my favorite person on the planet. I wanted to spend every waking minute with them.

They were the first person that didn’t treat physical intimacy like the “price” I had to pay to be with them, either. They supported me through my gender transition and I was there as they grappled with chronic illness. We showed up for each other time and time again.

I was never expected to be anything but myself, even if that meant that our Netflix nights only meant chilling in the literal sense. And for the first time, I had exactly what I wanted — a partner in life in the deepest emotional sense. Three years later, our queer asses got married under a rainbow flag. We drank ourselves silly and fell asleep that night, excited for the next chapter of our lives together.

Yes, a rainbow flag. The same flag that now hangs in our living room of our gay little apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bite me.

If I’m not queer, tell me what I am.

When a group of homophobic teenagers in Plymouth, Michigan, tried to run Ray and me over when we crossed the street, what were we then? When bigots pulled over on the road to yell at us as we held hands, what was that? When I wasn’t allowed to see Ray in the hospital because it was illegal to get married and I wasn’t considered “family,” what did that mean?

When society told me time and time again that I was broken because my relationships didn’t look the way that they “should,” what is that called?

When my heart pounded through my chest because I was afraid my family would reject me, does that sound straight to you? When I search the history books for someone who loves like I do and struggles like I did, and I can’t find a single footnote, does that sound like a privilege to you? When I take pride in resisting notions of “normalcy” and revel in my transgressions, what would you say that is?

Are you suggesting I let go of the one word that ever encompassed all these feelings?

Lately there’s been a lot of conversation in the queer community about whether or not asexual people “belong.”

When I hear this, I feel sick to my stomach. I spent years feeling like handing over my body to someone else was simply the “cost of admission,” the natural consequence if I wanted to feel like I belonged, if I wanted to feel loved, if I wanted to be accepted.

I’m now being told that having sex and losing my autonomy are a prerequisite for being queer, too. After spending years being violated just to feel less broken, people in my own community are asking me to do the same if I want to be in good standing and be accepted.

Take my “queer membership card,” then. In fact, I’ll gladly set it on fire and watch it burn before I ever let someone tell me — or any other asexual person — that access to our bodies is the price we pay to be queer.

“Queer” has, for a long time, been a banner under which folks who have been marginalized because of their sexual, romantic, and gender identities could find a sense of community.

If asexual people can’t identify as queer, where should they go when they feel broken? When they’re told that they owe access to their bodies to someone to be “fixed”? When clinicians suggest they need to be “cured”? When they struggle to find anyone like them to assure them that they’re enough exactly as they are? When they grow up wondering if something is wrong with them, the same way that I did?

The fact that ace folks are met with gatekeepers, even in a community that advocates for inclusion, makes it clear that asexuality is just as stigmatized as we’ve been telling you for years.

If my story sounds familiar to you as a queer person, then you know damn well that I’m queer.

And in my years of blogging and publishing about my experiences, not a single one of you questioned if I was part of your community. If you’re doing so now only because I’ve come out as ace, I ask that you reflect on why.

I’m asking you to believe me now, and believe all asexual people when we tell you who we are. When we choose to identify as queer, we do so with intention and purpose. Asexual (and aromantic folks, too) are not a threat to you. If anything, denying us community is what’s most threatening here.

Gatekeepers exist only to reinforce the idea that people don’t belong — and if you find yourself gatekeeping, you should ask yourself who it serves. Because the moment you ask marginalized people to assimilate, forcing them to choose between their identity and their chosen family, I have to wonder what queerness even means to you.

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In 2018, let’s stop pretending cis women are the only ones having periods. Seriously.

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Recently on Twitter I saw, yet again, claims being made that trans people who menstruate will eventually no longer have a menstrual cycle because of testosterone… and therefore, trans inclusivity when we’re talking about periods is a moot point.

Holy cisnormativity, batman.

This irks me. Because not only have I been on testosterone for two freakin’ years and am still #blessed with a monthly, but it’s also a wildly incorrect assumption that every trans person with a uterus is going to end up on testosterone in the first place.

There are transgender people who menstruate. Let me say it again to make sure we’re all on the same page here: THERE ARE TRANS PEOPLE WHO HAVE PERIODS.

And whether they identify as non-binary, as trans men, or anything else in the gender universe, one thing is clear to me: We need gender inclusivity when we’re talking about menstruation.

For me, that week or so of bleeding is when my gender dysphoria is at its peak. It is a continual reminder of body parts that are alien to me. It’s a reminder of all the barriers in front of me as I try to medically transition. I panic about being outed as trans whenever I get supplies at the drugstore. And not only that, but I am forced to directly interact with a part of my body that horrifies me — multiple times throughout the day.

Don’t get me wrong, periods suck for everyone. But when you’re transgender, it can be a particularly miserable experience.

So when the world is trying to tell you that this difficult thing you go through every month isn’t actually happening, it’s infuriating. It’s worse, too, when every product is stereotypically marketed to women, a continual reminder that you apparently don’t exist.

Spaces for cis women to commiserate about menstruation are valuable spaces that I have no interest in interfering with. But just the same, we could be doing so much better to make sure that trans folks aren’t erased in the process — and that there are products, spaces, and conversations that trans folks can have access to as well.

Where to begin? It starts with busting the myths.

No, testosterone doesn’t always stop someone’s period. No, not every trans person who has a menstrual cycle will opt for medical interventions that stop it. No, menstrual products are not “feminine hygiene” products. And for the love of all that is good, periods are not just a “woman’s issue” (and not all women have periods, either!).

Which means that when we’re talking about issues that affect people who menstruate, we need to be thoughtful about how we talk about it. People of any gender can have a period, because periods have to do with anatomy, not gender.

Is your mind blown yet? (Hopefully not, actually, it’d be cool if this were common knowledge by now.)

Beyond how we talk about it, we need to design products that are more inclusive. And it’s happening, slowly but surely!

One thing that has given me a lot of hope recently are the new products I’m seeing that actually are gender-inclusive. My favorite example of this, which yes, is totally worth the plug, is the Keela Cup.

It’s brilliant because it’s created with disabled folks in mind, and it’s founded by a disabled person who keeps the marketing gender neutral — a gal after my own heart, really. It’s a menstrual cup that has a pull string (why didn’t someone think of this sooner?!), so it’s more user-friendly for marginalized folks for whom traditional products just aren’t cutting it.

Its potential to decrease gender dysphoria because of the ease with which it could be used makes it personally appealing to me. But beyond that, smarts products like these matter for disabled folks, trans folks, and survivors of sexual violence — or really, anyone who struggles with their period and the demands it places on us.

For anyone who struggles to interact with their bodies during their period, especially in ways they might not be physically able to or find it triggering to do so, having products like these out in the world is seriously important.

The fact that it’s only now coming into existence means we have a long, long way to go.

If we keep pretending that menstruation is just a nondisabled cis woman’s experience, we’re going to keep getting commercials with ladies in long skirts twirling around like periods are one big funfest, and products that, frankly, suck for everyone and especially for marginalized people.

Trans people can have periods. And everyone, regardless of gender or ability, deserves access to conversations, products, and spaces that make that experience as painless as possible.

So in 2018? Let’s make a resolution to be more inclusive when we talk about periods, demand better for the folks who are often neglected in these conversations, and yes, applaud and back the folks who are working hard to create better products that serve us.

Because seriously, it’s about damn time.

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4 Things the Queer Folks in My Life Taught Me About Resisting Toxic Masculinity

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I’m standing outside of a club with friends.

We’re standing in a circle, laughing and chatting and enjoying ourselves. Intermittently, we touch each other’s hair, we put an arm around the other, we kiss each other on the cheek, and we yell above the noise, “I love you so, so much.”

Gender stereotypes and norms might tell you that we’re a group of women.

But we aren’t. We’re a group of queer folks, all with different relationships to masculinity, flaunting a total disregard of gender norms.

When I made the decision to transition – changing my gender presentation and pursuing hormones – I knew that testosterone in particular would come with a host of expectations around performing masculinity.

And as a genderqueer, femme trans boy evaluating my relationship to masculinity, I didn’t know exactly how comfortable I was with that – especially since so many aspects of masculinity can be toxic.

While I would benefit from gaining numerous privileges associated with masculinity, I would also have to contend with the gender norms that harm so many men and masculine-identified people.

But when I fell into a community of queer folks – some transgender, some gender non-conforming, all navigating the expectations of “masc” together – I found a very different kind of masculinity. While they are by no means the norm, what I learned from them was transformative.

This community taught me not only what toxic masculinity demands of men and masculine people, but also the possibilities that exist outside of it.

In the process, I came to realize the kind of masculinity that I could be comfortable inhabiting.

Here are a few of the things that I’ve learned from them.

1. Masculinity Doesn’t Mean Denying Each Other Physical Affection

Men aren’t often seen hugging each other in this society. If they touch each other, even in a platonic way, it’s considered too “gay” or effeminate. As a result, we have men who seldom share physical affection, affirmation, or closeness.

While everyone’s personal boundaries are different, masculine-identified folks are never given the freedom to set their own boundaries. There’s one boundary and one boundary only, and it’s that men shouldn’t share physical closeness. This isn’t just limiting. This can be painful.

What I appreciate so much about the community of queer folks that I’ve fallen into is that we love on each other.

In my community of queers, we greet each other with warm embraces. We lean on each other and hold each other through difficult moments. We aren’t afraid to touch each other and express our affection for each other just because society says that men and masculine-identified folks shouldn’t do so.

Just imagine what friendships between masculine-identified people could look like if we felt encouraged to express our affection for each other in whatever ways felt comfortable for everyone involved.

Imagine the closeness, the reassurance, the comfort, the support, the vulnerability – these are very healthy experiences that are encouraged in female friendships, but never permitted for men and masculine-identified people.

Denying men and masculine-identified people a full spectrum of intimacy with their friends is one of many ways toxic masculinity hurts us. And rediscovering this intimacy with my friends has been profound.

For me, having this kind of consensual physical closeness has been healing. So much of toxic masculinity relies on the idea that men and masculine people must keep others at a distance.

But why should we?

From a simple mental health perspective, I know that this kind of shared affection between friends can help us feel connected to each other and creates a sense of safety within our community.

2. Masculinity Can And Should Involve Emotional Vulnerability

Men shouldn’t cry. Men shouldn’t be emotional. Men should deal with their shit on their own time.

When I began my transition, I was fearful that I would feel pressured not to express myself or my feelings. And in the beginning, this was absolutely true.

If you browse through my Instagram, for example, you’ll see that prior to testosterone, I took many selfies while smiling – but when I started testosterone, I took pictures with more serious and standoffish faces, thinking that they made me “look more masculine.”

I didn’t even notice at first.

This insidious idea that men shouldn’t have emotions had impacted even the ways in which I took photographs of myself. I had internalized this idea that masculinity was about distance and suppressing my emotions – even joyful ones.

Encouraging men to not be emotionally vulnerable is enormously harmful.

Expecting us to push down our feelings can eat us alive, deny us valuable resources and support that we need, and often puts the emotional labor onto other folks of marginalized gender (primarily femmes) who are put into caretaking roles.

I would even venture to say that the epidemic of violence coming from primarily white men in the United States can be connected to the suppression, hostility, and aggression that is expected of them as the only legitimate avenues to asserting their masculinity.

Finding a community of queer folks that are very expressive, share their feelings and their struggles, and support one another through them has been so important in pushing back against toxic masculinity that encourages us to isolate ourselves and lash out.

I feel empowered to be around people who aren’t afraid to show vulnerability and encourage one another to reach out during difficult times.

Their sensitivity, warmth, and compassion fly in the face of everything that hegemonic masculinity has told us to be.

3. Masculinity Isn’t About Rejecting What’s Deemed ‘Feminine’

The first people to comment on my sparkly, beautiful nails were the queer men in my life. Some of them applauded how rad they looked. Some of them remarked on how they, too, needed to get theirs done.

And none of them shamed me or questioned the choice.

I once wrote an entire article about how I was fearful that being on testosterone would take away some of my favorite, more “femme” parts of who I am – and how I was determined to hold onto these things.

Toxic masculinity greatly limits the emotional range that men and masculine people can have, and it also limits our gender expression as well. At the root of this is misogyny, which privileges what we associate with masculinity over what we associate with femininity.

Often times, men and masculine people can fall into the trap of rejecting what is considered “feminine” because they feel it will affirm or legitimize their masculinity in the eyes of other people.

But well into my transition now, I am still rocking the nails, blathering on about my passion for interior design and stylish clothes, singing pop music at the top of my lungs, and crying over romantic comedies.

I don’t reject any stereotypically “feminine” aspect of myself just to cater to patriarchy. I am flipping the bird to a gender binary that says masculinity and femininity are these dual, opposing forces that, upon ever mingling, the universe will implode.

Thankfully, the universe has yet to implode from my queer, femme masculinity.

In reality, they don’t need to be in opposition, nor should one be valued over the other. In fact, femininity, masculinity, and even androgyny can be ingredients to each of our own individual, unique recipes that make up who we are and what we feel empowered by.

Or, you know… we can just ditch the binary thinking altogether and let people live.

I wouldn’t have felt like I could really be myself until I saw other queer men embodying this – a gender fluidity in which the limiting norms and rules of masculinity no longer apply – and embracing their whole selves, femininity unapologetically included.

They have rejected this binary way of thinking, refusing the “either/or” ultimatum of the gender binary (some of them, like me, even identifying as non-binary).

Seeing other men who are unafraid to fuck with gender has made me feel empowered to do the same.

4. Pushing Back Against Toxic Masculinity Means Acknowledging Our Privileges

Often times, women and other gender minorities take on the emotional burden and labor of educating men, in particular, about privilege.

It’s an unfair burden, to be sure, as folks who are on the receiving end of oppression should never be obligated to educate their oppressors, nor should privileged people feel entitled to their labor and energies.

What I’ve found so promising about the community that I’m surrounded by is that the men in my life have taken the initiative not only to have these conversations among themselves, but to act as interrupters and to educate other men and masculine people about their privilege.

One of the most eye-opening parts of transition has been seeing the ways in which I am treated differently as I move through public spaces. And in community with other queer and trans men, this has opened up many conversations about power, privilege, and interruption.

An essential part of dismantling toxic masculinity is men taking ownership over their own education around systemic inequality, and taking on the labor of educating other men about it as well.

It’s also about interrupting the manifestations of patriarchy when we see it. It’s about ensuring that marginalized folks feel safe in our spaces. It’s about being cognizant of the space that we, ourselves, take up. It’s about utilizing our power to amplify the voices of marginalized folks within our community.

It’s about tuning in when marginalized folks take the time to call us in, apologizing when we’ve fucked up, and taking ownership over our position of privilege.

And it’s definitely – definitely – about holding one another to a higher standard, calling in other men and being willing to be called in when mistakes are made. This is especially critical so that this labor is not left to people of marginalized gender who must endure microaggressions and harm to call us in.

When I identified as a cis woman long, long ago, I can remember feeling extraordinarily unsafe in groups of men, to the point where I wouldn’t be in those spaces at all.

Identifying now as a non-binary person with masculine privilege, I want to create the kinds of spaces where gender minorities can choose to be in community with me, knowing that the burden doesn’t rest on them to maintain the safety of our space.

I’m grateful that I exist in community with other folks who feel the same way.

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When I first embarked on my gender transition, I was scared of masculinity. I was scared of all that it had come to represent. I was scared of all of the toxic expectations that would fall on my shoulders.

Unpacking those expectations and doing better as a person of privilege will be an ongoing process for the rest of my life. But I’m grateful to say that in community with other queer and trans men, I’ve found a space to do this processing in a healthy way.

Surrounded by queer men who push back against hegemonic masculinity, I’ve also been able to carve out a new kind of femme masculinity for myself – one that I feel is both healing and empowering, allowing me to be my authentic and most honest self.

Communities like these, however small they may be, give me hope that a new kind of masculinity is possible – one that is nurturing, sensitive, vulnerable, self-aware, and even radical.

Knowing that it’s possible, I am committed to resisting this paradigm until it finally collapses under the weight of itself.

Because when masculinity is toxic – when it actively harms not only those who are marginalized but the oppressors themselves – it can never be sustainable.

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A version of this piece that I wrote originally appeared at Everyday Feminism.