Gender specific toys: advice column Q&A
Posted: November 19, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: advice, advice column, androgyny, emotions, family, family dynamics, gender, gender identity, genderqueer, lgbtqia, non-binary, queer, relationships, siblings 2 CommentsI came across a question and answer from a nationally syndicated advice column the other day. I read this in my local newspaper and got such a kick out of it I brought it home to share with my partner:
My 7-year-old daughter loves playing with her 13-year-old brother’s toys. She has her own toys, but she does not play with them because she said that boys’ toys are “way cooler.” I don’t know what “way cooler” means, but I would prefer my girl to play with her toys. Do you think I am wrong for thinking this way, or should I find “cooler” girl toys for my daughter to play with?
-Daddy’s Little Girl, West Orange, NJYour son’s toys will be fascinating to your daughter no matter what they are, because they belong to her big brother. Her desire to play with them shows her interest in connecting with him. Chances are, if you bought her duplicates of all of his toys, she would still choose to play with his. This could be extremely annoying to your teenage son, who is probably doing his best to grow up and be independent.
Suggest to your son that he devote some of his time playing with his sister. Enjoying a bit of her brother’s attention should help her to become less obsessive about his toys. Suggest that your son let her play with one of his toys on a regular basis as long as she agrees that she will not touch any of his other toys without his permission. Negotiating playtime and boundaries should help them to find a comfort zone.
When I read this, it felt like a tiny victory. This parent was, essentially asking what to do about the gender-anxiety-inducing situation of her offspring playing with the wrong type of toys. Should she find cooler girl toys so her daughter will be more drawn to the right ones? She wants her girl to play with girl toys.
Normally, I’d be miffed that the advice columnist didn’t address the question / concerns. But in this case, it’s so refreshing that gendered toys was not touched on whatsoever. Rightly so – seems like a non-issue. Also ignored was the impulse to buy more toys and control the daughter’s desires. Instead, the columnists focused on cultivating a good relationship between the brother and sister based around spending time together and creating boundaries. And also pointing out how the 13-year-old must feel about all of this.
It’s not about girls’ toys and boys’ toys. It’s about family dynamics and finding what’s best for everyone. The columnist gets it! Spread the sentiment!
The Transcending Gender Project Opening Exhibition
Posted: November 11, 2014 Filed under: coming out | Tags: androgyny, art, art exhibition, gender, gender identity, genderqueer, lgbtqia, photography, portraits, queer, trans, transcending gender project, transgender 4 CommentsMy partner and I attended the opening exhibition for this ongoing project that has been really gaining momentum in the last few months. Rhys Harper launched an indiegogo campaign to raise funds for a cross-country road trip this summer, photographing trans and gender-non-conforming people along the way. The results are beautiful 24X36 inch black and white portraits, along with brief bios of each subject, to illustrate who they are as people, beyond their gender identities.
To learn more about this project, (and find out how to get involved!) here is the website: The Transcending Gender Project and also a Huffington Post article and interview.
I first heard about the project in May and donated immediately to the campaign. We exchanged a few emails and then I met Rhys in person at the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference. When he asked if I’d like to get my photo taken by him, I said, “yes, definitely.” Not realizing he was taking photos right there at the conference! (I think.) I said it more as, yes, let’s set that up! D’oh, haha. Since then, we’ve been messaging further, and I’m very much hoping to be a part of this ever expanding collection of photographs which are gaining visibility and audiences!
My partner and I made a trip of it this weekend – we went to a vegan restaurant, book store, art museum, Mediterranean restaurant, and then to the event. It was a blast; nice to get out of town. The art museum portion of the day was totally bizarre and surreal. The docent seemed surprised we wanted to pay the full $5 each suggested donation. No one else was in the museum except for her and a very friendly (and bored?) security guard. Or so we thought, until we headed toward the stairway to the bottom floor – there were loud banging noises and the sounds of screaming children en masse. I just kept visualizing a stampede of school-aged children horsing around and slamming into the glass cases housing invaluable ceramics. I wasn’t too far off – it was indeed a stampede of children, but they were contained within a “play area.”
priceless ceramic piece #1
priceless ceramic piece #2
We wandered around for a solid 2 hours, and were trailed by the guard for much of that time. She made sure to let us know we could take photos of the ceramics, as long as we didn’t use flash. She pointed out some specific ones to us, commenting, “this one fools a lot of people,” etc. She asked us if we’ve ever heard a player piano before (part of one of the exhibits) and we felt obligated to follow her back into a room we’d already been in, because the piano was rolling out the music. I asked her how many times the piano kicks on per day. She said, “three or four.” There was an A/V exhibit where you could record a 10 second digital video of yourself, while manipulating special effects. So, we went ahead and did that, and playback mode shows what you just recorded, followed by everyone else’s segments… Our block was followed by 10 seconds of the guard, pacing the room at a slight distance, all pixelated and swooping (she must have recorded herself earlier in the day). It was a distorted version of our real life experience, at the art museum. It was a moment.
The gallery event was incredible. Very well attended. Lots of snacks and drinks (I usually make a bee-line for the free snacks at these kinds of things). Seeing these images (many of which I’ve seen online) on these white walls, in person, felt really powerful. There’s an Episcopal nun. A fire fighter. An ex-military person. A cat rescuer. A MMA fighter. A DJ. And so many more. I think Rhys’s project is going to go far. He’s already going far! He recognized me right away, and we talked further about my being photographed in the future. We also talked about being introverts and stuff like that. He invited us to an after-party outing which was super nice, but we politely declined (since my partner and I are such introverts. Haha.)
me and Rhys!
The opening was a joint effort with Gavin Rouille, a conceptual and graphic artist living in Minneapolis. gavinlaurencerouille.wordpress.com. If you go to his website and click on “personal” (personal work), you’ll come upon a lot of really cool visual stuff.
lots of interactive and take-away materials! (apologies for the blurriness – this stuff is all on his website as well.)
The text on the card reads: “Dear friend, I am a boy. I am sure you did not realize this when you called me, ‘lady, girl, miss, she, her, or ma’am.’ In the past I have attempted to alert people of my gender identity in advance. Unfortunately, this causes them to react to me as pushy, or socially inappropriate. Therefore, my policy is to assume people don’t make these assumptions about me, and to distribute this card when they do. I regret any discomfort my presence is causing you just as I am sure you regret the discomfort your assumptions are causing me.”
Edit: I JUST saw this: this article about Rhys’s photos was published 2 hours ago in Cosmo. (!!!)
Cosmopolitan article: 14 Beautiful Photos That Will Change How You See Gender Forever
Thoughts on getting a diagnosis
Posted: November 6, 2014 Filed under: coming out | Tags: androgyny, diagnosis, gender, gender dysphoria, gender identity, genderqueer, lgbtqia, mental health, non-binary, queer, therapy, top surgery, trans, transgender 25 CommentsLast week in therapy, I talked briefly about planning ahead for top surgery one day. I said that I might want to do this, maybe as early as this coming summer. That’s the most concrete thing I’ve ever said about the subject. She asked what some first steps would be, and I replied, “look into whether it would be covered by my insurance.” That’s kinda something that would really help frame it in my mind, the answer to that… She asked me how I’d do that, and I really floundered with the actual words I would use if I were for real making a phone call to insurance people.
It’s too sensitive and too hypothetical in my mind still, and I could barely even say, “female to male chest reconstruction surgery” out loud, just to her. She got it and said, “what you could do is find out the code for that type of surgery, and when you make the call, you can just ask about the code as opposed to using the words.” I said, ok, yes, I think I could do that. She said she would look it up for me and email me the code.
She ended up finding out a ton more info than just the code, on her own. She said certain info led to more questions and she ended up just calling. Basically, she got all the information for me, for which I am so grateful because it would have felt too emotional for me to do on my own, at this time. It is NOT covered by insurance. I’m not surprised. I told her that doesn’t change much – I’m still considering it.
We briefly talked about it again this week, and about gender identity in general. She said that some surgeons require a diagnosis of gender dysphoria for X amount of time in advance (glad she is doing the relevant research!), and should she be diagnosing me with that? This turned into a heated discussion (on my end), with the conclusion that I do not care about that, but I am OK with that, if it’s in order to help along a process. And that, again, I don’t really care to know what she is doing in that regard.
The idea of being diagnosed with a mental health label is contentious in my mind, and she knows this. She gets it. I’ll be writing about this further in my next blog post, probably next week. A teaser for what is to come: I was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 17, and held onto that belief strongly for about 6 or so years. That’s a heavy duty label to be grappling with, unnecessarily.
My therapist is not a gender therapist, but she is doing right by me more than any other therapist I’ve ever had (and some have been gender therapists). There was a time where I thought – we both thought – I would need to go to a different therapist in order to progress with any medical transition steps (I did this in order to access testosterone, kinda unnecessarily in the end). I don’t think that anymore. Why can’t she be that person? I think she is getting on board with, she can be that person. We concluded recently that a big goal for therapy is to make some progress with transgender-related issues and decisions, and I said I would send her some more general information to get her started. I sent her the following resources:
Genderqueers, Gender Rebels, and OtherWise in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey
Trans Research Blog – a compilation of what is out there
Trans Bodies, Trans Selves – a great book to have on hand
Anyone have other essential resources?
More than once, she has said, where is the data? Where is the research that says this and this and this are best practices? And I just keep responding, There needs to be more research. And I just keep shrugging. IT DOES NOT EXIST. (Yet.) I don’t know whether she believed me initially, but she may be starting to realize it by now. It’s maddening how little is out there.
Do I think that I have gender dysphoria? Whoa. That is going to take way too long to pull apart right now. That’s probably for a future post! Do I mind being diagnosed with that for the purposes of having a wider selection of surgeons to choose from if I do decide to move forward with top surgery? Not at all! It’s close enough. (Although I do strongly, strongly wish more surgeons would get on board with the informed consent model.)
Edit: Now that I think about it, I’m sure I’ve already been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by my primary care physician (for my testosterone prescription) and probably at least one other therapist. To me, it all feels so arbitrary.
Janitors in pop culture #3 / awesome film about a transwoman
Posted: November 4, 2014 Filed under: Janitorial work | Tags: film festival, gender, gender identity, getting published, janitors, lgbtqia, movie review, mtf, queer, stereotypes, therapy, trans, transgender, writing 4 CommentsI recently was at an LGBT film festival and specifically planned ahead to catch a film from Finland called Open Up To Me (Kerron Sinulle Kaiken). If you want to see it, this blog post is going to contain details you might not want to read about in advance, just a heads up!
Super highly recommend this film. It follows the life of Maarit, a transwoman, for a few months, starting at the point of her last appointment with her gender therapist – the tone of that first scene, the therapist’s farewell message, is: now spread your wings and fly. Maarit had been forced through a lot of sacrifices in the process of becoming who she is. She is separated from her wife and estranged from her teenaged daughter (we get the sense the daughter is open and figuring this out for herself; it is the mother who is standing in the way.) She has moved away from where she once lived and worked as a school social worker. She now leads a lonely existence and works as a janitor within a huge office building.
There are only two or three scenes where she is depicted at her work (and it’s just her coming and going. Loading a van, pushing a cart full of supplies). The story is not about that work, other than utilizing it as a plot device for somewhere she has landed and is unhappy about. She (understandably) yearns to get back into her chosen profession of helping people as soon as possible. She wants this so badly that she ends up posing as a therapist (through a series of misunderstandings) while on the job.
Which brings me to a reason I loved this film… It falls back on some unpleasant tropes common to trans characters in the media, but it ends up twisting them and rising above those ideas, to portray Maarit as a very human, very real, complex, well… person.
Transperson as deceitful: Although Maarit deceives someone about her profession (and she quickly comes clean), she never once is attempting to deceive anyone about her transgender status. She is proud, self-assured, and upfront with those around her (on an as-needed basis), even in the face of speculation and slander, discrimination, and violence.
Transperson as hypersexual: Maarit is not portrayed as a hypersexual person. It is clear that she is looking for intimacy, emotional connections, and a long-term partner. Instead, some of the characters around her are hypersexualizing her, and that seems more about them and their own issues, rather than who she actually is as a person. The film makes this very clear.
Transperson as dangerous and/or tragic: Maarit is in a very difficult place (there are other aspects of her life that have fallen apart. I won’t give away every detail!) and there are certainly scenes where she is in over her head, where she is compromised, where she seems desperate. It feels realistic – it very much seems that some choices she makes are due to (and only due to) being pushed so far into a corner, and she’s just trying to find her way back to where she can live her life. Those choices are not about who she is, inherently. It’s circumstantial. Some of these scenes, although hard to watch, feel triumphant at the same time. For example, at one point, she is attacked by an ex-lover. She ends up punching him in the face and ending the attack. Awesome.
I’m so glad LGBT film festivals exist – opportunities to get out there and see films I wouldn’t have heard about otherwise. This year, I saw this one, and another trans-specific one (52 Tuesdays – sadly, I didn’t enjoy this one all that much. It felt overly melodramatic, the characters didn’t feel believable.) My partner and I have gone to other films over the years, and it’s interesting that it always seems like there’s films for men and films for women. We’ve been to films before where we’re the only ones in the theater who are not cis-men (that’s an assumption, of course, but over and over again, it has been very much divided, and it is so bizarre to me.) At these two films (which were both well attended), there was a very diverse cross-section. I liked that.
Also, the film festival puts out an annual literary anthology, and this year’s theme was personal pronouns. I submitted, and my piece was accepted! I’m now officially published, in an actual book with an ISBN # and everything!!!
The piece was a re-working of these two blog posts:
While I was “out,” part 2 – partly out of the closet, fully out of the loop
While I was “out,” part 3 – coming back
Hey Halloween! (how costumes fit into our lives)
Posted: October 29, 2014 Filed under: Writing | Tags: anxiety, college, gender identity, genderqueer, Halloween, lgbtqia, non-binary, queer, relationships, trans, transgender, women's studies, writing 5 CommentsHappy almost Halloween! I thought I’d celebrate by digging deep into my writing archives to see if I could find something festive. It may not be all that festive, but it does seem apt – I found something I wrote 12 years ago, on Halloween day, that touches on gender identity, costumes, and anxiety.
A little back story for what is to follow: I was a Junior in college, and I was taking an awesome class called Imagining Herself, a cross-class between Women’s Studies and English Literature. The book list was from some Gender Studies Dream Team (for 2002, at least):
Leslie Feinberg – Stone Butch Blues
Riki Anne Wilchins – Read My Lips
Zora Neale Hurston – Dust Tracks on a Road
Kate Bornstein – Gender Outlaw
Audre Lorde – Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
And others that I can’t remember anymore. Unfortunately, I didn’t read these books (well, I’d already read Stone Butch Blues on my own). I couldn’t. I was having some major depressive issues, which really put a damper on what I was capable of doing. I hadn’t told any professors I needed help yet, but I would be doing so in the very near future. The professor’s name was Katrina (not her real name). I sort of had a girlfriend at the time, whom I’ll refer to as “girlfriend?” Question mark, because I was never clear on whether we were actually together. Girlfriend? had been in this class the semester before me, so the professor had a clear memory of her.
Here’s what I wrote on Halloween, 12 years ago:
_________________________________
More than ever, I became terribly anxious in Imagining Herself today. I think because we were discussing Stone Butch Blues, and I felt like I was supposed to be adding to the discussion, yet I couldn’t say anything. I’m one of five people in class who are potentially VERY focused on issues raised in that book. These other classmates all contributed a lot. I contributed nothing. I just couldn’t. Katrina even brought attention to me because of the zines I’ve been handing in for my project. She wanted me to talk about some of the stuff.
“[Janitorqueer’s] been doing these amazing zines,” she told the class. I felt like I was in elementary school again, simultaneously hoping for and fearing any kind of attention. “Can you share with us your thoughts about what you’ve been writing about, after reading through Stone Butch Blues again?” I hadn’t read through Stone Butch Blues again. I hadn’t yet read ANY of the books for class. I feel guilty and like a fraud. I stared straight ahead. Said, ” … um … ” in almost a whisper. My mind was totally blank. Why does this happen? She acknowledged my discomfort by asking me if we should just move on. I said, “yeah.”
I thought I might cry. How awful would that have been. I tuned out completely to avoid that scene, and that worked really well. I came back to reality within a few minutes. But for the rest of class, all I wanted to do was grab all of my stuff and run out of the room … go and hide. I have this urge often in class, but it’s never been THIS intense. Sometimes I want to slip through the edge of the floor, but not today. I just wanted to explode out, to escape.
Girlfriend? was brought up during the discussion! We were talking about clothing and performance, and Katrina asked me, “You know [your girlfriend?], right?” I nodded. Because I referred to girlfriend? a few times in my zines, she must have made the connection. Then she addressed the class. “Girlfriend? uses clothes as a performance all the time. She is always playing … she’ll wear goth, hello kitty, Ragedy Ann (girlfriend? prefers to call this one “Bag Lady”) … and when she came into class the day people were instructed to wear particularly masculine or feminine clothing, something different than normal, she said that this isn’t any different for her than any other day because she’s always playing. She feels comfortable dressing extremely masculine and/or feminine.”
A classmate asked, “Did she have pink hair for a while last year?” and I nodded, yes. “Oh, ok, I had a class with her. She is really interesting.” Katrina: “Yeah, she’s very bright.” Classmate: “Political Science major?” I nodded again.
I don’t think I’ve ever thought of girlfriend?’s incredible attention to clothing as “playing.” I thought of it as this valley girl thing she does. This thing which is sometimes tedious and sometimes fun and goofy. (She is really excited about creating me as a goth girl for Halloween.) To look at it as a carefully planned out form of play makes me respect it much more. I feel proud that I “know” her. I feel especially tender toward her, or something, ah, I don’t know! Anyway …”
________________________________________
I remember that Halloween. She dressed me up in her clothing and did my hair and make-up. I liked it. She was dressed as a school-girl gone wrong, or something to that effect. It was a really warm night, and we kind of just walked around a lot, stopping in at this party and that party, maybe acquaintances of hers. (I had no idea. As per usual, I was out of it, dissociating.)
It makes me think about all the things we can be expressing with our clothing choices, gender-wise and otherwise. And although Halloween costumes are extremes, all sorts of outfits can be seen as “costumes.” Getting dressed up in formal wear? Costume. Even business casual? Still, costume. Work out clothes? Total costume. If it’s not a t-shirt, hoodie, button-up shirt (mostly flannel), jeans, corduroys (or gym shorts, sweat pants for lounging around), hiking boots, or skater shoes, to me, it feels like a costume. Which isn’t a bad thing at all! Costumes have their times and places – I love costumes! But I will not compromise and wear clothing that does not allow me to feel like myself, when that’s all I wanna be.
Another blog writer covers some similar concepts, here – Becoming Hope: Masks
Oh, and completely coincidentally, this year I’m going as a goth boy for Halloween.
What’s your take on costumes?
I keep thinking I’m bigger and more masculine than I actually am
Posted: October 21, 2014 Filed under: Janitorial work | Tags: androgyny, gender, gender identity, genderqueer, janitors, lgbtq, non-binary, queer, school, testosterone, trans, transgender, work 10 CommentsI’m not complaining; it’s not a bad thing! My surroundings sort of facilitate this, which is fine by me. As a janitor at an elementary school, I spend most of my time, during the work-week, with women and children (if I’m with anyone at all). Every teacher I interact with regularly is relatively feminine in her attire, mannerisms, and speech. (There are a handful of men who teach / work at this school; I just don’t happen to see them on a regular basis.) Every child running around me getting ready to head home for the day, is tiny. I wear a work uniform which is super masculine by default. (Like, we don’t have “women’s uniforms” and “men’s uniforms.” We just have uniforms.) In addition to the uniform, I wear men’s pants and men’s hiking boots. I imagine my movements are relatively masculine. I’m working, I’m using big, sweeping motions. I saunter around slowly, sometimes with my hiking boots untied.
I am surrounded all day long by tiny furniture. The classrooms I clean are for kindergarteners through 2nd graders. (My co-worker cleans the bigger kids’ rooms.) Some of these table tops are seriously 2 feet off the ground. I have to essentially bend in half in order to spray and wipe them all down, daily. (My poor back!)
Not an actual room I clean, but a good representation.
I’m only 5’4″ (or maybe a little shorter than that. I like to think I’m 5’4″ – I’m at least that with my hiking boots on!) but I feel like a giant! Sometimes I sit down in the teeny tiny chair at the teeny tiny table and just catch my breath / think / relax. It’s sorta like I’m in a fun house, where my self-perception is distorted because of my surroundings.
It’s tough to get your knees to fit under the table. Again, not actual school/teacher/kids, but a good representation.
I like this feeling a lot. It helps me feel more like the way I see myself. The only tough thing about it is when I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror (this happens at home too, it’s not just a work thing) and I realize how tiny and feminine I actually am! I seem to especially hone in on my neck, for whatever reason – it’s so dainty and slender and like it could snap right in half so easily. My wrists too; it feels like my hands could snap off at any time. These feelings don’t really translate into me feeling like I should be taking more testosterone and becoming more masculine. They’re just sorta… fleeting, at least for the time being.
Another thing that’s going on at work that’s somewhat related is: age. The kids stay the same; the parents stay the same. (Not really of course. Kids grow up. I just mean I’m perpetually surrounded by kids and parents around the same ages, they cycle through, while I get older and older.) I used to be the youngest person who worked at the school, for years. Now, there’s a teacher who is younger than me. When did that happen?! (It happened last year.) Also, parents keep looking younger and younger. Many of them are, in fact, younger than me now, which is a shift. In fact, just yesterday, a parent recognized me from high school. She was in a grade below me. It was super weird!
It’s just not the same as it used to be: kids and parents these days!
Can hormones change my sexual orientation?
Posted: October 1, 2014 Filed under: Testosterone | Tags: demisexual, gay, gender, gender identity, genderqueer, lesbian, lgbt, lgbtqia, queer, relationships, sexual orientation, testosterone, trans, transgender 13 CommentsThis was a huge reservation for me, before I started testosterone. I had read enough personal accounts and spoken to enough friends that I had this somewhat common narrative in my mind: someone who is FTM was primarily attracted to women before starting hormones. Orientation then opened up / shifted, and this person now is attracted to both / all genders, or is now more attracted to men, or even exclusively attracted to men. One common idea surrounding this is that the person always was attracted to men (if even just on a subconscious level), but could not fathom being intimate with a man, while being seen as a woman. Another related idea is that the person identifies so strongly with being queer, that once he is finally perceived as a man, a new type of queer identity is now possible – one that may have been appealing all along.
OK – I’m done with the generalizing! It’s super uncomfortable for me to paint broad strokes and write about a hypothetical person in such a detached manner. I just wanted to get some initial thoughts down, some type of framework in which to plug my own narrative into. Whether these ideas are all that accurate or common is largely beside the point. The important part is that they were looming large for me. I had some serious fears about it.
While I was coming out (sort of?) as a lesbian (sort of?) in my late-teens, I was mostly just befuddled. I didn’t really understand physical and sexual attraction. I thought I was probably just a late bloomer. Now I understand that I’m probably a demisexual. Although this (somewhat recent) revelation is fascinating, I don’t feel a strong attachment to this label or a strong need to figure out my sexual orientation in all ways, shapes, and forms. It never caused me to feel much of a disconnect from others. I mean, I generally felt a lot of disconnect from others, but I didn’t look to my sexuality as a way to figure out why that was. It’s kinda, meh, for me… Fascination, and not a whole lot more. (Which is interesting because I usually love love love picking things apart! Haha.)
I’m gonna jump over a whole bunch of years and land somewhere in my late 20s. I’d been with my partner (she is a cisgender female, for the most part) for about 4 years at this point, and we were experiencing a long-term lull. We weren’t connecting. Everything felt dulled, foggy, I think for both of us (for different reasons). I was feeling more and more drawn to guys, all around me, and could not sort out whether that was because I needed to be a guy, or if it was a sexual orientation thing (again, the lack of the physical attraction part was confusing. It was more of a cerebral thing.)
I kind of decided that it was both. I fantasized about a totally different life, where I was a guy, and I was with a hypothetical guy. However, I did not want to break up with my partner. I strongly felt that the tough place we were in was circumstantial and situational, and that we could work our way through it. I wanted to work our way through it. I wondered if a big key to working our way through it was: for me to transition. I felt this heavy burden of a circuitous fear: I need to transition in order to get out of this place and improve our relationship; if I start transitioning, my gut is telling me that I will be even more drawn to guys, and I will want to end our relationship in order to pursue that.
I vividly recall, at one point, completely breaking down and telling her, while crying, that I was attracted to masculinity. She didn’t seem surprised, or threatened; she didn’t shut down. She stayed there with me, in that moment, and replied, “one of the many pitfalls of being in a queer relationship.” I appreciated that reply so much, in the moment. It felt like relief. Sometimes, I make things overly-fraught; she brings it back down to earth.
She has since elaborated that she did indeed feel the heaviness of the situation. Although we weren’t talking about all of this directly at the time, she recently told me that she knew. And that she was going to support me in transitioning (whatever that looked like to me) unconditionally, at the risk of losing me along the way. Wow.
While trying to sort that out, some life changes occurred that vastly improved things. My partner got a new job, we shifted our approach to friendships, I went back to therapy. Our relationship improved by leaps and bounds.
It was about two more years before I really found myself at that crossroads of needing to try testosterone (although I no longer planned to transition in that common-narrative way). That fear was still there. Although it felt like we had a solid foundation to work from, I worried, would things shift between my partner and me? Would I start to be drawn exclusively to men? Where would that lead us? I started testosterone anyway.
Testosterone has changed things for me, but not in those ways I feared. I’m attracted to my partner and also I’m attracted to men. Sometimes I’m attracted to women; mostly, I’m attracted to androgyny and effemininity (effeminate men). I don’t know what that all adds up to; I just call it “queer.” The nature of attraction feels a little less cerebral, and a little more physiological than before. I like that. I think I still fall under the category of demisexual, for sure, but it does feel different. My partner and I talk about all of it. None of it is threatening to her. None of it feels worrisome to me. It’s all just puzzle pieces, that, although not straightforward or common, make more sense to me than my sexuality has ever made sense before.
When No Gender Fits: Washington Post Article
Posted: September 24, 2014 Filed under: coming out | Tags: androgyny, article, coming out, gender, gender identity, genderqueer, lgbt, lgbtqia, media, non-binary, queer, trans, transgender 17 CommentsAbout five months ago, I did a phone interview with Monica Hesse of the Washington Post, as a potential candidate for an upcoming article about non-binary genders. She was planning on spending a few days with the person / people she selected; it wasn’t just a matter of chatting with her over coffee. It sounded really intensive and potentially uncomfortable at times. I thought the interview went well, and I talked to my partner about the possibility of her hanging around with us for a while. My partner was game. I was game.
I got back to her with a few reservations: When might this be, exactly? (I really love being able to plan ahead.) And, would you be coming to my work?!! (I am not out at work as non-binary, and I could not fathom her being there with me, at all.) She assured me that it was not a necessary part of her article, and it’d totally depend on who she ended up going with and what everyone was comfortable with. She seemed well versed in trans issues and understood the need for partial anonymity or a potentially incomplete story.
She had a lot more phone interviews to get through, and as we messaged back and forth, it became clear her interest in me was waning. I was pretty bummed. It sounded like something I was ready to challenge myself with! Of course, the disappointment faded with time. I’ve been looking forward to catching the finished article. Here it is!!!
When No Gender Fits: A Quest to Be Seen as Just a Person
I think this article is really well done. It covers important ground: pronouns, the internal isolation such an identity can bring (when society has no starting point for understanding), family and friend relationships, coming out issues. There is nothing sensational or hyped up about it – the reporter seems well informed and sensitive.
A major thing struck me. This article is about a very young person. Kelsey is 18 years old. They are at a completely different life stage than I am at. The article follows them over the entire summer. It appears that the reporter spent many many days with Kelsey, over a matter of 4 months or so. We get a glimpse into what’s going on, as they have concerns about clothing. As they have difficult conversations with their mom. As they go to a therapy appointment to discuss the possibilities of going on a low dose of testosterone. As they talk about teenaged things with their teenaged friends. As they meet someone they found through OKCupid, for the first time in person. As they pack up and plan for life at college.
“They will go to college. They will study engineering. They will get a job. They will find a partner and make a home. They will begin with finding a T-shirt.” This quote sums up the tone of the article.
Had I been the subject, it would have been nothing like this at all. I’ve been to college (glad that’s over with!!!). I have a job. I have a partner. We have made a home. I have a T-shirt. In fact, I have many T-shirts. Haha.
This story is no doubt important. However (and I’m definitely biased here, bordering on ageist maybe) I think it’s really really necessary that there are representations of older, established non-binary people. It’s not just a young people’s thing. (Not to imply that young people will be growing out if it – they won’t be!) I just mean that it’s not just something someone is focusing on at the time when they are naturally growing into their identities, just at the beginning of starting new chapters of their lives. There is, relatively speaking, a lot of representations (if even just online only) of young people, starting to question and figure these things out.
Gender identity issues are multi-generational. They are lifelong, and they come with different sets of challenges at different stages in life. I hope more media outlets will start jumping on the bandwagon (in respectful ways!) and more articles will pop up, with more frequency, soon. And that those articles will focus on other identities within non-binary genders, and different age brackets, different ethnic backgrounds, different socioeconomic backgrounds, etc.
And if I’m not seeing it, I’ve toyed with the idea of writing my own article, here. Like, pretending I am a reporter, looking in. Look for that in the near future, maybe!
janitorqueer 