Month: September 2017

snel hest

Came across some interesting phrasings, thought some about them, would reiterate conclusions to myself. Politically and socially (which is politically) I seek the abolishment of sex as a separating factor. At the same time, it remains for some reason that on an emotional level, I cannot help but recognize and construct gender around sex, and to be affected by my own placement in the resulting scheme. So it remains that my proper gendering – empty of stereotype or not as I may choose to make it from moment to moment – is the one way I know can reliably improve things for me.

The exact steps I take to do so in body and thought and network and nexus and society as a whole depend on what is available. At this point in time and space I am privileged. Given how we move this world, and given what is there for me to access, there is quite a lot I can do to take this path of transition, and so I take those steps. If they are complex (e.g. public discourse being made to recognize also self-identified gender, medical intervention, and so forth), it is because that which is available to me as tools for transitioning is complex; this complexity is no weakness of my transition path. Who am I to stare a gift horse in the mouth, after all?

So for said gift horse, the way my medical insurance works is that doctors send me bills. I send them on to the weird clearing house that handles the insurance and they pay it. Alternately I send on receipts and get reimbursed. I think they don’t cover any cosmetic treatments as a rule, which is one reason I needed a diagnosis sooner rather than later, to be able to point to medical necessity. As I wrote earlier, I decided not to wait but to pay for facial laser myself. So when I went for that treatment, which was at the same time as my mole removal surgery, I asked they make separate bills so I could pass only the one on.

Now as it turns out, they just sent a big summary bill with various items listed. This seemed an issue as it might bounce at the clearing house. But at the same time, it lists briefly some weird statements on hypertrichosis and ingrown hairs, implying this was why laser was done. So that gets odd too.

In the end now I just sent the thing on to the clearing house. In the worst case they will get back to me and ask I pay the laser parts separately. In the best case, they regard those statements as proof of medical necessity and just pay it. We’ll see how it goes. In the latter case, it would end up countering the issue of the time it takes to diagnose, and then perhaps diagnosis is done (inshallah) by the time I want to start hormones.

on phoric continua

Every now and then I encounter perspectives where my disagreement is relevant. Sometimes I will dump responses here, rather than go down the additional social complication of arguing forever with the person. My thoughts get better anchored by writing them out.

Noted a transgender voice with some various core claims problematic to me, chiefly that there is a strict distinction between needs and desires, that only gender dysphoria causing significant distress is a true need for transition, and that access to transition should be restricted to people experiencing it. The obvious counterpoint being, there is no obvious zero point in terms of happiness or functioning. This is equally true for most physical or mental health conditions where happiness or functioning are impaired. An injured athlete may still be faster than I am, yet we would have no qualms treating her as injured and in need of care. Similarly, happiness and functioning on a scale of perceived or reported gender dysphoria or euphoria will compound individual baselines, potentials, and coping strategies all together. The same underlying mechanisms may become apparent as an unhappiness that will kill unless treated in one person, and as the potential for greater flourishing still in another.

Honestly, I have always rejected the needs versus wants distinction out of philosophical conviction, but my emotions surrounding it also reflects thinking – even long ago – about these sorts of situations, about how individuals must be allowed to define their own utility measures and therefor also their needs versus wants thresholds. And this is not just splitting hairs. I could live without sight or hearing or touch or taste or mobility or sexual function or much intelligence, without self-realization, without pride or companionship. Do I really need those things then? Don’t I just want them, if I would still seek to stay alive without them? Seeing needs and wants as separate kinds of yearnings is absurd.

That said, this person had a pragmatic baseline relating to triage and priorities. They oppose changing diagnosis requirements from requiring significant distress, because if that is not intrinsic to recognized trans alignment, then, they argue, states and healthcare providers will easily be able to deny transition help. Here my counterpoint would be: the potential for relative improvement can be kept as a necessary requirement for accessing this care, whereas the extent to which this improvement starts from a dark enough place can be used as a sufficient requirement for prioritizing public use of funds to do so. I don’t see this as likely to end up reducing access to care; elective cosmetic surgery has not drained insurance support for reparative such, for example, nor does increasing access by self-perceived gender euphoria-driven transitioners to medical intervention seem to have reduced access to those treatments for those driven by what they describe as dysphoria.

That too all said, I realize more things about myself in these ruminations. This really matters to me. While I cannot know precisely how, it is apparently very important to me that I can transition. It seems like I am reducing a form of indirect dysphoria, which when considered as such is certainly not small in terms of its impact on my life. I just tend to doubt everything, so it is hard to pin it down, prove that this actually is the most adequate description of what I feel. This is why I took this year now to check what I feel persistently, and to experiment more subtly. But if I am right, and others certainly have similar stories, then this sort of experience does describe dysphoria masked by coping strategies and seen against an individual baseline.

The second realization: ultimately, I don’t care. In my non-transitioned identity, it would be hard for me to see myself as a person, not just the backdrop of the perceived world, so considering my own needs and wants as valid in and of themselves, when in conflict with anything political, has been difficult. From that perspective, the spectre of harming others statistically, whether by appropriating “truetrans” identities and somehow running the risk of reducing access to treatment, or by luring innocent young questioning-but-cis people into taking steps they later will imperfectly detransition from, that might have been enough for me to deny myself transition steps, at least partly. It may have been one reason why I stayed seeing myself as agender for so long, really.

But after coming to consider that some of my darkness could be dysphoric in nature, and trying things that let me see what may be an experential gender identity for me (i.e. perceived sameness or otherness with gendered virtual or actual persons, embodied) and finding this is euphoric, that is producing a change. When I know myself as woman, I know that I personally matter, and I find that I am ready to disregard that spectre of statistical harm. It’s not that it doesn’t matter. But it’s that I also really do matter to me, and I will to what I strongly yearn to. Whether I call that a need or a want is complicated and situational and perhaps not so important. I will do what I yearn to, and I feel liberated by this insight.

the laser healing process

It’s odd how it goes. The past few days have the burnt sections looking like they’re bruised, shaving gets weird and it resembles acne/eczema. I have been at my conference, with morning skin regime now being: cleanser, moisturizer, day cream, sunblock, primer, foundation, concealer, powder, fixation, and it looks good as a result. Really curious (hopeful?) though on seeing how it gets once this iteration has concluded.

I wonder how obvious I was at the conference? Yes, there is makeup (subtle though) and body language. And I told some people I am trans, and alluded to more when we discussed relevant topics (”that would be a very interesting study to conduct in a population of people undergoing hormonal sex transition, don’t you think?”). But on the other hand, most people don’t actually have a conception of this as something which could happen.

People using male pronouns grate more and more though it does not quite hurt. Two people seemed vaguely interested in me though I can never tell, really. Spent time in saunas feeling bodily happy by being in an environment of accepted nudity and noting the smoothness of my skin given hair removal, noting the need to learn more persistent such techniques also for non-face areas.

Anyways. The world continues. And I too.

rest your head

Content notification: This post involves me partially gushing over things that I am happy for. That means things which also are blatant expressions of privilege. Some things came about through some effort on my part, but the time and space and peace and spoons to make that effort, like many of the other things, were given to me by luck or accident or predictable unfairnesses. I’ll write about it nonetheless.

Starting out with relatively too little sleep. Popping a caffeine pill, I went through my list of concerns – as usual, doing so twice – and were stuck on some subset of topics. In brief, that is asking myself how I distinguish morally between three types of situation as compared to three other types, with respect to whether or not an intermediate unfairness resulting from an intervention will trigger the weighting scheme I apply in terms of utility estimation of actions to unfairnesses resulting from more action-proximate outcomes or not. It probably has to do with whether or not the same set of entities/demographics eventually reach a fair outcome at the end of the chain.

This is too complicated for me to easily bear in mind all at once, or to complete in any sitting, but I felt confused over the entire issue. This is usually how my spirals of anxiety start, since for a long time I have needed these crutches. Specifically, needing to know that no matter what, I have a perfectly consistent system of ethics that I know I stand behind, which is parsimonious, and which makes it clear that under all circumstances, my actions when in line with this system of ethics match my politics and the placement of myself in the world that I am comfortable with. Threats to the consistency or clarity of this system are existential and trigger anxiety attacks, time lost to brooding, feelings of absolute lack of safety or grounding. This is why I have spent so much time and effort over the years – the past few, contained to some time of daily ritual brooding – because without this certainty of being on the right track, at least conceptually, in the final equation, is dark panic.

The reason I suspect this is dysphoria is that when I reaffirm my decision to transition (have I made one? apparently!), as I did this morning when I could not quite grasp and resolve the thoughts about the moral system, then the urgency drains from the concern. If I understand myself as truly, actually, really a woman, then it feels as though I can deal with the world no matter what these ruminations would yield, I would be able to be OK even if I was wrong about something. I still care about the issue, but I can let it go without feeling as though there is a dangerous predator behind my back, without feeling as though I have been poisoned and need to get antidote. So I did, and I packed my bags, and I went to my second laser appointment.

This day I needed to catch a train at 13.14. I am on it now, heading to the mountains for a conference. My workload for the journey involves finalizing and practicing my talk (based on a recently accepted Nature paper), making progress on a major grant application, and various communication/planning/garbage related to upcoming meetings and other projects. This is partially hampered by phone reception being awful along the way, not having a seat reservation on a packed train, and not having good electrical outlets, but I am coping best I can and not recognizing failure as an option. But regardless, this had me somewhat stressed waiting at 11 for the treatment. In the waiting room was, I think, also the second other trans girl I have recognized in this little town. She might have been cis but I don’t think so, though she was cute. If so, presumably there for the same reason I was. We kept ourselves busy with our phones. After 40 minutes it was my turn.

This time I asked for higher laser settings and the dermatologist, Eris bless her botoxed heart, smilingly complied. She kept asking though if it was OK, because I still would flinch and tear up – unlike last time when the laser hit some places. Taking a little longer between places probably would have reduced the compounded pain intensity, but also have prolonged things, so all fine. I cannot not respond to the pain, but I can consent to having it continue, to endure. Now once more I smell of burnt bacon, and have little burn marks like blackheads. The pain went quickly and now I am merely tender and sunscreened. Tomorrow I can wear makeup again, though it will look like my shave was bad. I wonder so if anyone will notice, or ask, giving me opportunities to come out?

Still have that playlist one of my partners made for me for surgery, still using it for such purpose, laser included. Had time really only for the one song, that being this one: [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqsVFqk2NFw ], as I felt the beams. Laser goes fast. And stings so much worse in some places than others, weird.

Went a long detour to try a drink perhaps the most me one can become at this point – soymilk pumpkin spice latte with regular dairy whipped cream – which I’d been wondering about. Then on train. Gradually reconciling with the lack of internet connection – seriously, how can this be the developed world? What could matter more than reliable high-speed internet, why are there meaningless countryside regions lacking it, what purpose could they possible serve without it? – and hoping to gather up strength enough to start doing the work I must get done. I will, and it will go well.

I read that new cycles of follicles come to replace the old ones, so each region needs multiple laser waves. But so far, after 14-21 days of expelling dead hair, the regions zapped first around remain smooth. And now, probably more such regions will come, perhaps there will for a while just be thin strips between them where I need to shave. Still no chance of passing as beardless, yet. But getting closer, actually getting closer. And I see some angles of my face, when in the right mirrors. There is some of my mother there. There is more than I like of my paternal grandmother, how she might have looked in another life, still handsome rather than beautiful, but at least there some idea, some direction.

Met with an agent of some company the other day. Fairly useless meeting. She dressed maybe like I would want to, if I could find a way to there. Her arms were adorable – slight but still muscular from her taekwondo. I wish I could carry that look, I felt broad-shouldered and clumsy walking next to her, and also aware that losing musculature is my best bet for shoulder thinning, which is harder to combine with what she had going. But I’ll worry about all such things only when later that becomes an issue. One small step at a time. Right here and right now I am somewhat at peace, I am at peace in something approaching personhood, I am realizing myself in as many ways I can.

minor randomness high and low

So for the shallow stuff, I found I can order panties that fit me online (XL high-leg brief variants from Victoria’s Secret). They arrived. They fit my shrinking pre-op, pre-HRT body. I am glad of this, because it means I don’t have to either wear uncomfortable panties, wear men’s underwear and feel dark and sad over that because it feels like self-invalidation, or do laundry all the time.

Further shallowness, discovered I can do things with subtle nude and red eyeshadow in an everyday setting. Combined with the nude lipstick and the rose-metallic nail polish it’s probably the most feminine I have gone to work. I assume people react, but I don’t know how close they must come to conclude that the face stuff indeed is makeup.

Then last, just to remind you, this all crap is not all that I am. This is one area of my life only, and it is ultimately a minor one. My science, my loves, my friendships and families, my interests and hobbies and kinks and explorations, those are bigger parts of my life (though my gender inflects them). I just don’t transition in the same way in those regards, so I don’t have a need to write about them here. Peace. :*

need and use for sex nomenclature

Some voices – apparently mostly TERF-aligned ones – remark that while gender as a term is fine to let loose to allow self-identification (and so to trans people), sex is not. These would describe a trans man as female but still a man, for example. These people state it so with the perspective that the terms then alloted to sex are needed in order to describe phenomena – medical states and states of oppression – which build on top of sex in the sense of chromosomal sex, or anatomical sex, or the sex-but-really-gender of having been recognized since birth to have some particular set of genital anatomes. The claim then is that loss of this word link deprives us of the ability to do education and activism on these issues.

What this perspective misses is that virtually all word use in such settings either can be explicitly made statistical in nature, or can be implicitly assumed to be so intended. A statement such as, many females experience recurring urinary tract infections, this is a statistical statement. Whether or not it is true of the transwoman minority (for those who had bottom surgery, presumably it is!), it is true of the ciswoman majority and so unaffected by the former. Nor would I expect a trans woman to feel excluded from it, even if she is not one of those “many females”, for the statement does not condition her female status on urinary tract infections. We can keep on: lack of access to birth control and menstrual hygiene products lead to many females in the developing world dying each year. Many males die of prostate cancer because their socialization does not prepare them to seek medical care in time. Many females are murdered by the males they live with.

This is not neutering the language (setting aside for the moment the issue with that idiom itself). This depowers no activism, hampers no dialog, prevents no education. The only ones for whom this understanding of the terms for sex as being birth assignment-only are necessary, seems like it would have to be those who want to be sure that they can make 100% categorical statements: all males do this, all females experience this, maleness by definition requires this, femaleness by definition implies this. What sort of activism needs the capacity to speak in categorical rather than statistical terms? Not the sort of activism that I or my allies do.

screens

Visible bra straps at least appears to be a reliable way to get to be security checked female, from latest observations. Otherwise, lots of “sir”:ing. Very well, this is how it currently is like. Came to understand somehow that my presently feeling quite well, seems to be mechanistically driven to some extent by having come to start actually see myself as female, in how I understand various situations and interactions, helped by external cues and by the actions of others, and so on. The flip side is that this also means expecting the associated cues to be present. A few months ago I could just ignore the hair on my arms or belly, for example, or ignore the symbolism and labeling of using a male-coded facility. Now I am coming to feel those things, because expectations build, and this is intrinsically linked to the strategy for greater safety and calmness I am building up by adjusting my alignment. I am curious on where it will go. I hope to be as brave as I want. I know I can be.

New laser appointment next week, eager for that. In a few more sessions, then perhaps I might even begin to pass some (problematic as though the term is blah blah)?

turmoil updating further

On the topic of S doubting herself and dissecting all her thoughts and wants and feelings, we’ve had more of that. Some significant part – perhaps a major part – of my feelings of needing to belong with women conceptually probably does bottom in feelings about _how_ women and men stereotypically are, rather than _who_ they are. The fear that comes unbidden would be somehow that if it was only the former, then somehow I could equally assuage my conceptual dysphoria by unlearning stereotypes and establishing myself as a feminine man, which would be a less costly path (for myself and my loved ones) than transitioning. Yet to the extent I even am aware of my emotions in the first place, it seems to me that this is a scary thought, that anything which keeps me away from “really” being (even a trans) woman is scary and painful. So the response itself may suggest something about my underlying needs.

I feel I should inspect things clearly if I can. Part of the whole idea of this, I realize, is that I am so tired of having to defend concepts to protect myself. I want to be able to just be open to the world whatever it might contain, to be able to live free without any need of bias in any assessments. That is one way of being true to myself as I always have valued myself. And for whatever reason, I genuinely feel that unless I am woman rather than man, with nothing keeping me different from those who are women, the world is somehow not tolerable to be fully open to. Accepting myself as woman withut question – even one so androgynous as I usually am – makes it possible to at least accept the world, either way.

This could still be something derived mostly or wholly from me navigating the memeplexes of gender (plus this odd nebulous part of being within the body and caring for the body or not which I can’t know to what extent it relates to my gynephilia or possible minor functional spectral properties). But if it was something I could circumvent by building an identity as a feminine man, or if I could decide to function as agender without changing my body or social position, then surely all the attempts I have made at that for decades now would have worked? I have tried this. It made things tolerable, it allowed me to cope and live and realize other areas of myself. But the conceptual anxiety of my mental fortress is there, and it really has grown worse over time.

As the last time I asked these questions, about two months ago, in the end it amounts to the same conclusion. I can’t know if I have no choice or not. It could be my prenatal hormonal environment skewed gross or fine brain structures so that I never could have been happy and anchored understood as a man. Or it could be that there were paths to get there, where different socialization processes had made me be fine with it. Either way, where and as I am now, I have a choice between a neutral existence bounded by OCD-like processes for keeping anxiety at bay, or a supremely uncertain transition path that may or may not let me just feel I am a person, not just some sort of cloud continuously encircling and judging and assessing the world, anchored in a utilitarian fleshly probe.

I’ve apparently tried to build life so that the costs can be minimized, aiming to reach a point where transitioning raises as few eyebrows as possible, hurts me as little as possible, hurts my loved ones as little as possible. If I can make such a low-cost transition, and take it step by step, trying each in turn – going into serious androgyny, then if I wish going out on the other side within femininity, then based there, be free to move in expression spaces as I wish, as femme or tomboy either way, this is what I want, what I will try. I know that I am not like some, for whom this is a choice between transition or suicide, nor do I match Blanchardian stereotypes of androphile young transitioners. There was no crossdressing at age four, as far as I know.

But what I do believe in is agency, and in taking control over one’s life and one’s place within social constructs, and in the supremacy of the will over biology. That ethos and pathos is mine, and alongside it, a need which I feel more and more keenly, a hope, a wish, a faith. Tearing up again writing this on the train, smudging my makeup. I will be the witch it is my human birthright to be.

some forward motion

Heading back from second therapy meeting. Really not feeling questioned by this one, it’s almost as though she is trying to be open-minded, honest and do a good job… well, we will see. I continue presenting as I have, in the sense of, highlighting the version of my narrative which is least doubt-inducing, but that’s OK. Still in steps of overall anamnesis and demographics, this should take some time given sessions are so short. Two weeks until next, looking forward to. Those will be two pretty hectic weeks anyway.

Also, weight loss slowly continues. I feel bad talking about this because I don’t want to feed the engines of body issues and fatphobia that surround us. But really, I’d probably be quite fine with a body that was larger so long as I was parsed as a curvy woman rather than a chubby man (or a thin man, for that matter). But it really is a matter of being able for me to be seen as female at all, to be able to fit into clothing I would want to wear to further that, and with the assumption that if I indeed do go on hormones, I will gain weight from that no matter what I do, in new locations, but not lose any. For the first time I feel I _can_ do this, and I feel that sense of decision within me which may be a sort of way of feeling I want it.

This week was hectic in part to set up things to get to meet a heavily inspiring successful woman in my field who also happens to have transitioned, at something close to my age. After a lot of challenges this worked out well, it seems, and indeed was inspiring, like seeing one indication of the sort of person I could be ten years from now. As well as learning of some of the various challenges, including exclusion and prejudice, but still. A rewarding way to spend energy.

Other challenges remaining to require coping and energy and work, and I will do those things. I will fight all battles best I can, identify and focus my particular strengths. And perhaps even get some rest…