tantramobile

Content warning: sex and shallowness and dirt! Read further only if you are OK knowing these sorts of details from my life!

So, I was at a 3-day stayover tantra workshop. I had no idea what to expect. Was invited to go there with nice people (not currently my partners or lovers), who were together enough to handle all the logistics. So we did. I think there may have been perhaps twelve participants, about half of whom seemed to work with some form of massage or yoga or other bodywork professionally. I think seven of twelve were in preexisting relationships with each other. Those who were mostly but not exclusively practiced with each other. There was some awkwardness with the remainder on who to work with for each exercise; but it all resolved surprisingly smoothly, with organizers filling in if there were odd numbers. Two people found each other and hooked up, I think. I ended up practicing/playing with two men I came there with, and two women and one man I did not know before. The women each asked me if I wanted to practice with them, the men I asked in each case.

On the form of exercises, there was no explicit consent negotiation or safewords, but prefacing that all things should be done as the two people in every case wanted – fully, partially or not clothed (and I’d say the average choice was bottoms-only underwear, depending on the exercise), skipping things not feeling OK, and so forth. One person only watched, then practiced some with an instructor. Others did more or less advanced things depending on whether they were lovers or not, and on whether they had previous knowledge or not. Some feedback rounds with talking stick beginnings and ends of sessions. Such sessions being throughout Friday evening, Saturday morning, afternoon and evening, then Sunday morning and afternoon, with breaks in-between. Instructions were in a language I only partially speak. Usually someone would sit next to me and whisper translations, which was always kind, mostly helpful, and sometimes hindering. I do think I learned more of the language this way.

Generally, this workshop was quite practical. Not so much theory, each session would have the instructors (in some constellation of two out of the three) demonstrate a sequence of moves that could be performed as part of a tantric massage ritual. This would be done three times over. After the first, participants would split into pairs as above, then repeat the same sequence in turn as the instructors demonstrated and described/commented what they did. There additionally was some warmup and other exercises, and a few freeform sessions with more focus on mood where participants would practice the techniques “live”.

Important to note that everything here was clearly giver-receiver oriented – one partner was active, the other was receptive. The receptive partner was mostly passive, but should respond to physical cues from the active partner by moving in the way indicated. This was the main way of shifting the position of the receptive partner, and a lot of the whole repertoire centered around doing so. The receptive partner was not a sub per se and so could also move in any way they wanted to, but was not expected to, nor to communicate or even to take in any sensory input other than the touch received. If this sounds like something essentially BDSM, it does reflect how the organizers also work in other contexts with that. I don’t know to what extent classic tantra has this, though of course it is something dear to my heart. But this division took place in both exercises, with first one, then the other being active, and the same during the freeform sessions (about 30 minutes of each in those, with short breaks in-between).

It’s a question of definition on whether these exercises (or the subset of tantric practices they cover) constitute sex or not. Going by the definition of “if you are asking yourself, is this sex we are having? then it probably is”, then I would say that some of it would be if it had not been for the exercise context, and for those participants who chose to incorporate direct genital massages into their freeform sessions, I think they must have seen it as such as well. If I thought the exercise partner had seen it as sex, I would have labelled at least some of the sessions as such for me; as it is, it ends up as not-quite-sex but not something I would have been comfortable doing if I had been in a monogamous closed sexual relationship. No idea on the poly status of most other participants. Everything except for the aforementioned genital massages some of the pre-existent or emergent couples did was in any way unsafe (at least, not for me given I have HPV vaccination), the easiest way to describe would be as something existing in the triangle spanned by clothing-optional cuddling, sensual touch, and conventional massage. Stimulation was incidental to sensuality, with no aim of getting anyone off (and no evidence anyone did).

My phrasing for what this subset of tantra then is (I guess there are others, some more clearly sexual) would be that is sex is kenjutsu, then this is iaido; focusing on optimizing a subset of the larger set of activities. Essentially, this sort of tantric massage is highly-evolved foreplay with no expectation of anything taken further than that, and well able to serve on its own as a meaningful and pleasant activity. That said, by the end of any of my receiving sessions, had the other partners wanted to unambiguously sex me up, I was in a mindstate where I would probably have consented to anything safe they wanted to do, regardless of who they were. So from a perspective of optimized foreplay, the techniques certainly would work. They also would work as massage per se, improving circulation or resolving tensions. Many chose to use massage oil during a number of the exercises and free-form sessions, and this actually was really nice.

Given the status of not-quite-sex and alternating giving and receiving, there was also full gender symmetry in these techniques. Tantra may have sub-traditions that are more essentialist (read: sexist) for all I know, but here all things done could be translated between any combination of giving and receiving partners of either sex. It was quirky for me to try to do some of the giving exercises when the receiving partner was a very big man, but still possible. I have no idea on the sexual orientation of participants or instructors; as with poly status, I wouldn’t expect someone 100% arrow straight to take this course, but I assume a majority were mostly straight-ish, perhaps? With no real pressure on who to practice with, it might perhaps not need to be an issue, but there was also no expectation on opposite-sex or same-sex status in exercises and demonstrations included both of these options.

This made the environment come across as quite trans friendly. I applied and participated as S****, with female pronouns, and stated clearly at the start I was trans and early in transition, with the intention to try to see if these exercises could help me get closer to my body, to staying present in my body and not dissociate. No-one questioned this or misgendered me that I could hear. I was absolutely happy over the shawls/sarongs used by most participants. These were worn by men around the waist, by women tied around behind the neck as a simple dress. This meant there was an immediate and simple and accessible way for me to signal gender that I could choose to use. I had gotten one before and tried it on at first then and there, and had considerable euphoria throughout in seeing how I looked wearing it the female-coded way. Earlier in the day before the course started I went and had full-body sugar hair removal (super pricey, so need to find a more affordable way to get this done); this helped me immensely, the difference between the preceding day (with a month of hairy outgrowth) and that smoothness was huge in regards to how OK I was with being seen or being touched or just moving around and being present, and it became especially important when so much time was spent wearing very little.

On the lunghi garments, not only did I like that so much because I could signal femininity and look good doing so, but because it became symbolic to take it off. By declaring my breasts worthy of hiding until it was time to show them, I felt like I actually have some to speak of, that are subject to the same context as those of other women in our society webs. By having it be a part of an exercise that I bare my breasts to the other to express my sexuality, or was having them laid bare by the other as an expression for their sexuality, my flatness mattered less, I felt I really had a woman’s body – flat-chested as I may be – throughout a lot of that time, in ways I cannot often do otherwise. While this was not full-on sex, it was like a distillation of the background ways in which sex implicitly play a role in our regular social games and constructs and contexts, the salient underlying sexual dimension was becoming clearer rather than being added on. By having this happen in a mirrored hall, with other people present, that sexual dimension also became salient as a social construct.

In other words, by being sort-of-sexual in a way where I could claim female body dimensions, the way in which this actually is always there in everyday life but hidden by its bustle, became much clearer. It makes it more clear how it really is important to most of us that we indwell bodies that are sexual in a gendered and sexed way, even when/where we claim to just do practical and rational things. These things matter. It matters to us how our bodies look and are understood, and it does so in the space of knowing we are observed by people. If one thinks of sex as only a couple thing happening in a bedroom, and not this undertone to the larger cultural game, then it also becomes harder to understand the need of some people to transition their sexed bodies, easier to pass it off as some sort of frivolous fetish. It is not, and it is not unimportant. These factors are there all along, for trans and cis people alike.

Here too the context was good for learning more of what I feel. Since exercises and garb where mostly symmetrical – both men and women doing these things to women and to men, wearing mostly the same things – I could highlight the things which were different from the men and women I observed, how their bodies looked, how they moved, what sounds they made, how they carried out different movements or instructions. It disentangles from gender roles. It disentangles from sexual orientation, and from culture. It however leaves gender and sex, pure and simple, intact, and made it clearer to me how it is that I need to be like women, and need to be different from men, in order for my instincts to not tell me to step away emotionally from myself, not to dissociate.

Seeing the habitus (am I even using this word right?) and body language of the other women, who each also differed in age and tone, in these contexts, told me more about what living in these bodies is like than I could gain in a long time by observation or accounts from that everyday life wherein the sexual dimensions are submerged, and highlighted how deeply I crave that – it feels like my birthright to get to move and be and act and receive and be still and be in motion and to express lust or desire or care or tenderness or vulnerability or aggression in the ways they now did, compared to the adjacent analogous same-but-different way in which the man participants did. These are not large differences, not clear-cut ones, not ones of words or roles in this case, just a myriad ones of tone and of just being there as a body which moves and senses and wants and acts. This experience can be sexed, and I deeply need mine to be sexed female.

There were other ways in which this also became clear, along with other things. Practicing/playing with men was very interesting. Of the three I was with, each was bigger and hairier than me (sometimes by a lot, sometimes by a little), and I had the chance to touch and explore them sensually – in particular their muscles. As someone who sometimes worries she might be trans because she has learned to dislike what is expected of men, getting to express loving lust and curiosity and nurturing (a lot of the movements are like when one consoles someone who is tired or sad, very Mary consoles Jesus, parent consoling child) towards men inhabiting their bodies like this felt very good. Incidentally, it also made me more aware that I definitely am bisexual; I am perhaps drawn more to women, and with slightly different mechanisms operating, but men are by no means off the table for me.

Another dimension of this became apparent in playing with them – in several regards it was useful as a way to reinforce my femininity, something I believe androphilic cis women certainly do too. Having a man see me with desire in his eyes, lay my breasts bare before him to tease him, having him touch me and handle me and fondle me and claim me, expressing his desire for me as a woman, that makes me feel much more like I dare to believe I really am one. Of course, I cannot know how my exercise partners actually saw me, especially since the experiences would look the same either way, but I still felt continuously aware of this and that brought an immense feeling of joy and safety that I can hardly describe. My companions said that I was glowing. Come to think of it, I felt the same from when the women I practiced with showed sensuality in their touch – it was so obvious then and there to me that the body I was in was a woman’s body, that the intentful touch of others, whether lesbian or straight, confirmed that for me, gave me euphoria.

Something similar came from my own movements. It’s veering into stereotype, but I also learned from the other participating women by emulating them, how I myself tried to express sensuality, nurturing, affection, lust. How I touched my exercise partners, including bonding before and after sessions, how I moved around the venue. All of these things felt like the confirmed my lived body as a woman’s lived body, and it made me feel happy and serene and hopeful. It made me feel present in my body.

That also was the case with regards to exercises. Usually in sex, part of me would be outside observing and directing the symbolic narrative – this has sometimes even been useful, as I can tell my lovers about those ideas while having sex with them – which means topping would mean being essentially a mouth and a pair of hands. Thinking of myself also as a sensual woman – seen by others all around me – while using my body to please my partner, made me stay present in a way I hadn’t quite considered, and that I really want to learn how to do more of. It may have dimensions of narcissism, but it is a narcissism, if so, that I claim. I want to be get to be sexy while I am having sex. Will look for more ways in which I can do so. The clear giving-receiving dichotomy helps, as so often – it makes it safe for me to pose a little without feeling bad about it.

More powerful still was being on the receiving end, relaxing completely, following instructions as when dancing, letting myself receive for 20-30 minutes at an end with no requirement to communicate, take up information, act, reciprocate or think. This was absolutely mind blowing. It’s not quite genital lust, it’s some sort of whole-body drug like euphoria. Reminded of MDMA, thinking it may be subspace, definitely noticing how being for once completely convinced of my own womanhood made it possible to relax and take that in, to receive it. The non-focus on genitalia itself helped, it’s like under other forms of sex, that has distracted, taken away from this other aspect of whole-body sex. This was nothing orgasmic, it’s not that physical release in and of itself, but the emotional reward dimensions of an orgasm where there, were with me throughout the exercise, and afterwards felt like gently and subtly coming down to something like a plateau. It felt absolutely safe and glorious and great to surrender and receive, and removing the idea of some sort of end goal of genital stimulation to climax also made it possible to keep receiving each sensation in turn as what it was.

Only at the beginning of exploring this. But YES, not only is my bisexuality apparent, but also my switch nature. I can enter subspace. I can become drugged from submitting, being handled, desired, fondled, manipulated, held, from giving myself up to someone. I crave those things too on a sexual level. I’ve seen it countless times in my lovers, but not before experienced it myself on this level. I need to have more of these experiences, very much so. (And in those moments deep in maybe-subspace? If the other would use me for their pleasure, it would be magnificient – take me and penetrate me, rub themselves against me, perhaps make me climax too, but not necessarily so. I’d have rolled with whatever had been asked for, I think. My head still spins from thinking of it.)

The other thing which became more and more apparent is that my genitals fucking suck.

They swell up, become turgid. It feels awkward, becomes visible, become moist when going limper. It makes social interaction with sexual dimensions odd and awkward, because it’s sending messages independently of what I myself think and feel. It calls to become center piece when I want focus to be on sharing and sensuality. It feels like something that is in the way between me and another person, that stops us pressing body against body fully. It makes me feel self-conscious about taking part, asking for things, joining in touch. It makes me feel exposed. It shifts my bodily centre of gravity outwards in a weird way, feels like an extension, something tacked on at an angle. Erections suck, but the limp parts still are there as a crunchy mess that doesn’t stay in place, something that dangles and that also experiences odd pains under pressure.

Speaking of those pains, spending a lot of time sexually aroused and not ejaculating? It causes an odd swelling pain somewhere in the scrotum, parts become inflamed. Anti-inflammants help and I take them pre-emptively before dates sometimes, and did so this time too during the workshop. Once I went to hospital because of it. The pain radiates outwards and inwards, gets mixed up with bowel signals. The solution is not to just come, because as I am learning, I want sexual interaction to be ongoing and enduring, not to be just focused on one part and one single event of a few seconds like that. These parts interfere with that. As do testicular sensitivity more general in being an issue against receiving pressure, in keeping the body in certain positions, and so on. It’s like my pelvic balance ends up slightly off, even if I don’t look at the thing.

There’s also unwanted fertility, and in the disconcerting sensations that come from turgid genitals going flaccid, and in ejaculation leading into a boring and tired post-coital state. I was always jealous of (other) women for that, alongside not having to deal with a horrible sticky mess after they come (in other parallel news, having massage oil dripped on my breasts today during the practice made me realize I really really want guys to come on them when I am hot like that! Who’d have thought (everyone I assume, given how much I fetishize that act from a distance…), and which lad will be the lucky first, I wonder?). All in all, my genitals fucking suck. This time, the most naked I was OK getting was to the level of panties, so I could at least keep things in place. Still, there is all this sensitivity, there is a wish to be touched, and yes, I do want to get off, I want orgasmic capacity and experience as well.

I felt awkward throughout most of the practices for having a visible erection, and felt inhibited by it, not wanting to rub my crotch against the other partners for example, both because it becomes a much bigger thing and because I didn’t want to risk ejaculating from it and because it felt like making it too much about me and because of pain sensitivity. It affected how I moved and stood and navigated, impeding me. It made me be less intense when topping, more distant. It made me self-conscious while receiving, made me hold back and not relax as fully, kept me from fully enjoying the experiences as much as I could had I not need to care. If I’d had a nice vulva and vagina instead, with chiefly internal responses, I’d have been able to be more present still, enjoy the acts more fully still. I could even have come without that being the end of the act. I would look right, my balance would not be shifted like this.

Of course, the grass is always greener on the other genitals. I get that. But coming from the perspective of, “I don’t have any genital dysphoria, though”, I now think that perhaps, when placed in focus the way this sort of almost-sex in a social context does it, it may be correct to conclude that in fact I do. I really would like to have genitals like those most girls have, rather than the sad junk I was born with.

I still want the ability to get off, to gain some sort of release through climaxing. And I am not saying I _want_ per se the horrors of SRS, or the risk of non-functional results, or non-sensate results, or results looking weird (as if not every vulva looks different though…), or the period of several months having a wound slowly healing between your legs and inside your pelvis, or having to take several hours per day for half a year to dilate (as in, it seems like it work mesh poorly with the requirements of a leader within my profession, which I aspire to be!). I don’t _want_ those things. But during the free-form session today I realized that perhaps I really will come to a point somewhere down the line where those things are all still the least bad options. Others have described similar changes but I could not quite understand it. Maybe they too felt like this? That is, maybe I’ll be so irritated with what I have that I really do want what I could have instead.

(Somehow it feels like another separate and scarier coming out, if it comes to that. Mom, I may be trans. Mom, I use a woman’s name now too. Mom, I wear makeup and female clothing. Mom, I’m on hormone therapy. Mom, I’ll have bottom surgery and a legal sex change. So, so, so, so scary it hurts to think about it.)

In the meantime, I’ll continue to have sex, and I’ll continue to want my partners to occasionally make me climax. But I might actually look into ways of getting parts to stay in place outside of that aspect, so I can move and act without having to feel they are in the way. How does one even do that, in a way which is remotely sexy? And can some of all these sources of irritation perhaps be reduced by hormones, when I start that? Testicles are supposed to shrink, erections become less of a thing. If I did not become erect, did not have the pressure sensitivity aspect of large testicles in the way, did not have that silly inflammatory blue balls response to prolonged arousal, but somehow still could come with some effort? That’s beginning for the first time to feel like it would be not just an OK scenario, but a better scenario than what I have, though still a worse option than either a neovagina or a natal vagina.

Sorry for all this talk about junk. Boobs instead – feeling euphoric like I did also makes me realize that no, I won’t regret growing breasts on hormones, far from it. It will be awkward because I may have to come out. But I want them – I’m eagerly wishing to have my body feel like it should, and jealous of the women I saw and/our touched during the last few days.

I had not expected to be at this stage at this point. Maybe after starting hormones, yes. But really, the workshop made me skip at least a year ahead on several fronts. My sexual orientation, my switch nature, my body self-perception and wishes for it, and, apparently, also my dysphorias? Either way, I need more of it, more tantric practices and workshop contexts like this, learning more things to do to and with and for my loved ones, and learning more things I want done to and with and for myself, and to try various of those things – in particular, tantric massages that can but need not lead to genital stimulation and sexual climax for either party – in sexual interaction with my lovers. It is a good time to be alive. It is a complicated time to be alive. It is an interesting time to be alive.

conversations

Content warning: suicide

Had a conversation a while ago with a person I know is very quick of thought, which made me perhaps biased too much towards giving his ideas serious consideration. I disagree with them, but in a state of some thought fuzziness, so not yet having cleared those ideas. Not that they are new – he suggested primarily that people getting to “choose” their gender creates suffering, based on an underlying idea of people in general becoming unhappy from too much choice.

This was suggested based on anecdotal studies on suicide rates rising in societies where careers-as-choices replaced careers-as-inherited. I have heard similar ideas and anecdata from another very smart person in the past. Of course, I also seem to recall studies saying these rates are correlated with self-assessed happiness ratings. These would then indicate that in a society ripe with happiness and self-actualization, there people who do not feel they reach the expected happinesses, they will feel relatively worse off, and some will take their lives as a result. I suspect strongly these are the same phenomena, and that would suggest the issue is not with choice itself, but with having to make a choice under limited information, with perhaps limits to one’s possibility of realizing one’s choice, fear of failing to, and some trying and failing. That is, a situation of choice one is not given the tools to make well is stressful. This may follow implicitly from some situations of wide choice all on its own, but it need not. Nor do I see so many of us claiming that it would be better to go back to a caste system, or to arranged marriages.

(It makes every sense to give people tools to make decisions easier, give them help in finding paths, realizing them, and in coping with failures including by finding other paths, in many areas of life. But that is tangential.)

Second then concerns how applicable any of this is to gender. That one whom I spoke with wanted to make a case how sexual orientation – being things one does – is easier to have to make choices on than gender identity – things one is. That separation would seem to imply he considered gendered behaviours and roles being something that should not be such a problem having to choose from, leaving the argument remaining only on the more fundamental label/body aspects of gender identity. If we accept that for the moment, then the comparison becomes remote though? Because we are very far from a situation where a person is asked or expected to make a choice of their body/label gender-wise. There are always expectations on that, and they are sometimes very severe – certainly they are at least as pervasive even than those put on a medieval person to follow their parents’ life paths. Making a different choice, if choice it is, entails sustained active decisions against opposition.

Would reducing those pressures cause harm? If we remove those pressures (and that was what he may have been thinking of) by telling young children they get to decide what they want even in this regard, then would worrisome stresses result, or decisions be made which were regretted? Then this ends up in essentially the whole young transitioner question (along with whether or not adult transitioners like myself should stay hidden so we do not influence the young too much…). Here our conversation did end in concluding there is no real data; that is, we have no reason to believe more children from Swedish gender-neutral daycare either will transition, or will experience any sort of stressful confusion. I’m inclined to say there should not be much impact. We don’t “choose” gender of identification by weighing alternatives, nor do we usually stress over making a choice. For most that choice is instinctual and trivial to make, and it becomes an issue only if others do not accept it.

Can I know that a much more progressive society still would not cause decision paralysis and stress over gender identity? I cannot be certain, but I’m highly doubting it would. If it would, I’m quite convinced that when weighing for scale of suffering, the harm done for those who have the wrong decision made for them is higher than the harm done from such stress even inflicted on a larger population. Moreover, there are more than two possible policies – one can provide choice and guidance in making that choice, for example.

Having said all that, I am not sure my company wanted to limit the concept of gender identity to body/label only; he may have thought also of gender roles as something that it is stressful to have to choose. In other words, a model wherein a more strictly gender stereotyped society made for clearer expectations and guidance in choices within those realms, again reducing decision paralysis and stress over having to choose. This is still not a scenario I really am seeing. Young people build identities in larger spaces of variability still, and they do so by modeling peers and elders, preferentially same-sex ones. I have previously said I now believe the latter factor has a biological basis, perturbed in trans people. But given that, it seems like not even breaking down the stereotype blocks would prevent such model learning; children would still learn from same-sex models, only they would learn a more diverse set of behaviours, less stereotyped.

Is there any evidence whatsoever for such a conservative conception that reduced-stereotype societies would have young people more confused, suffering from the decision of a wider variety of gendered role models to follow? Some may believe it, but where would we see this data, and how would we deconfound it from the happiness-vs-suicide model above? Considering the examples of claimed-egalitarian societies like Denmark, there certainly is not an overall clear happiness decrease with this. Perhaps one can find such data somewhere, but from what I have available, I don’t see that breaking down the gender stereotypes would cause relevant suffering in this manner, although plenty of ways in which it would reduce suffering in other regards (including, of course, the experiences of gender non-conforming people). So whether the reasoning is taken for labels/body or for roles, in neither case do I fear significantly that a society taking my progressivism all the way would harm its people more than it would help them.

It ends up being a projection of two types of utility monsters. The one, that person who somehow will become sad and rootless unless being told externally what gender they are, or by having their own claims in the matter overridden, or by seeing the claims of others to be overridden. The other, the person who transitions and regrets, but who would not if their gender had more harshly been denied by those around them. I think that if either exists, they are very rare, and the total impact as I count it of their suffering still less than that of those who would have much sadder lives under conditions that could satisfy the utility monsters. No hints of systematic evidence of the existence of either was offered during the conversation yesterday, only speculation on the hypothetic possbility of the former and two personal anecdotes on the latter. Despite the person saying these things being quick of mind, there then is no real reason to think these things happen enough to matter.

All of that be that further as it may, because I would transition anyway. I do this first and foremost for me, because I need to be someone my brain lets me be happy being. I can let myself matter in this regard. Beyond that, I maintain it is best if we change this world in every way I can. More data may be needed to be absolutely sure, but I don’t think we need to wait for it.

sotto voce and the stressors

Realizing perhaps that a common form of distress (dare I call it dysphoria? impostor syndrome says no) for me concerns fearing for the future. I think of awkward or difficult situations – failed comings-out, being overlooked for collaborations, being wept about by family members – or of ways in which I would not be able to blend (moving away from the “passing” terminology now as an act of social engineering). Triggered by seeing the ways in which other trans women do not blend, or issues with my own ability to (broad shoulders, long arms, long face, furrowed brow, squarish hairline, squarish chin, largish nose, barrely chest, large fingers, deep voice…) or of imagined situations where even blending would be seen as artificial by those who knew me long. Central to all this: the perception of my gender as being fake, artificial. And given that at base, I have a need for it to be real, as real as it can be, then yes, this is dysphoric, it is a mismatch to the core gender identity need.

Anyways then, voice is a major fear, a major way in which I worry I cannot blend, or cannot without becoming seen as artificial. Not just that pitch is hard, but I have a professional and personal identity as someone who speaks up, who is heard, who can project voice into spaces and social spaces where the land is uncertain, cut to core issues and present solution. I get heard across lecture theatres, on shaky teleconference calls, and in one-on-one tutoring. All of those acts constitute emotional challenges where I push past social insecurity by following habitualized scripts. That lets me do the voice work of my current life while also managing the cognitive and emotional challenges that take place in parallel.

So I’d need a way to rewrite those scripts while still keeping them habitualized, and to do so in a way that I can maintain while at the same time navigating cognitive challenges (understanding what I need to say) and emotional challenges (understanding the social context and tone and managing fears around those). Plus I would want to change gradually to not alienate others more than needed. Plus I don’t actually know well how I sound yet, myself. So I need to work with a voice therapist. My psychotherapist told me I’d mentioned this to her in three consecutive sessions, so it probably matters to me. So now I contacted one, and he in turn asked me to contact an odontolaryngologist (?) to document for getting it insurance covered. So I booked an appointment with one such, on short notice, to be able to have this in time for when I can see the speech therapist (this given how my travel schedule looks), ending up one I saw before for an ear infection.

Which worked out. Somewhat weird/odd/awkward to navigate/explain, but I got my vocal cords checked and my documents prepared, and everyone was acting OK to me despite being registered under multiple names with them. Everything has gone smoothly. And I see how complex the system is, and how weird it is to navigate, and I feel so incredibly privileged as I do this from the position where I am, with relative financial security, all-inclusive medical insurance, fully flexible working hours and all the rest of things I am given which make it possible for me to achieve results in the system. So, so many people in similar situations are not being given those things, and for them this must be compoundedly harder.

Now to push forward.

all the things

It’s been a long week involving significant professional challenges, which I largely overcame, and various other stressors. Plus important things happening otherwise, or notable things. I wanted to describe each in detail, then never found the time. Taking it now, to at least describe briefly, because I am in a messy state and need to focus.

I got hair done again. It matters little in and of itself; I don’t look different from a trimming. It’s really a matter of hoping for my future hair to again be fully long, and to be thick enough that it can compensate for my facial features being too masculine.

More crucially, I went to an endocrinologist, and gave her blood samples. They will test my karyotype (because apparently they don’t do HRT if you are chromosomally intersex, or in a different way? weird), and my baseline hormones, and then when I can confirm having been six months in therapy, which will be in February, then they can perhaps start me on hormones. Apparently in Europe the preferred androgen blocker is one which has depressive side effects in some dose ranges, which has me a little concerned. That would be a later problem though.

Journey involved both correct and incorrect gendering. Restaurant staff madame:d me, police monsieur:d me, train conductor she:d me (causing me to ask my partner to confirm I heard right while smiling stupidly), and cleaning lady in the women’s restroom at the posh department store wanted to throw me out, upon which I said “non, je suis femme – trans femme“ and was allowed to stay. Came out to some more work people, vaguely, and felt generally accepted for my performance with perhaps no actual impact of presenting femme/androgynous.

That all there, I’m today in a dark mood nonetheless. Stress and lack of sleep and lack of blood sugar all might contribute. But there is also a malaise, a rootlessness, a sense of dread, a fear of something dangerous lurking, keeping me on my toes. It seems related to my gender, because it returns me to fear of the future – fear of becoming a freak, a failure, of not being able to find a professional home, of not being able to feel at home with my birth family. Seeing the examples of other trans people failing to blend despite attempts, hearing their accounts, that currently makes it worse. And those fears in turn connect to fearing that my future self would come across as fake, it is fear of not blending (but not about blending to strangers, rather about whether or not my own circles would be able to understand me as being a woman), it is fear of being artificial, of being fake.

Perhaps that is where my emotions are? I fear being fake, worry about it. Not as before so much about whether or not I “really” am trans, whether I truly want these things (though that too is there somewhere) but on whether the womanhood I actually can embody “truly” can be real, which somehow my emotional mind parses through the lens of whether or not others would see me so, whether I myself would see me so. Despair over there being no possibility of having lived as a woman in the eyes of others all along. It seems to broadly be worries concerning the challenge of successful transition, then?

How to tackle that worry? Moving forwards, certainly, but it is all so slow. Doing what I can in the moment. Recognizing that the extent of this worry also depends on unrelated factors which fluctuate in life. Letting it be there, accepting it, letting it pass. Focus on other things and staying effective, until it passes.

I’ll do useful things, and try to let it pass. Wondering if these sorts of doubts and fears and sadnesses can be understood as dysphoria?

mammalian questions

I have these odd fluctuations in how intensely I feel gender euphoria and dysphoria both. Roughly monthly, and for roughly a week (but in both regards with extremely high variability), both are significantly weaker than otherwise. No idea how that ties in with other circumstances and fluctuations. Worry of the day while in transit was, does this suggest some aspect of the biological substrate such that one could “cure” dysphoria in ways other than transition? That thought always scares me a little, since some less-than-rational sides of me worries it might invalidate me if in some future, this was possible. And in some chain of semi-logic, I am much rather a trans woman than a cis man, since that means that I am a woman, because the label/concept itself affects me. None of this matters so much though, it is all far away. What is immediately present is to navigate life.

That in turn means going up to the lab through the rain, because the next six days are going to be extremely stressful, the most intense period during the year work-wise. I will submerge and focus as needed, rising as I can to communicate, and try to let emotions manage as they float around me. I am confident that I can. Hoping to procrastinate some during evening with skyping, with doing my nails, and with some makeup – had no time rushing to bus, so brought it with me; my impulse is somehow to groom more the worse I feel, though I also groom more while happy.

Also, in between work things, I also will have my first appointment with an endocrinologist, assessing for hormones. I haven’t had time to sit down and evaluate my feelings on this, but I am assuming it will all take time. Had wanted to lose more weight before starting, but feeling that I really do need to learn what beginning those changes feel like. For many, I know I want them, and am confident they will make me happy. My main anxieties probably revolve around breast growth, for complicated reasons. I worry that my shoulders and chest are so wide I would look weird with breasts, though no way of knowing how much further weight loss could change that.

This is relatively minor though, more to the point is that growing visible breasts is the one change that would be hardest to hide, so it makes it necessary to successfully come out and navigate the fallout in every physical space, not just supportive ones. It means I must come out as medically transitioning to colleagues, collaborators and birth family. Fears revolve around perceived cumbersomeness of this process, more on how there is an awkwardness and a hurdle (and perhaps some rapport lost permanently) than a fear of an actual adverse reaction from them. It’s in many ways a fear of being seen as conceited or artificial, of not being understood, of not being seen as genuine or sane. I should investigate these fears and worries more clearly, dissect them into components, and try the boundaries of how out I am, to take the edge off of it. Which essentially is what I am doing these days, I suppose.

patterning

Spent some time in last days background worrying over claims some person made over Blanchardian autogynephilia, the idea that (some fraction of) MtF women actually are motivated to transition because they feel attraction (in some variants of the idea, also more general romantic) to their own potential or actualized female selves. Like every other trans woman probably, I’m periodically overanalyzing and second-guessing my own motivations, which is hard because of how hard dissecting our responses over time is. I need to make sure that I don’t treat that worry like those that have confined me in the past; it too is dysphoria-fuelled (more directly than my political angst) and the maladaptive temptation is to make sure I remember concerns and counterarguments until Godot arrives and I have time to fully let the second think in against the first.

This I really should not do. I know it, typing it down makes it better. If I’m wrong, so be it, it still is a question I will have to answer at any given moment, not one I can let confine me. I need so deeply to be done with lists and withdrawing to process them. It’s even OK to be wrong, if I’ll eventually find I am. Instead I should continue experimenting as I do – testing whether the special challenges of a trans life are not too severe for me (not so far, should project and escalate), and testing whether moving further brings new depths of experience, better calm and productivity (it might well, now mostly curious on what hormones will be like).

That all said, when contemplating people’s different accounts, including how some cis people describe being happy or unhappy with their gendered bodies, and for how various trans people describe their dysphorias about being very strongly about the way others see their bodies as those of the wrong sex (an account that I have a harder time articulating, because on the face of it, it seems harder to defend as important, which is an illusory distinction), then I came to a thought that surprised me. The evidence may be compatible with a scenario where some large fraction of trans and cis men and women all feel a strongly emotionally charged need to come across to others as the sex they identify as. This enters into eating disorders and similar issues, and it would enter into bodily gender dysphoria also. So far hardly controversial. I also know that some of these states (e.g. anorexias) probably have independent neural risk factors (including ones involving sex hormone levels), as there is animal model research implying it. And of course, most importantly, the gendered body ideal is culturally constructed and globally and historically volatile. Actual, direct peer pressure will be an important determinant, and offer potential points of intervention.

But might it still be that there is some human instinct (that is learned preferentially in some but not all people) to want to appear to others like those one has associated with the sex one belongs to? That is, part of what it means to have a male gender identity would be to actually want to be perceived as male by others. Which would translate into wanting to fall within the ranges of body and expression of those others one has come to see as males, and vice versa female? The point I want to make is, if this is in part instinctual, then a sizeable fraction of cis and trans people both will experience discomfort – dysphoria, more correctly – over perceived failure to match that range, and euphoria over coming to securely fall within it. It is directly analogous to the instincts of primitive animals to perform displays of sexual dimorphism for the purpose of competition for mates, which would also be why these instincts would have been retained in humans, even as their actual content and details are moved into a memetic rather than genetic substrate.

While the contents of those body ideals will be culturally constructed, they will also reflect features which are hormonally driven sexual dimorphisms having become encoded into the perceived range. Of course, being transgender would make in more cases for someone falling far outside the range, risking considerably more severe bodily dysphoria. There may not be so much novelty to this thought, except that it challenges the view that bodily dissatisfaction in either trans or cis people is solely something learned through toxic culture, lack of body positive role models, or peer pressure. These things interplay with what is there, certainly, but this model lets us explain how it is possible that someone may feel a strong need (i.e. unhappiness unless acted upon) to embody body expectations they were never taught applied to them, explaining a lot of accounts of people experiencing a need to crossdress to feel happy with no need for an auto-X-o-philic component. It also helps highlight how the desire (in the sense of, happier along, unhappier without) for bodily transition can matter without being some sort of kink or choice or habit one stumbled upon.

The truth is always complex, and modeling other people tells me nothing about myself. But I’m curious on this idea of an instinctual component to how we may want to be genderedly [is this a word? am I using it right? E*: you’re a native speaker, what say you?] perceived. This would land us in about three or four components to biological underpinnings of gender identity, each of which would be affected by prenatal hormones:

– Sex-classifying others as in-group or out-group relative to self (“should I go in this row or that row on the group picture?”)
– Instinct to appear correctly gendered (mating display instinct as laid out in this post)
– Proprioceptive map (have yet to explore this though but a knowledgeable person speaks of it a lot)
– Somewhat separate but using the same neural systems in another way: sexual orientation (“is this other person sexy?”)

Predictions from this theory would be that feelings of gendered body dysphoria in cis people (that is, cis women feeling like they look insufficiently like other women, cis men feeling they look insufficiently like other men) would be similar in tone to trans people’s body dysphorias, and that hormonal factors could affect its scope, e.g. it might be more common at certain periods in the menstrual cycle, or as a side effect of some hormonal contraceptives, or it too may be differentially occurring under conditions where prenatal hormones are perturbed.

molecules

S****, you twat: remember to not neglect your goddess-damned caffeine addiction! Don’t be too schedule optimizing to put off going to the pharmacy to get those pills for way too long, then ending up weirdly sad and worried and aimless. Make sure to have them on hand and take them regularly.

Yours sincerely,

also S****

law of fives

For the third laser round Frau Doktor H raised settings further to “23”. No idea of unit or on whether – probably, really – this is still below what more stoic people shake off. It hurt more than last, sometimes I asked for a few seconds of time as the chief issue is how the pain compounds on a short time scale. Burns post-laser are stronger, it looks like localized bad sunburn beyond the bacon-smelling burn marks.

Meh. It’s fine. Making me truly understand the idea of the Gom Jabbar. Now for maybe some short more sleep before going to lab, since right now having a full brain matters more than usual.