Month: February 2019

ertia

There are lead-heavy things in the beauty of our alchemy. Life moves, it’s powerful, I mingle pain and pleasure. I am in love, I feel weariness, I feel pride, I feel fear and I navigate it. Beyond anything else I am indubitably alive, and eternally hopeful.

It seems like these past few months my emotions have undergone a shift. It coincides with progesterone but not with cycle position within that or maybe even dosage. Possibly enough things have happened on many fronts. Whatever the case, I believe perhaps now I am experiencing some form of the increased emotionality I was hoping for from transition.

Basically, when I have fallen in love, it has felt very very powerful and continues to, with corresponding intensity and realness of emotions indirectly attached. I sense this especially because I can see the emotions making me act sometimes rashly or stupidly, without it being trivial to inspect and stop those actions. This is new to me.

Not always practical but I want it nonetheless. I need to work out strategies for monitoring and policing myself better, if I can act on emotion now in this manner. But well worth it for the aspect of being alive.

*

In terms of SRS prep, spoke with HR to check procedure for “being off work for two months, due to recovery from a surgical procedure done privately in Thailand”, not described in more detail and not needing to. It should work fine, my insurance should cover six weeks (need to verify) and I can combine with holidays + what does it even mean for me to be off work?

So it still feels surreal but I take the steps to test it in the external world. Moving forward. Probably will ask about dates again soon.

legionardo

Went to a spa with dear people who took me there and escorted me. As it so happens, the date commemorates also my first year of HRT. I anticipated it long as a learning experience, and travelled from Babylon to the old WW2 border to have it. I’m writing and it is late, so I will end up being concise rather than poetic, for much happened throughout eight hours.

First point of relevance, I suppose, I was very very nervous. Some was being hungover from wine the night before, but much was fear of the intense Bathroom Situation I was seeking out. But I could not feel that fear emotionally. I noted as we waited to get in that I had all the physical manifestations of fear and anxiety but not the affect. So this is apparently a thing, I can be afraid and nervous and I’ll somehow have to look to my body for evidence that this actually is what I feel? Clearly I’m nowhere near in touch with my full emotions yet, but this got me closer.

I passed as cis to the lady at the counter despite her hearing my voice, because she gave me a locker in the women’s section instead of the mixed section. Changing there was scary as fuck, and precisely what I had worried about, though having my ex with me helped. I wore tuck and bikini already upon arrival to not cause any issues, still felt very afraid of being called out. Once we were in the actual spa, it was easier.

First few hours we did swimming pools mostly, in the clothed area (bottoms/bikinis expected); this was a new though mild experience to me. My makeup handled the water well and as hoped for, tucking beneath bottoms looked OK. Still took time to calm down, generally, and thinking of how I share this struggle with loved ones helped me feel resolution and pride such that I stood up taller and explored as I wanted.

Then massage – it was good, I am sad my breasts were not massaged, I am bashful it made me a little wet, and it did help me recognize the position of my body in space as well as to feel relaxed in a deeper sense. I must seek out more of it.

After massage the most important part for me, spending time in the nude section, pools and saunas. It turned out to be as complex a navigation as I had expected. Since everyone is naked, I wasn’t worried about negative reactions (though as per the below, got some!), and I had the choice of either hiding (obvious, cumbersome) or just moving naked. When moving between pools and showers and saunas, I sometimes did the latter, though mostly wrapped a towel around me like I see girls do. This felt safely subversive; not bending over backward to hide my current self.

At the same time, whenever I sat down in water or on benches, I closed my legs in impromptu tucks. I’ve some hair showing now that I don’t epilate during electrolysis, the placement of bush from that angle got me a little euphoric, I could see for the first time what my post-op body might look like. All in all, my pre-op state felt like a wound that I didn’t have to either flaunt or hide, not be hindered by but also minimizing to myself wherever I could. I took joy in being naked not in my pre-op state, but despite my pre-op state. It wasn’t perfect but there and then that worked. I felt like I was present as openly pre-op, and exactly that.

No idea how people see me. Some more disapproving looks from men, some more smiles from women. My makeup looked great despite it all. I was sad to note boys with gynecomastia still having larger breasts than I (though also cis women with even smaller). I felt I came across as woman clearly enough that I wasn’t very dysphoric, just jealous at the effortless presence in estrogen-built bodies that cis women get. When naked, I wonder how many people parsed me as trans woman versus cis man, if they knew the difference? I wanted to be seen, wanted the ways in which I now at least will make it no longer obvious, to be seen, and that was why I craved and enjoyed this occasion so.

At least one person clearly did see me as a trans womwn, because he followed me into the empty herbal sauna, sat down next to me and started talking (major faux pas): “You speak French? (Not really.) You speak Spanish? (Not really.) You are very beautiful! (Silence.)” A minute or so followed after which I concluded I could not relax there with him and I left seeking refuge with my friends, telling them. I felt validated in the sense of, I feel like a “real woman” by actually feeling unsafe from this, doubly problematic validation, but also not certain, maybe I overreacted? Kept trying not to meet the eyes of Creepy Man as he cruised around the nude area. Some other fetishizing looks, too.

I wanted a little more hot sauna before leaving so asked my ex:s husband to come with me, he was as always a true gentleman and I deeply enjoyed having him with me. As we sat alone in the hot rock sauna, the precaution turned out to have been correct – Creepy Man entered and said to my companion: “You speak French? Spanish? Your pansexual (sic) is very beautiful!” My companion took objection and asked him to leave which I did.

So yet more problematic validation – creepy stalker men not taking my no, but waiting for my perceived boyfriend (and trying to solicit me through my perceived boyfriend/pimp?) to protest. Feeling uncertain if I just imagined things but actually not. Still chaser stalking rather than just man stalking, and that highlights something else – he saw I was not a cis man (as I have no body hair, some hips, breasts, sit like a woman, makeup, some femininity in face) but a trans woman, a second-rate woman, a woman he can get at a reduced price, where he doesn’t need to be roundabout but can just approached because of course poor little me will be fucking desperate for him.

Screw that.

And mixed, mixed feelings over not feeling safe in spaces because of stalker men. Validating but objectively limiting. I am thankful for my friends and allies, trans and cis.

Leaving was again scary as I needed to shower and change in separated facilities, so as to hide. It went OK but I remain afraid of bathroom panic in that context. Still, will seek this sort of experience out again.

I think all in all my predictions matched up. I can gain body positivity and better alignment through spending time in mixed-sex, enforced-nudity spaces. And I want SRS sooner rather than later, all the same.

I now have everything in place to book it, referral letters were accepted.

! pride

As I transitioned and dislike myself less, I simply don’t rush like I use to, and I spend more time preparing in the morning. This means I’ve began to be late for things and I am not entirely happy with that.

This morning I was just in time for the train. I was sure I would miss it, since the notoriously aggressive, rude and intrusive Babylon traffic inspectors held me up just at the main station. Their poorly coded ticket app froze and would not show my monthly ticket at first and they refused to let me leave for my train. Eventually that resolved and I only just made it.

Fear like that, even self-inflicted by not being properly ahead of schedule, made me almost insanely angry and I was screaming at them how useless I considered them, such a waste of space and time and human tissue, no meaningful contribution to the world in any regard but to try to enforce petty rules to the letter ignoring the spirit, focus on procedure over actual legality, how they compensated for their petty banality by this.

Well, actually less articulate shameful elitism and more just screaming profanity.

That makes me feel ashamed on several levels, for being myopic and unkind and unfair, for giving in to anger and fear which I do not want to ever, for being a poor LGBT role model and ambassador in the world of the cishet muggles, and for the way my voice drops when I am angry and shout.

It leaves me shameful and sad and dysphoric and I suppose that is deserved.

I hate these moments. Survival as a trans person while retaining dignity, then, means becoming extra careful, planning more, ensuring I never need to lose my cool because I always will stay in control.

process! process!

One aspect as it seems like, I self-misgender when I see my own tells. It was so with smell pre-transition, with stubble pre-success of laser (somewhere a year in or so, a state change), it is so still with voice as I hear it myself, with torso rectangularity, and with genitals, whenever they emerge. This is something that happens in the day-to-day moments, and the effect pain-wise lies in the feeling of falsehood and unreality that the self-misgendering brings.

It’s possible to work around any trait; this I do with others, I parse others as who they seek to be. It requires a little mental work, but I do it as a matter of course. I can do it on myself too but it either is somehow harder, or it is how that then means I have to constantly apply a filter to my self-perception. Vigilance thing.

This is why tucking is good, it turns that need off when clothed. This is why I don’t relax well during sex when naked, I’m actively translating perceptions into other representations. Live transitioning the lived experiential and social body. Medical transition shortens or eliminates those paths. It successfully did for hair removal and a lot of the HRT effects so far. I actually have a mostly smooth face, feminine eyebrows, and breasts, such as they are. I don’t need to shift those perceptions around.

I’d want that for genitals too, so I wouldn’t have moments during the day, like when dressing or going to the restroom, or when being intimate or getting aroused, when I’d be reminded of tells and self-misgender.

*

Then another thing, I’m sure I underestimate the pain and horror. Tiredness, pain, fear, no sleep, being drugged. Good part is, once it is started, I will be unable to stop it. I won’t have to choose to continue. I will have to. This is probably very similar to subbing. And reminds of Christ on the Cross, too. Thy will be done, not mine. Liberating from choice to be weak.

*
Then noting a new fear. What if there really is a somatic counterindication? I’m deathly afraid of that, I realize. In the same way as I’ve feared so many other things. I’m wanting to get x-rays and everything done now already, though they would be useless, they need to be recent by surgery, just to know I will be OK, which is to say, that I won’t be denied. I won’t get them yet. But I’m realizing as I hope for surgeries that I will fear the chance taken away until they sedate me. So that’s a chance to practice fear management. I’ll try to ride them but to still feel them.

toadette

SO MUCH TMI but I think I actually have some sort of scrotal yeast infection. In the area that is most densely tucked, which is also the area that has visible changes to skin pigmentation and texture. While it stings, it is also weirdly validating if so.

Also on the SRS matter. I was holding back when I started transition because I felt very strongly, I would never have SRS unless I am, well, not necessarily cis-passing, but looking like a cis woman with a few tells.

Whether I am or not, I’m realizing that at some point in the last year, I’ve started to think of myself so. I no longer feel a risk of perceived dissonance between genitals and rest of body. I feel that post-op me would be perceived as wholly and fully a trans woman to most.

This probably also impacts why I’m moving like this. I don’t always feel right like that, but it feels like the exception when I am not. And that means that not only do my genitals stand out stronger, but it means that perhaps strong fear I had of being a parody (the inverse dickgirl fear), that has dissipated, leaving me less worried.

noveau vag

“Should I have SRS (now)” is really the new “should I transition?”. I feel similarly over it – obsess over it, asking everyone, essentially looking for evidence and permission that this thing which somewhere deep down in my dissociate self I want, is something that I “get” to do, something that I won’t regret. It’s really exactly as things were two years ago, in the spring of 2017. I knew on some level what I wanted, and I was very worried that I wanted it for some other reason than I believed I did, and I was feeling reluctant to commit before I was certain enough that I would be OK if I did.It’s been two years of transition then. Woah. It really has. It feels like it should be less? Some of these posts are almost that old. I should perhaps go back and re-read myself, this transition account. I intended for it to become one, but it was also a venting space. It has become one. Maybe at some point I’ll bundle and edit all this. Maybe some of it is useful to someone.

So, going back to the analogy. I felt a longing to become sure I really was one of those who would be happier if she transitioned, but I needed external assurances – from reading accounts of others, from trying to evidence within my autobiography, from experiments. Eventually I got past all that by having enough experimental results and enough not-giving-a-fuck that I decided I get to decide. And moreover, that I got to decide because my will mattered. Which it does because I am a person like everyone else. Which I am because I am a woman. So I am transgender.

What I also did then was to process my fears. I was afraid of so much along the path that lay ahead of me. I was afraid of being seen as a freak, of being discriminated against, pitied, shunned, of being looked down on. In hindsight much of that was fear of coming out. It was also the fear of finally losing the choice of being able to pass as cishet or not.

I processed even before that point by stretching boundaries, going more and more androgynous. This was what I escalated back then. I got my first bralette almost a year before HRT and wore it thereafter when I went through airport checks. I started switching restrooms, presenting myself as trans, all these things before I was formally sure. I told my parents about my questioning. I know why I did this, I was trying to experience the awkwardness and fear and pain, socially speaking, before I passed the point of no return. I wanted to know if I could handle it, how bad it would feel, and perhaps also to dull the pain before it became compulsory. I LARPed being further along in my transition so that I would build resilience but perhaps above all to check, would I experience regret?

This afternoon I realized I’m doing the same now with SRS.

My increasing genital dysphoria and issues with sex may well to a large part be unavoidable and there, but I also focus on them and nurture them, let myself feel them, experience them. I open myself to the stone butch life, where I let myself feel the dysphoria of parsing my bare genitals wrong during sex, where I let myself get used to not wanting or be able to climax with a partner (or alone – I can but why the hassle? pfah). I’m actively riding the wave of these emotions, calling increasing attention to them.

In so doing I am testing myself for what my sex would be like if I had an unfavorable SRS outcome. Part of this which I am doing is this kind of emotional preparation, I’ve been asking myself the question: “Could you be OK with life if you never came again, if all your sex was breastplay and painplay and cuddles and topping?” I’m mildly melancholically sad about it, is the answer. I’ve looked to that melancholia as a putative reason why I should have SRS, and felt it’s not a big thing.

Where I should look, rather, is why I’m trying to get used to that sadness, why I’m preparing for the worst. Clearly it’s because some part of me deeply wants to be able to conclude she should have SRS. And it’s similar to the part of me that tested out being queer and at social awkwardness and risk as a non-passing trans person even before she had to, because she wanted to be able to conclude she should socially and hormonally transition.

I think one very likely conclusion to draw from this, though it needs more testing, is that to a large extent I want SRS for the same reason I wanted to transition in general. Underlying it all is a conceptual and existential dysphoria. I must be as much like other women as I can for the world to be OK. I felt that enough to take the steps I took so far, of which I would say that coming out and social transition was far costlier than anything medical – the latter I would say have all been pleasure and some interesting pain (when did I become so OK with pain? Ah, when I’d trained it enough…). So the question now is, is that same feeling strong enough to make we want the cost that is the risk of loss of orgasmic capacity (because ultimately that’s really the only realistic fear I have that I care about)?

I think it is, but I’ll take some more time to process all of it. I don’t have to decide just yet. In the next months. Perhaps by April I will.

(And if I just go by intuition? I want to be on the operating table already, so badly. Or rather, I want to know I am on track there. But I should not only trust intuition. Only more than I did in the past.)

hentai

So, the thought was raised and resonated with me, so I should inspect it deeply, what of effects of HRT and realignment on my person? More specifically, is there the possibility that continued further HRT and body awareness and happy sexual and sensual and mobile experiences will get me to a point where my genital issues are a sufficiently small obstacle that at that point, the distress they cause is less than my risk-weighted fears of unfavorable SRS outcomes?

This is relevant because it seems to be the core point of my process of decision-making for SRS. And while I can wait and observe (and will, as much as I need to), I also don’t want to wait more than necessary. I could wait for Godot forever. So I should actively inspect this part and it will require some significant effort to do so. Luckily it is within what I was planning already, actually, it is precisely what I was planning already.

So for dumping related observations, what came to me on it this day was the memory of what HRT has felt like, not the changes but my relations to the changes. When I came out and stopped trying to present androgynous, I accepted being seen however I am, however my body becomes. I have wishes of course for what HRT does to my body and mind, and I am an active participant in my treatment.

But more importantly, I remember now what I felt: I give myself up for puberty. I surrender to the best changes my regime and genetics give me. I’m not sculpting my body specifically, I am surrendering it to the becoming of womanhood. That changed a lot. I stopped fearing so much, started to anticipate so much.

On some level, at that point I accepted that whatever transition does to my body, it will. I will be whatever woman I can sail to within the scope of my biology. It’s not only my choice but it is how I grow. And on some level, that also reduced my fears of SRS complications. As long as I move towards womanhood, there is unpredictability in what womanhood I get. On some level I feel this way about the uncertainties of surgery also.

This is not by any means a reason not to worry. But it may be a part of why I don’t worry so much as I feel I should, intellectually. I accepted already that the details of this process are things I can influence but not control.

waiting rooms

It’s been written, I dimly recall it was by a hack author, that the courses of our lives are determined in healthcare waiting rooms.

Today I helped draft referral letters for SRS. I am not sure they will be accepted yet, so next step is to have them screened and verified.

I felt it was surreal that every step is so everyday, so mundane, so not loaded. Life is business as usual and the small details around us never stop.

If these are all correct, there will soon be nothing whatsoever left to use as an excuse to delay any longer.

Next then therefore, start treating the date as very concretely real in my head and my life, so I can see what happens and emerges as I do.

Let the dead rise to smell the incense.

camp like a row of tents

Came across briefly a piece of TERF rhetoric when not fully awake, so it bounced in my head a little; I’ll now clear it out. Aside from inaccuracy of saying girls like me are male, which as a biologist I say we are not, she claimed that while there may be cis woman “bathroom predators”, they are fewer and while it is not possible to police them, policing trans women by keeping us out of “womens’ spaces” should be possible, since we can be recognized on sight.

This is perfectly analogous to racial profiling today in Western societies, and perfectly analogous to the Japanese internment camps during the war. In the name of “fighting terrorism” or “fighting crime” or “fighting the Axis”, the line of argument would be that if a demographic actually can be visually distinguished, it is acceptable to cause harm to all its members to prevent wrongdoing from some fraction.

The extension would be that being indistinguishable from the mainstream and therefore not possible to profile is the only thing that can protect you from preventive discriminatory action.

A child in a basement in Omelas, if you will.

I don’t think we want that kind of ethics, even if they were expedient. And here I am quite certain they are not.

I also wonder what fraction of people in public restrooms clock me, these days?