posthuman and strange

At a sci-fi convention in Akkad now. I was here last year, my first. Then the main focus was on Battlestar Galactica, almost the whole cast was present. I had never seen the show, but I realized I had to, and that there was a particular character I had to cosplay the year after, that is, right now. This was in many important ways a transition-related need, for a lot of reasons. Back then I was 3-4 months on HRT and not so confident.

This character, Number Six, is important in many trans-related ways which the creators surely did not intend. She is a (humanoid) Cylon, a robot/AI that branches to multiple individuals who in turn reincarnate in new identical bodies if killed. The Cylons were created artificially by humanity but rebelled, and after a war against them, they are truly hated. When it is discovered there are human-looking Cylon infiltrators (some as sleeper agents), those are seen as subhuman, non-persons, artifical, machines, not real persons, who can be tortured and killed without any moral burden.

The specific character is further extremely femme-coded – bombshell blonde in revealing clothing, seductress infiltrator, with most of her significant screentime as a ghost presence in the head of a male character. She is also very competent, very dangerous, instrumental in destroying human main civilization, and she undergoes a lot of trials and sufferings which are also coded feminine – rape, pregnancy, miscarriage, and her objective of being able to birth or nourish a child that will bear the Cylon people forward is core to her plot.

All of this contributed to why I needed to cosplay this character. A very high bar for attempting performative and symbolic femininity, as a challenge and test of my own capacity. But also the duality of actually being a highly competent and dangerous immortal genocidal machine. And the fundamental struggle, so trans-like, of not being seen as a “real woman” but as somehow fake, artificial.

It is also my first serious cosplay, and first real femme cosplay. And I knew for all the above reasons, it was beyond crucial I would be understood as doing cosplay – a woman portraying a woman character – and not crossplay – a man portraying a woman character as a drag thing. The character has already attributes making this especially challenging – signature red cocktail dress, blonde hair, almost no makeup, no signature gimmicks or accessories. Meaning I’d have to use just simple clothing and my own body to portray a different person (who is a tall cis woman) well enough for recognition but without any hint of irony, faking or artificiality.

Going about this then required some challenges. The most important I did anyway already – another year of hair removal and HRT. I planned to have lost more weight to be slimmer, but did not succeed – will try harder now. As for the dress, I had great help from my partner who sewed it for me, got lots of compliments for it.

The hair was a major issue. Going blonde was costly, though at least I am not worried I am hurting the hair so much – I got complex protective formulations which seem to work. Bleaching eyebrows worked well. But the haircut is shorter, always a major dysphoria risk. Moreover, I recognize this year that keeping my hair out instead of in a bun makes the long shape of my face more apparent, accentuates squareness of hairline, squareness and width of jaw; I feel I look significantly more masculine with my hair loose, so that was already a major fear to have to face.

Similarly, for the character’s look I needed to skip during the cosplay (two more days to go now!) wearing glasses, lipstick, heavy eye makup, nail polish or eyebrow pencil; she has a cold “natural look” but all of these things I have come to rely on significantly to feel my face and form look more feminine. Going without them has been really frightening, at least at first. Would I look like some drag-performing man in a dress, performing this ironically as mere play-acting, not as an identity with respect to the gender dimension?

Add to this the most recent advances in my facial hair removal. Since two months I do only electrolysis, no laser, no shaving. I let the few straws there are grow so the electrologist can catch them next time, but that means having some long hairs here and there, most white and soft but some darker. This also scared me – how close must a person get before they can see them and notice? So facial hair, no makeup to speak of, a non-flattering hairstyle and a non-flattering body, when I need to come across as perfectly authentic for a high performative bar. Plus my voice still being quite deep.

That said… it actually went really well, this time. I feel confident. I feel OK. I don’t know how I am read, but I received smiles and compliments, was not challenged, and I sort of see even now under these circumstances a woman in the mirror, if one not so happy for her facial shape. No-one challenged me in changing room to the sauna (did not let them see my bottom parts while in there). I feel uninhibited in moving around, being real, being present. It’s as though I can recognize the flaws and limitations, but feel that I can ignore them and make others ignore them also.

So… it worked. I did it. And I now feel more confident still in “casual” femme presentation. I am who I am regardless, and I am beginning to expect to be read as a woman without having to jump through quite so many hoops. Maybe I expect too much still, but the fact I expect it is valuable and changes my self. And this marks also how my body has changed. It really has.

revolutions

I had a lovely date and a night of multichannel communications, bolstered by wisdom and humility. So many new impressions and shifts and thoughts. Her scent follows me subtly. I am late for the Scientific Council and that will be fine. It felt like coming face to face with reality. It felt like gentle fun. I maintain faith of connecting more and in more areas still. If we hurt each other it will be fine. I don’t need to preplan what might happen.

I kept fading out into… somewhere and she sensed it each time and told me to stay in the moment. It’s seriously hard work, I hadn’t realized how I keep escaping mentally during sex. Always to some extent.

I wanted my parts touched but even with the greatest care, and with the sensations feeling good, I feel like I’m keeping watch against something when it happens. So hard to stay even when I want to.

I cherish communication that is mutually desired. I hope for time shared simply being present together. I anticipate the future. This day is beautiful.

moon mask merge

So what happens? My partner (once more in some form) said my face has femininized. I had more moments of not being able to let go of an emotional surge once it started, just deciding what to do with it. Touch feels good.

Got gel estrogen and progesterone prescribed, so will start a cycle now. I wonder if I will experience something.

Also second hand shopping, got some skirts and a jacket for experimenting with business chick looks, curious if I will feel OK with that or not.

EDIT: Oh, and asked my endocrinologist on the possibility of collaborating on clinical studies. He was open in principle and seemed surprised. Continuing to represent!

process process

CW harassment.

Things were good yesterday, having dinner with a few friends then going out clubbing, despite some of us facing various sadnesses from other directions and along the path. Maybe this blog will eventually become some sort of mini reverse pervocracy, starting out talking transition stuff, then when that’s mostly in hand, just describing my day to day kink and decadence? Long story short, got to know a friend better than before during evening, realizing I am attracted and would like to be closer. Going out that evening, I therefore had hopes of something happening between us. Usually when I fancy someone I have difficulties because anything I can read as disinterest will make me pessimistic and withdraw emotionally, so I take no risks and ask for nothing; more importantly, the emotional withdrawal makes me less present in the situation, having less fun, being less available. It is mostly here that alcohol helps.

This night I somehow realized I could try to consciously ignore that mechanism, and I realized on the dancefloor that this is what the Maiden is about. She is naïve and happy enough that she does not interpret everything as rejections, so she remains happy and daring and sometimes she is lucky. I made myself present in my body as Maiden, and whenever I felt the alienation feeling of “I don’t grasp the codes” // “she is not interested” // “I am being embarrassing and stupid by doing/not doing this”, I felt her making a horizontal cut between the thought layers, like a lobotomy, not letting logic flow from the worry into inaction. Removing the cause but not the symptom; Frank too certainly was a Maiden. I just kept dancing, and when I felt there was chemistry, I gently expressed my interest, and learned some of the communication as it happened. I don’t think I’ve been this brave before like this.

I did get to know my friend better, and to sleep (though not very deeply) next to her, and to marvel at how she responds to touch, I’ve seen that sort of reactivity before and am jealous of it, hoping perhaps that I might gain it if I add progesterone to my regime. Will there end up a context where I’ve known most of my friendship circle(s) intimately at one point or another? Who knows. But looking back, that always was how I envisioned my life would be like, it’s part of my view on what is wholesome. Heh.

On the way back from the club, my friend and I walked arm in arm and a guy followed us muttering lewd suggestions about “pussy” and “fucking”. He walked very close and it was the first time someone groped my ass, I realized after a while. All in all quite scary, and I was so happy to be there with a girl whispering to me she could take him out with her keys if she had to. He followed all the way to the subway, and I used the minimizing/ignoring/defuse by asking nonsense questions, noncommittal comments, soft distancing, just as I am sure women do every day with this. Still, I was especially afraid since I could not tell how he read us. Did he parse us as cis lesbians or just cis friends? Or did he clock us and saw as us some sort of down-low gay entertainment? The fear of homo-/transphobic violence was there and I could not say whether it was already upon us or not. Basically I feared he might stab us, or that we would have to fight. My companion said it would have been much worse had be not read us as cis, she interpreted us as passing to him throughout. And she fundamentally does pass as cis, so maybe so – this would be a silver lining, beyond just another experience shared with sisters everywhere.

Confessed one crush, will see how that goes. Realizing another old friendship (and maybe two more or so) with smart boys may have been sort of crushes too. In one of those cases, not so sure I will never follow up on it. Hmmm.

lacrimosa

Nice start of evening going to event for queer women, felt all accepted and OK except for my horrible deep voice. Was OK.

Then randomly sir:ed, I think, by the person selling me fast food. This in full femme presentation. Are my features and voice so awfully masculinized that random strangers can only parse me as some drag queen or something is that it?

Went home. Realized I would weep. Doing so, with support of moon and rain and a fairy child grown strong. Cannot really stop. Feeling, quite simply, sad. Crying because I am sad and despairing, right this minute. Later, I won’t feel that, it will be OK. I will cope and deal and grow stronger.

Right now wondering what the fuck I can even do, wanting to cut away all the despicable horrible flesh that makes me look and sound like something which is not even a person, like some corpse, like some dead thing. Wondering what I can do, not finding clear solution. Hoping my medication will work its wonders over years and years of alternate sexual differentiation. Remembering this pain and sorrow so I really will put in the 10K hours needed to master a voice that lets people hear me as me.

Remembering and habitualizing to ask, “sorry, what did you just say?” by reflex, causing trouble. Not for my sake, the harm will already be done. But a teachable moment for the sake of others.

Still feeling it. I suppose this is good, this is me finally not being an emotionless husk who could just choose not to feel, this is me feeling without having to decide to feel. This is new growth, this is life. Growth hurts. Healing hurts.

attaché

Spending two days in an emotionally charged and impactful part of my professional environment, the very LARP-like scientific coordination meeting for a major project I am part of. I was very nervous or perhaps vigilant beforehand, feeling I absolutely had to have solved all my action points and to have provided solutions of sufficient impact where everyone feels involved. I felt this less than before because I now have my new job position taken up, so I am more secure and less dependent, but I am still dependent, and so felt it more than before at the same time as I now meet these collaborators in most cases for the first time since transitioning, and definitely for the first time since going somewhat full femme in my presentation. So situational and personal minority stress making me concerned and fearful, expecting acceptance if fully useful and efficient, and fearing – hopefully baselessly – that I would be questioned, misgendered or pitied if not. “He” went insane, tried to change sex, and now look how much worse “his” science has gotten.

For whatever reason this did not manifest. People have been great, wonderful, accepting. I think I told them all over email that I transition, but for whatever reason everyone seems to know, as I want them to, and I have not been deadnamed. Nor misgendered, excepting I saw an email sent between other parties using my new name but old pronouns. From someone who uses the right pronouns to my face, so not sure what to make of it. This does not improve my view of him. There were some awkwardnesses, but mostly very much a non-issue – people ask me about other things in my life, congratulates me on things etc. but my gender or my transition simply is entirely a non-issue in the public communication. Which is how it should be. I do feel wherever there is gendering (not so much) e.g. bonding between people in similar strata of age, sex, seniority, that I am included as I seek. Some acquaintances are deepening towards potential homosocial friendships, other established friendships already are close and open in ways where I feel no gender barriers in the way whatsoever as well as fully accepted. All good, and if I will come to meet some of these people less often in the future following end of the project, I will miss them. Subsequently, I must maintain collaborations not only for professional reasons but also for personal ones.

What felt really good was how free I felt to present while remaining me. I did my thing (semi-arrogantly discussing figures, algorithms, results, interpretation; commenting on things, suggesting things) feeling much more relaxed than usually. Ended up with voice perhaps melodious and in middle range but not so high as I wanted, hard to remember while also being heard. That bothered me some (as in, I feel dysphoric when I feel my voice is parsed as masculine). I did all this with open-footed high-heel sandals showing off painted nails and legs, in skimpy summer dresses (not even black ones!) and moderate makeup, as well as my signature occult symbol amulet. That last felt important, I am still myself, still S as the driven scientist and seeker for immortality, still someone who talks too much and comments too much and pushes some boundaries, but also someone who lets herself to be as fully femme in presentation as she feels like. I did this and since it worked well professionally, since I had some results and got good responses, I feel this makes me believe that by and large I am accepted, with some fully, with others at least on the surface.

So that was all good.

Things continuing with many many many things at once, personal things and work things and formal things (like registration and housing and company connections that are not work-related), and I feel I can only resolve a few matters each day. There is a list and I do the most urgent things first. This largely feels good, it feels OK. Most of the time I am less stressed, less sad and fearful than before, or it feels differently. I can’t quite say. This appears to be less the case just before I take each next estrogen dose, so may be linked to the dips as blood levels fluctuate. When I really do get stressed from outside sources it is more obtrusive, less easy to not feel. Still possible to ignore and not act on, but not possible to not be somehow affected by. Sometimes vexing but worth it.