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.

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.)

flesh

So, it seems now I actually have breasts. That is fascinating.

Additionally, whether out of weight loss or otherwise, I run the risk of getting drunk if I down too much hard liquor, which was not the case before.

Last but not least, I must conclude with some statistical significance that I feel happy, free, at peace. It’s amazing and true.

tsunami

So it’s all going somewhere, so quickly and no longer all under my control. I came out to wider and wider circles of collaborators, I came out on FB and linkedin and so forth. Surprising people have been supportive (especially ones I am useful to, I note, but still!). No-one negative. A few not saying much at all in response, but that’s OK. It’s now officially so much cat-out-of-bag that going back on this would be awkward, and I am little irritated at that, would like in the best of worlds to just question and experiment for as long as possible. Then again, I need to use this opportunity now.

Voice training proceeds, with very little benefit but perhaps, as of last sessions, not entirely none. Getting braver – thinking now I’ll not be too afraid to wear my bras, for example, even when at work, because now people know I am trans. No longer using men’s rooms, though that leaves me at a loss in my workplace at the moment as I don’t know myself yet to be welcome in the women’s there yet. Laser proceeds. Epilation proceeds, body sculpting proceeds.

Most interesting, may soon pick up my first hormone therapy prescription! Feeling a need to document myself before starting, so I can assess any changes. I suppose I now am vaguely restless and anxious, though this is more diet than anything else. Prone to dry skin and dry hair. Otherwise, what to say? I should take photos. Then to see where things go. Not sure when to begin taking the pills. At some point before next week.

verging

Not much time to write. Much action to fill time with. Momentuous stillness.

A year ago I started questioning.

Now I seem on the verge of coming out.

It’s surprising how conflicting and scary that feels. For several reasons – staring into the face of frightening outcome-risks that I can’t assess how unrealistic they are, that is one. Probably the lesser. The other, how while there isn’t anything that makes me doubt at this point, there is still the apparent absurdity, how different this future is from all that which I grew up around.

I suppose at this point I am processing the fears, spread thin as grease in the machinery of the events of my life, the glorious mechanisms of my agency. Stay tuned.