Emotional Support

I’m going to support you with whatever decision you make.

Having people in your life that not only trust your thought process to conclude with a good result but also care about you enough to look past their expectations for you to see a brighter future is important.

I know this all too well, after bringing to my family my desire to transition a little under a year ago.  At first, it seemed bleak because what I was proposing to them was hard to understand and literally shattered a lot of what they saw for me.  Or at least it seemed that way.

It turns out, that even living as Drew, I am still a productive member of society and (gasp) pretty much exactly as my family knew me.  It wasn’t just my family, but my friends that adjusted what they saw, or how they viewed what they saw.

Years of building with legos, taking apart electronics, and playing outside were not voided by my desire to be known as Drew.  The haircuts my mom gave me, the evenings playing softball with my dad, the family vacations were not struck from history by hormone therapy. I knew that I was going to be the same person, but I had to let them see it.

It took time, but they still see the same person.  If I’m lucky, they see some of the fruit of the labor I’ve put into being a better person.

As a result, I’ve adopted a similar philosophy for all of life’s large changes.  Do what’s best for you, tuck your head between your knees and hope that down the road the significant people in your life are still standing behind you.  In reality I should be holding the people that care about me accountable for eventually providing emotional support, but I’ve had enough issues with that in the past that I’m afraid of the inevitable disappointment that will follow assuming that the people I care about will stay standing beside me.

Being an adult means that you are presented with decisions where the best option for you often results in disappointing significant people in your life.  Emotional support seems to get fewer and far between. You get stronger, or your don’t grow up.  You stand on your own, or you sit down.  You do what is right for you, or you suffer under your sacrifices. You stay the same person, and other people get to see more of you.

Queer Invisibility

Something that has been nagging away at the back of my brain turned around and hit me full force in the face last week.  I’m now quite often invisible to many queer people- the people that are my community, that I used to be a large beacon for as a masculine female- now can no longer see me.

The event was frankly inconsequential, as most moments of invisibility have few direct consequences.  I was running a training sessions for the new TAs in which a lesbian friend was attending- and one of the new TAs with whom I was not acquainted with non-verbally acknowledged their mutual gay status.  You know, the head nod, the long glance, etc.  Let’s face it, after all this time I can pick queers out of a room blindfolded, drunk, and under 3 minutes, much less when I have 3 hours and my eyes open to see things like a Mt.Holyoke tshirt.  It was just really weird to see someone I (perceived as) being queer acknowledge another queer person… and completely miss me.

Granted, there’s a good chance that towards the end of those 3 hours of training that this person did eventually peg me as some kind of queer- but it’s not even the eventual knowledge that I’m worried about.  I had a power before, to make a space a safe space for queer people just by asserting my presence.  Making spaces safe, especially educational spaces, is something that I never want to stop doing.  Being invisible as a queer person takes away my biggest tool for doing that.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the way I appear now, the way I can express my masculinity and live as a male- it’s just a double edged sword at times in a way that I didn’t exactly expect.  At first, passing as a male was a nice vacation from being a queer beacon.  Now passing is standard to my day to day life and something I hope I never take for granted- while I strive for new ways to retain the power I had before.

I will never stop speaking up.  I’ve lost count of all the people I’ve argued with, defriended on facebook, nearly gotten the crap kicked out of me on the bus late at night, all over the use of derogatory terms.  So help any person I ever see physically harming someone for being gay- I’m touchy enough as it is about men harassing women, this is a thousand times worse.

This ties into teaching for me- I don’t want to just be teaching chemistry to my students.  They have to learn to succeed.  Between building some confidence, respecting the other people, and learning how to problem-solve on their own… there’s plenty I’d like to be teaching them. Indirectly, my invisibility as a queer person takes away the subtly stated fact that my classroom is a safe place for queer students.  It’s been a while… but I was a terrified student once.  I’d never wish that experience on anyone, and I’m going to do what I can to make sure that my classroom and my life aren’t swallowed up into queer invisibility.

Acne

Before I even started testosterone, I had acne.  I’ve had acne since I was ~13, and it’s never completely cleared up.  Once on testosterone, it has definitely gotten worse, as well as become much more localized on my chin/jawline.

One of the effects of testosterone is your skin simply changing.  I’ve noticed my face becoming slightly less soft, especially as fuzz/stubble comes in.  While my skin is still fairly soft, it reacts to hair growth by breaking out.  I try to minimize these break outs by not shaving too often, but stray stubble on my chin really irks me so I generally shave every 6-10 days.

During these hot summer months I am sweating A LOT.  I don’t have air conditioning at home, and my major form of transportation involves ~3/4’s mile walk each way.  The extra water, salt, and oil on my face isn’t exactly helping matters.

So… what am I doing about this? In high school I didn’t really do much to combat my acne, other than washing my face in the shower once a day.  I hated the acne, but had bigger issues with my body that I didn’t know how to express so I just let it all go.  Now, I wash my face at least twice a day, plus topical medicines.  My T-prescribing doctor gave me Differin right before I started testosterone.  The differin did a pretty good job keeping the oil from getting out of hand.  More recently at a check up she offered to prescribe a topical antibiotic (clindamycin).  It isn’t one of the many antibiotics I’m allergic to and as a topical application it’s unlikely that I would react poorly.  The antibiotic will help not only keep the oil at bay but also cut down on the little bacterial nasties that make my breakouts last forever.

I’ve avoid oral acne medicines as much as possible, simply because I hate keeping other drugs in my system… especially when they tend to be in the antibiotic genre of medicines.  I really appreciate having a health insurance company that covers medicines minus the copay, and even more I appreciate having a doctor that is proactive towards keeping the acne reasonable.  I knew from day zero that I would have pretty serious acne when I started testosterone… I actually thought it would be worse than it is now, based on the acne I used to have.

Not only does the acne feel gross and can be slightly painful, but it tends to make me look younger and if I’m not careful it can scar.  I don’t think I’m anywhere near the severity that leads to scarring, thankfully.  The pain stays relatively mild as long as I keep up with the face washing and the new antibiotic is also cutting back on the pain.  I feel less gross about the acne when my face is drier, which seems to depend on a variety of factors not limited to but including my testosterone cycle, my physical activities, the weather, how well I slept, my stress level, the food I ate, alcohol consumption, and whether or not my cat licks my face while I’m asleep.

Gay Softball Team

Well, the season is actually over.  We played through several months, 2 games a week on Sundays and practices on Wednesday evenings.  I had so much fun with my team despite our perfect 0-21 record, my many errors, and finally hurting my shoulder pretty good 2 weeks ago.

I’ve played a lot of softball in my life.  I played junior varsity in high school, I played intramural in undergrad.  I’ve never claimed to be great at it, but I love to play.  Because I love softball, there was no way I wasn’t going to play this spring/summer just because I knew that I was in the awkward-turtle phase of my transition.

The first time the team met I was about 1 month on T.  At first I had huge insecurities about pronouns but slowly learned to correct people and quickly the team picked up on my trans-gender. They never meant to offend, but I was naively surprised by how little the gay community knows about transpeople. I spent so many years looking into female-to-male transgender information, that it became second nature to me.  It was cool to hear from them what they noticed about my transition- when we wouldn’t see each other for a week and my voice would be lower, over the entire season when my fat had redistributed quite a bit, or everyone being supportive during the name change process.

I don’t exactly pass when playing softball, between the smaller jersey I wear and it being hard to wear more than one binder.  I started the season playing in a frog bra, but I felt emotionally very uncomfortable not binding so I gave up on that and found it very easy to play in a 997 binder.  I generally wear 2 of them at a time- now I wear 1 while playing sports and sleeping.  It was really interesting to see over the course of the season how much more I began to pass as I progressed from 1 month on T to nearly 5 at the end of the season.

I generally don’t mind talking to people bluntly about my transition.  I say generally because sometimes I get questions at the bar like “is Drew on your birth certificate?” by people trying to ask if I was born male or I’m pretty sure the next person asking about my anger/rage levels will send me into an angry rage (irony, I know).  My softball team became a sort of secondary family, and being open with them about who I am was a great experience for me.  Not only did I have to learn how to do that in a group/cooperative dynamic, but I got to reap the rewards of the family dynamic.

My softball team became fairly protective of me.  Whenever someone gets my pronouns wrong they’re corrected.  They spend time with the women in my life. They form opinions about the women in my life. They deal with the aftermath of the women in my life. They encourage me even when I make a sucky play.  They listen to me complain about work being rough.  They laugh at guys hitting on me. They laugh at me for getting hit on by guys.  They try to get me to like guys. They have fun with me.  I had a lot of fun with them.

I play softball because it’s fun, and I truly had a ton of fun playing in the gay softball league this spring/summer despite how awkward I felt at times. I got some of my skills back and by the end of the season I was hitting doubles and triples and the team had several get-togethers where we all ended up doing our fair share of laughing. I’m really glad that I decided to play, I have a lot of good memories both on the field and from time I spent with teammates.

www.tcgsl.org

Five Foot Three

I’ve always been a little insecure about my height.  I think there are very few people in the shorter minority that aren’t painfully aware of the difficulty in reaching items on high shelves or finding someone in a crowd- but I also have a good list of the advantages, such as not being uncomfortable in coach on an airplane or rarely hitting your head on “low” hanging objects.  This insecurity was rooted in my masculinity, not necessarily my male identity, and had existed for years before my transition.  When people ask me if I date women that are taller than me I laugh (like there are any other options) and explain that I just like to be able to pick them up.  While my height might be something I can get touchy about, it certainly doesn’t stop me from doing anything.

Needless to say, it did feel really good when people started swearing up and down that they thought I had gotten taller since I started T.  People started noticing about 3 months on T, and I finally did something about it this morning before having my blood drawn for my 5-month check up appointment.  I asked the nurse to measure me.

I’ve heard rumors about someone who knows someone that grew a little once on T, but I don’t think I ever saw an increase in height listed as an effect of testosterone in someone who is no longer in puberty. I didn’t expect to grow at all, I didn’t even hope for it because I figured it was completely out of the question.  Am I going to complain that I seem to have picked up 1-2 inches over the last 19 weeks?  Absolutely not.

Some explanations for transmen gaining in height is an improved posture that comes from no longer hiding their chests post-surgery… but as we’re all painfully aware, I haven’t had surgery yet. Men are biologically taller than females on average, so it would make sense that testosterone would contribute to the height discrepancy, but as I mentioned before this doesn’t generally make a difference post-puberty.

There are devices (shoe lifts) that can be placed inside the shoe to add an inch or two to someone’s height, and I never even considered them- it wasn’t worth changing the way I live my life or putting money in when I never had trouble living when I was shorter.  I’ve heard many pro and con arguments to these devices, and without being judgmental to other people- I’m going to say that I’ve found that my insecurities about being short were rooted more in my lack of faith in myself in other aspects of life such as being a protector or a partner.  Working those things out made my height more of an inconvenience at times than a constant disadvantage.

I know that my situation is fairly rare, that a transmale gains height from testosterone injections- but I’m honestly kind of excited about it.  Sort of like I won a lottery I didn’t even know I had been entered into.

Speak Up

I have a thing.  I have an insecurity.  I have a lingering apprehension when it comes to opening my mouth and saying anything.

I automatically am afraid that my voice will give me away, that it will sound funny and high pitched, that the person I am talking to will no longer see me as I am once they hear it.  I haven’t quite adjusted to my voice dropping so quickly.

I do really appreciate my voice now- I get sir-ed and mister-ed on the phone regularly and the smooth deepness in the morning doesn’t frighten me anymore.   It’s often times the first thing people say something about when they notice my transition.

It’s not every time, but it does happen often.  I speak softly simply because I am afraid and do not trust my own voice.  I feel a little ridiculous when I do it, because I do know that my voice has dropped rather quickly to a rather ideal register.  I’m making a more conscious effort now to force myself to speak up when I’m starting a conversation.  Starting with talking to strangers in public, talking to my friends, and speaking to large groups of my students, I’m going to speak up.  I want to be able to speak out. Only I can be my own voice, to assert who I am and what I need or want in life.

I’m not ashamed of my new voice.  I’m just insecure in my old voice.  That ends now.

Head Games

Earlier this summer, as I sat on my therapists couch, I rambled through all of the stuff that was making a good attempt at running me down with stress.  I finished with a deep breath, probably fidgeted with my shoe, furrowed my brow, and smiled a little. I generally have good resolve and am pretty optimistic.  I’ve powered forward through a lot of stressful times.  I have a chemistry degree for Christ’s sake.

The first thing my therapist said to me, after clarifying a few names and relationships of people that I mentioned, was “well, this will be a good test for you.”  All of life is a test when you’re taking serious steps towards modifying your body to match your gender identity- but this particular test covered several aspects of my life.  What my therapist was mostly interested in was if I was able to remain positive, balance my intense graduate program with my transition, keep working on direct communication, and continue to build the self-esteem and confidence that have been vital to my physical transition.

Yep, I’m absolutely still positive.  My life is going to continue to improve as I’m headed towards top surgery and I’ve worked hard to get myself into a good graduate program that basically ensures a secure future.

For the most part… I’ve been able to balance my graduate program with my transition.  Part of the “test” that I endured was the loss of a significant amount of research and several dressing downs from my advisor as a result from my mistakes.  I’m making progress again, but I still have a lot of ground to make up as well as I know that my boss is seriously concerned about my abilities as a researcher.

I wish I would have had more time to keep up with my family since my trip to St.Louis.  I know that they have been taking vacations and I could pass it off on that, but I have been so busy I couldn’t honestly tell you when they’ve been gone.  It’s frustrating because I was able to talk with them easier than I ever had before when I was in St.Louis, and I really liked that.  It’s just another thing to look forward to in the future, as my schedule fluctuates with the seasons, I know that my relationships with my family members can continue to improve.

My self-esteem has been the hardest part to preserve.  Maybe self-worth is a better term for it.  At any rate, failing at several aspects of your life at once is a royal pain.  I was able to remind myself that I know that I’m a good person, that I’m smart, caring, etc, but the feelings were downright overwhelming at times.  It was hard to remember that I’m intelligent when all I could feel was the failure of my research and disapproval of my boss.  Kicking that took remembering all of the other times when I’ve failed in school and that I was able to climb back up from the bottom rung.  It was hard to remember that I’m a good boyfriend when all I could feel was the rejection of the woman I was dating and the nonsensical reasons for the sudden end.  Kicking that took remembering dozens of little things that I like about myself that mean that people like dating me. It was hard to remember that my sense of self is valid when I spent quite a bit of time with people that didn’t always call me Drew and rarely used male pronouns.  Kicking that took remembering the refreshing validation that came from my legal name change.  There were a lot of feelings of disconnect from everything I had worked for in the last year throughout all of the “test”.

Test passed?  Absolutely.  I’m still standing.  Life hurts from time to time, but picking up and moving on is the only way to survive.  I don’t always know what the next step is in every directions, but the way my life goes- at least one direction always has a step moving at a time.

More recently I sat on that same sofa, again fidgeting with my shoe, smiling a little, my head held high, rambling through the recent events of my life.  Life is going to have to be a hell of a lot shittier before I’m going to give up my resolve.  Best way to be prepared for any more “tests”?  Continue to unapologetically be myself.  I can be proud of that, and that’s the strongest way to get the future that I want.

Emotional Stereotypes of Testosterone

Stereotypes do come from somewhere, I admit that. However, in my experience, the negative stereotypes of transmen and the effects that testosterone has on their moods is largely rooted in the portrayals of transmen in the media and not in the truth of our lives.

I’ve heard it many times from partners of transmen who are beginning testosterone, including the person who was dating me, that they’re worried about changes in mood as a result of testosterone.

I’m going to start with the affirmative.  Yes, introducing testosterone to your body does change how your emotions work.  Within the first few days I felt like my emotional response had become supercharged. Over the next few months I’ve found it more difficult to cry, which had been my previous way of dispersing sad emotions.  These were internal changes to my life.

Now onto the that’s-a-load-of-bullshit part of this post.

Anyone that uses changes in their emotions as an excuse to suddenly act negatively towards other people is pathetic.  If a transman you know is suddenly a jerk at times, that’s not the testosterone talking, that’s a lack of character. No, I’m not saying it’s easy.  Your emotions really do change on testosterone.  I failed an exam about 6 days on testosterone and had no idea how to handle the panic and anger I was feeling.  Be responsible for yourself! (I was totally lame, skipped a party, went home, made dinner and spent some time thinking to myself)

Testosterone does not create new emotions.  Emotions are a developed response that result in large part from the years of experience we have as humans. As inexperienced babies the only emotions we had were happiness and sadness.  The more of the world we were exposed to, the more we learned to feel.  Testosterone is not going to suddenly add uncontrollable anger and rage to a healthy person’s emotional arsenal.  Testosterone would make it easy for an unhealthy person to let their anger and/or rage get out of control, and the same thing goes for the rest of their emotions.  Anger and rage are emotions that we do not often see healthy models for handling, which makes them the hardest of the emotions to adjust to when they are altered by testosterone.  This is no excuse for letting anger and rage become an uncontrollable part of your personality.  Testosterone does not make emotionally-balanced transmen turn into people with uncontrollable rage or anger.

Similarly to the cycle of hormones in an XX-female body, hormones in a transmale will cycle as well.  Advances of science allow the administration of testosterone to minimize the fluctuations of hormone levels.  Weekly injections of 50-100mg are common to achieve normal hormone levels.  There is still a hormonal cycle but it is not severe.  Many things that we do cause emotional changes and chemical cycles in our bodies- sleeping, eating sugary foods, exercising, drinking alcohol, and mental stressors such as school or work. If you survived the female hormonal cycles, you will survive the male hormonal cycles.

Be aware of how you’re feeling, and don’t take the changes out on the other people in your life.  Adjust internally, not externally.  You (a transmale starting testosterone) may have to make some life changes to help you accommodate the changes to your emotions.  I found that I needed to eat better to feel good and that I felt pent up if I didn’t exercise more.

Everyone will change differently.

No one should use testosterone as an excuse to have poor character.

Testosterone is a tool that can help a transman physically be the person he wants to be, but it up to him to emotionally be a person that he is proud of.

Oh, I’m Going to Go There. Sex-Related Body Stuff.

I don’t write about sex on this blog generally.  My general rule if that you don’t ask someone how they like their eggs until you’re cooking them breakfast, you don’t ask someone how they like sex until you’re going to have sex with them.  Sex and my body is a huge insecurity for me, as I’ve grown to understand it is for many people. Though I share many things very publicly, with friends and family and acquiantences, I tend to be more private with my body sexually.

However, I understand that my views are far from obvious and have undergone a *renovation* over the last year, a complex transformation that I did not know would bring me to this point.  It’s not an easy thing to understand, even for myself, and I know that having read the experiences of other FTMs has helped me be more confident in the way that I view my body sexually.  Recently I read a very well-written essay by a gay top FTM from which I’d like to pull several quotes.

First and foremost, probably the most obvious, is that I feel that I have a flat and masculine chest.  As that is not the current reality, my chest is more off limits than the airspace above the White House.  Go there and be shot down.

Secondly and not at all obvious, is that I very much enjoy feeling a touch on my muscles, including my flat chest.  A soft hand on my bicep is a very caring touch and a caress to my flat chest is a direct line to my heart.  I don’t think I need to say what I’m really excited to do post op.

Thirdly, I do not pack daily.  I used to; my genitals felt out of alignment and I didn’t even recognize them as my own.  Then I started testosterone.  For better or worse, you will change between your legs on testosterone.  Not only is it uncomfortable physically to pack now, but I don’t feel like I need to or even want to.  What I have now is a force of nature.  My own force of nature.

“The clitoris has over 8,000 nerve fibers, more than any other organ in the body of any sex, and exists solely for sexual pleasure.  Mine is on steroids.  Time permitting, I can orgasm about five times a day and never once make a mess.”

Fourthly, and as I’ve said recently, my vagina is a lesbian.  If you’ve never heard of Buck Angel, look him up on teh Google (NSFW).  I’m a male that likes women, and my vagina is part of the package.  This doesn’t violate my masculinity or detract from my maleness.

“I’m not one of those FTMs who thinks that we should deny the benefits of the tranny bonus hole; far from it.  … I think it’s great when other transmen are able to fully utilize the complexities of their bodies while retaining their sense of masculinity and integrity.  Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.”

Lastly, I am generally a top, but that’s a dynamic I don’t know well or care to prescribe to the rules of.  If I want to frak with you, I’m going to look into it.  My assertiveness depends on my mood, and that’s not just a sexual thing.  I have been aware of becoming stronger while on testosterone, which actually makes me physically more timid at times.  One can only accidentally crush an egg while trying to just crack it before making the connection.

Overall, sex is just another facet of my life that I have been able to see how beautiful this transition is.  Though I know that my body isn’t the neat and tidy package many people expect based on the binary gender construct, my body is my own package.  I appreciate it, and know that other people can too.

More Changes from T

It’s like I woke up Monday morning, and my hips were gone.

I know it didn’t actually happen overnight, but within the last 1-2 weeks, the shape of my hips has drastically changed in how my clothes fit.  I wear dress shirts with the fitted cut in a 14 1/2 so that they actually fit my body (reminder: I’m a little guy), but I would have to accept that when the dress shirts hit my hips, they, well, hit my hips.  Instead of hanging down over my hips, they would bunch up on my hips.  Now I can tuck the shirt right into my pants.  To be honest, I wasn’t even sure I was wearing the right shirt today except I asked a friend to check the tag when she got to our office this morning.

All of my clothes fit a little differently now actually- my shorts that I bought in the beginning of June sit a little lower and my binders are digging into my ribcage around my upper chest. I’m more satisfied with how I look with binders look on, despite being more and more frustrated with having to wear them.

One of my close friends swears I grew an inch (that would put me all the way to 5 foot 2!!!!) but I’m not convinced.  When I go for a physical and blood work in late July I’ll ask them to measure me.

I am growing more body hair.  It’s all relative. I have blond hair so the hair on my arms is still very light, but the hair on my legs is darkening more and is actually visible on my thighs.  The hair on my stomach is slightly darker but still very sparse, though its started a thin trail up to my chest.  The backs of my hands are covered in lots of short blond hairs, I pet them sometimes to entertain myself.  I’ve had 3-5 dark hairs on my chin for the last month, and lots of very pale slow-growing stubble around my jaw. The sideburns are getting a little more dense, but I’m continuing to shave about once a week to keep from just looking femininely fuzzy.  Hair, facial and overall on my body is not something that I care much for.  It bothered me when the hair on the lower parts of my legs wasn’t really visible, but that stage passed about a month ago.  My hairline has receded a tiny bit in the corners of my forehead, but my hair isn’t thinning and based on family history I’m not worried about it.

Even with my pretty much complete lack of weight lifting lately, my muscle tone hasn’t decreased from where it was a month ago.  I’m satisfied with where I’m at with my arms and shoulders right now, so I’m not concerned with building more- but I don’t want to loose what I have. I have pudge, especially right in the middle. There’s not much I am willing to do that will get rid of the extra 10-20lbs in that area.  I am active, but I also love food.  No complaints.  Part of my feelings of being overweight are from viewing my chest as being extra fat instead of necessarily feminine.

Before starting testosterone:

This month:

My voice is continuing to drop. My singing voice has dropped a lot faster and farther than I expected- as in I am below a tenor.  My speaking voice still has a huge range from near my normal old speaking voice to way below if I try.  An ex pointed something out on the phone today- it was the first time she actually noticed that my voice has dropped because my voice naturally varies a lot during the day and since she heard me quite a bit first thing in the morning for over 3 years, she was used to a more gravely voice on me.  My voice varying a lot during the day would explain how I surprise myself or other people some mornings.

I certainly sweating more than I used to when I am active, and it smells a hell of a lot more than it used to.  Not a plus.

Despite the continued battle with acne and the increase in sweating, I’m still much more comfortable in my body as I recognize it as masculine in the changes I see happening.  I feel like a flower that is finally blooming after being surrounded by an entire garden for years.