The Fanstastic Ms. Fox

Coming back from the Fed conference (which not only keep getting easier, but strangely always give me some sort of sociological insight and gendery resolution) and the surgical consultation, I feel that, when it comes to transition, I've hit the halfway mark.

Now, if I were to describe my body as a chart, most would now have reached a dim blue, like the "good" colour in headache commercials. It is in-line; well. I am pleased. Most of it. Most of my face and all of my genitals remain an uncomfortably bright white space. Some parts of the white fade into a light blue: they're near where they should be; others glow an angry red.

They are blank. Not present.
They are bright, glaring. Too present.

I am looking at mending these discontinuities. In my last entry, when I said I spoke to a surgeon, I was not talking about genital surgery, but facial surgery. This is something that I've been thinking about for a awhile but on which I have kept uncharacteristically quiet.

I've been finding that, occasionally and unexpectedly, a sense of gratification, harmony or rightness surrounds me. This feeling of being happily embodied is new, and it tells me that I'm doing the right thing - whether that's "the right thing" is whatever I'm doing in the moment, or transition in general (probably both). This occurs most frequently at moments of genuine and often kinesthetic expression, unchecked by second-guessing; through movement, exertion, crying, creating art. It never occurs when looking in the mirror, nor has it come while pacing at a bus stop.

In tandem with this state, I usually perceive a semi-conscious image of me-now; a visual flicker in my mind as if I'm seeing myself viewed from elsewhere. It is a harmonious image; squaring with how my body feels, but seeing myself from outside carries a measure of disassociation with it, and I wonder what that means.

I would like to make these moments more frequent, as they seem to point to "yes, what you're doing is right for you." I am not sure how to do this.

Exercise seems to set it off. It can be climbing a steep hill, or using all limbs to scale a pile of concrete road-markers, or even carrying heavy groceries. In all cases, it's oddly gratifying, drawing me into present awareness.

I need to do some kind of a sport, I guess. The rec centre strike is over. Maybe I should see what's available? Something that doesn't involve a lot of running (i.e. no Soccer) on account of my knee, but which still require exertion. Suggestions? Locations?

Oh, right, I was thinking of taking up paintball.

I'm trying to follow Tim's fine advice about coming out: try a bunch of different stuff, see what works for you, find parts of your identity, and then see what you think of queer "norms."

Translasses have the option of presenting as visibly queer lasses. The advantage of this is that onlookers will be more likely to confirm their identity, as they'll write off the genderfucked appearance as some Sapphist side-effect ("enough Indigo girls and you just sprout stubble - it's true - so tell your teenage son to crank up The Watershed"). The disadvantage is that you always look queer.

The big advantage is that if you are a translass who is happy being obviously dykey (::the authour waves::), then this will make you happy. Otherwise it'll make you miserable - although some might find it better than being read as transsexual.

Anyhow, I cut my hair because it was "too long." Today I remembered what "too long" means.

"Too long" means "too feminine and not queer enough." (insufficiently Dykey) [Edit: tomboi-dykey]
"Too long" also means "it frames my face in such a way that it makes me look like a man in a dress." (overly Trans) [edit: transexual]

(note the connections in my head: dykey = good; trans = bad --- mmm?)

[later edit: masculine - good / feminine = bad?]

While I'm trying out things with my appearance, there's this nest of fears and hopes that yards me to one side or the other.

I'm afraid that if I look feminine, I'll look trans. I hate looking trans. I didn't ask to be born into the wrong sex, and I'm MtF because I have little other alternative to get where I want to go. Note the resentment? Part of this is due to the unpleasant experiences that I've had in meeting some other transwomen (in rapid sequence), and these were most of the first times that I'd met transwomen (at least that I'm aware of), so those fears of awkwardness, pariah status, overt social and phisical hostility, detriorating mental health and suicide, have stuck with me I guess. Living in a society that teaches us to hate femininity in men probably has something to do with it too.

I'm also afraid of looking decreasingly feminine and increasingly...  butch? Soft butch. Really soft, like squishy.

I'd hardly say that I'm a highly masculine person, but I'd also say that the more I look at queer female presentations, the more I feel drawn towards the masculine. It's comfortable. In fact it may be the first time I've felt comfortable behaving in a masculine fashion - without that grinding spirit-noise that it used to provoke, like a car with worn-through brake pads.

But to an extent, "comfortable" means "safe,"  and safe means "I want to hold back and turn to something familiar." And maybe some of it means "This will make me less of a man in a dress and more of a tomboi, because the latter form of gender transgression is more acceptable where I come from, and besides, it puts me one step further away from all the broken MtFs I've met."

On the other side. I'm also avoiding moving over to the masculine at all because it means that I'm breaking the norm for MtFs in two frightening ways. It could seriously undermine my attempts to justify to a psychiatric panel why I need the big switch (seriously - that's how getting genital surgery works) and so delay it. And "masculine MtF" it puts me so far outside the range of what most people, even those into queer issues, see as intelligible, and pretty much drops me outside the range of common experience. I mean, what the fuck is a squishy (i.e. really really soft) butch MtF? That's... what the fuck?


It's not as bad as this might make it seem. There is lots of time for experimentation.
It is however weird and new, and there is almost no support or reference for this kind of thing. Hence the long LJ posts, as you might have noticed.

1. Out-Out Campus is doing super-cool Queer awareness week stuff. There is a drag show on the 16th. You have to go.
I mean that you actually have to. You don't have choice - we passed it at forum last week. There will be drag kings with fedoras, painted-on mustaches and tommy-guns arriving at your place of residence shortly. Sorry.


2. This gay marriage ad campaigns point out the obvious: a lot of gay couples are pretty straight except for the gay part. Turns out that it had already been done in Canada (it's on the left side of the screen when you scroll down). These ads are funny and accurate and I like them but fall short in two areas.

  a. Gay marriage bills can fail in some areas because gay is seen as a White issue.
  b. Many people, of any sexual orientation, find something alarming about being in a conventional marriage.
(IMDYINGINTHISMIDDLECLASSVANILLAHELL)

I still like them, but I would like to see a multiracial genderfucked six-person bloodplay and the tagline:
Don't worry, you don't have to be a part of this...
but you're thinking about it aren't you?

Just sayin'


3. A few people have been a bit surprised by my gender issues. I've heard that many people don't find me to be that feminine, and that this acts as a source of confusion. Cool.           (and long live Eris, goddess of dischord!)

Here's the short of it: much as trans folk aren't necssarily straight, by which I mean "attracted to the gender opposite their preferred one" (in fact, I think that trans folk are more likely to be non-straight than cisgendered folks), gender identity doesn't always square with mannerisms. There are nelly transguys, who may be gay, straight or bi. I know of one butch translass.

Furthermore, Transgender shit is an intense process of self-blah-blah-blah-blah. In this, and often in transsexual cases of doing awesomely psycho shit to your mind-body with hormones (we must be mentally ill if we want to go through puberty again), people often find that they don't wind up where they expected. There are even trans folk who were homosexual in their old gender and still are in their new one

Changed sex, still queer, sorry dad.

So's you know.

Surprised, I pause to reflect on how this seemingly fluffy video in this post by Jhayne manages to hit home on a lot of my gender issues.
(And it reminds me why I shouldn't be allowed to watch TV)

Chronic psychological shittyness led me to seek out a physician and now I've taken two 37.5 mg doses of effexor. The big reason for this is that I was having trouble sleeping and, throughout the last 24 hours, I've felt as if I've  just had  two cups of coffee.

This raises questions surronding the word "am." Is this an altered state of me? Or would some medicated-to-the-point-of-"health" state be me? Or are they both? Or is the question moot?

Is this nine-volt-to-the-wet-part-of-the-brain feeling the medication? Or is it the medication under specific circumstances? Or is it just feeling good to be back, with my friends, at school, sleeping with Erin, and away from a really crappy week of death in Kelowna?
On the subject of feeling wired, there's an interesting variant on the placebo effect that bears consideration. I don't know it's name, but it goes...

"The worse the side-effects, the more potent the medication is perceived to be."

    ...if you're on a drug for chronic knee pain and you feel normal, it may or may not actually be working, but if you're on a drug that makes you dizzy and unable to see the colour green, you can be assured it's doing something. Besides, if the side effects are this bad, it must be effective.

There are ramifications to this dissolution of boundaries. If who 'I am' is an arbitrary midpoint between a cell and an ecosystem, between a moment's stray thought and a universe alive with cognition, then 'my' existence or nonexistence is basically unimportant. "I" am a bucket full of water in an ocean, minus the physical bucket.

More to the point, if all thought and feeling are one then I am a component of a larger soul; a component predisposed to thinking of itself as separate. What am I praying to then? Is the left pinky kneeling before the rest of the body, hoping to receive a glimpse of its wisdom or power?

Death? Unimportant: an evolutionarily programmed fear of the termination of a self that really doesn't really exist. The point where homeostasis stops is akin to the point where you whang your head on alow door and it stings and you lose a brain cell or two. My memories and personality cease but those are not fundamentally different from what I have done in the world. "My" actions leave traces in this brain called mine and in the world around it. There is no oblivion nor an afterlife, just a self-obsessed leaf drying up and falling off.

Selfishness? Foolishness: a calculation based on mislayed boundaries. A mistake. Not evil, just stupid. Kind of like selling your left hand for money or trying to cheat your toes..

God? You, me, everyone, everything. What's left when you remove imaginary barriers. Admittedly, this leaves us without an infinitely wise or more powerful being, but it also puts it within touching distance. Hell, it puts it within circulation distance.

So then: what's been distracing me is a stab at a solution to that "God, Ethics and The Afterlife" question.

A few people mention him, usually in passing. Outside of my mother, I've only heard "you remind me of him" once.

So be it: a man takes his own life. He's one of many I suppose.

But... I want answers. That I'm so interested disturbs me. For someone who's so gung-ho on society before biology (adopt!) (before god?), why am I so intent? I'm twenty-five, he's been dead for over three-quarters of my life for fuck's sake.

                                    but I hear this is the age of asking questions,
                                            an age that precedes a life
                                                    of living in unknown answers.

Indeed, it is on the edge of now. And now, much to my surprise, I may be able to consult a necromancer, or what passes for one nowadays.

So, speak to the man with the secrets, conjure a shade and ask some questions. It worked for Saul.