TRANS TURBULENT AIRLINES

 Hello Friends,

I’m back to continue my deep expose on the current state of the LGB  TQ community. The recent Dave Chappelle comedy special set the table for a huge discourse on issues surrounding trans women in particular — what kinds of jokes are transphobic? [answer: mostly the ones told by non trans people]

who is more marginalized, black folks or trans folks? [answer: black trans folks]

what was the true nature of Dave’s friendship with trans comedian Daphne Dorman? [answer: token trans friend]

What did it really mean when he said he was “Team TERF”? [answer: I am still transphobic but I’m trying to understand things]

Friends, I’ll have to admit that for the past couple of years I was cruising along not even thinking much about “trans issues” at all. During the year that I hid my face under a mask, something magical happened. I finally grew some facial hair — enough to earn “passing privilege” and to forget a time when the horrific slur “ma’am” was hurled at me everywhere I went, even if it was not meant to be hurtful. Some weight gain and some hair loss also contributed to my overall masculine presentation. I was thrilled, and because things were going so well for me transition-wise, I ass-umed all was fine in the community at large.

WELL, I WAS WRONG!!! There is a lot of shit hitting the fan, and some of it is of valid medical concern. Some of it is of valid social concern. And some of it is just pure transphobia rising to the surface because these valid medical and social concerns have started popping up.

I will give an overview of some of the turbulence affecting the trans community, and then I will give direct attention to some of the very special TERFs I have encountered.

First of all, it turns out that a lot of the people who were coming out as trans in 2015 are not really trans. Even back then I thought, is it possible that there are this many transes?? I mean, when I was a kid I knew, like, 2 people who were gender non-conforming, including me. And even we would never admit that we felt the need to live as the opposite gender full time. But in 2015, it seemed like a sizable portion of the human race had been secretly harboring feelings of gender confusion/dysphoria. And it was mostly young people. Kids, teenagers. Not as many people my age were transitioning, but they were out there too. And I felt pretty excited about this — a kind of I-am-not-alone euphoria to counteract the decades of I-am-so-alone dysphoria that had plagued me.

And most of the kids and adults who came out c. 2015 were choosing to medically transition (hormones, surgeries) as well as socially transition (wardrobe, name and pronoun changes). Not only that, but they were being celebrated for their bravery, their self-knowledge! Their journeys seemed like “success only” stories (I felt like I was the only person who wasn’t having a successful transition).

I first heard the term “Detransition” early this year. I saw it on some random youtube channel that had a transphobic tone to it so I didn’t pay much attention. I’ve known people who had to stop their hormone treatments for health reasons, but they still identified as trans. After the Chappelle special, as I was searching for info on Daphne and other trans comedians, I found a slew of “Detransitioners.” These are mostly young folks who were born female, transitioned to male for a period of time, then stopped testosterone treatments and returned to identifying as female. They sometimes call themselves FtMtFs. There aren’t as many MtFtMs going public, but there are a few of those out there too, and they tend to be older. I was surprised to see how many of these detransitioned kids were making youtube content. I know it’s possible they are “plants” from the neo-con universe, but it doesn’t seem like that is the case. They seem very sincere in their confusion and regret. [Keeping in mind that transgender people make up only about 13 % of the world population, these detransitioners make up only 5% of that 13%, but detransitioning was not something that was being talked about in 2015, 2016…].

So…more on detransitioners later. Now let’s talk about Autogynephiles.

A dubious psychologist named Ray Blanchard came up with a typology for transsexualism in males. One type is the homosexual male who is so effeminate he might as well just get castrated and live as a woman. The other type is the heterosexual fetishist who gets turned on by himself as a woman.

I can honestly say I don’t know any trans women who would describe themselves as either.

But apparently the latter type exists, and they are hijacking the whole trans rights movement with their male privilege!! They are taking over women’s spaces, and erasing the whole idea of what it means to be a woman! They are insisting that (biological) women define themselves with new language like “uterus havers” because transwomen are women even though they don’t have uteruses!  They are the force of evil known as Autogynephiles!!

They are the ones who would dress as women to get into the women’s restroom, or the changing room at the gym. And yes, there are documented cases of this happening, unfortunately. There was an autogynephilic transwoman in the UK who got sent to a women’s prison and raped someone. There have been several reports in the US of autogynephiles undressing and exposing their pre-op anatomy at women’s gyms or other women-only spaces. There are accounts of autogynephiles who troll lesbians for not wanting to have sex with them — dick & all. That’s transphobic, they say! Their main goal, it seems, is to play the victim and to make cis women feel uncomfortable.

Again I feel like I should state that I’ve never met any trans woman who fits this description, I’ve only seen/heard about them on the internet, so I am going out on a limb to suppose that they constitute a small percentage of the already small percentage of people who are trans. But they do exist, and that is cause for concern in some areas.

But more about the Autogynephiles later…let’s talk a moment about surgeries.

As a trans man I am familiar with the “trans rites” that constituted a successful FtM transition c. 2015. They included starting HRT (which I did on 12-7-15) a legal name change (which I did on 4-13-16) and “top surgery” aka double mastectomy with nipple grafts (which I did on 10-4-16). Notice I fulfilled my trans rites checklist very quickly — all within a year, and all because I was able to afford all this transformative magic (never forget the privilege!) I say that somewhat cheekily, but I am very grateful to have been able to do all these things rather expediently. It doesn’t happen that way for many trans identified people (and I have my theories about that being the origin story for the whole non binary movement, but we’ll get to that later).

The point is, once I made the decision to transition, I was helped down this path by a team of affirmative medical professionals who questioned me very little. I was under the care of a therapist who hooked me up with an endocrinologist and a “top surgeon.” I was with the therapist and a support group for a year before I made the decision to medically transition. I was 46 years old when I started the “journey.”  Most of the people I met on my way were much younger than me, and they were moving through their trans rites even faster than I was (ie, they didn’t spend a year in therapy first).

Notice I haven’t said anything about “bottom surgery” — which is the surgery everyone means when they ask “Have you had THE SURGERY??”  For FtMs in 2015 bottom surgery was not really part of the package (pun intended). Being on testosterone brings about some magical changes in the lower regions, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned in blogs from that era, and also there are some pretty life-like prosthetics you can buy to use at the urinal. Personally I felt no great need for “bottom surgery.” 

But it seems nowadays, more and more young trans men are opting for Phalloplasty. There is a better, less invasive surgery called Metoidoplasty, which makes use of the natural growth of the clitoris, severs a ligament to let it dangle free and look relatively like a micropenis. This used to be a satisfactory option for most trans men who wanted a little more enhancement down there, and I never heard of any long lasting complications or trouble healing from a Metoidoplasty.

Phalloplasty is a different story. It is a very complicated procedure that does not guarantee great results.

But let’s back up and talk about my own “top surgery” for a minute. I never once heard it called a double mastectomy with nipple grafts. It was always “top surgery” and it sounded so flippantly flamboyant! Everyone was thrilled to schedule their top surgery, including me. In Oct of 2016 I had been on T for 10 months but still did not look or sound very masculine. I was afraid the surgeon would take one look at me and decide that I was not a good candidate for top surgery. But that didn’t happen. I was a paying customer. No one questioned anything.

So I had the surgery and it all went well. I was surprised however by how , uhhh, surgical it felt. It was just top surgery, right? Elective? Cosmetic? I was not prepared for the level of pain and discomfort I felt. Basically I was sliced from the back of each armpit all the way across the chest, with each breast being fully removed, and the nipples traced by a scalpel and grafted back on somewhere higher than they had been.

There was much more healing to do than I was prepared for. They sent me home only hours after the surgery and I was barely able to straighten my spine into full standing position. I felt like I was splitting open. And then I had to get in a car and be driven home. That was scary! I thought, if we so much as bump into anything I am a goner. 

After about 8 weeks of healing I finally felt somewhat normal. I still felt like there was a piece of barb-wire yoked around my chest, right where my nipples had been. In fact, to this day I feel like my chest is tied up tightly with string. One day in 2020 after I finished running, I fell back on my bed and threw my arms up over my head and felt the most acute sensation of flesh ripping. In the days following I saw little pinpricks of blood all around the scar tissue. It has now been 5 years since my surgery and my scars still itch like crazy sometimes. My grafted on nipples itch a lot and I can’t scratch them directly because it’s too sensitive & tingly & weird. So I scratch all around them for relief.

I know this sounds like I’m complaining, or regret having the surgery. But that isn’t the point I’m trying to make. I do NOT regret having a double mastectomy with nipple grafts. I am thrilled about it actually. I could fill many more pages with how much I hated having breasts and how weird it felt to have bags of flesh dangling around & brushing up against my clothes every minute of the day. That I really hated!! I can live with itching and string. 

But I cannot, can NOT, CAN NOT, imagine living with those sensations in my genital area. I cannot imagine having to heal from scalpel wounds and stitches down there. I can’t imagine how much, and for how long, the itching of the scar tissue would affect that region.

I’ve unfortunately heard of so many young people going under the knife —for phalloplasties and vaginoplasties — and having terrible complications. In fact I haven’t heard any account of a phallo- or vaginoplasty that was without complication. These surgeries are not really ready for mass consumption. They are still extremely experimental. The things these kids go through after surgery is beyond anything I’d be willing to suffer. There is an especially cavalier attitude toward vaginoplasties —you cut the dick off and bam! instant woman. That’s how it is portrayed in movies, that’s how it is joked about by idiots. But ask any trans girl who’s undergone a vag-plasty and she will set you straight and hopefully smack the shit out of you for being so stupid.

But enough about THE SURGERIES for now. We will definitely talk more about those later. I can see this blog is getting super long and I haven’t even introduced you to the Triad of TERFs I want you to meet so badly. My god you will hate them…or love them maybe, if you’re hate-reading this blog. But they do deserve a mention in all this mayhem.

So I will mention them. Next time. In the Octopus Diary.

Farewell for now…