In other words…TikTok is the new Tumblr
Holy Shit, Friends:
I really do want to wrap up this series on the trials and tribulations of being trans in the 2020s, but the intricacies are endless. This may be the deepest rabbit hole in existence at the current moment. There are even transgender conspiracy theories (which I will definitely summarize for you, or you can look into them yourselves on youtube and reddit).
I was hoping to get right into The Surgeries for this post, but I feel like I need to get a little introspective just for my own sanity. Just to keep all of this real. Because the things I’ve been reading and seeing are beyond what I imagined would be happening when I decided to pursue my own medical transition.
I’ve always been a live and let live person. “If it harms none, do what thou wilt!” That was the basic tenet of Wicca, which I had embraced as a teenager and continue to believe in my old age. But this is an endlessly abusive world, and sometimes in order to prevent harm from being done to onesself, one must do & say things that may be hurtful to others. We’ve come to understand that this is called “setting boundaries” or “calling someone out” or even “canceling someone.”
I started writing this series as a response to the shitstorm surrounding Dave Chappelle’s comedy special, which took a specific interest in who & what trans women are in our society. How can transgender folks be doing better than black folks, when trans is such a “new” phenomenon and black folks have been fighting for equality for eons? There was a lot to unpack there — a lot Dave got wrong, but a lot of valid questions as well. It was something I was interested in from a sociological standpoint, something that went beyond comedy for me.
And how I wish I could close Pandora’s Box and just recite all the things I had once believed without question — that trans women are women, and trans men are men!! That all TERFs are evil bridge trolls with vaginas! That affirmative care is the only right way to treat gender dysphoria, no matter the age of the patient.
But what I’ve realized as I navigate this labyrinthine rabbit hole is — I have questions about my own beliefs. And that’s okay. But I want to be careful with how I communicate some of my new realizations, so that I DON’T sound like a smug TERF, or a half-informed comedian.
I’m not sure where to start, except at the beginning. When I was a little tiny child, it was the 1970s & that was NOT a conservative era. Nudity and sexuality are things I can’t even remember being introduced to because they were always there. Naked children everywhere, naked adults, kids poking and prodding each other in the bathtub, Playboy (and PentHouse!) stashes under the bed, sexual innuendo punctuating every conversation within earshot. I had only brothers and most of my parents’ friends had boys too, so I was often the only female-bodied child at any gathering. I rarely had the protection and camaraderie of other girls. There was nothing resembling privacy or dignity for me right from the get-go. This all seems like enough to make a small child feel uncomfortable with their gender. But add to it a father who was super-misogynist, often exhibiting contempt for my mom & me, enough that one of my brothers became just like him. And I had to share close space with this brother all the time, with no protection from either parent.
The thing is, I can’t remember when I “became” gender dysphoric either. I didn’t look around at all my male playmates, or hear my dad say something demeaning about my mom, and think “Oh I want to be a boy.” It was more like I couldn’t accept being a girl from the time I became a conscious being.
A few years ago, I wrote all about my experiences growing up. I put all the pieces of my life together and made some shocking discoveries, which I called “solving my mystery.” I will spare you the details, but I realized there was some significant trauma in my first years of life that may have pointed me in the direction of dissociating from my gender.
My feelings about being female never changed. The years I conformed to gender norms were just an attempt to make the best of a bad situation — the absolute futility of fighting against puberty. I never knew any other child or teenager who felt at odds with their gender. No one who spoke of it or acted on it, anyway. After high school I had one friend who I suspect now was a trans girl, but who has since committed suicide. When I aligned with the LGBs in the 90s, I knew lots of gays and lesbians but no one who wanted to change their gender.
When I got out of the hospital after drinking Drano, my mom was giving me shit about it. All her friends’ kids were off to college, doing great things. What the fuck was wrong with me, she wanted to know. And I blurted out “I want a sex change!!” Because that’s what we called it back then. And her response was something along the lines of: “That’s impossible, Deadname. They can turn a man into a woman, but they can’t turn a woman into a man. You have to accept that you are a female. You HAVE TO!!!!!!!!”
And so that’s what I did for the next 25 years, with varying levels of success. I loathed my body and often mutilated it with glass or razorblades. But I was somehow able to get jobs, and keep them, and finally get through junior college with a degree at 28. I met my husband when I was 29, and finally felt like I had met someone who cared about me as a person. We had a fun, but pretty conventional marriage for ten-plus years. But right before I turned 40 I got really scared that I was going to go through another round of severe gender dysphoria. It had happened at 20, then at 30 (right at the start of our relationship), so I wanted to prevent it from happening at 40. I adopted a more androgynous look and started dissecting my life in writing, making the aforementioned discoveries.
I cruised along pretty happily in my androgynous state for a few years. Then in my mid-40s, the emotional backlash of solving my mystery hit me, and I had a for-real mental breakdown — worse than anything I’d experienced in previous years. I cried uncontrollably for several months. It was almost like the akathisia I just lived through, but more emotional/less physical. It was so huge that I can’t even say gender was at the heart of it. But gender is where I started to try to fix it. I knew that was what had bedeviled me for the longest time in my life.
I Googled gender counselors in my area & actually found one. I wasn’t expecting to. That was in the summer of 2014, and I sat with her and her support group for a full year before I decided I was informed enough to take the plunge into my trans rites! I was feeling more stable & happy in the summer of 2015. I had the support of my husband. Why not at least try this avenue while it was available?
So there’s my life story in a nut’s hell —my trans trajectory! I know I’ve written about all this stuff before, but I sometimes have to remind myself how I got here & how well things are going for me. Of course, the trajectory has been ongoing since 2015. It has not been a success only journey. The first year I was absolutely giddy with excitement. I was horny all the time and busy fulfilling all my trans rites. But then it was 2017, Donald Trump was president, the world was erupting in hateful discord, and I was not passing as male at all. 2018 came & I still wasn’t passing very well. I never considered stopping T, I just exercised my patience and waited for it to work. By 2019 I was passing sometimes, feeling better about my transition. I felt like I would be satisfied if that was as masculine as I ever got. But I did transform even more in the next couple of years. I pass all the time now…well…98.4% of the time. It has been a much slower transformation for me than it is for most people.
So…let’s talk about “most people.” When I reached out to the gender therapist in 2014 I knew no trans people in my real life. I’d seen Jazz and Chaz on tv; I’d heard rumors about Caitlyn; I didn’t know Laverne Cox was really trans; I had read Kristin Beck’s botched memoir; I’d cringed at Max’s story arc on The L Word… I was woefully uninformed about my very own situation. And very alone.
The first thing I learned when I joined the trans support group in my town was — No One Is More Trans Than Anyone Else. Don’t be transier-than-thou. Don’t question anyone’s story or validity. Just because you knew you were trans when you were 3 doesn’t mean you are more valid than someone who figured it out at 13. Just because you had severe dysphoria doesn’t mean you’re more trans than someone who had no dysphoria. I obeyed this rule, even when I had my doubts about it. I mostly just sat quietly and listened to other people speak.
The group was primarily young people, teens and twenties. There were one or two guys in their 30s. There were a couple of guys in their 60s. I was the only 40-something person in the group. And it was mostly the younger kids talking about their parents/teachers/bosses wouldn’t acknowledge their gender/pronouns/new name, etc…and how hurtful that was. Sometimes they were being bullied at school. Sometimes they talked about being afraid to use the bathrooms at school and holding their pee in all day. The 60-something guys would talk about failed marriages to men, the children they had birthed as women, and how elated they felt to be living as their true selves after so many years of sucking it up in silence.
It was interesting to listen to their stories, but I always felt I had a different set of concerns. I was the only person in the group who was in a relationship with a man. Everyone else had girlfriends. I was assured that this didn’t make me any less trans — sexual orientation had nothing to do with gender identity (which is true). But I was still kind of insecure about talking about my relationship with this group. I was actually struck by how “unsexual” the conversations always were. Sex was not discussed. Self-harm and mental illness were not discussed. Eating disorders — though I could see they were present — were not discussed; nothing about body image was explored too deeply. We stuck to sharing stories about getting parents to accept our new pronouns, scheduling top surgeries & name changes, using the men’s room without incident. We kept it more political and less personal.
As I watched kids who had started T around the same time I did go through their changes at a rapid pace, I started to feel kind of….jealous. Jealousy is a valid emotion, but there is an immaturity about it. It was very awkward to feel jealous as I was pushing 50. I kept thinking, “If only I could’ve started T at 17 or 18, I wouldn’t have had to feel so shitty for so many years…” I stopped going to the group so I could just focus on my own trajectory without comparing myself to people half my age. Ah, self care. It is a beautiful thing.
I made it through 2017—2019 doing my own thing, patiently waiting for change. I made peace with my jealousy. I realized that my identity as a woman, a feminist, a riot grrl was important to who I was. I wouldn’t trade that experience for a different life. I realized that my opportunity to transition came at just the right time in my life. I never would’ve experienced the joy of a loving relationship with my husband if I’d started T at 17. When I was 17, the world would NOT have been a kind place for a transgender man. It was very difficult to accept being a woman, but I did finally accept it in my 30s — it felt like I’d fulfilled some spiritual duty. I feel privileged to have pushed boundaries as a female artist, musician & activist. And I feel extremely privileged (in a good way, not an entitled way) to now be experiencing the other side of that coin. To be perceived and treated as male by 98.4% of the world. To look in the mirror and see someone strong, grounded, fuzzy-faced, wise.
I have started wondering what ever happened to all the guys in my trans support group. Researching and writing about all this stuff has made me curious if anyone I knew has detransitioned, or if anyone in the group was autogynephilic or autoandrophilic (yes, I finally did read something about autoandrophilia — it’s pretty self-explanatory, just the converse of autogynephilia). I hardly see any of them on FB anymore, and I just wonder what they look like, what’s happening in their lives. Perhaps I am just sentimental, but I would love to know how they’re doing. I wish I’d had the courage to ask them more questions about their early lives, what made them want to transition, how did they really feel about being female, and what did they think of someone who had to wait until their 40s to transition.
Anyway…I wrote about growing up in the ‘70s because it was very different from how kids grew up in the ‘90s & ’00s, I think. Sometime in the mid-80s a nice lady named Oprah came onto our television screens and talked openly about things that hadn’t really been talked about before. Including one of the downfalls of the sexual revolution — the predation of innocent children. From there, it seems, children were more sheltered not only from sexual actions and content, but also from sexual knowledge. Preserving children’s innocence became the mantra of the times. But right at a very crucial point in these innocent children’s lives, a new invention called the internet seeped into their lives and with it came the scourge of pornography. And bam…innocence torn asunder, imploded like a tower rigged with dynamite sticks! Yet the veneer of conservative family values draped itself over the screen like a doily.
I discovered “smut in real life” sometime between the ages 5–8. I’ve heard that the average child of the 2000s discovers internet porn between the ages of 8 — 12. This seems like a much more insidious time to first be exposed to gratuitous sex content. I can remember walking in on my cousins looking at porn on my mom’s computer when they were about 10 years old. I was shocked & dismayed to see my innocent little cousins giggling at such grown up shit!! It didn’t really dawn on me till later that I was much younger when I started looking at grown up shit. And yet it somehow seemed more WRONG for these 10-yr-olds to be exposed. Sex had gone underground somewhere between Oprah & the internet. I remember the ’80s & ‘90s being dominated by a prim cynicism that painted every adult as a potential sex offender, and every child as a sacred gift from God who should be protected from …well, everything. Baby On Board, motherfukkers!!!
And if I have this all wrong, you Millennials & Zillennials can call me out. I don’t mind being corrected when I’m wrong about something. Most of this series is based on my personal observations, not statistical findings** or peer-reviewed journals. One thing that most doctors, psychologists, counselors, authors & TERFS do cite as an instigating factor in the massive shift toward transgender & non binary identities is early exposure to pornography on the internet.
While the real life pervy uncle in the family has been banished from the house, there are thousands of pervy uncles & aunties on the internet waiting to groom your child into a sex slave. Young girls are watching themselves in strappy lingerie getting pounded & throttled by faceless, unsympathetic males for pleasure. And young boys are watching themselves aggressively possessing these infantalized & helpless objects. And they don’t have any parental input about what they are seeing. This is negatively affecting kids of all genders and sexualities, but it is definitely cited as the #1 reason for the 5000% increase in teenage girls* wanting to transition to male in the 2010s. (* an actual statistic)
Going into the Internet Age with such smothering (& immature) views on sex has bred an incongruency. People who grow up in conservative environments believing that sex is some kind of unnatural perversion now have this alternate universe where they can be gratified anonymously. I just feel like we haven’t gotten sex right yet, and it’s time to rectify that. I really think that this generation of gender non conformists are just working through the rubbish they’ve been taught ( and not taught!) by previous generations. (Btw, role playing games are another online phenomenon that are believed to have influenced a generation of trans genders. I remember when all the guys used to want to have female avatars, for some reason, back in the Joss-Whedon-wave-of-feminism days).
One thing I know is, I was very sexually aware from a very young age. Probably an inappropriate age, due to early childhood trauma. I understood more than many of my peers, based on my observations. But I think all children are more aware of sexuality and gender than we want to believe. Anti-trans activists ask “How can a 3-yr-old know they are a boy, not a girl??” But I think they DO know. I think that is the earliest & most fundamental part of our forming identities. These activists will also say “My son is 3, and he thinks he is a dog, or an attack helicopter!’’
But does he think he is a boy dog, or a boy attack helicopter?
Wow, this has been quite a long-winded waffle. Sorry to get so personal, but I needed to clarify some of this incoming information in my own mind. I have been identifying as a TRANS MAN for over 6 years now. And in the past 4 months I have come to question what “trans” even means. I know that I am happier than ever to be who I am. Happier than ever with the dude in the mirror. But transitioning & taking hormones & having surgeries hasn’t solved ALL of my problems. I still take anti-depressant & anti-anxiety medications, so it didn’t CURE those things. It forged a truce between my self perception and my violent misogynistic upbringing.
To me, “transgender” was a medical/psychiatric issue. But it is not clearly defined as such in the general public. Do mental health professionals even agree on what “transgender” is? In the days when I intermingled with trans-identified people, none of them struck me as autogynephilic, or autoandrophilic, or people who would choose to detransition. But the stories I’ve read & listened to on podcasts about trans widows divorced from autogynephiles, or kids who sought hormone treatment to cure their depression & anxiety, only to detransition a few years later, not to mention some of the conspiracy theories I’ve heard… it makes me think we really need a better definition of what transgender is, who needs treatment, who needs protection, who needs to just wait it out and seek therapy in the mean time…
…I am exhausted, folks. So I’ll end this here. I still have a lot to say though. The Surgeries will be discussed next. Plus I’ve been watching this season of ‘I Am Jazz’ and I’m really concerned about her, so I will have something to say about that. I also wanted to air some thoughts on the whole non binary phenomenon. Oh, and the conspiracy theories!! ALSO, I plan to start doing brand new ART this weekend! Be excited. I’ll see you later, here in The Octopus Diary.
**I would love to find some true statistical data on the trans community —
what is the actual suicide rate among gender dysphoric kids who don’t start HRT?
What is the suicide rate of people who have transitioned (I’ve seen claims that it is just as high as those who haven’t)?
How many people are happy with their transition, versus how many detransition?
Are all trans women over the age of 40 autogynephiles, as the TERFs claim?
Is there a correlation between early childhood trauma and gender dysphoria, as the latest speculative science is asking?
Is non binary the “gateway gender” into the resorted binary?
Someone please collect all of this data and send it to me by midnight next month.
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