Staying out

I catch myself every so often feeling incredibly uncomfortable and afraid about being so open about my transition. On some level, I feel a strong desire to huddle it all up inside and to stop blogging. To resist, I remind myself about why I'm out, why I'm blogging, and why I'm so open about the little kibbles and bits of transition.

Growing up I was frequently 'mistaken' as a cisgender boy and would hear this abstract, foreign word used frequently to describe me: "androgynous". I had no idea what that word meant, but I'd gathered that it had something to do with being perceived as a girl who'd be frequently mistaken as a boy. I felt offended by that word and by all of the gender confusion on a daily basis, mostly because it was generally seen by other children in a negative way that would result in teasing.

Honestly, I remember feeling insulted. I'd look in the mirror and think that I wasn't a bad looking kid, but maybe I'd just adjusted to my appearance. I remember letting it seep in once or twice that, perhaps, I was such an unattractive female that I appeared to be male. The one pop culture androgynous role-model I knew of at the time was Pat from Saturday Night Live.


Guy: "Are you a brotha or a sista?"
Pat: "Well, I'm an only child!"
Don't get me wrong. I love Pat. But, for a little gender variant kid trying to figure out what this all meant, having Pat as my one and only role-model didn't help. Fortunately, nowadays there are a whole slew of bad ass uber hot kick ass androgynous role-models out there. Hurrah!

I can't even explain how excited I was to see Arclight (bad ass in mutant) in X-Men 3, played by androgynous model Omahyra:



Why wasn't she around in popular pop culture when I was a little bopper!?

Anyway, despite feeling confused and uncomfortable about where I fit in, I was skeptical about why everyone was so obsessed with what it meant to be a girl. Fortunate for me, my parents weren't.

I remember running around the neighborhood topless with a pack of boys once upon a time. While we were splashing about in a nearby river, a woman walked by and asked me, "Hey, aren't you a little girl?". When I didn't reply, she continued, "You are, aren't you? Why don't you have a shirt on?" When I refused to put a shirt on, she grew increasingly upset and even started to yell.

When I brought it up to my parents later, they explained to me that they didn't care whether I wore a shirt or not - but unfortunately, some other people do. And that, when I "developed", it would even become illegal. I wasn't quite sure about this development nonsense they were talking about, but started wearing shirts from then on.

Once I hit my teens, that development my parents were rambling on about kicked in. Other things started to happen, too. Things that made it more difficult to ignore the drastic disconnect this blog is dedicated to. When I was a young bopper, I had no idea what word there was to describe me and what I was experiencing. I felt like an undefinable thing. A freak.

When I wasn't being teased or harassed for being seen as gay, lesbian, a tom boy, butch, what have you, I would be frequently perceived as a boy by strangers. I'd never correct them but, when I spoke, this familiar expression of confusion mixed with embarrassment would cross their face and they'd stutter to 'correct' themselves, "O-oh, I'm so sorry!", like it was the gravest insult.

I felt like karma was playing a cruel joke on me, putting me in a body that couldn't even go to a public rest room without incident and explanation. The constant taunting and staring.

I'd kept the disconnect I was experiencing covered, but when I hit my mid-teens I'd finally started to embrace being referred to as androgynous and being perceived as a male in public at times. I'd had a paradigm shift in regards to believing that there was something wrong with being gender ambiguous. I learned to revel in it and attempted to use the nervousness I inspired in people to challenge. When a scene would arise, most frequently in public restrooms, I'd learned to laugh or smile about it rather than react embarrassed or upset.

In 1999, when I was 16 years old, Boys Don't Cry came out in theaters. In preparation I secretly rented a documentary about Brandon Teena, the transgender guy the film is based on. I remember watching it at home while my mom crocheted. Stemming from his story and from other things I'd stumbled across, I began to evolve from a young person who believed there was no word to describe me, that I was an undefinable thing, to knowing that there was a word - transsexual. Identifiable. A person. But how to fully admit that to myself? How to tell anyone?

It took baby steps, revealing layers of myself to a few friends. It also took me a long time to admit it to myself. For some time I was convinced that I was just a different kind of woman (i.e. "Why can't I be a woman without breasts and with a dick and a beard?"). Yet, stemming from that physiological disconnect and my perceptions on binary gender and social constructs, I knew that I wasn't.

And, in 2005 an HBO documentary called Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She came out. I related to it on numerous levels, particularly in regards to the Netherland studies on the brains of transsexuals, which I blogged about a bit ago. When I felt close and safe with someone I'd watch this documentary with them, and afterward would explain that I related in a round-a-bout way that never included the word "transgender".

I hadn't entirely accepted it myself, yet.

And I didn't know why I'd want to tell anyone. Why I couldn't keep it to myself, seeing as I feared that it would only hurt and confuse everyone around me. I also felt like no one could help and it was my problem to bear. But then, through counseling, I discovered that I did want to come out after all.

And why? Because closets are suffocating. I wanted to be free.

Coming out to my parents was the most terrifying, even knowing that they'd be supportive. I was mostly afraid to hurt them, to cause them worry or stress. I explained to them that I'd been covering this up for quite some time. I explained that the smiling face they know, the sarcastic prankster, had been crying himself to sleep every night and felt a tremendous amount of self-loathing that they weren't at fault for.

I explained to them that I'd become great at covering this, my most vulnerable secret. I didn't want anyone to see the anger, frustration - even self-hate - that I was experiencing. To stave off the teasing I'd learned to come off as entirely confident, impenetrable and whole. This was easy to do and not that hard to emulate. I'd learned that sometimes there were only two ways to handle something: either break down, or laugh. So I'd learned to laugh and to cry only when I was alone.

These past few months I've discovered that I'm not alone in this. There's a huge community of others like me, with similar experiences and stories. What matters is that we're not alone and that no matter how long we've covered ourselves up - we don't have to forever.

It took years for me to create this cover, to make it solid and it's taking a lot of effort to break that down. To let the truth come out, to be myself and to express that without backing up into those old habits.

The first step was to say, "I will not hide any longer." And that was a huge step. I will not hide. I will be who I am and I won't let anyone else decide that for me. I'm the one who has to live in this body for pete's sake, not them. And I can face my own reflection knowing I'm not alone, knowing that others have walked a similar path. Knowing that my family loves and supports me. Knowing that my friends do, too. And knowing that, by not hiding, it demystifies being trans and, hopefully, chips away at the fear surrounding it, too.

It's hard, but every small step forward is a big deal, even the baby steps. I realize that fear is okay to feel because I'm facing it anyway by letting go of the safety of the cover, the lie, and the fabrication by saying, "This is who I am."

It's horrible to know that most trans people don't have that crucial support from their families. As one trans feller put it:

"I need your love and your support. I need you to be happy for me that, for once in my life, I don't feel like the F word. For once, I feel whole. How can a parent or a sibling understand that? Maybe they can't and maybe they won't. Maybe it's why so many of us make our own families outside of familial bonds. Maybe it's why so many gays and lesbians, so many transgender people, have such close bonds in the families they create from their own subcultured worlds. We need that. We need to be touched and held. We need to cry and to be there for others to cry on. We need validation in our lives."

p.s.s. and today is injection day! Woo kapooie! This will be my 7th injection since December 11th, 2008.