At Ease With Uncertainty

There's a platitude that the only constant in life is change. Nothing is certain; everything changes. We all know this, and yet it's a hard fact to live with. We want to be sure of things in our lives; when uncertainty rears its head, we get anxious.

Uncertainty about my gender -- who I am, and what to do about it -- has been a source of anxiety to me for over a year now, but especially in the last few months. Since making the decision to start HRT, I've been angsting about even more stuff than before, though you'd think the opposite would happen. Am I "all the way" transgender or "just" genderqueer? Am I really trans* at all? Do I really need to transition medically? Am I ever going to "get there" with transition?

When I made the decision on January 14 to start T, I thought I had all the answers. I was a man. I wanted a male body. It wasn't long, though, before the doubts started. I wrote about feeling like I was in a no-man's land, having left the shore of femaleness definitively behind, and yet not having reached the shore of being perceived as male. I didn't know who or what I was. Eventually I started to question whether I actually was a man. I still wanted to look like one, to be one physically, but I didn't feel like one inside, or outside. I felt like I couldn't be female, but I didn't know if I could be a man, either.

Oftentimes, this stemmed from noticing something about my body or my appearance that rang the "female" bell in my head. You wanna be a man? Uh, nope - your waist and hips say otherwise. Or your chest in that sports bro says otherwise. The way you're walking, or sitting. The way your voice comes out high when talking to your kid, or on the phone, or speaking in Chinese. (Yep, although I'm doing all right in English, I still haven't learned to speak Chinese with male intonation >.<)

I can't even tell if I'm comfortable being perceived as a man, because most of the time, I think I'm not seen that way. I don't want to be seen as a woman, and knowing that I am (for instance, when I hear female pronouns or words like "ma'am") rankles me. I prefer to hear male pronouns and male forms of address. But does that make me a man, or just more masculine than feminine? Is my way of "being a man" sufficient? Is "being a man" something I want to do?

I just want to be myself, but at the moment I don't really know who or what my self is.

Part of that is because gender, once you open yourself up the idea that it can be more than just binary, is far from clear-cut. There is no right or wrong other than what your gut instinct tells you - but I'm so unused to trusting myself that I can barely make out what my gut is saying. (Even when it's hungry, I have a tendency to ignore that feeling, too.)

Part of it is that my gender -- my understanding of it and my expression of it to the outside world -- is in flux. I am looking more and more masculine, but I'm not at the point yet where I'm broadly perceived as a man, or even by myself. I feel a disconnect with femaleness and an affinity with maleness, but I'm still learning about both these things. I don't understand women and I don't know enough about men.

And so, I've been having a lot of moments where I don't know where I'm going, or if I'll get there, or why I'm doing this.

But you know what? It's okay.

For the past week or so, I've finally been feeling okay with the uncertainty of my transition. I think I've learned to "hold the questions" -- a phrase that I think comes from Pema Chödrön, but I can't find the exact quote right now. It doesn't mean to stave them off but rather to sit with them, to let the questions be and not seek after answers, to accept uncertainty. After all, nothing is certain in life.

Not even the self. I am not the same person I was in high school, in college, when I was 25, or even five minutes ago. The only way to be yourself is just to be. Yes, the human mind likes to label and categorize. I would feel more rooted if I could proclaim "I am transgender!" or "I am a man!" with absolute certainty. Letting myself drift in the vagueness of "genderqueer" and "masculine" doesn't feel secure. But that's reality. Nothing is certain. Everything changes.

And I think I'm finally learning to relax and go with the flow, at least as far as gender is concerned.

Because more important than the other shore, which I may or may not reach, is what's going on right here, right now, where I am. Where I'm being me, making myself in each moment, just by doing what I'm doing. It's okay to just be, without even knowing how.

No one told me about this part...

No one told me about this part of transition. The part between the celebratory highs (my first shot! My first time injecting myself! My T party!), between the moments of joyous realization that my body is changing (muscles! peach fuzz!). I don't mean the part where I don't pass yet, or the part where this change or that change hasn't happened yet, cause I knew that would take a while. I mean the part where I feel lost, everything feels wrong, and I still can't bear to look at or think about myself, just as in the worst moments of dysphoria pre-T.

It's not that no one told me there are tough parts to transitioning. Among others, my girlfirend (who is a trans woman) has always been careful to give me an honest, balanced, and realistic picture of what transition is like - that there are lows as well as highs, that it takes time and I must be patient, that there will be setbacks even if the overall trend is upward. Still, I wouldn't have thought that after T, I might feel so groundless - disconnected from being female by the extra 25mg of testosterone percolating through my body every week, by the fact that I have fuzz on my face and my muscles are growing while my butt is shrinking (not to mention by the fact that I never felt female to begin with), while also feeling like it's impossible for me to be male, because I do still have curves, and even worse remnants of femaleness.

I'm nothing at the moment, which is ground I thought I wanted to inhabit last summer, but not now. This no man's land of not this and not that, or too much of this and not enough of that, is harder to bear than I would have thought. I expected the confusion of strangers, the continuation of misgendering, for at least a few months more. But I thought I would feel hopeful, happy, excited - at least, no worse than before. Instead I feel farther than ever from masculinity, despairing of ever achieving it, loathing toward my body and disappointed and uncomfortable with how I look and am perceived by others. Things were supposed to get better. I was supposed to look and feel more male. But at the moment, I feel like hardly more than a girl in drag. (Which is silly, because I don't feel like I'm a girl, and feminine articles are what feel like drag to me. But this is what I think my outward appearance seems like at the moment, and that's why it hurts so much, because it's the opposite of how I feel on the inside - I'm not a girl; these male clothes belong on me and are not drag.)

I know in a few days I'll probably feel better, because I'll notice some new change or further development, and I'll remember that things really are getting better, bit by bit. Having written this down, I feel a little better already, because the big picture is back in sight. There are things going on which I've barely hinted at, because you just don't want to know; it's gory and graphic; but that too will pass - it may take months, but as long as I keep sticking that needle in my stomach every week, things will keep changing, and even the worst parts of female anatomy will fade. I may feel lost in fog, but at least I have a compass - I know which direction to go. I just need to keep picking my feet up and putting them down, one after the other, until I get there.

My Gender Journey

On the eve of starting T, I felt the need to reflect on how I got here. This isn't going to explain why I'm starting T - the answer to that is simple; it's that my body feels wrong and I think T may help to correct that. This is going to explain how I figured that out.

I'm writing this partly to share my story, with trans* people and non-trans* people alike, in the hopes of fostering more understanding for everybody – but I can't deny that I'm also trying to justify to myself something that feels unreal and unbelievable. A year ago, I had no inkling I'd ever want to transition. I'd had my doubts about gender, but identifying as trans and wanting to transition to the other sex were things that I never thought would happen to me.

There might have been a few flickers, when my trans male friends spoke of their transitions, of breast binding, of the end of menstrual periods - there may have been flashes of "Whataboutmecouldthatbemetoo?" Which were promptly quashed because no way, I was cisgendered. Just because I disliked having breasts and a period and having a curvy body instead of a flat, muscular one and wanted to pass as a guy sometimes but couldn't because of my curvy body - that didn't mean I was trans. I was just - not that feminine. Maybe genderqueer, because I didn't "get" girls and had no interest in acting like one or being one.

Well, unless it was to dress up like one occasionally to get the attention of boys. Boys liked it when I dressed up as a girl. They didn't like it when I dressed macho. They liked my chest and couldn't get why I exercised constantly in an effort to make it smaller.

Ever since I started caring about boys (junior year of high school), my outward presentation and even my self-image were a war between what I wanted and what I thought others wanted of me. I tried to deny what I really wanted – to wear cargo pants and be tough and macho - to make myself more desirable to others, particularly to straight guys.

There were gaps where my own desires started to claw their way out. A year of singlehood during which I owned that I was very "macho" and decided I needed to date women, because I was too macho for a man to accept. I felt my dissociation from the female gender so strongly that when I did end up dating a man after all, I told him, the night of our first date, "I'm not a girl." I thought he accepted me, with my cargo pants and my macho tendencies, but gradually I found he preferred to see me in a short skirt. Well, that's just what guys want, I figured. They like girls in skirts. And it was fun to play the girl. That was when I felt really desired. Being myself? No one wanted that version of me, so why bother?

And then I met someone who did want to see the real me, and that's when it all came crashing down.

I don't know why it was that in June 2014, a blog post, a text conversation and a google chat suddenly ripped my body issues wide open. Maybe it was the explosiveness of years of repressed feelings spilling out into the light when they finally found an audience who would not judge, condemn or reject them. Not just any audience - for most of my friends are people who would never judge someone else's gender or body feelings - but my primary romantic partner. I was used to hearing (or picking up from subtle clues) what I had to do to make someone else happy. But my partner told me to do what made me happy.

At that time, I didn't know what would make me happy. I only knew what made me feel terrible - my chest. I suddenly loathed it more intensely than ever before and wished it would go away. I suddenly understood those frightening scenarios of trans people who are driven to amputate body parts, because that's how badly I wished my chest would go away.

I didn't, of course, cut off my chest, but the next day I put on a sports bra and felt some relief. It was less visible; in fact, I was remarkably flat compared to before. 

In the midst of my angst, my partner had asked me, "So do you think you're still a girl, or are you genderqueer or trans?" And I replied in anguish, "I don't know!" I hesitated to admit to myself that what I was feeling was dysphoria, that sense of discomfort or dislike or hatred or anguish toward one's own body that I considered characteristic of being trans. How could I know what dysphoria felt like, how could I claim to be experiencing it? That was for trans people, and for me to claim it felt appropriative. Because I wasn't trans; I couldn't be. I would know if I was trans. I would just know.

Genderqueer, though - that was an identity I had toyed with for a long time. Surely, the sense I had that I wasn't a girl, and now the way I hated that mark of femaleness, my breasts, qualified me as genderqueer. Surely I could safely say, I'm not a girl, so…I must be no gender at all. Genderless. Nothing.

So I set about trying to live as nothing. At least ostensibly, I tried to present myself as neutral. The trouble was, people kept perceiving me as a woman no matter how hard I tried, and that bothered me. I experimented with clothes and hairstyles and tried to find a look that would be perceived as "ambiguous" or "confusing," that would prompt people to wonder, Is that a man or a woman? I called it my "balancing act," and it was an extremely anxious time for me. 

Channeling Ari Koivunen \m/

I thought what I wanted, what my identity was, was to be neutral, but even more than that, I wanted so badly not to be seen as a woman. And so, I learned what it felt like to be misgendered. The starkest example is when I went to a friend's birthday party, and she introduced me to someone as so-and-so's sister. Sister. The word made my stomach sink. How could I be someone's sister when I wasn't a woman? The next day I told the relevant people that I preferred the term "sibling."

Already in June, too, I experimented with something I'd wanted to try since college - passing as male. Although I called it "dressing up as a guy," because since I didn't see myself as male, it didn't make sense to me that I should pass as such. My first attempt was June 20, 2014, at the Agalloch show at Empire. I was incredibly nervous about it. I texted my partner, "I don't know if I'm more nervous about passing or not passing." If people actually took me for a guy, what would I do? And what if people saw through me - read me as "a girl dressed as a guy"? But I got there very late (a couple songs into Agalloch's set) and only talked to a few friends afterward. They didn't seem to notice anything different about me, even though I didn't generally wear baggy shorts or button down shirts before then. My first attempt at passing as male was a flop.

The next time that I tried - at the MoCo Ag Fair on August 11 - went a little better. Early on, a ticket seller addressed me as "ma'am," which made my confidence in appearing male plummet. But later on, a food seller refrained from addressing me either way, even though he called my (cis male) friends "sir," all the while giving me a friendly smile. I don't know what he saw, but at least he didn't address me with female terms - which is still the best I can get most days now.

That was also when I started learning and consciously trying to walk and stand "like a man" and to use a lower voice. One of my friends gave me a great deal of advice on the subject, some of it helpful, some of it disheartening. (The best advice, though, came from my friend J at MD Renn Fest in September. They key to moving "like a guy," it turned out, was moving so as to avoid squishing things. You know what things I'm talking about :P)

The corollary to trying to pass as male was that I started to have a strong sense of crossdressing whenever I dressed overtly feminine. The most extreme case was when I wore a bikini to the beach in early August. When I removed my shorts and tank top to reveal my very skimpy bathing suit, I felt so intensely crossdressed that I was sure someone would see through me, see a man in a women's bathing suit, and come over to me waving their finger and saying, "You shouldn't be wearing that!" It was the last time I ever wore something blatantly feminine in public.

Going out as male also forced me to come up with a different name - for I could hardly try to pass as male, but then introduce myself with my female name. But since I thought of myself as genderless, I wanted something neutral, so I used the name "Sascha" at first. I only used that name a few times though. By the end of August, I couldn’t bear to introduce myself by my female name, even when I wasn’t trying to pass as male. I felt like I was misrepresenting myself, and setting other people up to misgender me. Yet Sascha was never a name I intended to use full time; it wasn’t quite me enough. I still wanted something ambiguous, though, because at the time I still didn’t think of myself as male. And then one day I remembered how a college professor had made fun of Finnish researcher with a name that’s male in Finnish but female in the U.S. It was a name from my heritage and there were family reasons, besides, which made it a fitting name – so I decided to stick it to that professor and use that name.

In August, I finally changed my pronouns as well. It happened very publicly and suddenly. I was at the birthday party of a close friend on August 17, and the friend’s spouse (also one of my best friends) said several things about me to the gathering using female pronouns. It felt so wrong, I couldn’t bear it, and then and there asked my friends not use female pronouns for me anymore. That evening I made an announcement on Facebook that I wished to be called “they” (or “xe” for anyone patient enough to learn an obscure pronoun).

By the end of August, it became clear to me that I was expressing myself in more and more masculine ways. I had stopped wearing anything remotely feminine – capri shorts, women’s sandals and sneakers, any hairstyles other than a “guy” ponytail or simple braid – and attempted to wear male attire as much as possible, especially to my office job, which was the only place I had really worn feminine attire to begin with.

With this tendency toward masculinity, I suspected I might be transmasculine – but I couldn’t find a justification for that, since it’s not defined by presentation. Women can express themselves masculinely – wearing male clothing, acting in a masculine manner – and yet still be women; that’s the very definition of butch women. The difference, I felt, was that I figured butch women would feel proud of the fact that they are women. I felt the exact opposite. I felt that I wasn’t a woman, felt pained whenever anyone perceived me as one, and felt self-loathing whenever I contemplated my female body parts. But still, did that make me transmasculine or just plain old genderqueer?

That didn’t get sorted out for a long time. What was clear to me was how I wanted to present myself and be perceived by others. By September, I no longer wanted to hear anyone call me, or more importantly, introduce myself to anyone by my female name; and I found that being called “they” wasn’t enough, and that I longed to be called “he” and to try to pass as male every day. So on September 11, I came out my friends by asking them to call me by a different name and male pronouns through a post on Facebook.

I thought that that was the end of it, for at that time, I had no wish to physically transition. I did wish I could have a deeper voice and more masculine musculature, but I didn’t want facial or body hair. That changed at the end of September when I met some people from DCATS who had been on T for years. Before that, almost all the trans guys I knew were just starting T, and so this was my first close-up glimpse of the potential power of T. These guys looked like men. That’s not the most PC way to say it, but that was my first reaction upon meeting them. These are trans guys? They look like men!

And so, later that evening I lay on my bed and daydreamed about having a male body, and thought for the first time about starting T.

It took me months to sort out whether to actually do it, though. Even now, on the eve of starting HRT, I still have my doubts. (Is it safe to admit that?) I still think sometimes, what the fuck am I doing? Do I really have to do this? But the pang every time I'm misgendered, the discomfort at the thought that other parents at school see me as my daughter's "mom," the way I can't stand to look at or think about my body or fully share it with my current romantic partner, these all tell me that, yes, if I want to happy with myself, then I have to. And I keep in mind the words of that person who helped me through my first dysphoric crisis, once I started changing my life: "Think of how awesome you feel now. Feeling awesome is always better than the alternative."

It took months, months of fighting self-doubt, and the fear of change and of coming out, and internalized cissexist attitudes - and I will likely go on battling those things for some time. But I have a fairly definite idea now of what makes me feel awesome. Accepting and taking pride in the fact that I am a man, even though I was born with female anatomy. Living as a man, and being perceived as one by others. And finally, I think that inhabiting a male body, being able to live as a man more thoroughly, to be more consistently perceived as one, will also make me feel awesome.

Some people know the endpoint of their gender journey when they start out, but I didn’t. I still don’t know where it will take me – how things will go on T, what changes I’ll pursue after that. For me, it’s a journey of exploration. There may be a destination, there may not. As long as I'm feeling more awesome about myself, it's all good.

Isn't it enough?

Is this good enough?

Every now and then I look in the mirror, and I'm happy enough with what I see that I think to myself, maybe I don't need to change myself physically after all. Yesterday (when this picture was taken) was one of those days.

It probably helped, of course, that I didn't leave the house at all, so no one noticed my girly face or my not-quite-flat chest. It probably helped that I was wearing some of my favorite clothes - camo cargo pants and this shirt that Someone handed down to me, which is so soft and comfy yet doesn't emphasize my curves; in fact it does the exact opposite. And that I could wear my hair down and messy - death metal hair.

If I could look like this every day, would I be happy? Well, for one thing, I can't. Sometimes I have to go to work and tie up my hair and wear things that aren't cargo pants and T shirts. Sometimes I even have to wear a military uniform, and oh boy is it tough to be a guy with long hair and a girly face and high voice when in uniform >.<

And sometimes I have to undress and come face to face with my curves. I try to ignore them as much as I can, but sometimes something forces me to confront the fact that my body is shaped like a girl's body, and it makes me feel sick.

And then there's the fact that no matter what I wear, I still get called "Ma'am" sometimes (or "Mom" when I'm at my kid's school), I still get weird looks and awkward questions in the restroom, I still hate the way my voice sounds when I answer the phone at work.. It's not all about passing, but do I really want to live the rest of my life having people assume I'm the wrong gender, and getting them to acknowledge the right one only as a favor or through sheer brute force of will?

Yes, in a way wearing my favorite clothes and my death metal hair is enough - for now. It will get me through. For every day of being miserable while being constantly misgendered in uniform, there will also be a day of feeling good cause I'm wearing what I like and think I look tough and metal. But it's a bandaid. It's the bare minimum of being myself. Wouldn't it be cool if I could be myself no matter what I'm wearing? If being myself wasn't just an outfit that I have to take off at the end of day, but my actual physical reality?

I don't know what I'll look like after hormones, what extent of physical changes will truly constitute enough. Facial hair or no facial hair? How big of muscles? How small of a butt? A face that's only slightly less girly, or a lot less girly? I think I'll just know it when I see it. One day I'll be able to look at my body and not feel like it's a bad costume, but rather that it's me, really me.

And then finally my death metal hair will be just a part of a truly badass whole.