Sometimes we cry

I just got back from running some errands, and I'm exhausted. Not physically exhausted, even though it was a long walk. Emotionally exhausted. Sometimes it happens even in the smoothest transition.

I mailed a card to my mom. In it, I mostly wrote about friendly nothing, but I also apologized for having minimized the impact my transition has on her when I last wrote to her. I try to make sure never to write when I'm hurt, but sometimes I write when I don't realize that I'm hurt, and the wrong things come out. At any rate, writing to her always makes me feel fragile.

Then I went to London Drugs to get a whole bunch of things that had either run out or were about to. As I walked through the aisles, "Vida La Vida" by Cold Play came over the speakers. It was all I could do not to start crying right there.

"Vida la Vida" is the song my friend Breanna used for a performance she did a while ago in which she portrayed a male-to-female transition. The lyrics are about how the singer used to "rule the world" and had power and influence, only to discover that it was all built on sand, and now "(I) sweep the streets I used to own." She wanted to convey how she had given up the things that being male, and a particular kind of male, could bring, in order to be herself.

I didn't get it at first. I saw things that disturbed my sometimes fragile sense of femininity. I didn't really hear the lyrics, didn't understand the performance. Brea had to explain it to me. Sometimes I can be kind of thick.

I don't quite know why I was fighting tears, which continued after I left the store, almost all the way to the salon a mile away. Part of it was that I was set up for it already by having just sent a letter to my mom. Maybe it was because that performance, which Brea poured her heart into and which brought people who saw it to tears, had weirded me out at first. It made me deal with feelings that I didn't want to deal with. Maybe it was because I finally did get it, so now the song triggers an emotional reaction even though I'm not seeing the performance. Maybe it was because before I finally got it, I felt like I had been hurtful to Brea because of stuff that was in me, not in her or her performance.

I don't know. Sometimes we just cry.

I never came close to ruling the world, even figuratively. I didn't give up power and influence to transition. But my need to live authentically has not been without cost, the most painful of which is the breach with my mother. I don't always handle that well. And not handling it well reminds me of kinds of behaviour that used to be part of me, the old me, that I no longer want. Reinvention of self lets us get a new start. I'm never going to be perfect, of course, but there are some things from my past that I really don't want to repeat.

It might be that none of this makes sense to anyone but me. Maybe it won't make sense to me when I read it later. So maybe I just haven't had a good cry in a while.

Commitment

It struck me the other day that I have never committed to anything in my life the way I have committed to my transition. That would include my marriage. I'm solidly committed to my marriage now, and I have been for much of the more than 19 years, but I also had some serious lapses in there. There have been no lapses in my transition.

The key to commitment, at least for me, is to want something enough. For most of my life, I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't understand or trust my own feelings and desires, not just about gender but about anything. I would think I wanted something, but after some period of time the enthusiasm would wane. That was a pattern that was repeated again and again. When those are the things you look at, it's no wonder my siblings have been skeptical, to say the least, about my transition. (Interestingly, I don't think my mother is skeptical, just upset.)

But focusing only on the failures overlooks the things I did follow through on. I completed my undergraduate degree, with high honours. After one failed marriage, I've been with the same woman for more than 28 years. I have been associated with my employer and its predecessors for more than 20 years, on contract for a few years (due to having crossed the border) but mostly employed. I completed a certificate in software engineering, and I am five weeks, one presentation, and one paper away from earning a certificate in counselling skills. I have been volunteering on the LGBT help line for two and a half years.

I don't know why anyone would put my transition in the same category as a brief dalliance with ham radio or membership in this or that church. That strikes me as a cynical way of viewing things, looking only for the negative. I'm a pretty accommodating person, but I have a low tolerance for cynicism and negativity.

My commitment to my transition has been so solid because I now understand my feelings and desires, and I want this transition to work more than anything I've ever wanted. I realized I had an issue. I learned everything I could, and I got professional help. I underwent a medical evaluation and worked through issues with a psychotherapist. I realized that I was transsexual and that if I didn't transition then my life was never going to be right. I went on hormone therapy, transitioned socially, and in less than four months I will have surgery so that my genitalia will match my sense of being female. That's all huge, and all the more so because it takes a greater commitment even than the things I've already done successfully.

Even though transition is more difficult in absolute terms than anything else I have done, it's really a labour of love. I got rid of the real burden when I came to terms with what I was and realized what I needed to do about it. There have been difficulties during transition to be sure, and a lot of work to keep a relationship together. There have been tears because of the breach with my mother and because sometimes even a labour of love wears you out. But more than anything there has been joy beyond anything I ever imagined. I had no idea this was how life is supposed to feel.

Committed all the way, for the rest of my life? For anyone who thinks I'm crazy to be doing this, I'll put it this way: I'd be crazy not to go all the way with the best thing that has ever happened to me. You bet I'm committed.

The persistence of records

I learned the date when I will be flying home from Montreal—only nine days after my operation! I had thought it was 10 or even 11, but the woman at the clinic assured me that I would be ready to travel. Works for me.

So I'm on the Air Canada web site to book my flights. The flight to Montreal will be cheap, but the one coming home much more expensive, because for the first time in my life I'm going to fly Executive Class. It's a major splurge, but I know that flight is going to be uncomfortable enough without being squeezed into Coach, either crawling over someone to get to the washroom or getting up to let someone else go. I've saved up money for this process, so I'm going to spend some of it to get myself home in style.

I haven't paid attention to my Aeroplan (reward points) account for a long time, pretty much since I first got it. I had stashed the card away in a safe place, a legacy of it being difficult to carry a lot of cards in a skimpy boy wallet as opposed to a more generous girl wallet. I forgot about it or ignored it for those few times I'd booked with Air Canada. I don't fly very often, and most of those times have been on WestJet or another airline. But Air Canada can get me to Montreal and back non-stop, and it's the way to go for this particular trip. As I was working my way through the booking process, nervously, I hit the page where I would input my Aeroplan number. This flight is costing a bundle, so I'm sure as heck going to get some points for it.

So I dig out the card. And what do I find on a card I got in 2001? My old name, of course. I knew that wouldn't work, what with my no-longer-new name on both my passport and my credit card. I called Aeroplan, and the woman I spoke with was very helpful. I explained about the name change, and we figured out that there weren't enough points (now expired, but revievable for a fee) on the old account to go through the hassle of changing the account. So we started a fresh account. I will use it tomorrow, when it's activated, as I go through the flight booking process for real.

I bet something will pop up several years from now with my old name. We're stored on so many disks these days.

I got a phone call the other day from someone asking for me by my old name. I need to come up with a better come-back than "no one here by that name." In this case, I didn't care, because I don't like dealing with phone solicitors anyway, but I might need a smoother reply in the future. It might be someone I know. :)

Reversal of fortune

So you've gone and turned your life upside down. Was it really worth that?

Well, here's the thing. It turns out that my life was upside down. I just didn't know it. I'd got used to it being upside down. But turning it upside down actually put it right side up.

But you've upset people.

Let's just say that some people are upset.

They were used to you the other way 'round.

I know, but it was my life that was upside down. Once I realized that, I couldn't continue to live that way. I had to turn it right side up. Who wants to live upside down?

It didn't look upside down to anyone else.

That's probably true. When I had hints that my life might be upside down, I kept them to myself. And I adapted well to living an upside down life.

OK, let's concede that your life was upside down. You lived all those years like that. Couldn't you have just kept going that way?

My life was OK, sort of, when I didn't know for sure that it was upside down. But once I knew, and I saw what my life could be if it were right side up, then upside down was no longer an option.

Maybe those who are born with their lives right side up take it for granted. They really have no way of knowing how horrible it is to have an upside down life. But when you're born with your life upside down, you'll never take being right side up for granted.

Mate for life

I'm still waiting for an actual letter of confirmation from Montreal, but I have it in email that my date for surgery is solid—and just over four months from now. Sweetie, who likes to have things planned well in advance, found herself a flight and a place to stay. She'll be there from the weekend before my surgery until several days afterward, not quite the whole time but close. Her planning her trip is making things feel so much more real for me.

It's also reminding me of what an awesome spouse, soul mate, and best friend I have. Two years ago, she still had doubts that what I was feeling was real, which was quite understandable. I approached transition and hormone therapy very cautiously for her sake. I think one of the turning points was our trip to Portland in the rainy spring of 2008. I was in female mode the entire time, already being perceived as female, and that allowed her to feel a bit more comfortable with the idea. Still, she sought help for serious issues, especially the insecurity of no longer being part of a heterosexual marriage. And she got through those issues. And then we did our Imago weekend together in early summer 2008, which was better than we could have imagined. We emerged from that weekend a lesbian couple with a much greater understanding of each other.

Since then, her level of support has only increased. It amazes me. Sometimes, she has more confidence in me as a woman than I have in myself. She sees the real me, which is not always easy for me to see. She helps me, she encourages me, and she still has fun with me. In many ways, having come through the roughest period any couple can go through, our relationship is better than ever. And that's remarkable.

There are things that work in our favour. We're in our 50s, and life for us is different than it was when we were younger. We feel differently about a lot of things. If my transexuality had hit me with full force when I was in my 30s or even 40s rather than in my 50s, our relationship might not have survived. As well, we have always been bisexual, in feeling if not usually in practice, and her sexuality has shifted toward the lesbian end of the spectrum. I am more interested in men these days than she is. If she were still feeling the need for a man in her life, she would have to look elsewhere.

But most importantly, we both still feel strongly about our relationship with each other. We've spent half our lives together. We still complement each other. And if we were apart, who would share in our weird sense of humour?

I don't know what I did to be so fortunate. I proceeded with transition because I had to. Having had a glimpse of the promised land, I would have been a wreck of a human being if I had not done so. And I did so without knowing whether my marriage would survive, which was the biggest wrench of all. No one has ever been more important to me than my sweetie, and yet I had to take care of myself first. I am grateful every day that the process did not push her away.

Yo te amo muchissimo, mi novia!

Adipose tissue

Back to the personal, hopefully keeping me out of trouble!

I've read that trans women who transition generally experience the most breast development early in their transition. I've also read that full development takes up to five years, as it does for teenage girls. I've also read that some trans women experience some amount of development after the removal of their primary androgen-producing organs, the testes.

And I've also read that half of trans woman are dissatisfied with their breast development.

Much of the time, maybe even most, it doesn't matter to me that I'm one of the 50 percent whose development is inadequate. I love my life. I love what hormone therapy has done for me, especially inside. I like my face and hair. I love the skin I'm in, as the Olay slogan says. I generally like how I look in clothes, many of which were designed for bodies like mine. Even there, however, I find that just a little more in the breast department would make some dresses and tops fit better so that I wouldn't have to watch out for gapping.

Transition for me is not about growing breasts. I've actually read such nonsense in otherwise reasonably well-informed articles about trans women—"took hormones to grow breasts." WTF? Maybe it's part of the breast obsession in our culture. But I think it's more than that. Breasts and curves are a very visible indication of womanhood. Not that all women-born-female-bodied are curvaceous, but most still have more typically female silhouettes than I do, and if they don't, at least they have much smaller frames.

I actually have some mammary tissue, maybe even a decent amount. My breasts are tiny, but the shape is good. I think what's missing is fat. I have fat. I've experienced changes in the distribution of subcutaneous fat. The funniest is on my legs. I weigh about the same as I have for many years, but the ankle bones that used to be quite visible are now more muted. I can see the sub-Q fat on the rest of my legs. My abdominal fat has also shifted lower. But I'm supposed to experience more of a shift into the breast area and the hip area. Instead, I'm still a flat, skinny-assed chica.

Even though transition is about much more than physical development, I find that having such a boyish body sometimes makes me feel as though I haven't changed anything at all. Of course I have. My life is proof of that. But in the privacy of my own bathroom or bedroom, looking at my underdeveloped shape makes me feel less womanly.

I know there are ways to deal with this. Three friends I know personally and others I know remotely have had what is euphemistically referred to as "breast augmentation," meaning the insertion of silicone or saline or composite implants. They are all happy with the results. Some trans woman even have procedures done such as having fat moved from one place to another or getting implants in the hip area.

At this point, I'm not ready for such measures. For one thing, I want to wait longer in the hope that my very slow development actually is still happening, and that maybe I'll get that growth spurt after genital surgery (only four months away!). I tell myself that I didn't start estrogen until just over a year and a half ago, and I've had my dosage increased twice, obviously more recently. I tell myself that just a few months ago I was switched from spironolactone to cyproterone acetate because my free testosterone was higher than my doctor wanted it to be. I keep hoping that I have more time.

Another thing is that I'm just not comfortable with the idea of implants in my body. I realize that breast augmentation is done all the time, by plenty of women-born-female-bodied as well. But for whatever reason, it's not yet something on my agenda. If inadequate development ever becomes a more serious issue for me, about self-esteem or whatever, then maybe I'll feel more positive about surgical enhancement. Until then, I have a blog where I can whine!

And it's only a small whine anyway. Even now, a year and nine months since I starting living my new life, I marvel at how wonderful it is, and still scratch my head at how I could have thought my previous life was right for me. But then hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it.

Be not afraid

I've been dealing with difficult feelings over the last few weeks, and often I deal with them here. Writing can be therapeutic for me, and it's something I can do immediately, whereas getting an appointment with my therapist takes time. But sometimes in the process I might be doing what as a counsellor I am ethically bound not to do—going beyond my competence. And sometimes I might hurt people without intending to because of my own fears.

Last night, I had a long IM conversation with a very good friend. More than anyone else, this friend is responsible for opening up my world, more by who she is than by anything she did (although she also gave me valuable information). She identifies as genderqueer, and I love her dearly. She knows she can tell me exactly what's on her mind, and she did.

As a result, I have realized I need to add a few things to what I've been writing lately about transgender and about being a woman and specifically about my last post. And I need to fess up to something.

First, drag queens. I mentioned two in particular, then went on to generalize. That was wrong. I don't know either of those people well enough to know how they see themselves. I've had only casual conversation with them. There's nothing to say that a drag performer could not actually be transsexual or anywhere else on the trans spectrum. In general, I think I was correct in saying that drag queens are men who like to perform dressed as women, the best known example being RuPaul, but I have no business saying how any individual performer feels about gender.

Second, crossdressers. I pulled out much too broad a brush. Crossdressers are as diverse as humanity. I can't judge the gender dysphoria of any individual crossdresser or know why they do what they do, and don't do what they don't do. I did mention that some crossdressers are really transsexuals going through a particular phase of self-realization. Most transsexuals I know seem to have cross-dressed at some point in their lives, myself included (although briefly), and even considered that to be their identity. But there is a huge range of gender dysphoria among crossdressers and myriad reasons why they are on their particular path.

My friend also reminded me that it's not always fun and games. Some crossdressers who have done so only in private are in mortal terror when they first venture into the public sphere, even at a "safe" dinner gathering. Yet they do so. That's not just playing with gender. There is something else at work.

Finally, genderqueers. Again, we're talking diversity. My friend is not like anyone else I know. Like any drag queen, crossdresser, or genderqueer, she is a person, not a set of behaviours. She is who she is because that is how she is most comfortable in life, and it's not an easy road by any means. And there are so many others with many reasons for being the way they are.

Another thing my friend reminded me of was the distinction between gender identity and gender expression. The kinds of expression in which people engage might not correlate directly with their identity. Identity is something that's part of us. Expression is our public face, and we can express our identity in many different ways.

I have lots of gender-variant friends and know of many more gender-variant people, but I admitted that I don't understand a lot of gender variance. I should have left it at that. "Don't criticize what you can't understand," wrote Bob Dylan many years ago. Good advice.

I also admitted that I was dealing with some personal discomfort having to do with the painful part of realizing what I was being still too close and too fresh. It's actually worse than that.

I have always wished I'd been born a girl. I have always wanted to be a woman. I didn't want to be trans-anything, and that's one thing that scared me away from transition for a long time. But I am transsexual. I admitted it, and I'm dealing with it, but somehow it still causes me some discomfort.

And now I find myself with a certain amount of cissexual privilege. Because of how I am generally perceived, I do not have deal with trans-ness all the time. In general, people don't make me do so. Whether they know my history or figure me out or not, they treat me like any other woman.

Therein lies danger. When you're trans, it's very seductive to be allowed to be virtually not trans. It causes me to pull away from all things trans. It makes me...afraid. Yes, sadly, it's called internalized transphobia. I'm dealing with that too. We often use "-phobia" to mean "hatred of," but in this case I think I'm being honest in saying that it's simply fear. Fear that doesn't make me hate. Fear that makes me run away.

My friend told me not to go wearing a hairshirt about this, and I'm not going to. None of us is perfect, but there are some things about myself that I really want to change. Transition fixed so much for me, but it's not magic, and indeed it highlighted new problems. So even though I still have strong opinions on a lot of things, such as who is a woman, and I'm not going to go all wishy-washy in an attempt please all of the people all of the time (an old trap for me), I still want to apologize for going beyond my competence and for making pronouncements far too influenced by my own prejudice.

Sometimes, I still need therapy and not just blog writing. But when therapy is not available, it's amazing what talking with the right friend can do. I already feel as though something in me has started to heal.

Bending, breaking

A genderqueer friend posted a notice on Facebook about an upcoming "night of gender bender entertainment." Which got me thinking.

When I was making my tentative first steps out in public, once a month or so I used to join a group of mostly crossdressers for dinner followed by a drag show. This was a great group, and they helped me through those awkward first few months, when I didn't really know what I was but knew I loved going out looking fabulous. In the beginning, Sweetie would join me. Back in the day, she used to hang out with drag queens and had seen more drag shows than she cared to remember, but I don't think I'd ever been to one before those shows in the spring and summer of 2007. I'd met drag queens, but drag culture was still foreign to me. I was sheltered and naive!

Those were fun shows, and the two performers who put them on (and still do) are very nice. But I can't now bring myself to call them "girls" or "women," except in jest. They're gay men who love to do drag performances, and one especially has a strong association with the local crossdresser community. The crossdressers loved those shows. There seems to have been an assumption that anyone out with "the girls" must be into drag shows. I had fun for a while, and then that was enough for me. I haven't been to a show in a couple of years.

I think crossdressers are fine, but again, I call them women really only to be polite. After all, I appreciated being treated as a lady well before my gender expression was anywhere close to acceptable, and I owe them no less courtesy. I call them by their female names, usually the only name I know anyway, and use female pronouns. But I don't think they really are women. They live their lives as men. Their expression of femininity is perfectly legit, but it doesn't make them women.

Drag queens play with gender for entertainment purposes. Crossdressers push gender boundaries to satisfy an inner need, and indeed some of them are in the first stages of realizing they are not actually crossdressers, as was the case for me.

Is there a fundamental difference between those who transgress societal gender boundaries and those who, finding themselves with a brain-body mismatch, transition to the biological sex opposite their birth sex? Some people with brain-body mismatches go through a transgressive phase, as I did. I wished at the time that I was a transgresser, as I had been in a low-key way at various times in my life. In the end, that was not for me. But there seem to be plenty of transgressers who are happy with being so and have neither desire nor need to change biological sex. Are the causes of transgressive behaviour and transsexuality related, or not?

I love my genderqueer and crossdressing friends. I love that they turn gender on its head and discomfit society. Genderqueers, gender radicals, gender anarchists. It's all good. But the further I move along my own path, the less I feel I have in common with them on the gender front. There is an element of fun in transgressing gender, or at least there should be. Realizing that one is transsexual is not fun.

I have a trans friend, well into her transition, who "came up" through drag culture and is still very much at home in it. I know there are others among the group I used to hang out with for whom drag culture is part of their world, even as they transition. But I am not comfortable.

For me, a lot of gender transgression, especially of the entertainment variety, trivializes what for me was a very painful process. I think that's the crux of the matter. I don't think there's anything wrong with what they do. I just don't really want to be near it. I'm amazingly happy now, but maybe the memory of how I got here is still too painful and too recent.

There are reasons I still see my therapist from time to time, even though I'm mostly doing well.

So it could be just me, and something I need to deal with. Still, I continue to wonder about that big transgender tent and whether we all really belong under it.

Educating Véro

I've seen a few "what is a woman" posts lately. Maybe it's because of South African sprinter Caster Semenya. Maybe it's because we trans women tend to think about the question a lot. It's important to us.

Cassandra posted an entry with a link to an interesting and very candid piece from New York Times columnist Peggy Orenstein, who questioned how the loss of her breasts and ovaries might affect her sense of self as female. Before that, Jill posted an entry that started with a quote from a trans blogger who claimed that we could never be women because we had never been through what women have been through growing up, both socially and biologically.

Am I a woman? Can I become one?

Biology is not destiny, but we ignore it at our peril. Everything, everything, EVERYTHING we are results from some combination of genetics and environment. We are Homo sapiens sapiens, with 23 chromosome pairs chock full of genes that code for various proteins and form the basis of who and what we are. At the same time, as we grow we become human beings, a result of socialization and learning and interacting with our environment and with other human beings.

Some of what is coded in DNA is immutable: I will only ever have light brown eyes. Much is potential, potential that might or might not be expressed, depending on the environment. A child with a genetic predisposition to psychopathy who is reared in a loving home and favourable circumstances might never express any psychopathy. The same child reared in a home where he is beaten and unloved will probably exhibit psychopathic behaviour. Same genes. Different environment.

We are all born Homo sapiens sapiens. We become human beings. Likewise, we are born male, female, or intersexed. Those are biological realities. We become men or women, with subtle gradations between those two poles. That's the ultimate reality. How do we become women or men? We learn.

So...what did my biological state look like as a child? I'm reasonably sure I have a 46,XY karyotype and that the H-Y antigen was expressed on the Y-chromosome, typical of a male-bodied person. I was born with male genitalia. Yet it's now clear to me, and I imagine it will be clear scientifically before too long, that the structure of my brain does not fit with the rest of the biological pattern. For whatever reason—genetic predisposition that got expressed, drastic environmental influence (I don't think my mother took DES while she was pregnant with me, but it's possible), or something else—my brain was undervirilized in the womb.

I know some will attack me for saying this, but I don't know what else to call a condition in which a brain with typical female structures resides in a male body other than an intersex condition. It's only that it's not yet possible to test for it, because it involves the brain. Like other intersex conditions, it might be strongly expressed, weakly expressed, or in between. In my case, it was always there, but it vacillated between weak and strong until it hit with full force in my early 50s.

So I started with a male body and an androgen-dominant hormone balance but more typically female brain structures placed into an environment in which the assumption was that I was a boy. From the beginning, something was different, possibly because of my brain or simply because of genetic tendencies. I wasn't typically boyish like my brother. I wasn't a girl, obviously, but more like a soft boy with feminine tendencies. Still, I was brought up as a boy, and learned, more or less, to be a man, although the sports male role models of my youth were later replaced by musicians and writers.

I was not socialized as a female. I did not learn how to be a woman when I was young. For any male-bodied person, no matter how feminine, that just wasn't going to happen. And of course I did not learn about periods, pregnancy, and other things having to do with the female reproductive system.

Have I "always been a girl/woman"? I'd say no. Have I always had a "female brain" (in simplified terms)? I'd say yes. I had a biological potential that was not yet realized.

Fast forward to the present day. The body that started as male has been somewhat modified, although not nearly as much as I wish, and the hormone balance is now similar to that of a normal pubescent female. Of course my karyotype hasn't changed, but a lot else has. And like a young female of the species, I am busily learning just what it means to be a woman. Girls are not born women. They learn to be women. I'm learning it late in life. I cannot learn any of the parts that have to do with reproduction. I cannot learn in the natural way that youth learn, as part of growing up. But I'm not letting that stop me.

Consider it adult education. We adults learn a little more slowly, but we can still learn pretty much anything we put our minds to, especially if we are strongly motivated.

One thing that's different, even for adult education, is that in this case I have a lot to unlearn. I can't just learn to be a woman on top of what I already know. I am jettisoning a lifetime of male behaviour and male thinking. I thought I didn't have that much of it, but when it came time for new learning I had more than I had realized. Unlearning is often harder than learning, but in this case it is absolutely necessary, because what I'm learning must replace what I had learned before. I'm not getting rid of myself. I'm losing things I acquired that didn't really fit in the first place and now get in the way of who I want to be.

I learn in all the ways that anyone learns. I observe. I listen. I discuss. I listen some more. I learn by doing. I make mistakes and learn from those. I'm very self-aware, and I'm good at internalizing what I take in. Observing is how I learn how to act, how to move, how to behave. Listening is how I gain insight into how other women think and feel. I can't know their thoughts, but I can listen carefully to what they say and how they say it.

As for thinking like a woman, well, I think like me. That's all any of us ever does. I see myself as a woman, and I find that I react to stories about women in a very personal way. I find myself drawn these days to stories by women about women, on a very emotional level. Often these days I forget my origins and feel as though I've always been a woman. Yes, I realize that's completely subjective.

Will all of this ever make up for my not having been reared as a girl? I don't know. I think so. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that's more objective. In my experience, women accept me as a woman, whether they knew me before or not. They relate to me as they relate to other women. I see that when I'm with a group. Sometimes they have girl talk with me. If they see me as a woman, who am I to argue with them? I fully agree!

So I will say yes, I am a woman, and yes, I am still becoming a woman because I am still learning (and unlearning). And I will continue to learn more as long as I am able. If anyone doesn't think I'm a woman, or thinks no trans woman can possibly be a woman, I have to leave them to their opinion. For my part, I think I meet the criteria. Late bloomers still bloom.

Last weekend of summer

The bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle
And the hills the greenest green, in Seattle

(Montenegro, Shelton, Keller)

Well, not a whole lot of blue skies this past weekend, and I don't think we could see the hills very well (not to mention that they're mountains), but we still had a great quick break.

I had taken Tuesday off, and we drove down on Sunday, all of this in an attempt to avoid the worst of the border lineups. I'm pretty sure that on Saturday morning, and maybe well into the day, they would have been brutal. Besides, Sweetie figured out that Monday was the best day for bands at Bumbershoot, and it would have been awfully late to drive back that night.

As it was, on Sunday we went through the smaller Aldergrove/Lynden crossing in about five minutes. The guard asked us only a few questions. We then took our time, stopped for coffee, slowed down to make it through a torrential downpour, and arrived in plenty of time to leave our bags at our hotel near Seattle Center and walk to Lola in Belltown.

Just a few minutes after we were seated, Jill arrived. I'd seen photos of her, so I recognized her instantly. Jill and I are both volunteers at the Transgender Resource Center in Seacond Life, and I've known her online for quite some time. I've probably had more interaction with her than with any of the other volunteers. It was a pleasure to meet Jill in person. After all the conversations we've had, and having read each other's blog for some time, it was almost like I knew her already. Still, I love meeting online people in person. Sweetie is a teacher and Jill a school psychologist, so they got to talk shop a bit while we enjoyed a very good lunch.

The rain was holding off, so we walked to Nordstrom Rack on Pike Street. Nordstrom is a very nice department store where you shop if you can afford to buy designer fashions at retail. Nordstrom Rack is where things go when they want to sell them off quickly. It's similar to Filene's Basement in Boston. It can be a bit mad at Nordstrom Rack, and a bit overwhelming, but if you go through enough racks you can find excellent bargains. I ended up with only a top and convertible dress/skirt, but Sweetie found some tops and a very nice raincoat that she needed. Poor Jill did get somewhat overwhelmed, especially since her wife, who is her shopping consultant, was not with us. She's smart about not wanting to buy things that end up being wrong for her, as I did when I was first shopping for women's clothes. She's still learning what works for her.

Having escaped from the store, we wanted to find a coffee shop in which to sit and relax for a bit, and to get out of the wind which had really kicked up. Sadly, we did not find one that was open. That's one of the problems with downtown Seattle on weekends. We had walked most of the way to the ferry terminal Jill needed to go to, so Sweetie took a couple of pictures and we parted ways.

Sweetie and I braved the wind and did find a coffee shop in the other direction. Then we braved more wind to get back to our hotel. Then out into the wind again to the Frontier Room for barbecue and beer. It wasn't the best pulled pork I've ever had, but it was good, and it had been too long since I'd had any. (I might be a total pescatarian if it weren't for pulled pork.) Into the wind again to walk back to our hotel, where we got a cab to the Harvard Exit theatre in Capitol Hill to see In the Loop, a wickedly funny satire about how governments work (or don't).

Monday was a full day at Bumbershoot, probably our longest ever. We've usually skipped out on whatever late act we planned on seeing, but not this year. Maybe we're getting younger, eh? Highlights of the day: Visqueen, a Seattle band led by Rachel Flotard; Delhi 2 Dublin, a crossover band you'd have to hear to understand, and continuing our tradition of seeing Canadian bands at Bumbershoot, this one even from Vancouver; Mirah, a Portland-based writer of short, whimsical, engaging songs; Vieux Farka Touré, a wonderful guitarist and singer from Mali with an excellent band; and finally Metric (Canadian band number two). OK, so we didn't stay for the whole set by Metric, but we probably made it to half, and that's better than we'd ever done. In between, we spent money on crafts, clothes, food, and a print, saw cool band posters and other artwork, and caught bits of Recess Monkey, a band made up of school teachers singing songs for kids, and Dead Confederate, who were OK but not thrilling. And got rained on.

One trans note, just because it's the topic of this blog. We were killing time before hoping to catch the beginning of Sly and Robbie's set (they were late, of course, and we never did see anything but some sound check), and Sweetie and I went to a booth so she could get a lemonade. It had been showering, so I had my white and black hoody on with the hood up, probably with my hair tied back. After serving Sweetie, the vendor said, "can I get anything for you, ma'am?" Sweetie says later, see, you shouldn't worry about how you're read. And I don't really, but it's still nothing I take for granted. Nice to know my face is doing the job.

And then I woke up sick on Tuesday, but that couldn't take away from a wonderful weekend all around.

Approved and funded

I started to write a post about the Seattle weekend, but some important mail arrived before I'd finished.

I received a copy of a letter sent from the provincial Ministry of Health Services to the psychiatrists who did my evaluation for surgical readiness. The letter says that the Gender Reassignment Surgery Review Committee has authorized the Medical Services Plan (provincial health insurance) to pay for my genital surgery.

Yes, there were a few tears when I read that. I could have paid for the procedure if necessary, but I'm glad I don't have to. As well, even though I know I'm transsexual and need this procedure, it's cool to have those added bits of approval, first from the psychiatrists (and I didn't hide anything from them) and now from the Ministry of Health Services.

This all went pretty quickly. My evaluation was on July 30. The supporting letter was dated August 6, and was received by the ministry on August 19. And the funding approval letter was dated September 1! I'm still glad I set a date already. Now I can confirm and move things along.

I'm sorry for those who have to spend their life savings to obtain necessary medical treatment. I'm even sorrier for those who have no way to save that kind of money. I wish things were different. But I'm very glad I live in British Columbia.

J'suis malade

I should be writing about what a great weekend Sweetie and I had in Seattle. About how cool it was to meet Jill, whom I have "known" for quite a while through Second Life but whom I had never met in person. About finding bargains at Nordstrom Rack, which is where Nordstrom clears out designer clothes, shoes, and accessories. About what an excellent day we had at Bumbershoot, despite the sometimes heavy showers. Even about our weird hotel room. But I'm just not in the right place.

Today, I've been living on Melba Toast and applesauce. I'm sipping Gatorade right now. You can probably figure out what all that is about. I woke up on Tuesday feeling like I was still full. Not a good sign. After some time in the bathroom, I was doing better, and I managed to drive us home. I even felt well enough—or not too poorly—to stop at the Nine West outlet on the way. But when I got home, I went straight to bed. That's where I've spent most of my time since we got home.

I don't know what caused this. I tend to blame the bratwurst, although that stand is very busy and I doubt that they were spreading food poisoning everywhere. So who knows. All I do know is that I feel like, well, I'm tempted to say I feel like crap, but I do try to avoid bad puns. I'll get back to you when I feel in the right mood to write about a great weekend.

Elephant-free

Last night, I had dinner with a couple of new friends, the other guitar teachers with whom I worked a few weeks ago. There were a few things about that week we wanted to discuss, but mostly it was just a friendly get-together. I really like those women, so I'm glad that J, the organized one among us, suggested we meet up.

I had time to kill between end of counselling and dinner, and J's house was kind of on my way to the restaurant, so I rang her up and offered to give her a lift. I went to her house, and we hung around for a bit just chatting. Then we went to the restaurant, where we were soon joined by our friend, S.

I had a great time. I'm glad the company was good, because the service at that restaurant is very slow. At least the food was good when it finally arrived. Meanwhile, we talked about all kinds of things—music, school, jobs, life.

Now, I worked closely with J and S for a week. We met in advance to discuss plans, and we spent several hours together last night. In my experience, when I work closely with someone (as I sometimes did in school), if they have not sussed me out before, they do eventually. I blend pretty well, but not that well. J is also a Facebook friend. But neither J nor S has ever asked me about my status, and I have never brought it up. They treat me like a friend. It's funny. I don't know if either of them wants to ask me, and sometimes I want to say that I'm not sensitive about the subject, at least with friends, but of course I'm not going to bring it up.

The thing is, though, there's no tension. So with the right people, at least, not only is the elephant not in the room. That pachyderm has left the building.

I gave J a lift home, and When I dropped her off at her house, she said she'd like to get together again. So would I. If there's one thing that will get me away from this computer and out of my isolation, it's the opportunity to create in-person friendships.

Done with transgender

The word gender was originally a grammatical term. Words had gender: masculine, feminine, and in some languages neuter. Later, it took on two new meanings: a kind of euphemistic synonym for sex, and, as Merriam-Webster Online has it, "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex" (the "gotcha" there being the word "typical").

Trans people, and many others as well, use the word gender to mean our sense of ourselves as being male or female, distinct from our biological sex. Because we do have a biological sex. It's determined by external genitalia and reinforced by subsequent physical development. Male and female are scientific terms, with male animals having male sex organs and female animals having female sex organs. Those terms can get muddied by intersex conditions, usually determined by karyotype tests, but in general the biological categories of male and female are fairly clear. They aren't about how we feel. They're about how we're built.

The trouble is that our brain is part of our biology as well. It's not the part the obstetrician sees, but what our brain tells us matters a lot to our own lives. Our sense of ourselves as male, female, both, neither, or whatever doesn't necessarily match what we call our biological sex, as determined by our external genitalia. External genitalia are not actually sufficient for determining biological sex, but that's what is done. That's when we start to talk about gender instead. Brain sex, a result of in utero development, leads to gender, the sense of whether one is male or female or other. I was born male bodied, but my gender is female. I'm not phenotypically female—yet—but my brain says I'm female. My sense of self as female is an integral part of my personality.

Dysphoria arises in this situation because the body does not match the brain, the body keeps feeding the brain the wrong chemicals, and society wants to reinforce the gender that matches biological sex. This is what can cause stress, depression, and a lot of confusion. Imagine having a brain that was undervirilized in the womb for whatever reason. It's likely similar to the brains of women-born-female-bodied. Yet it gets bombarded with androgens, as well as bombarded with the idea that its sense of sex should match external genitalia. What's a brain to do?

There's a word for people like this: transsexual. Trans in this case means "so or such as to change" (thanks again, Merriam-Webster) as in the word transfiguration, with implications of the meaning "on the other side of," as in transatlantic. I have a brain that says I'm female, but a body with male sex organs that pumps out male hormones. I deal with that through hormone replacement therapy and, before too long, surgical reconstruction. I'm not about to have a personality transplant, so I change my hormone balance and my phenotype, as much as possible. I bring my body to the other side, where my brain already is.

When my dysphoria went from chronic to acute, I called myself transgender. It was a word that seemed to cover a lot of conditions, and I didn't yet know what I was really dealing with. Once I did know, however, I admitted the truth to myself: I was transsexual. It was my biological sex, the male genitalia and the result of having male genitalia, that needed to be changed. My gender was already perfectly fine, if sadly unmatched to my body.

I changed gender expression during my social transition insofar as I allowed my tendencies toward typically (there's that word again) female behaviour to be expressed. But those tendencies were there all along. People used to think I was gay because I had a soft appearance and a gentle manner. Only Sweetie knew that I was also interested in fashion and grooming among other typically female interests. Not all women behave and think in this way, but many do, and I did and do. So it was really a change in the level of gender expression. In the end, I could no more change my actual gender—my sense of my own sex—than I could change my basic personality. I didn't acquire a sense of being female. I simply stopped repressing it.

So I'm no longer using the term transgender about myself. I'm not sure how useful it is for anyone. It's been kicked around so much and used so facilely that it's becoming a word we accept without asking ourselves what it really means. We assume we know. It's the "T" at the end of "LGB," right?

But trans means "so or such as to change," and "on the other side of." Change gender? Change one's sense of one's own maleness or femaleness? Change one's "behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex"? None of that makes sense to me.

There are people like me who come to terms with the need to change biological sex and, to a greater or lesser extent, our role in society, and follow through on that need. There are also people who would probably be better off, at least in some ways, if they did follow through, but who do not follow through for various reasons, including that they would be worse off in other ways. Both these groups can be called transsexual. But there are also men who have a desire to dress in women's clothes, either privately or publicly. We call them cross-dressers, but do they belong in a broader category, and if so, what is it? As well, there are people whose sense of their own gender is at variance with their biological sex but who have no need to undergo surgical and/or hormonal treatment for their conditions. We have specific terms—genderqueer, bi-gendered, androgynous, and more—but do those people belong in a broader category? And if that's not enough, there are nearly infinite variations in between, such as a cross-dresser who undergoes facial hair removal or even hormone therapy but who lives his daily life as a man.

Do all these people belong under one umbrella? Am I like a cross-dresser? Is a cross-dresser like an androgyne? Is an androgyne like me? I wonder.

The word transgender is not going away, of course. It's entrenched. But I really don't know what it means any more. I tend to use the term gender variant for people who don't conform to societal expectations about gender expression. But whatever transgender is, I don't think it describes me, and neither am I gender variant. I'm dealing with a medical condition, and when I'm done, my body will match (as much as possible) my brain. I might still behave in untypical ways, but that's separate from the physiological condition.

As I wrote, I called myself transgender before I realized I was transsexual. The evidence is in this blog, and I'm not covering it up. Some people who call themselves transgender will also come to the same realization. Others, not being transsexual, will not think of themselves that way. They will simply break societal taboos having to do with gender expression. And I'm glad they do. Society should never get complacent about gender.

I realize that in saying that I'm not transgender and don't even want to use the word, I'm agreeing with people whom I usually try to avoid because I find their behaviour abhorrent. Having turned their lives upside down in order to be happy, they seem always to be unhappy. Me, I'm happy. I have no plans to spend the rest of my life bitching at people and arguing over terminology. But I have always agreed with them on certain issues, so this is just one of them.

So, I'm not transgender, or transgendered, which makes more grammatical sense to me. I'm sure some people will refer to me as such, and I can't do anything about that. I'm sure many people will consider me to be under that large umbrella that includes lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, because there is a common experience of similar kinds of discrimination. But at heart, I am a transsexual in transition. My brain and personality always had female in them, now given free expression. Day to day living and hormone balance are now those of a woman-born-female-bodied. Body correction soon will follow. The end result is a female, biologically and legally. Not a claim. Not a wish. A fact.