Revolucionando o gênero

Whitney

I’m not much of a writer and I don’t really journal, but these last few months I have found myself to be super reflective and then remembered I had a blog. While this isn’t usually something I would dialogue about I just had some insight. These last few days I have myself moved by the passing of Whitney Houston. As I was up late and watching a special about her I began thinking. Why was I so affected  by her death?  I hadn’t listened to her music in years with the exception of hearing a recent recording in the club from time to time. I found myself obsessed with listening to her old hits on you tube and then it me. Her music had the ability to instantly transport me back into a time of my childhood and moments I had with my family and friends. I remember getting my first tape recorder with a mic attached and busting out The Greatest Love of All for a family performance. It’s when I began to fall in love with music and singing, and the start of a dream to be a singer, which was also thwarted in my teen years when I realized I didn’t have much of a voice, but none the less a love affair. It was amazing seeing all those old videos and recalling where I was when I watched her perform at the superbowl. What I thought of the world, the family that was still together, and the time I felt safe and that my parents could always protect me. I miss those days, and as I get older I realize when times of old are gone as in this case, where I’ll never see her in a film or hear her at an award show,  a little piece of my childhood goes with it, and I mourn for it. The accessible marker of a song or performance that validates my life era, where I am now, and where it originated.  Maybe this is what usually ties up in our feelings of loss and mourning. With all the changes this year I feel like this sentiment is pervasive and strong. I have been in mourning to some degree as I have embarked on this new life with this new body, and sometimes I miss the simplicity and comfort of my old one. A community that I new was solid and that embraced me, all of me. The time where I wasn’t othered or forced to live half in one community and half in the other. Where my full identity resonated. Where my masculinity wasn’t challenged, seen as less, or just was known.…. Food for thought I guess.

My Road to Transition

A buddy is starting this great project called transaware to help other trans guys share their stories and help with the alarming suicide rates and a number of abusive behaviors lots of us engage in to deal with our dysphoria and social pressures. Here is their aim -

He is looking for stories about coming out, your experiences during transition, and whatever other narratives you think will help. Check out trans aware on face book here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Transaware/173518242693922.

Here is mine:

My road to transition:

My road has been a long one, as this journey that has led me to start medical transition has taken 30 years. Along the way I have sometimes championed visibly protesting the binary and at other times desired most to blend in and be appreciated for my character, versus judged first by my non-conforming appearance. I’ve loved being different and fighting for the option to do what made me feel good about myself and for the acceptance I believe every person deserves. I’ve also felt ashamed and despised that my preference made me feel weak, embarrassed, and sometimes endangered. There have been moments that I’ve sacrificed the me I am, and have chosen to soften my masculine energy and presentation for the love of partners, the welcoming of un-accepting communities, and the ability to take part in experiences and opportunities I desired. I’ve listened as partners try to grapple with how to introduce me to friends and family, how to enjoy my feminine and masculine components without wanting one to dominate, and how there are parts of my body that I wish to modify or re-name. From the time I was young others mistook me for a boy, and juxtaposed against my younger sister, my differences were more than obvious. I walked like a boy, played with the boys, and enjoyed the toys that someone deemed specific to their male gender. My father, a father to 5 boys prior to our family, knew something was different and had remarked one day in my early childhood, “that I was the most boy out of all his boys.” While I can’t say that I remember wishing to be a boy, I can recall always hating that I just wasn’t one. I knew my cis-male counterparts never fought for what I always had to beg and plead for. They didn’t have to pick five outfits they hated to get one outfit they wanted, when the time to shop for school clothes came around.  They didn’t have to prove they were worthy of being on the team, hanging with the guys, or really knew what they were talking about when it came to masculine hobbies. They didn’t have to try to be there assigned gender at birth, they just were and no further explanation was necessary.  I was fortunate to escape teasing as a kid because I excelled at sports and gained enough popularity, so that any kind of gossip was quickly silenced, but as the years went by trying to fit in got harder and harder. Overnight I knew that my persistence to be one of the boys would get me nowhere with either sex, since I was now socially expected to win the affection of some guy I wanted to be, and find common ground with other  cis-females doing the same. My athletic inclination allowed me a little more breathing room in the area of gender conformity, but as I grew up in Southern California, my blond hair was supposed to be accompanied by a bikini. I navigated high school easy enough and in college I came out as a lesbian, forcing me to forfeit my army scholarship and leave my career pursuits of a religious nature behind.  Soon after, I found myself partnered to a woman and living in San Franciscowhere at the time, girls could be bois, but not boys. The trans movement was just beginning and it was still not popular with the queer community, while remaining invisible for the most part.  I remember a PBS special airing around the events of SF PRIDE in 2000 and for the first time, I heard all of my own inner dialogue growing up being vocalized as the trans men told their stories of  coming out and transitioning. I was so excited and told my partner at the time who quickly informed me that if I pursued transitioning, I’d be single since she signed up to be with a woman and not a man. She was my first love and I liked the life we had and were embarking on, so out the idea of transitioning went, and in the idea of butching it up followed. Transitioning from female to male was not accepted, but masculinizing my female body was, and the butch femme scene was huge in San Francisco. Looking back this is almost funny, as the idea of occupying the space in-between the binary, the genderqueer of today that could be labeled as trans, would have most likely identified as butch or stone back then. I found that being masculine in appearance got the attention of many butch loving femmes and while at work or in non-queer spaces this was at times detrimental, among the queers I was received as attractive and desired.  I embraced this role and for most of my collegiate career it seemed to suffice, as I wanted to politicize my gender non-conforming preferences and I wanted to stir the pot in the world of academia and gender discussion. Women could be anything, do anything, and look like everything. I didn’t want to detach myself from my female bodied history and ideals, and I saw transition as a need born out of the binary. Having to pick the other box because the one assigned at birth didn’t fit seemed to be a consolation prize, since I didn’t think there should be a box in the first place.  Transitioning to identify with the box that held the power and made the rules seemed like some kind of betrayal to my own kind and the good fight they were waging. At the same time, I couldn’t resist the longing for a flat chest and a more male body.  The male body was something I strove to emulate and while I didn’t want to be a man, in the sense that I didn’t want to prescribe to the male way of thinking and privilege that is too often take for granted. My gender identity lay much more closely with the male designation than the female. For most of my twenties this debate and struggle between politics, my body, my gender, and the binary continued to unfold. My experiences in bathrooms, with partners, traveling abroad, work interviews, and other gendered or gender role dependant situations further weighed in on the conversation I was internally mulling over. It wasn’t until my plans for Medical school fell through that I had to take a serious look at what I was sacrificing my happiness for. What things had I toned down, refrained from doing, or put on hold to enable me to get to some end goal. Had that goal been reached by denying myself these things?  The answer was NO. I wasn’t any further in the process of getting what I wanted whether it be a partner, career, or self happiness. That being acknowledge was a huge wake-up call for me, and the decision to live for me and do what made me happen began. I knew I wanted to be perceived as male/masculine 100% of the time and I wanted to stop trying to make myself smooth around the edges so I could continue to use the gender marker that came along with my genitalia. I wanted to vocalize that I don’t think of my chest as breast,  I like myself in a tie, and my hair kept short and cropped. I wear boxers, polo’s, and have never felt like an Amy.  I am both male and female, and while my history as Amy is important, my future as Sean is instrumental. Through the process of making this decision and beginning my medical transition I’ve learned my happiness can be about being me. It doesn’t have to be dependent on proving that I can join society’s male club or diverge away from the female and still be included in theirs. My transition is unique to me and while not every aspect of it has been or will be easy, I know at the end of the day, just looking in the mirror will be a testimony to where I’ve been and the decision I’ve made to be happy. I no longer have to feel in conflict with what I want and what society expects, and that in itself is a weight that has finally been lifted and a struggle no longer waged. I finally can just be me, and I like the me I am becoming.