In which nothing special happens

Kyle approached me to write something for the lead-in to Transgender Day of Remembrance this year, and I agreed right away, but then I struggled to find something to say. It's harder to write about my life, these days. I feel like everything is pretty much normal and I'm pretty much happy, if maybe a little busy. There's nothing that requires deep self-analysis. Even when I reach some kind of important milestone-- October 28 marked one year on testosterone-- I don't feel like it's anything to write home about. I didn't celebrate; I'm not sure I even remembered to make a Facebook post. But, I'm coming to realize that the incredible thing about my life right now is that sense of normality.

All of these delightful things are now totally normal for me:

When I'm thinking about something, I'll often end up with my hands on my face-- and now there's hair there. So I'll absentmindedly brush at my tiny mustache, or the beginnings of my tragic neckbeard, and it's a satisfying feeling. It's all peach fuzz still, but I've gotten used to it.

I wear ties. I'm working in an office several days a week, so I've tied a tie often enough now that I can do it without looking in the mirror, and it no longer feels like a special occasion. It also no longer feels like any kind of sartorial transgression; what else would I wear to the office? I actually have a genuine need for a tie clip, and I can't wait until I can afford one and it, too, becomes normal.

My testosterone injections are no big deal. I switched from a daily gel to a twice-weekly injection a while ago; I don't really remember when, because... it's no big deal. I do have to make a point of scheduling the injections, because I have a friend actually give me the shot, but it's changed a lot since the first time. The first time, we had to dither over how to attach the needle to the syringe, and how to fill it with liquid, and how to find the proper injection site-- and we actually rendered that first needle useless before having the chance to use it, through sheer hilarious incompetence. (Luckily, we had a second.) This time, though, I just brought over my little cosmetics bag of supplies, and we carried on a normal conversation throughout the whole process.

My legal ID says Lawrence on it. It even says 'male'. Every time I get a paycheck or use my DukeCard to swipe into the Green Zone, I see my actual name. At first, it was a huge relief, every time I had to show legal ID for something. Now, it's just normal.

I even pass as cis. Not all the time, but often enough that it's no longer worth remembering each instance-- when I go out to eat waiters will sometimes call me sir, and so will the folks at the grocery store when I can't find something. Twice now, working at ABP, a customer has called me ma'am and I have replied by simply asking, "Did you just call me ma'am?"-- and they just apologized right away, and seemed genuinely confused at their own mistake. (This doesn't always work, but when it does, it's a beautiful feeling.) I tend to pass more in contexts where I speak less, so when I'm just wandering around town minding my own business, it's easy to just feel… normal.

Being trans is definitely still a major part of my identity. I love the fact that my top surgery left such obvious scars, because I like having evidence of my journey. I'm even glad that I wasn't born cisgendered, because I feel like I would be a completely different person if I hadn't had to go through this transition, and I'm so completely happy as the person that I am. But I enjoy it even more because, on a day to day basis, my life no longer feels like a fight.

In which I get my boobs removed

The title of this post comes from a hilarious exchange I had with one of my coworkers at Au Bon Pain. Someone I'd never spoken to before came up to me while I was standing at the cash register and, during a lull in customers, said, "So, maybe this is weird to ask, but I heard you got your boobs removed?"

She asked if it hurt (I guess, but I had lots of vicodin) and how I felt about it (really relieved) and then we had to go back to work. Afterwards, I realised that she had put together "buzz cut" plus "mastectomy" and come up with "breast cancer", but because she never asked why I had surgery, there wasn't a graceful way to correct her assumption. I've been having a lot of these kinds of conversations lately, where people ask the wrong questions so I don't know how to tell them the right answer. Mostly I'm just not that invested in other people's dumb assumptions, but the experience of being home again has really highlighted my favourite part of getting surgery: everybody I met already knew their shit.

I do mean everybody.The women at the front office of the plastic surgery institute: incredibly invested in a traditional presentation of femininity, to the point of getting plastic surgery themselves-- and yet, they were genuinely excited on behalf of the trans men getting the reverse surgery. The woman who took my money at the clinic: a professional bureaucrat-- and yet, she apologized for having to ask for my legal name and write down my sex as female. The parade of nurses who took my vitals and gave me my IV and administered my anesthesia: not in any way specialised in trans care-- and yet, a brief glance at my chart and they knew exactly which name and pronouns to use.

I'm not really a sensitive person, any more. Not when it comes to being trans, anyway. I understand that people aren't going to 'get it' right away, and I understand that they are going to be curious. When someone calls me "ma'am", they are probably just trying to be polite, and I have cultivated the habit of accepting their politeness in the spirit in which it is meant. When someone asks a personal question, they are probably just trying to learn, and I answer in good faith every question that is asked in good faith. At this point, these exchanges just don't have any sting to them.

And yet, when I got surgery, it was such a profound relief to be in a space where I wasn't constantly choosing between explaining myself or becoming invisible. It was like a fish suddenly discovering that it lived in water… by leaving the water… and breathing the air better than the water? Perhaps I am a lungfish. Perhaps this was a terrible analogy. It was like suddenly realising that I lived in a cisnormative world. Which isn't exactly a widely-shared experience, but probably more so than the lungfish thing.

To get this blog post back on track: I feel like I have a lot of friends who have the basics under control, but want to know how to be a better trans ally after all the 101 stuff. And I think the answer starts with combating cisnormativity-- which mostly means remembering, at all times, that you may not actually know the genders of the people you see around you. And you probably do not need to know. Today I actually asked for someone's number while having no clue whether they were cis male, trans male, or cis female; their gender would have eventually become relevant, but at that point I just wanted a way to contact them to talk about Doctor Who somewhere other than the crowded Amanda Palmer concert.

If you have to ask, think about what information you actually need and why you need it. If you're a doctor and you want to know if I need a pap smear, ask if I have a uterus. If you're putting together a form, think about whether you really need a legal name. (DMV: yes. Blackboard discussion forum: no.) If you're just making friends… ask my name, and where I'm from, and what kinds of books I like to read.

This, I realized, is what I most want from the people in my life: I want them to ask what they actually need to know, and then carry on with what they were doing. Or, in other words, know your shit.

In which I am not brave, I am a pathetic kitten

Okay, it's top surgery story time!

I've actually started to kind of dislike telling these stories because they tend to make people coo at me over how brave I was. This is mostly annoying for the same reason it's always annoying when people tell me I'm brave: transitioning is seriously the path of least resistance for me. But it is also annoying because these stories are meant to be funny; my woes are not pitiful, they are hilarious!

Therefore, please refrain from reading the following anecdotes unless you are prepared to find them amusing. Ready? Let's go.

I spent a week in Florida recovering from surgery. A good friend came with me, and then let me continue recuperating at her house in Georgia for an additional week. You are about to learn just how good a friend she was.

So, post-tits, I couldn't raise my arms. I thought I was prepared for the implications of this, but I was not. I could only drink through a straw (expected), from a glass lifted to my mouth (unexpected). I could brush my own teeth, but only if my friend handed me a prepared toothbrush-- and then took the toothbrush from my hand and cleaned it for me. I could sometimes get out of my chair by myself, but never out of bed-- so several times a night I would mewl my friend's name into the darkness until she woke up and lifted me upright, to let me toddle to the bathroom. Then she'd tuck me back into bed.

I couldn't get the bandage wet, so when I wanted to look presentable for an outing with a friend, she washed my hair by using all the cushions and pillows in the room to construct the perfect support for me to lie on the floor of the bathroom with my head over the tub. (Pictured: the deeply ridiculous ice cream which was my reward for flopping about on the tile.)

I repaid her by being truly terrible company. Mostly I slept and marathonned Mad Men while she… kept track of my medication schedules, I'm not really sure. (I told you I was terrible!) Never before has the phrase 'weak as a kitten' been more accurate. My first meal, I got tired halfway through and had to be spoon-fed the rest. My friend tied a piece of string around me so I wouldn't forget myself and reach too far, but it was a moot point.

I did get better, but the healing process was equally a process of adjusting expectations. It felt like genuine independence, the first day that I was able to finish putting on my own underwear after my friend had held them out for me and lifted them up to my knees. And once we'd returned to her house, I could even get out of bed all by myself! (Mostly by letting my lower body fall onto the floor, so I could get into a sitting position and then stand up from there, but it still counts.)

But for those first two weeks, I was so distracted by the unexpected absurdity of my situation-- and so removed from any of the social contexts which might reasonably have been affected by the change in my appearance-- that it was actually a bit difficult to remember that I wasn't just binding too hard. It didn't start to sink in until the day before I wanted to drive home to NC, when I grabbed a bra to put my tits on for a trip to the mechanic and… had no tits. I still get a little cheerful surprise every now and then, when I wake up and realize they're still gone. I'm not sure I'll ever stop being chuffed that I can leave the house without any ridiculous torso undergarments-- it's just so much easier!

And I guess that's the moral of the story: I am incredibly lazy, but I have folks looking out for me and that makes my life pretty good. Also: 'cosmetic' surgery, my ass.

In Which I Wax Poetic

Lately I've been telling a lot of people about my favourite poem. Lucky you, I'm gonna tell you too! My favourite poem is by Williams Carlos Williams:

This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

For me, this is a poem about not having regrets. He says "Forgive me," but he doesn't say "I'm sorry"-- he says, "they were delicious." For me, this poem is about not apologizing when I'm not sorry. It's about being able to acknowledge the collateral damage of my choices without ever forgetting why I made those choices. It's about choosing the things that I actually want, instead of the things that will result in the least resistance from others. So it's a very soothing poem for me; I've had this poem memorized for years, and I like to turn it over in my mind, like a worrystone, reminding myself of its shape.

Regret has played a huge role in my life thus far. I have regretted pretty much every life decision I've ever made, ever. I regret both of my serious girlfriends, each in their own way. I regret coming to Duke. I regret leaving Duke to go on medical leave. I really regret coming back. I have regretted every purchase and every joke I have ever made. I regret 90% of my social interactions-- and I definitely regret every time I've gotten drunk.

I don't always regret these things-- in fact, most of the time, I'm okay with the decisions I make, or at least I'm able to move on. It's just the awful social anxiety that makes me replay everything in my head, late at night when I'm trying to sleep, and everything I do seems so much stupider-- it's only in those moments that I regret. Well, and then in the morning I regret spending so much time focusing on my regrets.

But this is changing. More and more, I'm able to remember why I made the choices I did-- and more importantly, I'm able to remember the positive outcomes of those choices, and not just the negative ones. My regrets are more fleeting and less heartfelt, and they never keep me awake any more.

And, I now have two major life decisions under my belt which I have never regretted, not even for a moment. The first is my decision to write a thesis. For the first time, I allowed myself no excuses. I turned in a project that was the very best I can do. This is honestly pretty scary, because it means that if my advisor says it isn't any good, I can't blame something else-- it'll mean that I'm not very good at what I do. But that would be better than failing because I'd never even tried. Even then, I wouldn't regret.

The second thing I never regret: starting testosterone. It's been a little over five months; people have been commenting that they can see changes-- a little fuzz on my cheeks, a different shape to my face, a deeper voice. I don't see any of it, but I do feel... different. More solid. More okay.

I don't think I could have written my thesis, without testosterone. For one thing, T cured my writer's block! I hadn't even realised how hard writing had gotten until it was suddenly easy again. But more than that, being on hormones, and therefore making progress on the path I want to live-- it allows me to just not think about all my personal shit all the goddamn time, so I can think about Romantic-era novels instead.

I still waffle a little about some parts of transitioning-- I really love the middle name Isaac, for example, because I like the name and I like the homage to Isaac Asimov, but it makes my initials LIE, and LIE is even worse than LEG. But testosterone-- every single day I feel more at home in my body, more content with the direction of my life. I've been having a hard time, lately, explaining How I Know that I'm trans, since I don't fit a "typical" trans narrative, and I didn't Know until pretty recently. But the answer is-- I never regret a single step that I take toward transition. On testosterone, I feel more like myself. And for the first time, I also feel happy about being myself. I can actually imagine a future in which I don't regret anything. It's a remarkable new outlook.

So these days, when people ask me how I'm doing, I say I'm fine, or I even say I'm great-- but inside, I'm always thinking, delicious.

In which I habitually overload

This is my last semester at Duke, finally. I matriculated in 2007 but then took a year of medical leave, so it feels like I've been here forever. And yet I feel like I've hardly done anything.

I definitely feel like I've been busy my whole time at work, never enough hours in the day to get my work done. I've had a full course load every semester, and I've been working on an honors thesis for nearly a year. I'm a member of a Greek organization; even if I'm not the most active brother in the world, I hold an officer position. And I've been working ten hours a week at my job for two years. But I feel like at Duke, this is just average -- I feel like I should be able to squeeze in at least one more thing on that list.

There are a lot of things that I love to do, that I wish I'd been involved in throughout my Duke career -- I could have continued doing graphic design at the Chronicle, or I could have stopped by my scholarship office twice a week for the visiting lecturers and the brownies, or I could have edited a student publication, or gotten my own writing published, or actually attended more than three total BDU meetings in my life. These are all things that I would have enjoyed, that would have helped make my life more like the kind of life I want to live.

Instead, my biggest extracurricular is "stressing over LGBT issues." Not advocating for LGBT issues, or raising awareness, or anything externally productive -- just the internal emotional stress of navigating the world as both trans and queer.

It's a little like the 'second shift' a lot of women have to cope with -- when they go through their normal workday and come home exhausted, only to have an entire second workload of childcare, housekeeping, cooking, scheduling, etc. dumped on them without pay or acknowledgement. Except, I only wish this stuff happened in a separate shift. Instead, it's happening right at the same time as everything else I'm doing, like when somebody says something in class that totally freaks me out.

Managing my freak-out so as not to disrupt the class is work. I mentioned to a friend today that being LGBT sometimes felt like an extra class I was taking, making every semester an overload without even the advantage of getting an A at the end of the semester, and she asked me what took so much time. My first response was to complain about all the time I spend at the Duke Hospital dealing with my endocrinologist, but this is part of the answer too -- navigating the world while LGBT requires extra emotional work, which has an opportunity cost. Any time I spend dealing with a freak-out is time I can't spend listening to my professor, or taking notes, or thinking about what I want to have for lunch. Either I do those things later, taking time away from sleep and relaxation, or I don't do those things at all.

Similarly, every hour I spend arguing with my parents -- that's an hour that a non-trans alternate universe version of myself was able to spend reading a book for fun. Also: talking to friends about arguing with my parents. Doing research. Crafting extra versions of my resume to give me options in outing myself. Long coming-out conversations. Some mornings, I even resent the time it takes to take my T and bind; all I can think is that the time I spend applying gel and waiting for it to dry every day, is time I could have spent doing anything else.

Now, I have my life running fairly smoothly now. I doubt I've spent more than a few hours total this whole semester dealing with this stuff. But I have surgery in my future, which is time and money a cis guy could spend going on vacations. Not to mention the fact that my entire gap year is 100% happening so I'll have time for that surgery, and otherwise I'd be going to grad school. And the medical leave I took freshman year-- that was crisis of identity that consumed my life for an entire year an a half. A non-LGBT version of myself would have been allowed to go to Oxford that summer.

I don't necessarily regret all of these opportunity costs. I don't think I'd be the person I am if I hadn't had those experiences, especially the year off. I made it to Oxford eventually, and I find time for all of the most important things in my life. But I feel like this kind of emotional work can lead to a more subtle kind of discrimination against LGBT individuals: if we have to spend a lot of time and energy just dealing with the basics, we're at a disadvantage when compared to people who didn't have the same distractions. My resume, quite frankly, doesn't look as good as the resumes of my straight, cis peers.

I still kick ass, so I'm not too worried. But it makes me think about what a better world would really look like, and makes me wish I had time for just one more thing so I could make that world happen.

In which I kick someone

I hope everyone had a lovely break! Mine was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. On the 4th, I posted this facebook status:

Holyshit. My mom just walked into the Skyward Sword Room where I'm hanging out with my two brothers and their friend, and she said "I have a question for my three children, my three sons..."
I seriously never thought I would hear her call me her son. We are super-weirdly Not Talking About It and they are NOT calling me Lawrence but holyshit. Holyshit. I think they might come to my graduation after all.
(The question was about pizza.)

On the 5th, I wrote but did not publish this facebook status:

My dad called me a freak, so I kicked him. My foot hurts.

I still kind of think the second one is funny, in a black humour kind of way. I mean, if you know me, I'm not really a solve-things-with-violence kind of person; it's incongruous. (Maybe I can blame the T?) But I decided not to post it-- and afterward, I was really struck by my own determination of what kind of information is inappropriate for public broadcast.

I mean, both of these are personal events. Really personal. But when the first one happened, I practically wanted to work through my entire cell phone's contact list and tell everyone I knew. I ended up not making any calls only because it would have taken too long, and facebook was faster. Compare that to the second one... I actually had a really long conversation with both parents, but even the imaginary facebook status only hinted at what was going on. And in the end I only told one person, when I called a friend to have a cry.

Obviously, I'm changing my mind now -- but mostly because the very first thing I encountered when I got back to Duke was a friend saying they heard the great news about my parents, and I feel like unless I publish some kind of public retraction I'll be dealing with painful congratulations for weeks.

Which is where this stops being completely self-indulgent, and connects to something I feel like I've seen a lot of places. In general I feel like there's pressure not to talk about the really sucky parts of coming out as LGBTQ, especially when it comes to parents. Or rather, there's an insistence that it always gets better, for everyone, and I think that insistence makes life even harder than it needs to be for the people who don't see things getting better.

Because here's the thing -- I'm lucky. I actually do think my parents will come around. I expect things to be perfectly fine with my parents by 2022. I think they will start being radically more accepting within a couple years of me passing full-time. I know that it will get better eventually. But not everyone is that lucky, especially not people on the trans spectrum.

I think especially in the community, it's hard to listen to statements like "my parents will never accept me" or "I will never see my brothers again" without wanting to contradict them, because we don't want these things to the possible -- not for our friends, and not for ourselves. How can a mother really stop being there for her child? Nobody wants to believe it can happen -- but it still does.

In yesterday's Anonymous Posts, #6 talks about how there are some families that are impossible to come out to, and will never come around -- and the first comment response is someone offering hope by saying that the "right time" will eventually come. I think this person was saying something that was true for them, and I think they were trying very hard to ease another's suffering -- but I also think the next commenter, who argues that "some fears of coming out are fully rational", is more realistic.

More importantly, things can be bad without being doomed. Relationships are complicated, and they don't get 'fixed' in a single instant. And just because they'll probably be better someday, that doesn't eliminate the pain of now. Sometimes, all that matters is that I kicked my dad, and we need to be able to say these things.

But it's painful for everyone when we're reminded how far the world still has to go, and nobody wants to be the "downer" who spoils the mood; it's easier to keep these things private, even if that means feeling alone even when others are going through the same thing.

So, I want to give thanks to the amazing friend who let me cry. And I want to open up this thread for anyone to express any fears or regrets or grief that they want to get off their chests. Be anonymous if it will help. I will give every single one of you a hug.

In which I begin testosterone

On October 28 -- a month ago tomorrow -- I took my first dose of testosterone.

Since everybody always asks: it's a gel, that I apply to my shoulders. It comes in little packets. I take it every day.

Since nobody asks: it reeks of alcohol in a way that makes the whole process feel clinical and maybe a little alienating. I have to wash my hands afterwards and be careful not to touch my female friends.

Maybe I'm unusual in feeling this way, but I don't feel like I've crossed a milestone. I don't think transitioning has any milestones, not really. Well, there are milestones -- markers that show you where you are on your path -- but there are no thresholds. It's not a journey with a grand arrival, where you walk through a door and declare, "Today I am a man, whereas yesterday I was not."

I don't think it's even a journey at all, not really. I don't feel like I'm going anywhere. I've been here the whole time. I'm just putting my affairs in order. I can see alteration within myself, but no change from one clear category to another; it all just blends together into the process of growing up, the inevitable effect of time on a person's character. Starting testosterone is like declaring my major - a formalization of a longstanding internal shift.

And yet, it seems like testosterone has become a symbol for my entire transition in others' minds. There's a clear before and after in people's reactions. People comment on perceived changes all the time; to a certain extent, it's painful to have to say "no, you're imagining it, I don't have facial hair yet," or "no, my voice hasn't started changing," or "no, I haven't put on muscle" -- I really want to say yes to all of these things, and it's frustrating to be put in the position of denying them. Or, in some cases, I feel like I have somehow changed categories in the other person's mind, and they now think of me as being a transman 'for real'; people have started taking my transition seriously in a way that only reveals that they weren't taking it seriously before.

I don't want the tone of this post to be misleading -- in their own way, these are both positive things. It's great to hear that my friends perceive me as more masculine, even if their perception is based more on my changing attitude than a physical alteration. And it's great for people to realise that I am serious about my transition.

Moreover, I'm thrilled to be on testosterone. When I applied my first dose, I was so happy I literally cried. I was euphoric for a solid day. And now I can think about the future and feel excited about it. My 'dysphoria fits' do still happen, but they are always bearable, in a way they never used to be before. Even the decision itself helped me, independent of the testosterone; since I decided not to wait for my parents' approval for this choice, I've become a lot more independent in general. My relationship with my parents is more of a relationship between adults.

I just don't think that starting testosterone changed me.

This Thanksgiving, I went home to my family. Everyone knew I was trans, but no one knew I was taking testosterone. We didn't talk about it. And I had a blast, because I still love my family, and I still love spending time with my brothers. I was really nervous about my brothers in particular, because I was worried things would become awkward between us; the most valuable part of my relationship with them has always been how comfortable things always are between us. But we made each other laugh just as much as ever.

I hope my parents noticed how much fun this weekend was. If they do, I hope it helps them understand that my goal isn't to completely destroy my former life and to become a stranger -- my goal is just to grow up and become myself. Just like anyone else.

In which I have some suggestions

Recently I've been getting a lot of unsolicited advice about my medical decisions, and it's reminding me of my experiences a couple years ago when I first considered becoming a little more butch, and my friends were deeply unhelpful. So I thought I'd put together a little guide to what I consider okay and not okay to say to a friend who is going through a life change.

It's okay to ask my how my transition is going! That's probably the way you should phrase it. This is a big part of my life, and one I don't have a lot of opportunities to talk about in detail - if you're genuinely curious, I'll probably appreciate the chance to talk about it.

It's not okay to give me advice on my transition, unless I've directly asked for it. Even if we're already talking about transitioning in general, it's just weird for you to start giving me medical advice. And if your advice is "wait until you're sure," it's not just weird, it's rude and hurtful. It's not like I'm going to drop by the mastectomy store and get my tits lopped off on a whim, like somebody getting a misspelled Chinese tattoo after a night out drinking. "Wait until you're sure" almost always means "wait until I am okay with it," which in turn pretty much means "wait forever." And that's not okay.

Along the same lines, don't suggest alternatives to transitioning. This one really baffles me - you're really not very likely to be suggesting something new. Or, if you do find something I haven't tried before, there's probably a reason I haven't considered it. For example, a well meaning friend suggested yoga to me, as an alternative to top surgery. It's true, I haven't tried yoga! And maybe I could learn to transcend my body. But, it's not like it will make my tits invisible - I'd have to keep binding, or people would still be calling me ma'am. "Try herbal tea before you try testosterone" is just another way to say "wait until I am okay with it," only it involves even less respect for my intelligence.

But, it's okay to ask me to answer your questions. Note the phrasing: please don't just start the conversation with "how do trans people have sex?" - start by asking me if I'll answer questions, and understand that I may not always be in the mood to do so. Also please make sure that your questions are actually questions - "Why not try hypnotism?" is just advice with a question mark on it. But in general, I want to help people understand. As long as you're making an effort, I'm not going to be offended that you don't know something, and I'd much rather have the chance to tell you than leave you in the dark.

It's not okay to mess up my pronouns. Yeah, when I correct you I'll probably tell you that it's okay, that I know it takes time to get used to it -- but what I really mean is that it's not okay, but I've forgiven you anyway. If you're having a really hard time, practice. I'm an understanding sort of person, but it hurts when you make a mistake, every single time. And I'm getting tired of pretending that it doesn't.

And finally, the most widely-applicable piece of advice: if I know I want to do something awesome, but I tell you I'm nervous about it, back me up. If I hadn't had so many people tell me not to cut my hair, I probably would've gotten a buzz cut at 15 and never looked back. Instead, I spent years going from waist-length, to shoulder-length, to chin-length, to a little bob, to a pixie cut - and at each stage, everybody I asked said I shouldn't do it. In retrospect, I'm a little disappointed in the sheer number of people who should have known better who reinforced mainstream expectations of femininity. People who never wore heels, or skirts, or jewelry, or makeup, or contacts, etc. nonetheless told me that I should keep wearing these things, even when I confessed that I hated them, because they made me so pretty. "Conforms to societal expectations" is not always the most important requirement for your friends' personal choices. Come on, be more awesome than that! Do things just because they're fantastic, and encourage your friends to do the same.

Anyway, because I'm in a little bit of a "trans 101" mood with this post, now is a great time to ask questions! You can argue with me, I guess, or ask anything that's been on your mind regarding trans issues. I'm pretty much never going to be offended by a question that's asked out of genuine curiosity, so don't be shy!

In which, like most physical entities, I must occupy space

I've been thinking a lot about gendered spaces lately.

This semester, I'm taking a class on women in comics. When the teacher commented on the first day that the class appeared to be all-women, I piped right up and said, "Actually, I don't identify as a woman!" It all went over well, I was pleased, and I mentally categorized the class as a neutral space.

But then, earlier this week, discussing multilayered identity, one of my classmates made the point that specific identities are often called to the forefront of self-perception based on context. "If a guy came into this room, for example," she said, "he'd probably feel a lot more aware of his gender!"

I was surprised how physical my reaction was, and how fast it happened. The classroom became a female space, and in an instant, my entire body tensed, and it felt like my fever had shot up several degrees. (I still had pneumonia at this time.) One of the other students looked directly at me, clearly expecting me to say something, but seeing the recognition in her eyes just made my throat close up. I literally couldn't breathe; it felt like my body was trying to will itself into no longer existing.

When I say I'm uncomfortable in female spaces, this is pretty much what I mean.

She didn't mean anything by it, of course, and if I'd spoken up I'm sure everyone would have agreed that the classroom wasn't really a women-only space. But it's part of a larger loss, for me; women's spaces used to be safe spaces, the places where I felt most capable of speaking up. Now, it's like going 'home' to my parents' new house in Arkansas instead of my childhood home in Kansas; I remember a sense of belonging and familiarity, but I don't feel it any more.

This is the part where I start to wallow in self-pity, because I don't feel any more comfortable in male spaces. I learned the rules of femininity very explicitly; my best friend in high school said she wouldn't want to be my friend if people kept making fun of me, so she taught me how to dress and act like a girl. It involved a duffel bag of example outfits, and more than one practice session. Nobody ever taught me the rules of being a man, so I'm always worried that there's some secret code I'm missing.

I'm not actually all that interested in following the rules of traditional manliness, since I'd much rather come up with my own queer, feminist interpretation of masculinity. I would be OK with being a too-feminine guy in a male space. But instead, I tend to feel like I am seen as an insufficiently-masculine woman, and it's even worse than being in a female space.

Put another way: when I think about entering a women's space, my womanhood doesn't 'measure up', and that's uncomfortable because it's always uncomfortable to be an outsider. But when I think about entering a men's space, I'm worried that my manhood is insufficient, and that's uncomfortable because holy fuck how can I even express how awful and scary that is?

As with all my anxieties, most of this is in my own head; I don't think I've ever had someone explicitly say to me that I don't belong in a certain space. But I've also never been successfully read as male, ever. So I prefer to dodge the question by occupying co-ed spaces as much as I possibly can.

In this way, my classmate was absolutely correct. My awareness of my gender is directly related to my context. In class, at work, or with close friends, I don't worry about fitting into a specific category, and sometimes I even enjoy being a little 'in between.' (A much cheerier blog post is pending on just this topic!) But as soon as I'm reminded that gender is apparently supposed to be a binary, I panic.

And that's where baby blog posts come from.


P.S. - Starting to wish for a neutral space of your own to explore your gender expression? Consider visiting Spectrum, a discussion group for "all individuals who do not conform to gender norms or embrace the sex they were assigned at birth, including those who identify as transgender, genderqueer, transsexual, intersex, gender questioning, or are reading this blurb and getting excited that there might be a place for you on campus." We are open to anyone who would like some support as they deal with questions of gender, with no policing, but please be aware that this group is not intended for allies. Membership is not publicised. Meeting times are on the LGBT center events page; email jess.evans@duke.edu for more information. We are especially hoping to connect with those who fall onto the feminine side of the spectrum!


And if you're an ally who just wants to know more about trans issues, as always, feel free to ask me a question here or email me any time at lawrence.evalyn@duke.edu!

In which my father suddenly appears!

(I'm stepping on Dan's toes a bit, since his life is enviably ordinary whereas I'm totally flipping out, so make sure you read his post too!)

So lately, I've had pneumonia. Since I also have severe asthma, it's pretty much been the definition of awful. For one thing I can't bind, since I'm having enough trouble avoiding asphyxiation as it is. For another, I can't... do anything. At all. Awkward: asking your ex to do your laundry and empty your trash because your room smells and you have no clean underwear.

More awkward: complaining about this to your mother, and having her immediately book a ticket for your father to come nurse you back to health.

You guys, he's arriving tonight. At 11:41pm.

So I guess I can't put off the how-did-your-parents-take-it conversation any longer, huh? My mom's reaction, when I finally saw her in person a couple months post-letter, was that she couldn't stand to watch me mutilate myself like that, and she wasn't sure she ever wanted to look at me again. And anyway, I never liked cars or sports so I obviously wasn't a boy.

After three weeks of looking at me, she said she'd done some research and found out that more than half of trans people are estranged from their parents, and she doesn't want that to happen. So I should consider not being trans. But maybe after a decade we could get lunch.

But she also insisted that if I ever really, really needed help, I could always come home. Not help recovering from top surgery or anything, I'll have to find someone else if I want company convalescing, but I don't have to starve to death on the streets. So I do think she'll come around. I also think it will take a decade. It took six years for her to get from "you should consider not being a lesbian" to "have you been going to the LGBT center? It would be nice if you met someone."

My dad on the other hand wasn't interested in a showdown when I saw him this summer - until he suddenly showed up the night before I flew home. He seemed to think a decade was too long a timeline, and was surprised when I said I wasn't under the impression I was invited to Christmas. But then he asked me not to tell my brothers, and proceeded to tell a story about a coworker-of-a-coworker who transitioned from male to female, and... did not lose her job or her wife. I couldn't figure out why he considered it a cautionary tale, except that he used male pronouns the whole time and claimed that the receptionists felt weird finding a non-receptionist in the women's bathroom. (It was a CompSci department in the 80s.)

But... he did indeed get me an invitation to Christmas, and to Thanksgiving. And even though he's never really been the parent I talk to, he's also never been the parent I fight with.

When I came out as a lesbian he gave me a hilarious lecture about how no boy would ever date me again, and then he... let it be. My mom read my diary, read my email, snuck into my girlfriend's house; she woke me up to cry on my bed several nights a week; at one point she actually informed me that my girlfriend and I had broken up, and forbade me to see her. My dad... once drove me to a date.

So I want to be optimistic. But that's long-term! What the hell am I going to do with him here??

It says Lawrence Evalyn on my door decoration! Every person I interact with on campus will call me Lawrence! The composites on the wall have a hilarious serious of photos in which my hair gets shorter every year, and then suddenly my name is Lawrence and I'm wearing a tie! He's going to help me unpack and organize my stuff - he'll find my suit and ties! He'll find my pride flag! He won't find the condoms, I figure it's normal to hide those so I made my ex take them after the laundry-incident that spurred this whole mess. (Ditto the sex toys.) He'll find my trans T-shirts! He'll find my binding shirts! He'll find my queer fridge magnets, and I don't even know where those are so I can't hide them!

It's mostly a moot point, since the whole reason he's coming is that I barely have the physical strength to bend over and pick things up, let alone relocate a bunch of stuff to, I guess, a box in a friend's room. But my ex has been very helpful.

I don't plan to correct him when he uses the wrong name and pronouns, which in my book means I'm already bending backwards so far to accomodate him that I'm halfway to breaking. But I think it's fair to give him time. I don't want him to feel like I'm 'flaunting' my gender, but I think we all know how much opinions can differ as to what counts as 'flaunting' it! And it would be worse for him to think I've gone out of my way to hide it, since that would suggest I have something to be ashamed of.

I'm not going to ask my friends to stop calling me Lawrence while he's around. But I'm also not going to bind, thanks to my buddy pneumonia. Everything else is a huge muddle.

My binding shirts are underwear. The shirts and magnets and flag and so on will probably strike him as being too 'aggressive', and might give him the impression that this is the only identity I have any more - especially since I've hidden them all for his other visits, so he'll assume they're new.

The name on the door will be right in his face, fairly literally, the whole time he's here.

But... it's my name, here. Last year I didn't put a name up because I was in an all-girls hall, and I just went without a door dec. That bare door felt like a concession every time I walked through it. It was a real triumph, for me, when I told the RA that he had been given the wrong name for me. I fought hard for that.

But, should I do a queer-cleaning to tone it down inside the room to compensate for the name outside??? These are all battles that I've fought with myself over the last year - but which battles do I fight tomorrow?

As I said to Risa when I asked to post early: I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS. What do you guys think? Help me out!

In which I return, a changed man.

It's been a long summer, and even longer since I last wrote. A lot has changed! Among other things, I no longer feel the need to use a pseudopic on this blog, so now I am fully de-anonymized. Say hi if you see me!

I also came out to my parents, and they pretty much said they don't want to see me again for another decade, but I don't want to talk about that yet. (I actually can't talk about it yet. My throat closes right up.)

Instead, I want to talk about the changes that make me happy. I came out at work, finally, so I don't have to sit next to a sign with my girl name in all-caps when I'm on shift. It's changed in most of the internal systems too; I had a coworker comment that there was apparently a new guy named Lawrence, and when I told him it was me, he congratulated me.

Last semester, I had a lot of angst about how to come out in classes. This time around, I actually had Lawrence [LastName] as my 'preferred name' in ACES. It turns out that ACES is kind of an asshole about 'preferred names' so my teachers were given the name "Lavinia Bandersnatch (Lawrence)"* but that is a rant for another post. The important part is, all my profs either asked for Lawrence, or let us introduce ourselves and marked me down as Lawrence with no fuss.

Better than that: in French class, we were doing a group exercise where we had to mingle and find people who fit certain categories. I was the only senior, and the following beautiful exchange happened:

Classmate [talking to someone else]: She's a senior--

Me: He, sorry.

Classmate: Oh, I'm sorry! [Turning back to the other person.] He's a senior...

In another class, I happened to already know one of the other students. Before class started, I told him that I'd changed my name and I was going by Lawrence now, and he congratulated me. "That's really exciting news!" he said.

I don't use my "polite girl voice" so much. I've used men's rooms three times, and even used the men's shower earlier this week. I got turned down for a date because the girl in question was a lesbian - and yeah, that counts as good news! I bind every day. I'm pretty sure my tits have actually shrunk a cup size, which is a miracle I try not to investigate too thoroughly in case it reverses itself - but they don't weigh so heavily any more, physically or psychologically.

A close friend actually commented that I seemed much more masculine since I'd left for the summer. She thought maybe I'd started T, but I think I've just been settling into my skin. It's a good feeling.

*Ok, that's a lie, it didn't really say Lavinia Bandersnatch, it had my legal girl name on it. But I don't give that out any more so you get a fake name. I think it has a certain je ne sais quoi, don't you?

In which I pass for a girl

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

My post is a day late because last night, I was still in Washington D.C. with my mom. She and I spent the weekend together for my birthday, exploring museums, eating amazing food, and having "girl time."

I actually had fun. Like, a lot of fun.

I was panicking a lot before I left. I had intended to come out to my family long before now, and hadn't seen my mom since before I started going as Lawrence pretty much full-time on campus. (I'm out to two of four professors now, and to my boss. Possibly this is also why I was panicking; I was pretty emotionally drained.) I resolved to be myself as much as possible, though, and only packed my most masculine clothes. I also got my hair cut just a few days before leaving, so I was as butch as I could get without binding.

And... it was fine. She didn't say anything. Last time, I got some flak for cutting my hair so short-- but this time she just talked about how happy I seemed these days, and how glad she was that I was finally enjoying my life. She asked how things were going with my girlfriend. It was the kind of experience I've always wished I could have with my mom, but never really did. It was also completely surreal, because it was so different from being at Duke but it only took an hour in the air to get there.

The strangest part was that I didn't even mind when strangers called me ma'am, even though it happened all the time. All last week, it was like little ma'am-meteorites were smashing into me and cracking me into a million pieces; I came out to a lot of people in a desperate attempt to get it to stop.

I think the difference is that in DC, I wanted them to read me as female. I mean, I didn't want it, but I also didn't want anyone to out me to my mom. They were accurately reading the gender cues I was trying to give them, so it was all right.

Of course, I'm back on campus now, and back to wishing people could get it right. I'm already struggling to remember how I felt yesterday, because I've sunk back into being Lawrence. I couldn't find the binder I wanted this morning, so I'm keenly aware of my breasts under my polo shirt. For just a few days, I was oblivious to this feeling, and although I don't think I could have maintained that facade for too much longer (it was just as psychologically uncomfortable, in entirely different ways), it was nice to take a bit of a break from my usual crises.

As always, I love getting questions in the comments. What's on your mind?

In which I don't want to talk about my feelings any more

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

Hey there. So, last week I came out to one of my professors. I also got called ma'am approximately eighty-four thousand times. And I confirmed with my mom that next weekend we're gonna go to DC for several days of solid "girl time." So, last week, I was exhausted; this week, I just have nothing more to give.

So, rather than rely on my utterly-depleted emotional resources for a post, I'm just gonna fact-dump on you and talk about binding. I assume somebody will be interested, anyway; I feel like a lot of people want to know The Details but very few ask. Caveat: this is very much about my experiences. I'm pretty sure things are a little different for everyone.

The first time I bound my breasts, it for Hallowe'en. My senior year, my gay ex-boyfriend was Belle, my best friend (female) was the Beast, and I was Gaston. My girlfriend helped my best friend and I bind in the morning before school, with duct tape. The critical thing with duct tape is not to put it directly on your skin! We took control-top pantyhose and cut off the legs and crotch, and used the waist part as a sort of tube-top. Then, starting at the top, we wrapped the tape around and around over top of the hose. I actually just stood there with my arms up and let my girlfriend do all the work, because I wasn't exactly shy about having her touch my breasts; I think I got much better results that way, because I didn't have to worry about twisting around and potentially dislodging things.

The results were quite good, and not too uncomfortable-- while they lasted. Duct tape, it turns out, doesn't exactly breathe! I started to sweat underneath the binder, and the whole tube started to work its way lower and lower on my torso. Suddenly, in the middle of Scripture class (really!), my boobs popped free over the top of it, and I had to sit through the rest of the class with a duct tape tube hanging loosely around my waist and bare breasts jiggling under a flimsy shirt. Luckily, I had lent my ex-boyfriend one of my bras to hold his fake breasts, so I didn't have to go the rest of the day bra-less, but I did still have to get the binder off. Which meant... cutting it off. I had to borrow some heavy-duty scissors to have a hope of cutting through the multiple layers of duct tape, and it was still a slow and sticky process. A slow, sticky, process happening immediately next to my skin. And my boobs. For that reason alone I could never recommend binding with duct tape regularly: when the scissors get stuck in the tape, and you're trying to force them out, there is no safe course of action. You just have to be lucky.

I tried Ace bandages next, the three-inch-wide ones that I already owned due to my weak ankles. This was years later, and I was binding in order to explore my own gender identity. I was never satisfied enough with the results to leave the room with them on, though, so I ordered a binding shirt from Underworks. The first one I got was basically just a long tank top made of nylon and spandex, and I really liked it. To put it on, I have to step into it like it was a skirt and then work it up my body (it's really right!). It's an awkward process but eventually I'm able to put my arms through the straps and then reach into the shirt to arrange my boobs. The compression is really powerful and the shirt smooths everything out and doesn't show under clothes, so I really love it.

At least, until it starts to roll up... the bottom of the shirt is supposed to be near my hips, tucked into my pants, but dude pants aren't exactly tight around the hips so the bottom often rolls up to my natural waist. The thick roll of bunched-up shirt is quite tight and uncomfortable, and I always feel like it emphasizes my natural hourglass shape. (If you've ever seen me fidget with my shirt a lot, or "go to the bathroom" several times for extremely short trips, I am probably trying to fix this. It hurts!)

Sometimes to pre-empt this problem, I put the shirt on and then immediately pull the bottom of the shirt up to my chest (as if I were going to turn the shirt inside out and take it off) and wear it with two layers over my chest. I feel like it's hard to describe-- I roll the bottom up over the main shirt, so the hem is at my collarbone. Of course, from this position it can slide down, bringing me back to the same situation as before, but I find it easier to tug it back into place before catastrophe strikes when it's doubled up.

The best solution to the rolling problem, though, is the version of this shirt with little shorts attached to the bottom. I step into it and pull it on the same way, but because the bottom is actually attached to something that can't move, there's no rolling. There's no need to fidget with it, so it's so comfortable I forget I'm wearing it at all... until I have to pee. To go to the bathroom, I have to undress completely. This is extra-annoying if I am wearing a suit. So many layers! It gets in the way of enjoying myself because I'm always worrying about whether or not I'm going to need to pee.

I've been getting more frustrated with my Underworks shirts lately, and less willing to put up with their drawbacks. So one night, when I'd left both binding shirts at my girlfriend's by mistake and needed to wear a suit, I tried binding with the Ace bandages again. Unexpectedly, I was really happy with the results.

I used two three-inch-wide, several-yard-long bandages of quite nice quality. (Most transmen online recommend six-inch-wide bandages but I'm using ones that I already had for my ankles.) Starting as high as possible, and pulling tight, I wrap them around my torso. I don't wrap too far past the end of my boobs (which about where my ribs end, thanks to the squish factor) and when the second bandage runs out, I tuck the end up underneath the bottom of the binding. I've never had a problem with the bandages slipping down like the duct tape or rolling up like the binding shirts, but I trade those for the problem of... potentially causing myself serious harm. I'm pretty sure men have actually fractured their ribs, binding too hard with Ace bandages. To reduce the risk, I breathe in deeply before I start wrapping and try to keep my chest expanded the whole way through. I also make sure not to pull the bandages to the very tightest they can go. It can sometimes be uncomfortable, and look lumpy under a thin shirt (especially if I'm sloppy), but with the multiple layers of a suit it doesn't show very much and I've grown to like it, because it's not fidgety and it doesn't make me feel like my entire body is encased in a cocoon.

I'm gonna go ahead and open the comments section up to all your questions, especially any you might have about the practical aspects of transition. If you're curious about transwomen, my girlfriend has agreed to answer questions as well. And if you're embarrassed, you can always comment anonymously! I love to hear from you.

In which I am a little exhausted

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

Hey there, what have you been up to? Doing okay? Great, great. Oh, me? I've been knowingly making myself miserable, but what else is new?

So, every month, I do this thing where I start running low on birth control pills. I wake up and say, "Only five pills left! Better call in the prescription!" -- but then I don't. So the next morning I wake up and say, "Only four pills left!" -- but I still don't call. I don't call in the prescription until long after the pills are gone. I resist and resist, until PMS sets in. I can't describe how terrible PMS is for me. (Well, I can, but I deleted it because it's super gross.) And yet, I knowingly bring it on myself -- more than once a month, since lately I've been getting sloppy about taking my pills even when I'm not running out!

Or, this semester I've been doing this thing where I kind of don't go to class. Well, I always attend my grad class. And I pretty much attend Romanticism, because that dude is a hardass about late homework, but if there's nothing to turn in, I don't bother. King Arthur, though-- I think I'm literally 50/50. And Astronomy... last night I was up until 5am marathonning recorded lectures in a desperate attempt to prepare for the quiz today, because I haven't shown up since the last quiz. I wish that guy kept track of attendance; I might actually go. I like these classes. I like these professors! I'm actively curious about the subject matter. And yet-- resistance.

I know what I need to do, to make myself happy, and it even lines up with what I'm naturally inclined to do, and yet-- I resist. So I just end up stewing in my unhappiness and my bitter knowledge that the whole thing is my own damn fault.

Except-- the resistance isn't my fault, not completely. I resist taking my birth control specifically because it feels so wrong to put fucking estrogen in my system. And I resist going to class because it's the only place where I'm still in the closet. The closer I get to making my life look the way I want it to look, the harder it is for me to endure the parts that still don't match.

I wish I could just dodge the question for a little while, to take a break, but the world we live in doesn't allow for that. People make judgments about my gender before they even ask my name, so I'm fighting an uphill battle from the beginning. I can only choose to correct them, or let the lie stand. And when my teacher starts with "Yes, the girl in the back-- sorry, I don't know your name," there's no way I'm going to respond to that by saying to the whole classroom, "It's Lawrence."

I had to choose between outing myself to everyone in all my classes, and shoving myself back into an increasingly-agonizing closet every time I wanted to learn something. Being closeted is hard to bear, and genuinely impeding my ability to learn, but coming out would have to be such a production, it would surely get in the way of my classmates' education, too. I don't want class time wasted on people's double-takes, or on clarifying my identity, or on anything to do with me. So until there's a chance that anyone, ever, would look at me and consider the possibility that I might be male, this is what I'm sticking with.

Which just leaves me feeling like this whole thing is so unfair. I have to choose between having my identity acknowledged, and learning during class time. But I've been a little sick lately, and I'm stressed out because my car broke down, and I don't want to go through that kind of emotional turmoil to learn how to predict lunar eclipses. I just want to go to class and do my homework like a normal student. And I can't.

Usually I like to open things up for trans 101 questions in my posts but I think I'd rather not, this week. Right now I'd like to focus on all the other things in my life, rather than letting this one aspect define me.

Instead, I'd like to ask all of you to do me a favor. Don't assume you know someone's gender until you've at least asked their name. Actually try this. When you get dinner tonight, don't think about the girl in line ahead of you who is taking forever-- think about the person ahead of you. Self-censor your own gendering instincts as much as you can. And I guess, let me know how it goes. It'll probably be harder than you expect.

In which I backtrack from last week's bravery

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

I did not come out to my parents, everyone. I didn't even come close! My mom derailed everything right from the start by handing the phone to my dad instead, and while I love my dad he's totally different from my mom conversationally and I wasn't expecting that. Then, last weeks' "how is the LGBT center?" conversation was totally not revived, contrary to my expectations; instead, he asked about classes and then said he was watching the game (what game? I have no idea) and needed to go.

So. I've been fluttering around dealing with the rest of my life while wondering how I'm going to handle this.

I only named myself Lawrence a little while ago (October 16). Even that is kind of a long time, really, since I started coming out en masse to people pretty much as soon as I was settled on the name. Three and half months of being absolutely sure who I am, down to my very core, and living that out-- it's starting to feel more solid. But every time I comb through my history, trying to pin down one single day when I finally knew... it's like there's this whole huge chain of causality, and it just keeps stretching further back.

I knew my name on October 16 of this year. But before that, I spent six whole weeks this summer wearing exclusively dude clothes, as a treat to myself. And before that, I had my fraternity composite photo taken in a suit, because I knew how I wanted to look immortalized on the wall. I met with Janie February 9 last year, to tell her I was pretty sure I was transgendered (the first time I used to T-word to describe myself to someone else!). But even before then, I knew what road I was on. I was terrified, but I knew. I bought myself a binding shirt October 18, 2009. Almost exactly a year before I knew my name, I knew that I was going to bind my breasts often enough that I should invest in something better than Ace bandages. And it was November of two thousand and eight-- more than two years ago!-- when I first confided in a friend that I was uncomfortable with the way that people reacted to my gender expression, and that I wished people would use male pronouns to refer to me.

And now that I think of it, it was at just the same time that I started planning to create a male online pseudonym to write under, who would gradually take over the writing of my blog until I was able to retire my female pseudonym. In the end, I stopped blogging entirely rather than follow through with this plan, for reasons I couldn't adequately explain to myself at the time. But I was going to name that new pseudonym Lawrence.

I usually tell people that I should have known for years, that the evidence should have been obvious, that I did all kinds of things "for reasons I couldn't explain to myself at the time". And that's still true, I think-- there is surely another chain of causality stretching back from that Skype conversation in 2008, and who knows where it leads-- but I also think that really, I did know why I was doing the things I did. I was just afraid. Pretending I didn't understand my own reasons allowed me to do things I desperately needed to do-- like bind-- without facing my fears before I was really equipped to handle them.

This is where I whine about the fact that I saw three different therapists over those two years, and if one of them had been halfway competent they could have shown me that I really had no reason to be living in fear of myself-- but I have made it out the other end regardless.

I guess this is really just another kind of pep talk for myself, trying to accumulate proof to use as armor (or weapons?) in the showdown against my parents... and trying to remind myself that in every case, for two years at least, as soon as I conquered the fear I discovered that there had been nothing to be afraid of after all. So although I am still terrified that my parents will disown me, prevent me from seeing my brothers, refuse to pay for my study abroad this summer-- I know that really, even if it doesn't go well (which it doesn't always!), it can't be as bad as I fear. And I will be glad that I've done it.

Hopefully after a few more weeks of using the blog as public therapy to psych myself up (sorry, folks!), I'll actually have something to report here... in the mean time, I'd like to remind folks that I'm always up for questions, no matter how basic, and that I love email! So you can comment here or email me at lawrenceevalyn (at) gmail (dot) come and you'll pretty much make my day.

In which I take everything too seriously

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

People tell me I'm brave, for being so out. I've been hearing this since I started dating a girl, when I was fifteen years old, but I've never really been able to agree with the assessment.

A sense of honor is critical to my identity. Throughout this post I'm going to be using some pretty strong language to describe my relationship with honor, but that's because I really do feel this way; please understand that it's not silly to me. I can't be satisfied with myself unless I am able to think of myself as being an honorable person. Truth is the foundation of honor.

So, when I was fifteen and I realised I was totally in love with the cute girl in my math class, I broke up with my boyfriend of ten months and asked her out. And then I told my parents and my friends that I had a girlfriend. My friends were great, even if my timing was laughably bad-- two of the girls were actually topless at the time, what was I thinking??-- and my parents were terrible, but I didn't consider the results when I decided to tell them. If I had thought about their reactions-- well, I probably would have waited until all my friends had their shirts on, and I might not have told my parents at all. But I also would have been a little disappointed in myself for considering a lie.

Honor comes at a cost. I accidentally broke someone's headphones at work last month and they cost me $250 to replace, but that's an easy cost to pay. When I was fifteen, my honor cost me a lot more than that.

I refused to break up with my girlfriend, and I refused to lie about us. I followed every single one of my mother's draconian rules. I spoke on the phone with my girlfriend for 120 minutes a week and no more; I never emailed her; I received one good night text a day but did not send any; I only saw her in person with the appropriate chaperones (an odd number, three or greater) and went home as soon as one chaperone was ready to leave; I didn't even say "I love you too" if my mother could overhear our conversation.

I stopped eating, that year.

However, I am still much happier about that year than I am about the years that followed. When my girlfriend graduated high school, my mother declared that our relationship was over. I was seventeen by this point and exhausted. I decided that, apparently, all the honor in the world couldn't make me happy, and I started seeing my girlfriend in secret.

It didn't last long; it was always hard on her that we could spend so little time together, and her life was different as a college student. She tended to feel shortchanged by my unwillingness to confront my parents more. She started cheating on me, and after a month or so I found out and we broke up.

It hit me hard, because I felt like I had sacrificed everything I had for her. I had damaged my relationship with my family by coming out, and I destroyed it by lying. I couldn't look my friends in the eye any more, because I was so ashamed of having involved them in my lies. But the thing that hurt the most, really, was knowing that I didn't even have my honor. Maybe forcing the issue with my parents, and refusing to end the relationship, would still have ended in disaster-- but I would have been able to hold my head high through the fallout.

These days it seems like poetic justice, really, or perhaps just a fact of the world, that my girlfriend cheated on me; I colluded with her to betray my parents' trust in me, and she betrayed my trust in her -- if she had so few qualms about one betrayal, why would she balk at a second? I tried to learn my lesson from it.

Which is why, this Christmas, I finally finished coming out to my fraternity. I swore an oath to my brothers, and I take my oaths seriously. I had always felt a little uncomfortable with my place in the fraternity, as if I wasn't as honest with my brothers as I wanted to be, but I had no idea why I felt that way. As soon as I was sure that I was not the cisgendered woman I had been presenting myself as, I began to withdraw from the fraternity as much as possible, until I knew who I really was. It is always painful to be around people who misgender me and be unable to correct them, but it was unbearable with my brothers because I felt so keenly that I was forsworn. I couldn't stand to lie to them, but I didn't know the truth yet. I felt sixteen all over again.

So as soon as I had a name, I started introducing myself to everyone all over again.

Maybe it was brave. I'll never be able to think of myself as brave until I've told my parents the whole truth, unflinchingly. What I've done so far is only what I had to do. And it doesn't matter to me how painful it is to do the honorable thing; it is infinitely more painful to know I have chosen dishonor.

I think this has turned into a pep talk to convince me to tell my mother the truth, when I make my obligatory weekly call tonight. I was going to wait until it had been a year since I first put into words my desire to transition, which will be mid-April. I was going to wait until it had been a year since I chose my name, which would be nine months from now. I was going to wait until my youngest brother was away at college, a few years from now. I was going to wait... until I absolutely couldn't stand waiting any longer.

But I think that might be now.

I'm really fucking terrified by the idea, so I'm not going to commit and say it's definitely happening -- but if it does, I promise I'll post again.

Wish me luck?

In which I have a lot of wine at Christmas

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

Merry Christmas, folks!

Transgender Day of Remembrance was a while ago now, but I've found myself almost haunted by a question someone asked. I attended a reading of Gender Outlaw at the Regulator, and a woman in the audience said, "I want to raise my children to be gender neutral, but what do I say if my son asks for a Barbie?"

At first, I thought she was objecting to Barbie on feminist grounds, and I found it a really interesting question-- should you allow your sons access to toxic marketed images of femininity that you wouldn't give to your daughters?-- but then it turned out she didn't actually have a problem with Barbie. She had a problem with boys playing with girl toys. She didn't want her son to be picked on by other kids, she said; wouldn't it be better to teach him to fit in?

I have kind of a lot of problems with this.

First, I really object to the idea that a child's gender is readily apparent. Mine wasn't. How do you know it's your son asking for a Barbie? If it's your daughter, you're only going to break her heart if you deny her gender expression just so she can fit in with the "other" boys. This was my girlfriend's experience, and it caused her a lot of pain for years.

I lucked out a bit due to another flawed assumption-- the idea that "male" is somehow "gender neutral." It's way more okay for a girl (or, in my case, a "girl") to act boyish than the other way around (good ol' sexism!). So, if your goal is to give your kids a gender-free environment but you ban Barbies for the boys... you have epically failed to understand gender. Honestly, if you banned Barbies for girls, you'd still be failing at "gender neutral."

But I think the most difficult thing for me to swallow was the idea that, somehow, if the rest of the world is going to disapprove of your kid, it would help if you disapproved, too. This is the argument my mother still uses when she tries to convince my brother and I to stop dating people of the same (or in my case, "same") gender. She claims to have no problem with gay people, but wants us to be straight to make our lives easier.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I've always felt that I could deal with everybody else in the world with no problem if I knew I could count on supportive parents at home. I would almost certainly be going as Lawrence in class by now, for example. No problem is easier to overcome if you think your parents can't accept who you are as a person.

I'm actually a little intimidated by the prospect of ever having children, just because childhood is so full of gender policing, and I couldn't possibly protect my children from all of it. I can't bear the thought of the kids on the playground picking on my child for liking Barbie. I might go on a one-man crusade and talk to all those kids' parents. I might just give my kid a lot of pep talks about how some people are terrible. I would probably spend a lot of my time very worried. But I would still give my kid the Barbie. For me, that would never be in question.

And, you know, I don't give my mom a lot of credit for tolerance (largely because she remains "devastated" that I like girls, six years later) but she was pretty good about letting me just be myself. And this today we had a conversation that gave me hope (for the first time ever) that when I finally tell her I'm trans, maybe I won't have to be estranged from my whole family.

I usually get some nice new clothes for Christmas. Usually it's fancy dresses, shoes, or maybe a really stylish coat. Always in hyper-feminine prints and colors. This year, it was pajamas and some nice shirts from J Crew. Two or three of them had a few ruffles but they were all in earth tones, and they were probably the least-feminine clothes my mom had ever bought me.

"I noticed you were sort of dressing more neutral," she said, "so I tried to do that."

I didn't even care that she was conflating "masculine" with "neutral." I was just so, so happy. I'm pretty sure this is the first time my mom has had anything nice to say about my unfeminine tendencies. Usually it's a constant stream of criticism because I don't shave, she liked my hair better when it was long, I should wear earrings or my piercings will close, etc. But this time... when I mentioned that the ruffles were maybe too much, she said we could go exchange them tomorrow for something I'd like better.

And then, she asked if I had dress pants for an upcoming fancy dinner; I told her I'd outgrown my last pair, and said that I was just planning to wear a dress. I groaned when I said it, but I'm not sure I needed to. She immediately dismissed the idea of wearing a dress and insisted that we'd get dress pants. This is a huge turnaround from this summer, when she nagged me into waxing my legs specifically so I could wear dresses.

And you know-- it really does make a difference in how I feel about tackling the rest of the world. So I'm only more convinced that no matter what kind of consequences it has everywhere else, parents have to resist gender-policing.

As always, I'm just chitchatting about what's on my mind to get a conversation started. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here or email me at lawrenceevalyn (at) gmail (dot) com. I'd especially love to hear from other gender-non-conforming folks to hear your point of view. Come on, queer up my break for me!

In which it gets complicated

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

It's still Friday night, right? It's not Saturday morning until the sun rises.

I feel like "it's complicated" has been my mantra ever since I started questioning my gender. Today I want to untangle my identity a little, but I want to be clear that all this is only true for me, personally. I make no statements, or even guesses, as to how other transgendered folks relate to these things.

So, I guess I think of myself as having three selves. There's me, which is whoever I am when I'm completely alone, and then there are the slightly-processed versions of myself that I allow to be seen in public. I don't want to make it sound like these are totally different identities-- I think it's pretty normal to have a private-self and a public-self. You know, like, maybe your private-self likes to eat peanut butter out of the jar with your fingers, and thinks your boss is ugly. But your public self doesn't show this side of you to the world. Normal! Right?

Except for me It Gets Complicated, because right now I have me, my girl-public-self (whom I shall call Lavinia), and my boy-public-self (Lawrence). Lawrence is basically me, plus underpants, and minus nose-picking. Lavinia, though-- hoo boy, is Lavinia something else!

Lavinia is the perfect daughter my mother always wanted, plus all the coping mechanisms required to get me to go along with the act. Lavinia is high femme, and totally straight. She has an incredible work ethic. She's unfailingly polite. She's ambitious.

But in order to be that person I could never let myself make any close friends. It required momentum to keep Lavinia going; it broke my heart every time I had to put Lavinia back on after leaving a friend; I couldn't imagine going through the world as anyone other than Lavinia; clearly, the friend had to go.

Lavinia got a little tainted by my misery. She was a snob and a cynic and kind of a bitch. She was very aggressive and not very empathetic. She was so, so self-absorbed. I didn't like Lavinia, which only made her more unlikeable.

In a particularly tough period of my life, I tried to kill Lavinia. They made me stay in the hospital for a week. This was, as you may imagine, a bit of a wake-up call. I decided that I didn't care if I had no idea how to live without the facade, I obviously couldn't live with it, and I gave myself permission to find out what was underneath.

I am afraid I became an even more unbearable person at this point, as I removed all my self-censoring instincts and thus spewed my drama onto any and all unsuspecting passerby. I quit and re-joined all kinds of groups and projects, and changed majors every week. I flirted mercilessly with a cute girl and never called her back. I ate three gigantic ice cream sandwiches in a row one night, and skipped class to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender.

But gradually-- so, so gradually!-- I began to put myself together, and make myself presentable to society again. And I found out that I don't really care about making money, that I don't like to be in charge, that I do care about social justice -- and, oh yeah, I found out that I'm a guy. Surprise!

I am working hard to put Lavinia behind me, and to become a better, happier, truer person. A lot of this doesn't really have to do with transitioning at all -- though I don't think I could have gotten so carried away with the facade if I hadn't been so deep in denial about my gender.

It's not so bad, really, pretending to be Lavinia, now that I know that's what I'm doing. She's less of a bitch now that I'm less miserable. And hey, that work ethic is great!

But the rapid switching I have to do on campus causes its own stress. I have to be on the watch for people who "don't know," and if just one shows up I have to immediately switch to Lavinia. When they leave, I try to work her off again, but it's a slow process, and there are a lot of people on campus who know Lavinia. This is why, if I introduce myself as Lawrence to someone, I refuse to tell them my legal name (which is not Lavinia) -- they can't expect a facade they don't know.

I do have to "put on" Lawrence as well, but mostly this involves consciously rejecting Lavinia. I don't think I'd notice changing my gestures, voice, posture, etc. if I didn't have to change them from something radically different, several times a day, at a moment's notice. And, well, I have to put on pants to go out in public, too. So I don't worry too much right now.

But anyway, that's why I don't really feel a connection to my former, girly self. I am kind of the most effeminate guy in the universe, but Lavinia never got to have fun with her gender expression; all the terribly stereotypical love for fashion, Lady Gaga, and camp-- that's all me, and I'm Lawrence. The more baby steps I am able to take towards transition, the more I feel... congruent. And Lavinia has nothing to do with it.