Queersgiving.

This Thanksgiving, I was DETERMINED to make sweet potato pies. Armed with a glass of Riesling in one hand and my phone wedged between my neck and my shoulder (thanks Mom for leaving your recipe on voicemail….), I had somehow turned making pie into a Thanksgiving themed balancing act. By 4pm, everything within a 2-foot radius of the mixing bowl had become a victim of my endeavor.

You see, I've fallen in love with the peachfuzz that has managed to amass under my chin and over my lip. This love affair was sparked after an unfortunate incident involving curry remaining stuck to my face long after I had finished eating it. Until my unlucky run in with dinner that night, I was completely ignorant of anything growing on my face. Needless to say, I soon became the target of my friends' massive side eye (“How did you not know something was growing on your face?”) for the rest of the evening.

Because of this love (cue the Marvin Gaye y'all), I couldn't bring myself to utter the word shave. So, I made the decision to choose the 300 little hairs on my face over Thanksgiving at home, and the would-be concerned faces of family members that I haven't come out to yet. To this very second, I have no regrets over my decision.

So this Thanksgiving, there were no 8AM church services, no slow singing gospel choirs, no smell of the heavily perfumed bodies of the older women in my family. Instead, there was Queersgiving; 5 good (Queer!) friends and my sweet potato covered self, stuffing our faces to a menu that I still can't wrap my head around. Though the scenery of Thanksgiving had changed for me, the menu was pretty close to what I'd eat at home: pineapple and brown sugar glazed ham, mac and cheese, stuffing, and kale were all present and accounted for. 3 sweet potato pies were the result of my destructive cooking. To top it off, 2 apple pies and a tray of delicious enchiladas had also made their way to my friends' kitchen table. By 10PM, I was knocked out.

What began as a week of uncertainty over my absence from an annual family gathering, ended in a Thanksgiving I probably won't stop talking about for quite some time. I didn't have to go home and spend my break creating excuses and justifications for my identity, something that should never have to be justified in the first place. I didn't have to create an excuse for my flattened chest, for the sudden change in the pitch of my voice, or for anything, really. I got the chance to celebrate turkey day the way it should be celebrated- doubled over laughing, stuffed, mildly tipsy from my culinary adventure, and surrounded by people that I care greatly about, and who've gone out of their way to express that they care just as much about me.

How I would deal with holidays was never a part of my deciding to transition. I assumed that the holidays would be an extremely unpleasant 24 hour period of CSI style interrogation and questioning about my life and my body. Thank goodness I have friends who have shown me that it doesn't have to be that way.

What's The "T"?

For about 20 minutes a day, I scroll through my tumblr feed to find post after post after post of transmen discussing and documenting their transitions. Tumblr, whether they intended this or not, has served as a central place of communication for the trans community. There are thousands of Tumblr blogs (including my own) documenting the process of transitioning and the issues that many trans* individuals face on a daily basis.

I can identify with the transition experience of many of the blogs that I follow. Beginning hormone therapy, dealing with dysphoria, making decisions about surgeries, and the stress of having legal documents changed are things that I struggle with as well. Witnessing other individuals in my predicament gives me strength to continue on during some of the most difficult parts of my transition.

What normally differs between my own experiences and that of others is my awkward relationship with the “T” in LGBTQ. My relationship with that “T”, has evolved multiple times throughout the process of transitioning. Initially, I didn’t question my identification with the “T” in LGBTQ. I was just excited about finally having a name that described a community of people just like me. Lately, however, I’ve found that my willingness to identify as transgender decreasing as time goes on.

Let me be clear that my issues with “T” have absolutely nothing to do with the transgender community. Meeting other people who share this pain over their gendered experience that is as deep as my own has been one of the most validating experiences that I have had. However, because so much of my understanding of my own transition experience has been based in my physical struggles with gender as a child, it’s hard for me to identify as the term.

For me, the decision to transition was about alleviating the dysphoria that I had been dealing with since I was young. Dysphoria (though defined differently by almost everyone) is the excruciating pain that comes from living in the reality that your brain and your body sees two completely different people in the mirror. For many of us in the community who do experience this, Dysphoria causes periods of debilitating hopelessness that can seem almost impossible to navigate out of. As I child, I went through many periods of dysphoria. I forgot (or so I thought) many of these instances as I became older and distracted by the demands of life. But as I venture deeper into transition, I find these memories making there way back into my thoughts.

When I went through puberty (the first time), I remember a specific incident that occurred in my room. I had taken off my shirt, when I caught a glimpse of my chest in the mirror. I started crying, and from what I remember, I sat there sobbing, staring and prodding at my chest for a significant amount of time. There are many other memories such as this; some I'm not sure I'm ready to acknowledge.

You see, transitioning has brought up a lot of the pain of being misgendered for the entirety of my life. I often get myself into hours and hours of thinking about the outcome of my life had I transitioned earlier. Two decades of my life has passed where I have been a sister and a daughter, when all I ever wanted in the first place was to be a brother and a son. Though there has been a significant amount of healing that has occurred because of my decision to transition, there is still bitterness about what could have been.

For that reason, I take issue with using the “T” word to identify myself. To be fair, I do use the term to describe this experience for the purposes of interacting with other individuals who are going through the same process. However, I don’t want to identify as Transgender. I don’t want spend the rest of my life with the word trans appended to my gender identity. I don’t want to be a “special” type of man because I just so happen to have a vagina (and he’s a fabulous one, thank you). I’m a boy, and I always have been. No additional letters required.

Goodbye, Part 1.

I had an incredibly long conversation with a good friend on Saturday night. I won’t get into what we discussed, because well, that's her business. But there was one particular part of the conversation that stuck out from the rest of our discussion:

“Oh [Insert My Legal Name], I’m glad you called me, I just don’t think I could talk to any of my guy friends about this. I just don’t trust them.”

To preface this, I am not out to this person. Thus, in that moment, I wasn’t disappointed at the fact that my friend had completely disregarded my identity. But the more I thought about what had happened, the more upset I became.

Though I talked about all the wonderful reasons why I am transitioning here, I never really mentioned the more agonizing decisions that had to be made. One of the biggest ones is going through this process while knowing that with each step, I am losing the sisterhood that (most) women share amongst each other, and furthermore, the trust that most women have for other women.

Even though I've always realized that I could never truly identify with being female-gendered, some of the greatest and most life changing moments I've had has occurred in spaces designated just for women. Just to preserve the intimacy of these moments, I won't go into every single time I've felt this way. But the point is, the thought of not being able to exist in these spaces any longer is something that didn't hit me until a few weeks ago. And quite frankly, I'm going to miss it.

It wasn’t something that I realized I had been taking for granted until I began to slowly change my appearance. The more masculine my look became, the more my relationships with other women began to change. Once, I had enjoyed the freedom of entering a restroom without receiving suspicious gazes. There was also a time when I would walk to blue zone, and a woman wouldn't cross the street because she suspected I might harm her. There was also a time where I wouldn't be pinned as a misogynist because of my continual discussion of my attraction to Rihanna (which, I have been talking about since the beginning of my time at Duke….but now, I’m objectifying her?). The more and more that I come out, the more that I notice the relationships with some of my female-identified friends, whom I formerly found to be fairly close to, are slowly becoming distant over the “issue” of my transition.

Then on top of that I’ve personally added the guilt of leaving the tight knit queer women’s community and crossing to “the other side”. Though I realize that this pattern of thinking is completely irrational, it's a bit difficult to get over when leaving such a community changes everything about your life: who you date, what spaces you are accepted and welcomed to, and even what you can say.

I know, I know, it comes with the territory, and I should “man up”. But as someone who identifies as male, but yet still physically possesses all of the traits that come with being born with two X chromosomes, getting used to living in this in-between has been brutal for the past few weeks. It’s as if I’m expected to know everything there is to know about being male within the span of 2.5 months, and then act appropriately. All the while, completely disengaging who and how I was raised to be socially over the past two decades.

Though my guy friends have been more than welcoming and accepting of my transition (I even received a lesson entitled “How to date as a man, 101” last night- which may turn into an entire blog post in and of itself), I’m not going to front and pretend that I am 100% secure in my male identification. Granted, I know this is why it's a transition and not an event. It’s a process, and during that process, you become more accustomed to the gender you identify with, and more comfortable leaving the gender role you were told to accept since birth.

Honestly, I know that to assume that I can’t have the same loving, trust filled relationships with women because of transitioning is not the best way to think about this transition. I also know that the relationships that really matter will always be there no matter how I identify. However, knowing that the dynamics of my existence as a social human being are about to change is frightening. Hopefully with time, I’ll get over this fear.

I Got A Big *Ahem* Ego.

Let me preface what I’m writing today with two things: One, I’m always excited to see the multitude of transguys that exist on sites like tumblr and youtube, and I have nothing but love for them. Two, I realize that talking about body issues and transgender individuals is always a touch and go subject, but this is my experience. If any harm is caused, I meant nothing of it.

I spend a lot of (read: too much) time on tumblr. If you didn’t know, tumblr serves as some sort of virtual hub for trans people to connect and share their lives. One day, I bumped into a blog that claimed to focus specifically on the FtM community. Upon first finding this blog, I was pretty damn excited. However, the more posts that I saw, I found that I was slowly starting to feel worse and worse about myself. Though this was supposed to be for the community, I found that the portrayals of transmen were this consistent pattern of white, fairly skinny, indie/hipster looking transguys that popped up in my feed.

It’s not that I’m not a fan of (or not attracted to) this population, but when you are constantly bombarded with images that are supposed to be “you” that actually look nothing like you, a disconnect occurs. PARTICULARLY when you are transgender and you spend the better portion of your life living in the gap between what your body naturally presents itself to be and who you are on the inside.

So my acceptance of my transgendered self exited stage left, and the questions set in. What if I lost weight? What if I ate a bit healthier? Less? Will I finally look the way I’m “supposed” to look?

Would it be possible to exist as a non-skinny black transguy, and will I ever be content being this way?

So for a few weeks, I found myself doing the self-hate shuffle. For those of you not familiar with how this dance goes, there are several key moves. There was the “I don’t fit in a size smedium” shake, which progressed into “the only six pack I’ll ever have is the case of PBR on my floor” twist, which was followed up by the “ I’ll probably spend the rest of my life alone because girls don’t like non-skinny dudes, especially ones without a penis” cha-cha.

3AM two Mondays ago, I was in my room, consoling my friend who had just been rejected. I went on and on, preaching a sermon to my friend on self-love that John the Baptist would have given me a standing ovation for. I continued to tell her that her curvy physique made her no less qualified than any of the other duke women in the dating pool. Finally, at 4:30AM, she cracked a smile.

“Xavier, I get your point bro. Chill”.

What she failed to realize that instead of me expending my energy trying to convince her of her self worth, I had actually been talking to myself- through her problems.

Whoa.

You see, us transguys have a lot to be insecure of. For some of us, its our chests. For a lot of us, it's the lack of that organ in between our legs. For some of us, it's the inability to pass as male in the eyes of the people around us. During the past few months I had the pleasure of dealing with all of these insecurities, so this tumblr situation wasn’t helping.

After that conversation, I kept thinking about what had happened. As I sorted through everything I loathed about myself, one question kept coming back to me: Is this issue really going to make me any less of a transman, or further more, any less of a man?

The more I sorted through my insecurities, the sillier I realize that they were. Instead of focusing on the negative qualities about myself, I began to see that perhaps my physical attributes were something to be celebrated. I mean, do you really want indie hipster boy fighting for you during the zombie takeover?

So lets discuss all the things I love about this body. (This one is especially for you, ladies.) I’m fairly tall, and I can grab things pretty easily without the assistance of a ladder. I’ve always had a bit more muscle mass than my other female-bodied counterparts, so I can move lots of things: bags of laundry, furniture, even you. Stature wise, I’m a bigger dude, so I can go toe to toe with any guy who is giving you trouble, and at worst case scenario, I can deliver a pretty mean belly flop(though I do not advocate violence- peace all around, dude). I’ve never had someone leave my bedroom unsatisfied with the results of our interaction. Last, but most certainly not least, being a bigger guy means I’m a great cuddler. Chances are there is a lot more of me than you, so during those cold winter nights we can put away those blankets, and instead I could keep you warm ;)

To wrap this monologue up, this one is for my bigger guys out there (or anyone who doesn’t fit the physical profile of who we are “supposed” to be). Love yourselves. Chances are, those you meet will be more impressed by your kindness, your humor, your love, and your sincere nature than they will be of any physical “lack”. To put it a bit more succinctly, in the words of the honorable Kanye West:

Coulda let the dream killers, kill my self esteem,

Or use the arrogance as a steam that power my dreams.

So yeah, I got a big ego. And if we ever meet, you might even get to see it in action.

On Transition.

[Ed. Note: This is Xavier's first post, Everyone (Great to have you writing, Xavier!). Show him some love?

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 apseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

Sitting across from me was my best friend of over 7 years. This is the same girl would sing bad renditions of songs from RENT with me in high school during our lunch period. This is the same girl that would throw donuts at people out the window of my car to cheer me up when I was down. She was also the one who I confided my attraction to women to during my freshman year at Duke.

I came out to her not by the name for which she knew me, but as Xavier. She noticed the name change on Facebook, but she didn’t know I was coming out as a man and I was beginning the first stages of transitioning.

Her response was what I expected from someone who loves you too much to risk hurting you. She was shaken, but she tried her best not to show it.

Whenever I get into these coming-out predicaments, I always flip the switch that turns me from Xavier into a transgender awareness superhero. So off I began in the middle of a small Baltimore café, giving my best friend a trans 101 lesson. The lesson ended, but her concern wasn’t resolved.

She understood what it meant to transition, but she didn’t understand what it meant to me, and why it was imperative that I do it.

My mind begins to flip through a series of old memories from my childhood. The scolding I got from my mother at age five when I decided I wanted to walk around the house shirtless like my older brother. Or when I couldn't figure out why I was never successful at peeing while standing up. Accompanied by these are more painful memories as well; the utter disgust in my grandfathers eyes when I opted for baggy shorts and NBA jerseys during middle school. The time I got beat up in a girls bathroom and was blamed for it by a school administrator (“Well the way you dress brings more attention to yourself…..”). The time I cried myself to sleep because my science teacher wouldn’t let me sleep in the tent with my best friends, who so happened to be guys, during my 8th grade camping trip. Forced counseling. Puberty. And last but not least, when I decided to attend an all girls high school in a last ditch effort of being “cured” of my desire to be anything other than the gender identity expected of those born to the female sex.

In every transgender individuals’ life, there is a moment where you realize that you are standing at a crossroads; to continue existing in this life as the person that you were told you were since the moment of your birth, or to undergo transformation – to transition- into who you’ve always known you were. There are many people that don’t get the option of picking what road they truly want to take, upon penalty of isolation, discrimination, or in a worse case scenario, death.

So why is it necessary for me to transition?

Because I want a chance to live this life, not merely exist in it. It’s the desire to finally feel that the person – the man – who has always existed inside of me is reflected outwardly as well. To stop fighting the conflict of knowing that who I seem to be on the outside is not who I truly am. To finally have my soul, my brain, and my body in the same place. For me, to finally have the opportunity to look in the mirror and not feel betrayed by the direction my body decided to take at the age of 13.

Are there moments where I have hesitation about my decision? Certainly. There isn’t a day that goes by where my thoughts are bombarded by the possible negative effects of transitioning: How will I explain this to future partners? At what point do I disclose being transgender to people that I just met? What effect will hormone therapy have on me? How on earth am I going to pay for gender reassignment surgery (which is not covered under Duke Student Health, btw)? Will I be denied a job because a potential employer learns that I am transgender?

My friend flicks her straw at my forehead, and we both proceed to laugh as it bounces off. “I know you’ll be fine kiddo - I just want to be able to sleep at night knowing you're doing it for the right reasons”. I go to bed every night, a little more confident and hopeful that finally, I’m working towards being the person I’ve always known I was. Despite my worries, my fears, and my anxieties, I know that I’ve made the right decision. I’ve only had the last 21 years to think about it.