Post by Ayla on Mar 25, 2016 9:08:10 GMT 8
transgender.wiki/why-ive-joined-the-ranks-of-the-non-binary/
This morning, I changed my Facebook identity to non-binary feminine. This change has been in the incubator for months now, and it was time to hatch this egg. And while Kate Bernstein was able to figure it out in six-months, it’s taken me much longer. The change is the result of a broad-range of experiences and trials that began three years ago when I first realized that I was a transgender female, and began my journey of self-exploration.
Since that realization, I’ve been on some kind of constant form of female HRT (hormone replacement therapy) over the past three years. I began HRT with the naive hope that if I pursued it long enough that I would one day end up a beautiful, passing female. And despite having a lot of things in my favor such as being of smaller stature, that hasn’t happened. Nor has any of my hair grown back, I still have significant male-pattern baldness. Rogaine didn’t fix that either. So I’ve come to now perfectly understand why so many transgender women ultimately choose surgical procedures. But that is not and will not ever be my path, and my unwillingness to do any of that is a significant part of my decision in beginning to identify as non-binary. It’s a sad state of existence when my identity and ability to be recognized as a female is based entirely on wearing a wig.
Due to my privileged access to great healthcare because of my military benefits, I’ve had access to the best HRT drugs available. And because I’m relatively healthy, my doctors have granted me free-reign to experiment with virtually all of the HRT drugs. Spironolactone made my legs hurt and I couldn’t pass a McDonald’s drive-thru without getting a large order of fries to quell my need for salt. Two, three-month doses of Goserelin and Eligard (Lupron) nearly drove me to commit suicide. I’ll never take those drugs again in my life, because I’ve never been so completely and utterly emotionally destabilized, and I literally could not stop crying. I’ve also tried estrogen patches. And I have photos of the pepperoni sized welts they left on my buttocks and abdomen within hours. And despite the warnings and objections of my doctors, I’ve taken oral estrogens and progesterone (Prometrium). And for the past nine-months I’ve done estrogen injections and taken Finasteride. The Finasteride isn’t new, I’ve been on it for most of my transition.
Six-weeks ago I stopped taking the Finasteride after reading that anti-androgen drugs can increase my risk of getting Alzheimer’s. At my age that’s a real worry and it overshadows my desire to feminize my body. Four-weeks ago, I stopped the estrogen injections also, because that huge dose of estrogen all at once was making me weak and nauseous for three or four days afterwards. It was also sending my anxiety levels through the roof. The anxiety grew even worse after I stopped taking the Finasteride. That extreme anxiety had never happened on oral estrogens and I’ve since returned to taking small doses.
Throughout my HRT treatment my testosterone levels have basically been undetectable in blood tests, which I’ve had regularly – sometimes every three months. And I’ve always considered that to be a good thing, because I had become conditioned to fear testosterone since joining the transgender community. I had learned to think that testosterone equals male. And I’m not a male, and I didn’t want to be seen as, or thought of as a male, so I course didn’t want to have any testosterone; which I had begun to mentally equate to maleness by virtue of guilt through association in my distorted thinking. Lost on me was the fact that even cisgender women have some naturally occurring testosterone in their bodies.
All of this suffering with the various forms of HRT and the 18-months and 150 hours of electrolysis haven’t achieved any payoff for me whatsoever. The truth is cisgender women still take me for being a male and hate me for being in what they claim are their spaces. They refuse to accept that female spaces are mine too as a transgender woman.
It didn’t dawn on me until recently just how out of whack that my thinking had become until the sole on one of my Keen hiking shoes began to fail about a month ago. They were a purchase that I deeply regretted and swore I should never have made. But not because they were a bad pair of shoes. Rather, the reason I regretted the purchase was because they were a male designated shoe. In reality, they weren’t actually a male shoe, they were merely a unisex shoe that had an “M” embedded into the sole to brand it as male. And other than being a darker color, they were the exact same shoe regardless of whether they were designated as the male or female version. Which the salesman verified by demonstrating for me how every part of the shoe to include the insoles were exactly the same. As were the width and length when he compared a men’s 7 1/2 to the women’s 9 1/2 version of the shoe. Quite simply, the male shoe was dark brown with dark blue highlights and the female version was light brown with green highlights. I really didn’t like the green and the lighter color because of the potential for showing dirt in muddy Portland, so I reluctantly took the male version. And for nine-months I walked my dog in those male branded shoes, the whole time thinking that everyone who saw me would immediately know that they were male shoes, and think that I had either returned to living as a male, or that I had never fully transitioned to living as a female. I had real fears that my trans card could or would be taken away by some uppity transsexual. But then one morning I looked down and the rubber was separating on the sole of the right shoe. And it was such a joyous moment when REI exchanged them under their warranty program and gave me the female version in the green color that I so despise. It’s much easier living life not under suspicion of any gender apparel crimes.
But aside from the fact that my body was failing to turn into a beautiful woman and the minor nuances of clothing, shoes, female underwear that can comfortably accommodate a penis, and the transgender community politics; there were even bigger items that prompted the change in my identity from transgender woman to non-binary feminine. Which are the behavior of cisgender women towards me, the failure of lesbians to embrace me as being one of them, and of course the ever-present bathroom wars and endless political attacks, claiming that I’m really a male in the female bathroom. Which also somehow means I’m a pervert.
It’s kind of tough to put into words, but I’ve always explained it to people in this way: that first time I ever walked into a support group full of transgender women, I knew I had found my tribe, for lack of a better term or definition. The feeling was sort of akin to gaydar, but not in a sexual way. And I’ve never experienced it with any other group. I don’t feel it with gay or cisgender men. I definitely don’t feel it with cisgender women. And I don’t feel it with transgender men. But with other transgender women, I have this unique internal sense of having found my people.
Finding my tribe, however, did not ultimately put me at peace like it should have, or how I thought it would. Instead it only opened up more doors, induced more problems, and gave me lots of further issues to ponder and solve. And I’ve spent the last three-years doing just that.
The most glaring aspect of associating myself with other transgender women is that it’s blatantly clear that I’m expected to follow the narrative and travel the path taken by those who came before me. Which means I’m expected to get my facial and body hair removed, take hormones, and ultimately confirm my womanhood with genital surgery. And if I fail to do all of these things, then I can never achieve full standing and become an exclusive member at the transsexual female club – I’ll always be inferior. And behind my back the supreme transsexuals will refer to me as a cross-dresser when they’re in a good mood, and a transvestite when they’re not. And some have already even done it to my face over the past three years.
When Dana Beyer recently wrote her scathing critique of the genderqueer movement under the disguise of “the Difficulty of Educating About Sex and Gender,” I was struck by the thought that instead of attacking the genderqueer and non-binary folks, she should be asking: why do they feel this way? As much as I despise Zucker and the Toronto Gender Clinic, I did learn to ask “why do I feel this way?” from him.
By asking myself the “why do I feel this way?” question, I came to realize that I had to start identifying as non-binary. While I happily identify under the transgender umbrella, and I happily identity as a female, because of all the hatred, infighting, politics, and problems that are inducing unhappiness, I’m choosing to leave my transgender female equivalent of a cisgender female identity behind and become non-binary feminine. And I’m doing this in the same but exact opposite way that some transsexual’s have chosen to stop identifying as transgender and just live as women.
I won’t stop being feminine however when I do this, because I can’t – it’s hardwired into me. Someone recently asked me if I thought gender was fluid? For me it’s not. If you force me to act in a masculine manner, I become severely mentally ill as a result. So I’m just going to separate myself from all of these other sides and identities. Under my new non-binary feminine identity cisgender men can’t tell me that I’m not a man (even as they tell me I am one in regards to using bathrooms because of my genitals), cisgender females can’t tell me that I’m not a “real female” (they currently do so despite me having a female birth certificate), and other transgender women can no longer tell me that “I’m not female enough” (like they have throughout my transition). It’s done and over: I’m no longer in the same class as any of you. I have joined the ranks of the non-binary, the folks that Dana Beyer says don’t exist. And of course I realize that people can actually still tell me these things, but it’s going to fall on deaf, non-confrontational ears.
Which brings us to the really ugly part of this discussion, or parting as some of you may see it. The part that some of you will no doubt even label me as gender-critical for. Here’s how I see the world: Three years ago I was diagnosed with GID (Gender-Identity Disorder) as it was known then because of my life-long gender mismatch. The solution was for me to transition and begin living as the woman who I’ve always felt myself to be. Essentially, the medical community was going to turn my biologically male body into a female body with cross-sex hormones and surgeries. And I would begin using female bathrooms, dressing rooms, and locker rooms. Disclaimer: I never did get enough courage to use a female locker room.
That plan immediately and quickly went astray when a neighbor cussed me out for being in women’s clothing and a cisgender female screamed at me and accused me of being a male in a female restroom in a very public place, filled with lots of people.
I’ve come to realize that the reality of my situation is that I’ve always had the same body as any male or female at the beginning of life, but because of whatever it was that went wrong during my Mother’s pregnancy (or within me) and my life-long exposure to testosterone, my body developed male-sex characteristics. And these male-sex characteristics cannot be undone, no matter what. So essentially, no number of surgeries, or no amount of hormones can make me the equivalent of a cisgender female, that’s one of the biggest reasons I won’t get the surgery. And that’s the ultimate failure of this whole transgender transitioning, medical process in my eyes.
And speaking of the medical community, they are of course absolved of all responsibility. I did sign an informed consent waiver, and they did in turn give me everything I asked for and tell me everything that would happen to me when I began this journey. And everything that waiver said that could happen to me was true, to include me now being sterile and now having permanent breast growth. But I certainly don’t regret the permanent breast growth. In fact I’ve become so attached to my new breasts that I now fully realize how terrifying that it would be for a woman to develop breast cancer and face the choice of having to lose one or both of them. I would be devastated too. And that’s because I’ve grown them and they’re natural, they really are mine. There’s nothing fake about my breasts.
So basically, I’ve come to realize that everything about my identity as a transgender female revolves around emulating the cisgender female binary that despises me. I could have just read that, but I felt the need to actually conduct the experiment for myself. And as a result of everything that I’ve learned, I’m no longer playing that game. Why? Because cisgender females hate me, don’t respect me as being their equal, and there’s no obviously benefit to me in this. Their cisgender gaydar tells them that I’m not one of them in the same way that men’s gaydar tells them I’m not one of them either. It’s quite clear that I wasn’t born into the female family at this point. And that I also wasn’t born into the male family either. And I’ve matured enough that I can now comfortably state these things and self-deport myself out of this mess. I’m now happily part of some kind of third-gender. Which isn’t exactly life on some alien planet when you consider that India, New Zealand and some other countries all legally recognize a third gender.
But in my departure I’m doing something that I’ve always believed in. Which is, I’m working to create my own spaces. By going down the non-binary path cisgender women, lesbians, and radfems can no longer claim that I am appropriating their spaces or identities. The truth is these same women ultimately fail to realize and accept the reality that I’m not in their bathroom or locker room because I’m the exact same thing as they are, I’m there because I too have to be protected from men, which they accuse me of being.
So that’s the theme of my change and departure. While I have fought my way into cisgender women’s spaces and won the right to be there through the legal and medical channels, I am departing and self-deporting on my own accord with the intent to build something better. Better being defined as for all intents and purposes as gender-neutral facilities that protect and give privacy to me and everyone else that isn’t playing this sick game either.
It’s worth noting that when Michfest was destroyed, abandoned, or dismantled, depending on your camp or point of view, nothing better was built to replace it – the entity was just destroyed. From here on out my goal is to create. And if I destroy anything along the way, then I have a duty to replace it with something better. Because that’s just who I am, and that’s just what my values are.
This morning, I changed my Facebook identity to non-binary feminine. This change has been in the incubator for months now, and it was time to hatch this egg. And while Kate Bernstein was able to figure it out in six-months, it’s taken me much longer. The change is the result of a broad-range of experiences and trials that began three years ago when I first realized that I was a transgender female, and began my journey of self-exploration.
Since that realization, I’ve been on some kind of constant form of female HRT (hormone replacement therapy) over the past three years. I began HRT with the naive hope that if I pursued it long enough that I would one day end up a beautiful, passing female. And despite having a lot of things in my favor such as being of smaller stature, that hasn’t happened. Nor has any of my hair grown back, I still have significant male-pattern baldness. Rogaine didn’t fix that either. So I’ve come to now perfectly understand why so many transgender women ultimately choose surgical procedures. But that is not and will not ever be my path, and my unwillingness to do any of that is a significant part of my decision in beginning to identify as non-binary. It’s a sad state of existence when my identity and ability to be recognized as a female is based entirely on wearing a wig.
Due to my privileged access to great healthcare because of my military benefits, I’ve had access to the best HRT drugs available. And because I’m relatively healthy, my doctors have granted me free-reign to experiment with virtually all of the HRT drugs. Spironolactone made my legs hurt and I couldn’t pass a McDonald’s drive-thru without getting a large order of fries to quell my need for salt. Two, three-month doses of Goserelin and Eligard (Lupron) nearly drove me to commit suicide. I’ll never take those drugs again in my life, because I’ve never been so completely and utterly emotionally destabilized, and I literally could not stop crying. I’ve also tried estrogen patches. And I have photos of the pepperoni sized welts they left on my buttocks and abdomen within hours. And despite the warnings and objections of my doctors, I’ve taken oral estrogens and progesterone (Prometrium). And for the past nine-months I’ve done estrogen injections and taken Finasteride. The Finasteride isn’t new, I’ve been on it for most of my transition.
Six-weeks ago I stopped taking the Finasteride after reading that anti-androgen drugs can increase my risk of getting Alzheimer’s. At my age that’s a real worry and it overshadows my desire to feminize my body. Four-weeks ago, I stopped the estrogen injections also, because that huge dose of estrogen all at once was making me weak and nauseous for three or four days afterwards. It was also sending my anxiety levels through the roof. The anxiety grew even worse after I stopped taking the Finasteride. That extreme anxiety had never happened on oral estrogens and I’ve since returned to taking small doses.
Throughout my HRT treatment my testosterone levels have basically been undetectable in blood tests, which I’ve had regularly – sometimes every three months. And I’ve always considered that to be a good thing, because I had become conditioned to fear testosterone since joining the transgender community. I had learned to think that testosterone equals male. And I’m not a male, and I didn’t want to be seen as, or thought of as a male, so I course didn’t want to have any testosterone; which I had begun to mentally equate to maleness by virtue of guilt through association in my distorted thinking. Lost on me was the fact that even cisgender women have some naturally occurring testosterone in their bodies.
All of this suffering with the various forms of HRT and the 18-months and 150 hours of electrolysis haven’t achieved any payoff for me whatsoever. The truth is cisgender women still take me for being a male and hate me for being in what they claim are their spaces. They refuse to accept that female spaces are mine too as a transgender woman.
It didn’t dawn on me until recently just how out of whack that my thinking had become until the sole on one of my Keen hiking shoes began to fail about a month ago. They were a purchase that I deeply regretted and swore I should never have made. But not because they were a bad pair of shoes. Rather, the reason I regretted the purchase was because they were a male designated shoe. In reality, they weren’t actually a male shoe, they were merely a unisex shoe that had an “M” embedded into the sole to brand it as male. And other than being a darker color, they were the exact same shoe regardless of whether they were designated as the male or female version. Which the salesman verified by demonstrating for me how every part of the shoe to include the insoles were exactly the same. As were the width and length when he compared a men’s 7 1/2 to the women’s 9 1/2 version of the shoe. Quite simply, the male shoe was dark brown with dark blue highlights and the female version was light brown with green highlights. I really didn’t like the green and the lighter color because of the potential for showing dirt in muddy Portland, so I reluctantly took the male version. And for nine-months I walked my dog in those male branded shoes, the whole time thinking that everyone who saw me would immediately know that they were male shoes, and think that I had either returned to living as a male, or that I had never fully transitioned to living as a female. I had real fears that my trans card could or would be taken away by some uppity transsexual. But then one morning I looked down and the rubber was separating on the sole of the right shoe. And it was such a joyous moment when REI exchanged them under their warranty program and gave me the female version in the green color that I so despise. It’s much easier living life not under suspicion of any gender apparel crimes.
But aside from the fact that my body was failing to turn into a beautiful woman and the minor nuances of clothing, shoes, female underwear that can comfortably accommodate a penis, and the transgender community politics; there were even bigger items that prompted the change in my identity from transgender woman to non-binary feminine. Which are the behavior of cisgender women towards me, the failure of lesbians to embrace me as being one of them, and of course the ever-present bathroom wars and endless political attacks, claiming that I’m really a male in the female bathroom. Which also somehow means I’m a pervert.
It’s kind of tough to put into words, but I’ve always explained it to people in this way: that first time I ever walked into a support group full of transgender women, I knew I had found my tribe, for lack of a better term or definition. The feeling was sort of akin to gaydar, but not in a sexual way. And I’ve never experienced it with any other group. I don’t feel it with gay or cisgender men. I definitely don’t feel it with cisgender women. And I don’t feel it with transgender men. But with other transgender women, I have this unique internal sense of having found my people.
Finding my tribe, however, did not ultimately put me at peace like it should have, or how I thought it would. Instead it only opened up more doors, induced more problems, and gave me lots of further issues to ponder and solve. And I’ve spent the last three-years doing just that.
The most glaring aspect of associating myself with other transgender women is that it’s blatantly clear that I’m expected to follow the narrative and travel the path taken by those who came before me. Which means I’m expected to get my facial and body hair removed, take hormones, and ultimately confirm my womanhood with genital surgery. And if I fail to do all of these things, then I can never achieve full standing and become an exclusive member at the transsexual female club – I’ll always be inferior. And behind my back the supreme transsexuals will refer to me as a cross-dresser when they’re in a good mood, and a transvestite when they’re not. And some have already even done it to my face over the past three years.
When Dana Beyer recently wrote her scathing critique of the genderqueer movement under the disguise of “the Difficulty of Educating About Sex and Gender,” I was struck by the thought that instead of attacking the genderqueer and non-binary folks, she should be asking: why do they feel this way? As much as I despise Zucker and the Toronto Gender Clinic, I did learn to ask “why do I feel this way?” from him.
By asking myself the “why do I feel this way?” question, I came to realize that I had to start identifying as non-binary. While I happily identify under the transgender umbrella, and I happily identity as a female, because of all the hatred, infighting, politics, and problems that are inducing unhappiness, I’m choosing to leave my transgender female equivalent of a cisgender female identity behind and become non-binary feminine. And I’m doing this in the same but exact opposite way that some transsexual’s have chosen to stop identifying as transgender and just live as women.
I won’t stop being feminine however when I do this, because I can’t – it’s hardwired into me. Someone recently asked me if I thought gender was fluid? For me it’s not. If you force me to act in a masculine manner, I become severely mentally ill as a result. So I’m just going to separate myself from all of these other sides and identities. Under my new non-binary feminine identity cisgender men can’t tell me that I’m not a man (even as they tell me I am one in regards to using bathrooms because of my genitals), cisgender females can’t tell me that I’m not a “real female” (they currently do so despite me having a female birth certificate), and other transgender women can no longer tell me that “I’m not female enough” (like they have throughout my transition). It’s done and over: I’m no longer in the same class as any of you. I have joined the ranks of the non-binary, the folks that Dana Beyer says don’t exist. And of course I realize that people can actually still tell me these things, but it’s going to fall on deaf, non-confrontational ears.
Which brings us to the really ugly part of this discussion, or parting as some of you may see it. The part that some of you will no doubt even label me as gender-critical for. Here’s how I see the world: Three years ago I was diagnosed with GID (Gender-Identity Disorder) as it was known then because of my life-long gender mismatch. The solution was for me to transition and begin living as the woman who I’ve always felt myself to be. Essentially, the medical community was going to turn my biologically male body into a female body with cross-sex hormones and surgeries. And I would begin using female bathrooms, dressing rooms, and locker rooms. Disclaimer: I never did get enough courage to use a female locker room.
That plan immediately and quickly went astray when a neighbor cussed me out for being in women’s clothing and a cisgender female screamed at me and accused me of being a male in a female restroom in a very public place, filled with lots of people.
I’ve come to realize that the reality of my situation is that I’ve always had the same body as any male or female at the beginning of life, but because of whatever it was that went wrong during my Mother’s pregnancy (or within me) and my life-long exposure to testosterone, my body developed male-sex characteristics. And these male-sex characteristics cannot be undone, no matter what. So essentially, no number of surgeries, or no amount of hormones can make me the equivalent of a cisgender female, that’s one of the biggest reasons I won’t get the surgery. And that’s the ultimate failure of this whole transgender transitioning, medical process in my eyes.
And speaking of the medical community, they are of course absolved of all responsibility. I did sign an informed consent waiver, and they did in turn give me everything I asked for and tell me everything that would happen to me when I began this journey. And everything that waiver said that could happen to me was true, to include me now being sterile and now having permanent breast growth. But I certainly don’t regret the permanent breast growth. In fact I’ve become so attached to my new breasts that I now fully realize how terrifying that it would be for a woman to develop breast cancer and face the choice of having to lose one or both of them. I would be devastated too. And that’s because I’ve grown them and they’re natural, they really are mine. There’s nothing fake about my breasts.
So basically, I’ve come to realize that everything about my identity as a transgender female revolves around emulating the cisgender female binary that despises me. I could have just read that, but I felt the need to actually conduct the experiment for myself. And as a result of everything that I’ve learned, I’m no longer playing that game. Why? Because cisgender females hate me, don’t respect me as being their equal, and there’s no obviously benefit to me in this. Their cisgender gaydar tells them that I’m not one of them in the same way that men’s gaydar tells them I’m not one of them either. It’s quite clear that I wasn’t born into the female family at this point. And that I also wasn’t born into the male family either. And I’ve matured enough that I can now comfortably state these things and self-deport myself out of this mess. I’m now happily part of some kind of third-gender. Which isn’t exactly life on some alien planet when you consider that India, New Zealand and some other countries all legally recognize a third gender.
But in my departure I’m doing something that I’ve always believed in. Which is, I’m working to create my own spaces. By going down the non-binary path cisgender women, lesbians, and radfems can no longer claim that I am appropriating their spaces or identities. The truth is these same women ultimately fail to realize and accept the reality that I’m not in their bathroom or locker room because I’m the exact same thing as they are, I’m there because I too have to be protected from men, which they accuse me of being.
So that’s the theme of my change and departure. While I have fought my way into cisgender women’s spaces and won the right to be there through the legal and medical channels, I am departing and self-deporting on my own accord with the intent to build something better. Better being defined as for all intents and purposes as gender-neutral facilities that protect and give privacy to me and everyone else that isn’t playing this sick game either.
It’s worth noting that when Michfest was destroyed, abandoned, or dismantled, depending on your camp or point of view, nothing better was built to replace it – the entity was just destroyed. From here on out my goal is to create. And if I destroy anything along the way, then I have a duty to replace it with something better. Because that’s just who I am, and that’s just what my values are.
