Wild Metaphor for My Gender

I’m reblogging myself because this was just recalled to my attention, and, well, I’m really proud of it.

boygirlboigrrrl:

It’s sunday, which means no sleep for this makeup-wearing, hyper-feminine, female-assigned, male-centered, genderfucked androgyne with a passion for facial hair and women’s shoes.

Instead, I’ve been thinking about exhaustion again, and I’ve got a metaphor for you to ponder.

My gender is like a really fucking sweet pair of orthopedic sneakers. And here’s why: I got these sneakers really tricked out. I went online and I found this site that makes custom orthopedic sneakers that not a lot of people knew existed and I got these babies bedazzled, I got them in rich, bright colors, I got them satin-lined, and I got my name embroidered on them. They’re gorgeous and they go with everything I wear and I go places and people compliment me all the time, “wow, those are some really incredible orthopedic shoes; I didn’t know those even existed and now you’ve blown open my world and I’m thinking of getting a pair.” “Can you give me some advice on how I can make my own pair of orthopedic shoes?” People generally receive them well. Sometimes though, I get shit like, “ew, are those orthopedic?” or “are those regular sneakers or orthopedic? I can’t tell, let me whisper about it with my friends.” The fact of them being orthopedic shoes makes people feel they can ask me highly personal questions about them like what sort of medical condition I must have in order to have to wear such undesirable shoes, no matter how much I’ve been able to dress them up. Sometimes I’m told I’m brave for wearing my socially-unacceptable shoes out of the house and not letting anyone give me shit for them.

And then sometimes I get fake compliments like, “oh wow, those shoes are great. Don’t worry, I’d never have been able to tell they were orthopedic, if only you hadn’t told me, I would have just thought they were regular shoes.” To which I have to reply, “please, you wish you had known they were orthopedic. Not only are they fly as fuck, they’ve got great arch support, and I’m never going to be ashamed of recognizing that I don’t need beauty if it can’t also take care of me.” These shoes are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I can walk for miles without any back pain; I no longer have to hang my head. They make me feel safe and comfortable at all times.

Society, on the other hand, is a ride on the M train from Middle Village to Forest Hills, and the whole time I don’t get a seat. For those of you who are not from New York, that is the first and last stop on the M train. They are a 7-minute drive from one another, but if you take the M, it’ll probably take you about 2 hours to get there. And that’s what I’m doing, I’m standing for a huge stretch of time on a train, taking the longest, least effective route to get very little distance. And by the end of my ride, my feet are tired, and maybe I’m a little whiny and people say to me, “oh, but why are you complaining? I thought those shoes were supposed to be really comfortable,” when really I’m talking about how the whole time I couldn’t find a single place to just give my feet a little bit of rest.

On Choosing Not to Medically Transition: what transition has and has not meant for me

My transition started in about the middle of 10th grade, when I got fixated on the idea of going to school “in drag.” It’s important to note at the very beginning of this that I never had any trouble being a girl. I had a lot of issues with what my peers seemed to think girls could and could not do, but I knew they were wrong. I had at that point kind of plopped into the middle of an already-formed queer family that had awesome politics and was teaching me what it meant to treat people with respect for all of their identities, and they were an important factor in making me feel like exploration was possible.

So I bought some clothes from the men’s section and an ace bandage (cringe, I know) and a hat to hide my shoulder-length hair, chose a name, put them all on and went to school: This is what I looked like. Not how not-dapper. It was a joke at first, but I started to take it more seriously as the day progressed. By the time I was with my queer family that evening and they were using the right name and the right pronouns and really affirming my experiment, I felt I had gotten more comfortable with the idea of being seen as a boy. All of a sudden there were so many questions.

I started to keep a journal specifically for gender exploration. I very quickly decided that intellectually I rejected the binary, but I had no idea what that would mean in practical terms. I’m not even really sure I knew what that meant in theoretical terms. Having come from a background of believing that anyone of any gender can do anything, it was very difficult for me to pinpoint what it would feel like to be a particular gender and what it might feel like to move among genders. Then I read Kate Bornstein’s My Gender Workbook and interpreted Kate’s understanding of binary gender identities in a way that I feel is simultaneously her goal and not at all what she means and learned that man and woman are static, rigid words that describe opposite behavioral norms. Finally, I felt I understood what it would mean to feel like a man or a woman.

So I decided to try it out. I would wake up in the morning, decide how I felt, and dress as that gender. I had boy days, I had girl days, I had no-gender days, and I had all-gender days. Whatever gender I presented, I would try to maintain for the whole day. I had a pretty definite clothing code to help people recognize what pronouns (and also, initially what name) to call me, but my friends weren’t really down with having to memorize all that. In retrospect, their reticence makes sense, but at the time I think I really needed it and it was hard to feel like I was learning anything about gender when I wasn’t being treated the way I wanted to be treated. My queer family continued to try their best to be respectful.

Over the summer I got a more androgynous haircut and had a lot more freedom to try things out. My parents, though I wouldn’t talk to them about what was going on, insisted that if I was going to dress like I boy, I was going to have to find a style that suited and flattered me. I eventually found one and settled into it, presenting less and less often as a woman, but still definitely holding onto that part of my polygender identity. I continued to switch for another few months, even as school picked back up. I decided it would be easiest for people if I had only one name, so I decided on Ian and had my friends help me to make sure everyone knew.

Through switching, I learned a lot of things. I learned how to make myself seem more male through walk, stance, mannerisms, speech patterns, and, most importantly, the way I held my face. I no longer really use the other things that make me seem male unless I think a situation requires it (like if, for my safety, I need to be read unequivocally as male) but I think that learning my facial structure was the single most important part of my transition. I discovered one day—while taking a sip from a soda can in front of a mirror—that with my jaw dropped, I instantly looked more masculine. I had read all of Hudson’s Guide and knew that the advice they gave was to clench your jaw, but I already have a really strongly-defined jawline and clenching my teeth just made my face look small. Dropping it made my cheek bones look higher and my face look longer. I was always a tight-jawed kid, but I now keep my jaw loose at all times. I encourage everyone to spend some real time in front of a mirror playing with the way they hold their face. There’s a lot you can shape about your appearance without actually changing anything at all.

I learned other things too, like that it was uncomfortable for me to be seen as a woman because my female-assigned body made it so easy for people to get locked into the idea of a woman. If they saw me as male, I could probably play with their perception of my gender, but once the idea me as female took root, I’d probably never be able to alter that idea, no matter what I did. Still, I wasn’t ready to give up certain things women did, like wear great clothing.

I also found that I was uncomfortable being a man because the only things I knew about manhood were the things Kate Bornstein had told me, and I really just couldn’t uphold the type of masculinity ze said being a man required. I kept those clothes too, though, for the days when I was feeling too lazy to dress androgynously. Androgyny was where I found I was most comfortable, but it is sometimes work to maintain it the way I like it. So maleness became the identity of exhaustion. It still feels really cool to me that I can be read as male, so it feels pretty nice to just look really masculine in jeans and a t-shirt, and that makes it a good backup, but it’s not the way I like to dress. I am always self-conscious when I meet someone for the first time and I am not dressed up in my andro-femmeboi clothing.

So, slowly, I came to the conclusion that I did not enjoy switching gender every day, and also that I did not like the ideas that led me to do it. There are men who are like me, and women who are like me, but I didn’t want to be either of those things. I wanted to be trans and I wanted to make sure that transness was always at the forefront of my gender identity. 

So I guess you could say that my transition has included a social transition of changing my name and gender presentation and the pronouns I use and all that good stuff, cutting my hair, developing my own binding method (which I guess I forgot to mention, but yeah, I make my own binders), figuring out the shape of my face so that it looks more male without me having to do anything permanent, learning how to dress my body, learning what gender means to me, learning how to actually (to the extent that it’s possible) escape the binary, embracing the parts of me that people told me I could not take with me through transition, researching what other people did during their transition, coming to terms with the reality of my body, getting comfortable enough in my transness to wear clothes that could easily get me mistaken for a woman. There’s probably more, but this is a lot.

When I hear people who medically transition talk about non-medical transition, I feel like they often imply that it’s only a social thing. I want to be clear that I have done a ton of internal transition work as well. And maybe that’s because I didn’t start my process with a clear idea of what my gender was, but it’s not just about a haircut and some new clothes and a shiny new name to go with. 

But I haven’t even addressed the question: Why no medical transition, Enoch?

While all of that transitional stuff was happening, I was dealing with some body dissonance, but I was only dealing with it some of the time. There were whole weeks when it felt like my head didn’t fit on my body and it was very distressing to me, but then there were all these times when my body was exactly what I wanted and needed. Because I was switching genders all the time, my needs for my body were changing all the time. Like I said, I looked at everything Hudson’s guide had to offer, including explanations and pictures of hormones and surgeries, I made sure to research my options thoroughly, and each has a unique reason for not being a good option for me, though underlying all of it is a fear of permanence. My needs are not permanent, but all of these options are, to varying extents.

T: Baldness and body hair run deep on both sides of my family. I have very hair legs that I’m extremely proud of, but that’s really all the body hair I want. Because baldness and hairiness are so prevalent, I know that they are beautiful, but they have never been what I have wanted for myself. Sure, I could get a deeper voice and bigger muscles and an even more male-appearing face—and those are things I do kinda want—but none of them are so important to me that they would be worth the effects that I don’t want. Besides, my father pointed out that no one on either side of my family has ever managed to grow a really great set of sideburns.

Top surgery: Top surgery was a no for three reasons, the first was that with my needs always changing, I knew that top surgery would be an inadequate solution; if I made my chest flat, there would be times when I wished I had the chest I have now, so I might as well leave it be. The second is that I had to become comfortable with my chest in order to be able to deal with the conclusion I had come to that I couldn’t get rid of it, so now I really like it and I use it in my genderfucking. The third is that I was not personally excited about the available results. It’s true that I looked at surgical options about 4 years ago and technology is improving rapidly. Every once in a while I will see someone’s top surgery results and feel a slight pang of jealousy, but for the most part I felt that the results were not exactly what I wanted and I didn’t need it enough to compromise.

Bottom surgery: Similar to top surgery, I was not excited about the available results. Also, I just really don’t need a penis. 

Enoch Weighs in On Trans Men in Dresses

A long time ago, during my dry spell, someone rather aggressively asked Micah why someone would transition from (presenting) female to (presenting) male only to then wear dresses or do drag or whatever this person seemed to have a problem with. There was a lot of throwing around of stuff like “why not just stay a woman?” and “if you want to be a man then you identify with a dick. A dick in a dress doesn’t make sense” (these are not direct quotes). I wrote that person a personal message about it because people were getting very aggravated and mostly sending that person messages about how unacceptably ignorant they were rather than helpful an gentle explanations, so the person was getting more combative and probably felt more and more justified in their ignorance. After all, they were just asking a(n obviously narrow-minded and affronting, but nevertheless earnest) question, and no one was trying to give them an answer. Too often, I feel, our explanation is, “I can do whatever I want.” Obviously that’s true, but it doesn’t help a confused binary-dweller to understand why I want what I want. There’s a reason I relish in genderfuck, and I’m not interested in keeping it a secret so that only I get to feel that joy. So here’s what I wrote:

It seems to me that you’re saying that you don’t get why someone who could easily be interpreted as a woman would say that they are not a woman, take steps to make sure everyone knew they were not a woman, and then wear a dress.

There are a few things here that it might be helpful for you to understand:

a) Society says that only women can wear dresses, but that doesn’t make it true. Anyone can wear a dress, and it doesn’t make one a woman if one doesn’t interpret oneself as a woman while wearing the dress. There’s no reason that men can’t wear dresses as men, it’s just that there’s a taboo against it. Lots of people are interested in playing with or breaking that taboo and claiming dresses as clothing that everyone can wear.

b) You should probably just think of the genders of trans folk in the same way you think of the genders of cis folk: as the only gender they’ve ever had. While this is a simplification of what’s actually happened in the lives of many trans people, it’s a good place to start. You can see how a man can wear a dress and it doesn’t make him a woman, right? Well, think of a trans man the same way and you’ll be able to see that it doesn’t make him a woman either. Add to that. You can see how a man can wear a dress in the hope of being read as a woman without it meaning he’s a woman all the time, right? It’s the same thing with trans men.

c) There is a difference between being a woman and people thinking you’re a woman. Has anyone ever asked you what makes you think you’re a woman? Have you ever thought about why you’re so certain you’re a woman? My guess is that you haven’t, and that’s fine. There are two reasons I would guess at that make you think you’re a woman, and one is valid and one is a social construct. The socially constructed reason you probably believe you’re a woman is that you have a vagina. Society tells you that vagina means woman, but society also tells you that only women can wear dresses, so I think we can agree that a lot of the stuff society tells us about gender is wrong. The other probable reason you think you’re a woman is that you just feel it, and that’s totally valid. You should never feel you have to present evidence of your gender to anyone; you should simply be able to declare your gender identity and have it taken at face value. Your gender is intrinsic to you. It’s the same with trans people. Our genders are intrinsic to us, but, because they are not the genders people expect us to have, we are often asked to present evidence of our genders and this is where you see a lot of trans folk bringing up stories about how they hated this that or the other thing that they were expected to do or like or wear because of their gender. For some reason, these stories—often rooted in sexist understandings of gender—help people to believe us. They’re also usually the only language that folks have to describe their feelings, and they’re almost always not the whole truth. Usually, if a person tells you that they knew they were a boy because they hated playing with barbies and they wanted to play with trucks, what they mean is that they hated the way they were interpreted when they played with barbies and thought that if they played with trucks, people would read them the way they wanted to be read. Probably if they had been able to be read the way they wanted to while continuing to play with the barbies, they would not have hated it so much. It isn’t the toys that mattered; it’s the gendered meanings of the toys combined with people’s misunderstandings of those individuals’ genders that mattered. So now if we apply that back to dresses, think about the way that women are read wearing dress versus the way that men are read wearing dresses. Very different, right? Some people who can easily be seen as women wearing dresses (and can therefore easily be interacted with in the way that women wearing dresses are generally interacted with) prefer to be seen as men wearing dresses in order to be interacted with as such. They might have been uncomfortable in dresses when people saw them as a woman, but they’ve recognized that their objection is to the way they’re interpreted and treated rather than to the garment themselves. 

Wild Metaphor for My Gender

It’s sunday, which means no sleep for this makeup-wearing, hyper-feminine, female-assigned, male-centered, genderfucked androgyne with a passion for facial hair and women’s shoes.

Instead, I’ve been thinking about exhaustion again, and I’ve got a metaphor for you to ponder.

My gender is like a really fucking sweet pair of orthopedic sneakers. And here’s why: I got these sneakers really tricked out. I went online and I found this site that makes custom orthopedic sneakers that not a lot of people knew existed and I got these babies bedazzled, I got them in rich, bright colors, I got them satin-lined, and I got my name embroidered on them. They’re gorgeous and they go with everything I wear and I go places and people compliment me all the time, “wow, those are some really incredible orthopedic shoes; I didn’t know those even existed and now you’ve blown open my world and I’m thinking of getting a pair.” “Can you give me some advice on how I can make my own pair of orthopedic shoes?” People generally receive them well. Sometimes though, I get shit like, “ew, are those orthopedic?” or “are those regular sneakers or orthopedic? I can’t tell, let me whisper about it with my friends.” The fact of them being orthopedic shoes makes people feel they can ask me highly personal questions about them like what sort of medical condition I must have in order to have to wear such undesirable shoes, no matter how much I’ve been able to dress them up. Sometimes I’m told I’m brave for wearing my socially-unacceptable shoes out of the house and not letting anyone give me shit for them.

And then sometimes I get fake compliments like, “oh wow, those shoes are great. Don’t worry, I’d never have been able to tell they were orthopedic, if only you hadn’t told me, I would have just thought they were regular shoes.” To which I have to reply, “please, you wish you had known they were orthopedic. Not only are they fly as fuck, they’ve got great arch support, and I’m never going to be ashamed of recognizing that I don’t need beauty if it can’t also take care of me.” These shoes are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I can walk for miles without any back pain; I no longer have to hang my head. They make me feel safe and comfortable at all times.

Society, on the other hand, is a ride on the M train from Middle Village to Forest Hills, and the whole time I don’t get a seat. For those of you who are not from New York, that is the first and last stop on the M train. They are a 7-minute drive from one another, but if you take the M, it’ll probably take you about 2 hours to get there. And that’s what I’m doing, I’m standing for a huge stretch of time on a train, taking the longest, least effective route to get very little distance. And by the end of my ride, my feet are tired, and maybe I’m a little whiny and people say to me, “oh, but why are you complaining? I thought those shoes were supposed to be really comfortable,” when really I’m talking about how the whole time I couldn’t find a single place to just give my feet a little bit of rest.

Even after I stopped assuming that I was a woman because everyone else thought I was, I continued to assume I was at least occasionally a woman because I wasn’t willing to give up women’s clothes, especially the shoes. I became less and less comfortable with the idea of people seeing me as a ciswoman, but still could not let go of my conception of myself as a woman when I wore women’s clothes. After all, I passed so well as a woman when I wore them. Eventually I realized I was still trapped by my understanding of my body as female and that I was the only person standing in my way.  Think about it this way: Is a person with long hair necessarily a woman? Is a person who has teddy bears necessarily a woman? Is a person who collects high heels necessarily a woman? I’m pretty sure most people would answer all of these questions with a “certainly not. none of those things belong exclusively to women.”  So the question then becomes, what about these objects necessarily makes you a woman in having them? Nothing. If you’re not a woman, then nothing you own or wear or do can make you a woman. I personally love my high heels so much more now that I know how to wear them without implying to anyone that I think I’m a woman because of them.
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Even after I stopped assuming that I was a woman because everyone else thought I was, I continued to assume I was at least occasionally a woman because I wasn’t willing to give up women’s clothes, especially the shoes.

I became less and less comfortable with the idea of people seeing me as a ciswoman, but still could not let go of my conception of myself as a woman when I wore women’s clothes. After all, I passed so well as a woman when I wore them. Eventually I realized I was still trapped by my understanding of my body as female and that I was the only person standing in my way. 

Think about it this way: Is a person with long hair necessarily a woman? Is a person who has teddy bears necessarily a woman? Is a person who collects high heels necessarily a woman? I’m pretty sure most people would answer all of these questions with a “certainly not. none of those things belong exclusively to women.” 

So the question then becomes, what about these objects necessarily makes you a woman in having them? Nothing. If you’re not a woman, then nothing you own or wear or do can make you a woman. I personally love my high heels so much more now that I know how to wear them without implying to anyone that I think I’m a woman because of them.

I had a lot of fun being genderfucked at prom all three years that I went. The first two I wore a tux and heels. The first year I very intentionally presented as a woman in a tux and heels and the second I presented as not a woman. I dyed my hair a very nice, formal shade of dark teal and wore matching eyeliner. My senior year, because it was my prom, I decided to go even more genderfucked. I wore a floor-length black dress with magenta heels. My hair was white with a magenta flower painted in the back and I painted the stem down my back where the dress was open and wore white sideburns and a magenta soul patch and magenta eye makeup. My date, who was generally femme-presenting, wore a suit with a black shirt and a magenta tie and socks. We looked really fucking queer and fabulous. You don’t need to go binary to your prom. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend it.
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I had a lot of fun being genderfucked at prom all three years that I went. The first two I wore a tux and heels. The first year I very intentionally presented as a woman in a tux and heels and the second I presented as not a woman. I dyed my hair a very nice, formal shade of dark teal and wore matching eyeliner.

My senior year, because it was my prom, I decided to go even more genderfucked. I wore a floor-length black dress with magenta heels. My hair was white with a magenta flower painted in the back and I painted the stem down my back where the dress was open and wore white sideburns and a magenta soul patch and magenta eye makeup. My date, who was generally femme-presenting, wore a suit with a black shirt and a magenta tie and socks. We looked really fucking queer and fabulous.

You don’t need to go binary to your prom. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend it.