Some of you are probably aware that I’m currently waiting for a surgery date for a hysterectomy. Because this is being trans on the NHS, this means lots of long waiting lists and getting second opinions. I saw the specialist at another Gender Identity Clinic for the second opinion at the end of May, was given the okay, and told the letter would be in the post within the next few weeks. End of July, my GIC gets in touch for a checkup, and baffled that they hadn’t had anything through, so set about chasing it up. I’ve had a letter through from the other GIC to say the doctor I saw is off for the foreseeable future (I read that as ‘signed off sick with stress because the NHS is stretched to the limit, GICs even more so) and that letters would be dealt with upon their return. Basically, I’m in limbo as I’ve no idea if or when that letter will turn up, or if I need to see another GIC for another referral. I’m not upset, as this is for purely medical reasons (I’ll get into that later), but fed up with waiting because I’d like to be organising things like the odd holiday without worrying I need to drop plans for a GIC appointment. The actual surgery I could reschedule, because it’s routine with lots of options. GIC appointments are gold dust – if you reschedule, you can be waiting many months longer, so you reschedule plans instead.
Anyhow. With that news, I thought it was time I pulled together one of the posts about me being transgender that I have in my drafts. This one is about my personal experience of being trans and transitioning. The other will come at a later date and is about my relationship with feminism as a trans guy, so I won’t be dealing with that subject here.
Going into this, I think the first thing you need to know is this: I think gender is a bit bollocks.
I didn’t always believe this so firmly, it’s an opinion I’ve come to over the years through my own experiences of gender and transition. Gender is a whole bunch of social constructs where women are shoved into one box and men in another, and god forbid they stick a toe out and experiment. If you busted open the boxes I think there’d be one hell of an overlap between women with ‘masculine’ traits and men with ‘feminine’ traits. If you let people be people, men and women aren’t as different as mentally different as society would make you believe.
Not that there aren’t differences – of course there are, because of the very nature of having different experiences with different bodies. There are male experiences and female experiences, from the ways we experience sex, to women menstruating and men growing profuse amounts of hair from every orifice. The sexes are different. But the gender expectations in society, such as who plays what role in the household, how emotions should be expressed, what toys children of each sex should play with, what clothes are suitable for men or women… it’s all dictated, and these boundaries need to come down.
I’m not saying that we should all become androgynous, genderless beings, because most people wouldn’t like that (however, if that’s your identity, you fly with that because there’s room for you too), but if a boy wants to play with a Barbie or a girl wants to play with monster trucks, or a woman wants to be a firefighter and a man wants to work with kids in a nursery, society should not be boggling over a switch of gender roles, it should just accept a person’s choice and not make a single issue out of it. Likewise, people should be able to wear what they want (probably should keep underwear mandatory in public, though, for the safety of free-swinging genitalia as much as decency), and actually experience emotion and cry as much or as little as they want or need to. If a man wants to bawl his eyes out at the death of Bambi’s mother, more power to him. If a woman is unmoved by a kitten turning big eyes on her, that’s fine, too.
To boil it all down, I think gender roles are an outdated construct that are harmful to men and women – they can restrict women and their options in life, and men are pressured to be emotionless, macho rage machines. It’s time to stop with this crap and let people explore their identities across the gender gap.
“But then why are you transgender if you think gender is a bunch of crap?” I hear you ask.
Quite simple, really. It’s never really been entirely a mental thing for me, it’s more a physical thing. From a physical standpoint, men and women are obviously different. I got a female body from the sperm and egg lottery and my brain expected the parts of a male body. And I’m lucky enough that I have been able to take steps so that I can be comfortable in the body I have. Also, it’s taken a good few years to work out just how much gender is bollocks, so early on I didn’t make such distinctions. I just knew I needed to be male.
Did I always know I was transgender? Kind of? Not precisely as a kid. I was vaguely aware of gender roles, but never much affected by them. Gender stereotypes were never really enforced by my parents. @abjectcheddar and I were allowed to play with whatever toys we wanted to. My favourites were Lego, and I liked playing adventures with the figures in the garden, turning soil into swamps and plants into jungles. I loved building dens, climbing trees and riding my bike. I also had a Cindy (cheaper than Barbie), and would play ‘school’ with a load of animal figures. I enjoyed playing make-believe with @abjectcheddar based on books and television, but I would play mostly male characters, because they were my favourites. Interestingly, @abjectcheddar liked the same activities, but she’s happily cisgender, which just helps illustrate gendered play is utter crap. Also interestingly, she had a thing for fire and axes growing up, too. Basically, don’t mess with my sister, she can be dangerous.
I knew that I was supposed to be a girl, and knew vaguely what that meant, but didn’t have any peers to drive any of that home. At my first primary school I was bullied a lot and had no friends. By the time I moved to a new school I didn’t trust people, so I kept to myself, playing adventure games quietly in the playground. I didn’t have any friends until secondary school, by which point I knew for sure something was wrong when puberty hit. My period was horrifying, my breasts embarrassing and it made me feel ill to look at them. When I was 13, I was mortified by my friends ganging up on me and insisting I buy a bra because it wasn’t normal not to wear one, and I was embarrassing them by not doing so. I knew at that point that I had to hide my feelings on the matter because I didn’t want to lose the few friends I had and be labelled a freak.
I didn’t know what was wrong, precisely, because this was the early 90s. I had no internet access, and transsexuals were just men who wanted to be women who didn’t pass very well (because that’s all the media would tell us) – it didn’t apply to me because girls didn’t want to be boys, they were just tomboys, and anyway, I wasn’t attracted to women! Yeah, LGBTQ+ information was hard to come by back then, and thanks to Section 28 (fuck you, Thatcher, I will dance on your grave if I ever get the chance), finding educational resources was impossible. I hoped that hating your body was a part of puberty, and that once it was over, I’d be fine with my body. Sadly, over the years my feelings of dysphoria regarding my body have only intensified. It wasn’t until I was 17 and there was a documentary about Female-to-Male transsexuals on Channel 4 that I suddenly had answers, and it took another 13 years before I was in a place where I could transition. It took that long because for two main reasons: fear and anxiety. They went hand in hand. Fear from society and what would happen to me, because society is cruel towards trans people. The fear fed into the already existing anxiety problems, as I have chronic depression and anxiety as a completely separate conditions anyway. So it took a long time, and I’m resentful of how long it did take. If I was starting my teens now, I’d be all over transitioning and cutting out the years of doubt and pain.
So yes, I knew I was trans for a good long time before I eventually started my physical transition. I started wearing male clothing at around 19, had short hair, but just let people assume I was a tomboy, except for close friends who I came out to pretty early on. They’ve been my rock for the past 20 years, supporting me through it all and giving me space to be myself. I am very, very lucky and very grateful. I’m also very lucky and very grateful for my family being so supporting, too. It was obviously an upheaval for them, but we all got through it and came out fine at the other end. I did plan on transitioning when I was around 25, but before I could take the steps to do that, my Nan died, and I got struck down with diabetes and hypothyroidism (the specialist explained that Nan’s death probably caused my body to go into shock and my immune system attacked itself, causing those conditions), along with an understandable dip into depression. So I was in no state to do anything constructive then.
When I hit 29, I was at a point where I didn’t think I’d live past 30, and that I needed to do something to prevent that. So I started the process for physical transition. I’m lucky that we have the NHS in the UK, and that I could do this on the NHS (when I say on Twitter I would be dead without the NHS, this is one of the reasons why). Many others are no so fortunate and have to bear the expensive costs themselves (we’re talking tens of thousands of pounds/dollars), or just not be able to and end up living in misery or killing themselves. It’s not an easy process. It can take a long time (unless you’re rich and privileged *cough*Caitlin Jenner*cough*). For me, it’s been 10 years and I’m still going. I have the basics detailed in my transition timeline for those curious about the process on the NHS. Typing it all here would be long and make this post far longer than it already is. My transition has involved hormones and surgery, and I’ll briefly explain my experiences.
Testosterone – I wasn’t initially interested in T, getting rid of my breasts was the priority. But T came first, and it has done wonders for me. I am calmer, more emotionally balanced. I don’t cry over the smallest, stupidest thing (I could drop a glass of juice and cry about it pre-T, it was ridiculous). I can still cry just fine, I have no problem releasing the tears, it’s just for stuff that warrants it (including cute kittens and sad movies). My experience is part of the reason I don’t buy the manly-men don’t cry bullshit. T doesn’t make men emotionally constipated, society has done that by placing stupid expectations on men, and not teaching boys how to deal with their emotions so they get bottled up and channelled unhealthily. Hormones aren’t the devil here. Being on T is a great thing for me, and it helped dealing with the rest of my dysphoria so much.
Top surgery – or chest reconstruction, removal of breasts to form a male chest. This is something I ached for from the first budding of breasts. Just having the little conical bumps was distressing (and they hurt, too), and they just kept getting bigger, to my utter horror. I ended up a C/D cup. I was never formally measured (because the last thing I wanted was someone mauling me, and bras could fuck off). I used binders for going out in public, but they were never comfortable. They were sweaty and restrictive, and taking them off was always a relief. My back and shoulders hurt from hunching over and around, and it’s not an experience I want to ever repeat. They were worth it for reducing the dysphoria, but ye gods, top surgery was the most amazing, life-changing experience for me. I remember going to the loo after surgery, staring at the bandages in the mirror, cautiously patting my chest and feeling dizzy with the elation from not feeling breasts. Binders may make you chest look more male, but underneath you can feel your breasts being smooshed, you can feel the weird outline when you rub your chest. Even though I couldn’t see my chest, the fact I couldn’t feel breasts, just a flat chest was the best feeling ever. I cried. It’s been 4 years since surgery, and the only regret I have is that I didn’t get it done sooner. I even love my scars, because I fought for those scars, they’re a sign I not only survived utter despair, I won.
Bottom surgery – I’m not currently interested in phalloplasty/penis construction, for various reasons. Mostly that it’s a long process and several surgeries, and the scarring from the donor site puts me off. Then there’s the possibility of UTIs, and as a diabetic that’s just asking for trouble. I’m just not that bothered for it to be worth it. But the phalloplasty process is pretty fascinating, and it’s only going to improve in the years to come.
Hysterectomy – I didn’t plan on this, because the T had stopped my period, and again, I didn’t want to put myself through surgery unless I had to. Unfortunately, the stress of mum getting cancer and dying seems to have done a number on my body, and my period came back. With a vengeance. I have what is known as a retroverted uterus, which basically means it tips backwards instead of forwards. This isn’t life-threatening and doesn’t affect fertility or pregnancy (neither of which are an issue for me anyway). What it does mean is extra painful periods and constipation from hell when I’m on my period. It can also make penetration painful, too. On top of this I also get heavy periods, and was on a 3 week cycle pre-T (the T seems to have at least extended that to 4 to 5 weeks, small mercy). As I hit 40 at the end of the year, it’s come to the point where having a hysterectomy is just the sanest option.
There you have it. This is me, a trans guy, who is so much happier and confident for having been able to transition. I’m not a monster (unless you try and wake me up too early), I don’t want to convert your kids into trans kids (if they’re happily cis, they should stay that way), I don’t do shady things in public restrooms, and I just want to get on with my life like every other person on the planet. If society could let trans people get on with that in peace, that would be grand.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me in the comments or on Twitter.