Towards the end of posting more often
May. 16th, 2010 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timA DW friend linked to the "Trans Bodies, Trans Selves" project -- in short, an attempt to write the trans equivalent of _Our Bodies, Ourselves_. The authors include Jamison Green and Patrick Califia, among others.
The authors and editors created a long survey about trans identities, linked to at the above site. The friend who posted this link began posting her answers to the survey questions, so I'm going to do the same over a period of some number of days.
Questions are in bold, answers aren't.
What terms do you use to identify or describe yourself (ex. transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, trans man, trans woman, femme, androgynous, FTM, MTF, gender-bender, bigendered, drag queen, cross-dresser, fag, queer, boi, womyn)? Why did you choose these particular terms? Have the terms you use changed over time?
I'm a man. Politically, I'm transsexual, and when I need to filter out potential partners who don't wish to interact with a vulva, I'm a trans man. But as a general rule, I'm a man, a guy, a dude, no asterisks needed.
I used to identify as genderqueer, and as neither male or female. When I realized I had no idea what that actually meant, I transitioned, and found that masculinity was a place where I could be at home.
Are there particular terms that you would like other people to use when they talk to or about you? Are there others that you find offensive?
I'm a man, so I'd like them to refer to me as one. I find it offensive to be described as "transgender", first because I'm not sure what the word means or that anyone knows what it means; second, because there's nothing particularly transgressive or edgy or revolutionary about my gender. I'm a dude. That I was assigned female at birth is inconvenient for me, but has no greater social import.
Tell us your story. How did you come to identify as transgender, genderqueer or gender-non-conforming?
I was homeschooled, was extremely introverted as a child, and wasn't in touch with any family except my (single) mother, so I didn't realize while young that I wasn't a girl because I didn't have a point of reference for myself. I had no one to compare myself to. Moreover, my feminist mother always emphasized that girls could do anything.
So then why would I want to be a boy? Well, that would just have been silly -- according to what I was taught.
The summer I was 18, I had to give a research presentation and was asked to dress "formally", so I went to Goodwill and bought a dress shirt and pants and a tie. I'm a contrarian and I wanted to follow the letter of the rule while disregarding its spirit. Unexpectedly, when I put on these clothes and gave my talk, I found I felt powerful and grounded in a way I'd never experienced before. The same summer, my boyfriend told me about some of his sexual fantasies and asked me about mine. I'd been having sex for almost two years, and masturbating for much longer, yet my mind was usually blank during sex or masturbation and it went blank when I was asked about it. What slipped out was, "well, sometimes I think about what it would be like to have a penis while I'm having sex." This was true, but it referred to bits and pieces of thoughts rather than a coherent fantasy. The more I thought later about what I'd said to my boyfriend, the more it *became* true as I made a point of asking myself what turned me on.
That fall, I took an anthropology class on "gender, marriage, and family." One of our readings mentioned trans men in an offhand way. I'd known that trans women existed, but had never known before that it was possible to be a female-to-male transsexual -- at age 18, in 1999! I read _Stone Butch Blues_ after that, and soon began to identify as genderqueer. But I never really interacted with the world as a genderqueer person, because being genderqueer was just too difficult to explain. I thought it would place an excessive burden on anyone but my most intimate friends to ask them to understand that I identified as neither male or female, so I usually didn't. As time went on, being assumed to be a woman became progressively more difficult, but I saw no way out. The route of actually transitioning seemed puzzling and unattainable to me. I also began to accumulate more and more friends who were trans. I got a little more insight that way into why people transition -- I began to realize that transitioning wasn't just about changing what *other* people thought of you, but about feeling more comfortable as yourself. But I didn't believe that transitioning would give me what I most wanted (a penis), so I didn't think it was worth the attendant effort and discomfort.
Eight years later, I was attending a "hackathon" in England, a gathering of programmers who like functional languages and were going to spend a couple of days writing code together. I happened to be the only (nominal) woman present in a group of about twenty guys. After the first two days, I was marvelling (to myself) that no one had done a thing to remind me that I was the only woman in the room. I felt like I was really being treated as one of the guys, and was happy about that. The same night, we went out for dinner, and the waiter asked us what kind of wine we wanted to order. Never ask a group of more than three nerds to come to a conclusion jointly. I was getting embarrassed about how much we were holding up the waiter with our hemming and hawing, so I said something suave like "We'll have the house red." "Niels" (not his real name) said that it was just like the only woman at the table to be so decisive, ha ha ha. I was too angry to react; all I could do was go stand outside the restaurant for about 15 minutes writing in a notebook. Even after I returned, I couldn't enjoy the rest of the evening.
I continued thinking about why "Niels"'s comment bothered me so much. I decided that it wasn't just its sexism, but also the reminder that people saw me as something I wasn't. On the plane home, I realized that I had a choice between continuing to suffer people's false perceptions of me as a woman, or presenting as male. I realized that if I had to choose either the "female" or the "male" box to check, I would be much, much happier with "male"; though I would have preferred "none of the above", I realized that had never been an option. Making a non-gendered spce for myself in the world would have been a career in and of itself, and I wanted to make software, not spend most of my time fighting for recognition as a genderqueer person. I think I was about 30,000 feet above Greenland when I decided to transition. It took me about two months to make sure, after which I came out as a transsexual man via my blog and email .signature on March 19, 2007.
Have you changed your name or started to use another name some of the time? What did it mean to you to make this change? How did others react and how did you feel about their reactions? How did you choose your new name?
I changed my name when I came out as a trans man in March 2007. I had actually changed my name once before: when I was about seven, I found a name in a baby name book that was listed as a nickname for the name I was given at birth; it was still a girl's name, but I liked it better, and insisted that everybody call me by that name. So when I transitioned, I'd already been going by a name that I had chosen myself for almost 20 years. I liked my chosen name, and what was more, I could have changed its spelling without changing its pronunciation and turned it into a male name. But a friend gave me the advice that changing my name markedly would provide a hint to the people around me that they needed to see me in a different light.
During my first year of transitioning, I hoped that using my new name, "Tim", would be enough of a cue to signify that I was to be regarded as male. In reality, most people I met during that time just thought I was a woman who happened to have a funny name.
Most people reacted more to the news that I was transitioning than to my name change itself. One person was an exception: "Bob", a colleague who I encountered at a conference about three months after I came out as trans. He had not heard the news. Another colleague introduced me to "Bob" as if we hadn't met before. "Bob" seemed confused and I told "Bob" he'd probably remembered me as [old name]. Later, "Bob" asked me, "so why did you change your name?" I would have thought that knowing that someone previously had a feminine name, and now had a masculine name, would provide all the information necessary to answer that question, but apparently not. I said "Because I'm transitioning," and then, since that didn't seem like enough of an explanation either, "From female to male." He didn't ask any more questions.
I wanted a name that was short, easy to spell, and in the top fifty male first names from the 1990 US Census. "Tim" fit the bill; plus, it was the name of one of my favorite authors and of a role model I'd had in college.
The authors and editors created a long survey about trans identities, linked to at the above site. The friend who posted this link began posting her answers to the survey questions, so I'm going to do the same over a period of some number of days.
Questions are in bold, answers aren't.
What terms do you use to identify or describe yourself (ex. transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, trans man, trans woman, femme, androgynous, FTM, MTF, gender-bender, bigendered, drag queen, cross-dresser, fag, queer, boi, womyn)? Why did you choose these particular terms? Have the terms you use changed over time?
I'm a man. Politically, I'm transsexual, and when I need to filter out potential partners who don't wish to interact with a vulva, I'm a trans man. But as a general rule, I'm a man, a guy, a dude, no asterisks needed.
I used to identify as genderqueer, and as neither male or female. When I realized I had no idea what that actually meant, I transitioned, and found that masculinity was a place where I could be at home.
Are there particular terms that you would like other people to use when they talk to or about you? Are there others that you find offensive?
I'm a man, so I'd like them to refer to me as one. I find it offensive to be described as "transgender", first because I'm not sure what the word means or that anyone knows what it means; second, because there's nothing particularly transgressive or edgy or revolutionary about my gender. I'm a dude. That I was assigned female at birth is inconvenient for me, but has no greater social import.
Tell us your story. How did you come to identify as transgender, genderqueer or gender-non-conforming?
I was homeschooled, was extremely introverted as a child, and wasn't in touch with any family except my (single) mother, so I didn't realize while young that I wasn't a girl because I didn't have a point of reference for myself. I had no one to compare myself to. Moreover, my feminist mother always emphasized that girls could do anything.
So then why would I want to be a boy? Well, that would just have been silly -- according to what I was taught.
The summer I was 18, I had to give a research presentation and was asked to dress "formally", so I went to Goodwill and bought a dress shirt and pants and a tie. I'm a contrarian and I wanted to follow the letter of the rule while disregarding its spirit. Unexpectedly, when I put on these clothes and gave my talk, I found I felt powerful and grounded in a way I'd never experienced before. The same summer, my boyfriend told me about some of his sexual fantasies and asked me about mine. I'd been having sex for almost two years, and masturbating for much longer, yet my mind was usually blank during sex or masturbation and it went blank when I was asked about it. What slipped out was, "well, sometimes I think about what it would be like to have a penis while I'm having sex." This was true, but it referred to bits and pieces of thoughts rather than a coherent fantasy. The more I thought later about what I'd said to my boyfriend, the more it *became* true as I made a point of asking myself what turned me on.
That fall, I took an anthropology class on "gender, marriage, and family." One of our readings mentioned trans men in an offhand way. I'd known that trans women existed, but had never known before that it was possible to be a female-to-male transsexual -- at age 18, in 1999! I read _Stone Butch Blues_ after that, and soon began to identify as genderqueer. But I never really interacted with the world as a genderqueer person, because being genderqueer was just too difficult to explain. I thought it would place an excessive burden on anyone but my most intimate friends to ask them to understand that I identified as neither male or female, so I usually didn't. As time went on, being assumed to be a woman became progressively more difficult, but I saw no way out. The route of actually transitioning seemed puzzling and unattainable to me. I also began to accumulate more and more friends who were trans. I got a little more insight that way into why people transition -- I began to realize that transitioning wasn't just about changing what *other* people thought of you, but about feeling more comfortable as yourself. But I didn't believe that transitioning would give me what I most wanted (a penis), so I didn't think it was worth the attendant effort and discomfort.
Eight years later, I was attending a "hackathon" in England, a gathering of programmers who like functional languages and were going to spend a couple of days writing code together. I happened to be the only (nominal) woman present in a group of about twenty guys. After the first two days, I was marvelling (to myself) that no one had done a thing to remind me that I was the only woman in the room. I felt like I was really being treated as one of the guys, and was happy about that. The same night, we went out for dinner, and the waiter asked us what kind of wine we wanted to order. Never ask a group of more than three nerds to come to a conclusion jointly. I was getting embarrassed about how much we were holding up the waiter with our hemming and hawing, so I said something suave like "We'll have the house red." "Niels" (not his real name) said that it was just like the only woman at the table to be so decisive, ha ha ha. I was too angry to react; all I could do was go stand outside the restaurant for about 15 minutes writing in a notebook. Even after I returned, I couldn't enjoy the rest of the evening.
I continued thinking about why "Niels"'s comment bothered me so much. I decided that it wasn't just its sexism, but also the reminder that people saw me as something I wasn't. On the plane home, I realized that I had a choice between continuing to suffer people's false perceptions of me as a woman, or presenting as male. I realized that if I had to choose either the "female" or the "male" box to check, I would be much, much happier with "male"; though I would have preferred "none of the above", I realized that had never been an option. Making a non-gendered spce for myself in the world would have been a career in and of itself, and I wanted to make software, not spend most of my time fighting for recognition as a genderqueer person. I think I was about 30,000 feet above Greenland when I decided to transition. It took me about two months to make sure, after which I came out as a transsexual man via my blog and email .signature on March 19, 2007.
Have you changed your name or started to use another name some of the time? What did it mean to you to make this change? How did others react and how did you feel about their reactions? How did you choose your new name?
I changed my name when I came out as a trans man in March 2007. I had actually changed my name once before: when I was about seven, I found a name in a baby name book that was listed as a nickname for the name I was given at birth; it was still a girl's name, but I liked it better, and insisted that everybody call me by that name. So when I transitioned, I'd already been going by a name that I had chosen myself for almost 20 years. I liked my chosen name, and what was more, I could have changed its spelling without changing its pronunciation and turned it into a male name. But a friend gave me the advice that changing my name markedly would provide a hint to the people around me that they needed to see me in a different light.
During my first year of transitioning, I hoped that using my new name, "Tim", would be enough of a cue to signify that I was to be regarded as male. In reality, most people I met during that time just thought I was a woman who happened to have a funny name.
Most people reacted more to the news that I was transitioning than to my name change itself. One person was an exception: "Bob", a colleague who I encountered at a conference about three months after I came out as trans. He had not heard the news. Another colleague introduced me to "Bob" as if we hadn't met before. "Bob" seemed confused and I told "Bob" he'd probably remembered me as [old name]. Later, "Bob" asked me, "so why did you change your name?" I would have thought that knowing that someone previously had a feminine name, and now had a masculine name, would provide all the information necessary to answer that question, but apparently not. I said "Because I'm transitioning," and then, since that didn't seem like enough of an explanation either, "From female to male." He didn't ask any more questions.
I wanted a name that was short, easy to spell, and in the top fifty male first names from the 1990 US Census. "Tim" fit the bill; plus, it was the name of one of my favorite authors and of a role model I'd had in college.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-17 09:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-17 10:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-28 05:56 pm (UTC)I got a little more insight that way into why people transition -- I began to realize that transitioning wasn't just about changing what *other* people thought of you, but about feeling more comfortable as yourself. But I didn't believe that transitioning would give me what I most wanted (a penis), so I didn't think it was worth the attendant effort and discomfort.
If you don't mind my asking (and I haven't read the other posts in this series yet), how has it worked out for you? This comment struck me because not being able to have certain biology has always been a major stumbling point for me in trying to come to terms with who I am and the role of sex/gender in my life, and it seems like noone will discuss the topic and the turmoil it causes.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-29 01:48 am (UTC)I talked a little about it in part 6, but didn't really answer this question. What I think you're asking -- and if not, let me know -- is: have the physical changes that I have been able to achieve through transition done anything towards satisfying my desire to have a different set of genitals? And the answer to that is "no, not really". If anything, the desire is stronger, because I have the experience behind me of being able to change my voice, my body hair distribution, and even my genital dimensions (a little bit) and now it's like, "well, why can't I change this, too?"
It *is* nice to have a phallus that's big enough that I can see (in the mirror) the difference between its aroused and non-aroused states. (That's one of the effects of testosterone, which I don't think I mentioned in the relevant survey answer, for some reason.) But, you know, my brain seems to be wired to want to penetrate another person, besides just with fingers or hands or other albeit-useful tools. So having an inch instead of a quarter-inch doesn't really close the gap.
And I think you're right that nobody seems to talk about it. I think in the trans community there's so much eagerness to get away from the "woman stuck in a man's body/man stuck in a woman's body" discourse (understandably) that trans people like to emphasize that which is malleable and downplay that which is less so, or -- as with genital surgery for trans men -- play up the benefits of what as far as I can tell are risky and flawed surgical interventions. (Or, the people who aren't busy playing up those benefits are busy claiming that trans men don't really need penises to be happy -- they just need to be able to put on a suit with a well-ironed handkerchief in the breast pocket.) Sometimes I also hear trans people claim that the more socially accepted transsexuality and transgenderness become, the lesser the extent to which trans people will seek out medical interventions. That claim violates my lived experience so much that I can't really salvage any truth in it.
Anyway, hope this is actually what you were asking about :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-29 05:46 am (UTC)For me, part of identifying as a woman has to do with giving birth, menstruation, and all that (as I'm sure you can sympathize, given other posts). Not that I think those are necessary traits for "being a woman", rather they're part of what seems wrong/lacking in my body and part of what I mean/feel when I say that I identify as a woman.
Even if I could get top and bottom surgery with full sensation, there isn't any chance of getting those other things any time soon. After a long heart-wrenching struggle I managed to come to terms with the limits of technology. And so, when I was coming out to myself, this is a large part of the reason I decided not to seek transition. And yet, every so often, the desire to be a woman physically is so overpowering that I come back to the question again and again of whether what I could have is worth what I could not, of whether being so close and unable to cross the line would be more painful than being so far away.
I imagine there will always be moments of crisis, life is life afterall. So I was asking more whether the physical (and other) changes you've been able to achieve through transition have done anything towards satisfying your general desire to realize being a man. There's a lot more to living with gender than having a phallus or getting pregnant; how has transitioning helped (or hurt) with these other things?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-21 09:45 am (UTC)when I was about seven, I found a name in a baby name book that was listed as a nickname for the name I was given at birth
This name you found is the "K" in "krc", I presume?