That Survey Again, part 5 of n
May. 22nd, 2010 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timWhat is this, and why am I posting it?
Almost nothing graphic behind the cut. Part 6, on the other hand...
Are you employed or in school? If so, how have your employers or school officials reacted to your transition? If you are unemployed, is your unemployment related to your transition and/or any discrimination you have faced in the workplace?
I'm a graduate student in computer science. I received the admission offer for my current program about three days after coming out publicly as trans, so I had to come out as trans to the people in my new program when I visited the department and met some of them for the first time (and all after being at most casually acquainted in the past). For the most part, the reaction was no reaction at all. When I first arrived, my interim advisor asked me what pronouns I wanted used for me, and then he used them. I almost wanted people to be a little more interested in the fact that I was transitioning, because it was something important in my life that I wanted to talk about, and I didn't know whether others wanted to know more but were waiting for me to talk, or whether it would make them uncomfortable. The Big Silence made it impossible for e to tell the difference. I also felt like people were going out of their way to not talk about it because they didn't want to say something that would provoke criticism from me, and as a result I felt shut out of potential conversations that could have brought me together with people rather than keeping us distant.
Are you religious or spiritual? How has this interacted with your transgender identity? Even if you are not religious or spiritual, are there particular rituals that you have used as part of the process of changing your body or your gender?
I'm an agnostic who attends Quaker meetings regularly. I began to identify as agnostic rather than atheist just about when I started to think seriously about transitioning. I see these two changes as connected: in both cases, I had to acknowledge that there was more to truth than logical necessity. Transitioning and admitting the possibility of religious faith both require the possibility of an internal reality that contradicts or transcends the truths proffered by external authorities. And to the extent that I identify with Quakerism, its focus on the sanctity of the individual's connection with God or whatever else you call the source of truth fits very well with the imperative for a trans individual to define themself in their own terms.
Were you in a sexual/intimate relationship when you started your transition? How did your transition affect your partner? Were you able to maintain this relationship? If so, how?
When I started my transition, I had been married for five years. I divorced my then-husband a year after starting my transition. He identifies as straight, but told me when I began transitioning that my gender would have mattered when we first met but it didn't matter at all now that we were in a close long-term relationship. I don't think he really understood at first what it would mean for me to go on testosterone; when I showed him the book _The Phallus Palace_, he was surprised that the men shown in it were trans. I think he hoped that i would look like a fey androgynous 20-year-old boi-dyke forever. He wasn't really down with the whole facial hair and baldness concept. Despite that, he continued to claim that my gender didn't matter to him. I became less and less convinced that he would ever see me as anything other than a woman or that he had ever understood who I was. Other conflicts contributed to our divorce, but his inability to understand that I was a guy was a major one. (To this day, I'm certain that if you asked *him* why we got divorced, he wouldn't mention my transition.)
Have you formed new sexual/intimate relationships during and after your transition? What has it been like seeking out these new relationships or navigating them once they are established?
I still have one very long-distance relationship with a person I see occasionally who I met just before deciding to transition. (Even calling it a relationship raises question marks for me, as is true for her as well, I believe.) I haven't had any new relationships start since transitioning.
I find seeking out new relationships so overwhelming that mostly I'm not trying. I'm not interested in queer women who see me as just a special kind of lesbian; the idea of giving a straight woman what she wants scares me; gay guys are my target market, but I know that very few of them want the product I have to offer; bi guys are few and far between; and while the idea of sleeping with a straight guy who thinks I'm a woman seems intensely hot, I don't think it generates good relationship material. I find it hard to imagine meeting someone naturally through my social circles who would want to date a masculine person who has a vulva. I also find that as a scientist and a skeptic, I can't relate to a lot of people in trans-friendly queer circles. I've been single for over two years now.
Almost nothing graphic behind the cut. Part 6, on the other hand...
Are you employed or in school? If so, how have your employers or school officials reacted to your transition? If you are unemployed, is your unemployment related to your transition and/or any discrimination you have faced in the workplace?
I'm a graduate student in computer science. I received the admission offer for my current program about three days after coming out publicly as trans, so I had to come out as trans to the people in my new program when I visited the department and met some of them for the first time (and all after being at most casually acquainted in the past). For the most part, the reaction was no reaction at all. When I first arrived, my interim advisor asked me what pronouns I wanted used for me, and then he used them. I almost wanted people to be a little more interested in the fact that I was transitioning, because it was something important in my life that I wanted to talk about, and I didn't know whether others wanted to know more but were waiting for me to talk, or whether it would make them uncomfortable. The Big Silence made it impossible for e to tell the difference. I also felt like people were going out of their way to not talk about it because they didn't want to say something that would provoke criticism from me, and as a result I felt shut out of potential conversations that could have brought me together with people rather than keeping us distant.
Are you religious or spiritual? How has this interacted with your transgender identity? Even if you are not religious or spiritual, are there particular rituals that you have used as part of the process of changing your body or your gender?
I'm an agnostic who attends Quaker meetings regularly. I began to identify as agnostic rather than atheist just about when I started to think seriously about transitioning. I see these two changes as connected: in both cases, I had to acknowledge that there was more to truth than logical necessity. Transitioning and admitting the possibility of religious faith both require the possibility of an internal reality that contradicts or transcends the truths proffered by external authorities. And to the extent that I identify with Quakerism, its focus on the sanctity of the individual's connection with God or whatever else you call the source of truth fits very well with the imperative for a trans individual to define themself in their own terms.
Were you in a sexual/intimate relationship when you started your transition? How did your transition affect your partner? Were you able to maintain this relationship? If so, how?
When I started my transition, I had been married for five years. I divorced my then-husband a year after starting my transition. He identifies as straight, but told me when I began transitioning that my gender would have mattered when we first met but it didn't matter at all now that we were in a close long-term relationship. I don't think he really understood at first what it would mean for me to go on testosterone; when I showed him the book _The Phallus Palace_, he was surprised that the men shown in it were trans. I think he hoped that i would look like a fey androgynous 20-year-old boi-dyke forever. He wasn't really down with the whole facial hair and baldness concept. Despite that, he continued to claim that my gender didn't matter to him. I became less and less convinced that he would ever see me as anything other than a woman or that he had ever understood who I was. Other conflicts contributed to our divorce, but his inability to understand that I was a guy was a major one. (To this day, I'm certain that if you asked *him* why we got divorced, he wouldn't mention my transition.)
Have you formed new sexual/intimate relationships during and after your transition? What has it been like seeking out these new relationships or navigating them once they are established?
I still have one very long-distance relationship with a person I see occasionally who I met just before deciding to transition. (Even calling it a relationship raises question marks for me, as is true for her as well, I believe.) I haven't had any new relationships start since transitioning.
I find seeking out new relationships so overwhelming that mostly I'm not trying. I'm not interested in queer women who see me as just a special kind of lesbian; the idea of giving a straight woman what she wants scares me; gay guys are my target market, but I know that very few of them want the product I have to offer; bi guys are few and far between; and while the idea of sleeping with a straight guy who thinks I'm a woman seems intensely hot, I don't think it generates good relationship material. I find it hard to imagine meeting someone naturally through my social circles who would want to date a masculine person who has a vulva. I also find that as a scientist and a skeptic, I can't relate to a lot of people in trans-friendly queer circles. I've been single for over two years now.