There is an idea that someone who is transgendered is "becoming" another gender.
If it says "F" on your birth certificate, for instance, like it (currently) says on mine, then you are considered female. Okay, cool.
So let's say that you spend your entire life feeling incorrect. That at the age of five, you tell everyone at school that you're really a boy. That you get made fun of for it, but you insist. So then you're just a five-year-old with an overactive imagination who watched too many stories with male heroes, right? Uh.
And let's say you grow up, being told that you're female, and expected to act a certain way. So you do it. You wear dresses, and makeup (sort of, for awhile), and you go to prom and you imagine getting married and you get a boyfriend and on and on and on.
But it's not right, and you know it.
Years later, you finally go back to what you'd been saying all along.
I am really a boy.
This is a super-condensed version, but obviously, a true story.
When you finally tell everyone - your family, your friends, whoever - they decide that you are becoming a man.
Well that's wonderfully philosophical of them, isn't it? We can be here all night, talking about what really makes you a boy or a man. Personally, I still consider myself a boy and not a man, even though I'm old enough to drink and all that jazz. It's just not a concept I've come into yet, and I'm fine with being just plain old Boy Wonder for awhile. Hell, maybe forever.
I digress.
The people around me are not being philosophical when they think that I am "becoming" male. They're taking it literally, but they're also entirely wrong.
I've always been male. I have breasts, because I can't just magically wish them away. They don't make me a woman. Gender is between my ears, not between my legs, but thanks for playing.
I'm sick of this mentality that states that trans people are "really" the gender that they were assigned which is incorrect. Actually, they're not! I am really a dude. Chaz Bono is really a dude. He did not become one, anymore than I am becoming one. We were already male, just, most people didn't realize it.
This obsession that biology is how to judge is absolutely ridiculous. Other cultures have more than just the binary gender. Not all other cultures, obviously, and many people are totally resistant to the idea overall. The idea that someone is really anything, based on an outsider's perception, is wrong.
No one can tell you what you really are, based on anything they know or think they know about you. You are really yourself.
I am really myself, regardless of how people judge me. I'm a boy who just happens to have breasts, until I can afford to get the damn things removed.
Biology does not define me. And it shouldn't define anyone else.
7.22.2010
7.09.2010
Overcomplication and Overanalyzation
I have a serious tendency to overanalyze almost everything almost all the time. I have always done this - read too much into something, or worried incessantly about how some minor happening will take place. I am almost never prepared for things to go well, because I've come to expect something of the worst out of people.
When I first came out to someone at school, I came out to my voice teacher. My voice teacher is male, and has always been very laid back and very accepting of pretty much everything that I've seen thrown at him. I felt like it was a safe space, in the practice room where no one else could see. I spent probably the first three weeks of lessons doing nothing but talking, ranting, raving, and crying. And he listened, and let me, and gave advice as best he could. Mostly just listened, which was what I desperately needed at the time.
After talking to him, the proverbial floodgates opened.
I have always known who I am, of course, and people have been calling me Tim for about five years. It's just, well. There are a lot of reasons that I didn't come totally out about it. Eventually I'll get to that in a post instead of pussyfooting around it, but yeah, that's not going to happen tonight.
Part of the reason, though, is overanalyzing.
The head of my department is a rather intimidating woman. I'm not the kind of guy who is easily intimidated, but there is just something about her. I've always known that she's totally open-minded and all, but I was just terrified to tell her about myself for reasons I couldn't even fully articulate.
It took me almost five months to tell her. After telling my voice teacher, I mean. And I spent days planning what to say, and agonizing over it, and thinking of "BUT BUT BUT" and explanations. Just this insane, neurotic, freaking out thing. It was like I was going to go sky diving or something, and everyone was telling me "NO NO IT'S TOTALLY SAFE DON'T WORRY. PEOPLE DO THIS EVERY DAY. IT'S THE RIGHT THING, YOU'LL BE HAPPY IF YOU DO." And I was like "NO WHAT IF MY PARACHUTE BREAKS AND THEN I FALL BUT I DON'T EVEN DIE FROM IT I JUST LIVE IN MISERY FOR THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS OH GOD." That level of ridiculous.
Finally, I told her.
It wasn't like I planned. I was irritated and felt hopeless that day. And I just could not take it anymore. Living a lie was just killing me, and that was way worse than the parachute breaking. It was like being caught on the wing of the plane, indefinitely, flapping along screaming, but no one could hear me over the rush of the wind.
So it just came out (no pun intended). I just told her.
And it was a great conversation, even though I was highly distraught for the majority of it. She was incredibly supportive, and remains such.
In the past two months, she's passed this info on to all the office staff (I work in the music office), and to several teachers and several people in the program. They all call me the correct name, and they're working on the correct pronoun. It's just something that happened because I told her.
I never asked or expected that she tell anyone else. I planned on doing it myself, much more slowly. But this is the best thing that could have happened. Not only do I have her support, but all the music staff have been amazingly supportive. I really feel like the whole building is a safe space.
Some people use the wrong pronoun and it makes me cringe, but most of them correct themselves, and they're dealing.
It's a process. Mostly a good one.
But it's not the end of me freaking out about telling people. I think I'd be more okay with it if I hadn't known any of them previously. But I've known them for two years, and only a handful of them really knew anything about me. I may be a performer. I may love the spotlight and the applause. But I'm a social recluse. Mostly because of gender dysphoria, but also because I just am. I like you all from a distance! But a crowd of you in person talking to me, uh, not sure if want! So you know.
At my other job, I am not out as trans to more than three people. However, most people know that I at least go by Tim, and not (stupid legal name). I asked, when I was hired, for a nametag with the right name. I didn't get one, and it's now been two months.
The other day, a girl in the office was talking to me and noticed I wasn't wearing my nametag. (This is half on purpose, and half because I lost the damn thing anyway.) She asked if I'd like one with TIM on it. Of course I said yes, she made it, and now I have it. Another lady that works there was like "Oh, and here I've been calling you the wrong thing this whole time, sorry!" I, of course, did not expect it to be so freaking easy.
And now for the last example of this ridiculousness. Congratulations if you managed to read this far.
I am in the summer musical at school, playing a (very small) woman's role. I'm not super thrilled (that's another story, and probably not one I'll tell here anyway), but it's still a show and I was practically born to be on a stage anyway.
Thanks to the aforementioned head of the department, everyone in the cast knows me as Tim. (This started because she told the production manager, and he told the director, and the cast sort of just assimilated the knowledge that my name is Tim and that's all there is to that.) Most of them never knew me previously, or only sort of knew me, so it was easy to get that all out there. My name in the program, unfortunately, does not read "Timothy [last name]," which is really what it should read. It reads "Adrian [last name]" because my mother still can't accept the name thing and I'm trying to accomodate. I really should stop doing that, but I digress.
Of the people in the cast that do know me personally, two of them were aware that I'm really a boy previously. One of them was not. I really like this boy, and it's taken me two years to really get him to open up to me. He's socially very awkward, because he's on the Autistic spectrum. Interaction for him is not always easy, and after two years, he finally initiates conversation with me instead of me starting it.
The first day I was at rehearsal, he noticed the director calling me Tim and asked me why. I told him I was changing my name, and that was the short version. It wasn't that I was against explaining it, but a lot was going on and there were like twenty people within earshot. It just wasn't the time or place.
The other day, he sent me a message on Facebook and asked me why I was changing my name.
It took me half an hour to write a five sentence reply, because I was so busy freaking out about it. What if he thinks I'm not someone to be friends with anymore? What if he suddenly stops talking to me, fuck, it's taken TWO YEARS to get this far? WHAT IF THE WORLD EXPLODES BECAUSE OF THIS? And so on.
So I told him I was transgendered and a few more sentences.
The message I got in reply was "Oh, okay. I'll try to call you Tim, then. I might mess up sometimes because I've never known anyone that changed their names."
Maybe I should stop thinking of this as some HUGE THING I MUST OVERCOME. My mom's kind of pounded it into my head that "CHILD YOU ARE MAKING YOUR LIFE HARDER. I MEAN DAUGHTER. I MEAN SON. SHIT I CAN'T THINK OF YOU THIS WAY WHY ARE YOU MAKING YOUR LIFE HARDER. THIS IS GOING TO BE VERY HARD. HARD HARD HARD HARD." I'm sure it's not even her intention, but it's sort of a side-effect of her resistance to having a son instead of a daughter. (It's not even really a question of "instead of" since LULZ always been a dude, but you know.)
So I go into almost everything expecting UTMOST RESISTANCE.
Honestly, though. If I can't get acceptance from a bunch of slightly socially awkward music/theatre kids, where the hell am I going to get it at all? Yeah, see. Time to try to relax and let life happen. Honestly, it's going to whether I'm wound up or not, so I might as well enjoy as much of the ride as I can, right?
Now to make myself believe it.
When I first came out to someone at school, I came out to my voice teacher. My voice teacher is male, and has always been very laid back and very accepting of pretty much everything that I've seen thrown at him. I felt like it was a safe space, in the practice room where no one else could see. I spent probably the first three weeks of lessons doing nothing but talking, ranting, raving, and crying. And he listened, and let me, and gave advice as best he could. Mostly just listened, which was what I desperately needed at the time.
After talking to him, the proverbial floodgates opened.
I have always known who I am, of course, and people have been calling me Tim for about five years. It's just, well. There are a lot of reasons that I didn't come totally out about it. Eventually I'll get to that in a post instead of pussyfooting around it, but yeah, that's not going to happen tonight.
Part of the reason, though, is overanalyzing.
The head of my department is a rather intimidating woman. I'm not the kind of guy who is easily intimidated, but there is just something about her. I've always known that she's totally open-minded and all, but I was just terrified to tell her about myself for reasons I couldn't even fully articulate.
It took me almost five months to tell her. After telling my voice teacher, I mean. And I spent days planning what to say, and agonizing over it, and thinking of "BUT BUT BUT" and explanations. Just this insane, neurotic, freaking out thing. It was like I was going to go sky diving or something, and everyone was telling me "NO NO IT'S TOTALLY SAFE DON'T WORRY. PEOPLE DO THIS EVERY DAY. IT'S THE RIGHT THING, YOU'LL BE HAPPY IF YOU DO." And I was like "NO WHAT IF MY PARACHUTE BREAKS AND THEN I FALL BUT I DON'T EVEN DIE FROM IT I JUST LIVE IN MISERY FOR THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS OH GOD." That level of ridiculous.
Finally, I told her.
It wasn't like I planned. I was irritated and felt hopeless that day. And I just could not take it anymore. Living a lie was just killing me, and that was way worse than the parachute breaking. It was like being caught on the wing of the plane, indefinitely, flapping along screaming, but no one could hear me over the rush of the wind.
So it just came out (no pun intended). I just told her.
And it was a great conversation, even though I was highly distraught for the majority of it. She was incredibly supportive, and remains such.
In the past two months, she's passed this info on to all the office staff (I work in the music office), and to several teachers and several people in the program. They all call me the correct name, and they're working on the correct pronoun. It's just something that happened because I told her.
I never asked or expected that she tell anyone else. I planned on doing it myself, much more slowly. But this is the best thing that could have happened. Not only do I have her support, but all the music staff have been amazingly supportive. I really feel like the whole building is a safe space.
Some people use the wrong pronoun and it makes me cringe, but most of them correct themselves, and they're dealing.
It's a process. Mostly a good one.
But it's not the end of me freaking out about telling people. I think I'd be more okay with it if I hadn't known any of them previously. But I've known them for two years, and only a handful of them really knew anything about me. I may be a performer. I may love the spotlight and the applause. But I'm a social recluse. Mostly because of gender dysphoria, but also because I just am. I like you all from a distance! But a crowd of you in person talking to me, uh, not sure if want! So you know.
At my other job, I am not out as trans to more than three people. However, most people know that I at least go by Tim, and not (stupid legal name). I asked, when I was hired, for a nametag with the right name. I didn't get one, and it's now been two months.
The other day, a girl in the office was talking to me and noticed I wasn't wearing my nametag. (This is half on purpose, and half because I lost the damn thing anyway.) She asked if I'd like one with TIM on it. Of course I said yes, she made it, and now I have it. Another lady that works there was like "Oh, and here I've been calling you the wrong thing this whole time, sorry!" I, of course, did not expect it to be so freaking easy.
And now for the last example of this ridiculousness. Congratulations if you managed to read this far.
I am in the summer musical at school, playing a (very small) woman's role. I'm not super thrilled (that's another story, and probably not one I'll tell here anyway), but it's still a show and I was practically born to be on a stage anyway.
Thanks to the aforementioned head of the department, everyone in the cast knows me as Tim. (This started because she told the production manager, and he told the director, and the cast sort of just assimilated the knowledge that my name is Tim and that's all there is to that.) Most of them never knew me previously, or only sort of knew me, so it was easy to get that all out there. My name in the program, unfortunately, does not read "Timothy [last name]," which is really what it should read. It reads "Adrian [last name]" because my mother still can't accept the name thing and I'm trying to accomodate. I really should stop doing that, but I digress.
Of the people in the cast that do know me personally, two of them were aware that I'm really a boy previously. One of them was not. I really like this boy, and it's taken me two years to really get him to open up to me. He's socially very awkward, because he's on the Autistic spectrum. Interaction for him is not always easy, and after two years, he finally initiates conversation with me instead of me starting it.
The first day I was at rehearsal, he noticed the director calling me Tim and asked me why. I told him I was changing my name, and that was the short version. It wasn't that I was against explaining it, but a lot was going on and there were like twenty people within earshot. It just wasn't the time or place.
The other day, he sent me a message on Facebook and asked me why I was changing my name.
It took me half an hour to write a five sentence reply, because I was so busy freaking out about it. What if he thinks I'm not someone to be friends with anymore? What if he suddenly stops talking to me, fuck, it's taken TWO YEARS to get this far? WHAT IF THE WORLD EXPLODES BECAUSE OF THIS? And so on.
So I told him I was transgendered and a few more sentences.
The message I got in reply was "Oh, okay. I'll try to call you Tim, then. I might mess up sometimes because I've never known anyone that changed their names."
Maybe I should stop thinking of this as some HUGE THING I MUST OVERCOME. My mom's kind of pounded it into my head that "CHILD YOU ARE MAKING YOUR LIFE HARDER. I MEAN DAUGHTER. I MEAN SON. SHIT I CAN'T THINK OF YOU THIS WAY WHY ARE YOU MAKING YOUR LIFE HARDER. THIS IS GOING TO BE VERY HARD. HARD HARD HARD HARD." I'm sure it's not even her intention, but it's sort of a side-effect of her resistance to having a son instead of a daughter. (It's not even really a question of "instead of" since LULZ always been a dude, but you know.)
So I go into almost everything expecting UTMOST RESISTANCE.
Honestly, though. If I can't get acceptance from a bunch of slightly socially awkward music/theatre kids, where the hell am I going to get it at all? Yeah, see. Time to try to relax and let life happen. Honestly, it's going to whether I'm wound up or not, so I might as well enjoy as much of the ride as I can, right?
Now to make myself believe it.
7.05.2010
"Ladylike."
I am not, and have never been, a feminist.
I know that's probably considered to be one of the most awful things a transman can say. But it's just true. I do not fight extra hard for female rights, although I do suffer outrage at some things, and I'm aware that equality is beautiful on paper and a fallacy in practice. But I've found that feminism just isn't my cause. That's how it is.
That said.
I think that the way women are treated in public, like they need special handling in many situations, is ridiculous.
This is sparked for my absolute abhorrence for the term "ladies."
Unfailingly, if I go out with my female friends, we will get addressed as "ladies." This happens more often at restaurants than anywhere else, but the word is something that permeates all customer service existence.
I have never called a group of women "ladies." I don't know why I haven't. I know only that I have not - and will not ever. Why this is the norm of politeness, I could not tell you, but it makes me totally batty.
It feels, to me, like some kind of condescension. And I admit that I might be a little oversensitive about this particular word, but I know plenty of cisgendered women that are just as irritated by it as I am. They get their feathers just as ruffled.
Maybe it's that there is this idea of how women should be. Soft and genteel and all that jazz. Yeah, guess I wouldn't know much about that, would I? But apparently, neither would most of my friends.
I have manners, okay. I'm polite to the waiter, or the lady behind the cash register, or the girl who is honestly just doing her job and asking me if I need help finding anything, even though it annoys the crap out of me. I don't believe in rudeness for the sake of rudeness. Sure, I can be provoked into being rude, but that's not even the point.
The idea that all women must behave as "ladies" just ticks me off. That's like saying all women need to wear heels and skirts and makeup. No, actually, they do not. No more than all men need to wear pressed slacks and ties and have their hair cut above their ears. Diversity! What a magical thing.
I've noticed that when you go to a restaurant, men often just say what they want. "I'll have the steak (please is optional)." Women don't do that. They ask for what they want. "Can I get the steak (please is rarely optional)?"
Why? I really don't know.
Me? I've been known to do it both ways. However. If someone perceives me as female and I say "I'll have the steak," then I seem more forceful than a woman is "supposed" to be. They don't tell me that, but you can see it in their faces. Just one second of slight "I do not know how to react to you properly." And then it passes, because they're not sure what they didn't like about it, and they're back to "right away ladies" or whatever else they were saying.
This entry has no real point, and no real end. Just an expression of frustration, and something I've noticed more and more the older I get.
I know that's probably considered to be one of the most awful things a transman can say. But it's just true. I do not fight extra hard for female rights, although I do suffer outrage at some things, and I'm aware that equality is beautiful on paper and a fallacy in practice. But I've found that feminism just isn't my cause. That's how it is.
That said.
I think that the way women are treated in public, like they need special handling in many situations, is ridiculous.
This is sparked for my absolute abhorrence for the term "ladies."
Unfailingly, if I go out with my female friends, we will get addressed as "ladies." This happens more often at restaurants than anywhere else, but the word is something that permeates all customer service existence.
I have never called a group of women "ladies." I don't know why I haven't. I know only that I have not - and will not ever. Why this is the norm of politeness, I could not tell you, but it makes me totally batty.
It feels, to me, like some kind of condescension. And I admit that I might be a little oversensitive about this particular word, but I know plenty of cisgendered women that are just as irritated by it as I am. They get their feathers just as ruffled.
Maybe it's that there is this idea of how women should be. Soft and genteel and all that jazz. Yeah, guess I wouldn't know much about that, would I? But apparently, neither would most of my friends.
I have manners, okay. I'm polite to the waiter, or the lady behind the cash register, or the girl who is honestly just doing her job and asking me if I need help finding anything, even though it annoys the crap out of me. I don't believe in rudeness for the sake of rudeness. Sure, I can be provoked into being rude, but that's not even the point.
The idea that all women must behave as "ladies" just ticks me off. That's like saying all women need to wear heels and skirts and makeup. No, actually, they do not. No more than all men need to wear pressed slacks and ties and have their hair cut above their ears. Diversity! What a magical thing.
I've noticed that when you go to a restaurant, men often just say what they want. "I'll have the steak (please is optional)." Women don't do that. They ask for what they want. "Can I get the steak (please is rarely optional)?"
Why? I really don't know.
Me? I've been known to do it both ways. However. If someone perceives me as female and I say "I'll have the steak," then I seem more forceful than a woman is "supposed" to be. They don't tell me that, but you can see it in their faces. Just one second of slight "I do not know how to react to you properly." And then it passes, because they're not sure what they didn't like about it, and they're back to "right away ladies" or whatever else they were saying.
This entry has no real point, and no real end. Just an expression of frustration, and something I've noticed more and more the older I get.
7.01.2010
What's in a name?
It's astounding how much your name matters to your identity, isn't it?
Growing up, I never liked my birth name. It was a name that I never thought really suited me. I had what you'd call a "unique" name. As in, I've never met anyone else with that name in my twenty-some years of living. Not once.
I always got those comments, you know. "Oh, how do you say your name? WOW! That's so pretty!"
Yeah, it's not so "pretty" when you spend twenty years having maybe 2% of the population even consider saying your name right. Spelling it right. Remembering it without being corrected several times.
Through the past decade, I've gone through several names - some feminine, some androgynous. It doesn't seem like a big deal to people. I had comments before I came out as trans along the lines of "You don't like your name so you're changing it? That's stupid/silly. Don't do that."
Why the fuck not? I've never enjoyed my name. It doesn't describe me. It's never really describe me. It's like, in addition to having gender dysphoria, I've had name dysphoria. The names I went through stuck, but I shed them. Like a style, or a fad. Nothing was really descriptive of me, of the person I was, or of the person I was becoming.
When I moved states and started over two years ago (still not out as trans, stupid me), I chose a name that was androgynous. It could have been male or female. Naturally, people want to spell it the more feminine (and complicated) way. I chose the masculine spelling for a reason, but of course no one knew that.
I spent two years with this name that I liked, but that wasn't really me. I had been Tim to my friends since 2005. My parents did not know this. One of my parents still does not know this. I was convinced, however, that as a performer (and a woman), I could not conceivably be known as Tim.
Well, now it's a new decade and I'm not a new person, but I've got a new perspective. Part of that perspective consists of stop lying about who you are.
The show I'm in now marks the first time I've been in a situation where everyone unquestioningly calls me by my name. Tim. Most of them don't know it's Timothy, but I'd probably punch almost anyone who called me Timothy and wasn't over the age of fifty, or related to me. Hell, most of them don't actually know I'm transgendered, because this has to be done in baby steps, and suddenly telling a cast of Mormons that HEY one of your named roles is a dude in drag really isn't the greatest option ever!
But it doesn't really matter. I'll get to all of that as I continue this journey. I will. I'm working on it.
What matters is that someone I do not even know in the cast came up to me today and said, "Hi Tim."
No weird looks. No questions as to why. Just this unfaltering acknowledgement of my identity.
I never really knew that it would be so goddamned important to me to just be called the right thing. But it is. And this girl whose name I did not know until tonight proved it to me.
My name is so integral to my identity, in ways and for reasons I cannot put into words. Acknowledging me as Tim is acknowledging me as myself.
Thank you, chorus girl whose name I will not publish on the internet. You'll never know what a big thing you've done.
Growing up, I never liked my birth name. It was a name that I never thought really suited me. I had what you'd call a "unique" name. As in, I've never met anyone else with that name in my twenty-some years of living. Not once.
I always got those comments, you know. "Oh, how do you say your name? WOW! That's so pretty!"
Yeah, it's not so "pretty" when you spend twenty years having maybe 2% of the population even consider saying your name right. Spelling it right. Remembering it without being corrected several times.
Through the past decade, I've gone through several names - some feminine, some androgynous. It doesn't seem like a big deal to people. I had comments before I came out as trans along the lines of "You don't like your name so you're changing it? That's stupid/silly. Don't do that."
Why the fuck not? I've never enjoyed my name. It doesn't describe me. It's never really describe me. It's like, in addition to having gender dysphoria, I've had name dysphoria. The names I went through stuck, but I shed them. Like a style, or a fad. Nothing was really descriptive of me, of the person I was, or of the person I was becoming.
When I moved states and started over two years ago (still not out as trans, stupid me), I chose a name that was androgynous. It could have been male or female. Naturally, people want to spell it the more feminine (and complicated) way. I chose the masculine spelling for a reason, but of course no one knew that.
I spent two years with this name that I liked, but that wasn't really me. I had been Tim to my friends since 2005. My parents did not know this. One of my parents still does not know this. I was convinced, however, that as a performer (and a woman), I could not conceivably be known as Tim.
Well, now it's a new decade and I'm not a new person, but I've got a new perspective. Part of that perspective consists of stop lying about who you are.
The show I'm in now marks the first time I've been in a situation where everyone unquestioningly calls me by my name. Tim. Most of them don't know it's Timothy, but I'd probably punch almost anyone who called me Timothy and wasn't over the age of fifty, or related to me. Hell, most of them don't actually know I'm transgendered, because this has to be done in baby steps, and suddenly telling a cast of Mormons that HEY one of your named roles is a dude in drag really isn't the greatest option ever!
But it doesn't really matter. I'll get to all of that as I continue this journey. I will. I'm working on it.
What matters is that someone I do not even know in the cast came up to me today and said, "Hi Tim."
No weird looks. No questions as to why. Just this unfaltering acknowledgement of my identity.
I never really knew that it would be so goddamned important to me to just be called the right thing. But it is. And this girl whose name I did not know until tonight proved it to me.
My name is so integral to my identity, in ways and for reasons I cannot put into words. Acknowledging me as Tim is acknowledging me as myself.
Thank you, chorus girl whose name I will not publish on the internet. You'll never know what a big thing you've done.
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