scrubjayspeaks

[CW for frank discussions of body changes, including dysphoria. Also discussions of being outed, not entirely by choice (it was fine). I'll be putting these updates fully under cuts, as they are less general interest on the topic of gender/transness and more "what do I personally have going on with my bits these days." Niche interest and all that.]

HEYO! One year anniversary! Baked myself a blue(berry) cake and everything.

Big! Things! To report!

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[CW for frank discussions of body changes, including surgery and dysphoria. I'll be putting these updates fully under cuts, as they are less general interest on the topic of gender/transness and more "what do I personally have going on with my bits these days." Niche interest and all that.]

Yep, okay, missed the 8th again, because I am a tragedy. Y’all, I am having a time of it.

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[CW for frank discussions of body changes, including hair loss, surgery, dysphoria, and libido. Also warnings for workplace discrimination. I'll be putting these updates fully under cuts, as they are less general interest on the topic of gender/transness and more "what do I personally have going on with my bits these days." Niche interest and all that.]

Nothing is technically wrong, and everything is terrible.

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[CW for discussions of surgery (general, no details), medical gatekeeping, imposter syndrome, and dysphoria.]

Sometimes, if you’re a very strange person, you schedule meetings with a licensed social worker to get a letter of support for gender confirmation surgery on your birthday. Look, I knew I would be off work, which is 9/10ths of the battle most of the time. It did mean, however, that I spent a few hours vibrating out of my skin as part of the general birthday festivities.

But now I’ve got a letter that seems to tick all the boxes that the insurance (and by extension, the surgeon) will expect to see. I technically had a letter before, but it was much less formal and did not come from someone with the sorts of letters after their name that the insurance will expect. So this is round two on that front. (Please, please, please, let this be the last round.)

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[CW for frank discussions of body changes, discussions of (reclaiming) queer terminology, and talk of dysphoria. I'll be putting these updates fully (well, only MOSTLY this month) under cuts, as they are less general interest on the topic of gender/transness and more "what do I personally have going on with my bits these days." Niche interest and all that.]

Holy shit, yo, six months! So let’s talk overall impressions before I get into the usual details. How am I feeling after six months on T?

Going into it, I wanted to go slow. I was afraid. Would I like the changes? Would they freak me out? Would my body suddenly feel unfamiliar? Knowing that microdosing was an option was a big part of what let me finally feel like it would be okay to try out HRT.

Looking back, what I wanted was to look more androgynous. More ambiguous. I hated the idea that people could look at me and just tell that I was female (and therefore must be a woman). I wanted to be unreadable. And for me, that meant moving toward masculinity. But I’m not sure if masculinity, in its own right, was the goal.

After six months on T, what I want is

a) to keep being on T forever until the heat death of the universe,

b) to be a big, fuzzy bear whose so-called “femininity” is in liking sewing and flowers and colorful clothing (aka things that don’t actually have a gender unless you’re an insufferable killjoy) rather than in appearance,

c) and to be a man.

I haven’t stopped feeling nonbinary. My relationship to gender is still fucked up complicated. But as I both started experiencing new and increased masculinization and allowed myself to lean into my existing masculine embodiment, I felt so good. So safe--not in the world, but in my body. It felt right to be in my skin. It felt like home. I could feel my body becoming male in small and big ways, and it was the best thing I had ever felt.

The desire for ambiguity feels like it was a necessary but temporary waypoint. I couldn’t imagine what being male might feel like, but I knew that being female felt awful. Being nothing-in-particular felt like an antidote to that poison. And it has been. Allowing myself to set down the burden of trying to somehow be a woman was a great relief. Choosing to pick up manhood instead is, honestly, kind of intimidating. But it feels like more than just a relief, a cessation of distress--it feels joyful.

I can understand why some people have begun reclaiming the term transsexual. Transgender has become the accepted term, and that’s fine. But the demonizing of transsexual as too medical, too old-fashioned, too whatever the objection is, seems very sad to me. Likewise with the term FtM (female-to-male).

That becoming male aspect feels so precious to me. I am changing my sex. I put hormones into my body, and my body said, cool, we can work with this. It’s magical, really, what the body can do with hormones.

I don’t necessarily love the “born in the wrong body” narrative, and I certainly don’t think it’s universal to all trans people. I don’t think people need to change their body in ANY way to qualify as “trans enough.” People have all kinds of relationships to the gender they got assigned at birth, and to the gendered experiences of their childhood and life leading up to whatever transition they pursue.

But I should have been born a boy.

It wouldn’t have solved every problem in my life, but it would have been correct in a way I can’t fully articulate. I should have been male from the start; I should have gone through a testosterone-based puberty the first time; and I should have grown up to be a man.

I’m going to be playing catch-up for a long time. But I’ve spent my whole life feeling like I was lagging behind everyone else in some fundamental way. Being late to the party, I’ve discovered, is a shitty reason to not try something at all.

So yeah. That’s six months of T. Turns out, under it all, I’m just some guy. And that’s great, actually. Best thing I’ve ever done.

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[CW for frank discussions of body changes, including hair, menstruation, and libido, and talk of dysphoria. Also, I am going to talk (briefly) about sex toys. I'll be putting these updates fully under cuts, as they are less general interest on the topic of gender/transness and more "what do I personally have going on with my bits these days." Niche interest and all that.]

As mentioned last month, I nudged my dosage up a little bit. I’m at 0.35mL now. I wondered for a while if I was not reacting to it well, the details of which I’ll get into below. But I think most of it was just stress--September was a Very Bad Month for me in general--and it seems a bit better now. I’m definitely not going to increase it anymore for a while. I think I’ll reassess at six months. That seems like a good marker for a moment of reflection. (As though I’m not reflecting on this every month as it is.)

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I've seen a number of posts on tumblr talking about the metaphors of transness and gender identity. Landscapes are popular, like in this quote from Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer, comparing binary genders to the sea versus the mountain and nonbinariness (nothing about that word looks correct...) as a forest between the two zones. I've also seen memes asking people to describe their gender or presentation without using any conventional gender descriptors. This prompts responses ranging from charming gremlin descriptions to vowel-based wordless shrieking.

It's fun. This is how we have fun.

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[CW for discussion of medical mistreatment, reproductive care, and dysphoria. (Soon to be) Recurring reminder that everything here represents my personal experience of what it means to be trans, nonbinary, and masculine/butch, and none of it should be taken as commentary on or rejection of any other experiences and ways of being any of those things.]

Earlier this year, I started seriously researching HRT and gender-affirming care. By virtue of being queer and trans on the internet, I had general knowledge about what taking testosterone would be like. What I had absolutely no knowledge of was how to go about getting on it in the first place. I hadn't allowed myself to know anything about the practical steps needed to get hormone therapy.

Knowing how might mean trying to get it.

Trying might mean getting rejected.

And by then, I would have gotten my heart set on it. Being denied felt like it would be a killing blow. Better to pretend I didn't want it in the first place.

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