So… a lot has happened

Since my last post, I've been struggling to keep on top of everyday life. It's been a bit of a rough ride.

After seeing my Community Mental Health Team (who once again declared me sane: how many people can say that?) I was referred to a large Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) to commence the next stage of my treatment. NHS Guidelines state that I should see them within 18 weeks of referral, so I sat back & waited for my appointment letter to come through.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After the 18th week had passed and I still hadn't heard from the GIC, I decided to call them up to make sure they'd received my referral and that it was progressing nicely. They confirmed that they had received the referral (five days after I'd seen the Community Psychiatrist), but that they hadn't processed it yet because they have a backlog of cases due to a shortage of admin staff. OK, fine, they have it and they'll get around to it. So I waited some more.

And waited… you get the picture.

Two months later, I still hadn't heard anything back from them so I called them again. This time, a very stressed-out staff member admitted that they hadn't processed it, they had no plans to process it in the immediate future, and they couldn't say when they would get round to processing it. It might not even be this year. 

She admitted that this particular clinic has been inundated with new applications because there was a wave of transsexual documentaries on British TV last year (such as My Transsexual Summer), which led to more people plucking up the courage to approach their doctors & start transition. I was unfortunately caught up in that wave and they just couldn't cope with the enormous workload that resulted from it. (I have since befriended an existing patient at that clinic, and she says their treatment is so slow, particularly over the past year, that she's been with them for four years so far and she still isn't on HRT). 

I was distraught. There's a good reason why we're supposed to be seen within 18 weeks: transsexuals are over 30% more likely than the general public to attempt suicide, because living with a body/mind mismatch is utterly unbearable in ways that cisgendered people cannot even imagine. I'd been sitting there patiently waiting to be seen, even though I wanted & needed to be seen yesterday - because let me tell you, by the time a transsexual has finally plucked up the courage to approach their doctor and start their transition, they've reached a point of no return in their lives. In many cases, we spend many years fighting against our innermost feelings, trying to deny our identity just so that we can 'fit in', but then something happens that makes us realise that we cannot continue living the way we are so we finally approach a doctor. After years of torment. So being made to wait even longer is inhuman.

I remembered from my appointment with the Community Psychiatrist that there are two GICs in my catchment area. I'd asked him at the time what the waiting times were at each, and he'd said they were pretty much the same. So I'd gone for the big GIC because it's famous and has all the resources on its doorstep, whereas the other one is a bit out of my way. But now that I'd learned I probably wouldn't be seen at the GIC this year I needed to rethink my options. So I thought it might be worthwhile calling that other Clinic & seeing what their waiting times are like.

I asked the friendly, relaxed lady on the other end of the phone how long their patients generally have to wait before seeing the Community Psychiatrist and getting their first appointment at their GIC. She told me that the wait is generally one month. I burst into tears: I'd already been waiting seven months for the other clinic and no appointment was on the horizon; could I have seen these people around six months ago if only I'd chosen them?

She heard me start to cry, and said "Oh, no darling, please don't cry… if you're really desperate, we can see you within two weeks!"

Oh hell. Which, of course, made me feel even worse, in a way. So I told her I'd already been waiting seven months for the other clinic but they haven't processed my referral due to an admin shortage; what would I need to do to change my referral to their clinic? She told me the steps to go through, I thanked her… and immediately started taking those steps.

After much letter-writing, phone-calling and diligence on my part, two weeks later I received an appointment at that clinic for the following month. I have now seen them and am officially on my way towards full transition: they hope to have me on HRT sometime this summer if all goes well.

I cancelled my referral to the original GIC and have made a formal complaint to their governing body because they didn't even try to stick to NHS Guidelines of 18 weeks. Transitioning is extremely hard… does it have to be made even harder because certain parts of the NHS can't get their act together?

A Boy Named Sue

Why is it that, if you announce you're changing your sex, so many people automatically presume you will want to change your name to the opposite-gender equivalent of your birth name? For example, if your birth name is 'Sue', that you would automatically want to be 'Stu' instead because it's close enough to what you're already called?

I know some people do do this. Some people don't have any major dysphoria about their birth name and they seem to associate with it in some way, even if it is the wrong gender. So it would be simpler to just change to a correct-gender equivalent of their birth name, or to leave it alone if their name is androgynous enough.

But my name doesn't have a male version (although there are similar-sounding male names, similar to the 'Sue'/'Stu' example above) and more importantly, I've never felt that my name is actually a part of me. It's always been a convenient label that other people have used when they want to get my attention but it's never felt like it belongs to me - seriously, they might as well call me 'hey you' for the amount my name means to me. It's a name that belongs to other people so they have something to call me.

If I'm changing my life to honour my true identity, why would I want to retain some part of the erroneous identity my parents conferred upon me when I was born?

The fact is: I don't want anything to do with that horrible name. It's unmistakably female and it can't be lengthened or shortened to anything masculine, so I'm happy to just kick it to the kerb. But that leaves me with a bigger problem: which, of the thousands of male names available, should I select for myself?

I think I've come up with a very easy answer.

You see, when my mother was pregnant with me (back in the early 1970s) there was no way of determining the sex or gender of your unborn child. There was some folklore in my family that there had been no female children born for four generations and indeed, my father was one of four brothers, so nobody was surprised when my mother's first-born child had been a son.

So when my mother miscarried her second pregnancy a couple of years later, she presumed that that had been a daughter and that there was something wrong with my father's line which would mean she couldn't have any daughters with him. So when her third pregnancy (with me) was a healthy one, she resigned herself to the thought that she must be expecting another son… and my parents picked out a boy's name for him. They decided to name him in honour of his two grandfathers.

How right they actually were about expecting a son - only they wouldn't realise this until many years later.

Unfortunately for me, their second son was born female-bodied and so that original grandfathery name had to be abandoned. Instead they named me after my paternal grandmother (who had desperately wanted a daughter but instead produced four sons). I've always hated that old-fashioned, female name they gave me. But my grandfathers' names are perfectly acceptable even today, almost 100 years after they were named.

So when I decided to transition, the thought occurred to me that I could simply go back to the name my parents had originally intended to give me had I been born male-bodied. It seemed to fit; almost like it would help to heal part of what went wrong when I was assigned the wrong gender at birth.

So that's what I've decided to do. And I'm eternally grateful that my grandfathers weren't named 'Horace' or 'Cuthbert' or something. ;-)

Verbal Tasers

I'm looking forward to the day when people start automatically using the correct pronouns, titles and name for me rather than guessing and getting it wrong.

I've been kinda lucky recently. Living in the UK, which is generally a live-and-let-live society, I don't tend to get addressed with pronouns very often in public. I try my damndest to present as male but I don't pass well (due to my shrimpiness and my cute girly face, damnit) so people that I meet in everyday life can tell that there's something going on, even if they can't tell exactly what it is. So they just tend to serve me without addressing me directly with pronouns or as 'Madam', which is the perfect thing to do under the circumstances.

But that's not always the case. People do sometimes insist on using gender-specific titles and pronouns and every single time they do it 'zings' me like I've been shocked with a mini-taser.

• The other day I was in Boots (a British pharmacy chain) buying make-up for my very feminine elder daughter. I've been out of that particular market for so long that entire brands have been born & died since I last bought make-up for myself. So I asked one of the staff members to help me find the things on my daughter's list. She was brilliant and walked me round the shop like she was a personal shopper, but she then said "Your daughter is very lucky to have such a loving mother". Zing!
  Huh. Mother. Well, in all fairness I did fall pregnant with my babies, I gave birth to them naturally, I breastfed each of them for two years so I am definitely their parent, but do I feel like a 'mother'? No. 'Mother' is a word applied to women who have had (and/or are raising) children, and since I've never felt like a woman I don't feel that the term really fits. I'm not their 'father' either because they already have one of those, so I prefer the more neutral 'parent'.  
• Today at lunchtime I got 'madamed' by a chugger collecting on behalf of the British Red Cross. Zing! I corrected him and he apologised & wished me a good day, so that kinda defused the pain right there.
• This morning one of my colleagues greeted me by saying 'Hello Miss (Name)!'. Zing! She also tends to call me 'lovely lady'. Zing! She means well and it's just a term of endearment between colleagues who are fond of each other, but being addressed with feminine titles stings every single time.
• My kids still call me 'Mum' (which I have no plans to change) and refer to me as 'she'. Their 'she's are perfectly ok at the moment as I'm pre-everything and the habit is ingrained, but I do hope the 'she's will shrivel up naturally in time. Along with my ovaries, har har.  

Hanging with the Chinese tourists

OK, so I understand completely that it's difficult for many people to understand what it's like to be transgender. For most people, our physical sex (i.e. our set of genitals) matches our gender (the way our brains perceive ourselves to be) so it wouldn't occur to many people that some of us have a different experience. So as a public service (you're welcome!) I thought I might try to give you an analogy that could help you along.

Imagine, if you would, that you're a person of Oriental extraction living in a Western country. Say, your grandparents came over from China but your parents were both born in the USA and so were you. Your grandparents wanted their kids to be 'real Americans' (whatever that means) and so they didn't teach them any Mandarin and they encouraged them to immerse themselves in American culture. Likewise you have been raised without any real reference to your Chinese heritage since your parents didn't learn anything about it themselves. You're American through & through and although you're proud of your Chinese heritage, it is in reality rather alien to you.

With me so far? Good.

Now, imagine that you then decide to go on a foreign holiday/vacation to a country where English isn't spoken but that by sheer coincidence is also frequented by Chinese tourists.You go to visit some tourist attraction (say, a museum) because you hear there's a good guided tour and you'd really like to see the exhibits. It's a former Communist country, and of course China is still broadly Communist so the cultural relevance of this place would probably be very different to a Chinese person than it would be to an American. And more importantly, the tour would be presented very differently to a Chinese audience (so as to not cause offence by criticising Communism) than it would to an American audience (who might enjoy seeing how Communism has failed).

So you turn up a little late (the American tour group has already gone ahead), and as soon as you get there the museum officials usher you into the Chinese tour group rather than the American one. You try to protest but nobody speaks English so they can't understand that you're really an American; they see your Chinese features and perceive you as being one of the Chinese tourists. The door is locked behind you and the tour starts.

So there you are, stuck in a place that is not culturally relevant to you. The language spoken is unintelligible to your ears; you can't read any of the material; and you have no way of making people understand that you're really in the wrong group and that you're uncomfortable at being treated as something you're not. Because just look at you; you are Chinese, right? Get a grip! Get used to it! Learn to deal with it! Start acting like it already!

So people will react with shock and discomfort if you try to get them to understand that you're not what they perceive you to be. They might even feel threatened, because this particular tour group is a 'safe place' for people who are Chinese, and you're an outsider. A foreigner. One of them masquerading as one of us.

Humans love to take short-cuts in classifying people. It's part of our tribal instinct and in ancient times it helped us identify friend from foe. So people make summary judgements about you based on what you look like, so that they can pigeon-hole you into a slot that is familiar and comfortable to them. At best, this helped us keep our families safe during ancient times. At worst, it has led to Apartheid and the Holocaust.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you really are an American of Chinese ancestry who needs to be treated like the person you know you are inside (American) rather than what you look like on the outside (Chinese). And it can be uncomfortable and even dangerous when people treat you as the wrong type of person.

This is what it feels like to be transgender.

People see you as being one gender because of your physical appearance and they expect (and need, for their own comfort) you to behave like a typical person of that gender is expected to behave. However, you really are something else, and other people can react with shock, discomfort or even aggression when you challenge their suppositions.

People also tend to believe that their own perceptions are more valid than someone else's assertions, which leads them to think that they must be right about you and you must be wrong. This is especially damaging to transgender children, as we're often told that we're 'wrong'; 'weird' or 'deluded' for thinking we're not what other people perceive us to be. This leads to feelings of isolation as we start to believe what other people are telling us - especially since it's very rare for anyone to meet another transgender person whilst growing up. So it's not unusual for a transgender to child to think we're the the only person in the world who feels this way so we start to internalise what other people are saying about us being 'weird' or 'wrong'.

But I have to ask: who is the expert on 'me'? Is it you, the person who gets to meet & interact with me occasionally, or me who is forced to live in this skin every second of my life?

My lived experience of myself is far more valid than anyone else's fleeting perception. So no, I'm not Chinese. Nor am I American.

The Emperor's No Clothes

For many years - sporadically from age 5 but solidly from age 7 onwards - my mother didn't buy me any new clothes at all, apart from my school uniforms. I know I'm a bit slow on the uptake sometimes, but I think I've just figured out the reason why she neglected me in that way.

Mum used to buy my brothers new clothes on a fairly regular basis considering the tight constraints of her budget. My elder brother was even treated to t-shirts with his favourite bands on them as a teenager (these were very expensive as they had to be imported from overseas) and my younger brother owned everything that had anything to do with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But she was loathe to buy anything for me.

I've just realised that she probably didn't like to buy me clothes because she didn't like my taste in clothing: specifically, my preference for wearing male clothing.

I've recently been looking through some old family photos from the 1970s and one thing struck me: every single photo of me before the age of 5 has me in a pretty, frilly dress, looking like a stereotypical pretty little girl. When my parents had sole control over what I would wear, my mother would choose to dress me solely in pretty girly things. So she made sure she chose hairstyles & clothing that showed off her 'pretty little girl'.

But after the age of 5, the photos tell a very different story: I'm wearing t-shirts & shorts or my favourite corduroy trousers (hey, it was the '70s!) in every one. That's because I'd started to notice gender differences and I insisted on being treated like a boy. And there are far fewer photos of me after the age of 5 than before.

Many of the clothes I'm wearing in those later shots were my elder brother's old things that he'd outgrown. This is because my mother would refuse to buy me boys' (or androgynous) clothes and would pressurise me to choose dresses when we'd go out clothes shopping. I'd invariably kick up a stink & refuse the dresses, so the end result was that I would wind up getting nothing at all. For years.

This went on for my entire childhood, from age 5 until I started working and could afford to purchase my own clothes at age 17. I have wondered over the years why my mother would buy clothes for my brothers but not for me (did she love them more?): but now I think the answer is simply that she wasn't comfortable that her pretty little girl wanted to look like a boy so she couldn't bring herself to buy me anything. She wanted me to be her pretty little daughter, dammit - not the masculine tomboy I insisted on being.

She did have one way of trying to force me to wear dresses: if I was invited to a friend's birthday party, my mother would insist that the only way I would be allowed to attend would be if I wore a dress. This would lead to a lot of frustrated crying and begging on my part because I really wanted to go the the party but I really didn't want to wear a dress. She wouldn't budge, so if the party was important enough I would eventually give in & wear the damn dress. She would curl my hair and try to 'prettify' me as much as she could - but if you were to see the photos from that period you'd see a pissed-off kid looking very uncomfortable. I guess she wanted her daughter back any way she could, and she thought that if only I could see how pretty I am, I would start acting like a girl. She was very wrong about that, though.

I remember having nothing but my brother's old rags to wear for years and around age 15 I was invited to perform in a school play, and my mother's pride would not allow her to let me perform on-stage in my brother's tatty old clothes. So she gave me R20 to spend on clothing and sent me into town on my own to pick out some clothes. I came back with a pair of trousers, a t-shirt and a pair of boots. All in white, for some random reason. No, actually the reason wasn't that random - it was because I hadn't been allowed to buy clothes for the past 10 years so I didn't really know what to get. I was hugely uncomfortable and anxious on that trip; almost as uncomfortable as I had been a couple of years previously when she took me out to buy my first bra (what a heartbreaking experience that was!). That was the one & only time she gave me money to buy clothes; after that I couldn't buy anything until I started working part-time at 17 and could pay for my own things.

So, yeah. My stubborn mother was so uncomfortable with me wearing even androgynous clothing that she preferred to buy me nothing whatsoever to wear. :-(

Coming out at the gym

So on Friday I bit the bullet and decided to come out to the managers of both gyms I attend, as well as my Personal Trainer. I haven't been going to the gym since my last post on the subject as I've been struggling with the dysphoria that was triggered by that post I'd read… but I decided that I need support if I'm to regain my comfort in the gym.

The first gym started out very well. The manager is a lesbian and she was very supportive, friendly and sympathetic. She agreed to look into options to make me feel more comfortable in the gym, particularly in the changing areas an on the treadmills - all of which are in front of mirrors. So that went well.

My personal trainer? Not quite so good, actually. I've been working with  him for a couple of years now so he knows me quite well, but he kept saying things like "I never would've guessed" and "But you really do look like a woman!" (yeah, thanks for that - how do you think I feel about having that little fact pointed out to me, arsehole?). He then told me quite proudly that he'd once met a 'tranny' who 'even though he was really a guy, looked quite attractive' and he seemed to think this story showed just how enlightened and tolerant he is if even he had fancied that 'tranny'. Ugh.

Well, he gets ONE opportunity to talk trash like that whilst adjusting to the surprise of meeting his first transgender client. But I expect (nay, demand) that all my future dealings with him must be far more respectful and must not include words like 'tranny'.

So I had mixed feelings about that particular 'outing'. The good work done by the manager was kind-of negated by my personal trainer. Unfortunately the only other personal trainer in the place is a woman and I've seen how she operates - it's all about femininity with her and I'd be even more uncomfortable working with her under those circumstances.

My second 'outing' session was at my other gym, which is closer to where I live. I phoned the manager and organised an evening appointment with him… and when I arrived I was delighted to see that he turned out to be the campest gay guy you could hope to meet. Well, this is promising, I thought - there's a good chance that he'll be sympathetic to LGBT issues. And sure enough he was.

I had a lovely long chat with him in which he promised me all the support the club could offer. I'm very uncomfortable with using their ladies' changing rooms (and I don't pass well enough to use the men's yet) so he's offered me the use of the single-stall disabled changing room. It's not ideal, but it's the best that we can come up with within the confines of this club and its facilities.

He also got his senior management involved as they're always on the floor when he's away so I have three people making sure my gym experience is as comfortable as it can be. However, the (gay) manager did also say: "But you look very female". URGH!!! Twice in one day. :'-(

Goddamn it. I can't wait to start on hormones.

Surgery

The other night Eldest Daughter and I were having a chat and she mentioned that she wants to eventually have cosmetic surgery on her nose. I somewhat understand where she's coming from… when she was little her nose looked a lot like mine (small & button-like) but as she goes through her teenage years it seems that the bridge is becoming quite pronounced, giving her a bit of a hook nose.

She gets this from her father's mother, who has a rather generous hooter herself. Daughter's nose is nowhere near as pronounced as her grandmother's but she is very image-conscious, so she compares her nose unfavourably to everyone around her and she clearly has some dysphoria about it. Nothing to do with gender; just general dysphoria with the way it fits on her face.

Boy, can I relate about dysphoria.

So she said that if she could have plastic surgery some day, she'd like to get her nose done. I tried to reassure her that it doesn't look bad, but I'd understand if she'd feel happier with having it done. She then asked me what plastic surgery I'd have done if I could.

A meaningful glance downwards and a salacious wink was all the answer she needed.