Awhile back a new friend asked me about my trans journey. Where to start? Hating my body?
Welcome to shit soup.
There has never been a time that I haven't hated the secondary sex characteristics that came with puberty. I can still remember the horror, and sense of impending doom I experienced when I realized what puberty was, and the changes that would occur in my body. I can remember the sensation of blood draining from my face, my eyes dilating, my body going cold. The sense of powerlessness that went along with that revelation wasn't new, but it hit in a different way knowing that this would be a permanent thing, and not just an isolated experience with a clear beginning, and more importantly, end.
Growing up in a ranch community, being a "tomboy" wasn't that out-of-the-ordinary, but admittedly, it always perplexed me when other ranch girls weren't tomboys. Why would you NOT be a tomboy? That experience of growing up where I did meant that, for the most part, I wasn't pressured to "act/dress like a girl." Sure, my mom would occasionally try to put me in dresses, which I hated, but the pressure to be girly was minimal. Every now and then, usually a community outsider, would make a comment about "girls don't do that"...the memory that pops into my head is the time at the community picnic I had my slingshot, and the boy who had been adopted by a woman from the neighboring town boldly stated that "girls don't use slingshots." Forty-some years later, that memory still makes me bristle, and I can guarantee, my community would never say something so damn dumb! They would say a lot of other dumb shit, but not that.
Anyway, upon the revelation that puberty WOULD happen to me, I did my damnedest to will it away, but eventually it did catch up with me, but fortunately, I was a "late bloomer." Shortly after developing breasts the fantasies about how to get rid of them started. Maybe I could stop an armed robbery and get shot in the chest and the doctors would have to cut them off? What if I was in a horrible car accident and they got sliced off? Could I ever be brave enough to just do it myself? It wouldn't be until my early 20's that I learned about trans men, and that it was possible to get surgery to remove them (still I struggle to name them, those hated flaps of flesh that were the bane of my existence for so many decades).
But it would still take 30 some years before I got to have top surgery. In large part because of financial reasons (other than the year I worked at a local hospital, I hadn't had medical insurance until I met my wife), but also because of my difficulties in naming what I was. Although reading Stone Butch Blues opened up a whole new world of gender expression, I didn't necessarily relate to the hard-core "stone" butches who embodied hyper-masculine roles, or being a trans man. It wouldn't be until my 40's that I heard the term "non-binary" and had a better understanding of where I fit...more on that later.
Coming out as lesbian in my 20's was helpful in that I as got older I could see that my tomboy friends growing out of their tomboyishness, while I seemed to settle deeper into it, and I knew I wasn't "fitting in." It gave me a way of normalizing some of the things that I felt, that I knew my straight friends didn't experience-not wanting to be girly or feminine (in fact hating everything feminine related), not wanting to have babies/be a mother, being drawn toward "masculine" activities (shooting, martial arts, motorcycles). But, just like with my childhood observations that I couldn't understand why all ranch girls weren't tomboys, eventually I was perplexed by lesbians (especially non-femmes) who didn't hate having breasts or feminine hips, who didn't want to do "boy" things.
And along my journey it didn't help that the therapists I worked with had no understanding of gender dysphoria- and unfortunately, gender dysphoria and non-binary weren't a part of common vernacular until fairly recently. So what all that meant for me is that when I brought up hating my body, the conversation always would be steered toward resolving my so that I could make peace with my body. Granted the plethora of trauma didn't help my relationship to my body, but it wasn't the cause for my gender dysphoria, and no amount of trauma work was going to fix that. And it wasn't just my therapists, I too believed that I needed to figure out what was trauma based hating-my-body, and what was genuine I don't want to be a woman. For much of that time, I still believed the only choices were "woman" or "transman", and again, man wasn't resonating with me, but I knew I didn't want to be a woman.
In my mid 30's I knew a number of lesbians who then came out as transmen, and medically transitioned. Although I was clear that I didn't necessarily want to be a man, I was drowning in the abject hatred of my feminizing features, and I decided the only solution was to transition (at the time getting top surgery required being a T for a year/living as a man for a year). Upon talking with my partner of the time, she lost her mind because "what would it mean for me (as a lesbian) if you became a man?!" And unfortunately, I had no volition in that relationship, so I stuffed everything back in my emotional closet, and went on hating my body. As shitty as that was, ultimately it bought me the time to understand what it meant to be non-binary.
Fortunately, my beloved wife and I had conversations about our relationship with our bodies, and I was able to have someone just hold space for me to speak about my gender dysphoria (and my desire to have top surgery) without pathologizing it as a result of trauma, or telling me that I just need to love my body. She supported my desire...no, NEED to get top surgery from the get-go, it just took a while for it financially to be feasible.
A few years back NM started requiring insurance to cover gender affirming care. I had contacted my insurance company about the process of getting covered, and the person I spoke to had no idea essentially, and I gave up...if my insurances customer service couldn't even guide me in the process (or my PCP) how the hell was I going to figure this out? Then there was the pandemic, and then there was my Buspar-weight-gain (I'd known transmen who had lost weight after their surgery, and they wound up needing a revision so I was determined to lose weight before surgery).
But about a year and a half ago I met the right people who helped guide me along in the insurance process, to the right providers, and I decided that waiting around until I was at the "right weight" when I was so miserable in my body (and getting so damn old!) was going to mean I might never get surgery. Since surgery I've had a couple people as me if I had any regrets. My only regrets are not doing it sooner, and not going to a more experienced surgeon so I wouldn't have had to go through a revision surgery. What I have heard way more than "do you regret it", is "you finally look like yourself", "you carry yourself like you are finally comfortable in your body." And I am. I'm not 100%- it's not just the breasts that were a part of my gender-dysphoria, but as I sculpt my body with building muscle, I feel more and more like..."myself."
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