Still Learning What It Means

Early in my transition, people would sometimes say, “Oh, it must be so difficult.”  By “it”, they meant my transition and the things it entailed.  While I admit that some parts of it were strange, awkward or simply a pain in the ass (Try going through a second puberty in your forties!), I would point out that, for me, the real difficulty was having to live up to society’s, and some individual peoples’, expectations while pretending to be someone I wasn’t. 

From the time I first started my counseling, therapy and hormones until the day I had my operation, a bit more than six years had passed.  Now it’s been almost six years since my operation.  Along the way, some of my expectations have changed.  I have found friends and allies in people I didn’t expect to be on my side, or whom I simply never could have anticipated meeting.  On the other hand, I have lost relationships with people whom I thought would walk with me, or at least lend some sort of emotional support and spiritual sustenance, on my journey. 

Probably every trans person can say such things.  Also, nearly every one of us (or, at least, the trans people I know) would agree that the sorts of people we become, and envision ourselves becoming, are at least somewhat different from what we’d anticipated when we were still living our former lives or when we started our transitions.  A few might be disappointed, but I think more—I include myself—feel the pressure of, and are ostracized for not,  living up to a new set of expectations.  Some expected that I would be more sexual and attractive, at least by the standards of this culture.  Physical attractiveness and sexuality (at least in a hetero way) are seen as the hallmarks of femininity and femaleness.  (I think it’s the other way around, frankly.)  Others thought they’d find cute boyfriends or girlfriends, or husbands or wives who could “treat them right”.  Still others are trying to live up to other sorts of expectations, whether self-imposed or transmitted by the culture. 

Me, I’m not looking for a romantic or sexual relationship right now.  I don’t feel I need it; I can live just fine with myself, thank you.  Living alone, with a couple of cats, is certainly better than abuse or the demands some put on people in relationships. And while I’m going to try (again) to lose some weight, I rather like what I see in the mirror. Sure, I’m aging a bit quicker than I would have liked, but I think I also see an emotional honesty and vulnerability I never before saw. Perhaps others have seen it, too:  These days, people I meet talk to me because, nearly all of them say, “You look like someone I can talk to.”

Those same people tell me they knew, looking at me, that I’d survived a thing or two.  If I do say so myself, I have.  And, while I may not be the deepest person in the world, I don’t think people—whatever else they might say about me—accuse me of being shallow.  Plus, they all know that I mean whatever I’m telling them but I’m not saying any of it to be mean.

In short, I am starting to understand, not only what’s changed, but what I’ve gained in my transition.  Although some things are still very difficult, I still have hope that things will get better—or, more precisely, I will be better able to navigate them.  I’m also realizing now that the things and people I’ve lost probably would have been lost whether or not I’d transitioned or had my operation.  We change, sometimes incrementally, sometimes dramatically. But change we do, as long as we’re living.  I have to remember that a dozen years have passed since I started my counseling and, as I mentioned, almost six since my operation.  In such time frames—and in shorter ones—things changed, whether in my expectations or perception of myself and others. I didn’t want to be the same person at 24 as I did at 18, or the same person at 36 as at 30.  So why shouldn’t the kind of woman I want to be change as well.  After all, let’s face it:  I couldn’t be, at my age, the kind of woman I envisioned when I was younger, even if I wanted to.

Here’s some advice I’d give to someone—especially a young person—starting a transition:  You’ll change, but not necessarily as a result of your transition or surgery (if you decide to undergo it). And sometimes your change is of a kind you hadn’t expected.  Understanding those things, from what I’ve experienced, a way to prevent regrets and disappointments, neither of which I have about my transition or surgery.  

Advice To Someone Undergoing A Gender Transition

The other day, I was talking with a friend who is transitioning and works in an academic institution.  (It's not one in which I've ever worked.).  The environment in that school is noticeably more hostile, in all sorts of ways, than the one in which I started my journey.  This professor, though, is of a higher rank and in a specialty in which there are fewer qualified people than in my field.  Plus, that professor is, in a lot of ways, a cannier fighter and more savvy in dealing with administrative people than I was when I started. In part, those advantages come with being a few years older than I am and having other circumstances that differed from mine.  That prof also works in a field that is noticeably more male-dominated, and where there may be more people who are phobic to gender-variant people, than mine.

Still, I found myself helping this prof devise strategies for navigating various aspects of the school and its administration.  For one thing, we were trying to define acts of true discrimination.  As an example, when you're not notified of meetings, but other people in your department are, did the person who sent out the e-mails or notices simply "forget" about you?  Or, when someone attributes some manner of wrongdoing to you, is that a mistake?  Or is that person acting on some unconscious (or conscious) hatred and harassing you? Or what about a supervisor who has time to answer your colleague's questions but suddenly starts to dismiss you rudely when you are looking for his or her advice?  

What are you supposed to think when someone "loses" your file or application for some program?


Although I got guidance, from various sources, about how family members and friends might react, and some of the legal aspects of my transition (By the time I had my surgery, I thought I could become a lawyer!), I really didn't have any guidance for the issues the other prof and I discussed.  

There are times I wish I'd been more militant--or, at least, as ready to do battle as my friend.  I tried hard to appease people and to be a palatable trans woman.  I suppose I succeeded at those things, to some extent.  Some might say that "taking the Martin Luther King rather than the Malcolm X approach," as someone else described it, gained me some respect with some people, and perhaps made me "likeable" to others.  But, I realized, that supposedly educated and civilized people don't always play by the rules they make or live by the ideals their educations are supposed to represent.  And, of course, there are those who say the politically correct thing to your face, but say other things entirely to other people when you're out of earshot.  

(By the way, the person who made the "King rather than Malcolm X" comment has only comic-book knowledge about both men.  And he spouts all of the liberal shibboleths, naturally.)

In brief, one of the things I told my friend was that you need to make allies but to trust very, very few people in an academic (or, for that matter, most other work) environments.  Your friends, you make elsewhere.