That thing between your legs

As soon as I tell you that my partner's transitioning I know exactly what you're thinking: You are thinking Dick. You know --  Cock, penis, junk -- whatever you call the thing that dangles between most dudes legs. Because in the world we live in the thing that's the thing that separates men from women. Right? 

Photo by Mid-Century Pretty via of Flickr

And you want to ask, right? Sometimes you do. But guess what? It may be rude, but I don't really want to talk about it. It isn't my place. And really, I don't really want to talk to most people about their sexual organs. (There are some with whom I have had in-depth discussions but the operative word here is "most." 

I know that most dudes have penises and most women have vaginas. Right? And that's just fine. Do we really need to discuss it? 

It reminds me of the days long ago: there was a time when I would come out to people and they'd ask, hey, like how do you do it? What kind of sex do you have? Seriously. Now they don't. Because guess what? Being gay is ordinary. Boring, even. 

And as Chaz Bono and many others have said, it's about what's between your ears and not what's between your legs. Trust me, once you live with a trans person, you get this. R is a dude. Plain and simple. Maybe he's a special dude -- an FTM dude. But trust me. He thinks like a dude. He acts like a dude. He talks like a dude. And now he's starting to look like one too. 

Reflections on a bigot I loved

I wrote this for a class. But I thought it would be appropriate here since bigotry is obviously a major theme here. (It's only sort of fictional)

--

He misses the old days. You know the days. Fewer people. People knew each other, who watched out for each other. People knew people. They took care of each other. Life was simpler. Maybe not easier, but simpler.

Photo by canorus via Flickr

Not the way it’s becoming now. Where gays get are everywhere and women leave their children. And worse. Where people who were born men become women and women become men. It’s the way it’s supposed to be. Not the way God meant it to be.

He stares straight ahead, sitting on the couch, his belly big, his milky blue eyes staring at the TV. We were watching the news, me and grandpa. My special sweet grandpa who used to take me camping and throw me over his shoulders and carry me around like a sack of potatoes. I loved that game. I knew it was old. A sack of potatoes like he was back in Russia. I imagined him in peasant pants and knickers, selling potatoes, even if he never did. But it was my exotic projection. My grandfather with a smooth chest and a quick smile. My grandpa who I have known in my heart was born old with bristly gray hair. Because he seems perfect that way.

But now, he is sitting there, busting my illusion. He is just like those men on the TV. He’s just as bad, just as crazy. I like to forget this part of him. Because you can’t argue with it.

He knows I’m gay and said he didn’t care. But now he talks about the way gays are ruining the country and I feel a clenching in my belly. He looks at me. His eyes right on mine so intense I turn away. He’s almost spitting, he’s so mad.

“But I thought you were OK,” I want to say, “about me.” But I don't. Just stare straight ahead.

Stop discriminating and let people choose their own bathrooms!

So now that the transition is well under way and I've had a requisite number of crisis (I reserve the right to have more, by the way) I'm really noticing how transgender folks are increasingly showing up in the news. I guess now that it's no longer cool to discriminate against gays (more than half the country blatantly discriminatory law? (Yes they amended it but it's still awful.)

Photo by scot2342 via Flickr

favors gay marriage) it's now time to focus on a less powerful (they think) and less organized enemy: transgender folks. I'm not transgender (obviously) but since my partner is, I have a personal stake in this fight. So I ask, what the hell are Arizona legislators thinking with this

Wait: I know. Find new enemies. Target them. Make people think about someone of the wrong gender seeing their junk (sorry because I think it's mostly young men who worry about such things) and voila, like you no longer have to worry about silly things like how the economy is going to hell.

What are they going to do? Make us all drop our pants to prove we're the "correct" gender? Who else did that? Oh, yes, it was the Nazi's. Only way to prove men were NOT Jewish? Make them show their penises. If they were circumcised it was off to the death camps. Literally.

Top surgery and beyond

It's been nearly a month since I posted. And I can tell you the reason I haven't posted hasn't been because life has been boring. Quite the opposite. So much has happened it's almost impossible to catch up. So obviously I'm not going to take you through every nuance.  But I will give you the one big highlight: since I last wrote, R  had top surgery.

Yep. It happened.

I have so many mixed feelings about this that I don't even know where to begin. I feel like I should be writing something meaningful but it's almost too close to the bone. You know what I mean? No pun intended.

On the one hand I'm very excited for him. It's actually kind of a relief that he's never expressed any hesitance about going through with the surgery. If it were me, I would feel very mixed. I mean it is surgery. But it's altering your basic architecture.

And yes–I get it. That's the whole point. I'm actually really proud and impressed with R. He did it. It was brave. It was courageous. And it was actually extremely self-loving. And God knows, we all need to give ourselves love.

On that level, he's actually been a role model for me. I'm typically female in respect to needs. Like a lot of girls, I was also raised to put other people's needs before my own. I don't always do them mind you. In fact, I think it can actually make one quite selfish. But I'm learning at my late age to put my needs first. It's actually healthy.

And that means that I get to react to the surgery. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it, but it hasn't been all positive. I feel like a bit of a traitor for writing this here. But I'm going to do it anyhow in deference to the fact that I've said I would tell the truth. Let's just say it's been difficult. It's not that I'm so into breasts that I can't live without them (although certainly I would want to.) I think it's more about being with someone who is essentially altering who they are. And yes–I know that R  is simply becoming who he is on the inside. In other words, he's always been a man. He's just had the great misfortune (and I mean that sincerely) of having been born into a female body.

But I'm still allowed to react, right?  (I'm telling myself this) This is where I'm having difficulty. Because intellectually, I absolutely love what he's doing. I admire it and I respect it, as I said before.  But it's major. I guess the whole top surgery thing–well that's the point of no return. His voice seems to get lower every day. His muscles grow. And his beard gets thicker. And then there is the hair.  and actually I don't mind any of these changes. Some of them I actually like.  But I have to tell you it's really weird to watch this transformation.

 But I will save that for another day–look forward to the post titled, living with a grown adolescent.

So  if anyone is still reading, thanks for the support. I really appreciate it.

Transition

Photo by pennstatenews

I always thought transitioning was about changing genders—shifting from being a woman to being a man (or vice versa).

But that's the thing. It's not. Not for the person transitioning, anyhow. For R transitioning means he is shifting from being in the body of a woman to being in the body of a man.

The transitioning person is not really the one transitioning. I mean, he is. But he's not.  R is re-shaping his body (through medical intervention) so that it matches his true gender. He's coming into his own. He finally will be able to slip into the body that fits. Imagine what it's like to go around life wearing the wrong suit of clothing, being trapped in it. I haven't experienced it, but I imagine it would feel like being stuck inside some constricting costume with a false body and head. Claustrophobic.

He's getting to embody himself.  (Forgive me if this is obvious but it's still new to me.)

The transition? The change? The shift? That comes for everyone else. Because everyone outside of R has known him as a woman (even if that's never what he was). He's changing physically. And the rest of the world—those who know him—must shift our thinking. We need to transition our thinking and  adjust to this new manifestation of this human.

And hell, I won't beat around the bush. That's hard. That's fucking hard. Because gender is so hard-coded into us (everyone points out that it's the first thing we humans learn about their offspring: boy or girl). So finding out that someone doesn't fit the mold quite as we expected forces us look inside and question ourselves. Maybe that's why people are so threatened, but they needn't be. The questions are important and the answers are fascinating.

What is gender? What makes me a woman? What makes you a man? And why is it important? Why do we care about gender? The answers, of course, could fill volumes (sorry I don't have many answers; just questions).

So the shift really is up to everyone else. R does not have to shift at all. He's already there. We just have to catch up.

When she was a boy

(I wrote this as an exercise for a class. It's fictional but true in a fictional way.)

When she was a boy she had feet that could fly. They were her wings, her feet clad in boys shoes, sturdy and tight, her chemistry set at home. The other boys – they all knew she was a boy. She imagined herself a fisherman or a fireman or an astronaut.

Photo by wallyg via Flickr

Sometimes she was a pilot who could climb into a cockpit and soar above the world. When she was a boy, she was not a sister. She was not a daughter. She was a sailor. She was a cop. She was a construction worker who drove huge trucks that crunched over gravel and picked up impossible loads.

When she was a boy she was kind and smiled toothy grins. She caught spiders and bugs and burned wings under magnified glass.

When she was a boy, they told her she was a girl. They put her in pink dresses with lace and beads that she picked off in church. They made her sit still with her legs together, her knobby knees scraped and accustomed to shorts and high speeds.

And she knew in her heart that she would not grow up to be this other thing. But she really didn't think about it. She thought of the sun in her face. She thought of the tricks she would play on her sisters – like any big sister. Because she knew she was a boy.

"Mom – I can't wear that. I'm a boy." And her mother would look sideways at this child and her contrariness. She would stare and ponder because no one ever told her about little girls that grow to be boys and men.

"You're a girl and that's that."

And she would go off crying. But then her dad would come in to give her a fishing rod and she knew that he knew that she really was a boy.

When she was a boy, when it was late at night and she couldn't sleep, she knew the truth: that she would grow up. She wished every night and yet she knew that her body would betray her further. And eventually it did.

But now she is grown. Her parents are long gone. The memories of them telling her what she wasn't when she knew she was, long erased. And she looked at himself in the mirror and saw the betrayal. The body of a woman.

But that was all about to change. And soon, she would be a man. The man she was meant to be. And people would no longer doubt her. And they would no longer say she grew up as a girl who was a boy. They would just know she when she was a boy she was a boy. And now she was a man. A real man.

Gender Confusion

Photo by by Annie Warhol (who took it from somewhere)

I just want to say that when I was younger and going through a punk rock stage, thinking I might have a chance at becoming a rock star (until I sadly realized I had only enough talent to sing in the shower—alone) I started writing songs. They were, of course, terrible. But there's one song I wrote that keeps running through my brain. I called "Gender Confusion." And the only lyrics I penned were those: gender confusion. (I may have written more but who can remember?) They came with some awesome electric guitar power chords full of distortion. Now I'm asking,  how the hell did I know how these lyrics would resonate years later? I know I wrote it about my own state of gender confusion and the confusion I saw all around me. It was a very androgynous cultural period and I related. It just shows that I've always been on the gender edge, myself. Some call me gender queer. And I am, I suppose. But gender queer just sounds too cool for me. Still, it's far superior to the other word: confused.

So am I ok?

That's what my friends ask. Am I OK? How do I feel about it. I usually take a big deep breath. Then maybe I take a sip of the chardonnay I poured before making the call. (I'm human, OK?) And then I tell them the truth: yes, I'm OK. I'm good. I'm happy. R has opened up. He's expanded. Imagine, spending six decades with this secret sitting on top of you, suffocating you, keeping you from being who you are. Imagine all the shame. All the terror. Because you happened to be born into the wrong body. Well, when our therapist told him what he's known since he was two and demanded that he was a boy and not a girl, that he was a man, something changed. Something shook loose. Shook into place. And he became the man he's always been. He became more of the man I've always loved. Even though he was a she and I thought I was with a woman. And that's where it gets complicated. Because while I've always thought of myself as bisexual, I did not choose to be with a man when I chose R. I chose him because of his smile and his charm. I chose him because of the way he looked at me. I chose him because of the way he treated his animals, the way his hand felt on my face. I chose him because I was getting out of a bad relationship with someone who was unhealthy and he was there, like a song and a flower and he was easy. Then. I chose him because he was a woman with small but beautiful breasts too. And those will be going. I will miss them. That hurts. I am feeling so many feelings. All the feelings at once. So no, I don't know if I'm OK. Yes, I'm thrilled. And yes, I'm OK. And yes, it is much. So, so, much.