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Wait– You’re A Trans Man and Non-Binary?

Due to the expanded gender options available on Facebook, I chose “trans man and non-binary” … which will probably confuse people, but it makes sense in my head: I reject the binary gender system of expected behaviours and gender expressions. (girls are nurturing and wear skirts, boys are emotionless and wear pants) I reject the binary sex terminology and the characteristics society associates with the binary sex system. (male-bodied equals penis, female-bodied equals vagina) But I can’t help it if I strongly feel like I’m a gay boy. And I don’t care who gives me shit for wanting to have top and bottom surgery because I know what my body wants to look like and I’m going for what I want. I’m not a “sell out” or a “defector”. I still don’t support the binary, whether I get a phalloplasty or not, whether I identify as a boy or Agender or neither.

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I Had Top Surgery!! (Feb 10, 2014)

Sorry for being so LATE in telling y’all the good news! It’s been a hectic week, and I can’t keep up with all my social media accounts:

Monday, February 10th 2014, I had my top surgery. My parents and my friend M were with me. My surgery was originally scheduled for 12:30pm, then moved to 2pm, then moved to 4pm due to complications from a patient who was operated on before me! When I got operated on, I also had complications, and my surgery lasted 6 hours. When I woke up, it was 10pm, and I was lamaze breathing because the pain was so bad; it was either that, or screaming. And I wanted to spare the nurses hearing, so I breathed like I was in labor instead. A nurse talked to me, and fed me ice chips. I can’t remember what she said, or what I said. Honestly, I don’t remember the rest of the night.

I don’t remember much of anything until 10am the next day. M came to my private hospital room around that time, and basically did everything for me except wipe my ass! I’m not even joking! He came bearing flowers, a get well card, vegan dessert, vegan pizza, a book, jewelry, and tons of kisses! Now, we’re not lovers or anything, and we don’t even know each other that well, but he treated me like I was precious to him! He helped me to the restroom, he helped me walk in the hallways, he was a shoulder to cry on in times of pain and emotional distress, he held my hand when I was sleeping, he organized my room, he went out and bought my parents food when they came to visit me, he cleaned up after me when I ate (or when I spilled stuff), and when I was feeling weak from all the drugs, he fed me my dessert with a spoon! He told jokes, he advocated for me when staff mis-gendered me or called me by my dreaded birth name. He went above and beyond what I expected! When he said he was gonna spend time with me in the hospital, I had no idea he was gonna do all that! I’m so grateful for all his kindness! He stuck around for roughly 9 hours, until after visiting hours were over! Right before he left, he showered my face with kisses (something else I didn’t expect, but it’s not like I’m complaining!) Hugging right now is out of the question. He did more for me than my parents did! In fact, my parents barely did or said anything to me on Tuesday! He did more for me than the nurses!

Wednesday was utterly shitty from what little I remember. I was too drugged, and all the shit they gave me hurt my tummy big time! Once my tummy calmed down in the evening, I got released from the hospital. Thanks to the San Francisco traffic, it took an hour to get home, and all I did was go straight to bed, and I remember very little after that. According to my phone, I called and texted people, but who knows what I said in those phone calls!

Today, I feel good! I’m in a great mood. The pain is subsiding, and I’ve been chillin’ at home, doing some gentle arm stretches, walking a bit around the apartment, and I am very happy with my chest. I look down, and there are no boobs! I’m not wrapped in gauze, but for the first two weeks, I was wrapped in a black bandage with clear tape. I got my drains out 3 days ago. I’m super glad I had surgery! It’s a dream come true! My life has changed for the better, and I’m about to cry tears of joy right now! OMG, this post is long, but I wanted to tell y’all what happened to me. This surgery overall was a good experience.. I’m glad I did it!!

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Oppressing The Oppressed

I don’t care how much s*** I get for this. Some things need to be said. A while back, I wrote a post in some Facebook trans group about feeling awkward about spending time around cis folks, because I think people won’t accept me. Honestly, that fear is all in my head. The people that have been the least accepting of me, and the least tolerant of me, and the most angry at me, are people under the trans umbrella—not cis people. I’ve noticed that oppressed minorities like to tear each other down…instead of support one another and fight for our rights to be free—for our right to exist!

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Worn Out….

I am at a point in my life in the trans community where I feel worn out, burned out, zonked out, over-loaded, run down, and just plain annoyed with all the bullshit that comes with heavy involvement with social networking websites! For 5 or 6 months, I have been bringing up very controversial subjects, and they have REALLY pissed people off! But I shared these subjects in the hopes that someone out there in the World Wide Web would benefit from some of the things I say or write about. I appreciate the (few) people that DO support me and DO benefit from what I write. Those are the people I want to think about and cherish.

However, it can be hard to do that when my personal life ain’t so great, my parents are lacking in their support of my transition, and the HATERS that wanna have online flame wars with me! I’m really exhausted, and I know I’m gonna get shit for this, but I am so tired of being the only one in front of the firing squad, “taking the bullet” for the people who may share similar experiences as me, who may have strong and controversial opinions like me, but, for one reason or another, aren’t putting themselves out there as boldly and as intensely as I am. I’m an intense and bold person, and I want to be helpful. But the insults, high school drama bullshit, and angry replies to my writings have stressed me out, and made me feel physically ill!

I feel like all these months of being controversial with my writings have been two-fold. 1. A conscious effort to be helpful.  2. A sub-conscious way of figuring out more about myself by writing it down. I’ve become more stable in who I am as a person, and I feel like I need to make trans things less of a focus of my life. There is more to me than that. I really want to take a break from social networking, and explore other interests. (if I can tear myself away from the ‘net!)  I am making a physical transition, and plan to even get bottom surgery in a few years, and I think that once those things are done, and I have made blogs/videos of my recovery process, I won’t have anything more to talk about regarding being trans. I’ll just want to live a quiet and content life.

I feel like I want to retire eventually from my heavy involvement with blogging, being in groups, and making videos. Perhaps every now and then, when some epiphany arises, I’ll blog about it, or upload a video, but I really, REALLY need to explore other interests for the sake of my well-being! Negativity, insults, and haters can really wear on me… they can really wear on a lot of people! My brain needs a vacation from things that are trans-related, and it needs a vacation like NOW!

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Dating… Yeah…

So, okay.. I have thought about dating someone numerous times, but I see a potential obstacle: my transition. I must admit that I’m a bit wrapped up in myself right now, focusing a lot on what I want to do to transition, and my upcoming top surgery. Now, it would be lovely to have a boyfriend to cuddle up with while we sit on the couch and watch all 5 seasons of “Queer As Folk”. It would be fabulous to have someone to have hours and hours of sex with. It would be wonderful to walk down the streets, holding hands with my boyfriend, and doing a lil kissing as we wait for the light to change. However, I don’t think I can handle the potential challenges and the work involved to make a romantic relationship a healthy one, while spending all this time and energy on my transition journey. Transitioning is challenging in itself, but to put a relationship on top of that might be way too much for me! Not to mention the unfair-ness of putting a boyfriend through my journey and being self-focused. Being trans is a part of me that won’t disappear if I get a boyfriend. Surely there are ways to keep transition from being the focus of my life, but I’m not in a place in my life where I can put in the work to do that.

A lot of my blogs and You Tube videos and Tumblr posts and friendships are transgender-based. I’m not only wrapped up in myself, but I’m wrapped up in the community as well, because I need some kind of support from trans people who know what I’m going through. So, my life right now is totally trans-overloaded, but having some kind of link to the trans community is necessary, not just for support, but to share the nuggets of wisdom I’ve accumulated over the past couple of years to other trans folks that I know.  I think that sharing my perspective as a trans person is important for the world to see (and hear), because if trans folks like me don’t speak out about our lives, how will anyone know we exist? If I don’t say anything, who will? Not a lot of non-binary trans folks are vocal about their experiences, and if they just want to live their lives and not deal with the bullshit of being vocal about their experiences, then that’s perfectly fine! Because I know from personal experience that being vocal about my journey causes me to get a lot of criticisms, a lot of arguments, and a lot of hate because of the blunt way I say things, as well as the challenging subjects I bring up. But I’m willing to be someone who expresses my journey–not that I speak for all non-binary people–but as someone who is non-binary displaying to the world that I’m non-binary, and this is my story.

I kinda went on a tangent there, but it was only to give an example of how over-loaded I am, and that a relationship right now in all this chaos isn’t a good idea. I don’t think I’ll be this trans-oriented for the rest of my life. But, hell, I’m like a toddler right now! I’ve been out of the closet for 3 years, and we know what toddlers are like! Do you know any toddlers that are ready to have a boyfriend and make the relationship a successful one? I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I don’t know any 3 year olds like that! I’ve got some growing to do, some exploration to do, some figuring out who the fuck I am to do! Perhaps when I’ve gotten out of Toddlerville, I’ll be able to have a romantic relationship with somebody.

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I’m Done! Now What?

In my opinion, I think that we as trans people have no past, a difficult present, and an uncertain future. When I see people online and offline transitioning, mostly they are young people in their pre-teens, teens, 20’s, and 30’s, who can’t wait to transform, because being the way they were born causes so much agonizing dysphoria, and hate from society.Trans visibility is limited, and unless one is watching Jerry Springer or the Chaz Bono story, the trans folks who are visible are young. It’s a little scary actually, to see all these youngsters with piercings in odd areas, hairstyles & tattoos they might regret later, and this enthusiasm to hurry up and transition so they’ll finally be happy. I’m concerned that they aren’t thinking about the future; not thinking beyond the “I’ve completed my transition!!” phase. I just wanna ask a 20 year old: when you’ve finished all the transitioning that you want to do, what do you imagine your life will be like 20 years later? 10 years later? 5 years later? 1 YEAR later!! Some people might not have an answer for me, because a lot of people don’t look past the completion. I mean, congrats that you’ve done it…. but now what are you gonna do with the rest of your life?

I rarely hear or see any trans people that are over 45! I rarely hear or see any older trans people who have fully transitioned (whatever “fully” means to them) 10-20 years ago, and how their lives are now. It just seems like once a trans person gets into a certain age group, and once a trans person has completed all they want to do to their bodies, then they disappear. They vanish! They vanish, and they aren’t around to tell the world of our history! Perhaps they don’t want to. I mean, that’s the point of transition, right? To transform, to move on, and to forget about all the shit you went through to transition, living a “normal” life, blending in with all the cis people.

However, I have spoken to some of the young, pierced, enthusiastic trans folks, and they say that they have NO desire to erase their past, forget where they came from, and not share their stories once they have completed their transition. I’d like to think that these excited, young trans people will follow through, and actually share their pasts with the world once they’re done. I just worry for them (and myself) that our future will be utterly bleak, because we have lacked the storytellers of decades past to share our history with us. To share how life was after they transitioned. I fear that we’ll be lost, wondering, “I finished. Now what? I spent the last 15 years thinking about transitioning, and barely thought about anyone else! How am I supposed to live my life now???” It’s a valid question: how ARE you gonna live your life after completing transition? It’s a harsh, but totally possible, reality that in the future, there could be lots of post-transition depression, and lots of post-transition suicides. People could simply think to themselves that they have absolutely nothing to look forward to, and end their lives.

I don’t have the answer for anyone as to how they should live their lives after transition. It’s not my place to say what people should do with their lives. But I think people should really consider the future, after all that anticipation, excitement, and the joy of completion has worn off.

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Dismantling Gender

I know I’m a radical, a revolutionary, an innovator, and waaaay ahead of my time, but I want to live in a world where the construct of gender is dismantled, and everyone is genderless. Why is society clinging to gender SOO MUCH, even those who identify as Agender, Genderfluid, and Non-Binary? Are people afraid of losing something in particular if gender were eradicated?

I think that in the trans community, gender is everything to them. It’s all they talk about, all they think about, and they focus on their gender labels way more than any cis person EVER would! It seems like they think that a genderless society erases their existence, their life experiences, their personality traits, and their freedom to finally be their true selves, and the joy of self-expression… although some trans people don’t experience the joy of self-expression because other trans people bully them into conforming into the gender binary system.

 As far as I’m concerned, trans people who get bullied by other trans people for self-expression, and don’t want to live like stereotypes, should be the first in line for signing the Gender Eradication Petition.. if there was one! Actually, I would be the one who created the petition, and would have the first signature on it! But Genderfluid/Agender/Non-Binary people complain to me about how unfair a genderless society is… as well as the stereotypical binary trans folks! I don’t get it!

A no-gender society DOES NOT mean an erasure of anyone’s existence! It DOES NOT mean we’d all be the same! Why can’t we have a variety of life experiences, all sorts of label-free personality traits, a complete freedom to express ourselves WITH JOY, with no one bullying anyone to conform– without the construct of gender: an oppressive system that was created to control people, and it makes our lives miserable.