Month: July 2018

The Labels I Use And Why

Gay

I use this as a gender neutral term for homosexual. However, it is still a comparison of my gender to my partner’s and if society gets my gender wrong then they’re also going to assume I’m interested in people who do not match my partner (more on this here). This was a great label before I started questioning my gender and before my husband transitioned but has become somewhat problematic for society to understand since then.

Neutrosexual

This is a term I have made up (I think). It follows the same idea as androsexual (male-attracted) and gynesexual (female-attracted) which leave the person’s gender out of it and just specify who they’re attracted to. Neither of those work for me because I’m attracted to people who fall closer to the middle of the spectrum so I prefer neutrosexual. That way, if society still puts me in the female box, at least they’ll understand who I’m attracted to (once I explain the label).

Queer

A nice all-encompassing label. It can be misunderstood by older generations that weren’t part of the reclaiming process and also lacks the specificity I like from labels but has served me well. It can encompass sexuality and gender which is nice but I find that people assume it’s only referring to your sexuality until you specify. Thus:

Genderqueer

Fairly self-explanatory. All encompassing term similar to queer but specifying gender! Tends to represent people with a fluctuating sense of gender (which works for me) though doesn’t have to. Comes with its own flag of lavender, white, and green which also happened to be my wedding colours so I have strong positive associations with it (thus the name of the blog).

Gender neutral

This describes my day-to-day experience and expression of my gender the best. Though I do have both a male and female gender they balance out fairly evenly which lands me in the middle most of the time.

co-gender

This is the most accurate term for my gender but is a fairly obscure one. It describes someone who has two or more genders that exist in harmony with each other (such as co-existing or co-habiting). I have read descriptions of people’s experiences of being bi-gender or tri-gender where it feels like there is a gender war going on inside them all the time and they can fluctuate wildly day-to-day or even hour to hour. This does not match my experience at all so although ‘bi-gender’ technically describes me I prefer co-gender. Some people include this in their name for example Meaghan co Ray. Because of the ‘existing in harmony’ aspect it has a spiritual connotation which also matches my experience of my gender. For a long time the only label that I had heard that worked for me was Two-Spirit but as I am not Indigenous I cannot use that label publicly. Eventually I found co-gender which is a good substitute.

non-binary

I don’t mind using this term as an umbrella term to differentiate from binary experiences but as my sense of gender still falls on the binary spectrum I kind of feel like I am extra binary – both of the genders. I also generally avoid labels that describe the absence of something rather than identifying the presence or experience of something else. So non-binary doesn’t specifically resonate with me as a label but I’m fine with saying that I fall under that umbrella if that is the label that society ends up using for all gender non-conforming people.

So there you have it. At the most specific I am a co-gender neutrosexual (which sounds a bit bizarre) but I generally go by genderqueer and gay.

What are your labels? How did you find the labels that fit you? Are the labels that you use for yourself different from the ones you would communicate to others? Does society understand your labels or do people generally have a different definition than the one you use? Tell me your story in the comments below!

Intersections of Gender and Sexual Orientation

When my husband transitioned I was asked a few times if that meant I was straight. I knew this would be a question people would have but it took me a while to understand why that question was coming up and why I felt so annoyed by it. I tried to explain to a few people why I still identified as gay with varying success. I realized that the underlying issue is that although sexual orientation and gender are two completely separate aspects of a person, they are connected in society because of the labels we use to communicate them. This is my attempt to tease out these two aspects of identity and look at ways that they are entangled and misunderstood by society as a whole.

The basics

Sexual orientation is who you go to bed with.

Gender is who you go to bed as.

Though of course both are much more than that.

If sexual orientation was simply who you are attracted to or who you want to be in a relationship with the labels would mean something like ‘male-attracted’ or ‘female-attracted’ or ‘male and female attracted’ or ‘attracted to anyone regardless of gender’. Some labels do mean these things. Bisexual and pansexual for example. Or the more recently adopted terms of androsexual and gynesexual. But what about gender-neutral-attracted? Would that be neutrosexual? That’s the term I would use. Think it’ll catch on?

Where it gets complicated

The other sexual orientation labels require you to specify your gender as well as those that you are attracted to – homosexual and heterosexual (as well as lesbian and gay). Technically these labels mean ‘same-attracted’ and ‘different-attracted’ which requires you to first define your own gender so that society can identify who would fit into the ‘same’ category or the ‘different’ category. What if you’re questioning your gender identity and you don’t know what category you fit in but you are still attracted to the same people? Or what if your gender identity doesn’t match your gender presentation and people constantly assign the wrong gender to you (because who is going to ask your gender in order to clarify your sexual orientation)? This is where these labels intersect gender and become problematic for some people.

Take me as an example. I identify my sexual orientation as ‘attracted to people who are the same as me’. In order for society to understand who I would be referring to they first have to understand what category I am in. Because I am AFAB (assigned female at birth), they put me in the female box. Before my husband transitioned it was all good in society’s view – I was a lesbian. Though not entirely true or accurate it didn’t cause daily confusion. When my husband transitioned, society switched him to the male box and my sexual orientation label no longer made sense to most people. But rather than questioning their previous understanding of my sexual orientation or gender they would ask me if this meant I was straight. This is where their brain went even though nothing about me had changed.

what’s wrong with this question

The first problem is the feeling that society was policing my use of labels. Regardless of my own gender identity and that of my husband, I should be ‘allowed’ to continue to identify as gay if I felt like that label still represented my sexual orientation. I can understand people wanting to ask in order to make sense of how that works for me but that is not where their question usually came from. It was always phrased as ‘Doesn’t that make you straight?’ not ‘Does that impact your sexual identity at all?’

The second problem is seeing sexual orientation categories as absolutes instead of a spectrum. Gay does not need to mean 100% of the time attracted to same sex as myself, never ever anyone else. It is up to the individual where this line is for them. If 90% of the time I’m attracted to people like myself do I ‘qualify’ as gay? Am I ‘gay enough’? Or am I ‘required’ to use the label bisexual or pansexual if I’ve ever, even for an instant, been attracted to someone different from myself? What about if you identify as straight but you had a crush on someone who is the same sex as you once? Would you be ‘required’ to use the label bisexual or pansexual as well? Or would you have to be equally attracted to men and women in order to ‘qualify’ as bisexual? We need labels to communicate our experiences to each other but when labels become boxes they restrict people’s understanding and this becomes a problem. If my use of the label ‘gay’ was seen as a spectrum it would be possible for me to stay in the ‘female’ box society puts me in and be predominantly female-attracted but have fallen for this one guy, my husband.

The third problem was that society went from seeing us as in the same gender category to opposite gender categories. Gender should not be seen as two categories but also as a spectrum. If gender is a spectrum, it would be possible for me and my husband to still be closer to each other than either end and the label ‘gay’ (or same-attracted) would still make sense. Their question about my sexual orientation changing revealed their rigid understanding of gender and their assumptions about my gender identity.

The fourth problem with this experience is that it made it clear that people thought of my husband’s transition as a switch from being female to being male. Nothing about my husband’s gender was changing. He was still the same person, he had always represented himself in an honest way to me but just didn’t have the right words to express it to himself, to me, or to society. When he finally did, he had to transition in order for society to identify who he had been all along correctly but in my experience he barely changed at all.

This all sounds very rant-y and I suppose it is in some ways. But I’m not mad at people who ask me ‘doesn’t that make you straight?’ It just reveals their limited view of gender and sexual orientation. If they are the type of person that would be open to expanding their worldview and if I have some time (and energy) I’ll question why they think that would be the case.

How I answer the question

My personal crisis about my sexual orientation when my husband first identified that he was trans had very little to do with whether I would still be attracted to him. There was some doubt, sure, but the majority of my stress came from how I was going to explain my identity to other people who had only known me as gay.

When they ask ‘Doesn’t that make you straight?’ the options I came up with for answers were:

  1. I am still gay because I am primarily attracted to women but happened to fall in love with this man.
  2. I am still gay because I am attracted to people who are the same as me and we are much more similar than we are different.
  3. I am gay because even though I identify as female I am actually closer to the middle of the spectrum and so is Jake.

When Jake was first coming out as trans and I was getting the biggest number of these questions I was not yet comfortable discussing my own gender identity so I usually stayed away from #3. I felt like #2 was too vague and might be confusing or frustrating for people because it doesn’t specify anything about gender (which is actually what they’re asking about). A close friend of mine had a female friend who was gay and had been dating a guy for four years. She explained her identity as something like #1. So that’s what I went with most of the time. It still felt somewhat inauthentic but usually safety trumps authenticity (as most queer people can attest).

So that’s it. Pretty straightforward eh? Maybe next time I get asked that question, instead of answering I’ll ask them why they asked it in the first place and see if they can question their own assumptions instead of me doing it for them.

What is your sexual orientation and how does it relate to your gender? I am especially curious what you think of these ideas if you have never thought about your gender or sexual orientation before. Leave a comment below!

My Experiences of Gender Dysphoria and Euphoria

Personal Experiences

I have struggled to write this post because it is so intensely personal but I think it’s important for people to understand what dysphoria feels like. Many trans people talk about how their body has always felt wrong or as soon as they could talk they were voicing that they wanted to be the other binary gender. While dysphoria can present in this way, kind of like a big flashing sign, for me it is a lot more subtle and fluid.

For me, dysphoria feels like wearing a piece of clothing that doesn’t fit. You feel like you keep having to adjust it but no matter how you try it never sits right. It is a vague sense of wrongness. Like if I was a puzzle most of the pieces fit together but there are a few that sit slightly askew and I keep fiddling with them throughout the day to get them to fit. It’s irritating, annoying, frustrating, distracting, and confusing. It is also what I use to show me who I am which gives me a way to frame it in a positive way.

When I’m in an environment or around people who know who I am and are gender affirming regardless of how I’m presenting I get a feeling of ‘rightness’ or gender euphoria. This also happens when I put on clothes and look in the mirror and see a body shape that matches what’s in my head. The dysphoria is gone and because it is so uncomfortable when it’s there, the lack of discomfort feels amazing. These are experiences that cis people have all the time without realizing it because they’ve never felt the discomfort related to gender.

My dysphoria fluctuates day to day. Some days it’s barely noticeable and some days I’m doing everything I can to manage it and it’s still so distracting I have trouble getting through my day. Most of the time it sits at the level of a constant itch that you can’t quite track down. What things are causing dysphoria also fluctuates for me. Some days it is purely physical, some days it is purely social and my body feels fine. Most of the time it is a mix of the two. Separating these out has helped me find appropriate management strategies and allows me to cope much better and live more authentically.

Physical Dysphoria and Euphoria

Physical dysphoria is all those feelings that are centered on a part of my body. For me, this is typically my chest. Most of the time, I picture the shape of my chest being halfway between flat and curved. Some days it feels like it should be perfectly flat but more often I’ll have days where it feels normal as it is. I tend to feel more comfortable in clothing that doesn’t draw attention to my chest. So when my internal sense of what my chest should look like is about halfway flat I will wear a chest binder and that takes away most or all of the dysphoria.

I sometimes feel uncomfortable the shape of my body (curves, hips, thighs) for gender specific reasons ie because of how they are feminine, not because of my weight or size specifically. I generally wear clothes that are baggier or will hang straight down and avoid mirrors when I’m not dressed.

Things that I don’t feel dysphoric about that some people do: my lack of facial hair, size of hands and feet, body hair, or below the belt region.

Social Dysphoria and Euphoria

I generally experience social dysphoria when I’m feeling more male which feels at odds with how society sees me – female. I also experience certain aspects of social dysphoria when I start to have a feeling of invisibility due to no gender euphoria for more than a week.

The things that at times make me feel like I am at odds with how I’m being interacted with are gendered words such as ladies, ma’am, girl (as in ‘hey, girl!), my name, and female pronouns. Female gendered words and titles almost always feel wrong though I’m not sure if male gendered words would feel any better. Generally neutral words most consistently feel the best. Sometimes my name will feel too feminine. Unfortunately my job requires me to wear a name tag and introduce myself repeatedly throughout the day so the best I can do to alleviate this is ‘forget’ to wear my name tag.

Occasionally, female pronouns feel wrong though, again, I’m not sure male pronouns would feel any better on those days. As with the gendered words, neutral pronouns most consistently feel the best. So far I do not feel the need to use neutral pronouns at all times or change my name because my gender fluctuates to the female side enough that the hassle doesn’t feel worth it. I am open to the possibility of doing this in the future if that changes. I can also understand how, for some people, it would be necessary.

Wrap Up

As you can see, dysphoria is generally an uncomfortable experience which takes considerable effort to alleviate to the point of experiencing glimpses of euphoria. The strategies I use to manage dysphoria vary based on where my physical and social sense of my gender sit on the male to female spectrum. I will have a full discussion of this in a future post.

Even when my dysphoria is minimal it is still there at least a small amount and the fluctuations also can be frustrating and destabilizing. This takes a mental and emotional toll and can lead to burnout and difficulty coping with other life stressors. I will also talk about this more in a future post and what strategies I use to keep myself feeling stable.

I hope this description of my experiences helps you understand what dysphoria can feel like or helps give you the words you need to explain your experiences to the people in your life.

What are your experiences of dysphoria? How do you describe it to people who are trying to understand? Does anything here raise other questions you’d like to ask me? Leave a comment below!

My Husband’s Transition – A Partner’s Perspective (Part 3: Medical and Legal Transition)

The story began in Part 1: Exploration.

The story continued in Part 2: Social Transition.

And now, the conclusion.

Where do we start?

As soon as Jake knew he needed to transition we searched for any information about the medical process where we live. There was nothing online. The most reliable source of information came from Jake’s psychologist who is very involved with the trans community, including moderating a PFLAG group that we had been attending for several months. At this community support group we heard from others that were further along in their transition process how they had accessed medical care and got their legal documents changed.

Jake started by going to our family doctor who was allowed to prescribe hormones following a very clear algorithm in the WPATH guidelines but, having been to a seminar about the transition process ten years ago, our doctor felt like he knew the appropriate process (all referrals had to go through the psychiatrist) and refused to overstep his bounds. As you may have guessed, the medical management process has changed somewhat in those 10 years but very few family doctors are aware or feel competent enough to provide the treatment that trans people require. And although he was ‘aware of the correct procedure’ he didn’t know that the wait to see the psychiatrist was over a year long or believe us when we informed him of this repeatedly after talking to other trans people who had just gotten their first appointment and phoning the psychiatrist’s clinic.

Luckily, through the community, we learned of a family doctor who had prescribed Testosterone for another member of our group. Jake booked an appointment with him asap and was able to start T a week later. At the time I’m writing this Jake has been on T for 14 months.

Testosterone

The first change was his voice. He was starting a second puberty at the age of 30, complete with the cracking voice which led to much hilarity and some mild embarrassment. Until his voice had dropped enough to be more consistently recognized as male, I was the designated representative when interacting with strangers – ordering food, making phone calls, giving my name for contact info.

As his voice dropped mine started sounding higher by comparison to the point of sounding nasal and squeaky at times. I naturally found myself lowering my voice which in the end made me more comfortable due to my own gender identity (more on this in the posts from the ‘Personal’ category).

Jake then started growing facial hair, a sleazy mustache at first, then very slowly sideburns and a goatee. He got stronger, especially in the arms and shoulders. The slow nature of these changes gave me plenty of time to get used to them as they happened. I never had a moment of hesitation or question about whether I still found him attractive. The more his body changed the more confident and comfortable he became. Confidence is very attractive. My mental image of him had included a lower voice and facial hair for quite some time so as his physical body changed it simply fit my mental image more closely rather than being more and more at odds.

As he was read more as male this in turn made us read as a straight couple and put me squarely in the female category. All of this took away our visibility as a queer couple, something which we both continue to struggle with. It was also a trigger for my personal gender exploration – more on this here.

The struggle of Changing his ID

When it came to getting his documents changed Jake encountered too many barriers to list here. Forms that did not include options for his situation, systems that couldn’t accommodate a change in this information, customer service people who were not familiar with the process, conflicting answers that often required backup from unrelated documents that he was also struggling to get changed, all of which required a fee to be processed.

My personal experience with this was when I had to change his information on my health insurance through work. You can’t do this over the phone, you have to email them, they will send you the form, you fill out the form and fax it in, they will email you when it’s completed. The form has a section for changing your  dependent’s information and reasons why you need it to be changed including information is incorrect, marriage, divorce/separation, etc. There was no ‘transitioning’ category (which I wasn’t expecting) but there also wasn’t an ‘other – fill in the blank’ category. So I ticked off the ‘information incorrect’ and wrote beside it ‘transitioning from female to male’. When I got the email saying it had been processed I checked my account and found his name had been changed but he was still listed as female and ‘Mrs.’ So I emailed them back. A while later it got updated to Mrs. Jake, male. Another email, another wait, and eventually they got it right.

This whole time we weren’t sure what would happen if Jake tried to claim health expenses using his updated Alberta ID if his info in my account didn’t match. So he had been holding off on a couple of things until this went through. This was a needlessly frustrating process but still was much safer than many of the interactions he would go through to get ID changed – for example justifying himself in front of a line of waiting people to a clerk who then had to go get their manager to whom he had to explain himself again.

Getting his national documents changed was the biggest ordeal because he was born in New Brunswick, the one province or territory that had not yet passed legislature for people to change their gender marker on their birth certificates. And until your birth certificate is changed you can’t change your passport. And until your passport is changed it’s not safe to travel to a variety of places including the United States. So we had to cancel our planned vacation to go to Arizona in February at a time when we really could have used it.

Frustration levels rising

All I could do was try to support him, provide a sounding board for his frustration and provide positive outlets and distractions. Very few people could understand what this process was like. When voicing our frustration to others we would usually get the response of ‘oh yah, when I got married it was such a pain to change all my documents, it takes forever, but it’ll be done eventually’. Oh yah? Did the forms you had to fill out not have the option you needed to check off? Did the clerk never know how to process your request or require medical documents as proof? Did it take a huge amount of emotional resilience to walk into each office and out yourself every time? Just like coming out as gay and coming out as trans are not the same thing, changing your last name on all your documents after getting married or divorced and changing your first name and gender marker because you are transitioning is not the same thing. I know people were just trying to be supportive but the amount of educating we had to do to get people to understand the differences was exhausting.

The overall the frustration level rose considerably while he was on waitlists for surgery and endocrine, waiting for paperwork, and even waiting for laws to change so he could change his birth certificate. Frustration is a stagnant emotion that I learned leads to considerable burnout. Eventually I had to start paying more attention to my own mental health and I started a bullet journal including habit tracking, weekly debriefs which eventually lessened to monthly, daily journalling which tapered off quickly, and making sure I had emotional outlets that provided some sense of progress and connection with the queer community – for me this is creative writing and music. It took me five months of consistent personal work but I improved significantly and was pretty much back to normal.

Top Surgery

Jake had waited 4 months for his consult for top surgery with a local surgeon which would be covered by health care. The consult was not particularly encouraging, suggesting that he would likely need a revision a couple years later which would not be covered. It would also be 1.5-2+ years wait before he would be having surgery (because of the waitlist). So he had booked a consult with a private clinic in Toronto which he waited another 4 months for.

In prep for this consult we had to take topless pictures for the surgeon and take measurements which was a very uncomfortable experience for both of us as neither of us pictured him with a female shaped chest at this point. Any time he saw himself in a mirror it would cause dysphoria. My image of him had a blurred out section at his chest. Since he overheats easily and has asthma he couldn’t really wear a binder comfortably so instead he had been wearing baggier clothes and adopted a slightly hunched and rounded posture which was causing upper back and neck pain.

This consult went very well and, as it turned out, they had a cancellation and could do the surgery a month later. We had a brief scramble to make sure we could both get time off from work, see how much flights would cost, make sure my parents didn’t have other visitors staying at that time, and then confirm everything.

Just before leaving for top surgery he received his final national documents in the mail – a huge milestone and a huge relief for both of us.

Getting him through surgery

The days leading up to surgery were filled with excitement and nervousness. After the pre-op appointment the day before surgery this went to a whole other level and all I could do was help him manage anxiety about surgery and self-doubt about whether this was right for him or not.

While he was in surgery I waited and waited and waited. I checked in with the clinic at the time when they said he’d likely be done, was sent away, returned an hour later to be told he was in recovery but that they wouldn’t let me in. I came back 45 minutes later to be told he was a little teary but was doing ok (What does a bit teary even mean? Why was he teary? Wouldn’t I be the best person to support him if he was upset?). Not having access to him in recovery to help with the immediate symptoms was even more frustrating because I work in a hospital and I’m very familiar with how to deal with people who are coming out of anesthetic and dealing with post-op pain.

Half an hour later I finally got to see him. He was super pale, sweaty, and shaky. But even with the post-op binder on his chest was flat! I asked him about the tears. Turns out it was just an endorphin response when coming out of the anesthetic, not an emotional response to the surgery or his chest like they had made it seem. I helped him change out of the gown into his clothes, grateful that we had been told by friends to wear a button up shirt. Eventually he was feeling good enough to go home but they insisted on escorting him to the car in a wheelchair. As far as I’m concerned they’re either ready to release him or not but whatever. This caused more hassle than necessary because I had to go get the car and figure out how to get back to where they were waiting. I tried to stay calm because Jake didn’t need any more stress than necessary but was ready to scream or burst into tears by the time we were finally in the car and driving away.

We spent the next few days resting in bed. I visited with my family while Jake was taking naps. I helped him manage the binder, adjust it as needed, and folded face cloths to wrap over the edges of it where it was digging in under his arms. I helped him stay cool or warm, got food and water, made sure he had entertainment when he was up for it so he didn’t get antsy, got him different meds when he got itchy or nauseous from the narcotics, and put arnica on the bruises (very gently). His energy slowly came back and the pain decreased enough to wean from narcotics but the binder was still digging in under his arms in the most painful bruised areas where they had done liposuction so he couldn’t use his arms much as a result. T-rex Jake.

Post-op reveal and return to normal life

We went back to the clinic about a week after surgery for removal of the bandages and to see how the nipple grafts were doing. I’ve seen incisions before so it didn’t make me queasy or concerned. His nipples looked really dark but this apparently is normal and the surgeon was pleased which was a good sign. It was a very interesting experience to see his chest flat for the first time. I was finally able to look at that part of his body and not have what I was seeing conflict with what he looked like in my head. Over time the blurry part where his chest was in my mental image cleared to match what his chest looks like now.

Once we were home he struggled with the binder for another few weeks but eventually gave up and stopped wearing it. He was instantly more comfortable using men’s washrooms which in turn decreased my own anxiety about him being at risk in public washrooms. He slowly started wearing the clothes that he hadn’t been able to for a while because they had been too fitted across the chest. Now they fit perfectly. I don’t think he had realized how much stress he had been dealing with whenever he was putting clothes on to go out until he was able to put on whatever he wanted and not worry about it getting him misgendered. It’s an amazing experience to see your person finally be at ease with themselves and gain the confidence they had been searching for for so long.

The end?

So in the span of about a month we went from huge amounts of frustration and burnout to all legal documents changed and top surgery complete. It took a while for the stress to dissipate and the relief to settle in but man, did it feel good. Not everyone has the opportunity to pay for private surgery and get it in a timely fashion. Not everyone has support from family when they’re going through these medical procedures or transition in general. We are extremely fortunate in both these areas. And yet, even with all that support and stability it was still a very difficult, stressful, emotional process that was very hard to explain to the people around us. Spending time with each other and other trans people and finding online resources that related to our experiences were the things that kept us going. It is not a surprise to me at all that approximately 50% of trans people attempt suicide at least once in their lifetime (reference).

There is no specific end point to transitioning. Jake may have other surgeries in the future and will continue to have slow changes from Testosterone. But in our experience, after being on T for year, having completed top surgery, and having all his documents changed he has been able to pass consistently as male and has considerably less daily struggle with being trans. When we go through future transition related experiences I will make separate posts about those so stay tuned.

I hope you found this account interesting and helpful. Leave a comment if you have had similar or different experiences or if you’d like to hear more about any particular aspect.

My Husband’s Transition – A Partner’s Perspective (Part 2 – Social Transition)

The story began in Part 1 – Exploration.

Coming out

We started Jake’s coming out process with some preparation and planning, as usual. We made a list of the people he wanted to tell first starting with who would be easiest to tell and would likely be the most accepting. Telling them would hopefully give Jake the confidence and support he needed to tell the ones who’s acceptance would have a bigger impact and therefore, would be a lot more stressful to come out to.

I helped Jake write an email that he sent to the first few people on the list. When that went well, he continued down the list at his own pace. We revamped that letter a number of times throughout the coming out process depending on who we were telling and what type of information they would respond to best.

Gender Gymnastics

I had my own sort of coming out process at the same time. For a long time I had been trying to refer to Jake using male pronouns and name in my own head and at home (which we discovered is hard to do because when it’s just the two of us we never use our proper names or third person pronouns). But until Jake was ready to come out I still had to refer to ‘my wife’ when I wanted to share personal stories with co-workers. This is something I had done a lot of in the past in an effort to be a visible example of a queer couple. Plus, I’m a talkative sort of person, what can I say. This became very uncomfortable, to the point where I began avoiding pronouns or using neutral pronouns when talking about Jake, and shortened his birth name to a gender neutral nickname. However, neither of those would fly around his family so I had to continue with the female pronouns and name with them.

Adjusting to someone’s new pronouns and name is extremely difficult for a lot of people but here I was switching back and forth between three sets of pronouns and names with minimal errors for about four months. We quickly realized this must be my super power. Even so, it took a lot of mental energy, caused a baseline level of burnout that would continue to escalate over the next two years, and caused me to develop a speech pattern that has random pauses in it from when I had to reorder the words in a sentence to avoid a pronoun midway through.

Telling My Co-workers

Around the time Jake started coming out to his friends and family, he gave me permission to ‘come out’ for him with my co-workers (whom he had minimal to no contact with). Finally, I would be able to use male pronouns and refer to my husband Jake. This happened to coincide with November 20th – Trans day of Remembrance. I work in health care in a department that is broken into smaller teams so I decided to make a short presentation at a the next team meeting.

I highlighted how difficult navigating the health care system can be for trans people and the disastrous consequences of that ignorance and transphobia can have, especially when it comes from a professional or happens at a time when the trans person is already in a vulnerable position. I explained that this issue is particularly important to me because my husband is transitioning. My voice only wavered a little bit at this point but I was extremely grateful that I could hide my shaking hands behind the lectern and lean on it for support when my legs went to jelly. I quickly followed this with an educational introduction video done by Jazz Jennings listing the 10 most important things to know about trans people. At the end of the meeting I received hugs from a couple of my closer friends on the team and someone even thanked me for helping them understand what a younger member of their family was also going through and how to support them better.

In my experience, there was plenty of gossip about co-worker’s private lives relating to other topics (deaths in the family, health issues, reasons for absences, personality conflicts, etc). I thought this would be a novelty item for gossip and would spread quickly through the department. Well, I was wrong. Either my partner transitioning is too far removed to be of interest (rather than me transitioning), or people didn’t know how to talk about it or were too uncomfortable to talk about it to want to gossip about it. Or they recognized that talking about it would constitute outing someone which is generally not acceptable, though in this case it would have been useful.

So this began about a year-long, slow coming out process with many repetitions of – blah blah my husband blah blah, oh yes, still the same person, yes, my wife is now my husband, no I haven’t gotten divorced and re-married in the span of a few months, my husband is transitioning, yes I’m ok with it, yes, I’m still gay, his name is Jake, no, it’s not actually polite to ask what his name was before, no, that’s alright, yes, I’m happy to explain it all to you sometime, just not right now in this room full of people, anyway, what I was saying was…. Each time my heart would pound, my palms would sweat, and I’d be glad I was sitting down or would find a chair quickly. This reaction lessened with each repetition but often the mini coming out sessions would take me by surprise because I was never sure who would have found out some other way or who I had told already (I am notorious for forgetting who I told what to).

Occasionally I would have longer more in-depth conversations with some of the co-workers I knew a bit better or some that were particularly curious. I say curious rather than nosy because for the most part their questions didn’t come from a place of wanting to know juicy details about my personal life or my husband’s. They were more curious about what the internal and external process was like in a general sense or in a health care related sense and what my reactions were to it. So even when their questions were targeted to me or Jake I would keep my answers broad such as ‘well often the trans person…’ or if I was ok being more specific or personal (which often I was) I would say ‘well I can’t speak for other people but for us…’ I had many conversations with Jake about what aspects of his transition he was comfortable with me sharing with people and lucky for me he usually said whatever I wanted to share was fine. This is partly because I was talking to people who he had little to no interaction with and partly because I work in health care and we want to educate as many health care workers about trans issues as possible.

Over time (via trial and error and educating myself via online resources) I learned what questions were appropriate for people to be asking and which ones they didn’t really need to know in order to expand their understanding of the trans experience. One example is when people would ask what his name used to be. They would remember that I had a wife but couldn’t remember my wife’s name so when I said I had a husband named Jake and yes, he was the same person as before, they wanted to fill in the missing information. In these instances I learned to tell people that this isn’t actually a question you should ask and provide an explanation why so they didn’t think it was just because I was uncomfortable answering and then go on to ask the same thing of the next trans person they met. For the above example I would explain that knowing his previous name wouldn’t help them understand his experience or who he was, it would likely only get in the way of them changing the image of him in their heads by giving them a female name to latch onto. Maybe at some point in the future I will be brave enough to challenge them by asking why they are curious about this in the first place and make them reflect on where that question is coming from.

Telling My Family

When Jake was ready to come out to my family we discussed who he needed to come out to directly and who I could act as a go-between for. I helped him rephrase his letter (again) and provided backup for the follow up questions. I had discussions with my immediate family about what this meant for me and how I was dealing with it all. By this time I had had plenty of practice with explaining this to people so though the conversation was slightly more intense because it was more personal, I managed it fine.

Since my family lives across the country from us they had to police themselves in order to reinforce correct name and pronouns. So we gave my immediate family some time to get used to the idea and more comfortable with the correct name and pronouns before telling my extended family. I hand wrote a personal letter and mailed it to my grandmother, hoping that the evident effort in writing it would show how important it was to me. I got a brief response from her that said she received it and that she loved us and she used male pronouns and ‘Jake’ throughout which was all we needed. We shortened this letter to just the necessary basics and sent it as an email to my extended family all at once. I got many responses of support, all of which I forwarded on to Jake so he would see them too. Overall, it went fairly smoothly.

Helping With His Family

Around Jake’s family I reinforced his name and pronouns just by using them. Since he never uses them for himself and they wouldn’t use them when talking to him it was only when I was also there that they would hear someone using them and we could see whether they were doing the same. This meant I had to get out of the habit of avoiding pronouns and start using them as much as possible – again, thankful for my super power. But their slow reaction time and constant misgendering of him took its toll on me. We discussed a number of times whether it was ok for me to correct them or not – was Jake not correcting them because he didn’t want to rush their acceptance process and he was trying to be respectful or because he didn’t have the energy but really wished I would? Jake preferred to correct them when he saw fit so when I felt my blood pressure rising I would bow out of a conversation or avoid social engagements with them for little while.

The turning point came when Jake’s step-brother got married. Jake hadn’t planned on telling his extended family yet but he knew he didn’t want to be introduced as the groom’s sister or be asked to wear a dress *shudder*. So about a month before the wedding Jake sent them an email (as per usual) and got a supportive reply suggesting they get together the next week when they were in town. We had a lovely open conversation with them and discussed how to handle this at the wedding. Jake decided he was going to jump in with both feet and correct people as needed but he would be ‘Jake’ and ‘he’, the groom’s brother from now on.

The majority of the guests at the wedding had never met Jake before, though a few would have known that the groom had a number of sisters but no brother. I assume some of that correction happened in the background on the groom’s part but for our part Jake and I made brief explanations and corrections for the people who actually knew him and his mom helped with that a bit too (yay!). Throughout the weekend everyone around us was referring to Jake as male like it was a non-issue. It was fantastic. More than that, it showed Jake’s immediate family that using Jake and he/him was ok, people wouldn’t treat him as a freak, and he was so much more relaxed. Because everyone else was calling him Jake and ‘he’, they looked weird when they didn’t. So his immediate family had a weekend of name and pronoun immersion which is just what they needed.

Coming out at work – more anxieties

We had been planning for Jake to come out at work for a while. He had contacted HR to make sure he had backup if he needed it, he had done bathroom reconnaissance to find a gender neutral bathroom in case the males were not supportive enough to feel safe using the men’s bathroom, and he had drafted a letter to his team lead and her boss. But after that weekend at the wedding where he got to be Jake for an entire weekend it was extremely difficult to go back to being a woman at work. So he bit the bullet and sent the emails and had the meetings.

When Jake was preparing to come out at work I had a resurgence of the anxieties about whether he’d be going to an antagonistic work environment that was unsafe but I knew that it would still be better than the constant overwhelming dysphoria. How would he deal with people that weren’t accepting? The first day when he was telling people was super stressful but in the end it went fairly well. They are still (more than a year later) messing up his pronouns on a daily basis which is taking a toll but overall everyone was supportive.

The next step was to start changing his ID. Not to mention that he was still waiting for the initial psychiatrist appointment who would refer him for hormones and surgery. This is where the real frustrations began.

The story concludes in Part 3: Medical and Legal Transition.

My Initial Gender Exploration Process

WHAT I ALREADY KNEW
  • I am both male and female which leads to a fluctuating experience of gender centered at the middle of the spectrum
  • The label ‘non-binary’ doesn’t particularly fit because it’s more like I’m dual-binary
  • My physical sense of my gender and my social sense of my gender can be different from each other
  • I experience both physical and social dysphoria but don’t know in what ways or how to manage them
  • I also have difficulty with my queerness feeling invisible but don’t feel ready to ‘come out’ as something other than cis (one of the biggest reasons why I started this blog)
WHAT I WAS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT
  • How far I actually fluctuate in either direction
  • What specifically causes my dysphoria
  • How to manage fluctuating physical and social dysphoria so I minimize the negative effects by feeling more comfortable in my skin and environment and therefore more authentic
  • How to alter my presentation in ways I’m comfortable with while feeling male or female but also that will be noticeable to the people I see every day so it will influence their interactions with me
  • Whether I will need to transition socially or medically in the future
TOOLS I USED

Gender Tracker

I created a gender tracker in my bullet journal that has a scale from 5 female to 0 (neutral) to 5 male. Each day I rated my physical feelings about my gender and my social feelings about my gender on this scale. The sense of my gender was based on a combination of what things made me feel dysphoric (feeling wrong for gender reasons) and what things made me feel euphoric (feeling right for gender reasons). I filled it in daily for a month and a half which gave me a good sense of how much I fluctuate (not as much as I thought), how these fluctuations related to other things going on in my life (most obvious influence was my menstrual cycle – of course), and how my sense of gender related to my mood (a couple very specific and useful correlations). I haven’t continued to track it objectively since then but I do use the same system in my head on a nearly daily basis and can now easily identify when my bad mood is related to dysphoria or when a shift in gender might happen.

You and Your Gender Identity: A guide to discovery

by Dara Hoffman-Fox

This is a step by step self-help style book that takes you through three broad stages: Preparation, Reflection, and Exploration. It combines advice and self-reflection questions/activities in a work book style layout. I started at the beginning of the book and worked through the sections that resonated with me and skipped sections that didn’t feel like they applied. I kept my notes in a journal specifically for this stuff so that I wouldn’t be afraid to write down my thoughts for fear that someone would see them in my everyday journal. The sections I found the most helpful were:

  • Fears
  • Positive Approach
  • Gender Questionnaire
  • Getting to Know Yourself Creative Prompts
  • Physical Discomfort
  • Social Discomfort
  • Exploration Ideas and Process

If any of these sound like they would be helpful for you I would recommend you get the book and work through it! It gave me a guideline so I no longer felt like I was floating in the middle of nowhere with lots of questions and no way to find answers.

Journal

Even before consciously starting my gender exploration process I started using a bullet journal to keep myself organized, track my personal habits and mood, and have somewhere to write down my thoughts and feelings. I found this very helpful during the later stages of my husband’s transition when all the stress and frustration had built up to burnout level. I have continued to use it since then and often journal about gender-based observations, experiences, and stressors. Mental and emotional wellness is difficult to maintain in the face of daily dysphoria. This journal gives me somewhere to put down my thoughts and feelings to help me process them, gives me a creative outlet, and keeps me organized so I don’t have to keep schedule or to-do list in my head.

Self-care Toolkit

Another idea from Dara Hoffman-Fox’s book that I talked about above. This is a physical box of whatever size you need to hold everything that goes in it. Mine is fairly small and I keep it at work as that is where I generally experience the most burnout type symptoms. It includes reminders for self-care activities and positive statements and sensory objects that will either override a negative mental or emotional state and give you something else to focus on or provide a calming and grounding effect. Mine includes:

  • Reminders for self-care activities that help me such as music playlists and phrases that I can use as a mantra
  • Scents that I find grounding or calming (sandalwood, cedar)
  • Tastes that are strong and distracting (mint, cinnamon) or enjoyable and comforting (chocolate)
  • Tactile objects that fit in my pocket and can be played with as a distraction or for calming effect (soft leather, worry stone, carved animal, chainmaille)

Everyone’s toolkit will be different. I put it together about a month ago and have used it about 3 times since but just knowing it’s there if I need it has been a big comfort.

DAILY PROCESS

When I get up in the morning I check in with my body to see where my physical dysphoria is at. When I’m getting dressed I picture myself at work and get a sense of how I want people to see me/interact with me which hints at where my social dysphoria is at. The clothes I choose (including a binder) used to be the hardest part of my day because they relate to both physical and social dysphoria and if one is female and the other is male it can be difficult. I have gotten considerably better at knowing when a binder will be helpful and what clothes I will be comfortable in since I started the more objective gender discovery process. I pick accessories to balance out my gender presentation. If the clothing I picked to feel comfortable is more masculine I will choose neutral or feminine accessories and vice versa. Throughout the day I check in with myself and alter my appearance as needed – put my hair up or take it down, take my name tag off or put it back on, engage in self-care activities as needed.

This post goes into more detail about what types of dysphoria I experience, what it feels like to have different male and female combinations of physical and social sense of gender, and specific strategies I use to feel comfortable with each version of my gender.

What do/did you use to discover or explore your gender? What parts of my process are similar or different to your own? Is there anything that I used that you might find useful or want to know more about? Let me know in the comments!

Differences in AFAB and AMAB Cross-Gender Exploration and Transition

Note: Since writing this post I have learned that the use of AMAB and AFAB to categorize people, especially nonbinary people, is exclusionary, reductive, and often not helpful in describing experiences in an accessible way. I am working to stop using these terms. I have chosen to leave this post up for now. If you feel strongly about what is written here please leave a comment or send me an email. I appreciate your input.

Historically in society the default has generally been masculine. This is slowly changing but is still true in a lot of ways. One of the main ways this is brought to my attention on a regular basis is that it is deemed appropriate for women to present in a more masculine way but it is not ok for men to present in a feminine way. The ‘androgynous ideal’ is often seen as someone with short hair and a flat chest both of which are typically masculine aspects of appearance.

AFAB people 

exploring your masculinity or trying to decrease your femininity

Pros

  • You can explore your gender and presentation without having to justify it as much.
  • Cis women who prefer an androgynous or masculine presentation are fairly easily accepted by society.

Cons

  • Your efforts to express a more masculine or less feminine gender will be seen as changes to your presentation only and will not necessarily be seen as a reflection of your gender. Therefore, people will not necessarily adjust the language they apply to you or your gender category until you explicitly come out.
  • You may have to over-masculinize to feel like it is having an impact on how people see and interact with you.

As an AFAB person exploring my mostly neutral but somewhat fluctuating gender and trying to present more masculine at times to reflect that, this has definitely been my experience.

AMAB people

exploring your femininity or trying to decrease your masculinity

Pros

  • Once you are ready to come out it will only take a few minor changes in your presentation for society to start questioning your gender and applying new language to you.
  • You will not need to overly-feminize (unless you want to) in order for society to take notice.

Cons

  • It is very difficult for you to explore your gender without society noticing and potentially putting yourself in a dangerous situation
  • Cis men who want to explore or express their femininity have difficulty doing so without having their gender identity questioned.

This leads to AFAB people having difficulty gaining male privilege because they are still deemed female no matter how masculine they present and AMAB people losing male privilege very easily as soon as they present slightly feminine.

For those people who are interested in undergoing medical transition there are distinct differences in experience with certain aspects of transition due to society’s specifications of how they identify someone as female or male at a glance.

AFAB people

attempting to be read by society as male

Pros

  • Male puberty overrides female puberty so taking Testosterone results in slow but effective changes to allow you to ‘pass’ as male fairly easily (voice lowering, growing facial hair, building muscle, body fat redistribution).

Cons

  • Producing the appearance of a flat chest is very difficult either by wearing a binder which is uncomfortable at best and injuring at worst, or surgery which has a difficult recovery and leaves obvious scars.
  • Surgery to relieve dysphoria associated with genitalia or provide a sense of physical euphoria or completeness has a high rate of complication and may require an extensive skin graft again resulting in visible scarring while providing minimal benefit for sexual function.
AMAB People

attempting to be read by society as female

Pros

  • Producing the appearance of breasts is fairly easy, either with breast forms and a bra or through a well refined surgery for breast augmentation if hormones do not produce the desired effect.
  • Surgery to relieve dysphoria associated with genitalia or provide a sense of physical euphoria or completeness, while still having a fairly high risk of complication, also is highly effective.

Cons

  • Because male puberty trumps female puberty, starting Estrogen after completing male puberty does not reverse the effects (facial and body hair continues to grow, voice remains lower) and though some breast tissue may develop, it is not always enough to provide the appearance of a typically female chest.

Caveat: The pros/cons related to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) will differ if you’re on hormone blockers prior to the start of puberty.

This all results in trans men ‘passing’ more easily but potentially having ongoing physical dysphoria or visible scarring as a result of surgery and trans women having difficulty ‘passing’ but having effective surgical options if desired.

These are my own observations during my husband’s transition from female to male, my experiences as an AFAB genderqueer person, and listening to other trans people’s experiences. If your experiences match or differ from these observations please leave a comment below!

My Husband’s Transition – A Partner’s Perspective (Part 1 – Exploration)

initial reaction

We were driving in the car together (the place a lot of our more intense conversations happen) and my husband turned to me and said something like “I’ve been wondering lately if my social anxiety and awkwardness might be gender related…”. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that and tried to clarify. The conversation progressed something like this:

Jake: “What if this means I’m trans? What if I won’t be happy unless I transition?”

Me: “Wondering if your anxiety is gender related is nowhere near deciding you’re trans. Lets just take it one step at a time. And so what if that’s where it leads? We’ll figure it out.”

Jake: “You wouldn’t leave me? You’re gay! What if I end up being a guy? That’s not what you signed up for. You mean more to me than figuring this out. I wouldn’t do any of it if you weren’t going to be ok with it.”

Me: “Yah, I’m gay. So what? I love you. Let’s take it one step at a time. I can’t guarantee that there won’t be stuff that I’ll struggle with. But we’ll figure it out. You have to figure out how to be happy, figure out who you are. There’s no way I’d be ok holding you back from that.”

I don’t know if those are the exact words but you get the gist. I’ve heard from other people – either trans people or their partners – that this is a fairly common pattern. I understand why Jake would say that he wouldn’t transition if it meant I would leave him but what kind of person would I be if I said yah, I’ll stay so long as you never live authentically? Not the kind of person I wanted to be, that’s for sure.

This revelation didn’t particularly take me by surprise but I know it does for a lot of people. Jake had been living as authentically as possible and was quite a masculine woman to begin with which, I recognize, is a benefit of being AFAB that is not afforded to AMAB people who want to present more feminine (more about my thoughts on this topic here). I also had my own gender questioning experience and had been involved in the queer community for a number of years which gave me an understanding of what he might be feeling and the language to conceptualize and express it (more about my personal history here).

Exploration and Experimentation

So, we took it one step at a time, starting with a deep dive of the internet. We quickly learned terms like dysphoria, FTM and MTF, learned about binders and packers and STPs (stand-to-pee devices), and started looking for community support.

For the first few months we were exploring and talking about his gender confusion pretty much in secret. I was must happier being his confidant and helping him sort through it than I would have been finding out later that he had struggled through this part on his own while I was out/at work.

We learned pretty quickly that Jake’s experience of his gender and dysphoria didn’t match the typical trans experience of ‘feeling like you were born into the wrong body’ and ‘telling your parents that you were meant to be a [insert non-assigned gender here]’ or ‘suddenly feeling like your body was betraying you when you started puberty’. It took a while before we could explain what his experience actually WAS but now we know that, at least at the beginning, he primarily was experiencing social dysphoria (as opposed to the physical dysphoria described in the stereotypical examples). He felt fairly neutral towards his body but felt uncomfortable in female spaces, being treated as a woman, and referred to as female.

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible for general society to perceive you as male unless you physically appear as male so even though he was not uncomfortable in his body, a lot of the exploration required altering his presentation and body appearance (trying binding, packing, haircut, wardrobe changes, etc). This progressed at Jake’s pace which was significantly slower than I wanted things to move. I was all – yah! you can do it! Let’s figure this shit out! But sometimes people need time and space and the supporters need to give them that.

We also wanted to explore the social aspects of being male (pronouns, name, interaction) but that is impossible to test without first telling other people who you are exploring your gender and could they please use male pronouns and a different name for you. At the time we did not have a group of friends that we felt comfortable doing that with as a trial period so we tried it as best we could just between us.

My role and experience as a partner

Through all this my role was helping him see the bigger picture about how far he’d come, help him to not get discouraged or frustrated, provide support and feedback, provide options when the first thing didn’t work or feel good, provide positive distractions and outlets, and help him find confidence in his new image. Pretty much just give him a positive, safe space to explore himself in. I would often ask him how something had felt and he would struggle to put it into words so we would start with did it feel good, or bad? We used the things that felt good as a compass for what direction he was going with his gender.

I often pushed him to take the next step before he felt ready. This is partly because I didn’t want fear to stop him from figuring out who he is but also because the longer it took him to figure himself out the longer I was in limbo. How do you start the process of acceptance when you don’t know what the new status quo is going to be? I had a constant feeling of unsteadiness which worsened when I was away from Jake and improved when we spent time together. I think this is because when we were apart my mind would fixate on all the new things, all the changes, and all the unanswered questions. When we were together it was obvious that he was still the same person, we had the same inside jokes, enjoyed doing the same things, and had the same interactions as always. Together time was the major antidote to both of our mental and emotional stress during the entire transition and we learned early on to prioritize it as much as possible.

Changing my mental image of Jake

I knew a big part of accepting whatever the end result was going to be was that I had to change my mental image of Jake to match his mental image of himself. I was able to do this bit by bit rather than all at once. As he explored his gender we communicated regularly which allowed me to understand his sense of his own gender as he discovered it. This was very beneficial to me and allowed me to adjust the pronouns and name I used for him much more easily when he was ready to experiment with those.

Changing your mental image of someone who has told you they don’t identify as the gender they were assigned at birth is hugely important. In order to be truly supportive I couldn’t continue to see him as a woman – I wouldn’t be able to discuss his dysphoria or experiences of gender euphoria in ways that felt authentic to him. Yes, this took some personal work, a lot of mental corrections anytime I thought of him, and a lot of quality time talking about his perception of himself as it was changing during his experiments so I could give my mental image the best chance of keeping up. And once he was ready to change his name and pronouns it allowed me to consistently use male pronouns because my mental image of him was of a male person, regardless of what his physical appearance was. One of the things that helped the most with this was changing his name in my phone so that every time he texted me or called me I would see his preferred name. This was a huge step forward when I figured that out. We ended up recommending it to other people as he was coming out to them in an effort to help them adjust as well.

My Own Fears

I had many fears and questions that came up throughout this process. I didn’t want to talk to Jake about them all the time because I didn’t want my struggles to increase his already exponential fear and confusion. Luckily, we had a couple of friends that Jake felt comfortable telling early on in the process so that I would have someone to talk to about this stuff. Having that outlet was very important.

Some of my fears were: How would I respond to people’s questions about my identity changing? What if I wasn’t as attracted to him once he started appearing more male? What if I wasn’t interested in being married to a man? What if he changed as a person as he transitioned? Many of these questions couldn’t be solved just with introspection or discussion. Some required time and patience, some required trial and error, something I’m not as comfortable with. I had to see how I felt about him in ‘boy mode’.

So, on a vacation to an area where we wouldn’t likely run into people we knew, we planned for him to be my husband for the whole trip. We used male pronouns and tried out a couple different names that had made the short list. As we went along we realized you don’t introduce yourselves to many people when you’re on vacation, or at least not when you’re both introverted and you’re going on a driving and camping trip and the general goal is to stay away from civilization as much as possible. So it wasn’t the best test but it still gave us one more piece of evidence.

The Tipping Point

At some point we sat down and made a list of the stuff he had already tried and the stuff he wanted to try next and we realized that even if he didn’t go any further with exploration or transition he would still be more comfortable living as a man than either a non-binary person or a woman. Finally, I could let my mental image of him solidify.

At the same time, he all of a sudden had an exponential increase in physical dysphoria. He had identified that he was a man and suddenly his body was no longer what he wanted it to be or what other people would expect. This took us both by surprise. I have since learned that this is a very common experience from talking to other trans/NB people. This was extremely difficult for him to deal with and all I could do was support him, distract him, and interact with him in ways that validated his identity and avoided triggering more dysphoria.

The next step was to start telling people. This was a big relief for me because I no longer had to be alone in this. I would be able to share what was happening – take the lid off the boiling pot so to speak. But the thought of him coming out as trans increased my anxiety and fear in new ways – how people would react, would Jake be put in any danger, how he would respond to people who weren’t accepting, whether he would stand up for himself or absorb and internalize the antagonism.

There was nothing for it but to make a plan as best we could and push on.

The story continues in Part 2: Social Transition.

The story concludes in Part 3: Medical and Legal Transition.

My Story So Far

Background

I grew up in a liberal family in downtown Toronto. I was dressed in practical clothes that I could play around in outside – overalls, jeans, shorts and t-shirts, running shoes. I was surrounded by people of all types. I had a couple close family members who were gay and who had partners that were accepted as members of the family.

I am fairly introverted and luckily, so is most of my immediate family so I was raised in an introvert-friendly environment which helped me develop self-confidence. I don’t know whether it is my introversion or just my personality but I tend to figure myself out using introspection rather than trial and error type experiences. This is probably why I was a bit of a late bloomer, sexually speaking.

Sexuality

Throughout junior high and into the beginning of high school, as my teenage hormones started to make themselves known, I realized I was more interested in the girls around me than the boys. This was partly an innate sexual experience but I do remember thinking about what personality traits I liked in other people and discovered that the females around me had more of these traits.

So at some point in grade 9 I told my mom that I knew I liked girls but I wasn’t sure whether or not I liked boys. She asked me a couple of questions to help me figure it out and I came back a couple of weeks later to tell her I didn’t think I liked boys. This is how I came out to my family. I was also out at school around the same time.

The only time I remember being in the closet was when I went to undergrad and wanted to see what my dorm-mates were like before coming out. That lasted all of two weeks. I couldn’t stand it.

As far as I could tell I had three labels to choose from – queer (nice all-encompassing label but misunderstood by older generations that weren’t part of the reclaiming process and lacking the specificity I wanted), gay (general term for homosexual but usually applied to men), or lesbian (women who like women). I never liked the label ‘lesbian’, originally because it’s a noun instead of an adjective. It felt like I was putting myself in a category instead of describing a part of myself. Now, I don’t like the term because it is strongly female gendered both for me and my partner. So I generally used the label ‘gay’ but I was also comfortable with ‘queer’. More on my labels here.

I didn’t start dating anyone until undergrad, mostly because I knew all the queer kids in my high school and wasn’t interested in any of them and didn’t know many people beyond that sphere. I met my now husband in the summer after second year and we were married six years later in a lovely gay wedding on a beach just outside Halifax.

When he transitioned from female to male I had a brief re-look at my sexuality, decided I still liked the label gay because of its gender neutrality, and attempted to field questions from family and well-meaning acquaintances about whether his transition means I’m straight (more on this here). I also like saying I’m Jake-sexual. At this point I am a person who likes people who are similar to me. I am attracted to that sense of same-ness in my relationship and for me, this falls squarely in the homosexual category, regardless of gender.

Gender

My first experience of my gender as anything other than female was about a year after I came out as gay. I started having days where I felt like a guy. I already had mostly tom-boy type clothes, nothing extremely feminine, and didn’t particularly like dresses, skirts, leggings, makeup, or painting my nails. But this was different. I felt like a boy. So I wore my most boy-ish clothes and tried to make sense of what was happening.

There was a guy in my year named Ray who had a locker down the hall from me and on the ‘boy’ days I felt like someone was talking to me when they called his name. It just happened.

After a couple of days up to about a week, I would switch back to feeling like Meaghan, feeling female again, and go back to wearing whatever I wanted. A week later, I’d have another few days of feeling like I was a boy named Ray. I ended up separating my closet out into girlier clothes and boy clothes so I could just go to one side or the other depending on the day.

After about three months of this I was confused, frustrated, annoyed, and had no idea how to explain what I was feeling to myself or anyone else. This was before google, and YouTube, where you can search for ambiguous things and hopefully find someone describing a similar experience. So, March break of that year while we were at the cottage, I took a notebook and found a secluded spot to sit. I wrote a list of personality traits that I felt like described me when I was Meaghan, and a list of personality traits that described me when I was Ray, and I connected the ones that were the same (about half of each list) and decided that these traits were me. I couldn’t have two people, or spirits, or genders fighting each other for supremacy all the time. I needed some semblance of consistency and identity and these traits became the core of that. For many years I forgot about this three-month experience and left my gender alone. For the majority of the time it remained slightly female of center.

When I was in undergrad I was part of the queer group on campus. I met a few people who were gender neutral or questioning whether they were trans, four or five of whom either transitioned during that time or have transitioned since. I was exposed to new language about gender identity and expression and learned the basics of what it meant to transition. The non-binary label was not pervasive in society or even queer communities yet. I felt a vague envy of the people who presented as androgynous and identified as gender neutral or gender-fluid but didn’t delve into it more than that. My presentation became more masculine, or androgynous. This has fondly been termed my ‘butch phase’ by my older sister.

I was thrown into the deep end of the gender identity pool when my husband started questioning whether he might be trans. With my full support, he explored various aspects of his masculinity and eventually came to understand that he was male and began his transition. Throughout this process we learned all about physical and social dysphoria, binders, packers, how to navigate the medical and legal systems for transition, and had nearly daily conversations about gender (and still do).

As he started being read as male we were suddenly seen as a straight couple. This partly bothered me because it took away our visible queer identity but it also put me squarely in the ‘female’ box. This was uncomfortable enough that it was partly what triggered me to revisit my own gender identity. But now, I had the language to understand it and the tools to explore it.

My experience of my gender and process for exploring it are significantly different from what my husband went through but, seeing as we were both assigned female at birth (AFAB), many of the same strategies are useful, not to mention having a partner that intimately understands what I’m going through. So far my exploration process is mostly on a personal level (which I will now be sharing with you) but I haven’t ruled out the possibility of some component of social, medical, or legal transition in the future.

On the Horizon

Fairly recently we have also been trying to conceive. This in itself has been an interesting process for a number of reasons and is the other part of what triggered me to revisit my gender identity (see the Pregnancy and Parenting section for more recent updates). Hopefully, at some point I will be pregnant which I am anticipating will come with its own shift in gender and dysphoria, requiring new management strategies and tools. And then of course, there will eventually be navigating being a gender queer parent. Exciting times ahead!