Tag: Identity

My Hero’s Journey, So Far

Here is how my gender journey lines up with the Hero’s Journey. Missed my previous post about Gender Transition as a Hero’s Journey? Check that out first and then come back to read my story.

ORDINARY WORLD

When my husband started being identified as a man by strangers, their ingrained heteronormative views told them that I must be a woman. I started getting treated as more feminine when we were together and this didn’t sit right with me.

I had never been comfortable with the term lesbian, and instead had always called myself gay or queer.

In grade 10 I had a gender fluid experience where I would feel like a boy named Ray for a few days every few weeks, shifting back to feeling like a girl named Meaghan in between.

I grew up in a very liberal and supportive environment but at the inception of my gender journey I had moved away and was working in a more conservative and very hetero- and cis-normative environment.

CALL TO ADVENTURE

Part way through my husband’s transition, I realized that I was definitely experiencing dysphoria as well. We had been attending local PFLaG meetings and had been listening to people describe a range of identities and experiences. Some of these, especially the more androgenous, gender neutral, gender fluid, and nonbinary ones, really resonated with me.

REFUSAL OF THE CALL

However, my husband was still in the middle of navigating how to get top surgery, how to change all his legal documentation, and what to do about continually being misgendered at work, months after coming out. From witnessing his experiences and hearing about similar experiences from the community, I knew that exploring your gender and clarifying for yourself who you are and what you need to feel authentic can make not having those things feel a whole lot worse.

Knowing that my husband still needed a lot of my support and I was not working in an environment that would be condusive to coming out as nonbinary, I decided to put off all gender related self-discovery for the time being.

MEETING THE MENTOR

As soon as my husband felt fairly stable in his transition, he encouraged me to do my own gender exploration work. As a result of his transition, he finally felt ready to be a parent (being able to picture himself as a dad instead of a mom) but also did not want to be the one to be pregnant. This meant that, if possible, I would be the carrying and birthing parent.

There is so much unknown and out of your control in the process of trying to conceive, pregnancy, and birthing. I didn’t want gender related feelings to be one more. So I started to explore what felt not so great, what felt awesome, and how my gender felt on a daily basis.

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD

Turns out I am nonbinary. I discovered that I have both female and male genders which balance out to an overall experience that is a mix of the two or ‘somewhere in the middle’. I discovered that I do have some physical dysphoria during which times I feel better if I wear a binder (if my body can tolerate it). I discovered that I have significant social dysphoria and feel much better when referred to using they/them pronouns and neutral language.

The physical dysphoria I could manage pretty well with some practice. The social dysphoria was a whole other story, especially at work.

TESTS, ALLIES, AND ENEMIES

Partly as a result of constant social dysphoria, I started expriencing periods of burnout that would last 1-2 months and re-occur every 4-6 months.

I had a few new colleagues at work that were queer and super supportive and a few others that I slowly built friendships with and eventually came out to. These allies, especially at work, were a major help on bad dysphoria days.

I had a colleague who was also a friend come out as nonbinary. Unfortunately, the support from the management team was not in place and did not appear when they needed it. There were very few allies around them and they were continually misgendered, had repeated conflicts with coworkers, and ultimately moved to a different job. As an example of what it would be like for me to come out at work, it was a pretty clear one.

Navigating the world of fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum as a nonbinary person is extremely difficult. There were times I found community and resources and felt like I could belong. There were also times that were nauseating and traumatic that I will carry with me for life.

APPROACH TO THE INNERMOST CAVE

While I was on parental leave (for a whole year – go Canada!), and in the middle of a global pandemic, I had minimal interaction with the outside world unless I reached out for it. I had significantly less dysphoria and significantly less burnout, despite being a new parent in a pandemic. This told me that my burnout was indeed primarily dysphoria related and in order to feel more comfortable in my life, and have the emotional reserve I wanted and needed to support my child, I would need to make some changes. I would need to find spaces that I was comfortable being out in. And I would need to be out in as many spaces as I could.

This was especially true around family. I wanted my kid to grow up hearing people refer to me using the correct pronouns. This meant I would first have to explain my identity to everyone my kid would be interacting with regularly (namely family) and train everyone to use my pronouns and preferred language. This would take time and my kid was growing up at a steady pace. I had to come out to family before my kid started understanding what pronouns meant and remembering and repeating phrases from those around them.

THE ORDEAL

The first step I took was to apply to a graduate school program using my preferred name, pronouns, and gender identity. I was open with my supervisor from the beginning and made it clear in my application that my identity and lived experience was a big part of why I wanted to do research work. This meant that in September, when I started school, I had the foundation and backup to expect that everyone refer to me correctly. When they don’t, I have significantly more confidence to correct them than I ever have in other environments.

When my kid was about ten months old, I bit the bullet and came out to my in-laws (who live near us) and my parents (who live across the country but were coming for a month-long visit). I did this via email with the hope of some reply, either of support or questions or concerns that I could respond to. Mostly, there was silence and confusion. I had a brief follow up conversation with my in-laws and, after a period of awkwardnes and tension, saw some awereness and progress. My sister had many follow up conversations with my parents on my behalf but I had minimal expectation that they would be able to/willing to follow through and change their use of pronouns for me during their visit.

However, their visit happened to coincide with work I was doing to develop inclusive training material for a health professions college. They were curious about my work which gave me an opening to talk about many of the issues trans people face in health care settings (mostly related to ignorance and being misgendered). The materials I was developing included a ‘bad’ version of a health care interaction and a ‘good’ version. I sent them both versions and we had a few conversations about why the ‘bad’ version was ‘bad’ and why it was important to interact in ways that were depicted in the ‘good’ version. They were able to grasp these concepts significantly better than the information my sister had attempted to explain, perhaps because it wasn’t directly about them and thus did not make them feel as defensive. They almost immediately started making an effort to use my correct pronouns. While they weren’t great at it, and they will likely back-slide between in-person visits, this was more progress than I expected and I took it as a positive sign.

REWARD

It’s an increadible feeling, being seen. It’s even better when you don’t have to fight for it first. I now have numerous allys who actively step in to do the educating and, if necessary, fighting, on my behalf. I am better at advocating for myself (or getting better at it slowly), and better at identifying situations where having an ally would be useful and then recruiting one.

Confidence, euphoria, authenticity, and visibility are pretty good rewards. Do I wish I didn’t have to fight for them? Sure. But it’s still worth the fight.

THE ROAD BACK

I now spend the majority of my time working in an inclusive environment with my name and pronouns displayed correctly on my zoom screen during ‘meetings’. I have more bandwidth to apply to my work and family. I have not had a period of burnout in over a year despite having a baby during a pandemic. I am able to exercise despite the accompanying dysphoria because, for the majority of the time, I experience more euphoria than dysphoria. I can recover easily from the few days I spend in my previous work environment where I am still not out (and likely will never be).

I am using my unique experiences and perspective to help others make their work more inclusive. I am being recognized for the value of my experiences and identity rather than ‘supported’ or ‘accommodated’.

I am thinking about the future and what I might want for myself in my transition. Are there ‘next steps’? I have a long road to recovery from pregnancy related body changes and have chosen to focus on this prior to pursuing anything further related to transition. Though, likely, at some unknown point in the future, I would like to have some form of top surgery. Will this be my ‘Ressurection’? Who knows! If you stay tuned, you’ll likely find out when I do!

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Gender Transition as a Hero’s Journey

The heroes in our favourite stories all start out as ordinary people. Their journeys often follow a similar pattern as they face trials and tribulations, discover their inner strength, and return triumphant. Joseph Campbell orginally described this story arc using 17 stages (and fairly problematic language). It has since been revised into 12 stages, most recently by Christopher Vogler.

As it turns out, these stages match the emotional stages of a gender transition pretty closely. Which means trans people are all heroes or heroes-in-training!

Here’s how it looks:

There are three parts: Departure (the beginning), Initiation (the middle), and Return (the end). These are broken down into the 12 stages.

The journey starts with the hero in the ordinary world living in a harsh and unforgiving external light in a state of unhappiness, stress, ignorance, and/or confusion.

They move to a new, extraordinary, or special world during the Initiation phase. Here they move through darkness as they struggle to discover their own internal source of light.

They then return to the ordinary world in a state of triumph and rebirth, having learned how to shine brightly from withinwith. They now have a new perspective, skill, or, in our case, identity.

As I was thinking about the steps in the Hero’s Journey and lining them up with the experience of gender transition, it was interesting how easy it was to see. Some of the original wording even makes sense without changing much except the context.

Let’s break it down and look at each of the twelve steps:

Stage 1: Ordinary World

Classic: The hero is uneasy, uncomfortable or unaware. They are living a life at the mercy of their enviornment, heredity, and personal history. The hero feels pulled in different directions and is stressed by the dilemma.

Trans: You are living with confusion and discomfort, just trying to get by with no language or understanding of why you feel different, that there is a way to relieve your distress, or what path your life is going to take.

Stage 2: Call to Adventure

Classic: Something shakes up the situation, either from external pressures or from something rising up from deep within, so the hero must face the beginnings of change.

Trans: You discover that your discomfort might be gender related by meeting a trans person, seeing a trans person represented in media, or learning about language, labels, or experiences that feel right for you.

Stage 3: Refusal of the Call

Classic: The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure, however briefly. This uncertainty may be voiced by someone else rather than the hero themself.

Trans: You have immense fear about the enormity of what this would mean for your life. This fear takes over and you ignore what you have just learned, bury the knowledge deep down, convince yourself that you don’t need to transition or don’t need to think about this. You try as hard as you can to fit in with what is expected of you or numb/ignore this awareness.

Stage 4: Meeting the Mentor

Classic: The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives them training, equipment, or advice that will help on the journey. Or the hero reaches within to a mentor from their past or an internal source of courage and wisdom.

Trans: You meet someone who sees you for who you are and encourages you to delve into yourself. This could be a trans or queer person from the community who is living their best life and provides the experience and support you need, a therapist that starts helping you unpack your gender identity and dysphoria, or a close friend or family member who is no longer willing to let you hide from your truth.

Stage 5: Crossing the Threshold

Classic: The hero commits to leaving the ordinary world and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values.

Trans: You come out to yourself, accepting yourself for who you are, accepting your true authentic gender identity. You are flooded by understanding, fear, excitement, confusion, discomfort, and determination.

Stage 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies

Classic: The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the new, special world.

Trans: You now know why you’ve felt uncomfortable your whole life and being able to point to and name dysphoria makes it so much bigger, louder, and more constant. You search the internet for trans information and find a huge community on social media platforms and many local and national organizations that offer support. At the same time, you start recognizing all the transphobic and cisnormative language around you and feel like no one in your life will accept you for who you are.

Stage 7: Approach to the Innermost Cave

Classic: The hero and newfound allies prepare for the major challenge in the special world.

Trans: You collect information from allies about coming out and navigating transition which helps you clarify for yourself what you want/need. This intensifies the dysphoria which gets harder and harder to deal with, especially when you haven’t told anyone yet. The internal pressure of knowing what you want, who you are, and how you want to be seen builds, pushing against the confines of the closet until…

Stage 8: Ordeal

Classic: The hero enters a central space in the special world and confronts death or faces their greatest fear. Out of this moment of ‘death’ comes a new life.

Trans: You decide that coming out is worth the risk, worth the loss of those that don’t support you, worth the potential harm in order to be who you are. You take the first steps to telling others who you are, breaking down that wall one brick at a time, or by driving a bulldozer straight through it and coming out to everyone at once.

Stage 9: Reward (Seizing the Sword)

Classic: The hero takes possession of the treasure they won by facing death. There may be celebration, but there is also danger of losing the treasure again.

Trans: Some people you come out to start using your correct name and pronouns and you have your first real taste of gender euphoria and what it could feel like to live as the person you are. Not everyone is supportive or consistent and dysphoria continues to fight it’s way in. You fight to hold onto your confidence in who you are and your resolve to seek what you need, using the bursts of gender euphoria as your guiding light.

Stage 10: The Road Back

Classic: The hero is driven to complete the adventure, leaving the special world to be sure the treasure is brought home. Often a chase scene signals the urgency and danger of the mission.

Trans: You learn how to integrate your new trans identity with your life at work, home, and school, with friends and family, and in social activities, hobbies, and sports. You struggle to navigate and access the medical care and legal services you want/need in order to be safe and feel authentic in your body and identity. You are desperate for the changes and progress yet they happen at a maddeningly slow pace.

Stage 11: Resurrection

Classic: The hero is tested once more on the threshold of home. They are pruified by a last sacrifice, another moment of death and rebirth, but on a higher and more complete level. By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.

Trans: You start to recognize the person in the mirror, be recognized correctly by people around you more often than not, and feel more comfortable in your body. You come up to and cross a milestone of significance for you in your transition (starting hormones, top surgery, changing your gender marker, bottom surgery, etc) with all the doubt, fear, excitement, relief, pain, re-learning, and celebrating that comes with it.

Stage 12: Return with the Elixir

Classic: The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed.

Trans: You reach a sense of completion related to your transition or have found confidence and peace in the sense of an ongoing and lifelong gender discovery and evolution. You are living authentically, supporting others who are questioning their gender or know someone who is, expanding your society’s view of gender and authenticity, and maybe even advocating for trans rights. Huzzah!

What an epic journey! Can you see yourself, or the trans person you love, as a hero? What stage of your Hero’s Journey are you at?

I know everyone’s transition is different. Are there stages that line up differently based on your experience?

If you add in specific details that match your own experience, what story does it tell? Who were the mentor, allies, and enemies? What tests did you face? What treasure do you carry with you to this day? What final milestone did you face and overcome during your stage of resurrection?

What was the timeline of each stage, and the journey as a whole? Did it progress in a linear fashion the way it sounds like it would here?

Share your story in the comments or send it to me in an email! If you’re willing to share it, I’ll publish it here as a post! The more stories the better. We need more variety of trans experiences and we need more trans heroes!

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Gender Inclusivity in the Workplace: What it is and How it Feels

For the last five years I have worked in the same environment. During this time, my husband came out as trans and I discovered my identity as a nonbinary person. I recently cut back on my hours at this job and started a different job. These two jobs are wildly different environments, types of work, levels of inclusion, and effects on me as a nonbinary person.

For the last few years, I assumed that any workplace connected to my chosen profession would be the same in terms of it’s effect on me with mild variability in inclusivity. But since switching to the new job, I am realizing how much of the burnout I’ve been experiencing is from inclusion related factors, or the lack of inclusivity at my previous job.

A lot of these factors are within the control of my colleagues and management staff. But some of them are simply related to the nature of the job.

WHAT A NON-INCLUSIVE WORKPLACE FEELS LIKE

When going to work at my job that has minimal inclusion, recognition, or support for my identity as a nonbinary person, I have a nebulous feeling of resistance, anxiety, apprehension, disappointment, and risk. I carry this around with me to varying degrees throughout the whole work day. It is distracting and tiring. I feel like I am hiding, shrinking, holding myself in a small tight ball inside myself for the course of the day.

Every time I have a chance to show a part of this aspect of my identity I have to make a risk vs reward calculation. Every time I encounter something that directly relates to or impacts my gender identity, even if it isn’t directed at me, I have to decide if I’m going to hide or react which is again, a risk vs reward calculation.

This isn’t to say that everything about that work environment is bad and negative. There are lots of things I like about it or else I wouldn’t still be working there. But in order to engage with the things I like about that job, I have to bring the rest of this heaviness along with me.

I am not out to the majority of people in this workplace because it doesn’t feel safe or feasible (more on this below). When I am misgendered, it is primarily out of ignorance and assumption. But, because of many factors, I expect that the majority of people would continue to misgender me even if I did come out. This means that coming out is not worth the effort or risk.

WHAT AN INCLUSIVE WORKPLACE FEELS LIKE

At my new job, I am excited to get to work every day. I can focus and do my work efficiently. At the end of the day/week I am as tired as I would expect given the amount of work I did. I still have mild reluctance to engage with people who are not necessarily trans competent but I know that, should I need to correct them on my name or pronouns, I have the support to do that.

I entered this workplace using my preferred name, pronouns, and gender identity. Not everyone I interact with knows all of that information but I feel safe in providing it openly when I need to. I can share any parts of myself that are relevant without fear and with minimal risk vs reward calculation because the risks are much lower and the reward is more likely to occur.

Colleagues recognize the types of knowledge and expertise that my nonbinary identity affords me and come to me when they have things I can help with.

Overall it feels easy, affirming, and allows me to simply focus on my work.

WORKPLACE FACTORS THAT IMPACT GENDER INCLUSIVITY

Culture

This is the factor that we think about the most in regards to inclusivity and it is definitely the most complex one. You can think of cultural factors in three groups: policies and procedures, competence, and representation.

Policies and Procedures

Is there a policy in place that protects workers based on gender identity? Do their policy documents use gender neutral language? If they have a dress code, is it gender neutral? Do their application forms and other types of documentation such as ID and health insurance forms have inclusive fields (sex, gender, legal gender marker, legal name, preferred name, pronouns, neutral labels, etc)? Is the use of homophobic and transphobic language pervasive, ignored, discouraged, or penalized in the professional work spaces as well as the social spaces in the workplace? Is it commonplace to include pronouns in introductions and email signatures?

Competence

Is the management trained in equity, diversity, and inclusion to the degree they need to be in order to put the policies and procedures into practice? Do they know what to do if an employee or colleague comes out as trans or requests they use different language or pronouns for them? Is there positive, neutral, or negative regard for differences and diversity? Are there ‘safe space’ stickers on office doors? Is the messaging around safe spaces and being inclusive accurate to the level of competence of the staff?

See the end of this post for numerous other posts on this blog related to building basic trans competence.

Representation

Is pride month celebrated? Is diversity represented in the company/business promotional materials, staff support messaging, and among the workforce?

I’m sure there are more but these are the ones that come to mind from my experiences comparing these two work environments.

Physical Environment

This factor is a bit more straightforward but often overlooked by anyone who isn’t negatively affected by it. For gender related inclusivity, some of the questions that come to mind are:

Are there gender neutral/single use bathrooms and changing spaces (if applicable)? For places like gyms, yoga studios, and rehabilitation clinics, are there spaces that aren’t surrounded by mirrors? If asking clients about their personal or health related information, are these meeting spaces private (for both sight and sound)? Is the messaging that is visible at the entrance and throughout the space inclusive and representative of diversity?

Social Demands

This is a factor that is often overlooked and took me a while to recognize as important. My experience with it is more specific to gender identity (though I’m sure it applies to many other minority groups as well).

How many social interactions with strangers or acquaintance level co-workers are required throughout a day of work? This is important because, especially for nonbinary people, strangers, and anyone who we haven’t specifically come out to, will make incorrect assumptions about our gender identity and pronouns. No matter how inclusive the workplace is and how comfortable you are being ‘out’ in that environment, every interaction with a stranger requires coming out again.

Many of the components of the other factors make this significantly less onerous. For example if the company’s messaging is clearly trans inclusive, if employees have pronouns on their ID badges, and if the culture is supportive, affirming, and protective of trans people, I would feel much more comfortable introducing myself to a stranger using my pronouns (they/them). If the other factors are poor in terms of inclusivity, this one gets exponentially worse.

But, if the type of work requires very little interaction with strangers, it is significantly easier to get through the day in a workplace that has mediocre cultural and physical inclusivity.

  • What have your experiences been with gender inclusion in your workplace?
  • Have you ever quit a job due to it’s lack of gender inclusivity? What factors affected you the most?
  • How would you rate your current workplace on it’s gender inclusivity based on the factors above (or others that you’d like to add)?

Leave me a comment below or send me an email! I’d love to hear from you.

RELATED POSTS

Workplace and Coming Out

Surviving in a Non-Inclusive Workplace

Trans Competency

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While You Are Sleeping: A Poem to My Baby

Over the course of the last year, the first year of my child’s life, I have experienced many intense moments. Sometimes these happen over a discrete period of time – a moment, a day, or even a few weeks – and then they pass. Other times, like the one described in this poem, these intense moments happen repeatedly, in small bursts, and are related to a particular activity.

For me, one of these has been the emotions, sense of connection or disconnection, and shifts in identity that occur while I’m watching my baby sleep.

While You Are Sleeping

While you are sleeping, 
I watch.
I listen. 
Your fist clenches, opens, relaxes. 
Your breathing catches, slows, deepens. 
Your face winces, smooths, smiles. 
Peaceful.
Makes me feel peaceful.
Because of our connection.
Makes me aware of our connection.
You are the seed of my soul,
Life of my body. 

While you are sleeping, 
I watch.
I listen.
I can't help it. 
I am drawn to you. 
I feel obsessed.
Your peacefulness is a drug. 
It soothes me. 
Slows time. 
Pause. 
Quiet.

While you are sleeping,
I have given you all you need, 
For now, in this moment.
Satisfaction.
Pride.
Confidence.
No demands, frustration, concern,
To overshadow the good feelings.
The powerful feelings.
The awe.
The wonder.
The love.

While you are sleeping,
All your needs are met.
For now.
Relief.
Not being needed.
My body is my own. 
My time is my own. 
My space is my own. 
Freedom.

While you are sleeping,
All your needs are met.
For now. 
Relief. 
Not being needed.
Confusion.
I am not needed.
I am lost, untethered.
Who am I, when I’m not needed?
What do I do, when I’m not needed?
Lost.

I look at you again, 
While you are sleeping,
Peaceful.
I feel our connection.
You are the seed of my soul,
Life of my body.
I am here to protect you, 
Guide you.
I feel the enormity of the role I now live,
Feel myself filling that space and overflowing,
Expanding to be more than I am. 

While you are sleeping,
I have space, time, energy,
To care for myself. 
To care for our space. 
To rest and recharge, 
So I am ready 
For when you awake.

Over the course of the last year my identity as a human and as a parent has shifted a number of times. My relationship to myself and my child has changed, morphed, adapted. This is reflected in the different experiences that are brought out by the same activity of watching my baby sleep. The collection of experiences I describe in the poem happened over the span of our first year together. They aren’t necessarily presented in chronological order but are more of an overall impression of what I can and have experienced or thought about while watching my baby sleep. I hope some or all of it resonated with you.

If you would like to share your own experiences of what it feels like to watch your baby sleep, or another type of activity that gives you similar types of emotions and experiences, leave a comment below or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you!

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When You Get It Wrong: How to Correct Yourself and Others When it Comes to Trans Identities

WHEN YOU MISGENDER SOMEONE

Even I, a nonbinary person with a trans husband, sometimes get people’s pronouns or preferred language wrong. Our brains are used to holding onto stereotypes and first impressions as shortcuts. It takes conscious effort to change how we perceive people and the language we are using for them. So, when someone you know comes out as trans or nonbinary, or simply asks you not to use certain language when referring to them, you will likely get it wrong at some point.

When you get it wrong, correct yourself and move on.

Do not apologize, especially not repeatedly or profusely. By apologizing, you are putting the focus on you and the mistake you made and forcing the trans person into the socially conventional role of either thanking you for the apology or excusing the original mistake, neither of which is acceptable.

The more you apologize, the more you are emphasizing the mistake in your brain. Repeating what you said with the correct pronouns, name, or other language is necessary to cement the correct version in your brain. The more you de-emphasize the mistake and emphasize the correct version, the faster your brain will adapt and stop making mistakes in the first place.

If someone else corrects you, say ‘thank you’ (not ‘sorry’), repeat it correctly, and move on.

Sometimes we are talking without hearing what we are actually saying and someone else hears the mistake for us. If the person you misgendered doesn’t correct you, it’s not because ‘it’s fine’ or they didn’t notice. Trust me, they did. It’s more likely that they don’t want to draw attention to the mistake, to themselves, or don’t have the energy to correct you and everyone else around them every time they are misgendered.

If the trans person or someone else catches your mistake and corrects you, that’s a good thing! That means that the culture of the place you are in or the relationship you have is one of support, openness, and inclusion. Respond to the mistake in a way that upholds this culture. Thank them for making the effort to bring your mistake to your attention, even though it meant going against social convention and interrupting the conversation. Correct yourself by repeating what you said with the correct language. And then move on by continuing with the conversation.

WHEN SOMEONE ELSE MISGENDERES SOMEONE

If people around you are making mistakes, make sure to correct them if you feel it is safe to do so. It is often easier to hear when other people make mistakes than when we do it ourselves. The more you correct someone else, the more you are emphasizing the correct version to yourself and others. You can correct others by interrupting them and stating the correct pronoun/name/language, by repeating what they said but using the correct pronoun/name/language, or by continuing on with the conversation, ensuring to use the correct pronoun/name/language with added emphasis.

If you know the person they misgendered personally, and especially if that person is often present when this misgendering occurs, consider asking them how they want you to respond in these situations. Depending on the relationships involved, they may prefer you don’t correct certain people in favour of preserving a tenuous connection. Or they may not feel comfortable correcting people themself but would really appreciate if you do it on their behalf. It may depend on who else is around or what context you’re in. Sometimes they don’t know yet and it takes some trial and error. You can always check back with them later to confirm or clarify their preferences.

WHAT IF THE PERSON THEY MISGENDERED WILL NEVER KNOW?

Let’s say you’re at a business meeting where a colleague is referring to a previous client who was trans. Or you’re a health care professional at a complex case discussion and someone brings up a case with a trans patient. Or you’re at a family gathering and your uncle refers to a celebrity who is trans. Now let’s say this colleague or family member uses transphobic or ignorant language when referring to the trans person.

What do you do?

You have three options:

  1. Correct them in the moment
  2. Correct them later, in private
  3. Don’t correct them at all

How you decide is important. If you would pick option 1 if there are trans people present who would be directly affected by their comments, and option 2 or 3 if there were no trans people present at the time, I take issue with this. You are assuming that you would know or be able to tell if there are trans people present. This means you are assuming that either trans people are recognizable by how they look (false), or that, because you are an ally, anyone who is trans or questioning would have told you (also false). It also means that you are assuming that if you don’t know of any trans people in the room, everyone must be cis. You are using cisgender as the baseline until proven otherwise rather than keeping an open mind.

I would prefer if you decide based on safety and energy. If you were to correct them in the moment, would it put you at risk, create a much bigger argument that would lead to significantly more transphobia rather than less, or use more energy than you personally have at this time? If any of these are true for you, then pick option 2 or 3, using the same questions to decide. If none of these are true for you, please choose option 1. You never know who in the room needs to hear the correction, either for themself, someone they love, or someone they will interact with in the near future.

Let’s look at each of these options in more detail.

Option 1: Correct them in the moment

This takes practice. The first few times someone says something transphobic in front of you it will be gone and the conversation will have moved on before your brain clicks in and says hey, that’s not right. If you are socially confident, you might be able to interrupt the conversation to make the correction. If not, it will take some planning and repetition.

Make note of phrases that you’ve encountered and what the correct phrase would be or what assumption needs to be corrected. Plan a one sentence correction that you could say. Also plan an interjection to use to get the attention of the people in the conversation first. There’s no point in making a correction if no one hears it. Something like “Excuse me, I heard you say something that I don’t think is right” works well.

The goal isn’t to create a debate around language use and trans issues. It’s to correct how they are referring to a person or using terminology in this context and continue the conversation. So keep your corrections relevant to the topic at hand, using examples specific to the current conversation.

This option takes significant confidence and energy, even if you aren’t a trans person. But it gets easier with practice. It also takes some quick calculations about what the social environment is, how the people in the room are likely to respond to your correction, and whether you have sufficient social capital to be heard. This is a small scale example of the types of calculations that trans people make all day long. It’s part of what it means to be an ally.

Option 2: Correct them later, in private

If, for whatever reason, option 1 isn’t going to be good for you or potential trans people in the room, or the moment passed and you didn’t recognize it or decide what to do about it until later, option 2 is the next best. You have time to think about what you want to say, gather some resources that might be helpful, and pick an appropriate time when they might be more receptive and/or you feel safer or more capable of making a good impact.

This can be a face to face conversation, a text, a phone call, or an email. Sometimes it’s best to have it in writing, sometimes not. You could also consider having backup included in the conversation if necessary – either someone else who was in the room, a supervisor, or an inclusion and diversity rep if one exists in your setting. You can make sure they go with you for the conversation or add them to the email, even privately if necessary.

The important part is that you take action. If the person who made the mistake is receptive, you will be supporting them in making a positive change and providing useful resources. If they aren’t receptive, you are safer and know that you’ll have to take it to the next level should this issue come up again.

The major drawbacks of this option are that the other people in the room didn’t hear the correction so a) they may not recognize that what was said was wrong, b) they may not know what should have been said instead even if they know it was wrong, and c) any trans, nonbinary, or questioning people in the room don’t know you are an ally. So, if you choose option 2, consider other things you can do to address these aspects as well.

Option 3: Don’t correct them at all

This is the least useful option but is also the safest. Only pick this option if you have no other choice. But, if you do have to pick this option, consider other ways you can get information out to the people around you about common errors or assumptions about trans people and corrections/accurate information. Because if you didn’t correct them, and no one else did, it’s not only the person that made the mistake that needs the information but everyone else who was present and didn’t say anything either.

I hope this helps you feel more prepared and more comfortable with correcting yourself and others instead of letting mistakes slide. Leave a comment below with your experiences of correcting yourself or others and any other tips or suggestions you have.

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From Baby to Toddler: Developmental Thresholds and Complex Emotions

DEVELOPMENTAL THRESHOLDS

Babies are constantly changing. Even before birth, their development during pregnancy is rapid and constant. And yet, we perceive this development as occurring in stages. Some of these stages seem arbitrary – like the trimesters of pregnancy – and some seem practical – like the motor milestones. The change from one stage to the next requires adaptation and often comes with excitement, pride, mourning, and anxiety.

Often, these thresholds feel sudden because we mark them with a discrete event – conception, birth, first time our baby sleeps through the night, first time they eat solid foods, first tooth, first step, first word. But really, these are indicators of progress that is slow and constant.

This focus on a discrete event is where we get into trouble. The more sudden a change from one stage to the next feels, the more trouble we have adapting and the more our emotions around this change can feel overwhelming.

Motor development especially can seem to happen in sudden leaps. If that is our focus, we can fall into the pattern of waiting for the next leap to happen, trying to help our baby get there faster, and even becoming anxious if the space between leaps is taking ‘too long’. But if we pay attention to other areas of development, we see them progressing more quickly during that space between gross motor leaps – fine motor control, perceptual abilities, social interaction, language ability, sleeping skills, and eating skills.

So when we take a holistic global view, development doesn’t happen in chunks with discrete moments marking one section to the next but gradually and globally. We can define our child’s ‘stages’ in whatever way is most meaningful to us. And the thresholds between stages are more like the changing of seasons than the flip of a switch.

COMPLEX AND CONFLICTING EMOTIONS

Often, thresholds or transitions from one stage to the next cause lots of complex and conflicting emotions. We are excited to see our baby learn new things and delight in their excitement and wonder (such as learning how to turn pages in a book). We are proud of how far they’ve come and how our bond with them is manifesting. But we also mourn the loss of the things we enjoyed about the previous stage that we will never get back (such as being able to cuddle and read a book without them grabbing it, chewing it, or tearing it). And we can feel anxious about adapting to, managing, or guiding them through the next stage of development (such as how to stop them from damaging books while still encouraging their interest in them and promoting literacy).

Sometimes, the mourning especially feels big and overwhelming to the point that you wonder if there’s something wrong with you (such as yearning for the days when your baby was soft and tiny and squishy and stayed where you put them). In these moments, I have tried to identify what it was about the previous stage that I feel I am losing and look for how that same experience or form of connection is showing up in my baby’s new way of being or interacting (such as encouraging my baby to come to me when they need me or getting down on the floor to play with them on their level).

As with all endings of one stage and beginnings of the next, the closer you look at them and pay attention to the details of the experience, the more they seem to overlap. The ‘moment’ when one thing ends and another begins starts to look more like a process. This zooming in helps me smooth out the emotional experience as well.

It means I am not mourning everything at once but in small pieces as the changes occur. I can then more easily stay focused on the exciting new aspects of my baby’s development and our life together. I can be proud of the small victories as well as the big ones.

I can also see the smaller pieces of the change as they occur and adapt in real time instead of feeling like something has suddenly shifted that I wasn’t ready for. In this way, I avoid a lot of the anxiety that comes from a sudden loss of feeling competent, a loss of control, and the feeling of my baby growing up too fast for me to keep up. There will definitely be times when things do shift suddenly – an illness or injury for example. And maybe I will have to learn a completely different way of dealing with those. But for the more predictable shifts that happen as my baby grows into a toddler, I have found this ‘focus on the details’ approach to work well.

WHEN DOES MY BABY BECOME A TODDLER?

The standardized moment when a baby becomes a toddler is their first birthday. This is an example of an arbitrary and sudden way to mark this threshold. For us, this time corresponds with the end of my parental leave and the start of daycare. Their first birthday is also the first anniversary of their birth and all the emotional memories that come with that. We are also in the process of weaning bottle feeding and our baby is rapidly working their way to taking their first steps.

These related yet varied developmental and life changes all feel like part of the process of my baby becoming a toddler. So while their first birthday may be the definitive moment that the label flips over, the emotional processing of this developmental change incorporates so much more.

PROCESSING THE THRESHOLD FROM BABY TO TODDLER

The threshold between baby and toddler isn’t the first time in parenting that I’ve experienced complex and conflicting emotions, and it definitely won’t be the last, but it feels particularly big.

Some of the changes around this threshold involve the ending of something that has been a constant for us since their birth a year ago or very close thereafter (bottle feeding, parental leave and full time caregiving). These aspects have been core elements that defined our existence up until now. Progressing past them to move on to the next phase feels like we’re giving up parts of what defines us as a family. Or what has defined our experience as a family up until now.

The end of parental leave is like pushing our way out of our family cocoon (reinforced by the pandemic-induced isolation) and re-entering the world, now as a family of three. It feels vulnerable and shaky. It feels like there will be monumental distance between us after spending almost every day together.

Their first birthday is an opportunity to reflect on all our memories and experiences, growth and change from this first year. It will also bring back a lot of emotional memories from our experiences of labour, birth, and immediate postpartum.

The end of bottle feeding feels like the end of early morning cuddles and a clear step from the baby-drinking-from-a-baby-bottle phase into the toddler-drinking-from-their-own-cup phase.

There is so much development in so many different areas around this time but the one that gets the most attention is walking. A baby’s first steps are often much celebrated and, emotionally, mark the shift into toddlerhood. The name ‘toddler’ even comes from the unsteady, wide based gait quintessential to new, young ambulators. But this ‘milestone’ especially feels like a long slow process as I’ve watched my baby go from sitting to pulling up to stand, crawling, cruising, kneeling, bear-crawling, standing, balancing, reaching, and soon, taking steps, then walking. And even then, it will be a while before they give up crawling altogether.

So overall, there is a shift towards my child becoming more independent, spending more time away from me, and a re-defining of our experience as a family from one that exists in isolation to one that exists integrated with the wider world. Clearly, my baby is not the only one making a shift to a new stage. We all will be shifting together.

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Trans Affirmations

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

My experience is real.
My experience, my identity, and my life have value. 
I deserve to take up space.

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I do not owe anyone an explanation of my gender. 
I have control over my own identity. 
I have a right to any label that feels right for me.

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I do not owe anyone an explanation of my transition process.
There is no 'right way' to be trans.
My transition is my own process and I don't need to compare to anyone else. 
I am proud of who I am and who I am becoming. 

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

While I am trying to avoid dysphoria, I will seek out gender euphoria.
I will seek out what feels right. 
I will do what makes me feel whole. 

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I love my body for being my vessel in this world. 
My body belongs to me and no one else. 
My body is capable of amazing things. 

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I am strong.
I am beautiful.
I am worthy of love.
I am enough.

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I can do this. 
One step at a time. 
I will go at my own pace. 

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

I am allowed to be scared. 
I am allowed to let people assume I am cis.
Doing this does not make me a coward. 
Doing this does not make me less trans. 

I am important. 
My voice matters. 

There is a community out there that understands and supports me.
When I have the energy, I will advocate for myself and my community.
When I do not, I will find ways to protect, care for, and be kind to myself.

Because I am important. 
And my voice matters.

What words do you find affirming? What do you remind yourself of in the face of transphobic politics, family members, and workplaces? Add your words of strength, encouragement, and assurance to mine by leaving a comment.

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My First Parental Celebration Days as a New Parent

I recently celebrated my first Nonbinary Parent’s Day and Mother’s Day as a parent so I thought I’d share what those days felt like for me as a nonbinary person.

Some background:

  • I am more comfortable being called a parent than a mother or a mom
  • I identify with parts of ‘mom culture’ but the parts I don’t identify with feel really wrong to me, mostly for gender related reasons
  • My parental term of choice is ‘Mur’ which is a sounded out version of M and R for Meaghan Ray (my name)
  • The majority of people in my life do not yet know about my chosen parental term or my discomfort with the label of mom or mother

NONBINARY PARENT’S DAY

Nonbinary Parent’s Day fell on April 18 this year. I didn’t even know about it until my husband mentioned it a few days early. We didn’t plan anything special, just went about our normal activities. But the day still felt special. I was more in tune with my connection with my baby, more grateful, thankful, and had an sense of inner peace and oneness.

Only a couple people other than my husband knew to wish me happy Nonbinary Parent’s Day the way you would for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. This wasn’t surprising since I hadn’t even heard about the day until he told me and hadn’t broadcasted it to the world. I did see lots of celebratory photos and posts on social media from other nonbinary parents which gave me a much greater sense of community and connection.

So while celebrating this day felt great personally, it has very little recognition in the wider world as of yet. I’m hoping this will increase in future years. Starting next year, I will be more proactive at letting my friends and family know that this is my preferred parental celebration day.

MOTHER’S DAY

I had no idea how I would feel about celebrating Mother’s Day, or at least being wished a happy Mother’s Day by others. Turns out it was a complicated experience.

I was looking forward to getting to celebrate my first Mother’s Day as a parent alongside celebrating it for my own mom. I was looking forward to the sense of understanding, shared experience, community, and recognition. Turns out that when the title of ‘Mother’ doesn’t sit right, being wished a happy Mother’s Day doesn’t feel great either.

I did some translating self talk every time someone wished me a happy Mother’s Day. Something like – they’re recognizing my new parental role, expressing their understanding of the work that goes into being in the primary parental role that I’m currently in, and I appreciate that. This translation helped a bit but it also took effort.

Every time I was wished a happy Mother’s Day, while I knew it came from a good place, I also knew that it meant that they had overlooked how my gender interacts with my role as a parent. Feeling seen in my new role as a parent and simultaneously invisible in my gender makes for a confusing and isolating experience on a day when I was hoping to feel seen and connected.

A few friends were careful to wish me a happy Parent’s Day or happy Gestational Parent’s Day on Mother’s Day which definitely felt better. These wishes were more personalized and recognized my gender in addition to my parental role but didn’t lead to a feeling of being connected to any community with similar experiences. I let these friends know about Nonbinary Parent’s Day and was wished a happy belated Nonbinary Parent’s Day instead.

For me, celebrating Nonbinary Parent’s Day feels like the right fit. It’ll take a while for my friends and extended family, and especially the wider world, to recognize this annual day but at least we can make a tradition of it in our family of three.

Next year on Mother’s Day, I will try to use a gentle response such as: Thank you, but I celebrate Nonbinary Parent’s Day instead which is the third Sunday in April.

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Trans Wisdom: You Define Your Identity

YOUR IDENTITY IS YOUR OWN

In the first post in the Trans Wisdom series, I talked about how the bodies of trans people don’t determine their gender identities (or any other aspects of their identity) which means that is true for everyone. It is your choice to allow your body to inform your identity in whatever way makes sense to you. You have control over your own identity.

This is not only true for your relationship to your body. This is also true with respect to the roles you identify with in your life, your career and interests, your family history, your culture and race, your sexuality and sexual orientation, and your personal experiences. No matter how other people use this information to label you, interact with you, or connect with you, YOU are the only one who gets to decide how these inform who you are.

You also get to decide the balance of the different aspects of your identity. Is your role in your family the most important part of your identity, followed by your career, and then your culture and race? Or is how your career impacts who you are most important, followed by your personal experiences, and then your gender? Identity is like a 3D pie chart with blurry, overlapping lines between the sections and some sections that influence the whole thing but are only forefront a small part of the time.

Or maybe it’s more like a cloud, more ephemeral, and shifting over time.

IDENTITY CHANGES OVER TIME

Trans people go through a huge identity shift when they discover that their discomfort in their life has been related to gender. This can happen at any age but the longer they have lived as their gender they were assigned at birth, the larger the shift. Regardless, looking back over their life, they can say that their identity clearly has changed over time. In fact, this is true for most queer people.

Funnily enough, this is actually true for everyone. Anyone who has become a parent has experienced this shift in identity. Anyone who has changed careers, entered a committed relationship, experienced a health crisis, or lived through a global pandemic has experienced a shift in identity. Even something as simple as turning 18, learning how to drive, entering high school, or moving away from home cause a shift in our identity. We may not be aware of it at the time or feel like we have control over it but our identities shift as we adapt to new life circumstances.

You may not being able control the circumstances that influence these changes in your identity but you do have control over HOW your identity changes. How quickly do you adapt to the new circumstance? Is it a positive change or a negative one? Does it eclipse all other aspects of your identity, even for a short time, or simply become another component of who you are? Is this an aspect of yourself you will keep hidden or share openly with others?

If our identities change over time, why are sexual orientation and gender seen as constants? They are simply components of our identities and therefore are influenced by our experiences and circumstances just like anything else. I think everyone should feel free to explore their sexuality and gender at any point in their life and as often as they choose. Even if you conclude that nothing has changed, you may decide you feel like expressing some aspect of yourself differently or that it influences other aspects of your identity in a new way.

IDENTITIES ARE COMPLEX AND INTERSECTIONAL

As you can see from what I’ve said so far, and probably know from personal experience, no one is made up of only one component of their identity. And no aspect of our identities are the same for any two people because they are all influenced by every other part of who we are.

When someone is coming out as trans, they get the same reactions and get asked the same questions over and over. Because, historically, trans people have had to hide their identities and mainstream society is only just now becoming aware of this identity and experience, the story that gets told about trans people is a monolith. Anyone who doesn’t fit that story is either not recognized as being trans or labeled as an exception.

If every aspect of identity is variable between individuals, why do we assume that someone’s experience is the same as our own or the same as that one other person we know with that identity when they identify in a similar way? If our identities are complex and intersectional, so are everyone else’s. It takes time, patience, and open communication to learn where our experiences overlap and where they differ. Being open to this type of communication allows for authentic bonding over the similarities and learning and growing from the differences.

IDENTITIES ARE NOT CATEGORIES

In some settings (such as medical and legal forms) we have to check off boxes that relate to our identities. These boxes are for the sake of information gathering, not to be used as a guideline of how to interact with someone.

As a medical professional who has to read patients’ charts and then interact with those individuals, the image you get of a person from their chart is never accurate. It tells you nothing about their personality, attitudes, or cultural experiences. And a medical chart holds a ton of information. So why do we feel like we can judge someone based on their appearance? Or the awareness that they identify as trans? Or their identity as a man or woman?

No identity is a monolith. No identity should be treated as a category or a box. Masculinity, femininity, and androgyny belong to everyone. No two people’s experiences of parenthood are the same (though some will have more in common than others).

Which aspects of your identity do you feel confined by? Do you experience that aspect of your identity a certain way because that is the narrative you have always been told about how you should feel, act, or look? Can you find examples of people that share that same identity but embody or express it in a different way?

Your identity is your own. You get to determine what parts of your life inform your identity. You get to determine the balance of the different aspects of your identity. Your identity shifts over time. You can let those shifts happen based on outside influences, experiences, and circumstances, or be take an active role in deciding how those outside influences with impact your identity. Every aspect of your identity is influenced by all the others creating a complex, intersectional, and unique individual. If this is true for you, it is true for everyone else. No aspect of identity should be considered a monolith, a category, or independent of any other aspect.

Just for fun, try writing a list of the different components of your identity. Now re-order the list from most important to least important (or strongest influence on how you view yourself to least influence on how you view yourself). Are there other components that you remember used to be part of your identity but no longer are? Are there components that you anticipate will be part of your identity in the near future? Try this activity again in a couple weeks, or a month. Has the list or the order changed?

Leave a comment with the results of this activity! I’d love to hear what you learned.

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Trans Wisdom: Our Bodies Don’t Define Us

YOUR BODY DOESN’T DETERMINE YOUR GENDER. YOU DO.

Trans people learn very quickly that their body and all the assumptions that go along with it don’t define their gender. Whether the body they were born into feels wrong or not, their identity is separate.

If this is true for trans people, it is also true for cis people. Maybe you feel at home in your body and the gender you were assigned at birth. But is your experience of your gender based on your genitals? Is it solely made up of your secondary sex characteristics? Or is it more than that? Do you have an innate sense of being the gender you are? What aspects of your personality, behaviours, and presentation are related to your gender?

Once you learn how to think of your gender as more than various parts of your body, you also learn that you can choose how to express your gender. Do you wear the clothes you wear because they align with your gender and make you feel good or because it’s what society expects you to wear? Have you ever tried wearing clothes or jewelry that you think will make you uncomfortable? You never know! You might discover something you like even better than your original presentation.

YOUR BODY DOESN’T DETERMINE YOUR WORTH.

It goes beyond gender. Our bodies also don’t determine our worth. Regardless of your body type, ability, size, colour, or sex, we are all worthy of love and care. Society may not treat us that way, but we have to treat ourselves that way.

Trans people learn this throughout the difficult journey to self-acceptance. As we learn who we are and take steps to communicate it to others, we are faced with uncertainty, confusion, anger, fear, and even violence which are really easy to internalize. If we take steps to change our bodies to align more with our sense of who we are, we learn that though the change may alleviate some dysphoria and make it more comfortable to go about our daily lives, it does not automatically result in an increased sense of self-worth. This is something we have to consciously work on at every stage of our journey (and throughout life).

YOUR ABILITY TO REPRODUCE DOESN’T DEFINE YOUR GENDER.

The reproductive organs you possess and whether or not you are able to reproduce has no bearing on your gender. It may be a component of yourself and your experience that you choose to include as part of your gender identity but this does not mean that is true for everyone with a similar experience.

Trans men and nonbinary people who have uteruses can get pregnant and successfully birth a baby. Cis women who have had hysterectomies are no less women. Trans women who produce sperm are no less women. Cis men who do not produce sperm are no less men.

Your gender (and your worth) is not defined by the ways in which you can or cannot reproduce.

SOCIETY’S PERCEPTIONS DON’T HAVE TO BE YOUR PERCEPTIONS.

Trans people are assigned a gender by almost everyone they encounter. Often, this assumption is either entirely or partially incorrect. Having a trans identity is also perceived as wrong, unheard of, a burden, or inappropriately fascinating. It takes work to unlearn these perceptions and hold onto our own self-concept, even when we feel like no one else around us sees us for who we are.

Are you judged by society in a particular way because of an aspect of your body or appearance? How society perceives you does not have to dictate how you perceive yourself. It’s often hard to identify which perceptions we have internalized and constant work to fight against that perception internally but it is worth it.

SURGERY IS PART OF A PROCESS, NOT AN END GOAL.

Many trans people undergo one or more surgeries in their effort to align their body with their identity. Often, when they are looking forward to the upcoming surgery, they have the perception that once they have the surgery, everything will be better. They fall into a mode of waiting for the surgery and build high expectations of the positive impact of the results.

No matter what the surgery is, it is always a difficult experience. There is pain and healing. There are often activity restrictions and limitations, sometimes for months afterwards. Sometimes there are complications. And regardless of the outcome, it does not automatically change their self worth or self confidence. If they are lucky, there is a decrease in dysphoria but often, over time, the dysphoria will shift to another area of their body, or they will become more aware of the dysphoria once the other source has been relieved.

Trans people learn the hard way that surgery is part of the process, not an end goal. Whether you are undergoing surgery for cancer treatment, weight loss, pain relief, or transition, it is never the only component of the process and often isn’t even the component that makes the biggest difference. If there is something going on in your life that is big enough to require surgery, it is definitely big enough to have emotional components and other milestones that come before and after surgery. Try to keep it all in perspective while you work towards or recover from surgery. Don’t leave ‘the rest’, whatever that is, until after surgery. Work on everything else while you wait for surgery. You’ll be glad you did.

What are your experiences around how your body does or does not inform your gender or other aspects of your identity? What societal perceptions have you worked hard to unlearn? Leave a comment below with your story!

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