Day 16: Be a voice of encouragement. Let’s take a moment to encourage people who are suffering in the closet to take steps to improve their life. Fight fear with love!
Did you know that you can transition just because you want to? It doesn’t have to be a life-or-death need, or something that you’ve been certain of since you were five, or even something you’re certain of now. It doesn’t have to be a profound statement about your innermost self, or 100% binary all the steps, or something pleasing to other people. If you think that you would like to transition, that you would prefer your life and your body to be that way rather than this way, you can do it. Wanting this is a good enough reason to have it. I say this in a country with a lot of gatekeeping, not an informed-consent utopia, because a) people who are nonbinary or only want certain parts of transition or aren’t teens or aren’t straight and gender-conforming can and do transition even through these slow, old-fashioned state systems, and b) you can lie to gatekeepers, it’s not even uncommon, it’s not even really lying: you’re presenting them with the parts of the truth that are relevant, and happening to not mention things that aren’t their business or would only muddy the waters. Don’t lie to your endocrinologist, though, they’re usually asking the intrusive questions for legitimate reasons and by the time you see them, you’re usually past the gatekeeping steps. You can always ask for the rationale behind a question. You are not obligated to get any particular surgery, many people don’t do a big coming out to everyone in their lives, if you’re terrified of gaining body hair or losing head hair you can take finasteride (research the risks and effects carefully), there’s a growing body of evidence that HRT does not reliably make people infertile.
One of the great advantages of the internet is the ability to connect with other trans people anonymously, or even just lurk in spaces where trans people talk with each other. You can get a lot of information about what transition involves, common issues and their solutions, how people choose their steps and how they feel about them. Over time, you can get an idea of how you feel about these prospects. We’ve all been in the closet at one point in our lives, we’ve all spent time agonising over whether and how to transition, most people want to offer you support.
It is very frustrating that the early parts of transition are the most hassle. Coming out, changing your name, getting new ID documents, getting new clothes, figuring out how to present in a different way, especially when you’re unlikely to pass, is all genuinely difficult. Finding it difficult is not a sign that you can’t handle transition. This is a temporary stage. It all gets easier. Many trans people find that the people in their lives react much better than they feared: no-one really wants conflict.
Day 17: Talk with pride. Why are you proud to be trans? How do you show the world your pride?
It’s really more of a neutral fact about my life. I’m not ashamed, but it’s personal, therefore not many people’s business. I’m certainly happy being trans, I think if I hadn’t come to understand myself this way and transitioned I would just have become more and more resentful, miserable and angry. I’m happy that I was able to access transition. I’m happy to show off my top surgery results to other trans mascs, online and in person, and happy to provide a possibility model for other trans people, living my life. But when I go to Pride, it’s because I’m queer, specifically bisexual. That’s the flag I carry, though I consider the rainbow to apply to all of the LGBTQ community, and I fit pretty squarely into the bear subculture stereotype these days, which is nice, so could probably opt into their section too. I joke that I’m one of the trans people who have collected all the letters: at various points in my life, I have identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer. I do like wearing obnoxiously gay shorts, tanktops, haircuts, but subtly: about presentation, not about flag colours. Damn, I miss Pride now. There's something special about being in queer-normative spaces.
Day 18: Talk about privilege. What privileges do you benefit from? What special challenges do you struggle against? Has your experience of privilege changed as a result of your being trans or transitioning?
I benefit from a lot of privileges. I’m white, I’m middle-class from a well-off area in a well-off country, English is my first language, I’m university-educated and my schooling was also quite good. I’m financially comfortable even though I’m not working, because of my relationship, and my family has been financially comfortable for almost all my life, including being able to financially support me even as an adult when I needed it, and helping me build up savings with a combination of gifted money and advice/access. I did most of my transition in a country where it is very easy indeed to legally change ones name and gender marker, and where almost all medical transition steps are available for free if you go through the NHS. It was legal for me to access private gender clinics, and I had the financial resources to do so. When I moved to a country with more gatekeeping, my GP was sympathetic and the clinic psychologist knew my diagnosing doctor personally. I live and have lived in countries where transphobia is largely considered impolite and it is largely considered ok to be trans. I’m binary, I appear able-bodied (though I do have an invisible disability in the form of chronic illness, which is currently well controlled by medication, though it has been very, very dangerous in the past), I can mask my autism well enough to be unremarkable (and never got a formal diagnosis I’d have to disclose, which is a double edged sword: I wish I’d had support as a child, for example), I’m pretty good at constructing a persuasive argument, at interpreting bureaucratic language, at keeping track of paperwork. I pass. My family, partner, and friends have been supportive of my transition. I had the financial resources to get top surgery privately, and the social bonds that people helped me recover. I had hysto in a country where it’s free (or, well, 100kr per day that you stay in hospital, which is pretty cheap). Almost all doctors and nurses speak English, as well as most other people I encounter in Sweden. Having experience of formal education helped me pass Swedish language exams more quickly.
However, being seen as a man was still a massive change. I no longer experience street harassment. I very rarely experience unwanted flirting, condescension, dismissal, subtle threat. My appearance is not scrutinised to the same degree. I went from “very overweight, we don’t make those clothes” to “kinda soft average, medium” without changing weight at all. People listen to me. People speak to me as an equal. I can just exist.
Nevertheless, I am disabled. I am queer, and in a queer relationship. I am autistic .I am unemployed with little work history and not enough savings to live on for long. I may never be able to afford lower surgery. Doctors are sometimes suspicious of people with multiple diagnoses. I am an immigrant who will likely be an immigrant forever, who will probably never again live in my home country, never again be unconditionally part of the society even if I gain citizenship, forever go through life imperfectly speaking a second language I fear I may never be fluent in. I am precariously dependent on one romantic relationship, which if it ends, ends my right of residence in this country. My male privilege is also conditional: if someone hostile finds out that I am trans, I am subject to all the risks that attend women plus all the risks that attend trans people. Even neutral people may stop considering me a man, with the associated loss of privilege and risk of spreading the word to hostile people. There are many countries and areas of the world that I will never be able to visit, either because my presence is actually illegal there or just because it’s very unsafe indeed.
Day 19: Talk about the future. How are you planning to spend TDOV? How about the rest of the year? Do you have long term plans?
I don’t have any plans for TDOV. I’ll probably wish trans friends a happy one. I do have long-term trans-relevant plans: my genderqueer partner and I are planning to get married (and invite our trans social circle, among others), and once I get EU citizenship we’re planning to move country, to be closer to our friends (some of whom are trans), other members of our polycule (some of whom are trans), and a more vibrant queer social scene (among other advantages, like a reasonable response to the pandemic). It seems like every queer person tries to move to Berlin at some point in their lives and this is ours. We’re really lonely in Sweden. For this year, everything’s vague because of the pandemic, but I’m hoping to get to visit friends a couple of times, family too, try to meet up with local people a bit more, and get revisions for the minor dog-ears at the sides of my chest scars. If this is the last year we live here, too, I want to grow a really nice balcony garden and travel around the countryside a bit, looking at art and nature.
Day 20: Talk about deadnaming and misgendering. Has this ever happened to you? How did you deal with it? How did it affect you?
One of the great things about moving abroad immediately after changing my ID documents is that no-one in this country (apart from my partner) knows what my old name used to be, and there's no record of me as female here at all. One of the great things about being four years into transition is that everyone and everything important has been informed of my new details, therefore anything using the old ones can be deprioritised and discarded as unimportant. Another is that I have a lot of emotional distance from my old name. I don't have an instinctive response to it anymore, and sometimes struggle to remember what it was.
That being said, I do recall a few instances of misgendering: Very early in transition, one friend kept using my old name and pronouns, saying that it was unconscious slips. I told him it was unacceptable, it had been months and everyone else we knew including both his cohabiting partners used my new details consistently. I suspect he'd been attracted to me and wanted to continue seeing me as female. Some years later, while updating my old school exam certificates, a customer service representative made a point of addressing me by the details he knew full well were being removed from the records. I was furious, escalated to a supervisor, and got an apology. Later still, my racist aunt took exception to a very bland social media post expressing my support for the black lives matter moment and dug up my old email address to send racist propaganda articles, then used my old name to demand my mother get me in line. I cut contact with her, and am more pissed off about my family's desire to rugsweep the racism part of the revelation that she's a horrible person than the transphobia, which is just kinda spiteful and pathetic. There was also an instance of my bank having accidentally recorded a Mx title for me that I was surprised to be annoyed by: I think I perceived it as their not taking my transition seriously, going for hedging compromises instead of actually changing my details in their system. Generally I feel fairly secure in my privileges to allow me to demand better when misgendered. It makes me feel vulnerable and sick and that turns into anger, so at least I try to use it to insist they correct the problem.
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