Transgender Day of Visibility AMA — Part 2/3

Hey all! This is part 2 of 3 answering the questions from my Trans Day of Visibility AMA. You can find Part 1 here, and Part 3 and the Addendum.

Belonging

Are there times that you don’t feel othered? That you forget your trans identity and just feel like a person? What can we as friends and allies do to help you not feel othered? Do you want to not feel othered? When and when not?

Yeah, there are definitely times that I don’t feel othered. These occur mostly one-on-one, in small groups, in intimate groups, and in queer groups. I’d say I’m lucky, but it was cultivated, to have lots of situations out in Boston and here in the Bay where I feel just… as though my transness is as present as the brownness of my hair. I worried a lot that it would be a big deal to be someone’s “trans friend.” But nah. I’m just me, and happen to be trans. Big shoutout to my UBP crew, my WildFire crew, the Vuvuzela’s Children crew, the goth scene in Boston, and more. I love how easy it is to be with all y’all. It’s just not a factor in most of my relationships.

To help me not feel othered, just… be my friend. That’s pretty much it. I don’t ever want to feel othered — but sometimes I do want my difference of experience to be acknowledged. Especially when we’re discussing road trips. Please offer to go to the bathroom with me in rural areas.

What kinds of queer and trans character representation would you like to see more of in the media (specifically in narrative fiction)? For example, do you enjoy when a character is incidentally queer or trans (where their story doesn’t revolve around their gender identity or sexuality) or do you like to see a character’s gender identity experience more featured as a plot focus?

There’s a middle ground here, and the phrase I use to describe it is “informed by, but not defined by,” a trait. This is a good rule of thumb whether you’re talking about gender, race, sexuality, disability, or more. To try to feature a trans person without ever acknowledging that they’re trans or that they may have specific experiences erases those experiences. As an easy example, we’d never feature a Deaf person and then have dialogue advance as though they can hear. Even in a fictional world where transness isn’t stigmatized, what might some of the effects on their backstory be? For example, I’m an Eagle Scout — that has an effect on my leadership experience and my ethical outlook. There’s a place for having identity featured as a plot focus, but the times we’ll really move forward are when we allow people to just be who they are.

A philosophical question. What is your “utopia”? Is the utopia of society leading us to no gender or to continuing to have different flavors of gender?

Emphatically yes. To explain further — gender is bullshit. It’s a social construct. And… so is money. Money’s also bullshit. But you have to pay rent. Sometimes people think that when we say something is a social construct, that we mean it’s “not real.” But what it actually means is that we made it, and we can re-make it. So my utopia involves gender being so flexible that people get to pick and choose whatever they want in terms of behaviors to match what they’re feeling inside. Which might wind up being no gender. But my money’s on an every-shifting borderless set of multiple spectra.

Sex/Genitals/Biology

Do hormone treatments help trans women and men have their desired bodily and facial hair grow according to gender norms? I know that what “looks like a woman” is subjective, but I wonder about the experience of being a woman and dealing with a lot of body hair. It sounds hard.

This is really two questions at once.

First, the general rule is that puberty is a one-way street. You can’t (generally) undo hormonally-induced pubescent changes with more hormones (what I call “second puberty”). For instance, hormones can grow breasts, they can’t ungrow them. Hormones can deepen a voice, but can’t undeepen it. That means you can’t ungrow the beard once you’ve got it. Which is, for most trans women, a bit of a bummer. And for most trans men, growing that facial hair is exciting. That said, personally, my body hair thinned out a lot though when I transitioned. Thank the gods. When my (identical twin) brother and I get together, we can put our arms against each other and the difference is stark.

Fun fact though: I now poop rose petals. Thanks, estrogen!

Second question: it sucks. Really hard. I’ve gone through a lot of laser hair removal and electrolysis to get rid of most of my beard, because I’m anxious about whether people will perceive me as a woman when I go out. But I still shave every day, even though when I go three days without, people don’t notice. But I notice.

It’s a shame, too. It was a damn good, very sharp beard. Did I mention I’m proud of the boy drag I did?

A person’s genitals ought only to matter in medical or sexual situations. If a person has limits on the type of genitals they want to be sexual with, what do you think would be the best way to broach that subject with a prospective partner? Do you think this should be normalized across all people (cis/trans independent) as something talked about prior to sexual intimacy?

This is… sticky. Search the internet, and you will find plenty of cisgender (usually straight) people arguing that having restrictions on which genitals they like to be involved with is perfectly normal. Search the internet, and you’ll find plenty of advocates that this is bullshit transphobia.

I personally have mixed thoughts. I think that if people have those restrictions, then they should examine them and figure out where it’s coming from. And if it comes from a place of trauma, then definitely you need to respect your own trauma in terms of who you have sex with. And I think this comes from the fact that, well… to not mince words, a lot of queer folks think that straight folk are mostly having super boring sex. Like, super boring. Why do I bring that up? Because straight folk are sold a very straightforward narrative of sex. Penis meets vagina, friction happens, the end. Queer folk get creative by necessity. We don’t have your scripts. And things aren’t straightforward. The number of ways that people figure out how to have sex is nearly infinite. If people have limits on which genitals they play with, I encourage them to get creative in all the various ways of having fun with folks.

And yes, we should absolutely normalize talking with folk. Most of the time, if you’re getting frisky and want to know, you can usually ask right before the reveal, if you have a question about it. If you’re not getting frisky though, you’re just being nosy — don’t ask.

How do you navigate anatomical expectations in relationships that are becoming sexual or are likely to become sexual in the future?

With all of the above having been said, I navigate it by almost exclusively dating bi/pansexual people. Dating an exclusively gay woman wouldn’t be my top choice, but that’s because of my own anxieties. Dating bi/pan folks means that I don’t have to worry about part of my brain going “are they secretly turned off by my anatomy?”

How does sex change after [bottom] surgery? Is it still possible to enjoy it and/or orgasm?

Question 1: read between the lines above, and you may have guessed that… I don’t know? Fun fact: only about a third of trans women and even fewer trans men get bottom (genital) surgery. This could be for a number of reasons. First, not all trans people experience dysphoria based on their plumbing. Second, many might be financially unable to receive surgery — whether for the cost of the surgery itself, or from the time off from work. Third, many might experience dysphoria, but don’t want surgery for other reasons. Fourth, many may have health complications (age, hemophilia, whatever it is) that prevent them from being able to receive bottom surgery. That’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s safe to say — genitals do not make the trans person.

Question 2: From second-hand information, those are each an emphatic “YES.”