Finding Nevo

by Nevo Zisin

  I went away for the weekend to a Hebrew camp organised by my school, in which Israeli leaders came to teach us about topics relating to Israel. I asked one of them what her favourite Hebrew boy’s name was and she said Nevo. And something about it felt right. I also loved that it could be shortened to Nev for those who couldn’t correctly pronounce it. I told my close friends and Tia and I started living more comfortably in myself.

  But my mother didn’t know my name. I left the house and was Nevo, authentically and truthfully, and at home I was Liat, quiet, sad and hidden. Eventually my mum found out my new first name, and I gave her the opportunity to choose my middle name. That is how I became Nevo Amiel Zisin.

  With the tension with my mum over gender issues, I avoided telling my dad I was trans. Similar to when I came out as a lesbian, I offered myself adjustment time between parent coming outs. We were at lunch when I decided to tell him. I could barely hear conversation over the sound of my thumping heart. It was time.

  Dad and I had always had a relationship that might be described more stereotypically as father–son. We used to wrestle, go fishing and fly kites. Those aren’t activities restricted to boys but I told myself becoming his son wouldn’t change our relationship very much. At the end of our meal, I quickly blurted out how I had been feeling. He took a moment, looked at me, and said something along the lines of, “I’d be lying if I said I was completely surprised. I will always support you no matter what. I just want my kids to be happy.” I couldn’t believe the relief that followed. I thought he would understand but I didn’t quite expect the degree.

  It did however become clear that his initial reaction was perhaps more accommodating than he was feeling. He struggled with the new reality, especially in conversations over medical intervention and he often tried to tell me how supportive he was, in a way that felt to me like he was congratulating himself.

  People often tell my parents how incredible they are for supporting me. While this is true, it certainly doesn’t make me feel very good about what a “burden” I have been to my parents and how much they’ve had to “overcome” to accept me. This reinforced the feelings I had that I was consciously bringing this selfish and hugely difficult transition onto my family as a way of being destructive. I had no choice in the matter; this was survival. Believe me, I am grateful for their support, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have expected it.

  Accepting your child for who they are and being there for them, regardless of how difficult it may be, should not be placed on a pedestal.

  Leila, Siobhan, Shannon and Nevo at their Year Twelve formal (2013)

  Chapter 7: The Path To Passing

  When I was doing my research into trans-related issues, I found a lot of discussion around the idea of “passing”. Passing means being read as the gender you identify with. For me, identifying as a man meant being read that way. I studied articles and resources for young trans men about how best to pass as a man and started working hard on changing my behaviour. It was a difficult position, because I struggled with the idea that there were different behavioural standards for men and women, and I didn’t agree with most of the things I was reading. But I was desperate to do anything to alleviate my gender dysphoria, and that meant conforming to behaviours I didn’t necessarily identify with.

  A phenomenon occurred for me during transition, whereby strangers on the street and in stores became more of a comfort than those closest to me. While my family and friends were adjusting to all these changes and dealing with them, I could walk into somewhere like a 7-Eleven and be read as a man. No dramas, no trouble and no emotional labour. I received more validation from people I didn’t know than from those I had lived with my whole life. Of course this makes sense, but it was hard on an emotional level to face the people I love and feel silenced or drained around them. So I took the small comforts I received from strangers and held them closely.

  Step 1: Clothing

  The first step in passing as a man was buying more masculine clothing. I asked my mum if she would come with me, but she wanted nothing to do with it and told me she didn’t know how to shop for boys. I went with Tia and friends. If you google “tips on passing” for transgender men, clothing is one of the first things that comes up. There are recommendations for styles that will take emphasis off hips, thighs and other parts that are considered “womanly”. I changed my style and started wearing more button-up shirts and less tight-fitting clothing. I started hiding parts of my body and, essentially, hiding parts of myself in an effort to be seen as a man.

  This was empowering, because I felt I had control over how I was read and I could be whoever I wanted to be. I felt powerful. In the long-term it didn’t help me feel more connected to myself. I was pretending parts of me didn’t exist. After putting it off for a long time, I went through my clothing and threw out all of the outfits I thought were too feminine. This is one of my biggest regrets. I spent so much time researching what it meant to be a man that I lost sight of what it meant to be me. But this was an important step in my journey of self-discovery. I needed to move on from who I was in order to discover who I could be. I got rid of everything. As I put one item of clothing after another into a bag, I cried. I saw it as a way of leaving my old self behind. And for the first time I felt I might miss her.

  I wish I had known at the time that I could be a man in any shape or size, rather than changing myself to fit some narrow view of what it meant to be a man.

  Step 2: Grooming

  I already had short hair that could be tied into a topknot and the sides of my head were shaved. Then there was facial hair. I tried everything to encourage the hair-growth process before testosterone was an option. I read about how hair growth works and considered many different gimmicks. I started shampooing and conditioning my face because I had read it might help more hair grow. When I realised that didn’t work, I researched ways I could create an illusion of facial hair. There were all sorts of complicated processes that involved cutting off bits of head hair and sticking them to your face using special theatre glue and make-up. It was all too much for me. Instead, I embraced the very light blond hairs I had around my face and started filling them in with mascara to simulate a stubble appearance. I hadn’t interacted with mascara for so long and now suddenly needed to apply it every time I went out. Even though it didn’t necessarily look anything like a beard, it definitely helped my confidence and eased my dysphoria, which was the more important thing for me.

  I began being read as a man more and more. Each time it happened I felt validated and safe. I felt like people were seeing me for who I was. But it also highlighted the times I was read as a woman, and there was a very fine line that decided the direction the interaction would go. Many times someone would call me a man until they looked at me longer, or heard me speak, and then they would apologise and “correct” themselves. It felt like they were giving me a gift I desperately needed and then ripping it away. Every time I was misgendered my heart dropped. I felt heavier with the burden of correcting them, or accepting this assumption and holding it close to how I saw myself. While being gendered correctly was a victory, being seen as a woman was a failure to me, and proved I would never truly be who I believed myself to be.

  Step 3: Packing

  “Packing” refers to putting something in your pants to create a bulge. The whole idea is a little bit strange, because I really don’t want people looking at my crotch – bulge or no bulge. If that’s where someone looks to confirm my “manhood”, then I’m not sure I want much to do with them. But I know there is a confidence that packing brings. I tried to pack with socks. I don’t know if you’ve ever put socks in your pants – it’s not that comfortable.

  As usual, I turned to the internet. I was inundated with packing options and enormous price tags. Eventually, I found a product that was designed as a packer, but was hollow and useable also as a device to allow me to stand and pee as well as one that could be used during sex. It was marketed as a three-in-one
product. I couldn’t believe it existed. It was exactly what I wanted. It was expensive, so I focused my attention on working harder to earn the money for this thing I felt could really help me.

  Step 4: Mannerisms

  There were endless tips online for how to learn mannerisms considered “typical” for men. I tried to change my behaviour. Some of these things involved practising how to lower my voice. One tip suggested singing along with the radio by trying to sing male parts or a lower version of the female parts. I also changed the way I sat. I stopped crossing my legs and instead spread them apart to take up more space.

  Websites told me to build more muscle, to look at my nails by creating a fist and turning it towards me rather than stretching my hands out straight, to walk with a certain confidence and stride, stand with legs spread and hands by my side rather than on my hips (that was something that took longer to adjust to) and many other uncompromising depictions of what it is “men” do. I became hyperaware of my every action in public, scrutinising my mannerisms to ensure they were always that of a man.

  Passing is not simple for everyone. I was incredibly lucky that once I started dressing, acting and behaving in a certain way, I was passing as male most of the time. Once this happened, I wasn’t sure I could continue going to the women’s toilets. Toilets are probably something that people who aren’t trans, gender diverse or questioning never have to think about. I was getting stared at whenever I went into the women’s toilets, but I knew I wasn’t ready for the men’s. I was terrified of being harassed, or beaten up, or worse. For a long time, I stopped peeing in public toilets. I would time my toilet trips to ensure I wouldn’t need to go once I was out of the house. I held my bladder on long days and tried my best to wait until I was home and safe. This became increasingly unrealistic. Where possible, I would go into the accessible toilets, but felt uneasy using them as an able-bodied person. I felt I was occupying a space I wasn’t entitled to. On the very rare occasions I would find a gender-neutral bathroom, I almost cried.

  I was becoming more confident in how often I was passing and took the opportunity to go to the men’s toilets in an empty building when no one else was in there. I rushed in to the “men’s”, heart racing, and quickly locked the cubicle door. I had done it. I sat down, allowed myself to breathe and then peed. I was both terrified and relieved and acutely aware of the smell of urine that seemed absent in most women’s toilets.

  There was a lot on the net about etiquette in male bathrooms: details of which urinal to go to if someone is already peeing; how long one should spend looking in the mirror; and the general atmosphere of the men’s room. I certainly wasn’t used to people farting or burping loudly. I was very nervous about my first trip into a bathroom that actually had men in it. I learned to pee quickly so that I could make these journeys as painless as possible. I would run in, go to a cubicle, pee, quickly wash my hands, barely look at myself in the mirror in case I brought attention to myself and run out. It’s funny how much more comfortable I actually felt in the women’s toilet. I wasn’t anywhere near as afraid of women as I was of men. I remember when I first began using the men’s room and my mum asked me whether it made me feel out of place seeing all of those penises. I had to explain that peeing was more of a priority than staring at strangers’ junk.

  Once I was a full-time male toilets user, another issue announced itself obnoxiously – menstruating in the men’s room. There are no sanitary bins for your pads and tampons in the men’s room. I was afraid to flush my tampons down the toilet because I had been told my whole life not to, and my anxious brain created scenarios where I did, clogged the toilet, flooded the place and then everyone saw my tampon. I looked up tips and tricks and settled on wrapping up my sanitary items in lots of toilet paper and subtly walking out of the cubicle and throwing them in the bin. I had never been this embarrassed about my period before. I was highly aware of the extra attention I could potentially be bringing to myself. The men’s toilets never felt safe for me.

  The whole journey of passing was incredibly important, but I hope that in future we can shift focus away from trans people needing to “pass”. I don’t need to sit, stand, walk and talk a certain way to be believed as a man. The only thing that should influence whether someone sees me as a man or not is how I identify. If that is what I say I am, it’s as simple as that. I shouldn’t need to meet rigid ideas of masculinity.

  I’m not sure why moulding everyone into the same kind of person is so appealing anyway. There are many different ways to perform gender, and we should be open and encouraging of them. Passing served its purpose for me, and was crucial at the time, but it also resulted in a loss of identity. I wasn’t sure any more how much of my behaviour was truly my authentic self and what was created as a means of being seen a certain way. In order to be seen and treated in the way I felt was appropriate, I had to meet many standards set by social norms. But I often found myself wondering, what does it actually mean to be a man? Or a woman? Who gets to decide these criteria? And why are we afraid to embrace notions of “other”?

  Even though passing did a lot for my confidence, there were still moments when dysphoria took over. Tia and I went to a Tegan and Sara concert one night, which was the first time I had been surrounded by lesbians since coming out as a trans man. Tegan and Sara were an important part of being a lesbian for me. I discovered them on Tumblr when I was sixteen and began a lifelong love affair. They’re Canadian twins who both identify as lesbians, and as a young girl-lover I identified strongly with their music. To hear songs that actually reflected the relationships I was in was affirming.

  It should have been an incredible night. However, I felt anxious and paranoid that I would be read as a lesbian. I wish this hadn’t bothered me. I had for so long identified as a lesbian and held that label close to me, but suddenly it had become distressing. I spent the night trying to convince myself that knowing I was a man was enough; I didn’t have to be seen constantly as one to make it true. I ran my fingers along my very minimal facial hair. At that point I had started shaving my face to encourage growth – even though this is a myth – and the feeling of harsh stubble growing back comforted me. This, and feeling my chest with the binder on, became ways of minimising anxiety and tools to deal with my dysphoria. It was this night that made me realise being a trans man might mean I’m no longer a lesbian and that scared me.

  I loved being a lesbian. It was always hard to find a place as a lesbian in the gay community because it was overrun with men. Every time I went to a gay party or club, it was filled with gay men. I’m glad that they have a safe place to express themselves, but I always wondered where mine was. I had spent a long time trying to find my own safe lesbian community and to a certain extent I had managed to do that. But the more male I looked, the less I felt welcome in this community. I suddenly wasn’t sure where I fit in. I knew I wasn’t a straight man. I wasn’t a gay man either, and I didn’t feel like I could be a lesbian any more. I felt a great loss of community. Especially because a lot of trans men I knew merely assimilated into groups of men, something I didn’t really feel comfortable with. I didn’t want to lose the queer community. I was part of a few online groups with trans men but I felt different from them and I wasn’t sure why.

  Nevo and Tia at their Year Twelve formal (2013)

  There was always a complicated dynamic between my siblings and me, and I was terrified to talk to them about my gender. They had been accepting of my sexuality, but it was clear that we come from, and move in, different worlds. My siblings are amazing – they are accomplished, inspiring and beautiful people. I understand now that their reactions did not reflect how much they loved or cared about me. I know they have come to understand things more clearly and I know they did not mean to hurt me. But none of that changes the pain I felt at the time.

  This is hard for me to write. I remember this stage of my life clearly, and all I want to do is forget it.

  After I told my dad I was trans, I didn’t feel r
eady to tell the rest of the family. I explicitly asked him not to tell my siblings as he had with my sexuality. I was exhausted by the depression and anxiety taking over my life. It was a constant battle and I didn’t want to deal with everyone else and their reactions. It’s difficult to comfort people about something you feel you need comforting over. I didn’t have the emotional capacity at that point to support them through this change. I needed to support myself, and I wasn’t doing it very well.

  One evening I was at my dad’s house and I was wearing my binder. My brother noticed my chest was flatter and asked me about it. I didn’t want to go into it, but wasn’t sure how else to explain it. He seemed genuinely worried about me, so I told him the truth.

  Not long after, he invited me to come to his work after school one day to properly talk about my transition. I was anxious to the point of hyperventilating. I mustered up my educational energy and was prepared to answer any and all of the questions he had. I sat down in his office, where his wife was sitting with him. It seemed more that he wanted to speak at me, rather than hear what I had to say. It felt like a job interview, a “prove that you’re really trans” interview. He asked me a lot of questions I couldn’t possibly answer. “How do you know this won’t change?” and “What exactly makes you feel like a man?” and “Why can’t you just be happy being a lesbian?” I didn’t have answers to these questions, only feelings. I acted with a certainty I didn’t have, contradicted myself because I wasn’t sure how to adequately respond, and this was used as evidence against me.