by Nevo Zisin
It was amazing to be reunited, but even though Mum had been watching my videos, she wasn’t quite prepared for how hairy I would be. I met up with her at the LGBTQIA+ Pride Parade in Jerusalem and the first thing she commented on when she saw me was my facial hair. Then I showed her my stomach and leg hair …
I decided while Mum was in town I should do something for my YouTube channel and conduct an interview between us. I had received a few questions specifically in relation to my mum and our relationship, and I thought it’d be fitting to make a video. We sat on the rooftop of the place where we were staying in Tel Aviv and had a very relaxed conversation about my transition and our relationship. Mum was drinking a coffee and I was reading questions from my phone. Neither of us ever anticipated that the video would get over 3000 views. It was only the two of us, having a chat, with lots of banter and a very real insight into our life together.
I had been feeling more and more comfortable in my body since starting testosterone. My reflection made more sense and I felt like I fit into my skin in a way I had never felt before. One day, my housemates and I were playing around with nail polish and I decided to put some on. It had been years since the last time I had worn it and I wasn’t sure how I would feel. My hands had been a point of dysphoria because they were slender and what I viewed as “feminine”. I tried to keep the nail polish on for a while. When I went to the supermarket I noticed people were staring at me. Since more changes were happening heads had stopped turning every time I walked down the street and I didn’t feel like I was constantly attracting attention. I had become relaxed in my invisibility, so I thought it would bother me that people were staring again, but it didn’t.
Although it had been a nice change not to have people constantly looking at me, I eventually felt strange blending in with everyone else. I never felt “normal” and I wasn’t sure I ever would be or would want to be. I was interested in re-exploring my queer identity and felt safe enough in the way I was being read to push the limits a bit further and begin to present more visibly alternative. I had gotten to the point where I was done being invisible. I’d spent too long pretending I was like everyone else. I started wearing nail polish more consistently and worked to stop hating the things that were feminine about myself, but rather, embrace them.
I have only ever been me. Sometimes, I have been more authentically myself, but I have only ever transitioned from me to a better version of me. I don’t identify with the words “female” or “male”. They are not my words. The space in which I have felt gendered female and transitioned to gendered male has been in the ways people have treated me.
The changes I experienced on testosterone were significant. With every month throughout my year in Israel, I knew I had made the right decision to be on testosterone. Yet I think the biggest change was less the physical attributes and more how the world treated me as a man, compared to as a woman.
It is undeniable that the world is an easier place to live in for men. The only reason anyone would contest that would be a lack of perspective. If you are a person of colour, transgender, from a lower socioeconomic background, or have different physical or mental capabilities, then of course this affects how difficult life and the world is for you. But on the privilege/oppression dynamic between men and women, it is men who hold the power and women who are the marginalised group. Men are afforded more space, more money and more rights.
Privilege is a very difficult thing to see through privileged eyes. I am privileged in many ways and this has allowed me access to countless rights and opportunities. Acknowledging this addresses the fact that there are power imbalances in our society, which require change. One of the first steps in overturning the white heteropatriarchy to which many of us are victim is admitting it exists, and that we are complicit in the oppressions it produces, even if we don’t consciously oppress. Only then can we try to navigate processes to overcome it.
People have argued with me against feminism. They have tried to convince me there are no differences between men and women in our society. While this may be the experience of some, that does not make it the truth. I can give tangible examples of how people’s interactions with me have changed since my transition.
When I identified as a woman, I was often called “sweetheart”, “darling” and “honey”. I never liked those labels. They created a power imbalance where the person calling me that was asserting some kind of dominance over me. I was no one’s “sweetheart”. I think this feeds the societal expectation that women should be polite, quiet and lovely – a sweetheart. I come from a long line of loud and not particularly polite women, and I’m proud of that. Often men would speak over me, interrupt me and say things similar to if not the exact thing I had just said. I rarely walked home alone at night. Even during the day I felt scared passing strange men on the street. I made sure I was always accompanied, that someone always knew where I was, and I would have fake conversations on the phone while walking past people to seem less vulnerable. I had adjusted to being afraid of men. It was just an expected reality.
I felt a large shift in how I was treated when I was read as a man. I was suddenly referred to as “bro”, “mate” and “dude”, which made me feel accepted into some sort of covenant. Those words reflect a certain closeness and level of friendship that “sweetheart” and “honey” do not. I suppose I started to feel a brotherhood with men that I had never felt before. I felt taken more seriously by men. If I said anything about feminism, I felt listened to, compared to being trivialised when I was presenting as a woman. People laughed at my jokes more and I was allowed more space to speak. There was a new energy when walking home at night. I felt safer, and I realised that when I was walking behind women, it was possible I had come to be perceived as a threat myself. I had to be aware of what being read as a man would mean for women. I started crossing the road and avoiding situations that could make a woman feel unsafe. These were not privileges I had anticipated or ever wanted, but I had a new responsibility in recognising how a society that favours men would favour me when read as one of them.
People stopped commenting on my weight and the clothing I wore. Comments became more focused on how strong I was rather than how skinny, or how nice my shirt was. There was less pressure on my appearance because suddenly I was valued for the content of my personality, rather than my physical attributes. I could grow my body hair out without being stared at, wear the same outfit every day without anyone saying anything or even noticing. After my transition, my mum even asserted that now I was the man of the house, I would have to do some heavy lifting. I went from one rigid gender box to another, but this one had more space.
After the final months of my program in Israel and a brief stint in Europe and Thailand, I came home. I hadn’t been in Australia for almost a year and was both ecstatic and petrified to be back. I couldn’t wait to see my friends and family, but I was scared to come home to a world very different from what I had been immersed in. My mum, brother and sister surprised me at the airport. I was overwhelmed and excited to see them. But seeing familiar people after a year apart was strange. Following an extended period of living with gender as an underlying silent current, it was quickly brought to the forefront again. Everyone commented on my facial hair, deep voice and other changes they noticed. I had to deal again with people using the wrong name and pronouns for me, which I hadn’t experienced for a long time. I was asked a lot of questions about my transition. I longed to become invisible again.
I felt quite displaced after I got home. Mum had moved out of our apartment to go travelling and hadn’t found a new place by the time I was back, so we were housesitting. I was suddenly living with a parent again and needing to check in about where I was going and what I was doing. Everything was hauntingly quiet. Living in a house with two people is quite different to a house of sixteen, and I felt lonely. I went to my old family home to visit my dad and his new wife. My dog ran up to me and sniffed me, but it was clear she didn’t know who I was. I looke
d different, smelled different, sounded different. It was a bittersweet moment because it meant that I had changed. I was truly becoming the person I felt inside, yet I worried about being unrecognisable. Sometimes I looked in the mirror and I wasn’t sure I even recognised myself. I didn’t want to lose who I used to be completely.
I had been so preoccupied while overseas that it seemed my body had changed without my mind having time to catch up. I welcomed the changes. Though it was strange to look back on old photos of myself and no longer be sure who I felt more like: the person I was used to being, or this new me. I had to readjust to what I looked like and spend some time getting to know myself as a man, or at least a person with new characteristics and a new identity in society. While everyone was getting to know the person I had become, I was doing the same.
I reunited with close friends that I had been apart from for too long. I spent time coming to terms with the fact that Tia and I would not be rekindling our relationship. It turned out a year away is a year out of touch with reality. When I came back, it hit me hard that we would not be together. While I mourned a loss I hadn’t expected to affect me a year later, Tia had moved on. We eventually reconnected and started a strong friendship. I got a new job, started dating new people and got ready for university. I wrote some music and got back into the swing of things at Habo.
I began reading a lot about the ideas of different relationship structures – polyamory and ethical non-monogamy – and applied these principles to the new relationships I was in. I tried to re-immerse myself in the queer community by making new queer friends and involving myself in queer and intersectional feminist activism. I took the time to settle into life back in Melbourne.
2015 – The Transgender Tipping Point
Not only were my friends and family interested in talking about my transition after being away, but it seemed the whole world had suddenly become interested in talking about transgender people. When I came out in 2013, there was very little media attention around transgender topics. By 2015 it seemed the mainstream was ready to start talking about issues of gender and sexuality more deeply. This was a huge moment for the transgender community. To see my identity at the centre of discourse was incredible, and also scary. This sudden exposure meant that not only was I hearing important conversations, but also more negative comments than ever. The transphobia flung at celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox over social media may not have ever reached them, but it reached me and many other young trans people. It was painful to gain this visibility in transness, because it meant there was also more visibility in transphobia.
A few years prior, while I was still at school, I was included in a few documentaries, and these weren’t screened until 2015. The first was called “Love in Full Colour” by Suzi Taylor. It’s a beautiful film that follows the stories of multiple young queer students and their experiences in school. It also focuses on Minus18’s same-sex and gender diverse formal. The documentary was filmed over two years and I was pleased to see it was to be screened at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival. I was asked to be on a Q&A panel afterwards. I knew it would be confronting to see old footage of myself, but I wasn’t the only one who had transitioned since the film, and I anticipated that I would not be alone in this apprehension.
We sat together and cringed as different versions of ourselves popped onto the big screen. I was nervous about seeing the old me. I was blonde, identifying as a lesbian and talking about how I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Tia. I was different now. I had come a long way, but I still had a lot of respect for the journey I was on at that time.
The host of the Q&A was a journalist with a show on Radio National, and a few months later she asked my mum and me to be interviewed. From there, things began to snowball. I received calls every few weeks for a different interview both in general mainstream media and within the Jewish community. I was excited to be received with such acceptance and interest, but it was quite a shift from not having spoken about these topics for some time. The language surrounding many of the interviews was incorrect and, to an extent, hurtful. I understood that society had a way to go in transgender education before everyone gets it right. I have always seen it as my responsibility to be part of that education. I felt like it was important for me to take those opportunities to both provide insight for people who may not understand, but also to be a role model for young transgender kids who may feel they don’t have a future – like I used to feel.
Mum and I were asked to speak at a Jewish Women’s group. We tried to prepare for the speech but knew our story would have to be told naturally, improvising and interrupting each other. That first speech we did together was probably one of my most meaningful and deeply personal pieces of activism thus far. We were in a room, surrounded by one of the demographics I had struggled with the most in my life – older Jewish women. Mothers of kids who had bullied me, who didn’t make play dates when my parents went away; conservative women with their belief in gender binaries and modesty, sitting down for over an hour and listening to my mum and I talk about our journey through transition. The room was silent. I wasn’t sure if people were bored or engaged.
At the end, there was a huge round of applause and had testosterone not put an end to tears, I probably would have cried. The women stayed back, asking us questions and trying to understand better. Many of them approached me, congratulated me and thanked me for teaching them something they knew very little about. An older woman said she would be proud to have me as her grandson, that I was an incredible young man. I was humbled. Although the speech had taken a lot of emotional labour and at some points felt like relived trauma, I felt re-energised from the reaction I received.
Mum and I went on to do more speeches within the community. I was asked to speak at some Jewish high schools, including an event at my old school where I had been severely bullied. I went to a graduate education class at a university as well as a few public and non-Jewish private secondary schools. I had the opportunity to tell my story to many different people. The struggle always came in knowing when to take a break. I was sometimes invigorated and sometimes incredibly drained. Retelling stories you may wish to forget can be very difficult.
Nevo on a Habonim camp, twenty years old (2016)
Chapter 12: A Path To Unlearning
I was desperate to get chest surgery. While still in Israel I organised an appointment to see a surgeon. A week after I returned home, I had my first consultation. I was overwhelmingly excited. We consulted briefly, he looked at my chest, took some photos and we made a date for surgery. I had to provide a letter from my psychiatrist but the process was relatively simple. Getting the money to pay for surgery, however, was not. I was lucky enough to be born in a country that recognises chest surgery for trans people is not elective, and Medicare covers a certain amount. I was also fortunate my dad had very good private healthcare under which I was still covered. A surgery that could have cost around $9000 would cost me $6000, with an added rebate of about $1500. For someone who had just arrived back from overseas, was struggling to find work and studying full time, $4500 was a lot of money.
I booked my surgery for July and worked hard to save up the money. I was no longer as dysphoric about my chest. I was able to be topless around people without as much discomfort or self-consciousness. I didn’t feel I had to wear my binder around the house as strictly as I once had. I felt a lot better about my body and myself … though I still wanted the surgery. I had always wanted a flat chest. I never connected to or appreciated my breasts; they were always a point of insecurity and discomfort. However, I struggled during this stage. I was slowly detaching from the label of “man” and I had to take a step back to consider the reasons for this surgery. I ended up cancelling my July surgery date. It seemed clearer to me the closer it got that I needed to think more about this irreversible decision. Besides, I definitely wasn’t going to have saved enough money by then.
A few years prior I had set up a crowdfunding site to h
elp raise the money I would need for testosterone. I didn’t like asking for handouts. I worked hard for my money and wanted to pay my own way, but I recognised that it was okay to ask for help. I was dealing with expenses non-trans people would never have to confront. I wasn’t forcing anyone to donate and anything that people were capable of giving would make a huge difference to me. So I set up another crowdfunding site for surgery and received overwhelming support. It was this money that made it possible for me to get the surgery. Although I still paid for the vast majority myself, seeing the Jewish community support me in my struggle was inspiring. I couldn’t be more grateful to those who donated.
I had a lot of discussions and spent a long time thinking. It was important for me to understand that having a flat chest wouldn’t make me “more of a man” or even more masculine. I could identify as a man who had breasts, but I couldn’t see a future in which I wouldn’t bind my chest. The idea of binding for the rest of my life was suffocating and unhealthy. I didn’t want to struggle to breathe any more and I wanted a flat chest. I was working as a swimming teacher and I wanted to be able to lift kids without worrying about my binder ripping open and them freaking out. I wanted to take my shirt off in the change rooms without hiding behind a towel or dashing to the cubicles as I had done as a child.
This was an important surgery. It didn’t have to be because I hated my current chest or even because of gender, it was something I felt would improve my life. So I decided to get the surgery.