For most of us it takes years. I started taking testosterone in December of 2013. In the first three months, my voice dropped, sounding like I was a woman with a cold. It would take until close to 2015 until I would be reliably identified as male by strangers, and would take until July 2016 for me to even grow more than a few wisps of facial hair.
Despite all the hand wringing about transgender people making snap decisions, it’s a fairly long process just to go through the medical side of things. That doesn’t include if you want to undergo counseling beforehand.
When I started to medically transition, both Lucky and I were worried about my safety. Inhabiting that middle gender ground draws a lot of unwanted attention. It’s when you are most vulnerable publicly. There are people in this world that will do you harm if your gender doesn’t line up with their expectations.
Often, in the transmasculine community we talk about it in percentages. For instance, as I was job hunting in late 2014, I’d say I was being identified as male about 80% of the time. I’d still get the occasional “Ma’am” thrown at me the rest of the time. I could literally have two people side by side and they would read me as different genders.
It was like being Schrodinger’s gender. You never know if the person you are interacting with sees you as male or female. It’s super hard to tell unless they outright say something. This can be frustrating because you think you are being treated as male, then boom! “Miss?”
My approach was not to force it. I can’t make strangers read me as male. I can’t control how I am perceived by the world at large. I identified as male when asked, but let it go if it wasn’t important. I really had to decide if it was important for the cashier to be corrected. Most of the time, for me, it wasn’t.
The biggest problem with this was bathrooms. If you are read as gender neutral, or gender non-conforming, getting into a bathroom that’s gendered is big issue. It didn’t help that the media was just starting to blow up with sensationalistic transgender stories. Caitlyn Jenner was just beginning to be an unstoppable news story.
My strategy in public was to look for gender neutral, or single toilet bathrooms for the most part. God bless Subway Sandwiches and Jamba Juice franchises. They universally have single toilet bathrooms. I care less about the name on the door and more about safety. I’d buy $1.50 in cookies and then get to pee in peace.
Then I got a job at a law firm, where I thought I was being read as male. I tried every trick imaginable. As an accountant, I wore a tie, and wore very masculine clothing. I used super tight binders to flatten my giant double D chest.
I was still Schrodinger’s gender though. The majority of folks saw me as male, but some figured it out. I was a hot gossip item at the office.
One day in particular, I was followed into the men’s room by a coworker on my second week. He was staring intently at me as I walked in, and followed me over to the stalls and urinals. I’m a stall-using guy, but since I was aware of him, I walked to the urinal. I paused, and turned to find him staring me down. If you’ve ever been in a men’s restroom, you know that is some boundary breaching behavior.
I’ve always found if you can be more aggressive than someone, you can get away with a lot, so I walked back up into his face, and said, “What, you wanting to hold it for me?!” I put on my fighting face, and waited.
Suddenly he wasn’t interested in gender checking me anymore. He apologized and backed the hell out of there fast. I would learn later, one of the gossipy ladies had tipped him off, after clocking me as “woman” and digging up my name online.
I’m sure if I was less aggressive, there would have been a fight. Unfortunately for law firm guy, I was an aggressive punk kid in the 80s. For his part, the guy decided I was his friend after that. The feelings were not mutual.
The worst part, though, was to have to come home and tell my husband that it had happened. He feared for my safety, and I could see the frustration in his face. He guarded bathrooms, scanned for trouble and acted as my own personal 6’2” bodyguard when we were together. Then I go off to work as an accountant, in a law firm no less, and almost get into a fistfight in the men’s room.
I can’t really downplay the risk of being identified as transgender in public. I had countless times people would clock me as “female” and then get into my space. If I flinched, some of them would have become violent.
When I started my transition, I knew this was a risk. I felt bad because this put my husband in the line of fire, as there is no doubt in my mind he’d step in if someone tried to attack me.
To have to live with this possibility of violence makes you behave in ways that protects yourself. You enter bathrooms with care, like walking into a war zone. You study people for clues as to their motives. You become hyper aware of your surroundings. To be that careful wasn’t new for me, but it wasn’t easy.
One of my biggest pushes for getting top surgery in 2016 was to avoid being identified as transgender by the general population at large, and to stop getting pulled by TSA at airports. It became so routine I just started reassuring the shaking TSA agents when they patted me down, that, “don’t worry, we’ll get through this together.” Those scanners certainly don’t like breasts on a man, squashed down with a binder.
I don’t hide that I’m transgender, but I’d just like to pee without worrying the guy next to me is going to sucker punch me for being in the bathroom. In a perfect world, people would leave you alone, but with the current media focus on transgender people in the bathroom, that is not likely to happen anytime soon.
Chapter Five:
Telling Lucky’s Parents
Parents and schools should place great emphasis on the idea that it is all right to be different. Racism and all the other ‘isms’ grow from primitive tribalism, the instinctive hostility against those of another tribe, race, religion, nationality, class or whatever. You are a lucky child if your parents taught you to accept diversity.
—Roger Ebert
From the Accidentally Gay Blog: Christmas Eve 2013
Originally posted on December 29, 2013
I am a little late in posting, but I wanted to say my first family gathering after Wolsey came out with my parents went extraordinarily well.
I don’t want to sound horrible by saying I was worried, but I was very worried. My parents and siblings have all been supportive, but I haven’t seen my siblings since Wolsey came out (especially my sister) face to face.
They were incredibly good to Wolsey. My family isn’t what you would call respectful about anything. Our jokes are always inappropriate and balances just on the edge of unacceptable.
There is not much detail to go into, honestly. They asked a few questions, and were quite clear the whole time that they still loved Wolsey. They apologized that it would take time to change the pronouns, but even I still make mistakes when I am not thinking.
It was a good Christmas Eve. I’m sorry that’s all I have to say this morning.
Lucky’s Perspective Now
I never talked about it much in my actual blog because I think at the time I was worried I might jinx the situation. By the time that possibility had passed, I had other things to talk about.
I come from a rough family of bikers. My father a Vietnam Vet ex-con, who worked a lot of illicit jobs in his younger days. The rest of society saw him as one of those “dangerous” people. The funny thing is even though he fought the bottle his whole life, he was nothing but loving to his family, friends and anyone that needed help.
My mother was always smiling, loving and cared for her family deeply. She would always be there for someone if they needed her. She, however, had no problems bouncing a frying pan off someone’s head if they deserved it.
The culture I grew up in was one of external violence, and a visit from the cops was a regular occurrence. I have several childhood memories of my dad and the local cops fighting with each other. I saw a lot of illicit activities, including one that resulted in us having to move in the middl
e of the night because my father’s business partners thought it would be cheaper to put a contract on our family than pay the debts they owed my dad.
That was when my dad gave up doing dangerous things and the blowback on the family made him put that away. Sadly, because of his record, and because most of his skills weren’t marketable in the civilian world, we ended up homeless for a year. This resulted in extreme poverty that we couldn’t pull out of, but my parents refused to engage in those activities again. This was when the alcoholism slowly crept in.
No matter the external causes such as the alcoholism and jail, I always knew my parents loved me. We were a very affectionate family, No matter what else was going on, we were always hugging, kissing and always telling each other that we loved each other. While alcoholism slowly seeped into their lives, they always accepted Wolsey and me.
The one thing about the culture I grew up in was that insults were common in everyday life. Racist, sexist or homophobic epithets were normal, but didn’t have the same influence or meaning as in normal society. Our family had several friends that were gay, minorities and, in one case, a trans lady. Hell, my dad and mom were friends with several Black Panthers in the 70s. In fact, my brother is named after a very close African-American who died saving my dad’s life in Vietnam.
This kind of language wasn’t right, but it was just part of the culture as a whole. The insulting epithets slowly died away as I grew up and times changed. The jokes and innuendos disappeared on their own and I couldn’t tell you why. I suspect, unlike some, my parents constantly watched documentaries, historical perspectives and shows about other minorities. It wasn’t for any specific purpose; it was just what they liked watching. Their attitudes shifted as new information came out over the years.
By the time Wolsey was in our lives, they had moved away from most of those behaviors. They accepted Wolsey fully into the family when he was a teenager, long before we dated. My parents always thought he was a great person. My parents told me when I was 18 that I should start dating Wolsey, and that Wolsey obviously cared for me, and that we would be a great couple together. One night my dad told me he thought people only come across a partner a couple times in their lives and that Wolsey was one of them for me.
During that time my parents adopted Wolsey into our lives as one of their kids. My dad was always excited to teach Wolsey how to work on a car, work on a house, how to handle violent situations, including how to breathe if someone is trying to choke you. That’s the kind of background we came from.
I think my dad was ecstatic with Wolsey since none of his other sons had any interest in learning to work on cars, houses or what a real man does. My mom always wanted to show love to Wolsey. She didn’t understand how Wolsey’s parents could be so horrible. Once she told me that all we had to ask and she would go over there and “take care of” Wolsey’s mother for us if she insulted Wolsey one more time. Yep, still not socially acceptable, but they obviously loved us both unconditionally.
The reason I talk about that is to give an understanding of why I initially had no fear of telling my parents about Wolsey’s transition into outwardly reflecting who he was. After all, my parents accepted the fact that we weren’t going to have children after only a little backlash from my mom on a drunken night. Sober, she accepted that Wolsey never wanted children. My dad never said a negative word about it himself.
That belief that my parents would accept Wolsey’s transition was eroded a bit after talking with Wolsey about it. Wolsey was incredibly worried that my parents wouldn’t accept him because he knew that so many transgender people are dumped by their families. This aligned with the problems I had been learning about with people staying with a trans husband, along with all the stories I heard at the group meeting.
We put off talking to my parents until Wolsey started his testosterone, just in case there was an issue. At that point, we didn’t have a choice and had to tell them. I still believed my parents would accept him because they didn’t abide by the rest of society anyways, but the fear was there.
I agreed I would go up by myself and tell my parents on my own, partially because my parents would listen to me and they would normally do something if I asked. I also thought I could soften the blow a bit.
The drive up to see my parents was the longest drive I had taken up to that point. It may have been a trip I did every other weekend, but that anxiety stretched out how long it felt to drive up there. I arrived and was met by both parents with the normal love and affection I would receive. We sat down and had coffee. I was going to start telling my parents when my mom asked if I could take her to the doctor. I thought that was my chance to tell my mom before my dad and get a reading of what he might say.
We were driving down the road and, as we pulled up to the doctor’s office, I was so damn nervous, I was freaking out in my head, but the whole time I was trying to play it cool to my mom. She went into the doctor’s office and while she was in there I went over what I was going to tell her, trying to plan for every objection, any anger or any crying she might do. After all this was their “daughter” as they told everyone and they have to accept Wolsey as their son.
My mom came back out and got in the car. I just blurted everything out about Wolsey’s struggles with being transgender, our discussions, that he was going to transition and start testosterone. My mom was quiet the whole time, just watching and listening. If you knew my mom, you would know this is unusual. My mom is anything but the silent type. She waited until I had told her everything. Her kind eyes were just watching me the whole time. I could tell she was worried for me, and then for Wolsey.
When I was done talking, she gave me a small smile, and said “Well, Wolsey’s gender identity is her business, so it’s what she wants. We love her and are her family, we will always love her”.
I was pole axed when I heard that. I sat there stunned that my mom even knew what gender identity was. After all, the highest education anyone in my family had was my mom graduating high school. No one else in my family, other than me, had even graduated high school. I kept wondering where my mom even learned that term.
The realization of the acceptance came shortly after that. I felt my eyes get wet, she leaned over and hugged me. She just whispered that she loved both of us no matter what. She patted my head and told me to let her tell dad. She asked me to drop her off and go to the pharmacy to get their prescriptions while she talked to my dad.
This made my anxiety even worse. Did my mom know something I didn’t? Was my dad going to freak out? I was worried for myself, but even more so for Wolsey. I dropped my mom off and told her I would be back in 20 minutes. She just smiled at me and said that it would be fine. I think I was really anxious because I had never been sent off while my mom talked to my dad, not even when there were incredibly adult illegal activities going on. Did she think he would react badly?
That felt like the longest 20 minutes of my life. On my way back, I kept going over different scenarios in my head. Would he be angry with me? I was even more nervous. Would he be angry with Wolsey and not accept my husband?
I walked into the cramped living room of their one-bedroom apartment and sat on one of the couches. My mom and dad both sat on their recliners, cups of coffee and cigarettes in hand. My dad was quiet as I walked in. He’s not the silent type, either. He was watching me closely with the same expression he would use when in a dangerous situation. There was concern in his eyes, though.
I sat, and my mom got me a cup of coffee. He just lit his home-rolled cigarette and watched me as my mom gave me a cup of coffee. I was so damn nervous and I think he felt it. He waited until I had a couple of sips and talked with my mom a bit. Then he started speaking. His first words were, “How is Wolsey?” I was surprised; I hadn’t imagined that would be his first question. There was a lot of concern in his voice. I spluttered back that Wolsey was fine and that he was just worried about the reaction from both of them.
My dad got a questioning look on his face and
asked me why Wolsey would be worried about that. He had no clue as to why Wolsey would think that they would react badly. I told him all about Wolsey and my own fears. His face softened and he shook his head. ”I will love you two, no matter what, even after I am dead and gone. You and Wolsey can sure as shit never change that.”
Yep, there we have my dad’s inappropriate language on display. It was funny though, and I chuckled, he chuckled, my mom chuckled and then we all hugged. They asked when they would see Wolsey next and I told them for Christmas the next week. They were excited and asked a lot of questions as to how they should behave. They were especially worried about insulting Wolsey. I told them just treat Wolsey like you always did, just refer to him as a him, not a her.
That is when my parents started joking that they should have seen this coming since Wolsey had the most machismo and boy-like tendencies in the family.
I got home, told Wolsey, and reassured him that nothing had changed. He was caught off-guard by that, I think. He hugged me and was shaking. I hadn’t realized how truly worried he was about what my Mom and Dad would say.
We did go up there Christmas Eve. My sister was drinking but held her shit together. Her family was all there, along with my brother and his family. Everyone had questions, even inappropriate ones, which we expected.
My Dad and Mom both hugged Wolsey tightly and told him they loved him. However, they didn’t treat him any different than before except changing their pronoun references. They were always supportive of his change. Even when family friends would come by they would correct the friends if the wrong pronoun was used, and they would proudly proclaim Wolsey as their son. I don’t believe we ever had a single issue come up with his transition, except for the occasional pronoun slip.
Wolsey’s Perspective Now
Acidentally Gay Page 6