Thinking about National Coming Out Day. I don't think there's
anyone in my life or even kinda near my life who doesn't know
that I'm transgender. And a lot of you know that I'm kinky, and
some of you may know/remember than I'm polyamorous. (Well,
'ambiamorous' -- I can actually be quite happy in a monogamous
relationship or a poly one, depending on whom I'm in the
relationship with and how it develops. But I identify more as
poly.) I've been "out" about all of that for a long time, even
if not everybody has had the last two come up in conversation
with me, so it kinda feels like i don't really have anything left
to come out about. But maybe I do (though I said some of this in
less detail last NCOD). Because several years ago I realized my
identity was shifting and I felt a strong mental pressure to
start making my body change too.
While many of you met me while I identified as "intergender"
(because genderqueer wasn't a label yet when I chose one), my
identity is no longer in-the-middle. A lot of folks who've run
into me recently have heard this because they've asked -- either
because asking about pronouns is a more normal thing nowadays or
because they notice changes to my body, or both -- but I'm closer
to the F pole on the gender graph than I was, and looking forward
to seeing whether this journey carries me all the way there.
So here's my Coming Out Day thing, which (as I mentioned)
folks who talk to me one-on-one a lot or have run into me and
asked questions already know, but not everybody is up to date on:
I have been on HRT for about five years, my pronouns are she/her
(though I won't hold a "he" against anyone until I harmonize my
gender-presentation with my gender-identity), I am trying to
schedule a relevant minor surgery, I'm trying to work up my nerve
to shave my beard (which feels like a bigger step than growing
breasts or telling people or trying to schedule an orchiectomy),
and I'm trying to pick a new name. Some of this is scary, more
of it is wonderful, a bunch of it is both. Even though I haven't
reached my destination (or figured out for sure what my
destination is), that mental pressure to act is greatly reduced
since I started taking these steps, my emotions seem to work a
lot better on estrogens than androgens, and a lot of "mental
static" that I'd gotten used to has gone away. (As Zinnia Jones
has pointed out, not all symptoms of gender dysphoria are
obviously that, until treating the dysphoria makes them go away.)
I stopped using conventional labels like
'gay'/'het'/'straight' to talk about my orientation a long time
ago, and started just saying "attracted to women" and leaving the
label as en exercise for the listener ... but did (do) identify
as "queer". First because being trans (and especially for being
visibly gender-nonconforming) I was already part of the queer
community, and again because even though attraction to women
didn't feel gay, it didn't quite feel straight either. (Because
when my gender was in-between, which was the "opposite gender"?
The labels 'bi' or 'pan' would have worked if I had been bi or
pan, but I wasn't and AFAICT still am not.) Amusing thing
though: I've assumed that most other people mentally tagged me as
het, and while HRT did not change my orientation (it can do that,
but I've never found out how common or rare it is), changing my
gender does mean that the label for my orientation
changes.
It's been said that coming out isn't a one-time act, but
something that winds up being repeated again and again when
meeting new people or joining new groups -- and that goes double
for bisexuals and trans people. Like coming-out, transitions are
scary and liberating and sometimes difficult ... and there's more
than one. Even for a textbook story of a binary gender
transition there are medical, legal, and social transitions which
may happen at different times and aren't instantaneous. Of
those, social transition is the scariest (and generally the most
important). And I've already transitioned socially from male to
genderqueer years ago, but here I am in the middle (beginning, I
guess) of another social transition, from genderqueer to female
or mostly-female, in the middle of medical transition, and
looking into options & to-do list for legal transition. And
y'know? Telling people one on one has been relatively easy (has
gotten easier with practice), but standing up to the world and
saying, "Here I am, I am changing, this is what I am doing," is a
lot harder. So I guess I had something for National Coming Out
Day after all.
BTW, what do folks think of the name Eftychia
(Ευτυχια,
/eff-ti-KHEE-a/ where the χ is sort of between a kh sound and
a gh or really-rough-'h' sound)? Still making up my mind, but
that one's in the running.
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dglenn
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