How to Be an All-Inclusive Gender Thread

Wonderful news, Hyp! I'm so glad everything went well! *little dance of joy for good doctors*

Yeah!

Hypatian wrote:

(And the prospect of having April 15 be me HRT tranniversary amuses me way too much.)

I fully admit to being a filthy skimmer, but is there some context here that I'm missing?

Also, "tranniversary" is the best word.

Also also: congrats!

Floomi wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

(And the prospect of having April 15 be me HRT tranniversary amuses me way too much.)

I fully admit to being a filthy skimmer, but is there some context here that I'm missing?

Also, "tranniversary" is the best word.

Also also: congrats!

It's Tax Day in the US.

Floomi wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

(And the prospect of having April 15 be me HRT tranniversary amuses me way too much.)

I fully admit to being a filthy skimmer, but is there some context here that I'm missing?

Also, "tranniversary" is the best word.

Also also: congrats!

April 15th is the day taxes are due in the United States, leading to the date being one that elicits groans from most U.S. citizens.

Hypatian wrote:
Floomi wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

(And the prospect of having April 15 be me HRT tranniversary amuses me way too much.)

I fully admit to being a filthy skimmer, but is there some context here that I'm missing?

Also, "tranniversary" is the best word.

Also also: congrats!

April 15th is the day taxes are due in the United States, leading to the date being one that elicits groans from most U.S. citizens. :)

*Tries desperately to think of a witty Tax gag to tie it altogether, but fails miserably*

Congrats!

EDIT:
All I can come up with is adding ASCII oogaba to the relevant return form title!

Spoiler:

( . )( . )

m0nk3yboy wrote:
Floomi wrote:

April 15th is the day taxes are due in the United States, leading to the date being one that elicits groans from most U.S. citizens. :)

*Tries desperately to think of a witty Tax gag to tie it all together, but fails miserably*

Tax Day becomes Tranniversary when an arm & a leg just won't cut it.

Oh dear.

New goal: Quitting smoking before April 15. Last time I tried, I tried to loosely apply the same techniques I used for dieting to help... and failed miserably. I've signed up with a phone-in quit-line thing on the recommendation of my doctor, and talking with the person there helped me realize that I wasn't applying the same sort of rigor to smoking that I did to dieting. I basically just said "I smoked X cigarettes yesterday, I'm going to smoke X-1 today". So, this time I'm going to keep track of precisely when I'm smoking and try to cut back from those periods specifically. Hopefully that will make it a lot easier to be more mindful of what I'm doing, because it's the unconscious habitual nature of things that really wreaks havoc. Also going to try to turn that habit around into one of filling my water bottle when I'm feeling that craving and telling myself "no", since I should be more hydrated in any case.

Whee.

It would be really, really, really great to go into starting HRT having kicked smoking and managed my weight and... yeah. Good things.

Hypatian wrote:

New goal: Quitting smoking

/cheer!

Cod wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

New goal: Quitting smoking

/cheer!

+1!! It's a hard habit to break, but I have faith you can do it - esp. with all the motivation behind it. Here's to your even healthier future!

Mimble wrote:
Cod wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

New goal: Quitting smoking

/cheer!

+1!! It's a hard habit to break, but I have faith you can do it - esp. with all the motivation behind it. Here's to your even healthier future! :D

Compared to everything else you're accomplishing, quitting smoking almost seems like a 'gimme' (I understand that it won't be though). +1 to the healthier future.

Whee. Down from ~30 cigarettes a day to ~16. I'm currently using a rule of "if I've had a cigarette in the last hour, I can't have one yet", and I'm not quite on top of it yet. Once I am, I'll probably step to two hours. That may be more difficult, hard to say.

Other news: I got a new epilator, an Emjoi Emagine. It is quieter, faster, more effective, and less painful than my old one. I am very happy with it.

Last week I didn't share this, but I had a bit of a freak-out. I played way too much SimCity that weekend, and was just starting on the "try to quit smoking thing", so I ended up not getting a lot of sleep and being kind of distracted. It ended up being Sunday evening, and I was rather sleep deprived, and I hadn't shaved my face on Saturday after electrolysis like I usually do. Well... the extra time without shaving took me from "heavy stubble" to "beginnings of a full-on full-face beard". Since I wasn't in an awesome mental state in the first place... yeah, that kind of broke me. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror, even to shave. I couldn't sleep. I ended up taking Monday off work sick and finally managed to work myself up to looking at myself enough to shave by Monday evening.

In short: Yeah, that was bad.

It was a really weird feeling. Dysphoria for me has almost always been mostly this sort of dull constant ache. Something's wrong, but it's not acute--it doesn't actively grab me and throw me around. This was... a bit more than that. I've very occasionally in the past had mild panic attacks when I'm around too many people (particularly people I don't really know but who I'm expected to maybe interact with, like at a big party). It felt a lot like that, except I couldn't get away from it by stepping outside to go somewhere quiet--it was about me.

Weirdly, it was kind of affirming in a way--because it was so obviously serious and a part of my being trans, it was kind of a spike of "no, really, I have [em]really good reasons[/em] to go through the stress of transition". Of course, on the other side it was deeply scary--because it's never fun to feel out of control like that.

Anyway, nothing else really new to say. I'm going to go get blood tests done on Monday, then three more weeks until my next doctor's appointment.

Hypatian wrote:

Dysphoria for me has almost always been mostly this sort of dull constant ache. Something's wrong, but it's not acute--it doesn't actively grab me and throw me around. This was... a bit more than that.

If you're looking for a positive reframe on this reaction, I'd say it's letting you know you're closer to being the 'real you' than you realised. You had such a strong reaction to seeing yourself the way you appeared because you're focused and looking forwards to the you you'll eventually be.

You've moved a lot of emotion/psychological furniture around in your mind, and in your perception of who you are. Think of the beard as a table out of place, and the dysphoria as a bloody good knock to the shins from something you didn't expect to be there.

Congrats on the reduction in smoking too! I had a friend who did similar, but found two hours was too much without a patch to curb that itching sensation. He found limiting himself to only smoking outside helped also. His laziness won out over his addiction, 9 times out of 10 in the evenings at home

Yeah. It's just kind of surprising and disquieting when something that was sort of under control is suddenly and obviously not, and you know that it's because you chose it to be that way. There've been things before where I've been like "Oh. Yeah. Stripping away my mental armor here, making myself vulnerable, so that I can feel what I really feel again and know where I'm going." But this is the first time it's been, well, debilitating. It's not going to make me turn around, but that doesn't make it not scary.

I guess the important lesson I should take from it, really, is: be sure I know where my support systems are and am ready to make use of them. That spot is tender. Ow. Don't poke it, but don't be surprised when it gets smacked again and be ready to deal with it somehow. One of these days it will finally be healed right.

I'm getting back into an experimenting mood, a bit. I played with my posture and voice again as I walked home (first time in ages it's felt nice enough out to walk.) I ordered a new corset. (A good quality one this time as I don't expect to drop a zillion sizes from this point out.) I experimented a bit with my old one, and then with tearing up an old pillow and padding-under-tights to produce poorly simulated hips.

Deduction: If I thought that putting weight back on at this point would give me hips, you would be able to hear me eating from [em]space[/em].

My backside... is a boy backside. My man-boobs are gone. My spare tire is almost gone, too, but... it seems cold comfort.

I went in to have my blood tests done today. Three weeks until I hopefully get prescribed hormones. And then... the fast things are over, and it's time for Second Puberty... which by all accounts will take a lot of waiting. A lot. Even knowing, going into things, how long these things take, it's a bit hard to really comprehend the scale, sometimes. It's been, what, six months since this adventure started? And it seems in retrospect like it's gone by so fast. But looking forward, every month seems like a long time. And the changes I want to see? That's a lot more than months.

Patience is really hard.

And I feel like the people who know I'm going through this are probably all "Hunh, nothing's really happening". And that's probably pretty boring.

On the plus side, while the big body changes take a really long time, the smaller changes happen faster. Fat deposits around the face. Hair growth. Electrolysis is getting close to more interesting areas than the voluminous neckbeard, and with hair growth slowing down that should start going faster, I hope. Certainly I should be able to feel like I'm seeing real progress there by the end of the summer. At my age for the body changes, well, it's more like "see how you feel about things in four years and then start thinking about surgery options."

In the meantime, well, I will be happy to have a corset that's the right size again. And I can get some better-designed butt padding if I really feel the need. And... the mental effects of hormones are really something I'm looking forward to experiencing. I've been wondering for a while now if it will help me stop talking over people. (Which, in my workplace, may be a curse. But still... how much of that is learned, and how much is a testosterone-fueled urge to be aggressive?) Will I become less aggressive in forum exchanges? Because that urge also makes me feel weird.

Anyway, thoughts of the day, and probably many days to come. I'm looking forward to this summer, and whatever changes it brings.

IMAGE(http://25.media.tumblr.com/223b412f88345db90c1240ebf092d993/tumblr_meyf5pXR471rk56iwo1_500.jpg)

Ran into this interesting glossary of terms that I am curious about how accurate it is:

A Transgender Manual Of Style

Comments?

No link yet, but apparently an upcoming episode of Elementary will feature a trans character.. played by a trans actor.

RedJen wrote:

Ran into this interesting glossary of terms that I am curious about how accurate it is:

A Transgender Manual Of Style

Comments?

Seems pretty reasonable, and a good match for a lot of the way things get said these days online. One thing to note is that there's a [em]lot[/em] of variation in exactly how people break things down in various communities, particularly in the fine points.

For example, some people find the use of "transgender" as a noun to be off-putting, but it seems to be pretty commonly acceptable in India—I think part of that has to do with whether there's a cultural institution in place relating to trans people, because that kind of institution provides a foundation for a possible trans-embracing identity. (That is: it may be more common for people to identify as hijra as distinct from identifying as male or female.) I'd say that it's best to avoid using it that way, but you shouldn't assume that anything that does use "transgender" as a noun is doing it out of either being misinformed or a desire to cause offense—it can also be because it's a common usage in the area of origin.

Some people object to the term "transgendered" (adjective form) for some reason, while I'm perfectly happy with it. (A transgendered person? Sure, why not. A transgender person? Also sure.) Back when I was first reading about trans issues (early-to-mid 90s), I'm pretty sure that "transgendered" was the common usage.

--

An interesting thing that came up lately was a interview with a trans woman in which the interviewer used the subject's feminine name and pronouns throughout, even though when she interviewed the woman, the subject expressed that she was comfortable using her masculine name and pronouns. Some readers were rather put off by this, even though the author specifically mentioned it, simply because they felt the author should have gone to the subject and asked her opinion on the question. Personally, I think that if the author couldn't get ahold of the subject again, switching to uniform feminine usage was appropriate.

However, the author should probably have made clear that she tried to get in touch with the subject before making the change. That is, I would say, the most important single point of usage: Always make an effort to ask the preferences of the person in question, to abide by those preferences, and to explain at least in passing that you have done so. Doing this shows respect for the subject, and makes it clear to readers what that respect entails. If it's impossible to ask, always go with the apparent intent of the subject. And as Ms. Reed pointed out: it should never be up to the judgement of a reporter about whether the subject "passes" or not—because that just opens the door for disrespectful bigotry. "Well, he didn't *look* like a woman to me, he looked like a guy in a dress, so I called him a man!" (The current AP style guidelines, from what I understand, would be easy to interpret that way, which is unfortunate.)

Call and Response: On Body Snarking and The Word "Tr*nny" (Autostraddle)

Pretty cool pair of essays, one by a cis woman one by a trans woman. A couple of quotes:

One of the most offensive aspects of body snark is that it's used to delegitimize women (as the popular phrase like "real women have curves" makes clear). Suddenly, instead of just being a woman, full stop, there are degrees of ‘real' womanhood to aspire to.
"Tr*nny" doesn't just mean someone who is trans, it means someone who isn't accepted as a woman.

This is a really really sad thing.

It was exactly three months ago that Richard Littlejohn published a piece in the Daily Mail viciously attacking Lucy Meadows, a primary school teacher in Britain. Littlejohn targeted Meadows because she’s transgender and had chosen to remain in her job as a teacher after beginning to present as a woman – this was the entire basis for his outrageous, unprovoked assault on her identity, her career, and her very life. It was vile and hateful in all the ways we’ve come to expect from a publication that, like much of the press these days, treats trans women as alternately ridiculous or a threat to society. It was quite literally intolerant of everything that Lucy Meadows was.

So it came as a surprise today that the Daily Mail has completely removed any mention of Meadows from Littlejohn’s column. What happened? Did they suffer a sudden attack of morality, three months later? No. Their decision was based on something much darker than conscience.

Lucy Meadows killed herself this week.

Hypatian wrote:

This is a really really sad thing.

It was exactly three months ago that Richard Littlejohn published a piece in the Daily Mail viciously attacking Lucy Meadows, a primary school teacher in Britain. Littlejohn targeted Meadows because she’s transgender and had chosen to remain in her job as a teacher after beginning to present as a woman – this was the entire basis for his outrageous, unprovoked assault on her identity, her career, and her very life. It was vile and hateful in all the ways we’ve come to expect from a publication that, like much of the press these days, treats trans women as alternately ridiculous or a threat to society. It was quite literally intolerant of everything that Lucy Meadows was.

So it came as a surprise today that the Daily Mail has completely removed any mention of Meadows from Littlejohn’s column. What happened? Did they suffer a sudden attack of morality, three months later? No. Their decision was based on something much darker than conscience.

Lucy Meadows killed herself this week.

That's awful.

Any suicide is tragic, but suicides instigated or enhanced by that sort of ignorant, hateful rhetoric is truly heart-wrenching.

f*ck the Daily Mail. Hate-mongering ignorant rag.

*spits*

Hypatian wrote:

This is a really really sad thing.

It was exactly three months ago that Richard Littlejohn published a piece in the Daily Mail viciously attacking Lucy Meadows, a primary school teacher in Britain. Littlejohn targeted Meadows because she’s transgender and had chosen to remain in her job as a teacher after beginning to present as a woman – this was the entire basis for his outrageous, unprovoked assault on her identity, her career, and her very life. It was vile and hateful in all the ways we’ve come to expect from a publication that, like much of the press these days, treats trans women as alternately ridiculous or a threat to society. It was quite literally intolerant of everything that Lucy Meadows was.

So it came as a surprise today that the Daily Mail has completely removed any mention of Meadows from Littlejohn’s column. What happened? Did they suffer a sudden attack of morality, three months later? No. Their decision was based on something much darker than conscience.

Lucy Meadows killed herself this week.

Sometimes I really don't like this planet's inhabitants.

m0nk3yboy wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

This is a really really sad thing.

It was exactly three months ago that Richard Littlejohn published a piece in the Daily Mail viciously attacking Lucy Meadows, a primary school teacher in Britain. Littlejohn targeted Meadows because she’s transgender and had chosen to remain in her job as a teacher after beginning to present as a woman – this was the entire basis for his outrageous, unprovoked assault on her identity, her career, and her very life. It was vile and hateful in all the ways we’ve come to expect from a publication that, like much of the press these days, treats trans women as alternately ridiculous or a threat to society. It was quite literally intolerant of everything that Lucy Meadows was.

So it came as a surprise today that the Daily Mail has completely removed any mention of Meadows from Littlejohn’s column. What happened? Did they suffer a sudden attack of morality, three months later? No. Their decision was based on something much darker than conscience.

Lucy Meadows killed herself this week.

Sometimes I really don't like this planet's inhabitants.

You're raising two good ones. I'm trying with mine. That keeps me from packing up and moving to the mountains. Although...

Weirdly affirming moment of the day: As I was exiting the crowded bus, I had to push past a woman and her kid who was on the edge of the seat. As I passed, she said "You could have at least said excuse me", and then after a moment (when I kept going because I was kind of off balance due to trying to push to the exit of a crowded bus) "Female Doggo". At that point, I had a moment when I could stop, and I turned to her and said "I'm sorry, I did say it." And she kind of stared at me and blinked for a second before saying "Oh, I didn't hear you."

So, uh... yeah. Unpleasant crowded conditions lead to people being unpleasant... but... I do think she read my clothing and body language as female until I turned around and addressed her, which made me really weirdly happy. (What body language can be read in a bus-crowd-push, anyway. :D)

And another good post from Natalie Reed. I do hope she starts up a new blog somewhere one of these days.

Wow. I'm pretty sure this hasn't got a chance in hell of passing, but still.

Summary: Last month, Phoenix, Arizona's City Council passed an anti-discrimination ordnance that covers sexuality and gender expression for housing, employment, and public accommodations. Bully for them.

Last week, state representative John Kavanagh proposed a measure (by amending an existing bill) that would make it illegal to enter a restroom designated for a gender that does not match your legal gender. Of course, most people don't carry papers with proof of gender around with them, so this could lead to cases of trying to pee while looking too masculine for non-gender-variant folks, as well. So, that got shut down pretty hard.

So now he's amended a different bill to make it OK for private businesses etc. to throw people out of restrooms, changing areas, showers, etc. on the basis of their gender identity or expression, and forbids county or local governments from having different rules.

Ugh.

And the most amazing part of this bill to me is:

Sec. 2. Emergency

This act is an emergency measure that is necessary to preserve the public peace, health or safety and is operative immediately as provided by law.

Yes, that's right. It's [em]that important[/em].

In less eye-rolling news: Can anybody talk to me about tinted moisturizers? I'm thinking about maybe trying to wear some regularly while presenting male, at least on days when I'm not all stubbly.

So what are good products? What should I look for, and any hints for the "even out skin tone, but doesn't really look like wearing makeup" look?

Edit: Oh, and I stumbled across mention of a tattoo artist in SF who it sounds like would be the perfect person to do the tattoo I'd love to have. ("... my favorite would definitely be designing custom Art Nouveau or nature inspired pieces".) So I guess that means I should be hopeful that she or somebody with similar taste will be findable a few years down the road when I'm comfortable enough with my body to have that done.

From violations of human rights to tinted moisturiser advice in less than 5 minutes. I love this thread so much.

In less eye-rolling news: Can anybody talk to me about tinted moisturizers? I'm thinking about maybe trying to wear some regularly while presenting male, at least on days when I'm not all stubbly.

So what are good products? What should I look for, and any hints for the "even out skin tone, but doesn't really look like wearing makeup" look?

BB cream! Or Neutrogena tinted moisturizer, but if you're fair it doesn't match so well.

Hmm. Or just a primer like the Smashbox one, with little/nothing on top.