Sunday, January 25, 2009

Introduction to this particular individual and this whole process

This blog is one I have put off for a long time but now, I think, is the best time to start investing myself in it. Considering this is my first post, let me introduce myself a bit.

I am a person of, what is known as, the "trans experience", to put a lofty term on the entire process. I am a person, born of a female body, raised a female in our current binary gendered society, and, upon introspection at a young age, discovered that this was not a comfortable place to be and so, in high school, decided the best course of action was to transition from outwardly female to outwardly male. 

of course, I was born and raised in a very small town in upstate New York, where words such as transsexual were heard only on Jerry Springer and words such as transgender didn't even exist. I was the town queer, for sure, because I was female bodied and I liked girls, a lot (I kissed quite a few straight girls even as young as adolescence. I'm not sure how I managed to be such a stud; I didn't have many friends. Its hard for the "freak" at school to have friends). But I never came out as trans in high school. how could I? As it was I had to face my van being egged and my locker being written on (Lesbo-dyke was the most common phrase) and being tortured to all hell in gym and the locker rooms.  While being bi is trendy in the world today, at least in our culture, this was not the case in my small town. Being queer in any sense of the word was a threat and so how could I come out as not only a gay female but something else entirely? Something no one knew a thing about?

But then I went to art school, in New York City. From day one I was 'out' as trans. I would begin this transition as soon as I possibly could. People are liberal in art school, and if they don't understand the whole "trans thing" they easily adapt or at least try to. For the first time in my life, I'm not looked at as the freak, but just as another person - another person with something rather odd about me that people always have questions about, ones I'm never sure I know how to answer, but there it is. 

So three years of scouting for doctors, coming out to family, going to psychotherapy (a lot), getting blood tests, having nervous breakdowns,  going to more psychotherapy, and finally, at the end of January of my Junior year,  I am getting my first shot of testosterone.

So it begins. Its strange to me, because internally, in my own mind, I mean, I've gone through this process already, I am there, I am male, I am a boy or a man or whatever you want to call it, but my body has not changed one smidgen. It frustrates me, makes me angrier and sadder than I've ever been about anything in my life, but all that is about to change. 

The changes won't happen overnight, they'll happen so slowly, in fact, that I probably won't notice them - sort of like a parent who sees their young child often, never sees a change, and a visitor comes and is surprised at how tall they've gotten. Which is why, of course, I want to document this. 

Because I am a film major, I feel I am obligated to myself (despite my fear of being in front of a camera) to document this in a visual way, so I may or may not begin doing those youtube "vlogs" that are sometimes so cliche, for a lack of a better term - overused. But to see other people during this transition process on youtube helped me when I was feeling down, when I felt I would never get there, so perhaps I can offer hope to someone else. I don't know any trans people outside of the internet, so maybe it will bring me closer to trans people in the real world. 

So, dear reader, thank you for taking your time with this tl;dr piece. Hormones begin Tuesday, and I'm sure I'll update then. 

1 comment:

  1. Max- I am so sorry that this small town would actually do something like this to you. I am very interested in your transition and have been following along. I hope that the negative actions from the town has only made you that much stronger as a man. Good Luck!

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