At some point you just have to say Goodbye.

I've neglected posting here for quite some time and I suppose it's because there isn't really much to say anymore. I've basically completed my transition. Most of the anxiety around expectation and presentation have disappeared and I mostly just live my life. I've realized that no matter how worried I am about people finding out I'm trans (and why should I care?) I can't do anything to alter their behaviour. People will talk behind my back. People will talk, and whisper and point and use my identity as a little piece of juicy news to move themselves up the gossip ladder. I can do nothing to stop this. I can ask people to keep what they know to themselves but as I found out time and time again you just can't trust people to keep their mouths shut. So now I just live my life and stop worrying about who knows what. At this point I've stopped caring and good thing too cause it freed up a lot of my time!

When I started this blog I wanted to give other guys another perspective, a Canadian perspective. When I was looking for information during my own transition I found it difficult to find experiences from my own country. This doesn't mean that American or European experiences will be different but the medical systems are VERY different and so I wanted to find more information about what I could reasonably expect from doctors, hospitals, how long I might have to wait and of course if and how much transition would end up costing.

I will continue to post about these things when they happen: physical changes, trans "incidents", and anything related to trans medical  procedures. What I will no longer be posting about is sociological observations about gender. I see things. I have opinions but I don't want to get into an online debate about who is right and whether or not I am paranoid. I do not appreciate patronizing comments so if you have some of those please visit this post. I'm not here to get into a tangle of words or debate whether or not you might think I'm paranoid. I was weary about starting a blog for this exact reason. I've removed some posts and refused to publish some comments so consider this your notice dear readers that this will not become a forum for airing your prejudices. I welcome comments about your personal experiences shared or different from mine is great and those comments WILL be posted. The more experiences I can offer to other FTM guys the better.

So I am sort of saying goodbye to you all as I expect that posts will be irregular from now on as I await the next leg of the journey. So until then I wish you all well and hope that in these pages you can find something that will help you on your own journey. Thank you for sharing your stories and taking the time to read mine.

Revision Quest Completed!

It's been 4 weeks since I had my chest revisions to take care of the dog ears under my arms and I have to tell you that I am feeling fantastic. I have mentioned once or twice before that I have the best doctor in the territory and probably the country when it comes to having someone who will stand up for you ad go out of his way to help me which he did by getting a general surgeon to do the procedure. 

The surgeon I saw was awesome. No nonsense and to the point, and since he had some plastics background and by the sounds of it some experience with trans patients, I was shocked that after a 15 minute initial consultation I had a surgery appointment exactly one week later. Go ahead, read that part again, I did say one week. 

And so there it was. no time to get nervous or fret or even think that holy crap I was going to have to be awake for this one. No kidding. The procedure is relatively minor but after 18-20 pokes of a nice fat needle full of freezing I was just nearly ready to run out of the place. But that was the worst part. IT took just under an hour to remove the dogears and sew me back up, dress the wounds and send me home. 

I was offered a prescription for Tylenol 3 but passed. I stayed home from work the following day so didn't even really miss any work. I was a little sore for a few days and avoided putting my arms above my head. I have a few spots that are still tender and the dissolving stitches are still working themselves out but other than that it has been a pretty uneventful  procedure.

Then next thing is to see if I can get my left nipple tattooed back onto my chest There is an awful lot of scar tissue there since the graft didn't take and I hope that a talented tattoo artists can fix that up for me. 

As a trans patient, ok as the trans patient in the territory, I always feel so blessed to be able to go into my doctor's office and have him actually KNOW what is going on and how we can go about dealing with it and educating other medical staff along the way. I have to say that for the most part my experience here has been tremendously positive. I am so lucky to live in a country where medical care is seen as a necessity and is offered equally to everyone regardless of their ability to pay for it.

So here is the new me, at least from the outside! There will be lots of swimming this summer me thinks!

 

Revision Quest

If only things for trans people could work out as quick and painlessly as my most recent consultation. My family doctor referred me to a general surgeon here in town who works two week rotations as a locum. He spends approximately ten days seeing patients and performing procedures and he has quite a bit of plastics experience. He saw my little dog ears and within minutes I had an appointment to have them repaired. That appointment? it's not a year away, or a month even. It's happening in a week. And it's covered by my health care. Seriously.

When I told him that the surgeon who did my original surgery wanted to charge me $1800 to fix them and there was a short pause before he said Eighteen hundred? That's highway robbery. I'll say.So there you have it. Good things do happen. The ongoing saga of my uterus is another story but since this is a happy story I'll save that for another day.

So Tuesday March 27th in the early afternoon I will have the fatty little beaks in my armpits removed and then look out because the t-shirts are gonna get TIGHT-yo!

Semantic Scribbling

I have been working on a document at work that basically is the sexual education curriculum for the entire province and I've had the opportunity to do a little behind the scenes education on the topic of gender identity. There is a LOT of information available about transgender identity disorder, transgender "lifestyle", gender expression and what have you. Unfortunately not all of it is accurate or applicable or relevant or correct  for that matter. Much like that age old game of telephone someone somewhere screws up the message and that error is copied and carried over again and again until it somehow becomes fact.

I was impressed by the clients willingness to learn and include the correct information even though I think there is a little further to go I was pleasantly surprised by the reception to my suggestions on how to improve the content. Lucky for some trans kid out there now or in the future who will actually be able to get his or her hands on the correct information.

I was a little surprised by the misconceptions and misunderstandings contained in what has been a thoroughly researched document and I wonder if it is not unlike the era not so long ago when HIV and AIDS "education" was still full of misinformation and speculation as we learned more and more about the disease and its pathology. I suppose the same holds true for notions of gender and in some respects sexual orientation since when discussing these two things together things seem to get muddier instead of clearer.

When I had my intake meeting at the psychiatrist to confirm a GID diagnosis, I was given a package that described in detail variations of gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation. I quickly came to understand that gender and sexual orientation are tied to physical markers of male and female biology. The problem lies in the fact that presentation of a thing doesn't necessarily make it that thing. OK what the hell am I talking about: the use of the words heterosexual or homosexual to describe a transgender person's sexual orientation is inadequate because it only serves to bring attention once more to their body in relation to their desire.

If a married MTF person decides to transition (assuming her cisgender wife stays with her) her sexual orientation does not change. She is still attracted to her wife just as she was when she had to exist in the body of a man. Once she transitions and is read as female by others  however she will be labelled a lesbian and "suddenly" become a homosexual. Do you see how ridiculous this is? Not to mention that somehow her partner has now also become a lesbian by this definition.

Let's make this even more complicated. A cisgendered butch lesbian is out an a date with her cisgender femme partner. To many people they will both appear to be straight but again this is based entirely on the perspective of the viewer, not on the reality of the sexual orientation of either woman.

I'm not suggesting there aren't other sexualities just that these particular terms: homosexual, gay, lesbian and straight tie the idea of sexual orientation to the body and as we all know we are more than just a body. Pansexual, bisexual, omnisexual, whatever other terms all work equally as well to eliminate the body from orientation.

Trying to explain the nuances of gay and straight and how they relate or don't relate to gender identity makes things difficult yes. There is a simple solution that finally made it off the dispute page and onto Wikipedia. The words are androphilic and gynephilic. Androphilic describes a person who is attracted to men. Gynephilic describes a person who is attracted to women. Neither word implies a biological sex, or gender identity. What exactly is a homosexual transgender? without modifying it with a word like "man" or "female" those two words together don't really tell you anything.

My androphilic trans friend who is currently going through his transition is becoming visibly queer. This doesn't make him gay it makes him appear gay to others– his sexual orientation hasn't changed because he cut his hair short and changed his name, nor because he started hormones. He only appears gay because of how his body is perceived.

I'm pretty sure I have now outed myself to the entire office having had the educational gender discussion pretty much in front of the entire art department but honestly I feel ok about that. It felt good to be able to educate a few people and have them be receptive to actually learning. I know how lost I felt (and still do sometimes) without anyone around to talk to and I can't imagine what that might be like for a teenager. Finally getting my confidence back makes me think I might like to have a little more active participation in teaching people about gender identity.

This isn't difficult. It's not theoretical physics. WE can educate ourselves and our peers so that we can hang onto all the identities out there who just don't fit neatly into little boxes. I'm a gynephilic kinda guy who still identifies as queer....figure that one out! So just like learning to program a VCR (back in the day), or how to use a Mac, we CAN do it. It just takes a little effort.

Chest Surgery Update

my dog ears aren't this cute

It's been 8 months since I had top surgery and I haven't posted much about what's been going on for the last three months mostly because there hasn't been much to post about. I've been talking to my doctor about getting revisions to fix the dog ears under my arms and he has been awesome so at the moment here is what's been going on:

I called the surgeon's office and asked about getting a consult for revisions via email. When I heard back, the result was a little disappointing but not really unexpected. Of course there was no way that I was going to pay more for the revision out of my own pocket than what the province paid for me to have the entire surgery in a hospital with anaesthetic and the works. apparently there is a scale for what constitutes revision and cosmetic. I suppose if I had breast cancer and needed a new boob or wanted the dog ear fixed I'd be "allowed" but as it stands now I am only cosmetically disfigured? or perhaps my results are satisfactory on a scale of aesthetics (provided they aren't on anyone else's body but mine). Go figure.

Like I said before I have the most amazing family doctor EVER and he has lined up a referral to a general surgeon here in town who should be able to snip off the extra skin and sew up the two little flaps and splish splash I'll be back in my kayak in just a few days instead of weeks. I have the appointment in just a few short weeks from now so will keep mu fingers crossed that the surgeon is willing and able to repair the pooches under my arms.

So till then it'll be sweaters and my parka which is probably a good thing since the temperature is still hovering around -20C!