Can You Help?

Last night at one of our group picnics, one of the other members I have known for a couple years  came up to me and asked if we could talk.

Already, by that point, I knew what was coming. And, there it was, she said she has a 20 something MtF transgender niece who has just decided to begin the coming out process. It sounded as if the transgender millennial has had a fairly positive coming out process, except for a very religious father who still doesn't know.

Fortunately (or not) I am becoming increasingly experienced in having conversations such as these. In the approximately past three months or so, I have had three.

Now, more than ever, I don't sugarcoat the process the transgender person is facing. First of all, attempting a gender transition is a marathon...not a sprint to the finish line. Expect a long difficult path. Secondly, the family has to be very understanding with things such as pronouns and names.

Finally, I said, in a very over simplified discussion, expect many changes along the way, excluding the obvious.

Last night, the woman showed me on her phone, quite possibly one of the best reasons to transition I have ever read.  Very elegantly, the young transgender woman stated the case for transitioning coming down to one simple fact, dysphoria. (Where have we heard that word before?) She explained to the world how she just couldn't live as a male anymore. Plus, it wasn't a choice, she and any other transgender or LGBTQ person was born this way.

Of course, I offered my shoulder to cry on, plus a couple of groups here in the Cincinnati metro area which could be of assistance. Then finished the conversation with each transition is different but I would be glad to help however I could.

It's nice to be wanted.

Dysphoric Hell

Following my recent post concerning transgender gender dysphoria, Connie wrote in this comment:

FABULOUSCONNIEDEEAugust 5, 2018 at 4:50 PM

"There are so many triggers that can bring on gender dysphoria - internal triggers and external ones. Waking up in the morning with a scratchy face from the overnight beard growth sometimes gets to me. Even the act of shaving can feel so unfeminine. 99% of the time, I can ignore it, knowing that, once I've completed the unpleasant task, my face will be all smooth again - ready for makeup and the day ahead. The other 1% usually occurs when I've overslept, and really don't have time to spend on a close shave before heading off to work. Still, I'll be late before I'll ever go a day without shaving, but even the feel of stubble (though not visibly detectable) at the end of the day is often a source of misery.

External prompts that can bring on the dysphoria can come from a mis-gendering or even a sideways look from someone. Developing a thick skin reduces the dysphoria, but it doesn't block it off completely. Fortunately, these things happen quite infrequently to me these days. Last week, however, I was accosted by a man like I've never experienced before.

It was early on a Saturday morning, as I waited, alone, for a bus to work. A middle-aged man with an aluminum suitcase appeared from the intersection, and I went into my vigilance mode, clutching my purse and fumbling inside it for the metal nail file I always carry. He walked by me, but turned and came back to ask me if I were going to work. I answered affirmatively with a polite smile. He followed up with asking me where I worked, and, still trying to be somewhat polite, I told him that I worked on the pier (there are 91 of them, so I felt safe enough saying that). By this time, he had ascertained that I was probably trans, and so he just had to say so with another question: "Can I ask you a question? Were you born a man and then became a woman?" I looked away at that question, grasping my nail file so tightly that I'm sure my knuckles were white. He persisted until I finally told him that I am a woman, and how I "became" one was no concern of his. I so wanted to ask him if he were born a boy and then never bothered to grow up to be a man, but there was no-one close enough to even hear my scream had he decided to get physical.

My bus was not due for another ten minutes, and I was a captive for his lecture the whole time. He went on about how it was a sexual thing, and kept trying to get me to answer questions about my sexual preference and such. I finally had had enough, and I told him, in a voice that I realized was a channeling of my mother's sarcastic tone, that his questions were highly personal, inappropriate, and totally based on misinformation. He tried to argue with me, but I refused to say anything else except that he had no right or basis to presume that he knew who and what I was when I've been living with who I am for over six decades - longer than he'd been alive. As the bus appeared down the block, I stood up and told him that I had to go. He followed me to the curb, asking if I knew anything about spirituality, karma, or vibes. Just as I stepped on the bus, I left him with my parting words: "Yeah, I'm getting a bad one right now."

Despite my satisfaction at getting the last word with a pretty good zinger, the incident stayed with me and affected my whole day. It's been over a week now, and I can recall it quite vividly, still. My battle with dysphoria has been to think of myself as a woman - not a trans woman or whatever anyone else would like to label me as. Knowing that there are others out there who do not see me the same way as I see myself is as bad as the itch of my growing whiskers, and such incidents can leave me with a lingering feeling worse than a full-blown beard on my face. If only it were as easy to zap away the jerks of this world as it is to zap away whiskers with electrolysis - which is not even that easy, really."

Thanks for sharing! I keep wondering when something similar will happen to me.

Voice Training Day One

All the angst surrounding my first day of voice training has come and gone, mixed in with a liberal amount of excitement.

As I waited, I had myself convinced the person doing the work wouldn't have any experience at all with a transgender women going down the same path as I. As it turned out, a totally unfounded fear since the first thing she asked me was how long I had been out. And, what pronouns I preferred!

Then, we embarked on an hour's worth of measuring my voice on a neat little machine with a microphone and blue lines with solid gray ones. The closer I could get my blue lines to the gray ones the better.  It turns out too, my natural voice isn't so far off a feminine range, which should make the whole process easier. I thought all in all the session went pretty successful.

My vocal problems seem to come from trying to do too much. For example, when I try to raise my voice too high, it cracks. Then becomes scratchy.

All of that is the good news, the bad news is my instructor just finished up her masters from Ohio University and is headed South to Charleston, South Carolina, so I have to start all over with a new person in two weeks when I go back.

In the meantime, I have daily homework assignments to do to designed to stretch my vocal cords more or less permanently.  Plus, I have to work on reversing fifty plus years of male style talking. Men have a tendency to speak more forcefully. I have to work how I approach my sentences and attempt to speak in a more "sing-song" pattern.  I have to do it until it becomes natural.

The things I have on my side are time and enthusiasm.

I just hope my next instructor is as good!