Every time I think that we're making progress, that people are starting to respect our community more, I read something like this or this.  So much for progress.

A study done by the National Health and Medical Research Council and the US National Institutes of Health have performed a study on the androgen receptor gene in trans women.  They studied the androgen receptor gene in 112 male to female transsexuals and compared the results to the samples from 250 cisgender males.  They found that, on average, the transsexuals were more likely than the nontranssexuals to have a longer form of the gene.  Lauren Hare, a researcher from Prince Henry's Institute, said, "We think these genetic differences might reduce testosterone action and under-masculinise the brain during foetal development."

I'm all for scientific progress.  It's great that we have technology to study genes; it gives us the ability to make serious advances in medicine and hopefully save lives.  But studying this particular gene will not save any lives.  Many people within the transsexual community are very happy to hear that there may be some sort of genetic cause for transsexuality.  People hope that now others will understand that they were "born this way" and not see it as a choice that can be reversed.  But I can really only see the results of this study as potentially very dangerous.  If there is a "transsexual gene", something tangible and medical that makes us identify as the other sex, then it seems only logical that people are going to try to "fix" us.  I can only imagine the endless tests and experimental surgeries that would ensue.  And what if pregnant parents could have their fetuses tested for this gene in order to decide if they were going to abort or not?  What about gender variant children - will Johnny's parents bring him to geneticists simply because he likes dolls and wears pink?  Will gender specialists decide that the only way somebody can be permitted to transition is if they have this elongated gene?  I'm worried about the possiblities here.

But my interest is piqued.  The study was only performed on trans women.  I wonder if there's any kind of a similar correlation in trans men. 

Well, today is National Coming Out Day.  I feel like I've been coming out constantly for the last six weeks.  It's exhausting.  But it feels good at the same time.  My experiences of coming out as trans have been so different than my experiences of coming out as a lesbian, though.  As a lesbian, I didn't really need to tell people unless I felt it was somehow relevant or would affect our relationship.  As a trans person, I have to tell absolutely everybody, if for no other reason than that they use the appropriate name and pronouns.  Gender is an issue everywhere I go.  It’s a battleground of sorts, filled with countless questions and concerns.  Are people reading me as male?  Is it safe to use the men’s bathroom?  Is it safe to use the women’s bathroom?  Is it weird that I’m buying tampons and men’s deodorant at the same time?  To some people, I’m stealth.  They’ve always known me as a guy, and they continue to read me as male.  Some people think I’m a butch lesbian.  An increasing number know I’m trans but knew me as a girl first.  How do I deal with the intersections of all these people in my life?  Well, anyways, I wrote a reflection on coming out, both to myself and to others.  Here it is.

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“Mommy, I wish I were a boy.”  There.  I said it.  My mom looked back at me through the rearview mirror, looked at my intent little six-year-old face, and sat there silently for a minute, shifting her gaze back to the road in front of her.  I waited.  Finally, she said, “You don’t really mean that, do you, honey?”  I looked down at my lap, discouraged.  From the tone of her voice, I knew what my answer was supposed to be.  “Of course not, Mommy.  Just….”  And I let it go at that.

I always knew I was different somehow.  I just didn’t know exactly how to put it into words.  And for the most part, my childhood was pretty forgiving of gender difference.  I was allowed to be a tomboyish, masculine kid, and this behavior was rarely questioned.  One incident sticks out in my mind, however.  I remember sneaking into my brother’s room in the second grade, opening his closet, and stealing his First Communion shirt and tie.  I ran back to my room, pulled on the shirt, clipped on the tie.  And I remember wishing that I could wear these clothes for my First Communion instead of the dress that was hanging in my closet.  I didn’t explicitly associate this feeling with the desire to be a boy.  It just felt more right.

Puberty was hell.  On an intellectual level, I knew what was coming, but I never really imagined it would happen to me.  Or, at least, I hoped it wouldn’t.  When I started to get breasts, I was mortified.  Long before my mom took me to get my first bra, I began layering my shirts to hide the growths on my chest.  And even worse was getting my period.  All the girls talked about it with an air of excitement, and then there was me, so embarrassed about it that I couldn’t even bring myself to change my pad in the school bathroom.  So on multiple occasions I came home from middle school crying, with my pants soaked in blood.

In high school, I came to the conclusion that I must be a lesbian.  There was something about that label that didn’t feel quite right, but I mean, I liked girls – what else could I be?  Identifying as a lesbian also helped me justify why I wasn’t particularly feminine.  But because of this nagging feeling of uncertainty, it took me years before I actually decided to come out to anyone.  Eventually, I told my parents.  They were heartbroken.  My dad didn’t speak to me for weeks, and my mom did her best to understand, but she still had a really hard time with it.  After some time, they learned to deal with it, but to this day every time my dad looks at me he has this horribly sad look in his eye.  The only thing that comforts him is that I’m still his daughter.  I can only imagine how he’ll react when I tell him that I’m not even that anymore.

During my senior year of high school, I was channel surfing and happened to run across a program about transgender children.  It caught my attention.  Transgender – what did that mean?  By the end of the program, and after about ten minutes of Google searches, I knew that this was a word that described me.  But for a long time, I thought I could live as a masculine woman.  I could be genderqueer.  And I tried to embrace this identity as much as I had tried to embrace that of lesbianism years earlier.  But every step I took towards masculinity, towards malehood, felt more and more right.

By the summer after my first year of college, I was passing as male on a regular basis, much to my delight and my parents’ chagrin.  But that summer was a trying one.  My job involved working with kids, who were constantly asking me if I was a boy or a girl.  And every time I had to answer that I was a girl.  It was draining and got to be painful by the end.  It really made me think – can I live the rest of my life as a woman and still be happy?  Ultimately, the answer was no.

And so, when I got to school in the fall, I started coming out.  I started telling people: My name is Liam.  I’m the same person I was before, yes, but I’m not a girl like you thought I was.  I am a guy.  And I can imagine how hard that is for some people to comprehend.  Overall, though, I have been received with overwhelming support, for which I am extremely grateful. 

Sometimes, though, I don’t want to come out.  In my physics lab, my lab partners never knew me as a girl and consistently read me as a guy.  It’s the most amazing feeling, to be unquestionably accepted as one of the guys.  But it’s stressful, too.  Every time I log onto the computer and my female name pops up, I’m afraid they’ll see it.  I don’t know how they would react.  And I don’t want the feeling of camaraderie, of belonging, to go away.  It makes me wonder about the future.  Will I go completely stealth someday?  Will I be visible as a trans man, or will I blend in and become just another dude?  How will I deal with the issue of coming out, both to those who have known me as female and to those who will know me as male?

I’ll figure these things out eventually.  It won’t be easy, I know.  But for now, what matters is that, when I look in the mirror, I recognize myself.  I can see the boy I am, the man I am becoming.  And I like who I see.  I finally like myself.

As a registered California voter, I've been hearing a lot about Proposition 8, which, if it passes, will ban same-sex marriages in California.  So, of course, all the gay and lesbian organizations are pushing against it, as well as many other groups.  And I am definitely planning on voting against it.  But I know a lot of trans people don't care about gay marriage because they think it will not have any direct relevance to them.  In fact, not too long ago I was on an online forum for trans people, and a significant number of them were describing how they don't support gay marriage.  And that struck me as odd and somewhat counterproductive, because, as I see it, same-sex marriage is beneficial for all of us, even for post-op, heterosexual trans people.  And this video, created by the Courage Campaign, demonstrates that point pretty darn well.

This post is purely personal and has nothing to do with trans issues on a larger scale.  Just a heads-up.

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Sometimes I wonder if this is what I want.  I mean, I know it is.  I'm so much happier and more confident living as a guy.  But why am I so scared?  Why does each little step give me anxiety attacks and send me into brief periods of depression?  Sometimes I wish my life could be just a little less complicated.

It has been an eventful last few days.  I'm now out to most of my friends here at school.  There are just a few more people that I feel like I need to tell personally, and then I guess I'll just let everyone else kind of figure it out.  So far almost everyone has been completely supportive, which surprises me a little but certainly makes me happy. :)

I emailed PFLAG yesterday to see if they knew of any resources in town.  I'm especially looking for a trans-friendly doctor.  I'm not quite ready for hormones just yet, but I do need to see a doctor for regular medical stuff, and the last doctor I went to, well, it was a really uncomfortable experience.  Anyways, the person from PFLAG who emailed me back happens to work in the library here at school.  She's going to put me in contact with another FTM guy who used to live in Walla Walla.  And she wants me to stop by her office to pick up some resources.  I'm scared to go, but I don't know why.  I mean, she's obviously supportive.  Maybe I'll get the nerve to go tomorrow. 

And today I emailed my choir director to see if I could be allowed to wear a men's shirt and pants for concerts instead of the dress or palazzo pants required of women, and he said that it sounded like a good idea.  Hooray!  (Of course, this means I have to come out to my parents before they visit in April to see our spring concert, or there will be lots of uncomfortable questions.  Grrr.)

So in spite of all this good news, it has been the most emotionally draining day.  I literally spent half the afternoon crying, and I don't usually cry all that often.  Everything feels so right, but at the same time I'm emotionally messed up, and I don't quite know what to make of it.

I grew up in a very Catholic environment, complete with twelve years of Catholic School and eighteen years of going to Mass every Sunday.  My parents are very into the Catholic religion, and my dad especially is very concerned with traditional Catholic values.  As I was thinking about how I will eventually approach them about being trans, I decided to look up the Catholic Church's official position on transsexuality.  I didn't expect it to be good, but I didn't expect it to be quite this bad, either.  I thought maybe they'd consider us mentally ill, deranged, in need of serious moral help, but I didn't think they'd go so far as to flat out deny the existence of transgenderism/transsexualism.  But that's what they did.

The document that addresses this, released by the Vatican in 2000, begins by saying that "sex-change" procedures don't change a person's gender in the eyes of the Church.  A trans man cannot become a priest and a trans woman cannot become a nun.  Infuriating but pretty much expected.  But the mindblowingly frustrating part is that a priest who transitions to female could technically remain a priest.  The likelihood of this happening is slim because the person's mental state would be seriously called into question by the Church authorities, but still.  The Catholic Church is willing to go so far to uphold its stance that gender is determined 100% by sex at birth that they will essentially allow a trans woman to be a priest, a field in which only men are allowed.  This is a complete denial of an individual's identity and essentially a denial of the existence of trans-ness.  So you were born with a penis?  You'll always be a male in the view of the church, regardless of your identity, your expression, who you really are.  The genitals you were born with dictate your existence for the rest of your life.

Another way this idea is expressed in the document is the Church's view on trans people and marriage.  If a trans person who has transitioned or is in the process of transitioning wants to get married, well, too bad.  Trans people cannot get married in the Church because either they would be marrying someone of the "same sex" (in the case of, say, an FtM and a non-trans woman) or they would be considered to be in an unreliable mental state that would prevent them from making valid marriage vows (in the case of an FtM and a non-trans man).  On the other hand, if a person gets married and then later in life realizes he or she is transgender and decides to transition, the couple's marriage is still valid (even though it is now essentially a same-sex marriage) because the trans person's identified gender is not recognized as valid by the Church.

This is so backwards.  It simply baffles me the lengths to which the Catholic Church will go in order to delegitimize the identities of trans people. 

According to the document, "The key point is that the (transsexual) surgical operation is so superficial and external that it does not change the personality. If the person was male, he remains male. If she was female, she remains female."  Really, I couldn't agree more.  I was born male on the inside, and my female body is so "superficial and external" that it does not change my personality.  The current state of my body is no less external than a surgically or hormonally modified version of my body.  It still does not dictate my identity, my knowledge of self as male.  My body is still just a body, and I learned in my religion classes from a very young age that it's not the body that counts.  God cares about what's inside of us, not what we look like.  I look like a female, but God knows who I am.  Who are the Church leaders to think they know me better than God does?

http://www.tgcrossroads.org/news/archive.asp?aid=599

On Friday, September 19, a federal judge ruled that discrimination against a transgender person constitutes sex discrimination and thus violates Title VII.  Previous federal courts have said that transsexuality is unprotected by Title VII.  The argument made by Diane Schorer, the plaintiff in the case, was that gender identity is a component of sex, and discrimination based on gender identity is therefore sex discrimination.  Diane Schorer is a Special Forces veteran who was denied a job with the Library of Congress after she stated that she was transitioning from male to female.  What's really cool about this case is that, even without ENDA, it was declared illegal to discriminate against this woman because of her gender identity or trans status.  Even though this is simply the decision of one judge and may still be overturned by the Justice Department, it's an important first step.  It looks like we're finally making some real progress!

To see the full decision, click here

To read more, click here

I'm looking at my calendar and realizing that it has been exactly two weeks since I arrived back on campus.  And what an eventful two weeks it has been!  Let's see, where to start...

Ever since I got back from camp, I've had a hard time identifying with my female name.  I guess after responding to the name Cheez-It for 2.5 months, I just wasn't used to it. :)  So the day after I got back on campus I was sitting around thinking about stuff, and heavy in my mind was coming about being trans.  I decided it would be cathartic to write a coming out letter, so I typed one up.  Then I thought about the coming year, and I decided I really couldn't go another year as a girl and still be mentally healthy.  So I sent a coming-out email to my campus GLBTQ list-serv.  I didn't sleep at all that night, and I've never had so many anxiety attacks in a 24-hour period.  But people have been great.  A lot of people responded to my email supportively, and most people who got the email have been doing their best to call me by my chosen name and pronouns.  Everything has turned out better than I thought it would, which makes me so happy.

Of course, this group was the easiest to come out to.  All of them identify as queer in some way or other, and many experience similar forms of discrimination and harassment as I do.  Now comes the hard part - talking to everyone else.  I'm not expecting too many problems here at Whitman, though I am really nervous about coming out to my rugby team and the girls in the residence section I lived in last year.  These are both all-female groups, and I have close friends in both that I would really hate to lose.  And I'm nervous about coming out to my roommate, not because I think she would be intolerant or wouldn't understand, but just because I have these feelings of guilt.  She shouldn't have to deal with this.  Actually, I feel guilty about coming out to anyone.  People have their own problems, and I don't want to impose my own on anyone.  But I guess I'll just have to get over this guilt, because people aren't going to read my mind, so I have to come out.

Something that has been weird is the feeling of being the only guy in all-female spaces.  This is something that I've felt for a long time, but secretly, because everyone always assumed that I identified as a female.  Now it feels more public, more like I'm living fraudulently somehow.  Like yesterday when we saw the men's rugby team doing some insanely hard workout and someone said, "This is why we're glad we're not boys."  But I'm not glad!  It's just weird for me to stand by and listen to that now, especially since I'm kind of out.  Similarly, in choir, when the director asks the men to sing, he's really talking to the tenors and basses, and he means altos and sopranos when he says women.  As the only male alto, I'm always tempted to sing when he tells the men to sing.  The director knows I identify as a guy, but I guess after a lifetime of having men = tenors/basses, it's probably hard to adjust the language.  I just hope that I don't have to wear the women's concert attire.  I know I can't wear a tux because I'm standing in the front row surrounded by women, but I would be eternally grateful if I could wear a men's black shirt and slacks.  At least that way I would still match the color scheme.

I've been passing really well lately, which kind of surprises me.  One of my physics lab partners still thinks I'm a guy.  I'm just waiting for the day that someone "corrects" him when he calls me "he".  (Not that I want it to happen, not even sort of, but I know it will.)  And today I had kind of an awkward experience at the Farmers Market.  I went with a few of my friends, all of whom were girls.  We went up to the woman who was selling milk, and her sons were bothering her.  As she shooed them away, she said something about boys being annoying.  Then she looked at me and started to ramble: "Of course, I didn't mean you... I'm sure you're not annoying... I wasn't trying to be offensive... Just boys at that age... Unless you're 12?..."  It was really kind of amusing.  I'm not out to any of the people I was with, so I just kind of shrugged at her and didn't really say anything.  I'm surprised that none of my friends said anything (but grateful, too - it would have made the situation just that much more awkward).

Well, that was a long post without a whole lot of substance, but I guess those are my gender thoughts for the last few weeks.  More to come later.

If you haven't made your way over to the "Take Action" page yet, be sure to do so.  There's a link to a survey done by NCTE and NGLTF for trans and gender-variant people, and it's super important that you respond if you are trans or gender-variant.  Seriously.

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted because, as I said before, I was working as a camp counselor at a Girl Scout camp this summer.  What a summer it has been!  Now, first, if you're thinking Girl Scout camp isn't exactly the right place for a transguy, well, maybe you're right. :)  I went in as legally female, with my female name, since I haven't started transition yet and I didn't really want to deal with coming out.  All of the other counselors and essentially all of the staff were women, although there have been male counselors in previous years.  That fact made me feel better about working there, because it was a job I could have had even if I were legally male.  The staff were awesome people, and I love and miss them all.

Next came campers.  We had girls ranging in age from 7 to 16 staying for anywhere between four days and two weeks.  I was so nervous going into this job that I wouldn't be good with the kids or I would be a boring counselor, but my fears were unfounded.  After a couple of days, it was like second nature, and to my surprise the kids actually liked me.  By the end of the summer, there were kids literally hanging onto me and yelling "Cheez-It, Cheez-It!" (Cheez-It was my camp name.)  I loved the kids, and except for a few minor breakdowns over the course of the summer, I had an absolutely wonderful time.  I really hope I can work there again next summer.

Over the last few months, I've had some realizations about gender.  I don't have them organized or thought through in any way, but I want to express them so that hopefully I can make some sense out of them eventually.  I think I'll make a numbered list of observations and examples, and then maybe later I can try to think about them more.

    1. Kids, especially the younger set, always asked me if I was a boy or a girl.  They would literally argue with one another over what gender I was until somebody told them that I was a girl.  A couple of them were downright obsessed, which bugs me a little bit.
    2. Kids have high expectations about what is appropriate gendered behavior.  I had many kids ask me why I looked like a boy, or why I didn't want to wear a dress to formal dinner, or why I wouldn't wear a bikini, or so on and so forth.  On crazy hair day I put my hair in a mohawk type thing, and one girl first told me that she thought my hair was cool.  Then she remembered that I was a girl and she told me that girls shouldn't wear their hair that way because it's gross.  Surprised by her attitude shift, I asked her why it was gross, and she told me that if a girl wears a mohawk, people might think she was a boy and then a girl might kiss her and that would be gross.  I had to laugh. :)
    3. Whenever a girl called addressed me using a masculine pronoun (which happened frequently), and then either she "remembered" or somebody "corrected" her, she would act as though she had just committed a cardinal offense.  Girls who called me by the "wrong" pronoun would apologize profusely or make up some sort of excuse, as if I would be so offended by being called "he".  Of course I wasn't, but even if I were female-identified I don't think that would offend me much.  Whatever.
    4. When kids thought of me as a boy, I feel like they trusted me less.  Every night when we put the kids to bed, we did hugs, handshakes, and high-fives.  The first night or two of every session, when either the kids didn't know yet if I was a boy or a girl, or they just still thought of me as a guy, I got way fewer hugs from the campers than the other counselors did.  Also, one time a camper told me that on her very first night she didn't want to sit at my table because she thought I was a boy.  Another night she sat at my table because she felt bad for me because she thought the new campers would think I was a boy and not sit by me.

And some personal things that I've realized over the summer: I want to continue with transitioning, possibly having friends call me by my chosen male name and masculine pronouns soon and maybe seeing what I can do about finding a gender therapist (there aren't any in this area).  I definitely want top surgery, the sooner the better, and I'm considering hormones more strongly.  More than anything, I want to be recognized as male.  I want to be able to tell campers next year when they ask that I'm a boy (though how I would deal with kids who remember me I'm not sure).  It was super hard to say that I was a girl every time.

So, yeah, all in all it was an awesome summer.  Now I just can't wait for school to start!

Hey all.  I don't really have much to say, and I really need to go to sleep, but I wanted to say that I'm not going to be posting or making any updates to the site in the next two-and-a-half months.  I'm going to be working as a counselor at a summer camp, and as such will not have access to computers or internet.  I've never been a counselor before, and I'm really excited and nervous.  Wish me luck!  Enjoy the summer, and before you know it fall will be around the corner!