Am I Trans Enough For You Baby?

The question 'Am I trans enough?' seems to be depressingly common among we trans folk. Natalie Reed and Ami recently had a conversation about this on Twitter.Natalie said the doubts about rather she was 'really' trans delayed her transition about twelve years. I my case doubts about how trans I was were a major contributor to my ten year delay in coming out to myself and actually transitioning.

These doubts are aggravated by our oh so cis normative culture are dangerous to express as so many gatekeepers will see them as a sign that you aren't trans and deny you access to necessary medical care. It gets worse when you're gender queer. Telling many therapists that you feel gender fluid or between genders will get you dismissed as 'not serious' and not 'really trans' almost immediately, I have been lucky in that my therapist  accepts my gender as valid because it is mine.  That still hasn't quelled the self doubts that always lurk in the back of my mind and help feed my depression.

All this is aggravated by lack of language to express who I am. Oh yes I have words like gender queer and trans woman but so many people in our overwhelmingly cis normative society will ask 'but what does that REALLY mean?' or deny that they have any real meaning at all. This is further aggravated by people in the trans community who claim that if you don't have or want SRS you most definitely are not a 'true transsexual'.

A hopeful sign for me is that hearing this from outside or inside the trans community no longer automatically depresses me, it now more often just pisses me off. I am slowly working out some of my doubts and getting better and handling the remaining ones. Still they will never truly go away, it's just something I have to live with.

Natalie Reed

Natalie Reed is essential reading if you are at all interested in gender, sexuality or really anything. She is a brilliant critical thinker who will always make you think about things in a new way. For a added dose of thoughtful goodness follow her on Twitter as well.

Die Cis Scum!

While that statement may seem a little strong but I doubt there's a trans person alive who hasn't thought that or a close approximation at least once in their life. I'm lucky in that I've personally experienced very little trans misogyny and that mostly very mild. The worst was when my significant other called me a freak, we have moved well beyond that luckily. If you're at all connected to the world coming across daily examples of trans misogyny is almost inevitable.

While one expects professional bigots like Peter LaBarbera and Tony Perkins to make routine trans misogynist remakes the ones that piss me off the most are the ones that come from people who consider themselves LGBT allies. One very prominent example is Roseanne Barr who managed to faithfully mirror the attitudes of Perkins and LaBarbera. Nor is Barr the only liberal media figure to routinely make trans misogynist 'jokes', Adam Sandler and Craig Furguson being two notable examples.

I don't know about other people but having my identity and very being mocked and made into a bad joke tends to make me go all stabby. Trans people are routinely considered decivers, fakes and not quite human. Given the realities of the hate directed towards us I think Die Cis Scum i an appropriate and rather mild response.

On Not Passing

I didn't realize I was anything but cis until I was fifty and didn't start to transition until I was sixty. As a result though two and a half years of HRT have feminized me that can not undo the effects of sixty years of  testosterone. I will never be 'passable' by conventional beauty standards and I'm just fine with that. I started off my journey as a androgynous person so presenting in a androgynous fashion really suits me just fine. Basically I have decided to dress to please myself and screw trying to live by the standards of a cis hetero-normative society. So yes I am a gender queer trans woman and damned proud of it. Hell I even have it tattooed on my skin;

My tattoo

This is me femmed up for a night out;

See what I mean by not 'passable'? But what counts is I enjoyed that night immensely so fuck convetion live your life.

Stream Of Consciousness

Maybe it's my age but I just can't seem to do long thoughtful posts anymore. So this blog is going to stream of consciousness, AKA disjointed rambling. So let's begin shell we?