Category: Human Rights

This blog is part of my public identity, and therefore I exhibit a fair amount of care in terms of what I divulge. One consequence of this approach is that I have very little insight into my past internal emotional state despite ten years of blogging.

In an effort to have some record of this tumultuous period, I’m going to talk about what’s going on with me. I said in July that I was taking the steps to transition. That followed an earlier post in March where I noted that something was up gender-wise.

I’m still getting assessed for hormone replacement therapy. I had my fifth of six appointments at a community clinic this week. I should probably start on HRT come January.

Since my last update, I changed my name to Maëlys. It popped out at me when I was looking at popular French girl names. I hadn’t wanted to use variations from my birth name because I associated them with specific people. I liked that Maëlys was uncommon, that the first letter was in keeping with the names of my two other sisters, and that part of it was also an homage to a good friend.

Despite these traits I still wasn’t too sure about it at first, but as I’ve been using it more and more it’s come to feel right. My pronouns have also changed and are now she/her.

On that note, I was given this card the other day to honour the name/pronoun change. The friend wrote inside that there needed to be Hallmark cards for these milestones. It was a really kind gesture.

Transitioning wise, I was going to talk about when I started to shave my legs this summer, but actually it goes a fair bit further back. It wasn’t entirely with that awareness.

There are signs that go back to when I was 18 but on their own they were pretty inconsequential. Then in 2010/2011 things started to get more serious, in particular around sex and my bottom bits. It got to be that sex was really painful for me, but again I let it go.

It wasn’t until the early months of 2012 that I started to make an effort to hide my secondary sex characteristics whenever taking pictures of myself. I’d tuck, make sure I was shaved and take photos from angles that would seemingly round my face. I wasn’t able to verbalize it, but the masculinity I was seeing was a real problem. Even though I never admitted it, I loved it whenever someone mistook me for transitioning the other way. That happened a fair bit because I was posting selfies to a queer-friendly social media platform and it meant that maybe one day I could be mistaken for another sex.

That’s also about when I got my first strap-on from a vendor at Sexapalooza. I couldn’t enjoy sex with my own parts anymore; initially because of the pain and then because whenever I saw it as the male appendage it just completely killed it for me. A strap-on changed the game. It was cheap mainstream sex shop crap designed for impotent men, but that didn’t matter.

I knew that if I could make a wish and wake up in a girl’s body, I totally would. I knew that even sexist 18 year old me would have too after coming to terms with my internalized misogyny. I dreamed of being able to trade my body with someone of the other sex. But that wasn’t my world, so I just kept going on.

Come summer 2012, I got my first RodeOH harness. It felt so validating. I kept getting confused for a trans guy. I bought my first binder in the spring of 2013. It suggested I had a chest to hide, and that message was affirming the body I was seeing in the mirror. By this point I knew I needed to quench this disconnect with my body.

At first, that was in the form of seeking bottom surgery. Really I could live on as a guy, I just needed to fix what was down there. If I contemplated hormone replacement therapy, it was just to follow the narrative to access surgery.

Outwardly transitioning wasn’t really an option I thought. I had no hopes that I could live on as stealth and that was really discouraging. I feared rejection. Meanwhile, all the trans women I was aware of seemed to be very feminine, which further made me feel isolated as that wasn’t my path. Genderqueer was more apt but that seemed to only to mean female-assigned-at-birth. I felt like I didn’t really belong anywhere.

I kept thinking more on transitioning, and I realized that no – actually I wanted what the hormones would bring me. Belonging be damned. Bottom surgery started to get less important. I reflected much in this period. I realized that despite all these fears of going at it alone and forever being ostracized in a deeply transphobic society, that it was better than the alternative.

A big driver was looking at year old photos and realize that I was masculinizing at a fast pace, and that soon I would look like what men do in their thirties. I felt that any shot of inhabiting the body I desired was dropping rapidly. I felt that it was time to get the ball rolling.

I consulted friends on how I could start HRT given that I didn’t feel like I could out myself to my GP. Fortunately, a local clinic was starting a program to offer free assessments for hormone replacement therapy. I called them and after a while was able to see someone.

Those assessments started in the summer of 2013. I wasn’t in love with the idea of transitioning but I was doing an enormous amount of processing. The pause and simultaneous feeling of progress with the assessments helped in this regard.

By that point I felt like I was suffocating. I was going through this difficult period, for which talking would have helped immensely, but I couldn’t do that except in great confidence with a few friends. The mediums that I was using to express myself, like this blog and Facebook, were becoming jails. I couldn’t say anything otherwise risk compromising my relationship with my family and my work situation. Suppressing myself on every platform, however, was taking a toll.

So I started to make spaces where I could be free. I deleted my Facebook account, creating a new profile where I only friended those that would respect me regardless of my identity. I came out on this blog and to those in my life I could trust.

Outside of that, the transition kept progressing. I went out with a friend and picked up my first sports bra. I was too scared to go alone. It’s difficult to convey how liberating and good it felt to finally wear it. That was an important moment. I soon bought my first sports bra on my own.

Weeks before Pride, that friend and I went to Value Village where I picked up two skirts. I wore that skirt for the first time outside a week before Pride. I was so afraid before then that I would be destroyed by comments from judgy passerbys. I had witnessed such homophobic and transphobic vitriol over the years in Ottawa. But at the same time, I needed to do this for me. So I femmed up and walked outside.

I did get inappropriate comments. But I didn’t care – because what I noticed as I walked down the street is that virtually no one so much as gazed in my direction. That lack of attention was in itself so affirming that when someone finally did say something nasty, I just didn’t give a shit.

Pride came, and I wore that skirt again. I felt so real.

Two days later, I announced that my name had changed to Maëlys.

By then I was wearing and stuffing sports bras every day including to work. Not wearing one made it as if all the air in the world outside my apartment’s door were as heavy as molasses. I still dressed in a masculine fashion, which was in line with my gender expression.

I nonetheless did like to occasionally femme up. That said, wearing skirts started to make me feel very uncomfortable about my hairy legs. I wanted those hairs gone but I was scared to shave because I thought people at work would notice. I was afraid of what would happen if they did.

But at one point it became too much. So I shaved. The second I was done, it felt so right. All those fears about work just melted away. A few weeks later, I went through the same thing with my arms. Same anxieties, just as quickly vanished once done. As it turns out, no one at work said a thing.

Meanwhile, my processing started to bear fruit. I continued to have reservations about starting hormone replacement therapy. The question became should I move ahead while having these doubts.

I came to conclude that the answer was yes. I recognized that those doubts would persist for as long as the dissociation with my gender continued, which could be the rest of my life. Hormone replacement therapy would bring me a resolution.

There was also reassurances in thinking of what if I was wrong. If I did this and was wrong, I could just stop and things would be more or less reversible. I would have many months to evaluate the slow changes and see if I liked what I saw. However, if I didn’t do this and was wrong, I’d be in real trouble. I would have squandered my one chance to do this as young as I did, and by then I’m not sure I could stand myself. I can barely do it now. I don’t know if I could carry on.

If it turned out that this reversal of feelings came in ten, twenty years – then I would of had all these years of good life that I made happen. That’s an excellent thing to be able to claim and I can deal with whatever steps I need to then.

The sense of victory in terms of my bra and shaving did lead me to believe I’d likely feel pretty good about HRT too. Doing these things had been like weights lifted off of my shoulder that I never knew had been there until they finally came off. Now being cognizant of the relief in their absence, I could never go back. There was also a pretty good track record with the transition of others, though I never felt like I quite matched up to their exhibited resolve.

Then finally, there was how I felt about regret. Which is to say that it isn’t the things I do that I regret but rather the things I didn’t do because I was afraid. Regret doesn’t belong with the outcome but rather somewhere much before that point. For me, that was a discussion spanning months on how I could transform this very unhappy set of years in terms of my body into something good. That I won’t regret nor the decision it led to.

I started to gain some confidence with my newfound identity. A part of that was being able to have friends that didn’t bat an eye at treating me like a girl, and sharing intimacy with people that respected my body as feminine. So much of my lack of confidence had been rooted in the poisoned depiction of trans women in mainstream society – from being treated as threats in the washroom by this country’s elected officials, to openly derided in television and games, to desired in a creepy objectified way as “shemales” by straight men. In all of these cases, we are no more than genitals to them, as if to say that that’s all a woman is.

It also helped that I finally found role models that made me feel less alone in my approach. There was a talk by butch trans women at a conference that was absolutely affirming for me. There were people in the local queer community that showed that having side burns didn’t mean you were disqualified from being she’d.

That confidence led to me being able to finally change my gender marker on a dating site. It also led me to being able to hold up my own in the face of disapproving parents and not be affected by ignorant messages like that below:

So there you have it. My name is Maëlys. I’m 28 years old, queer, and go by the pronouns she/her. Pleased to meet you.

Note: Even though this site is public, please don’t disclose what I’m doing to others. Allow me to decide for myself when I’ll disclose to those who don’t read this blog. I’m sharing this because I hope that it being out there as yet another narrative might help someone else feel a little less alone.

The company I work for has an employee assistance program through its insurance policy. It’s a self-help website with material focused around health and well-being.

A year and some ago, I approached them about their stuff on queer and trans issues. It was just a mess. In particular, their articles touching trans issues were so bad as to risk causing harm if consulted. The worst of the bunch was one called Transexuality, transgenderism and sexual identity.

There was silence, and I contacted them again in February of this year. In the months since, there has been some back and forth. I explained to them a few times why the information was offensive and harmful. They would thank me, give me some details that helped elucidate matters from their end, and promise updates.

Well, the changes finally came through. They removed all articles pertaining to queer issues except for two, one being an updated version of the cited problem article. The article meanwhile was reduced by two thirds, definitions were plagiarized from a better website, and the rest of the content was reworded.

It was clear to me that no one with experience in trans issues was involved in the writing of these articles. Through our communication I learned that they didn’t always vet articles by experts, and that this article was put together by a copywriter. I offered them resources to professionals, but they never took me up on that.

So I’ll post the original and revised articles below, and go into what was so bad about the original one, and what changed with the revised version.

The Original Article

Transexuality, transgenderism and sexual identity

Overview

Understanding transexuality, transgenderism and sexual identity

• Basic terms and definitions
• Sexual orientation and gender
• Sexual orientation and transgenderism
• Supporting a transgendered or transsexual co-worker

The difference between transexuality, transgenderism, and sexual orientation can be confusing. It’s important, therefore, to understand the differences in order to fully understand the need for some people to bring their external appearance into line with their internal gender identity.

Let’s begin by examining the basic terms and definitions surrounding the subject.

Basic terms and definitions

• Gender. How society, biology, or culture defines “male” and “female.”
• Gender identity. How an individual defines his or her gender.
• Gender role. Rules assigned by society that define what clothing, behaviours, thoughts, feelings, relationships, etc. are considered appropriate and inappropriate for members of a given gender. Classifications of “masculine,” “feminine,” or “unisex” vary by class, culture, location, occasion, as well as other factors
• Transgender. An individual who defines his or her gender identity as opposite from his or her biological identity at birth. For example, a man who was born with male genitalia and identifies his gender as “female” or vice versa.
• Transexual. Similar to transgendered, a transsexual associates him or herself with a gender identity opposite from his or her biological identity at birth, but undergoes sexual reassignment surgery to change gender. An example is the 1970s tennis star Dr. Richard Raskind who was born “male” but felt “female.” He underwent sexual reassignment surgery to become physically female — Dr. Renee Richards. Other notable transsexual people include photographer Christine Jorgenson (born George William Jorgenson Jr.), writer Jan Morris (born James Morris) and musician Wendy (born Walter) Carlos
• RLT. Stands for Real Life Training and means a transgendered individual wishing to undergo sexual reassignment surgery must live as the member of their preferred sex for a period of time prior to having surgery.
• SRS. Sex Reassignment Surgery. After successfully completing the RLT stage, a transgendered person completes the final stage in aligning his or her internal and external gender.

Sexual orientation and gender

According to the Kinsey Reports, sexuality is not a fixed state and is prone to change over time. Instead of three categories (heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual), the Kinsey Report used a eight-category system. The Kinsey scale ranked sexual behaviour from 0 to 6, with 0 being completely heterosexual and 6 completely homosexual. A 1 is considered predominantly heterosexual and only incidentally homosexual, a 2 mostly heterosexual and more than incidentally homosexual, a 3 equally homosexual and heterosexual, and so on. An additional category X was created for those who experienced no sexual desire. The majority of us land on the heterosexual side of the scale, while one in 10 will identify as homosexual. In between are those who identify as bisexual.

Simply put, sexual orientation refers to the gender to which we are sexually attracted.

Gender, on the other hand, is the physical appearance and internal wiring that makes us either male or female. Unfortunately, nature sometimes doesn’t align our internal wiring with our external appearance. The result is someone who experiences a disconnection between his or her inside sense of self and gender and external, physical characteristics. The physical package may say male but their sense of self may say female or vice versa. These people are labelled as being “transgendered”

Sexual orientation and transgenderism

It is important to separate sexual orientation from transgenderism. Sexual orientation is the direction of our sexual interest – our sexual attraction to members of the opposite sex, the same sex, or both sexes. Transgenderism has nothing to do with the choice of sex partner.

For example, a transgendered male attracted to females will still be attracted to females after sexual reassignment surgery. He will go from being described as a straight male to a lesbian female. Consequently, a male attracted to males will continue to be attracted to males following sexual reassignment surgery and will go from being described as a gay man to a straight woman.

This may be a little confusing but if we keep in mind that orientation is about whom we are sexually attracted to, gender is how our individual physical and internal wiring dictates whether we are male or female, and that gender role is how we appear physically externally, then we can begin to better understand the issue. We can then see that transgenderism and transexuality is merely correcting a disconnect between the external appearance and internal self.

Most transsexual people will only feel whole when their internal self matches their external appearance.

Supporting a transgendered or transsexual co-worker

It can be confusing when a person with whom we have worked begins to transform into the opposite gender. Often ignorance and myth are the cause of much fear, anxiety and discrimination. We are, after all, human, and humans generally fear the unknown. Sometimes we feel tricked by the transgendered person, believing that he or she has betrayed us by keeping such an important secret.

Some of us may fear that a colleague’s gender change will result in a change in sexual orientation and that we may become targets of the transgendered person’s affection. Many of us are afraid we’ll say or do something that will result in a distancing from a person to whom we were once close. In some ways we are grieving the loss of someone we knew and are having to get reacquainted with that person all over again.

All of these reactions are normal.

Co-workers and friends of a transgendered individual need to keep in mind that sexual reassignment is not a decision anyone makes lightly. It is difficult and requires courage. It’s important to understand that while your transgendered colleague’s outward appearance may be changing, he or she remains the same inside. He or she has the same personality, the same sense of humour, the same professional skills and qualifications. If we care about that person, we need to respect his or her decision and understand that this isn’t about making a statement, but rather about feeling a complete – and correct – human being.

It is also important to respect our co-worker’s right to privacy as he or she makes the transition. We can ask questions, but the most important one is “Is it okay for me to ask about the process?” Don’t ignore what is happening. For a transgendered person, ignoring this life affirming change will result in him or her feeling as though you either don’t care or that you have a problem with the situation.

Don’t be afraid of being awkward. It’s normal to feel a little awkward when we are presented with a new situation. Be respectful, be supportive, remain interested, and your colleague’s transformation may just change your life as well.

What’s So Wrong With The Original?

Let’s start with the fact that they get the gendering and pronouns wrong. Let me just say that a woman is a woman, irrespective of any medical history. Irrespective of outward appearance. Irrespective of genital configuration. She is a woman if she says she’s a woman.

This article starts to get things wrong starting right with the definitions. For “transgender”, they say “For example, a man who was born with male genitalia and identifies his gender as ‘female’ or vice versa.”

They’re describing a woman. Yet they call her “a man”, use the pronouns “his”, and put “female” in quotation marks. Everything about this says that they don’t really think she’s a woman. She’s a man. Using the wrong pronouns alone can be very hurtful when dealing with someone, but this takes it a step beyond. This is not a good start to get people with no exposure in the right mindset.

The next set of examples, in the definition for “transexual”, are equally bad:

An example is the 1970s tennis star Dr. Richard Raskind who was born “male” but felt “female.” He underwent sexual reassignment surgery to become physically female — Dr. Renee Richards. Other notable transsexual people include photographer Christine Jorgenson (born George William Jorgenson Jr.), writer Jan Morris (born James Morris) and musician Wendy (born Walter) Carlos

Again, everything here serves to de-legitimise the person’s gender identity. The tennis star is not referred to by her actual name, but by her masculine birth name. It says that she “felt” female, and that “he” (wrong pronoun) underwent surgery to become “physically” female. Again and again, a denial of her womanhood.

Then it goes on to cite other examples of famous trans people, feeling it necessary to put their birth names there. Tip: don’t bring up people’s birth names – ever – unless they gave you explicit permission to do so.

They go on to define “real life training”, which ignores the reality that every day is real life training. It’s rooted in an antiquated approach by the medical establishment to dealing with trans people. It’s also based on very strict gender roles for what a “man” or “woman” ought to dress and behave like.

Finally, it’s the definition for sexual reassignment surgery (SRS), which they call “the final stage in aligning his or her internal and external gender.” Which is of course just plain wrong. Some people will go through SRS. Some won’t ever. But the identity of both are equally just as valid.

You are more than just your genitals. Something that this article gets wrong time after time.

After definitions, the article discusses orientation. They mean to say that sexual orientation and gender are independent. That’s a good message. However, they do so invoking the Kinsey scale and bringing up the long disproved statistic that 1-in-10 people are gay. Whatever though.

What’s troubling are their examples in this section, where they get it all wrong:

For example, a transgendered male attracted to females will still be attracted to females after sexual reassignment surgery. He will go from being described as a straight male to a lesbian female. Consequently, a male attracted to males will continue to be attracted to males following sexual reassignment surgery and will go from being described as a gay man to a straight woman.

With the first example, what they mean to say is that a trans woman attracted to women will still be attracted to women. She will go from being described as a lesbian woman to a lesbian woman.

Let’s unpack this first example, because the subtext is what’s quite harmful. First off, remember that a woman is a woman. If you put “trans” in front of it, she’s still a woman. But they call her a “transgendered male” because the person was likely assigned male at birth. And according to whoever wrote this article, what makes the difference is your genitals – notice how she wasn’t recognized as a lesbian woman until after she had SRS?

This example gets the definition for trans man/woman reversed, and their gender identity isn’t respected until “the surgery.” That’s a really harmful message to propagate, because it suggests that all those men and women aren’t there aren’t real unless we can peek down their pants.

But that’s not the worse of it. That comes in the next section on support:

It can be confusing when a person with whom we have worked begins to transform into the opposite gender. Often ignorance and myth are the cause of much fear, anxiety and discrimination. We are, after all, human, and humans generally fear the unknown. Sometimes we feel tricked by the transgendered person, believing that he or she has betrayed us by keeping such an important secret.

Some of us may fear that a colleague’s gender change will result in a change in sexual orientation and that we may become targets of the transgendered person’s affection.

…

All of these reactions are normal.

These reactions are not okay. Again let’s unpack.

The article says that fear and ignorance drive discrimination, but then justifies it with “we are, after all, human.” They say that it’s a normal reaction to feel “tricked” and “betrayed” by a trans person for being themselves.

The more disturbing one is the expressed “fear” that we could be the “targets of the transgendered person’s affection.” Why is this even in there at all? And why the use of the words “fear” and “target”? Oh, because the affection of a person isn’t the same if they have a trans background. Right.

This article normalizes hostile behaviour towards trans people (“we are, after all, human”). It uses language like “fear”, “target”, “tricked”, “betrayed” when discussing a trans person for just existing. This is what makes this article harmful. It’s subtle – look at the vocabulary used – but it promotes a way to frame the issue that’s hurtful for trans folk.

The messaging towards the end of the article gets better. It states that people are still the same they’ve always been. That’s important. But it also screws is up once again. It equates being trans with surgery – perpetuating the destructive idea that it’s your genitals are what legitimises your identity.

We can ask questions, but the most important one is “Is it okay for me to ask about the process?”

I totally agree, consent is important. But get away from this obsession with “the process” – which given the wording is really is another way to talk about genitals. How about just asking them how they’re doing? Furthermore, different people would be quite content not to be reminded how they’re seen as different all the time.

Like some people might want to talk about it, which is totally cool. But bringing up intimate details about someone’s body, especially in a work situation like this article, I don’t think makes for a welcoming environment. Do you really want to go to work to be asked about your genitals even in a polite way?

Don’t ignore what is happening. For a transgendered person, ignoring this life affirming change will result in him or her feeling as though you either don’t care or that you have a problem with the situation.

Actually, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with treating the person as you always have, new name and pronouns aside. In fact, that might be pretty fucking desirable. Depends on the person. It’s not a sign that you don’t care or have a problem, it could be the very opposite. Pretty sweeping assumption though, well done article author.

So yeah, just a terrible piece of work. I mean the intent is to have people be more supportive of trans people in their workplace, but instead they get told that trans people’s identities are reduced to genitalia, that they aren’t really that identity anyways, that it’s normal to fear them being attracted to you, etc.

On to the revised version.

The Revised Article

Showing Respect for Transgender or Transsexual Co-workers

Overview

Understanding and showing respect for transgender or transsexual co-workers, colleagues or business associates.

• Basic terms and definitions
• How you may feel when you learn that you have a transgender or transsexual co-worker
• Ways to show respect for transgender or transsexual co-workers

Basic terms and definitions

The term LGBT is widely used for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, but each of those groups is unique. Here are some definitions to keep in mind:

• Lesbian, gay and bisexual are words to describe a person’s sexual orientation – a term that indicates whether someone is attracted to the same sex, the opposite sex or both.
• Transgender refers to gender identity, and not to sexual orientation . Gender identity is the sex that a person identifies with on a deep psychological level, whether or not his or her birth certificate reflects it. It is “an umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth,” according to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center (www.gaycenter.org). “The term may include but is not limited to transsexuals, cross-dressers, and other gender-variant people. Transgender people may identify as female-to-male (FTM) or male-to-female (MTF).” A transgender person can be straight, gay or bisexual.
• Transsexual is an older term that refers to someone who identifies as a member of the opposite gender and who, through surgery or hormone therapy or both, acquires physical characteristics of that gender.  The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center says that many people who have had surgery or hormone therapy call themselves transgender rather than transsexual.“However, unlike transgender, the term transsexual is not an umbrella term, and many transgender people do not identity as transsexual.”

At work and elsewhere, it’s best to use the term the person prefers. Avoid using the term “transgender lifestyle.” Transgender adults have many lifestyles, just as others do.

Many transgender people have gender reassignment surgery (SRS), the term preferred to “sex-change operation.”  But, not everyone wants or can afford to have the surgery, and not having it doesn’t make gender identity less important to the person.

How you may feel when you learn that you have transgender co-worker

It can be confusing when a person whom with you have worked for some time – and particularly if you know him or her well – begins to take on a new gender identity. If this happens, you may:

• Feel hurt or even betrayed that the person kept an important secret from you.
• Wonder if you will become the object of the person’s affection.
• Worry that you will say or do something that will result in a distancing from a person to whom you were once close.

All of these reactions are normal. In some ways, you may be mourning the loss of the person you knew, and feeling as though you need to reacquaint with that person all over again.

Showing respect for transgender co-workers

If your transgender co-worker has made the decision to go through the process of gender reassignment, here are some important things to remember:

• Keep in mind that sexual reassignment is not a decision anyone makes lightly. It is difficult and requires courage.
• Remember that while your co-worker’s outward appearance may be changing, other aspects of their personhood aren’t.Your colleague has the same personality, the same sense of humour, the same professional skills and qualifications. In order to maintain a good relationship, you will need to respect his or her decision and understand that this isn’t about making a statement, but rather about feeling a complete and correct human being.
• Respect your co-worker’s right to privacy as he or she makes the transition, but don’t ignore what is happening. Ignoring this life-affirming change may make the person feel as though you either don’t care or that you have a problem with the situation. If you aren’t sure what to say, you might simply ask your colleague, “Is it OK for me to ask about the process?”

You may also want to visit the website for PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays Canada – www.pflagcanada.ca),which has an extensive section of transgender resources that can help you understand your colleague’s experience and possibly even the changes that he or she may be experiencing.

Don’t be afraid to feel awkward. It’s normal to feel unsure of how to act when a new situation arises. Be respectful, be supportive, remain interested, and your colleague’s transformation may just change your life as well.

So… Better?

The title sets the right tone, with “Showing Respect for Transgender or Transexual Co-workers.”

The definitions this time round are actually okay. It helps that they copied-and-pasted parts of them from better websites. Gone is the incorrect gendering and the use of surgery as what validates your identity. In fact, there’s now a paragraph about how surgery isn’t the arbiter of identity. The definitions could stand to be improved (there are more orientations than just straight/gay/bi), but it’s a big step up from before.

Justification for discrimination, and words like “tricked”, “fear”, and “target” have all been removed. That’s good. What’s less good is that the gay panic shit remains, albeit reworded in less strong language (you may “wonder if you will become the object of the person’s affection.”) That should just be removed entirely.

Because much of the revised article is rewording of the original, the association between surgery and identity still remains in spots. There’s still that suggestion of what many would associate with asking questions about their genitals in a work setting (“Is it OK for me to ask about the process?”)

The revised article concludes by suggestion the reader visit PFLAG’s website. So overall, the new article is better. It’s not a very useful article, given that their approach to making it acceptable was to cut, copy, reword – rather than write something decent from scratch. But better that than the original, which was spreading really terrible ways to look at trans matters.

I stared at my cellphone. The phone number was there, I just had to press the icon of the phone to place the call. I couldn’t.

The second day I did it. I explained to the person on the other end that I had called about being able to get an assessment for hormone replacement therapy. They thought that this wasn’t the right extension, but that they’d find the individual I was trying to get to and have them call me. They then asked me for my number. I froze.

I couldn’t remember my own phone number. This had never happened. My old phone number came to mind. Was that my old one? My new one? I knew my email address. Could I give them that instead? They then read off her Caller ID and asked me if that was my number. It was. Thank goodness.

I got a call back. I was told that this was a new program, and that they’d call me next week to schedule an appointment with for the assessment. That was in May.

It doesn’t feel two months have passed.

I’ve seen the social support worker twice now. I have four more appointments to go before I can get a referral to an endocrinologist. I’m really grateful for the program that’s giving me these free appointments, because the other avenue of approaching my family doctor just wasn’t an option.

How far I’ve come, in so many ways. For those who have been around me during this time, especially those that just listened and opened up to me, I’d like to thank you. One of my greatest obstacles had been to overcome this feeling that what I was experiencing wasn’t real because it didn’t share the resolve of that narrative I heard over and over. You broke that perception down, and in doing so, made me feel a little less alone.

There are many unknowns that remain in me. My head is a mess of strong emotions and anecdotes, wishes and pains. I’ve nonetheless decided to go ahead with the process of acquiring hormone replacement therapy. To make that call, book the appointments. First out of fear of deep regret if I waited while my body further masculinized, and then out of a nascent sense of confidence.

The more time passes, the more I’m sure that that was the right thing to do. Having a future where my body becomes a part of me that helps me find joy, as opposed to being an impediment to that, is becoming viable. I don’t want to give the impression that everything is certain. It isn’t. But stories from those around me has given me strength to find myself, and I know that I won’t regret anything as I move forward.

So where does that leave you and me.

At this time, if I’m asked for my preferred pronouns, I answer they/them. I don’t correct people that use ‘he’. I don’t feel like either the trans or cis label fit me, jokingly referring to myself as gender fucked. You can use genderqueer. I would also caution against the erroneous assumption that my choice of labels diminishes the importance of transitioning for myself.

Finally, I want to thank everyone that’s shown me kindness and acceptance.