Redress Alert

Anonymous asked:

Are there any films or novels that resonate with you in regards to your disidentification or detransition even if they're not speciffically about that topic?

Yes, but my associations with my trans/detrans story are not separable from other aspects of my life, so this is a real idiosyncratic list.

Novels:

Laika by Max Robinson (holy shit, it hits so hard in that medical transition trauma place. buy this book!)

Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler (the part about the Oankali children who mostly appear human but have Oankali appendages, and the humans want to just cut those parts off so they can pretend they are nothing but fully human children. and they are warned, they’re risking the kids’ health and the appendages will keep growing back… just such a goddamn vibe, even if not a neat parallel. but something that informed my disidentification was my pre-existing physical “otherness” from other girls and i think it hits me there.)

The Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart (this has everything…visionary and awesome ideas about what women are outside of patriarchy; passing women who foray back into mensland periodically for strategic purposes and at great personal cost; interesting ideas about how to hold memories of a fucked up past while not living within its confines…just so much here.)

The Female Man, Joanna Russ

The Swashbuckler, Lee Lynch (something that informed my disidentification was being an overt dyke who likes a whole range of women, very much including other obvious dykes, and alienation from the butch/femme gender norms that ruled the scenes i found myself in…my desire for anyone but femmes was only okay insofar as it was framed as a “gay transman” thing. anyway, this is a love story between two butch dykes who have to question the gender norms of their lesbian communities to accept what they mean to each other and it is so good.)

Empathy by Sarah Schulman (i love this book. can’t say much without spoilering but it deals with very relevant stuff wrt ways that het society fucks up lesbians’ ideas about ourselves.)

The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman

Plays:

The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, Carolyn Gage

Bite My Thumb, Carolyn Gage

idk about films…

sometime ask me which books/movies fucked me up wrt gender identity issues, lol!

Anonymous asked:

Any tips on how to navigate bathrooms and locker rooms? I've stopped HRT but as i don't want to dress feminine and can pass for male I can't rely on my voice or breasts like other gnc or masc women do, and really don't want to make others uncomfortable. I'd prefer neutral single stalls but those are rare where i live so i have to pick. Would changing my documents to F work?? Should i just not bother and continue to use the male ones even as a woman? I feel very guilty and shitty, like a freak

I know, single user bathrooms are really amazing, wish they were more of a thing everywhere. Meanwhile, I think you should go in whichever bathroom you feel most comfortable in without guilt or shitty feelings at all! I get not wanting to make other women uncomfortable but I think everyone female should go where she needs to go. You may also want to look into a pstyle if you don’t already have one–just gives you more options, either in the mens room or ya know..in the wild. If you decide to use the men’s in consideration for other women who will perceive you as a man–just know that you are in good company–plenty of other detrans women and passing women and dykes use the men’s room just to avoid causing a stir.

Off topic, if you have “male” documents, I would recommend thinking through how that would go if you ever got arrested–it’s a serious consideration.

Anonymous asked:

Hey! Sorry if this doesn't fit the focus of your blog, feel free to ignore. But I'm wondering if you can talk about ways non-detrans women can support detrans women? And especially if you had any insight into ways radfems/GC feminists specifically tend to 'get it wrong'. I want to be an ally to detrans women and I feel like some comments I see from other radfems seem kind of shitty toward detransitioners but I feel like I'm not informed enough to speak up/call it out.

Thanks for the ask and the consideration! Often what is missing is that very consideration, awareness that detrans women are whole people who are worth treating with basic respect. The problems I see really often stem from treating us like symbols. Those projected symbolic meanings can be dehumanizing whether they are intended to be positive or not. We’re not weird martyrs, we’re not broken or ruined, we’re not tragic catastrophes, we don’t enjoy being compared to mass transit wrecks or cautionary tales; we live in our bodies as they are and typically already have a lot of social stigma to resist about our appearance (in ways that are not easily shared with most other women, who have a different bag of rocks in that regard); we don’t welcome your pity or ridicule–no one would.

We are women who have a particular experience in common, and while it may not be a very typical one, we are not some separate exotic species you cannot fathom. Some women have experienced rape; all women have experienced rape culture. Some women were raped as girls/by family members and that is its own unique, specific experience. You might, as a woman who has experienced rape culture in a more general sense, be capable of digging deep to make connections and grow your empathy with that specific experience, but you wouldn’t then say “well, all women have been incested.” Likewise, some women have experienced gender troubles serious enough that we’ve transitioned to an extent; all women have traumatic experiences with imposed gender roles, limitations/expectations (1). Dig deep, make connections, grow both your empathy and your political framework from that empathetic connection-building. But realize how dismissive it sounds to say “well, all women have gender dysphoria.”

Also, I appreciate your drive toward solidarity with detrans women but I hope it also extends further, to those who have “incorrect” identity paradigms in your social circle. Often the same people who dis us also make a habit of mocking transmen or genderqueer/nb-identified female human beings for sport. There is a genre of person who who does both of these things all while self identifying as “radfem” (and if I may throw their own words back at them: identifying as something doesn’t make it so). Being a radical feminist means aiming for the liberation of women as a sex class, regardless of their individually-held identity politics or how they name themselves. It also, in my experience, involves treating other women with respect. When that is missing, there is something else going on under the name of feminism, and it’s always good to ask–what cultural work is this behavior actually doing? And who interests is this serving?

If your interest is in women’s liberation, how does it serve that purpose to identify an “acceptable female target” (2) to scapegoat for your frustrations about patriarchy? Even if that identified target is acting as a “token torturer” (3) in a given situation, how would the way forward (from any kind of feminist perspective, let alone a radical one) involve a practice of creating group cohesion by belittling and mocking her as a representative of a group of women you’ve deemed bad/impure/fallen/crazy/damaged goods/pitiable –with a particular focus on mocking their bodies? Or treating living women as an Exhibit A to be exploited for the sake of your own political opinions, with no thought that the woman herself has a richly informed opinion of her own, and perhaps it is worth a listen?

The “ally” language makes me nervous because of what it has so often come to mean. You do not have to agree with every detrans woman’s takes–this isn’t about toeing some line or taking dictation, and that would be impossible, as we don’t agree with each other and hold multiple conflicting and mutually exclusive opinions. But if “allyship” matters to you, then the best thing to do is hear us out–including the ones you disagree with–and see if you can get to a place where our ideas are at least comprehensible. Where you understand where it comes from and can see the sense in it, get the internal logic from within her particular context. Be willing to bridge and translate–make that effort.

And you don’t have to be particularly “informed” to interrupt group-bonding-via-disrespect. You can always say, “This doesn’t feel right to me,” or ask, “Whose interests is this serving?” But I will warn you that I’ve gotten precisely nowhere with interrupting this kind of thing in people whose sole purpose for being on the internet seems to be exactly this: trashing acceptable female targets for sport while pretending there’s some political virtue in doing so and calling it “feminism.” They aren’t going to stop. I gave up on them many years ago. I focus instead on the women who are doing something I believe in.

I guess I’ve been focusing on the way of “getting it wrong” that involves bad internet behavior, but I also think it’s egregious to make us a symbolic “cause” and cast yourself as the hero by doing activism that my entire cohort of detrans women, at least, see as extremely damaging–here I’m thinking of women who have taken it upon themselves to harass patients at gender clinics, allegedly in solidarity with women like me. Nobody I know among detrans women would want that. We did not ask for that. We would never! It is a horrific proposition, modeled after anti-abortion tactics, and represents yet more of the damaging consequences of right wing infiltration into some feminist groups. I’m sure that none of the people doing that are aware that years ago, a detrans woman did some amazing direct action involving her former clinic. First she tried meeting with them about her experience. When they wouldn’t listen to her, she made artwork confronting her former “care providers” and telling her truths. She wheatpasted that art all around the clinic. It was extremely badass. She didn’t harass the current patients, for fuck’s sake! But some people just need to be the big hero in their own minds, and get lauded by their internet buddies, they can’t be bothered to understand why it might be important to…you know…have meaningful connections/input from the people they think they are “saving.”

Some self-identified GCs/radfems seem into creating dismissive, thought-stopping cliches about detrans women/transmen/etc. For example, dismissing us as “denying biological reality.” In fact, most detrans women I know were doing the furthest thing from that when we transitioned. We were painfully and acutely aware of our biological reality the entire time–this was part of what pushed many of us into transition in the first place. For another example, anytime I would say something that wasn’t extremely in lockstep with the rhetoric du jour in some internet so-called “radfem” circles, I would routinely get accused of “still being trans” in some way. This was bizarre, as I had detransitioned 10+ years before these interactions and in no way had a self-concept as anything but a woman. But that was an easy thing to say to get people to dismiss me. I’ve found the lens of “sex, not gender” that I saw articulated by radical feminists to be very valuable and because I take it seriously, I don’t think we should be dismissing anyone female in a conversation about patriarchy/women’s liberation. So it never made sense to me that this kind of accusation worked that way, resulted in being dismissed, in groups that supposedly shared that lens.

I’ve also noticed a lot of arrogance coming at detrans women whenever we might attempt to correct a misconception–really often we’ll get told we just don’t understand ourselves or we are in denial. Pretty patronizing. And it only happens when we try to add any nuance to a conversation or deviate from the “script” of thought-stopping cliches. As long as we’re being mouthpieces of the cliches, these kinds of accusations are notably absent…so, that is transparent as hell and it sure is not respect.

There’s also the tendency among some self-identifying “gcs/radfems” to claim they can always tell who is male or female and bizarre ideas about what constitutes “male traits.” Like. You’re going to be more accurate if you are looking for sexed traits, not gender markers, but some people really are ambiguous, and especially now that we’re bio-hacking sexed traits–you just cannot always tell sex based on appearance. Some of us pass successfully. Yes, really. I am confident that I have a way higher accuracy in reading ambiguous people’s sex than average, but I cannot “always tell” either. So I know these clearly clueless people definitely can’t.

Now that I’m listing peeves, it’d be nice if people would stop acting like “therapy” is some magical solution we were all cruelly deprived of, that would absolutely have “saved” us if only we’d had access–rather than realizing that the DSM and its priests have always been part of the pathologizing/normalizing context that created our conditions in the first place. Like, I also think there is a problem with hormone dispensaries having zero standards of care in practice, and I’m not denying the usefulness of therapy to some people under some circumstances and for some purposes–but the assumption that it is The Answer to trans/detrans issues and represents our “salvation” is way, way off the mark. Social/cultural/economic/political problems are not solved in the psyche of the stigmatized person.

All this kind of stuff has leaked offline at this point, but a whole lot of these issues are created or made worse by an online context–I’d strongly encourage you to build offline radical feminist community and organizing bodies. Refuse any right wing connections–keep it absolutely autonomous and female-focused. Not just what you resist, but what you stand FOR. Probably the single most important thing you can do is to resist right wing infiltration/co-optation and try to help repair the damage it has caused. And don’t contribute to the weird, fundamentalist behavior I described, the trollish targeting of groups of women, replete with thought terminating cliches and zealotry–which made fertile ground for that kind of infiltration in the first place.

I hope this helps. I appreciate your question.

Notes:
1. The limitations and expectations framing comes from Nedra Johnson’s lyrics in her song August Moon.

2. “Acceptable female targets”-my thinking on this phenomenon was deeply informed by the writing of former tumblrer lavenderjanestrikesback.

3. “Token torturer”-this concept comes from Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology.

Seeing the trees for the forest

permutational:

It’s tiresome that so much discussion around detransition is all about “how easy/difficult it is to access trans healthcare”, and “whether or not therapy should be required first”. I wish the conversation would evolve beyond this. Don’t know if it ever will.

People seem quick to assume that the only perspective a detransitioner could offer is, “It was too easy and I shouldn’t have been allowed to do it,” when in reality, we’re equal participants in this realm of healthcare, and might have more nuanced criticisms and contributions were people to seriously engage with us. Surely we can be more than a pawn in someone’s Twitter argument.

Looking at my story, for instance, some might assume that it was “too easy” for me to transition. Some would argue that it should Never Be That Easy, others would argue that I’m straight up lying because it’s not that easy in their city/state/country (ha ha, as if modern trans healthcare has established itself to the point of having consistent standards).

I disagree that it was “too easy”, and also assert that no amount of bureaucratic hurdles or ~therapy~ would have stopped me from doing what I did. My criticisms of my healthcare have nothing to do about how “easy” or “hard” it was, and everything to do with the lack of engagement, information, or support I received over the years from the healthcare providers who were purportedly there to help me, especially the radio silence in between the “milestone” events along my transition. My criticisms also extend beyond my care and into the larger world I live in.

Some things were quick and easy to access, others were difficult; my problem is that no matter how I accessed it, it was of poor quality and had no fallback for when things didn’t go according to plan. During my entire transition, I mostly felt… very alone and on my own. Same goes double for when I detransitioned.

I don’t want people to put up more bullshit barriers for others in response to what I’ve been through; I want people to make healthcare and the world better as a whole.

Focusing on Gatekeeping is seeing the trees for the forest.

—

When I was 19 and I started testosterone, I got my first dose at the Mazzoni Center after two visits. Technically 3 appointments, with two of them occurring on the same day. I was living out of town at the time, so they kindly offered to schedule the last two appointments on the same day to save me a third train ride into the city.
If I recall correctly, the first day was intake, a general visit with the primary care doctor, talking with the doc about HRT, getting bloodwork done. The second visit was something like a 1-hour session with their intake therapist. And then after that, the “third” visit (right after walking out of the therapist’s office) was signing informed consent forms and having the nurse do my first shot and teach me how to administer it myself.

I was uninsured at the time; they had some programs to make HRT cheaper for uninsured youth under 25, and the rest, I paid with my money from work-study.

—

A few years later, after dropping out of college and joining the workforce, I got a job at a place that had insurance that claimed to cover trans health. I decided to spend a year saving up what I could for my top surgery and hysterectomy, and get them both done at once while I knew I still had insurance at all.

When the time came to seek letters – plural, because 2 are required for a hysto – I wrote to Mazzoni and asked what to do. They immediately sent me a letter, from a therapist I’ve never met in my life. One down!

They referred me to a local therapist for the second letter. He was a fellow trans guy, and he told me that he hated having to be a Gatekeeper. So his policy was to do 3 sessions as a bare minimum to claim that he had a therapeutic relationship with the patient, and he would then “fill in the blanks” in a template letter (which is what most therapists do for these letters, don’t kid yourself!).

I was 23 years old, had been on T for several years already, was living full time as male, and had legally changed my name and sex markers. He saw no reason to dig into what I was doing and why; it was clear I had already made up my mind about what I needed. So we just sat and shot the shit about whatever was on my mind. Told him about other stuff I was dealing with in life (surprise, there’s more to my life than my transition). On the third day, he printed my prefab letter, and off I went.

I had saved up as much money as I could, but even with insurance, it wasn’t enough. The insurance actually covered… very little, overall. Go figure. And I didn’t have a wealthy family to rely on, or an attractive face to garner sympathy with a GoFundMe. I paid for what I could at the time, and the remaining thousands of dollars – close to $10k! – I put on a 0% intro APR credit card. Made what payments I could during the interest-free year, and then rolled it into a personal loan with the best rate I could find. I’m still paying it off, 5 years later, long after I’ve detransitioned and regretted having had surgery at all. Sigh.

—

A few years later, when I started seriously considering that I might be autistic, I came to this conclusion on my own, with no input or influence from the healthcare providers/clinic I’d been seeing all these years. I independently sought out a doctor who specializes in diagnosing autism in adults, to find out whether my suspicions were correct (and they were).

While I don’t expect just any doctor to be able to diagnose this, or even recognize it (honestly, it’s more likely for your average doc to be offensive about it)… I still wonder why I was on my own this whole time. Why there were no documents or resources or anything presented to me early on, to even encourage me to consider the possibility. There are a large number of autistic people who end up transitioning, but somehow it never occurred to me that I could be one of them, or that some of my struggles could have less to do with Gender and more to do with my being autistic, or being a closeted lesbian, or being a survivor of extreme abuse & trauma, or my socioeconomic status, or…

—

What especially frustrates me is that, upon reading experiences like mine, people insist that I simply Needed More Therapy, as if I’ve never been to a therapist in my life or something. I’ve talked to therapists pre-, mid-, and post-transition. I’ve had my fill, thank you. In fact, I’m pretty firmly anti-therapy at this point.

I’m frustrated that what few standards of care there are, are shoddy and mostly there for appearances, and trans healthcare organizations are so busy fighting increases in stigma and red tape that they apparently don’t have the bandwidth to make the practice better in any other ways.

Like with my referral letters, that technically follow the WPATH standards of care, just enough that people can’t be sued, while also not actually doing anything to better my health or self-awareness. It’s just performative. It’s red tape for the sake of red tape. Adding more legislative red tape isn’t going to make people care about my well-being, it’s just going to give them one more performative barrier to juggle instead of working to make my healthcare better.

I don’t have any answers for anyone. All I know is where I’ve been.

In some ways, I don’t even know how to criticize things beyond screaming, “Why was I so alone this whole time? Why was I spinning my wheels for years? Why do I have to keep spinning them even now? Why do I still not have a doctor that can answer my questions or help me build a plan for my long-term health after these experiences? How did it get to this point?”

But it’s like screaming into an empty hallway. Nobody’s home, and nobody wants to hear it.

Anonymous asked:

Given that the 60 Minutes special pulled a 180 and deleted some interviews of the detransitioners then changed theme to mitigate the backlash and appease trans activists without even warning the interviewed, do you think there's a proper way to engage with media outlets and ensure we're not played with or should we just resort to remain underground? i feel like detransition on its own has become a recipe for having your trust in others stomped and shredded and it's like an extra layer of trauma

There’s certainly a lot of fuckery against detrans women in media representation. An interview can go okay if the reporter has her own decent ethical code to answer to, but there’s no larger cultural incentive to treat us with any respect. There’s no negative social/economic consequences for treating us like garbage. We’re in a hard position, because many of us believe greater visibility is part of the way that can change. But is all “visibility” really worth it? If we’re only ever cast with this series of dehumanizing tropes, used to make a point one way or another about the legitimacy of other people’s identities, and not regarded as subjects in our own right, what is the net impact?

You have to do your best to vet reporters, and it’s critically important not to give your story or image to someone with a known hostile agenda who will use it against you and possibly others–but you won’t know for sure how something is going to be framed until a piece is published. In any instance, not just for detrans women, some reporters strategically lie about the focus of an article in order to get the quotes/material/information they want. But here, there are also just so many hostile agendas to be wary of, from all directions–right wing strategists and the duped or astroturfy self-id’d “radical feminists” who are doing their work for them; queer misogynists; clueless liberals who think they are saving people…

But I don’t think the only options are big media coverage or being underground. I am a big fan of us making our own media or working with independent producers who are not single-agenda zealots, and have even an ounce of nuance + a solid track record.

Working with mainstream people who have a good moral compass could also be good, just hard to come by–and even then, they answer to editors who may ultimately be unwilling to do anything but toe the party line (whichever one they answer to).

I dunno. I thought Katie Herzog did a pretty good job. Hard pressed to think of others at the moment.

The last thing I will say about visibility is that I am against any kind of martyrdom for its sake. If you really believe you will benefit in some way from telling your story, then go ahead & risk it if it feels worth it to you. If you’re taking some action on your own behalf that is inherently newsworthy, then more power to you. But if you’re making a sacrifice by telling your story/being photographed purely for the “greater good” of “visibility,” I really don’t think it’s worth it.

What do you want to be known for publicly? Your own creative work in the world? Or detransitioning and being used to make someone else’s point about the implications of your story wrt trans identity?

Anonymous asked:

Do you think it's a good idea to creat a mini meetup or group for detrans people off-line?? why or why not? If you think it's okay, what tips and warnings do you think an inexperienced person should consider if they have a feeling of initiative?

Yes, of course–it’s very important to have offline connections like that. I suggest meeting in a public place, although one where you are far enough away from other people that you can speak freely. And don’t assume trust with anyone you are just meeting–remember trust is earned, over time, no matter who the person is or what you share in common.

Unless you are very sure about being public with your story, I recommend that you protect your anonymity. Be judicious about any public information about the group. Honestly–just try being anonymous for awhile anyway, even if you do think you’re sure about being public. Once you have gone public, you can’t take that back. Let’s just say, I’ve seen some women not hold up well under those pressures.

Also, be prepared that–like any woman who takes on anything resembling a leadership role–even if it’s not your intent to be any kind of leader, you will be projected onto, pedestal-ed, and ultimately trashed. It’s probably not all that will happen, but you can expect it to be part of what happens.

I wish you the best with organizing real, offline connections among detrans women. It’s very important work.

*I just noticed you said “detrans people.” I assumed you were a woman and would be organizing women, so that’s what my answers are about. Whether you’re a woman or a man, I recommend organizing any meetup along sex-based lines. Detrans women and men don’t actually have a ton in common and it’s my strong opinion that detrans women need female-specific space/connections to make sense of these experiences.

Anonymous asked:

Gay male anon again. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the thorough response! You were right she's a dear friend. She's a lesbian too and i'm embarrassed to say i know little to nothing about lesbian history or culture so I feel afraid of saying something wrong or deeply disrespectful. Where can i read about the tradition of women that pass?? Do you think if I look for a lesbian group or meetup for her she'd be mistreated there?? any red flags i should consider?

You’re more than welcome.

Lesbian history and culture are not the easiest to come by–you don’t get that knowledge just by virtue of being a lesbian yourself, and the vast majority of us don’t grow up in a family that imparts it. It’s unlikely your friend knows much more than you do, unless she’s been making a real effort to seek it out and has been lucky enough to stumble on it. I am alternately frustrated and extremely grateful that much of my lesbian community cultural experience is ungoogleable and effectively underground. (I remember a woman said something to me in a prophetic kind of way at a festival, clearly she was quoting something, and she got cryptic about it when I asked what it meant. ”You’ll know,” she told me. I thought, “I’ll google it when I get home.” Reader–it was ungoogleable. I found out what she was quoting years later when I heard the words in a lesbian circle song at a different festival…)

On your question about reading up on women who pass…I know in the 90s there was a spate of things published on that topic, including something called Passing Women, but I think most of my awareness of it comes not from books but from having been a babydyke who passed as a boy, knowing older lesbians who once passed as men or who continue to do that (sometimes unintentionally), just having that be part of the fabric of who is in my women’s community, and hearing their stories about their elders who did the same. That said, Max Dashu of the Suppressed Histories Archives has some good historical documentation on the topic. Among many other topics!

Lesbian groups or meetups is really broad and their attitude toward detrans women would depend on the group. We are definitely misunderstood and mistreated in many places by many people. There are parts of my women’s community that are more aware and sensitive to our experiences, but it is not universally true that every lesbian group would be a comfortable place to land in early detransition. Some of the offshoot gatherings that came after Michigan would be good places to start (for example, Big Mouth Girl hosts a meetup for detrans/reconciling women), but for local stuff that’s more of a daily life, all year connection, mileage will vary. If she’s not in a place to be a “first”/”ambassador”/translator then I would recommend trying to find groups that already include other detrans women. If she wants to write to me privately or email with her location I can try to help with that. Or here are some other ideas:

* She may want to write in to Lesbian Connection/search for Contact Dykes there–but again with that, I’d expect a mixed bag.

* Even without Michigan, there are places a dyke can show up and the context of the place lets the other dykes know something about who you are/your values, possibly after some degree of explanation if you really are stealth passing for male, such as: finding out if your local OLOC chapter would accept younger volunteers for an event or project or attending one of their events that is open to younger dykes; getting involved with local women’s music venues or even producing shows yourself; etc. (Again, unlikely she knows about these things, so if she’s comfortable sharing location info I can try to help let her know what is going on in her area.)

Anonymous asked:

What can a gay man do to support properly a dysphoric or detransitioning woman? what to avoid?

You’re a sweetie to ask.

I don’t know you or your friend, obviously, but off the top of my head, one thing would be not to assume that detransitioning necessarily means “feminizing.”

Especially early on in detransition, some of us will swing wildly from one kind of “presentation” to another. Others will not change appearance at all, only our understanding of what it means and doesn’t mean, for example, being able to hold the concept that passing for male isn’t the same as being male, and it’s entirely possible to be a woman who passes (there’s a long tradition). Those who do swing wildly may eventually swing back again, or settle into something new. Don’t attach some great weight of significance onto her appearance, act like it makes her a different person if she looks different, or assume that your friend now wants your advice on “women’s” clothes and makeup, regardless of what she’s doing with her appearance. Whatever she’s doing with that has an intensely personal significance that she’s navigating within an inescapable and deeply fucked up array of cultural demands and she won’t benefit from anyone–particularly a man, no matter how gay–acting like the expert and arbiter. I would recommend to avoid commenting on her appearance altogether–even compliments can feel like scrutiny. Try compliments that are not appearance-based but about her character and why you value her friendship.

(This is a good thing to experiment with in terms of how you talk to women in general–try not talking about their appearance for a week. Notice every time you felt the impulse to do it, make a note of what you wanted to say/the circumstance. If you’re thoughtful about this exercise it might be really interesting and useful.)

If your friendship is processy/emo, then you can listen and ask questions, being sure to give her lots of space to answer them. Or if it’s more what she needs, do activities together that are about enjoying life, whatever that looks like for her and you. Just be a good friend. Anyone who’s going through a life-altering experience needs friendship. Detransitioning is not only surreal, scary, and full of grief, but usually brings a loss of friends besides–so just being there for her is a big deal.

There are definitely going to be parts of her experience you won’t be able to understand or relate to directly. That’s okay! You don’t have to pretend that isn’t true, or focus on that in a way that centers yourself either. If you care and make space for those un-shared aspects of her experience, that is valuable regardless.

Your question is thoughtful and caring, so I bet you can do well with that if you apply yourself. Feel free to ask again or email if there’s something more specific you are thinking about. Also if you are a nerd or willing to do some homework, you can ask me for book recs.

Anonymous asked:

How do I deal with the fact that my voice will never be the same as before transitioning?

That was a hard one for me for a very long time. A few things seem to have been part of my shift to acceptance about it.

One is knowing a lot of other women with T-altered voices. It just doesn’t mean the same thing to me anymore. It means we share this certain life path, history. Early on in my attempts to get detrans women talking to each other, my T-altered voice was one of the things that made it possible for me to reach out to a woman in early detransition crisis; from my voice, she would know that I had shared some part of an experience like hers. My changed voice means something different to me because of experiences like these.

Two, I have a women’s community that knows what my voice means and what it doesn’t mean–and that really helps. In the world at large, sometimes people think it means that I’m transitioning. Obviously that isn’t true anymore, but there’s no shame for me in that misunderstanding either. If it’s someone who isn’t going to know me, it’s pretty easy to let that go. If it’s someone I’m going to interact with in some ongoing way, I clear up the confusion in whatever way I think is best.

Three, I started singing again. As a practice, this has helped me understand and experience my voice differently, also exercise her and let her keep growing. I’ve found ways to make sounds I didn’t think I could anymore. It isn’t the same as before, but that is okay. I used to try to make certain sounds and no sound would happen. Now with enough exercise and practice I can create them again, in a new way. I also think the experience of singing just for the joy of it, focusing on how it feels without regard for how it sounds, has been a helpful practice. Lesbian circle songs have been a really cool part of my life around this issue. I even wrote one for us to sing at the last detrans gathering I organized on womynsland.

Four, I allow myself the grief of what’s lost. There is no end of grief in life. It’s just part of things. Learning to live with that fact is an important part of being a person, not just in this experience. I do grieve it. If I had a choice, I’d choose to have my unaltered voice–but I don’t feel a lot of angst about that impossible desire. I also wish I could fly and breathe underwater and teleport, without feeling any life-altering angst that I can’t. I am old enough that I don’t have any recordings of my voice from before. That’s sad to me now. I wish I could hear her again. Learning to live with grief is not easy, but it connects you to everyone else who is grieving.

Five, I now have the benefit of having lived to middle age, and have the experience of my body as an everlastingly changing being. The way I learned to think about bodies was so misleading–you hear about body changes at puberty and old age. But really bodies just change all through their lives, it’s all they do! So there is a context of change to place it in. The less I feel shame or self-judgment about having transitioned, the less loaded this one change feels, as one change among many.

Six, It seems to me that when I started to metaphorically raise my voice, I became less distressed about how my physical voice sounds.

I’m sure there’s more but this is what I’m thinking of now.

Your mileage may vary, what you need may be very different from what I needed. But I believe that whatever your story is, there is a way for you to come to acceptance, too.

redressalert:

it wasn’t useful to think of it as “dysphoria” when i had my most recent distress about having breasts. of course that could have been the framework i used to think about it, it “qualified,” and i could fit it easily into that paradigm. but it has been a long time since i believed i was not really female/was desperate not to be female. and for as long as i thought about it as dysphoria, there was a range of things i attached to those feelings as the meaning, possible responses, related issues, ways to understand it. and it became an exercise in something like vivisectioning reality, bargaining. “it’s not that i don’t want to be female, i just want my old body back, which was also female but which did not have these breasts.”

it felt different when instead of dysphoria i thought about it as being upset by having fat. that made the situation plainer. the stakes became obvious. different possibilities opened up for me at that point. i found my rage, and that meant i knew i was worth being angry about, and that meant i found my boundaries, because i realized they had been crossed in a deep way that got into my head without my permission. and from there, i could resist.

As an update, my breasts are larger than they were when I wrote that last post and I no longer have any distress about that. I’m comfortable. I’m shaped like many other middle aged dykes I love and respect. Friend-shaped.

I often think about that idea from A Passion for Friends, that the Self is the original friend. It has a different feeling to it now since I have had this experience of catching an accidental glimpse of myself in a mirror, not recognizing myself at first, and having my gut reaction be something like “Who’s that friend?” and then realizing–yes, a friend. Myself. My body.

When I interact in the patriarchal world, I don’t like the way others interact with me–but am aware that the problem is not located in me. If someone acts disgusting about my breasts, I am angry and disgusted with that person; I do not ascribe my sense of disgust to my own body. I don’t understand myself as “parts” so there’s no longer the ability to scapegoat any “part” of me.

I am a weird, whole, complex being, a landscape, a creature–not a cafeteria selection of parts which are disposable or can be improved upon.

The ways I change now come from within and come from a desire to be satisfied. One thing I am includes muscles that want to do what they are capable of doing, so I move in ways that please me and I change, grow stronger. It is pleasing and satisfying to move, to exert, to feel that good kind of tired and sore. I don’t see this as a self-improvement project, but a way to feed myself. Growth and experience are satisfying. It’s not about a body project, imposing a particular shape or ideal. It’s about having what I need.

There is nothing about my embodiment that can be “improved” upon, certainly not through any traumatic medical intervention, but not even through some imposed aesthetic ideal or idea of what I “should” do or be like.

I think the reason I’ve started to recognize myself as a friend is that I let myself Be.