Tag Archive for: transgender

Getting Real: Preparation for Egg Retrieval

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[CW: Menstruation, medical procedures, and underwear]

I stopped taking testosterone in July.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve gone off T since my transition—in late 2017, I had to stop T two weeks before my top surgery, and I had to stay off for two more weeks afterwards. I was so relieved when I could go back to taking my shots again, mostly because I feared having a period for the first time since 2011.

This time, though, my medication pause will last a lot longer. When I stopped taking T this past summer, it was because my wife and I had decided to pursue another medical marvel: having our first child. Our dream is to eventually have two children—one using one of her eggs, and one using one of mine. After testing and consultation with our fertility doctor, we decided to use one of my eggs first, since I’m older and have a lower ovarian reserve number. This is all very exciting, but it also means that in order to start the egg retrieval process, I have to change the hormonal balance of my body once again.

Stopping T has been a mixed bag. On one level, it’s empowering to see how much of my transition remains in place even when I stop hormones. I still have a beard, my voice is still relatively low, and my body fat is still distributed in a way that tracks with a masculine-of-center gender presentation. It has been freeing to feel like myself even without taking a shot every week, especially since the routine injections are something that have frustrated me for the last seven years. I haven’t felt any significant emotional or mental health effects from stopping, and for that I am grateful. However, just as it did when I was first trying to get my hormone balance right, my face is breaking out like crazy. I feel like one giant pimple, which is frustrating and in one sense feels infantilizing. It’s like going through puberty, again, for something like the fourth or fifth time.

The biggest fear I’ve always had about stopping T, though, is the return of menstruation. I have a vivid memory of writing an anguished blog post back in February 2011, when I had been on testosterone for about one month and was going through what turned out to be my last period. Every drop felt like my body betraying me, fighting me—as if my own flesh was misgendering me with every step. Thankfully, that was the last time I had to go through a menstrual cycle—until today.

Seven years and nine months have passed since I first started testosterone. It’s been 83 days since I stopped. Today, my period started.

It feels very, very different than that last time in 2011. I don’t mean physically—honestly, it’s hard to remember what this experience used to be like, so my basis for comparison is hazy. Emotionally, though, this is very different, because it’s a choice that I made for a specific reason. Kerri and I have been talking about becoming parents for years, and it’s so exciting to make that dream a reality. I knew going into the process that I would have to menstruate in order for the egg retrieval to happen; in fact, for the first month or two I was very worried BECAUSE nothing was happening, and I worried that my system would never restart. Today I feel some relief, because this cycle is strong evidence that I will be able to produce eggs and be a genetic part of our reproductive process.

Of course, menstruating as a man is weird and uncomfortable in a lot of other ways. When I first stopped T, Kerri helped me prepare an emergency kit to leave in my bag, full of tampons and pads and special underwear. I’m so grateful to have a supportive, wonderful partner like her. I thought I was very prepared, but when I first discovered the spotting this morning and knew I’d need to actually use those supplies, I wasn’t ready for it. I usually wear boxers, but for this purpose I bought a pack of boxer-briefs, assuming that I’d easily be able to put a pad in. It didn’t register until this morning that boxer-briefs leave a large amount of space in the crotch, so I had to hike them up in order to get the pad in a useful place. I was at work when I had to put in a tampon, and there were (of course) no disposal bins in the men’s restroom stall, so I had to wrap the applicator in toilet paper and hide it in my palm when I went out to wash my hands. If you thought that was uncomfortable to read, just imagine how uncomfortable it was to do it!

I have often thought to myself that one advantage for cisgender women who have transgender male partners is that we trans men remember what it’s like to have a period, so we are better equipped to understand how our partners feel about it. Today I realized how little I actually do remember what it’s like. Before I noticed the spotting, I was having cramps, but at the time I couldn’t remember what cramps felt like and thought it was indigestion. When I tried to put the pad in, I couldn’t remember whether I was supposed to do it with the underwear on or off, and I wound up sticking it in the wrong place and having to reposition. Even the supplies seem alien to me—I remember using exclusively Tampax Slims, with a soft cardboard applicator and a bare cotton head, but now everything’s plastic and the package is short enough that it fits in the palm of my hand. There’s a lot more variety on the drugstore shelves than I remember.

Today I feel alien to the body I’m in. I don’t know it the way I’m used to. It acts in ways that are unpleasant and out of my control. Yet I went into this process with my eyes open; I know that eventually it will end, and I’ll be able to go back on my hormones and feel like myself again. I also know that the result—our baby—will absolutely be worth it. I feel like I’m experiencing, in a very, very small way, something like pregnancy, and I’m glad to have that small piece of solidarity with my partner. Today also makes our IVF process, quite suddenly, VERY real. We’ve been planning this for months, but now it’s happening, and I can feel it. It’s scary and exciting all at once. With luck, and if all goes well, by this time next year we’ll be parents. Last week I would’ve said “I can’t believe it” – but today, I really, really can.

Save Obamacare: Open Letter from a Transgender Man

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It’s been a while since the last time I wrote here. A lot has happened in my personal life, and also in my country, since my last blog post. In happy news, on June 4, 2016, I married my best friend and love of my life. I’ll write another time about how we planned our wedding ceremony and celebration to reflect our values, and how wonderful and empowering our wedding felt. In unhappy news, my country elected a president and vice-president who seem at the very least complicit in, and at the very worst actively committed to a roll-back of civil rights for transgender Americans like me. The first salvo in this fight is the proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act, known to most as Obamacare. The ACA isn’t perfect, but it contains a myriad of provisions, including protections that make a real difference in transgender people’s lives.

Today is January 16th, 2017 — the day we celebrate civil rights legend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In honor of Dr. King’s legacy of service and political activism, I have written an open letter to the United States Congress, urging them to halt the repeal of the ACA.

My story is singular; I am only one of millions of Americans who will be affected if the Affordable Care Act is repealed without preserving its essential benefits. I urge others to speak up with their stories. Write a letter or an email. Make a phone call. Attend a protest. Make your voice heard.

The text of my letter follows below. Here’s a link to the PDF version. Please feel free to share, or to use my letter as inspiration or a template to write your own. We must speak out.

Open Letter to the Congress of the United States of America:

Aiden James Kosciesza
Philadelphia, PA 19104

January 16, 2017

United States Congress
Capitol Building
East Capital St NE & First St SE
Washington, DC 20004

To the Honorable Congresspeople of the United States:

My name is Aiden Kosciesza, and I am writing to you today, on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, in support of the Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as “Obamacare.” I am a millennial, a young professional, and a transgender man. The Affordable Care Act has provided real, enormous benefits to me and my family, and I am appalled that Congress is moving to repeal this program and take away all of the great things that the ACA brought to our country. I want to share my story with you, and implore you to do everything in your power to stop the repeal of the ACA, and preserve the key benefits that mean so much to millions of Americans like me.

I am a full-time, tenure-track college professor, but four years ago, I was still an adjunct instructor. At one point I taught six classes for three schools in two different states during the same semester. Since I was technically working part-time for each separate employer, none of them were required to provide health care coverage. For three precarious years I had no coverage at all, and avoided going to the doctor even when I really needed to. Without insurance, I just couldn’t risk the cost of a doctor’s visit. Only through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace was I able to get insurance, and only through the ACA’s subsidies was I able to pay for it.

When I moved into a full-time position, I continued to see the benefits that the Affordable Care Act provided for my students, and for my friends and family. My younger brother was able to stay on our parents’ insurance while he looked for a job after graduation. My friends who were self-employed or still working part-time were able to afford insurance with the help of ACA subsidies. My godson, born in 2016 to a friend who is an adjunct professor, could only come into this world because of the ACA plan that covers his mother. So many people in my life are healthier because of the Affordable Care Act.

As for myself, even after moving to employer-provided health insurance, I still see great benefits from the ACA that I am loath to lose. The protections in the Affordable Care Act make it illegal for insurers to discriminate against me because of my gender identity. This has a huge economic impact on me as a transgender person. If an insurance company is allowed to make blanket exclusions of care for people like me, then I have to continue to pay out of pocket for medical expenses that my doctor has deemed necessary and essential. This puts a young family like mine in a precarious position.

Without the Affordable Care Act, I am left with the absurd choice: health or home? If I have to pay out of pocket for my health care, I can’t possibly afford to save up a down payment for a house, much less start a family with all of its attendant costs. I often hear older people criticize my generation, the millennials, asking why we aren’t participating in the economy at the levels they expect. How can we, when we’re forced to choose between paying for our health care or securing stable housing? If Congress goes through with the repeal of the ACA, millions of Americans will be right back where we started: a position of financial insecurity that makes us unable or unwilling to take on major life expenses. Make no mistake – this insecurity will have long-term effects on our economy and our nation.

This decision is about much more than politics. Prosperity begins with people, and the American people will suffer irreparable harm if their health is not protected. I do understand that the political line is “repeal and replace” – that a nebulous “something better” is waiting in the wings. If Congress really does want to pass a new health care bill that will preserve the great benefits of the Affordable Care Act while also fixing some of its problems, I will support those efforts. But to repeal any part of this law before a clear, concrete, complete replacement has been written, analyzed, tested, and passed through both the House and the Senate is partisan political theater that will literally cost American lives.

I urge you to stop this madness. Do not allow the essential benefits of the Affordable Care Act to be taken away from the Americans who need them. Your legacy is at stake – and so are our lives. We are counting on you to do the right thing.

Respectfully,

Aiden James Kosciesza
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Transgender Rights PSA

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Yesterday I received an email from a high school student working on a final project for her English class: a public service announcement. She chose transgender rights and public restrooms as her subject, and she wrote to me to ask if I could answer some questions for her. I was glad to help — and since I thought those same answers might be useful to others, I’ve copied my letter to her below.

Hi [Name],

I’m glad to hear that you’re interested in transgender rights. I think it’s a great topic for your PSA project! I am happy to answer your questions, but I would like you to do something for me in return. When you finish your project, would you send me a copy, or a link to an online version? I’d like to see the results! If you are willing to do that for me, then please feel free to use my answers in your project.

You asked me three questions:

My questions are:

What was going through your mind when you made the change?

Do you have any thing to say to other transgenders?

What do you want people to understand?

In order to answer your questions, I first have to explain a couple of things. In your first question, you asked me about when I “made the change.” I think that what you mean is my medical transition, but this wording is problematic for a few reasons.

First of all, saying “the change” makes it sound like there is just one change, and it is something that all transgender people do. That’s not the case. Being transgender doesn’t always mean having surgery or taking hormones; it’s an identity, not an action.

Many transgender people do want to make changes in their lives — changes that feel right to them, or changes that signal to other people that the trans person wants to be addressed a certain way (for example, with male pronouns instead of female pronouns). We call this process “transition.” There are three basic types of transition: social transition, legal transition, and medical transition.

Social transition is when trans people change the way they interact with other people (society), usually to express a different gender than the sex they were assigned at birth. This could include changing one’s name and/or pronouns, wearing different clothes, walking or talking differently, or taking part in different activities or social spaces.

Legal transition is when trans people get new documents to reflect their gender identity (remember, gender identity is one’s own internal sense of one’s own gender; it’s not necessarily the same as the sex that one was assigned at birth). This could include legally changing one’s name and gender marker on documents like a driver’s license, social security card, passport, birth certificate, or bank accounts. In the US, these processes vary by state, and sometimes it’s difficult or even impossible for trans people to change their documentation.

Medical transition is when trans people change their bodies to bring them more in line with the trans person’s gender identity and sense of self. Medical transition could include hormone treatment or a number of different surgical options. Trans people may do all of these things, some, or none.

The most important thing to remember about medical transition is that it is not the only way to be trans. Many transgender people either don’t have access to this kind of medical treatment, or don’t want it at all — and even for those who do have medical treatment, it’s not a single event. There’s no such thing as “the change.”

It’s very invasive to ask transgender people about their hormones, surgery, or other medical procedures. That’s no one’s business except the trans person and their doctor, and many trans people will be offended if you ask. In my case, though, I’m very open about my medical history, because I’m a transgender educator. You probably learned from my website that I visit schools, hospitals, and organizations to talk about transgender identities and to answer questions. So let me tell you about my medical transition.

I started taking injections of testosterone about five years ago, in January of 2011. That is the extent of my medical transition. I haven’t had any surgeries or other procedures; the way I look and sound has only been affected by hormone therapy. I plan to have chest surgery in the future, but I currently have no plans for genital surgery. That is because the current medical procedures can’t achieve the results that I want.

What this means is that there was no moment in my trans life that can be described as “the change.” There have been important milestones, like the summer when I first realized I was trans, or the time I cut off my long hair, or the day I took my first hormone injection, but my process of transition is ongoing. And if you think about it, isn’t that the same for cisgender (non-transgender) people, too? We all change over the course of our lives. My aspiration is that the changes I make in my life, whether they’re related to my gender transition or not, will all help me to explore and express my authentic self.

In fact, this is also my answer to your third question, where you asked me what I want people to understand. I want people to understand that transgender people are not defined by their transition process, or lack thereof. No transgender person is “more” or “less” trans than another. Just as every artist has a unique form of creative expression, every transgender person (and indeed, every cisgender person!) has a unique form of gender expression. Although medical transition is an integral part of many trans people’s journeys, it is never the whole story.

Your second question — which I am answering last — also contains some problematic wording. You asked me if I have anything to say to other “transgenders.” This is grammatically incorrect, and using this word to describe transgender people is offensive. The root of this mistake — and it’s a mistake that many people make, believe me! — is a misunderstanding of the word “transgender.” Transgender is an adjective, not a noun. This is why “transgendered” is not a word — we tend to add the -ed suffix onto words that we want to turn into adjectives, but transgender is already an adjective, so it doesn’t need any help. Of course, you can’t call a person, place, or thing an adjective without adding a noun. It would be like saying “a smooth” instead of “a smooth plate.” Transgender is an adjective used to describe people, so you must say “transgender people,” not “transgenders.”

So, let me return to your question: do I have anything to say to other transgender people?

This is a very difficult question, because trans people are living in a difficult time. In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, it seems like opponents of LGBT civil rights have turned their attention to transgender people, a population that is already vulnerable (as studies have shown — you can read more here). Across the nation, states have proposed or have actually passed laws specifically written to discriminate against trans folks.

The so-called bathroom bills are sexist, discriminatory, and dangerous. They start out as image policing. In the time of the Stonewall Riots, men and women could be arrested if they were not wearing at least three pieces of “gender-specific” clothing. Now people — transgender and cisgender people alike — are being harassed in public bathrooms if they don’t fit the arbitrary image of masculinity or femininity that onlookers might have. Lawmakers are using scare tactics to demonize transgender people, and the media coverage they are afforded gives their views an air of legitimacy, even when they don’t have a shred of evidence to back up their claims. This leads members of the public — some motivated by bias, and some simply by ignorance — to dislike and distrust transgender people, and then the publicity emboldens them to air these views. Transgender people have already been targets for harassment and violence, and the current political climate is only making things worse.

As a trans person myself, sometimes, I feel despair. It seems unbelievable that the United States, a nation that is supposed to stand for freedom, justice, and equality, could be so backward when it comes to transgender rights — especially with other countries providing a progressive model. Didn’t we learn anything from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s? Haven’t we come farther than this?

Yet when I travel and give presentations about transgender identities, I am heartened and inspired by the people I meet. There are good people out there, lots of them, who want to be allies — who want to learn about transgender people, and learn how best to support us in our struggle. Allies are out there. They might not be as loud as our enemies, but their ranks are growing. Meeting these allies gives me hope, and hope gives me the strength to keep fighting. What I want to say to other trans people is: don’t give up hope. We’ll need it.

I hope these answers help you to learn a little more about transgender people — and of course, I hope they help you with your project! Please don’t forget to send me a copy when you finish. I’m really looking forward to seeing your work.

Very truly yours,

Aiden K.

Health Care Or Home Purchase? The Transgender Dilemma

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Today I completed the US Trans Survey, a comprehensive study gathering information that will be used to inform public policy towards transgender people in the United States. Trans, genderqueer, and non-binary folks: if you haven’t taken the survey yet, please do so now! Our data is urgently needed.

On paper, my answers to the survey questions are encouraging. I have never been assaulted or harassed due to my gender identity. I have never been fired from a job or made to feel uncomfortable at work as a result of my trans status. I have had positive personal relationships, and I have not experienced homelessness. My answers, of course, are only a tiny fraction of the trans experience, but they are mostly good news. Unfortunately, they don’t quite tell the whole story. At the conclusion of the survey, participants are asked to share a personal story of either acceptance or discrimination to help round out the picture of their experiences. I’d like to share here a selection from what I wrote:

In many ways, I have been very fortunate as a trans man in the United States. I have a supportive immediate family, a wonderful fiancee, and a full-time job. However, although my salary is enough to support me, I am struck by the difficult choices I’ve had to make because of my trans status and my inability to get comprehensive transgender health care.

I began my medical transition four years ago with hormone therapy, but my health insurance has never paid for any of my trans-related treatment. Because I am fortunate enough to be employed, I have been able to pay for my hormones out of pocket, and I felt secure in the idea that I would be able to continue doing this indefinitely. However, I was recently shocked to learn that my usual, trans-friendly pharmacy has been barred from issuing my normal hormone prescription, and that the only replacement available would be twice the cost. Because of this capricious regulatory setback, I’ve been unable to get my regular medication, and this puts my health in a precarious and unexpected place, at least for the short term.

This short-term situation is frustrating and difficult, but it doesn’t even compare to the long-term anguish of having to choose between chest surgery and the normal life expenses of a young professional. Although I do have health insurance through my employer, all of the plans available to me specifically exclude coverage for any type of transgender care; thus, I would have to pay out of pocket for gender-affirming chest surgery, even though my doctor would affirm that such surgery is medically necessary for my health and well-being.

The practical upshot of these policies is that I must continually choose between my own health and well-being and my ability to afford the purchases and milestones that will contribute to my long-term livelihood and stability, and that will help me to contribute to my family and community. I am getting married next year, but I can’t possibly afford a wedding alongside a surgical procedure, so I’ve delayed my surgery. After the wedding, I’ll need a down payment for a house — there’s another delay. Once my housing is settled, perhaps I’ll want to raise children with my partner. Will I have to choose between top surgery and infant expenses? I’m sure that I’m not the only transgender millennial being held back by tough choices between medical care and participation in the so-called “American Dream.”

The refusal of American health insurance companies to cover transgender-related care — and the failure of our legislators to require them to do so — is a national embarrassment that could have far-reaching economic consequences.  Just as housing, employment, and other forms of discrimination have created a wealth gap between white and non-white households, I have no doubt that the denial of comprehensive medical care for trans folks will likewise affect our incomes, stability, and earning power.

To force transgender people to choose between medical care and major life purchases is to hamstring the economic potential of an entire class of people in the United States. These discriminatory policies are hurting us as a nation in both moral and practical terms. Allies, please urge your legislators to step up and ensure that all insurance policies provide comprehensive health care for transgender people!

#Transhealthfail Exposes the Need for Transgender-Specific Training in Healthcare

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When you experience discrimination, it’s easy to feel like you’re alone. The very nature of discrimination is isolating: the minority is singled out for insults, ridicule, or poor treatment from the majority, and for transgender people, the numerical difference between majority and minority is huge. A 2011 study put the U.S. transgender population at an estimated 0.3 percent. Although a definitive count has never been performed, that estimate gives a sense of scale to trans people’s experiences as they fight for recognition and respect.

One of the most daunting and pervasive forums for anti-trans discrimination is the health care system. The landmark 2011 transgender discrimination study Injustice at Every Turn reported that 19% of trans people studied had been refused care due to their gender identity, 28% had postponed care due to discrimination, and a staggering 50% wound up educating their own doctors about trans issues. Yet it’s easy for individual trans patients to feel like they’re the only ones being treated this way.

Enter social media. The hashtag #transhealthfail was started by @MyTransHealth, an upcoming website that is building a database of transgender-friendly health professionals. (Their Kickstarter is here – and Philadelphia coverage is among their stretch goals!) The first tweets invited trans folks to share their negative experiences with healthcare providers, and the hashtag quickly exploded.

These posts reveal a daunting, often hostile environment for transgender patients. Some were misgendered, outed, or ridiculed in public:

Others were questioned or dismissed by doctors with narrow-minded or uneducated views of trans people:  

 

And still others highlighted the serious failings of insurance coverage for transgender people in the U.S.:  

The tweets go on – and to date, they show no sign of stopping. Although it’s terrible to see so many horror stories, the attention #transhealthfail is getting is encouraging. It is my hope that all of these tweets, shares, articles, and replies will spark support not only for political action – the passage of laws that ban discrimination and ensure health care access for all trans and non-binary people – but for transgender-specific training for health providers.

I got involved in healthcare training in 2013, just two years after I started my medical transition. I had previously spoken to college students and activists about transgender identities, but had never thought about addressing the medical community until I was asked to give a workshop at Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a physical rehab center in Philadelphia. They had recently served a transgender patient and were looking for ways to improve future care. I agreed, but the night before the presentation, I was getting nervous. Medical professionals go through years of school and training, I told myself. What could I tell these doctors and nurses that they didn’t already know?

It turned out that I had a lot to offer. The professionals I spoke with were all at the top of their field, yet many of them had never been trained in transgender issues. Every one of these doctors and nurses wanted to do their best for patients of all genders – they just didn’t have a lot of experience with the terminology, the range of identities, and the personal stories of trans people.

After the session, the organizer walked me to my car, and it was clear that the workshop had made a difference for her. “We just never talked about this back in medical school,” she explained to me. “I mean, for a lot of us, our training was ten or twenty years ago. They weren’t discussing these types of issues back then. Just having a vocabulary reference, knowing what to say and what not to – that’s huge!”

As I continued speaking at hospitals and clinics, I quickly realized the difference that a training session could make for both providers and patients. While there are certainly doctors who discriminate against trans patients out of bigotry and fear, I believe there are many more who want to be allies to the LGBTQ community – but they need the tools to do so.

We must champion comprehensive training and professional development for medical professionals – training that prepares them to treat transgender patients with compassion and respect. Of course, this training must start in medical school, but it must also extend beyond the classroom so that we can reach professionals who are already working in the field, and so that providers can keep up to date with best practices.

The best way to avoid a #transhealthfail is to teach our doctors, social workers, receptionists, nurses, security personnel, therapists, and everyone involved in patient care about transgender identities. This is not the job of the patient. It is the responsibility of the institution to seek out knowledge and to better serve the trans community.

Healthcare providers: Please step up and ensure that your staff have the knowledge they need to provide transgender patients with the highest standard of care. Let’s put the #transhealthfail hashtag out of commission for good.

Packing as Code-Switching: What’s In My Pants, and When, and Why

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A guy walked in on me today in the bathroom at work. It was entirely my own fault; I was sleepy, and I had forgotten to click the lock on the single-stall men’s room. He retreated at once, but I had to wonder what he saw.

At a glance, I’m sure I looked no different from any cisgender guy using a toilet. There’s nothing unusual (as I often remind myself) about a man sitting down in the loo — we all have to do it sometimes, right? I could have been any man at that moment, my shirttails rumpled from being tucked into my slacks, my boxers down around my knees, and my tie dangling as I hunched over my phone. My coworker surely didn’t look long enough to register any details. Yet in the sheepish aftermath, I kept wondering: Did he notice the sock?

Yes, there was a sock between my legs.

Let me explain. When I go to work or to certain more formal events, I wear a packer, which is basically a silicone penis. Some packers are functional and may be used as an STP (Stand To Pee) device, or sometimes for sex. My packer is entirely cosmetic. Its sole purpose is to provide a realistic bulge in my slacks.

(Here’s a bit of irony: after going to the trouble of finding and purchasing a realistic packer, one that even matches my skin tone, I wear my packer inside of a sock. This is for purely practical reasons. It’s a lot easier to throw a sock through the wash than it is to scrub silicone, and while I only own one packer, I have plenty of socks to switch out while one is being washed.)

My decision about whether or not to pack for a particular day is usually a question of wardrobe. Wearing a tie and khakis? Put on the packer. T-shirt and jeans? Packer stays home. This means that in general, I am packing 100% of the time at work, and close to nil in my personal life.

When I first started packing, it was because I had just started work as a college professor. I was in the early stages of my medical transition, and though my voice had dropped and my binder kept my chest reasonably flat, I couldn’t yet grow a beard or even male-signifying stubble. I was nervous about standing in front of a class as my not-quite-complete self. My job is to be watched; I have to capture and hold the attention of a group of late teens and early twenty-somethings, and when they’re seated at desks while I stand by the board, their eyes are naturally at crotch height. I didn’t want to risk questions — or worse, whispers — about what was not in my pants.

Yet in my everyday life, I never think about packing. Even when wearing relatively tight jeans, I never consider what people might think of my decidedly not-bulging anatomy. I know that some trans* men use packers to counteract dysphoria, that simply feeling the weight of it helps to ease the profound distress that many transgender people feel when they’re stuck in a body that doesn’t align with their gender identity. That’s not the case for me. I don’t feel any more or less like myself just by wearing a packer; I would never, for example, bother to wear it when I’m at home alone. So why do I feel the need to do it in public, and specifically on the job?

As I transition, my masculine gender expression is challenged much less frequently, and then I start to question the steps I take to reinforce my presentation as male. Some things, like wearing a beard or a tie, I do because I like them. I like the way that facial hair and men’s clothing make me look and feel, and the fact that they are such strong signifiers of masculine identity certainly doesn’t hurt. Other things, though, like wearing a packer and a chest binder, have no intrinsic value to me. These extra bits of wardrobe are uncomfortable and inconvenient; I wear them not because I want to, but because I feel like I have to.

As I thought more about my trans* wardrobe this year, I realized that switching back and forth — wearing a packer to work, then taking it off when I go home and go out with friends — represents a kind of physical code-switching. I alter the dialect of my gender expression depending on the “listeners” around me and how comfortable I feel with them. This is especially evident with my chest binder. I wear it whenever I leave the house for any significant period of time, no matter who I’m with, but if friends come over to visit, they’ll know we’re close if I excuse myself to go change out of my binder and into a baggy shirt.

When I realized how much I was allowing other people’s perceptions to dictate what I wore and how comfortable I was, I felt immediately rebellious. After all, I told myself, what does it matter what students think of my crotch? They probably don’t notice anything. And aren’t there plenty of cisgender men with bigger chests than mine who walk around every day, unchallenged and unperturbed?

I made up my mind: I was going to stop wearing a packer to work. It was silly, I told myself, and was evidence of nothing but my own insecurities. I wasn’t yet ready to give up on the chest binder, but the packer seemed like a good place to start.

On the same day that I steeled my resolve, I met up with a friend and colleague, a fellow transgender male college professor. We were discussing “teaching while trans,” and he told me the story of a time when he had disclosed his identity to a group of students. Most of the students had been respectful, he explained, but one was visibly shocked, so much that she fell out of her chair. She looked up at him and burst out,

“So that’s why there’s nothing in your pants!”

The story had a positive ending — the student kept taking courses with my colleague, and eventually told him how that disclosure had inspired her — but it also shattered my newly-formed resolution. How could I put aside my packer when I was now absolutely convinced that everyone was staring at my crotch?

That’s how it came to pass that this morning, at work, I was sitting on the can with a silicone penis, wrapped in a sock, dangling from an elastic strap around my waist.

The guy who walked in on me probably never saw the sock, and even if he had, it’s unlikely that he would connect the dots and realize that I am transgender. Yet the very fact that I was wearing a packer made me feel much less self-conscious about that embarrassing restroom moment.

I continue to wear a packer in my professional life because it acts as my armor of expectations. When I’m at home or with friends, I can feel very comfortable subverting expectations, especially gendered ones — but at work, I tend to save my fighting spirit for other things. I’d rather challenge students’ ideas about the materials they’re reading than upend their mental graphs correlating “manhood” with “observed penis.”

Sometimes I think that this makes me a coward. In a perfect world, maybe I would toss out my packer, and my chest binder too, and champion a fluid kind of masculinity. But then, in a perfect world, I’d be able to continue my medical transition to my preferred endpoint and render both packer and binder obsolete.

I often think of being transgender as living a compromise. My body doesn’t align with my gender identity; that’s a fact I have to live with. My transition is about making choices that let me express who I am, even imperfectly, and to do that I often switch the language of my gender expression according to who I’m with and what I’m trying to communicate. So for now, I’ll keep packing — it’s just another part of my gender code.

Reclaiming My Feminism

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When I finally realized my gender identity around my junior year of college, one of the first things I did was attend a meeting of the women’s group on campus. It did not go as planned.

It was not my first encounter with feminism. I had been taught about women’s liberation all my life. I was raised by a strongly feminist mother who told me horror stories of being required to wear skirts as a child, and who encouraged me to become whatever I wanted, regardless of gender stereotypes. In the house where I grew up, Barbies were unwelcome, and Our Bodies, Ourselves was prominently featured on the bookshelf. Yet in spite — or perhaps because — of these early lessons, I never really identified myself as a feminist. To my younger self, my mother’s feminism seemed historical; I had never been prevented from doing or saying something because of my X chromosomes, so I assumed that the need for action had passed.

As I grew into young adulthood and became more aware of the world around me, those assumptions vanished. I learned about women’s struggles abroad, and also those closer to home — and the more I learned, the more I realized that I was also struggling. I began to recognize and interrogate the gender roles I’d been brought up with, not because my parents had fed them to me, but because I had absorbed them from the larger culture. From fairy tales and movies, textbooks and TV shows, toy aisles and playgrounds, I had picked up the stereotypes to which I had earnestly striven to conform. In those first years of college I realized, with the sudden shock of a cold-water wake-up call, that I didn’t want to wear skirts and make-up and date boys. I had only assumed that I did.

It took more of a push for me to recognize my transgender identity (which is a story for another time) but when I came back to college in the fall of my junior year, I felt electrified by my new knowledge. Ironically, it was the realization that I am not a woman that made feminism and gender studies feel relevant and personal to me. It was in the midst of this giddy excitement that I went along to that women’s group meeting on campus, but I was about to get a shock of a different kind.

I can’t remember the name of the club, nor the discussion topic for that day. I do remember that most of the other group members were also residents of the Womyn’s House on campus, an all-female dorm for students who were devoted to feminist causes. The discussion, from what I recall, was avid and fruitful. It was towards the end of the meeting that I had the opportunity to introduce myself, and it was one of the first places where I shared my transgender identity with others — and the first where I shared it with strangers.

I don’t know what I expected — support, solidarity, encouragement? — but it wasn’t what I got. It could have been worse; I could have been yelled at or ridiculed, or even subjected to violence, as so many transgender people have been. Instead, what I encountered was a sudden distance, with a hint of betrayal.

The women at the club that night didn’t see me as a fellow feminist warrior. They saw a tool of the patriarchy. Why do you want to be a man? they asked me, as if I had just announced to a group of socialists my intention to become a hedge fund manager. Why aren’t you happy being a woman? What’s wrong with women? Why do you want to switch sides? Not everyone said these things, but the ones who did are the ones I remember. To them, I wasn’t a gender pioneer. I was a traitor.

I never went back to the women’s issues club. I still believed in all of the things they wanted to achieve — equal rights, equal pay, respect for women and their bodies — but I didn’t feel comfortable in that group. For a long time after that encounter, I even stopped calling myself a “feminist,” advocating for words like “humanist” or “equalist” instead.

I still consider myself a humanist, but now, more than ten years after that club meeting, I am beginning to reclaim my feminism. For a long time I thought that “feminism” had an image problem, that the word was too scary or too exclusive or too damaged by its enemies to remain relevant. Now I know better, thanks to another word with an image problem: “queer.”

My understanding of the word “queer” has always been a positive one, associated with things like queer studies, queer theory, genderqueer, and the LGBTQ community. But when I was researching the etymology of the word for a presentation earlier this year, I realized how profoundly its meaning and usage have changed in just my own lifetime. If a former slur can become the name of a movement, then surely we can’t give up on the name of the movement that came before it.

The feminist movement laid the groundwork for the gay rights movement, and both still have work to do. So I’ve put the past behind me to say:

I am a feminist.

And so can you.

Body Image and the Transgender Man

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There has never been a time in my life when I did not feel fat.

I was never directly bullied for my weight when I was a kid, but I was always aware of it. There was an undercurrent of worry to my mother’s persistent efforts to teach me about nutrition. I remember having colored cards that represented servings on the now-obsolete Food Pyramid, which I would move from one envelope to another as I “spent” them throughout the day. I was required to join one sport or physical activity per season, a melange that included a lot of left-field daydreaming (few balls ever sailed that far), soccer goalkeeping (I didn’t have to run much, and had the advantage of surface area when the ball came at me), and one ballet performance where I was cast as “the boat,” a part where my body was literally covered by a cardboard set piece as I danced across the back of the stage.

USDA 1992 Food Pyramid

Remember this gem from 1992?

My favorite activities were ice skating, because it required big puffy winter clothes, and swimming, where my body was hidden by water and my buoyancy was an asset. Although I thought of myself as anti-sport and proudly self-identified as a nerd, in retrospect I did and enjoyed a lot of athletic activities as a child. My elementary school summers were spent hiking in the mountains or swimming in the rivers of Vermont, where I grew up, and the winters were filled with cross-country skiing, skating over frozen lakes, and trekking through snow-covered forests. Yet even when I passed the swimming test and got my first job as a YMCA lifeguard at 15, I was never thin. And I knew it.

What started as an uncomfortable but accepted childhood reality — one friend nicknamed me “chipmunk” because my cheeks were fat — grew into a filter of shame that overlaid my self-image. As the new kid in middle school, having just moved south to Pennsylvania and away from my New England roots, I took to wearing huge, oversized T-shirts over leggings, a combination that was well out of fashion but which concealed my lumpy body from sixth-grade eyes.

My new hyper-awareness of body image coincided with the advent of puberty. The shock and dismay that I would later recognize as dysphoria stemming from my trans* identity was immediately mixed up with body shame. In retrospect, that body shame might have been the reason why I didn’t understand my gender identity until much later, when I was halfway through college: I knew that my body felt wrong and awful, but rather than realizing that it was because I was a man growing unwanted breasts, I assumed that it was because I was fat and ugly.

Aiden in 7th Grade

My 7th grade class photo, taken in 1996.

Transition has helped me to make incredible progress towards a positive body image. Part of this is due to physical body changes, like hair growth and fat redistribution, that stem from hormone treatment. Part is simply the relief that comes with aligning my physical body with my gender identity — I recognize myself when I look in the mirror, rather than staring at a stranger. Another part is the shift in expectations that comes with a new set of gender norms: where I was previously seen as a stocky, broad-shouldered, big-footed girl, I’m now a medium- to slim-built man. My clothes are sized small or medium instead of large to extra-large. As transparently artificial as that barometer is, it still makes me feel better.

AIDS Run Philly, Oct 2014

I’m not the Rocky type, and that’s fine with me.

Yet even as a confident, self-assured, outspoken adult, I still struggle with my body and weight, and I think a lot of that stems from being raised as a girl. Our society glamorizes Photoshopped supermodels and bombards women with unrealistic body images and product advertisements that play on shame and self-hatred, and it’s hard to shake off those messages. The ideal that I imagine for myself is not a hunky, muscular, square-jawed movie star but a slim, slight-shouldered, and slightly androgynous masculinity that has more in common with British alternative rock than, say, pro wrestling. Is this because I accept a wider spectrum of masculinities, or because I was bombarded throughout my childhood with the message that big is not beautiful? It’s hard to say.

What worries me is that I, at thirty-one, am staring at the mirror and yearning for the flat stomach of rock stars and fashion models. Even after transition, after rejecting the expectations that came pre-packaged with my assigned sex, after taking control of my  own gender identity and exercising my agency to live as my authentic self, I still dream of being skinny.

If my female upbringing is still warping my body image two decades later, what does that mean for today’s fifteen-year-old girls?

Transgender Day of Visibility and Being “Out”

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Today is the sixth annual International Transgender Day of Visibility. The holiday, started in 2009 by Rachel Crandall of Transgender Michigan, acts as a happier counterpoint to the sobering Transgender Day of Remembrance, which mourns the lives that we have lost. TDoV is a celebration of trans* identities and an opportunity for trans* people to be open, to be proud, and of course, to be visible to the world around us.

Visibility is at the core of my speaking work, yet it has been a struggle in my own life. I think this is true of most trans* people. Some of us have too much visibility. We even have a term for it in our own vernacular: being “clocked” means being noticed or called out as transgender when one is trying to blend in. For trans* people who are trying to fly under the radar (note that I don’t say “pass” — I’ll explain why I hate that term in a later entry), visibility can lead to discomfort, fear, or even violence. Trans women, particularly trans women of color, are especially vulnerable to hate crimes — put simply, for some trans people, visibility can be dangerous.

My struggle is with the opposite end of the spectrum: a lack of visibility. Broadly speaking, trans people are often invisible to the world at large. In 2015, most Americans know someone who is gay, or can at least name a gay celebrity; although trans celebrities like Laverne Cox and Janet Mock have seen a flurry of attention in the past year, many people are not yet familiar with trans folks in their personal lives. Politically speaking, this is a challenge. The saying goes “you can’t hate someone whose story you know” — meaning that once we form a personal connection with people who are different from ourselves, it’s easier to understand and accept them. The opposite, sadly, is also true: it’s easy to hate (or fear) people you don’t know.

What this means for trans folks is that if people don’t know about us, it’s hard for them to empathize with us, or to resist the media caricatures of transgender people. This is why TDoV is so important for our community: the more people we can reach and connect with, the better our chances of gaining legal protection from discrimination and violence, which we sorely need.

But visibility also has a more personal side. Like most trans people who tend to be read as cisgender, I struggle with the question of when to disclose my gender identity. I don’t consider this “coming out,” because I have never been “in” — from the time I first discovered my gender identity, I have been very open and honest about it. The existence of this website means that my gender and history will never really be a secret, and I celebrate that. However, most people don’t Google me the minute we meet, so there are plenty of people in both my personal and professional life who simply don’t know that I’m trans. It’s not that I’ve kept it from them. It just hasn’t come up.

So when, if ever, do I tell people that I am transgender? My general policy is to be myself and carry on conversations without self-censorship. If something I say or do confuses someone, I’ll explain my gender identity; if it doesn’t come up, it probably isn’t relevant to the discussion. But what about days like today, when I want to speak up and identify myself even outside of a trans-related conversation?

In honor of Transgender Day of Visibility, today I started both of my classes by telling the students about my transgender identity. I gave them a brief introduction, then disclosed that I am trans and encouraged them to seek out articles or other media about trans* people, and to ask me questions if they are curious. I was met with a warm, positive, and curious response — a perfect TDoV outcome. I hope that all of my trans* and cis friends — and everyone reading this — will take a moment today to learn about trans* people, and share that moment with someone else. Spread knowledge, and stamp out hate — and let’s keep TDoV going all year long.

Transition and the Thirty-Year-Old Teenager

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As a transgender man, I am both older and younger than my age. I’m thirty-one years old, but I often feel like I’ve lived two lifetimes in the space of one. I don’t feel dissociated from my childhood in the way that some trans* people do, but when I look at photos from as little as five years ago I see a drastically different person. Go back ten years, and I hardly recognize myself.

I’ve been through puberty twice, which is 100% more puberty than most people have to deal with in their lifetimes. I have radically reinvented myself – not just in terms of gender expression, but in personality and ambitions. Before I figured out my gender identity, I felt like a bomb caught in a space-time fracture. I struggled on the edge of disaster, but even when I crossed the line, there was no relief. I swung back like a pendulum; the supernova shrank back in on itself, and there I was again, ready to explode. I was angry, desperate, and hopeless, mostly because I had no idea what I was angry about.

When I realized my gender identity and began transition, that anger vanished. It didn’t happen overnight, but the shift was profound. Now I’m a calm and rational person, which would have shocked my twenty-year-old self. I feel like an old man when I think about that time in my life. Was I really so volatile?

Yet in other ways, I feel much younger than thirty. Trans* men usually look younger than cisgender men, which doesn’t help – I’ve had students, for example, who thought I was a classmate until I stood up to call the roll. Growing a beard has allowed me to shrug off that visible aura of youth, but internally I often feel like a teenager. There are so many things that I skipped over during my adolescence in the wrong gender, things that are old hat to my peers, but that I’m experiencing for the first time. I never had acne before I turned thirty. I didn’t know how to buy or use a beard trimmer. I still haven’t learned my new vocal range, and when I try to sing along with my old college CDs, my voice cracks or gives out altogether. These are things that my friends have dealt with, yes, but they figured them out years ago. I, on the other hand, got ice crystals in my beard for the first time last winter, and took selfies with childish delight.

A lot of the time, I feel like I’m still catching up. I’ve lived only four years as my full, authentic self. I recall these recent years with a clarity and immediacy that my pre-transition life just can’t match. Sure, part of that is because memories fade with time, but not all. Transition has made me more courageous, more certain, and more free – when I made this choice, I realized quite suddenly that I could define myself, rather than trying to fit into the mold that had been handed to me. Now I’m trying to cram as much me as I can into every moment, to make up for the time I lost when I was trying to be something I’m not.

I don’t feel like I’m thirty, but like my gender, my age is complicated. And I’m proud of that.