For the lack of an elegant introduction, I will just get straight to the point. In my last post, I wrote about the physicality of undergoing a second puberty, today I want to tell you about a few things that I forgot last time and moreover about the “emotional side of things”. But let’s get started.
As soon as you undergo training to become a poll worker, you are told that you should not wear any objects, clothing or symbols that could suggest a political affiliation while on duty on election day. As I don’t own a Circle-A or a hammer and sickle and was able to leave my numerous rainbows at home, the issue was quickly resolved. Or so I thought, because suddenly I was confronted with the question: What makes a political symbol a political symbol, and to what extent was the stereotype of a queer guy with piercings, alternative clothing and dyed hair already an indication that you most likely wouldn’t vote for a conservative party? How did a guy with baby beard shadow, who was clearly having a voice change, had too expressive gestures for the stereotypical cis guy and whose binder passed as a crop top because it was simply too hot for more clothes? What were binders anyway? Medical gear or a matter of self-expression? When did self-expression and personal style become political? I didn’t know, but apparently my grey trousers, black t-shirt, colourful bandana, lots of jewellery and face fuzz weren’t political enough to be sent home. Gender Fuckery was tolerated as a poll worker.
»Horniest« – Grant
Last time I wrote briefly about the problem of how difficult it is to find the right penis for you. If your own isn’t enough – the clitoris also grows on testosterone, and sometimes not even a little. However, this also means that you suddenly have growing pains in places that I, at least, didn’t realise were even possible. But growth isn’t the only thing that hurts there, it’s also the days when your libido shoots through the roof so much that it hurts between your legs, and it hurts hard (pun intended). There have also been days when I couldn’t sit up straight, and there were days when masturbating didn’t really solve the problem. Now I can at least understand a little bit why male teenagers want to shag everything that’s not up to scratch. Perhaps young people should be encouraged at their confirmation or consecration not to use the money to buy expensive clothes or a computer for gaming, but to invest in good and, above all, quiet sex toys.
My libido wasn’t the only thing that went through the roof. My kink did too. Whereas I used to be quite picky about my kinks, I now have days when I could easily tie an orange hanky to my trousers and scream it out to the world: I am ready for anything at any time! Don’t be shy, be nasty!
The bigger picture:
To this day, I’ve hardly told anyone from my home town that I’ve started taking testosterone. The last time I visited them, it was still up in the air whether my wish would really come true and since then we’ve hardly had any contact with each other. Very few of them are active on social media and writing to each of them individually seemed far too strange. I don’t have to explain anything to them, I don’t owe them anything and I’m also of the opinion that testosterone only changes me in the sense that I’m finally a much happier person who likes his body and has left the depressed teenager behind. I don’t think I need to come out for that.
The few people who know that I am now on testosterone are happy for me and otherwise nothing has changed between us. Only one friend was very confused at the beginning because he found me extremely attractive and through a chain of unexpected circumstances, one day he asked me if I would marry him and I said yes because I would marry all my best friends as opposed to my sexual partners. That really threw me for a loop, he didn’t understand my understanding of marriage, nor had he ever identified as bisexual. At the same time, it also made him feel guilty, because for both of us, his behaviour implied: In what way was I man enough for him? Obviously not enough, because to this day he still describes himself as heterosexual.
I couldn’t care less about the sexuality of this friend, but one thing does annoy me: that my gender identity is still dependent on how much I conform to the conventional image of a cis man. I’m not (yet) a fan of genderfuckery in the sense that I would walk around in a dress, but I still refuse to wear the black, white, grey and beige colour palette of the men’s department in department stores. Instead, I’m currently making myself comfortable in a bright and colourful alternative style of dress and hope that this already confuses people enough to cause social irritation.
I wish I was liberated enough to be above my own (non-)passing, but unfortunately my euphoria about being read as male is too great for me to trade it for deconstructing gender norms. Which leads me to the next question.
The „feminist“ conundrum
How can trans men be feminist without being reduced to being trans? A trans woman said in my indirect presence: ‘I’m glad I took the step. Testosterone is a real poison.’
Neither my brain nor I could necessarily agree with the statement, even though we both knew that testosterone had probably had more advantages than disadvantages for her. Furthermore, I knew that I would probably never be able to make such statements as ‘oestrogen is a real poison’ in future as a male-read person (I wasn’t planning to anyway). Why? Imagine a cis man making that statement, something like that would scream misogyny, wouldn’t it?
Apart from that, I can report for myself that after coming out to myself as a trans man, slogans such as ‘For the critical examination of masculinities from (pro) feminist perspectives’ have a different effect. As a woman, I was given all kinds of offers to strengthen my self-esteem and self-confidence, to demand my right to opportunities, resources, participation and self-determination, but as a (trans) man, all of these offers suddenly fell away. As a trans man, I avoidably move from the group that is affected by sexism to the group that is socially privileged, at least when it comes to wages, social recognition, leniency for my own misbehaviour, tax law, medical care, everyday self-realisation. Yes, I could go on with the list and yes, I am aware that intersectionality plays an important role in the points mentioned above.
Before I write an eternally long and nuanced argument about what and how anti-transmasculinity manifests itself in society, I would like to take this opportunity to point out three essays by the blogger S. L. Void. The first essay deals with how the identities of trans men and trans women are often played off against each other, the second essay deals with how trans men are socially and politically invisible and the third essay deals with the fact that not all trans men have always been men from birth, but that ‘being trans’ or rather ‘becoming trans’ can be a process.
In the end, what matters to me is that I personally am a fan of having something like a backbone, and my backbone means that I don’t behave like an arsehole. Above all, this means that I hold values such as: A person’s dignity is inviolable, integrity and morality.
At the same time, I also know that most of my character traits (enthusiastic, solitary, sprinkles of being self-righteous, easily bored, weird bursts of courage, perfectionist tendencies, sometimes cynical, fashionably angry, doesn’t buy bullshit, CHAOTIC, loyal towards friends) are only charming as long as I’m read as female. Because in the end, women who display a certain cheeky impertinence continue to be less ‘threatening’ than men. Does the idea of one day becoming one of those toxic old white men scare me: yes. Is the answer ‘then just don’t become one’ helpful? No, because the fear remains that I could fall into these traps of ‘toxic behaviour’ without realising it. At the same time, purely cis male-dominated spaces such as football stadiums, barber shops, pubs or stag parties seem like predator cages to me. As soon as you show vulnerability or weakness, you’re finished…
What remains
Despite all the thoughts and doubts, I wouldn’t change anything. I know you should never say never, but at that moment, no one could convince me to just stop taking testosterone. I stopped surviving and finally started living and thriving. I look at myself and think I’m sexy. I run around grinning so much that people think I’m crazy. If I could, I would continue to skip through the streets singing and dancing like in one of Disnes‘ older live-action films. I think these are all things that continue to show me that I was right in my decision to transition.