Coming Out

Coming out isn't something that I did once and then never had to face again. Admittedly, the first time felt absolutely cataclismic, but it's a process that repeated itself a thousand times in a thousand different venues. It's the "little death" that follows us to work, to the mall, to pumping gas and to the apathetic desk clerk at the DMV. Every time it gets a little easier. Every challenged assumption makes the world a little more accommodating for us all.

And now, after being out as queer for over 10 years, I'm having to start from square one. I'm facing all of the anxiety, all of the alienation, and all of the rejection all over again. It's even harder to explain transitioning in the context of being genderqueer. I don't have a 'pronoun preference'. I don't want to be a 'real man'. I just want to go about my daily life in a manner that doesn't cripple my ability to function.

I love being on hormones. I love the changes happening in my body. I love the way that it all seems like a natural progression of my life. I love the way that I feel like I have a future now.

But I don't know what words to use or how to explain what is going on to anyone else. It's this intensely personal experience happening inside my head with only vague external exhibitions. It was easy to explain being gay, I could summarize the situation in concise phrases like: "mom, I like girls". Would it be enough to say "mom, I'm genderqueer"? Or "I have gender dysphoria."

Would anyone understand my conscious decision to move towards gender ambiguity? Or would they automatically ascribe my actions to a grossly oversimplified gender binary?

Would they be open to deconstructing my perception of gender? Would I have to dumb it down to something like: "hey, I want to look more like a boy, but I'm still keeping my girl parts"? Would I have to say that the sum of my boyishness and girliness are not the sum of my being?

It took me a decade to sort out my gender issues. The years of barbies, Cosmos, tv, football, and tonka trucks weighs a heavy anchor on a child's soul. The systemic harassment in the school hallways and locker rooms took their toll as well. Being myself was something that I learned to hide to survive. So I spent a long time pretending to be a person who wasn't real, who didn't exist.

It took a really long time for me to get past the fact that I was never going to be one of those skinny girls that the media overhypes. I don't think I was overweight, but I had some fat going on. I definitely wasn't athletic or svelte. I knew that it wasn't healthy to want to look like a supermodel, I just didn't have any idea what the alternative was.

Because my build was so womanly, I spent many years fighting with my body. I have an hourglass figure: narrow shoulders, sizable bust, narrow waist, sizable hips and thighs. Women's clothes are cut for an average build across the spectrum of body types, so I had the devil of a time finding clothes that fit. After a while I learned what kind of cuts were flattering and for the first time in my life I could walk into a room and heads would turn. Lovers started undressing me like they were unwrapping a special present. My body stopped being a medium to be tolerated and became an asset to be reckoned with.

It took me almost ten years to establish a realistic standard of beauty, and it wasn't until then that I started to really be able to face the rest of my gender issues. Ironically the very elements of my physical appearance that I thought were attractive also started to elicit crippling emotional responses.

Why did I want to cry when a lover fondled my breasts? By any standard, including my own, they were nice breasts. Why did my heart wrench itself inside my chest when lovers tried to worship them? Why would I look down at our naked bodies and feel like the body I saw couldn't possibly be my own? Why would it make me despair to see myself looking soft and curvy curled up in bed?

Being naked meant letting my guard down. And the moment that happened, the expectation that my body should look more boyish would come pushing in like a hole in the dike. By that time, I had finally learned to muffle my body behind my clothes. But I could only hide behind them for so long. Naked in my lover's protective arms, I lay vulnerable to the rising tides of a gender that couldn't live with my body.

I don't know why I couldn't cope with it. I don't know why I couldn't get used to living with it. But I couldn't. My whole life was falling apart. Every gendered situation would send me home depressed and alienated. My relationships were falling apart. My job performance was abysmal. I felt like a double agent, committing treason on both sides. I couldn't bear to watch the things that I love most in the world slip through my fingers.

Something had to give.

It seems criminally arrogant to say "I'm at odds with my body, therefore my body needs to change". But on the other hand, this life is a composite of elements at odds with nature. Clothes, birth control, airplanes, pacemakers and space travel all fall outside of what is "natural". But why only are some of those acts considered "unnatural"? Why are some of them considered "progress"?

I spent 10 years trying and failing to come to terms with the situation. And since I started hormones less than 6 months ago, things have improved immensely. I didn't so much care what needed to change, I just wanted my life back. It seems easy for outsiders to overlook the fact that my whole life was falling apart, and the locus of that destruction was my gendered body.

I'd be the first to admit that the situation is not ideal, but to what alternative? If you can't live with your body, you die, either mentally or physically. It really is that simple.

And I didn't want to die just yet.