Farewell, duderus

What a relief – the hysterectomy’s over and done with, and while the first week of healing was pretty miserable, I’m feeling much better now. One of the incisions is still causing me pain, and although that has been pretty frustrating, I had my follow-up visit with the surgeon yesterday and she said everything’s looking fine and healing like it should. For the most part, I’m done with this process.

I actually don’t have much of an emotional attachment to the hysterectomy, certainly not in the way I did (and still do) with my chest reconstruction. It went a long way to helping me feel comfortable with my body and more confident in my interactions with other people. The first time I used a public men’s bathroom was the first day I left the house after having surgery. Sure, I was still extremely nervous, but I managed to do it.* And now I wander around my house without a shirt on, and people can touch me in the chest area and it’s not horrifying, and shirts kind of fit now where they definitely didn’t before. It’s great! It’s been a really meaningful thing! After almost six years I still feel excited by my chest.

The hysterectomy, though, is all internal, and not really important to me on an emotional or identity-related level. I haven’t menstruated since about two days after my first testosterone shot in 2005. I wasn’t having any cramps or pain, no abnormal pap smears, no family history of ovarian cancer. I know some guys get really traumatized by pap smears but while I’ve never enjoyed them, it hasn’t been too much of an issue to me. This surgery was really just something to do as a precaution and to keep me from needing to worry about pap smears or bizarre improbable pregnancies in the future.

It is nice, now that I can focus on something other than pain and frustration at not being to DO anything, to realize that I won’t have to worry about getting pregnant at all in the future. I mean, it hasn’t been a real issue for years since I haven’t been ovulating and haven’t had much sex with people who could potentially get an ovulating-me pregnant, but the fact that I could somehow possibly become pregnant if I couldn’t access T for a long period of time has been in the back of my mind. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a relief now, but it’s like the relief I felt when I started taking testosterone and knew my chances of becoming pregnant were very slim is finally sinking in and becoming permanent.

I remember what it was like being on birth control pills; my irregular period still had a “normal” window of 24-36 hours and I’d worry every month (during the times when I had partners who could possibly impregnate me) that I’d gotten pregnant. I don’t think I had one month where I was sexually active and didn’t feel an anxiety spike in the days leading up to my period, and often it was pretty severe. I used to go to Planned Parenthood for my annual exams and talked with the nurses once about how much it cost to have an abortion there so I knew how much money I’d need to have on hand in case I got pregnant. And I feel like I was in a pretty good place – I could afford to buy my pills every month and was able to take them around the same time each day, I lived in a city with a Planned Parenthood, I had access to information about my options. And I still had a strong fear of becoming pregnant.

I think it’s great when I hear about men getting pregnant – go dudes! High-fives to you! The concept is pretty fantastic, as long as it’s not me because I would freak the fuck out. But here I am, with no uterus, no ovaries, no cervix, no possibility of pregnancy. Mostly I’m just glad it’s over with, but it is good to have that extra sense of security.

* Actually, here’s a fun fact: on that first outing, I drove myself to Borders to buy myself a book. I ran into an acquaintance who noticed that I looked pained and unusually bulky in the chest area from the surgical binder, and asked what was up. I didn’t know her that well and wasn’t sure if she knew I was trans, but I went ahead and said something about chest surgery, and she thought for a moment and then asked if I was going to “go all the way” as if we were thirteen-year-olds talking about our dates. The extra-fun part was that I asked what she meant and it was quite clear that she meant genital surgery but just as obvious that she had no idea what she was really asking me. FUN TIMES.

At least it went well

As angry as I am at having to have a mental health professional write a letter of recommendation before my insurance will authorize my hysterectomy, I’m quite pleased with how the visit went. I think it was about as enjoyable as an instance of gatekeeper bullshit could be.

I went into my appointment with Dr. K expecting it to go pretty well; I hadn’t had an appointment with her since last fall but I knew she was trans-friendly since I specifically asked about that before I initially started seeing her. She has a template she uses for this sort of letter; she hadn’t used it for a hysterectomy but had written letters for hormone therapy and other surgeries so she just prepared one that she read out to me, with the thought that I could help her fill in blanks where she didn’t have information and point out any wording that I wasn’t happy with.

What was really refreshing, and actually a little unexpected, was that Dr. K seemed to feel about as uncomfortable with the process as I did. When we hit a tough paragraph about my diagnosis with Gender Identity Disorder and its treatment, I told her that I’m not comfortable with that language but am ok using it to get my medical needs met, and she put the paper down and said “you know, this is hard for me too – I want you to know I don’t think this about you” which was a great moment and really put me more at ease. We then had a brief discussion about how she feels trapped by the gatekeeper nonsense too, and wants to get her clients the care they need while also respecting them. She agreed with everything I said about how gross and angry the process made me, and I hadn’t thought about how she might feel just as uncomfortable on the other side of things. So we were really on the same page, and it felt more like we were collaborating together to solve a problem than like I was a little kid getting a permission slip signed for a field trip.

She was, like me, confused by the “general identifying characteristics” item on the list of guidelines – we agreed that it sounds like something you’d write on a wanted poster. So she put my height in there, and I think described me as having a beard, glasses, and a septum piercing. She asked if she could put “enjoys crafting and baking” in there too, and I told her to go ahead, but it’s not in the final draft. I appreciate her dedication to taking absurd requirements overboard, though.

My appointment was last week before I left town for a few days, and I came home to a completed letter that’s already been accepted by my insurance. It’s a nice feeling, and hopefully I’m done with this and can get back to the important business of not thinking too hard about robot arms poking around inside me.

Extra parts, extra anger

I have a surgery coming up: a robot, assisted by a surgeon, will be performing a hysterectomy on me in early October. I’m a little squicked out by surgery and didn’t really consider this procedure much before, but my partner’s employer, whose health insurance program I’m on, recently explicitly made trans-related health care costs covered so when my GP offered me a referral to get this done, I thought it made sense.

The day after my consultation with the surgeon, her scheduler called me up and said that she’d double-checked with my insurance and had gotten the go-ahead to schedule the surgery. So easy! But in the weeks following this initial conversation, things have gotten a bit messier.

First, I was told that I’d have to change my health insurance information to say I’m a woman, which struck me a bit odd since this is a specifically trans-inclusive plan and with that in mind they should be all right with guys getting their uteruses out, but whatever. I didn’t really mind making that change and then changing it back after the surgery.
Next, after my partner asked someone about making this change, I got a call from a “patient advocate” at Blue Cross/Blue Shield who told me I wouldn’t have to change the sex on my insurance. Great! But then she started to ask questions related to the medical necessity of the hysterectomy (do you currently menstruate, do you have uterine pain, etc.) and I realized that as it turns out, the approval process was not actually already dealt with despite what I had been led to believe by the surgical scheduler. She wasn’t exactly sure what would need to happen but she got some information for me and promised to call back soon. I was a little confused by the fact that she didn’t seem to know what to tell me, but perhaps I was her first trans client? She is super-helpful but I’ve had a hard time getting concrete answers from anyone so far, which is a little odd.

Also, one of her first questions was “how long have you been transgender?” which… is not really a question I can answer. I think I told her how long I’d been taking testosterone (seven years) and added a year or two to that number? But I do not have any sort of sense of how I should answer that sort of question; it isn’t like that first T shot was the beginning of my identity. But I can’t pin it down to a moment or event, either. My answer is definitely not “my whole life,” and I am very thankful that I have never felt like I had to lie and say this to gain access to care or resources.

A few days later I was given this delightful piece of news: in keeping with WPATH standards for trans-related genital surgery (bafflingly enough, a hysterectomy counts as genital surgery), I would need to provide TWO letters of recommendation from mental health professionals. Two. Letters. I talked to her at length about how gross and condescending that is and she was super-sympathetic and helpful, and did get back to me the next day to say that I now only need one, which I suppose is a tiny victory.

But still, here I am. I am almost thirty years old. I have already had to get Official Approval from a physician and a psychiatrist to start taking testosterone and to have chest reconstruction surgery. At what point am I allowed to sign an informed consent form and make these decisions for myself? Do I really need to go through the demeaning and pointless process of paying a mental health care professional to state my “general identifying characteristics” for the record?

I can do that shit for free, check it out:

• short
• glasses
• messy hair
• lots of piercings
• not enough tattoos
• and sometimes hat

Just for fun, here’s what I was told needed to be addressed in the letter:

1. The client’s general identifying characteristics;
2. The initial and evolving gender, sexual and other psychiatric diagnoses;
3. The duration of the mental health professional’s relationship with the client, including the type of evaluation and therapy or counseling to date;
4. An explanation that the criteria for surgery have been met, and a brief description of the clinical rationale for supporting the patient’s request for surgery;
5. A statement about the fact that informed consent has been obtained from the patient;
6. A statement that the mental health professional is available for coordination of care and wel­comes a phone call to establish this.

I did see a therapist for about a year once I moved here; the stress of the move destroyed a lot of the coping mechanisms I’d developed to handle my depression and anxiety problems and I needed some help with that. But here’s the thing – I didn’t really talk about my gender identity with her. She knows I’m trans and it came up on occasion, but as a way of providing context for other things I discussed, not in any sort of Big Issue way, mostly because I sorted through my Big Issues YEARS AGO, thanks. I haven’t seen her since last fall, but I contacted her and she’s willing write the letter for me. Of course I have to pay for an office visit to get it sorted out, though.

I realize that it looks like I’ll get this squared away without too much personal expense, and that I’m complaining about an aspect of getting this surgery paid for by my insurance when health care coverage is something a lot of people don’t have (especially trans people and/or people in unmarried domestic partnerships). I’m very aware that I’m in a relatively privileged position, here!
But still. Still. I am no stranger to gatekeeping bullshit. I have done this dance before, and even the first time it made me feel like I was being talked down to and disrespected. I should be able to sign an informed consent form without having to pay my former therapist to tell BC/BS about my “sexual diagnoses” (I don’t even think I have any but if I did why the fuck would they matter here?). The list doesn’t even make very much sense to me, to be honest. JUST SKIP TO #5 AND LET ME MAKE MY OWN FUCKING DECISIONS ABOUT MY BODY.

If I had known it would mean this back-and-forth with the company and this pointless therapist visit, I don’t know that I would have tried to schedule the hysto in the first place, or at least not so soon. I’m not sure now why I was so naive as to think that “revolutionary trans-friendly health insurance plan that covers surgeries” would actually mean “we respect you enough not to subject you to demeaning mental health evaluations.” And wow, what a depressing sentence that was to write.

I’m angry. I’m furious, actually. But while I’d love to make a huge fuss and Change the System, instead I’m being surly about it online and going to see my former therapist this week like I’m supposed to. I don’t know how to feel about that. Am I giving in too easily? I’m one step removed from the company I’m insured through, so I can’t really complain to them easily (or without a long process by which point the surgery date would have passed, most likely); at this point I feel like my only choices are to go ahead with this ridiculous letter or cancel the procedure altogether. So on Wednesday I’ll spent an hour talking about how personally offended I am that I have to be at the appointment in the first place, and when I leave I will have this bloody letter and can get on with my life. Bleargh.

Remorse, reform, and Readercon

By this time, many of y’all are probably familiar with the harassment incident that happened at Readercon last weekend, described here, and the Readercon board’s baffling decision about it, seen here (Valentine’s reaction to the decision is here). Now, I’ve never been to this con, but as a fan of SF and an extreme anti-fan of harassment and harassers getting slap-on-the-wrist punishments for their behaviors, this has been a really upsetting story to follow. I feel a little ridiculous about how fucking angry I’ve been since I read about this, but this story is also coming on the heels of several stories of convention harassment (and really ugly responses to it) in the atheist/skeptic world and I am so tired of hearing over and over how people just do not. fucking. get it. and insist on victim-blaming and/or downplaying the actions of perpetrators. It’s disgusting and disappointing and it makes me feel like I need a hot shower to scrub off the layer of slime that accumulated on me just from reading about this shit.

There are a lot of things I could say about this case, but there’s a lot being said already and I think if I write everything that’s in my mind, I’ll get way too angry and worked up about it (which has kind of happened already, oops). So I’ll focus on just one aspect of the Readercon response: the issue of reform. From their official statement, linked above:

“If, as a community, we wish to educate others about harassment, we must also allow for the possibility of reform.”

Ok, I do actually agree with the spirit of this. I do think there is and should be room for abusers and harassers to reform. People who are abusive and predatory won’t just stop abusing on their own – they’ll find other places to sneak in and take advantage of others, and without a radical change in their thinking they won’t change their behaviors, either. If someone doesn’t want to change then I’m happy doing whatever it takes to keep them away from potential victims, but sure, I’d rather see someone go through a lot of reflection and change and stop offending. That’s clearly the best-case scenario.

However, that process should not take precedence over the safety and comfort of a perpetrator’s victims, and it is not Readercon’s job to provide a serial offender with his personal redemption narrative. The convention’s job in this case is to keep its general attendee population safe. If someone’s self-aware enough to say to a convention board “I fucked up and I’m sorry” then he should be self-aware enough to realize that changing his attitudes and behaviors is his own fucking job that he can do on his own time. If he’s truly remorseful, he should probably step away from Readercon according to the harassment policy as it existed at the time of his offenses whether or not the board decides to enforce the policy.

Maybe he could release a statement saying “I fucked up and clearly I need to work on my interactions with women, especially in a convention context. I’m going to take a break from cons for a while, and I will be removing myself from Readercon permanently.” That would show he’s taking his problems seriously more than an apology to the board and a two-year suspension does. Yes, he hasn’t released a statement that I know of, but the fact that there is the two-year suspension makes me think he either argued for it or didn’t say “no y’all, I messed up and I should really adhere to this harassment policy and not come here any more” when they talked to him about it. And that’s troubling.

Also, the world of SF cons is pretty large; if he wants to attend other conventions in the spirit of reform, he has plenty of other places to try out his bold new non-harassment plan, assuming others don’t ban him as well. And frankly, if he does get banned from other cons, or feels like his professional or personal fandom experience is otherwise impacted by his own actions, that’s just too fucking bad. I honestly don’t care that much for the feelings of perpetrators, and I don’t think that’s where the focus should be in this discussion. Sure, as I said above I would love to see a change in his behavior. That would be fantastic! But until things do change (and again, I think this should be personal change that happens in private before he ventures into the convention world again) I don’t see any reason why his feelings should be taken into consideration over the safety and comfort of women he’s harassed. How is this even a question?

I know there’s been some talk over this decision being partially about the perpetrator being a Big Name in SF fandom, and while that could be part of it I’m really unsettled by the fact that the official reason is because he apologized and felt bad. Don’t people on the Readercon board know that this is what serial offenders do? That this is part of the cycle of abuse? You apologize profusely when you’re caught, so that people will let you go about your business more or less in peace and you can wait for the right time to offend again. And if the board’s looking for “substantiated reports” of further harassment on his part, then he’ll just time incidents for when no one else will be around, won’t he?

Yes, the Readercon board has truly struck a great blow against harassment and intimidating behavior at cons. After several years of not being particularly interested in attending conventions, I’m excited to be dipping my toe into that world again (FOGCon earlier this year, Worldcon in Chicago this fall, and I’m planning on going to WisCon next spring)! But there’s no fucking way I will go to Readercon if the situation stands as it is.

Apparently this is my hard limit

This week, I saw the first episode of Game of Thrones at a friend’s house. I haven’t read any of the Song of Ice and Fire series, which is kind of surprising considering how many brick-sized fantasy novels I have read, but once I heard that the series was not yet finished, I figured I’d wait to read them until the last book came out. Before Tuesday, I knew the following things about Game of Thrones:

• Winter is coming.
• There’s some sort of wall that monster people attack over.
• Lots of naked ladies and sex.
• A big spiky throne.
• Main characters die a lot.

I was expecting a gritty, serious fantasy experience with lots of beardy guys looking grim, and Game of Thrones certainly delivered on that front! And on the surface, this looks like something I would want to continue watching; I do like complicated political stories and although I will always struggle with narratives that introduce over a dozen named characters right off the bat and then assume I will instantly remember who everyone is (Guy Gavriel Kay, I’m looking at you), I think that shows with a complex plot and large ensemble casts, when handled well, are pretty fantastic. That first episode set up several interesting plot threads, mostly revolving around political alliances, marriages, and potential backstabbing, and I can see why a lot of people are so enthusiastic about the show (and the source material). I’m certainly curious about where the story is going.

However, I don’t think I’ll be watching more, because I just do not have the stomach for rape scenes on-screen. At all. To the point where this trumps any other interest I have in the story. I’m putting the discussion of this particular plot point under a cut in case any of y’all either don’t want to read about a rape scene or want to avoid spoilers…

Surly Book Review

It’s a bit more accurate to call this “surly short story review,” I suppose, but the entire anthology (The Future is Queer, which bills itself as a sci-fi anthology with queer themes) that contained this story was mediocre at best, so I’m ok with extending a blanket of surliness over the entire thing. I was already a bit skeptical about this book since the back cover asked “…what does the future hold for gays, lesbians, and transgenders?” but I’m a fan of short stories and am always looking for less-straight sci-fi reading material so I decided to give it a go.

The book’s editors each have an introduction, and in typical anthology fashion they mention themes or plot devices present in each story. The phrase “a future where too much tolerance is suffocating” stuck in my mind when I read it, and I was a little worried about what that story might describe. Well, dear readers, let’s find out together in the world of “Instinct,” by Joy Parks.

By 2045, when this story takes place, discrimination against people based on sexual preference and gender identity has been outlawed (although there are some private gated communities that enforce heterosexuality). Once equal rights were achieved and greater freedom led to more personal experimentation, there was little cohesion within the queer community, and the community itself faded away for the most part. The narrator, a single lesbian, tries to patronize a matchmaking service (online dating has been outlawed because “too many people were arrested for misrepresentation”) but can’t find anyone she’s interested in – none of the available women seem like “real lesbians” to her. She’s contacted by an underground organization that takes queers out of the protected dome cities where most of the population lives and into reclaimed rural areas, where they can live out fantasy lives based in different eras of oppressed queer life. She decides to go to a 1950s-era settlement, where bigots (volunteers trucked in from the private hetero communities) will be present to lend the proper amount of danger and she thinks she can have a Real Lesbian Experience. When she arrives, she knows exactly how to put on her makeup and wear high heels because her instincts have kicked in. THE END.

I think there’s a lot to be said for resisting assimilation, or at least understanding that not every queer’s goal is marriage and “acting straight” in a Craigslist M4M ad sort of way. I’m not interested in marriage and upholding an ideal of proper masculinity, and I’m certainly more interested in a discussion of legal and social rights for assorted QUILTBAG folks that doesn’t focus on “and then we’ll all be happily married.”

But there’s something really uncomfortable about reading a story that explicitly states that achieving full rights will lead to a complete destruction of queer identities and community, that when things become too easy and we have nothing to fight for, we cease to be ourselves at all. If struggle “builds character” BUT all that character and passion evaporates when the struggle ends… did it really exist in a substantial way in the first place? Does Parks actually believe that every non-straight person has, as their ultimate goal, complete assimilation? That any sense of queer identification would vanish once that goal was achieved? A character in this story says that assimilation meant there was “no reason to congregate, no gay bars, no dyke potlucks, no gay media.” Wouldn’t lesbians with full rights still want to hang out with each other? Wouldn’t gay men still enjoy going to bars where it was more likely that attractive men would appreciate being hit on? I do not see the connection between “no more oppression” and “no sense of queer identity.” If there’s a decent argument to be made here, the author certainly didn’t manage it.

I wouldn’t be so angry if the story presented a picture of a different way to fight for rights; there are many queer activists right now who are focusing on housing, education, health care, immigration rights, prison reform, etc. and not just marriage and the millitary. It’s possible! It’s happening! And if Parks took this story in a different direction, where her nameless savior tried to show the narrator another way to work for queer rights and community that didn’t focus solely on assimilation, I think it could have been both more interesting and more believable. Instead, she seems to be saying that only a retreat to more dangerous and oppressive times can restore a sense of queer culture and identity in the community, and I just can’t get behind that at all.

Setting aside the premise of the story, which I find inherently flawed, the narrator’s treatment of trans people and identities made me wish I could justify throwing a library book into the ocean. Early on in the story, the narrator explains that “MTFs became nuWomen and FTMs became nuMen,” although there’s no explanation of what exactly this awkward terminology means. I suppose “trans men” and “trans women” aren’t futuristic-sounding enough?

Next, we see the narrator sift through her matchmaking possibilities: “A lot of them were obviously nuWomen, even though I’d specifically said I was interested in birth women only. Maybe no one but me could tell the difference anymore…I wanted a woman who’d come into this world as a woman for reasons I couldn’t even articulate, and no amount of debate or rationalization was going to change that.” So, great! Another lesbian wanting to exclude trans women as Not Really Women because she doesn’t think they were born women. Clearly the narrator knows these women’s minds and histories better than they do. But it’s a personal preference she can’t rationalize away, so we can’t blame her for it! The narrator and an employee of the matchmaking service make this even more explicit when they claim there are “no real lesbians” registered: they’re all either trans women or straight/bisexual women looking to experiment (bisexuality is also treated with little respect in this story).

The narrator is pretty fixated on her ability to tell if someone is trans; above, she knows who is “obviously nuWomen” and when she meets the slim and androgynous liason for the outside-the-dome settlements, she’s initially confused about her gender but knows she’s “not a nuMan; the hormones still made you gain weight.” I suppose if I wanted to be charitable I could imagine that this refers to a future form of testosterone that causes weight gain in every instance, but my sense of charity ran out about two paragraphs into this story.

Further examples of bizarre and offensive passages about trans folks:

“If you are born a woman, become a nuMan and still want women, does that make you straight?” Well, unless you also like men (and allowing for people to self-identify however they like), PROBABLY SO. It’s not really a trick question.

“A lot of gay men and lesbians had decided to pack it in and become nuMen and nuWomen.” WHAT. That’s… that’s not how being trans works at all. I have run into this bizarre thought process before: “why did you become a gay man, when gay men want to be women?” and “why go through all this trouble if you aren’t going to date a female?” are actual questions I’ve had to answer. I am constantly baffled by some people’s inability to separate the issues of sexual attraction and gender identity. There’s some interplay there, to be sure, but not enough to excuse this sort of statement.

“Even the trannies were more real back when you actually had to have some real motivation for jumping the gender line. Not like now, when you get the operation easier than you could once get a pack of smokes. All gone now.”
What the fuck can I even say to this? The idea that medical gatekeeping keeps the fakers and wannabes from transitioning is disgusting, as is the reduction of transitioning and a trans identity to “the operation.” No one is earning points for having a harder medical or social transition than anyone else, and if access to surgery or hormones or basic fucking respect was easier, then that wouldn’t make trans people “less real.” It would give people more options and help them feel more in control of their lives and their bodies. This is such a vile statement.

I don’t know that I have a lot of brilliant analysis to make about this – the tone of these comments, along with narrator’s desire for someone who was born a woman and the reference to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, say quite a bit without my help, don’t you think? – but I was really angry to read this content in what was specifically billed as a lgbt-positive anthology. As usual, the T was pretty much silent.

I am not a novelty item.

Story time!

A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with a large group of people, most of whom I had not met before, and struck up a conversation with the woman across the table from me. I didn’t catch her name because it was loud in the restaurant, but I’ll call her H. We were all splitting some big margarita pitchers and having fun, and her questions about my split tongue moved onto a conversation about piercings in general, which was fine by me because I always enjoy talking about that sort of thing. I enjoy evangelizing about genital piercings when I have the chance, because I always want to make sure people know they heal very quickly when compared to a lot of other piercings and are often not as painful as one might think. So, since I was tipsy and H was friendly, I found myself talking about how genital piercings are great! And when she said “oh, well, maybe it’s different for men because your parts are larger, but with a smaller area I think it’s more intimidating for women to get those piercings,” it somehow made sense for me to tell her that because I’m trans, my genital piercing experiences were not the same as what most cis men would go through.

(Again, there were many very strong margaritas at our table.)

Her reaction was not really what I want to hear when I disclose to someone, but it wasn’t too surprising either: her eyes got wide and she said “REALLY? I never would have guessed! I couldn’t tell at all!”

Folks, let me be clear: I don’t feel complimented with someone tells me how they “never would have guessed” I was trans. Am I a carnival game? Do you go around guessing if people around you are trans or cis? Really? If folks are trying to be nice when they say this sort of thing, they’re failing. If you like how I rock my gender presentation, tell me! But don’t gush over how fucking cis I look to you because I do not want to hear it.

In that moment, I realized I was stuck in “trans ambassador” mode, which I tried to live in 24/7 when I first came out and quickly learned was a quick way to burn out on any interaction with clueless (even if well-meaning) cisgendered people. I try not to slip into that role if I can avoid it, but in a loud restaurant when both individuals in a conversation are drunk… it’s not an ideal time to have a Teaching Moment about inappropriate reactions to trans disclosure, and it was easier to just let her talk. So I got to hear stories about how surprised H was to know several trans women who were so beautiful and who you would never know were trans, a trans woman she dated who she considered her “bridge” between straight and lesbian relationships (yeah, I’m kicking myself now for not calling her out on that because it was pretty gross, but again: drunk! loud!), etc. etc. I’m pretty sure she was honestly being enthusiastic and excited, but it didn’t make me feel like any less of a novelty item. I doubt she would have liked it if I said “OH, you’re a lesbian! I wouldn’t have known at all! I knew someone who turned out to be a lesbian, and we were all so surprised!” but even in queer-land, etiquette seems to fly out the window where trans people are concerned.

It’s not that I’m particularly angry or bitter about this, but it was a weird moment. I really did just want to talk about how great piercings are and instead I felt like a tipsy science experiment.

Oh, and the best part of this conversation? I was one of four trans folks at our end of the table. Apparently she would have NEVER GUESSED it about any of them, though, so they were all spared the delights of this particular discussion.