Ravenously Hungry, Urgently Hungry

I have a complicated relationship with food. There are a bunch of things that have contributed to this over the years. When I was young there was rarely enough food around, and so I would absolutely stuff myself to the point of making myself ill whenever there was a plentiful supply of tasty food (church banquets, parties, etc). This lead to my mothers embarrassment on many occasions, and she would call me a greedy pig, and other names. By the time I hit highschool, I had read about gymnasts delaying puberty because they didn’t eat enough. I didn’t eat as much then. My mother was also worrying at me about how I would grow fat.
When menses commenced at 14 I started starving myself in earnest. My mother was pleased with my weight loss, and rewarded it with new clothes… the first new clothes I could remember receiving. I managed to halt my period, and ended up weighing 42kg at a height of 5′7″. I was skeletal, and by this time suffering from major depression, paranoia, and low self esteem.

My mother changed my doctor in desperation to find out what was wrong with me. (The first doctor diagnosed me with anorexia and depression. He was actually right, but my mother didn’t believe it).
The new doctor treated me as if I had anorexia and depression, without naming them as such. She challenged me to increase my weight to 50kg, and then 55kg, and explained the damage that starving myself was doing to my body.
By the time I left home at 18, I weight 55kg and was 5′8″.

By the time I was 21 I had started eating ‘normally’ again because I was using the pill to stop my periods. In fact I was binge eating, and gaining quite a lot of weight. I weighed almost 90kg at the beginning of 2007. I tried starting to run, and try to eat really really healthy, but I was eating *so much* that it didn’t matter that I was on a reasonably balanced diet… and besides, I kept binging on crap in addition to my ‘balanced diet’.

I am notorious for my inability to regulate my own diet. I spent several months in 2007 eating only cookies and yoghurt. (That would be how I lost one third of my body weight, getting down to 60kg again by the middle of 2007… I really don’t recommend it).
This year I have been eating a lot of bacon and egg rolls, vietnamese takeaway, bad food court food, and drinking a lot of booze. Pretty much, if it isn’t protein rich, and swimming in fat, the food really doesn’t interest me that much. Oh, and the SUGAR, the amount of sugar I consume. It makes me cringe whenever I think of the word ‘diabetes’.

I weigh 77kg and am 170.5cm tall, as of last week. Since yesterday I have been having an increased appetite. I get hungry, ravenously, desperately hungry. My stomach says ‘Food. Now. No. Arguments.’
The thing that has really surprised me is the kind of food I want. Yesterday I wanted a fruit salad. Nothing else would do. Today I have eaten a banana and an apple. I usually eat fruit and vege’s pretty rarely, which I know is bad for me, but whatever. Now though, my diet has improved considerably in just two days because my body is like ‘Fruit! Vege’s! Fresh! Bread! Pasta! GIMME GIMME GIMME!’

I think that this effect is because my body is asking more loudly for what it wants, its easier for me to understand. Also, I feel much more positive about life now. I feel like I ought to take a bit better care of my body.

I hope that this keeps up. Its a turn for the better.

Now though, I’m hungry, my stomach demands FOOD!

Finally things start to look up…

I posted a month ago now, just before that ill-fated trip to the dodgey endocrinologist, that I felt able to focus on stuff other than transitioning again. I’ve been pretty buried in ‘trans stuff’ since then. I’ve slowly been growing more and more depressed, and since last Thursday I have been dragging around a black cloud the size of Uluru with me.

Yesterday afternoon as I sat in the doctors office I didn’t feel the least bit excited. I felt jaded, and cynical, and angry. I snapped at the receptionist, and geared up to fight with my Doctor. When he hadn’t received his instructions from Dr Conway my heart sank, and I felt so tired, I didn’t think that I was going to be able to push for my injection if I had to.
But then he gave me my testosterone anyway. He took a look at the script, and was willing to follow my instructions.
He congratulated me, and shook my hand. He even taught me how to self inject.

The moment he opened the little box of Sustenon 100, and said ‘This is a intra-muscular injection isn’t it?’ I felt lighter. I smiled. I felt even better when he agreed to teach me how to self-inject. I never want to be in the situation of not being able to have my medication because of the moralizing of other people.

Last night I felt kinda sad because of other stuff happening in the evening, but I went to sleep, and I woke up this morning feeling really optimistic again. I’ve been limping around (my leg *hurts*) feeling amazingly cheerful. My colleagues have been teasing me about how I have to eat steak and drink beer, and they’ll give me playboy etc etc.

So yeah, cheerfulness is good. I wouldn’t really want to rename this blog ‘Cynical Megalomaniac’ it just doesn’t have the same RING to it.

Stunned Speechless by Statistical Stupidity

At the last census, the ABS stated that gender and sex diverse individuals were free to answer the sex question in some way not specified by the form (such as intersex for example). As part of the same press release, the ABS spokesperson reassured us all that anyone who answered the form in this way would be randomly assigned a sex of either male or female by a computer program written especially for this purpose.

I am shocked. I don’t think that the stupidity of this approach even needs to be outlined, I am sure that you can just see it right there.

The most conservative estimates I have seen, of how many intersex people there are range from 1 in 1500 births to 1 in 2000 births. I have heard numbers as large as 2% of the population used to describe the total number of sex and gender diverse people (that is: intersex, transgender and transsexual).

That means that somewhere between 3000 and 350 000 records are incorrectly recorded with the ABS.
That means that we don’t know how many are wrong.
That means that we don’t know how many intersex or transsexual or transgendered people there are in this country.

12 year old FTM to Undergo Hormone Treatment

This morning the news broke that a 12 year old FTM is to be allowed to have hormone blockers to delay puberty until they are 16. At 16 a new court approval must be sought before he can begin testosterone therapy, and no surgery will be allowed until he is 18. (Dude ain’t gonna NEED top surgery if he’s on blockers though, which is AWESOME for him).

The media coverage has been quite offensive. I have quickly discovered that there are *levels* of offensive.
The Australian: “‘Best to delay’ decision on sex changes for children”
This article was just stupid. It parades out some professor of psychiatry who isn’t familiar with the case (the article even admits as much), and who says that “Even in the the best of circumstances [transition is] something that most regret.”

News.com.au: Sex Swap Approved for Girl, 12
News.com.au persistently refers to the process as a ’sex swap’ and claims that it will be ‘tax payer funded’. (Which is bull shit, Australian medicare doesn’t cover transition, it only covers the doctors appointments, but not hormones or surgery).
In another article they claim that the child has been pressured into it to spite his father.

A 12-year-old girl who a court has allowed to begin sex change treatment has been vindictively “brainwashed” by her mother into making the decision, a relative says.

There’s not much to say really. I may post again later. I wrote a letter to the Australian, but now I need to get to work on the HREOC submission.

It never bloody ends. Fight fight fight…

Thoughts on Community

So Rebecca has posted about the ‘trans community’ again. She says:

I’ve been distancing myself from the trans community in recent times, as I start to begin going, at least to a significant extent, stealth. It’s somewhere I never quite expected I’d be, but I’ve really reached the point where being trans no longer defines my day-to-day existence in any significant way, and I need to move on.

and

while I’m increasingly getting to a point where I don’t want to be defined by being trans any longer, it’s really helpful to keep these people around, for there are so often times when it really helps to have someone around who can really understand what’s going on.

I can understand not wanting to be defined as purely trans. I am Ryan… pansexual, genderqueer, geek, nerd, book worm, friendly, laid back, extroverted… so many definitions, of which trans is hardly the most important.
HOWEVER, that said, there is no need to be an arsehole about other trans people in order to distance yourself from them. Sure, I don’t identify with the likes of the trans women who populate our Canberra Trans Network… I find them loud, and in some cases obnoxious. Thats not because they are trans though… its cos they are annoying people.

Queen Emily posted a comment:

There’s a trans *community*?

To which Bec flippantly replied:

I’ll put it another way. Bec decide other trans people suck. Bec run from said people.

My own response on the comment thread was (rather snarkily, I’m afraid):

From the Oxford Dictionary
Community:
2 [usu. with adj. ] a group of people having a religion, race, profession, or other particular characteristic in common eg: Rhode Island’s Japanese community | the scientific community.
3 a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals eg: the sense of community that organized religion can provide.

For these two definitions of community one certainly exists in Canberra.
I definitely and strongly disagree that ‘other trans people suck’. Those ‘other trans people’ are my friends…. and *shock* I’m one of those ‘other trans people’.

while I’m increasingly getting to a point where I don’t want to be defined by being trans any longer, it’s really helpful to keep these people around,

Oh right, no I’m one of the ones thats handy to have around for in case you need a shoulder to cry on about being trans.

I’ll define you right here if you like… not as trans, but as an arsehole.

I belong to several trans communities. Among the Online Trans Community there is Tarald, Nix, Jacky, Gender Outlaw, Geekbynature, EmmaG, Drakyn, all of whom I feel a bond to, and who I would count my friends.
Offline and locally, I have my friends E, N, Peter, Tait, Daniel, Robbie, Rebecca and the members of A Gender Agenda, whether or not they are friends, they are still working with me toward a common goal of equality for all regardless of gender expression.

I value all these people. It is quite painful to hear myself, and my good friends described in such a way by someone I had counted amongst their number.
I have never really felt a sense of community before, and I really value that feeling now. The knowledge that there’s stuff to fight for, but I’m not fighting alone… there’s a bunch of people fighting for the same goal, thats something worth having.

—
I just got a message from Bec, she deleted my comment, because it was ‘unfair’.
I think that its pretty bloody unfair to expect me to be perfectly cool with her attitude. I don’t want to be one of ‘those people’ she’s ‘kept around’ for emotional emergencies of a trans nature.

Last night that my boyfriend said that he needed to ‘make some nice straight friends’. Now Bec wants to distance herself from trans people.
Has the world run mad?
Like it or not… I am gay, and I am trans. Distance yourself from trans people, or queers, and you distance yourself from me.

Sex and Gender Diversity Project

The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) is seeking the views of the sex and gender diverse community about the most pressing human rights issues facing their community. HREOC also seeks input into how it might assist in promoting and protecting the human rights of people who are transgender, transsexual or intersex.

HREOC has prepared a short paper analysing some sex and gender diversity issues and their human rights implications. The paper has been sent to some organisations representing the sex and gender diverse community.

If you would like to be involved in HREOC’s sex and gender diversity human rights project, please refer to the following documents:

* invitation for comment from the Human Rights Commissioner
* sex and gender diversity issues paper

Initial feedback is required by 30 May 2008.

Responses can be sent by:

* email to sarah.winter@humanrights.gov.au or
* post to Sex and Gender Diversity Project, HREOC at GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001.

For more information, please contact Sarah Winter, Policy Officer on 02 9284 9650

Tough out of Necessity

Women’s bodies are public property. This is quite a Feminism 101 concept. Women’s bodies are up for public consumption, critique, and possession. I’ve long accepted that. I’ve witnessed it in my own life.

As I am accepted as male more and more, I am granted the privileges of not having my appearance commented upon, I am given more personal space, I am not touched by strangers, my weight is now irrelevant. People used to brush past me without so much as a comment… now I get a ’sorry mate’ if people walk past me close, without even touching me.
Even if people see me as a butch dyke, they generally extend me a similar set of privileges, regarding personal space, and not sexualising my body.

I have discovered that if I am outed as trans, all those privileges, privileges which should be rights, are immediately waived. Trans bodies are barely human. I no longer have feelings, or a need for personal space, or privacy.
Every time I have been out partying recently, and been outed as trans, either by myself or someone else, I have had at least one person subsequently try to grab my crotch. I’m really not cool with people grabbing my private parts.
People asking me questions about the contents of my briefs is bad enough, without them trying to investigate on their own.
Thats the worst offense, but the analysis of my masculinity, or lack there of, questions about my breasts, patting my chest, coming on to me cos “trans men are hot” (as opposed to ‘Ryan is hot’, there’s a tangible difference, and one that I don’t like at all).

I used to have no boundaries at all, I was constantly vulnerable, and being harassed so constantly that it was just life. However, even as a woman that was propositioned for sex at work more than once, kissed by customers, had my arms stroked, my arse pinched, been grabbed, and so on, I have never experienced the same level of extreme disrespect and invasion of my body as I have in recent times.

I have found that I have had to get tough, and get tough fast. Last night I had to be very firm with a drag queen who wanted to investigate my crotch. Its occurred to me, that being assertive is no longer optional. Passivity puts me in real danger.

Fragile Femininity

At some point I decided that I must be a feminine kind of man. A flaming fag, a queen, a femme FTM. I am not exactly sure what led to this self-assessment. Perhaps influenced a lot by others telling me that I am too feminine to be a trans man.

Last Monday my boss told me that he and the other guys in my department had thought that I was a ‘relatively butch lesbian’. I had never heard myself described as “butch” before that moment. It was a bit of a surprise really. I’ve never seen myself as butch. In fact, because my last girlfriends ‘type’ had been ‘butch dykes’, I had wondered what she saw in *me*.
Since last monday I have been called ‘butch’ a few times. I am starting to reassess my ‘femininity’. Particularly when I said to a friend tonight that I consider myself a rather femme guy, and she said ‘Femme!? No, no honey, I’m really not seeing it.’

It then occurred to me that perhaps, just perhaps, I am not a feminine guy. Perhaps my ‘femininity’ was just an ILLUSION created by my previous conformity to various gender norms that I have since thrown out the window.
I mean, there isn’t really anything that ‘femme’ about me, that isn’t directly related to the effects of estrogen on my body. Well, other than my pink mobile phone, and my satchel with the retro 80’s flower motif on the lining fabric, and most people are various levels of shocked when they see me reveal those items.

I’ve been feeling a little insecure over the last few days. I don’t actually like transgressing the norms I was raised to accept and abide by. I don’t feel comfortable perched outside the gender binary. That said, I don’t want to trade one kind of gender oppression for another. What is the point in stepping off the feminine pedastal, only to pick up and carry the heavy weight of masculinity?

Last Monday I started living ‘as a man’ in every aspect of my life. I am Mr Ryan to everyone. At work, as well as socially. I think that change has subtly changed my attitude, and as such I am being misgendered less than every before. I have noticed that strangers refer to me as ‘mate’ a lot. Its a guy thing that I had never noticed before. ‘Excuse me, mate’, ‘Sorry, mate’, ‘Yeah, they’re open, mate’. Three times just this evening.

I don’t feel a need to pretend that I am more masculine than I am. In the past I have felt extremely insecure about being a ‘real girl’, and behaved in hyper-feminine ways to overcompensate for what I saw as my shortcomings as a woman. Now days though, I feel kinda content to just be me, and I am discovering that the person I am, and the person I thought I would be are a little different. I am in fact, more masculine than I thought I was, now that I feel free to express that part of myself.
I have to say that I am a little surprised.

I am left sitting here tonight feeling slightly amazed and bemused by my extreme average-ness. I’ve always been a rather exceptional girl. Into ‘non-traditional’ pursuits, so to speak.
However, I am not special anymore. Not particularly non-conformist, or non-traditional, or subversive. I’m not shattering gender binaries, or being a gender warrior, or trail blazing in any way shape or form.
I’m just a regular guy.

I feel normal for the first time in my life, even though I am about as far from *normal* as one person can get.

Privacy of Information

I have recently been going through a Google Purge. I have been removing the connection between my blog and my person, but not vice versa. That is, if you are my friend IRL, you can read my blog, but if you read my blog, you probably wont be able to figure out who I am IRL. Thats the theory anyway. I’ve had a few slip ups, but now if you google my name, or my old name, my blog isn’t a result.

This is in keeping with a new desire to not have incriminating information about me easily found by people that don’t know more than my name (prospective employers for example). Its also because I don’t want people finding out who I am easily using only a google search.

One thing that I have never put on the internet is my phone number. Its there in my facebook account, but they have fairly decent security, and I wanted it there for my friends. Its actually more restricted access there, than if it was in the White Pages.

Now, its well known that I am a queer rights activist. Its not something I hide. I am involved in the CCU, and will probably get involved with Good Process and/or Gender Agenda soonish. All of those organisations have excellent reputations, and so I can be proud to count myself a member of them, if I choose to join.

During a routine google search of my name on Tuesday evening I noticed an odd listing… it was 3rd… right after my Facebook ‘This profile is restricted!’ result, and my employers directory listing for me.

Word! TRANS PRIDE MOMENT!

If ever a real man existed
He was trans

You know why we rock YOUR world?
Because we’ve seen the best and worst of both

We are fighters.
Champions
Survivors
Lovers
Listeners
Boulders

Not just because we were made this way
But because we chose to carry on

We don’t need your pity
We don’t need your accusations
Or your psychological analysis

We know who we are
And we’re probably a lot more stable than you will ever be

If you had the power to stand
When chains were dragging you down
The power to survive alone
When no one was around
If you had found compassion
In no one other than yourself

You have become a real man
Without the pity of someone else

just gimme some freakin T.

From The Hottest Transbois