I don't want to want more things I can't have

So...I've been re-thinking the issue of hormones lately.  I have known for some time that I wanted rid of the breasts, but hormones I was not sure about.  Partially because I needed time to see what my body would work like not being on estrogen containing pills for the PCOS.  Because, I have testosterone that is higher than what is considered "normal" for a cis woman by a good shot anyways, but I also have "average" levels of estrogen and progesterone.

Also, can I just say here how tired I am of this myth that estrogen and progesterone don't really shape the body all that much and that testosterone is so powerful and overwhelming?  Not all FAAB trans people have naturally "boyish" figures.  No one in the history of my life has considered my figure boyish.  It takes quite a bit of baggy clothes and binding to reshape the lines of my body to get taken as not a woman on a few occaions (which means getting taken as a man, which also doesn't really reflect reality, what makes me happiest is when I get "ma'am" at one place, cross the street and get "sir").  I went from tiny and delicate as a small child to curvy and broad hipped and big breasted, and then to curvy and broad hipped and big breasted and fat.  "Normal" levels of estrogen and progesterone are more than enough to shape a body in huge ways even with testosterone levels in between what would be expected for a cis male and a cis female.

I've been watching my body during this time, experiencing being an adult and watching and feeling my hormones shift.  I've purposefully tried to focus on keeping my speaking voice in the lower range, but now I feel like I have the voice of a thirteen year old cis boy.  Did you know when I'm not on hormones and my voice slips into certain modes, I can sing low enough to go along with a tenor and then slip back into soprano as falsetto or on other days soprano as just my base tone?  My voice even cracks sometimes.  I've never left puberty.

 I can watch my face shape change and shift.

 I know whether my testosterone or estrogen or both are high with a pretty good estimate at this point from observing my body.

I've had six months in a row without periods before, that's what got me in for a PCOS diagnosis.  Now, if I don't get a period every three or four months or so, I medically induce one.  I don't really have bottom dysphoria (I mean, I am one of those people who doesn't find the idea of having other genitals upsetting, but also doesn't feel upset by them as they are) and menstruation is not dysphoria inducing for me.   That certainly doesn't apply to all genderqueer people, it's just the way I feel.  It doesn't particularly bother me.  I don't have too many physical symptoms around menstruation like some people, so that might be part of it (I don't get anemia at times like my older sister does, I don't have bad cramping like my little sister).  If anything, the break in hormonal wildness that it usually takes to produce a period without pills means that I feel rather good and calm.  And, now that I get my body better, I'm much better at estimating when they are coming, so it doesn't have the panic inducing randomness factor that used to bother me as a kid.

Anyways, I wonder sometimes if I should consider going on blockers and hormones.  I wonder if they would make my thighs a bit less...well...but I had very wide hips even when thinner, they aren't really going to get small, and I wear long enough shorts that it's less of a big deal in public anyways.  It might help with the voice stuff.  But, when I start wondering, a lot of times I will shut myself down thinking "I don't need to want them anyways, I don't want to want them anyways.  You can't have top surgery realistically for years yet, and you've wanted that way longer and way harder.  Why even want hormones if you just know you can't have them?  Wouldn't that just upset you?  Just don't think about it."

And, I'm not sure that I want hormones anyways, but I want to get over that hump.  I want to be able to think about and explore that idea like I have other stuff, regardless of what the end decision might be.   Stinking medical gatekeeping, it's even interfering with my brain's ability to let me figure out what I want.

An Inadequacy of Terms

So, yeah, I spent way more time playing with this in class than I should have (available here http://www.dolldivine.com/marie-antoinette.php).  But it got me thinking again about a terminology issue I've been struggling with.  I think we all know that within trans communities, anti-femme sentiment exists, and some trans people are targeted more by each other and by society for certain types of violence and oppression.  But, what terms do we use?  FAAB and MAAB are sometimes useful, we can talk about violence and rhetorics that target more harshly MAAB trans people, including trans women, and how some FAAB trans people, including trans men, sometimes direct those unique combinations of sexism, femmephobia, and transphobia against them as well.  However, some people, especially non-binary or non-normative presenting people find these terms reductive.  Not everyone thinks that it's okay for people to be that focused on their birth assignment when discussing their experiences and bodies.  But, terms like "trans feminine" and "trans masculine" certainly don't work either.  Butch trans women, femme trans men, genderqueer people who do not present as just butch or femme do exist.  So, am I a butch or a femme?  Feminine or Masculine.  Mostly, I talk about being coded butch or masculine, but a lot of that is a function of the fact that most people who I encounter perceive me as a woman, which I am not.  If you look at my behavior through that lens, I am on the butcher side in most people's eyes.  But what if you looked at me as a man (something I also am not)?  Then my habit of painting my nails, my Mario Mushroom earings, my playing with dress up dolls on the internet, that I am willing to wear bright pink shirts, that I sometimes willingly dress up more high femmey as an almost costume sort of deal, makes me far more than the normative level of femme for a man.  We certainly need terms to discuss which trans people are the targets of transmisogyny, the people who are targeted by transphobic violence at higher rates, the unique ways in which sex assigned at birth and appearance and perception interact, and we need to be discussing these things.  I just think that when people group me as "transmasculine", they should consider the discourses they are using and the frameworks in which they are viewing me.

Queer Babies

Sometimes, I wish I bought into the idea that queerness and transness were genetic.  I have a certain fondness for the notion of having and raising queer trans babies, of being able to share queer and trans cultures and community ties with them, of having.  Maybe it would be enough to tip the scales and make me willing to face the social hell that would be heaped on me if I ever had kids if I could know that I'd be able to have little queer trans aspie kids.  I could read them Feinberg for bedtime stories, help them learn the eyebrow codes, and show them queer movies.  They'd grow up knowing their history, Compton Cafeteria Riots and Lawrence v. Texas. And dysphoria sucks, but if my babies had dysphoria, I would get them treatment, I would fight for them.  Because we already have cures for a great deal of dysphoria.  We've got hormones and surgeries.  It's one of those things that transphobes don't think of when they suggest we need "cured".  We've been working on that, and we've made a shit ton of medical progress, and if people would stop getting in our way, we'd make even more.  It's just our version of what we need is totally fucking different from what they imagine people should need.

Of course, in real life, you wouldn't know, and in real life, the trans or queer kids of a genderqueer queer person might tear themselves up and tangle themselves up because of social pressures to not be like their queer parent(s).  It's not okay to pressure kids to have a certain sexuality or gender.  Of course, the rest of the fucking world brutally forces everyone else, but still.  And of course if I had a child that was hetero and cis and neurotypical, I would love them too.  Though there's still a part of me that, when reading studies of "same sex" parenting and they emphasize that the kids won't turn out queer, is rather disappointed by that news. 

Is Genderqueer a Political Identity?

Yes and no.  No, being genderqueer isn’t like being pro-gun control, it is an identity, not a position.  Does being genderqueer identified say something about me and the way I view gender?  Yes, but by that standard, so does the identities of those who are cis, are binary IDed, etc.  If my gender identity is political, so are binary IDed cis people’s.  Binary cisgendered identities are only seen as apolitical insofar as they are treated as the norm and as the default human.  

We often do this with marginalized or stigmatized identities.  The rights and lives of trans people, queer/lgb people, people of color, people with disabilities, women, poor people, colonized people, etc. are seen as objects of public scrutiny and as “political issues”.  But marginalized identities are not inherently more political than centered ones.  Oppression is not primarily an “issue” of the oppressed, rather it is an issue with the oppressors.  If being against an enforced binary gender system is a political position, than the opposite position, being in support of an enforced binary system, is also a political position. 

You know what?  I would fucking love it if being genderqueer were as easily accepted, acknowledged, and given rights as being cis and binary and we didn't have to engage in political and social struggles.  I would fucking love not having to fight for rights, not having to navigate through unfavorable legal and social minefields, not having to swallow the vomit that rises in my throat when confronted with being forced to put myself in a gendered box.  It would make my life so much easier.  I would love to not have to be “political”, but until that day comes, I won’t accept being told to stop fighting to protect myself or others like me (and others not like me who are given shit too).  The frontlines of this “political” struggle isn’t a game to me, it is my life.