As a young trans guy, one of the only things that tends to inspire you is musing upon what the future holds. Particularly the ways in which testosterone will change your life or improve your general existence. For me, it was the only thing keeping me going, as — though contrary to conservative talking points — being trans is a struggle and I needed an emblem of hope.
My life became this myriad of imaginative writings and checklists for when I’ll be considered “man enough”. All started and seemingly ended with testosterone, affectionately named ‘T’ by many trans masculine people like me. Yet, as I sit and write now, coming up to 12 months on T I begin to panic: why am I not a man yet?
You always tend to see the famous voice update videos — which of course I too have participated in — and you see how masculine these men look after transitioning for just one year. What you don’t see is everyone else: the men like me. I am currently 11 months on T and do not pass. I do not even fractionally pass in a university setting where everyone knows and doesn’t pretend to hide that they do. I find that I pass more to the older generations than to the younger. When I’m in my hometown I tend to be referred to with ‘he’ rather than ‘they’ as I do in places like Newtown.
Medical transition is an experience I did alone. I turned 18 and very briskly attained my own Medicare card. And with that card with my mother’s name located at the tippy top in bold letters, the name that has caused me some of the most grief to do with my trans identity, I handed it to a receptionist as a plea for acceptance, to the road of being taken seriously. As that’s what Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) is: the quest to be taken seriously in the binary you are mischaracterised by day in, day out. What a fucking silly notion, the only way to be taken seriously as a trans individual is by ‘passing’ as a cisgendered person.
What I have come to realise about transitioning is that I needed it just as much as I thought I did. Another thing I realised is that my life continues to transpire irregardless of the next shot of T I take.
I craved to be normal so much, so intensely, I think I lost a part of who I was before. Part of my love and pride of being queer. I grew up as an intensely outgoing individual. I didn’t care how I looked nor how I came off; I was just me. And in this pursuit to fit into manhood I’ve forgotten that most cisgender men don’t fit that description either. Part of who I was before has become lost in the complicated existence of transhood and I fear I’ve lost him for good. Many may take that as an opportunity to blame that on transgender ideology, but rather I blame the strict gender I was projected into being from birth. If I wasn’t forced to be a girl who knows who I would be, who knows how much freer I could’ve been.
Another aspect of trans existence is the notion of give and take. I have sacrificed my relationship with two of the most important people in my life for this, my parents. Throughout my life I have relied on my parents for not only teaching me what to think but how to think, especially about myself and who I am. And because of this, I wanted T to prove to my parents that I can be normal, a normal man, a normal child, again. But your body doesn’t owe you anything. My body doesn’t owe me quicker changes, more masculine changes, just because I’ve sacrificed love. Unfortunately, retribution and justice aren’t concepts that mean anything to the chemicals that make up your physiology. My body, though incredibly hard to believe due to my upbringing as a woman, has very little politics to it. It just is.
I am only now just entering into being socialised as a man and only now can begin to understand a massive facet of what being gendered male means. Gender is undeniably an identity that everyone has the right to prescribe themselves as and I don’t mean to discredit that. Yet the experience of a binary trans person is that of many self and societally inflicted pains. You begin to develop this hyper awareness of trans people because you are so insecure of your own presence, you begin to lose a sense of creative expression due to the binary you find yourself identifying within, or, like me, you begin to develop a disdain for non-passing and non-gender conforming individuals because you hate yourself so severely.
It is incredibly taboo to discuss this internalised transphobia in a current tense because so many people on this campus, in this city, are very addicted to their own binary of ‘valid’ and ‘bigot’. But being trans cannot be sanitised in this fashion; it’s truly anger-inducing watching people attempt it. There is nothing clean cut and polite about queer history, nor queerness currently. If I believe myself to be free of prejudice I’ve missed the point of progression.
So, to answer my own question of why I’m not a man yet here is what I’ve come to. I will never be a man if I continue to label myself as a work in progress person. If I continue at this rate two, then five, then fifteen years on T will begin to feel like a fruitless quest of self fulfilment. And it’s just not.
Testosterone saved my life, but it also humbled my expectations. I will never be a man if I base my identity off of a hormone I get injected by every three months. I will never be a man if I have such a strict, inherently transphobic definition of what a man is.
To any trans people reading: your pain is not isolated, please continue to surround yourself with your chosen family, or blood if you’re so lucky. Just know you aren’t a half baked nor work in progress human, who you are right now is who you’ll continue to be into the future. HRT or not, binary or not, out or not, you are loved, and you are real.
