What’s in a name?  This trans-woman’s dawning realisation that she too will have a deadname.

One of the most challenging parts of being a trans woman is how this journey changes everything.  And I mean everything.  And that there is no way to know what that might be before you begin.

When I first contemplated coming out, I couldn’t imagine life living as a woman, and that is still hard, but I am living as a trans woman, and that is hard in different ways.  But not hard in the sense that it is hard because of resistance from the outside, but hard because of how I am changing from the inside.

I say that ‘I am still me’.  And I will always still be me no matter what surgeries I do, even if I become physically different.  It is a strange experience to feel these gradual changes that take place in every aspect of my physical, but also spiritual and mental being, and to wake up on some days and realise just how far I have come.

My children worry that surgery, especially facial surgery, will change me and make me unrecognisable, or ugly.  I am saving this surgery for last, and although I tell them I probably won’t do it, or that I am only thinking about it, I am sure I will.

When I first came out it took me several months to start hormones.  Fear, trepidation, the need to cut through the noise, fetish, kink, misinformation, hate, pseudo-science held me back.  To be a responsible trans woman is like getting a PhD in endocrinology.  It should be if you want to thrive.  It amazes how many doctors don’t know what they are talking about.  The DIY community in the trans world for self-medicated hormones is probably larger than those who follow the “accepted” path.  Part of that is economic, but a lot of it is that the “accepted” path is too often rigid.  Our bodies are all different.  Our needs and goals are different.  Because we are a fringe group living with fringe issues, and now politicised on top, there is little research money spent on determining optimal paths for the cocktail of hormones we take.

I was also afraid of growing boobs.  But these thoughts and fears existed in a male brain.  I could have never imagined what would happen inside my brain because of the changes wrought by hormones.  Instead of wanting to hide my breasts, I have taken immense joy in them, how they feel, what they look like, and I want people to see them.  Quite literally.

I wear tight t-shirts so that people know they are real, and not just falsies.  And the other day, I stood proudly in front of a crowd of people as a dominatrix undid my bodice and let me breasts fall out.  They are beautiful, and I am exotic, I know that, and kinky people find that appealing.  I was happy for them to be on display.  This is something that I could never know.  I am grateful to her for deciding not to hurt them or mark them, as the marks on my backside will be with me for weeks.

I note this attitude towards my breasts and my body because although there is no full “cure” for gender dysphoria, I am comfortable being naked for the first time in my life.  And I can even touch my penis without freaking out.  I still want it gone and can remember the joy of PIV sex with some people, people with whom the emotional connect was right.  I still even think with longing about wanting to be inside someone, although it is no longer a reliable instrument.  The best thing about it, though, is that it looks almost prebuscent now (and that is most definitely kink, people, please).  What I mean is that it is half the size it used to be, even smaller maybe, and that given the near total absence of hair down there brought on by a mix of my own long-term submissive connection of hairlnessness down there to a closet dominatrix-electrolysist, and you get the picture.  

Now that I am on the home stretch for surgery, I can calmly reflect on the evolution of ‘maybe’ to of course.  But I realise that the ‘maybe’ was for others, but I have this goal since I was little.  There is no way that I would not have this change.

And I suspect that just as my world changes every day from hormones, so too will having a VJ have a massive impact on my perspective.  I’ve begun to pack my bags in anticipation of a move to be near the hospital where I will have surgery.  I am taking time to spiritually connect with the place.  To meet people, to feel ‘at home’ in a place which could become home, as it is a trans-friendly city.

I say that I do not wish to leave Italy, and in truth, I don’t.  But I also have a growing lust for professional success now that I feel it is being taken from me by discriminatory people—the fact is, trans people make many cis people uncomfortable.  Or worse, resentful.  This is what is happening with one of my dearest friends.  But I am not responsible for what she thinks and know that such thoughts in her are hers to own, not mine…but I can also say that I don’t want bigotry in my life.  I don’t want to feel judged.

Being professionally successful is a way to own myself, my body, my world.  I know that I am better at the work I do than so many people, than most, which is why I have delivered so enormously for people over many years.  But that I cannot do this work because people don’t want a trans woman leading a company?  F* that.  One of my kids said to me, ‘the best thing you can do for the trans community is to be rich, to be successful, to be aspirational, to live free’.  From the mouths of babes, never truer words were spoken!

And that means that I am going to be resolutely and publicly female, and resolutely and publicly kinky.  I ceded so much of my life to the shadows, and I am sick of it.  I want to live.  As me.  Without compromise.

Thinking about packing my suitcases

Another small example of what is happening in my mind stems from the questions I have in my community, and how I am interacting and on what.  Mostly I have operated at a very general level up until now.  I have interacted on big picture things like ‘coming out’, discrimination, dysphoria.  This has changed as the imminence of surgery and the need to pack my bags has settled in.

Now, I have asked my trans sisters what kind of underwear to wear post op, how long will I bleed for, will I even be able to put on my socks or should I just wear slippers, what kind of pads I should wear, things I need to take into the hospital with me.  And the practical reality of the answers to these questions, the feeling of being reduced to my body in the most primordial way, is something that makes me feel more female and more in this and beyond committed than anything else has thus far.  It is no longer a theoretical pursuit.

If there is anything that I needed to learn it is that ‘life is the journey’.  That’s it.  There is no such thing as a destination.

The Dead Name

I sometimes read about issues in the trans community and don’t get it.  Mostly I just keep my mouth shut.  Mostly.  But sometimes I open it and put my foot in it.  What is the expression?  “Better to keep your mouth shut and have them wonder whether you are stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”  I am perennially reminded of my shortcomings and looking forward to continuing to f* up here and there so I can continue to work on the things that make me an ass.

Thankfully I have never uttered a peep on the topic of dead names.  For those of you who do not know what a dead name is, it is the name a trans person had before they came out as trans, and might have changed their name, either socially, legally, or both.  I met a trans woman recently who used to be called David.  She is very much no longer a David.  A lot of the discussion in trans circles is how horrendous it feels to be “deadnamed”.  I didn’t have a compersive feeling towards this concept when I began my transition.  Part of that comes from my own name, which is ambiguous.  I just figured I would never change it.

But I also figured that being called a name that was the name, was somehow not that bad.  But it is.  Nothing is more powerful than a name to centre us in who we are.  And of course, a trans person who has changed their name has changed their centring point.  I didn’t understand this.  It could be that I am tone deaf, which is true.  I have discovered that it is weirdly possible to be hyper-sensitive on the one hand, and rude or tone deaf on the other, which is something that is a hallmark of ADHD.  I am sorry to everyone I hurt or offended along the way.  The gift of oestrogen has included some healing from this.

I just assumed as well that I wouldn’t change my name.  What a hassle.  And I am that so-and-so.  But when I think of my born name, and who that person is, I only see the little boy, the one who didn’t want to experience puberty, the boy whose life ended when puberty struck.

Someone who knows me well commented on some photos of me that they saw of me as a man, maybe 10 years ago.  I never thought of myself as unhappy.  I was super happy.  But she saw this profound sadness in my face, and I had never recognised it before, but I could see it.  And I did such a good job of hiding from the world, from myself, but you can see it in the eyes.

And when I think about the most fundamental ask that I made of the keystone person in my posse of therapists, a dominatrix, it was ‘can you please beat me until I cry, because there is something going on in here that I don’t understand, and I don’t know any other way to get it out.’  And she did.  And it was the sorrow that my friend could see in my eyes.

It’s gone now.  That was the biggest difference she could see.  And it is a big one I can feel.

Funnily enough, this same feeling of fitting the name happened on this blog, twice, and now I have ditched girlieboy forever…

The Impact of Being Legally Female

I didn’t think it would be such a big deal.  But somehow, I knew.  I already felt it when I read the affidavit signed by my doctor, especially this sentence, “she has already made irreversible changes to her body which make her female and is committed to a life as a woman.”  I carried those papers with me for days before sending them, but the resonance was far more than administrative when they came through.

There was insane joy, but it is proving to be one of those things that changes everything.  It settles me as female in ways that nothing has thus far…it is another building block of my feminine self.  It is that I feel I have a right to assert my feminine identity.  Not that I ever didn’t, but my experience at the airport pat down where I said I would prefer a woman to pat me down, but if it had to be a man, to stay away from my breasts.  In the end, I didn’t get my way, had to sit on the naughty step for 30 minutes, and then when I finally got tired of waiting, said, “it’s okay, it can be a man.”  Who do I get?

A pimply faced, sweaty-handed, Muslim man who went straight to my breasts.  LOL.  I said, “you like that baby?”  He was flustered out of his mind.

Being legally female makes it okay for me to feel okay with asking for the correct pronouns.  When they don’t come, including from people who are very much in my camp, it is a reminder that I fail on many levels to be the woman I wish to be seen as.

I’ve said that I don’t care about passing, at least from a physical standpoint, but I don’t think that’s true.  I called myself non-binary because I didn’t feel that I could own “female”.  I feel it more strongly, but also know that transition takes a very, very long time, especially if you have gone through the wrong puberty.

This will certainly affect my decisions about future surgeries, but right now, it is one step at a time.

But the major thing that seems to be falling away is that I will change my name.  I realise that they boy I was, is dead now.  Although ‘I haven’t changed’ or say ‘it’s still me’ who that ‘me’ is has changed.  I am more ‘me’ than ever and feel more ‘me’ than I ever felt.  Does that make sense?  That living as a man made it impossible to be me, to be seen as me.  I felt this most acutely during puberty, and maybe that is why I feel it so strongly now as I go through puberty again, the transgender “second puberty”.  

And changing my name is an inextricable part of letting him go, but also holding him, loving him, cherishing him and the life he gave me, his struggles, how he coped, and how despite everything, he set me up for a beautiful life.  He was the perfect slave to me, and I am grateful to him, but it is time for him to go.

And as I feel this, I have put up some pictures of me as a boy, a man, as a male child.  They seem to be of a person who isn’t alive anymore.  Someone else.  Someone I know really well, a very good friend.

And so this business about finding a new name is a lot more than about presenting female.  It is about identity.  Our names shape who we are very dramatically.  Changing names as an adult is about who we see ourselves as, who we want to be, into which name do we wish to grow.

I think that most people just change their first name, or names which are dead giveaways for the old gender.  I’m not going to do that.  I am going to change my entire name, all of it, ditching even my surname.

I have thought about the woman I want to be, the name I want to inhabit, and who she is, who she represents.  And I realise that as a man, I fully inhabited my name.  I may continue to use it in professional circles as it is a relatively well-known ‘brand’ in the world I move in [small pond, eh].  But my legal name will change from beginning to end.  And this matters most, as it speaks to the me I am becoming.  It speaks of my aspiration.  It speaks of my inspiration.  

That’s what’s in a name.