Wednesday 18 October 2017

Another Year of Experience

It’s been ages since I wrote on this blog. Partly because typing on my phone is a pain in the neck (computer died) and also because I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear the mundane details of our lives.  This year has gone by quickly. We’re still ‘out of the closet but not out of the house’ by which I mean our family and a few close friends know about my wife, but we’ve not announced it to the people we work with or our church community. The two questions I get asked most are if we’re out and of course the dreaded surgery question. So let’s address them both.

As mentioned. We’re both in and out. Work, while your job is federally and provincially protected, would you really want to upset your boss who is a very traditional baptist by announcing that his only representative to the businesses he serves, is trans? Most of you will say yes. But maybe if you’re older and a couple of years from retirement you’d think it’s probably ok to just not rock the boat at this point.  We’re not that bothered, so it’s ok for now. Church is a whole other ball of wax that deserves its own future post.

Surgery. I know some people get their knickers in a twist about something so personal. And for good reason. But I’ll tell you honestly where we are at. And I use the term ‘we’ to loosely mean both of us.  Had we found out earlier in life that my spouse was trans then yes, we’d probably be having a different conversation. But since we’re older now and don’t have dysphoria the way some people do we’re lucky because it means the options are more open. Including the option to do nothing. At our age the risks and benefits of hormone therapy and surgery change. We’ve done the reading of hormone shots vs. pills. Risks of surgery. Plus there’s the sexual component when you’re in a committed relationship. Each person and each couple have to talk about the needs they have and work out what will make them happy. It may change over time. I know it has for us. One thing to definitely note here is that making no permanent changes to your body is a valid choice. Not all trans men and women want surgery, not all want to be beholden to big pharma for life, and it’s up to them to decide how much of a transition works for them. You’re not any less of a man or woman if you are socially trans but not physically. After all, the most important physical part of your gender identity is your brain. And you can’t change that. xxx

So that’s life in a nutshell. We dream about coming out, we worry about it, one of us dreams about larger breasts that aren’t removable, and one of us worries what our friends will say about this sweet and wonderful person they love when they find out the workpants were all for show.