It's not fair.

 Had a dream I can't remember enough of to bother dream journaling it, but what I do remember from just before waking was worth a note. The whole dream was vaguely like a movie about a young queer friend group. I was mostly following a young trans guy, and he had a girlfriend; it was basically my wife and I if we were together much earlier and I'd figured myself out as a teenager. The trans guy was excited he got taller (hey, I gained about an inch throughout college), and his gf was happy for him. There was a very flamboyant queer friend (maybe transfemme?) who was picking on him a little. At one point they said "We gotta get some nail polish on you, queer it up!"

And he said "Nail polish makes me feel like a girl again, I don't like it."

They kept picking at him, and the gf took them aside and tried to work out why. They said they didn't like what he was doing (re. transitioning) and she pointed out that he/I was just being true to himself the same as all LGBTQIA+ people are trying to. They broke down and said "But My truth gets homophobic slurs yelled at me from passing cars, but His truth gets him respect and normalcy and that's not fair!"

They were bitter because of that and I honestly can't blame them, and it does tap into the reality that transmen seem to have passing privilege at a higher rate than transwomen. Not all transmen pass. Nonbinary folks may have an even rougher time, in a way, and passing should never have to be the goal for anyone. 

Queerness is very much about fighting the patriarchy, yet for many transmen the end goal- especially for white transmen, can leave them looking physically just like the patriarchy. It would be a lie to say there are no benefits to looking like a cis white man. It's an awkward juxtaposition and one that I've struggled with. It puts transmascs in an odd place in the queer community.

No, it's not fair.

Thanks for the back hair, Dad.

 My father's middle name is Harry.

Wait, back up, that joke works way better verbally, and usually there's a lead-up about body hair, and 'Harry' and 'hairy' sound the same... I'll just start over.

My father looks like Santa Claus. White hair, full beard, glasses, slightly stocky build- maybe a little skinny for Santa but it's enough that kids give him long looks around the holidays. Growing up, I never, ever saw my father shirtless, unless I caught him changing clothes or something. He wore t-shirts under his button-downs. I guess I just thought he was modest, which fits with his quiet, introverted personality.

Then one day my mother told me he's embarrassed to be seen shirtless, because he's so hairy. I can remember a few glimpses of my dad shirtless over the years. He's covered in curly, thick, grey-white hair. He's fuzzy with it.

If he were a gay man, he'd be a bear. This is not a criticism!

We do not get to pick and choose the genetics we inherit, and we are a physical equation heavily based on what we get from our parents. Transmen are always warned, when starting testosterone, that we can't pick and choose which masculine traits we'll inherit. Male pattern baldness is the big one a lot of guys look out for. My mother's father was starting to thin on top, but still had most of his hair when he passed in his eighties. My dad's hirsutism extends to his head, so I've never been especially worried about my genetics on that front. I have been losing some hair, but I recently realized my mild hair loss has been the squaring up of my hairline, a fascinating but common change after a while on T, and one that helps make me look more like a man.

Everywhere else, the hair is growing. They talk about a 'treasure trail', and I don't have that, because instead my hair is thicker from chest all down my stomach, a uniform downy carpet. It's not curly, like my dad's, but there's a hell of a lot more than there was a year ago. Hair is thicker on my arms, and creeping up the backs of my hands. My nose hairs- which were perfectly serviceable before, are not so much thicker as longer and I can't see the evolutionary point in that.

And then there's my back. Which is not hairy. Or rather, it's very selectively hairy. For weeks, I kept having a specific spot on my back that itched. Then one night my wife pointed out, as we were getting ready for bed, a single dark long back hair that conveniently sprouted where the band of my bra rubs against it daily. It took about six months before two more showed up, also conveniently in spots where they're irritated all day. And that's still where I'm at, a few months later. Fur all down the front of my body, and three random back hairs.

My beard is filling in well though, it's curly like my dad's but not grey yet, even though a fair amount of the hair on my head is. I don't know that I will ever look like my father- the genetics from my mother's side may help balance things out and her dad was pretty sparse on body hair, but if I do end up being a bear, I'm okay with that.

I think my dad should be okay with it, too. It's not a bad look! Besides, his middle name really is Harry. That's a dad joke for you, anyway. I've inherited that, too.

My dad, or possibly Santa

New year, same me, and that's okay!

I'm attempting to catch this blog up, little by little. The vlog transcripts take time, and my time is limited. Anyways, I had a decent Christmas and New Years Eve spent at home in pajamas with my wife and talking to friends on the internet. I couldn't help but notice these were the same people I spent New Years Eve with 20 years ago, except I wasn't sitting beside/married to one of them then, and we were all worried about our computers blowing up at midnight because of Y2K.

Today the year is starting off on a slightly sour note, although it's a distinct improvement over the year we spent new years day at a memorial service. We are going to do that thing dreaded by so many people on the lgbtqia spectrum: visiting relatives.
A year and a half ago, I got married, and unexpectedly two of my wife's aunt & uncle sets declined to attend, one pair with apparently a very public proclamation that they objected on moral grounds. The other set said the same, but did so more quietly and only when questioned, or at least this is the impression I've gotten from the fallout. None of this was said directly to our faces, but neither was it said with any warning not to let it get back to us, which it inevitably did. These people are my father-in-law's sister and brother, and he was actually deeply hurt about it even more so than we were. On the other hand it has possibly brought about more awareness for him of the struggles we face.
My father-in-law is one of eight, and all the rest of his siblings were supportive in one way or another (some couldn't come due to age-related health issues but sent well wishes). Because nothing was said directly to us, we said nothing back, just had our wedding with people who wanted to be there, and it was awesome!

But here's the thing; Our 'lifestyle choice' was in no way a surprise to any of these people, and they were very welcoming up to this point, and in fact continue to be welcoming. By the time we were announcing our marriage, we'd been together for at least sixteen years. I went to family reunions and holiday gatherings with my wife almost every time, and the times that work meant I couldn't, they all asked where I was. Everyone in the family knew we were a couple, and a few of them had even asked about if we were going to get married, after it was finally legalized here. My being trans is new, but that's very unlikely the wrinkle, because that wasn't even an obvious part of the announcement. For a decade and a half we were the lesbian couple in the family and for the most part people didn't address it directly, but accepted us. We thought we were good, because there were zero objections about our relationship until we made it legal.

It's a weird hill to stand on, and it's bugging my wife more than me, because it's her family. But what makes it stranger still is now that we are married, the vocally protesting aunt is still inviting us to family gatherings. Both of us. We've mostly made ourselves scarce, in the past year or so, but showed up for a funeral and an anniversary celebration for an aunt and uncle set that happily came to our wedding.
This time, she has apparently noticed we're avoiding her and harped on making sure that we know we're invited. She wanted to be very sure that we knew, and that we'd be missed if we don't come. So we're going, but we haven't heard a word of apology, and I'm not sure if she expects us to pretend we're not married because that's not happening.

We're not going to press the issue, of course, but these people are somewhat religious and our best guess is this is a 'Love the sinner, Hate the sin' approach. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me either, though. The so-called sin is in what we do, and who am I if I am not defined by my actions and the choices I make? I am not a person who is separate from loving Bridgie, or from being trans, those things are a part of who I am. If I loved somebody else instead, that wouldn't be wrong either, but I would be a very different me than the me that I am. I would be a different me, if I wasn't trans- and I don't mean the me that I was before I knew, because I was still trans then and just lived in confusion over how I was so terrible at being a woman. The me that I am today is stronger and happier for standing beside my loving wife, and having a face in the mirror that I recognize as my own. There is no moral scalpel to separate me religiously from these things, because I would bleed out and wither. We are who we are, and love is a thing that needs to be whole and complete.

I'm not planning to say all of this at the party; we will go, and eat some snacks, and make small talk about our jobs and weather, over the noise of the kids. And then we will come home, where we are happy to be ourselves.

His father's face in the mirror

Talking to my mother about my transition still feels like baby steps. It can be frustrating, this far on, because I pass for a man in my daily life with ease. I came out to my parents three or four years ago, before I started testosterone and when the realization was still pretty fresh even for me. Because I had talked it over with my then-girlfriend/now-wife and started to come out to a few select friends, my mother felt that I came out to them absolute last (not true at all) and was apparently hurt by that idea. I think I may have discussed it with my boss, before them, partly because I was unsure how my transitioning would affect my job (not at all, as it turns out, but we live in an at-will employment state so it could have gone another way). Maybe I could have come out to my parents sooner, but it felt like something that needed to be done in person and I was counting down the months to them visiting in person, at the time. Also it was hard, harder than any other interaction I have ever had regarding my transition.

I feel like my parents don't understand that sometimes. I am cautious approaching them with things not because I don't care about their opinion, but because their opinion holds more weight than that of other people. This is true even now that I'm an adult who's lived across the country from them for close to two decades. My wife's opinion holds even more weight, but I am also more sure of it in advance. What my parents will think of something is as much a mystery to me as what I think seems to be to them. Obviously there's a communication problem there, and I'm not sure how to solve it. I talk about my mother's comments on things more often than my father's because most of the time my dad just doesn't say anything at all. I'm not sure if he feels that her words carry for them both, or if he has no opinion at all, or just doesn't want or know how to communicate it.

In some ways, maybe I'm more like my father. I'm cautious extending my opinions on things, laid back and patient, sometimes to the point where it's a flaw more than a blessing. I let life and people run over me sometimes, because I don't want to be confrontational.

Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going with all this, but on Halloween night my mother and I were chatting over text, and she mentioned that the way my hair is now makes me look a lot like my father. My father now looks a little like Santa Claus, but she sent me a photo I'd seen before of the two of them when they were younger. It's a picture I'd seen before, but not in a long time and I'd never realized such a strong comparison.

I hear my father's voice all the time, now. I think I had a lot of his vocal habits before, but now that my voice itself sounds more like his, half the time when I talk I'm startled by just how much I sound like him. I don't know what he'd think of that. Maybe I never will. I don't know how I feel about possibly looking like Santa someday, either.

Birthday thoughts

I'm turning forty next week. I've heard (and it's true) that a lot of the markers for being a successful adult have been culturally erased, or at least put out of reach for the majority. On the other hand, as this birthday closes in I stopped to assess. I'm happily married, with a stable relationship that has covered nearly half my life. I have a steady job that could probably be classified as a career- and I'm salaried now, at that. Two years ago, my big birthday gift was starting testosterone, and I cannot overstate the change this has made in my life. For the first time in my entire life, the face in the mirror is mine. (This has even nearly abolished my mirror phobia.) I shave. The guy I see in the mirror now looks good even rumpled and unshaven, and for all the little idiosyncrasies of hair in unexpected places, having a beard is awesome!

At this moment, Maxie would like to remind me I also have a very loving cat.

I haven't been as productive creatively as I'd like, but what else is new. On the other hand the stuff I've been creating the past couple of years is exciting and I've been consistently satisfied with the results. Prop making scratches an itch I didn't know I had. My drawing, too, has reached a level where what I turn out is pretty cool, even if it's mostly sketches these days.

My car is possibly in its final days, and the house we're in has structural problems that could go bad in the future, and the government is a ship of fools being sunk by a schoolyard bully at the helm. And yet I am finally who I'm supposed to be and where I'm supposed to be. My wife has a good job, and huge personal success as a runner. I don't think I could be this content if she wasn't, too. There are a lot of problems in the world, but we're as successful as we can be.

Mother Jones Podcast June 26, 2018
A little over a week ago, I did an interview with a reporter from Mother Jones for a podcast. It was a pretty non-controversial bit about LGBTQIA representation in the media, and the part that ended up in the podcast was only a fraction of the interview, because that's just how that stuff works. I was just one of a group of people interviewed, but I was happy to add my voice to help raise a little awareness of how we fit into the world in a normal way.

Since then, a few people have made comments to the effect of being proud of me for it, like it's brave of me. Thanks for that, but it isn't brave for me, because I am risking nothing. As I've said before, I'm aware I'm in an enviable position of safety. I can speak about LGBTQIA stuff because I can do so without much risk, and I know a lot of others cannot.

Sometimes I feel a little torn because I can say we're normal and want to just live quietly; because a big objection I've heard is some people don't want LGBTQIA stuff 'shoved down their throats', and here I am talking about it. A lot. But the thing is that all of us, if we're lesbian, bi, pan, gay, trans, intersex, ace, aro, black, muslim, hispanic, whatever, we have to talk about it because we are not allowed to just live our lives. We have to have a voice because everywhere we turn, other people are talking about us. It's not fun, to be just going along doing your thing, surrounded by strangers using you as a political talking point. It's not something you can ignore. If other people are saying all kinds of things about you, it's hard not to want to speak up to at least make sure they get their facts about you right.

May 8, 2018 Vlog (Transcript to come)