I’m not a “hot guy”

The first time I hooked up with the gender-expansive gay guy from the chorus, he said to me just twice, “You’re a hot guy”, and it felt extremely affirming to me. I don’t see myself as a “hot guy” but hearing it explicitly from a gay man is validating of my gender-identity. At least in some ways, in small doses.

When we hooked up again last week, he said to me many times, “You’re so hot”, and a couple times, “You’re so sexy”. 

That doesn’t feel good to me. And even the phrase “hot guy”, which was repeated to me also by a transguy friend who visited me yesterday, can bother or upset me. 

When, instead, the  gender-expansive gay guy from the chorus said to me, “… I feel attracted to you… ”, that felt good.

One of my ex-boyfriends from almost two decades ago, used to say to me that I was so beautiful that he wanted to sketch me (he could draw really well) and that my eyes looked like something out of a painting by Tiziano (the great Venetian artist). A friend’s husband in California once said to me that my profile looked like one of those male profiles you can find on Grecian coins. A couple friends in California used to say I reminded them of classical sculptures of boys or young men.  

All of those comments felt really good to me. 

What’s the difference between those types of comments?  

Said to me once, the phrase “you’re a hot guy” can be affirming because I can focus on the gender-validating aspects of it contained in the word “guy”. Repeated many times, it starts to make me feel objectified. “Hot” or “sexy” by themselves, instead, just feel sexually objectifying and thus upsetting to me. I feel a sexual charge in those words that I don’t know how to deal with, I cannot understand or relate to, and therefore almost make me shut down. Even the “hot guy” comment, if reiterated too often and/or in the wrong context, can be upsetting because then I feel there’s some kind of expectation attached to it: if I’m “hot” or “sexy”, or if I’m a “hot guy”, am I expected to behave or act or feel in certain ways? I feel objectified and also burdened with something that I don’t understand and don’t know how to handle. 

If instead, someone says “I’m attracted to you”, then it’s about them, not about me. They are free to feel attracted to me and to feel attracted in whichever ways is congenial to them, even if it’s sexual. At that level, I feel we’re both subjects, there’s no objectification (at least I don’t feel it), and I don’t feel like I’m expected to do something that might not be natural to me. 

The aesthetic comments, though, are the easiest for me to handle. Precisely because they’re aesthetic and thus I can relate to them. I can look at someone and think, or say, “they resemble that painting or remind me of that sculpture”. That’s how I feel about most “attractive” people: I find them aesthetically attractive, there’s no sex involved. And it also feels more objective to me: it feels like there’s no judgement (positive or negative), it’s just the statement of a fact, the similarity between two things; if I wanted to, I could even pull up a photo of me and compare it to a Grecian coin or to a painting by Tiziano or to a classical sculpture, and maybe agree or disagree. But I don’t have to act or behave or feel in any way that might not be natural to me, I don’t feel like it’s required of me to act or behave or feel in any particular way. I can just be. And maybe be myself.

My salpingectomy is a political act

Yesterday evening my buddy who drove me & took care of me all day for my double procedure on Wednesday came over for dinner with his wife & daughter to celebrate not only the Winter Solstice with me but also my last gender-affirming surgery. It was a lovely gesture and we had a lovely time. 

On Tuesday, ironically, I had my last menstrual bleeding. As I hung out with the younger, gender-expansive gay guy from the chorus and talked about my upcoming surgery, the focus was on “never getting my period again — YAY!”  

Even the original decision months ago of getting a salpingectomy came as an additional procedure that my doctor offered me while I was planning to get the endometrial ablation done. 

So somehow in all these months the focus has been a lot, maybe mostly, on the ablation and the desired result of stopping my menstrual bleeding. 

As I let the effects of this double procedure sink in, though, I’m starting to realize that it’s actually the salpingectomy that means more to me. And it means more to me than “just practically eliminating future risks of getting pregnant” (which is already super important per se). 

My salpingectomy is a political act. It is my way of refusing that some patriarchic asshole in power might rob me of my rightful control over my own fertility.  

I’ve known my entire life that I would never want to bear children and the risk of getting pregnant has always been one of my greatest fears or horrors. The right to control one’s own fertility has been one of the principles and battles I’ve felt most intensely and keenly since puberty. Since my very first sexual experiences a quarter of a century ago, I have been super careful & active about not getting pregnant and living with that constant fear at the back of my mind. But it’s not “just” that. I have also felt at a deep, visceral level that the right to self-determine our own fertility is one of our most important human rights while also being one of our most vulnerable “Achille’s tendons” as one of the most direct ways that persons with a uterus have been kept under the control of others. 

I grew up with the idea that birth-control and abortion were inalienable, almost obvious, human rights. I also grew up in awe of the people who made that possible. The shock and disbelief and fury at seeing that those two pillars could be demolished were intense. And then, a fierce resolution slowly grew within me: in this dystopian world where unfortunately the worst versions of patriarchy might rob us of our human rights, I chose for myself.

For me, it’s not “just” about never getting my menstrual bleeding again; it’s not “just” about not risking an unwanted pregnancy (although those are huge, super important points per se). For me, it’s about saying: “I refuse a bodily function that could make me a pawn in the hands of the worst representatives of the toxic system that is patriarchy. I refuse my fertility. For ever. Irreversibly. By free choice. And thus, I liberate myself”.

The boy who got a salpingectomy

[Trigger warning: some medical details on salpingectomy & endometrial ablation surgeries.]

I am a boy. A nonbinary, trans, aro-ace gay boy. A boy with a vagina and uterus and ovaries. 

And a boy who just got a salpingectomy and endometrial ablation. That means I got the lining of my uterus cauterized and removed so I won’t get menstrual bleeding anymore and I got the Fallopian tubes cut out of my belly and removed so the eggs from the ovaries cannot reach the uterus anymore, thus avoiding any future possibility of pregnancy. 

From the outside, this double surgery might seem “not as big as” or “less important than” the masculinizing mastectomy I had almost two years ago. There’s definitely less of an immediate “visual effect”. I probably won’t really internalize what I have done for a few months, until several months with no menstrual bleeding have passed, until I’ve had several sexual encounters where I don’t have to worry about the risk of pregnancy any more. That will take a while, it will take time. But the reality and meaning and importance of what I have done is starting to sink in even if I cannot “see” it yet (apart from the three small incisions on my belly). 

This double procedure I got done on Wednesday is actually a huge step for me. It’s a huge gesture of self-determination: deciding for myself what to do with my own body.

As the baritone section leader in our chorus wrote to me, “You are becoming more YOU”; or, as one of my closest nonbinary friends just said, “this isn’t a surgery for appendicitis”; as this nonbinary friend recognized and validated for me, the double procedure I got done is just as “necessary” as, say, a surgery for appendicitis, it’s not a whim, but it’s different in that it’s a gesture of self-determination. 

I decide what to do with my own body, with my body parts, with my fertility. I decide for myself. No one else has the right to decide for me. 

Validating words and reactions from my nonbinary friend, from the baritone section leader, from another friend yesterday who said “I’m realizing now how impactful this procedure is for you” or from the buddy who drove me to & back from surgery on Wednesday and who’s coming to celebrate my last gender-affirming surgery with me (& with his family) tonight: I need all these words, these reminders, these reactions from friends because for so long I gaslighted my own self, for months and even until the morning of surgery itself I still had a voice within me saying that this was “just a whim”. But no, this is not a whim. No form of gender-affirming care is a whim. No form of determination over our own body — be it gender-affirming care (which can be necessary for cis people, too), birth-control, euthanasia — is ever a whim. 

I am a boy who got his belly cut open to have his Fallopian tubes removed. Because I am a boy with a uterus and ovaries. And I am a boy who wants, and has the right (& the privilege), to decide over his own body. 

I wish we all had the same right.

Standing on the threshold: the day before

Another sleepless night, tossing and turning in bed. Restless and sleepless despite my physical tiredness. 

It’s my emotions. So similar to the couple of days prior to my gender-affirming top-surgery in January 2023 and so similar to the last couple of days in Spain before moving to California in January 2016. 

The main feeling I had then and have now is that, at this point, I’m ready. Ready and impatient. I feel like I’m standing on a threshold, about to take a step that will forever change some important things about me and/or my life, and that at this point I just can’t wait to step over that threshold and be on the other side. 

Just as for that big move from Europe to California in January 2016 and my masculinizing mastectomy in January 2023, the weeks and months leading up to the decision and to actually getting everything ready for the decision to become reality were hectic and stressful, with so many practical things to get done and so many issues to solve that one almost forgets the reason, the meaning of the step. The goal, from the practical viewpoint, is clear: and that keeps me going and allows me to get everything I need done from the practical viewpoint. But it’s only the last couple days before the step over the threshold that, for me, the deeper reason or meaning of that step come more fully to my senses again. It’s in those last couple days before the step that I really feel, on the one hand, the importance of the decision for me and, on the other hand, the need to do some rituals to mark and celebrate this step, these last moments before an irreversible change.  

As I did in January 2016 and in January 2023, today as well I will be doing something that feels special and meaningful to me in general but also to me particularly as relates to this step. This afternoon, I will be going to “the city” to visit the Christmas Market first with the gender-expansive gay guy from the chorus with whom I had hooked up and then by myself; and then I might join him and some others for a movie night at his place in the evening. 

If I don’t visit the Christmas Market today, I probably won’t be able to see it again before it closes this year. This year more than others, with the gay men’s chorus holiday performances, Thanksgiving with my dear running friend & his wife, and Friendsgiving with one of my queer families, I have felt not only the importance but also the real opportunity of making new, positive memories around the holidays: so going (back) to the Christmas Market today, both in pleasant company and by myself, feels like a delicate, profound, and important ritual for me today, since then the market will close before I’ve recovered enough from tomorrow’s surgery. 

Then, there’s the symbolic importance of spending some time today with a gender-expansive gay guy and, in particular, someone with whom I’ve recently had physical & sexual intimacy. My double procedure tomorrow is both gender-affirmation and birth-control, so spending the day with him, and then possibly with some other gay guys for movie night, seems particularly appropriate for this surgery: it feels right to me. 

After tomorrow’s procedure, I will no longer get any menstrual bleedings and no longer risk getting pregnant: having lived with these two realities for a quarter of a century, I can hardly imagine how that will be, how it will feel. But I imagine that, at least in some ways, it might help me feel more like a “gay boy”… 

This scared child

[Trigger warning: some detail about surgery (ablation & salpingectomy).]

Last night, despite my tiredness, I couldn’t fall asleep. I was physically exhausted but my mind kept spinning, taking some upsetting thoughts & feelings and running with them. I could literally see, feel the spinning — one of the few times that I have really been able to understand physically what it means that our mind can “spin”, and “spin out of control”. Fortunately, I was able to keep it under control, but barely. The way I found and maintained this control was to finally say out loud while lying awake in bed at nearly 1 AM: “I am scared”. I said it over and over again, almost a dozen times — “I am scared”, “I am scared”, “I’m scared”, “I’m scared”… Then, heeding the (scared) child within me, I put on a lullaby, turned on my tummy hugging both the pillow on which I put my face and my cuddly animal (a gray triceratops called Tracy), and eventually fell asleep. 

In three days I am undergoing surgery again, a double procedure: ablation and salpingectomy. It’s both a gender-affirming surgery for me and a practical safety measure given that I am a gay boy with a uterus living in a country where abortion is no longer a guaranteed right. 

I want to do this surgery. I’ve had to postpone it a few times this past year and now I’m feeling ready and impatient to get it done. But also scared. This scares me more than both my masculinizing mastectomy and the UCL surgery. Both procedures (ablation and salpingectomy) are considered “standard, not very invasive, and with a short recovery time”. But they’re going to go into my abdomen. And that scares me. Also, the pain and discomfort that I’ll feel for a few days after this double procedure scare me because they’re probably going to be worse, or of a type that I’m not used to, compared to the pain after other surgeries I’ve had. 

I’m also scared because I don’t think my housemate, i.e. the person I’m living with, understands the seriousness of my procedure coming up — or of any surgery, really. They’re all wrapped up in their whim of getting a kitty (they already have a dog) in a rush now and I feel that my needs, not only around my surgery but also around having some more time to settle into this place where I have been living for only two months, are not being heard. 

And here’s where the scared child in me really comes in. Not so much for the reasonable, justified fear around my surgery; but rather for all the other fears that have been coming up this past week and really escalated in my mind last night. The fear of my needs not being really heard or valued by my housemate. The fear of my friends leaving me behind and/or not missing me. The fear of the other members of the chorus forgetting me and/or not missing me. The fear that the text messages from one of the chorus member with whom I have plans for Tuesday were not really to check in about our plans to hang out but rather a veiled way to change those plans and/or avoid spending one-on-one time with me. 

Looking at this list of fears from the “outside” what does one see, what do I see? A person — a child — who is fundamentally afraid of not being valued (loved?). Whether it’s my practical/living needs or my presence or time with me one-on-one, it all boils down to the same deep fear: “I am not enough”; “I — i.e. me as a person, my needs, my emotions, time with me — am/are not valuable, not important, not worthy”. 

This wound is so deep. Its origin probably goes back three or four decades. 

How does one cure, heal such a deep wound? 

I don’t know.

But what I do know is that today I’m going to sit with this child, take its hand, and do what I can to soothe its fears (while also trying to separate the practical issues, like living compromises with my housemate and surgery preparation, from the emotional ones).

FOMO

I’ve been wiped out by fatigue since Tuesday and yesterday I woke up with a sore throat and I still feel tired and with cold symptoms. Apparently, I have nothing “serious”: the swab/PCR tests for COVID, STREP, RSV, and flu all came back negative, so that’s good news. But I’m probably fighting something and definitely in need of rest. And today’s pre-op phone call with the nurse really brought it home to me that I cannot get sick now, that this weekend is the most critical time before my surgery next Wednesday. 

So, I really should skip the last two performances with the gay men’s chorus. Realistically, I probably still wouldn’t have the energy for the show tonight. And the show on Sunday is really at the most critical moment before my surgery as far as contagion risks go. 

Rationally, I get it, it makes sense; but it’s hard to make peace with this. 

I’m struggling to make peace with the fact that my performances with the gay men’s chorus are over for this cycle, are over for the next three months. I had just started enjoying them last weekend, after all the difficulties, and that enjoyment isn’t available to me anymore. And to make it worse, I have to miss the shows that my friends are going to see: half a dozen of my closest friends will be attending tonight’s performance and my running coach got thickets for the Sunday show. I was so much looking forward to performing for my friends and coach, for them all to see this other aspect/identity of me, to share with them the joy of this other community, this other family I have found. And the shows tonight and on Sunday would also involve some socializing afterwards, so I’ll miss that, too. 

All this is making my FOMO come up. I’m feeling sad and disappointed, also because I hadn’t taken into account to skip this weekend’s performances, I was really counting on them and looking forward to them, so last weekend’s shows were to me the preliminary of these. If I had known or foreseen then that I would/should skip this weekend’s performances, then I probably would have approached last weekend’s shows differently, with a different mindset or emotional preparation. This way, instead, I’m emotionally unprepared and it just feels like a huge loss. I’m losing out on the fun and magic of performing with the additional pleasure of performing for my friends. I’m losing out on time with my gay men singers family. I’m losing out on socializing time with my friends and/or with the gay men singers after the shows. I’m missing out on seeing the chorus members to wish them happy holidays in person before the three-week-break until the next cycle. 

And the next cycle will be different: there will be new/additional newbies, different music/songs… altogether a different vibe. 

What if I’m forgotten?

I’m feeling left out, left behind, and without the opportunity to get some real closure for this phase ending — because this particular phase with the gay men’s chorus does end this weekend and I won’t be there for it.

“Internal Family Systems”

I’ve never really done therapy with the Internal Family Systems method but I am familiar with the concepts and tools from it. And I think I’ve been living or enacting it in my life lately, partly even unawares.

Lately, I’ve been having lots of (not unpleasant) dreams in which my sister and/or my mother appear together with myself at different, younger, ages. I’ve also been thinking a lot about my various identities lately: how I miss my “bro-time” and my athlete identity, especially the “climber me”, because of the lack of opportunity to climb with my buddies; how the queer parts of me have had so much more space to express themselves and explore because I’m spending so much more time in different queer environment and with my queer friends/families; how the more “professional me” has been quite subdued or absent because I’ve been unemployed and/or unmotivated in my latest job; how the more childlike, and often specifically boyish, parts of me have had more space because of my experiences and exposure with the gay men’s chorus, which are still so new to me. 

This “fractionality” in me has felt more pronounced lately and in some ways uncomfortable, almost leading me to not recognize myself. Within the gay men’s chorus, for instance, I’m not the “PhD scientist” or “STEM professional”: they might see me as a trans guy who sings and is an avid athlete, but really there I’m mostly a teenage gay (trans) boy trying to find himself in a new, mostly unknown, world. That’s also how I felt, for instance, when I hooked up with the gender-expansive guy from the chorus who is fifteen years younger than me: in many ways, I can feel I’m older, more mature, more experienced than he is (e.g. when it comes to jobs I’ve had and places I’ve lived); but close up, in that specific type of intimacy, I’m a teenage boy and in many ways much “younger” and less experienced than he is. When I chose to hang out with him and to hook up, I instinctively made the choice of allowing my teenage-boy-self to have that experience, somehow feeling instinctively that he was safe even if it felt a little scary.

And it’s probably going to be similar with other guys from the chorus if we hang out as friends. 

I think this answers part of my question: what do I want from this chorus, from being part of this chorus? A big part of what I want, or need, is letting myself live some of those experiences as a young gay boy that I didn’t have two decades ago. 

I guess that’s actually living the Internal Family Systems method: I can be my young gay boy self at chorus; be my “PhD scientist” or “STEM professional” at work; be “bro-y” with my climbing buddies… And I think that I was my own mother and sister in my recent dreams, the way I felt profoundly that I was — or could be — my own father last spring & summer. By allowing myself to be all these different parts of myself, all of these different roles in my life, I can help heal some of my wounds.

So, although it might sometimes feel like I’m made up of fractions, I think I’m still a whole after all…

My gay men’s family

The first performance I did with the gay men’s chorus on Thursday evening ended up being such a difficult, overwhelming experience for me that I skipped the one on the next day. 

Last Thursday, I just couldn’t get myself in the mood to perform with them. My social battery was drained, my introvert self was the only one in charge, and my autistic brain was misfiring. All I could feel was a desire to run away and hide in my little cave — and the sensorial overload was unbearable, even with the noise-canceling headphones that I donned at every break. When I got home Thursday night I was a wreck: having both a sensorial and an emotional meltdown, feeling overstimulated and lonely and not belonging — or, rather, unable to get my needs met in a way that would help me feel like I belonged in this group of people.

So I took Friday off. I did my job interview and went on a hike. 

I reached out to a couple of the chorus members with whom I’m most comfortable to let them know I was struggling, and I got loving, supportive responses, which helped. And I also reached out to the other chorus member who lives in my neck of the woods to carpool: he’s a lovely (socially awkward) person and I knew that would help — and in fact, it did. 

Saturday, I gave it another try, while also giving myself permission to skip the Sunday performance, if I felt it necessary. 

But it wasn’t necessary: at the show on Saturday I had the time of my life and I even had fun socializing with a small group of people afterwards. And Sunday was magical. 

I love these people. And I know they love me. We all love one another. What I was unable to see, or receive, at the performance on Thursday night I saw and felt clearly, intensely during the weekend shows, like I had at the retreat: these people love and care for each other so deeply, so sincerely. There is just so, so much love and care among them all, among us all. This is a family, a beautiful chosen family. 

Before the show on Sunday we did more shares, and I did mine, too. Without mincing words, I told them personal things that are often hard for me to share even with my closest friends: I told them how I dread the holidays, how I’ve dreaded them almost my entire life because to me they mean a time of year when I’m either with people who do not see the true me or alone; I told them my father died a year & a half ago and that the last time I saw him was at Christmas nine years ago; I told them how he’ll never know the “real me” but also how he would have been horrified by, or not understood, the trans gay boy that I am; I told them about my autistic brain and sensorial overloads; and that for all these reasons this holiday show is very difficult for me and that I was a wreck when I got home on Thursday night; but I also told them how I had had the time of my life on Saturday and how thankful I am to be part of this family; and how I hope to make new memories, associated with positive feelings, around the holidays with/thanks to this chorus. 

It was very difficult for me to say all that but I also knew I needed to say it and would regret it if I didn’t. And I found the courage to share all that with them greatly thanks to what other folks had shared before me (gosh, the amount of pain and trauma that so many of them have endured…) and to the expressions on their faces while I was sharing: the empathy on their faces while I was talking… I felt so held… And later, throughout the evening, folks came to me to thank me for sharing and offered me love, support, empathy. And hugs. So many hugs of so many different kinds… 

In so many moments I have the feeling of not belonging, of still not being integrated enough into this group of people, of not knowing how to interact or get closer to them. I often still feel like I’m yearning for something that I cannot quite get, and it’s partly that I don’t even know exactly what it is that I want from them… But to say that I’m not connecting or getting closer to people is a lie. I am connecting. I am connecting with many of them and with some of them in ways that are quite deep. There’s my Big Brother who’s super sweet and clasps me in big, warm, tight, brotherly hugs. There’s my section leader who checks in with me and offers me fatherly support and big dad hugs. There’s the vice president who is super responsive and supportive with me via text and even in person whenever I need it. There’s the older guy with whom I danced Swing who is also one of the people who gave me support when I was struggling at the beginning, who introduced me to his daughter last week and with whom I feel there’s a special connection. There’s one of the guys in the dance troupe who happens to face me for some of their dance numbers in the show and he & I just smile to each other throughout the number — and we finally talked about it and said how special it feels to us both. There’s the guy I hooked up with and with whom there’s still some “special vibe” even if it might just be rubbing cheeks when we embrace at choir. There are several singers in my own section who check in on me almost every time, often offering hugs. There’s all the people that until yesterday I had only said “Hi” to, or maybe not even that, and with whom now there’s been some dialogue, hugs, a new connection. 

I’m still confused and a little overwhelmed by all this — so much of it is still so new and unclear to me, I still feel like I have so many questions and doubts around how to navigate all this and so much fear around losing it. And so much impatience about “getting closer” already. 

The truth is, I’m still figuring it all out, and often the process feels too slow and uncertain to me. But the truth also is that these people care for each other and love one another and are chosen family for each other: and that includes me, too. 

These people really feel for each other — for me included — those messages that we’re spreading in our holiday show: love, joy, and acceptance. 

Too much cake…?

Tonight I have the first full, official concert with the gay men’s chorus. And I’m not really in the mood for it. 

Since last Wednesday, in just over one week, I’ve sung & hung out with people from the choir already four times, and will have to do so for four more days in a row from tonight through this Sunday. 

Tech rehearsal on Tuesday night was extremely long (4 hours) and simply exhausting.  

I guess I’m feeling a bit how one feels when one’s had too much cake: it tastes good in the moment, and we may even binge on it, but then it feels like too much, and sometimes we might wish we hadn’t had so much of it. 

The small, reduced performances in which I took part last week on Wednesday & Saturday felt wonderful to me and I’m really happy I sang then. The additional events of special socializing and bonding with some individuals on those two days were also meaningful to me and I’m glad I had those experiences. But now it almost feels like that was the apex for me, the culmination of this holiday concert cycle for me and now I would rather just take a break from it all and move on, going back to my other activities and dedicating more time & energy to “my other identities”. 

I’ve started climbing again now that my wrist has healed enough and yesterday evening I had a great session with my best buddy and also a very meaningful time at the social climbing event I organized for expansive/inclusive masculinity. Both of those events put me in touch again with parts of my identity and of my (social) world that mean a lot to me and that I had missed in the past few weeks/months. Both events were important to me also because my presence there really mattered, they couldn’t have taken place without me. 

Tomorrow I have a job interview that is quite important to me. And in less than two weeks I’m scheduled to have a surgery that means the world to me. 

These are the things that are on my mind and in my heart now, the things I want to focus on now. 

At the small volunteer singing events last week, I felt my presence and my voice really mattered. And I know they did. But for the whole big show I feel they don’t. At those small volunteer singing events, there were about thirty of us singers in total; at the show there are about thirty of us per section. It makes no difference whether I sing at the full show or not. And anyway so much of the show depends on small groups of people (the a cappella ensemble; the dance troupe; the singers who are also acting characters) doing their visible parts well, while we in the chorus just feel, to me, like an almost unnecessary “backdrop”. 

Additionally, the artistic director said something during tech rehearsal on Tuesday night that upset me and is still nagging at me… He commented on the fact that he could hear some individual voices from the chorus sticking out and that we needed to fix that, i.e. (quoting him) that we need to “sound like one voice, we need to match the other voices around us in pitch, timbre, and volume”. While I understand and agree with that, and I also noticed some individual voices sticking out too loudly from the chorus (like one of my neighbors), the requirement that we match timbre hurt me. I might be confused about the technical terms here, but I’m pretty sure that the timbre of my voice is different and there’s no way around that. I can match pitch and I’m definitely keeping the volume of my voice low (also because I wear an N-95 face-mask while singing) but my trans voice is in some way different from the cis-male voices (& even different from some of the other trans voices, probably of trans folks who are on higher doses of testosterone). Even if I sing the same note — as I do — and avoid singing too loudly — which I wouldn’t do anyway — my voice sounds different, it cannot match the others fully… 

So why should I go and make the effort of singing in these concerts at all?

Men’s dress shoes & ties: gender-euphoria & healing

I thought I hated shopping. I actually used to hate shopping — shopping for clothes or shoes or accessories always felt like a nightmare to me and I used to avoid it like the plague.

I still avoid shopping: I tend to do it only when I really, really have to (e.g. today, I finally went to buy the dress shoes I need for tomorrow’s concert with the chorus!). But now I actually tend to enjoy it — and sometimes I’ve even gone shop-browsing just for fun with a (queer) friend. 

I’ve actually started to love shopping in men’s departments, especially these past couple times when I’ve had to buy formal attire. Going to buy the dress shoes for the concerts was really affirming for me today. Now, I walk into these men’s stores and I can see how much I just look like a guy. And I’m treated like a guy. It’s very affirming. But I also honestly like how the formal clothes and shoes look (on me): I like to see myself in the mirror dressed up formally like a “man” — as much as I like wearing more fun/flashy “girly” or “feminine” clothes when I go out dancing. 

I guess what I really love is that now I can choose: I’m no longer forced into “women’s clothes”, I can wear them whenever I want to; and when I wear “men’s clothes” on this flat chest, I “really look like a guy”.

In the men’s stores, I particularly love the ties. My dad used to love ties, too. We’d give him a tie for almost every single occasion (birthday, Christmas, etc.). And I’ve started telling my friends, “if you want to give me a present and don’t know what to give me, just get me a tie”! 

The interaction with the clerk in the men’s store where I got the dress shoes today was so pleasant and so affirming for me that I finally got the courage to do something that has been nagging at me for months now: I texted my mother and asked if she could send me a couple of my father’s ties, adding that it would mean the world to me. 

Having at least one of my dad’s ties — one of those objects that somehow would bond us even if he’s dead and will never know I’m wearing it, never even know he had a son — would be a beautiful, healing tie for me… 

And fortunately, my mother said “yes”, and even added that it would mean a lot to her, too, and that she’d be happy to send me anything I’d like of my father’s (e.g. shirts, sweaters)…