No Options

I have serious problems with social dysphoria. I would really like help with this, but there don’t seem to be any real options. The school counselor probably doesn’t really know enough to offer any really helpful suggestions. Most gender therapists, based both on my experiences and hearing from others, would end badly. I’d first have to find one who isn’t binarist or else face them trying to force me to decide if I’m a boy or a girl. Then I have to find one who has experience in this, because most of the time it seems like they only know how to help people transition because that’s the  main reason a lot of trans people see a gender therapist.

I’m trying to work on it myself, but it’s slow going. I don’t really know how to work on it.

T

Reasons not to start T (personal list, please be aware this applies to me only):

• Baldness runs in my family, I love my hair
• more body hair, do not want
• more acne, I have severe issues with my acne already
• can’t control how deep my voice becomes
• clitoral growth, may end up being another source of dysphoria and makes it harder to use STPs and the surgery to be able to pee through it is fucking expensive
• Different health risks
• Give up the ability to pretend to be cis when I need to
• Need fucking expensive surgery to be able to change all my legal information
• Doing this may invalidate my marriage in the eyes of the government and result in my partner being deported
• May not be any happier being seen as male full time
• Make wearing dresses & skirts much more dangerous
• May never fully pass as a cis male
• shots are painful, and get more painful as time goes on, cost money I don’t really have. All other forms are incredibly expensive.
• Not sure what emotional effects it will have
• Not sure if I’d like what it’d do to my overall body shape or facial features
• Sweat more

Reasons to start T:

• Might get people to stop reading me as female
• Easier time building muscle

That this is still something I’m seriously considering should shed a little light on just how freaking awful social dysphoria can be.

I don’t want to do this

I don’t want to email my teachers to ask for the correct pronouns

I don’t want to go to another class or room or place where everyone thinks I’m a girl

I don’t want to have to explain my gender to have any hope of getting it

I don’t want to deal with a world that refuses to acknowledge I exist except to attack me

I don’t want to feel like I have to take T even if I don’t want what it’ll do to my body

I don’t want to have to wonder if my friend’s room is actually a safe space or not or if it sort of is but she’d still vote against me having equal rights to her

I don’t want to have to wonder if I’ll ever have true friends in meatspace

I don’t want to take two tests tomorrow because on Thursday I threw up breakfast and probably had had the flu for a week so couldn’t take the test then and I haven’t been able to study well for either of them because of depression and exhaustian and still being sick.

I don’t want to continue living on this hall where I have to hear that asshole‘s voice because the walls are too thin and he practically lives here

I don’t want to have to move when he doesn’t

I don’t want the best place to move to be so far from everything else that on days like this it’ll be even more difficult to drag myself to class or food.

I don’t want to have to convince some cis guy that I’m depressed just to get medicine that may not even help

I don’t want to worry about money any more

I don’t want to deal with this

Social Dysphoria

For anyone who doesn’t know- there are 2 basic types of dysphoria that I know of (in terms of trans people). Social and Bodily. I had, and sometimes still have, pretty awful bodily dysphoria for my chest. Bad enough that I didn’t notice the social. Now that the chest is gone, I’m keenly aware of the social dysphoria.

I hate being seen as a girl, I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the pathetic excuses people give me for why it’s my fault they thought I was a girl. I’m sick of being afraid when I use the men’s room and hating myself when I use the women’s. I really don’t enjoy having to come out to get my pronouns even close to right (or at least not dead wrong). I don’t enjoy wondering if, because I had to come out to try and get people to stop thinking of me as a girl, they really still think of me as one and are just humoring me. I don’t enjoy being called a “lady” or “miss” by complete strangers- people laugh at me when I say “Hey– person with the [notable article of clothing/object/whatever]“, but that’s something I wouldn’t care about being called.

Privilege

I am white, able bodied enough (certainly nothing visible), neurotypical enough (I think), well-enough off, with access to education. I have privilege. All the things I don’t have privilege for can be hidden- I don’t have to bring up being asexual or trans if I don’t want to (although I prefer to) and I’m pretty damn bad at being out about this, no matter how vocal I am online.

I’m not good at coming out. It makes me nervous. This fiasco that this blog has documented is a bit of why, because often times cis people think it’s okay to flaunt their privilege at us in ways they don’t when they think we’re cis. There’s also the thing that when someone messes up my pronouns now, it’s because they don’t know. When someone messes up my pronouns after I come out, they’re either purposefully being hurtful or don’t care enough to get it right. I don’t really want to know who of the people I know are jerks like that.

It’s hard to give up privilege. I don’t even have the option of going stealth after transition- how? Even if I somehow manage to get the government to acknowledge a third legal gender, that still outs me. Even if I somehow manage to be fully androgynous to everyone I meet, people won’t look at me and think “neutrois”, they think “freak”. I get to choose between two closets.

I bring this up because I’m still not really sold one way or another on T, and this is part of why. If T makes me look like a cis guy, I’ll still legally be an “F” on some of my papers. I have no interest in getting the surgery that would let me change my birthcertificate for a good long while because, guess what, people who aren’t women can want to have kids with their genetics, too. (and I really doubt that a trans couple would be allowed to adopt, especially since we can’t bring ourselves to coercively assign a gender to a child and raise it as that. I don’t fucking care what cissupremacist people say- small children internalize this shit).

And… then what? Would I be able to get a job with mismatched documents? Will we have problems with immigration if the law decides not to acknowledge our marriage as valid anymore? I don’t even know if I’d be more comfortable being seen as male.