genderqueer.me

One of the most commonly repeated phrases / acknowledgments / pieces of advice / soundbites of justification that we hear as transgender people is “Be Yourself.” As I’ve transitioned, I’ve uttered these words in a meager attempt at explaining the hugely positive impact this gender journey has had on my life: – I am my authentic self – I feel more comfortable – I can finally just be myself But how…

I was invited to speak at Google about my book “Nonbinary Memoirs” and gender diversity in general.

You’ve come to the perfect place my friend!

I’ve given a lot of workshops over the years. The main one is called Nonbinary Transition, and I’ve put up a video and slides online of one presentation. I hope it helps you figure things out.

https://genderqueer.me/non-binary-transition/

LGBTQ Anthology

The BreakBeat Poets Volume 3: Halal if You Hear Me, Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo, Haymarket Books

Foglifter Volume 4 Issue 2, Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, Foglifter Press

The Heart of the Matter: The Gerald Kraak Anthology Volume III, The Other Foundation, Jacana Media

Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry, Amber Dawn and Justin Ducharme, Arsenal Pulp Press

LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia, Jeff Mann and Julia Watts, West Virginia University Press

Love WITH Accountability: Digging up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, AK Press

Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity, Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane, Columbia University Press

A Rainbow Thread: An Anthology of Queer Jewish Texts from the First Century to 1969, Noam Sienna, Print-O-Craft

There are several reasons:

a. You are not sure if you want the “standard” dose, or how masculine/feminine you want your body to be/look. Taking a low dose lets you start the process, try it out, and take things slower. You can always stop too.

b. Gives your body time to adjust. It also gives your mind time to adjust. Puberty doesn’t happen in a day, or even a year, and the changes can be physically and mentally jarring.

c. Mental or physical health: everyone reacts differently. Some people feel worse on a higher dose (I know I experienced extreme anxiety) while others feel better on a higher dose.

d. Some people are still undisclosed, so with slower onset of changes this starts your physical transition while buying you time for social transition. 

e. Until relatively recently, there had been few studies on what the “standard” dose should even be, so this was truly an arbitrary number. Now many doctors agree that the touted “200mg/mL x 2weeks” for T is too high for a lot of people.

Even though I’ve been on a low dose for 8 years, I doubt I’ve reached the “maximum” amount of changes. That is, if I took a higher dose, my voice would probably continue to drop, and I would see a significant increase in hair, etc. I’m in the “middle” zone and that’s where I like it.

So why do I keep taking hormones if I’m not seeing changes? Well, I think my body is changing, just very very slowly - too slow to notice day to day, yet noticeable over the years. And staying at a low dose continues giving my body some of the non-permanent effects of T, such as body-fat distribution or muscle mass, even if I experience these in a lower intensity than at a higher dose.

What happens when your gender doesn’t fit neatly into the categories of male or female? Even mundane interactions like filling out a form or using a public bathroom can be a struggle when these designations prove inadequate. In this groundbreaking book, thirty authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary.

If you’d like a copy of my book, I recommend clicking the link above and ordering directly from CUP website.

Thank you for the kind note! I do hope that others feel empowered and are allowed to take the steps they need.

The reason I started my blog, and the reason I kept going with it, is because I really couldn’t find more than a handful of folks doing what I was doing. They existed, they just didn’t post about it online :P

I remember that I had literally watched all the videos on youtube about low dose t. Confession: it was no more than 5 people. Now you search for low dose hormones and there are thousands of blogs and videos and official pamphlets and everything. It’s amazing!

Yes, you could “pass,” if passing for you means having people see you as a mix of binary genders. Or it could mean that people always ask for your pronouns, or they refer to you with neutral pronouns. Passing could even mean being seen as a binary gender consistently.

It really depends on what passing means to you.

So instead of “passing” you could ask... what is your goal? What do you want to look like, and what do you want others to see (or not see)? What do you want to feel?

I liked to think of my goal as being comfortable.  I wrote a post about what it meant for me to “be myself.”

Yes it is ok!

I have no idea! The site genderqueerid.com used to have a lot of great historical archives (like the genderqueer flag), so maybe the answer is somewhere in there. I don’t remember having a flag when I started blogging (in 2011).

The origin of the term neutrois is also unclear, but I think it may have started in 1995 or so in an online listserve. Although I still think that term describes my gender the closest, I generally refer to myself as nonbinary now, because it is more inclusive and people are more familiar with it.

I’ve been on low dose T almost… 8 years now? Wow. At first I was on-and-off, but I’ve been consistently on since 2013. I take about ¼ of a “standard” dose (although standard varies a lot nowadays).

In 2013 I had written a post about whether I would ever be “post transition” - or rather, whether it was even possible for someone nonbinary to be “done” transitioning. At this point in my life, I am “post transition” in the sense that I really don’t think about gender very much. Sure it will come up once in a while, but it’s more like a small blip, a funny anecdote, a parenthesis in the daily course of my life. 

Generally I get read as male. Although, I’ve found it really depends on who I am with, and the context I’m in. I transitioned socially about 8 years ago, and I’ll tell you, it is still sometimes very weird when I get called sir or when someone looks at me directly and says he, especially if it’s someone I know.

I do still get called “she” sometimes, which usually leaves my friends aghast, like “how is that even possible?!?!?!” but yeah, it happens. It’s more amusing than awkward, but only because it is rare. Generally this is with strangers, but if it happens with someone I will be working with or seeing regularly, I kind of let it slide and hope it will auto-correct itself later - as in, they’ll catch on by hearing others refer to me, or someone else will tell them.