Just a quick update, due to doctor telling me no flying for two weeks I won’t be going to Atlanta this month (stupid ear infection). This means those posts will be in May when I go again.
Good news, means I can wrap up some upcoming posts that have nothing to do with Atlanta.
Also, I really wanted to thank all the supportive messages I have gotten for my father’s passing and all the stress Jello and I have been through with the top surgery at the same time.
Thank you very much!
Well folks, it is that time of year again. When we last left AG and his travels he had gone to the unexpectedly liberal place of Philadelphia and was pretty damn happy about it.
Yes, I am talking about me 🙂
Now, we are going back to my original training location of Atlanta. It has been 18 months since my last visit (who knew I would still be here at my job that long) and I am a bit nervous. I did have a lot of observations to share at the time, but for some reason I don’t remember why, I stopped after the first one (see Atlanta Observations 1).
I do need to make it clear before I start complaining in future posts, there were some cool people in Atlanta. Contrary to my liberal/socialist/progressive world view up here in Seattle, not everyone down there was a bible thumping, finger pointing conservative who wanted me to die in a fire.
My general response to judgment
However, with the anti-gay bill that had passed the Georgia Senate recently, I had become a little nervous. For what seemed like forever I have been hearing on the news about the bill waiting to be approved by the Governor. Last time I went down, I wasn’t nervous, but after more than two years with Jello, I have grown a bit more cautious and uncomfortable going to places that may pose a health problem.
Vandalism in a church in Augusta.
Fortunately today I have found that the governor vetoed it so I feel a little better about it.
It does worry me though, that the state has such hate for LGBTQ that they passed the bill and the only reason they backed down wasn’t because it was hateful, but because a lot of companies threatened to move and/or boycott the state. I realize the Senate is not representative all the people in Georgia, but they were elected by the people of Georgia and by it does make me uncomfortable that they had enough people believe in them, to elect them.
Maybe not the majority, but still a minority with a lot of power. (Church in Midgeville)
Also, while I am a bit nervous still, it is nice to see that Andy Bauman is calling for protection of the LGBT community and his district is the 6th District for Atlanta (Sandy Springs). You may ask why this is beneficial, well because I am evidently staying/training in the Sandy Springs District (I get off the MARTA at Sandy Springs). So YAY!
Thank you Mr. Bauman,  (click image for story)
So stay tuned for more info. Now that my personal life has slowed down, I have a lot more to write about it. Since I fly out this Sunday, there should be some adventurous stories (or stories about a middle aged guy trying to figure out Atlanta again.
Another day, another bathroom bill, it seems. In my state, they keep swatting them down, but that’s because I’m in a liberal place. I could be in some place like North Carolina.
North Carolina? Fix this!
It’s a big issue, because if you are transgender, you can be attacked if you are not deemed male or female enough. My biggest conflicts came when I was just starting testosterone, and was still very feminine in the face. I wasn’t masculine enough to be read as male by strangers.
In a lot of ways, it was easier to slide by before transgender issues hit the public stage. All it took was the right clothes, and just generally hitting the gender mark, and strangers would mostly assume you were the gender you were dressed as. This was by far easier for transgender men, than transgender women, of course.
Now, people search your face, and really pay attention to gender. Once again, this happens more for transfeminine folks, than transmasculine folks. I feel there are a vocal minority that are jumping at gender shadows.
Just look at this guy who threatened to wave his penis at a woman he thought was trans:
Alderman John La Tour, who sits on the Fayetteville City Council, decided to attack a woman that was not in any way transgender. This isn’t the first time this has happened, but this time it happened to a cis gendered person.
Now that transgender issues are getting a lot of publicity, I feel a lot of folks are playing a game of Where’s Waldo, but more like Where’s the trans person. These days there are folks out there that are actively looking for, and targeting folks like me.
I “pass” as cis gendered these days. If folks identify me as trans, it’s because I am out about it. However, that that doesn’t mean I have always been read as male. Nor does it mean you should have to perform gender to some arbitrary masculine or feminine level in order to access the bathroom.
So all these bathroom bills being supported or passed all over the US? By every single definition, I would be legally forced to pee in the women’s room.
![SIGNS_Women%20Adjust%20ADA[1]](https://accidentallygay.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/signs_women20adjust20ada1.gif)
I guarantee you if I went to pee in a ladies, restroom someone would call the cops. Then what happens? I get scrutinized by taser happy American policemen for being in the women’s room? I risk being openly transgender to the police? Do I get carted off to jail until a judge decides what to do with me? I’m white, so I’d probably survive the process. Then do I start this entire process all over again for using the bathroom I am legally forced to be in?
Being transgender, I have had it more than confirmed by a vocal number of people that they would like me to disappear or die. I am more than aware there are hateful bigots that know nothing about trans issues, that want us to be the next great fearful rallying cry to drive their politics.
But seeing all these laws being proposed or passed? That’s like having a new low level radiation of hate permeate your life. There’s nothing you can personally do about it. You don’t have support from the big lesbian and gay organizations to help stop it. In some ways it’s worse because the big eye of politics has now turned to us, instead of being ignorant of our existence. It’s just a constant on a political level you can’t change.
I am much more able to deal with individual, face-to-face, hate. I can make a snarky comment, mock them, or punch back. This legislative hate? I have no tools in my social toolkit to stop that. Nor do I have any resources at my disposal to help. Transgender people are such a small demographic of the American people, so we definitely don’t have any political clout.
This effects my husband as well. He worries because we train for our agency in some of these states, and what if I get sent down there? I’m out of the closet, do I have to use the women’s room, since everyone knows I’m trans?
It sure curtails where we want to travel on our off time, right now. The hubby runs a Civil War history Youtube channel, and would love to get first hand video of battlefield sites. We don’t feel safe going there right now.
So even in my liberal, diverse happy, corner of the US, all these bathroom bills hit me, and effect my life. It’s not the same as if I live in one of those intolerant places, but it’s still there floating around the edges.
Last night, Jello and I went to a very close set of friends’ wedding. It was the first event we have been to together really since his surgery. It was really nice to get out of the house for a few hours and be around others.
Hello Kitty wedding could have been cool.
It was awesome. Jello was relaxed, happy and there was no hesitation in holding hands with me. He even gave me a kiss in public.
Although he probably was tired of the photographs
Don’t get me wrong, he holds my hand all the time, but when we go out to public things it is a bit more limited. He is concerned like we have said earlier of people’s reactions. Originally it was because he was worried he didn’t look masculine enough, but as that started to fade he got worried about us being jumped or heckled for being two guys.
In real life, I am a lot taller than Jello.
We are lucky, we have a large network of friends who are either part of the LGBTQ scene here in Seattle or are allies. It was a great night, and while I don’t have a huge post to put up about it yet, I wanted to share that with you.
A very progressive/liberal place to live.
Now, to give you a bit of background, my mom is HORRIBLE with names/pronouns on a general basis. My entire life when my mom would try to call out one of the siblings names (Lucky, Jackie or Derek). She would always start with the wrong name and have to cycle through all the names until she got to the right one. It didn’t matter who she was trying to talk to.
It isn’t that my mom is stupid, but she is forgetful and this happened to all of us siblings. Â I should have seen this might be problematic with pronoun usage with Jello. She has known Jello for 27-28 years, starting when Jello was my best friend (years before we started seeing each other). For the first 25, the pronoun Jello used was she/her.
As a reminder, my mother has been incredibly supportive of Jello’s transition. The fact that she originally brought up gender identity as a 66 year old biker lady was both unexpected and fantastic (I can’t find the post I talked about it to link to, sorry). She has had only one area that has been troublesome for herself. That is pronoun usage when she is talking about Jello in passing.
She gets the pronoun usually right, but sometimes she and would slip up and say the pronoun “she”. Not usually when talking to Jello, usually it was when talking to me on the phone. This doesn’t bother Jello or I much because she corrects herself immediately, pronouns are hard to change and there is obviously no malice when she does say it.
This has changed drastically for the better after the surgery. While Jello missed my dad’s passing, he was able to go to the funeral (the surgery made him unable to travel the 120 miles to my parents house when my dad was in hospice and he passed before Jello could travel).
He showed up though with three weeks of beard and a flat chest. Now the beard is growing in pretty well for Jello, but its still very light. However the chest was a huge difference. Jello use to have DD sized breasts and even when bound they were noticeable depending on the clothes he wore or how he stood. Now though he doesn’t wear any binders and he has a flatter chest then I.
My mom slipped up once during the day of the funeral (understandable, a lot of stress). She got herself though apologized immediately. Jello jokingly said with the beard growing in it would be hard for Jello to pass as a “her”. My mom didn’t refer to jello as a she from that point on during a very stressful day.
Since then we have gone up weekly to see my mom (last three weeks). Jello showed my mom his scars on his chest. My mom marveled at what was done and agreed it looked good. The one side thing I have noticed though, my mom hasn’t used the wrong pronoun with Jello in the last five weeks, since Jello pointed out the beard and especially not after showing his chest.
I honestly hadn’t realized the chest surgery would help so much that it would even help those that are already accepting and try to follow the right protocol with Jello.
When you are the living embodiment of a social stigma for a vocal part of society, things can get weird. It not only gets weird for you, but for your loved ones. Being transgender is a social stigma for a lot of uninformed people, many of whom are not shy about screaming about it.
When I came out, I only had one person that made a point of coming to tell me (on Facebook, no less) that she didn’t “agree with the Transgendering”. She played the often used religious trope of loving the person, but not what they do, paraphrasing “Love the sinner, hate the sin” which is so often used to do hurtful things to already marginalized groups. I shut her down pretty hard, and she then uncomprehendingly spent a long time lamenting how mean I was, and why couldn’t I just accept her bigotry?
I’m in a very liberal area of the country, were the latest bathroom bills (6 of them!!), attempting to criminalize transgender people peeing in public bathrooms, were shot the hell down with finality. That means the kinds of reactions you receive here might be minor in comparison to the outright shunning and violence in other areas, but it’s still there.
I am completely out at work, where I work with my husband, and my recent surgery was not a secret. I had top surgery with some liposuction on my hips. They called it “masculinizing lipo” on the paperwork. It was the only way my 44 year old self was going to get rid of my hour glass hips, and very full DD’s. As such, I talk frankly with my respectful coworkers about the surgery, what I got done, and how great it is.
What I notice is that I have a large number of very vocal supporters at work. This could be in part because we have a shockingly large LGBT+ community in my normally very conservative government agency. However, we still have people from all over the country where I work, and some come from far more conservative bible driven areas.
Because I have the support of management, and the open support of so many coworkers, the prejudice I get from folks is a lot subtler.
How do I explain this? Have you ever dated someone, and had them ghost you? You think you are fine, texting along, and then one day they just stop talking to you and act like you don’t exist? That happens in a social context when you are transgender and people figure it out.
It’s not like I’m hiding it, but some of my coworkers literally could not figure it out at first. Now that some of them have either figured it out, related to talk of my surgery or been told outright, I notice there are a couple that have totally ghosted.
It’s not something you can point your finger at, and say “This is definitely because I’m transgender.” However, when you see it enough times, you are 80% sure that’s the reason they don’t want to eat lunch near you, or talk to you, make eye contact, or even look at you and say good morning.
I think, as we make progress away from the brutal open hatred against transgender folks, this will be more the way it is expressed. When you can’t outright condemn someone in a marginalized minority, you are left with social shunning and quiet ghosting.
What makes being transgender or queer such a weird thing, is that often the bigot can’t tell at first. This means you get to see the intolerant person as a human being with a sense of humor, and nice qualities before they make that realization that you are the embodiment of a social stigma for them. Then, POOF! gone. You’ll never see them again if they can help it.
It’s even weirder to watch that umbrella of stigma drift across your loved ones. My husband is avoided by the same people. Before they knew, they were completely fine with him, and sought him out regularly. Even knowing he was married to a man. Not so much anymore now that my deep dark not-so-secret about being transgender was discovered.
This is the part that really drives me nuts. I am far better at taking the hit myself, than watching my loved ones get caught in the cross fire of some sort of mean girls campaign. My husband is a big guy, and always willing to stand up for what’s right. He can more than take care of himself, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch folks ice him out just because he’s married to me.
I can’t say 100% that this is the reason, but I can sure extrapolate because I have seen it again, and again. It’s like you perpetually have to come out to people when you are mostly read as cis gendered. I don’t like being in the closet, but honestly, being transgender doesn’t come up a lot in office conversation. Getting ghosted by folks that don’t want to be around a transgender person, is now a part of my foreseeable future. Forever.
I’ll take this over the violence so many other transgender folks face, but it’s still exhausting. This is why I don’t want to be in the closet about being transgender. I’d rather these folks, with their quiet bigotry, self select out of my life. I’d rather not grow to like someone that’s going to ghost later when it comes up. I may be the one they think is stigmatized, but in the end, I wouldn’t want anything to do with them anyways.
A very quick update: I am finally getting a chance to see what Jello looks like post surgery (and it is good). The surgeon’s office underestimated his recovery process, but now he has gotten the furniture foam off of him along with compression gear, the finished product is coming out.
They said the surgery would be a little challenging but no big deal and he should be able to move around like normal after a couple of days.
Don’t get me wrong, the surgeon was awesome. His skill with sculpting a body cannot be denied. I do need to say however they were very dismissive of any problems. The sad fact was, he was a fountain of blood that I had to change bandages every 20 minutes. Don’t worry there will be at least one post just about this coming up, so if I don’t have a lot of details you now know why.
However, now that three weeks has gone by and all the other family issues have resolved he is able to take in what he has now. He looks great!
I realize you can’t see much (which is why this is called “First Glimpse”) but he has had Double D breasts for the last 12 years (they were D for five years before that, C for five then very itsy bitsy B’s when we got together). Funny enough that is how his family worked, they wouldn’t get any heavier, but they would get a breast size increase every 5 years or so. Now he is flatter than I am (good for him)!
I have a lot more to post about. Things are settling family wise and hopefully you will see the posts soon!
I’ve been moving towards surgery since I started testosterone in 2014. It was an inevitable closure for me, and my goals for transition.
As such, there has been a bit of anxiety in my marriage about this step. I have always had a bit of residual anxiety about getting top surgery. It changed my body’s generous breasts to a flat chest. I was always worried such a masculinizing step might cause my husband to decide he couldn’t be with a man.
This is ridiculous. He has never ever been the type of man that cared about those things. He’s always been attracted to people regardless of their gender. It was never realistic that he’d actually leave me.
For my husband, he was worried that once I had hit this stage of finality, I might decide to fly off and love someone else. His anxiety being the flip side of mine.
A photo of a woman squeezing a stress ball
We are both idiots, really. I couldn’t love him more, and he is the most devoted person I’ve ever met. I guess we are both a bit anxious though.
The operations were successful from day one. Even swollen, and waiting for everything to heal, I am ecstatic about the results. I can wear T-shirts, without fear of my binder’s bunching up like sports bras.
That little bit of flat chest goes so far in confirming my gender to outsiders. To the casual observer, there is no way they’d ever consider me feminine in any way. Between my age related wrinkles, and my flat chest, I look like any other guy.
A few days after surgery, my husband looked at my now flat chest, and smiled. I could tell he was so happy for me, and that he was just itching to touch me when I was healed up.
That kind of relief just can’t be bought. All my worry evaporated. Finally, we can just be a couple, without this surgical deadline hanging over either of us.
I hope for his part, he knows I won’t be fleeing, now that I have surgery. I think he does know, because he has stopped asking me if I’m going to go find someone younger and prettier.
It was a weird anxiety that we both shared, but I’m not sure it’s that unusual for couples, with one party transitioning. There is such an unknown to the transition process. Everyone has to pioneer what works for them. With couples, you have to not only work with your own anxieties, but your partners.
Just letting everyone know that Jello’s surgery went well, healing went well, etc. I haven’t been able to post though as my father passed away this week and as the oldest sibling I am taking over most of the arrangements.
More posting will come after the funeral next week and I will try and get this thing rolling again. Both Jello and I have a ton of stuff to write about.
I just didn’t want you all to think we gave up here. 🙂
Hubby waiting for surgery.
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