autogynophilla and the DSM V

Look, I think autogynophilla is bulishit, it is sexualising to trans women, it is misgendering, in short it is bullshit.

But I will support it being added to the DSM V, on one condition. That is is considered a sufficient diagnosis for FUNDED transtion. If we follow the view of autogynophila as the cause of all non heterosexual (ie attracted to women) then a hell of a lot of trans women are autogynophillics and I am aware of no evidence that bi and gay women gain less from transtion and as transition is generally considered a medical necessary then clearly what you have done, is recognized someone is trans, with a very common presentation, so they should be provided with medical care.

Sex is ickky and you have a paraphilla therefore you shouldn’t transition is not a good enough reason to withhold medical care.

Now I am a FAAB trans person, while autoandrophila has been added to the DSM I would expect that it will be a rare diagnosis, and that the threat of autoandrophilla will not generally stop trans men transitioning, and it may well stop trans women from being able to access transition, so their voices should be the primary voices in this fight, please read about the problems with autogynophilla by the amazing author Julia Serano.

But if I may be able to humbly request that we consider if this diagnosis is going to be made that we push for it to be recognized for what it is, another diagnosis that should be considered equivalent to gender dysphoria.

Questions from search results

will genderqueer peoples children be genderqueer?

Occasionally yes, as far as I know there is no evidence that gender identity is heritable, but particularly I would not expect it to be anti heritable, that is, some gq parents will have gq children in the same way that some people who are prom queens will have children who are prom queens.

However if the question is restated as is it more likely that gq parents will have gq kids, then the answer would have to be something along the lines of possibly, at least in the fact that the way we express gender changes thoughout time, and having parents who know that gq exists as an identity means you at least know what the words are. I think I would have known I was trans a lot earlier if I knew trans guys and gender queers existed, if there where models of gender which fitted my experience.

Other than knowing it exists, then no, I expect it probably isn’t heritable, but that is just a guess and if someone wanted to research it, I would kindly suggest that they research something that would actually help trans people, rather than research that all to often sets us up as a defect.

What will I look like when I transtion?

That question, What will I look like when I transition? was a question I asked myself over and over, and tonight I answered it, staring into the mirror, I look like me, older, with wider shoulders and more hair, my voice is mine the same weird ways of saying things, the same accent a bit deeper but fundamentally me, there was, to steal a metaphor no phone booth to fall into and come out a new man.

There is the trope of the trans person who meets their pretranstion friends and is a totally new person, unrecognizable, if this happens I have never heard of it. Although a friend was once asked if their sister had previously worked in the shop they now worked in.

I think there is a deeper question in here, our society doesn’t really accept yet that trans people exist, feminist bloggers (not linked) talk about doctors murdering women when they help trans men transition. Tell all documentaries feature parent who quite comfortably stand in front of their living breathing child and talk about morning that child’s death. They feel that their son, their daughter has been replaced by a changeling. They can’t see their child, their real breathing child with that same nose, that same smile standing right there.

I think I used to believe that, at some level that I would be replaced by a man, and yet I have not, transition is both profound and minor, socially and emtionally it is huge, and I don’t want to deny that for anyone who transitions, knowing your body as your own for the first time ever, that is huge, but then, this is my body, always has been, always will be, these are my hands, my nose, my chin, I never stopped looking like me.

testosterone and Interstitial cystitis in trans men, we need case studies

I am back on testosterone, on a low dose, because I have a mood disorder and nothing else I have found works half as well as it.

I have Interstitial cystitis, I was first developed symptoms when I started HRT the first time around, and the pain of it, and the four or so doctors who couldn’t give me any answers, was one of the reasons I stopped taking T, now I am back on it, and have had a major IC flare up, I worry that this connected and I will have to choose between the body I want and becoming best friends with the toilet door.

As far as evidence goes, I found nothing. I found the oh so helpful Donna commenting here.
Part of me just wants to join the forum to tell her

1) Find me a gender doc who knows fuck all about IC, or a urologist who knows fuck all about trans issues and I will go see them.

2) The forum shares medical advice all the time, hell even about testosterone therapy and I didn’t see you telling cis people they need to talk to their doctors.

Breath man, breath.

Ok look, I am a trans guy and I have IC and testosterone seems to make it worse. For all the limits of case studies, I couldn’t find anything in the literature about trans guys getting bladder problems, but if I missed something or if I find something later I will post it.

For now I don’t know if my situation is rare? I talked to another trans guy who had what sounded exactly like IC but he had been fobbed off by doctors and never got diagnosed. Maybe a lot of trans guys get better on T but what I do know is that there is one more case study out there now then they was before I wrote this post, if you have come hear seeking answers, I wish I had them, for myself more than anything, I am sick of the pain, and the urgency, and the rest of it.

If you have experience of this, please comment, let me know what you tried, and what worked and what didn’t. In a data free world every data point is important, shorter cycles? longer cycles? Creams over shots? What helped you? Are you a trans women or maab trans person whose IC symptoms have changed after HRT? With two rare conditions* there is very little medical evidence about us, but there is an internet full of people, just some of them might be trans people in pain, on the toilet right now.

*if you see your trans status as a medical condition of course.

Lets pretend

I pretend I don’t notice the space before “Us men”

You pretend it wasn’t hard to hear that your daughter was a son

I pretend it wasn’t hard to hide for all those years

I pretend not to wince as you pretend you don’t rack your brain for the right greeting

Together we pretend this isn’t fucking hard

We think together that if we don’t pretend we might break under the strain of a world pretending that gender is simple. settled. at birth.

Questions from search

I have a number of searches which are all variants of why are all genderqueers female assigned at birth.

Short answer, they are not, many gq and non binary people where assigned as male or intersex, if I had to guess I would say that non binary people are as likely to be male assigned as female assigned, so I would reframe the question as why do people assume non binary and gq people are FAAB?

I would start with masculine privilege, and a social dislike of people considered male cross dresses, butchness is idolized, many gq FAAB people are lumped in with butch dykes, where as “male cross dressers” which many gq maab people are seen as are seen as pathetic, gross, a joke, not as gender rebel, which is to say classic trans misogyny.

I think it is worth repeating a genderqueer community which welcomes people on the basis of assigned sex is missing the god damn point, and the sooner that genderqueer doesn’t mean skinny white faab and masculine the better.

Cross post: pledge up for non binary representation

So those who follow me on twitter may already have seen me going on about the wonderful kickstarter project Doing it again in depth if you haven’t then here is a bit from the blurb

Stereotypes and prejudices around trans women’s sexuality influence public policy, access to healthcare, workplace discrimination, sexual harassment, “trans-panic” defenses in murder trials, and so much more. Trans women are alternately portrayed as hypersexual, deceptive and predatory, or portrayed as desexualized and pathetic. The goal of this project is to create depictions of real humanity and allow trans women to take control over how their sexuality is portrayed.

The project has two DVD volumes, one featuring trans women with male partners and one with female partners,(Edit: sorry it’s one with cis partners and one with trans partners) there is a 15K stretch goal to create a third volume on genderqueer trans women and trans women with genderqueer and non binary partners, I am super keen to make this happen, so I said on the comments that I would up my pledge if the 15k goal looked close, a couple of others did to, and I am setting up this post as a place for others to pledge up too.

Here is mine:

If the 15K goal is close I will move my pledge up to 250

Want to join me? Please do! Leave your pledge at the original post

fetishisation of ftm’s/faab genderqueers and faab butches

A lot of time is spent talking about the fetishistation of some kinds of trans guys and faab gender variance. I want to talk about this and that will lead to generalizations so I want to start with making clear that while binary ided trans guys, faab genderqueers, and female ided faab butches are thrown into one big bucket they can have very different experiences, for a start, only some of them are men, Right moving on.

I have personal have only experienced the very edges of this, most of my partners are straight ided men, who wish I would stop mentioning the whole trans thing, and wear dresses more often. Which give me a different perspective I think than men and gq’s who have spent more time in queer women spaces and women and trans spaces.

My experience of these spaces is surprise that anyone wants to sleep with me when I am not in drag. I am yet to get laid out of the wonder of trans fetishisation, I don’t fit the ideal, some how the “radical superbutch” loving lesbians wander off when I start enthusing about the new McQueen collection. I’m not thin, I don’t pass, and I live as female.

I have on occasion passed well enough as “radical superbutch” to attract attention and while it switches one uncomfortable drag for another it is in marked contrast from the hetro world I mostly move in (I suspect that gay men want nothing to do with me, sexually).

One thing that marks my experience of sexuality is that I need to present a fake me to get laid, a more feminine, straighter, cis version of me, being hot and being seen as sexuality available means presenting as femme, and sometimes I am quite ok with if that is what I feel like, but I know (most) my partners have preferred it, and I know that there are times where I have sacrificed my mental health for that.

I am going to a sex positive blogger/twitter meet up tonight and while I quite like the idea of meeting potential partners, I can’t bear femme drag right now, so I am going in my pretty gayboy getup, which is fine and all, except that I wish I could work out how to signal interested in men and available without having to trip up my dysphoria.

A friend of mine said recently, “I don’t know what trans guys get out of butch femme communities, except for misgendering” Well, I have put up with plenty of misgendering in an attempt to get a little bit of love and companionship, I had one partner of then 18 months tell a friend of mine that he wasn’t really ready to date a trans guy, and he left me when I started T, to date a cis women. So if I will put up with that for love, for companionship, I cant imagine why a straight trans man would be any different, and I know how attractive fetishisation can be, when the alternative is a world that can’t imagine you as sexual.

New blogging project

One of the reasons I haven’t been here much is because of my new blog, which is about politics, life and everything and can be found at http://cheshbitten.wordpress.com I will still post here, if/when I have something to say.

Bad blogger, no biscuit

I have been remiss in updating this blog, there are lots of reasons for this, but one of the big ones is that this blog was set up to be a resource for non binary identified trans people seeking medical transition.
I am not currently one of these people, so I feel very weird talking about these issues. I love reading the comments of trans people here, finding they own way through transition. I hope I can maintain a resource for them.
My plan is to keep this blog up, and I would love to take on others to write in this space. If you are interested please comment Or drop me an email, my address is the same as my username here at gmail.com
Stay strong, I’m still around.