Number 78

I Dead-Named Myself

'Dead-naming,' for those who don't know, is a term used by the trans community to refer to one's former identity. It can be a noun, as in: "My dead-name is/was ______." It can also be used a verb, as in: "My aunt still dead-names me, and it really hurts." That example kind of gets to the heart of the matter. Dead-naming is rarely used in circumstantially positive situations. It is, in fact, usually used by a trans person to convey pain, anxiety, disappointment, dread, etc.

Though I've come to understand the extent to which being dead-named causes hurt to different members of the trans community, my own history with the term has been a little more ambiguous. I remember when I first heard/learned about it, I thought it was extremely harsh. I mean it had the word "dead" right in it, for goodness sakes. But the reason for that is simple. Unlike many other trans people, I do not have a negative relationship with my former life - including the name my parents gave me back in 1966. My life was good, and I had a good name - it's just that neither quite told the full story of who I am*. But for many folks in the trans community, their former lives are often quite painful. There are many stories of condemnation and rejection from family and people they thought of as friends. I came to learn that, as severe as it sounds, "dead-naming" was an appropriate term to convey the hurt the use of their old name could cause.

When a person transitions, everything doesn't magically change in the blink of an eye. Sure, a judge signs a legal document, and your name is changed from one thing to another, but everything else takes a little time. There are an innumerable situations where you need to notify different people and businesses about your identity change. Friends and family, even if they're supportive, will need some adjustment time, too. And, in my case, after 50 years of thinking one thing, it's taken me a bit of time to readjust my own thinking (and, yes, it's still a work in progress).

I have an old Gmail account in my former name that I have not yet deleted. I should, as nothing of importance has been coming into it for the last number of months, but I haven't. In any event, the other day I was doing some on-line work in my role as a board member of Calliope Women's Chorus that required me to send out a number of emails. No big deal, really - just normal stuff. Anyway, one of my missives required a response from another board member, and it wasn't until I received her email that I realized I had somehow sent it out using my old account. Oops and embarrassment! I had dead-named myself!

I didn't follow up with her until our first rehearsal a few days ago. I apologized and she shrugged her shoulders, saying it was no big deal. She described her initial confusion of receiving an email from someone she didn't know (who seemed to know her), but she ultimately figured it out. I told her she was the only other person in the choir who could answer the trivia question: "What was Nora's original name?," and then the conversation turned to another topic.

What's interesting to me about this whole thing is how mortified I felt when I realized what I had done. With everything I told you about my relationship with my old identity, you would think it would not have been that big a deal, but it sure felt that way. Perhaps if the same thing had happened earlier in my transition, I would not have been so keenly embarrassed. Or perhaps it's because it happened in connection with the choir - one of the few places where I have been unambiguously welcomed as 'Nora Henry - female.' For what it's worth, as time has passed, I have become increasingly reluctant to refer or use my old name. Perhaps the longer I live my life as "Nora" the further I  am removed from my old life, no matter how affectionate I feel towards it. Such a thought leaves me both happy and sad at the same time. In the long run, I suppose, this is the only life I have, and it doesn't really matter that I lived the first part one way, and the second part another. I just have to convince my heart of that.


*For those who don't know, "Nora" was the other of the two names they had chosen for me a loooooong time ago when I was born.

Number 77

E & T Go To War

Regular readers (all 3 of you), might recall me mentioning that blood tests reveal that I have the hormonal profile of an average 50 something cis woman. Yay! It's hard to remember how I "felt" back in July, 2018 before I started HRT. That was the last time my hormonal profile would reflect a person who was assigned male at birth. (Full disclosure: Ever since I became aware of it, my testosterone level was always borderline low - go figure.) I'm sure that is because the changes to my mental functioning have happened so gradually it's been impossible to chart them. The other challenge in evaluating any changes is the fact that my basic "me-ness" is essentially the same. But if there weren't any differences, why would I be writing this?

The first thing we must agree on is that each man, woman, and everyone else has a little bit of E (estrogen) and T (testosterone) floating around their body. So I haven't "replaced" all the androgens in my body, so much as I've changed their percentages. What follows are some interesting observations that may, or may not, reinforce certain cultural male/female gender differences. You decide.

1. I dance a lot better than I used to. Seriously. I guess I always knew I had hips. The big discovery was realizing they move.

2. The other day was a gym day for me. I got ready to go. (OK: parenthetical thought here, but what is the f*cking deal with sports bras - impossible to put on, and worse to get off!) In the old days, I would have then left the house. But no more:

"Oh, let me take care of that real quick." "Um, why did I walk into this room?" "Oh yeah, don't forget the breakfast dishes." "Sh*t, where is my phone? Oh there it is!" "Should I let the dogs out first?" "Where are my keys?" "Oh, yeah!, I need to start a load of laundry!"

AAAARRRRGGGHHHHHHH!! Just leave the f*cking house already!

3. Men are flat and women have curves.  Emotionally speaking. (Get your minds out of the gutter!) Perhaps I shouldn't generalize to such an extent. Let's just say that my emotional palette has a lot more shades of color than it used to.

4. A man and a woman arrive at a door at the same time: Which one apologizes to the other? A woman and a man are working their way through a crowd: Which one apologizes to the other folks (as oppossed to saying "excuse me")? A man and a woman are watching a sporting event, but they're not rooting for the same team: Which one apologizes to the other? Why am I apologizing more than I used to?

5. Why do I feel like crying?

6. GAD. Otherwise known as Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It's been present in my life for a long while now. Anti-depressants specifically formulated to treat it have been very helpful to me. Only here's the difference now. Very specific, intense panic attacks that occur with alarming regularity. I mentioned this on FB, and many of the responses from my female friends indicated their familiarity with them. There's nothing to do but try and 'ride the wave' of panic until it subsides.

7. Friendships are more important to me. I'm sure there were a variety of reasons that I was as introverted as I used to be. But I'm not interested in hashing them out, so let's just accept that I was (shy and introverted). I was always polite, and if someone asked me a question about what was going on in my life, I would answer; but it rarely occurred to me to ask another person, a friend even, what was going on in their life.

Nowadays, I'm still kind of introverted, and being alone is how I energize myself, but I definitely enjoy the company of others (especially women), much more than I used to. And I've gotten much better at the give and take that makes conversations worthwhile.

8. Seriously... why am I crying again!

Number 76

Addendum to #75

In preparing to write #75, I poked around the internet and 'borrowed' the factual information on the Maya Forstater court case from an article I came across written by Dr. Veronica Ivy. At one point, I intended to include many of her observations in that entry, but that would have made a long entry even longer. Instead, I decided to offer some of them by themselves, as a separate entry. The link to the entire article is at the bottom.

JK Rowling's Maya Forstater Tweets Support Hostile Work Environments, Not Free Speech
Dr. Veronica Ivy

... After that series of Tweets, in a... conversation published by the court, Forstater reiterated that her stances — "'women are adult human females' or 'transwomen are male'" — are "basic biological truths," and "'transwoman are women'" is one of a number of "literal delusions.” 

"I have been told that it is offensive to say 'transwomen are men' or that women means 'adult human female'. However since these statement are true I will continue to say them." But [Forstater] said that, since she did not wish to be rude, she would "respect anyone’s self-definition of their gender identity in any social and professional context" — her tweets about Bunce notwithstanding.

Forstater's contract expired in December and was not renewed; she sued in March and waited for a ruling — while continuing to make transphobic statements, including (but not limited to) a link to a piece comparing the use of proper pronouns to the date rape drug rohypnol and her commentary in defense of not using people's preferred pronouns, a defense of using transgender people's prior names in public settings, another series of statements misgendering another gender nonbinary person and another defense of her right to refuse to use the correct pronouns and to openly misgender people.

Then, as part of her complaint, Forstater submitted the following statement: “I believe that it is impossible to change sex or to lose your sex. Girls grow up to be women. Boys grow up to be men. No change of clothes or hairstyle, no plastic surgery, no accident or illness, no course of hormones, no force of will or social conditioning, no declaration can turn a female person into a male, or a male person into a female.”

This, then, is what Forstater wanted the courts to uphold: Her right to make her co-workers uncomfortable; her right to place her nonprofit organization in an untenable position vis-à-vis potential donors (like Credit Suisse senior directors); her right to be, even as she defines it, rude and disrespectful in social and professional contexts; and her right to disrespect U.K. law, which defines transgender women as women and transgender men as men if they jump through the right legal hoops.

Courts, of course, tend to look askance at being asked to rule that an employee should be allowed to harm their employers and co-workers based on "philosophical beliefs" they've decided are both "biological truths" and tantamount to religious canon. This is especially true when major international organizations, including the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, World Health Organization and the United Nations all support respect for trans identities.

In other words, Forstater's repeated statements that trans women are not women — statements that by her own admission she knew were rude and disrespectful, and that she knew bothered her co-workers — violated the rights of trans women to be free from such harassment, and were a legitimate cause to not renew her contract. Trans people, and particularly trans women, are subject to daily indignities, including harassment, discrimination and violence, and U.K. law is designed to protect them from such treatment in the workplace and society more broadly.

Hate speech has no place in a free and democratic society. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from the consequences of that speech. And yet, constantly, people in a position of relative power or authority seem to be saying that they should have the right to say or write rude, vile, violent or discriminatory things about their fellow citizens. But even more, they think that they should be legally protected from any and all consequences of those actions, even if their speech has negative consequences on the people to whom it is addressed.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/j-k-rowling-s-maya-forstater-tweets-support-hostile-work-ncna1105201