Self-Organizing Man

I don’t know if other FtMs are contemplating a gender clinic or obtaining the services of individual plastic surgeons and gynecologists to meet their surgery needs

Either route is problematic.

In sharing some of my experiences perhaps others may learn from them.  For the sake of my own sanity, I will leave the name of the clinic off this blog.  If any of you wish to know more, please email me.  We can discuss things more fully offline.

When I first transitioned in 1995, I refused to see a therapist.  Being diagnosed with a mental illness offended every fiber of my soul.  It still does.

I do not believe I have a mental illness.  A hormonal imbalance, maybe.  Genetic disorder, possibly.  But I know that I have always wanted to be man.  From the time I spoke my first words, my mother says I conceived of myself as a boy.  “I had to tell you repeatedly that you were a little girl.”

Knowing this lifelong feeling to be the most truest thing in me, I simply refused to debase it with discussions about impulses or reasons or bad mothering with individuals who had no experience with transsexuals.  In 1995/1996 in Chicago, the level of knowledge among therapists was nonexistant.  But many wanted me as a client.  Why wouldn’t they?  I offered them great financial and intellectual gain for no experience.  They got something for nothing. 

I said “screw that!”

Because I worked at a small teaching hospital in Chicago I was able to receive care from a very competent gay doctor known to me experienced with treating people living with AIDS/HIV.

He was a great ally and advocated insurance reimbursement for me on my behalf.  The hospital where I worked was a Catholic one.  His efforts went nowhere.  But early on in my transition I had the experience of a medical provider working on my behalf without any letter from a therapist testifying to my mental veracity.

Once I started hormones, I refused to have top surgery.  While I told myself I didn’t want it, I think now I refused to pursue it for several reasons.  I could not afford the out of pocket expense; the thought of recovering in a strange city in a stuffy, tiny hotel room did not appeal to me; and psychically I was not prepared to deal with the surgery.

I’ve eased into my manhood by fits and starts.  The privilege that has accrued to me as a white man is enormous, unimaginable to me before hormones.  Do I sound misguided when I say that I could not handle having my tits cut off because I was afraid?  Afraid of what it would mean for me as an even closer approximation of man than before.  Afraid of losing my already increasingly strenous ties to the so-called lesbian community.  Afraid.  Afraid.  Afraid.  My transition can be characterized as a sloughing off of layers of fear to find joy.  Maybe I could have been less afraid.  But who knows and regret gets me nowhere.

I lived with my decision to pass on surgery for nine years.  Then I met a woman and asked her to marry me.  She agreed.  We both wanted to have a civil, state sponsored wedding.  (More on my participation as transsexual in a heterosexist institution at another time.)

In order to legally marry, I had to at least have top surgery.  My state of birth, Colorado, changes birth certificates with a letter from a surgeon.  I also wanted a full hystorectomy to reduce my hormone intake and m primary care physician believed it medically necessary, too .  Now I was at a crossroads.

My two choices were: Do I opt to participate in the gender clinic near my home, a clinic run under the auspices of a an international teaching university and subject myself and my partner to a rigorous set of therapeutic interviews to test my mental capacity, but that would work with my insurance company to pay for the surgeries; or, do I choose to purchase the surgeries I needed through doctors willing to treat me without said therapeutic interviews, but who may practice in Oregon or California or some other place far from my home and who would require payment up front?

I knew either route to be problematic.  And boy, did I resent having to make the choice in the first place.

I do not know if I can convey to non-trans people with no experiences with transsexuals (not transgender people, mind you, but, full on, hormone taking, body loving transsexuals) how extremely offensive, stressful and ridiculous the whole medical process is for transsexuals.  I am offended that I have to submit myself to stupid mental health questions with people only concerned about liability to have insurance pay for my surgeries.  I am equally offended that my only other option is to go out of state for surgeries and recover in a hotel room.  A fucking hotel room.

But I am most appalled and disgusted that my condition/state/reality was and is deemed a mental illness.  I suffered from body dysmorphia and gender identity troubles.  The whole process of being interviewed by a therapist for what amounted to permission to make my body the same as my heart was, in fact, so appalling to me, my future bride and I spent countless hours discussing the pros of heading out to California for surgery with the cons of recovering in a Best Western or Days Inn.

Finally, the possibility of recovery in my town, near my primary care physician, was more attractive than California, even with the mental health dog and pony show I knew I had to endure, so I made that first phone call to the coordinator of the clinic.

(I will continue with this thread in my next post).