Blood, Part I
You can hide your gender identity. You can repress it for a lifetime if you want. Or you can acknowledge who you are. You can change your blood.
I am changing. My blood is proof.
Let’s talk about my pre-HRT blood… which was super disappointing.
I gave a blood sample the day I started hormone therapy — I had just picked up the pills at the CVS across the street.
I expected my pre-HRT testosterone levels to be low and my estrogen high. I’m not joking — I had a fantasy that I had impacted ovaries.
622 ng/dL of testosterone
12 mg/Dl of estradiol
So, yeah. No long-concealed female genitalia. As I am starting my hormones, I am very much biologically a man.
Fuck.
Trans people used to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria. If you are gender dysphoric, you are so unhappy with the gender they assigned you at birth that you simply have to switch.
(How to identify a baby’s gender: Step one, see if it has a penis. Step two, live with the consequences.)
Here’s my problem: I’m not gender dysphoric. This whole thing would have been a lot easier if I were. But I never hated being a boy. Now, I did not want to be a boy. But I survived. Thrived at times. Passing as a boy got me through a Midwestern childhood. I played baseball badly. I played football worse. I wore size XL boys clothes — that’s what my mother bought for me. All the while I dreamt about wearing skirts, but I could pass.
My blood says I’m a man. I nailed the penis test. I’m not gender dysphoric. Which prompts the question:
What the fuck?
All I can say is…
I’m just this way.
+++++
On July 6, 1984, my mom gave birth to what I was certain was going to be my sister. Her name would be Sarah, and the three of us girls — me, my sister Anne, and Sarah — would have slumber parties, paint each other’s nails, and dress each other up.
That was the plan, anyway.
The phone rang.
“How is Sarah?” I asked.
“Well, actually, {dead name},” my dad said, in his gentle voice, “your mother just gave birth to a little baby boy.”
A six-year-old trans girl silently went through the stages of grief that day.
When I was 14 and my brother was 8, I proposed a game — we’d take turns picking a costume for someone else to wear, and they would be blindfolded so they couldn’t see it.
He agreed to play so long as I didn’t dress him like a girl.
I dressed him like a girl.
He pulled off his blindfold, looked down, saw the long, flowery silk dress I’d put on him, and started screaming.
He couldn’t stop crying. His friend was sent home. My mother projected her shame, showed me her disgust.
The house fell silent. Mom snuggled my brother in her bedroom.
I felt awful. I snuck into the room. I passed him a five-dollar bill.
I thought that might help.
Sometimes our rules about what behavior is acceptable, what kinds of expression will be tolerated, and what degree of shame will be visited on those who violate the unwritten rules are subtle.
Other times, they are not.
