back to school

Going back to school is always an adjustment, whether you’re coming from summer, a different school, a different town, or especially a foreign country and the opposite gender. Several of my school advisors and professors whom I’ve talked to about re-adjusting to life at school have mentioned that our school doesn’t do a very good job of helping students re-integrate after studying abroad. And there most certainly is not a rule-book on how to adjust to going back to your previous school after six-months of gender transition which you began the summer before leaving to study on a different continent for a semester:

So, You’re Freaking Out Because You’ve Been Living as a Man for Six Months in a Foreign Country and Now You Have to go Back to the School Where Everyone Knew You as a Girl: A Transgender College-Student’s Guide to Navigating Awkward Situations and Surviving Multiple Strands of Culture-Shock All at Once Without Failing Out and Losing Your Scholarship.

If only

life is all about balance

Needless to say, it’s been a bit of a rough semester: more stressful while simultaneously much more relaxing than before I left. Before I get into the thick of it, let’s talk for a second about more ordinary reverse-culture-shock. First off, I did hardly any work while studying in Amsterdam apart from practicing; no papers, no projects, no assignments, no written homework to speak of, and I hardly spent any time in class. If you’ve ever gone to school in America, you know how drastically different our school system is here. And lemmetellyou, I had gotten pretty used to doing nothing but practicing and exploring outside of my largely discussion-based classes, so my first dose of reverse-culture shock came in the form of ominous piles of papers, projects, and other assignments that I quickly had to remind myself how to focus on completing. It really shouldn’t have been that difficult of an adjustment, right? I mean I had only been going to school in the US for the past 15 years… But you’d be surprised how easy it is to fall into the habit of reading novels in coffee shops and going to art museums as opposed to staying up until 3am to do hours of homework interrupted only by the occasional desperate late-night outing to Taco Bell.

I am extremely lucky to have such great and supportive friends, whose presence at school has made coming back a hell of a lot easier. They even practiced using my new name and male pronouns while I was gone. I mean, who could ask for more, seriously? And although they sometimes mess up, they are always quick to apologize and correct themselves. They’ve even tried to help me work through some of the transitioning issues I’ve faced since coming back. Luckily I’ve passed the point of TMI (Too Much Information) with most of my pals so we can talk about any issue I may need help with. One thing that’s come up in conversation several times is the topic of dating. And although we joke around about how difficult it is for us guys to find someone whom we can convince to be interested in us, I feel even more at a loss for what to do sometimes.

“Well, let’s go to a gay bar this weekend,” my friend suggested one night as a few of us were talking about how to get a date.

“Why…?” I asked, slightly confused.

“So you can, you know, meet people.”

“But I’m not gay,” I replied.

“Oh yeah,” he thought further, trying to come up with a solution.

Hmmm…

“Are there transgender bars?” My other friend asked.

“I don’t know, maybe,” I said.

“I mean, is that where you would go to meet people? Do you have like a…target

audience?”

“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

do you have this in a larger size?

We were stumped. Did I have a target audience? I don’t even know, but it was very nice of them to try and help. Plus I had more pressing issues to work about. Possibly the most visibly pressing issue I had upon returning to school, was the bathroom problem.

Public bathrooms are the worst. I think we can all agree on this. Being transgender, however, makes public bathrooms a nightmare. I don’t know firsthand about being a transgender woman and using the a public women’s room, but being a transguy and having to use public men’s rooms have made for some of the most revolting and anxiety-inducing experiences of my life. FIRST OF ALL, why are men’s restrooms so horridly wretched? There’s always pee on the toilet seat, hastily-drawn pictures of male genetalia on the walls, and an overwhelming stench that slithers into my nostrils and burns my eyebrows off and latches on to my hair and clothing with its spiny tendrils and drags along behind me for the rest of the day. #forrealthough

SECONDLY, men’s bathrooms just don’t have the necessary facilities for people in transition. There are no waste receptacles in the stalls in which to dispose of any feminine hygiene products (um HELLO can we talk about how terrifying it is to open a tampon in a stall in the men’s room?? And then you when you’re done with it there’s no where to throw it out, so you have to wrap it up in toilet paper and shove it in your pocket (gross) and wait to dispose of it until the next trash can you come across), there’s often not enough, if any, toilet paper in the stalls-- that is IF there’s a working stall available that hasn’t had the door beaten off or the lock broken. GOD I just absolutely DESPISE public men’s rooms. I thought it would be so great never having to wait in line to use the bathroom, but the women’s room (sadly) is WELL WORTH the wait compared to the men’s room.

ANYWAYS

For the first several weeks of the semester I was just too scared to use the public bathrooms at school: on top of all my anxiety about public bathrooms in general, I was sick of explaining myself and I dreaded being happened upon by someone who didn’t know I was transitioning and having to explain to them why I was in the men’s restroom. So, instead of facing my fear, I would run back to my dorm in between classes to use the bathroom. This, however, was not really a solution as it just made me consistently late to class.

Another adjustment I had to get used to was my new living situation. The dorms at school are gender-segregated, and I was afraid that if I explained my situation to reslife I would be thrown off campus and have nowhere to live upon my return from Amsterdam. Luckily, while working at camp over the summer I had met another transgender guy who began his physical transition at about the same time as me. And luckier still, he informed me while I was away that he was looking for a roommate for spring semester: he had been living with his girlfriend, but she was transferring to a different school. He hadn’t told reslife that he was transitioning, and so he had just been living in a suite with three other girls. I thought this was perfect: I could live on campus without coming out to everyone in residential life. Everything, however, was not as perfect as it had at first appeared.

Though he has started transitioning at roughly the same time as me, and had not been living as a man for even a year’s time, my roommate turned out—much to my surprise—to be kind of a misogynist. Yes, you read that correctly. The sexist comments he would make would take me so off guard that first that I felt like I was literally going to lose my balance. I overheard him talking on the phone one night: “haha yeah man, bitches should just learn when to SHUT UP, that’s what I’m sayin’, sometimes girls just shouldn’t be allowed to talk.”

um

excuse me

what?

Did you not spend the FIRST TWENTY YEARS of your life as a female? Being treated as a girl and then a woman? He told girls that his hands cured breast cancer, and on top of all that, he cheated on his fiance almost constantly. He didn’t try and hide it either! He told me one night about having a girl up to his room and how they “ended up” in bed together and how she just “ended up” on top of him and his hands “somehow” came to be on her ass and how “things just went crazy from there.” I mean, come on. And then his fiance would come and visit, and do his laundry, and get food for him, and wait for him all day while he was in class, and I just wanted to CUT EVERYONE. #dramatic

cut, strangle, whatever

At first this just absolutely baffled me. I just assumed that transgender people were the most sensitive and accepting (and overall best) people on earth, but I have to remember that everyone deals with their identity in a different way. Some transgender people want to be visible and active in trans civil rights, some want to go stealth and just live their lives happily, some trans people identify closely with the life they led before transition, some want to forget about the past, some trans people choose to defy gender stereotypes and roles, and some overcompensate by acting extra stereotypical in their gender role in order to not be questioned or disbelieved. And there are valid and respectable reasons for all of these ways to identify. At first I didn’t see why anyone who transitioned would want to be extremely male or extremely female, because that wasn’t the way I felt about myself--on the contrary, through transitioning I have come to feel that gender has little to no importance in society (or SHOULD have no importance), and that I don’t want or have to act in ways “appropriate” for my gender. It took me a little while to realize that not all trans people think this way. Transitioning is hard, I can see why some people might choose to act hyper-masculine in order to be categorized easily and instantly by other people as male, BUT unfortunately acting hyper-masculine basically equals acting like a jerk and objectifying women and such.

Despite the perceived convenience of this rooming opportunity, we we were just not a good roommate match, and OH YEAH ALMOST FORGOT my suitemate smoked and dealt weed out of our common room. One day as I was walking across campus back to my room after class, a friend approached me to say, “hey Miles, why are the police searching your room?” To which I replied I DUNNO PROBABLY CUZ OF THE GIRL DEALING DRUGS and ran off to discover that campus police had searched through my belongings, along with everyone else’s in our suite. (When I went and talked to reslife about this, they told me there was nothing they could do about it unless they literally saw her holding a joint up to her mouth and smoking it--even though EVERYONE on our floor could smell what was going on.)

everybody just act. natural.

SO BASICALLY I needed somewhere else to live.

I gathered my courage, frustration, and disgust and bundled them up into a neat little package and headed downstairs to the building director’s office.

I told her everything.

I told her that I was transitioning, and that I had chosen my roommate just because he was transgendered as well and that I was afraid of being kicked off campus and didn’t want to be homeless after study abroad. I asked (begged) her to check and see if there were any other rooms available ANYWHERE. But first, she wanted to ask me a few things.

LET ME JUST PAUSE HERE to say that this building director is one of the nicest and most helpful people on our campus, and so I don’t want you to think badly of her because of the questions she asked me, which at first angered me irrationally to the point of rage.

First she asked me if I would prefer to live with boys or girls, and I told her that I didn’t really have a preference based on gender, but rather that my comfort in any given living situation would really depend on the understanding and acceptance of my roommates.

Next she asked me if I liked boys or girls. This is where I started to cringe. I can see why she thought it might be valid to ask this question, since she was helping find me a new room at our private Catholic institution, but it’s not really considered a polite thing to ask someone in a professional situation.

you wanna repeat that?

I told her that I like girls.

"So are you gay or...?"

"Um, nope. I'm straight."

"Oh. Yeah. I guess you would be straight since you're a guy and you like girls."

"Yep."
...
Right

So basically, she wasn’t trying to be rude, but this conversation left me feeling offended and oddly violated and I was once again enveloped by unwarranted anger and felt as though I wanted to CUT EVERYONE. #dramatic #testosterone #GRR

Here’s the thing, I’m not the only transgendered person who goes to college and needs to live on campus (duh), and so this is something that professional institutions--especially schools--really need to start thinking about. Hopefully one day people working in schools and offices and such won’t need to go through LGBTQQIA sensitivity trainings, but for now these programs are an excellent and effective way to start learning about the needs of certain members of the work or school community.

In addition to feeling just plain stupid that the building director has asked me if I like boys or girls, I was BEYOND SICK of explaining myself to others. I was so apprehensive upon returning to school that I got all worked up every time I had to tell someone that I was transitioning and that I was going by a different name. Now it’s a different story--I’ve largely stopped caring about being afraid of awkwardness--but several months ago, I was terrified and anxious daily.

On the first day of one of my classes this semester the professor asked us all to go around the room and tell him our name, our major, and something to remember us by. I instantly became anxious--how would I explain why my supposed name didn’t match my name on the roster?? I had added his class late and hadn’t sent him an e-mail explaining that I was transitioning. I sweated with anticipation as my turn approached. The professor was thoughtfully taking several minutes to talk to each student in front of the class as they introduced and shared some interesting fact about themselves. I thought the conversation would come to a stand-still as a girl several places in front of me revealed that she had to try a caesar salad at every restaurant she attended, but the professor was able to talk to her about salads for a substantial time. I devised a plan. Ok, I thought, I’ll talk about studying abroad in Amsterdam and playing music and he’ll ask me all about it and he won’t even have time to wonder why my name doesn’t match the name on the roster.

WRONG.

When it came to my turn I said, “my name is Miles, it says Madelaine but it’s wrong on the roster,” and then talked about travelling to Amsterdam, thinking that I was feeding him lots of intriguing material to ask me about. But, when I finished all he said was, “wow Miles, how interesting, can you tell us how you got to Miles from Madelaine?”

“Umm...well...” I began hesitantly, desperately trying to think of a way out of coming out in front of our entire class.

But then,

I just went for it.

“Well, I’m transgendered. I started transitioning from female to male last summer,”

and went for it some more

“and so I decided to pick a male name to go by, and I wanted it to start with the same letter as my given name so that it wouldn’t be too hard for my friends and family to get used to,”

and just kept on going

“and I’m not really sure if I want to change my name legally forever but I figured that going by a clearly male name would make it easier for people to get used to the idea of me transitioning use male pronouns when referring to me and so that people would realize that I was serious about transitioning.”

brakes? what are brakes?

The professor looked surprised, but not shocked. After what seemed like 3 hours he replied; “Well, thank you for being candid, I appreciate your honesty.” And I was just on such a roll that I apparently couldn’t stop! “Yeah,” I said,” I mean I could have tried to come up with some lie or story or something but I figured that it would just be easier to tell the truth.” He then told me about a book about trans civil rights that he had particularly liked and moved on to the next student.

This particular point in time is when my disregard for what other’s thought sparked noticeably and I truly started to let go of my anxieties about my identity. But confidence is a lifelong process in which there are many ups and downs and realizations and let-downs and which I am still very much in the midst of.

I was not ready, however, to explain myself to everyone I came across at school.

Our school’s cafeteria is named the Orleans Room, or “O-R” for short. Yes, for most of freshman year I couldn’t help but imagine an operating room every time someone asked me to grab lunch. BUT ANYWAYS. The OR employs many very nice people whom students sadly do not always treat very nicely in return. Some students don’t even acknowledge their presence, which I find especially odd when it comes to being swiped in for meals because you stand right up next to the women and hand her your ID so how weird is it to not even look her in the face and say hello?? It is sad that the simple fact that I greeted this woman and asked her how her day was going made us fast friends. Ever since second semester freshman year I’ve made it a point to say hello or how’s it going whenever I walk into the OR, and she in return says, how’s it going baby? or what’s up girl? For the past two years we’ve had a similar conversation every day, and for the past two years she has believed me to be a girl.

Now, after I came back from Amsterdam I e-mailed all my teachers and advisors and such and explained that I was transitioning, so why was I stumped as to how to explain myself to the woman who swiped me in for dinner every night? While it was difficult to tell the big, important people in my life about my transition—because I was nervous about what they would think and didn’t want to be treated differently in a bad way—I’ve found it peculiarly difficult to come out to acquaintances and other people whom I’m not as close to. I mean, how do you bring that up in casual conversation? How do I explain to someone that I hardly know and only ever talk to for 8 seconds at a time that I’m not actually a girl anymore. #awkward And I keep on wondering to myself if she’s noticed the changes that all my close friends and family have: does she think it’s odd that my chest is flat and my voice has lowered half an octave?

I encountered the same problem with my dentist when I went for a cleaning over winter break. My appointment was made under my given name and, living in an extremely small town as I do, the receptionist recognized me as soon as I walked in and greeted me with a hearty Maddy! as did the dentist. Again, I don’t know my dentist very well, we’re not friends. I don’t particularly want to explain my transition to her, and I wouldn’t even know how to. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I go in for an appointment with stubble and an even deeper voice.

Here’s the thing about transitioning, it’s a very personal thing, and our bodies are our own private matter. But, at the same time, transitioning becomes very public, and it has made me aware of myself and my body in a very public way. Transgenderism is visible sometimes but then not other times, and transitioning is also kind of a big deal, but then at the same time it’s not at all. I don’t want to explain myself to every Joe Schmoe I’ve ever met, but sometimes I feel like I have to, or like I’m supposed to. And often times, I’m just at a total loss for how to come out to near-strangers or casual acquaintances.

In the stairwell the other week en route to my dorm room, I happened on a somewhat awkward fellow whom I knew vaguely from music classes and had only spoken to a handful of times. He stopped me as he stood in the doorway:

“Uhhh, hey. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“So, when did Maddy become Miles?”

I immediately became extremely and rather irrationally angry.

“Over the summer!” I spat back, as if he was the most idiotic human on the face

of the planet. I stomped up the stairs towards my room.

this is not my amused face

As if! I thought in an outraged huff. As if it were that easy! As if I could simply “change” from one to another! What was he even really asking me?, I wondered in all my frustration. Was he asking when I started using my new name? When I realized I was transgender? When I began my physical transition? When I started the grueling process of coming out? As if there were one singular point in time when I definitively “switched” from Maddy to Miles!! #!!!!!!

After several minutes I calmed down and realized that perhaps I shouldn’t really be so livid over this. After a bit of reflection, I realized that I had become angry because I had assumed from his question that he thought that transitioning was some easy little task that one could complete without effort in a moment or so. Plus, I was sick of people insinuating that I was becoming a different person or that the very essence of my being had changed. But this, of course, was silly of me to assume. He had merely been curious. Sometimes I have to remind myself that people are not being offensive or belittling my transition, but rather that they are merely curious.

That’s the other thing about transgenderism, it’s not something that everyone knows about. I forget sometimes how little your average person knows about the entire transitioning process and all that it encompasses. And these are the times that I have to tell myself to calm the eff down, because every awkward encounter such as this is really a chance to educate people. And the more people know, the easier transitioning and living as a transgender individual will be in the future.