haircut

Earlier this summer I went and got my first professional hair cut. Ever since I was very little my mother cut my hair, and since I went off to college I’ve had a friend do it for me.

I actually had quite a bit of hair when I initially started school, it was long and quite frizzy; the volume was exacerbated by the extreme New Orleans humidity. One night in late February, I decided I wanted to get rid of all my hair. I had wanted short hair since childhood but had never mustered up enough courage to just cut it all off. My friend agreed that she would help me shave my head, much to the dismay of all our other friends. So after procuring clippers I locked us in my room, took a shot of tequila, and told her to go at it. Just as she was about to shear my untamed mane, our quiet and mild mannered friend knocked on the door. She had been violently shaken from a nap and urged by the others to “save me” from certain disaster.

“Please, just let me in.”

“No, go away, I want short hair and you can’t stop me!”

“I won’t stop you, I just want to help you.”

My friend and I agreed that we didn’t actually know what we were doing and that a little bit of guidance couldn’t hurt.

Long story short, my quiet artistic friend gave me a wonderful (and short) haircut and has been cutting my hair ever since.

i was skeptical at the time

UNTIL, earlier this summer, when I got my first professional haircut. #dejavu #backtothestory

Right. So I decided that a men’s haircut might help me pass more easily, and looked around until I found a nice little barber shop in Uptown. (My friend suggested Supercuts while we were driving around getting frustrated at our attempt to find a suitable establishment, and I had to explain to her that that is where white people go to get mediocre haircuts.)

I knew this little barber shop was perfect as soon as I saw it. My friend and I walked in and the short balding barber told us he would be with us in just a minute. As he finished barbering his current customer I looked up “men’s hipster haircuts” on my phone so that I could show him what I wanted.

When I sat down in the hair-cutting chair I asked him for a “typical men’s haircut, but longer on top, like this.” As he draped the smock over me and ran a comb through my locks I began to look around. What I saw made me mildly terrified. I had been so distracted by the prospect of looking good that I had failed to notice the abundant right-wing propaganda that covered the walls. Pictures of Bush, Rush Limbaugh quotes, and a cartoon that read, “You’re going to vote for Obama? Do you have your head up your ass?” were taped to the mirror directly in front of me, framing my nervous twinge of a feigned smile.

Oh dear god.

I was certain for a minute that he was just going to slit my throat with one of his razors.

And I couldn’t help but wonder, was I passing??

Was he perceiving me as male?

Or as a lesbian?

Or maybe just a masculine girl??

When he asked me how I wanted my sideburns done I thought I was in the clear. Sideburns are just a guy thing…right?

it's a guy thing

I said I didn’t know how I wanted them done, whichever would look better. #rookiemistake

He stopped cutting my hair, tilted his head, and looked at me; “Are you going for a real feminine look?”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Fail.

There was my answer. I was not passing.

“Oh, uh, no no.” I tried not to sound embarrassed.

I mean, I should have known that he would be able to tell, since he was going to see my (hairless) neck and face up close.

Later on in the haircut, he asked me if I wanted him to touch up the back, and after I replied yes please, he told me ok, but he usually didn’t do that for women.

As he grabbed his straight razor he added “Don’t move or I’ll cutchya!”

Hahaha…. #rushlimbaughwouldlikethat

When he was finished he told me that there was only one other woman whom he also gave a touch-up in the back, except that she had a flat-top. “A real flat top!” he exclaimed in amazement.

He said that she had several kids and was very “athletic.” (ha)

He was actually a very nice man, and he gave me the best damn haircut I ever had in my life! Which is why I went back a second time…

When I went back for my second haircut, there were two other barbers as well; a woman barber cutting someone’s hair, and an elderly man reading the newspaper. So, I sat down in the same chair and asked the same barber for the same haircut. My barber and the old man were making cracks at one another as he began to cut my hair.

He remembered me from the last time, and so I told him how well the first haircut had worked out for me. To this, the elderly man commented jokingly, “Hey you cut his hair once and he came back a second time?? He’s a brave young man.” #youhavenoidea

The elderly man and woman barber referred to me as “him” and “young man” several times after that, and I could tell my barber was starting to feel awkward. I was feeling the familiar twinge of nervous-awkwardness myself, because although I like passing as male (duh), what I absolutely do not enjoy, is when I am passing and something happens to make someone “realize” my biological gender, because then they either:

1. Apologize profusely.

2. Avoid talking to me because they feel embarrassed/awkward/disgusted.

3. Start to treat me differently/extremely nicely, because they feel bad.

4. Make some weird comment about how they couldn’t tell because my hair is so short or something like that, basically implying that it is my fault because I don’t present myself in a way that makes my biological gender obvious. For example...

Over Christmas break, before I had come out to anyone at home, I went down to the gas station to purchase lottery tickets to give to my grandmother as a Christmas gift. When I got up to the front of the line the cashier was finishing up a conversation with a police officer, and when I told him I would like to purchase some lottery tickets he said "You better get out of my face! How old are you??" Shock overshadowed the anger I should have felt and so I answered "19..." I handed him my license.
"You don't look nineteen. Are you a man or a woman?" and then, as he actually looked at my ID, "Oh, well, I couldn't tell, uh, you know..."
The policeman butted in, trying to make up for this man's rudeness; "it's just the short hair, don't worry about it..."
"Yeah, you should grow your hair out because, you know, how is anyone supposed to tell?" replied the RUDEST CASHIER I HAVE EVER HAD THE DISPLEASURE OF INTERACTING WITH.
Right...
There were so many things wrong with this situation, I don't know if I even want to get into it. He was basically telling me that I needed to conform to gender stereotypes regardless of how I would like to present myself so that others could have the ease of immediately judging me based on my outside appearance.

SO ANYWAY, I was getting anxious along with my barber, because I really wasn’t in the mood to go to awkward-town.

to awkward town! 

i think we're already there.

Unfortunately, my haircut was finished much more quickly that before and didn’t turn out nearly as good as the first one. As I got up to leave, he leaned in and said “you really should consider the flat-top, it’s something that looks good on a lot of women.”

I have encountered many situations similar to this, and when I think back on them I wonder, what should I have done?

Should I have explained what was going on to my barber? I mean, I don’t feel the need to come out to every random person I encounter each day. Actually Mr. Deli man you can call me SIR and while you’re at it I’d like that sliced extra thin thank you throw in some potato salad as well have a nice day.

I’m still not entirely sure, but I do hope that as I continue transitioning it will become easier and easier to go stealth with strangers and those who I don’t feel the need to pour my heart and soul out to. I would like to continue to see the same barber, and so I’ll just have to see how it goes once I start showing up with facial hair. 

going home

Good News!

Turns out the TSA agents aren’t looking at our privates when they send us through the x-ray scanner machine. How do I know this? Because even after I was “randomly selected” (is it still random when it happens to you every time?) to stand with my hands up in the scanner machine for a little dose of unnecessary radiation, they still thought I was a man. How do I know this? Because they had the male TSA agent pat me down. Which, in and of itself, was not a cause for celebration, but hey, I’ll take it!

Before I cut my hair and started binding I was regularly “randomly selected” for an additional pat down whenever I made my way through airport security. Usually a portly older woman would check my arms, legs, and chest for who-knows-what, but on my most recent trip home I was addressed as “sir” and checked for explosives by a mustachioed man.

Progress!

Maybe the next time I fly I’ll try wearing my packer. I have avoided wearing it through airport security for fear of appearing as though I am trying to smuggle something on to the plane in my pants. Can you imagine? Now that would be awkward. “Excuse me sir but we’re going to need you to empty your pockets completely.”

don't touch me there

Anyway…

What I really want to talk about is going home. My trip back to New England was actually quite enjoyable, because I passed very easily the entire time; the flight attendants called me sir, someone on the plane called my “guy,” and someone else referred to me as a young man. So, needless to say, I was in quite a good mood. Actually being at home has been a bit more difficult than expected.

I have been out to my parents for a while, and I had asked them as well as my close friends from home to call me Miles and to use male pronouns when referring to me. I also called my sisters a few days before I flew home and came out to them. So I was hoping that everyone at home would just call me Miles and refer to me as a boy and that everything would be easy, but this was a bit unrealistic. #yeahyouthink??

Of course I understand that it is weird for my close friends and family to call me by a new name and that it will take some time for them to get used to it. And I know that they are trying. My mother and cousin even came up with the idea of the name-and-pronoun-jar, like a swear jar, but instead of owing money after cursing, they would owe five cents for every incorrect pronoun and ten cents for forgetting to use the name Miles. It seems to me, however, that this worked better when I wasn’t actually around (they started before I arrived.) Which actually makes sense when I think about it; it’s a bit easier to refer to me as Miles the boy when I’m miles (ha) away than it is to look me in the face and call me something other than what my family has associated my visage with for years and years. Several hours after telling me about the money jar idea, my family just resorted to calling me “M.”

The problem really lies with me, because I am SO IMPATIENT. I wanted everything to be different as soon as I stepped off that plane, I want facial hair and a low voice and a flat chest RIGHT NOW #morelikeyesterday

But I have to wait.

Because it’s a very long process. #waytoolong #thatswhatshesaid

What I REALLY can’t wait for is having a flat chest. Each time I go to the beach or walk down to the docks to go for a swim, I am so indescribably jealous of all my guy friends; walking around with the shirts off, swimming in shorts, getting a nice even tan, and then drying off and putting their shirts back on without having to wear anything underneath. It’s all that I’ve ever wanted.

I cannot even begin to describe how uncomfortable it is for me to live with breasts. Even though half the world lives happily as women, I feel as though I am carrying all this extra weight around, as if it is not a part of me but something merely attached to my front, pulling me down, getting in the way. To me, they’re just completely useless. It’s like when I had long hair; I didn’t own it, I didn’t want it, and I certainly didn’t know what to do with it. I just carried it around everyday even though it annoyed me to no end, because I thought that that was what girls were supposed to do.

I dream of how free I will feel after chest surgery, how light it will be and how I will finally feel like I am in control of my entire body. I’ve always been extremely jealous of flat chests, but now that I have a name for what I’m going through and know that’s it’s actually possible to reach my goal (now that I’m closer to being happy) it seems like I am even further away.

This transition is going to be quite the lesson in patience. But I’ve never wanted anything more, so it must be worth it. 

headed in the right direction

summer camp

Working with kids is so much fun, especially when they ask you what your gender is forty million times each day.

not amused

So this summer I had a lovely job working as a camp counselor at a sports day camp for kids ages five through thirteen. I was planning on presenting as male at work but that didn’t pan out. It was my fault really; I was just going to go into work, introduce myself as a male and let that be that. I figured the kids wouldn’t notice, and if my coworkers did I would just explain to them what was going on.

Yeah…

Unfortunately I did not think this through nearly enough. #thankscaptainobvious

So anyways, it dawned on me a couple weeks before camp started that I should probably let my boss know what was going on, and ask him if it would be ok for me to present as male at camp. SOOO I called him up on the phone, told him what was going on, and then listened nervously for his reply. After a long awkward silence, he told me that he was going to call be back next week. When we talked again he told me that he would need to use me as a female counselor because each group of kids would be instructed by a boy and a girl, and so he had purposefully hired a certain number of counselors of each gender. He asked me if that would be ok, and if I would still be able to work if I had to act as a girl, and I replied “yeah that’s fine, that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life.”

…TMI? Probably, but he was really nice about it.

awkward

On the first day of camp I walked up to my group of kids and asked them their names and to tell me a little bit about themselves. I introduced myself to them simply as “Maddy,” and as I showed interest in what they said to me the kids immediately opened up and told me all about their teachers at school, their favorite sports and the annoying things their brother did yesterday. As one of the boys in my group told me a story he was interrupted by another enthusiastic camper, to which he replied, “hey hold on, I’m trying to talk to him,” as he gestured in my direction. I felt the sting of apprehension travel up my spine; a couple of the kids looked confused, but the majority of them noticed nothing and kept on chattering. I decided not to correct him because A. I was nervous about making a scene, B. I wanted to kids to like me and was afraid that if I corrected them they wouldn’t (even though obviously they were going to find out that I was a “girl”…)

Later that day we were to head into the locker rooms to change before going swimming. (This was one of the main reasons each group had a male and female counselor, to supervise the campers in the locker room.) As I followed my four nine-year-old female ankle-biters into the women’s locker room they turned around and looked at me in confused disgust/ apprehensive amusement. “What the heck??” one girl giggled. I rolled my eyes and followed them in.

I changed into my bathing suit (swim trunks and a sports bra) in a stall. And when I walked out I was met with an array of offensive and startling reactions:

“What the heck is wrong with you?”

“That’s DISGUSTING.”

“What’s wrong with your chest? Oh my god I feel so sorry for you!”

One girl simply shrieked.

I could feel my cheeks burn red with embarrassment as I told them sternly to finished getting dressed. When we exited the locker rooms into the pool area I was met with a similar but less intense reaction from the boys.

“What’s with the bathing suit top?”

“What’s that on your chest?”

I played dumb, like I didn’t know that they all had obviously thought I was a boy.

Well almost all of them. For some reason one girl had instantly been able to read my biological gender. For the remainder of the day this girl asked me such questions as “Do you ever wear dresses?” “Why do you have short hair?” and “Are you ever going to get your ears pierced?” To which I replied in a jumble of embarrassed and annoyed mumbles.

The thing about summer camp is that despite its innocent visage, it turned out to be quite the gendered institution. At least the one I was working at was. Or maybe it was just the age the kids were at. The girls would only talk to, eat with, and walk next to other girls, and the same with the boys. They complained when they had to play on the same team as someone of the opposite gender (every f**king game), and tried to display their superiority over the opposite sex with such comments as “dodgeball is for men,” and “boys smell bad.” In fact, it reminded me of why I hated middle school and most of the other kids around me so much when I had been young. I tried to challenge them to think outside of their stereotypes, but it was a daunting task to say the least. I remember one day in particular when we were all sitting in arts and crafts and the girls were gushing over Justin Beiber, “What would you do if Justin Beiber walked in through that door RIGHT NOW??” “OHEMGEE I would ask him to MARRY ME and then I would kiss him!” “On the LIPSSS??” I was sitting at the boys’ table (ha) when one suggested “Let’s KILL him.”

“Why do you want to kill Justin Beiber?” I asked.

“Because I hate him, and he’s gay,” replied one boy.

Oh shit.

This was bad stuff.

What could I say to make them understand…?

“Hey, hey, guys, calm down. That’s not any reason to kill someone…”

They looked at me in awkward confusion and then went back to painting.

As I mentioned before, trying to make kids un-learn the gender (and other) stereotypes constantly shoved down their throat by society since (and even before) they were born wasn’t going to be easy.

As the days went on the kids slowly started to think of me as female. Well, some of them. I was amazed that even after seeing me in the pool, in my sports bra, dozens of times, some of them were still convinced I was male. After about a week one girl asked me, “why are you coming into the girls locker room? You’re a boy.” Even today, on the last day of camp, one of the boys pointed to his friend at lunch and said “Maddy, he thinks you’re a girl.” My co-counselor rolled his eyes shot me a look like stupid f**kers and laughed to himself. (We love them, really, but after six weeks they do start to get old.)

So here’s the problem with the kids thinking I was male. I mean it should be a compliment, right? I passed very easily to a large group of people, even if they were munchkins. The problem was, I had to “correct” them by telling them I was a “girl.” I was asked to present as female at work, and so every time a kid asked me if I was a boy, or asked if they were in the wrong bathroom, or referred to me as “he,” I had to CORRECT them, except I wasn’t really correcting them, I was LYING. It was bogus, it made me feel weird, and I didn’t like it. #thatswhatshesaid

I kept on thinking, why am I getting these little buggers get to me? They’re kids. But for some reason their questioning and teasing bothered me just a little. I have never wanted to hit a child before the other day when a six-year-old boy would not give up arguing with me about my gender.

CHILD: Are you a girl??

ME: Yes.

CHILD: Really??

ME: Yes…

CHILD: No you’re not, you’re a boy.

ME: No I’m not.

CHILD: Yes you are.

ME: Nope. I’m actually a girl.

CHILD: No, you’re not.

ME: Stop telling me what my gender is. #arguingwithachild

CHILD: You look like a boy.

ME: Ok

CHILD: You have boy hair.

ME: Girls can have short hair.

CHILD: You sound like a boy.

ME: You sound like a girl.

CHILD: No. You look like a man.

ME: Ok

CHILD: You’re a woman who looks like a man.

ME: Alright, you’re being rude now. Stop it.

CHILD: No I’m serious (except it sounded like seeweeus), you look like a boy.

ME: Ok, I know. But seriously, stop.

CHILD: No, I’m serious, you look like a man.

ME: I’m serious too, go back to your group before you get into trouble.

CHILD: I’M SEEWEEUS!

ME: OK SO AM I STOP IT.

we were just playing with fake blood I would never hurt a child I promise

I swear I could have smacked him. Not my most professional moment.

I’m not sure why this kind of exchange bothered me so much, but every time it happened I felt anywhere from a tinge of aggravation to fuming embarrassment. Maybe it was because I had to repeatedly incorrectly correct the kids by lying about my gender identity, or maybe it was simply the constant reminder of the fact that I am not comfortable with my biological gender and currently inhabit the grey space between male and female.

In any case, these types of exchanges got on my nerves every couple of days, but other than that working as a camp counselor was quite enjoyable. Working with kids is challenging but definitely rewarding. And although comments and confrontations regarding my gender will increase in awkwardness and even malice, at least I am done pretending to be a cisgender female. Now when I correct people, I can stand up for myself and correct them CORRECTLY.

Hooray!

realization

At four years old, I walked up to my mother and asked hopefully: “Mama, everyone has some boy and some girl in them right?” I don’t remember if or how she replied, but I do remember my follow-up statement: “but I’m mostly boy.”

Realizing that I am a transgender human has definitely been a big step forward for me, but at the same time, it has also been a journey into the past. When I was a young la(d/ss) I knew that I wanted to be a boy, even though I wasn’t entirely clear on what the differences between boys and girls were. I knew that I wanted to wear “boy” clothes, play “boy” games, and I definitely knew that I abhorred the feminine assumptions that others placed upon me.

Middle school was a different story altogether. AS IF middle school wasn’t BAD ENOUGH already, #theworst, it was around this time that I started trying to suppress my gender non-conformity. Society made it QUITE CLEAR that these sorts of thoughts were frowned upon, and so I tried really hard to be happy/ok/not-completely-disappointed-in-every-single-way with being a girl:

I bargained with myself,

      it's not SO bad now, is it?

I reasoned with myself,

      come on now, just relax, this is crazy talk...impossible dreams.

I ignored myself,

      what? problem? there's no problem here...

to no avail.

Puberty was a nightmare, quite literally. I had nightmares about what was happening to my body: you mean I’m going to bleed? For a week at a time? And not die? WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?? I was a ten-year-old insomniac, not entirely sure what I was so durn ANXIOUS about all the time, but extremely anxious none the less.

I tried several times to deliberately follow the gendered guidelines that society had set forth for me: I bought girl clothes and read seventeen magazine #friendsdontletfriendsread17 and talked about cute boys with my girlfriends, but it was no use. After a while I assumed that I had simply been given a raw deal, and that I had to just get over it. I truly thought for a long while that being female just sucked for everyone, and that it was an accepted fact of life, and that all the women of the world just found a way to deal with it.

It wasn’t even until college that I learned that being transgendered, was a thing. In the back of my mind I knew that people got sex changes, and I had wondered a few times what that might be like, but I never thought that my impossible dream could ever come even close to being fulfilled. After watching several (many) documentaries about transgender individuals, I began to wonder about myself. I thought gee, if someone had explained all this to me when I was a kid, I probably would have taken those puberty blockers and started on some cross-gender hormones… I finally stopped suppressing all my feelings about gender and allowed myself to once again want what I had always wanted: to be a boy! It was so simple, and after the initial shock, “WTF is going on?? What is WRONG with me??” it made perfect sense…

…Ok, it sounds really simple when I put it like that. In reality I wrestled with the though for quite a while before I was comfortable admitting even to myself that I wanted to be male. I flipped out. JUST as I was settling in to being really comfortable with being gay, I realized that my biological gender did not match my mind. It took many nights of tears and talks with my therapist to accept the reality of my situation, but now things are far more clear than they have been in a very long time. And so now I am setting off on a cognitive-societal-personal adventure to do EXACTLY what I knew I wanted to do at four years old, and if I could high-five my four-year-old self right now I would. 

This is for you, little M!

 

intro

 Hello world!

My name is Miles. I am a female to male (FtM) transgender individual, and I will be using this blog to document my gender transition. I am a nineteen-year-old music student living in New Orleans. Life has gotten a lot less (and more) confusing since I realized I was transgendered, and despite the doubt of many others--and occasionally myself--I have discovered that gender transition is exactly what I need to do. I am pre-op, and have been on Testosterone for just about two weeks. I hope you find this page useful and/or interesting.