
*Editor’s note: I wrote this piece back in mid-January. Before I had my vulvoplasty, I tried to speak to a number of women about their GRS experiences, and more often than not I was told essentially “that happened.” This frustrated me—how could you forget something so significant as GRS recovery? I decided that in my own recovery period I would be proactive and note down incidents and feelings as they cropped up. In the intervening months since I wrote* Sutra *I’ve come to understand the  perspectives of the women I spoke with because I've noticed my own encroaching haziness around the experience. I’m glad I made the effort to record what I could here, both so that I have something to share if anyone were to ask me about my own GRS, and for my own sake.*

<hr/>

*The patient is a 35 y.o. transgender individual who desires gender-affirming genital surgery. After discussion of available options, the patient elected to undergo vulvoplasty. The patient met all WPATH criteria and provided informed consent after discussion of risks, benefits and alternatives.*

A mentor of mine once shared how she cried tears of joy after waking from surgery, relieved to have anatomy that finally matched what she knew about herself. Several hours after my anesthesia wears off, only one clear thought crosses my mind: thank god I won’t have to dilate. Weeks later, another friend in recovery (who does have to dilate) shares with me her same disappointment from not experiencing a moment of catharsis. We recline next to each other on my bed, sizing up the mountain of recovery that we are, at least, climbing together.

*After excising the scrotal skin, obtaining hemostasis throughout, we deepened the incision through the dartos tissue in the midline towards the urethra and bulbospongiosus muscle. We continued our dissection to expose the bulbospongiosus and corpus spongiosum.*

For the fourth time today I clamber slowly out of my hospital bed onto an awkward wall-mounted toilet in a freezing concrete bathroom. Before I can go home, I’m supposed to void my bladder into a plastic “hat” that rests in the toilet bowl, but again I only manage to produce a shallow pink puddle. I feel around for the muscle that will let me fucking pee oh god I need to pee so bad please please don’t let them catheterize me again fuck fuck. All the old buttons and levers to initiate the process are still there, but they don’t seem to pass the information along. The floodgates finally open when I return to the comfort of my bathroom at home, and it takes me another three days to reliably learn how to pee again.

*The left corpus cavernosum was opened down to the level of the proximal crus. The same was done on the right side, and the urethra transected just beneath the glans and separated from the corpora.*

My phantom dick has started slithering around on its own. Sometimes it banks right as if pulled by my bandages, sometimes it’s flopped up and airing out. Other times I feel poking or tugging, like when, after sleepy sex, you wake up the next morning and have to peel your underwear out of your sticky penis tip. I reach to adjust but there’s nothing there, just pad and gauze. I slowly haul myself out of bed and as I stand blood rushes to the area, feeling like the World’s Shortest Rock-Hard Erection. I look around, embarrassed that someone might see my bulge, but of course there’s nothing to see. It will take weeks before my clitoral hood starts to look like anything other than David Cronenberg’s idea of a tuck.

*Markings were made on the midline dorsal glans and 1cm to each side. The 15 blade was then used to incise the glans along these lateral markings and at midline, and the central bulk of the glans tissue was excised, leaving the corona intact and dividing through the urethral meatus ventrally.*

My PA says that I need to start washing my vulva during my twice-daily showers. Showering is already enough of a challenge because the water stings my rash from the wound dressings and I keep losing bars of soap to the distant floor. Pushing through the ache from standing, I lather and gingerly work my fingers down my swollen labia. A brush across a suture line causes signals to skip radially around my labia minora. My middle finger grazes the puffy ridge of my clitoral hood, and a wave of pleasure briefly travels up my body. Bent over and unsteady as I rinse off, I cry happy tears. She’s mine.

*The neoclitoris was then affixed to the corporal body stumps with interrupted 3-0 Vicryl approximately at the level of the adductor tendon. Next, the apex of the fold of the tunica albuginea/neurovascular bundle was sutured from its edge bilaterally to the fascia overlying the pubic symphysis to help keep the neoclitoris in position.*

So many friends have come to visit, and my metamour gives me a vagina-shaped pillow as a recovery gift. I name her Yoni, and keep her with me at all times. I’m usually not one for stuffed toys, but something about this one makes me feel comforted. The one time I forget Yoni while paying the living room couch a visit, my cat, in an attempt to watch TV with me, decides to parkour off my pubic mound to reach the couch back. I’m more startled than hurt, and I scream, quickly ripping my underwear open to check for claw marks. No harm done, but from then on I cannot rest without Yoni placed firmly on my lap.

*The penile skin was inverted and pulled downward over the clitoral complex, then incised sharply at midline to match the clitoral complex. The clitoral complex was then pulled through. 3-0 Vicryl suture was used to approximate the inferior edges of the urethral meatus to the inferior aspect of the penile skin flap.*

I’m going stir crazy from weeks of bed rest, and the room I’m in is starting to smell like after-Christmas farts. My wife suggests we get dinner at one of my favorite restaurants on the other side of the river, the one with the padded booths and generous Italian sandwiches. I unexpectedly tear up in overwhelm, threatened by the prospect of leaving the house when I can barely sit in a chair for more than ten minutes at a time. The world seems too unpredictable, and I feel more delicate than I ever thought I would be. We make it to dinner the following week.

*The tip of the perineal flap was sutured to the perineal body with 3 2-0 Vicryl sutures. The skin edges of the perineal flap were inset to the edges of the penile skin flap with interrupted 3-0 Vicryl sutures.*

Since arriving home from the hospital I’ve found myself hunching over while I stand or walk, but today while getting dressed I straighten up in the full length mirror and take in the view. Over the past 3 years I’ve seen a lot in this mirror: a pilot episode about a girl I would soon meet, a roller coaster drama tussling with the residue of masculinity, a psychedelic art film on primal dykedom. I look into the mirror, and this time it seems to be showing a worn VHS copy of “The Blob.” Not a rerun I want to watch, so I put on my baggiest sweater and slouch away.

*The skin edges were reapproximated using 3-0 Vicryl suture. The labia minora definition was then created using interrupted horizontal mattress sutures of 3-0 vicryl through the preputial flap out to the natural sulcus of the penile skin tube.*

My chatroom friends are talking about how what was old is new again. Some influencers are entertaining the idea that once you’ve had The Surgery you’re effectively cis because your body and self are in alignment. This same idea had been voiced much earlier by some members of the gender community in the 1990s by people who saw “trans” as more aligned with what we might call “genderfluid” today. As I read the discussion, stretched out in bed with gauze tucked into my shallow dimple, I picture my next physical with my doctor, or a future run-in with the TSA. I feel both queerer than ever, and also wary of how my peers might now think of me.

*The wound was then covered with Adaptic nonadherent gauze. Fan-folded roll gauze and an ABD pad were placed and taped down in an "X" pattern with 3 inch wide elastic tape from the buttocks to the abdomen.*

The mirror’s story today is simple and gentle: it’s about a woman in her 30s who has a body, which, though currently marred by sutures and scars and rashes and inflammation, looks more or less right to her. I stand up a little taller, in spite of the strain.

*The patient was taken out of the lithotomy position, transferred off the table and taken to the recovery room in stable condition. There were no surgical or anesthetic complications.*


Sutra


*Editor's note: I have had* such *a busy past few weeks! Last weekend [Alana](https://gliff.org/) and I went up to Seattle for the [TRANSplants Zine](https://www.instagram.com/transplants_zine) issue #3 release party, and I found the experience challenging to my creative practice (and like, personal philosophy?) in a number of good but unexpected ways. One of my takeaways is I want to try writing less for the blog (at least in the short term) and instead focus on pieces I can take to open mics. Hypertext can feel like a bit of crutch at times, and I want to see what sort of writing I produce when factoring in time and the spoken word.*

*With that in mind, here's my first attempt at a 5-minute read, with some edits for the web. I'm hoping to find a mic in Portland where I can take this soon.*

<hr/>

July 2004. After lurking for several weeks, Social sciences professor Susan Driver finally contacts the LiveJournal group called “Birls”—a “community dedicated to boyish/androgynous girls.” Driver is researching how queer teen girls form subcultures online, and the birls’ interactions have shaken her understanding of gender and sexuality. The birls are more than happy to answer Driver’s questions about what exactly it means to be a birl, and why they all seem to be so horny for each other. Driver notes:

> Commenting on the sexual allure of birls becomes a daily ritual of birl members, reinforcing self-confidence and collective bonding[…] Such affirmation unites this community as a place to find sexual acceptance. Their mutual belonging rests on a mutual appreciation of their appeal as birls.

June 2019. Sol Brager, a birl alum, publishes a comic about Birls titled “[LiveJournal Made Me Gay](https://thenib.com/livejournal-made-me-gay/).” Brager writes, “we were, even if we didn’t realize it, constantly negotiating the borders of birlhood as an identity, as a community of belonging, and as a community of desire.”

September 1998. TransGender Forum webmistress Cindy Martin puts the finishing touches on her latest “pictorial” in CorelDRAW, then uploads it to the worldwide web. A pictorial is a collage of glamour photos of a specific TGForum member, showcased as a “special feature” on the site. Martin links each member’s pictorial to their ad in the personals section, a page replete with photos of every TS, TV, CD, and TG who has the means to get online. Though many members call themselves heterosexual, being able to peruse each other’s flirtatious photos seems to be one of the most important functions of TGForum. The degree of care that Martin puts into each pictorial is obvious: she knows what it’s like to want to be valued, desired, seen.

May 2023. I’m on a video call one Saturday morning with the other admins of a large transfem Discord server. Nobody on the call apparently wants to be responsible for the NSFW section, where user generated content runs from ooh-I’m-being-so-bad bathroom titties to edgeplay. One admin proposes cutting the section entirely, and I push back. “I’m not into lewds personally,” I say, “but it seems like a lot of people get something out of it.” We eventually cut the kink channel, which leads to general outrage and my own shameful departure.

April 2025. Dripping wet, I stand in my bathtub and angle my phone up from my thighs. I take the picture, and post it to the group chat, with the caption: “POV: you’re about to eat me out in the shower.” My friends light up the post with pleading emoji reacts. I’m not sure why lewd selfies have started feeling more appealing to me—is it the validation that I’m desirable? Is it helping me accept my new pussy? Or do I just need to be reminded that someone out there knows I exist?

Early 1962. Illustrator Vicky West and a handful of other members of a crossdressing club in San Francisco arrive at a house with paper bags that hold their illicit outfits. Their host, Virginia Prince, invites them in and instructs everyone to put on their hose and heels—*together*. According to Prince, no member can narc the rest out for crossdressing if they all watch each other dress.

...

Before West moves to New York City in 1968, Prince will rename the growing club the “Society for Full Personality Expression.”

Mardi Gras, 1978. Photographer [Mariette Pathy Allen](https://www.mariettepathyallen.com/) shares breakfast with a group of crossdressers at her hotel in New Orleans, and starts to take pictures of their poses and gestures. Allen spots Vicky West, and feels something that will cause her to shift her career to focus on gender diverse subjects. Allen later says that it was “as if I were seeing into someone’s soul, unburdened by masculinity or femininity, as if in covering her male anatomy with a beautiful dress, her *full* humanity was present.” (emphasis mine)

June 2025. Nervously, I approach the now 85 year old Mariette Pathy Allen at the bustling opening of her retrospective. I gush to Allen about her work, and how it helped me find empathy for an ancestry that I initially struggled to connect with. She smiles at me with her soft periwinkle eyes, and then compliments my “nice” face and “not too broad” shoulders. I wither, reduced to my passability. Later, it occurs to me that Allen was trying to do me a kindness—she was trying to see me the way she thought I wanted to be seen. But I don’t need a famous photographer to see that I’m worthy of desire. I have my own people for that.


Community of Desire


I feel like I’m at my clockiest right now, which is ridiculous. I sit at the food cart pod, watching couples review menus as I poke at my pad thai. My bleach-blonde highlights are up in a claw clip, and bruises from a night out dancing show through my tights. No matter what I do, or how I show up, it feels like I have more eyes on me than ever. Some of those eyes are cruel, but most are just inquisitive. The biggest shift I’ve noticed in *how* I’m being clocked seems to come from the people I spend time with in public, and that determines how much I get to let down my guard and just feel normal. Moments of normalcy and quietude out in the world have felt increasingly hard to come by.

Back in the bad old days, trans women were told to follow the Rule of Two: if you’re seen with another trans woman, you’ll both be clocked. Stay separate to stay safe. I went to an iris garden with Lily and her daughter last weekend, and despite being clocked again and again, our 2-femme-women-with-a-child dynamic profoundly shifted the gazes I met: sometimes quizzical, but almost always followed by smiles. Women with a child make sense to the world, in a way that two trans women on their own do not. (Later in the car, Lily would joke about how if anyone were to press us on who the biological mother was, we both should step forward.) I pulled Lily’s daughter in a green wagon meant for hauling potted plants as we wound through the blooms, and when the coast was clear we charged giddy down a pea gravel path, laughing the whole way. The three of us stopped to smell every kind of iris we passed, even the ones marked Fragrance: NO on their placards, and we savored their fresh, peppery scents. We fit in, just a little bit, and were rewarded with room enough to be with each other.

Casey Plett talks about the seductiveness that tastes of legibility can provide in her perennial essay collection *On Community*. Here she is describing some of her dates with cis men:

> And suddenly, the world feels different. Particularly when that man is not aware that I am trans—which is even rarer, but truly, suddenly the entire world is whole-cloth different. Bartenders treat me differently. Strangers on the street, their body language is different. I walk to the bathroom in a restaurant and I can feel myself walking differently, and in the mirror I see a softer, happier, more restful woman. It’s like a puzzle you never found the last piece to but suddenly it turns up and the picture is complete out of nowhere. Every song, every movie, and, beyond that, every piece of family lore and wisdom that rests on conventional heterosexuality—suddenly it all snaps into focus[…] What I’m talking about here, it’s a feeling like I’m sharing something with *not a small group but with the world.*

Speaking of restaurants, when I’m out with Lindsey, there’s no question who wears the pants in our relationship. Lindsey gets the eye contact and banter from servers when we’re out trying new breweries or getting pizza, and Lindsey gets offered the check. Her read as “the man” in our relationship—for responsible things, at least—has always been like this, honestly, even since before my transition. Years of contractors working on the house and late night beers shared with male friends at campfires attest to Lindsey’s inherent approachability. As of late her gender presentation has been shifting even more butch, but just because there’s a more obvious pants-wearer between the two of us doesn’t mean my femininity has started making any more sense to others when I’m with her. Reliably, when we’re at a bar I’m almost always misgendered by my drink choices (excuse me, I’m the girl drink drunk), and often I’m talked over or ignored by wait staff until we hit an awkward silence. Part of the joy of being a trans woman is you get cast as a man when doing so provides an opportunity to impress a cis woman, and cast as a woman when there’s an opportunity for misogyny. Best of both worlds. Lindsey and I don’t fit a script, we never have, and while you would think that two partners ostensibly listing away from each other in the gender continuum would give people a damn clue, it really hasn’t.

Another book I’ve been revisiting is Maggie Nelson’s *The Argonauts*. A friend gave me a copy years ago, and I found myself reaching for it again initially as an example of unorthodox essay form. I got my socks knocked off by Vivian Blaxell’s *Worthy of the Event* last month, and her final essay on the relationship between form and content in writing (and more importantly, literal shit) stirred up some self reflection around where my blog writing has been heading. I keep telling myself that I’ve been experimenting more and more with what constitutes a blogpost, but that’s not really true, some of my earliest entries are machinima and lyrical essays. Back when I was making egg art, I liked to talk about my fascination with “the formal qualities of digital media,” and aspired to make form that first defined content, which often meant that it lacked content. These days my relationship with form feels like I’ve cooked up way too much yogurt in the crockpot, and I’m pulling every odd-shaped container out of the weird corner kitchen cabinet of my subconscious in order to scoop some of it out. I’m trying to do the best I can with what I produce, but there’s not much intentionality to it.

Blaxell’s writing got me thinking about Maggie Nelson because Nelson seems to work in small, unrelated bites while she secretly feeds you the main course. *The Argonauts* is an unbroken string of short paragraphs, often with quotes of philosophers and writers folded in, like swirls of cinnamon and raisins in a dough. Nelson veers and coasts through her meditations on gender, attraction, what it means to be queer, what slipping and falling out of visible queerness into seeming heteronormativity can steal from a person. In order to resist typecasting as Het Mother, Nelson shares with the reader the joy she experiences in what it means to be queer and a mother at the same time by stripping the experience down to the studs, which is the sensorial: baby tongues white with milk, feathery earrings and “scribbly” blouses, labial lips touching without sensation, a leather belt sliding through a palm. Maybe there’s something I can glean from her scratch-and-sniff approach to shared humanity.

Maggie Nelson and I have a shared grief for what felt like control over our legibilities. There was power and eroticism in Nelson’s prior life as a proudly out dyke that became more subtle as she built her family with Harry Dodge. I had high hopes when I started transition of being understood as *just* a woman, and those moments continue to be rare and highly contextual. It’s almost worse that I get snatches of ease in womanhood, like a payout at a slot machine, random reinforcement in different spheres and modes. I increasingly understand how one could develop a taste for these moments, an addiction that determines the bounds of a life. But I think it’s probably better that I acknowledge my queer existence for what it is—and relish the taste of normalcy when I can—as nothing more than an unexpected treat.


Tastes of Normalcy


When I first started transition, I thought of it as a video game tech tree—grinding on the paperwork branch, checking my stats with regular bloodwork, crossing off people to send coming out letters. So many things were quantifiable or could be categorized. I tried to make sense of myself using labels and clean definitions, which meant my feelings didn't have to be complicated. <span class="editor" data-content="And—you felt like you were good at it. Expand on that." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span> Something changed in me recently—I’m not as self-assured as I used to be, and that new self awareness has been tipping me into spirals of shame. As odd as it sounds, I actually feel okay about this because I think it reflects some personal growth. <span class="editor" data-content="More odd to say that you feel okay when you've been sobbing in bed for hours multiple times a week and are primed to explode at the slightest amount of feedback from your partners. Revise." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span> I recognize more of a need for nuance in my positions, and this has led me into a sort of autistic skill regression as I unmask and refactor myself. But I’m being really abstract, let me share some examples.

I first noticed the shift when a reader(!) emailed me a few weeks ago, asking if I would be open to being cited in a book talking about trans catgirls. The request prompted me to revisit [Catgirl Crusade](/posts/catgirl-crusade), which remains my highest-traffic blogpost for some reason, <span class="editor" data-content="Nice job with the clickbait title :3" onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span> and I found myself feeling pretty mixed about the conclusions I reached. While I stand by my central thesis around my awe for trans ancestors, and I still feel annoyed when transfems are stereotyped as all being catgirls or puppygirls or whatever, what I wish I could have understood when I wrote about my skepticism toward catgirls was—let people enjoy themselves? At this point, I’m just happy that people are seeing photos like the picture from Le Carrousel and choosing to engage with them. <span class="editor" data-content="This feels abrupt, what changed that brought you to more self awareness? Or has the judgment just shifted elsewhere? Elaborate." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span> I recognized in my older writing a judgmental attitude—a need to set myself apart as “doing trans woman right,” as opposed to those cringey catgirls. I feel embarrassed at the degree with which my defensiveness showed through in Catgirl Crusade. These days I like to think that I’m playing less respectability politics. <span class="editor" data-content="You're avoiding how your defensiveness stems from grief for the legibility you lost with transition. Remember how nice it was to be invisible? Your changing relationship with grief could give us the 'why' for your shift." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span>

Recently I was out at tea with some friends. One friend was talking about struggling with HRT access, and as we got into dosages and regimens, I found myself flying off the handle as soon as the word “spiro” entered the conversation. <span class="editor" data-content="Here we go." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span> Because my migraines are impacted by how I take estrogen, I had to learn a lot about administration methods early on, and it became quickly obvious to me how most transfems in my life were on criminally low doses of E. Doctors seem to be terrified of [prescribing](https://startwith4mgestradiolenanthateweeklyandtestatonetothreemonths.com/) E at levels where it will suppress testosterone production. I have seen so many transfems experience crashing moods and malaise and fall into despair because their medication doesn’t seem to be feminizing their bodies or quieting their brains. <span class="editor" data-content="You're holding back—isn't this exactly you're going through right now? How does your insecurity about your ability to even take care of yourself factor in? Elaborate." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span> Even writing all of this out has my dander back up, which is exactly how things played out in conversation with my friend. I had to step back and calm myself down when I realized how disregulated I was becoming, and how the horror and rage churning in me wasn’t helping her. <span class="editor" data-content="'Disregulated' feels like a pathologizing dodge so you don't have to own your feelings. Revise." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span> My friend knows how to listen to her body, had a plan to take care of herself, and knows that I and other people in her life were available to help work through medical issues should she choose to reach out. I don’t need to get on my soapbox any time HRT comes up, even if I disagree with someone’s approach—I just need to be there. <span class="editor" data-content="It's nice to see that you're working on emotional maturity when talking with your friends, but your conclusion sidesteps your emotional experience of shame. Revise." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span>

One more reflection—I decided to get on an FFS consult waitlist at OHSU after hearing that the plastic surgery department had reduced their wait times by adding a few new surgeons. I still feel guilt for doing this, because early in transition I proclaimed very loudly that FFS was not something I was interested in pursuing. Even last year I was doubling down in [Cave Girl](/posts/cave-girl) on how my remaining dysphoria focused on my genital configuration, but here I am five months out from The Surgery and that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. I’m honestly ambivalent about FFS—I’m not going in with a burning desire to have my skull shaved down <span class="editor" data-content="'Ambivalent' seems like the wrong word. I saw you looking at yourself in that photo from the park the other day." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span>—but I feel guilty in light of my earlier protestations. It seems like I was trying hard to prevent the possibility of a change of heart, probably because there was something in me that was interested, but I wasn’t ready to accept it. <span class="editor" data-content="Expand on the relationship of guilt to shame—tell us more about how your feelings of compromising your own standards have been metastasizing into self judgment and disgust." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span> Why can’t I just, you know, be open to changing my mind on wanting things and be ok with that? Oddly, getting a date for a consult over a year from now has quieted down some of the anxiety I was feeling when I first decided to get in the pipeline. <span class="editor" data-content="Second 'Oddly' we've encountered, feels like a crutch. You were deflated when what you thought was going to be a 6 month process turned out to be closer to 2 years. There's an opportunity for you to open up here about your actual desire for FFS and struggles with dysphoria, passing, and beauty standards, but you're still pushing this 'will I won't I' narrative. You wrote this whole section beautifully outside of your blog a month ago, why not borrow liberally from it?" onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span>

When I dig deeper into the feelings that come up from these incidents, I sense underneath my reflexivity and shame a deep exhaustion with myself. I’m _physically tired_ of having to disassemble the barricades I built to defend my fragile ego and give myself a sense of control those first few years. <span class="editor" data-content="But on the other hand you're still building barricades, too. Look at how the story you're telling here offers a tidy conclusion, when actually things are still really messy. Revise." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span> I’m tired of the toll that these big emotions are exacting on me once I recontextualize them. But I feel like in spite of these struggles I’m gradually learning how to let complex and often contradictory seeming feelings and truths sit next to each other and evolve without resolution. <span class="editor" data-content="Debatable—you do a lot of telling us that the instances you cited have led to a shift, but you aren't telling us yet why things might have changed, or what action you're taking." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span> So maybe this is another inflection point for me—my approach to transness has moved from needing firm stances in order to feel legible, to operating in the grey, where it's okay to change my mind and discover new things about myself. <span class="editor" data-content="You literally pulled this blogpost once you realized that you were yet again telling yourself aspirational stories about self improvement, when in fact you are still struggling hard. Until you can accept yourself as a flawed person and own your mistakes without slipping into shame, you won't be capable of sitting in the grey. The emotional awareness that comes from self acceptance in transition isn't enough—without finding self compassion as well, you will just hurt. So revise. Revise. Revise." onclick="if(this.dataset.content){this.innerHTML += ': ' + this.dataset.content; this.dataset.content='';}">Editor's note</span>



Touch of Red

Reflections on Eid (Clap if you believe in fairies)


In my continued drive towards inscrutability, I've assembled some of my recent thoughts about absurdism, gender and shame into an interactive website. I wanted to make something that feels like how my thought processes have been working on these topics, like shuffling a deck of cards to make new associations. Check it out here:

<h2 style="text-align: center">
  <a href="/post-media/epe-baby/index.html" target="_blank">~~EPE, Baby~~</a>
</h2>

EPE, Baby


> Sound of silver, talk to me<br/>
> Makes you want to feel like a teenager<br/>
> Until you remember the feelings of<br/>
> A real-life emotional teenager<br/>
> Then you think again <br/> <br/>
> *— LCD Soundsystem,* [Sound of Silver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kmTQj8x0N8)

Yesterday I celebrated 3 years since I stepped through the mirror and started my life over as Erin. In so many regards I’m pleased with where transition has taken me: I feel my emotions so much more clearly, I’m plagued less by dissociation and depersonalization and their accompanying cataracts over my memory, my body has transformed in ways that I never thought possible. I live as a woman and recognize myself as a woman (albeit a strange one, with a mysterious past!).

And yet.

I don’t want to seem ungrateful or anything, but this year at my egg crack date I find myself sitting with impatience as I wait for the return of my adulthood. My life right now feels like the longest summer ever after high school graduation: a directionless holding pattern. Puberty still slowly burns through my body and brain, while new expectations of executive function are placed on me. All of my friends are in town but we all know life is going to take us in different directions. I really need a summer job, but I’ve been looking for months and nobody wants to hire recent graduates (especially when many employers don’t think they will stick around). I’m still working through the teenage passion of trying on new identities, so my wardrobe is a mess and I feel cringe most of the time. I want to start building something that’s going to last, lay the foundation of an adult life, but the college applications haven’t come back yet and I’m still stuck in my parents’ house.

I think this feeling is coming from a few different places. The most obvious one is the literal experience of second puberty—I don’t think there’s much to discuss other than I have another 2 years to go on that front. Another source is systemic oppression: it’s hard to feel capable when the State is weaponizing its bureaucracy against you, throwing up roadblocks at every turn, feeding into uncertainty. Power doesn’t want to contend with adequately resourced adults if it doesn’t have to, and so it makes things like employment, education, healthcare, housing and identification more and more difficult for trans people to possess. I feel lucky to have close to 4/5 of those checked off for the time being (hire me!). But lacking these things, and/or lacking assuredness in retaining these things, severely constrains my and my peers’ ability to move through the world and start making long term plans. I want to build more of a life—find a new home, restart my career, invest in some long term projects—but without being able to know what is attainable, what is a mirage, and what soon will be snatched from me, it’s hard for me to direct my energy.

Part of the experience of adulthood is a feeling of moving through time in step with the world and with the people around you. Transition smashes that feeling to bits. Many writers have outlined how trans lives often fail to adhere to mainstream temporalities because we experience a loss of cisheteronormative milestones. Our train jumps off the standard track of education -> relationships -> marriage -> parenthood -> retirement, and we keep on steaming ahead into the wilderness for parts unknown. Some people look for new milestones: get on hormones -> come out -> start voice training -> get a few surgeries -> maybe fit in some self acceptance work when the surgeries don’t solve everything. The question always comes back around: now what? I’ll admit that I still hear the siren call of the knife sometimes, but I know that another consult and wait and recovery is not what I need to move forward. To make meaning out of a life not structured by the norm can be exciting and promising, but it can also be deeply frustrating in its unresolvedness.

Paired closely with time is finesse, and the ease that it brings to one’s circumstances. Nothing is easy about gender expression when you’ve transed your gender. I was talking with a trans friend the other day who shared with me a feeling of intense gender envy that washed over her on a recent trip when she met an exceptionally put-together art curator who was about her age. For those of you not familiar with gender envy, it’s a sort of fantasizing about stepping into someone’s gender expression. Eggs and closeted gay people can sometimes confuse the feeling for attraction, when what they’re feeling is not so much a desire for the other person as for their aesthetic: outfit yes, but also mannerisms, the way they move through the world, often a perceived sense of effortlessness in a setting. It’s been three years of hard work to paper mache together a new understanding of myself, so when I meet someone similar in age who demonstrates 20 adult years of finesse, 20 years I’ll never get—the mix of longing and grief can be devastating. My challenge here is to not count that time in the eggshell or closet as a waste, to find the value that it brought me. Pining for an ease one will never have is a distraction from accepting the inherent cringe of transition into your heart, and the only way to build finesse is, unfortunately, to fuck around and find out.

The common thread that runs through all of these struggles—material instability, lack of a roadmap, the effort of showing up in the world—is a much higher level of complexity that trans people have to navigate in our lives. We have to pick our battles carefully, often without clear indicators of the likelihood of success. When I first came out, I was quick to judge some of the women around me for what I perceived as “slacking off” on fronts of transition. These days, I know better: we’re all doing the best we can to prioritize our limited energies in life, investing so much more of ourselves into just facing the demands of the world while so many cis people move forward without having to contend with the same obstacles. “Keeping up appearances” isn't an option for us, and acquiescing to that fact is the only way we can survive at all.

Not too long ago, I was out on a walk with two friends who had begun their transitions five and twelve years ago. I told them about my struggles with this feeling of perpetual adolescence, and asked if they felt like it went away for them. They both smiled, and the “elder” of the two chuckled. “yeeeah—it went away for a while, but then it came back,” he said. Not the answer I wanted to hear, but maybe it was the one I needed. Here's to three years—I'm gonna keep looking for that summer job, and managing the tasks at hand as best as I can.

World's Oldest Teenager

TV Cart Day


As senior transfem rock correspondent [@flaneurfemme](https://www.instagram.com/flaneurfemme) was stuck at home with the sniffles last night, I’m filling in on coverage of Transfemme Takeover 5, the latest show in a series running since 2023 that centers transfem-led bands and solo acts local to PDX. Yesterday’s edition took the form of an all-ages punk basement house show at [@snakefarmsux](https://www.instagram.com/snakefarmsux). The folks at Snake Farm have kitted out their basement with baffles and quality ventilation, so things didn’t get too sweaty, and the sound was unquestionably better than several “professional” venues I’ve attended in town.

[![Olivia Lyon](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7805.jpeg)](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7805.jpeg)

 I hadn’t been to a house show in over 10 years so I was a bit nervous that I wasn’t going to be cool enough to enter, but the door person accommodated for those of us with a deficit by giving us cobra hand stamps. (I know this is how it worked, because my dear friend and wingwoman of the night [@taylor.tldr](https://www.instagram.com/taylor.tldr) did not receive such a stamp, and instead was marked by a tally of her coolness level.)

[![Olivia Lyon](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7794.jpeg)](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7794.jpeg)

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    <source src="/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7796.mp4" type="video/mp4">
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First up was Olivia Lyon ([@olivviamary](https://www.instagram.com/olivviamary)) playing a solo set. Her songs were meditative, with plaintive vocals and delicate trills and progressions on guitar that started folksy but landed on sneaky jazz chords - complicated, heart rending. Digging back into her insta I see that she usually plays in trio form, and while the stripped down atmosphere was a solid opener for the night I find myself hungry to experience even more richness in her sound.

[![For You, Always For You](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7802.jpeg)](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7802.jpeg)

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    <source src="/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7803.mp4" type="video/mp4">
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For You, Always For You ([@foryou_always_foryou](https://www.instagram.com/foryou_always_foryou)) followed, with singer and electric banjoist Lillyn alternating between quiet moments of introspection and opening the floodgates of her voice to a deluge of anguish and grief. FYAFY was the most “punk” act of the show - raw, avant garde, stripped down to its core power. Lillyn would get into a clawhammer groove and the whole front row would start twisting and bouncing as the waves of distortion washed over them.

[![Garbage Witch](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7811.jpeg)](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7811.jpeg)

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    <source src="/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7809.mp4" type="video/mp4">
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You wouldn’t know that this was the debut show for Garbage Witch ([@garbandwitch](https://www.instagram.com/garbandwitch)), and I can’t wait to hear more from them in the coming months. Their style was versatile, polished, loose in a roomy way - serving up punk anthems and train beats and indie rock like nobody’s business. Garbage Witch closed with two covers, one of Ezra Furman and the other I missed in my notes, and band lead Miryam Weiss (aka. garbo) energized the already amped crowd further by teaching us to sing along with the choruses. I wanted to dance so bad to Garbage Witch but the room was packed.

[![Girl Fiend](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7819.jpeg)](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7819.jpeg)

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    <source src="/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7813.mp4" type="video/mp4">
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Finally closing out the night were indie rockers and TFT5 instigators themselves, Girl Fiend ([@girlfiendmusic](https://www.instagram.com/girlfiendmusic)). The musical stylings of duo Robin Cook and Elle Archer are what got me attending local rock shows regularly, and now that I’ve been to 4..? Girl Fiend shows and numerous Shaylee shows prior, I feel like I can say Girl Fiend has really found their balance since their formation last year. Shout out to Cook’s strong vocal stylings at this show in particular, and the new drummer (whose name I didn’t catch) brought the energy and tightness that their songs call for. Archer played a stripped down version of “Shaylee Baby” at one point that you could feel charge the crowd with frisson - all of us reflecting on its lyrics about that moment of early transition when you realize your life has been torn in two. Balance that with a number like the tongue-in-cheek, guaranteed-to-headbang “Cum Geyser,” and Girl Fiend’s thesis becomes apparent - voicing the emotional extremes that come from living life as proudly, unabashedly trans and queer.

[![Upcoming shows at Snake Farm](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7806.jpeg)](/post-media/transfemme-takeover-5/IMG_7806.jpeg)

It can feel like drudgery to elaborate on “how things are” right now as a trans woman in the US. But the thing is,  there are still houses being packed to the gills full of rowdy trans girls who want to dance and cheer and feel music move through our reclaimed bodies. The story of the moment is incomplete without that reality, too, and if we dwell on the state sanctioned narrative and stay home and feel scared, we will never tap into the power that comes from congregating and sharing in rage and joy and grief together. TFT5 reminded me how not alone I am, and how talented and capable transfemmes will ever be. 

Show Notes: Transfemme Takeover 5


One of the first things you learn in drawing class is that if you go to make a drawing and you find yourself creatively paralyzed by the blank page before you, there’s only one way to move forward: make a mark. It doesn’t have to be good or expressive, you just need to get something down on the paper so that its surface is no longer dazzlingly pristine. Once you’ve made a mark, it’s easier to make more marks, and then you’re off to the races with your drawing.

Since my last blogpost in November I’ve felt myself faced with a similar problem - something about the previous post felt like it brought a finality to my writing here, at least for a bit. And then I had my vulvoplasty and spent two months deep in recovery before I felt like I could write much of anything. I have done other creative work since then: a hybrid essay that I submitted to a regional zine, some tinkering with new HRT calculators, a couple bumper stickers that are currently under content review at Zazzle. 😜 Oh, and I did a little writing for friends about an anime that I watched, [Stop!! Hibari-kun!](https://archive.org/details/stop_hibari-kun_owlversion/), a light-but-complicated series about a teen trans girl in 1980s Japan. I’ve been telling myself that I just haven’t produced anything that felt like it belonged here on Human Kibble, that what I’ve been making hasn’t been as theory-oriented or personal, but looking back over the blog there have been plenty of playful, experimental entries over the past three years. I think more accurately I’ve just been hesitant to resume writing.

Recovering from surgery has challenged my relationship to my gender and to my body. I’m finding myself balking at labels, and feeling more open to playfulness with categories than ever before. Oddly, the dogshit political climate has been a part of this, too. The White House continues day after day to take potshots at trans people, especially trans women, and something about the whole exercise in conjunction with how I’m feeling about my body has been putting me in a real [Susan Stryker](https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Stryker_My_Words.pdf) headspace. That is to say, as the fascists in power seek to justify the “natural” basis for our erasure and oppression, I feel less inclined to seek a natural basis for my own understanding of myself as trans:

> I offer you this warning: the Nature you bedevil me with is a lie. Do not trust it to protect you from what I represent, for it is a fabrication that cloaks the groundlessness of the privilege you seek to maintain for yourself at my expense.

> Susan Stryker, "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix"

Once I started feeling sharp enough to read again, I picked up [Anti-Semite and Jew](https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/anti-semite-and-jew.pdf) by Jean Paul Sartre, which tangles with nationalist rhetoric around natural orders and identity. I’m currently reading two other books, the first is [Feminism Against Cisness](https://www.dukeupress.edu/feminism-against-cisness), a new collection of essays that challenges the idea of “cisness” as a fallacy. The second book is [Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity](https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517901738/black-on-both-sides/). C. Riley Snorton digs into the white supremacist roots of our modern conceptualization of gender, and talks about how slavery and hierarchies of racialized gender laid the groundwork for transnormative narratives about sex and gender’s malleability. These two books together are turning over rocks in my conceptions of gender, exposing all the nasty little bugs of internalized prejudice that live inside me.

In all of this, I’m continuing to look for a better way to talk about the experience of transness, one that moves beyond transnormative and medicalist cliché. When we look at the past 11 years since the “trans tipping point,” I wonder, have we articulated ourselves in a way that will suffice? Not necessarily is it “correct,” but does the common understanding of trans identity further The Agenda? And right now with how things are in the US it feels like it does not. In continuing to grow an understanding of myself I want to keep trying to describe my experiences in transness in a way that subverts systemic narratives. I’m just as vulnerable as anyone to falling into [not even wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong) patterns of rhetoric, but I’m going to keep imperfectly writing here, as I band together and care for the people around me, to try and make a mark in my own little way.

Human Kibble

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