I have two contrasting experiences from this weekend to share with you, but first some big news. I have a vulvoplasty surgery date in December! I’m working on a longer blogpost about the details and my reasons for going with vulvoplasty, but the important thing to know is that while I’m beyond excited I’m also a bit scared and trying to find peace with the direction I’ve chosen to take. Even though vulvoplasty is a less common gender reassignment surgery, I’m pretty sure that it’s right for me, but I’m still finding myself visited by doubt. I’ll be sharing more specifics soon, but for now it’s important to know to put my weekend in context.
On Friday I attended HUMP! Film Festival with Lindsey, a meta, and a friend. I had low key wanted to see HUMP! ever since I heard about it over 10 years ago (the Portland Mercury used to advertise for it relentlessly). A bunch of indie filmmakers make and submit under five minute long porn films to the Fest, then sex advice columnist and HUMP! organizer Dan Savage and team review and rank the submissions. Their top 20 films are then shown to the public. Some of the films were funny, some were cool and experimental, a lot were boring gay guys boning for the entire time in fancy lighting. I had heard that HUMP!s before often featured significant queer content, but this year there was no obvious trans representation - at all, hardly any queerness, and minimal kink (except for this one gorgeous needleplay piece). There was also a heavy male gaze bent to almost everything that was shown.
Watching the films, I felt this growing sense of wrongness about my own body, and how it didn't resemble really any of what I watched, or when it did it was disjointed. I have a feminine body, but my body didn’t look like any of the femmes I saw on screen. I also had a strong reaction to the sex depicted - there wasn’t anything that looked like the kind of sex that I and my partners have. It made me feel like I didn't fit or belong, like I wasn't welcome. I recognize now that if, like Savage said, they received 500 submissions and showed 20 and not one had a trans person, that that was a deliberate choice. But while I was watching in the theater it made me start to doubt myself and my decisions around transition, especially in light of my upcoming GRS. I felt disgusting.
I couldn't tell that this feeling was building in me but I kept getting more and more irritated at people talking behind me, so I thought at first that I was just really pissed off about that. What should have tipped me off was the moments I was coming close to tears watching people have sex in ways that I will never experience, no matter what hormones I take or surgeries I have. I found myself hit with this deep shame about my transness, as film after film went by with no bodies or acts that connected with me. I was kind of mean to my companions afterward and hard to be around while I was working out why I left the theater so pent up and sensitive, and a bit later after some reflection I felt really embarrassed for how I behaved. I like to think that I recover from bouts of dysphoria pretty quickly these days, but my shame and disjointed feelings from HUMP! lasted well into Sunday.
I had plans with Lindsey and meta to go on an outing Sunday afternoon to Rooster Rock, a local clothing optional beach. None of us had ever done anything like this before, but we had heard from a number of friends that the setting was very queer and body affirming, so we thought we would give it a shot. Still mired in insecurity, heading to a nude beach sounded like a recipe for disaster to me, but after several days of temps in the 90s and wildfire smoke-choked air, a few hours taking a dip in the Columbia seemed preferable to being sad and alone at home. I got my act together and we headed out.
Swimming and walking around at the beach turned out to be, for me, erotic in the Audre Lorde sense of the word. I felt empowered and connected to my body in the exact opposite way that HUMP! had made me feel, and not sexualized or objectified or “incorrect” in the slightest. Instead of worrying about how I appeared to others, I was just one more pale person out there with my lumps and bumps doing this wacky clothes-free thing. I was able to focus on enjoying sensations - the temperature difference between the hot day and the cool water, squishing my feet in the sand and algae and mud, jumping totally naked into the Columbia river and feeling the water rush past me, dancing topless in the sun to 90’s R&B on a neighboring group’s boom box and letting the music guide my body.
People were the same level of chill as any other beach and seem to give each other space. I know I was getting checked out and clocked by some of the men there, but we were all looking at each other and I didn’t really give a fuck because everything else felt so good. Even more, it became very apparent to me how starkly different my body is from theirs. Next time the mirrors in my house think they’re gonna get me down with notions of residual masculinity I’m going to revisit that memory.
Rooster Rock saved me from HUMP! by reminding me that I don’t exist for others’ consumption, and that I need to live my life for myself. Transition has changed me so much, and I love what my body has become. Best of all, it’s all mine.