Hormone Replacement Therapy … All the Flavor!

 

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Hormone Replacement Therapy … All the Flavor!

HRT can bring unexpected changes

Originally Published in "Prism & Pen", July 30, 2022

Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash

I recall one summer evening out for dinner with my former wife. I had come out to her as transgender several months prior but had not made any social transition changes over the intervening months. I had started hormone replacement therapy (HRT) about six weeks before that evening, at a low dose to see if it would improve severe gender dysphoria. My starting HRT had been the cause of a bit of distress, but that was mostly past us at this point.

We were dining at one of our favorite steakhouses, a place famous for its excellent cuts, pleasant setting, and superb service. We had a nice table for two, in a fairly private part of the dining room. I was looking forward to this dinner, as it both got to be a break from kitchen duties at home and I expected to have an enjoyable meal, my first night out in a few months.

We both ordered the prix fixe dinner, each picking different side dishes that we would share. This menu started with an appetizer, a soup or salad, the main course with sides, and a dessert. I ordered the house salad, a rare New York steak, asparagus for a side, and the dessert for that night, an apple cobbler. My partner got the house salad, a medium filet mignon, and the mashed potatoes, with the cobbler for dessert.

Now, there were additional sides on the main menu that were not part of the prix fixe dinner options, and that night these included a candied sweet potato dish. Now, I love sweet potatoes and asked the waiter to add this side dish to our order. We could share them, I thought, along with the other sides. I also ordered a glass of a favorite wine, a merlot to enjoy with my dinner.

The merlot tasted a bit different somehow, a little sharper than I expected, but with a nice velvety finish. The wine was quite good, with enjoyable flavors, so I certainly wasn’t going to complain. Shortly after that, the salad was served. This looked like the regular salad with the basil dressing that I had expected, but the flavor of the dressing had more bite than I remembered, and the basil flavor was quite strong. It was still good, but I thought it might just be a normal variation, perhaps some changes back in the kitchen in how things were being prepared.

We relaxed and chatted about inconsequential things in our lives after the salad, and a bit later the steaks and sides were served. The steaks were sizzling on their iron platters, dripping butter and steam rising, smelling quite delicious. The sides looked good as always, and that sweet potato dish, with butter, hints of brown sugar and cinnamon wafting from it, and crushed pecans glistening with sauce over the top, had me salivating.

The steak was perfect, with a hint of charring on the edges of a bit of the fat, that delicious butter and the meat almost melting in my mouth. The flavor was perfect, I could not have asked for anything better. I think this was the best steak I had ever had to this point in my life. The asparagus was quite good, that sort of “greens” flavor present and the hollandaise sauce spot on.

Then I tried the sweet potatoes.

Everything else had me primed by this point. I dipped my fork into that lovely sweet potato casserole, lifting out a fork-full of potatoes, glaze, and pecans. I raised it to my lips, catching that lovely cinnamon scent overlaying the rich buttery yams. I tasted it.

I paused. I couldn’t believe what I was tasting. This was so very, very good. A pulse of heat rippled through my body, radiating outward. I shuddered. I managed to set down my fork before I dropped it. That flavor rested in my mouth, on my tongue, and my body responded, repeatedly.

Yes, I think I was enjoying this meal very much.

My spouse was looking at me, head tilted slightly as she examined me, wondering why I was suddenly so quiet and almost frozen in place. I tugged at my napkin and tried to explain how very good I was finding this meal, and how particularly good the sweet potato dish was. She tasted a bit of this. “Yes, it’s pretty good.” Pretty good? I tried another fork full. Yes, damn good. Oh, not as surprising on the second tasting, no interesting orgasmic side effect, but damn good.

I tried to explain how the flavors I was experiencing seemed so new, more intense, and somehow brighter than the last time we had been there. I was starting to quietly wonder if perhaps my hormonal changes were involved, but wasn’t about to mention that out loud. I likely carried on a bit too much about how things tasted, in retrospect. This little conversation ended with the remark, “You’re weird.”

I enjoyed the rest of the dinner but kept quiet about the flavors and other aspects of the dining experience that might have caused a bit of distress.

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I know. I’m weird. I also know I’ll never forget that dinner.

Fun with Definitions — Woman: Adult Female Human, not Adult Human Female

 

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Defining “Woman” in Three Words

Words matter. Understanding the meaning and implications of a phrase matters, too

Originally Published in "An Injustice!" July 28, 2022

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

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Let me make this perfectly queer. We are all, first and foremost human beings, people with inherent worth and dignity. Whether straight or queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, ace, two-spirit, or any of the other myriad variations of gender orientation and identity, we are human beings, people, all in this world together. I believe that each and every person is important and that people should be treated fairly and kindly. Sadly, not everyone believes this, and I’ve seen language and words twisted in very odd ways in what appears to be an attempt to construct harmful ideas.

Words have meanings, of course. Words form our expressive map to describe and interact with the world around us. As we discover more about our world, we have added new words and extended the meaning of existing words incorporating new things we have learned about our world. This has added some complexity to our language as we have to interpret words in the context in which they are used. “Charm”, for example, may refer to the power or quality of giving delight or arousing admiration, may refer to a small ornament worn on a bracelet or necklace, or may denote a variety of unstable quark having an electric charge of +2/3.

We interpret the word in the context in which it is used. Should someone complement my charm, I am unlikely to believe that they admire my collection of unstable quarks. Our interpretation necessarily depends on the context and setting in which it is used. Social interactions are unlikely to be using meanings of language normally confined to laboratory and scientific papers. Definitions and descriptions similarly use words in the sense that best relates to the common usage of the words being defined and the things being described.

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Defining a woman

“Woman” is a word, with three consonants and two vowels, the English translation of the Proto-Indo-European word “*gʷén-eH₂”. The word is generally used to describe an adult human being who presents a set of observable characteristics or traits, the phenotype, corresponding to what the culture using this term considers to be in the female range.

Note that the term is typically used by other humans who lack any inherent capability to immediately examine alleles, karyotypes, or details of anatomy concealed by clothing or internal to the body, and is generally used without requiring detailed medical examination or medical laboratory analysis.

The word “woman”, like other words in English and other languages, does not predate the existence of the entity being described. The word is simply a symbolic mapping of the actual referenced entity. Words, like maps, are useful references but should not be confused with the actual entities or terrain.

One can erase or alter a map, yet the actual terrain remains unaffected. Similarly, one can attempt to alter the definition of a word in various ways, create new words, or try to erase words from the language, but the actual entities will persist.

I, for example, have a phenotype typical of an adult human being, and am typically referred to as a “woman” by others, who rather cavalierly apply the term without even insisting on genetic testing or a computer-aided tomography scan! It’s mind-boggling, I know, but some humans don’t overthink and agonize over the words they use in their everyday speech!

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“A woman is an adult human female” is a problematic definition and sentence.

I see t-shirts with this statement or a variant styled as a dictionary entry, which I understand has even appeared on billboards. It sounds obvious to many folks, at first glance, but that predicate has an interesting structure. I cannot help but wonder if it was deliberate.

In English, sentences can be built from a subject and predicate. The subject, “woman” is followed by a predicate consisting of a verb, along with a direct object and modifying or qualifying adjectives. In this sentence, “adult” and “human” are placed as qualifiers before the direct object, “female”.

The sentence reduces to a statement that a woman is a qualified form of “female”, which is used as a noun here. The words “adult” and “human” are here used as qualifiers, adjectives illuminating or qualifying the following noun. Why is this problematic?

I avoid female in my own writing because it feels disrespectful, as if I’m treating the people I’m referring to as mammals but not humans. — Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University

If we examine the dictionary we can gain a sense of why using “female” as a noun in this definition of woman is troubling.

female - noun

a female animal or person:

The kitten was actually a female, not a male.

Females (= women) represent 40 percent of the country’s workforce.

used to refer to a woman in a way that shows no respect:

I suspect the doctor thought I was just another hysterical female.

When used as a noun, “female” connotes a biological category, while a “woman” is a whole human person. Emphasizing the biological category rather than their being human beings has a subtly deprecating effect. This is nothing new, of course. People have deliberately referred to women as “females” for comedic or condescending effects for a long time.

What these females have to understand is…

Why would we go to so much trouble over a female?

Oh, females are always doing that sort of thing.

These sort of phrases seem to be making misogynistic statements and use “females” deliberately rather than “women” to emphasize this. No, female as a noun referring to a person just doesn’t cut it outside of a narrow scientific or technical scope.

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“A woman is an adult female human”

Here, the direct object is “human,” and I am more comfortable with that. The words “adult” and “female” are used as qualifiers and adjectives to illuminate and further define humans.

I know that I am a human being, first and foremost. Let’s look at how these qualifiers fit me in my everyday life and interactions with others.

Adult as an adjective is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “fully developed and mature” This word describes a broad category that I likely fit within, as a downright overdeveloped and certainly mature senior citizen.

Female is another adjective describing broad categories, with several definitions in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

• “of, relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to bear young or produce eggs.”

In my day-to-day social interactions, the topic of my ability to produce eggs has never come up. It might conceivably matter if I were being considered as a donor for in-vitro fertilization procedures, but that is something I would never be discussing with strangers or casual acquaintances. I have the appropriate gross phenotype, blood chemistry, and such, but atypically yet not uncommon at my age, I am out of the gamete production business. This is one of those laboratory or scientific definitions that don’t work well in common daily use.

• “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male.”

I certainly do not have a male gender identity and certainly feel that I am at the far end of the gender spectrum from male, so this applies.

• “made up of usually adult members of the female sex: consisting of females.”

This definition seems to be a bit circular and applies to groups or sets of people, so I’ll just pass on this one.

• “characteristic of girls, women, or the female sex: exhibiting femaleness.”

Well, yes, I do present pretty typical characteristics of an older woman, so this would seem to apply. This definition also has a hint of being circular and appears to be all about gender performance and roles.

• “designed for or typically used by girls or women.”

Well, no, I’m not an object, so this doesn’t apply to me.

• “engaged in or exercised by girls or women.”

Yes, I engage in some female pursuits and activities, but, this feels a bit stereotypical, another reference to gender roles.

• “Having a quality (such as small size or delicacy of sound) sometimes associated with the female sex.”

I suppose so. I’m moderately small compared to many of my friends. I’m not sure my ancient voice is all that delicate anymore, and the choir director is likely to agree!

As I am neither a rhyme nor a hose coupling, the remaining definitions certainly don’t apply, either.

The noun “Human” seems appropriate enough, as we are first and foremost human beings. Human as a noun is defined as

• “a bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens): a person: MAN sense 1c — usually plural.”

Man in this reference is defined as:

• “a bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens) that is anatomically related to the great apes but distinguished especially by notable development of the brain with a resultant capacity for articulate speech and abstract reasoning, and is the sole living representative of the hominid family.”

This is also a broad definition intended to identify a category of beings. While it does exclude some folks I know who are not bipedal and others who have a great deal of difficulty with articulate speech and abstract reasoning, as a category, we recognize that some individuals may not fully conform to the definition. As with other words that broadly describe categories, it is possible to see past the limitations of the dictionary and grant others the benefit of the doubt concerning membership in the category of “man.”

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In the social environment

Within our normal social activities out in the world, the details of our zygote production capabilities do not typically come up. I know that the topic has never come up when ordering breakfast, and even in as intimate and personal an activity as using a restroom, I have never had to explain such details of personal biology to anyone else. Certainly, I have never had to provide a cheek swab and blood sample to a random stranger on the street before they would regard me as a woman.

In the social environment, we rely on the same interpretations for ‘woman’ and ‘female’ as we have used for millennia in categorizing people we encounter, estimating by gender performance, the gross physical appearance, wardrobe, and movement a person presents. We have no real insight into whether or not other individuals have a functioning SRY gene or a particular karyotype. We don’t have access to an inventory of organs for every other person, nor do we pull a medical case history from every individual we meet. We rely on the social definitions of these words in describing ourselves and the world rather than the variations we might use in the confines of the laboratory.

Woman? Very simple, say those who like simple answers: She is a womb, an ovary; she is a female: this word is enough to define her.

— Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex”, 1949 (2011 translation)

This is a simple answer. It is also effectively useless in the social environment unless one chooses to leave a trail of outraged people in their wake. This sort of reductionist answer, limiting the concept of a woman to reproductive function, offends when actively applied in the social environment. It assumes a degree of intimacy hardly warranted for casual social interaction.

From a man’s mouth, the epithet “female” sounds like an insult; but he, not ashamed of his animality, is proud to hear: “He’s a male!”

- Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex”, 1949 (2011 translation)

Confining the definition of a woman to her sex is insulting. A woman is, first and foremost, a human being with all the glorious incongruities, foibles, and majesty that come with being human.

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“Woman: adult female human.”

For those who must have a simple answer, who are capable of understanding that we all live within a social environment and not a laboratory and thus should use socially oriented definitions of these words, this becomes a marginally acceptable definition. It is also similar to the definition the linguists at Merriam-Webster have come up with, “an adult female person”, and the Oxford definition of “an adult female human being.” These dictionary definitions of “woman” as a category are necessarily terse and broadly descriptive yet limiting. They hardly constitute a checklist for who does or does not qualify.

I don’t care for the simple sound-bite-sized definitions. Humans are amazing complex, and the vast category of women within humanity holds a world of variations and differences. There is far more to any woman than a few words can describe, from our paths through life, our particular lived experiences, our associations with others, to our deepest thoughts and desires. We are none of us the same, and none of us can be held in toto by a few words in a dictionary entry.

We always have to keep in mind that words form our expressive map to describe and interact with the world around us. As we discover more about our world, we have added new words and extended the meaning of existing words to incorporate new things we have learned about our world.

Further reading

Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex”, Editions Gallimard Paris 1949, Vintage Books May 2011 (English Translation by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, 2009)

Alex Byrne, “Are women adult human females?”, Springer Nature B.V. 2020, published online: 6 January 2020 https://philarchive.org/archive/BYRAWA

Maggie Heartsilver (pseudonym), “Deflating Byrne’s “Are Women Adult Human Females?”, “Journal of Controversial Ideas”, published: 25 April 2021. Deflating Byrne’s “Are Women Adult Human Females?”https://journalofcontroversialideas.org › pdf

Mikkola, Mari, “Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/feminism-gender/

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An Injustice!
A new intersectional publication, geared towards voices, values, and identities!aninjusticemag.com

Yes, Gender is a Social Construct, and…

 

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Yes, Gender is a Social Construct, and…

Originally Published in "An Injustice!", July 20, 2022

We’ve all heard this phrase. There is an assumption that anything which is a social construct is, therefore, artificial, which ignores how social construction works

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Image by the author; text from Arroyo v. Rosselló (2018)

We’ve all heard this phrase. “Gender is a social construct” is a catchy little phrase, only five words, practically tailored for a bumper sticker or campaign button. It’s simplistic, easy to understand, and problematic when used as an ideological foundation element. There is an assumption that anything a social construct is, therefore, artificial, ignoring how social construction works.

Social construction is simply the joint development of understanding the world that forms our shared assumptions about reality. We socially construct meanings that we attach to words to communicate. The fun starts when one party alters the meanings behind a word without communicating that fully to others, breaking the shared assumptions and producing communication failures. This may occur by accident or with malicious intent.

I view gender as the social construct by which we perform a part of our identity which we wish ourselves and others to see. There are two pieces to this, the performance and the identity.

Breaking Down Gender: Gender Performance and Identity

The idea that gender is purely performative, that we ‘do’ gender solely for others, is a persistent oversimplification of a complex matter. It makes constructing philosophical cloudscapes much easier, but it is not reality.

We all know that our assigned sex at birth comes from what folks observe between our legs, the shape of bits of tissue that originate way back in the first few weeks of fetal development. A complex dance of messenger proteins and genetic origins is involved to produce this. There is a tremendous range of possible outcomes in measuring and describing these bits of tissue. Collections of such measurements from a population of humans will produce a “bimodal distribution,” a range of outcomes with two distinct peaks or normative values.

Bimodal Distribution — This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

We, humans, love our dichotomies, binary classifications, and Either/Or choices. In the case of sex at birth, the social agreement is to ignore all the measurements that aren’t quite close enough to those normative values and pretend there are precisely two results. We are assigned one of these two socially constructed labels.

Many folks do not realize that much evidence points to a nugget of gender identity that is also formed, many weeks later in fetal development, deep in the structures of the brain that interface with the body. Again, a complex dance of chemistry and biology drives the production of the bits of neural tissue that hold this nugget of gender identity.

Sexual Differentiation of the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis in Humans May Extend into Adulthood

Almost all of the brain is essentially identical across male and female persons. There are several dimorphic regions with overlapping but slightly different average characteristics, mostly related to regions of the brain that handle body regulatory functions, olfaction, and visual-spatial skills. It’s also worth noting that very few people have measurements close to the normative values for their sex for all of these regions. We are all, it seems, a bit of a mixed bag.

The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, a bit of the brain involved in reflexes and body movement control, is one of these dimorphic regions. Curiously, this region varies across gender identities. In the small number of samples dissected to date, the region appears similar in both natal and transgender men and is different in both natal and transgender women. This similarity between natal and transgender persons is present before any medical transition is done by the transgender person. Now, this is a correlation, not causation. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it waggles its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.

This biological nugget of gender identity is problematic for much of Western philosophy and theology. For centuries, it has been widely argued that there is a Cartesian duality, a split between mind and body. This argument is a handy way to construct theological cloudscapes of the mind or spirit somehow being detachable or independent of the body, which in turn permits the argument that the mind is infinitely flexible in its independence, able to overcome any limits or issues of the body.

The popular interpretation of gender as purely a social construct is related to this mind/body duality. It enables the claim that gender arises from the infinitely flexible mind, and therefore gender is merely a socially imposed thing. Oh, and since the mind is infinitely flexible and separate from the body, it should be possible to apply conditioning to alter the mind’s idea of gender identity to match the body.

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I argue that there isn’t a mind/body duality, but rather that the mind is part of the body, a sort of emergent phenomenon that arises from the operations of the brain, capable of learning and adjusting, indeed, but bound to the capabilities and characteristics of the brain and not infinitely malleable.

While I would agree that gender roles and gender presentation are certainly social constructs, I argue that gender identity is not but rather arises from the brain, a deeply seated phenomenon impacting the mind that develops in the brain.

If gender identity itself were merely another aspect of an infinitely malleable mind, then psychological persuasion or coercion techniques should be able to alter that gender identity. So-called “conversion therapy” would work, rather than simply terrifying the subject into concealing their gender identity. I know from personal experience that it does not work.

If gender identity was not seated in the depths of the brain but imposed from without, then changes in the imposing stimuli should cause the gender identity to change over time. Dr. John Money attempted this, most notably with the involuntary gender reassignment of the child David Reimer, which despite his initial claims, failed miserably.

John Money (8 July 1921 — 7 July 2006) was a New Zealand American psychologist, sexologist and author… (link to wikipedia.org)

David Reimer (born Bruce Peter Reimer; 22 August 1965 — 4 May 2004) was a Canadian man born male but reassigned female… (link to wikipedia.org)

Dr. Milton Diamond refuted Dr. Money’s claims that males and females were psychosexually neutral at birth, and that nurture could alter gender identity.

The John/Joan case was the unfortunate story of a set of normal identical male twins. They developed a penile condition called phimosis, which is a closing of the foreskin, so it becomes difficult to project the head of the penis. It can make it difficult to urinate and the closed foreskin can accumulate dirt and gunk. To correct this condition the boys were sent for circumcision. Instead of the circumcision being done with a knife and bell clamp as is typically done, it was done with a cautery, a device that basically uses a hot wire to cut. Surgeons often like to use such an instrument in surgery because the heat also closes off any cut blood vessels. In any case, there was an accident and the penis of the first twin was burnt off. For privacy sake, in our publication, we called him John when living as a boy and Joan when living as a girl. The parents anguished about the decision of “What to do now with John?” What could be done for a boy without a penis? The local physicians they consulted recommended he have later cosmetic surgery to fashion a penis. However, they saw Dr. John Money on television telling how a male (transsexual) can have surgery to live as a contented female. He was then consulted. His solution, with the basic idea that males and females were psychosexually neutral at birth, and any male without a penis would be better off living as a girl and then as a woman, led him to recommend that the child be given appropriate sex reassignment surgery and raised as a girl.

The parents followed Dr. Money’s advice. This sex reassignment included removal of the child’s testicles and scrotum, and preparing him, to have a vagina. The parents did the best they could to raise the child as a girl we called Joan. As the child grew up, however, Joan began to look around and say, “Well, they’re calling me ‘girl’ yet I’m more like my brother than I am like the girls around here.” “My parents are calling me girl and I have a girl’s name but I’m not like any girl I know. I think more like a boy and prefer to do boy things.” But there was a long transition stage before Joan would come to refuse to live any longer as a girl. First off, not only did Joan realize something was amiss, so did her school mates. They teased her for the incongruities between her male-like behaviors and her female-dress and appearance. They called her Gorilla since they saw the male in her behavior and demeanor. Finally, despite the absence of typical male genitalia and the administration of female hormones to induce breast growth and feminine hips and fat deposits, Joan decided she could no longer live as a girl. She had to live as a boy. After the switch she was called John instead of Joan. After the switch Joan was eventually received better as John than as the girl she had been led to believe she was.

With psychiatric help and hormone therapy in addition to the surgical removal of his breasts and construction of a penis, John developed into a mature man, married in his twenties and adopted his wife’s children.

— “A Conversation with Dr. Milton Diamond”, Dean Kotula, Pacific Center for Sex and Sexuality (2011)

Unfortunately, at age 38, David Reimer committed suicide after suffering from severe depression.

Gender identity can reassert itself despite social pressures. If not congruent with the gender role or presentation imposed by society, it can result in considerable discomfort, as some of us have experienced.

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Yes, gender is a social construct, and gender performance is the socially agreed upon means I use to express my gender identity. This fragment of my identity is informed by a few bits in my brain near the hypothalamus formed late in fetal development.

I perform my gender not to please society or to please others, but to be in alignment with my persistent gender identity. I have built a gender role and presentation for myself that removes my discomfort and better aligns the elements of my gender.

While I have gone to some lengths to explain my conceptualization of the origin of my gender identity, how I come to be this way is far less important than understanding that I am, that I exist, and that the identity that I hold and express is valid, my truth, and dwells as part of the core of my identity.

As one social construct to another…

I see no reason to hide my truth, to pretend to be that which I am most emphatically not, simply to live my life in this world. I expect to continue living and loving my life far into my future.

An Injustice!
A new intersectional publication, geared towards voices, values, and identities! aninjusticemag.com

 

The Parable of the Talents

Originally published on Medium.com, May 10, 2022

A personal interpretation, through the filter of an agnostic Unitarian Universalist woman who agrees with much of what that nice Jewish boy had to say a few millennia ago.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

I’ve been the recipient of a number of messages, often quoting bits of poorly translated tribal law written for a band of nomads some two and a half millennia ago. These texts, while of historical interest, are perhaps not as applicable now, as society as evolved a bit.

For many of us, these tribal laws are now routinely ignored. We no longer have battlements on our rooftops to avoid death or injury from rolling off of them while sleeping, for example, and we have developed a more sophisticated understanding of crop rotation. The stoning of women and unfaithful husbands is now rarely practiced in Western society. Improvements in our understanding of food safety have moved lobster and shellfish from being considered unclean to being a delicacy among diners. We routinely blend fibers to make up modern fabrics, and no longer affix colored tassels to the corners of our clothing to indicate tribal affiliation.

A few millennia ago a young man in the Middle East came forward with guidance on a better way to live in relation to one another. He often delivered his message in the form of short stories with a lesson to them, what we call parables. One of the most famous of these parables is the Parable of the Talents, which holds significant meaning to me.

Now, I am an agnostic old woman. I do not believe in the traditional deity of Western Christianity, that rewrite of Odin as the old narcissist in the sky, prone to toying with humans to win bets (Job, anyone?) and ready to torment anyone who doesn’t say the right magic words or engage in all the right rituals. I do believe there is something greater than us, whether we call that the Divine, Love, the Universe, or a nice shorthand for the unknowable, God or Goddess.

I also happen to be a queer person, an old married Sapphic queer woman of transgender experience. This is the proximate cause of the messages I mention above, threatening me with retribution from that gnarly old narcissist in the sky. They tell me that God does not make mistakes. I agree. God does test us, and those around us, through His gifts. He may grant us gifts to use in our lives, if only we can recognize them. What we do with those gifts matters.

The Parable of the Talents

A man going on a journey calls his three servants together. He entrusts 5 talents (a talent is about 80 pounds of silver, roughly 20 years wages at the time.) to one servant he sees as being very able, 2 talents to a capable servant, and one talent to the third servant. Then, he leaves. The servant with 5 talents invests them, and makes another 5 talents. The servant with 2 talents invests them, and earns another 2 talents. The third servant buries his talent, fearful of risking it. The man returns after a long period and settles accounts with them. The first servant returns 10 talents, the original 5 plus the investment gain, and the man praises him, granting him a high position. The second servant returns 4 talents, the original 2 plus the gain, and the man praises and promotes him as well. The third servant returns the original talent he buried. The man decries his wicked and slothful ways, takes the one talent from him and gives it to the servant with the 10 talents. “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Now, when I was created, I had a family that was fairly well off, a good home, and I would develop with an intelligent and curious mind, the potential for a good education, as a white male. I think God looked at this and thought “OK, this one has it pretty easy, and needs a special challenge to fully develop. I think I’ll give this one the soul of a woman and see what they do with that.” God caused my mother and doctor to use a new medication, diethylstilbestrol (DES), that made my brain ready to receive a female soul.

Now, having been granted this gift, and realizing what I have, what am I to do with it? Shall I bury it, hiding it from the light, so at the end of my days I can only return this gift, unused and uninvested? Or should I bring this gift into the light of day, use it to its fullest extent, to let it grow and flourish, for the benefit of myself and those around me, so I may return this gift manyfold at the end of my days?

Now, there are those who would have me bury it, suffer in silence, for this gift makes them uncomfortable. At The End Of Days, they may very well be cast into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

 

Transgender Day of Visibility…

Can I be invisible now? Or at least have a cookie?

Originally published on Medium.com, Mar 31, 2022

Photo by the author

It’s another Transgender Day of Visibility, and I can already see all the social media signs that this one will be a doozy.

The Transgender Day of Visibility (TDoV) is an annual awareness day celebrated around the world. The day is dedicated to celebrating the accomplishments of transgender and gender nonconforming people, and raising awareness of the work that still needs to be done in the interest of equlity and justice. It has also become an informal special day of action by others, with rather different interests.

The first thing I saw on Medium was an article called 
“What Happens If Trans Women Aren’t Women?” The author argues for the sincerity of people dedicated to pushing transgender women out of safe spaces, and in many cases out of visibility, and that trans women should just be content to be “trans women”, “trans men” should just be “trans men”, while somehow still feeling validated and recognized as human beings with human rights.

While I find the goal of a new culture that simply recognizes all human beings as human to be admirable, I’m not willing to sacrifice my own life, health, and happiness to the abstract hope that such a culture might emerge in a few hundred years. In a patriarchal culture hell-bent on demanding all follow its broken binary model, I need to find a way to live my remaining life while being recognized as a person, not “other”, the bogeyman, or the Monster in a rousing chase with pitchforks and torches raised.

Over to the mail app, where I find the usual collection of spewage has grown for TDoV, while mixed with pleas for funding and a few press releases. The mail filters have disposed of most of the rubbish already, and a quick pass weeds out the rest.

I still spend a few minutes every day checking on Facebook content, as that is how some of us senior citizens stay in touch with each other. Facebook figured out my gender-variant nature long ago, and the mighty algorithm sells ads into my feed which specified just the right keywords. There are the usual scams and such, along with a few fresh offers from online churches to help me repair my sinful ways. Yah. Been there, done that. Conversion therapy didn’t work in 1970 even with medical folks behind it, and it still doesn’t work today.

I check Twitter for activity for a few other friends. Fellow trans folks and allies have put up the requisite TDoV posts, naturally. Just as night follows day, the usual transmisic folks have shown up with their endless comments and shared wisdom. A quick scroll shows that many in the debate firmly believe in their 6th grade 1960s biology text as the summation of all human knowledge, while other practice the highly skilled strategy of the “ad-hominem” rebuttal.

Yes, it is once again the Transgender Day of Visibility. Where’s my damn cookie?

Michelle’s Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 1 c butter, softened (2 sticks)
• 1/2 c white sugar (100 g)
• 1 1/2 c packed brown sugar (310 g)
• 3 eggs
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp blackstrap molasses
• 3 c all-purpose flour (375 g)
• 1 tsp baking soda OR 2 tsp calcium carbonate — baking grade
• 1/2 tsp salt (optional)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2/3 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 2 c semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla and molasses. Add baking soda to batter along with salt if needed. Add in the spices; cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ground cloves, and ginger. Stir in flour until smooth, then add the chocolate chips. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans, preferably lined with parchment paper.

Bake for about 10–12 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.

 

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Me and My Shadow

Response to Logan’s Corner Writing Prompt

Originally published in "Logan's Corner", Mar 28, 2022

Image by Author

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I performed this piece for Mt Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church, on Sunday March 27, 2022, as the Call to Worship in a service talking about shadow and light, Jungian philosophy, and the Transgender Day of Visibility! Logan’s (@logansilkwood) writing prompt “Tell your story with different words” inspired the style of this particular retelling.

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We each have a shadow, of course. When the light is right, we can see it there, unique to each of us, yet two-dimensional, and taking the color and texture of the surface it happens to be cast upon. It’s a bit like a chameleon that way, more or less holding our outline while blending in, unnoticed and safely ignored.

Shadows are safe, you see. Harmless, blending in, drawing no attention. That which lies in shadow is hidden from the light. That can be useful. We can hide things in shadow.

Sometimes, we can even hide ourselves. It’s a matter of safety, you see. When hiding within a shadow we are seen as blending in, drawing no attention. We don’t risk making others uncomfortable with our presence. We don’t risk provoking outrage or violence through our visibility.

Living one’s life hiding in the shadows has its own costs. There’s the effort of maintaining that shadow, keeping up a socially acceptable, safe but dull presence to hide behind. There’s the impact of having to remain hidden in the shadows, isolated, feeling blue, and dealing with that very uncomfortable blend of depression and anxiety that arises over time.

Some of us are told that this is how we must live, that the only acceptable way of living one’s life is appearing to be socially acceptable, safe, not making others uncomfortable with our presence. Oh, this is rarely an explicit message. We are told how we must live by the jokes others tell about folks who are a little different, by the horror stories told around campfires and mass media that associate being different with monstrously bad behavior. There’s an implicit caution that being a little too different will result in our being seen as the butt of jokes, or the horrific monster menacing others and provoking the wrath of the villagers.

It is a poor way to live ones entire life, just to avoid making others a bit uncomfortable, while worrying that if discovered, the villagers might break out the pitchforks and torches. This tends to take the joy out of life.

Some of us are fortunate enough to enjoy the privilege of actually living our lives as ourselves. We may live in places where the law actually forbids ending us with a quick round of “monster and the villagers” or prohibits our being forced into treatments designed to push us back into shadow as a sort of reparative therapy. In these places we can actually step out of the shadow into the light.

Stepping out of our own shadow and revealing ourselves feels like a very dangerous move to many of us. All those bad jokes, the thoughtless comments, and the horrific media depictions have conditioned us to expect the worst. We often need to see that it is possible to live our lives as ourselves. We need to see that beyond the transient troubles we might experience, that there is an opportunity to find joy and peace to replace that depression and anxiety.

We need to receive that message that we will be all right. We need to know that others have done this, that they are thriving outside of the safety of shadow.

It’s going to be all right. When we gather on the side of love, supporting one another, it’s going to be all right.

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I’m Michelle Paquette, and my pronouns are She/Her/Hers.

This writing was inspired by the song “Me and my shadow”, written by Al Jolson, Billy Rose, and Dave Dreyer in 1927.

Writing Prompt: Tell Your Story with Different Words
A “Logan’s Corner” Writing Prompt medium.com

 

I’m Trans. I’m Human. I’m a Weird Old Lady.

A response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt: I’m LGBTQ, but You Don’t Know THIS About Me.

Originally Published in

Prism & Pen

Jan 25, 2022

Photo by Michelle Paquette

My wardrobe has entirely too many dresses, and I need to do something about all the shoes. All just suburban girl problems, which would be nothing really, but for an accident of birth.

You see, when I was born, the doctor told my folks they had a healthy baby boy. He was wrong, of course, but the mistake was understandable. Still, that little technical oversight makes me a transgender person, with a gender identity that doesn’t match what Mom and Dad were told.

Does knowing that I am a transgender person mean that you now know everything about me? That one little word hardly describes my life and how I live it. I would have to say it is almost irrelevant to my daily life. Take Thursday, for example…

I woke up about 8:30 in the morning, in bed with my wife and three cats. The cats were very well-rested, no doubt recovered already from walking back and forth across us at about four in the morning. My wife and I were a bit groggy but started our day with a kiss. I propped myself up in bed while she went into the hall to fetch our morning coffees.

Coffees in hand, we both sat in bed, poking at our gadgets. This is a bit of a morning ritual for our life as retired folks. I checked my mail and found I had a new request to deliver a presentation on “Magnetic Loop Antennas” via Zoom to an amateur radio club meeting in Northern California. I checked my calendar, and penciled in the date, sending an acknowledgment back to the club’s scheduling person.

We flipped through the news, and Laurie shared a few funny posts on Facebook with me. I don’t do Facebook anymore, as someone went through and reported dozens of my old posts, resulting in a ban on my account. So it goes.

I got a second cup of coffee for the two of us, and while my wife sipped hers, I put on my exercise clothes and headed downstairs for a light breakfast with my coffee, half of a homemade bran muffin, and my morning workout. I try to do about 45 minutes a day on an elliptical trainer, something I have kept up for about 15 years now. I found it was easier on the knees and ankles than jogging, and more practical considering the weather here in the Pacific Northwest.

After my workout, I toweled off and changed to old denim jeans and a sweater. I’ve been upgrading a storage space, our garage attic, to be usable as a workroom. That has meant insulating the space and putting up interior walls and the ceiling, all meeting the local building code. I’m nearly done, with walls and a shiplap sloping ceiling in place, and am preparing to put in flooring.

Photo by Michelle Paquette

Today’s project is to make baseboard moulding, using several lengths of leftover shiplap board. I set up the table saw to cut 2 3/8” strips from the boards after trimming off one side. I then set up the table router to first smooth the rough cuts on the strips, and then switched to a Roman ogee bit to shape the upper edge of each strip, with a result that looks similar to classic “Coronado” moulding in a 2 1/4” height.

My wife takes a break from her day and helps me with cleaning out the work area, moving remaining lumber and moulding pieces to the garage, and I clear away the sawdust with the shop vacuum. I’ll still need to do a little prep work, and then I can put in the flooring.

Photo by Michelle Paquette

My wife, her sister who lives with us, and I have a family dinner every night, sitting down at the table together. I’m cooking tonight, like most nights, and leave work in that room behind to start dinner. Tonight I’ll be preparing meatloaf, butternut squash, cream biscuits with sausage gravy, along with a spinach and romaine salad with citrus dressing. I generally prepare everything from scratch, as I find it tastes better, and can be healthier for us. I also find cooking and baking to be very enjoyable activities.

We sit down to dinner at about six in the evening and chat about the news, goofy events, politics, and other irrational human behaviors. My sister-in-law tells a funny story about the hummingbirds that visit the feeder outside her window, engaging in a territorial battle over the sugar water that helps them get through the winter.

After dinner, my wife did the cleanup, following the long-standing policy of “I cooked, you clean” we operate under. While she did the cleanup, I put the first coat of paint on the new moulding, and then it was my turn to clean up a bit, removing the paint from my brush and my hands. We kicked back to relax with a little dessert my wife put together, ice cream with toppings, and watched an episode of “The Expanse” on TV. Finally, we did our evening ablutions, and teeth brushed, headed to bed.

Did anything about being transgender inform you about my day, my skills, or any other aspects of my life? Did that one little adjective tell you much of anything about me?

I do have too many dresses and shoes, things I once wore in daily life before daily life became all about social distancing and sheltering in place. I considered myself to be high femme in my presentation at one point, but now, on days where travel can be limited to wandering between bedroom, kitchen, and living room, soft old denim, and comfy sweaters dominate my daily wear.

My therapist once asked me, very early in my transition, what I expected to be when I reached the other side of the transition. I told her that I expected to be a weird old lady.

Goal achieved!

This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt: I’m LGBTQ, but You Don’t Know THIS About Me.

I’m LGBTQ, but You Don’t Know THIS About Me
A Prism & Pen writing promptmedium.com

Other stories so far →

Curious Treasures in a Kinky Closet
Cosmopolitan longings and a rural redneck upbringing produce tensionmedium.com

Running in High Heels and Other Skills of Trans Manhood
A response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt: “I’m LGBTQ, but You Don’t Know THIS About Me”medium.com

I’m Queer, but I Don’t Fit the Stereotypes
I’m a mess of contradictions. I’m human.medium.com

Her: I read your poem online. What’re you gay now?
There’s a simple short answer. Yes, and always.medium.com

After 15 Years of LGBTQ Living, I Forget I am Queer Sometimes
Queer is my most interesting trait for some, forgettable for me.medium.com

I’m A Lesbian Who Can Sew Cushions To Go With Your Couch
I’m LGBTQ but you don’t know this about memedium.com

 

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Happy Re-birth Day!

Legal documents for name and gender marker change. / Photo by Michelle Paquette

Five years ago this week I completed the process of having my name and gender officially recognized and recorded by the state. The laws and procedures have changed in California and other states since I did this, largely for the better.

In November I put together the various forms and documents needed for the legal gender and name change. The Transgender Law Center’s “ID Please” guide was very useful in doing this. The petition, doctor’s letters required for the gender marker change, and supporting forms were all filed with the court, and I was given a court date of January 13, 2017 to appear for the name change proceeding.

While waiting for the court date, I prepared the various documents that I would need in addition to a court order to revise my birth certificate, passport, and drivers license. I wanted to get all of this filed before January 20, 2017, as on that date a new federal administration would come into power, and I was concerned about how they might want to alter policies and procedures compared to the previous administration.

The court did offer the option of simply picking up the records on approval, after which I could file them with the county clerk. I decided to appear instead, just in case one of our local cranks decided to raise an objection to my name and gender change request.

Here’s my record of the day from 5 years ago.

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I think I just set some sort of record.

My petition to the Court requesting the government acknowledge my existence was heard this morning at 9:00 AM. The judge had a couple of other name change petitions this morning, and called us all forward by name, to be seated at the Petitioner and Respondant tables. Yes, I heard “Michelle Jean Paquette” called for the first time in that courtroom.

He then signed the documents, passing them to the clerk, who did something with the computer system and then handed us the documents. He told us to take them downstairs to Filing, get them recorded, and get certified copies. (Nothing unexpected there.) In at 9:00, and out with my court order recognizing me at 9:08.

I had the order filed at once, and got my certified copies, embossed with the court seal and stamp, and signed by the Clerk. By 10 AM I was home. I put the car away, grabbed my prepared materials, and added the court order copies. Time for a little walk to the Civic Center.

At 10:30 I was in the Post Office queue, and by 11 (they ARE the post office…) I had posted a packet to the Department of Vital Records, by priority mail, that should arrive Monday. That one requests the birth certificate under the new name and gender, and seals the old certificate.

At 11:10 I had checked in at Social Security and was in their queue. At noon, my Numident record had my new name and gender inserted. Off to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

At 12:15 I was in the DMV queue. At 12:30, they rejected my paperwork, due to a blank ‘Case Number’ field in the doctor’s form. Kaiser doesn’t seem to actually have case numbers, after calling them, but my Medical Record Number would do. Yay cellphones. OK, I fill that in and get back in the queue. Eventually a really nice older woman calls my number, and we chat while she gets the system to open up the name/gender change screens. A manager has to sign the forms, and then unlock the screen so the clerk can enter the new information. At 2:08 PM, I have the traditional bad photo taken, and I am out the door, new license on the way, old license sealed.

Five hours from gavel strike to being done with the Birth certificate, Social Security card, and Drivers License. The SS and DMV cards will be here within 2 weeks. The birth certificate takes a few months, but everything is filed and in process before any administrative rule changes might happen.

Time for a lunch break… Or something…

Over the moon? Elated? Excited? Oh, you bet! I am definitely going to celebrate this event. I don’t know how, just yet, but it will happen.

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I had all of my documents, including a corrected passport in my hands by March of 2017. Sometimes, things really do go well. It’s worth celebrating and remembering those good days.

 

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There’s More To Me Than One Label Holds

Originally published in "An Injustice" magazine, Jan 2, 2022

For all the ‘purists’ who believe “chromosomes are everything” and “sex at birth is all”…

“If your crazy-ass theory of the world doesn’t ease the suffering of people whom you do not understand, maybe what you actually need is a new theory.”

— Jenny Boylan

The Whole Trans Thing

I personally reject the idea that the sex assigned at birth determines all of my identity, drawing a hard boundary around the gender role and presentation I am permitted, and forcing me to remain in one little box of gender identity.

I am aware of the potentialities of biology and biochemistry, and understand the path this body has taken from conception onward, resulting in a person who has transcended the boundaries that this culture draws around gender identity, presentation, and role. My awareness demands that I reject the ideologies that declare assigned sex at birth to be all, or even the primary determinant as to which cultural boundaries I must remain within.

I recognize that there are those whose ideology demands that they deny the validity of my experience, and who demand that I remain within the bounds set by assigned sex at birth.

I also recognize that there are those who accept part of my path and my experience, but for whom my origin and experience are insufficiently pure, ideologically unacceptable in summation, to be worthy of their chosen labels.

These various interacting ideologies and prejudgements make social interactions a bit of a minefield. Living in a culture that insists on a gender binary, and only accepts a narrow set of paths through life can lead to someone like me being rejected or viewed as undesirable by some others. While I personally do push hard for acceptance and recognition that people like me are human and valid, I don’t do this to deliberately others cause discomfort in others. I wouldn’t be comfortable pushing into a crowd that rejects my right to exist as myself.

I would, for example, no more demand entry to a “womyn-born-womyn” event than I would try to attend a Klu Klux Klan rally, for similar reasons. I’d be encountering people whose ideology denies the validity of my existence, and who would not be swayed by my presence.

I do have to be mindful that not all such groups label themselves clearly, and am careful to reach out to organizers in advance to make sure my attendance won’t cause difficulties. I’ve run into situations where a group might tolerate me, but other individuals there are uncomfortable with my presence. I generally will drop such groups, rather than have my presence cause issues.

This is an area that lies outside the experience of the typical white upper-middle-class cisgender woman, but is a part of my life. I am somewhat social and extroverted, and can’t really live my life closeted to avoid causing discomfort to some others.

There’s More To Me Than One Label Holds

That one word, “transgender”, is merely a descriptive adjective. In my case, it very roughly describes how I arrived at my current place in life with respect to gender. Other than that, it’s pretty much irrelevant.

That one label says almost nothing about my skills, my knowledge, or my lifetime of experiences. It doesn’t indicate anything about my carpentry skills. It certainly doesn’t indicate my skill as a technical instructor, an engineer, or cook. It doesn’t even indicate which power tools I’m proficient with!

Honestly, being a transgender person is almost irrelevant to my daily life. I get up, have my morning coffee(s) with my wife, work out, fix a late breakfast, and start in on the day’s projects. These projects might include:

• Finish carpentry on the garage attic I’m turning into a workroom
• Starting some bread
• Grocery shopping
• Preparing notes for a class I’m teaching
• Recording a training video
• Participating in assorted meetings and discussions, mostly online these days
• Doing a bit of research or writing

Later I may be preparing dinner for the household, doing a bit of cleaning or mending on the side, and eventually enjoying a nice meal with my wife and her sister. These are just human activities, the normal elements of my life that occupy my time.

Oh, they don’t occupy all of my time. There are cats to be played with, and of course my dear wife to attend to. We are not islands, after all!

My point is that I am a human being. I am not a political phenomenon, or an ideology to be debated. I can’t be easily defined out of existence.

The right to identify our own existence lies at the heart of one’s humanity. And so, we must heed their voices: ‘the woman that I am,’ ‘the man that I am.’

— US District Judge Carmen Consuelo Cerezo. (From a court order overturning the categorical ban on corrections to the gender marker in birth certificates. )

Finally, a cautionary note: Should you be prone to committing acts of assumption, know that your cultural stereotypes do not interest me, and if you make the mistake of assuming that I fit some stereotype, know that at some point I will happily, joyfully shock you.

Retired software engineer, holder of 19 patents, former nuclear engineering trainer and tech instructor, FCC license examiner and trainer, with experience in finish carpentry and baking. I also have cats…

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An Injustice!
A new intersectional publication, geared towards voices, values, and identities!aninjusticemag.com