Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

I have so far enjoyed the podcast Be Gay Solve Crimes, where three trans women assert that all detectives are transgender.

I love the premise (I'm even paying for the bonus episodes!), but after a dozen or so episodes I'm increasingly unsettled that these fictional male detectives are mostly talked about as "eggs" (a word some trans women use for their pre-transition selves; the moment of coming out to themselves is described as "their egg cracking"), and these fictional women are mostly talked about as fully-formed trans women.

The occasional background character is claimed to be transmasc, so it's not exactly erasure I'm complaining about. Feels more like a version of "the only good thing a man can do is transition,"* which is a possibly-unkind* shorthand I've adopted for the feeling I get from online spaces or statements that position themselves as universally trans but then end up being about things specific to (white) trans fems/women.

I've been telling myself I'm being unfair and too sensitive. But today's episode about Nancy Drew is making me sad. (Partly because it makes me wonder if Harriet the Spy is a certainty for a future episode as I'd initially thought it'd be; is that also a literary fixture only for USians?)

There's nothing wrong with knowing your audience, but to hear early in this episode "If you're a boy -- which, I imagine, that's not many people listening! you might find out something really important real soon!" in this episode about a girl I related strongly but differently to when I was a kid reading all these books. I can understand wanting to identify with a girl who's strong and clever and who barely even has a boyfriend and who's a bit odd -- this is the premise of the podcast really: the kind of detectives you get in fiction are of course very different from the people they're surrounded by, and once you feel (at least) one kind of difference it's easy (or easier) to feel affinity with other people who don't fit in.

And while there certainly are -- and, I hope, more all the time! -- fully-realized trans women who are in the vague older-teenager age range that Nancy Drew is, fully au fait with the Online touchstones that indicate a woman is trans (whether that be a disinterest in male partners or what the hosts perceive as an old chunky laptop which would've been cutting edge when the movie they're watching, from 2007, was made but they're all such infants that they were in elementary/primary school then so only know such things as hallmarks of retrocomputing and/or poverty), this isn't what I was expecting from the podcast.

I expected some of the assigned-female-at-birth characters to be pre-transition men. I expected their reading of Poirot to be transmasc -- he's short, he's dapper, he's obsessed with his mustache... he's right up there with Gomez Addams in this feels like an exaggerated stereotype except I also know people who are literally like this levels of transmasc representation.

And it's not just characters but their reading of characteristics that baffles me sometimes.

• They mention Trying to Make the Hat Work as "deeply egg-coded behavior," but I only had to work so hard on that pre-transtion! There was some allusion to this in an earlier episode too, like if cis men think they can pull of a hat they not only can't, they aren't even really men. Which might have been these women's experience but I think they're overgeneralizing: a lot of men (cis and trans!) can Make the Hat Work! I find them way more fun now than I used to.
• The podcast host I like the best says that any "quote unquote guy" who wears (US English)suspenders/(UK English)braces is an egg, and they're not just a wardrobe staple for me but a godsend because I'm so short but also because they help hide my wide hips (by wearing (US)pants/(UK)trousers that fit my hips but sit at my waist, suspenders keep them there without having to cinch my torso in half, which is less comfortable and also draws unwanted attention to the shape of my body. Suspenders also distract a bit from the way my chest looks in a binder (I won't wear them without one, of course), and break up the lines of my torso in a useful way.
• And then (UK)waistcoats/(US)vests! (Why does this have to involve all the clothing items that I have bilingual terms for?? Or is that just all of them? Hm...) Which is so funny because immediately when I started my new job I was like "what if I became a waistcoat guy?" and the first time I needed to dress up fancy, I went to Slaters and bought one. It's still as dressed up as I get, because suits are the wrong shape for me (without paying for bespoke tailoring, which isn't an expense I can justify when I don't really need to wear a suit ever). And anyway testosterone has made me too warm all the time -- I'm not quite a shorts-all-year-round kind of guy but I'm way closer to that than I ever thought I would be. And, again, it helps hide the binder! And hips!! Whichever old English king it was who was too fat to button the last button on his waistcoat so the whole court had to start wearing them like that and now we all do...that guy was such a trans ally; I don't think I could button that button on mine! But I'm not supposed to! Marvelous.

Anyway, that's more than enough sartorial commentary from me, far more than I ever thought I'd do. But the point is, it's really odd to have stuff that's so obviously one way for me described as so obviously in a venn diagram circle that doesn't really overlap with that at all.

Writing this all out did make me feel better: I enjoyed the podcast episode more, and in talking about this on fedi I ended up wiht two new library books: Harriet the Spy and a recommended book with a transmasc Watson (The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall), which I'm looking forward to.

*: Though, potential unkindness aside, it seems I'm not even exaggerating: a Black transmasc activist that I know has told me that he's heard people say this in as many words: the only good thing a cis man can do is transition. Oof.)

I e-mailed the HR inbox with a question at work this morning, and the response I got was a name I recognized asking when she could call me to chat through the answer. It was the name I recognized from being cool about me being trans when I started this job.

I didn't think she'd recognize me, but as soon as we got on the call she said "Long time no see!" My smile, which felt both surprised and a little shy in response, hopefully gave her a good look at all the facial hair I didn't have last time we talked -- I hadn't even started testosterone yet.

Today was a hard day, one of those where I'm just worn down I think.

Today I'd like to share this Letter From Minnesota. I keep thinking that Minneapolis, St. Paul, other Minnesotan cities have big populations of refugees, from Somalia and from the U.S.'s "secret war" in southeast Asia. Not just in living memory but people my age who arrived as children. My heart breaks that people who came to Minnesota specifically for safety and sanctuary (Renee Good among them) are now finding it so unsafe.

So. Anyway. Some good things:

1. I got a message saying my bloods are fine, which is especially exciting because this means I can finally (six months later than expected) get blood taken only every six months instead of every three months.
2. I went to the gym and actually felt the good brain chemicals from it this time. Also, an annoying charge that had been on my account for a month was just wiped out by the young person behind the counter, who didn't even give me a chance to explain why I thought it was unjust, he just sorted it right away!
3. Not only has a transphobic group been blocked from a transphobic attempt to keep trans women out of women's swimming places. More than 32,000 people said they wanted the ponds to remain trans inclusive – 86% of the respondents to the consultation on this. This followed previous votes overwhelmingly supporting trans pond users, and a petition with over 14,000 signatures asking to keep the ponds inclusive. Transphobes are disproportionately noisy and have too much access to power in the UK. But it's important to hang on to the reality which is how neutral-to-positive the majority of people are towards trans people.

Last Monday morning I was supposed to have a voice therapy appointment but our internet was borked. I had to drag D out of bed just after 9 and make him deal with a confusing and mysterious problem. He bodged a solution really quickly but I was supposed to have a voice therapy appointment at 9:30 and I'd texted the clinician warning her that I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it. We had

Thank you for letting me know. Unfortunately as it is such late notice this will count as a missed appointment. Please let me know if you would like to re-book the session, and if there is anything we can do to support attending going forwards. If you do not reply within 7 days we will assume that you do not wish to continue voice therapy and you will be discharged.

Something about that "if you would like to re-book the session" rubbed me the wrong way -- I waited years for this referral! -- and all of a sudden I didn't want to re-book. I was put off by how the technical problems were handled at the first appointment, and even though they didn't recur and I was confident I wouldn't have them again because once she agreed to use Teams I gave her my work address where Teams works fine every day so I didn't anticipate any recurrence.

I just. Still felt weird about it, like I was doing it wrong by treating this as an investigation about something I'm curious about rather than something where I had clear and specific Transition Goals in mind. Indigo might be a little too patient-led for me, heh; I appreciate the ways it's more flexible and less judgmental than the old Gender Identity Clinic system, but this isn't the first time I've struggled with mismatched expectations: I'm expecting some kind of information that doesn't exist and even when I ask for it I'm told to look at social media websites I don't use; I'm like you're the NHS, don't you have a photocopy-burned brochure for me?

(This feeling I'm having here is like a grain of sand in comparison to the deserts-worth of the same feeling that I'm having when it comes to top surgery... I've written thousands of words about that so far and it's still not ready to share.)

It just felt like too high a hill to climb, so I've let the seven days go by and now I'm discharged from the service. I hope someone else who's chomping at the bit for their voice to sound different in some particular way is making good use of the appointment instead.

( cancer, child death, suicide [no one I'm close to] )

While we were in Stornoway, I noticed that my phone wasn't getting text messages when I expected them for 2FA.

Again. This happened a few months ago and the phone company's suggestion was to try my sim card in another phone. Which D (who can see these tiny things) was obliging enough to do by swapping it in to his phone.

And (with a lot of me running up and down stairs between where V was and where he was asking people to text each other and letting them know when the other had so we could check if the text went through) that actually worked!

But then (with a lot of me running up and down stairs asking people to text each other and letting them know...) it turned out that his phone/sim card was now having the same problem! Only worse! I felt so bad for having "infected" him with this, a version so bad it wasn't fixed for a few days when he got a whole new sim card in the mail... Even though I didn't actually do anything and it isn't like Independence Day where you can infect a gadget with techno-gremlins like this.

I didn't want any of this to happen to any of us again, and I figured I could put it off until we were home anyway because it's rare that I actually get SMSes (other than for automated stuff I mostly ignore and the 2FA; I could use other options for that) and besides D needed his little phone-takey-aparty kit with the tiny pokey stick for the sim card which of course he didn't have with him so that settled it.

And I forgot about this entirely (because I never think about SMSes) until this morning. The ongoing dregs of the restructure at work have taken another fabulous colleague from me; she had sent me a message saying goodbye with her personal email and phone number. So without thinking much of it I sent her a text...and then I got a reply text a minute later!

Which is a good thing, because I soon after got a text from the pharmacy saying my meds are ready for collection and I'm about to run out, but then even more importantly I got one from the gender clinic telling me I have finally made it near the top of the waiting list for Voice and Communication Therapy.

Only fifteen months after I was told I'm near the top of the waiting list for voice therapy, only three months after I was assured that I really am near the top of the list, I've been sent a form asking me when I'm free and stuff shout accessing the sessions.

The form also asked me why I want voice therapy, which feels so much less urgent than it was when I was referred for this 3+ years ago. Then, my reason could have been described as "I can carefully sculpt my appearance to avoid most misgenderings, especially online, but I'm sick of being misgendered by everyone who can hear but not see me and I work with a lot of blind people." Two years of planned manitizer has mostly taken care of that problem.

But I am if anything even more interested in voice therapy now because I feel like I've been given by the 2+ years of testosterone a...tool? weapon?...that I don't really know how to operate properly. And, nothing against YouTube videos and the other online DIY resources, but I've never felt good about steering my (post-)transition life by them. To say the least (I still have to write about how the whole top surgery thing is going... I can't just now but let's just say that the two big headings will be Medical Anti-Fatness and Why are Healthcare Professionals Telling Me I Have to Go on Facebook and Reddit).

But anyway, the SMS with the link to the form also included a boilerplate NHS thing:

If we do not hear from you within 7 days, we will assume you do not want to access VCT, and you will be discharged from the VCT service. You can re-refer at a later date by contacting...

I was gone for longer than seven days, imagine that had been in the U.S. where I wouldn't have access to my SMSes, or imagine my phone hadn't fixed itself this time. I had no other indication of this information, no email or attempt at a phone call or anything.

It's maddening when a referral I've been waiting three years for depends on my phone working properly (and a bunch of other aspects of my life working properly!) during any given one-week period.

Yesterday was a delight. I got tipsy around some friends of friends, one of those being the person who always remembers to introduce herself and where she saw me last. She tells me when things are happening to the side of me where I can't see.

It turns out she works in a special education needs school, specifically in a class for kids with multiple sensory impairments, so she's like "oh this is nothing."

Access intimacy plus alcohol might be a hell of a drug, but then I don't feel I overstepped when she's the one who told me I must have a really good binder because she did not believe I have the cup size I told her I do, heh. The kind of conversation that'd be wildly unlikely and inappropriate in most contexts can be so fun when it finds the right one.

Trans Pride Manchester today.

I took photos of signs saying:

• "Pride was a riot started by us" (held by a dark-skinned person
• "New chair, new arse, same shit!" (with both "EHRC" and "TERF" on it and crossed out)
• "I bite TERFs" (on a blåhaj)
• "Corgis for trans rights" (accompanied by two adorable corgis)
• "Making trans boring since 1983" (held by a trans man)

I didn't manage to get photos of the signs that said:

• "You made toilets weird, not us"
• "Tough year, tougher community"
• "I went to Athens and all I got was this stupid top surgery"

I particularly love the concept of making trans boring -- it can be complicated because trans men/mascs are invisibilized as the flipside of trans women/fems hypervisibility and I don't think it's inherently better to pass as cis or fit in, but also there's a screenshot of a tumblr post that goes around every so often with a photo of a few standard white guys in t-shirts and jeans, completely unremarkable hair and stuff, walking with an "FTM" banner (it might have more words on it too, presumably whatever group they actually were, but this is what I remember of it), and some commentary about how great it is that they just look like Some Guys.

D's sign, tailored to be dual-purpose since we planned to do the trans march and then go counter-protest a UKIP demo in town, ended up giving us cause to illustrate an entirely different way to make trans boring. By the time we got to Piccadilly Gardens, the fash had marched off. So we went for a drink with a friend. But on our way back through there on our way to the bus home, D spotted that a couple of fash had returned. His placard suddenly had a few white guys swarming around us, phones already held up as if videoing, asking him to be "interviewed" for their "citizen journalism."

Their attempts to shock him with language about "men cutting their dicks off" didn't work even after repeated applications, and when asked loaded questions he blandly responded "Well, I don't think that's happening" and then said sensible stuff like "I think kids should learn about all the kinds of humans that there are." His standing-for-political-office skills might be dormant these days but they were undiminished! Another guy -- absolutely stereotypical British racist, down to the bad teeth -- accosted me with "if trans people end up coming out anyway, kids don't need to hear about it in school," an extremely straightforward stance for me to bat away like a fly.

Very quickly they realized that they weren't going to catch D saying anything damning or even interesting for their YouTube channels or whatever, and lost interest, and we strolled away.

This, too, is an advantage of making trans boring.

D watched me put the planned manitizer on my thighs this morning and sang "goopy legs doodoodoodoodoo" to the tune of "Baby Shark."

Then he said "No wonder you're so good at wall sits, you put the testosterone right on your quads!"

(I am not that good at wall sits, but I don't hate them as much as he does.)

I smiled. "I don't always, you know," I said. "Sometimes I put it on my shoulders, upper arms. It's why my biceps are so good."

I see so much of myself in this person's life! I knew they were my age before they said, just from their description of junior high.

And of course so much is different too. I wish I could write anything as good as this.