Hello! My name is Lisa. Actually, legally, it's Elizabeth Hillary Bunker, but that's for business and formal. Lisa is who I *am*. In November 2008 (having presented as male all my life) I wrote to my own surprise in my journal: "I just want to be a girl." Now I am living full-time as a woman. My purpose in writing this blog is to document my ongoing gender metamorphosis, and to increase the world's understanding of the trans experience. Thank you so much for reading! :-)
Recent Posts
Links
Become a Fan
05/23/2012
Five weeks to go, and a shiny new metaphor
...surgery and counting. I have just finished paying for it, taking an exchange rate hit in the process. Oh well. The pre-surgery tests are done, though there’s still the task of making sure the results have gotten to the clinic. And of course, there’s always the chance that the tests will show something wrong. I feel healthy, but I’m not going to stop worrying about some last-minute monkeywrench until the deed is done.
I’ve secured my extended leave time at work, with a sense of gratitude to my boss, Jim, who mentioned ruefully that I might need to make special arrangements in advance. If he hadn’t spoken I would have blundered into trouble when I naively tried to enter six weeks of sick time through the regular timesheet system. Thanks Jim; I think perhaps you thought you were giving me bad news, but it has turned out well.
There’s even this thing where after two weeks I can start claiming short-term disability on top of my sick pay. I’ll actually be making more staying home than when I’m working. I’ve checked twice, and it’s above board. In fact, it was my hr person who told me about it. This strikes me as very odd, but I’ll take it, thanks, as a chance to get back a little of what I’m paying out of pocket on account of the surgery not being covered by insurance.
Arrangements for coverage at work and help at home are coming together. I picked summer on purpose; no trainings to conduct. I’m teaching Ross, a wonderfully adept workstudy student, to keep things together while I’m gone. We get along well because our levels of compulsiveness about details match exactly. Just one notch shy of OCD, and so what if we are - what’s wrong with that, huh? Huh? You trying to make a point? (Um, could you please brush that one hair into place? It's bugging me...)
In a few weeks it will be time to stop hormones - there’s a three-week buffer zone because the estrogen increases the risk of blood clots. By the time my sister Sus and I start driving north, my estrogen and testosterone levels will be back to normal middle-aged male levels. One last round of male sexual response, hair growth, aggressiveness...a necessary evil. I will endure it, because it means soon I'll be rid of the detesticles forever.
The biggest task left is waiting. There are still details to track and supply shopping to do, but overall things are falling into place. (Touch wood.) For a little treat I bought myself a book of Rachmaninoff preludes so I’ll have something new to practice (sitting on my toroidal pillow) while I recuperate. And, I have re-read the descriptions of preparation, surgery, and aftercare, wanting to really understand what I’ll be going through. Some of it sounds harrowing, but it doesn’t matter. I have to avoid thinking about how badly I want this, because I need to stay sane and functional.
On a completely different subject, I’ve been puzzling for a long time about the best metaphor for where and who I was during the long male time. The obvious first choice was prison: a cell in the mind. I’ve used it and it’s useful, but it’s also clichéd and not quite right - I wasn’t locked away, just elusive, obscured. Exile? Kinda works, but also not right. Mask? Projection on a screen from a secret place in my inner dark? I’ve used them all, but I’ve not been satisfied...until now. I have a shiny new metaphor of which I am foolishly fond.
I was dutiful and obedient. I took a vow of silence, and then dedicated my life to service to an exalted external masculine ideal. I disappeared completely into the task, glimpsed only at rare intervals as a flicker of the selfless doer behind the good works. So, not a prisoner, not an exile. Nope. Sister Lisa. I was a gender nun.
05/19/2012
05/18/2012
05/17/2012
Before the lecture
At 7pm this evening there is going to be a lecture here on the USM Portland campus by Dr. John Broida, chair of the psychology department. It seems to have two titles: "How do you know if you are a girl or a boy?" and "The differences between the sexes: are they the cause of differences between the genders?" I plan to attend, and I thought I'd write a quick post before I go so that my reporting of my state of mind going in is not tainted by the event itself. I'll report after too.
There are two things on my mind heading to this talk. The first is a hope that I will learn something about the latest science around gender. According to my (somewhat desultory) research, there is no consensus yet among scientists about exactly where gender comes from. (To be clear, by "gender" here I mean a person's sense of self as masculine, feminine, or some combination or negation of the two.) Is gender innate, or a learned social construct, or some combination of the two? How closely is it tied to biology, specifically, to the sex of the body you are born with? Different answers to these questions can lead to sharply different explanations of what it is to be trans - a birth defect, a psychiatric disorder, the next step of evolution - which in turn can lead to real consequences in the lives of millions of trans people. So, these are politically and socially loaded issues.
The other element of my state of mind is a readiness to defend my gender should Dr. Broida answer his own question with a determinism which implies that I don't exist or am deluded. I Googled him, and there was an incident a decade ago in which a student complained that he had made racist and homophobic remarks. The case ended with a settlement to Dr. Broida from the University, apparently after a U. official mishandled the institution's response. On the other hand, I gather Dr. Broida includes in his lecturing toolkit a willingness to provoke for the sake of instruction, which seems commendable, and I also hear that there are LGBT students who have spoken highly of him. Still, he gets mixed reviews on ratemyprofessors.com. One recent review remarks, "Likes to use intimidation and reverse psychology on students."
In short, he's a straight white man in a position of power, and he sounds like he might be a bit of a bully.
Well, it's just about time to get myself over to the planetarium. I haven't dressed out of my ordinary for the occasion, but I did give a thought to a solidly femme presentation this morning, and I've done the second-shave-of-the-day I do on days when I'm going to be face to face with people in the evening. Will Dr. B, do you suppose, let me live?
05/13/2012
Little black dress
On a Saturday in early May Elizabeth had a lunch date with Katz at the Green Elephant, loosely connected to the fact that they had both recently had birthdays. Elizabeth would be going on later to help run the fashion show fundraiser, so she wore clothes with color and texture beyond her usual muted palette, particularly a deep pink floor-length hippie-skirt which swirled pleasantly around her boots. It had a tiny jingle-bell on the waist-tie. On top she had chosen the form-fitting soft grey sweater she wore when she wanted to feel at least a little sexy, and she had picked out jewelry from the more ornate end of her available spectrum.
Lunch was organic and tasty, but incidental to the gushing out of a couple weeks’ worth of pent-up girl talk. Given the opportunity, Elizabeth realized she needed to detail the minutiae of an attraction. There had been promisingly awkward moments, but there were complicating factors...Katz listened patiently and offered encouraging remarks. Then Katz had a fascinating story to tell about family history, and before they knew it an hour and a half had gone by.
Katz treated, which was sweet of her, and Elizabeth invited her to come along on an errand to get some jewelry repaired. She had found out about a place on one of the many secret side-streets of Portland. It turned out to be a charming one-woman shop with display cases full of an impressive array, for one artisan, of styles, materials, and colors, as well as sea shells and art glass on commission. Remembering the ocean motif of Katz’s camp, where she had stayed one night the winter before when her power was out, Elizabeth bought a pretty strawberry periwinkle and then handed the bag to Katz outside the shop with a “Happy birthday.” They hugged.
A little further along they bumped into acquaintance X, a young trans man walking the other way with a friend. There was a minute of friendly banter, and then they parted ways. Around the corner, flushed with the success of present-giving and wanting to impress her friend, Elizabeth forgot her trans-etiquette and outed acquaintance X: “Would you ever guess he was born female?” Then she blushed and, as they walked on, squirmed about this foolish indiscretion.
They had a little more time and stepped into a high-end second-hand store. While Katz took a picture with her phone of a western shirt she thought her daughter might like, Elizabeth tried on a little black dress, made of soft stretchy fabric (good for a snug slimming fit over her big male ribcage) with a sleeve style she didn’t know the name for: two overlapping semi-circles of fabric parting over the shoulder. The skirt had the same style, which meant a helpful double layer of fabric in front camouflaging the unsightly bulge. The skirt stopped at mid thigh; between boot-tops and hem there was a fair stretch of naked leg, pleasingly smooth and rounded with the hormones. “I wouldn’t want to go to the pool hall in this,” she said, and Katz made a cautionary mom face. “No, you wouldn’t.”
Elizabeth bought the dress but did not put it on. Outside they said goodbye and Elizabeth continued on to Asylum, where preparations were under way for the fashion show. Workstudies Cat and Chelsea were there, whom Elizabeth loved for the unabashed pleasure they both took in girlhood. Both had dressed for the occasion - their own versions of the little black dress meme - and shyly she mentioned the contents of her bag, saying she might put the dress on later, for the dancing. The workstudies ordered her to put it on now. Elizabeth went to the women’s room, and with beating heart put on the dress in one of the stalls.
As with so many of the babysteps of transition, it turned out to be no big deal. She received a few compliments (always nice), and otherwise, no reaction. As the evening went on she checked her reflection often, unable to believe each time that the woman-body she was seeing was hers. Perhaps, it turned out, the slowest step of transition was the invisible internal one of really believing that it was actually working, that the world saw and accepted her as not just a woman, but a natural, even attractive woman. So hard to believe after so long in the dark.
The afterparty was a bust - no one showed up - but Elizabeth still enjoyed dancing in the disco lights, watching her shadow on the wall, continuing the long slow work of daring to begin to believe.
05/10/2012
05/03/2012
Countdown, contra, pool hall encounter
So I’ve gotten all fancy with my entries and have forgotten to simply document. Here are some things which have been happening.
Surgery countdown continues. It’s 56 days away as of this typing - June 27th. As you can see, I am counting the days. I’m eager and scared and determined and curious, all at once. There has been a long wrangle about how to pay for it without impacting my children’s college funding, but I think I’ve figured that out. I’m getting pre-surgery tests soon, and arranging for various kinds of assistance I’ll need before, during, and after - a ride up, a ride back, a ride back to the airport for one of my rides. It’s complicated, but just the sort of detailed planning I’m good at. I’ll be taking five or six weeks off from work...and then life will go on.
I can’t imagine the outcome. I mean, really, I can’t. I move forward based on my fervent desire to get rid of the present accoutrements. It is enduringly unpleasant to feel estranged from parts of your own body.
I went contra dancing a few weeks ago, my first time approaching this particular gendered activity from the female side. I was anxious and it was hot, so after the first dance I began to sweat. The hormones have made it so that I don’t stink the way I used to, but still, it was embarrassing - my bangs plastered to my forehead. In the ladies’ room I poked at them in the mirror, and, forgetting myself for a moment, made a vexed remark in more or less my old male voice. A woman just coming out of a stall gave me a second look, but then went on her way. Aside from that moment, I didn’t see any of the double-takes or knitted brows or eyebrow-jumps or face-freezes I have learned to recognize as being read.
It was fun taking hands and being swung and spun by all those different men. It wasn’t sexual at all, but it was physical and gendered all the same. One guy lifted up my arm to spin me and I spun him instead. “Sorry,” he said, looking confused. Next time I go, I’ll work on letting go into following more. And I’ll dress less warmly. This time around I couldn’t resist wearing my new long-sleeve dress, to feel as femme as possible.
The other vignette I've been saving to narrate is an encounter with a man, a stranger. This was at Racks, a tavern on St. John St. in Portland, where I have started stopping some evenings on my way home from work to play pool. I had a table to myself and had worked my way through a couple games of 8-ball, playing both sides, when a male voice spoke behind me, asking if I was alone. I turned and looked. He was maybe 56 or so, tall and large-chested, tan, with coiffed white hair. He wore a sweatshirt and shorts, showing off muscular calves. His face was open and his eyes intent. He was shooting pool alone too - would I like to play? I said yes. We introduced ourselves and shook hands. The question of which of us would give up our table hung in the air. “It’s fine,” I said, not realizing until later what an eyeroller of a line it was. “I’ll turn in my balls.”
Bruce and I played two games before I had to leave to pick up the boy. He watched me in a steady searching way and complimented my better shots. He was a good player - not smashing the balls, as so many male players do, but finessing his leaves. He won both games, though we got down to the lone eight in the second. I liked his soft-spokeness and seeming gentleness. I also liked that he played for real. He didn't ease up or condescend.
Did I find him attractive? Yes. Was I in a tizzy? Only a little, and mostly because I hadn’t shaved since morning, so in strong light what remains as yet un-electrologized of my stubble would have been visible to him. I was also self-conscious about my voice, but then I'm always self-conscious about my voice. Overall I felt cautiously at ease. I’ve learned that once people have read you as one gender or the other, they tend to stick with that read. (One time last year after an hour-long workshop at a conference which I conducted in pretty much my old male vocal tones, a woman participant told me she loved my voice. “It’s so deep - you sound like Lauren Bacall.”)
Mostly I wasn’t in a tizzy because my experience from dating sites is that even decent kind thoughtful men are generally not interested once they know I’m trans, so I don’t get my hopes up. I work on the assumption that when it comes time to have that conversation (and I lean toward having it early in an acquaintance), that will be the end of any possible romance. Of course, it will take only one good man to prove I’m wrong about that, so I do hope a little. Not that it’s guaranteed that I’ll end up with a male partner, but I am definitely interested and curious.
After he sank the eight the second time I said I had to go and we shook hands. I said maybe I'd see him there again sometime, and he said he was from out of town, travelling, and only visited a few times a year. He leaned a little forward as he said this and let a silence open out and I sensed an opening, an opportunity to offer companionship. I would not have taken it even if I could - I had had enough novelty for one night. We shook hands again. There was the awkwardness which bespeaks mutual attraction. As my daughter would say, herp derp.
I was at Racks again earlier tonight and wondered if maybe he had left me a message at the bar, but apparently not. Bruce, I doubt we’ll ever meet again, but thank you for making me feel attractive and womanly. I liked you.
Other things have been going on - some expensive rejected insurance claims for hormone testing, which I’m trying to get covered, and some fruitful counseling with my son - but I don’t feel like writing about them at length right now. Maybe some other time. A sporadic irrational sense of doom aside, things are going pretty well. Half the days or maybe even more, I feel at least somewhat optimistic. Not bad.
04/15/2012
04/08/2012
Susan Swartz Bunker, 10/7/33 - 4/8/92
Dear Sue,
How can it be twenty years since I sat by your hospital bed, stunned by the calamity of your aneurysm? “It couldn’t be much worse,” the neurologist said bluntly, and the nurse had to keep clearing your breathing tube after you coughed...they said on top of whatever else the flood of blood in your brain was putting you through, you were also giving up smoking. They said if you lived on in the coma your tendons would shorten, so Susie went out and bought a pair of black high-top sneakers to keep your ankles bent.
You did not live. You died without regaining consciousness, though there was that moment when I asked if you could squeeze my hand and you did, just one little twitch. “Oh, yes, I’m here, I love you!” I cried in a rush, squeezing convulsively back. It was our last communication. The memory of it still brings me to tears.
I wish you were still alive. I want to introduce you to your grandchildren. It still rips my heart apart that you died just before Mad was born, though it is a consolation that you at least got to know she was on the way. I still smile when I remember telling you on the phone we were thinking of “Cosmo” for a boy. “No,” you said, and I loved the flat presumption to veto in your voice. For all your tight-lipped silences over the years, or perhaps because of them, when you spoke you could imbue your opinions with the force of moral certainty.
Oh my dear mother, what would you have made of me? It would have been terrifying, telling you I am trans. Would you have denied it outright, the way you did our whimsical baby-name choice? I imagine you might have; but this time, I would have had to insist.
Would you have been angry? Would you have disbelieved me? Would you have shut me out for a time? Perhaps all of these reactions...but I can’t imagine you would have shut me out forever.
And what might you have been able to tell me about other denials long ago? I can’t remember if I stifled myself, or if you stifled me, or a combination of the two, but if it was you, I bet you didn’t realize what you were doing. If I ever asked you timidly if I could, say, try your lipstick, I bet you never guessed I was telling you who I was; nor that when you said no, it was another turn of the key in the lock of my secret gender prison.
I remember you as an emotionally elusive woman, and I feared your anger, but I also remember your sly sauciness and your laugh. I remember how when I was small you used to rub my back to soothe my distresses. I remember your tender acceptance when I was soft, emotional. I remember songs you taught me. I remember cutting your hair for you, one straight slice across with the sewing scissors after you clipped it back. I remember how one Christmas evening when I was sitting by the woodstove absorbed in a gift-book, you brought me a plate of little sandwiches made of leftover turkey with mustard on crusty bread. I remember, after I brought hugging home from college, feeling your bird-bone shoulders under my hands when we hugged.
One thing I can’t remember is your voice. I wonder if the voice I’m searching for sounds something like yours. I do find, as I settle into my natural womanhood, that I look somewhat like you, and that I use words and phrases and gestures you used to use. I take after you, it seems.
I can’t imagine you would have shut me out forever, so I must imagine that at some point you would have accepted me, called me by my name, used “she” and “her”...called me your daughter. What a gift that would have been: a second giving of life. In your absence I have had to birth myself this time, and it has gone fine, but I grieve that I will never get to show you who I really am. I just have to live with that.
Mother dearest, I was a girl the whole time, and I am a woman now, and I miss you, and I love you.
Your daughter,
Lisa
