The Ides of March is my HRT Tranniversary and I did indeed get stabbed
The photo of me on the left is from February 2002, slightly less than a year after I'd started T. The photo on the right is what I look like today, 25 years after I started T.
While I continue to struggle with ongoing burnout that is impacting my ability to make comics, I've been doing a lot of prose writing, largely in the form of non-fiction essays. For the most part, I have no interest in sharing these publicly at this time; they're not particularly polished, and are more about organizing my thoughts than anything else. Some of them, though, veer into memoir, specifically relating to the early years of my transition a quarter of a century ago. Given that today is the 25th anniversary of my having started the HRT segment of my journey, I thought it would be worthwhile to share a piece I wrote about navigating that experience, and my impressions of the dangers we navigate today.
"I don't think you're quite there yet ..."
It's early 2001, and I'm sitting across from my endocrinologist for an appointment I had hoped would end with me getting a prescription for testosterone. My anxiety spiked as these words left his mouth. It had taken me several months of determined effort to get here, winding my way through legal name change, therapist appointments, doctor referrals, and the gathering of various official letters from various medical providers as though they were quest items. All of it just to arrive at this very appointment, each piece of paper a key to open the next gate.
Dr. F had been recommended to me as a trans-friendly endo by the guys from my FtM support group. We operated almost entirely by word-of-mouth when it came to navigating the medical establishment, which still had many long miles to go to reach its current (drastically better, but still far from perfect) state of trans acceptance.
Other trans men I knew had worked with Dr. F, and he referred to HRT as "the medicine," so he did frame trans medical care as the appropriate treatment for dysphoria. But he was still a cis gatekeeper, and something about my presentation wasn't quite meeting his standards. Did I cross my legs too much? Did I not swagger enough when I walked? Did I move my hands excessively when I spoke? Was the cadence of my speech not enough of a flat, grunted monotone?
These thoughts raced in my mind as I wondered if I'd have to start over with a new endo (would I even be able to find one?), or if I just needed to butch it up a bit more to get him to open the gate. Or maybe this was as far as I'd ever get, officially designated Not Trans Enough by the medical establishment, no transition for me. Locked out.
"I don't think you're quite there yet ... but I believe you'll get there soon enough, so I'm going to go ahead and write you a prescription for the medicine."
I never did find out what it was about me that didn't quite pass muster with Dr. F. I never bothered to ask. The gate was creaking open, and I wasn't about to jeopardize my opportunity to sneak through by asking too many questions. On March 15th, 2001, I officially started testosterone injections, and have never stopped laughing about celebrating the Ides of March by getting stabbed (even though I have long since switched to gel).
Crossing this barrier was a major milestone, and it was common practice amongst the trans guys in my support group to have a T Party to celebrate the occasion. I went to a restaurant with a group of maybe 10 friends, for an event that felt as much like a birthday celebration as anything, and in a way it was. A communal acknowledgement that you'd managed to survive thus far, and a wish for continued survival.
I have been thinking a lot lately about what it meant to survive as a trans person then, and what it means to survive as a trans person now, and all that has passed (pun intended) in the intervening 25 years. It's very rare these days for me to meet a trans person who transed before I did. This is not because I was an early adopter - trans people have been around for as long as humans have existed, and medical transition was practiced by trans people who died of old age long before I was born - but rather because so, so, so many more trans people have come out in the intervening quarter century. And it's not because we were ever a newly-invented trend (I've been hearing variations on that nonsense for the entire time I've been out as trans), but because more people were able to access this piece of information that made their whole lives make sense. The gift of uncovering a vital truth that was hidden.
The trans community has utterly exploded in size in the last 15 years. A rumbling that began around 2010 or so got a boost a couple of years later when the words "nonbinary" and "cis" broke containment and rocketed into the mainstream, affording a great many more people an opportunity to rethink their relationship to their gender, to examine that previously-hidden truth more closely. This ultimately snowballed into the Great Egg Cracking of 2020, when the isolation of pandemic lockdown offered even more people the chance to take a break from their rote performance of assigned gender and ask why they were doing what they'd always been told they must do, and maybe did they want to try something else while no one was looking.
When I go to indie comics shows and zine fests now, trans people abound as both attendees and vendors. I've been to trans punk shows at mid-sized venues packed with trans fans who weren't born yet when I transitioned. The people in the audience in my age range were the parents chaperoning their trans children to the concert. Trans pride flags abound at protests. This future would have been inconceivable to my own baby-trans self.
Living now in that future, things are both more hopeful and more scary than they've ever been for trans folks. We have a much, MUCH bigger community to offer support, more allies than we have ever had, and informed consent has made accessing medical care dramatically easier than it has ever been (though, and I cannot stress this enough, it is still not easy, just easier). At the same time, we face a concerted effort by extremely wealthy and powerful people who wish to eradicate us altogether. This is not physically possible to achieve, of course, but they're trying all the same, and will inflict as much damage as they can in the process.
The anti-trans push of post-2015 bears a striking resemblance to the anti-same sex marriage push in many ways, probably because it's literally the exact same groups funding and promoting it. And the attack is met with the same milquetoast mealy-mouthed support from supposed liberal allies ("can't you just not play sports?" is the new "can't you just settle for civil unions?" - can't we just compromise on your rights?). Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, state after state passed law after law to block marriage rights queer people hadn't even won yet.
It was always extremely obvious in the 2000s that the right-wing freedom haters never intended to stop with preventing same-sex marriage. They always meant to steam right on ahead to eradicating queer people altogether (this is not physically possible etc.). When they ultimately failed to make same-sex marriage illegal, they openly announced their plans to fall back, attack trans people as a smaller and less powerful group, and once they'd gotten rid of us they'd resume their efforts to get rid of the rest of the queers. Oh, and women's rights, too, those are also on the chopping block. You don't have to read between the lines. They say all of this out loud themselves, using their gigantic megaphones made of money and institutional power.
How to persist when you're outspent and outgunned? The same way we always have, with the help of our community and our allies, sharing knowledge and resources freely, offering assistance as we are able with no expectation of reward or payment, doing what we need to do to survive. This has proven to be a tactic our opponents cannot seem to get their heads around: sometimes people just help each other and show kindness because they care about other people. For all the violent, selfish, genocidal warmongering of the right, altruism and cooperation are the reasons the human species has persisted as long as it has. And I see it suffused throughout the trans community (yes, despite the inevitable infighting), a community which is far more vast and far more openly, unapologetically, proudly, resolutely trans than anything I have ever seen before.
Deep in my heart, I know we can win. I know because I see trans people continue to come out even now, even as the attacks against us reach a fever pitch. I know because the truth that is unlocked by coming out is too powerful to destroy. The war rages on, and the danger has not passed, but the tide is turning, and our defiance is a big part of that. Just as it was in the 2000s when queer people refused to accept bullshit compromises that would enshrine us as second-class citizens. Just as queer people in the 1980s refused to acquiesce to the genocidal monsters who sought our destruction then by allowing HIV to run rampant. We have a strength our enemies cannot possibly understand, based in our truth and our compassion and our fierce determination to survive. So do that, trans people. Survive. And help whoever you can to survive, too. And, whenever possible, make that survival a party.