Social pressure III

People want hormones and surgery, because it gets us what we want. Radical feminists speak out against surgery even while putting more pressure on us to have it.

Surgery means that you do not have to take hormone suppressors, which have side effects. Sex can be difficult before surgery: people feel alienated from their genitals, and accepting after. I am a woman. At last, I can function as a woman. And now, when I feel that what surgery achieved for me was a sense of authenticity- I am truly a [trans] woman, because I have had surgery and take hormones- I accept that not everyone agrees, because the magic would not work if you understood it. People believe it proves they are real [trans] women, and makes them more likely to be accepted. I would rather get that sense of authenticity, and permission to express who I am without hiding, by some other means than the mutilation of my body.

I agree that hormones and surgery harm people, by making us sterile and by altering our hormone balance. My temperature regulation is poorer, and it may affect me in other ways. My emotions have been more labile. International human rights law says we should not have to be sterilised to get gender recognition.

For F-Ms, breast surgery, and hormones promoting beard growth, make us pass better. Even for M-Fs, hormones taken along with electrolysis produce a softening of the skin and perhaps an alteration in odours and pheromones, so we pass better. Passing is important if someone might be hostile. Though now it feels as if I am not noticed, not considered worthy of attention, rather than not read.

Walking with Drea- she exclaimed “Oh, he’s beautiful!” of a passer-by. I had not noticed the man, except to avoid collision. Then I heard someone introduce a man to her sister, and he said “Hello, it’s lovely to meet you!” in such a forceful yet warm way that I felt his personality reach out to envelop hers, and even mine- yet Drea did not notice. We pay attention to different things.

When a radical feminist tells me she can tolerate me in women’s toilets because I have had the operation, it reinforces the idea that surgery confirms our trans status. They talk of the danger of penises in women’s space, yet say that surgery is mutilation and wrong. It seems they want to have it both ways, excluding us and de-legitimising us. The effect is to increase our desperation for legitimacy, which we seek in surgery. Though we need to have it both ways- being accepted in women’s space, yet not needing surgery. You don’t need a penis altered to have sex, you just need to use it differently.

Then again I want it both ways- access to women’s space, no surgery required. There is so much anger and fear in the conversation, and some radical feminists feel a need to delegitimise us completely- we look like men however much we spend on facial feminisation surgery, we are a violent threat even after genital surgery- so that we will not be in their space. It’s the Principle of the thing. Yet however great the anger, we do not go away.

S objects to any body alteration, even shaving her legs or plucking facial hair. It is her body, she should not have to alter it or go through this long grooming process of make up, nail varnish, cleanse-tone-moisturise etc. It should be acceptable as it is. It may be that she wears clothes for practicality, though social signalling is unavoidable in the way we dress.

It’s not a useful conversation. “How can I be myself?” I ask. “NOT THAT WAY! GO AWAY!” some people yell, though others are accepting, and I feel wounded, even wronged. Though to see it from another point of view, a man in women’s space is objectionable and that is the wrong to be righted first. How might we meet each other without anger or fear?