Dreaming

In the past few months I have been having the weirdest and most intense dreams.
But the thing that's been bothering me is how many of them have involved people I have loved throughout my life.

Some of them are really innocent just intimate conversations I never had, or reminders of why I loved them in the first place, and others are... More intimate.

I know I've been lonely and really feeling the lack of intimacy in my life lately, but this mental greatest hits of my mistakes is a special kind of traumatic.

Especially when one of them involved the girl who damaged me so much I've been basically single for the past decade.

I don't know how to stop this, and when it's the better ones I'm not sure I want to, I made a lot of really dumb decisions romantically in my life so these virtual second chances are amazing.

I think I'm going a little mad.

Love,
Abigail

Simultaneously Screaming and Crying

I'll admit it, I am currently lying in my room wanting to punch kittens, slash artworks, and generally just set fire to the entire fucking universe.  I don't have any one particular reason, it has been a general mood for a few weeks if I am honest.  Maybe it's being trapped at home, maybe its hormones, maybe its just the constant setbacks and disappointments.

I think under ordinary circumstances I'd be crying but with the chemical cocktail I am currently on, crying isn't really an option, so apparently instead I get to feel "burn it all down and salt the fucking ruins" if that is some kind of mood.

But at least one thing triggered me exceptionally hard today, to the point that I actually HAVE to write something about it, because I am fucking tired of it.

As a trans person all you can really do is TRY to explain to your cis friends what it's like to be trans, and hope that you find some perfect metaphor or philosophical scenario that actually gets them to understand.  

More often than not though it doesn't work, so what ends up happening is people are friends with you enough to respect your gender identity and pronouns, but in practical terms you will ALWAYS be the product of your genetics, and only in their limited understanding of them.

Boys have a peepee, and Girls have a vajayjay... that is all.  

And if you chop off your peepee, the secret chemical soup underneath remembers still, and you can't ever trick the chemical soup.

So lets cover some biology....most of you are familiar with XX/XY/XXY/X combinations of chromosomes, holy shit notice how we are already at four.... yeah it only gets more interesting from there.  

When you are nothing much more than a clump of cells the SRY gene on the Y chromosome can be activated and begin the process of male development.  But it is only the very start of a series of steps that need to happen to result in what most people decide is a MALE.  

And even that is a fragile state, you also have DMRT1 and FOXL2 genes which help keep that state in adulthood, if either of those genes ever become damaged...uh oh your gonads (that's fancy terminology for sexy bits) will actually start changing.  

So that's the kinda base biological on/off boy/girl mode stuff... its already more complicated than XX/XY..... and we haven't even gotten to the brain.

The common theory at this time is that the brain and the body develop their sex characteristics separately which can in some instances cause the brain to develop as the opposite gender likely as a result of hormonal fluctuations during the pregnancy.
On top of that the transgender brain shows numerous structural similarities to their cisgender counterparts, and even a few structural differences unique to transgender people.

And then we have hormones... which are a wildly chaotic mess even between individuals of the same sex, levels can change due to social activities and external stimulus, diet and behaviour.  

Any number of things can cause an individual to exist outside the spectrum of "average" male or female.

SO.... that's the biological stuff....links at the bottom for much more hardcore science on that, but the consensus from geneticists is that simply looking at XX/XY chromosomes is incredibly inaccurate, and when you start looking deeper than that there are actually a multitude of combinations which could result in a wide variety of differences in the genitalia, secondary sex characteristics and brains.

Moving on then....next we have gender identity.  

All the nice little social constructs we have convinced ourselves separate the boys and the girls.  This is where we enter the realm of the assholes who say that our gender identity is a CHOICE.

My gender identity was no more a choice than my eye colour, there is no possible way to explain this to someone with no experience of it, I have tried so many times, and here we are... I am still frustrated and angry.

But as a meme once said.... Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning, and everyone was treating you as the opposite gender, you know for sure that you are definitely not that gender, but nobody believes you and if you argue too much they might kill you.  

That is the day to day.....until we transition.... and then it just gets worse in some ways because we can't hide it anymore.

Genetics don't matter nearly as much as you think they do, there are two genes keeping your fragile masculinity together....and if they failed ya know what would happen? You'd start developing female characteristics and your brain would remain male... so I hope that happens to some of you, so you can FINALLY understand that this isn't a choice, it isn't a costume we get to slip in and out of.

Anyway in summary... your peepee doesn't matter as much as you think it does.

Or if you want a more serious summary from a real life geneticist:
So if the law requires that a person is male or female, should that sex be assigned by anatomy, hormones, cells or chromosomes, and what should be done if they clash? “My feeling is that since there is not one biological parameter that takes over every other parameter, at the end of the day, gender identity seems to be the most reasonable parameter,” says Vilain. In other words, if you want to know whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to ask.




Educational Resources:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-science-of-sex-and-gender/
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/stop-using-phony-science-to-justify-transphobia/
https://www.the-scientist.com/features/are-the-brains-of-transgender-people-different-from-those-of-cisgender-people-30027
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/

Goals For The Detained

I haven't written anything here in quite some time, so I thought I would try and outline some goals just to keep me motivated while I am forced to stay at home.
There is a bit of a tendency to feel worthless when you are unemployed, and to be trapped at home with really minimal socialisation even more so... so what are we going to do to keep the pep in my step?

One of my major goals for the year is to lose some weight, I have gained a lot since starting hormones and essentially lounging around in bed for a year feeling sorry for myself.
But I got an exercycle and for the most part I have been sticking to doing it every day.
Right now I am 91kg, and the goal is to get to around 75-80 somewhere.
This will become important at some future point for surgical recovery times.

I also want to quit smoking, it's the worst drug to be addicted to, and even though I know for a fact I can live without nicotine since I had to when I was in prison, that doesn't actually make it a simple thing when you are out in the world and can readily obtain cigarettes.
Does that mean I am a weak willed slug... yes... so I need to come up with a game plan to overcome that.

I need a job... but its EXTRA difficult when I need to explain my gender identity, and my criminal convictions.... like the already slim pickings in my home town get a lot slimmer once you factor those things in.  Especially given the ultra conservative mindsets of people around here.
If I don't have anything within the next few weeks I am going to HAVE to do something like online transcription just to try and get some income happening.

I want to write more often, I have ALL this time lately and I am wasting it playing video games and watching Netflix.  I have some ideas to write my life story since it really has been just a series of near misses and stupid decisions.  I feel like somebody somewhere should benefit from it.

So what else has been happening with me since it has been months since I last updated?

Well I have my official legal name change now, unfortunately updating the gender marker on my birth certificate is slightly harder so that needs to happen later.  But I have been running around updating my name with all the other crucial day to day things... its quite a struggle when you're essentially grovelling for permission to update gender marker even though my birth certificate says Male.

I didn't get into the counselling class I wanted this year due to my conviction, but I may be able to study again next year.  Kind of a downer, but I will be okay.

Anyway I guess that's kinda all the important updates really, you now know roughly as much as I do about my current existence.

Love,
Abigail