One of the most commonly repeated phrases / acknowledgments / pieces of advice / soundbites of justification that we hear as transgender people is “Be Yourself.” As I’ve transitioned, I’ve uttered these words in a meager attempt at explaining the hugely positive impact this gender journey has had on my life: – I am my authentic self – I feel more comfortable – I can finally just be myself But how…
ok so i know im nonbinary and im glad i figured that out but... what do i do now? i want to explore and express and better define my gender but i don’t know how. especially if you have any online resources.
You’ve come to the perfect place my friend!
I’ve given a lot of workshops over the years. The main one is called Nonbinary Transition, and I’ve put up a video and slides online of one presentation. I hope it helps you figure things out.
What’s the point of taking a low dose if you take it for years and end up looking the same as you would have if you took a standard dose?
There are several reasons:
a. You are not sure if you want the “standard” dose, or how masculine/feminine you want your body to be/look. Taking a low dose lets you start the process, try it out, and take things slower. You can always stop too.
b. Gives your body time to adjust. It also gives your mind time to adjust. Puberty doesn’t happen in a day, or even a year, and the changes can be physically and mentally jarring.
c. Mental or physical health: everyone reacts differently. Some people feel worse on a higher dose (I know I experienced extreme anxiety) while others feel better on a higher dose.
d. Some people are still undisclosed, so with slower onset of changes this starts your physical transition while buying you time for social transition.
e. Until relatively recently, there had been few studies on what the “standard” dose should even be, so this was truly an arbitrary number. Now many doctors agree that the touted “200mg/mL x 2weeks” for T is too high for a lot of people.
Even though I’ve been on a low dose for 8 years, I doubt I’ve reached the “maximum” amount of changes. That is, if I took a higher dose, my voice would probably continue to drop, and I would see a significant increase in hair, etc. I’m in the “middle” zone and that’s where I like it.
So why do I keep taking hormones if I’m not seeing changes? Well, I think my body is changing, just very very slowly - too slow to notice day to day, yet noticeable over the years. And staying at a low dose continues giving my body some of the non-permanent effects of T, such as body-fat distribution or muscle mass, even if I experience these in a lower intensity than at a higher dose.
The best thing you can do is forget the “standard” and find your own dose - one that works for you physically, mentally, and emotionally.
What happens when your gender doesn’t fit neatly into the
categories of male or female? Even mundane interactions like filling out
a form or using a public bathroom can be a struggle when these
designations prove inadequate. In this groundbreaking book, thirty
authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched
gender binary.
If you’d like a copy of my book, I recommend clicking the link above and ordering directly from CUP website.
The seventh annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 12th March 2020.
After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a blog post summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.
If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, retweet this tweet, boost this Mastodon post, check out this post on Reddit, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks like Facebook. Every share is extremely helpful - it’s what helped us get 11,000 responses last year.
The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.
Hey Micah, thanks so much for creating this resource! You mentioned that early in your transition, you hadn't seen any examples of other non-binary people taking similar biomedical steps. That sounds really intense, but I hope that having more examples (including yours) gives people an expanded sense of their options.
Thank you for the kind note! I do hope that others feel empowered and are allowed to take the steps they need.
The reason I started my blog, and the reason I kept going with it, is because I really couldn’t find more than a handful of folks doing what I was doing. They existed, they just didn’t post about it online :P
I remember that I had literally watched all the videos on youtube about low dose t. Confession: it was no more than 5 people. Now you search for low dose hormones and there are thousands of blogs and videos and official pamphlets and everything. It’s amazing!
While I don’t write about my personal journey anymore, I’ve uploaded some of the workshops I’ve given on nonbinary transition. Hopefully these are still useful to people!
Is passing as non-binary possible? Do you have any tips for doing so?
Yes, you could “pass,” if passing for you means having people see you as a mix of binary genders. Or it could mean that people always ask for your pronouns, or they refer to you with neutral pronouns. Passing could even mean being seen as a binary gender consistently.
It really depends on what passing means to you.
So instead of “passing” you could ask… what is your goal? What do you want to look like, and what do you want others to see (or not see)? What do you want to feel?
I liked to think of my goal as being comfortable. I wrote a post about what it meant for me to “be myself.”
The answer is not easy, and it’s not obvious, and it may change. Just keep asking yourself these questions and eventually things will make a little more sense.
Is it ok for me odentify as genderqueer and use she/her pronouns alongside they/them pronouns? I know it seems like a silly question but it's been bothering me.
Yes it is ok!
Some people choose to use multiple sets of pronouns, including “binary” pronouns like he or she alongside other options.
