Thoughts on T

A friend asked me the other day if I was moving closer to transition, meaning medical transition.  He’s post top surgery and has been on testosterone for a while and feels awesome and thinks I might feel awesome on T as well.  I explained that I was not looking at a medical transition at this time but working toward more of a social transition – preferred pronouns, preferred titles, etc.

But the T question… yeah, it’s not that I haven’t thought about it.

If it were just up to me, I might try it, on a trial basis, but it’s not just up to me.  My wife gets to have a say as well, and based on conversations we had several months ago, she might be resistant to that therapy.

If it were just me and I did try it, I would mostly be fine with the permanent changes – more hair, deeper voice, clit growth, less fat, more muscle, no more periods!… but some changes I would not welcome – potential hair loss, potential voice changes that would alter my singing voice.  Potential conflict with my wife <– that’s the big one.

However, my resistance goes deeper.  Why would I be taking T?  I’m not trying to fit into the binary notion of m/f, I’m already very masculine in appearance, so what would T do for this bigender butch?  Would it make me more recognizable as masculine, make my male side more visible?  Probably.  Would I feel better, physically and mentally?  My friend said I probably would, he’s feeling awesome, but he also transitioned to create a more recognizably male body to go with his male identity.  Would T help my two genders fit into this body better?  Would I just be giving into the binary to start using T?  Would I be admitting defeat in the face of a world that really has a hard time with non-binary genders?  Would T be a cop-out?

My friend Micah (NeutroisNonsense) would probably tell me that I have every right to choose any of the options on the transition buffet that work for me.  The question I’m asking myself is, what would T do for me?  And yeah, I know I really can continue to identify as non-binary even if I chose some of the medical transition options but again, what would those changes do for me?  Would T or any other element of medical transition solve a problem I’m having?

Thinking about my physical self, and body parts some butches and trans* masculine people take issue with, I don’t think of my breasts as any more objectionable than my knees.  They are a part of my body, they function to the best of their abilities and only rarely do I wish I had a slimmer profile in the chest.  Those times are usually when I’m acutely conscious of my masculinity as opposed to the presence of those fatty lumps, and the sense that this contradiction is making me the target of unwanted attention.  That self-consciousness sometimes means I’d like to not have them — but it never lasts long enough for me to strongly wish to be rid of them, not forever.

I don’t feel less masculine or male by having a vagina rather than cock and balls, though I have some really good fantasies that involve me having a flesh dick.  I used to feel a lot more self-conscious about not having my own bio dick, especially when thinking about my faggot desires, but being around the trans community, with a lot of very masculine men who are constructed basically the same way I am, has made that less of an issue.

I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t feel that I have the kind of dysphoria — so far — that is leading me to want to pursue medical transition.  It doesn’t seem like my problems are the kind that will be solved that way.  It might be cool to experiment with T, but is that enough of a reason?

This is a topic that I go round and round about in my head.  I lean toward masculine, but not so far that I want to give up my feminine completely.  The issues I have in terms of interfacing with the world – outside the comfortable enclaves of friends and comrades who are or who understand non-binary gender — are more about the way people refer to me.  I don’t object, so far, to she/her pronouns but I definitely prefer he/him, with they/them as my second choice.  I hate hate hate being called a lady, gal, chick, girl.. any of that.  I recognize that since I have evidence of girl curves, ridding myself of those labels might always be a battle.  Being more recognizably male might solve that for me but, again, I’m not sure the cost is worth it to me.

Dammit, I am not one OR the other.  I am this person who is careening down the center line.  I can’t and won’t stay in one lane or the other, this is who I am.  I guess that means that I’ve got to accept that I will mostly be misgendered by the general population forever.  And that sucks.  But this is who I am.  I’ve got the boobs and the bulge, a walking contradiction to those who cling to the binary like a life raft.

And no, that still doesn’t answer the question.

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