That Damn Sniper, Tom

Dear All,

How has it been since I came out for the second time?

Amaz­ing. A huge relief. Scary at times. A little con­fus­ing but not that con­fus­ing, cer­tainly not as con­fus­ing as life was before. My head has been incred­ibly clear.

I’m Tom- short for Tomás- and I am cur­rently sit­ting around being well-dressed, smart, inter­est­ing and cool. I am mostly straight, I have two awe­some cats, I have star­ted reread­ing one of my favour­ite book series’, “The River­run Tri­logy” by S. P. Somtow, one of my favour­ite authors. I bought some new clothes and foun­tain pens on the week­end and caught up with friends. I am basic­ally con­ten­ted and complete.

One thing I really did not expect was it to be such a relief or for me to feel sud­denly so much bet­ter and so much hap­pier and con­fid­ent. I thought it would be much more con­fus­ing and harder in my head.

So, how has it been otherwise?

Other people have mostly been sup­port­ive, or at least con­grat­u­lat­ory. Ser­i­ously! It has been much much bet­ter than I had anti­cip­ated. I feel like I have a lot of people to talk to, and gen­er­ally they are all pretty awe­some! People have noticed that I look hap­pier and more con­fid­ent and that my demean­our has changed. I am con­stantly get­ting com­pli­ments about my new ward­robe (which looks pretty awe­some). It also helps that in gen­eral my friends have been inter­ested in the whole pro­cess! I think it is interesting!

Here is a photo:

How­ever, I have been a lot more sens­it­ive than I expec­ted in regards to when things have made me feel upset.

The people who have advert­ently or inad­vert­ently made me feel uncom­fort­able have fallen into the fol­low­ing camps:

• Women (usu­ally) who say “But you can be female and still like mas­cu­line things”. Not the point, honey. Plus, what if I am a fem­in­ine man (I am).
• Men (usu­ally) who are fix­ated on “But you don’t have a penis and phal­lo­plasty sucks”. None of your busi­ness, I would like to see how well you pleas­ure your partner(s), and once again, none of your busi­ness. (Actu­ally I am quite pleas­antly sur­prised at how little of this I got. Really, only one or two people)
• People who jump the gun and become very insist­ent- even when I say I have not decided yet– on “So when are you doing X, Y or Z” when I have not made any decisions yet about whether I will do hor­mones or sur­gery or legal things. “Oh but you must!” — says who?
• People who later make inap­pro­pri­ate jokes or jokes that hinge on me being a “girl”. For­tu­nately this has not happened often but when it has it has, it has hurt.
• The wrong pro­noun. This is actu­ally prob­ably the least of my con­cerns. Most of which has just been a mat­ter of people for­get­ting inad­vert­ently. I can excuse that as long as even­tu­ally people get the hang of it.
• Once again, the idea that “it only counts if you have done some­thing”. Some­times people for one reason or another choose not to take hor­mones or sur­gery at all, often for com­plex reas­ons. Does that some­how make their gender dif­fer­ent? Given that the first stage in any trans­ition any­way would be to “live as one’s gender”, I don’t see how this “does not count” or that close friends should be wait­ing to change their pro­noun use.
• People post­ing links to anti-man rants that gen­er­al­ise everything about mas­culin­ity or man­hood or men as being patho­lo­gical or sug­gest that women should take over. Unhelp­ful. Inac­cur­ate. Counter-productive. And kind of hurt­ful, actu­ally. That sort of essen­tial­ism and black and white think­ing is exactly what made his­tor­ical male-centred pat­ri­arch­ies prob­lem­atic. Oh, wait, you did not mean to include me in your anti-man rant. Why is that exactly? Oh, right, because I am not a “real man”?

On a much more pos­it­ive and once again inter­est­ing note, since com­ing out quite a few people have approached me and said that what I have talked about really res­on­ated with them– either because they under­stood a friend/family/other people much bet­ter, or because what I was describ­ing really res­on­ated with their own exper­i­ences and for the the first time they had talked about it openly and it was good.

So I guess one small action some­times makes a big dif­fer­ence to the people around you in ways that are actu­ally kind of awe­some and unexpected.

Yours,
Deutschy, cam­paign­ing for the Ori­ental Express since 1201!

(the tl;dr ver­sion of this is that I am a man and I’ve just put it together. A female bod­ied man I guess whatever that means. But I think the nar­rat­ive below is worth read­ing, as is the rant about the state of the mod­ern man)

Dear All,

When I was 15, I wrote my first ever good short story. I did it as a writ­ing exer­cise — I’d decided that I really liked writ­ing and I was going to do it some­what ser­i­ously. Every­one knows that in writ­ing this story I also got my other pseud­onym, “Sniper­girl” from the incred­ibly cool Hallowe’en out­fit a caller into the radio had had (“I went as Sniper­girl!” she said). But I haven’t really talked about the story itself.

It was kind of an awful time for my fam­ily in that basic­ally every­one had decided to self-destruct. In the back­ground, I’d dis­covered that I was into girls. Really into girls. And I was just recov­er­ing from being incred­ibly depressed while being at an all-girls school where every­one was para­noid about “the gays”. Oh yes, and one of my friends had outed me a year pre­vi­ous. For such an awful time it might be sur­pris­ing but there were some pretty hil­ari­ous times too.

I had star­ted sneak­ing into my dad’s ward­robe and put­ting on shirts and ties and pants. Believe me when I say I make a pretty cute guy. I do. It would make me feel sim­ul­tan­eously scared and excited (in a non sexual way). One of my first memor­ies is of walk­ing next to my dad when I was 3, con­vinced that I was going to grow up to be a man just like him.

I idol­ised my father as a child. I did not real­ise that he had been thwarted in his desire for a “per­fect son” by my brother hav­ing aut­ism. So luck­ily for me I guess I got to absorb all the les­sons a father gives a son. Like how to match a tie and a shirt? Or that real men can cook?

But mov­ing coun­tries and puberty changes everything. My dad got really weird and my fam­ily self-destructed. It’s no won­der that so many stor­ies are writ­ten about the end of puberty I guess. Just think of Peter Pan.

So Sniper­girl is about a girl(?) who sneaks into her father’s ward­robe and puts on his suit furt­ively while her dad and brother are hav­ing a phys­ical fight down­stairs. I did not real­ise what a hell I was liv­ing in until I left. Still, it could have been worse. I was not sexu­ally abused or raped. My par­ents were crazy but our home envir­on­ment and my par­ents could have been much worse. I could have had broken bones and bruises. I could have been someone without the means to get friends or help. I could have not been smart and focused enough to get into med­ical school and escape.

I came out as being into girls at the end of high school too. My par­ents didn’t accept it for years. Now they do. But I have never iden­ti­fied as a les­bian. Bisexual woman? It does not feel hon­est. But a mostly-straight man does. It feels unbe­liev­ably hon­est. I finally recog­nise the per­son in the mir­ror.

I am a man. A mostly straight man. An effem­in­ate, silly camp man. A man who isn’t afraid to wear pink and give out manly hugs. A man who is full of per­sonal strength and some per­sonal weak­ness. An hon­est and warm man with integ­rity. A man who is in touch with his fem­in­ine side. A man who is strong and sup­port­ive. A man who rides a motor­bike and plays gui­tar and some­times wears flan­nel and watched rugby at the pub the other day. A man who paints and likes flowers and writes poetry.

In other words I am incred­ibly com­fort­able with myself and my man­hood.

I do not need hor­mones or sur­gery or to be born XY with a huge cock for that. (I am more than sat­is­fied with my abil­ity to pleas­ure hot girls in bed, thanks)

What does it mean to be a man? Good ques­tion. Other than the obvi­ous (gender iden­tity), for me it means being an adult man and not a man-child. What does it mean to be an adult? It means being someone who takes respons­ib­il­ity for my actions. That’s about it. It’s pos­sible to be a respons­ible adult who plays with Lego and jokes around and some­times takes a sick day and some­times needs other people. Being a man doesn’t neces­sit­ate being a moun­tain man liv­ing in a log cabin (though, the thought is appeal­ing).

So I guess it is an ongo­ing dis­ap­point­ment to see that my age peers have a sig­ni­fic­ant minor­ity of man-children. People who define their sense of self by whether or not they are “banging hot chicks”. Or like the “men” who once did a fur­niture removal for me, base their sense of self on mak­ing fun of a poor dis­abled woman say­ing “would you root that”. Abus­ive men. Needy men. Men who use their pos­i­tion of power to lie and cheat. Men who refuse to have under­stand­ing of those who are less for­tu­nate than they are and instead whinge about how tough they have it because no-one real­ises what a “nice guy” they are. Entitled men. Broken men.

I don’t know what the solu­tion is. The major­ity of 30 year old men are not like this. I am sur­roun­ded by awe­some, inspir­ing, sup­port­ive men. Some of them have men­tal health issues. They are not per­fect. They have flaws. But they are good men.

Hav­ing grown up with the exper­i­ence of a woman’s life I can say that women out­side of fam­ily struc­tures sup­port each other and define a sup­port­ive iden­tity for each other in a way that men have only rel­at­ively recently star­ted to do. Women struggled a lot — and much more than the mod­ern man — until they ban­ded together and star­ted help­ing each other.

I star­ted the week won­der­ing what it is to be a man and it turned out that I was lucky enough to have had pos­it­ive role mod­els in my fam­ily and around me. And I still struggled. I struggled with being a needy man and a “nice guy” in my late teens and the very very start of my twen­ties (until women kicked my ass and I was forced to grow up). Many of my male friends went through sim­ilar exper­i­ences. Almost all of them got over it, as I did, fairly early on. But a few slipped through the cracks and they are the “lost boys”. The guys blam­ing women and fem­in­ism and other men and racial minor­it­ies for their prob­lems. Look­ing online, con­vinced that spend­ing thou­sands of dol­lars learn­ing the “art of seduc­tion” will cure the deep, hor­rible black void within them.

It sad­dens me immensely. It is a major prob­lem. Some of these people are the rap­ists and abus­ive part­ners and par­ents that cause so much dark­ness around them. That per­petu­ate the prob­lem where young people — male and female — grow up exposed to viol­ence and abuse and neg­lect and inap­pro­pri­ate rela­tion­ship mod­els.

There is a reason that chil­dren do bet­ter in a single (non-abusive) par­ent fam­ily than with two par­ents of whom one is abus­ive or unsup­port­ive.

It is a prob­lem that is too big for me to really cover or con­tem­plate fully right now. But I am myself and I am free and happy and com­plete. I am myself and I glow as bright as the sun on a summer’s day.

Yours,
Deutschy, mov­ing zug since 1804 for great justice.