It’s been a month since my vaginoplasty. The time since has passed extremely quickly and been uneventful.
I learned rather quickly that despite having some mobility, I needed to do far less than I had initially felt I could do. Nonetheless, I had no problem taking care of myself solo. I had bought a bunch of groceries in anticipation of my recovery, enough to last me a few weeks, I had meal prepped ahead of time, and for everything else I was mobile enough to go to the grocery section of the drug store across the road from my apartment.
I got a bunch of visitors in my second week back. It was really nice to get guests, especially as I was more or less in bed all day, and I appreciated the food they dropped off. It was also reassuring to have other pairs of eyes on my healing wounds.
Some of the lovely visitors I received.
As far as my healing went, I’ve been bleeding all month. I had been wearing adult diapers and GoodNites, and I’m just now able to switch to pads. My surgical site has also been extremely swollen. Like the bleeding it has steadily decreased over time but it’s still sore, limiting the length of time I’m able to stay standing, walking, or sitting. If you get this procedure done you should get a bag of frozen peas.
The only contact I’ve had with the surgeon’s office since coming back has been two follow up emails. I’ve sent them photos so they can evaluate if I need to be attentive to anything obvious. They have yet to reply to the second email. On my exit from the recovery center they issued me the opioid-based painkiller Tramadol. I used it the one time to handle the journey back Ottawa. Otherwise I took Tylenol twice a day during the first few weeks, plus the antibiotics that they had prescribed.
In the past month there’s been continual signs of progress. Whether that’s being able to tie my shoes for the first time a few days ago, or sitting at a coffee shop without feeling constant pain, or being able to lay on my stomach. I’m very pleased. In terms of care, I currently spend about two hours each day bathing and tending to my wounds. I no longer apply ice to my groin area.
I’ve given myself two estradiol injections since my return. I’m slowly feeling back to my estrogen-based normal, after having been through a challenging intermediary period where my body was back on testosterone. I haven’t taken spironolactone since my return, which has been lovely. Not having my nights interrupted by multiple trips to the washroom is alone worth the discomfort of surgery. By body’s insatiable appetite for salt (pickles!) has also gone along with the diuretic.
My only dismay is that I went back to work a week after coming back from the recovery facility. It’s too soon but I had little choice. I lost my last job with less than two week’s notice after an unexpected change of corporate priorities. I found another position weeks later, but by that time surgery was less than two months away. I just didn’t feel like I had the flexibility to take more than two weeks off. Luckily, I’ve been working from home. But I’m still exhausted all the time. I really could use more rest than I get.
On February 6th 2019 I underwent a “vaginoplasty without vaginal cavity.” In other words, the surgeon turned my penis and scrotum into a vulva.
I wanted to talk about that process, and how it went. Before I do, I just want to say how thankful I am to Jay, who stayed with me and took care of me in the days before surgery and at the hospital. He held me when I was scared, and was there to help me through. I am likewise so grateful to Tim, Gillian and Iain, my dad and step-mom, and Joy. I am also indebted to all those who messaged me online during this period.
When I saw my doctor in June or July of 2014, she asked me if I wanted to start the process. I declined as I needed time to think about it further.
Over the next three years, I resolved it was for me. It would free me from spiro and its unpleasant side effects. I would be more comfortable wearing form fitting bottom wear. I would be safer in change rooms. I wouldn’t miss the sex – it had always been a chore and painful for me. My sperm was frozen. Plus I had had a post-puberty penis for twenty years and now I could experience something different. I wasn’t as resolute as I expected, but would I truly ever be? It was a jump into the unknown but as with hormone replacement therapy I was comfortable with all outcomes.
In October 2017, I saw my doctor to get the ball rolling for surgery. I had printed out a template letter for her to use with the Ministry of Health. She wrote her own instead, and gave me a referral to a second doctor. Under the new way of doing things, I needed one doctor and another registered health professional to write letters proving I was trans enough.
In November 2017, while Joy and I were seeing a play, I got a call from Jay. The surgery information had come in from the surgeon’s office. I was in tears. I had been approved! The second doctor must have just signed off and this was it! I called the surgeon’s office. They had no file on me. They couldn’t tell me why they had sent this information, and what it meant. I was deflated.
Come January 2018, I hadn’t heard anything from the second doctor. I saw my GP, and she gave me another referral. The first referral finally called me to schedule an appointment. Then the second. I cancelled with the second explaining them what had happened. They were understanding.
In February 2018, I saw the second doctor. She was the local community health clinic something like once a month to see trans patients. We talked for an hour, and by the end she approved me.
In April 2018 the surgeon’s office contacted me to request missing documents. This meant the Ministry of Health approved funding for my surgery. The second doctor had submitted the letter to the Ministry, but perhaps the surgeon’s office hadn’t received a copy.
I went to my GP to get a copy of the second referral letter that the other doctor had written and submitted everything to the surgeon’s office in May 2018. The office informed me that they would process my file at some indeterminate point in the future. They wouldn’t give me a rough idea of whether that would take weeks or months.
During the summer of 2018 I didn’t hear from the surgeon’s office and worried I had fallen through the cracks. I resolved to call them every three months for updates.
In October 2018, I got a call from the surgeon’s office. They had a tentative date for in February. They would send me information three months before, so in November.
November 2018 came and went and I hadn’t heard anything from the surgeon’s office. Meanwhile I knew from friends that I needed to stop taking hormones a month before surgery. I had received no instructions. That same month, I lost my job. I would be having surgery right after starting at a new workplace, complicating things.
In the first days of December 2018, I emailed out asking about being off hormones. Two weeks later, I got a reply saying yes, and that it should be in the information sent to me. Only, they hadn’t sent me any such information. I called and emailed to get that information, but no one answered phones or returned my messages. Meanwhile I found a job. My manager there was understanding about surgery.
In January 2019, I started calling every day until I got someone. I got the surgeon’s wife, who worked in the office. She was surprised I wasn’t given the information. Finally, they emailed it. In the package, there was the request that I have blood tests done and sent in for December 15th, 2018. It normally would take a month just to see my doctor. I called the surgeon’s office. They said I had to get the blood tests done for two weeks before the surgery date or the procedure would be cancelled. I called my doctor’s office explaining the situation. I was able to get the blood test done the next day. A week later the surgeon’s office let me know they had received the results.
In late January, the surgeon’s office sent me an email with the time to show up at the hospital. 11 am on February 6th. I wrote letters to my besties Jay and Joy to read in the event that I passed away during surgery. I also left instructions and spent time with people close to me.
On February 4th 2019, Jay and I took the train out. We would get off a stop early, at the request of the taxi driver that was pre-paid by the surgeon’s office.
Surgery
It seemed like surgery was so far away. Then it was immediately upon me. There didn’t seem to be an in-between. It hit me when I arrived at the train station. This was it.
I was scared. I was scared of going to sleep during the surgery and not waking up. I suppressed that fear as best I could, but in doing so I removed the capacity to feel happiness or excitement at the procedure.
I felt a bit in the dark. I showed up at the hotel on February 4 2019 with Jay. The hotel had reservations for me paid for by the surgeon’s office. I went to the room and found two enema kits and instructions from the surgeon’s office.
The enemas were bottles with a long lubricated tip. One on February 5 at 4 pm, the other four hours later. Right during Trump’s state of the union address. I resolved the enema was preferable to Trump.
I was worried. Up until this point, I hadn’t talked to any medical professional at the surgeon’s office. Communication wasn’t really respondent with the administrative staff. What if I missed something? What if they needed to cancel on me that day? I felt so in the dark. Being sent generic PDFs as the sole source of technical information wasn’t super reassuring.
I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep the night before surgery but I did. The next morning we showed up at the surgeon’s office for 11 am on February 6. We arrived early and filled out paperwork about not photographing other guests without their consent, the risks of the procedure, etc. A cute trans guy showed up with two friends.
At around 11 am they came for me. I was brought to an office the size of a closet, where the nurse went over the information I had sent in: allergies, weight, etc. She checked if I had shaved my genitals well. She gave me pills to take, and then she brought me and Jay to my hospital room.
I put on the hospital gown and robe. We waited. The surgeon came by. He was amenable. He asked if I or Jay had any questions. He then said there was a concern of whether there was enough material for my junk to work with. He inspected it, said there was more than enough. He then told us it would be an hour to an hour and a half wait.
At around 12:30 pm the nurse came by. She brought me to a separate admissions room alone. We switched to talking in French; the English was for Jay’s benefit. I waited in the admissions room. The cute trans guy showed up. We talked. He was here for top surgery and would be discharged that day. He was really nice and from Montreal. We both had a lot of nervous laughter as we talked. He was scared too.
The anesthesiologist came in. We switched to talking in French. He said he would give me an epidural. There would not be general anesthesia. I would be conscious but under heavy sedation. He asked if I had any questions, then left.
A nurse came by shortly later. She brought me to the operation room. The anesthesiologist told her I spoke good French and we could talk in that language. Everyone switched. We laughed; she said and here she was trying to pronounce my name in English. In the operating room was a table for me, with extensions and straps for the arms. It reminded me of what they put people in the US who had lethal injection.
A nurse asked me to sit up. He gave me a pillow to hold on to. Something that felt like a bag of cold gel was applied to my back. I was tense; he was there with me telling me to relax and rubbing my shoulders. His presence really helped. Then they put a cream. Then I felt the prick of a needle, comparable to what I had with my intramuscular injections. Then I felt something funny inside my spine. The epidural was done. It wasn’t painful. Just mildly uncomfortable.
The surgeon came in. My legs were raised up, like at a gynecologists office. They put these wraps on my legs that would compress them every twenty seconds for ten seconds. A blue sheet was placed to cover my view. The surgeon started working, I could feel him applying something to my thighs and junk. I could feel him doing something to my genitals.
I woke up in the recovery room. To one side was a third person who had been in the admissions room with the cute trans guy. He was moaning and under a lot of pain. To the other was someone who had breast augmentation. I waited there an hour on a bed, immobile. It was longer than anticipated due to a shift change. I was fully alert. My pain was maybe 1 out of 10. I couldn’t move my legs.
They wheeled me over to the hospital room. Jay was there. We chatted. My pain got to 2 or 3 out of 10. There was another person in the room with me. She was a trans woman from BC. She told me about her life.
Joy arrived. Jay was here too and we took selfies. Having my two best friends here was such a moment of happiness for me. I love them so much. She left then two friends from church, Gillian and Iain, came. We had a lovely talk and they took Jay out to dinner. Joy came back and stayed with me until visiting hours ended at 8:30 pm. We had a good chat that included talking about the Buddhist interpretation of Christianity. I got given pills to help sleep. Pain went down to 1/10. I had full control of my legs now.
At 10 pm they came to change my dressing and get me to walk. They got me up, I took two excruciating side steps, and was back in bed. The pain increased to 4/10. At midnight they woke me up to take my pulse. Pain was back down to 1/10.
I couldn’t sleep easily after that so I took my phone and wrote a draft for this article. It was a good move because this day would be really blurry come a few days later. I did fall asleep at 2 am, but was woken up again two hours later. My hospital mate was in a lot of pain. At 5 am the staff came in to change the dressing, replace the IV, and give me a breakfast menu. I checked off white bread, peanut butter, and herbal tea.
Day after surgery
The breakfast was the first food I had had since the burrito the night before surgery.
A nurse then came by and took me for a walk. I was bracing for it to hurt like yesterday but it didn’t. I was able to take a loop around the unit. It’s only in getting back in my bed that I felt pain.
We went back to bed. I talked to my bunk mate. Jay, my dad and step-mom came to visit.
They fed me lunch. It was a really good full meal, not at all what I expected for a hospital. A nurse came by to change my dressing, and later to do two more laps walking around the unit. Then a nurse removed my IV. I didn’t feel the needle come out.
I napped the afternoon, interrupted by nurses. It was quiet time. I listened to a Spotify playlist of Steven Universe influenced musical selections.
I was fed supper, and did more laps. My roommate was with me, and it felt like being in a race between two turtles. They changed my dressing.
I slept well that night.
Second day post-op
The nurse came in at 6 to change my dressing. The bleeding had stopped. She replaced the dressings with lighter versions.
I was served breakfast. A nurse came in and replaced the catheter bag with a valve. I was now able to go to the washroom to pee, by opening up that valve. I was expected to do so every two hours.
A nurse then helped me to dress up and pack my stuff. Then later, a nurse took it and the two of us walked to the rehab center next door.
I was given my own room. It had a sink, and quite a pretty view.
Once there another nurse introduced herself, and gave me instructions to read. She removed the tubing for the blood grenade that went into my groin. Pulling it felt like being touched after a bad sunburn. She then applied ice. I had the room to myself. I was tasked with walking around four times a day. Every two hours I also needed to move the ice around four spots for ten minutes each.
My dad and step-mom came, along with Jay.
After they left I had lunch. This was done at a large communal table. The manual they gave me showed the different meal times they had. This was the first time meeting other patients. There was maybe ten of us. As best as I could tell they were all feminine trans women. There wasn’t enough space so I was off in the hallway to the side.
The others, except for my hospital mate and another, seemed to ignore me and my hello’s. At this point getting in and out of bed was starting to get relatively painless.
Boredom started to set in. I learned that to replace the ice on my groin, I needed to empty the pack out and fill it from the ice machine next to the dining room. I could move with much greater ease than the day before.
Gillian and Iain came over to visit a final time. They were amazing, as usual. A nurse came in with some information, as I hadn’t been properly inducted. I learned that I needed to call the orderly to get dressings to replace mine with, and that I would do it. I learned that it was important for me to drink two or three pitchers of water a day to prevent infection. That I should wear slippers even in my room to reduce risks.
Iain and Gillian
Jay came over. I ate dinner. I wasn’t very hungry and ate half a sandwich. I noticed the one trans guy in a sea of feminine trans women. It was neat listening to people converse about their experiences of trans-ness, though I didn’t really want to participate. It looked like half the people were over forty-five, and the rest being young adults.
My guts were uncomfortable now. I hadn’t defacated since the day before surgery. I took two more pills to soften my stool. The nurses wouldn’t start administering laxatives until the next day.
I didn’t have to wait too long. While video chatting with my sister, I felt it. And again. I went to the washroom, and it came out. I didn’t force. It was diarrhea like, which was a relief.
Video chatting with my sis.
I replaced my rehab-issued underwear, and took a shower in the sink of my room. I wouldn’t be permitted a real shower for another three days. I cleaned my arms and chest with soap, and brushed my teeth. I swapped out my PJs; I had stained my top with blood. It was the first time I had felt clean since arriving.
No nurse interrupted my sleep that night, but I did wake up three times to drain my catheter in the toilet.
Third day post-op
The nurse checked my dressings. I had just changed them. She checked my pressure. Another nurse came in and took my laundry. I tried sitting for the first time after she left. It hurt too much to stay there.
I had breakfast and got to know the others better. One was from my home-town. Another from Arizona and was chatting with her followers back home. I was able to sort of sit for thirty seconds. We got talking about how public transit in Ottawa sucks.
The rest of my day seemed to be pretty on my own. I just needed to periodically empty my catheter, check on my dressings, make an effort to drink water, put ice packs on me, replenish said ice packs, attend communal meals, have nurses check my dressings, and entertain myself. I enjoyed the view out my window. My mood improves so much in the presence of a sunny day.
In the evening, I had a bit of a scare. My pad was soaked in blood. I replaced it, and an hour later it was soaked again and this time my dressings too. I replaced them, and saw a nurse. She inspected it minutes later – and my new dressings were already getting bloody.
She explained that because the inflammation was going down beside the catheter tube, and the catheter tube creating an opening into the bladder, that pee was coming out around the tube. Only because my dressing sutured on my skin was bloody, the pee was mixing and becoming blood red. It was normal she said, and she gave me diaper sized pads to use. I had read about the blood mixing with pee thing in the PDFs the surgeon’s office had sent, but I didn’t know this is what this was until the nurse identified it as such. It just looked so much like regular blood.
I also asked the nurse about the dates in my rehab paperwork. My confirmation document said was being kicked out of rehab on the 12th at 7 am. But my rehab paperwork said the catheter was coming out the 12th. Was that correct? She checked. It should come out the 11th instead. She would inform the night staff to inform the day staff.
Fourth day post-op
I had breakfast with the other patients. In a room adjoining the dining area the sutured dressings were being removed for the patients who had their surgery the same day as me, and catheters for those who had it the day before.
I approached the nurse at the end. I wouldn’t be having my sutures removed today. The sutures and catheter would be removed tomorrow. If there was issues they would leave the catheter in for an extra week, and I’d go home with a prescription to have it removed. Another nurse later explained that the surgeon sometimes delayed removing dressings like this when there was little skin to work with, or the cavity was shallow. I replaced all my dressings and used a wash cloth to wash myself in my room and then I washed my hair in the sink. I missed having showers.
I couldn’t wait to go back home, but at the same time, I felt like I was going to be leaving two days too soon. The routine was the same as the day before.
I used time while icing my junk to read, and to process things in a notebook. The sun imbued a positive and constructive outlook. I wrote about shame and relationships past and present, simultaneously identifying with clarity what needed to be let go and finding the bright path ahead.
I walked to the common area and talked to a woman there. In some ways, being institutionalized first in a bed and then something the size of a large detached home for a week, monitored regularly, fed on a schedule, with a bunch of strangers felt simultaneously like being caged and really nice. It was soothing to be taken care of in this way; it’s not something that happens in adulthood. There a spirit of bond making comparable to a first day at school or uni, with strangers together in a space facing a shared burden. I would soak what I could in, and then leave it behind as I joyfully regained my full independence.
I looked at the guest books with writings from patients dating back to 2008. It was a collection like no other, containing sometimes funny, sometimes insightful, sometimes banal messages taken from a specific moment in these hundreds of lives. Each patient took up a page.
Tim came to visit me that evening. He noted he could see in my eyes how content I was. We chatted, and after he left, I watched an Agatha Christie murder mystery on television.
Fifth day post-op
I had my last communal breakfast. I would miss this part.
Afterwards I went into the examination room which was connected to the dining room. There a nurse removed my sutured dressings and catheter. Nether removal hurt, but it did feel weird, like I was being tickled, and uncomfortable. It was over before I knew it though. She gave me a container, a piece of paper and a pencil. I would write down everything I drank today, and I was to drink a lot. Then I would pee in the container and let her know, to make sure my bladder emptied completely.
I had my first shower. This included washing my newfound genitalia, with the instruction not to have the shower head water it directly. I put on my PJs and fresh cotton underwear to get back into my room.
Once there, I found my underwear bloodied. The nurse came in and told me I was to not use coloured underwear as the dye could cause complications. I should instead use the underwear they provided with pads. She fetched some ice and showed me a new method to ice my junk.
A bit later I looked at my genitals. They looked way less engorged than they had hours earlier. The ice was working really well. I had expected this to look like ground meat, but even at its worst, I was really pleased with the result.
Six glasses of water later, I had to pee. I went to the toilet with the pan they provided, and placed it beneath the toilet seat as instructed. I had my first catheter free pee in five days, which was very exciting to me. I sanitized everything and took the pan to the nurse to inspect. All good. Then she took me to the examination room to do an ultrasound of my bladder. I had let out 500mL of urine but still had 200 mL of urine in me.
I returned to my room to ice. Had lunch. Two of the ladies were heading off to grab some beers. First at the dep and then the hipster bar.
In the afternoon, the nurse called my room. It was time for my first bath. The bath was to be filled up to my belly button. Then I’d go in, rub the unscented bar of soap between my hands, gently wash my genitalia, and then sit in the bath for ten minutes. At the end I’d empty the tub, and point the shower head to my stomach to rinse my genitals. I read Alan Cumming’s Not My Son in the tub. After I was to dry my junk by exposing them to the air in my room; no patting down.
The surgeon came in to check up on me. This was the first time I had seen him since the hospital. Again he was very amenable. He checked on my vulva, said the discoloration was normal, said I understood hygiene and that it would be important not to force for stool. He gave me his blessing, recommended I book a follow-up in a month, and left.
Later a nurse came in, and asked to check on my genitals. She too was pleased, and said it was pretty simple without a cavity. Because I hadn’t peed everything out in the morning, she would do two other ultrasounds on my bladder. I would inform them the next time I urinated.
When that time came the nurse took a measurement of my bladder. The first two readings indicated half as much left-over pee as the morning. The third reading indicated a touch more. This risked the catheter going back in, which I really really did not want.
I had my last dinner. I found out one of the girls had left earlier that day. It felt like we had spent much more time together than we had. I packed my stuff.
Tim came over and dropped off some absorbent briefs I could use the next day. We chatted again, and the nurse came by to give departing information. I’d be given antibiotics to take 4 times a day. I should take Tylenol twice a day. If I had questions I could email/phone them. The swelling would continue for months; so I should continue to ice my junk and take Ibuprofen as needed. Discharge was normal, so I should continue wearing pads.
I had my second bath of the day. I could see the sutures float freely from my skin in the warm water; they were invisible otherwise.
In the evening I went for a pee and informed the nurse. She scanned my bladder. 164 mL. No need for a catheter. I was relieved. I applied ice and went to bed. A nurse came by to give me the evening’s pills. I set my alarm for 6.
Heading home
I didn’t sleep that well. I had gone to pee a few times, and was too excited to fall asleep. I woke up at 6:30, Tim showed up fifteen minutes later.
I got some ice, got dressed with Tim’s help, and iced my junk for a while. I told Tim part of me wished I could be here an extra day. Part of me just wanted to get the fuck home. A nurse gave me my last set of pills.
The driver came by. The trip to the train station was painful. Sitting on its own had been okay, until we hit potholes. Once at the station I popped a tramadol, my first during the entire time. I just didn’t see how I could make it home without it.
Waiting at home and work would be two months of baths or siltz baths twice a day, applying plenty of ice, and limited movement. But I could see the end.
Tim got the staff to get me a wheelchair to board the train. I couldn’t get up the stairs on my own. We got on, and I looked out the window at the scenery as we headed back home.
Content Warning: This article mentions a previous way of thinking that conflates androgynous trans men and cis butch women. It also details transphobic harassment.
My transition started as the cumulation of little changes that eventually became something.
There isn’t a definite start. I didn’t like what puberty did to my genitals, which hit me the summer I turned 14, but it was what it was. I kept having crushes on lesbians in university, but tossed that off to being unlucky. It wasn’t universal – I had had a crush on a straight guy in high school. I remember falling asleep in uni wishing I had been born a girl, but transitioning never occurred to me. I grew up in a home that compared gay relationships to bestiality, with a step-dad that admired John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. As bad as it would have been to be gay, to end up like the large personalities ridiculed on daytime television was inconceivable.
I don’t know when things changed. I didn’t think anything of it when the first person I met during frosh in 2003 told me she had wondered whether she was masculine or a trans guy – settling on masculine. I was 18. In my third or fourth year, I joined a forum for trans men. That was in 2007-2008 and by then I was already openly pansexual and kinky. In 2009, I was dating a trans man.
Come 2010, I was following Tumblr accounts of trans guys and androgynous women unsure if I wanted to be them or be with them. I attended the Trans Day of Remembrance that year with my partner, watching NDP MP Bill Siksay promote bill C-389. My immediate social network was soon almost all trans people. This wasn’t conscious; many were originally friends of friends; many came out as trans after having befriended them. Like has a way of finding like.
In the winter 2011 – 2012, I started to alter the way I looked in the mirror of my bathroom. I bought a RodeoH in the spring of 2012, and come a year later I also had a hollow dildo and my first binder. I tried to make myself look more like the trans guys I saw. I tucked. There was safety and comfort in exploring gender through masculinity, but also a shame around appropriating the experiences of others.
I wrote the following in March 2013:
I’m MAAB, and I’m ambivalent with being read as male and he’d. I don’t hold to it, but since my gender expression is masculine then whatever.
But my sex is different. More specifically, the bottom area. I’m okay with a flat chest, I want the flat chest. But not the bottom. I wish there was a script I could follow to correct that that was supported here.
If I followed the script that is available, I’d be a butch woman who would bind. Not sure that that’s me.
By then I was having conversations with friends about hormone replacement therapy. I decided to give it a shot in May 2013, later explaining:
I knew I needed to quench this disconnect with my body.
At first, that was in the form of seeking bottom surgery. Really I could live on as a guy, I just needed to fix what was down there. If I contemplated hormone replacement therapy, it was just to follow the narrative to access surgery.
Outwardly transitioning wasn’t really an option I thought. I had no hopes that I could live on as stealth and that was really discouraging. I feared rejection. Meanwhile, all the trans women I was aware of seemed to be very feminine, which further made me feel isolated as that wasn’t my path. Genderqueer was more apt but that seemed to only to mean female-assigned-at-birth. I felt like I didn’t really belong anywhere.
I kept thinking more on transitioning, and I realized that no – actually I wanted what the hormones would bring me. Belonging be damned. Bottom surgery started to get less important. I reflected much in this period. I realized that despite all these fears of going at it alone and forever being ostracized in a deeply transphobic society, that it was better than the alternative.
Around this time I saw a YouTube video of butch trans women. I had known a few feminine trans guys, but this was the first time I saw trans women with a masculine gender expression:
This 2011 video featuring butch trans women opened the doors to transition for me. Up until this point, all the trans women I knew were very feminine, which didn’t match how I saw myself.
It was the first time I saw someone like me. The video legitimized in me what I had felt, and what I had been pursuing seemingly on my own. Further helping things was that one of my friends from DEFCON had come out and been instantly named/gendered correctly by our mutual friends – including the one who had a Southern drawl. Her coming out helped make feasible what had seemed impossible then – being accepted as a woman having looked like me and having had cisgender friends like mine.
I made great strides in my self-discovery over the summer of 2013. I started the summer going by they/them pronouns. A friend helped me buy my first bra and skirts; I shaved my arms and later my legs; I went out in public in feminine attire for the first time. Each of these milestones was accompanied by the removal of a psychic burden; and I realised that I had deferred to a masculine and then a non-binary identity because I didn’t think I could be accepted as a butch woman. Only I could. Each of these steps was making me feel better about my body. I wrote later:
Weeks before Pride, that friend and I went to Value Village where I picked up two skirts. I wore that skirt for the first time outside a week before Pride. I was so afraid before then that I would be destroyed by comments from judgy passerbys. I had witnessed such homophobic and transphobic vitriol over the years in Ottawa. But at the same time, I needed to do this for me. So I femmed up and walked outside.
I did get inappropriate comments. But I didn’t care – because what I noticed as I walked down the street is that virtually no one so much as gazed in my direction. That lack of attention was in itself so affirming that when someone finally did say something nasty, I just didn’t give a shit.
Pride came, and I wore that skirt again. I felt so real.
Two days later, I announced that my name had changed to Maëlys.
I came out to my mom and step-dad in September 2013, some four months after I had made the call to start hormone replacement therapy and after all these realisations. It didn’t go well; my step-dad informed me that this was delusional and that I was hurting those close to me by transitioning.
After that exchange didn’t end positively, I wrote this letter to him and my mom the following month:
Hi there to the two of you,
I wanted to write this letter so that I could bring some clarity to what was going on with me.
Mom I never gave you much in that regard directly. [Step-dad], I didn’t feel like the communications we did share elucidated much. They were framed in terms of you disagreeing with my decisions without an awareness of what led to them, and that shaped the dialog in a way that was similarly constrained.
My purpose here isn’t necessarily to convince you, but to inform you. For me to able to speak plainly about myself so that you at least have the perspective of the one experiencing this. My hope is that my doing this will strengthen our relationship through understanding.
A good starting point would perhaps be to start with saying that I am transitioning. That I go by the name Maëlys, and that my pronouns are she/her.
There wasn’t really a fixed start to this transition. If you want something more tangible, you could go back to the winter of 2011/2012, which is when I started to make a conscious effort to alter my appearance in the privacy of my bathroom. Round my chin, make it seem like I had a chest, tuck, etc.
Or you could go forward in time to this past spring, which is when I started being assessed for hormone replacement therapy. There was much in between, including months of self-reflection and pondering what living meant to me. I won’t speak much to that here, however.
What I will instead cover is how I feel as I have been transitioning outwardly over this past summer. Every step I’ve taken, from buying a bra, to shaving my legs, to then shaving my arms – has resulted in a progressive shedding of a long-standing source of discontentment around my body. I can actually enjoy my own company now. This is new.
As I had once described to you [step-dad], it’s as if each of these steps is accompanied by a weight being lifted off my shoulders. Only in their absence do I become cognizant of their past presence, with the accompanying relief so great that I could never fathom going back to that miserable self.
Meanwhile, I’ve been enjoying wonderful relationships with folk. They know me only as Maëlys and have no problem she-ing me. It’s funny how much the use of one word is powerful. It’s the difference between “Your existence is legitimate” and “I won’t even treat you as you ask to be treated, even if it’s but uttering a single word.” I am grateful for their presence in my life.
Truth be told, I don’t know what my future holds. That’s okay with me. What I do know is that what I’m doing now is right for me.
Much love,
Maëlys
In their response, my parents addressed me by the correct name. Over the next year I would make the name change legal and start hormone replacement therapy. Later on I would amend my gender marker on my birth certificate, driver’s license, etc. The sense that I was appropriating the experiences of “real trans people” would go away and I would accept that I was trans.
This brings us to the present, some six years later: I had surgery on February 6th that removed my penis and testicles and created a vulva. It is the last major milestone of my medical transition.
Jumping into the unknown with hormone replacement therapy remains the single best decision I’ve ever made. I didn’t go in knowing whether it would work for me; just knowing that it was possible that it could. Am I ever glad I did. I am so grateful to those who counseled me and assured me the changes were progressive and reversible. I’m also thankful to those who shared their own stories. It was reassuring to know that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t “always know” and lacked the easily digestible narrative.
Had it not been for the listening ear and calm words of my friends, I wouldn’t have been able to make this important leap. Their support was precious in this very intimidating time of my life.
Evolution in photos
With all that said, I figured that I’d mark my surgery with a photo essay of the past decade.
November 2010. I attend the Trans Day of Remembrance. I consider myself cis.August 2011. My private Tumblr blog is very focused on trans issues and I comment that I wish I looked like the trans guys I see.August 2011. Pride. As with everywhere else, I only spot a few young trans folk. It’s mostly just old trans women. At this point, I hadn’t noticed any butch trans women.Winter 2011-2012. I start to do gender play with a RodeOh, strap-on, binders and tucking.October 2012. I return to university for a second degree. This time I attend the Pride Centre, and go to trans events for my own benefit instead of as in solidarity.Winter 2012-2013. I’m having a lot of conversations about transitioning with friends.March 2013. I blog publicly that I’m doing explorations around gender.May 2013. I make the call to get on HRT. It’s with a new program for trans adults at the downtown clinic. I move into its catchment area.August 2013. I’ve socially transitioned among friends. This is at DEFCON, in Las Vegas, at the queer pool party.August 2013. Pride. This is one of my first public outing in girl mode in Ottawa.August 2013. I change my name.September 2013. I come out to my parents. It doesn’t go well.October 2013. I inadvertently attend the Philly Trans March.December 2013. First time in a women’s washroom. I do so outside the GenderQuest meeting at Pink Triangle Services.January 2014. I apply for my legal name change. It is refused on the first go.February 2014. Still waiting to get on HRT. I start to self-administer androgen blockers.April 2014. My name change becomes legal.May 2014. I freeze my sperm at the most hetero-toxic-masculinity clinic ever.July 2014. First estrogen injection. I socially transition at work.January 2015. I do laser hair removal for the first time. It takes three years to get rid of my facial hair.February 2015. Gender change on driver’s license and health card comes through. June 2015. Gender change on birth certificate comes through.June 2015. One year on HRT.August 2015. Pride parade. Protesting the conservatives killing the bill to add gender identity to the Canadian Human Rights Act. My mom is to the left.October 2017. The day I get my library card is also the day that I see my doctor to get my first recommendation letter for surgery. I am referred to another doctor for the second letter.February 2018. I see the second doctor and get a second surgery recommendation. I have my final laser hair removal appointment.July 2018. Four years on estrogen.August 2018. I go attend the trans march. I notice how many more of us attend year on year.February 2019. I undergo surgery.
Societal context
As an aside, things have happened in the world in the short period since I’ve started to transition. I thought it would be useful to give some of that context from an Ottawa lens:
2008
OHIP relists gender affirmation surgery under a Liberal government. The Progressive Conservatives had delisted it in 1998, requiring people in Ontario to pay out of pocket for surgical care.
Susan Stryker’s book, Transgender History, is published. It becomes essential trans lit along with The Whipping Girl, a book by Julia Serano published the previous year.
January Marie Lapuz is a trans woman who emigrated from the Philippines. She is the Social Coordinator of Sher Vancouver and the first transgender person to hold an executive position with the group. She is described as the life of the party. She is also a sex worker. She is murdered in Vancouver.
Orange is the New Black comes out, and with it an explosion of attention on trans lives by cisgender individuals. News media and television become saturated with coverage, though it remains largely reductive and largely focused on white and affluent persons.
The first episode of Rebecca Sugar’s animated television show, Steven Universe, airs.
The zine Brazen containing safer sex information for trans women is published. It compliments the zine Primed which was released for trans men into men in 2007.
Rosa Rebut is a trans woman from Indonesia who enjoyed Edmonton winters. She posted pictures of her frolicking in the snow at the legislature grounds, shopping on trendy 104th Street and joked she was a snow princess looking for her snow prince. She worked at a 7-Eleven as well as an escort. She is murdered in Edmonton.
2015
Morgan M. Page releases the first episode of the trans history podcast One From The Vaults.
Venus Envy, the feminist book and sex shop in Ottawa, is fined after selling a binder to a trans teen. It is the only store selling binders in Ottawa. The fine is waived after community outcry. The store later purges its pornographic video collection to remove age restrictions on entry; this includes feminist films of trans performers engaging in consensual sexual activity.
Sumaya Dalmar is a trans woman of colour who has been the lead actress in a play about the relationship between the Somali ethnicity, religiosity, and its correlation to masculinity. She is a qualified speech therapist. She’s about to start a job with the 519. She’s also a sex worker. She is murdered in Toronto.
Angus Reid polls Canadians for their attitude on trans issues. 25% of Canadian men are uncomfortable with a trans person moving next door. Only half of Ontarians think trans people should be able to use the washroom they’re most comfortable using.
Myrah Whitstone is an indigenous trans woman who studied social work and did advocacy work for an Indigenous mothers group. She is murdered outside Edmonton.
Somewhere in there health care practitioners in Ottawa started to adopt informed consent for hormone replacement therapy in greater numbers. Workshops targeting health care professionals on these matters became well attended by those who didn’t specialize in this care. Workplaces and schools started to include gender expression and identity in their non-discrimination policies. Mainstream bookshops went from carrying zero books on trans lives and issues in their LGBT section to those books making up a significant portion of their collection. It became common for schools to have multiple out trans students.
The number of out trans people exploded in the last decade, as seen through these referral numbers of trans teens across Canada.
None of the positive developments would have been possible without the efforts of largely homeless, poor, and/or working class gender non-conforming individuals.
Unfortunately, the good of those developments has not been evenly distributed. Young white affluent gender-conforming trans people and young white middle-class transmasculine folk have overwhelmingly been the beneficiaries of recent societal change and become the face of transness for mainstream culture. The attention on them has diverted resources away from the very people who made this change possible and who need a shift in societal values the most.
It’s not all roses
Ignorance and harassment continues to be a regular facet of my being trans in Ottawa. I’ve written about some of my experiences and those of others before here, here, here, here, and here, so I won’t go too much into it. I have never felt safe in Ottawa, and I am frustrated at the lack of consequence for mainstream organisations that abet this danger for profit (see here, here, here, here, and here).
Some examples of harassment include:
A man in his fifties yells at me in French “Are you a guy or a girl?” before then shouting “You’re a guy with a penis!”A man (not shown) interrupts me while I’m walking with a date and grabs my breasts to see if I’m really a man or a woman.A man calls me a faggot while walking with a friend. I turn around, he asks if I had a problem with that, and I calmly tell him that I do since he had called me a faggot. I take his picture and walk away. I hear him say he’ll punch my face in.Messages I’ve received from men while dating.Unsolicited comments I’ve received from men on social media.
I haven’t been shocked at the intimidation in Ottawa. When I was perceived as a dude in a gay relationship previous to my transition, I was called faggot by men in cars and told that my head and that of my boyfriend should be cut off. My trans friends all have stories, many of them involving physical assault. The nice things they’ve tried to run – picnics for rainbow families and support groups – have been threatened and disrupted by transphobic and homophobic locals.
Ottawa is a conservative town.
Meanwhile I encounter transphobia in the books, tv, movies and newspapers I consume. It’s always like a little punch in the gut:
Closer to my heart, I lost some friends because of my transition. My sister initially refused to use my name and pronouns around her young children, asserting it would confuse them. I heard my step-dad tried to stage an intervention. I was in my twenties when I transitioned; non-acceptance hurt me more then than it would now.
My sister eventually had a talk with her kids about aunt Maëlys. My step-dad came to use the right name and sometimes the right pronouns. Given conversations we have had since, I felt that things would be better for me if my mom and step-dad didn’t know about my surgery until after I recovered. I worried they might try to stop me, or make my recovery about their immediate emotional needs.
It’s been good
When I decided to start hormone replacement therapy, I didn’t know whether it would be for me, and whether I would always be on it if it was. Maybe these feelings around my body would change years later. I didn’t have the story I was expected to have – that I always knew, that it was some strong feeling in me.
I came to be okay with the ambiguity. I resolved that it was better to give a shot at living live five, ten or fifty good years, which is what HRT could potentially enable, than the alternative. If it wasn’t for me, then I’d know and stop. If things changed for me after years, it was no big deal, and I’d address it then.
This was the moment to give it a shot. I had hit rock bottom, and I was mentally prepared to lose my job, my family, and my friends. It’s harder to relate to those consequences now, but this was before awareness of trans people exploded into the mainstream.
The six happiest years of my life followed.
Then came surgery. There was a lot of processing, with some final ambiguity but comfort with all possible outcomes. After the procedure, I had a moment of “holy fuck, I just got my penis cut off.” It lasted maybe a day or two.
The momentary incredulity gave way to contentment. I began to feel absolutely liberated. Anything I could put my mind to I could do as long as there were steps to get there. I had spent my adult life so uncomfortable departing from a known routine. This departure, along with quitting two previous jobs with nothing lined up, signaled a change in me that I had wanted to see.
I continue to be the happiest I’ve ever been. There’s a lot more to why that’s the case than my transition – such as going to therapy and reprioritizing who gets to be in my life and to what extent – but transition is a significant part of it.
I walked around my place, unsure what to do. My contract had ended unexpectedly right before Christmas. It was about the worst time to look for work, and I had surgery in two months further complicating the job search.
I immediately went to Halifax. Never been. Always wanted to go. A friend met me there and I had a great time. Once back, I was a bit at a loss.
I had a “no buy” policy to save money; so pretty much all outings were out. My extended friend network didn’t really do stuff together anymore as we aged; instead favoring the intimacy of their home and partners. My closest friends were at work and school. Winter had come and I only had a bus pass to get around. I got into a routine: yoga on YouTube, good coffee, job search, walking to the library / around, reading, video games.
I was bored out of my mind. I yearned to be around people. Where can you hang out without expectations of paying in downtown Ottawa during winter? It’s really just the library.
I ended up getting a job, at least for now, but I still dream of common spaces. Big venues in the center of the city, with a large library, free concerts, poetry shows, communal gardens, free chili/tea, work spaces, maker spaces, and green spaces to lay down for picnics, with plenty of natural light. Where everyone, from affluent urban parents with young children, to the elderly, to those with significant visible mental health issues, to those who experience great levels of poverty, are all able to feel safe and enjoy and use the space equally.
This week the Vancouver Public Library is at the center of outcry over its hosting of Meghan Murphy’s event. She is perhaps the highest profile transphobe in Canada along with Jordan Peterson. The VPL said in its statement following the negative attention:
VPL is not endorsing, or hosting this event; it is a rental of our public space. VPL has zero tolerance for discrimination and does not agree with the views of the Feminist Current. However, commitment to free speech and intellectual freedom are fundamental values of public libraries and are bedrock values for democratic society. As such, we will not refuse to rent to an individual or organization simply because they are discussing controversial topics or views, even those we find offensive. We seek to be a welcoming place for all, and actively find ways to support the trans, gender variant and two-spirit communities.
Media relations director Althea Blackburn-Evans said Peterson “has the right to express his views,” but that faculty members “also have responsibilities to create a learning environment at the University of Toronto that’s free from discrimination.
“The university’s mandate is to foster discussion and debate around topics that can often be very controversial,” Blackburn-Evans said.
In both cases these venues portrayed themselves as neutral and against discrimination. On this I wish to be clear:
Debates are not neutral.
Hosting speakers is not a neutral gesture.
We know this, because had the speaker been a Neo-Nazi, the VPL and U of T wouldn’t have given them a platform. It isn’t a violation of free speech to decline to give a platform to bigotry, but it is a choice.
It is inconsistent to insist they oppose discrimination while playing a key part in promulgating beliefs that a particular segment of society should be denied fundamental rights. It is no coincidence that the people making such statements on behalf of these institutions are not those targeted by this vitriol.
Part of what is going on here, I believe, is this myth that debates are neutral. That speech does not contribute to discrimination. That we live in a society of unfettered free speech. That the right side wins in the battle of ideas. That discrimination is a thing of the past, or a thing that takes place over there, or a case of individuals acting badly.
It ignores that for groups that are marginalized, the side to win these debates in the beginning is the side that argues to further ostracize them. The view of those with power, be it on women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights, sex worker rights, indigenous rights, always starts off opposed. Eventually, but certainly not always as we see with indigenous rights an sex workers, there is a shift. During that transition, a lot of people continue to be opposed to rights. So when you inject a platform for people to argue to support this marginalization during this period of transition, it carries heft. People listen. This doesn’t take place in a void and so people act on what they hear. Those acts are legal – most discrimination is. And it can do a lot of damage.
Jordan Peterson rose to fame specifically on the basis of his transphobic views amplified by Canadian and American media. So it happens now that I sit down at a restaurant, and I overhear the man at the table next to me share with great enthusiasm to the person across from him Jordan Peterson’s view on gender. That man, and those like him, are embolden through this validation to treat people like me worse. These views are validated and legitimized through their association with institutions like the University of Toronto and the Vancouver Public Library. They thought it was okay, so it’s okay for me too, right?
To the cis people heading these institutions, it’s harmless free speech. It’s harmless to them that’s for sure. But to me, it’s adding to the bottom tier of the discrimination pyramid, lowering the bar for the harsher acts that follow.
