Being openly trans v. being stealth: the continuing debate

To what do I owe a continuing stake in a crusade that makes my own happiness less pertinent?

By what passion, what permanent interest, is the beloved observance of my formative experiences actuated?

How palpable is the public good that I should grow unduly attached to a cause that dispenses nothing but incomprehensibility in my presence?

How consistently must I assert these concepts that alienate me before my accrued rights sustain the injuries of my accrued debts?

When will the hours that I pour into advocacy and the animosity that I inherit be consonant to a pronounced respect for people like me?

I just want to retreat into my intellectual cabin, study people as though they are things, be left alone, and secure the testimony of autumn that time obliterates rather than heals that which was not maladious to begin with.

I want to file away the scandals, the scrutiny, and the ease with which the presupposition makes it more probable that I will feel oppressed.

I want to burn my driver's license and deposit the ashes in a Swiss bank so that they will be insulated from the light of day, from the pressure to reciprocate support for a past that serves as an impediment.

Is it possible to compose enlightened views from the incubator of neutrality? Is it possible to elicit support and kindle sympathy for who I am without disclosing who I used to be?

I wish I had answers instead of pain.

Should I start over completely at Rutgers by leaving my past behind forever?

I always thought that I would go back into a burning building to retrieve my antecedents as though they were a friend under extreme duress.

I thought that I would be capable of wearing my past on my sleeve.

I thought that I was ready to be a pioneer instead of a person.

I was convinced, mistakenly, that as long as some unsubstantiated trans kid in Uganda got his wings every time a gay person I met at a pride event asked me intrusive questions about what's in my pants or felt entitled to know what surgeries I have had, that I could derive an iota of satisfaction from my transparency in spite of the humiliation and discomfort that it facilitated.

A sense of purpose and a commitment to promoting the visibility of a vastly underrepresented population has beleaguered me with a balancing act that I cannot reconcile.

I write this from a musky basement littered with embarrassment in the form of clothing that has not felt mammalian warmth in over a year and a half. I'm leaning on a pillow made of garbage bags filled with bra imbued tank tops that were stitched together to accommodate bits of matter that I seek to destroy, in spite of the ineptitude of our universe at doing so.

Curse the conservation law. I want so badly to forget that I was born in a female body. It's so fucking painful.

The solicitous inquiry about my transition provokes unwanted memories. It embellishes an opening that has already been antagonized by birth, a void that grows more evocative every time I am lured into a dark cave full of reckless inquiries and drinks laced with determinism.

I thought that I could perceive my past as a legacy rather than a liability. Instead, I want to write myself out of my own history the way that autumn omits the foliage from the trees.

How many calendars would I have to rewrite in order to account for the discrepancies that would undoubtedly come up in future conversations? Must I deprive myself of hundreds of Facebook posts, a lifetime of wisdom acquired through the lens of lashes that were often lengthened, even my fucking Bat Mitzvah? Must I go so far as to invent a twin sister to rationalize the contents of a thousand photos, only to kill her off so as to put her sudden disappearance from my life in context?

Though this task seems daunting, it is one that I seriously entertain.

For while I am incapable of establishing a meaningful friendship with someone who doesn't know what I have been through, I can't bear the thought of one insidious detail compromising their conception of me early on, or ever.

So long as I draw upon my experiences as a trans person for educational purposes, I will continue to be my own worst enemy. I undermine my own masculinity by divulging these flagrant sources of comparison for all the world to see. Interesting and statistically rare as these reference points might be, they conjure to the forefront of my mind stabs of remorse for having drawn attention to them at all.

I don't want a Sabbatical. I want a sunset.

I want the past to die. I want to introduce myself with a display of blood that will never be blue again. I want rigor mortis to take my memories away, to absorb sound waves that I now find staggering to interpret and egregious in the damage that they inflict upon my newly resolved sanity.

I stupidly thought that embracing this magnanimous resolution to educate and reform by living my life as openly as possible would serve as a source of strength. Instead, I find that any vestige of my former self weakens me.

It's sad because...I never thought that I would fight so vehemently to come out of one closet, only to trade it for another.

The Transgender Individual Can Fuel Cutting Edge Scientific Research

We are the cornerstone of any meaningful debate that strives to establish if greatness is made or if greatness is born.

The transgender body, ostensibly born as one sex while endowed with the invitation to someday decompose as another, offers more answers about human nature than the armamentarium of Abrahamic religion and the typewriter, or rather, wax tablet, of Dr. Phil and others whose brains manufacture oatmeal instead of grey matter.

I want to take a moment to separate the sigmas and epsilons of my predecessors from the "P's" and "Q's," and still, to eradicate the politically correct jargon-fuck of an alphabet soup that the LGBT acronym has become so that we can have a scientific conversation about gender identity, one that highlights the assets of the transgender individual and the wisdom embodied by those who have lived as both sexes. From a scientific standpoint, transition is a powerful vehicle for significant physiological change, a lightening bolt that sifts through the sky and splits everything around it into a before and an after.

My chemical transition has facilitated so many personal changes that for the purpose of brevity, I cannot even begin to list them.

Prior to taking testosterone, while my true interests, moods, aggression levels, and sex drive fell within the range of what would be considered male typical, these traits still developed against the backdrop of a female physiology. All of my organs and neural circuitry were bathed in the same currents that flowed through Cleopatra.

While I identified fully as a man, I sought to isolate my more feminine traits and accommodate their presence by rejecting the dichotomous gender model that contemporary society subscribes to. And while I fully embrace the beauty of gender variance and defend the existence of a gender continuum, I am compelled to report that since taking testosterone, I am more inclined to incorporate those feminine traits into a patriarchal umbrella that engulfs these attributes rather than ostracizes them from the shadow's reach. That is, the male chemical has catalyzed the development of my true self by substituting masculinized equivalents for female traits.

I used to think that emotions were basic, primal, and universal. The old me would have asserted that, indeed, tears blur the lines of gender into pastel shades. People cried in varying degrees, I thought, with parts of them that are male, and parts of them that are female. To harbor a mix of male and female attributes, I maintained, was to be extricated from the casket nailed shut by gender conformity. And sorrow was a gourmet tea, rich with herbs and other halves.

The dramatic revisions that have been made to my body as well as my emotional faculties serve as a reminder that this is not the case, and that the read-only biological template sponsored by liberals and progressives alike is, ironically, as backwards as whatever word processing technology Bill O'Reilley might be employing these days.

The paucity of mere references to the transgender individual in contemporary psychological and neuroscientific research is alarming. Note the vivacity with which such an individual opposes the assignment of a biological sex at birth and the degree to which he or she feels as though their autonomy has rudely been imposed upon. Like a recalcitrant state, he or she rebels against an authority that has been instituted among men, presumably cisgendered men, and consequently, is not equipped to infer the grievances of the incongruous.

This internal struggle strongly suggests that men and women are inherently different. If these differences were not so salient, then the horror elicited by being born in the wrong body would not be analogous to sustaining some awful birth defect.

Thus, the transgender struggle heavily insinuates that society must altogether scrap this politically correct facade and understand that diversity is not to be equated with deficiencies. It is impossible to ignore the gender differences that have been elucidated by discoveries made in the fields of neuroscience, genetics, and general biology. Inherent biological differences between the sexes need not be equated with inferiority. In fact, basic evolutionary theory recognizes that variety is an advantage for any species, as genetic diversity ensures adaptability in the face of environmental change. Thus, specialization should be seen as a strength, not a flaw.

Any researcher concerned with the study of gender needs to step away from the drama and painfully contrived theories generated by the Real Housewives of Social Psychology.

Consider, for a moment, a biological approach to gender, one that gives rise to an appreciation of physiological differences between cisgendered men and women.

For example, sex differences in the anatomy of the eye suggest that boys are prewired to be interested in motion and girls are prewired to be interested in faces. This explanation is conducive to the results of one experiment in which male babies fresh from the delivery room were more than twice as likely to look at a dangling mobile, while female babies were more likely to look at a young women smiling at them.

The retinas of almost every male animal are significantly thicker than those of their female counterparts because they contain a much higher concentration of "M" (magnocellular) cells, which receive input from the color-blind rods and detect motion. On the contrary, female retinas are dominated by "P" (parvocellular) cells, which receive input from photosensitive cones and detect information about texture and color. They are more involved in object identification than "M" cells. At very young ages, even before they have any conception of gender, girls prefer dolls and boys prefer trucks or cars. When they reach school age, cisgendered girls tend to draw people and use warm colors in their pictures. Cisgendered boys tend to portray verbs, such as vehicles in motion, and use very little color.

I have come across dozens of experiments that aim to uncover discrepancies between the genders. But in all of my reading, I have yet to encounter one thinker who has espoused the revelation I have had in regards to the transgender individual and empirical design.

The transgender individual that resorts to chemical means in order to transition is a researcher's dream. I will tell you right now that hormones affect everything.

Absolutely everything. Aside from total fat redistribution, voice deepening, increase in muscle mass, and the masculinization of my figure as well as my face, the manner in which I experience and express emotion has shifted markedly. I will assert that the addition of these new dimensions to my character can unquestionably be attributed to testosterone.

Clearly, we can learn a shitload about gender by studying a transgender person during the course of his or her chemical transition. But what I want the scientific community to realize is that transgender people offer an incredibly rare and invaluable opportunity to learn about gender differences through the lens of the ideal experiment.

Many researchers employ the within-subjects design because it offers fundamental advantages. In this type of experiment, the same subject is exposed to more than one treatment. In this case, we would administer brain scans, surveys, and standardized tests aimed at capturing the cognitive and emotional performance of an individual before, during, and after he or she undergoes hormonal therapy. Using the same subjects for each condition reduces the variance associated with individual differences in intelligence, genetic makeup, environmental influences, diet, sleeping schedule, and any other confounding variable imaginable. It also reduces the probability of beta error and increases statistical power by increasing the number of subjects than would be used in other experimental designs.

Unlike every other study about gender, this one would feature participants that have each been exposed to both conditions: pre-transition and post-transition. One sex before, one sex after. Because every other biological and environmental factor is being held constant, all subsequent changes in physiology, personality, and emotion can be attributed to the only variable that is being manipulated: the dominant hormone that is circulating throughout one's body.

Oh, just think of the untapped potential that an entire population has to offer! Isn't it monstrous that, rather than appreciate the invaluable contributions that transgender people can make to scientific and psychological literature, we segregate them inside a "greater-than" inequality on a pie chart representing unemployment and discrimination rates?

In addition to wondering why some cartoon women have coniferous boobs, I beg the question as to how the scientific community has not yet realized our value as living, exquisite experimental designs?

Transgender people don't simply represent the next frontier in civil rights. They represent cutting edge research endeavors in a range of scientific fields. In a country where injustice is as incontrovertible as Independence Day, the fireworks that we throw in peoples' faces need to be put to better use. I will not be placated by playing dress up. I am going to initiate something that is even stronger than political change; I am going to study the body, the most potent of social constituents, and publish my findings through an enriched understanding of the human race. In a culture where we are told that attitude is everything, I WILL squint, not with the eyes of an optimist, but with those of a scientist, until wish bones snap into a size that is favorable to me.

It is time to show some fucking respect for the transgender individual.

Examining The "Affordable Care Act" Anti-Obesity Initiative Through The Lens of Physiology

I have major reservations about the War On Obesity that will be facilitated by the Affordable Care Act. For those of you who are unaware, the Obama Administration plans on channeling millions of dollars into obesity prevention initiatives by implementing public awareness campaigns, establishing research efforts to optimize the public's understanding of health and nutrition, and providing states with incentives to educate Medicaid beneficiaries about the availability of obesity prevention services. On the surface, it seems like this is exactly what our country needs.

But I'm here to tell you that Obama's efforts, while solicitous on the surface, will only serve as a polarizing agent in a culture that is already perturbed by the extreme ends of the disordered eating spectrum.

The initiatives set forth in the Affordable Care Act perpetuate society's obsession with weight loss. This is ironic because the body is inclined to achieve homeostasis, the tendency to maintain stability and optimal physiological levels despite changes in our ambient surroundings.

Ingestive behaviors are triggered by correctional mechanisms in the body that operate in order to replenish depleted nutrient stores. These mechanisms are activated by any deviation from a set point of a system variable; thus, they increase our motivation to seek food as soon as our nutrient reservoirs begin to dissipate.

Powerful hunger signals besiege us from all parts of the body. The stomach secretes a peptide hormone called ghrelin, a potent stimulant for food intake.
Feelings of hunger are correlated with increased blood levels of this hormone. Both the brain and the hepatic portal vein in the liver contain receptors that are equipped to detect falls in blood glucose levels. The brain monitors the availability of glucose inside the blood-brain barrier, and the liver monitors the availability of glucose in the rest of the body.

What needs to be noticed here is that, due to the vital importance of eating, no one system, organ, or mechanism in the body is allotted sole accountability for controlling ingestive behavior. The body is hell bent on being fed. Severing the hepatic branch of the vagus nerve, which prevents the brain from registering the aforementioned hunger signals, does not prevent the organism from eating normally. Lesions in the medulla that destroy the hunger signals associated with glucose deprivation do not disrupt long-term eating patterns. The consumption levels and body weight of mice with a targeted mutation against the ghrelin gene, the potent hunger stimulant mentioned before, are not disturbed. Clearly, the preponderance of redundancy in the body's neural and hormonal mechanisms that regulate food intake suggests that voluntary efforts to deprive oneself of food present a sure recipe-pun intended-for failure (I will bet you are still laughing!).

American culture is conducive to disordered eating, whether these pathological consumption patterns manifest themselves as obesity, anorexia, bulimia, or dieting. Our unhealthy obsession with food has insidious effects on every aspect of our lives. We manage our emotions with food, whether our desire is to surround ourselves with comfort after a stressful day at work/school or seek respite from our insecurities through calorie counting. Often, the aim is to exert control over over our bodies, to exercise sovereignty over the physical encasement either through suppression or overindulgence.

Society is stymied by making fat the focal point of weight loss efforts, or by even prescribing weight loss regimens at all. Industry capitalizes on this fear of fat, thereby perpetuating unrealistic fitness routines that make weight loss difficult to maintain. The preoccupation with thinness is a societal standard that is inherently unsustainable.

As one Harvard professor points out brilliantly, the inverse correlation between portion size and ideal body image has steepened over the decades. That is, as Americans increase their level of consumption, the archetypal beauty remains untouched. When the media and fashion industries promulgate a standard of beauty that is, for many people, not feasible, the consequences are amplified by the constant presence of food on television, in magazines, and on every street corner. This exposure to conflicting ends-a skeletal structure and satiety-either discourages people from being healthy when their efforts to lose weight don't yield the unrealistic results they desire or deters them from eating altogether.

Making fat the culprit in our war against weight gain simply won't work. This approach has already failed. In fact, a meta-analysis of 55 intervention studies, which was published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, yielded the finding that the average amount of weight lost by the 30,000 children who participated in these studies was one pound. And diets are notorious for being associated with weight cycling. Restricting calories and engaging in an exorbitant amount of exercise doom weight loss efforts because the body is, from an evolutionary standpoint, designed to reserve fat. Achieving fullness when food was available prevented our hunter-gatherer ancestors from starving.

One fascinating study has even suggested that the symptoms of eating disorders are triggered by starvation. Researchers at the University of Minnesota observed the effects of semi-starvation in thirty-six physically and psychologically healthy young men. When their diet was cut in half, these men displayed mood swings, an obsession with food, ritualistic eating behaviors, irritability, severe depression, reduced sex drive, fatigue, isolation and social withdrawal, and other hallmark symptoms of anorexia. Perhaps these findings can elucidate the relationship between diet crazes and the eating disorders that plague millions of people of both genders.

At the other end of the spectrum, researchers have found that hunger can be induced in an organism by depriving cells of fat, a process called lipoprivation. This implies that excessive dieting proves to be counter-productive, as unattainable levels of emptiness trigger strong hunger signals that cause people to disengage from the weight-loss goals they have set for themselves. This accounts for the high proportion of failed diets in America.

So, rather than endorse campaigns that castigate overweight people, we should be teaching people to treat their bodies with respect, not give them more of an incentive to view their bodies in a disparaging manner.

This is not a matter of political correctness. It is a matter of pragmatism.

By requiring that insurance companies pay for medically-advised weight loss expenses, and additionally requiring that employers provide said insurance, there is a risk that weight loss initiatives will enter the workplace. As it is, some companies already offer benefits to employees with a low body mass index.

Not only am I strongly opposed to federally sponsored values entering the workplace, I am also strongly opposed to perfidious weight loss programs that guarantee long-term results in exchange for a lifetime of shame and guilt.

We need to recant our stance against fat. According to one study, body mass index is not even a reliable criteria for determining who is healthy, as 51% of “healthy” participants were identified as unhealthy, and 18% of participants with a low BMI failed to elicit concern from their doctors, in spite of their poor health (Wildman et al.,Archives of Internal Medicine, 2008). Additionally, diet pills and liposuction don't produce the long-term results that they promise because the mere removal of adipose tissue from the body is insufficient means to maintaining a lower body weight.

Why, then, do we continue to buoy our efforts to dispel fat from society? It hasn't worked so far, has it?

The logical thing to do is to make self-acceptance a priority. Everything about the way the body works screams that satiety is the solution to weight management, rather than an obstacle. Commercials or advertisements that portray any body type in a vilifying manner or serve to increase our dissatisfaction with our bodies only encourage us to abuse them, whether by over-eating, starving, or purging.

Really, what we should be striving for is fullness, not hunger. The aim is to fulfill needs, not deprive oneself of nutrients, to indulge in care that includes a plentiful diet as well as regular exercise and consistent physical activity. Balance is literally the key to controlling vital characteristics in mammals, including, but not limited to, temperature, pH levels, fluid compartments, and hormone diffusion. Eating is no exception to this rule.

In the end, the hippies have it right. Love conquers all. In this case, self-love leads to physiological peace and harmony.

The Overman: An essay in which I come to terms with becoming a man

(Contextual note: I wrote this three days before I started taking testosterone.)



It is time.

"It is the hour of your greatest contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome to you, and so also your reason and virtue."

For happiness, as well as everything cerebral, and everything emotional, that does not resonate with one's rendition of truth, is militant to the mind in which it resides.

So implied Nietzsche when he passionately spoke of The Overman, an idea in which a man rises above humanity by establishing his own values and severing his dependence on the predetermined. He fills his home not with comforts, but with constant reinterpretation inside a castle of his own reality.

It is time to be real.

For a split second, I curse the scientific method, and that avenue in which we are analytical at every turn, because it has become more of an alleyway than an asset. It is a scene that incriminates, deprives us of blood, bruises us when we rebel, infringes risk upon us, and paves our road with regret instead of who we really are.

I am afraid, but I am also the Overman. I am, not less than a biological male, but something more than, something in addition to, and that in-addition-to is the implication of strength, courage, and empathy that I would not possess, had I not been born something other than a biological male.

The Overman. I have decided to challenge the gender binary. We are taught to leave the world a better place than when we found it, to venerate those who live in a manner that is consistent with altruism. But I venerate those who live in a manner that is consistent with entropy, those who leave the world in an increasingly chaotic state. It would be a privilege to add disorder to the universe, to expend from the system every iota of wisdom that we take for granted, to compel other people to mark up and annotate the nuanced gender spectrum, and ask that they leave it acronym-laden.

I am petrified by the act of creation that is necessitated by living in a world that is meaningful solely because we will it to be, as this act calls for change. I fear the changes- the emotional, the mental, the physical, and the unfathomable. But does this mean that I should fear art, and music, the birth of classical literature, and theory formation? Why can't the creation of a self incite the jubilation associated with initiating any other kind of change that is meaningful and lasting? Can change not be beautiful?

The Overman insists it is.

Look at the keys that unlock music. The piano creates beauty out of a binary-and so will I. Black and white will no longer be the prestigious tones. It is time for other colors to be considered. So disproportionately represented are the shadows, as I am among men. It is time to intercept the prevailing position on a man and what he should be, to interrogate every type of masculinity so that I may wear his secrets and his authenticity every day and without shame. The road not taken is that which is not an archetypal man, and I walk with shoes that I refuse to fill. The entire industry of striving comes to a standstill as I announce that my distance will no longer be in accordance with societal ideals. Rather, I will beat my own drum.

Some people will never know how to react, but catering to their confusion is not my mission.

I aspire to be multi-faceted. The columns of man are monolithic. The empire of man was built with shallow stones. There is no room for sorrow that is wet and does not dry quickly, for cheeks that are burdened by the visible proof of despair. Despondency makes a name for itself with anonymous men, with those who would rather be caught cheating on their partner than weeping.

Well, I am going to instill a new kind of man with the soles of my feet. I will walk the journey of a thousand miles uncensored, insecurities and all. I will never auction away anything of my own. They are more valuable than the greatest jewel that I do not have, my unguarded sorrows, the ease with which I am moved to tears. These are qualities that I covet highly, and I will not relinquish them simply because I am to become a man.

I am creating a new man, my own man.

I spent these last few days in the terror that I would lose myself, that the devastation induced by my inability to uncover the most prized aspects of my personhood would be irremediable. In some time, my current self will be a tenant of another time zone altogether. Our satellites will no longer be partners in space. And that is a terribly sad concept for me to consider. But I can assure myself that continuity is temporal, that it can be touched, that all of the qualities we love about ourselves can be lured back to the surface, if only we keep our core luminous. There is really nothing to lose except fear.

Oh yes, I will still be afraid. This is inevitable. For one really can be polygamous with one's principles, in the sense that we can commit as equally to the arduous as we can the pursuit of happiness. I can shake interminably and at the same time feel like the luckiest man alive for having this opportunity at all. Is it possible for fear and happiness so profound to occupy that same space?

It is so, for I will it to be. I relinquish lawfulness in the name of self-love. It is the anarchy of who I am. Everything that I am supposed to be surrenders to what I actually want.

With order usurped during these tumultuous times, we find that the root of all evil is not desire-it is a debt to ourselves. We sue our standards in court, then lead protests in order to end their imprisonment. We let them free, and then we let them in. We resuscitate them every time, because we are afraid of living unabashedly. Staying true to oneself with wild abandon takes strength.

These past few months have stripped me down to my weaknesses and my darker elements. But I am proud to say that the velocity of my shortcomings is not as swift as my ability to overcome them.

These are the physics of epiphany. It is the energy used to create light, in a world where the natural state is darkness. And it is the understanding that even that which is lost can never be destroyed.

Who I am, the Overman, is just being born. With so much creation, there is no room for loss.

The fibers of continuity are not a soul, but a strength exhibited by oneself. It doesn't mean that we never change. Rather, it means that we do not let go. It does not mean that we stay the same. Instead, it implies that we are giving ourselves a chance, at whatever that may be.

I understand that I am scared of losing myself. And yet, there is already a part of me that remains inaccessible, and that is my participation in the male role. In a sense, I have already lost something valuable. It is worse to live a partial truth than a lie, for at least those who live a lie are impervious to how rich and rewarding an honest living may be. Yes, at times, pain will inhibit my true potential, and reduce me, and weaken me, but as my preferred gender, I am automatically true. I am, intrinsically, a truth. I am an ideal, honesty; without having to be a perfect man, a strong man, an integral man, I can still be an ideal, without exhibiting any of them, purely because I am a man.

And I do not need to lose someone that I love. I can evolve without erasing what I like about myself. All of the qualities that I hold in high regard need not become part of the past in light of this new potential self that looms on the horizon. My beliefs will rub their decibels against each other like diamonds that don't have the heart to tarnish the surface of something that they can sympathize with. Everything that is important enough to define me will endure. I need not be afraid to take this next step.

Gone are the days when I must appease the agony of being misgendered by biting my lip and holding my tongue. No longer must my self-control release endorphines as it is exercised, constantly, by people who refer to me as "ma'am," "miss," and "she."

Gone are the days of facing the unmistakable scrutiny of strangers every time I enter a public venue. No longer must I notice their incredulity before I notice the color of their skin.

I am harnessing this concept of Nietzsche's in the hopes that I may live sincerely from this moment on.