Why Marriage Equality Is No Longer My Cause

Yesterday, I posted the following status:

"Dear Civil Rights Movement,

Please. Guide me in the right direction this summer while I work for HRC. Help me to reconcile my disillusionment with the neoliberal/albelist/classist/racially unjust/trans exclusive LGB"T" movement and its emphasis on assimilation as a determinant of respectability and equal protection with my faith that the same pragmatic approaches and principles that worked so many years ago will once again motivate genuine social reform. I am torn between promoting change from the inside slowly but surely and the knowledge that I will be enabling an agenda which focuses on the privileged majority and ignores those whose very existence obfuscates its image to the masses..."

That status was triggered by my escalating resentment with a nearly seven year long career in queer activism that has seen one issue beaten to death, and, well...to be perfectly blunt, queer (mostly trans friends) actually beaten and their access to justice occluded by the lack of visibility that is perpetuated by the umbrella LGB movement.

A few weeks ago, one of my closest friends attempted suicide. A lot of his distress resulted from his status as a trans person. To receive the news was nothing short of devastating. I realized to my chagrin not long after that he had joined what I like to call the "How The Other Half Lives" club. Since 50% of trans individuals attempt suicide by their 20th birthday, I use this term to denote those of us who incredulously ask our trans brothers and sisters who do not try to take their lives, "Really? How does the other half actually live? How do they do it when this world is so inhospitable to our existence?!"

Today, I received a Facebook message that did it for me. This message was sent by a trans friend who has already been severely taken advantage of by the system in regards to his trans related health care. He is commenting about Rainbow Perspectives at Rutgers and how invaluable it is, since he faced many difficulties at his old school due to his trans status:

"I would have had a much higher chance of being able to graduate living in that situation. I feel like such a failure dropping out but I just can't live like this anymore. I'm really happy that situations like your exist and I really hope that more students are given that option. I'm so happy that you are where you are. I'm sure you'll use your education to do great things and I hope to see you this weekend."

It made me cry. It still makes me cry that HRC employees made trans activists remove the trans flag from the view of cameras at a protest in Washington D.C. that had been organized by those who wanted to see DOMA and Prop 8 rescinded.

What moves me so much about the Freedom Rides of 1961 is that both black and white people were willing to die so that all Americans could have rights.

But it is 2013 and I feel like I am watching my trans family drop like flies around me. I am sick of feeling as though there is something so egregiously wrong with our identity that those in power are ashamed to expand legislation in our name.

They hone in on our protection-worthy status without even bothering to know us as people, and by focusing only on our vulnerability, and not the damaging perceptions that cause others to target us in the first place, we become this burden, a Scarlet Letter facing a situation so grave that the LGB group begrudgingly adopts our cause in the name of purported fairness.

But they are not really willing to die for us, and with us, as I undoubtedly would have been willing to do for my black brothers and sisters, provided that I had been born in the 1960's and able to participate in the Freedom Rides.

At this point, we remain a knob of disenfranchised and severely disadvantaged nerve endings that are easier for those in power to amputate than repair.

This post is for every trans person I have met who has has attempted suicide (nearly all of them), who has been homeless for who they are, who has been physically or sexually injured because of who they are, who has turned to sex work or lives in poverty due to employment discrimination, and who has cried in despondency before Google search results that yield no promise of conditions improving for trans individuals anytime soon.

And this is why I have pretty much stopped giving a shit about marriage equality.

What Changing My Name Means To Me

I always thought that being transgender was such a hindrance to my humanity. It seemed that all of the time, money, energy, and emotional faculties that I invested in the tenets of survival reduced me to nothing more than needs and a contempt that turned every act of improvement into a hybrid of new beginnings and an abyss that would never be filled.

Over time, the extra steps that I had to take in order to assert who I really was became infused with a skepticism that dampened my passionate response to existence. The Dionysian spirit of self-empowerment decomposed as the methodical certainty which I so desperately sought receded with the distance of a repeating decimal. I knew exactly what I needed to do in order to live. But every fiancial barrier, primary care protocol, and suggested guideline (note how they are promulgated by cisgendered people, never trans folk) which demanded that I be soluble in someone else's standards and more palpable to the masses only served to reduce me to a set of criteria that could be used by others in order to discern the authenticity of my identity.

Within the constraints of the contemporary Trans Rights movement, I was always made to feel as though my gender identity and the perennial struggle to achieve the secondary sex characteristics that my brain mandated I develop at all costs was a burden. The great lengths, the hurdles, and the leaps and bounds seemed to detract from who I was-or rather, who I could have been-and necessitated that I be a pioneer before I was a person, a patient and a diagnostic category before an individual.

My feelings have changed entirely. Today, after assuming a name that I paid for with my own hard earned money and imbued with rich personal significance and history, I realize more than ever that being transgender is a source of pride and a uniqueness so profound that I cannot help but rejoice at having been...well, born this way.

While many people spring out of Zeus's forehead, their gender identity fully-formed and intact, I had to work ten times as hard simply to be recognized as male. I realize now that I am a stronger person, a more resilient person, and a more empathetic person precisely because my armor germinated as a product of hard work and sacrifice.

Every dollar of my own money that I put towards transitioning and every doctor's appointment, counseling session, and support group that I attended by myself enriched, rather than poisioned, my character.

This journey forced me to be dependent on other sources of identity, ones that decorated a previously untrodden path, and I am so much better for it.

My unique journey has afforded me the opportunity to earn, and I mean REALLY EARN a title, an affirmation, a symbolic gesture. I call myself "Jordan" after "Jordan Todessey," the person who plays the transgender character "Adam" on the show Degrassi. He was introduced to the show during the summer when I realized that the term "transgender" applied to me. I decided to assume the middle name "Wayne" after my grandmother's brother, a beautiful human being who founded the first gay synnagouge in Manhattan and whose humor, charm, and kindness radiates our familial history with the light of his life in spite of the darkness and inner turmoil that emanated from his closeted status. Enamored by the type of man that he was and firm in my conviction that this was the type of man that I aspired to be, I chose to assume his name as part of my own so that I could carry him in my heart, always.

By choosing a name, I am able to disseminate a fundamental facet of myself to the world.

While others are fixated on finding the self, I, and countless other trans folk, are at liberty to CREATE a self, from scratch, devoid of even the most trivial of preconceived notions.

In a previous blog entry that I posted the night before I started using testosterone, I evaluated my transition through the lens of The Overman, a figure who, according to Friedrich Nietzsche, overcomes his humanity by creating a new set of morals under which he decides to live. The Overman is a self-creating figure, one who derives power through self-empowerment.

This is what I wrote:

"For a split second, I curse the scientific method, and that avenue in which we are analytic 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 spoke so highly of these ideals without fully believing that their weight resounded inside of me. I now understand that it was only by experiencing life in a transgendered body that their true value could be actualized.

I wrote,
"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 wrote that. I wrote about being so steadfast in who I was that inner conflict could only make me stronger.

Now, I BELIEVE that.

Satire of Steubenville Rape Coverage

(Disclaimer: This is a SATIRICAL news article clipping that I wrote. As a survivor of sexual violence, my contempt is directed at victim-blamers and rape apologists, NOT the person who is raped. This is an issue that I feel very strongly about.)


Two days ago, Steubenville High School football player Trent Mays expressed regrets for the consequences of his actions after hearing his guilty verdict read aloud in court:

”I would truly like to apologize to [the girl], her family, my family, and community. Those pictures shouldn’t have been sent around, let alone taken.”

The crime of photography beyond a reasonable doubt in Ohio is punishable by imprisonment for up to two years in juvenile jail, five tops if the camera is stolen. Seeing as this was the only crime that the boys were on trial for, and nothing else, the sentence is expected to remain this way.

However, the outcome of the trial, as well as the content of the plaintive (which almost makes things about the plaintiff, but not quite) apology uttered by the defendant through gut-wrenching sobs, elicited outrage from hundreds, possibly thousands of Americans, who thought that Mays and Richmond were guilty of something else entirely.

Said one anonymous forum user, "Those pictures should NOT have been taken. It should not have happened. It defied the laws of physics, as it is impossible to take pictures while one's fingers are inserted inside a vagina. And yet it happened. Which is why he should ALSO be convicted of...lying."

Coming Out and Mental Illness

***Edit: This is a different kind of coming out. I have OCD and PTSD. After spending the past week feeling like someone who is less than human and convinced that no one would ever love me or want to be my friend anymore if they knew, I have decided to adopt a "Take me or leave me" attitude. You accept every part of me, or none of me at all. Don't pity me. Pity the people who are cruel and ignorant...because they will be harder to change. And hopefully, by living our lives visibly and without shame...they will one day. ***

And now for the original post:

Stigma is a black market emblem.

It is an antecedent that denotes us as a set of all integers rather than as individuals.

It is a de facto law that disqualifies our souls from participation in society...but not our skeletons.

Deinstutionalization has replaced hospital stays with the immutable mark of remissions on patient charts.

We are supervised not by hospital staff, but by the insidious glances of those who judge from a privileged distance.

We are the North, and the needles in their eyes-the daggers in their stare-respond to our weaknesses with an absolute magnetism. Our gestures become egregious and unforgivable, the by-products of a seedy bar on the wrong side of the bell curve.

On days when we feel as though we are dying, our screaming bodies-in the tradition of Socrates-attempt to transcend and ignore our nature because it is what we are expected to do.

When we stand up for ourselves, whether it be in the form of asking for an extension on an assignment or calling out of work because we cannot even get out of bed, our actions are the epitome of sacrifice. We dispel the order of the universe by coming across the exceptions to its rules and in the process, we bear the burden of harboring the variance that occurs within a species.

We stand by and witness the misrepresentation of what is a fundamental facet of our being, a recessive trait expressed only through the consternation of others in the wake of tragedies such as those that occurred in Aurora and Newtown.

We are a morbid curiosity bestowed upon others by the light spectrum, and not by purpose.

Enough is enough.

We cannot abdicate the responsibility to discuss these issues in a mature and dignified manner.

I know that They do not understand. Their ideals are less damaging than mine, less threatening to the stability of the world as we know it.

But we must disrupt the balance between all beings like ideas that were first espoused in the 1800's and the world hasn't been the same since.

This is simply a part of who we are. I would rather live in a world where corsets are loosened and morals follow suit than one where my mind is viewed as an abomination. If this confession carries the same weight as the bathtub gin that undoubtedly launched a thousand court dates, then so be it.

Sidewalks should be paved with gold, and not history books. They must be composed not by the winners, but by the common man and every ailment that is spewed-as Wilfred Owen would say-from his froth corrupted lung.

What It Means To Be a Real Man, God Fucking Dammit

On Sunday, I attended an orientation for students who are planning on being involved in Greek Life. A man on a podium spoke of standards of excellence that we are to abide by. He demanded dedication to the highest ideals of manhood, ideals that resonate deeply with someone who has always dreamed of embodying a man.

I grew up hearing my grandmother tell stories about her brother, Wayne Bardy, a person that I am honored to call a relative. Before he was killed in a motorcycle accident at the age of fifty, he came out as gay to all of his loved ones at a time when homosexuality was considered a disease. He founded the first gay synagogue in Manhattan. He would don a tuxedo and fool everyone at celebrity parties into thinking that he belonged there-and with his charm and exceptionally good looks, he probably did. He worked an honest living on a cruise ship and consequently had lovers and friends all over the world. On freezing cold winter days, he would stock up on peanut butter, jelly, and bread so that he could give sandwiches out to the homeless, even though he struggled with his own living expenses. He designed original clothing, including a pair of jeans with an embroidered pattern so exquisite, I want to showcase it somewhere at Rutgers.

Everyone loved him not only because he approached life with an affinity for adventure and an unflappable sense of humor, but because he always, always, always treated other people with respect and kindness...

Right before I started taking testosterone, I swore to my grandmother that I would adopt the middle name "Wayne" when I have it changed legally because he is the kind of man that I want to become.

I carry every day in my heart not only his legacy, but the legacy of anyone who has ever called himself a man.

And every day, I strive to be worthy of the highest precepts of manhood, because that is not a title I take lightly.

Unfortunately, it means nothing to the majority of people in this world that I will always treat a woman better than I would treat myself. It means nothing to my doctors, my professors who accidentally call out my wrong name in class, and the people who don't understand what trans is that I will never hook up with a woman who is wasted or that I will give up a seat for her on the subway.

It means nothing to them that my transition was as much about getting to be a gentleman as it was about getting to be a guy.

And still, it means nothing to them that when my mom abused me my entire life, I never raised a hand to her, because I firmly believe that someone who calls himself a man should never hit a woman, ever.

I have to fight so hard just to be perceived as male from an aesthetic standpoint. It has cost me hundreds of dollars and hours of travel time. I'm risking cancer and all kinds of unknown and untested effects from the long-term use of a highly controlled and potentially dangerous substance. I'm destabilizing myself and exacerbating my mental health issues by throwing my body into a chemically imbalanced state of chaos, and seriously jeopardizing my own sanity and well-being, just to be able to call myself a man.

So when I hear nearly an entire room of people who have been designated male at birth laughing when the person on stage makes light of girls losing their right to say no if they are at a frat party late at night, I just want to fucking scream at the world. They do not deserve their chromosomes. They are not real men...and yet, their legal documents purport authentic maleness. And mine don't.

Why I Vehemently Deny That Gender Is a Social Construct-And Why It Is a Beautiful Thing That Women and Men Are Inherently Different

I feel just as threatened by theories that posit gender is completely social as I do by the transphobic individual. Both insinuate that my very architecture is not authentic, that the elementary particles of my identity are in the eye of the beholder, and not my own body.

My body is my body, and not a cultural category.

Social constructs might be human conceptions, but humans are not.

Even in the most enlightened of societies where gender stereotypes have been eradicated, the 10th grade me still would have cringed when adults told me knowingly that I would want to have kids when I was older. To them, pregnancy would always be a potential life, a protagonist, a gift that gentrifies the empty nests we all come to build following a secondary education.

To me, the conceptualized child that I would be expected to carry to term would still join the ranks of the monstrous, like the dead deer lying on the highway divider as my parents' car drove down Rt. 9.

The diagrams of vaginas and fallopian tubes in our health class textbooks still would not apply to me. The female-oriented support groups that were listed when I Googled "eating disorder" in high school still would not apply to me. Efforts on behalf of the staff at my Jewish sleep away camp to promote healthy body images among the female population still would not apply to me.

To imply that gender is purely social is to imply that the temple in which I spend every waking and sleeping second is at the mercy of whatever some postmodern philosophical quack decides to preach from the pages of the same insipid publication that proposes quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct (yes, that actually happened).

Would you call schizophrenia a "problem of living?" I would hope that, given its universal distribution across cultures with varying degrees of westernization and the enormous progress that has been made in identifying the biological basis of schizophrenia, this assumption would never leave your mouth, let alone cross your mind.

Certainly, strong interpersonal support acts as a buffer against the worst symptoms, while lack of these same resources is associated with higher relapse and hospital admissions rates. But at the end of the day, if you are hallucinating, it is not solely because you lost your job. It is because a pre-existing genetic vulnerability to the manifestation of schizophrenic symptoms has been activated.

The point is that biology fucking matters. First, I am going to provide additional evidence to support my argument. Then, I am going to explain why I don't think it is a bad thing to say that men and women are qualitatively different.

In preparation for my own hormonal shift, I spent months consuming volumes of literature that described in detail the biological differences between the sexes and how this translated into behavioral differences.

For example, I read in one book that researchers from Cambridge University found that gender differences in what babies prefer to look at are present the day they are born. In their experiment, 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. Sex differences in the anatomy of the eye may suggest that boys are pre-wired to be interested in motion and girls are pre-wired to be interested in faces. The retinas of almost every male animal is significantly thicker 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, studies show that on average (although obviously, there is major variation within both groups), girls tend to voluntarily seek out dolls and boys tend to voluntarily seek out trucks or cars to play with. When they reach school age, girls tend to draw people and use warm colors. Boys tend to portray verbs, such as vehicles in motion, and use very little color. Given these discoveries, it might offer a possible explanation as to why more women receive degrees in fields that center around people and feelings, such as psychology and English (although social factors are also important to consider).

Now came time for the real test. Taking testosterone was going to teach me first-hand whether these differences actually mattered. Would they be profound, like the unmistakable effects of a prescription sleeping pill on the central nervous system, or barely discernible, like the tendrils of fatigue brought on by drinking a cup of chamomile tea?

The answer was delivered rather quickly. Within the course of a month, I found that some of the most enduring and defining characteristics of my psychological life had been dismantled and constructed into something entirely different. The manner in which I had experienced emotion and thought for nearly two decades was altered profoundly in a relatively minuscule period of time.

My meticulous documentation of the "new me" (which is still sitting in my Gmail drive to this very day) makes it clear that I am not the same person I was before taking testosterone. Fundamentally, I am the same. Qualitatively, I am so very not the same.

I changed so fucking much. To deny this is the name of political correctness would require turning my back on a nearly eight month roller coaster ride.

I went from being the kind of person who cried every day and was moved so easily by any remote vestige of sadness in the world to someone who was largely unable to cry (unless shit got real) and was no longer physiologically engulfed by emotion. Now, my body exhibited greater selectively when reacting to sadness or fear. My anxiety attacks became more centered around a cognitive appraisal of stress, and not the recurring autonomic arousal that I had learned to live with for years.

I had always approached problems logically, but prior to T, I felt my way around the world as much as I thought it through. Now, the ability to detach entirely from the emotional aspect of a conflict became possible, even habitual.

To say that my emotions were no longer expressed in a manner that was consistent with venting is not to say that they disappeared entirely. It was quite the opposite, actually. They were not destroyed-they simply changed form.
Now, I felt things deeply inside of me, and not on my face. Everything was so heavily internalized, in spite of my new outwardly reserved nature.

There were things about being male that just clicked once I started T that I never would have been able to understand prior to taking it. It suddenly made sense why women saturated the couches of therapists all across the country. It wasn't because society discouraged men from talking openly about their feelings. It was because something about testosterone made it impossible to discuss emotions and that much easier to act on them.

I remember telling a close friend, during a particularly dark moment, that it suddenly made so much sense to me why men completed suicide at a rate that was four to five times that of women. There was something about this inhibited male darkness that could be detrimental to one's survival.

All of a sudden, I really and truly preferred social isolation during my worst moments, and wasn't just saying that I wanted to be alone. For years, my first instinct during times of stress would be to talk to someone or surround myself with friends. I'll never forget the first time I experienced this foreign male practice called repression. After an intensely stressful night at work (I was a waiter at the time), I went to reach for the phone while I was waiting to hand in my tips so that I could call my best friend, as I had countless times before in similar situations.

Suddenly, talking about my feelings seemed like the most futile thing in the entire world. I could feel the unspoken sentiment being sucked back into my chest as I lowered my hand and marveled, honestly marveled, at how easy it was to swallow up the significance, bury it, and wait for it to build up.

Which leads me to the build up part. I had a lot of anger in the beginning, and while it died down, it continues to be the intrinsic motivation behind everything that I do, whereas my previous-and, up until this point, unchallenged-muse had been sadness. For me, this was huge. It was like a fucking paradigm shift. Instead of running into the bathroom and crying at work every time I was misgendered, I felt flashes of rage being internally directed towards the customer that had addressed me improperly. I began to hate my parents for everything they did to me over the years, and not just myself. The burden of blame became more evenly and fairly distributed. The tone of my writing changed as the pervading theme morphed from despondency into fiery passion.

I remember the stark understanding that registered in my head while watching the crime show Numb3rs on t.v. When a character whose daughter had been kidnapped knocked down all of the book shelves in his study as the time that he had to find her ran out, it clicked for the first time that this was a rendition of male sadness. Contrary to what a first glance might suggest, this man was not full of rage. Rather, he was full of despair. That never would have made sense to me prior to taking T. This is merely one of many ways in which I came to understand what it means to experience emotion as a male.

I continued to be affectionate with my close friends, but found it increasingly difficult to be indiscriminately nurturing. I simply was no longer comfortable with saccharine displays of affection unless I knew somebody really well. I went from being a big ball of love all of the time to someone who could no longer find the right comforting words unless it was a true crisis. Otherwise, on a day to day basis, I found that it required much more work on my part to sustain the quality of my interpersonal relationships. Emotional intuition became something that I had to exercise daily, or I would lose it.

I refuse to believe that the development of what would be deemed by society as male- typical behaviors progressed as a result of being socialized as male. This is due to the fact that although these tumultuous changes were erupting inside of me, it was a good two months before my customers (who, as complete strangers, serve as a valuable reference of progress) at work started addressing me as "he." In fact, apart from my customers and coworkers, who didn't even really understand what was going on and continued to treat me as a female, I barely interacted with anyone, as I had confined myself to self-imposed isolation until I could emerge from my chrysalis like the Butterfly Man that I was. Everything else in my life remained constant. The only variable that was being manipulated was the hormonal balance in my body.

This is why I believe that men and women are different. And you know what? That's a fucking great thing. People are special and have unique talents! We claim to live in a society that cherishes diversity, when in reality, there is an uproar any time a new scientific finding suggests that we all diverge just a bit from the basic biological template that underlies us all. This standard deviation is something to be celebrated, not suppressed.

While I absolutely prefer to experience emotion and thought as a male, simply because this is who I was supposed to be all along and I needed hormones to fix the awful disease that stunted my true development, my experiences have made me able to appreciate the sheer beauty that is exuded by women and all that they are capable of.

I spent my entire life resenting the womanhood that had been imposed upon me. Now that I am healthy, and my body is moving in the direction of where it should be moving, I am viewing femininity with fresh eyes. It seems paradoxical, but it is precisely because I have been imbued with male biology that I can start to see how my curse is someone else's greatest gift.

I suddenly have this insane respect for women and a deep reverence for everything that they do. I absolutely love women like I can't even begin to express. I even consider myself a feminist now.

I think that it is amazing, all that women have to offer the world, as women, and not as men. Because even though I was not meant to be female, I can still acknowledge the merits of femininity. It saddens me when I hear radical feminists vehemently denying all that makes them unique and special. They denounce traits that I used to possess-traits that I coveted highly and struggled to part with on the eve of my transition-and speak of them as though they are deplorable.

I haven't a single regret about how things turned out for me, but I can still acknowledge that a loss was sustained.

It saddens me when women deny all that makes them valuable assets to society and truly magnificent members of our species. It saddens me that our idea of praising women is glorifying men, and that the only way a woman won't be seen as a traitor to her chromosomal tribe is by emulating a traditionally male role.

I think that women are fucking wonderful and I refuse to demean them by saying that they are the same as men and that there is nothing, nothing that sets them apart in the most positive of ways.

You are doing everyone a disservice when you deny that gender is biological. You undermine the deeply painful existences of trans people whose lives are centered around trying to fix what nature fucked up.


You undermine the experiences of anyone who is a gender non-conforming individual by insinuating that who they are is deeply societal rather than deeply personal and fixed. Males and females are exposed to vastly different sex hormones prenatally as well as during puberty, when secondary sex characteristics emerge. Because the brain has numerous receptors for these hormones, development may diverge based on which chemical is being secreted. In fact, studies have shown that girls who are exposed to abnormally high levels of androgens before birth tend to have male-typical toy preferences, play patterns, levels of competitiveness, occupational preferences, facial perception skills, and mental rotation abilities.

You deny the beauty in every woman that blesses this earth with her presence.

You hurt men, too. There also exists a stereotype that boys don’t like to read when actually, they are alienated by English assignments that focus on role-playing, analyzing character motivations, and discussing feelings. This does not appeal to most boys. One reason for this is that in men, the amygdala, which plays key roles in emotion regulation, has fewer connections to the prefrontal cortex, which is the epicenter of articulation. Women have many more connections between their amygdala and cerebral cortex, so they are equipped to verbalize what they are feeling. Generally, men are less capable of coherently addressing emotion. In school, boys score significantly better in all areas of comprehension when they are assigned nonfiction reading, newspaper articles, and assignments that play on their strengths. Literacy and the ability to communicate effectively are lifelong skills that are more important than ever, regardless of profession. By ignoring innate gender differences, men are subjected to disadvantages, too.

Basically, everyone is hurt when you say that gender is entirely a social construct, and nothing else.

Biology allows us to breathe a sigh of relief. It lets us know that we are born this way. And that there is nothing wrong with that.

How To Date When You Are A Trans Guy

For my creative writing class, we had to write a short piece in the same style as the author of an assigned reading. It has to be a two page "How-To" guide about something personal, and it needs to be written in the second-person. The original work was "How to date a brown girl black girl white girl or halfie" by Junot Diaz. This is my version. I poured my heart into this, so enjoy!



Sneak it surreptitiously into small-talk all week when acquaintances inquire about your Friday night plans, because the chance to do so does not arise often. Ideally, you'd be a man whore, or better yet, a devoted lover, but your carefully planned aspirations to be the eclectic blend of British, metrosexual, and G.Q. model that is so highly coveted by straight women and gay men clash with your incongruous anatomical ensemble. And so, you embrace this blue moon with every inch of your biology, or lack thereof.

If the date is with a girl, brace yourself for the high fives and one-dimensional dialogue of straight men as they vicariously channel their voyeuristic lust into your dinner reservations-even though your involuntary participation in the female role for seventeen years of your life has primed you to view their misogynistic comments with repugnance.

If the date is with a guy, brace yourself for the furrowing of brows from the same people who have just been cajoled into tentative acceptance by your heartfelt rendition of what it means to be a man in spite of what it says on your birth certificate, only to have their conception of masculinity challenged even further as an additional tier is cemented onto your irrevocably queer identity.

While you debate on what to wear, be sure to disassociate every time you look down, or your dysphoria will trigger an inconveniently timed panic attack. Luckily, the psychological saran-wrap that your eyes utilize as they glaze over reminds you to grab a condom on your way out the door. At the last minute, you stick a knife into your coat pocket, not only because it offers the illusion of security from belligerent drunk people on Easton Avenue when they take note of your effeminate features, but because you might need to seek refuge with the blade in a bathroom stall when your date inevitably makes some remark that reminds you of the components that are covalently bonded below your belt.

When you arrive at the restaurant, give your date a hug and pull out their chair for them because it has taken you a lifetime to earn your unalienable right to be the chivalrous one. There is a 95% chance that they too are a member of the LGBTQIA community, so there is never a dearth of conversation topics and the sexual innuendos flow as freely as international trade.

However, you are well aware that-ironically enough-participating in acts of sodomy does not mean that someone has been enlightened with original plumbing etiquette or that their vocabulary has been enriched with “nice-t words.” If it is a first or second date, you try not to feel completely violated when they inevitably ask you about the sordid details of surgery or menstruation and instead steer the conversation in the direction of a mutual intellectual interest or favorite movie. It is not a matter of whether or not they will disappoint you and end up being like everyone else; it is a matter of when.

You bristle as an incendiary circuit sends a powerful charge coursing through your entire system when they use language that, in no uncertain terms, elucidates the feminine etiology of your past. The stormy sky inside of you invokes a simile involving idiots and electrical outlets. They might even ask you when you decided to be trans. You have to remember that this isn’t Facebook and you can’t sardonically call people out on their ignorance by responding with a string of song lyrics such as, “Oh what a night/Late December back in ‘63.”

The two of you head back to either your place or their place. All you want to do is hook up while watching a Mel Brook’s movie on a used sofa that has been mottled by mystery liquids and the asses of savory characters from Craig’s List like every other person your age. You are not some radical queer who feels the need to point out that the binary is perpetuated by the use of black-and-white film screening techniques in Young Frankenstein.

Your lust for their body overpowers your disgust for your own, and the clothes are peeled off in rapid succession. The clamorous course of your heart as it races towards satisfaction is intercepted by the pain of being perceived by someone other than a bathtub. Every antecedent is exposed between the sheets. The necessary truth ex nihilo nihil fit-out of nothing comes nothing- makes it inevitable that you will end up having to educate him or her while you are naked.

That testosterone has transformed you into the more reticent of the sexes in a matter of mere months is hardly evident as tears automatically spring to your eyes like a reflex. If you are with a girl, recover quickly from the divisive slice as she separates you from other men by saying that you are different and not like other guys. If you are with another dude, ignore the stab of envy as your pupils widen to accommodate the girth of his manhood.

Try not to feel like your body parts have been outsourced from basements and that your skin was constructed from the second-hand upholstery used by Coach bag vendors in China Town. You have needs and are determined to form an interpersonal union in the absence of dulled senses, partly because you cannot emotionally afford to grow dependent on masking the pain and partially because you have been advised to abstain from drinking due to the hormonal therapy.

You pray that they refer to your junk with gender-appropriate language and cringe when they don’t. It requires your most sincere efforts to feign confidence and take them on the ride of their life without falling off the edge of the earth in the process.

You are just getting acquainted with your erection when they use the word “woman” in reference to your former self. It takes everything in your power to not pull a hysterical Gene Wilder and cry during sex, even though this cruel conjugation is enough to deploy the air from your lungs and consolidate your chest into a neatly crushed soda can. If you are horny enough, it is possible to undergo a hot-blooded rebirth and achieve a born-again boner. Despite the lump that has formed in the back of your throat, you fight to reclaim the intimacy of the moment the way you would muster five more minutes of reading as the sun goes down in the summer because you don't want to go inside just yet.

After an unsatisfying fuck, you roll over and try to make light of the situation. Indeed, even authentic copies of Leonardo da Vinci's greatly detailed, highly accurate anatomical depictions had wine stains.