Trip to Bristol

For the last few months I have been sat on tenterhooks wondering what would happen. I have not been the biggest fan of the psychological referral process of transition as to me it feels like I have to validate myself and my existence. The closest analogy I can think of is end of year exams which are make or break. As I need to transition I have jumped through the required hoops.

This week I attended a referral consultation for my second referral for reassignment surgery. So off I went to Bristol to jump through more hoops. As usual I am early and end up sitting in the waiting room with some guy ranting about an alien invasion from Mars that is happening and nobody does anything about. It is at this point I want to get the hell out of there. Instead I absorb my attention into a game on my phone.

The appointment itself was the usual questions and double checking the case notes. The guy is kind enough not to press for details as he had actually bothered to read the notes. Thirty minutes later he told me the hoop jumping is over and my surgeries should be in 6-9 months time. Three months of that I am busy with various Pride activities across the south west of England so that time is going to shoot by.

With top surgery I was able to leave my past self in the past. Now I can finally start thinking of my future self as I can see a light at the end of the tunnel where I can truly be me. It does not change the fact being transgender, whatever aspect of that umbrella, is still treated as a mental health problem. Sure it causes mental health problems by the bucket load, but in itself being transgender is not a mental health issue and should not be seen as such.

 

 

 

© JG Farmer 2016

When you do not include the “I” in your human rights efforts, this is why it hurts me and other people born intersex:

Mx. Anunnaki Ray Marquez

I am not transgender.  I was born intersex.  

Guess what?  

Almost everything that can happen to a gay person, lesbian, transgender person, or gender nonconforming queer person, has happened to me.    I now know I am not alone.  These things happen to other people born intersex too.  So far, due to being born intersex these Sixteen Human Rights and Civil Rights Violations  have happened to me.  I am forty-eight years old and almost did not make it out alive:

1. At the age of three and four, I went through therapy to be taught I was a girl.   I was assigned female at birth.  I am not female.
2. Although I am stable now, I have attempted suicide three times and almost four.
3. One of those attempts happened before the age of eighteen years old; at the tender age of sixteen years old.
4. Was kept out of locker…

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Why was I diagnosed with GENDER DYSPHORIA?

Awesome

Mx. Anunnaki Ray Marquez

As a person born intersex, October, 2014, I desperately needed to reclaim my true gender.  It was for health, mental and spiritual reasons.  It had become life or death for me at this point.  To get help, I had to seek out a transgender doctor, because no other doctor would go against my assigned gender at birth.  Even after sharing my history of having intersex traits (what the medical world often calls a disorder of sexual development or DSD), it made no difference.  Most, where I live consider the change of one’s gender “taboo medicine”.  Let me share about the illusion of “normal” when the majority refers to my gender and compares me to this binary standard of  typical female or typical male.

To get insurance to cover my treatment, and to get a reproductive endocrinologist to help me, I was told I had to first go through…

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the end of gay and straight

You nailed it here Mo

Summer Thunder

I have really got to the end of this whole sexual identity thing. I no longer see what it has to do with humanity, love or human reality, emotional or sexual.

I think it’s very true that most people have a marked need for partners of one sex or the other, and that need means that in many people as a generality in their life, will be overwhelmingly heterosexual or homosexual, as a rule. But people can have exceptions too, and I have come to believe that Tammo de Jongh was right when he said that people are essentially bisexual. Except that we don’t yet have an understanding of that, because we think in categories, not real descriptions, so we imagine “bisexual” is a box someone ticks, and you then put them in that box, but that’s not how anyone is. If everyone is bisexual, it includes all the…

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Out of the Cage

More of my ramblings from my diaries over the time of Top Surgery October 2015

A week of not so quiet and restful healing later, life has a way of changing our plans at whim, and it did that with style as always, but I was back in Brighton for my post op. Had it worked? Everything is healing as it should. Staples out from the nipples; glad I had taken codeine beforehand, so it wasn’t that painful. No more itchy dressings and I only need to wear a binder if I go out to protect myself.

I looked in the mirror and I look a bit battered. But I can look at me and not hate what I see to the point of spiraling into dysphoria. For the first time ever I can do that. I still have a lot of healing to do but it is one huge step in the right direction.

For the last two weeks my emotions have been shot to hell. They are still shot to hell. I don’t have the words that sum up how I feel and yes that is frustrating me to bits – I am a writer and not knowing words that express the emotions is unheard of for me. Happy. No it is beyond that way beyond that. I am out of the cage now and it is awesome. That is the best I can do to sum it up.

My Thanks

It is only proper that I stop at this point and thank all those who have supported me this far. My deepest thanks go to Mr. Yelland and his team at Nuffield Health who made it possible. Also to Jenny, Misty and Lisa for getting me there and back for the operation and to Andy for being there for the post op. My boys for being my boys and keeping me going. Alf for being a real bro and staying with me until I woke up. Kayto for being the best friend a guy could have at 430am. Finally, to Caz for being my Caz and making me smile when I wanted to cry – I’m not easy to live with and you hung in there for me.

The Operation

 

Taken from my incoherent rambling of a diary for Monday 28 September 2015

To be honest I don’t remember that much. It was still dark when my friend and I left for the hospital and the roads were peaceful. Just as well as we were both tired from the previous night.

 

On arrival I booked in and was taken to my room for the next 24 hours or so. A flurry of people came in and told me stuff, can I remember any of it – not a thing. I ordered food for later in the day, undoubtedly vegetarian as I don’t eat meat that much and probably a bucket of coffee. No coffee since the day before and I know me well enough to know I would have been as edgy as a cat on a hot roof. We were told, so my friend tells me, I was going to theatre for 9.30am but didn’t go until 12. I was back by 2:30pm judging by his post on Facebook.

 

I must have dozed off as they woke me up to give me the anaesthetic, after that the next thing I know was talking to my mate and it was all done. I felt like I had been hit by a wrecking ball but was too groggy to make much sense of anything. The night was one of interrupted sleep as the nurse had to do regular obs on my sugars as I am a diabetic and some painkillers when needed.

 

The procedure can be found here http://transurgery.com/chest-reconstruction/double-incision-technique

 

Mr Yelland, the surgeon, made the cool dude list on Tuesday morning when he came in to sign me out. His tie was superb. Anyone who knows me will know, that means I was back to my normal self even though I physically felt like I had been demolished. So it was home for a week of rest and healing before the post op appointment.

The Ripple Effect

Trans Swindon

When a pebble is dropped in still water the ripples expand across the surface growing larger and larger. Today I am going to ask each of us, who feels able to, to become a little pebble.

Just before my surgery Janey and I discussed the high rate of suicide within the transgender community with Sim Courtie on BBC Radio Wiltshire. The latest statistics show 48% of transgender people attempt suicide before the age of 25. This compares to a figure of 23% among the general population in the same age range.

There are ways we can significantly reduce this figure. In fact, we can almost eradicate it. Statistics have proven that 93% of transgender suicide attempts could be avoided if the transgender individual felt safe, accepted and supported by their family and friends. Teenage years are problematic and stressful at the best of times, but when an individual is faced…

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I am an Intersex Person. I never felt like a Cis Gender Person and I Relate to Some Transgender Men

A moving reflection – hope you don’t mind me sharing

Mx. Anunnaki Ray Marquez

End of First Year: December, 2015

I am a person born with intersex traits, that was assumed to be female, and raised female.  A Cis Gender person identifies as the gender they are assigned to at birth.  I do not, nor have I ever felt Cis Gender, even when I appeared female.  All the therapy and surgery in the world could never achieve that with me, however, there are some intersex people who do identify as being Cis Gender. Each of us are so different.

I know many intersex people who were assigned the wrong gender like I was.  I have never felt 100% male or female; although I definitely identify with being male, far more than female.  Please note, I do not speak for other intersex people.  I only share my experience, strength and hope.

Until I honored my true gender, that of being a Non-binary, Gender Fluid…

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Omens and Eclipses

Written at some point on the night of 27 September 2015

Travelling down to Hastings was event free, the conversation easy and nicely distracting from what was going to happen the next day. We stopped at Cobham Services for coffee and sinful donuts. Donuts are a very rare treat for me so they always taste awesome.

It was getting dark by the time we were driving through Kent to East Sussex with the aroma of hops teasing our noses. I had forgotten the utter deliciousness of that. I must have drifted into my memories a bit, as the next thing I know was a glorious reflection of the full moon shimmering on the English Channel and we were nearing the end of the journey.

My friend dropped me off with the friend I was staying with. Again easy conversation and a chilled out atmosphere and I am too calm, I know I am too calm. Tomorrow I am having surgery and I’m not even feeling a slight sense of nervousness, just an amazing sense of calm that life is beginning to go the way it should be.

We watched the lunar eclipse. Light pollution in Hastings is so much less than in Swindon. The darkness of the sky made so many more stars visible and the colour of the moon was a deep blood red. A truly blood moon and prophetic to a Pagan like me. Blood moons are omens of an end and a change in life. I wasn’t going to watch it as I knew it would set my mind into thinking.

Thinking, oh yes, the thoughts started coming thick and fast. Back in bed for another nap before leaving for the hospital – sleep wasn’t going to happen quickly. So I let the thoughts come. Not once was it ‘am I making a mistake’. I never have had that thinking really. I have known my male identity too long to think it is a mistake or doubt myself on it.

Omens are not all doom and gloom and, when you think about it, what does the end mean. It just means something stops. The pretence of being content in a female body has come to end. For a new beginning, something must end and for the man I know to exist that pretence must end and tomorrow it ends, there is no going back.
©JG Farmer 2015

IOTD …. Images of the day, #391 …. “Day of Remembrance”!!

It Is What It Is

~~November 20, 2015~~

DAY OF REMEMBRANCE

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2015

Those We’ve Lost

At least 81 transgender people were murdered worldwide this year — and those are just the victims whose deaths were reported. 

BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM
NOVEMBER 20 2015

Today marks the 16th annual Transgender Day of Rememberance, after the first event was organized by Gwendolyn Ann Smith in Allston, Mass., to memorialize Rita Hester — a trans woman of color killed in 1998.

Every year since, growing numbers of trans people and advocates worldwide take a moment to pause and remember the countless lives lost around the globe to transphobic violence.

The somber occasion serves as a memorial event in which trans people and allies can mourn their dead, celebrate the lives they lived and as a popular hashtag in the wake of unabated anti-trans violence proclaims, #SayHerName.

~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~

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