Daniel Lavery reunites with Jules Gill-Peterson in: The Case of the Barely-There HRT
Now with a Post-Scarcity Transition Manifesto!
You know and love Daniel Lavery over at The Chatner, but also for his fabulous books, referenced below. This is Part II of a chat we had about the great Hormone War of this week online. Read Part I here first before diving in!
JULES:
something you write about brilliantly in Something That May Shock and Discredit You is the way that we tell ourselves we can't transition before we decide to transition. I just adore that part of the book. and I feel like it's quite relevant here, because you weren't saying "it's okay, be sexist and transphobic to your heart's delight, it's just a little lark on the way to hormones!" there's internalized transphobia and then, well, there's making up problems and trying to limit other people as much as yourself with them.
DANIEL:
yes! that was very much a dithering game I chose to play a while before starting hormones (and, frankly, during the first few months)
and it didn't do me or anyone else much good!
I'm reminded of Avery Lake's tweet on the subject:
which is not to say that everyone currently contemplating taking any amount of T for any potential period of time ought to say "Thank you for clarifying, I am a man, let's go!!!"
merely that if you begin the possibility of transition -- whatever kind of transition -- on the premise that being a man is at best an ethical compromise you might be able to get away with you know, you're gonna have a bad time
JULES:
brilliant. I think this is a problem of consumer society? like, gender is not an art project where you perfectly pick and choose what body you want, down to the chin hairs. but if we want to tame the terror of saying "I'm gonna inject or swallow this molecule and see what the fuck happens" we could say it's about desire! desire to be a man because that's hot and affirming and a little scary!
transition is spiritual, it's about your deepest self/soul. and if you want to enjoy it, aka have a good time, you can't start from the premise that you can control every aspect of your body. that's...literally what cis people try to do.
I will say, thanks to having zero self esteem and being wildly dissociated, when I started hormones I had no image in my mind of what I would become. and that felt really, really shitty. so I get what people mean--I too do not want a receding hairline, it was one of my motives for starting estrogen. but becoming other than what I had anticipated has been a truly sensual and weird experience and I think if there was less transphobia in the world I would even say I've loved it all.
can I say something kind of polemic?
DANIEL: Oh, yes!
JULES:
here's the thing: it takes a certain...arrangement of your life to prevaricate so intensely on your own feelings about transition that they consume your whole life AND bear the entitlement/arrogance to think your interior struggle is legitimately the moral yardstick that the entire rest of the world should follow. and I would call that situation whiteness.
here's the really provocative version of it: the whole "I simply cannot want to be A MAN [when, dear reader, they in fact very much do want to be such a person] and if I can't, no one else can either!" is a shtick that basically only a comfortable enough white person with nothing else going on could have the time and energy to do.
here's the less provocative version: it's a dark reflection of the central white bs of gender critical and terfs leading the crusade against our lives--the Abigail Shrier types. their deep self-hatred about white womanhood makes them feel incredibly righteous and zealous in their civilizational mission to control the bodies of everyone around them, as has been their role since at least the 19th century. some of this is transferred and transmuted into queer and trans community. like, the pleasure of feeling tortured and special and exceptional and therefore having to drag down the world around you is generally a luxury Black and brown people just don't have to exercise, and so we don't.
JULES:
Let’s have A Post-Scarcity Economy of Transition! Here are the main points:
1. Maximalism, aka not "as little as possible, please" is a good situation because it gives everyone as much license as possible to follow their desires, with as little interference as possible.
DANIEL:
2. HRT produces effects in and on the body.
2a. Also, just for fun, here is a table of some testosterone doses from UCSF trans care. Look at the variety!
3. Don't let "man" stand in for what "whiteness" is doing
JULES:
4. As we come up with better, non-medical, non-moral and non-legalistic concepts and language for transition, let's try and have them deal with the chaos that is transphobia and racism, but also be trans empiricist: i.e., figure out what we can do with our genders and bodies and help people do them. Let's not reinvent the medical model or wish it away through queer fantasy, but actually do figure out what we want and how to make it happen.
5. Be nice on Twitter. (We know this one is very hard and just an ideal.)
DANIEL:
this is a good manifesto
more than five is too many to remember
JULES: agreed!
DANIEL:
although I will add one last point, for me: Try not to act like you invented transitioning or that anyone who started T eight months after you did is somehow the Liz Lemon to your Jack Donaghy
Which, now there was a forced-masc fantasy you could really sink your teeth into
JULES:
YES
whoa
you just blew my mind about 30 rock
Liz being force-masced by Jack...weirdly hot?
DANIEL:
your relentlessly self-aggrandizing conservative boss played by an actor whose youthful male beauty was the stuff of legend, constantly calling attention to how lousy a job you're doing being a girl until you marry a twink?
JULES: !!!
I'm giving you an Emmy in advance for this.
DANIEL:
have you not read my extensive work on the sublimated gay transmasculinity of Liz Lemon 30 Rock is Egg Theory, Jules
JULES:
well this is embarrassing, because now you will know I have in fact not already read that!
DANIEL:
i just realized that piece was paywalled so i'll reproduce part of it here:
<<I am not yet building towards a thesis. The world is not ready – may never be ready – for my grand unifying theory of Liz Lemons, my Casaubonesque Key To All Lizologies. I write here merely to supply the grand jury with the all the relevant facts; I do not yet – do you hear me? – I do not yet argue my case. As it is written in the book of John, chapter 2, On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Now both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.”
Liz Lemon: She’s not gay. That’s Liz’ whole thing – she’s not a lesbian, but she was supposed to be one, or other people think she ought to be, or she feels vaguely guilty that she isn’t, but also vaguely hard-done-by that she’s so often mistaken for gay, or gay-adjacent. The or something part is key – do you remember that bit towards the end of Wells For Boys sketch where the narrator says, “Don’t just give him a Barbie – I mean, it is like that, but that’s just part of it”?
That’s the tortured, almost-but-not-quite, sibling-rivalry type of relationship between Liz and lesbian; there’s an undeniably optimistic part of me that thinks If only Liz could figure this one out, maybe she wouldn’t be such a dick to sex workers or blonde women or trans people, which I realize is ridiculous, not least because Liz Lemon is not a real human person; homophobes aren’t all secretly gay and Liz Lemon doesn’t hate trans people because she’s a deeply self-loathing, hyper-closeted gay trans man. Or, at least, that’s part of it, but that’s not the whole thing. And I’ll happily confess that at least part of the reason I’m always at least partly on a mission to figure Liz out is for the purpose of self-interested rehabilitation – as a man of Liz Lemon experience, which is to say as a man who at one point in the mid-aughts was a white lady who wore glasses and made a lot of half-jokes, half-mission statements about being repulsed by sex, I’m always trying to figure out if there’s a way for the two of us relate wherein Liz doesn’t think I’m disgusting. The comedy writer girls only tease you because they like you.>>
JULES: holy shit.
this works. it really works. and I feel my lingering aggression towards Tina Fey and that show suddenly all making sense
DANIEL:
do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
JULES:
I feel like we're all gonna be okay as long as we chill, log off sometimes, take more testosterone (or don't!) and go hang out with people, on a beach or maybe in a park. I’m sorry, I know “touch grass” is cringe or whatever, but getting offline is often a good idea.
DANIEL:
Also, nobody can make you take HRT, not even a trans lady on Twitter who says things like "you can take hormones if you're thinking about hormones"
JULES:
but can that trans lady make me eat my vegetables? that I would love some forced-femme help with.
DANIEL:
if any of your present ideological or identitarian commitments are leading you to blame a trans lady on twitter for your problems, reconsider them!
Oh, we never really did get into that angle, actually, if you don't mind a quick final aside –
JULES:
I never mind another bit
DANIEL:
it's fine to be nervous about starting T because you're not sure you're ready for various changes – but certainly I think transmisogyny is at least part of the context when people act as if T is a potent and terrifying witch’s brew
JULES:
it is deeply that. trans women are the original, OG trans person. becoming a man, transly, took some different historical feats that generates specific baggage. it's all written down in Confessions of the Fox!
DANIEL:
and while it's true that T can produce pretty rapid results (although everyone's mileage and dosage may vary), it’s not universally the case, which is why it’s sort of weird that so many prospective trans men worry that starting T is like signing a contract to turn into Rod Serling in 24 hours
JULES:
aye!
DANIEL:
and just, the gap between "appreciable differences that are not immediately reversible" and "people calling you Sir" is significant! and depends on a lot of different factors
JULES:
at the end of the day (lol), it's not socially sanctioned to want to be a woman, but it is normatively desirable to be a man. let's just, like, be careful with that dilemma.
DANIEL:
without trying to overcorrect, like, I am coming up on 5 years on T and I still experience (new!) changes and I do not get reliably sirred
Lmao "Good news, I'm almost five years in, and I still don't pass"
JULES:
mmhm. life's purpose is not to preplan everything that every happens to you, it is tricky and complicated to attach what you want to what the world will do to you and how your body squishes in between them, as their meeting point.
and only 2-something years in, I pretty much pass constantly. we are breaking expectations!
DANIEL:
"You're looking very breedable today"
JULES:
look, I love sex and totally have it, but the "oomf/breedable" turn on twitter is a lot, even for me!
DANIEL:
it really is something else, isn't it
JULES:
do we feel satisfied? I feel very satisfied. my desire to chat with you infinitely will never be satiated, so it's clearly a reason to do this again.
DANIEL:
let's save that for our next chat -- until then, I remain your faithful correspondent!
JULES: and I yours.