Celebrating Going Bald on the Trans Day of Visibility

 

 

Here’s my announcement for the Trans Day of Visibility: I’m balding. And I love it!

Times right now for trans folks in the U.S. are not good. Really not good. But I’m not going to post about that today, because today we celebrate being visible. And you know what gets me seen the way I’d like to be seen? Well, the beard sure helps—but at 5’2”, a lot of people look down when they look at me, and you know what they see? My big ol’ bald spot, and the wispy tuft that is all that remains of the front of my hairline.

Now, I know a lot of men don’t like going bald. For some weird reason, going bald is framed as unmasculine and embarrassing by our culture (probably greatly influenced by capitalism, which loves to instill anxieties in people so it can offer expensive “cures”). Elon Musk and Donald Trump were both getting my hairline, and they both got transplants to make them feel more manly. (That is, they got gender-affirming surgeries.)

The idea that balding “unmans” you is very silly, because you know what causes male-pattern balding? Testosterone. Taking testosterone is what transformed me from a person with a thick head of hair and a low hairline with the opposite of a widow’s peak—a hairline I always hated—into someone who could feel gender euphoria as my hairline receded.

I study gender professionally, so I understand fragile masculinity intellectually, but I’ll never understand it viscerally. Men who are all hung up on being “alphas” and on nonconsensual dominance displays are generally yawning pits of insecurity, and it’s all so unnecessary! You’re a man because you understand yourself to be one, at a visceral level, and nobody can take that from you. Losing your hair certainly doesn’t take that from you.

And really, this business of cis men with fragile masculinity being horrified by going bald shows us how strangely people can conflate sex characteristics, gender identity, and gender expression. Those distinctions are obvious to me. My physical sex is intersex, as I’ve written about plenty. I identify as an intersex man—that’s my gender identity, who I know myself to be. But I’m not particularly interested in being masculine. I enjoy a more androgynous, flamboyant self-presentation. When my (also intersex, also trans) wife sees me dressed for the day, she has often said, “Good morning, you look very gay today.” And that makes me grin happily! That’s my ideal of gender expression.

There’s a claim made by TERFs that trans boys and men are really lesbians who are terrified by their cowardly internalized homophobia (or have homophobic parents who are forcing them to transition so that the parents can try to transform their reviled lesbian daughters into “fake” straight sons). I personally never identified as a lesbian during the many years I was forced to live as a woman (though I support and love my lesbian sibs!). For the record, I’m pansexual. And I look much more queer after transition than I did before it. That is a source of gender euphoria for me!

So: you know what makes me happy? Getting dressed in the morning, looking in the mirror as I tie my floral tie, and seeing my balding, bearded head.

Happy Trans Day of Visibility!

Why must I list the sex marker on my original birth certificate to get vaccinated?

 

A personal anecdote about going to the drugstore while trans. . .

I was born right after a vaccine for measles was introduced. In those early years of the vaccine, killed virus was used instead of live, and only a single shot was given instead of a series of two. So, the pre-Kennedy CDC urged people in my age bracket to get a modern MMR vaccine if there was a possibility of encountering measles (initially considered in terms of foreign travel or healthcare work). Now, medical news reports recommend that my age cohort get vaccinated.

So, I decided to get an MMR vaccine at my local Walgreens. I've been getting my vaccines at Walgreens rather than a nearby CVS because the Walgreens registration form to schedule a vaccine just asked me to indicate my "gender," while starting in the first Drumpf administration the CVS form began requiring that I check the "sex originally listed on your birth certificate." But recently, Walgreens started making the same registration demand.

I waffled over whether to ignore the new requirement and just list my lived gender. People of any gender get the same vaccines--they don't come in pink and blue sex-variants. There is zero medical reason for Walgreens to have to know my original-birth-certificate sex in order to vaccinate me. In any case, I was born intersex, and so my original binary birth certificate sex-marker was never accurate. And trans people living outside of large "blue" coastal cities receive medical care that is on average substantially worse in quality than that cis people receive in the US. When I am dressed, I currently have the privilege of being gendered correctly by strangers more often than not. Being balding and bearded thanks to testosterone access has a lot to do with that. Sometimes they recognize that I am transmasculine--but here in Wisconsin, sometimes they just presume I am a cis man. (Transmasculine people face a lot less scrutiny than do transfemmes, so my being 5'2" and pear-shaped can go overlooked fairly often.) Should I not try to conserve that privilege in interactions that could negatively impact my health? After all, I have dependents. . .

In the end, I entered the sex originally listed on my birth certificate, for the same reason that my backpack features trans pins and I wear t-shirts with trans-celebrating graphics and I post about trans topics on social media. As someone who has the privilege of often being properly gendered by strangers, it's important for me to be out, and not leave the hard work of trying to navigate and lessen transphobia to those who don’t have that privilege.

Well. I went to get my shot. I filled out my paperwork at the counter (with "Sex: F" printed at the top right corner next to my name) and took a seat in the waiting area. Twenty minutes later, my name was called. I got up and started walking to the pharmacy tech—young, with feminine makeup and long hair. “No no,” she said, “I’m not calling you.” I looked at her for a moment, then went and sat down while she watched. “Next is Cary,” she articulated loudly. I got up again, and walked over. “Your name is Cary?” she asked dubiously. “Yes, that’s me,” I said. She looked down at the form on her clipboard, where my name sat next to the “F” marker. She looked at me. “OK. . .” she said, and led me into the little vaccination cubicle.

Once we were in and the door was closed and I sat down, she had to go over the checklist of prevaccination questions—all of which I had to answer already on the form—but first she said, with a stony look, “Sorry, Cary is a female name so I was confused.”  I have a standard routine in circumstances like this, bringing up actor Cary Grant, but she never heard of him. So with a smile I said I am old, and many names change in how they are gendered over time, almost always going from traditional men’s names to gender-neutral ones to names seen as quite feminine. Lesley. Beverly. Meredith. Lauren. Taylor. “Really? Beverly was a boy’s name?!” “Yep,” replied I.

She didn’t mention the gender marker, though she did glance several times at my chest. (I wear a binder.) She just went ahead and gave me my shot. But she looked uncomfortable the whole time. Who knows what she was thinking. I didn’t ask, because it was a socially awkward situation, and there were a batch of people awaiting their shots. Getting a simple injection is a short medical interaction, and hard to get wrong, so it’s not like this tech’s discomfort posed a substantial risk to me.

But many other medical interactions do put a person’s health or life at risk.

Folks who are trans, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming had been seeing improvement in the quality of our interactions with medical practitioners, but now that’s reversing, because institutions all over the US are caving and pre-complying with executive orders demanding disrespect for trans people that are all being legally challenged. And you see it even in the simplest of interactions, like going to get a shot at the local drug store, and having that experience become more uncomfortable.

It's important that we push back at things like this. There’s no reason to force people to misgender themselves to get a vaccination. Or to get a passport. The cruelty is the point, and we need a nation that is less cruel, not more! I know there are many worse things happening right now, from deportations to the attempt to destroy universities. But so much of our lives exist in little moments and short interactions. . .

This administration has turned a cold cultural civil war into a hot one, but we can mitigate that at least to some degree by being civil to one another. For example, if we’re unsure what’s going on with someone else’s gender when we’re dealing with their paperwork, we can just carry on being friendly and kind.

Do that!
 

Sarah McBride, Desegregating Hero

 

At a House of Representatives hearing yesterday on US relations with Europe, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Keith Self turned to give Delaware Representative Sarah McBride her chance to speak. (McBride is Congress' first transgender member.) Self called upon her as “the representative from Delaware, Mr. McBride.”

Without a beat, McBride replied, "Thank you, Madam Chair." She prepared to give her speech, but first Rep. Bill Keating, the ranking Democrat from Massachusetts, asked Self to correct himself, and when Self again introduced Sarah McBride as "Mr. McBride," Keating asked Self, "Have you no decency?" Self said business would now continue, Keating said not with him until Self properly addressed McBride, and Self said "This meeting is adjourned!" and huffed out.

 Yes, Keating white-knighted Sarah McBride, but she carried herself with great aplomb. She was prepared to do Congressional business despite her being harassed and disrespected by her own peers. She has maintained this coolness in the face of other misgenderings, other attacks, and a federal law being passed by Congressional Republicans to ban trans people from using Congressional bathrooms that match their lived genders--something passed solely to discriminate against her.

On social media, we saw the following comments afterwards:

Self posted, “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” citing Trump’s executive order of January 20th.

McBride posted, "No matter how I'm treated by some colleagues, nothing diminishes my awe and gratitude at getting to represent Delaware in Congress. It is truly the honor and privilege of a lifetime. I simply want to serve and to try to make this world a better place.

Mary Miller, Republican Representative from Illinois, who has also been misgendering McBride, threw in a gratuitous deadname: posting that Self "is right to state the biological reality that [deadname] ‘Sarah’ McBride is a man. Enough with the lies. As God ordained and President Trump declared, there are only TWO GENDERS: Male and Female!"

 And the vile Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina and champion bigot, tossed in, "You know what’s indecent? A mentally ill man pretending to be a woman. Biology. Science. The Left should try it some time." 

As a reminder, the racists who fought against desegregation claimed that their Christian beliefs compelled them to do so. So did the bigots who opposed interracial marriage and later same-gender marriage. They always say God is on their side as they kick people in the face. And back when they were segregating bathrooms along racial lines, they claimed science proved this was imperative, citing eugenics.

Anyway, what really impresses me about McBride is her ability to keep her composure in the face of the provocations and bullying and disrespect. She knows--we all know--her attackers are hoping she gets angry and yells at them so they can paint her as dangerous and themselves as reasonable. And she certainly has justification to do so. (In fact, some trans people criticize her for not coming out swinging and getting in the faces of those harassing her, and for using the private bathrooms of Democratic colleagues rather than defiantly marching into the women's bathroom by the House Chamber.) But McBride is doing something much harder than punching back. She is winning the respect of average Americans watching these incidents on social media and the news. Her attackers look nasty and rude, and she looks reasonable, dignified, and unruffled.

We need all kinds of tactics to win battles for the rights of targets of discrimination. Some of those are confrontational, some of them are community building, some of them are legal challenges, and some of them are educational. But one of the hardest is to be among the first people desegregating an institution, be that baseball or a high school or the House of Representatives. Because all eyes are on you, and you have to keep your cool despite people screeching at you and harassing you and spitting on you, and show that you can play the game, or pass the tests, or do the job of legislating under that kind of pressure.

McBride's not rolling over! She calmly misgendered Self right back. But she was prepared to go right on doing her job representing the people who elected her. It was Self, the zero, who huffed out and left the business of Congress (which Republican Congresspeople seem oddly content to just abandon right now) undone.

Sarah McBride is an American hero.