Been a while since I’ve posted anything. Not that I haven’t been meaning to. Lots of things to write about really, but just haven’t had much time.

So, lets start with some recaps from last year:

Surgery

The main thing about last year is that the final hoop for my gender affirming surgery was jumped through. And recently I got my scheduled date. May 14th. The same day that a dear friend is also getting her surgery. The chances of that were pretty astronomical, and I’m very very happy that I got this date. It makes the waiting very worth it.

Relationship

The other main thing is my relationship with Melissa is still going strong. I visited her in October for a long weekend, and while short, it was a very good and memorable visit. She is an amazing woman, and I am so happy to have found her.

Work / Validation

The other other main thing is work. School finished at the end of June, and I started work in the middle of July. As a complete surprise to me, work has become an actual place of validation. Going in to a heavily male dominated field, I expected to get misgendered a LOT. Turns out, the opposite is true.

The amount of daily validation I get at work is mind boggling to me. I understand that I am a very lucky woman to have this. I have coworkers that constantly gender me correctly when dealing with clients (the amount of misgendering has pretty much disappeared). I have clients that gender me correctly, use validating speech (eg. “Oh look, the angel has come to fix my network.”), and other women (or femme identified people) treat me as any other woman.

Work has actually become a safe space for me. I can be less guarded, and less stressed because of that. There’s still a few clients I have not interacted with yet, but even if there are a few bad apples, the rest more than makes up for that. And my boss has even said if I’m not comfortable with a certain client he can send someone else.

Work has also been validating in the sense that I am in the right field. There’s been a huge learning curve (and I’m still in that curve) but I’m getting to do things that most people right of school dream about. I’m working on live production servers, datacenter networks/routers/firewalls, internal network design and implementation, script writing and more. Plus, I still wind up doing help desk stuff (because we’re a small company). So, I’m doing almost every aspect of IT.

I’m a happy girl at work.

Living

2017 has seen a change in where I live as well. I’m further away from the big city. Which is good and bad. It’s a long commute when I go in to work (over an hour one-way) and a lot of friends are further away. Yet, the area I’m living in is nice, lots of places are easily within walking distance. I’ve been working on getting my bedroom finished – just have the closet to do. And I still don’t have my cat. *pout*

Car Accident

December 29, 2017 I was in my first ever car accident. I was driving Teresa’s car because mine had a flat tire. Conditions were bad that night, and I was in the right lane of 3. The middle lane had stopped ahead, and I slowed down expecting people to lane jump. I did not expect people to actually hit each other, and get pushed in front of me (no one was in front of me for miles). I hit the breaks, and the anti-lock kicked in (I hate anti-lock breaks) and while they slowed me down, they did not stop me in time for the left front of the car to hit the rear passenger quarter panel on the car that was all of a sudden in front of me.

Teresa’s car has been written off, and she bought a newer car that she loves.

Changes

Gaming

Another surprising source of womanly validation has come from my D&D gaming group. I’m playing with 4 cis males. 3 of which I went to school with last year, and the 4th, the DM, I’ve never met. In the last 4 months of playing, not once have I been misgendered. Which is amazing to me given we use voice chat. One of the guys is playing a female character, and when she gets misgendered, I take perverse pleasure in seeing a cis male deal with it.

Friendship

These are photos of me since I stopped trying to look cisgender. My everyday look more or less.

Enjoy.

Hi Jessica, I hope this isn’t strange or intrusive. Whenever I come across a person who is visibly trans, I like to take the time to say hi. I want to commend you on your bravery. You are truly beautiful to me. I hope one day, everyone in our society will catch up with the same idea. I have 3 children, and I promise you, that I will accept them and encourage them to be who they really are, no matter what. MWAH!! -Amanda

Messages like this happen every now and then, sometimes in person, sometimes via social media. To have this kind of support come in for me, and the transgender community as a whole, is very special. With all the bad that is going on in the world with our community, it eases the pain a bit to know there are people, outside our community, that support us and love us. That the bigots aren’t the only ones out there.

Personally, it helps ease the effort that it takes to present visibly trans. To have the confidence to present visibly trans is emotionally draining. It does get easier, every day I do it, and the reward definitely outweighs the effort, yet, messages like those from Amanda Cowper boost me even more.

So, I want to thank Amanda for her message. Thank her for having the views that she does. Thank her for raising her children with those same views. And to all those that are doing the same, thank you so much!

With Love,
Jessica

I went for a kidney ultrasound last week. A week before, when thinking about the appointment, I mulled over informing them I was trans before the test. Then I had 2 thoughts. First, it’s my kidneys, nothing much up there that is different for an XY vs an XX human. Second, they’ll obviously know I’m trans.

At my ultrasound, the tech informed me he was doing a bladder check too. So, I slipped my skirt a bit lower, lifted my shirt up, and he started. Pretty quickly he developed a confused look on his face. Then it seemed he was trying to find something – pressing harder, changing the area of search, etc… I really had to pee, and this was not helping as he was pressing all over my bladder.

He looks down at me and asks, “have you had any surgeries in this area?”

So, again, thinking he knows I’m trans, is asking if I’d had the vaginoplasty. I guess because things shift a bit during that surgery. So, I say, “no, no surgeries.”

He continues to examine me, looking more worried now than confused. Then it seems he finds something, and stops, and goes to my chart. Looks back at me, and looks at the chart, and says, “ermm… your chart says female….”

It wasn’t phrased as a question, but I could tell it was a question. I realized he had found my testicle in the inguinal canal. “Oh! I’m transgender,” I say, as a bit of relief comes over his face.

He was worried I was a ciswoman with no womb, ovaries, etc… and didn’t know how to deal with that, because he can’t disclose anything diagnostic. Then when he found a testicle, things started to become clearer.

It’s very difficult for transwomen to deal with the medical community. We ARE women, but we often have physically XY bodies. We don’t want to always be bringing it up because a lot of the time it’s unnecessary, yet in some instances it is helpful for the person we’re dealing with to know.

What I learned from this, is that I actually pass. Well enough to confuse a medical professional, anyway. I even had talked with him a bit before starting, and he still didn’t clue in.

At first, I was quite happy about this. It leads to being privileged. Something I gave up with transition. To regain some of that felt good. For a little bit. Then, as I thought more and more about it, I started to really hate that it had made me feel good.

We shouldn’t HAVE to pass ourselves off as ciswomen. We should just get to be ourselves and seen and interacted with accordingly. Why do ciswomen have to be the standard for what a ‘woman’ is supposed to look like, act, talk, etc…? (I’m not blaming ciswomen, definitely not)

I see each and every transwoman as a woman. No matter where they are in transition, or even if they are transitioning or not. None of that matters to how I see them. This of course goes the same for nonbinary identified people as well, and transmen. Granted, in order to see people as they want to be seen, communication is sometimes necessary. And is that such a bad thing? It’s not that hard to talk to someone without gendering them.

I’ve decided to stop trying to adhere to a cis-normative look. I’m going to go out as me. A woman. A woman who happens to be transgender, and has a receded hairline, and thinner hair on top. If I wear a hat, headscarf, or wig it will be because I want to! I already do this with every other aspect of myself.

I may cause myself dysphoria. I may get negative feedback. This may be damaging to my emotional state. On the other hand, this may be a great thing. I’ve never wanted to hide who I am since transition. I’m proudly transgender. This will be interesting. My life is always interesting.

Me myself and my hair (and a headscarf)

I think it was fitting that today was the day this happened. I’ve been growing my hair since January. To finally go out with nothing artificial, and feel I’m presenting the way I really want to, is a very fulfilling thing.

Exactly one year ago today, I accepted that I was in fact Jessica. The day of December 8th, 2014 will forever be ingrained in my memory. More important than any other date. I accepted that she was not a small part of me, that I indulged every now and then. I accepted that I had buried her deep inside, and hurt her prolifically. I accepted that I needed to change. I accepted that I needed to be true to myself.

I threw away all my fears and doubts that I had been clinging to. Fears and doubts that had allowed me to deny who I really am. Losing those fears allowed me to finally open myself up. Discover who I really am – a process I’m still working on.

It has been quite the year for me. It went by so fast, and yet certain things seemed (and still do seem) to take forever. I’m essentially at a point, where I am fully me. Yes, there are some physical things to fix yet in the next year, but for all intents and purposes, I feel realized.

Life feels natural to me now. A feeling I never knew about until recently. Before transition, I was always making sure no one saw any outward sign of Jessica, not a natural way to live. Constantly guarded against slipping up, saying the wrong thing, like ‘Oooh, that’s pretty!’ Then in the early part of transition, it was better, but I was still worrying about how I was presenting, just in a different way. Yes, most of the time I had confidence, but it wasn’t the same as now.

Now there really is no effort in being me, I just am. I’m comfortable in my skin. I have bad days, I get misgendered. But the bad doesn’t last as long. The misgendering bothers me a bit, and then it goes away. I see myself as a fairly attractive woman. I’ve kind of accepted that I will get called sir occasionally. I just can’t see why. Maybe I’m deluding myself, but I’d rather delude myself this way, than the way I’d done it for 34+ years.

I am so thankful for all my friends and family that have supported me through this process. It is a very remarkable thing how many of you are there for me. Also remarkable is how many have joined after I started this journey. When I came out I had about 187 people on my friend list on FaceBook. I lost 2 acquaintances in the process. I now have 256 friends with only a few of those being very peripheral acquaintances.

I had zero connection to anyone in the trans community when I started this journey, and I really appreciate the friends that I now have, that share this road. To have people that I can talk to, that really understand what the hell I’m talking about it, is invaluable. And probably helped me from going completely insane, as well. You are some of my closest friends now.

In this last year I have changed a lot. Some of the changes are from throwing away my fears and doubts. Some are from hormones. Some are from life experiences. Some are from new people in my life. Some are from people that have always been there. I am no longer the shy quiet person hiding in the corner. I still lack certain social skills that I didn’t learn growing up, but I’m getting better. I’m predominately extroverted, not an introvert like I had thought my entire life. I thrive on being around people and being social.

I have learned a lot about my likes and dislikes, and how wrong and skewed they were before starting transition. Most of my likes and dislikes were based on my filters and how I thought I needed to present myself to pass as a guy. With those gone, my world opened up.

My life has complexities in it now that I never imagined even a year ago. I wind up saying this a lot, but, life really is interesting now. I’m constantly looking for new experiences, and I keep finding them. I’m not sure I’ll ever run out – and I don’t want to.

Thanks to everyone in my life, everyone that reads this blog, and everyone in the LGBTQQIP2SAA (look it up if you want to know). I love you all.

– Jessica Jaclyn Hanna Reimer

I’ve heard some things third hand that make me feel like ranting a bit. So, here goes.

I am a woman. Period. (pardon the inappropriate pun)

It doesn’t matter how I dress, how I talk, how I act; I am a woman. It doesn’t matter that I have big hands and feet, that I’m very tall, wear wigs, shave my face every morning; I am a woman. I could put zero effort into passing and it would not change that a bit.

I do not do anything to be ‘more’ of a woman.

I don’t shave my legs because society says women shave their legs. I shave them because I love how it feels.

I wear pretty clothes and have a hard time dressing casual because it’s how I am. Not because I have some screwed up notion of what a woman is supposed to look like. This is how I want to look.

I wear makeup because I like how I look with it. I’ve gone out without makeup, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t feel less a woman when doing that.

I am not a stereotype. I don’t ascribe to stereotypes. I happen to like some of the things that are often stereotypically associated with femininity. I also like a lot of things that are stereotypically associated with masculinity.

Realizing that my likes and dislikes don’t define my gender identity was a breakthrough I had when I figured myself out. It is how I feel and see myself that defines my gender identity.

I bring all this up because I have made some comments about a couple things in the last few months and that has generated some negative responses.

Firstly is an experience I want to have of feeling small, vulnerable, and protected by a big, strong, stoic man. I don’t want this experience so that I somehow feel more complete, or to feel womanly. As I said, I am a woman. It’s just an experience I’ve never had, and it sounds really nice to me. Comforting.

The other thing that has generated flack is that I am happy to be losing some upper body musculature. Apparently this statement has been misconstrued as me saying I’m happy to be weak because it’s more womanly. Which is bullshit. I haven’t actually lost much strength at all. Just bulk. I never had a lot of upper body strength in my muscles, all my upper body strength comes from leverage (long limbs). I joke about it at times as being weaker. It’s a joke. Physically I may have lost a tiny bit of strength – I can live with that – it’s not something I ever desired though. Losing muscle mass on the other hand, I am very happy with, and would even appreciate a bit more if it happens.

Do keep in mind all of this is how I feel. I do not have a messed up version of what it means to be a woman. I am me, and will continue to be so. I am stronger than I have ever been in my entire life, and each day I get a little stronger still. Feel free to disagree with me. Feel free to argue with me. I don’t have any problem debating anything I say, ever. I will even admit when I’m wrong about something. But please take it up with me, and not so that I hear about things 3rd and 4th hand.

Today, for the first time at work, I was audibly gendered correctly. This is big for me. It took just over 2 months to happen. I know without any doubt I do not look as female at work as I do outside of work. But I DO think I look female. ish. mostly.

Without hair framing my face, all the masculine features leap out. Granted, there aren’t a TON of them, but they are there. And even most of them are subtle, but add them all up, and people make assumptions. This really isn’t about passing, but it kind of is. If I passed, this would be a non-issue.

It’s about presentation and reaction. If I present properly as female, I should get reacted to that way. A lot of my problem in my work environment is my fault. How I view myself affects greatly how I present myself, and vice versa. It’s a vicious cycle. I know I don’t look the way I know I can look, so that gets projected. Muscle memory is a great thing a lot of the time, but not so much for a transwoman in my job. When I’m at work, I have to do a lot of things that rely on muscle memory. A lot of things I don’t need to rely on muscle memory for, come along for the ride, unfortunately.

So, this is what happened:

Having lunch in the truck, an Indian fellow (about 55 years old) walks up to the truck (I believe he is a shop owner in the strata mall we’re pruning at). He says hi, and then asks how he can make his plants grow, with all this sunshine, his aren’t growing.

I get a few words out to find out what kind of plants, as he spots my uncle on the other side of the truck. “Oh, I will talk to the boss,” he says, and walks around to the other side of the truck. My immediate reaction is great, I don’t have to deal with this. Then my second reaction is, wait a sec, I’m the crew chief.

My uncle proceeds to find out it’s vegetable plants this guy wants help with. Neither of us are that familiar with growing veggies. I kind of zone out of the conversation at this point. Until I hear, “How much does she work for?”

Wait. What? She? Holy fuck. He said it completely matter of factly, not questioningly as I envisioned the first time being. He KNEW I was a she.

“I could hire her to look after my tomatoes,” or something like that. “$25 an hour for her to do that,” again he says. Then he said something about she should work for nothing, but I didn’t catch why.

It was over and over again, “she” and “her”. I was flabbergasted. I, in my opinion at least, did not look my best today. I’ve had other days where I could have sworn I was very cute and rocking my head scarf and still got called sir/he/him. I had minimal makeup on today – foundation (to hide electrolysis redness), eyebrows, blue eyeliner. That is it. Not even mascara today.

As he went back to the store, he offered us drinks (because of the heat) which we declined – we had lots of water anyway.

For the next while I was over the moon happy about this. Then I started thinking more about it. Was that a little bit sexist? Was I just a victim (albeit a minor one) of sexism? First thought; yay! Second though; that’s a completely inappropriate response.

I am completely of two minds over this. Sexism of any kind is horrible, and here I am happy it happened to me. wtf? I guess I kind of have to live with the fact that I’m happy about this one time. If it wasn’t the first time ever getting correctly gendered at work, I would NOT be happy about it. And it was relatively minor, could even just be ageism. I can’t discolour my first time with negativity. So, I’ll try and forget the ‘isms’ of it, and just recount the happy.

So yeah, ultimately – Happy.

Hugs,
Jess

A large part of me being able to feel this way, last night, was simply the people I was surrounded by. The friend, whose birthday party it was, has an amazing group of family of friends, and it didn’t even feel like I was ‘accepted’ because that seemed like a step that wasn’t even necessary. It was beyond that. Transcendent, you could say.

Even around my closest allies, I still am very aware of being trans. These people have known me a certain way for so long, and I them, that it’s very hard not to feel it. There is a change that is palpable. I don’t hate the feeling, as I’m quite proud to be transgender, but it isn’t all of who I am. It’s a big part of me currently, and will be during my transition. Yet, after I transition, I see it fading to a background as much as my left handedness (something else I’m proud of lol).

I’d been feeling a bit of my confidence eroded lately. I believe this is largely due to going to work as ‘James’. It’s not so much that I dress like James when I go to work, it’s that I think like James there. Granted, it’s not the same as before, but I still have my defenses up so that I pass as male. So, trying to be male for 10 hours a day on weekdays definitely has its impact on me. It is still an emotionally draining thing to do, even if I’m aware I’m doing it now. And it starts to muddle up how I present as female.

I got a lot of my confidence back last night. It was the most unguarded I’ve been to date, I think. Strange how letting my defenses down builds up my inner strength.

Teresa did very well in this social arena as well. Being introverted (we think she might have some extroverted qualities now though) she finds parties draining. Apparently, last night was not draining, and we were at the party for over 5 hours. We talked to some people we knew for the first while, but then started talking to people we didn’t know previously.

My other breakthrough, was that I took zero selfies. I didn’t ask Teresa to take any photos either. I finally went a day without taking a damn photo. I’m very proud of this fact. Proud that it wasn’t particularly hard to do too. Finally, in my mind, I was just going out to a party. It was part of the whole ‘not feeling trans’ last night.

It was a karaoke party, so people were trying to get us to sing. They were unsuccessful, but I did promise to sing next year. So, now I really need to work on my voice. Screw doing it for passability, I need to learn how to sing. lol.

– Jess

For transgender individuals, it is often a mental necessity to pass. In some areas of the world, it is a vitally important survival tactic.

It can become an unhealthy obsession, leading to multitudes of plastic surgeries that never leave the individual satisfied. It can lead to severe depression, and it can definitely impact a life greatly.

Not all of us feel a need to pass. Some don’t even want to. It’s as varied as humanity itself can be. Self image is something almost everyone struggles with every day, but couple that with dysphoria and it can become a monster. I’m constantly seeing trans people doubt themselves, get down on themselves, and seek validation. It’s why support groups are so important to us. We need to rely on our allies to help build us up as we break ourselves down.

I think I’m one of the lucky ones in that I don’t feel a ‘need’ to pass. This is partly due to where I live being very accepting as a whole, and partly because I’ve taken ownership of the things that used to own me (height, hands, feet, nose [to a lesser extent], chin).

That being said, I would still love to pass. I would love to not second guess the looks that people give me. To just accept someone looking me up and down as a normal day to day occurrence instead of seeing it as being ‘read’ (or ‘clocked’ or seeing the wrong gender coming through).

I still find myself constantly asking Teresa if my hair looks alright, or if my beard shadow is showing, or if my clothes look okay, etc… I don’t have a problem with being noticed, but I want that notice to be because of things I’m doing right, not things I’m doing wrong. So, even with all my confidence that I present well as a woman,  I still have lots of lingering self doubt. I’ve only been told by a couple people that I pass, but then I’ve never outright asked either.

My voice is one area I have a bigger issue with. For the most part it’s a personal issue, since no one I’ve actually talked to in public has reacted in any way at all to my voice. Teresa has, on occasion, suggested I really need to work on my voice though. Especially when it sounds too much like ‘James’. Currently, all I’m doing is taking the base out of my regular voice, and raising the pitch VERY slightly. It still sounds like me, but more androgynous you could say. And sometimes at home, I forget to do it. It’s still a very conscious thing to do, and takes effort.

I mentioned it to my therapist, and she said she hadn’t even thought of my voice as an issue, just thought of it as my voice. It is something I want to get right by the time I’m full time, but I also don’t want it to be so different as being unrecognizable as me.

I’m hopeful hormones (starting in March) will help with feminizing my face a bit, to get rid of some of the masculine hard edges. They can have an affect, but they work differently for everyone. Some get very little, others react to it like they were born for it. I’m hoping to be in that latter group.

– Jess