By Tammi Dodger.
“I’ll share something too, but you’re going to lose respect for me.”
This is my reassurance to a friend, who grins back at me from beneath her glossy, black cycling helmet. She is in the process of telling me something that while embarrassing, is also too burdensome of a secret to hold inside. I forget the exact details, but something along the lines of wearing the same pair of knickers for the third day in a row. We are on a cycling tour of Ireland.
She nods at me, as if to prompt me: what’s your thing then?
“I’ve been wearing sanitary pads,” I say.
This triggered the first of several confused expressions. She knows I was assigned male at birth and go by she/her pronouns, but that doesn’t explain this revelation.
“I’ve been a bit leaky,” I offer, prompting an even more puzzled expression. I’ve generated many more questions that I’ve answered.
“I’ve had, you know, an intestinal thing.”
Sheer bafflement.
“The skid marks haven’t only been on the tarmac.”
She laughs as enlightenment dawns and reassures me in kind. “I haven’t lost respect for you.”
I start effervescing about how oddly enjoyable I had found the process of applying the pads, noting all the prettifying touches. The thin strip of tape holding it together. The intuitive sequence in which to remove this strip and the next strip, until the pad is firmly in place. Just something quite satisfying about the process and all with a delicate hint of perfume.
“They’re just so well engineered,” I enthuse.
“Yes,” she replies, with a hint of reserve. “They’ve definitely improved.”
We are standing outside a convenience store petrol station. By the road stands a giant, plastic ice cream cone, shabby with the dirt flicked up by years of passing traffic, a gash in one side held together with gaffer tape. Astonishingly its marketing bid has succeeded, because we see another member of our group emerge from the shop with an ice cream.
I need to round off the chat before anyone else hears anything.
“But I appreciate that the prettifying touches are scant consolation to anyone using the pads as intended,” I add.
“Yes,” she says, nodding emphatically.
(I showed a draft of this to a trans friend who told me to be unapologetic about enjoying the pads, as he aped Oliver Twist begging the cis folk “oh please can I have some gender!”)
A few days later we scale Connor’s Pass on Dingle Peninsula. It’s a 7% gradient, ascending 400 metres over 7 km. Initially we find ourselves on a back road and as we looked up the fearsome slope, we see a dirt track with loose gravel and stones instead of tarmac. A passing local says: “Should have taken the main road. Youse are going to be getting off and walking.”
Three of our group of five prove him correct, but I am incapable of taking the easy option and almost pull a muscle in my back stubbornly cycling up the slope.
At the top of the dirt track, we learn that we have another 300m to climb. The road snakes around the curves of the hill, revealing each new section of road by increments. As each corner approaches, I pray that the next section will be less steep – flat even – but each time it slides into view and it’s just as steep or steeper. Each time I begin my hopes for the next section to be less formidable.
Half way up the slope we stop for a rest and notice a sheep gazing at us, its head poking through a wire mesh fence. One of our number instinctively realises that the animal is stuck, but the rest of us need convincing. Its woollen fur is so thick and fluffy that it obscures sections of wire. When we approach it gets agitated and we realise that it is stuck. One of us calls a helpline and reports it but we will never have any way of knowing what became of it.
My intestinal problems have resolved by now and I don’t need the sanitary pads any more. My sudden fascination with them is part of a reawakening of a side of myself I had once again tried to bury, but it has occurred to me that rhapsodising over their usage might be an insensitive thing to describe in an article. Then I realised it was the perfect metaphor for what I perceive the TERF impression of trans womanhood to be. The accusation being that transwomen think being a woman is all about wearing lacy knickers and make up, all of which fails to qualify as even a one-dimensional view of womanhood. Or certainly, it was words to that effect that an old friend had shared with me recently.
Shortly before my trip, the friend had got in touch noting how crazy it was that we hadn’t spoken for seven years. Ha, I thought to myself, I can tell you exactly why we haven’t spoken, steeling myself finally to have the conversation we needed to have.
In our previous exchange seven years earlier, I’d said something like “I’ve been exploring my womanhood.”
The friend replied: “Putting on a skirt doesn’t make you a woman.”
I wasn’t in the right place mentally to have the chat then, but seven years later, I thought, I’ve got this.
What ensued was a pointless attempt by both parties to convince the other they were wrong. All I said was that I now identified as non-binary transfeminine, in her next response, she was already decrying the choice of transwomen to “mutilate” themselves. As the whole sorry train wreck unfolded, it became clear that for her, transwomen are not women and there needs to be a new word for them that doesn’t make any suggestion of their being a woman. “Would you prefer it if I described myself as transfemme instead of transfeminine?” I suggested. “Because in the end it starts to look like pedantry.”
Later on a trans friend advised me simply not to engage on this topic with such people. It’s a fair point but I also read recently that what changes people’s minds about things is interacting with a person in their social sphere who presents a confrontation to their set of beliefs, so I thought, why not give it a go?
What was so draining about the exchange was that my old friend unwittingly jabbed her thumb in the festering sore of my own ongoing doubts.
I go round and round endlessly trying to figure out what I need from my transition. Am I being brave enough? Do I have enough dysphoria to warrant medical interactions? Are the regret rates around transition truly as low as science reports? What are the right words to describe myself?
A few years back I wrote a post in an online trans support group, expressing my grief at my mum’s passing, but the fond memory of her saying something very affirming about my gender in one of our final exchanges. Somehow one of the other members of the * checks notes * support group decided I needed some tough love and said I needed simply to decide what I was and tell others how I wanted to be described.
I’m happy for her that she’s found that so simple.
Measure twice, cut once. My mum taught me that. Admittedly she was talking about woodwork but good wisdom is where you find it.
The online social group wasn’t my first taste of tough love from a trans person in a support role.
When I first came out, it was quite the proverbial rollercoaster of exciting possibilities, beset by the fears of a harder life. One night after an incredibly painful clash with the realisation that straight women weren’t for me any more, I called a dedicated support line.
I told the person who answered that I thought I might be trans. Her initial response was to state that trans people are the demographic with the highest suicide rate and that I might lose family over it. Later on she noted that it wouldn’t all be wearing sexy outfits in glamorous nightclubs. What about when I had to go to the supermarket? How would I feel then in my day wear?
Her parting shot was: “No one would choose to be trans.”
It has been a journey. My friends tell me off for blaming my transition for the fact that I no longer have a love life. They’re right to do that, but I have my own sympathies. I hear all this content about what an easy time of it older cis men have in the dating game. (Although I’m certain it’s an oversimplification). Then there’s the fears of coming out professionally in such a transphobic phase of the culture wars. Meanwhile every time I make a resolution to further my transition, I get this sense of resistance and I wonder if I’m trying to persuade myself that I’m more trans than I am.
Given the stakes, it would be weird if I didn’t have doubts, although that’s nothing new. Ever since I was a teenager my brain has crackled non-stop with anxieties and doubts and now here was a fresh batch.
Doubts and anxieties point to other labels of course. The first time I heard the word “neurodivergent”, I instinctively knew it applied to me, but whenever I took the online quizzes to gauge which flavour I might be, none of them seemed to fit. Besides I had a shit time at a young age at boarding school, so another possibility was that I just had CPTSD, symptoms of which bear significant resemblance to neurodivergent traits. Finally I realised I had ADHD (diagnosed), from which I inferred I must also have autism (undiagnosed), or I would have realised I had ADHD sooner. More revelations to process.
If I had autism, how did that play into my gender? Our nation’s growing awareness of how common it is for people to have autism as well as transgenderism has fuelled the suggestion that lots of young folk who think they’re trans are really just confused about how to be autistic. Then I read something about autistic people tending to wear very vibrant or otherwise attention-catching clothes and that had me wondering. “What if I’m not trans? What if I’m just an autistic, effeminate man, who embraced the femme side he’d been hiding behind the various masks associated with attending boarding school, having undiagnosed neurodivergence, and just plain old being a human? What if I just got a bit carried away and I can just kick all this trans stuff back under the rug?”
Then my old friend gets back in touch, arguing with points that had become the very most central aspects of my core identity, sharing links to videos that seemed to expose endless inconsistencies in the trans narrative.
I felt lost and not for the first time. And that was where I was mentally when I arrived in Ireland for our cycling tour.
I was really worried I wasn’t going to enjoy the holiday. I was in a funny mood and like a petulant teenager, my brain kept pelting me with its very most hurtful things that it says, and the thought occurred: do you think it’s because you’ve been trying to convince yourself you’re not trans?
We eventually reach the top of Connor’s Pass. It takes about two hours, several rests and a whole bag of Haribo Tangfastics, but we make it. From the viewpoint at the top, in the curved ridge between two peaks, we can see both the Northern and Southern coasts of Dingle peninsula. The mountains are lush with grass near the summits, patchworks of different coloured fields at the bottom, where the distant shores are lined with sand. Tourists mill around taking pictures of themselves against this backdrop.
An American offers to take our photo and strikes up a chat with us. He’s a cyclist himself but his bike is back home. He lavishes us with praise for our achievement.
As the wind starts to chill the sweat from our backs, we don windbreakers and set off down the other side.
What follows is twenty minutes of joyous downhill. Wind rushing past our ears, no need to pedal, the road continues to snake round the slope, so we have to flick our cycles round endless chicanes, dabbing the brakes to keep speeds within the limits of our courage. Throughout the holiday I’ve been terrorising the group by singing Simply Red songs and now the joy of downhill has me singing the chorus from Something’s Got me Started.
And flapping in the breeze is my favourite new piece of clothing.
While planning the trip to Ireland, I had thought I would mainly stay in “guy mode”. I was feeling so confused about gender stuff anyway and I didn’t know how a femme presentation would go over in the Emerald Isle. Perhaps I should have expected more from a country that has introduced self-identification for trans people. (Meaning we can just tell the doctor we’re trans, rather than have to pay to convince endless psychiatrists that we are.)
That said, I had brought a dress with me. Just in case. A few days into the trip, I chanced wearing it out to the pub. I wore trousers underneath, which I like to think makes the dress somehow more incognito. No one raised an eyebrow.
Suddenly I found myself in an uncommonly good mood.
Next day I got back into an old pair of shorts for which I am now officially too big. They were super uncomfortable.
One of my female companions was lyrical about how comfortable she was finding her culottes, which she got from Fat Face. Next day we chanced upon a branch and I went in and found a pair. Bracing myself for a comment through pursed lips, to the tune that: “Don’t you realise those are women’s shorts?”, I was relieved that none of the staff batted an eyelid. I wore the shorts out of the store.
And now my mood was even better. In fact, that was the best day of the holiday.
My female friends complimented the shorts and told me how much they suited me and I was euphoric.
But even as my new culottes are flapping in the breeze of the gleeful descent from Connor’s Pass, another concern unfolds. The holiday has been so nice that I start to feel sad about it coming to an end.
Having rolled down the other side of Connor’s Pass, we find a campsite which is a minute’s walk from a stunning sandy beach. After dinner we go and watch the sunset on the beach, the setting sun’s elongated reflection making a thick, golden stripe on the ocean. Waves lap at the shore, their shallow crests fizzing as they break on the sand.
My friends gather wood and light a fire. After some time the flame dies down and the fire is mainly embers, glowing all the best pinks, reds and oranges that the sun makes through the sky’s daily twist of the kaleidoscope. I always think the embers look delicious to eat. I say this and one of my friends acknowledges their captivating appearance, but suggests she’d like to wear one as jewellery.
As the fire starts to die, the two friends who built it take it in turns to blow on the fire from either side, keeping the flame alive as long as they can.
I’m in high spirits.
Earlier while clearing up after dinner, I had to take the rubbish to the enclosure of recycling bins. Two chatting men were blocking my entrance.
In my head I occupy this middle ground, telling myself that my ditsy floral dress, pink hoodie and pink check pyjamas, curls of hair cascading from a messy bun, are somehow incognito, gender neutral, below the radar. But of course people notice these details as if they’re flashing lights, as obvious as my assignation as male at birth. It’s just a question of whether they ignore it or acknowledge it and in the event of the latter, it’s about how kind they choose to be.
As I approached the recycling enclosure, the man facing me bade his friend move forward, saying: “A woman needs to get to the bins.”
Back at the washing up station, I tell my friend that I’ve been called a woman.
“How does that feel?” she asks.
“So good,” I reply, glowing like the embers.