Dear Anita

This is the last week of Fall 2018 semester and class finals are wrapping up and I will be on winter break December 22nd-January 22nd. I have Spring 2019 semester at Ocean County College and then I will transfer to a four year university- hopefully I will get into Rutgers- New Brunswick for genetic engineering. I will miss Ocean County College, but I am excited to attend a four year university because I will be living in a dorm on campus (currently I commute to college and back home because I’m at community college) and will have time away from my parents. Last week was a good week for me because I didn’t get misgendered once and there was a lot of holiday fun at Ocean County College and I enjoyed playing some de-stressing games such as checkers. It made feel truly alive for once to have a week where no one called me the wrong gender and also have time to de-stress from finals. Most of my classes are winding down and I have completed all the assignments. This Friday is the wiccan winter solstice so I am going to take time off to celebrate. I’ll probably take a walk out in nature and enjoy the time to relax.

Thank you for your understanding and for being here for me. It is great to have friends like you who help me cope with gender dysphoria. I feel like I have a clearer sense of self when I talk about my feelings because it makes them tangible and easier to understand.

Humans are not the only animals that have high ranges of emotions. The limbic system of the brain that regulates emotions is larger in dolphins and whales. This allows dolphins and whales to express higher frequencies of emotions than humans.  Dolphins can feel more emotions than humans because they have a bigger prefrontal cortex and limbic system.  Dolphins are highly sensitive creatures especially the females. If you take a baby dolphin away from its mother, the mother will emit a cry of a specific frequency to try to find its child and the cry can be measured on a sonogram to check the sound waves and they correspond to ones similar to a person crying with grief which is why scientists have discovered dolphins can feel sadness. Also the other female dolphins will check on the grieving dolphin to see if she is okay. Whales are the same way. Whales feel grief if a baby whale is separated from their mother much like dolphins. Sometimes the whale feels so much grief that it decides to not come up for air. Whales have a blowhole that spouts out water as they break the surface of the water to breathe, but they can choose not sure come back and they can drown in grief. That may be where we get the term “drowning in misery.” Even though animals may not appear to express sadness, they can still experience it. Pain, sadness and fear on any levels can be felt by all species throughout the animal kingdom. Yet, gender dysphoria relates more to the intense depression a human feels when they feel like their bodies don’t match their gender identity. Humans have an ability to reason and a sense of self which allows them to communicate their feelings to others. Animals also have a language in which they communicate their feelings, but most animals do not establish specific behaviors of gender as people do. People are conscious of their bodies and society likes to assign gender roles at birth to people, but in animals gender roles are not as defined. Gender roles help society set organized boundaries and allows people to interrelate with one another. Since animals don’t create gender constructs or assign themselves a gender, they don’t have the same gender presentations humans do. Humans may dress in different ways that present our gender identity, as for animals they will pick the traits that most aid their survival. Humans have an ability to reason so they have a sense of who they are and can create gender structures of behavior, but animals don’t create specific gender cues because they are mostly focused on survival. If a trait helps them survive and replenish their species, nature will favor that trait. There have been many cases where allopatric speciation has taken place in which a group of fish in a pond become separated from the main group. The separated group may be all of one sex- say female. Overtime, some of the fish will change their sex to be male so the fish species can survive. Since animals don’t have a defined sense of gender identity, scientists believe they do not experience gender dysphoria as humans do. To experience gender dysphoria, you would have to be aware of gender roles and feel like your body doesn’t match your gender identity which requires a sense of self-awareness that is common in higher-level mammals and not all species of the animal kingdom. Although, animals may not have the higher level intelligence of humans to experience gender dysphoria, they are still capable of feeling emotions of pain, fear and sadness. The colobus monkey feels hurt because upon reaching puberty, the male colobus monkey is shooed away from his family to join another group of single males. Evolution has caused male colobus monkeys to have their anus swell before puberty mimicking a female so it stops them from being kicked out of their family and although the swelling stops later on, this feature stays with them for life.  Scientists believe that male colobus monkeys are expected by their family to have sought a female monkey when they are capable of reproducing to replenish the species so it may be a way of shaming the male monkey by kicking them out of the family and having them go into a group of single male monkeys if upon puberty they haven’t met a female monkey. So by imitating a female monkey, the male monkey makes it seem like he understands that female monkeys can reproduce and that makes the family seem more accepting of him and they may allow him to stay for a while until he finds a female monkey so he doesn’t feel like his ‘masculinity’ is questioned by being kicked out of the monkey pod. Also animals can change their sex based on environmental and genetic factors. Female lions are often born with more testosterone than males so they are more aggressive and many of them may grow manes. Scientists believe that female lions do this to appear more fierce to other animals that may pose a threat to their young. Both male and female hyenas have a testes and penis. The elongated clitoris in female hyenas is called a “pseudo-penis” and it serves as protection for the female hyena. Female hyenas also urinate, give birth and mate using this feature. Although animals don’t exhibit the higher level of intelligence to be self-aware of their gender identity and don’t experience gender dysphoria, their bodies often change due to genetics, the environment and their drive to survive and reproduce so there are animals that can exhibit different sexual characteristics. In animals, it is not as defined as humans though because humans can create gender roles, dress the way they want but animals don’t do that. Animals often change their bodies to adapt to nature and for survival so their bodies may not be as defined physically as humans and they don’t really have a sense of gender.

It is often easier to transition if you are diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a gender therapist, but it is correct that you do not need gender dysphoria to be transgender. A transgender person is someone who feels comfortable with the opposite gender than the one they were born with. Since transgender people often feel like their bodies don’t match their gender identity, most will experience gender dysphoria but not all. Gender dysphoria is a feeling many gender therapists look for in transgender people before they decide to help them in their transition. Since many transgender people have gender dysphoria, it is often assumed by people that you need gender dysphoria to be transgender but that’s not the case. Some transgender people do not have gender dysphoria, but they are still transgender. They may not feel an extreme emotional pain about parts of their body, but they still feel that the biological sex that they were assigned doesn’t match their gender identity and these people are also transgender even though they may not experience gender dysphoria. For people who feel like their gender identity doesn’t match their birth sex and are transgender but do not experience gender dysphoria, many people refer to their feelings about their gender identity as gender dissonance. These transgender people may not experience gender dysphoria, but feel like their gender identity doesn’t fit into what society deems them to be and they feel a lack of harmony or belonging into the identity assigned to them at birth or a gender dissonance.

Most people who start to question their gender identity spend six months with a gender therapist before the gender therapist decides to write a prescription for hormones. Many gender therapists also ask the person to live a year as their preferred gender and see how it feels and if it feels right for them then they may consider a medical procedure like sex reassignment surgery. Many transgender people dislike sports bras because they don’t bind as well and there have been transgender people who have broken ribs by wearing two sports bras to make their chest look flatter. Modern chest binders are made of nylon and they have a good ability to compress the chest so it makes it look flatter. Chest binders aren’t the most comfortable though because they do limit movement and it can be hard to breathe with them on, but it is often better than gender dysphoria. In addition, before there were chest binders many people bind their chests with bandages or tape. The modern chest binders are a lot safer because binding with tape and bandages is very restricting on the chest muscles and can result in bruised ribs and breathing problems. Many stores sell transgender binding tape that is specifically for transgender males to bind their chests and the tape can be adjusted to various lengths of comfort. Gender nonconformity goes back to Native American times. Native Americans believed people who felt like they didn’t have a female/male identity had the potential to understand the souls of people and thought of them as healers. Many of the Native Americans called these people “two-spirit” because they could understand both genders.

With each passing day, it seems like I am losing touch with the feminine aspect of myself and becoming more masculine. I don’t hate females, but I just don’t feel like one anymore- like there is a void where that gender used to be and it gives me room to express my true self. I dislike wearing dresses, fashion accessories and dolls, anything that gives the gender stereotype of being female. I enjoy wearing gender neutral clothing mostly in dark colors that make me appear more masculine. I have realized that I feel more comfortable as the opposite gender- male- and have started to dress and act in ways that seem more masculine. I enjoy having my hair short, not only because it’s easier to maintain but because it makes me feel more like a male. I have always been interested in computer science, engineering and body-building which are stereotypical of males. I realize I am also happier when portraying the opposite gender.  The gender dysphoria at its worst feels like I’m looking at myself through a glass- feeling detached from life and then the glass breaks and the shards of broken glass pierce my heart and I experience extreme emotional pain, discomfort and depression. I have been seeing the counselors at Ocean County College who help me with my gender dysphoria. Ocean Pride LGBT club at Ocean County College has been very helpful. My college friends from Ocean Pride have helped me with the hard times. It is because of my friends and the college counselors that have helped me find a sense of self. I have grown in confidence as I am currently finishing my third semester (one more semester to go) at Ocean County College and being with Ocean Pride LGBT club has helped me better understand my feelings. I know I am transgender as I identify as male, but was born female. Being a male is what makes me happy and feels right for me. I chose the name Janus because I was born in January and Janus is the Roman God of new beginnings and transitions. I feel like it is a new beginning for me where I feel closer to who I am as a person. I don’t feel like I’ve become a new person, but a better version of myself- a person who has more of a sense of self.

So I’ve been working on dropping all labels except for scientific and spiritual because I feel those are the ones that fit me the most. These days, people see the real me and they aren’t sure if I’m in pain or happy and they often ask me if I’m okay. My feelings range from pain to numbness/ detachment to happiness these days. I have begun to assess all my feelings including the painful ones and I am no longer running and trying to hide the pain like I used to. The thing that makes me annoyed is that when people will still put labels on me when they don’t fit anymore. At those times, I want to snap at them and say “I’m not any of those anymore. You don’t know me.” The thing is my college friends understand that I am in the process of finding myself and they accept the journey I’m undertaking. Ocean Pride LGBT is great because we all share similar stories and I feel like I can totally be me in that club. Other people who don’t know me well are quick to put labels on me and think that they know me, but they really don’t. I am finding my separate soul entity from this world, finding my true self, the person at the soul. I want to sift through all the memories and experience them and let them all go and find my core self beyond my physical thoughts. When making my life’s choices, I want to find and follow the ones in my heart and not those people expect of me. Currently to paraphrase the quote from As Simple As Snow (book I read) : “I know nothing of where I’m going, but that’s okay. Before I had everything, then lost it all and now I have nothing. But with nothing, I have everything to gain. There is no more of the baggage that I’ve carried with me and I travel light. Wherever I’m going, Whomever I am doesn’t matter. With losing myself, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”  I feel like I am working on releasing parts of myself and there are parts of me that are gone, but I have a clearer sense of who I am without the emotional baggage. I realize that strength is not being physically strong. Strength is not about being able to defend yourself in a fight or covering up the pain. Strength is moving through the pain and not letting it control you. Strength is being able to get back up when you’ve hit rock bottom and trying to start over again. Strength is about being compassionate and being okay with your flaws and working on being a better person daily.  I thought that to be masculine I had to have physical strength, that I had to be sure of myself and be able to deal with sadness. But I realize now that strength is not trying to act as if I can hold it together or covering up the pain by showing the physical muscles. Strength is realizing that you are not perfect and being okay with that and accepting that you are okay being you. Strength is doing what helps you be happy and heal not breaking your body down by working out to the extreme so you can look muscular. Strength is about taking little steps to improve your life and being okay that you may not make everyone happy but being confident doing what makes you feel good. My perceptions of what strength was have changed and I realize that I have strength and although it may not be what society sees strength as I am okay with that because to me strength is building yourself up and going for the things that help you heal and not limit you. I tried so hard to be strong in the ways of society that I became anorexic trying to make myself appear masculine, but I am healing and have realized that true strength and courage lie within the heart and not in the values of other people. I don’t want to break myself to achieve what seems like strength to others because it won’t last. If I’m not happy on the inside because I’m trying to fit into a stereotype of what I should be then I’m only limiting my potential to grow and that’s not strength. Strength is working on building yourself up, learning from your flaws, making mistakes and knowing that you’re okay being you and working on seeking a happiness that feels right for you. That is what I am working towards, I am working towards establishing my inner strength.