It's time to stop living a lie
As of today, I am 27 years old. 27 years spent mostly trying to live as a woman, albeit one who is not particularly feminine. And I’ve decided that 27 years is enough. Plus, it turns out my birthday is also International Transgender Day of Visibility, so here goes.
I’ve known that I’m a man for some time now. How long depends on semantics, as I’m not entirely sure which moment in my existence is the one that cemented my male identity in my mind. Suffice to say, I am growing more certain every day that transitioning is right for me. At this point I’m ready to announce it to the world:
I am a transgender man.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want my social transition to go, and to be honest I wish I could have handled it slightly differently. There are some things that are happening “behind the scenes,” so to speak, that I would have liked to get done before making this announcement. But I’ve been dragging my feet, and things are not getting done as quickly as they do in my fantasies.
So I’ve decided to stop punishing myself for my own failures and delays. I don’t want to struggle through another day of pretending to be a woman. I don’t want to bite my tongue when people are talking about trans issues, because other people are unaware of my experience and it’s an integral part of the way I relate to that subject matter. I want to be treated as the man I am, rather than the woman people have always seen me as.
Now, here’s the stuff that you need to know for your future interactions with me:
My pronouns are he, him, his. It is appropriate to refer to me in masculine terms, such as son, brother, uncle, etc. I understand that people may occasionally slip up out of habit, but if you make an effort to use masculine or gender-neutral terms for me I’ll appreciate it.
I have no plans to change my first name, so you can still call me Robynne for the time being. I will probably change my middle name sometime in the future, but my middle name is only rarely used so that’s not going to affect many of my interactions with other people.
Any decisions I make about medically transitioning are personal, and, to quote John Oliver, “None of your f**king business.” However, I want to inform those who know me that I will be starting to take testosterone soon. I feel this is relevant for most people because the changes that testosterone causes will be noticeable, and I don’t want to act like it’s some secret when people will be able to clearly tell that something’s going on. If you only know me online it won’t be so obvious, but if you interact with me in the real world at all, here’s the deal:
Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) is one of the most basic steps of medical transition. For trans men, like me, it generally means that the estrogen in a body is going to be replaced with testosterone. I’ll be putting testosterone into my system, and it’s going to masculinize my appearance in a few ways. The shape of my face will likely change. I will likely develop facial hair. My voice will probably drop. The exact results vary from person to person, but overall, I will probably look less like a woman and more like a man.
I’d like to start soon, within the next couple of weeks or so, but I want to get some things squared away first. I’ll talk some more about what those things are when I’m ready to share them.
For the meantime, I’m celebrating International Transgender Visibility Day to the best of my ability, by making myself visibly transgender.