Well, it’s Pride Weekend here in Vancouver. My apartment sits right on the parade route which is on Beach Ave to Pacific Ave this year. Meanwhile I’m over at a nice little coffee shop on the south side of False Creek over by 2nd Ave.
As I’ve said before, the commercialization and the promotion of alcohol have always been turn-offs for me.
And then there’s the do nothing politicians like Hedy Fry that wrap themselves up in the gay pride flag for votes, but then come up with every flimsy excuse for their inability to help their constituents with governmental issues.
If that’s the one benefit of having grown up in a dysfunctional household on various Canadian Forces Bases across Canada is the fact that I learnt very young that I’m on my own and there’s literally no help coming from anyone.
In fact, I learnt very young that I’m better off just keeping my mouth shut as people in positions of authority don’t like finding out that there are problems and that these persons in position of authority are more than likely to blame me for bringing the issue to their attention as they are to actually do something about the issue. The “squeaky wheel” syndrome where instead of fixing the issue that caused the squeaky wheel, you just pump on massive amounts of grease until the squeaky wheel stops squeaking whether or not the underlying issue is fixed.
So no, I’ve never felt any benefit from the “community” or a need to “belong” to the community. Especially not a community that is extremely selective with its chosen “cause célèbre”. And not a community that is extremely protective of lame duck politicians because said politicians wrap themselves up in the pride flag and wave from a float in a parade.
Queers, gays, lesbians, trans, bi, and other people on the gender spectrum have existed since time immemorial. This need to be officially sanctioned by the local LGBTQ+ community is something relatively new.
When I first came down to Vancouver in February of 1992 to apply for a job in Burnaby, I knew that there was something different about Vancouver. When I got back to Deadmonton later that week, my mind was made up. Into the dumpster went all of my furniture, gave the keys back to the landlord, and off to Vancouver I went.
Of course I migrated towards the West End. But sadly when “queer went mainstream” the West End changed. The GLBTQ+ crowd that could, moved away. The Pride Parade at the same time went from being a massive “fuck you!” to the society in general that shat all over the queer community because the church told them to, to being a massive corporate advertising campaign for banks and booze.
And I don’t ever see this changing.
And now that the GLBTQ+ crowd has had a taste of acceptance, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to keep that acceptance, even if it means no longer making society feel uncomfortable about issues involving the GLBTQ+ crowd.
A trans teen goes missing from a Canadian Forces Base and no one bats an eyelash when their body is found in a river near the base.
Someone brings to light the fact that the Canadian Forces gave conversion therapy to the victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse due to the assumption by military social workers that male-on-male child sexual abuse was nothing more than homosexuality. Not one single fucking person cares.
This isn’t a community. This is just an excuse to get shit faced and wear glitter in a parade.
WordPress sometimes prompts me to write about a certain topic. It’s geared towards “family” type events.
There are very few that actually seem to apply to me.
Today’s prompt was somewhat interesting.
I think the biggest fear that I had in my life was my father.
I overcame that fear somewhat in 2006 during a series of phone calls that I had with him.
Then there was his death in January of 2017.
That was a major relief.
My brother thinks that I’m over exaggerating my fear of Richard, but as Dr. Gabor Maté observed, “no two children have the same parents”.
The most significant fear that I had of Richard was his temper. Richard had very poor impulse control and very poor control of his anger. He also couldn’t take into account the difference in physical strength between himself and the person he was lashing out at.
My fear of Richard only grew more intense when I became involved with military social worker Captain Terry Totzke.
Richard is dead and gone. And the world is probably better off for this. But his effects still haunt me and have left their traces upon me.
My grandmother was another person that I feared as a kid.
Her anger and her impulse control were worse than Richard’s, but at least she lacked the physical strength of Richard.
Alcohol. I’ve always feared being an alcoholic.
Both my father and my grandmother were intense alcoholics. Both were happy drunks for the most part. Conversely both were intensely angry people when they were sobering up.
I’ve had so little alcohol in my life I can almost remember every exact time.
The last time that I had a drink was back in July of 2011.
Before that it was January of 2010
Before that it was August of 2006
Before that it was September of 2005
Before that it was May of 1994
Before that it was sometime in the winter of 1990 in Gagetown, New Brunswick.
Before that it was sometime around 1986.
I can’t remember all of the “sips” that my father or my grandmother would give me when they were drunk.
I do remember the beer that grandma made me drink in the summer of 1984.
Most of these were just casual get-togethers when I was changing jobs and moving up the so called ladder.
But becoming an alcoholic has always been one of my fears.
Growing up on military bases I was exposed to a significant amount of alcoholism. It was as if being an alcoholic was a requirement to join the Canadian Forces back in the ’50s through the ’90s.
Being a “homosexual” and subsequently growing up to be like the babysitter was always a major fear of mine. Both Captain Totzke and my father would keep telling me that if I didn’t stop kissing, hugging, and being interested in other boys that I would grow up to be just like the babysitter and the priest from Namao.
Imagine the type of fear that would instil into a 9 to 11 year old.
Being told that you’d be going to a psychiatric hospital or jail for “allowing” the babysitter to do what he had done.
Okay, so I had a little bit of a learning curve with my estrogen patches.
Yes, they’re supposed to stick you your skin. But I found for the first couple of days my patches kept falling off.
And not really wanting to miss out on any of my meds, I had to think of something to do to keep these from coming off.
If I could put them on my upper arms like a nicotine patch, that would have worked, but the estrogen patches have to go on either my butt or my lower belly for the best effect.
So I turned to Tegaderm.
I put the patch on, then I put a Tegaderm dressing over top of the patch. And the patches don’t fall off. which is nice.
I don’t want to miss out on any of the meds.
Coming up this Friday I have my first blood test to make sure that my body is handling the estrogen properly.
As I’ve said, I’ve never really taken part in pride, and I really don’t identify with it.
I guess part of it has to do with the environment that I grew up in.
Military communities were isolated. And by isolated I mean that the Canadian Armed Forces had control over the types of people that were allowed to live in the military communities on base.
By way of filtering recruits, the Canadian Armed Forces could control the political leanings of those living on the bases. And it should be of no surprise that these military communities were very conservative and right leaning.
The thing is, when you’re living within these communities, especially if your exposure to the outside world is very limited, you come to see the political leanings of these communities as being “normal”.
Yes, Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 did no apply to children living on base, it only applied to members of the Canadian Armed Forces. But as has been indicated through various studies, members of the Canadian Armed Forces often had a problems with separating their military careers from their home lives.
As the civilian social worker that dealt with my family noted during various home visits to our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, Mr. Gill orders his children with simple commands and answers their questions with yes or no replies and the children don’t question these decisions.
Being in the Canadian Armed Forces, Richard was nothing more than a cog in a machine that demanded his servile obedience. His was not a position to question. His was a position to do as he was told. And like many men who are stripped of the authority in their lives, he made up for this lack of authority by exerting his authority on those he could.
When it came to me and my issues from Canadian Forces Base Namao he was not going to question the authority of Captain Terry Totzke. If Captain Totzke said that I was a homosexual, that I was exhibiting signs of homosexuality, who was master corporal Gill to question this?
When I’ve talked to other base brats about how things were on base I get this Pollyannish rose coloured view of what things were like on base. This usually comes from former brats that didn’t have “issues” and therefore weren’t exposed to the underbelly of life in the “company town”.
I have encountered a few former brats that don’t participate in any of the social media groups for base brats. They want nothing to do with acknowledging their past. And I have an inkling that the brats who don’t want anything to do with remembering their pasts as base brats vastly outnumber the number of brats that celebrate their past as base brats.
The number of broken and dysfunctional families that lived on the bases was probably a high percentage, especially when you look at how the recruiting process would naturally filter out more liberal minded recruits. The military communities were rife with homophobia, racism, misogyny, victim blaming, victim shaming.
Another matter that played into the sterility of the military community was the fact that military housing could only be rented to members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and that these members had the ability to decide who could live in these houses and who couldn’t. If a service member wanted his spouse out of “his” PMQ, she was booted off the base by the military police. Same thing for his kids. As long as provincial law allowed for it, the serving member could give his kid the boot. The age that a child can live on their own varies from province to province. In Ontario a 16 year old can move out on their own.
I’m not sure what the rules are any more, but in my day living on the bases, 18 was the absolute oldest a base brat could be. Once you hit 19 you were expected to get off the base. There were exceptions to this rule, care givers could live in military housing so long as it was to look after military dependents, persons with disabilities could live on base past their 19th birthday, and students obtaining a higher education could continue to live on base until their 24th birthday.
As you can imaging, there wasn’t a lot of diversity. Everything was sterile. Everything was the military mindset.
Queer kids just learnt to stay in the closet.
Queer kids learnt that they were defective and a national security threat.
Kids on base learnt that there were no victims, that it always took two to tango.
Kids on base learnt that compassion was a liability.
Living on base there were no “others” like us.
Living on base we only had exposure to adults that passed the requirements of the Canadian Armed Forces recruiting agents.
Our view of the world was shaped by the monochromatic views of the world espoused by these serving soldiers that passed the conformity tests.
You know all of those soldier that have been implicated in hazing rituals over the years? Yeah we grew up amongst those people.
I lived on the base that was the home of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. We grew up amongst the mindset and the racism that lead to the death of Shidane Arone in Somalia.
All those sexual assaults that occurred in the Canadian Armed Forces? Those were committed by men of the Canadian Forces, many of whom were our fathers.
The misogyny and homophobia that were rampant in the Canadian Armed Forces back in the day? The men espousing these views were often our fathers.
I grew up in a community that allowed everyone up the chain of command to escape responsibility for the murder of Shidane Arone and allowed a lowly private, private Kyle Brown, to be made the scape goat for the whole sordid affair.
I grew up in a community that allowed sexually abused children to be blamed for the abuse they suffered at the hand of members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
I grew up in a community where the chain of command could determine who was a victim and who wasn’t a victim.
I grew up in a community that had the legal power to investigate itself and its members for sexual assaults against children.
I grew up in a community in which officers with no legal training and no legal background could summarily dismiss service offence charges that had been brought against their subordinates.
I grew up in a community in which a 3-year-time-bar applied to all service offences, including service offences of a purely civilian nature.
I grew up in a community which claimed criminal code offences related to children as service offences to be dealt with solely through the military justice system.
I grew up in a community served by such a compromised justice system that it was dismantled and restructured due to horrific miscarriages of justice.
I’m currently on patch #3, patch #4 will be on Wednesday.
Not too much noticeable in the way of changes, but there are some changes.
My facial hair isn’t growing as fast.
My nipples have started to change shape, and now it feels like there’s an empty void behind them.
And my testicles are smaller.
Other than that I’m still waiting on the muscle loss.
I did go for physio last week and the one thing we noticed is that my muscles aren’t as stiff and tense as they usually are.
I don’t expect the really noticeable changes to start occurring much before June.
June is my vacation month, so I am expecting to go back to work looking a little different than I did before my vacation.
That should be very entertaining……..
A co-worker of mine whom is aware of my blog and my desire for M.A.i.D. has asked me if finally being able to transition will put an end to my desire for M.A.i.D.. I told them that we’d have to wait and see. We’ll have to see what awaits in 2027.
I don’t really expect to see any results for a couple of weeks.
Mental changes should start showing up first.
Physical changes should be showing up in a few weeks.
Facial hair should be the first to slow down, followed by hair on the other parts of my body that females typically don’t have increased hair growth at puberty such as their backs or their chests. Arm and leg hair will slow down but not by much.
Muscle loss should be coming up shortly after that.
The neat thing is I’m off work for the month of June for my annual vacation and this is when most of the new changes will start to come into effect.
When I go back to work after my vacation there should be some noticeable changes.
I’m hoping that after my first three months on 50 ug patches that I can look at something stronger. But this will depend on the results of my blood tests.
As long as nothing goes out of whack and as long as my body processes the estrogen properly I can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t be able to step the dosage up.
One thing that I didn’t anticipate with transitioning is that blood tests will be a frequent requirement. For the first while they’ll be monthly. This is just to make sure that my androgen levels are decreasing like they should and that the estrogen is not harming my liver.
Because I’m over 50 my doc wants to work me up to the full dose of between 100 – 400 mcg of Estradiol
My starting dose will be two 50 mcg patches per week.
I’ll have to go for blood tests every four or five weeks to see how things are progressing.
The blood work will guide us in ramping up my dose of estrogen.
Once the estrogen is under control then my doc will start me on an androgen blocker such as Spironolactone.
Between the estrogen and the androgen blockers my testicles won’t stand a chance. They’ll start shrinking on their own.
It’ll be about a year before I can request surgery to remove what I want to have removed.
If everything goes fine then I should start sprouting breasts in about 3 to 6 months. My breasts will max out in about 2 to 3 years. And if I stop taking hormones my breasts will remain.
My testicles will start to shrink in about 3 to 6 months and will reach maximum effect in 2 to 3 years. This will be permanent even if I stop taking hormones.
My muscle mass will start to decrease in 3 to 6 months and I will have achieved maximum muscle loss in 1 to 2 years.
Decreased growth of facial and body hair in 6 to 12 months with maximum effect in 3 years.
My skin will start to soften between 1 to 6 months. It’s unknown when the maximum effect will occur.
If my gender dysphoria and my gender related issues resolve with hormone therapy, then I should be able to decrease my anti-depressants.
There are some side effects, such as an increase risk for stroke, blood clots, etc.
But to me the risks are more than worth it.
Am I happy that I’m finally starting to transition?
Yes.
This is something that I have wanted to do for so long.
Am I upset that I let the CFB Namao issue get in my way?
Honestly, had I started to transition back in 2008 when I had changed my name in preparation for transitioning I think that the CFNIS would have taken me even less seriously if I had shown up for my video statement in a dress with breasts than they already did.
I can only wonder what Richard would have thought seeing me after my transition.
Work is going to be wild over the next while. Yeah, I’ve worn dresses, skits, kilts, etc. for an eternity at work. But I don’t think that anyone at work has any ideas of what’s coming down the pike.
People have asked if I have ever been involved with any type of queer support groups in the past.
No.
No I haven’t.
I don’t do well in groups.
Never have, never will.
I’ve always been on my own.
In Toronto as a kid I would always sneak down to the Pride parade but I would always enjoy it from the periphery.
Even though homosexuality wasn’t an outright criminal offence in the ’80s, the police were still mostly of the old school.
And of course there was the fear that I’d be caught in the vicinity of one of these parades or events.
I guess that I was carrying around the teaching of Terry.
I went to a few pride parades in Vancouver during the ’90s. Again just watching from the periphery.
What I always loved about the early parades was how “in-your-face” they were. It’s like the participants in the parades were wiping off all of the shit that society had thrown on them and were throwing that shit right back in the face of society.
But then the double aughts came.
And the pride parades started to become more corporate, more generic, and less offensive.
2006 was the last parade that I went to watch and the last pride event that I went to.
To be honest, pride events were never too appealing to me because of the overt presence of alcohol.
When my doctor and I first started discussing my desire to transition into something other than male he proceeded to give me a list of groups that I could join.
The thing is I don’t want to join a group.
I have been on my own all of my life.
I function better on my own.
I can’t see myself willingly becoming part of a group.
So…… off I go on yet another adventure.
Transitioning from male to not a male.
Anyways, time to head off and get my nails done.
I’m thinking something of a hot pink shade this time.
Well, this time next week things will be a bit different.
At this point next week I’ll have had estrogen coursing through my body for just over 24 hours.
And for the first time in my life since I was about 12, I’ll be experiencing diminished levels of androgens.
Tiresias transformed into a woman by Pietro della Vecchia
“Take a little trip back with father Tiresias Listen to the old one speak of all he has lived through I have crossed between the poles, for me there’s no mystery Once a man, like the sea I raged Once a woman, like the earth I gave But there is in fact more earth than sea” From “Cinema Show” by Genesis from their 1973 album “Selling England by the Pound”.
The goal of this is not to become a woman.
The goal of this is to get as far away from being male as I can.
XY syndrome is a life altering disease and humanity should be searching for a cure for the defective “Y” chromosome.
Through my entire fucked up crazy life there have always been a few constants.
The first is that I’ve never felt like this body is my body. It’s always felt like it has belonged to someone else.
As I said in other posts, since I was young I was always certain that I was going to have breasts.
When I hit puberty and my hips didn’t widen it felt odd. I know it’s hard to explain, but starting at puberty and even existing to the very day is the odd sensation that my hips are not where they should be.
And the junk that I do have has always felt foreign to me.
And even though genetically I am a male, men have always been a source of fear for me. I have never felt okay around men. And that was well before CFB Namao.
Yes, I did often make pleas to the imaginary friend in the sky to make me into a girl when I was younger.
And there were times as a kid that I wanted to be a girl so badly that it was eating me up from the inside out.
Through my teen years and my 20’s and my 30’s I had always but my desire to me a woman off as being a side effect of the sexual abuse on CFB Namao or my involvement with Terry.
But, as I got towards my my 30s I began to realize that my desire to be a woman and the feeling that I was in the wrong body was not shaped by the sexual abuse on CFB Namao or my involvement with Terry.
These feelings and these desires have been with me for as long as I can remember.
I really hope that things go as smooth as I want them to.
If I don’t have any bad reactions to the androgen blockers and the estrogen I’ll be very happy.
I can’t help but wonder what my brain and what my emotions will be like with the removal of androgen from by blood stream.
What will it feel like to have estrogen flowing through not only my body, but my brain as well.
Will my way of thinking change?
Will my view of the world change?
If everything works out fine I’m really hoping that I can go for bottom surgery. As I’ve said before, I just want to get everything removed down there.
I don’t want anything added to or created.
No penis
No testicles
No scrotum
All gone
Nothing but a smooth scar closing everything up down there.
A small hole to pee from.
But nothing else.
The male curse will be gone.
Banquished
Never to haunt me or traumatize me anymore.
Hopefully the male craziness and insanity are washed away from my brain.
As I responded to Zuzu, no, I haven’t given up on obtaining Medical Assistance in Dying.
Transitioning is something that I want to get off my plate.
It’s like a dying child using “Make-A-Wish”.
Transitioning, or more appropriately, nullifying my male gender is something that I had wanted to do all of my life.
I have never identified as a male.
I didn’t ask to be a male.
So, at least I’m going to take some big steps.
Start off with the androgen blockers and the estrogen replacement.
I will lose a lot of my muscle bulk, which is good. Mentally my body has always felt much smaller that what I physically am.
Next step would be orchiectomy and then the penectomy.
And that’s it.
The genitalia that I’ve always considered to be foreign is gone.
The body that I have never identified with is gone.
The body that I will have will have the breasts that I always felt were missing. They won’t be much to look at, but at least they’ll be breasts.
The hips that I have always felt should have been wider with the iliac crests for me to rest my hands on will never be there. Male puberty was a long time ago, and some things can’t be undone.
No labia majora, no labia minora, no clit, no vagina, no cervix, no uterus, no ovaries.
A female?
No.
A male?
Thankfully no.
As I discussed in a previous blog post, I never thought that I was giving off signs as to my gender issues, but nonetheless others have picked up on it. These were usually men who were certain that I was gay due to some effeminate traits or signals that I wasn’t aware that I was giving off.
Unfortunately I will now have another faction of people to deal with.
There will be women out there that will despise me.
You’ve never had a period!
You’ve never experienced growing up knowing that you could be raped at any moment.
You’ve never had a pap smear.
Yep, sure.
I’ll never get to become pregnant and have children.
The raped part?
Sure, technically in Canada rape was not a crime that could be committed against boys. But I did spend 1978 to 1980 getting penetrated by my babysitter. I would go on to be sexually abused by men, some of whom were in positions of authority.
If anything I am only following the whims of my genes and my DNA.
I am firm believer in the nature side of the nature vs. nurture debate.
Yes, the male brain and the female brain are identical in build. Autopsies, MRIs, fMRIs, CT scans, EEGs have shown that for the most part male and female brains function the same. But what these scans and tests can’t yet detect is the wiring of the brain.
The human brain has to have some instinctual information hardwired into it otherwise every human born would have to learn the basics at birth.
Breathing?
Instinctual
Swallowing?
Instinctual
Latching on to your mother’s nipple?
Instinctual.
Women don’t have to learn from other women how to engage in sexual intercourse just as men don’t have to learn from other men how to engage in sexual intercourse.
“So how was Henry last night? Did you have sex with him?” “Oh, sure I did, if you can call it that” “What do you mean?” “Well, he kept rubbing his flaccid penis against my ear” “What?” “Yeah, he said that no one had shown him how to get an erection and he didn’t know how to make his penis hard” “But why your ear? Don’t you know where his penis is supposed to go you silly girl?” “My mother never showed me, so I thought that it was supposed to be my belly button, be he told me not to be silly.”
Sexual behaviours are basic instincts. Every human is born with instinctual level knowledge as to how their genitals work.
All humans begin their first few weeks not as a blank slate, but as a fetus that appears to be female from the outside.
This is why most clinics will not tell the parents the gender of their child, it’s not that they don’t want to, it’s that until about 12 weeks its almost impossible to do with anywhere near 100% certainty.
Prior to 6 to 8 weeks all fetuses have labia and all fetuses have vaginas, and all fetuses have a clitoris.
Over the next few weeks things will begin to change.
All fetuses have a pair of gonads in their lower abdomen.
If the fetus has XX chromosomes the gonads will descend into the pelvis where they will become ovaries.
If the fetus has XY chromosomes the gonads will develop into testes and they’ll descend to down to where the scrotum will eventually be.
The timing of the development of the gonads is critical as the gonads will drive major changes in the fetus.
If the gonads become testicles, they’ll start to secrete androgens, one of which is testosterone. The labia majora will close and fuse together, this is why males have that ridge in their scrotum. The labia minora will become the penile raphe. The clitoris will become the glans of the male penis.
If the fetus is XX, the gonads will become ovaries which will secrete estrogen and other hormones associated with female development. The genital features that are in place already will continue on with their development. The uterus will form as will the fallopian tubes.
There is a very interesting condition that occurs when a fetus has XY chromosomes but has Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome or AIS. This whole topic is well beyond me, but basically due to a genetic coding issue the androgen receptors on the cells in their body are unable to bind with androgen molecules.
These people are born with genitalia that looks female. And nothing is suspected until their teenage years when they fail to develop secondary sexual characteristics and they fail to start to menstruate.
A blood test or a tissue test will show that instead of being XX, their cells are all XY. They have no uterus and they have undeveloped testicles in their abdomen.
Other gender variations arise from XO, XXY, XXX, XYY. Even “normal” XY and XX can have a multitude of variations due to variations of genes on other chromosomes.
The idea that there are only two genders if fucking laughable.
The above paragraphs deal with gender. The next few paragraphs will deal with gender identity.
I am of the firm belief that gender identity is hardwired into the brain along the same time the gonads form into either testicles or ovaries. Your brain has to be wired to be able to use the various parts of your body. To say that the human brain is formed as just a billion random neurons with no purpose is laughable. Every human brain, barring genetic defects, has the same sections that preform the same functions.
There has been quite a bit of research done into the development of the human brain so far as it relates to gender and orientation.
Much like the genitals of a fetus require androgens to interrupt the development of female genitals the human brain as it turns out is destined to be “female” unless it is masculinized by exposure to androgens.
Can an XY male that doesn’t suffer from AIS identify as a female?
Why not?
If the human brain is supposed to become masculinized with the exposure to androgens, is it not possible that timing issues or hormone levels or even hormones from the mother’s bloodstream have affected the fetus’s brain?
Is there a brain test or a brain scan that will detect this masculinization to see if it occurred at the right level to fully modify all of the original female wiring.
Nope.
You get people like me who feel like the junk they have is not what should be there.
You get people like me who don’t fit the masculine roles that we’re supposed to fit.
But back to the topic of M.A.i.D..
I want medical assistance in dying because I am tired.
I am burnt out
Will transitioning change my desire for M.A.i.D..
No.
But at least I will for once be able to be comfortable in my body.
Beeshive 