What was your plan for transitioning?
- My plan was to get started on hrt sometime in 2010, then get top surgery soon after, hysto and legal gender marker change soon after that. Genital surgery I was unsure about back then too. Cause I came out in 2009 and got diagnosed in early 2010, but then the rest didn't happen quite that soon, to my dismay. I self-medded with T for a year to survive.
Is there anything you wish someone would have told you before you started?
- To really stand up for myself if the gender therapy clinic wasn't doing what they were supposed to. Cause they didn't, and I didn't know what do and felt so lost.
When did you get top surgery relative to starting T?
- I finally got top surgery in March 2014, which was about 7 months after I got to start T the legal way via endo in August 2013. So by then I had been taking T one way or another for about 1 year and 7 months in total. Now that was a little over 4 years ago I had top surgery, and I've been on T for almost 6 years in total.
Of most intrigue: how did you deal with coming out at work? I can't imagine it would be easy to hide the effects of T on the voice.
- I might be old(-ish) at age 29, but I've actually never had a job. Perks of mental disability, I guess. I went to school somewhat inconsistently up to age 22 (high school level stuff, no university) and got disability allowance at age 19 cause I was diagnosed as a total wreck. Since then I've been living on that and tried to study up my missing grades on and off for that past decade, with no success what so ever. I did come out at school when I was 20, before I had started taking T. Then came out again at a new school I had started a few monhs later when I had just started self-medding with T. Came out on the first day at school, and I think even within the first hour of being there. A bit unplanned, but it turned out well. We had some "getting to know each other" exercise in the class. The teacher told us students to say our names and one thing about ourselves that is easy to remember, and I just blurped out that I'm trans. I have a habit of being a bit impulsive. Everyone there took it well and some had a few questions about it that I gladly answered.
But for work... I really can't say much on that point. If I'll ever work in the future, which is uncertain due to my mental health issues (not so high-functioning aspergers and stuff relating to past trauma, although my issues have gotten a lot better these past 2-3 years), I will be fully passing as a man, have my male name and gender on all legal documents and thus coming out would be optional for me. Although that depends on the job... For the past several months I've been wanting, researching and planning at the best of my ability, to see if I can maybe become a sex worker (escort, at least for starters) as legally as humanly possible. I think it would be meaningful for me but also expect it to be harsh, no idea if I can even manage, but worth a shot cause I really want to. I may be starting rather soon, so at the very least I will be able to say I've tried it. In that kind of work, not even having had bottom surgery... yeah, I'm gonna have to be open about being trans. But that's not an issue for me. Everyone in my life knows I'm trans already and I prefer being open about it.