(no subject)

I'm tired of being volatile. That's not necessarily to say that I'm always sorry when I'm angry or outraged, because that is wholly appropriate (unfortunately too) much of the time. But I'm tired.

the body will be heard

There are some topics, some issues about which I'm reluctant to write or speak because I fear it will give authorization to some to ignore my wishes or requests and instead validate their own comfort where I am concerned. I'm talking about the (my) body and gender here.

More and more over the past year or more, I've been creeping up on this idea that my body knows what it wants, has a template or internal schema from which it operates and tries to connect with the world. This is very different from what I've generally held as ideas of what my body should look like, how it should work, or what I might want, but the difference is more tied in with the gut, with a feeling of inhabitance or inhabitability and much less about tags that convey meaning to the outside, and then back to my self.

I've been less than fully diligent with my hormonal regimen for six months or more now. I think this is definitely related to all of what's going on. At this point, I've all but stopped my spironolactone. While I appreciated some of the effects (reduction of body hair, booster effect on the estrogen), the sexual effects seem to be almost directly counter to what I'm coming to recognize as the internal push for bodily autonomy. I've never really had an issue with my genitals. Even when I was convinced I was a transsexual, I never minded having a penis; I minded definitely the meaning and sorting associated with it, though. To an extent, I still do, but there's something about respecting the body as a body, not a cultural object or signifier, or at least not as either of those primarily or exclusively.

I can't really call the effects of spironolactone side effects, since it pretty much works as advertised. I understand its place in transsexual, or more traditional mtf implementation, but for me, not so much. While I think my endocrinologist recommended it for its booster effect on breast growth, it probably didn't occur to him that the libidinal (in the physical sense) and genital effects might be an issue for me. To be honest, I might not have listened if he had articulated that more clearly (he didn't). One one hand, I had (have) an axe to grind on biological determinism, and acted (act) as though what may be true for others in regards to traditionally sexed hormones will not (necessarily) be true for me. On another hand, I was (am) pretty certain that more breast growth was something I wanted.

The latter point leads me back to body knowledge and internal familiarity. While the language of dualism is deeply disturbing to me, I can't think of any other way to say it, but my body knows what it wants, and is unconcerned with social meaning, membership or approval. Historically I've been unwilling to listen, at first because I did buy into mind/body dualism, and the subnarrative that my body was clearly the problem, and thus wrong; after that, I was reluctant to listen, because the social narrative of the meaning of bodies led (leads) me to different places, conclusions and worries than I wanted to face.

But my body is finding a voice, a means of communication that would be hard to ignore if I wanted to any more. I don't think that I do. It could be that I'm so taken with the novelty of this new perspective that it's easy to ignore the very real concerns and difficulties in store or already present (though a cataloguing of extant concerns and dangers and fear of them do not fully overlap), but I prefer to think that, when faced with what seems like incontrovertible new information there is no honest choice other than to stop and listen. The negotiation between the body's template, the social meaning and expectations, and the mind's fears and concerns will be a large, but different, work.