Tag: transgender

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Barren

nicole ai portrait

I used to float, now I just fall down
I used to know, but I’m not sure now
What I was made for
What was I made for?

– Billie Eilish

Today, I spent the day driving around the roads outside of Denver, kind of aimlessly. It was an excuse to listen to the audiobook of “Inverse Cowgirl” by Alicia Roth Weigel, a woman born with XY chromosomes and complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS). I am fascinated with biology, specifically human embryology, and more specifically, human sexual differentiation in utero. You can probably imagine why: I spend a lot of time thinking about, wondering about, and hoping to find some reason that I am the way I am. Arguably, I’m also a kind of intersex person: I was born with what I can only describe as a female brain in a male body.

All humans start off as intersex. Until seven weeks’ development, we have both female and male anatomical parts. What are called “primordial germ cells” migrate into our abdomens and form undifferentiated gonadal streaks. We have a common genital ridge which, left to its own devices, would form a vagina. Müllerian ducts that would become fallopian tubes, uterus and cervix. The gonadal streaks can become either ovaries or testes. Wolffian ducts can become prostate and seminal vesicles. Labia majora and scrotum are the same tissues, as are clitoris and penis.

Then, at seven weeks’ gestation, genes on the Y chromosome which code for specific proteins become active in embryos with that chromosome. These proteins, in turn, form anti-Müllerian hormone. They obliterate the part of the gonadal streaks which would form ovarian tissue, as well as the Müllerian ducts. From that point forward, the embryo develops as a male child, except in certain rare circumstances. In Alicia’s case, she is quite literally molecularly immune to testosterone, so while the AMH obliterated her female reproductive system and gave rise to testes, the testosterone could not affect the rest of her systems. She was born with a vagina and grew up with female secondary sex characteristics.

We still don’t know what causes trans people to be trans. In some cases, it may be another type of hormonal intersex condition, in my case, I suspect a condition which causes my body to be extremely efficient at converting estradiol to estrone. In utero, exposure to my mother’s natural estradiol may have enabled my body to sequester large reserves of estrone, feminizing my brain. Blood tests seem to bear this out. Or, it could be something else.

In any case, when Alicia was born having had an amniocentesis test saying she would be a boy, and popped out with a vagina, everyone was surprised. Doctors advised removing her testes from her abdomen at an early age. Thus, she was sterilized before the age of one, never given the chance to have biological children of her own.

I never had children, either. First, I thought, by mutual choice with my ex-wife, although now I understand that my desire not to have kids was really a desire not to be a dad. I wish I could have been a mother. When I underwent bottom surgery to help alleviate dysphoria about my anatomy (dysphoria I’ve had since at least the age of two), I was also sterilized, but by my own choice. I didn’t want those things in me any more, making a hormone I do not need or want.

Listening to Alicia describe her sex life in her 20s made me so sad. I mean, good for her, but I felt this deep jealousy. I didn’t have sex until I was 26. I’ve only ever been with two people. I was so ashamed of my body. Transition helped, but now I’m ashamed of my transness, specifically my inability to bear children and the fear of being hurt by a partner who may think of me as “less than” or low status. Or be embarrassed by something about me.

I found myself listening to Alicia read her book, and yearning to have been a pretty blonde girl in my 20s, attractive to guys my own age (now, it seems like the only people interested in me are either men 20 years older than me, or 20 years younger than me. Or men who fetishize me. In many cases, both.)

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which I will spend alone. I am incapable of producing a family with my body. I feel barren and wasted, old and alone. The men I’m attracted to aren’t attracted to me, and I’m not attracted to the men who are. It reminds me of something a girl once said to me in junior high, totally apropos of nothing (or maybe she knew): “Girls don’t like Nick because Nick doesn’t like girls.”

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Quantum Polynomial Unicorn Sparkles

“I’ve been tryna give it to you all night
What’s it gonna take to get you all alone?
I just want you here by my side
I don’t wanna be here, baby, on my own”

– Kim Petras, “Alone”

Last night, I went to the Kim Petras “Feed The Beast” show at the Fillmore Auditorium on Colfax in the heart of Denver’s gay district. Probably 75% of the audience were very cute gay men, and the other 25% were a mix of cis women, trans women, drag queens in full regalia, and a couple trans guys.

I always feel like a space alien at these types of events. I spent the vast majority of my life pointedly avoiding anything that was remotely queer-coded. I was afraid of the community for the same reason I was afraid of putting on women’s clothes or doing my makeup or painting my nails: Because it felt like an indulgence. A permission-granting exercise from which there would be no coming back. I suspect that same fear is a large part of what keeps so many others closeted, and doesn’t allow many queer-spectrum people to explore parts of their own identities and sexualities.

That room was full of joy and queerness. Acceptance and love and passion and gaiety. Singing, dancing, grinding, kissing, hugging, sweating, waving fans at each other, sharing drinks and vapes and selfies. Shouting along at the top of our collective lungs, hands in the air:

“King of hearts
You gon’ keep on playin’ ’til you go too far
No one in the world could ever be enough for your love
Baby, you keep on playin’, oh, baby, c’mon, ah, ah”

I try to make smalltalk with the kids standing in line behind me in the cold, waiting to get in before the show. I’m probably 25 years older than them. My makeup artist had to cancel my session so I did my own makeup, which I’m terrible at. They all have immaculate drag makeup on. After eight straight hours of zoom meetings at work, I barely had energy for mascara, rainbow metallic lipstick and blue glittery sparkle tears that I put on with my finger in the car, parked on Downing and 14th. We’re talking about what everyone went as for halloween, and I show them my Troye Sivan costume. One of the guys says, “Ooooh cute! Masc for masc” and my heart tries to break for a half second.

Girl, please. I’m in a form-fitting zip-up jumpsuit with my tits out. Yeah I’m not as effeminate as 80% of the boys here, but I’m still undoing decades of suppression and trauma. Anyways, I was cute too.

In the moments between smalltalk and songs, I hit my vape and think about why I have a hard time talking to people. It’s the shame. And the my brain is full of thoughts about OAuth and SAML, the threat that quantum computing poses to traditional cryptosystems, and how to anchor trust in a massively distributed world. Five percent is taken up by knowledge of fashion, hair, makeup and miscellaneous other of life’s most important concerns. So I observe.

I look at how people greet each other, eyes wide, arms offered forward in an invitation to embrace. Couples kissing. Groups exchanging deets. Facial expressions and body language that I can’t even imagine how I would start to make my muscles try to replicate. Hands in my pockets. Look at phone, hit vape, open snapchat and take selfie.

Think about how I’m 25 years older than everyone else.

Get asked by a sweet queen if I’m going to Charlie’s afterwards, I say yes, he says he’ll buy me a drink. I’m his favorite person because I let him hit my vape.

I walk back to my car alone. I don’t have the energy for Charlie’s.

But let me tell you, what I discovered in that room is that everyone has an inner unicorn. Life is better with glitter and sparkles. We all only have one life, so be gay. Do crimes. Grind on the dancefloor. Some day I’ll go to Charlie’s.

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Memories of My Childhood as a Girl

When I was five years old, I went to a preschool called Kinderfarm. It was in an old farmhouse east of town, with goats, chickens, bunnies. Lots of kids my age. I was a bit of a solitary child. I tended to play by myself. Coloring, playing with toy cars, dolls, action figures, digging in the sandbox while talking to myself.

One rainy day, while sitting on top of the indoor playground in the big room, a boy came up to me wearing a Denver Broncos football shirt. He really wanted to talk to me. Like, he needed to talk to me. I was low-key ignoring him, but he wanted to know what sports teams I liked. I didn’t know any sports teams. He said, “OK, what do you like to do?” I said I liked to go camping. I started telling him about the nice lady park ranger I met that summer, camping with my family in Arizona. How she told us stories …

“OH THE RANGERS! I like them!” And he proceeded to talk at me about baseball. He was very upset when it became clear I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. After a while, I realized that he was talking, yet again, about sportsball. I remember thinking something along the lines of, “What is going on with this creature? He seems totally alien. Why is he not understanding what I’m saying to him? Why is he obsessed with sports? Can’t he talk about painting and nature like a normal person?” Well, that, but in 5-year-old.

That is the first time I remember seeing strongly gendered behavior that absolutely baffled me. It is the first time I remember someone making a strong assumption about my likes, desires, interests, and knowledge, based solely on what I looked like. Over the years, there would be many more instances of this kind of thing, but each one was more subtle and nuanced, masked by the increasing knowledge of who the world expected me to be. With each such interaction, I got better at bullshitting.

“Haha! Of course I don’t want to try on that dress, that’s silly!”

“Haha!” Of course purple and pink are not my favorite colors!”

“Haha! Of course I don’t want to put on the rest of this makeup after putting on that mascara. That was just a joke! Haha that’s gay!”

“Haha! Of course I am not absolutely fucking mortified at watching “The Birdcage” with my family and being envious of the queens!”

“Haha! Of course that woman I fantasize about while having sex is who I’m imagining fucking, there’s no way that that woman is me and I’m fantasizing about being fucked, as her!”

Now tell me, what exactly is a “Nugget” and which type of ball are they concerned with?

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A Journal Entry

I remember thinking, back when my voice was changing, “you are going to have to have a lot of surgeries if you want to fix all the stuff that’s about to go wrong with you.” I remember feeling my skull/jaw/back of my head as they changed shape throughout puberty and into college, feeling increasingly sad as I could feel the bumps and change in size of various protuberances.

And, sure enough, yes, I have had to (and will continue to have to, for a while) have a lot of surgeries. I never imagined that I could actually do what I’ve done. I thought it would be impossible. It turns out that it was “only” very, very, very hard.

On top of everything else, yesterday, I was coming back from a post-op at Denver Health for my revision bottom surgery, and someone pulled out in front of me in traffic and I slammed into the side of their truck. I had the right of way.

My brand new (a month old, exactly) bright red, beautiful, 2023 Toyota Crown Platinum Hybrid Max turned its dashboard red and told me it was emergency braking before I even knew what was happening. Klaxons started to sound in the car. I hit the brake but discovered it was already at the bottom of its travel, ABS pulsing furiously. I remember seeing the side of the black truck approaching fast. I was going maybe 30 or 35 MPH. The pyrotechnic hood ejectors on the hinges fired and the hood rocketed itself into a position so that it could cushion the potential impact of a pedestrian, the seatbelt pretensioned itself and as I heard the crunch-thud of the impact, it started to ease out the tension as the airbags (steering wheel and knee) fired. I was dazed. The car filled with gunpowder smell from the airbag deployment. I remember blinking, seeing bright white midday light filtering through millions of little particles of rocket propellant and fiberglass in the air (fabric shreds from the airbag) seeing the asian characters printed in diffuse, hardly readable, red, stamped on the white fabric of the airbag, slightly dingy from soot. Feeling remarkably uninjured, surprisingly uninjured, and then looking down at my wrists and seeing bright red welts raising. Thinking, “huh, I wonder what caused that? Oh, right, the airbag. I hope my boobs are ok” Immediately worried about my breast implants. The car klaxoning warnings very loudly both inside and outside the vehicle. Toyota telematics emergency person on the line. My watch dinging from Megan and Jill responding almost immediately to emergency alerts generated by the impact detectors in my Apple Watch. Me telling the telematics person my name. Them misgendering me repeatedly. In my dazed state, saying, “I’m not a sir, I’m a m’aam!” Getting misgendered again, even after telling the person that my name is Nicole Roy. Telling them, “please, my name is Nicole and I’m a transgender woman, PLEASE call me ‘ma’am’!” And the person apologizing, and then continuing to misgender me because of my voice.

It is amazing, the sci-fi, artificial intelligence, miracles of safety in modern cars. I wish I had not had to find out how amazing they are, first-hand, but I’m grateful for them.

The Denver Police Department 911 dispatcher, and all of the fire/EMT/police on the scene *all* immediately and without asking or prompting, correctly gendered me the *entire time*. Thank you, city and county of Denver.

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Talisman 🦋

The Blue Morpho butterfly is very special to me. It has become my symbol of transition and healing, partly due to its presence in the emoji lexicon. I use it on social media posts to denote transition progress and joy. I have always found its iridescence beautiful, as beautiful as I wanted to be, as I knew I could be, as I knew I was.

You can see the pain in how I presented myself to the world before I transitioned. Always in black, head-to-toe, with some dashes of brightness in my shoes and my sunglasses. They were the only iridescence I would allow the world to see from day to day.

Until, one day, I allowed myself to dream, and then quite a while later, after much soul searching and resignation, allowed that dream to become reality. I went into a cocoon of transition in the fall of 2020, and inside that cocoon, I liquefied in order to resolidify some time later as Nicole.

My outfits became colorful, vibrant, full of life. Today, I went to the Denver Botanic Garden to bask in the warmth, wet greenness, and wonderful smells of the rainforest. A treasure for the people of Denver on York Street.

I love the colors, the life, the beauty. I allow myself luxuries I did not, before. The joy of an orchid.

It’s important for human beings to create symbols for themselves, objects and ideas which guide the course of their life, and act as reminders of hope in the dark times. In the gift shop, on the way out of the gardens, I saw a framed set of Blue Morphos. I have wanted this set for years. I didn’t know why, before. Now I do.

So, I bought myself a gift.

The Morphos are a Talisman for me, a symbol of life, hope, joy in the brief time we have to emblazon ourselves with iridescence on the memories of those around us. Let me fly for a brief time under the sun, my wings shimmering with blue, aquamarine and flecks of violet. That is what I want.

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Innie

If you’ve read this blog, you probably know that I put a lot of personal details out here. There are three reasons for this: One, I think adults probably are used to dealing with pretty tough topics. Two, I hope that by putting a bunch of this out here, it will start to be de-stigmatized. This is normal stuff, human being stuff that all of us go through. Just different stuff for different people. Three, I really do appreciate and need your help, kind of now more than ever.

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That said, if extreme realness isn’t your bag (and I don’t blame you) probably best to stop reading here.

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OK.

If you are still with me, here’s what’s up. On February 8, 2022, I am having “bottom surgery” or “genital reconstruction surgery” or “gender confirmation surgery” or “gender reassignment surgery” the last two names are pretty problematic for a number of reasons. In any case, I am getting my “outie” turned into an “innie”. It turns out that women’s and men’s sex organs are mostly embryologically very similar and/or develop out of the same tissues. So… they are just going to put things back to how they used to be.
The thought of this surgery used to horrify me. I thought they “cut off your penis” or something. It turns out it is quite delicate and they are able to preserve sexual function. You can have the same level of fun afterwards that you had before. Usually more so because you’re not ashamed of your junk.
For my entire life, I have felt ashamed of my body, and this is a significant part of that shame. I am so excited for this to happen, and also quite scared. There are serious complications that can happen, many of them quite gross and painful, and in some very rare cases, death can happen. I hope that I have little to no complication, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take, in order to be me.
I know that not every trans person wants or needs this kind of surgery, and that is completely valid and they should be accepted absolutely as the gender they present as. In my case, this is a life-saving surgery. My mom is coming to Denver for six weeks in order to help me recover. In some ways, this is sort of like a second birth, and I’m so grateful that she can be here.
If I could go back in time to December, 2019 and talk with my pre-pandemic, pre-transition self, and tell that person that this was going to happen, I wouldn’t. They would not be able to deal with it, they were still firmly in the closet. On the other hand, if I could go back in time and tell 8 year old me that I would be able to grow up to be a woman, I think that person would probably break down crying tears of joy, because that is all they wanted. They wouldn’t believe how it could happen, they’d be very sad about how long it would take, and the emotional and physical pain involved.

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Requiem For My Former Self

I need to honor Nicholas Spencer Roy. Although I’ve said I don’t like or believe in the othering of the self that happens a lot with trans people when they talk about their lives before transition, I think there is a degree of truth to this. I still feel like me, and you can still see a lot of what I used to look like in my face and body, but it’s rapidly fading. I definitely look like a woman version of myself now. After FFS, that will only become more pronounced. So, I want to say that the man named Nicholas Roy, Nick, was a good, kind, strong, compassionate person. He loved deeply, cared greatly for those he loved. His strength to endure through a world that didn’t know he carried me inside was impressive. Although I caused him pain, I think I also brought him kindness, sweetness, glimmers of beauty. Nick and I needed each other. He’s still here, but now he gets to rest. I love him, I will always love him.

(Originally posted on social media May 16, 2021)

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Letter to My Dad

Dear Dad,

I think of you every day and miss you so much. So many people have told me how much you meant to them. You made an enormous difference in so many people’s journeys. This week, in particular, as I thought about what would have been your 73rd birthday, I thought a lot about how badly I wish I could tell you about my own journey. I’ve thought about how to tell you this, and if you were still here, I would probably just call you on the phone and tell you, but I can’t do that now. So, I will just say:

I am transgender.

During your lifetime, I had thoughts that this might be the case, but I could not connect them to any kind of reality that made any sense. I remember daydreaming of being a girl as early as age seven. As I got older, I became angry at myself and the unfairness of a universe that had doomed me to be a boy and to become a man. These thoughts were not frequent or all-consuming, but rather, background noise that was easily dismissed as impulsive and not real or realistic.

When I lost a lot of weight in 2004, that was about being transgender. The thing that caused me to gain all that weight in the first place was a hatred of my own body, and a desire to hide from the world and keep people at arms’ length. When I finally rejected that attitude as unsustainable and lost the weight, I struggled with rationalizing why I was doing it. I told myself it was because I wanted to live – not to die at a young age from complications from obesity. However, once I had lost the weight, I remember thinking, “You lost all that weight, you can do anything you set your mind to. You can become a woman.” Immediately, I labeled that goal as unrealistic and that thought as dangerous and transient and dismissed them. I did not give another thought to these things until a couple years ago.

In mid-2018, I was out on a run. Running seems to be when I let my guard down and ideas are free to present themselves to me seemingly out of nowhere. On that particular day, as with so many others here in Colorado, the sun was shining, the weather was beautiful and warm. I remember seeing a woman out on her run, and she sort of resembled me. I thought, “You can look like that. Wouldn’t it be nice to be the person you haven’t allowed yourself to imagine?” Again, I dismissed this almost immediately as a spurious notion.

Then, you got sick and I forgot all about the box of puzzle pieces my brain kept trying to assemble for me. For eighteen months, I became more and more depressed. Then, the pandemic hit. Thank goodness you didn’t have to experience the pandemic. While your extensive experience with and passion for online teaching would have served you well in this environment (your online lecture material is still being used to teach your courses, still with record enrollments!) I think you probably would have been driven mad by not being able to go to restaurants, movies, the bookstore, etc.

Shortly after the start of the pandemic, I had decided that this thing was going to be with us for a long time, and I needed to get outside and get exercise, or I would also go nuts. I started running on the trails near our house, with a mask on. Something about the “social distancing” (a terrible Newspeak term) environment – masks, standing at least six feet apart in line, staying inside much of the time, felt liberating to me. It was liberating in the ways I imagine it is for many introverts like me. But, beyond that, there was something else. On the run, with a mask over my face, no one could tell I wasn’t a woman. Obviously that’s not true, but for some reason, this was the first sign to me that I had facial dysphoria. I decided that running was a safe place to start to come out as trans. I bought some women’s running clothes. Nothing too obvious or over the top. Nothing too colorful. It was still cold out in March, so I bought insulated leggings. I loved running in them- they kept my thighs from rubbing together and chafing, and were nice and warm.

Things progressed from there. I had to tell people. In May, I told Jill, Mom and Megan that I was non-binary, and they all took that quite well. And, it was the truth. I am not totally a woman and not totally a man. That’s what being non-binary is. I was emboldened by their support at that point, and continued to explore my gender more freely. I started buying more kinds of women’s clothes, trying them on when Jill wasn’t around, because I didn’t want to shock her. I had the biggest smile on my face the day I tried on a women’s button-down flannel shirt and jeans. I looked much more how I wanted to look. I bought makeup at Target. I clumsily applied that makeup and I kind of looked cartoonish, but it was so much closer to how I wanted to be, I smiled so much!

Eventually, I came out to Jill, Mom and Megan as transgender. I’m still non-binary, but I am clearly very transfeminine – want to be much more feminine in appearance and action than I have ever been.

This may be shocking. It was certainly shocking to me to learn this about myself. When my brain finally assembled all the puzzle pieces in July, I was distraught. How would I ever do this? Could I tell Jill? What would it do to my relationship with her? I love her so very much, and I don’t want to lose her. So, now she and I both have to figure out how to work through this. I hope we can, and I have to believe we can.

I am so sorry that I could not understand this earlier. In many ways, I wish I had listened to myself years ago, and not been afraid to see what the assembled puzzle looked like – mostly, because I feel like I’ve been hiding something from very important people. It hurts when this is suggested, probably because I feel like it’s true, as much as I know it’s not. What hurts the most is that I could not ever tell you about this while you were here with us. For that, I will be sorry for the rest of my life.

I love you, Dad. I hope you understand.

Nic