Blue Pills

I went on estrogen almost four months ago. I don’t really pay attention to it much –I had to check to see if that was even right. As someone who is on HRT I think there is a serious gap in the discussion.

A pass on passing

I am a nonbinary trans woman. Within the first year of being out as transgender I was constantly plagued with people asking “When are you going to go on hormones?”, a question which has & still does annoy me to this day.

The dialogue that every trans person must, or should, inherently want to seek medicalized transition, is a deeply flawed & even toxic viewpoint to hold.

You Must Be This Tall to Ride

Content Warning: Height dysphoria, transphobia

I recently joined the millions of users on Tinder, a social networking app that allows for mutually interested individuals to communicate if they are within a predetermined distance. Tinder functions simply. Users are presented one-by-one with other profiles—which include up to six photos, age, distance, and a brief text description—and are given two options: swipe left to “dislike” and thereby remove the profile as a potential match, or swipe right to “like.” If both users have mutually swiped right, the application allows for text communication between the two profiles to occur.

While the app can be used to find friends, Tinder is most frequently used as a dating services app. As I have swiped through profiles and read their short descriptions over the past few weeks, I have picked up on certain trends in the information users present to potential romantic and/or sexual partners. One of the most frequent descriptors used is height, revealing what many view as an important physical factor. This mark of importance ranges from implicit, such as simply listing one’s height, to extremely explicit, in which I’ve seen a profile’s description read, “Do not swipe right if you are under 5’10”.”

A recent national study showed that 48.9% of the heterosexual women surveyed wanted to only date men taller than them (Yancey & Emerson 62). Height preference was important to the heterosexual men surveyed as well, but not as important, with 1.3% wanting to only date women taller than them and 13.5% wanting to only date women shorter than them.

Height is clearly an important characteristic when it comes to choosing a partner, yet there has been some debate as to whether this is due to biological tendencies (evolutionary perspective) or social expectations. Ultimately, these gendered-height expectations are rooted in patriarchy. The women surveyed in the study often listed protection and security as reasons to why they prefer taller men (Yancey & Emerson 62). Others stated that a taller man made them feel more “feminine.” The men surveyed in the study who set upper limits for height were “not considering physical or sexual difficulties but societal expectations” (Yancey & Emerson 66). These men did not explicitly speak on traditional gender roles, but they did convey a desire to avoid possible stigma. Men were “reinforcing societal expectations with their higher height limit just as women reinforced those expectations with their lower height limit” (Yancey & Emerson 66).

Like many gender norms, height expectations have the harshest impact on the transgender community. Height dysphoria, an invasive dissatisfaction and discomfort with one’s height, is a frequently seen dilemma among online transgender support forums. Height is very difficult to amend, and because it is wrongfully associated with masculinity and femininity, transgender individuals suffer greatly. Posts in these online forums express a sense of futility. While it can be achievable to possess societally-deemed masculine traits such as hair growth, muscular strength, and body parts, height is nearly impossible to change. Some responders recommend shoes with platforms or boosters. Others simply recommend an attitude adjustment.

This attitude adjustment should not be the responsibility of the trans community, but rather those who have the privilege to actively challenge gender norms free from danger, particularly white, cis, and heterosexual individuals. It is human and understandable to have height expectations, as patriarchy is deeply embedded and can be difficult to unearth, but I ask the reader to truly consider their own expectations and from where they have been created. Just as we work to untangle the mess of patriarchy in our coursework, conversation, and minds, we must also work to distance ourselves from harmful gendered-height expectations.

Works Cited

Yancey, George, and Michael O. Emerson. “Does Height Matter? An Examination Of Height

Preferences In Romantic Coupling.” Journal Of Family Issues 37.1 (2016): 53. Publisher

Provided Full Text Searching File. Web. 29 Sept. 2016.

The Price of Self-Esteem

Being bigger is not easy, as anyone who is can tell you. From a bit of chub to full on large, people have a hard time dealing with it. Larger women are more often seen as either repulsive or sexually intriguing, while larger men are seen as pals, buddies, men who know how to live. The gendered standards for both are so simple and terrible.

I wish I had that luxury.

The Body and How It Changes

Disability is an interesting subject when one gets truly down to it. What is considered a disability and what is not also varies. Mental disabilities, physical disabilities, these are both types, but what about when there is a confluence of two of three types all at once?

I call that, when I am referring to my own situation, being trans.

A real disease for once

Leslie Feinberg died today. I did not know until reading the article about hir passing that zie was struggling with Lyme disease. Andrea Gibson posted about Leslie’s passing on Facebook and came out publicly as also having lived with Lyme. Leslie Feinberg and Andrea Gibson are two of the most influential and inspirational people I have ever encountered, so it’s strange to think they they have the same disease I had (have?). I never realized that other people (particularly those  knew/knew of) had Lyme disease. I used to think it was something that only one other 4th grader and I had, and that it ended after I left the hospital.

He or She isn’t for everyone

Pronouns. Pronouns are things that we learned about in grade school and for most people, something they haven’t thought about since (unless we get into learning other languages but that brings up something else entirely). Pronouns are almost always read off the body, which is funny because they actually have nothing to do with bodies. Pronouns are related to gender, so within the gender binary, it makes sense that he/him/his or she/her/hers are the only pronouns people know, and are almost always the pronouns that people read off of others’ bodies. I’m gonna let you in on a little thing called “there are more than two genders” (it’s shocking, I know. I’ll let you think about that for a minute).

Princess Joules

A few days ago, I have rediscovered one of my favorite YouTube bloggers, Princess Joules (Julie Vu). Princess Joules has been documenting her transition from male-to-female for about 3 years. About 5 months ago, she went under sex reassignment surgery and made a complete transition. What I love about her videos is that she is honest about her experiences. In the video below, she tells us about her feelings as she is an hour away from surgery.In class, we’ve read about how a transgender person must have a psychological assessment done before they are approved for sex reassignment surgery. I personally felt that it was upsetting that they had to prove that surgery was necessary; society should not be able to police our bodies, especially when we know ourselves best. However, Princess Joules tells us the truth about her feelings – something that most of us would not expect…

After seeing this video, a few questions came to mind:

• Before Princess Joules came out as transgender, she came out as a gay male. I want to know if surgery changed her perception of her own sexuality. Because she believes that, internally, she is a female and belongs in a female body, and she is now a legal female, is her sexuality labelled as straight?
• How do most transgender people define their sexuality after their transition into their true selves?
• If we completely got rid of gender roles, gender, and sexuality (LGBT), how would we define our self?

Male/Female: To be or Not to Be

After reading Dean Spade Mutilating Gender essay I am baffled and saddened. It seems as if gender binary is causing more strife in society than one cares to recognize or admit. Why does every entity in life need to be categorized in order to be accepted? Due to the ancient history of gender roles/identity and my new achievement of joining Biologist I am sure the discovery of karyotyping is throwing a wrench in the system.

My Baby Obsession

It has been an hour and a half since our class discussion on the film about the pregnant man. I have a hundred different emotions swirling about inside me and I have spent the last ninety minutes trying and failing to be productive while these emotions cloud my brain. I’m not sure what I’m feeling, exactly. It’s a mixture of anxiety and fear, doubt and disappointment, and maybe a little bit of hope. Is that even the right word? I don’t know.