Some of My Noticings About Transitioning from Female to Male

Dear Readers,

I have experienced some really interesting differences between being a man and a woman. The way to think about this is not in a binary way: man or woman, but what the influence of testosterone vs estrogen has on this bag of bones!

Here are some noticings in random order:

Physical:

• I am now covered in hair, and hair literally grows in every orifice. Not only does it grow, it is itchy. The only place I am hair-free is my head, which is cold frequently. The insides of my ears are cozy, though, in case you were worried about my eardrums
• When I was female, I had a very large derriere. My derriere closed up shop and moved northwest to my abdomen. Can you here "The Jefferson's" theme song playing? "...Moving on up, to the (west) side, to that deluxe apartment in the sky..."
  
• Oh, and did I mention my toes are also quite warm; the fur keeps them that way
• My strength has increased greatly. Early in my transition, I went to family summer camp with my girls. I played a game called "Knock-out" where two people vie to shoot a basket before the other thus, "knocking" them out. In order to get into the game, people take turns shooting a free throw and the first several who make the shot get into the game. When it was my turn I chucked the ball in the air and went way, way over the top and far into the next group of people sitting and talking. It looked like I did it on purpose because I missed the backboard by so much and the ball went very far away. One of the teens muttered, "asswipe," and I could see why, but I really just did not know my own strength!
• I grew from 5'6" to 5'8" and my shoe size went from a 7.5 to a 9 in men's sizing
• My nose grew to epic proportions. Men have sex receptor cells in their nostrils and apparently I got a bunch late in life, so my nose is the umbrella of my face
• Then I had my surgeries (in order of occurrence):
• breast reduction from DD to A-, prior to accepting I was a man
• After realization, man-chest surgery
• vaginectomy and phalloplasty
• scrotoplasty and glansplasty
• more on these in another blog

Emotional:

• I am still the same person in my heart that I was when I was female. However, my feelings are stored and accessed in a different way. Imagine you have a filing cabinet with all of your thoughts and feelings organized in the front of the drawers. Then one day, you look for them and the files are no longer where you had always kept them. You know they are there because you can sense them. Upon searching, you find a lockbox in the back of the drawer. Inside the lockbox everything is there but it takes longer to access them; they aren't as much on the surface or as easy to get to. 
• I used to feel dread regularly. I also hated my body and had frequent, severe judgement about how fat I was. Now those thoughts creep in once in a while, but for the most part I enjoy being in my body; in fact, I fricking love it!!!
• I am still a highly sensitive person but it just travels in a different path than it did before

Psychological:

• Testosterone has affected my psychology tremendously
• First, I still, after 13 years, forget that I am a man and:
• occasionally walk into the ladies' room instead of the men's room
• spook myself in the mirror catching myself saying, "Who's that guy in here?"
• sign my former name on check
• Find my attraction to women has changed. What I mean by this is as a lesbian, I thought things like red lipstick and high heels were ridiculous. On testosterone, I really like that stuff and my wife is actually relieved because she likes that stuff, too. She was frequently dismayed, long ago, when I preferred her in what she calls, "shlumpy" clothes. I thought of it more like an Earth-Mama look, but she is glad for my change in fashion taste
• I do not fear walking down the street, ever. This is a huge change especially from being a vulnerable butch lesbian, easy to identify. I have had my share of being gay-bashed so this is a welcomed relief, but I sure see how defensive women have to be and that is not ok!!!
• At first, I was shocked by the tight clothing my wife was wearing at the barn. There were lots of ranch hands staring at her and other females. I learned to ignore them when I was female. Once on testosterone, I understood how intense testosterone is do I told her to wear a mumu. She did not follow my advice

Cultural:

• This is where it gets weird
• I know I have more privilege than I did before but not without a cost
• Transitioning has helped me see the differences, the burdens, the advantages and the losses
• For example:
• As a woman, I could touch people and it didn't make them uncomfortable. I am an educator and would walk around the room and lay my hand on a student's shoulder without thinking about it. I was a middle school teacher. It was welcomed and part of being a caring adult. As a man, I cannot do this
• I used to hug people. As a man, this is also not welcomed. A huge loss for me!!! 
• As a woman, I called everyone, "Honey or Hun." This was upsetting for women when I said this as a man, so I stopped. However, I did decide to call every man I worked with "Honey" to see what happened. I got a lot of, "Did you just call me Honey?" The only person I didn't call Honey was the college president who was a man
• I was the manager of a statewide college program that had mostly women in it. When I would go to quarterly meetings, I stopped volunteering answers to make sure every woman had a chance to offer something before I spoke up
• I became eerily aware of how men impacted certain situations
• I noticed that (even now) if I go somewhere, like to an African drumming and dance class, women do not speak with me before or after class, but they do with each other
• On the other hand, there is a beautiful brotherhood to be found among men. Lots of men, of various ages, call me Sir or Brother or Boss. It's harder to make close friends with men, but there is definitely a warmth that I did not notice before
• One of the first losses I experienced as a man is this: when I first moved to Sonoma County, about 9 months into my transition, I came here a few months ahead of my wife and daughter to find us a place to live, etc. I joined a church choir and was at my third or fourth rehearsal one night. A teen daughter of fellow singers needed a ride home. I offered her a ride and there was a great hush and weird tension. Someone else volunteered to take her. Later I learned they were afraid I would rape her. This was a very rude awakening to the tribe I was so happy to join.

Six Years of the Salami and other Spiritual Noticings

March 28, 2022

Wow! It's been six years since I got my dong sewn on! Having a dong is, well, different than not having one, I must say! I actually just completed my first album about transitioning and one of the songs is called, "I Got My Dong Sewn on Yesterday." It's a hoot of a Blues Song. While it hasn't been released yet, you can go to my website: www.nicklawrenceftm.com to hear the first song released, called "Before (I Became a Man)" and see the photo montage that covers my life span. I will put the Dong song on here as soon as it is available. The album is a blend of raucous humor and deep spirituality with an eclectic group of songs. Many of the songs have spiritual roots. I don't mean the music genre of Spirituals, but the experience of awe in relationship to God, experienced by me in the flesh, my flesh.

I know that some people will think I am being disrespectful of God and religion in some of my songs, but I am not; I am the most devout God worshipper, ever. I just have a different perspective than some people. I want you to know that transitioning has been the singularly most spiritual experience I have ever had. The operations I endured were slow in preparation and slower in recovery, both physically and mentally. But spiritually, I have gained what I consider incredible insight.

When I went in for my Man-chest, I came out with a chest whose female breasts had been removed, but what was left did not look like a man-chest. It looked like a location where at one time, things, two in particular, had been located. Kind of like a building site that had not been fully prepped for the next project yet. Silly me, I thought my impending burst of manhood would happen immediately. It didn't. I felt relieved to not have my chesticals any longer, but I felt like I was still the same person. This may sound silly but it is true. I thought my breasts were preventing me from "feeling like a man" but how I felt inside, my personhood, really didn't change. I felt relieved. Oh, yes, I did. So much relief. Let me say it again, SO MUCH RELIEF from having my breasts removed. I kept hearing this mantra: "my body isn't me."

So I countered with ,"Well if it isn't me, why am I rearranging it? Why does it even matter then?"

Over the last six years I returned to a spirituality I found in my late teens called Metaphysics. I have come to understand on a deeper level that what animates my body is my spirit (which I encapsulate with my personality) and my spirit expresses itself through my body, but is not my body per se. When I removed my breasts, I removed the lady bits that so many women  identify as what makes them a woman. I no longer had those bits, thereby releasing me from "womanhood", which came with tremendous relief, but not having them or having them didn't change my spiritual experience of inhabiting my body. 

In fact, the experience of removing my breasts gave me a clear experience of my body surrounding my spirit, which freed me in a sense to rearrange it any way I wanted because it doesn't really matter what shape it is in at all! Meaning, that while the removal of them did not make me "feel like a man", the having of them didn't make me "feel like a woman" either! The power to feel who I am is not controlled by my body parts. While I was born female bodied, I never felt like a I was a woman. For whatever reason, my spirit in combination with my naturally masculine personality, is happier with a male presentation. 

Speaking of male presentation, however, when I got my dong sewn on, that was a different kind of experience! My "manhood" was clear but I really still felt like me, but lighter and happier.  I mean there they were: my dangly bits. Can you hear my Tarzan roar in the background? Again no change in my internal perception but more RELIEF from my external presentation. The only real drawback was the fact that I now have this giant Dangler that never retracts! Ha ha! I literally harvested the tissue from my thigh to make a fat, floppy cock with my micro-penis clitoris embedded in the base of it. WTF!!!

Who does this crazy shit? Ok fine. Me. I did. And even though my salami, Sal, is a little funny looking, he is so much fun to play with that I am filled with glee! I know I am on the right track because I love my penis. I didn't love my breasts or vagina. The onset of puberty number one, back in 1975 along with Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" only created a vortex of despair. Puberty number two created a vortex of  joy amidst the need for a whole lot of self-love. It takes enormous self-love to withstand the current of how things are supposed to be and do what feels right anyway. 

It has taken six years (post phallus surgery) to have sensation throughout my wienie. It is a miracle every time I have an orgasm. I think, "How the hell can this possibly work?" But it does (OMFG!!)  and then I remember that my body is surrounding my spirit and that my experiences are a combination of my spirit and body working together plus Mind. What I see in my mind is what I experience. To me, this is God living through me, as me.

What this means to me is that whether you are XX or XY or any of the other multitude of combinations (and, yes, there is a multitude), your expression of who you are has nothing to do with the body you were given. That's why there are very small, badass butch women, and very large Tinkerbell type men. Otherwise the template would dominate our expressions of our spirits.

And, finally, I have come to accept that the way I feel inside is exactly how this man is supposed to feel; the integrity of my inside and outside matching is a delicious harmony. I wish this kind of harmony to everyone.