An introduction to men's jewelry

Like many transguys, I like my jewelry. I don't wear as much as I used to, but I do have quite a bit and have learned a few things over the years about what kind of jewelry has sabotaged my ability to pass, and other jewelry which has helped me. That is the subject of this essay.

Note: I format this as "stuff I do to pass" because I don't want to give the impression that these tips are going to work for everyone.  Also, to aid in your deciding whether these tips are going to work for you, I am white, 5'8", large-framed, and I live in Wisconsin.

I am not a "bio-girl," thank you very fucking much.

So there's this website called QueerSecrets.  It's a Tumblr which is kind of like PostSecret but for queer people, and instead of sending a letter you send a graphic file or something like that.  A rather disproportionate number of the posts on QueerSecrets are from FTM transfolk.  That's just an aside, actually.

There's a reason I don't subscribe to it.  And that's because of posts like this:



Yes, poster, the entire reason I have been living as a man for the past seven years and the reason there is an "influx" of people like me is because society has made me feel unhappy with myself as a "woman."

It's not like being a transman has subjected me to intense scrutiny of my body as it relates to my gender identity, that's something that clearly only happens to cis women or as you call them "bio-girls."  Clearly the "influx" of transmen isn't because we ever lacked visibility and resources like the Internet, this is all happening right now because otherwise cis people would have known about it because cis people are experts on trans people and why we are the way we are.  I know this because cis people tell me so.  I don't know anything about myself until it's told to me by a cis person.

Things cis people don't have to think about...

A couple friends of mine were recently complaining about how uncomfortable and undignified people consider the new TSA procedures including full-body "naked" scanners and invasive pat-down procedures that involve touching the breasts, groin, buttocks, and other areas most of us consider private.  They said that we are all comfortable with this around doctors, so why not around TSA employees?

If you think like this, stop.

It's very easy to say things about how people are making their own naked bodies too big a deal when their bodies are considered "normal" by most society.  Those of us who use prosthetics or body shapers have a very different set of problems than you do.  They already made this breast cancer survivor take out her prosthesis, which is a standard part of the procedure.  I'm just waiting for them to ask a transman to whip out his prosthetic penis to subject to explosive testing.  Wouldn't that just be good times?  You could just decide not to wear it that day, but that's its own can of worms as you walk through the scanner or subject to their grope test and they notice something is amiss.

All over something that makes your flight only marginally safer than it was before.

But no, we're all just naked under our clothes, why should we worry about that sort of thing?  Because clearly my body is everyone's business.

Also, the NCTE has an article detailing what trans people need to know about the new TSA procedures which is worth a read if you fly a lot or plan on flying in the near future.

I have an oppressor complex the size of Alaska.

Milwaukee Pridefest, 2008

The amount of space dedicated to the interests of transmen as transmen is necessary.  We deserve the right to identify ourselves, we deserve the right to determine our own needs, we deserve the right to space, and we deserve the right to exist.

It's taken me years to be comfortable with saying this.  Because, due to the crowd I was allying with during my first run through college, I was internalizing the belief that because I was entering manhood, I was an oppressor whose role in that environment was to unquestionably accept critiques regarding my identity as a man.

So if transmen were forming their own groups because we felt unwelcome or unheard at mixed trans groups, it was because transmen were transmisogynists.  If we were uncomfortable with Dr. Alan Hart or Brandon Teena being portrayed as lesbians, it was because we were homophobic.  If there were fewer butch women in the world, it was because we were luring them into transgenderism.  If we got excited about our surgeries or the effects our hormones were having on us, we were devaluing women's bodies.  If we considered ourselves fully a member of our lived gender, we were being binary-enforcers and demeaning genderqueer people.

Being surrounded by the vocal minority that says things like this, it hard for me to remember that I had important problems, too.