6-month T update:
My reality of being on testosterone is that, once I’m on it & have been for a while, it becomes less important to me. Whether this is because I’m becoming more conscious of myself as someone belonging to a certain lower class in society, as opposed to being someone with a unique “gender issue”, or because I’m simply more conscious of myself being a spectacle, is hard to say.
When I say “lower class”, I mean I am a person who does not have a lot of power. This is evident in the way I live my life. For instance, a day in my life entails waking up, going to a class that I might not like, dropping by the office to pay for rent & getting fined for not paying on time, having money to buy lunch that’s filling but not very nutritious otherwise, only to have no space to eat it in, or friends to eat it with, and then going home because I have no library to study in, eating bread because I had no time to make a better dinner.
In other words, my day is marked by the things I didn’t do because of the things I didn’t have—whether it’s a material, time, space, or something more complicated, like having a say in whether my fine was reasonable, or whether my class could have been designed in a way that’s more interesting.
Furthermore, by the end of the day, I have lost due to the things I didn’t do or didn’t have—I’ve not prepared for my test tomorrow, and I am not in a good mood for tomorrow because I didn’t have friends to spend time with today. So you see that one day’s loss carries on to the next day.
It’s not likely that the school will be very sympathetic to the fact that I didn’t study, or that I was not happy. It will tell me that’s it’s my fault. It will say, for instance, that there are resources I could have used to better prepare myself. E.g. why didn’t I look on its website for exam studying tips, or information on how to better get along with my housemates so I didn’t end up alone, etc.
When I say “lower class”, then, I mean I am permanently losing, and I am penalized for losing.
In face of this, it’s not surprising that I don’t place more importance on testosterone. I know, for sure, that there’s more to the reasons why I’m behind than testosterone.
This also means that I am willing to fight for the right for testosterone users to lose less. I have a testosterone user friend, who goes through many of the same problems as me. It’s ironic. We highly enjoy keeping each other company once in a while and share our stories and jokes. We make fun of non-testosterone users a lot, for their self-assured superiority over us.
But I only see this friend once in a while. And I don’t always hang out with him because once we finished sharing our newest stories, we don’t have anything else to talk about.
Sometimes, then, I go to this group located in the other side of town. In this group, half the people use testosterone. The other half uses something else with an equally funny name. They are very different, but they understand what it’s like to use testosterone, so we group together to talk about the things we face in common. Some people don’t use anything, but they, too, “get” it.
And when we get together, we talk. We talk about testosterone. A lot. We talk about the other chemical with the funny name a lot too. Then the people who don’t take anything chip in too. We talk a lot, then I go home.
On my way home I notice a lot of people. Some of them are quite similar to the testosterone-users. Others are quite similar to the estrogen (the other chemical with the funny name) users. Some seem obviously discomforted by either. They walk slowly.
I expect them to be mean to me, but they aren’t.
I learn from them that they, too, are losing. That they, too, are penalized for losing.
Then I walk through a group of them, sitting, talking on the sidewalk. I feel very self-conscious walking past them, expecting one of them to make a remark, or throw something, or trip me. I grip my fists very tightly.
Nothing happens. Then another person walks through. I notice that he is very attractive, that he is wearing a nice beige suit.
But even though he is so nice & attractive, he is actually obviously sweating from walking through the crowd that is sitting and chatting, the very same reaction I had!
And this point, I am no longer thinking about testosterone. I am thinking about that man’s reaction and mine. I realize that I am fearful for what I am, while he is fearful for something else—what he has.
He has more than do those people sitting on the side walk, even though he is not carrying all of it on him. But his nice beige suit alone… they did not like that! While they took no notice of my red shirt.
Even though once I sought to dress like Mr. Beige, to act like him, to talk like him, and to go to the same school as him, I never really could keep up with that lifestyle.
Furthermore, I notice that Mr. Beige is on a lot of billboards, television shows, newspaper features, and books.
I noticed that there are infinite copies of him in the world, though few actually lived up to what he has lived up to!
There are lesser versions of him, whose mind could be change to be not like his, whose behavior, schooling, talking, could be trained to not want to be him.
It’s these people, I realized, that I should talk to, in addition to people who really dislike me for taking testosterone.
