[transgendernews] [People] [Canada] Transgender policy makes difficult life more difficult
Stephanie Stevens
Edmonton Journal, Canada
Transgender policy makes difficult life more difficult
Young man describes how changing from female to male has freed him and
added to his burdens
By Scott McKeen, The Edmonton Journal
April 24, 2009 3:04 AM
Ultimately, how do you measure a man?
On material success or physical strength? Grace under pressure, or
grace as a father?
I struggled with such questions long before I met Mateo. Do we even
value masculinity anymore? If so, what parts of it?
Mateo works at my favourite coffee shop. He is sleight of stature and
effeminate in nature.
At first, I was a bit freaked out by his androgyny. But my classifying
brain did its thing -- 'subject is gay male' -- and stopped worrying
about it.
Mateo turned out to be more of a challenge, though. He is not gay. Not
biologically male. Not female, for that matter.
At the moment, he is betwixt and between -- not this or that.
On a recent day, my coffee was served with a side of outrage by Mateo.
He was incensed with the Stelmach government's decision to de-list
gender reassignment surgery. Outrage led to listening, to empathy, to
an interview.
Mateo was born 20 years ago in Edmonton, as Kayla. His parents are
Spanish immigrants.
Mateo's childhood was difficult, to say the least. His mother always
thought her girl Kayla a bit odd.
At puberty, young Kayla became more and more aware of a sense of
personal crisis. Hers was not the proper body.
So Kayla took up two things at age 13: Cross-dressing and skateboarding.
One day, she wiped out badly off her skateboard and into a load of
gender stereotyping. When boys crashed, they were left alone to pull
themselves together. When she toppled, the boys came right over to her
aid.
"It's OK," they said. "You're a girl. You can cry.
"The significance of being a girl was dissonant with what I felt
inside," says Mateo. "I started getting depressed and suicidal. I
could not live in a female body."
She began researching transexual issues and wasn't comforted by her
findings. First, there wasn't much written on female-to-male gender
reassignment. Second, the process sounded hellish. Her sense of crisis
deepened.
"It's like a depression, except you know the source of it," says
Mateo. "You know how to fix it, but you need to find the courage to
fix it."
Kayla survived puberty and began making new friends, many of them gay.
Mostly, she was accepted and encouraged to delve further into
transsexual issues. At age 16, she began to slowly accept her
situation.
She still dressed as a girl, though eccentrically. She enjoyed the
freedom women have to express themselves in fashion.
"In some ways I had more fun when I was perceived as a female," says Mateo.
"There aren't as many expectations placed on you socially, among friends."
At age 17, Kayla told a local psychiatrist.
At age 19, she started gender reassignment by taking male hormones.
She gained an Adam's apple and some facial hair. She filled out. Her
voice deepened and his libido reached new heights.
"It was basically puberty all over again," Mateo says, laughing.
Ever since, he's celebrated each change to his body. But the world, he
discovered, didn't share the same enthusiasm.
Public washrooms became a hassle. He got dirty looks in the men's room
-- called out if he went in the women's. Even asking for a male
haircut at the stylists was awkward.
One time in Toronto he was attacked and knocked to the ground by a guy
who wondered if Mateo was "a faggot or a girl." Fortunately, a
passerby intervened.
So yes, transitioning brought a whole new load of problems. But it
also allowed Mateo to settle into himself. When someone called him
"miss" it no longer bothered him.
When I ask Mateo what it means to be a man, he shrugs. He says his
role models range from macho to queer.
Friends have told him to stop swinging his hips when he walks -- to
stop holding his free hand up when he takes a drink from a glass. "I
do that?" says Mateo.
He shrugs that off, too. He gets it. He's different. It's not like he
wants to be a lumberjack.
"When I was living as a female I could be eccentric and people didn't
care," says Mateo. "Now there's all these masculine things to worry
about.
"I'm male, but I don't have to be imprisoned by the male stereotype.
Why go from one form of imprisonment to another form of imprisonment?"
Yet he remains imprisoned, still. Imprisoned in a transitioning body
and imprisoned by a government decision to scrap medical treatments
for a silent minority.
Mateo is a university student. He can't afford to pay for the
surgeries on his own.
Are his surgeries a medical necessity? Yes, if you believe it our duty
to help those who suffer. Yes, if you consider the tragically high
rate of suicide in the transsexual community.
"Some people think their tax dollars are being spent on freaks who
want to mutilate their bodies," says Mateo. "We aren't perverts, or
whatever they see us as.
"We just want to be treated humanely. We just want to be treated as citizens."
Mateo chairs a support group for other transitioning female-to-male
transsexuals. He says transsexuals are no longer prepared to hide in
the shadows; no longer willing to remain quiet in the face of bigotry.
They will fight for their rights. Fight bravely. Fight for as long as it takes.
Fight until this society sees that they, too, measure up.
smckeen@thejournal.canwest.com
© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Sports/Transgender+policy+makes+difficult+life+more+difficult/1529262/story.html
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