Interview with Cat on Being Transgendered

Interview by Nirupa Varatharasan and Michelle Soltau, Additional information and research by Corrine Aberdeen

We had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Cat. We had called the 519 Community Center in the gay village and asked if anyone does workshops on trangender issues. Cat was kind enough to come in and do a workshop with us on everything from understnding terminology to what it was like for him to go through the process of identifying as female to identifiyng as male. We had A LOT of questions and there were A LOT of things we didn’t understand – but Cat helped make things a lot more clear.

Transgendered: A broad term that describes people who trans- gress society’s ideas of biological sex and gender norms and begin a self motivated transformation to have a lived identity

as another gender (meaning people who are identified at birth as being a girl but live and walk through the world as a boy, or vice versa).

Gender: The social construct that masculinity and femininity are attributable to male and female physical bodies

Sex: The biological physical body, its reproductive organs, its secondary sex characteristics; male and female as defined by doctors at birth.

Transgendered people feel that the gender they appear to be physically does not match the gender they feel they are inside (i.e., a boy in a girl’s body or vice versa). Imagine not being able to be yourself and having to constantly deny how you feel, what you believe, and who you are; these are some of the issues that young transgendered people struggle with from day to day.

Most transgendered people are aware of these feelings from as early on in life as childhood. In many cases when children begin to show their displeasure with their gender, they are diagnosed with gender dysphoria (clinical term for unhappiness with one’s gender). Not every transgendered person is gay/lesbian; in fact being transgendered has nothing to do with sexual preference.

Support groups are available worldwide and are only a quick on-line search away. These groups help transgendered people explore the choices available such as living “in role” as a person of the sex they feel they are or gender-reassignment (sex change) surgery or hormonal treatments. Many issues take place in the lives of transgendered people, including coming out, acceptance from themselves and their family and friends.

N&M: Where are you in the process of transitioning?

C: Well, I’ve been through the Clarke Institute, which is a mental health facility in Toronto, and I have spoken with the psychiatrist, family doctor, and my family. I’ve had upper body surgery to remove my breasts, and I inject testosterone on a daily basis.

N&M: What made you change your sex?

C: I didn’t actually feel like a girl or a guy; I felt like a person stuck in between. This year I went to a conference and that made me decide. In this world you cannot be in between, and therefore since I felt more like a guy than a girl, I changed my appearance.

N&M: How do you identify?

C: As a sissy boy! I don’t act like a typical guy. I like to call myself a homemade guy because of the marks from the surgery I went through.

N&M: How does it feel to be a transgendered person?

C: It’s a difficult process to go through. Everything about you is so different from other people and it is hard to understand how you feel. I have lost some friends, although there has always been support.

N&M: How much does the surgery cost?

C: In Canada upper body surgery for female-to-male costs any- where from $5 000 to $10 000. Bottom surgery for female-to- males costs anywhere from $60 000 to $100 000, for male-to- female is $10 000 to $20 000. So yeah, pretty expensive! I’m not sure how much it costs in the United States. (See the resources section for how to find more info.)

N&M: How do you handle starting new relationships and telling them about transitioning?

C: Being very open from the start really helps. Seeing their reac- tions is rather amusing. You usually know how the person feels about you when you tell them. You find out if they like your personality or your gender!

N&M: When having sex, do you consider yourself straight? C: No, I consider myself gay, not straight. It’s playing with gender roles. I don’t know, I date girls.

N&M: Have you experienced any problems with your vital organs after surgery?

C: No, although you can get uterine cancer, when your ovaries shrink. I have not experienced any problems with my organs, as of yet.

N&M: Who experiences more prejudices, M-to-F’s or F-to-M’s? C: I think male-to-females experience more prejudice than female-to-males because they need to conceal more facial hair, and society has very strict ideas about men.