21 de maio de 2018

I'm feeling sick

I'm feeling sick. My gender is considered so despicable that not a single country considers its existence, some countries treat transness as a pathology, but mine doesn't even get close to that status. 

I'm feeling sick. I see my community fight for their rights and, painfully but surely, moving the society in the right direction, getting caught in introspection, reaching acceptance, conditional, controversial... but there. The nonbinary subgroup isn't considered a part of the conversation. Non-binary people fight alongside the binary part of the trans community, we fight for their rights, however, the opposite isn't always true. I went to a protest for trans rights last week, and the lgbt+ community kept saying "todos e todas", not even trying to use a more inclusive, non-official, non-gendered language. 

I'm feeling sick of the invisibility. I'm feeling sick of having to oppress myself. Right now, I feel like I can only relate to my own non-binary community, sparse and all over the world. We are so few that we don't even know each other. Oh, wait, what am I saying? We are not that few! We are pretty easy to find on the internet! We are just invisible and unable to find each other. Only we know what is like to be so invisible that most languages don't even give us a way to talk respectfully about ourselves, so invisible that we are erased from supposedly inclusive spaces, so invisible we don't exist in any kind of registry and can't be recognized legally, in a way that it doesn't only erase our existence, but also our needs and the prejudice we suffer. If we aren't recognized as non-binary, we can't be discriminated because of that, because people can't be discriminated because of something they are not.

I'm feeling sick because every day I'm made to feel that I can't care about my health. I do my best at home, but it's almost impossible to go to a hospital or to any health facility. Trans issues are shitty here in Portugal, and our doctors don't understand a thing about them. But they are even worse to people who don't physically transition, and to people who don't "look as trans" as the doctors expected them to look. 

I probably have tokophobia, a "fear of getting pregnant". Isn't only a trans-thing: many many cisgender women also feel that, and that's actually classified as a women-only issue. But every time I research about that, my experience is never considered. Every fucking website says that women who feel that way can be "cured", get over their fear, be less afraid of getting pregnant and therefore be comfortable having penetrative sex with a man... But what if I want to adopt because it means more to me? What if I don't like penetrative sex, and if I don't have relationships with (cis) men? What if I'm afraid and feel violated by all the exams I would have to do? What if I don't agree and oppose the violence people are submitted when they are birthing a child, what if I find the treatment given in hospitals dehumanizing? And those are valid questions for cis women. The problem, though, is that I consider their problems, but I don't see my specific issues anywhere... so I'm assuming no one considers mine? Besides all of those problems, if I wanted to have a child and got over the fear of... not pregnancy, the notion of carrying a child in the womb doesn't bother me, I only fear the act of birthing a being... I would still have layers of dysphoria to win. And why would I be required to win those layers, if the problem could be simply resolved by society? Why it's me who has to change? As I said, carrying a child isn't something I fear in itself, but knowing that everyone would assume that I'm a woman and a mother definitely is. Knowing that that problem in specific would not only be found in strangers, but also perpetuated by doctors, scares the hell out of me: They would definitely call me a woman, a lady, a mother, a she. I want to have a tubal ligation but, again, I would have to justify myself and I don't know if it's secure to say that it's a way of transitioning to me, especially because, even if the doctors understand I'm talking about dysphoria,  they may want to refuse the operation, want me to transition on other levels or even consider me a transgender man, which is not the case. I hate the idea of entering a gynecologist. I hate the idea of being violated for no reason and, on top of that, being seen as a woman. But I still haven't had relationships nor had any kind of penetration, and I don't really like the idea of having "my first time" in a hospital. I don't know if it's going to hurt, not even how does it feel, and I'm afraid of getting even more scared after an operation like that. It almost makes me consider to have relationships with someone that I don't like simply to know what to expect. It makes me sick...

I'm really lost. I feel comfortable enough with my body, but not with the way my body is perceived, and uncomfortable enough to consider interventions. But when those interventions make me feel mentally worse, to not say traumatized, what should I do?

I'm feeling sick...