(header art by Natalia Lavrinenko on Pixabay)
Welcome to Trans Tuesday! This week we discuss a huge and complicated issue for so many trans and nonbinary folks… physical contact. Love it or hate it, here comes: TRANS TOUCH 1: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES.
There’s so much to talk about regarding touch, both friendly or platonic, and sexual, and I’ve seen so many trans and nonbinary people struggle with the topic. In fact, the podcast version of these essays were the most difficult episodes to schedule a guest for.
And that wasn’t because people didn’t want to talk about it, but a whole lot of people don’t even know how they feel about it and haven’t figured it out yet, and so didn’t feel they could add to the discussion (or, some were worried about their spouses hearing them record these episodes, because things are difficult around the topic at home). So an extra special thanks to Erin Rodriguez for being up for talking about this tough and complicated issue.
A while back I posted a survey about touch, asking folks how you felt about different kinds and if that changed with transition. And your responses were overwhelming. So much so that I can’t cover them in one essay. So you’ll find those in the next two essays following this one, because first I want to talk a little about my own experience, so you have an idea where I’m coming from. And what I, personally, was dealing with.
Pre-transition, touch was such a difficult thing for me. For reasons I talked about in the essay on GENDER DYSPHORIA, my life (such as it was) was lonely, isolated, terrifyingly empty. Even when I was happy. Even when I was being hugged by people I loved, even when kissing my wife, even during sex.
I hated being touched by anyone who wasn’t my wife, and I only acclimated to her touch after a long time. But I still wouldn’t say I sought out touch from her, it just eventually ceased to bother me. But at the same time, I wanted it so bad, because I felt so completely alone, trapped under an ocean of pain.
I never understood why. And I dissociated through most of my pre-transition life, so while I remember hating, hating, HATING being touched, and the feelings it gave me (which I’ll talk about shortly), I don’t remember many specific instances. But I do remember one.
It was somewhere in my teenage years, and my family and I were going… somewhere. I have no idea where. But as we approached this mystery building, a man was helping a senior lady toward the building, she walked with a cane. I held the door open so she could get in easier.
As she passed… she reached out to put a hand on my shoulder, and I instinctively flinched and pulled away. I only realized after the fact, after being yelled at by my mother, that she was doing it to help support herself as she went through the door, because it wasn’t a big enough opening for the man helping her to walk in beside her.
She made it through okay and didn’t fall or get hurt or anything, but I felt so awful about it afterward. The guilt that wells up inside me even as I write this hurts. A lot. I do everything I can, always, to help absolutely everyone I am able to. Not helping, if I have the ability to do so, just isn’t an option for me. It’s why Trans Tuesdays exist.
And here was a woman who needed help, and I denied it to her. For my own selfish reasons. At the time, I didn’t even know why I did it. I just knew I did not want her to touch me.
That had nothing to do with her, and everything to do with me and my dysphoria, which I didn’t even know I had at the time. I just knew that being touched, by anyone, for any reason at all, was absolutely not good.
The one pseudo-exception to that was things of a sexual nature. Sex itself, sure, but not just that… even kissing a girlfriend, or holding hands as we walked through the halls of our high school. And if holding hands doesn’t seem sexual to you, that’s because it’s not. But when my body was a raging mass of hormones, the wrong hormones, and confusion, at that age? Even holding hands with my girlfriend sent sexy little jolts through me.
Ah, to be a teen! If only I’d been able to be me in those years, how different might it have been? This is actually something I wrestled with for a long time, as discussed in the two-part essay on TRANS GRIEF.
My sex drive allowed me to get past my aversion to (sexual) touch, but only with people I’d grown emotionally close to and could trust. I’m not demisexual, by the way, I just needed to really feel comfortable with someone to get past my dysphoria enough to even think about sex.
But even then… well, I didn’t know it at the time, but I dissociated through all of it. Even once I was married to my wife Susan, who I love and adore and is the sexiest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
I was not present for any of it, mentally or emotionally. I was entirely disconnected from my body through all of it. I could allow my body to do whatever it was that it did during sexy times, but I was not really there for any of it. If I got the urges out of me for a while, fine.
I still never wanted anyone to touch me. I’d shake hands if it was expected of me, I’d hug friends if they tried to hug me first, because I was taught you hug people who want hugs and you let them kiss you on the cheek if that’s what they want to do, even if you don’t want it.
When I look back at that, it seems so gross and unacceptable. It’s my body, why should anyone else get to do what they want to me, if I don’t want them to? In fact, even pre-transition, we told our kid he didn’t have to hug or accept kisses from any relative if he didn’t want to. It’s up to him. That’s how it should be. I actually haven’t so much as kissed his cheek in years now, because I asked him if he minded me doing it, and he said yes. So I stopped.
We hug, and that’s wonderful! And if that’s all he wants, that’s okay. I wish I could still give him little kisses on the cheek, but that’s my problem and not his. I respect him far too much to force him to accept something he’s stated he does not want.
What you’re hopefully seeing here is that this is inextricably linked to bodily autonomy, and not just in terms of who’s allowed to touch us when, and under what circumstances.
In my BODILY AUTONOMY essay, you’ll see that discussion is mainly around my tattoo… tattoos which I never understood or could imagine anyone ever wanting pre-transition.
Because my body never felt like mine.
And that’s the crux of what the issue of touch revolves around for me. And based on the data from the survey so many of you filled out, for many other trans people as well.
Every time anyone touched my body, it hurt because it reminded me that my body was there, but it wasn’t my body. So it’d spike my dysphoria something awful, and instead of pulling me out of the depths so I could breathe, it shoved me even farther under the surface and away from any kind of relief.
During transition, and even post-transition (I don’t know that I consider myself “post-transition” yet because I’m not sure it’ll ever end, but it’s definitely at a point where it’s a gradual incline and not a rocket to the stars), that began to shift.
Because as I came more into myself, became more in touch with who I really am, came to feel as if my body was actually my body… touch electrified me.
Not in a sexual way (unless it was a sexual touch), but in a “holy shit this feels amazing” way, because now… shit, this is so hard to explain.
My dysphoria is mostly gone these days, even though it pops up here and there occasionally. But mostly I am out of those depths, and flying free in the skies above (see GENDER EUPHORIA for more). And touch?
It sends me into fucking orbit.
Because unlike before when it reminded me that my body wasn’t mine, now it reminds me that my body is mine. That whoever is touching me (hugging me, putting a hand on my arm, kissing me, whatever) sees me for who I really am, and wants some form of contact and intimacy with me.
And it wasn’t until this shift happened for me, that I realized how incredibly touch-starved I’ve been my whole life, and am even still.
I have this… deficit. Like someone who hasn’t eaten in ten years not being able to sate their hunger. Like someone who has known deep poverty (hi, this is also me) never, ever being able to feel financially secure regardless of your actual financial situation, because you know how quickly it can all disappear.
I want to be touched. Please see me, recognize me, accept me. Be close with me. I’ve been so alone for so long, and I can’t go back. Please please please reach out a hand and help ensure I never fall back under the ocean. I’ve asked my wife to touch me more. Put a hand on my hip as you walk past, touch my arm, my face, my back. Just… let me feel you close to me. I need it so much. So much.
But I still respect bodily autonomy.
I love hugging people so much. Friends, family, even people I’ve just met (Los Angeles is a very hug-forward city). But I don’t assume others want it, because I intimately know what it can do to someone who doesn’t. So I always ask. It’s so easy! “Do you do hugs?” is usually one of the first things I say when I meet people. And if yes, we hug! And if not we shake hands, or fist bump, or touch elbows, or simply smile and wave. Whatever they’re comfortable with! And it’s all great.
Sex has entirely changed for me, too. Not just because being on different hormones makes certain parts of your anatomy function differently, but it literally changes what feels good. It was one of the earliest things HRT changed for me… suddenly new parts of my body awakened to sexual touch in ways they never had before.
It was so surprising and confusing. The first sex I had after those changes was legit world-altering. There’s not even any comparison. It’s like the difference between having the energy to run a hundred yard sprint, and having the energy to run a 26.2 mile marathon (and then some), y’know? Maybe you don’t. But holy dang, it’s amazing.
Over the next couple weeks we’re going to get into the results of the survey I ran, and the overwhelming amount of data you flooded me with, and see if we can find some commonalities.
For me, I feel like I’ll never, ever get enough touch and hugs for as long as I live. So if we meet, yes, know that I will gladly hug you… if you want. And I give amazing hugs, because I know the value of them to those who want them.
It’s not just a greeting, or a goodbye. It’s pulling our hearts together, and holding each other in our arms, saying I see you, and I’ve got you.
And that’s magic.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com
PS – Part 2 is here!