A year has passed, and I find myself back in Montreal. Only a month this time, with a week in the middle to visit my son and dance at the Ontario Regional Contact Jam in Toronto. Three days, this past weekend, of dancing! Last night was the Wednesday Jam at Fleur d’Asfalte here in Montreal. The dancing was continuous, after Marie-Jose’s guided warmup; eyes closed!

I’m preoccupied. With contradictions. And Contradictions, the name of the show I spent the previous year helping to create in collaboration with fellow dancers Karla Kloeble and Mitchell Larsen. And Contradictions, the working title of the book I have decided to begin writing. I have about 40,000 words, a good start, but I’ve slowed down the past few months, uncertain of how best to proceed.

I continue to visit; twice a year now, to dance Contact Improv and to visit my son in Toronto and my daughter in Montreal. I want to live in Montreal, but I want to live in Saskatoon also, sharing a house with a good friend, with my cheap and beautiful downtown studio, the berry bushes and the beaches on the river.
Contradictions, the performance, was a success. We worked on it for a year; it opened at the end of August 2016 for three shows, two sold-out and one well attended. Plus all the works in progress and excerpts showings. But I was never satisfied. It felt like we’d reveal one contradiction, peel it away, and underneath there’d be another layer, like onion skins; under each layer another seemingly whole onion.

For me the contradiction between being born and living the first part of my life in a male body and now living as a woman was one of the central themes to the performance. But I was always conscious of the next level, my inability to reconcile my radical feminist views with the philosophical implications of claiming to be a woman.

What is a gender identity? After campaigning for human rights protection for gender identity and gender expression, both provincially and federally, I came to the conclusion that gender identity was a shaky legal concept, that may also buy in to notions of gender essentialism; the notion that we’re born with gendered natures, and exhibit gendered behaviour, and have gendered abilities and interests.

There was a time when I would have said I feel like a woman, early in my transition. But I soon decided that was nonsense, that like most women I knew I felt like me, like a person. That my sense of gender came from context and relationship, and that it involved a lot of cultural stereotypes.
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If I look at my earliest contributions to this online journal, I see myself characterizing female as being tender, vulnerable, brave, submissive, gentle, sensitive, having inner strength, nice, equanimous, empathic, loving one’s self, being flexible. Some of the qualities I associate with being male are being emotionally repressed, tough, dominant, cynical, obsessive, angry, stiff and bitter.

I am finding that the way forward is through practice and presence. Which for me right now, in more concrete terms, is gratitude and self love. Gratitude is a practice of presence, of experiencing the miracle of the moment. The trick is to let go, to be guided by sensation. The challenge is to be grateful for all my contradictions.

Self love I visualize more concretely, often in the negative, as in; “Don’t beat up on myself.” Don’t even beat up on myself for beating up on myself. As a friend said in a moment of inspiration, “We’re all miracles, spirit becoming gods, no wonder we find it so difficult.”

It is difficult to admit that the core of the problem is that the idea of being transgender, of having a gender identity is a woo woo idea. Gender identity is unverifiable, unscientific. Big value judgements here. And yet gender diversity exists, it’s an historical fact. I think all human cultures have had prescribed gender roles for the sexes, as well as people who transgress those roles.

I fear what I see as a push back from right wing and extremist religious forces, likely well funded, and for some reason inflaming the fears of some gender critical radical feminist thinkers. It's so divisive. We’re such a minority that I don’t see why radical feminists should be concerned at the far-fetched notion that trans women might dominate women only space, or positions reserved for women.

My view of being transgender, now, is that it is not something to be encouraged. It’s not something to take on lightly. I think we still know too little about it. I admire those who are gender queer, who reject gender identity. But society is so not ready, and the change demanded is so huge and fundamental I don't see much hope. If a person can find a way to live a reasonable life without transitioning, I think that’s best. Me, I’m questioning everything about being transgender. Except the fact that being a woman is the right thing for me.

What do I want to be when I grow up?

I keep coming back to this question. I feel like I'm always starting again. It hasn’t been an easy year, and I was not finding answers, which is a big part of the reason I didn’t post to this journal. I don't know what I can hope for.

Because of the proximity to my previous surgeries and danger of further nerve damage, I held out for a knowledgeable surgeon. I was referred to one, who referred me to another, who referred me to one who could do it laparoscopically, inside the abdominal lining. This way the nerves to my genitals were not disturbed, and the patches are less bothersome for dancing. After a long, uncomfortable wait the surgery was performed at the beginning of summer. Eight months after the initial diagnosis I was healed enough to begin training again.

I tried writing, but despite having lots of free time in bed, I felt blocked. I was full of doubts about my direction as an artist. At 59 was I too old to do movement performance? Would it now be one health issue after another? I had time to dwell on my doubts about gender. The medical part of my transition had not turned out well; tiny breasts, imperfect vulva and apparently permanent nerve damage. Despite a couple of sexual encounters at the end of the previous year with a lesbian friend who found me to be an attractive female lover, and with whom I became aroused, I still wasn’t able to achieve orgasm.

When I grow up… I want to be sexy. I want to be funnier than I am now. I have friends who spontaneously break into song. Could I break into song? Why am I so serious and introspective? How much more growing can I do, I asked myself as I approached sixty?

In the spring I said goodbye to my daughter. She moved far away, with her mother, to Montreal, nearer to her brother who left over two years ago.

We sold what had been the the family home for 22 years. I hadn’t lived in it for the previous two and a half years. It involved a lot of anguish; two summers doing repairs and finishing renovations, holding garage sales and sending trailers  to the dump full of materials and treasures I had saved over the years. The market was slow, but finally the house was sold. It’s hard to let go of a dream. Even after letting go, it still seems there’s more… letting go.

I felt scared. I couldn’t decide what to do, afraid of making the wrong choices. Of course I knew the worst thing would be out of fear to do nothing. Somewhere, I read; what one fears may be the thing one needs most. I wasn’t sure I did want to grow up.

For a few months I couldn’t do anything creative in my studio, because I had filled it with drawings and files saved from the basement of my old home. Tempted to throw away everything, in the end I set to work and looked through it all and kept what seemed significant. Much of it was sad, and even disturbing, but I found there were two ways I could look at it. I could use past embarrassments and mistakes as material for beating up on myself, or as insights into my fallible humanity, how I ended up who I am, and how to move on. One example was something I had written in the mid 80s, about my first wife, and a boyfriend I had in University.

My wife knew about us, and we even tried a threesome. I was an idealist, and I wanted to be open about it, to share my joy with all our friends. He was more cautious, and knew the dangers of homophobia. He broke up with me, was the way I remembered it all these years, uncomfortable with my girlish displays of affection, and terrified we would be discovered.

However, what I found in my files proved my memory was wrong. I had written about how I had been unable to handle the growing feelings between my boyfriend and my first wife, and had broken with him, in his car, in a farmer's field, and he had cried. I suppose I had been unable to accept the contradiction between my ideals, and what I had done, and had invented a different version of the events.

This past summer, when I had almost recovered from the hernia, a friend asked if I would be interested in joining a small group of collaborators, creating a movement based performance. The theme she proposed was contradictions. I was afraid to commit, but felt I should accept the opportunity. We workshopped contradictions in different ways, finding it easier to slip into dancing conflict, opposition or contrast. We realized contradiction is an intellectual concept, not easily expressed through dance alone. Instead of giving up, we began incorporating story. This led to us sharing, in intimate and sometimes emotional ways, some of the contradictions we live with in our lives. I found I was incorporating my doubts and dilemmas into our creative process.

In the late fall, after a short trip to Montreal for a week long Contact Improvisation workshop followed by the Montreal Annual Contact Jam, a visit with my daughter, and to Toronto to see my son acting in a play, I was offered a sublet for the apartment of a friend in Montreal. I had a vague sense I had to get away from the safe and comforting life I had made for myself during the previous four years of my recovery from my nervous breakdown, marital breakup and surgeries. I had learned a lot about self-care, friendship, gratitude and community service, but I had lost a sense of creative direction. I felt oppressed by my habits.

Classes and workshops in somatic practices were being offered in Montreal. Coming from an intellectual, visual, object based background as a sculptor, designer and architectural consultant, I have been perplexed by the somatic, integrated, body, mind and spirit source for creation through movement. I’d encountered the concept in many of the different movement workshops I’ve taken in the past 7 years. I suspect some of the artistic blocks I have struggled with during my life may be due to a disconnection between my intellect and my heart. I am beginning to understand that this kind of somatic integration is what I need to learn in order to move ahead in my own creative process.

I’ve observed my best friend, collaborator and roommate Kyle in her physical and spiritual practice, trying to learn from her, and realizing such practices can be deeply personal, at least for unconventional people like us, arising from our particular histories and a growing sensitivity to our own needs. I needed other influences, and space, in order to evolve my own somatic practice. I didn’t want to leave her, I felt I needed her guidance and support as a movement artist, but I began to suspect this dependance might be self destructive. She gave heartfelt support to my plans, though I could sense her ambivalence at the idea of me going away for many months.

I decided I would not burn my bridges, but keep my room and sublet my own studio, and return in the summer to continue the Contradictions project and to work with Kyle.

What do I want to be? A 60 year old woman; young at heart, living, for now, by myself. Have I grown up? No, I feel like a child, just leaving the nest. Another transition; there is much yet to learn.

I am a dancer. It’s not just that I like dance, it has become my primary mode of artistic expression. Becoming a dancer may have been my most important transition of this decade. Professionally, it has meant my transformation from a behind-the scenes creative artist to a performer. Personally, it was the fulfilment of a long repressed desire, and helped open the way for my gender transition. I’m not what many people would consider a good dancer. I’m a little clumsy, and awkward, and uncoordinated. I’m slow to learn steps, and routines. I am, however, authentic, and uninhibited, and can communicate with my partners, and an audience.


Dancing was not something I was exposed to in my childhood. As an isolated immigrant family moving frequently from one Canadian town to another, we were never part of any cultural events that might involve dance. My parents knew how to dance but I never saw them dancing. In later years, I learned that my father would join singles dance clubs to meet women. I imagine him as a smooth operator. If they became a couple, he would stop going out. My mother, in her 70s radical artsy feminist days was attracted to folk dancing, she was enthusiastic, but not very skilled. I take after my mother.

After they separated I remember being introduced to square dancing for several weeks in grade 3 or 4, and being the only boy who appeared to like it. I was disappointed when we moved on to some other physical activity. I would have loved dance lessons if I had been offered them, but in our town boys didn’t dance. Like music lessons which I also wanted, we couldn’t have afforded it. I had a strong aversion to sports, especially team sports such as hockey, which is what small town Canadian boys were expected to do, but I enjoyed skating.

My mother enrolled me in figure skating, which I loved and which I did for two winters. Without a car, this was made possible partly by the proximity of the rink to our home, only a ten or fifteen minute walk. In a small Saskatchewan city boy’s figure skates were unavailable, and I had an early experience of the mutability of gender. My mother had to buy a pair of used girl’s skates, and paint them black, and I clearly remember my wonder at the simplicity of the transformation. I loved figure skating, and especially performing. We would travel to neighbouring towns with our end of year show, and I vividly remember the atmosphere of female camaraderie on the ride home, late at night, in the bus.

At the end of grade 7, new in a larger prairie city, I became friends with some of the girls in the class, and they invited me to a year-end party held in the garage attached to one of their houses. We played 45s on a portable record player, my favourite being The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” with “Fool on a Hill” on the flip side. The girls taught me to dance the twist and we got high by hyperventilating and hugging each other’s chest from behind until we got dizzy or passed out. I remember the softness of the girls’ angora sweaters. I was in heaven.

From being an introspective, artistic immigrant kid, I blossomed in the post-hippie years of the early 70s as an anarchic “freak” as we called ourselves. I grew my hair and didn’t mind being called a girl. I loved to lose myself in a drug-fuelled ecstasy, dancing to rock music, wishing I could have been at Woodstock. I hitch-hiked across the country, went to sit-ins, played the guitar and sketched portraits of musicians in coffeehouses.

I attended a couple of wedding dances, and enthusiastically learned basic polka and waltz steps, and when I married at 19, I was able to dance at our wedding. As I got older, I found less opportunities to dance. My second, common law spouse didn’t like dancing. I struggled to establish a career, first as a sculptor, then as a scenic designer for theatre. I envied the actors the release of their movement warmups, but I felt inhibited, and conformed to the expectations of the male dominated art and theatre world of the 80s.

In the 90s I began dancing again with my third spouse and second wife, who loved to dance and had danced with a Catalan folkloric troupe when she was younger. We decided to take ballroom dancing classes together. It almost broke up our marriage. In retrospect, maybe it marked the beginning of the lack of communication that led to our eventual separation. I have a good sense of rhythm, but she was good at learning the steps, and it seemed everything I did was wrong. Yet when I danced with other partners it went well. The instructor danced with her, and commented that she should follow, but she denied that she was leading. I felt that she was trying to prove that dancing was something she could do better. This put a damper on my dancing for a long time.

Many years later, having difficulties learning swing dance a from a friend, he suggested I try the role of follow. With him leading, all of a sudden it began to work for me. Later, I took a queer ballroom dance course, and insisted on the role of follow. I found I was making progress, but the class only lasted one season. Even in that queer setting it was hard to find partners to lead with me. Regular ballroom classes would have been impossible. Now that I live as a woman, and I’m not so easily read as trans, I might have more luck.

At 49 aging and death were on my mind. My mother had advanced Alzheimer’s and I had been her primary caregiver for the previous three years. I was unhappy. I had left my career as an unconventional theatre consultant in the high stress, macho world of the Barcelona construction industry. I cut my long hair short, stopped wearing leggings and t-shirt dresses and straightened my image. I was offered a full time job as exhibits designer for a Saskatchewan museum, which I accepted in order to pay the mortgage and fund my young family of two kids. I thought my wife and I were getting along, we generally agreed on lifestyle and childrearing, though I was sexually frustrated and communication wasn’t good. My health was deteriorating. I was getting old. I had arthritic pains and my posture was getting worse. I decided that I had to do something about it before I turned 50. I was not interested in going to a gym. I thought about dance, about exercising with music. Not ballroom dancing, but something creative. I had seen advertisements for the “Big Fat Ass” creative dance classes, but when I inquired I was told it was for women only.

My mother’s decline was particularly tragic. Like many intelligent and creative women she had to put her aspirations on hold while she dealt with a husband, and then, as a single mum, raising 3 children on the brink of poverty. She persevered, and took night classes while working full time. In 1968 we moved to the larger city where she went to university and eventually attained her Masters degree and became a sessional lecturer. She began to write when she retired but Alzheimer’s prevented her from continuing. It was painfully clear to me that if I really needed and wanted to dance, it would not be wise to put it off. So at 49, when a friend, a master of the art of mime, needed another person to sign up for movement classes he was offering for our unschooled children, I asked for Friday afternoons off work and joined the class. I did that for 3 months and got used to doing difficult and ridiculous things with my body in the company of young people. A few days before Christmas of 2006 my mother died.

After New Year’s 2006-07, just before my 50th birthday, I began taking classes in Modern Dance, and I also joined an improvisational dance group. My mime instructor began teaching a more serious, adult class. Mime involved rigorous physical training. He drilled us on strength and endurance exercises. He broke down basic movements and made us practice until we could do them perfectly. The very simplest of mime sequences came later, when he thought we were ready to use the correct technique. Many of the moves, the tendus, the pliés, were the same as ballet, only he was more exacting than any ballet instructor I had until many years later. We worked on isolations; moving hips, chest, shoulders and head independently of each other. We did Limon swings, a modern dance technique. Finally he began to teach us the “toc” the core impulse which generates a movement of the body or limbs. We were a tight knit group, mostly men, or in my case, male bodied. We would go out for a beer together after class. The last two years my boyfriend joined the class, and insisted on continuing even after he dumped me. After four years working with my beloved instructor, he had to stop because of illness.

I took Modern Dance classes for a little over 3 years with my first instructor. The other students were young women, less than half my age. It was challenging for me, learning the basic Graham techniques. I was clumsy and felt foolish. My body would not bend right. I could not sit with my legs out and a straight back. I lost my balance. I could barely remember the first moves in a sequence. Hardest was letting myself be ridiculous. How difficult, and liberating it was to lose my dignity. 

Improvisational dance was not much easier. Even though most of the other dancers were around 50 years old, they began our sessions with a fiendishly difficult half hour floor warmup and strength routine they had been taught by Linda Rubin, the founder of the group, 25 years previously. Then we would work on improv exercises, followed by a half hour of improvised dancing. They all had cool moves they had perfected in their years working together. I felt so awkward.

I persevered. I was getting stronger. It took a long time before I felt my dance technique was improving, but I soon noticed it was easier for me to straighten my posture and to sit on the floor without a backrest. When out, or at a party I was more apt to dance if music was playing, even if I felt it might not be socially approved. An occasional visitor began coming to the improv group, a younger woman with dreadlocks by the name of Kyle. She danced with me in a way that gave me more confidence, and I began to learn how to communicate with my body. 

I loved my first performance with the improv group. It was for an outdoor dance and performance event called ”Back Alley Antics”, where the audience moves from one urban setting to another to see various performances. The rest of our group were all women, and at the end of our piece they all lifted me overhead and rolled me out of the performance space. I enjoyed the feminist overtones though I wasn’t pleased to represent the role of the male. The thrill of performance, the camaraderie of the rehearsals and pre-show preparation and the joyous after show glow reminded me of my early figure skating experiences.

I was coming full circle as an artist. My early professional work, site specific sculpture and art happenings, had a performative element. In the intervening years I explored theatrical performance from backstage as a scenic designer and a designer of lighting and costumes. I worked for a decade in Barcelona designing and renovating theatre buildings, and teaching the history and theory of  performance spaces. Back in Canada, I helped translate a script, and collaborated on producing shows with a small company. Around the time of my first dance performance, I brought my mime training into play by accepting a non-speaking role in one of our theatre productions. After decades behind the scenes I was transitioning to being a performer. 

The play was about clowns who perform for the Fuhrer’s birthday in wartime Germany. My character represented an imaginary shadow to the lead clown. All the other actors playing the clowns were clean shaven. The actor playing the Gestapo officer had a moustache. Since my 20s, in an attempt to appear more masculine, I had worn a goatee. I shaved it off. Clean shaven, I decided it was my opportunity wear a dress for Halloween. After applying make-up, I fell in love with the woman I saw in the mirror.

I was feeling more graceful and losing my inhibitions about moving my body. I was feeling myself as feminine, and found occasions to dress as a woman when going out dancing with my boyfriend. Losing my inhibitions was allowing me to explore my female self. From childhood my mother had assured me that feeling both female and male was normal, but without realizing it, in an attempt to succeed in my career and as a father, I had been trying to embody society’s idea of masculinity.

Men can dance, and lose their inhibitions without becoming less masculine. In my case it freed me from pretence, and allowed me to blossom as female. I began to feel more authentic, and able to express myself in ways I had not been able to before. I felt like my humanity had been curtailed, that my full potential had been suppressed. Dance improved the health of my body, focused my mind, and liberated my spirit.

My first Modern class was challenging and fun, but not very rigorous. The first season my wife also attended, a dangerous experiment to add to the other she had encouraged me to try, that of having a boyfriend. I realized that I liked Modern Dance, and she realized she preferred something with more structure. I continued, but after 3 years I needed something more challenging.

I attended a modern dance workshop with a vivacious and inspiring woman who had begun a modern dance company at a studio I frequented. She offered no regular modern dance class, but taught a weekly ballet class she described as “organic ballet”. The level was listed as intermediate, but she encouraged me to try, suggesting I follow as much as I could and to simplify if I had to. I found her so inspiring I decided it would be worth it just to listen to her. I attended ballet with her every weekend for the next two years. She insisted on us trying to feel the joy of dancing, even when doing simple exercises at the barre, and I began to strive for grace in my movement. At her invitation I began joining her company training sessions a couple of days during the week. I got used to struggling my way through the barre exercises, then trying some of the centre routines until I got in the way, then working on the bits I could remember in a corner, or stretching while I watched and listened. It was humbling, but thrilling when she eventually began to comment on my improvement.

The following spring Kyle suggested we perform together for Back Alley Antics 2009, and we began improvising and experimenting. A friend had given me a blue evening gown for a costume party, and I decided to wear it, incorporating the movement limitations and the ambiguity of my male body in a delicate female costume into our piece. Once we began to set the choreography I found Kyle to be a rigorous trainer, and struggled to learn and perfect my part. As the performance approached, I was often in a state of despair and terror as Kyle made last minute changes and improvements. My wife and kids were away in Barcelona, and I was able to dedicate most of my free time when I wasn’t at my day job as an exhibits designer. My boyfriend was feeling neglected, and when the time came for the performance, he missed it. We were a big success with the audience. No-one knew what it was “about” but it stimulated a lot of thought and discussion.

A friend had begun a weekly dance group, called “Dance Church”. The only thing religious about it was that it was held on Sunday mornings. After a couple of years, she moved on, and Kyle and I have kept it going. It is one of our most popular regular dance events. Similar to what is known as “Ecstatic Dance”, we prepare a playlist of music and everyone dances however they feel for an hour and a half. We cover the mirrors with sheets for those who have body issues, and to encourage the dancers to focus on movement, not image. Sometimes we hire a musician who improvises with our dancing. Our regular participants range in ages from their 20s to their 60s, both men and women. Some of us, especially Kyle and I practice Contact Improv some of the time. Others groove in their own individual ways.

In the subsequent couple of years I reached a peak of creativity, while my personal life fell apart. At the museum, my supervisor who 8 years previously had invited me to be the other half of the Exhibits Department was nearing retirement, and became resentful; attempting to stifle my creativity and limit my autonomy. Occasionally he would bully me with frustrated rage. I fought for a leave of absence, hoping a year off might allow for some improvement, and save my sanity. Leave was finally granted as a result of pressure from the director of the museum, and in the early spring of 2010 I was able to dedicate myself to my art, which by this time was mostly dance. I began creating new works with Kyle, was hired to perform with a professional company, and applied for arts grants. I took dance and movement classes and attended Contact Improv workshops in neighbouring cities.

My wife told me our conjugal relations were over, and I eventually bought my own bed. My boyfriend of three years dumped me, afraid of my love for him and the increasingly overt expression of my femininity. I seriously injured my elbow during an ambitious and successful dance performance, from which it took me years to recover. The grant applications were unsuccessful. A trip to Vancouver helped restore my self confidence, and introduced me to Laban based bodywork. I began dressing full time as a woman. I rented a small studio in a 100 year old building downtown. The director of the museum agreed I could return to work from my leave of absence dressing as female, which gave me the strength to be creative despite difficult conditions, such as having my office taken from me by my bitter and increasingly micro-managing supervisor.

Kyle was out of the country, and I prepared and performed my first solo dance piece, and designed what may have been my last professional theatrical production, exploring new interests in video, lighting and movement. Some of the employees at work had begun harassing me, culminating with a gang of them confronting me in the mechanical workshop. I had a breakdown and was referred to a psychiatrist. I unsuccessfully tried anti-anxiety drugs, took time off work, and was eventually fired. Dance classes, and walking helped save me from suicide. I simplified my life, giving up alcohol and driving in order to save money. I found a better therapist, and decided to commit to living as a woman. I changed my name, and began taking hormone replacement therapy. Soon, free of the effects of testosterone, I found a lasting equanimity and began to regain my strength.

In our society, which devalues the arts, dance is the least valued. Dancers earn less than professionals in any of the other cultural fields. Like other devalued work, such as the caring professions, the majority of dancers are women. These are effects of patriarchal oppression. Studies have shown that of all the physical exercises, sports and mental gymnastics that have been tried; dancing, of any kind, is the best prevention for dementia. Dance has been controlled and suppressed, as have women, because those in positions of privilege fear their power. Any change in our society will have to come with a feminist perspective. The most powerful tool of human evolution is culture, and the most revolutionary and liberating cultural force is dance.

Dance saved me. Dancing, I am myself, I am human, I celebrate life. I continue to be sustained by dancing

In my last journal entry about my genital reassignment surgery, foreshadowing this one, I wrote; “Louise (the nurse) spent a long time examining the lower part of my vulva, and when I asked if there was anything wrong, she said everything would heal and be perfect. Later, Dr. Brassard visited, and also spent some time examining the same area, but reassured me that everything was healing well. I noticed he didn’t spend as much time looking at Donna’s (my roommate’s). I tried not to worry.”

Of course, I’ve been worrying. I’ve been finding it hard to put my thoughts into words, to express, even to myself, my experiences with my changing body. I’ve been obsessed with my genitals. They are not how I expected.

Transition does not end with “the surgery”. The popular myth is that genitals mark both sex and gender, and as post-op I am now “really” a woman. As though a Disney fairy would transform me with her magic wand. But did I find myself suddenly more female than before the operation? No. In some ways it’s easier to feel my body as female. With time and healing I’ve become more comfortable as a woman; when dancing, or wearing a light skirt, or changing in the women’s locker room or with my roommate present. I am more relaxed about my gendered appearance and behaviour and not as self-conscious about my small breasts. But the truth is that I have continued to transition as I gradually adjust to the changes in my body. Some of the changes are more or less what I had expected, but most of my experience has been unanticipated, a reality profoundly different from what I thought I was prepared for.

Now I know why the doctors and nurses spent a long time examining the lower part of my vulva. Not until two and a half months had passed after the operation would they admit something was wrong. Those two and a half months were difficult for me. There was still pain, and considerable discomfort; a sensation of stretched flesh, bruising and tenderness. Despite being fit from dancing before the operation it took me much longer to regain my strength than I had anticipated. The lower part of my vulva did not look right. I worried about it more and more. The nurses responded to my weekly reports and photos with less and less convincing reassurances. I became good at taking wide-open beaver selfies.

I’m not surprised the doctors and nurses couldn’t be sure what they were seeing when they first removed the dressings. It wasn’t until the swelling and bruising had subsided, until the clots of blood and stitches had come out, that I was able to see how the inner labia were joined in the middle over my vagina. As I explain in an earlier journal entry, I had chosen the option of not having a full vaginal cavity created. I had a bad feeling when I was reminding the doctor about this choice before the surgery, as though he would disapprove, but he was reassuring, explaining that there would be a small depression, the entrance to the vagina, but no deep canal. I could see no depression. If it was there, it appeared to be covered by the joined labia.

Why would the labia fuse together there? I thought about how they had been made: skin from the scrotum and penis patched together in strips. At first they had to be kept separate with gauze. The first few days after the operation I had a thick, stiff gauze pad on the front. The other gals had the same, but they also had the stint, like a bandaged dildo, to keep the vaginal canal open. I wondered if the operating crew had forgotten to put a bandage between my labia where, in all the 5 other vaginoplasties done in those two days, they had put the stint. I had a consultation with my GP and she thought my speculations were reasonable. I wondered if the surgeon, disappointed at my choice to not have one of his beautifully crafted vaginas, after having done the attractive, curvaceous, 22 year old Kayley before me, unimpressed by my advanced age, lack of desire for breast enhancement and facial surgery, had been a little less attentive when he operated on me.

I sent more pictures, with labels and arrows, and wrote to the clinic, explaining that my pee was obstructed by the adhesion. Dr. Brassard himself called the next day. Could I still dilate? If I couldn’t dilate, my vagina would be reabsorbed. I reminded him that I didn’t have the vaginal cavity, and explained my condition. He was nice, as always, and told me I would have to come back, and have a small corrective surgery, and everything would be fine. When I wrote the administrator, she replied that it would cost $1000. I wrote back, explaining that their oversight had caused the adhesion, and I received a reply from Dr. Brassard. He corrected me: they had made no mistake. It was one of the risks I had assumed when I signed the waivers and if I wasn’t happy I could go to another surgeon. But, he conceded, if I returned I wouldn’t have to pay for my corrective surgery.

While I was worried about the need to return, and have more surgery, and where I was going to get the money for the travel and accommodation in Montreal, it was a huge relief to finally have my fears acknowledged. The hardest part had been the insecurity of having the staff of the Brassard Clinic denying my fears with facile reassurances. My criticism of the clinic, and the whole system of providing surgical services to transgender people, is that it is done for profit, and was designed to maintain the status quo of the gender binary, and in the case of transwomen, to facilitate male sexual privilege and dominance. The shame I felt at admitting my surgery had not provided me with perfect female genitals is not unusual, and keeps transwomen from sharing our experiences, helping to maintain a skewed narrative which, no doubt, improves sales of sexual surgeries.

On the other hand, the care and service provided by the clinic, and the high level of skill and professionalism of the surgeons and their team is exemplary. Despite the under-reported less than satisfactory results, like all the post-op trans people I have talked to I have no regrets about having had the surgery. While I am surprised at how my altered body does not fit my preconceived notions of how it would be, notions of which I was not entirely aware before the surgery, I’m not finding it difficult to accept and embrace the reality.

Healing has been slower than I thought it would be. It took me much longer to to regain sensation than most post op transwomen. This had me worried, because in a small percentage of cases it never completely returns. Once I had confirmed a date for my corrective surgery, my self explorations in the bath became less fraught with anxiety. I realized that the pricking sensation inside the small opening which I had first mistaken for my urethra was in fact my clitoris, which gradually gained more and more sensitivity. Dr. Brassard had confirmed that my idea of stretching and dilating the flesh around the adhesion in an attempt to keep it from moving forward and absorbing more tissues would be a good idea. I also began dilating my little vagina, deeper that I had expected, first with my little finger, then my middle finger, which eventually I was able to introduce as far as the second knuckle.

One afternoon, idly scanning Facebook posts, my attention was caught by one which talked about a music group of young women who were advertising their latest album by posting videos of them singing while masturbating and having orgasms. At first ignoring it, I soon returned and clicked on the link. As promised, the videos showed the women one at a time, clothed, from the waist up, singing while bringing themselves to orgasm. Watching them, I began to feel a flood of sensation in my clitoris. I dug my lubricant out of the bottom of my drawer, and began masturbating. Eventually I felt like I might be close to orgasm, but I gave up, afraid that my vigorous stroking might be damaging my barely healed vulva. It was a sensation both familiar and unlike any I had known before. As the glow gradually subsided I felt intensely happy at the promise of future fulfilment.

The tissues were less swollen. The incisions healed, and the scars became less pronounced. The two main ones on either side became covered with pubic hair. The ones inside the vulva were nearly invisible. I still experienced discomfort, feelings of tightness and tenderness that continued to annoy me as more and more flesh regained sensation. I found I was able to ride my bicycle if I maintained an upright posture, keeping my weigh on my sit bones, and so I raised my handlebars and lowered my seat as much as I could. While I love my 30 year old mountain bike, for once I began to wish I had a woman's cruiser bike. I was dancing regularly, and as my strength returned I agreed to perform. Tight clothes no longer made my groin as uncomfortable, and I felt ecstatic to be able to wear leggings again, finally enjoying the sleek form I had dreamed of. With other dancers I didn’t feel self conscious of the occasional contact of my pubis with their bodies.

As the nerves continue to grow and reconnect, the phantom sensations diminished. By six months after my first surgery I had regained feeling in most of the skin. It became easier to identify the various tissues, on the surface and deeper inside. But, in a grotesque and surprising way, my genitals didn’t feel feminine. They felt like different parts of penis and scrotum. Especially my clitoris. It felt like the tip of my penis. It still felt like it was joined to my body with the shaft of my penis, which felt bent over at the base, under the skin, a little to the right of centre, under my labia and joined to the clitoris. I could feel it under the skin with my fingers. It was sensitive, especially the base, now a stump. At one point I though too much erectile tissue had been left, and been buried under the skin. That first masturbation had been magical, the only real sensation coming from my clitoris itself, the rest vague and imagined. As feeling returned I found the sensations too specific and disturbing to allow me to be able to relax with that kind of touching.


It was a difficult summer. My ex-wife had decided it was time to finalize the divorce, and to get the house ready for sale for the spring of next year, because she and my daughter were moving away to a big city. I agreed to help fund and do much of the work, to be compensated when we sold the house. I enjoyed being outdoors in the garden, and working in the big sunny addition, finishing the last details from the renovations begun over a decade ago. I enjoyed some of the carpentry. I enjoyed seeing my daughter on a more regular basis. I did not enjoy sorting through 22 years of family memorabilia, objects and building materials. There were times when the house, the possessions, and situations with my daughter and her mother were catalysts to tears.

I borrowed money on my Mastercard to finance the work on the house, pay for my trip to Montreal, and see me through the rest of the year. In the fall, after hiring a crew with a digger and two huge garbage trailers to haul away everything I hadn’t been able to sell or give away, I caught a plane to Toronto. I had three days with my son, and dancing at The Move and with the Contact Improvisation jam at Dovercourt House. Then I took the bus to Montreal, where I stayed in the apartment of Terry, my performance artist friend, who was away. Downstairs was Emmanuelle, who was recovering after her own genital reassignment surgery. I revisited the Asclépiade recovery clinic with her, for her one month checkup with one of the surgeons. The following day I returned to the Asclépiade to say hi to Constance, the cook, and then to the Clinic next door where I had my corrective surgery.

First I had a long wait downstairs by the nursing station, where the nurses remembered me from seven months before and said they remembered I was one of the good ones. Then a shorter wait upstairs in the little waiting room I remembered from my previous surgery. I was given gowns and changed in the washroom. Like before, Dr. Brassard came in to talk to me. He took me into a tiny examining room and had a look. Yes, he’d separate the adhesion, but he would not be able to redo the portion of inner labia that had disappeared. He could do something to make the hood of my clitoris more hood-like, but it might restrict the clitoris. I agreed that less was better. Then I asked him about my sensation of feeling the base of my penis and a sense of the shaft under my skin. He told me yes, that was exactly what I was feeling. The clitoris needed to be left connected to the nerves and blood vessels, which had been stripped of most of the erectile tissue, curled around, and placed under the skin of my new pubis. What I was feeling was scar tissue and swelling. Massage would help, he suggested. 

I was led walking into the operating room, in a better position to look around than when I was wheeled in on the gurney for my first visit. It was a corner room, where windows in two walls gave views of sky and autumn trees and let in lots of light. The orderly helped me on to the operating table, installed the stirrups and draped me with a hot blanket. The operating room was cold, and he asked if I’d like another hot blanket, which he brought while the nurses draped me in sterile sheets and readied the banks of surgical lights. The surgeon arrived, and after two needles of local anesthetic, he began to cut, then to stitch. Within 10 minutes it was over, everything was packed away, and I was helped to stand and walk away. Anticlimactic. There was no pain; the part that was cut had no sensation. Three days later I caught the plane home.

Healing has been rapid. I came home with a cold, and some TV series Emmanuelle downloaded for me.  Orange is the New Black and Transparent. I have some books to read and I’ve been writing. This has helped keep me resting for the ten days recovery the doctor had recommended before I begin dance training again. It will be a while before I’m ready to ride my bike. I massage the stump of my penis which feels sore but seems to be changing, softening, blending in. One of these days I’ll try masturbating again. I’ll use a mirror, to help me redraw my mental map of what I’m feeling. I suspect that when I experience my sexuality with someone, who turns me on as a woman, it will also affect how I feel about my genitals. I'm loving my vulva, and my vagina, and clitoris. Miki’s own sweet crazy kiki. I can stop obsessing. It's time to move on…

It has been 5 months since I had my genital surgery in Montreal. I have been writing about it, but been unable to finish, absorbed by my present experiences with my changing body. I feel I need to express this, but it’s all too much, and I’m stuck. I think it’s best if I continue with the narrative. Much of this was written shortly after my return to Saskatoon. I have edited it, taken a few liberties where my memory and notes are unclear and to improve the narrative, and I’ve changed the names of everyone except the doctor. Be warned, some of this is graphic and not for the squeamish. I don’t want to gloss over any information that might be useful for someone considering surgery.

My last entry before the operation, titled “My Montréal Pre-Op Regime”, was posted a few days before I went to the clinic. I filled those days with wonderfully stimulating activities such as dancing with Contact Improvisation groups and attending a feminist performance festival. On Sunday I made a trip to the Old Port of Montréal to find the dock where I had disembarked in 1959 from a steamship as an immigrant child of three years old, with my mother and little brother. It was an emotional recognition of another transition.

 Monday I was scheduled to be taken by limousine to the Brassard Clinic for my pre-op preparations. I  spent the morning packing and cleaning the apartment. I watered plants, and dealt with the rest of my food, leaving my homemade granola and sauerkraut for my absent host. After lunch, Terry came to interview me for her radio show. I had met Terry once, in Saskatoon, before I came to Montreal. When I arrived I found she was a neighbour, and we became friends. She kept me company, talking while waiting for my ride, which had been scheduled for 2 pm. It was late. Terry let me use her cellphone, and I found there was some confusion on the part of the staff at the Brassard Clinic. They had failed to order the promised limousine for me, even after I had twice confirmed the date, place and time. They then sent it to the wrong address.

Terry was sweet, and stayed, chatting until the car finally arrived 40 minutes later. In a rush, I said goodbye to my lovely home on Rue St. Zotique, hid the key in a flowerpot on the front stoop, hugged Terry, and was sped off in the back seat of the powerful black car. Years of imagining and deciding, months of financial commitment and final preparations, weeks of travel, and finally I was in the care of the Clinic. I felt very alone. 

The uncommunicative driver, phone in ear, wearing a black turtleneck under a black suit jacket, looked like a Mafia underling. We headed north, accelerating powerfully, changing lanes and passing through the traffic. I gathered my skirt around my knees, shrinking into the black leather upholstery, feeling a vague sense of alarm as though I were a kidnap victim. We soared across a bridge, turned past a depanneur covered in beer ads, entered a prosperous suburb beside the river, and arrived at the bed and breakfast where I was to spend the night in preparation for the operation.

The driver unloaded my suitcase, and zoomed off leaving me standing on the driveway of a huge house with a stone façade and plastic on the sides, a pastiche of castle and Swiss chalet. The door was locked, but soon Eveline came and let me into a large, spotless entrance room with antique furniture and fake marble tiles. There was some confusion as she had my name as Angela, which is my middle name. She gave me my keys. Before showing me my room, she gave me an enema kit and told me I had to use it at 4 pm the following day.

My room was the third floor attic suite. It was accessed by an ornate steel spiral staircase from an atrium on the second floor at the back of the house. Overwhelmed, I tried to relax in my room with its en suite bathroom, dormer windows and glass patio doors opening onto a little balcony over the atrium. The slanting ceilings made the architecture more interesting. I was apprehensive of the bed with it’s ranks of ruffled pillows, but it was comfortable. Despite the decorative shelves suitable for a palace and jewelled toilet brushes in the bathroom, the toilet paper was industrial single-ply. The coffee bar nestled among the antique furniture in the atrium had a little fridge, and some fancy herbal tea, but no black tea. Only a semblance of a palace. I had brought the last of my teabags and my thermos, and there was enough milk in the fridge, so I was relieved to know I could have my customary tea on the following morning.

Feeling a need to escape, I went for a walk. The neighbourhood was suburban and pretentious, close to the river. I headed into the park opposite, looking for a walking trail, and found a poorly travelled path through the snow, across a little bridge, and through the woods along a creek behind some large buildings. The fresh air felt good, as did resting my eyes on a bit of unkempt nature. Realizing I was on a small island, I crossed a parking lot and came to a road along the main channel of the north branch of the St. Laurence River, and walked as far as a lookout near the bridge I had crossed earlier in the limousine. The water flowed swiftly in the open channel between the snow-covered icy banks, dark under the thinly overcast sky.

The island appeared to be owned by the Catholic Church. The buildings were overseas missionary headquarters and seniors’ residences. The end of one of the buildings had five floors of steel balconies connected by stairs, caged in with steel mesh. On the second floor and on the fourth floor balconies an old man and an old woman paced slowly back and forth, oblivious of each other, and of me.

Later Monday afternoon, waiting for supper, I met the other girls awaiting surgery. There was Renée, a beautiful, tall woman with long blond hair in her 30s, from Wisconsin. She used to be the lead singer in a rock band. Despite her name, she was not French. There was Donna, in her early 50s, living in Ontario, but working in the tar sands of Alberta. Her face was pleasant but a little weathered. She explained that the barely visible scars were from a mine which blew up her armoured troop carrier while she was in the army in Serbia. She had served for 32 years. She was talkative and opinionated. Kayley was 22, blond and beautiful like Renée but not as tall, polite, here with her mother, Nancy. They had driven from Ontario. 

Over supper I learned more about them. Kayley wants to be an aesthetician or a plastic surgery nurse. She’s already had a breast enhancement, but despite having voluptuous D-cup breasts, she’s planning another surgery to make them bigger. Donna noted down the name of Kayley’s surgeon for her own breast augmentation which she plans to do as soon as she saves enough money. Her breasts appeared to be a nice C-cup. I didn’t join the talk about breasts. I don’t like the idea of implants. I’ve grown to accept that mine will never get to the size of even an A-cup. I began taking estrogen for other reasons, but I was thrilled when my breasts began to grow. I think it’s one of the most magical things about this process, feeling the chest growing mammary glands and putting on fat.

Kayley’s mom, Nancy, worries about everything; her car, which is stalling, finding her way in Montreal, her daughter’s operation and hair extensions. There was much talk about hair, and finesteride, the anti-androgen Renée is taking, reputed to reverse male pattern baldness, though neither Donna nor Kayley have male pattern baldness. They all talked a lot and occasionally asked me questions but didn’t wait for my reply. They admired my hair, how it’s so thick. When I tried to tell them my hippie secret, that I don’t wash it, they didn’t seem to hear me.

After supper Renée, whose surgery was scheduled for Tuesday morning, was picked up to go to the hospital. The rest of us gathered in the atrium and sat up talking. Donna considered the $2,200/month pension she’ll get from her army days to be not sufficient to support her lifestyle, even after having paid off her condo. Kayley worried that a $40,000 a year job is not respectable, though she lives at home. I tried to explain to them how I’ve learned to live on $12,000 a year. Nancy was from a military family, like Donna, and so we talked about army life. We also talked about sex after surgery. Kayley said her boyfriend was anxious to get down to business as soon after surgery as possible. Donna told us tales of dating in the tarsands community, her strategies for avoiding sex with the men she went out with, and how a transwoman friend was “wearing out her new vagina before the warranty expired”. I was tired, and feeling anxious, so I went to bed at 10pm. They are nice people, and I enjoyed their company, but I felt so unlike them. Was this the tribe I was going to be part of? Did I want to? Was I falling for gender binary stereotypes? Was I being scammed by a consumer culture trap? My doubts were not as specific as this. I lay in my opulent bed. For the first time I felt an awful sense of fear at the enormity of what I was doing.

In the morning I enjoyed my thermos of tea with milk in my large bedroom with the morning sunshine coming in the windows. I had a shower, then descended my spiral steel staircase to spend a few minutes in the atrium chatting with Donna before going down for breakfast. Somehow everything seemed nicer in the morning. I talked with our hosts, Eveline, the boss, and Guy, her quiet and helpful partner. The dining room and kitchen were in a big, open room, bright with the morning light. I looked at the paintings on the walls and realized they were originals, of Quebec landscapes, in vaguely impressionist styles. I commented on them to Eveline, who proudly pointed out a few that she had painted. Despite our differences, I was beginning to appreciate the company.

After lunch, Donna and I decided to go for a long walk together, an expedition to visit the hospital and the recovery clinic. We strolled in the winter sunshine. Donna shared one anecdote after another. I managed to tell a story or two of my own. We crossed the bridge over the north branch of the St. Laurence, past a large red brick hospital and a prison, and after three quarters of an hour we arrived at l’Asclépiade. The recovery clinic was as I had been told, a big old house next to a park on the shores of the river. I hadn’t realized the clinic had it’s own hospital, a white two-storey building next door, unimposing and reassuring in it’s smallness. I needed to pee before we began the journey back, so we went in, and I introduced myself to James, a friendly and polite man at the reception desk. I had to put on sterile booties over my boots, and used the washroom of one of the pairs of patient rooms. I found out later there were four pairs of rooms, in each corner of the first floor, with two beds in each. Upstairs was the operating theatre. In the basement was storage, and a tunnel connecting with the recovery clinic.

I found the hospital friendly and scrupulously clean, but not sterile, and felt relieved. While Donna and I were looking at the recovery clinic next door, Nancy and Kayley drove up and offered us a lift home. Nancy was anxiously figuring out the route so she could drive it later alone, when she came to visit Kayley. The day was still beautiful, so we refused their offer and walked back. At the bed and breakfast I lay down and tried to nap. I had some moments of sadness, a sort of vague nostalgia. The rest of the afternoon was occupied with my first pre-op enema, our “last supper”, and soon after the taxi arrived to take us back to the hospital.

Kayley and Donna were assigned a room together, and I was given a bed in a room with Renée, already recovering from her surgery. There was another enema kit for me, and a box with a rubber doughnut cushion folded inside. I had been told to blow it up, so I did. Made of thick orange rubber, it looked orthopedic and old fashioned. I tried sitting on it, then left it on top of the little valuables safe, where it sat for the next couple of days. I put my clothes for leaving the hospital in a drawer, sorted out my toiletry and makeup, had some misadventures learning how to lock and unlock my safe, ran cords for my laptop charger, and changed into my pyjamas and the blue silky Chinese print robe I had brought. A nurse came to visit, and my shaved genitals were inspected, and approved. Later one of the nurses found time for us to complete all the admission paperwork. I chatted briefly with Renée when she was awake, but she became more and more distressed with pain and nausea. I put on headphones and listened to music, tried to sleep, and finally, reluctantly, accepted a sleeping pill and slept soundly, only getting up once to pee, until woken by the early morning hospital activity.

No tea, no breakfast. By 7 I had showered with special antiseptic soap, put on the hospital gown and booties, and was waiting, hungry, to see the surgeons. We were informed the operations would begin somewhere between 8am and 12 noon, and finally I was told I would be second of the three, at around 10. I went for a walk around the hospital. Donna was already gone to the operating room, and Kayley was having a shower. I checked Facebook, and wrote a profile post. “I’m feeling calm now. Last night I had butterflies… It has been an amazing journey! I'm ready.”

Around 9:30 an orderly came for me and I was taken upstairs to a small waiting room. I waited. I did some dance stretches. I thought, tried to be present, felt a conflicting sense of calm and excitement. Finally Dr. Brassard came. A compact man with a large head, strong chin, short thick brown hair, suave and handsome. Serious, with a hint of humour, he reassured me that they wouldn’t forget I wanted the operation without the vaginal cavity, and described to me briefly what they were going to do. I forgot all the rest of the questions I was going to ask, and I was left alone again. Soon James came to get me and led me into a large, bright room where people were busy getting supplies from cupboards and shelves and opening packets of instruments. I was helped on to the bed, feet in stirrups, and the IV needle was inserted into my arm. I was wheeled into the operating room. The anesthetist introduced himself, explained he was going to give me an injection, an epidural. I rolled onto my side for the needle, bright lights and bustle all around me, and remember nothing more.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up and James was asking me questions.

I felt clear headed, but disconnected, as though watching through a window. I knew where I was and I marvelled at the speed and co-ordination of the team of attendants who were bustling around me. They were disconnecting and putting away devices and instruments, in a smooth, high speed ballet. I marvelled at how good I felt, the clarity of my awareness that the surgery was over and that I was finally living the future I had dreamed about. It didn’t occur to me I was high on opiates. Soon I was wheeled to the elevator and back to my room.

After the nurse had helped me back into my bed, I began to take stock of my condition. I was paralyzed from the waist down, with no sensation at all. I had tubes coming out of my dressings and bedding; the catheter and a blood drain at my groin, and the IV from my arm. My legs were encased in velcroed-on wrappings, which were hooked up to a pump which inflated them, and then every 30 seconds released the pressure with a gasping noise. Now I understood the sound I had heard coming from Renée’s bed the night before. It was a device to prevent blood from pooling and clotting in the legs. I was able to maneuver the bedside table over my lap, and start up my computer. I checked Facebook. There were a few greetings from friends, one with an image of flowers, Lily of the Valley, which I posted as my timeline banner, and as my screen wallpaper. I updated my status:

The rest of the day I listened to music. I napped in between visits from the nurses to check on my vital signs, give me medication, and change my ice packs. I did gentle stretches with my upper body, and I made efforts to move my legs. Finally I could move my toes, and sensation gradually returned. By late afternoon I could move my legs, and squeeze my sphincter, and so I did gentle Kegel exercises and foot flexions. I was progressing so well, the nurse asked if I would like some water, which I drank slowly as instructed. I had no nausea, so I was offered soda crackers and more water, and took my time happily nibbling and sipping. My restraint and obedience were rewarded, and I was given a supper of toast, yogourt and a banana. In the evening, a nurse and an orderly came to change my panties, which to my surprise they did with a pair of scissors! They inspected and changed some of my dressings, and cleaned some of the blood from my legs and waist. I was then taught how to get out of bed without hurting myself and helped to stand for a minute while they changed the sheets. Then they helped me back onto the bed and tucked me in. I was beginning to feel some pain, mostly a kind of uncomfortable ache, but it didn’t seem too bad. They told me I should be taking more painkillers before it started getting worse. I had been taking only Tylenol, and I held off on the opiates for a while, taking only one, but by 11 I realized I needed more.

I slept between visits from the nurse, taking a few moments to stretch my feet and gently move my legs, and stretch my upper body before dozing again. I could feel the incessant squeeze and release of the leg compresses. I wore my headphones, and played music from my computer, and it helped keep me happy when I was awake and drowned out the sounds of the hospital while I slept.

I woke on Thursday morning feeling uncomfortable, groggy and nauseous. James brought me tea, which made me happier and settled my stomach, and I was able to have some breakfast. I had lost the euphoria of the previous afternoon, and realized it must be the aftereffects of the pain killers I had been given the night before. After breakfast I was cut out of another pair of disposable panties, changed and cleaned up a bit more, then I carefully hiked myself over to the side of the bed, rolled on my side, and performed the single motion swivel and stand I had been taught to get out of bed. I showed the nurse how I was able to organize the transfer of my tubes and bags to the rolling stand, and with her help I went for a little walk. It felt so good! I was able to get back into bed by myself, and after resting and napping, I was feeling much better.

Having passed the test of getting in and out of bed by myself, and dealing with my tubes and bags, I was allowed to get up when I wanted. The staff were particular with rules, and I was happy to let them make decisions for me. I got up before lunchtime to get some tea and took advantage to shuffle around the hospital and visit Donna and Kayley. Renée was gone, taken to the recovery clinic, and had been replaced as my room mate by Ryley, a hilarious trans guy.  I asked him to open the curtains so I could see out, past some junipers to the street. We entertained each other with conversation and banter. It was his third operation at the hospital, his penultimate. He knew all the staff, had brought them presents of candy, and was full of schemes to get extra favours. After Ryley was taken to the operating room, I had a quiet afternoon. More sleep, more walks, internet, music.

Ryley returned, and was groggy. He slept, then began complaining to the staff. He was in pain. He needed a puff on a cigarette, and persuaded me to check if the nurses were vigilant, and if he could go out the back door. He was hungry. A nurse finally gave him an injection of morphine. The orderly gave him some water and juice and crackers. He continued his complaints. A nurse gave him another injection. He was raving, sometimes incomprehensible. He began to vomit. I put on my headphones and turned up the music. Eventually he went to sleep.

I was in pain and I was uncomfortable. Some suggested it was because I had walked so much. They tried a new painkiller on me, Dilaudid, as I didn’t want to repeat the experience of that morning and wake up feeling like a zombie. Synthetic heroin. It took a long time to take effect, so I put on my headphones to block out the night activity and tried to relax. After the second set of pills, the pain was still bad, but I slept more. The third set of pills worked, and I slept soundly to the music of Bach on the classical guitar and woke up to the arrival of the morning nurse, with little pain and feeling rested and happy!

They removed the leg massaging sleeves in the morning and my IV in the afternoon. Ryley was feeling better, and he and the nurses realized he had been given an extra dose of morphine the previous evening by mistake. Many mutual apologies were exchanged. Ryley and I had a fun morning of animated conversation, causing the orderly to close our door after noise complaints. We went for walks. I did gentle tendus and demi-pliés in the sun by the back door. We rested. I had a lovely conversation with Louise, one of the nurses. She explained how she had come to work at the hospital and clinic, and how much she liked it. She pointed out that it was a hospital without sick people, that all the patients were there because we wanted to be, and were grateful of what the hospital was doing for us. One of the orderlies, motherly, cleaning up our room, admitted that she was a transsexual, and had had her operation at the clinic several years before.

I showered and dressed in the clothes I had prepared, a favourite pleated cotton skirt and a soft aqua cotton sweater. I did my hair and makeup, and felt wonderful, but weak. The orderly lifted my suitcase on to my bed, and I packed my pyjama and toiletries, and my computer. Then another orderly from the recovery clinic came. He took my suitcase and computer and in a while he came back with a wheelchair. He was a short, slight man by the name of Sébastien. Later I learned that he too was trans. He wheeled me across the pavement in the bright daylight, ice and snow exciting my senses, up a long ramp, and into the Asclépiade recovery home. I was welcomed by one of the nurses and given a brief tour of the downstairs. I was instructed on the use of the ice machine. Sébastien carried my suitcase up the sunny staircase to my room, and feeling a bit overwhelmed, I followed.

I settled in to the large, sunny double room, choosing the bed opposite a row of south facing windows. I had a cupboard and a dresser with supplies of pads, panties, liquids in bottles, rubber gloves, q-tips, Polysporin ointment and a 1950s style refillable ice pack. On each side of the bed was a small cupboard, and I found a small wooden TV table at the side of my bed that I used for my laptop.The bed was motorized, and the control for the bed positions joined my laptop on the side table where it was often used. The room had an adjoining bathroom, with shower and tub, toilet, sink, shelves piled with supplies and a big west window that looked out over the clinic parking spots into a residential neighbourhood.

Kayley was in the next room, with Renée, who later confided to me that Kayley would have preferred to be with Donna, with whom she had shared a room in the hospital. When Donna came, I offered to switch if she wanted, so she and Kayley could be together, but she said she’d prefer to stay with me. So us older ladies shared one room and the “girls” another. After a few days, Renée, suffering from complications, got tired of Kayley’s complaining, drama, and particularly her incessant, loud cellphone conversations and arguments with her boyfriend. She was moved to a room of her own that opened up when one of the men left.

We were all in a wing of the house, on a lower level than the main house, connected with a sunny atrium where the main staircase descended to the long glassed in porch, and a short set of steps which led to the upper level of the main house, where the other patients had rooms. Those rooms were private, but they had shared bathrooms off the common hall. One bathroom was large, and had an examining table with stirrups in the corner.

At lunch I met the other residents and more of the staff. Nightingale, a tall grey haired woman, went off to have her lunch at a table in the porch because she said she had found the chairs in the dining room too uncomfortable. Jessica, a petite, olive skinned, dark haired woman in her 30s, showed us how to kneel sideways in the chair, or to sit with the chair reversed. The cook, Constance, introduced herself and asked me questions about my diet preferences, promising to feed me well even if I was the only vegetarian, and pointing out what I could eat from the lunch. Constance had an infectious good humour, bantering in French with Jessica and Nightingale and with us English speakers with a charming French accent. A big soft farm girl with a round open face and a warm heart, she fed us well and made us laugh and fear for our stitches. In the week I spent at Asclépiade, I gained 10 pounds! Kayley and Renée came down late for lunch, which continued to be their habit, and we had more pain and mirth as we all tried various sitting postures. I tried sitting on my doughnut cushion and found it uncomfortable, though later I was to find it helpful. I settled for a variation of the sideways kneel, with one leg tucked under. We met Tom who had his major phalloplasty operation on Monday, and who took his lunch on a T.V. tray in the adjoining living room.

That afternoon the nurse examined our dressings and we were given explanations of our self-care regime. There were privacy curtains, but we hardly ever used them. Donna and I became used to seeing each other with legs spread wide, baring all, and having nurses come in to peer at dressings and later our vulvas on a regular basis. Our self-care kept us pretty occupied between meals and sleeping. We were given lists with explanations, and had to measure and record how much we peed and write down all the liquids we consumed. Peeing was different. Our urine bags had been removed, but we still had our catheter tubes hanging out of our dressings, like little penises with plugs on the end. We had to clean the catheter and plug with sterile wipes before and after every time we urinated. Blood and a little urine continued to seep from our dressings, requiring frequent changes of panties, pads and bed pads. I used my regular trips to the ice machine as an excuse to go for walks, making circuits of the house up and down the front and back stairs.

I had received no news from my relatives, except for my son, supportive as always. Cut off by my father, I didn’t expect anything from him. I was feeling abandoned by my sister who wasn’t responding to my requests for a Skype conversation, and not hopeful about my brother who had been uncomfortable and uncommunicative for the past year. That afternoon I received a comment from my brother on my Facebook post of that morning. “Here’s hoping you have a speedy recovery sis.” That was the first time he’d ever called me sister. I cried. I haven’t heard from him since, but that was huge.

That evening after supper I had visitors; Terry and her beautiful androgynous young friend, Emmanuelle. Nightingale also had visitors, and it turned out they were acquainted through the Montréal transgender community, so we all sat together in the porch. I began to feel tired, but stayed on because I was enjoying the company. I overdid it, and had a difficult night, needing Dilaudid in order to sleep.

Saturday I walked less and napped and surfed the internet. I finally had a response from my sister, and we had a long conversation on Skype. Donna was happy for me, knowing that I had been fretting about feeling neglected. Nightingale, not feeling well after having her dressings removed, in discomfort from her stint (the packing inside her vagina) stayed in her room. Knowing I was interested in politics, she sent me a Facebook notification and I spent part of the afternoon watching live coverage of the kettling of Montreal anti-police violence protesters blocks from where I had been staying the previous week. Living in Asclèpiade was like being in a bubble of peace and care, and it was strange to imagine the passions of the real world outside. We had become a family, concerned for one another and cared for by the nurses and staff.

Sunday, the fourth day after the operation, I had my dressings removed. This was done in the late morning, in the bathroom with the examining table, feet in stirrups, by Louise. The dressing was an uncomfortable lump, bigger than any packer, made of layers of stiffened gauze, by this time stained with blood and urine. It was firmly attached to the sides of the pubic area with sturdy sutures which had been pulling at my flesh for several days, so it was a relief when these were cut. Louise delicately removed it, layer by layer, softening it with water. The last bits, inside the folds of my vulva, tangled with blood clots, were left to come off by themselves in the baths I now had to begin taking several times a day. She removed the little bag full of blood and the drainage tube which came out through a little hole at the side of my pubis. The catheter was left in for the time being.

I was handed a mirror, and finally saw my new genitalia, while Louise gently explored and examined the area. It was ghastly. Like one of Dr. Frankenstein’s early experiments, a seemingly random patchwork of different colours and textures of bruised flesh stitched together along raw, scabby incisions. The phrase “chopped liver” came to mind. The bruising in my upper legs and lower stomach had begun to appear a couple of days previous, and by this time was spectacular. When I closed my legs, I did not have the svelte V that I had been looking forward to, the whole area being swollen. I felt rather delicate, a bit horrified, but much more comfortable without the dressings and sutures.

Louise spent a long time examining the lower part of my vulva, and when I asked if there was anything wrong, she said everything would heal and be perfect. Later, Dr. Brassard visited, and also spent some time examining the same area, but reassured me that everything was healing well. I noticed he didn’t spend as much time looking at Donna’s. I tried not to worry.

I wished I had flowers. I had thought about it when I was preparing for my trip, and had almost decided to order myself some flowers to be delivered from a Montréal flower shop, but in the end decided it would be too much expense. Without expecting it, I had hoped that someone, such as my siblings who could afford it, would arrange to have flowers delivered. Or my visitors. One mentioned that she had wanted to, but in the end had not found a flower shop on her way. She was a dance friend from Alberta, also visiting Montréal, who came on Sunday. It was nice to have her visit. The virtual Lilies of the Valley a friend had sent the day after my operation were a consolation every time I opened my computer.

In the afternoon the nurse returned to examine our vulvas and explain the next phase of our self-care regime. We were encouraged to keep our genitals uncovered, and our legs apart to get lots of air. We had to have a soak in the bath, or sitz bath three times a day. The bath had to be cleaned and disinfected, this was done by the staff, but we were given instructions on how to do it at home. After the bath, we had to air dry, then apply Polysporin to the main front incisions using a precise technique to get the right amount in the right place in the most sanitary way possible. Then we could dress with maxi-pads and disposable panties if we wished to get up.

I began to have bowel movements. We had been taking laxatives, and there was prune juice in the fridge and prunes on the counter, which I had been having as advised. We were warned against trying to push, but I had no need to push. I had some awkward problems while peeing and having my sitz bath that caused me some inconvenient clean-ups and sanitization, but I was spared the discomfort and difficulties of constipation that some of the others experienced.

Constance had made a special dish for supper; real French Canadian poutine, with home made french fries and gravy and fresh cheese curd. She even made a special vegetarian gravy for me. Tom was not feeling well, he had a slight infection on his thigh where his skin graft had been taken, and he had his supper in his room. Jessica had also had a complication, her urethra was stuck on a blood clot and couldn’t be removed. It was a high spirited time for the rest of us; Kayley getting French lessons from Constance and trying out absurd phrases, and Ryley cracking jokes. There was a new man, from Vancouver, originally from Africa, scheduled for his surgery the next morning, a little subdued and overwhelmed by our antics. After supper I helped Ryley clear the table, despite the protests of the hard working staff, who were in fact grateful. It was a habit I had picked up from him, and continued doing it until I left.  That evening we had a “party”; a few of us sat up and watched movies in the living room, ate chips and drank pop, kind of a goodbye for Ryley, who was leaving the following day. 

That night there was a full moon. It shone in through the south facing bedroom window opposite my bed. I let the moonlight shine on my vulva, feeling that it might also be good for it.

On Monday I went for my first walk outside, with Ryley. The sun felt bright, and the cold crisp air was invigorating. I felt great, but walked carefully on the icy path. We went to the clinic next door, and visited with the nurses and staff.

Renée had a serious complication. Her urethra had swollen up after the removal of her catheter the the day before, and she had to have the catheter replaced. It would stay in for another week, and she would have it removed by her doctor when she returned home. My catheter was removed without problems. It was a relief not to have the little plastic penis tucked into the waistband of my panties, and getting in the way of cleaning and dressing. However, peeing became messy, a random spray rather than a stream. I found I was also having a problem with incontinence. I was having to urinate often, and when I thought I was holding it, I would discover I was in fact leaking. I took to wearing adult diapers for meals and walks, and began to worry, but this problem diminished after a few days, and eventually went away.

Donna and Kayley had their stints removed from their vaginas, a process that was a bit painful and uncomfortable, they told me, but a great relief. As I had not had the full vaginal cavity created, I did not need this procedure. What was even better was that I didn’t have to dilate. The other 5 gals were all now occupied dilating five time a day, a process that took them up to an hour, including all the douching and cleaning of the dilators. So except for my roommate Donna I didn’t see as much of them, and spent more time with the men and on my own.

In the evening Terry came to visit, and I also had a Skype meeting with the Transgender Awareness Week planning committee in Saskatchewan. Terry was used to me having to split my attention, including her in the meeting, this being the third time one of our visits had coincided with a Skype meeting. As a transactivist herself, I think she found it interesting.

I spent a lot of time the next day working on the final stages of the Saskatchewan Time 4 Rights campaign, and getting ready for Transgender Awareness Week. I also began to think about the coming battle to get better health care for trans* folk in Saskatchewan. I had been struck by the fact that of the 10 people who had genital surgery at the clinic the past week, and all the ones I had met so far from my second week, only two of us did not have full funding from our provincial health plans. Renée, who was from the States, and myself, from Saskatchewan. I could have applied for some refund from Sask Health, a maximum of 15% or 30% depending on the interpretation of the guidelines, but I had chosen to fund it myself to avoid the three year wait and all the red tape and extra travel expenses for assessment at CAMH in Toronto. However all the others, from Québec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia were getting 100% paid directly by their provincial health plans. The guy from Alberta was even getting his travel costs paid.

I had another visitor, a beautiful androgynous genderqueer person from Saskatoon, a friend of my son’s. A crossdresser and drag queen, they had been impressed by my being out and proud in Saskatoon, and felt they had to get to know me. They were interested in the clinic and my surgery, obviously gender curious, if not transgender. For someone who had come to the Brassard Clinic expecting to be alone, I was finding myself blessed with companions and visitors.

My last day, a week after my surgery, began as usual with a freshly filled icepack and a mug of hot milky tea in bed. It had been a long and difficult night, but as usual I felt better after my tea and breakfast. I was still taking two Tylenol tablets four times a day, antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory twice a day, and a couple of Dilaudid to get through the night. Generally I was not bothered by pain, unlike some of the others. Mostly mild, and only occasionally severe discomfort. I had continued to exercise, mostly walking and gentle stretches, more than some thought was advisable, but apart from Ryley, whose operation wasn’t as invasive, I was the one with the least pain and complications, and in the best spirits. Of course it also helped not having the vaginal cavity.

There were goodbyes. Dean left in the morning, and Renée left with her father later in the day. I spent some time taking pictures inside the Asclépiade. I went outside to the corner and across the street from the clinic, and then walked around the outside of the Asclépiade to see the other side, and the view of the park and the river.

I spent the afternoon on the internet, engaged with developments in Saskatchewan. I was especially happy to read that the University of Saskatchewan had passed a policy revision to include gender expression, gender identity and two-spirit identity in their Discrimination Policy. The efforts of the committee of which I had been a part the previous fall had paid off! There was also good media coverage of our Time 4 Rights campaign to include gender expression and gender identity in the Saskatchewan Code of Human Rights.

That evening Terry and Emmanuelle came to visit me again. We sat and talked on the sofas in the living room. Terry, in her polyamorous way, put her arm around me, and I snuggled up to her as we talked with Emmanuelle about her hopes and fears about having surgery someday at the clinic.

I was not happy to be leaving on Friday. I had experienced a life change, in intimate and intense company. I would miss my sisters and brothers who had been sharing my journey through surgery and recovery. The skilled and caring staff at the Brassard Clinic and the Asclépiade had become friends.

Getting my ice from the ice machine in the porch in the early morning I began to cry. The last time! There were more tears when I said my goodbyes. I was crying as my suitcase and computer were loaded into the limousine, and as I was driven off on the long, sad journey to the Montreal Airport, past landmarks reminding me of my recent visit, and previous years, decades ago.

I had chosen a mid-morning flight, with a generous three hour stopover in Toronto for a relaxed change of planes, arriving in Saskatoon in the late afternoon. I had requested wheelchair service, as recommended by the clinic, which turned out to be a great help. I took the maximum dose of all my painkillers all day, and was high on the opiates, with little discomfort. I also had the unbelievable luck, on both planes, that they were not full, and I had three seats to myself. The only problem was that my suitcase didn’t arrive in Saskatoon. It came a few days later. I had my basic hygienic supplies and medications in my carry on bag, so I took a taxi home, was reunited with our cat, and went to bed.

I'm very proud of my son. Apart from being a wonderful young man, and my only son (he has a sister, of whom I'm also very proud), he's my greatest ally. From my earliest times of gender confusion and right through my whole transition, he's remained steadfast in his acceptance and love. My daughter has also remained supportive, but I think not so comfortable. This makes sense. She's four years younger than her brother, and I was exploring my femininity as she was going through puberty.

Transition can be hard for families. In my case it has been hard for my dad, who won't speak to me, and to my siblings. It was difficult for the mother of our children. Though we had problems from before, it was my transition which proved the catalyst for her asking for a separation. We remain on reasonable terms, and perhaps one day we might return to calling ourselves friends.

In the summer of 2013 I started a radio show on a community radio station, with gender diversity as its theme. I had great plans, but I think I was too ambitious for my collaborators. A new person who joined us exacerbated our difficulties, leaving me feeling attacked and unsupported, and after only 5 episodes, I retired from the show. I did shows featuring different trans* identities, local health professionals, and a transgender music group. I had begun preparing for shows about two spirit identities, about sex, and about the families of transgender people. For my show about families I interviewed my son. I had planned to make the family interviews anonymous, so I interviewed him as though I were a third person, asking him about his parent. I recently came across the interview, and I thought it was too good to let it go unheard. He suggested I post it in my online journal. It's 16 minutes long. I invite you to listen to our interview:

As part of the 3rd annual Saskatchewan Trans* Awareness Week activities, I travelled to Regina to present a piece I had written for the Trans* Monologues. I was one of several people presenting, both trans* and allies. I had presented a piece the previous year, though I couldn't attend in person and it was beautifully read by a friend on my behalf. It was called "Joy Is My Guide". I find that transgender people are often talented and thoughtful individuals, who feel our voices have been ignored, and so when we get a captive audience, we tend to go on. The monologues are supposed to be around 5 minutes; this year mine was 9 minutes. It's common for us to share a personal narrative, which is what I did last year, though I tried to counter the tendency to dwell on the negative aspects of my experience. This year, I felt the need to try and express some more critical thoughts, touching on issues that concern me in transactivism and its relationship with the queer community and with feminism, issues I hope to explore in greater depth in future writing. Here's the text of my presentation:

"On Empathy and Responsibility"

"I just want to be accepted and loved for who I am, like anyone else. It shouldn’t matter what gender I am. In the same way that it shouldn’t matter how old I am, or the colour of my skin, or my religion, or my economic status, or my political beliefs, or any of the other ways people can be oppressed.

Canada used to be known as a tolerant nation, but in the same way as we were admired as peacekeepers, in recent years we have been slipping. Perhaps many of us have become too complacent, too invested in maintaining our wealth in the face of the disturbing deterioration of the health of our world. To be tolerant requires empathy. The ability to imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to try to understand, and then to act on that understanding.

Us trans people want others to have empathy for us, to tolerate our differences, and to give us the same opportunities as anyone else. This seems to be an unusually difficult thing to achieve, as we who have been struggling to get equal protection from discrimination under the Saskatchewan Code of Human Rights have found. It’s unfair. We get discriminated against in ways that are now viewed as unacceptable for other groups. Employers discriminate against us in ways that they used to discriminate against women. We’re challenged for using public washrooms, like the ‘whites only’ policies of the past. Our access to health care is restricted as it used to be for the economically disadvantaged. We feel uniquely deserving of consideration.

I remember a discussion about health care with a group of transgender people where one woman said that she needed Sask Health to pay for her to have breast enhancement. Her breasts were the size of an average woman’s. When I pointed out that other women didn’t get coverage for this service, she insisted that we should be entitled, because we are trans. We have to be careful what we ask for, or other people will think we only care about ourselves.

I feel empathy is a two way street. If I want empathy from others, I must have empathy for them as well. And I must have perspective. Many in our society still think it’s alright to discriminate against transgender people, in ways they would no longer dream of doing against other groups. Yet women and some racial and ethnic groups are still denied equal opportunities and pay in employment. We’re not the only ones. If we want others to respect us, and to be responsible in the ways they behave toward us, we must also be responsible.

When I tried to live as a man, I thought I was a very empathetic and responsible person. Since coming out as female, and allowing parts of my character that had been suppressed to blossom, I have realized that unknown to me at the time, my behaviour as a man was not always as kind as I believed. It’s very easy to see defects in others and be unable to see them in yourself. I’ve become more social, more interested in people, and more prone to talk about what I see and feel. Writing my thoughts down in public spaces, such as the internet, I’ve become increasingly aware of the responsibility that I have to express myself very clearly, and to be empathetic about how my words might be perceived by others.

My increased awareness has not come about by superior female empathetic mental powers, but by making stupid blunders. For example, I recently had surgery at the Brassard Clinic in Montreal. The first night waiting for my surgery I shared a room with a wonderful woman who had just had her surgery, and was having a difficult time with pain and nausea. The next day, after my surgery, she was moved to the recovery clinic, and a hilariously vivacious trans man took her place. We had so much fun together and even got in trouble for talking too much. I posted about it in my Facebook status, and concluded: “The girl was nice, but she was suffering, so it's a good change to have someone more upbeat as a roomie.” However I forgot that we had become Facebook friends. She commented on my post, “Sorry I was not more upbeat. Now that I am at the recovery centre they are giving me the right level of medication and now that I feel very little pain as a result, I feel much happier.” I felt awful. Why didn’t I think about her, and what she might feel before I posted? When I went to the recovery clinic and saw her I apologized, and she said it was OK, but I could see she had been hurt.

A recent incident in Saskatoon showed how someone who was sure they were right, and who had little empathy for people who didn’t agree with him caused great damage within the queer community. The organizer of a drag show, a fundraiser for good queer causes, titled the event using a word considered by many to be a slur and term of abuse. He justified the choice on the basis of freedom of artistic expression. He felt he could use it as a term reclaimed by many in the drag community. He called his show “Trailer Trash Trannies", and was publicly scornful of those who challenged his disrespect.He and his supporters, counting on the disempowerment of transgender people in our society, had to back down when trans* activists from all over the country rallied, and the organizers were served with notice of legal action.

In the triumph of victory some in the trans* community showed little empathy for this person, a person who at heart is a supporter of transgender people, and may even feel himself, as a drag performer, to be in some degree transgender. It’s very easy to be critical of others. Yet, in our struggle for acceptance I think we have a responsibility to be empathetic.

I have been a feminist since my youth, and now that I have come out as a woman feminism has become even more important to me. In a recent initiative to start a dialogue between feminists and trans women, it was requested that I contact a Saskatchewan feminist group of which I am a member, but one trans person responded immediately to say we should keep out the TERFs. This sounded like a disrespectful way to refer to feminists who might wish to have dialogue with us. Many feminists are concerned about how some male-to-female transgender people are unaware of how they continue to employ male privilege and make other women uncomfortable. Many feminists are also uncomfortable about how the very definition of women is broken down, and their struggle is weakened if people who have lived most of their lives as men, and have male biology can simply claim to be women and have that claim legally recognized. Women who were identified as such from birth because of their biology are not allowed by patriarchal society to escape their oppression so simply.

Some feminists consider the term TERF to be a derogatory term. Even though TERF, which stands for Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists is a term coined by radical feminists in 2008, not all radical feminists, nor those who find some of their arguments persuasive are such hurtful haters of transwomen as many of those who embrace the term. So I think we have to be careful, if we want to enter into respectful dialogue, how we label people.

Just as we who are trans* don’t like others deciding how we should be labelled, we should respect the wishes of others. Even when it appears to us misguided or ignorant. A good case is the use of the word cis. Cis is a very useful term in the context of gender studies, trans activism and transfeminism. It is a respectful shorthand to refer to people who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. Gender ‘normal’ people, in common usage. However the use of the word ‘normal’ implies that we who are different, are not normal, that we’re some kind of freaks. Hence the word cis. However, in my encounters with radical feminists, I’ve found that many of them consider ‘cis’ to be objectionable. And it’s true that some transactivists direct the term at individuals in a way that could be considered a slur, in the same way as the term TERF is sometimes used. While it’s easy to scoff at such a misunderstanding of a useful word, I think that here, too, we should have empathy, and be respectful. We should be responsible in our use of language and never label people with terms to which they might object, without their permission.

In the words of what I think is one of the greatest Christian sayings, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In our struggle for acceptance and equality we have a responsibility to remember that every person has their own personal struggle, and that in a truly just society no one can be left out."

I thought I was going to have lots of time during my recovery and recuperation to write my post about the clinic, and to finish another couple of posts I have begun. However, I was kept occupied at the hospital and convalescence home by resting and listening to music, self care and socializing with my fellow patients and my lovely visitors. I also spent a significant amount of my time working, from my bed, on organizing for Saskatchewan's 3rd annual Trans* Awareness Week, and for our Time 4 Rights campaign. Once home and settled back in Saskatoon, the organizing has intensified. I was asked by our chief organizer, Joe Wickenhauser, if I could contribute a video to encourage participation in the events we were planning, and so I did. Here it is:

Then, yesterday we had an early kick off to Trans* Awareness Week with an historic meeting to discuss trans human rights. The strong panel, organized and chaired by the outstanding Joe Wickenhauser included David Arnot, Chief Commissioner for the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, two members of the Legislature; Jennifer Campeau Sask Party MLA and David Forbes, NDP MLA, the outspoken Alex Wilson professor at the UofS and expert on Two Spirit identity, and transman Jai Richards Mental Health Therapist and ex-Director of the ACC.

I counted over 50 people jammed into the Avenue Community Centre. More than a dozen young people, half a dozen from the media, several trans people, political aides, educators and allies were in attendance. Joe began by acknowledging Treaty 6 Territory, and later Alex Wilson reminded us that for millennia before the coming of the white settlers, the First Nations peoples had honoured their gender variant two spirit people. Judge Arnot tried to dominate the conversation and made an increasingly unconvincing case for leaving the Saskatchewan Code of Human Rights as it is. He discredited himself with his attempts to have the last word after the uncompromising Alex Wilson made a devastating critique of the colonial system of systemic violence perpetuated by white male supremacists. Judge Arnot's attempts to claim privilege were thwarted by the polite but firm Joe with the assistance of the audience showing their support with their applause. Yet, on the whole the atmosphere was one of engagement and respect. David Forbes reviewed the efforts of the NDP to amend the Human Rights Code, and challenged some of Arnot's assertions. Jai Richards made some excellent points about the need to educate the medical professionals of the province, and review the treatment of the transgender community by Sask Health, as well as pointing out the need for reform in the way gender change is accommodated for identity documents.

It's going to be a little while before I finish the other posts I have begun writing. This morning I did a radio interview for CBC Saskatchewan Weekend. Now I have speeches to prepare, a presentation to write for the Trans Monologues in Regina next Friday, and of course post-surgery self-care. Today I also want to make another batch of sauerkraut and kimchi; one day I'll write about how I've learned to transition vegetables into old-style pickles using traditional natural fermentation techniques. Please keep checking my online journal, there's more to come!

Now, on the eve of sexual reassignment surgery, there’s so many things I want to talk about! I’m in Montreal, very happily settled in the little house of a friend I know only through Facebook, who is in New Orleans celebrating Mardi Gras. It’s a ground floor flat, a shambolic porch tacked on to a two-storey apartment building, idiosyncratically decorated with scrounged objects. I’m in his sunny studio which looks out on a residential street in the neighbourhood known as ‘Little Italy’. Here for ten days, in less than a week I’ll be in a Montreal hospital, recovering from surgery. Yesterday I went for hot chocolate on Rue Ste. Catherine with a friend I know from Saskatoon who is working here in the film industry, and she asked if I’m afraid. No, I’m excited! The decision is made, the money is paid, on Monday next a taxi will come and pick me up… it’s rather like the feeling of peace and anticipation that used to come over me when I flew regularly between Barcelona and Saskatoon, when I had passed through airport security and I no longer had to make decisions. That contemplative, creative, no man’s land of ‘in transit’.

After my exciting, exhausting week in Toronto I’m having a quiet, restful time. My pre-surgery preparation. Very little tourism. The weather’s cold so far, and I feel I already know Montreal quite well, unlike Toronto, though I can see it’s changed. This house is so lovely! I feel peaceful and full of joy. I’m spending most of my day here, going out only to shop, to visit friends, and to dance. I have neighbours! I had lunch at their apartment on my second day, and one came over yesterday for tea. They’re a lovely couple of artists, also trans activists. I’ve invited them over for supper tomorrow.

My pre-op regime begins with lots of sleep. The insomnia I experienced in the last few weeks, before leaving Saskatoon, and in Toronto, is gone, and I’ve been sleeping eight hours every night. I’ve also been having a late afternoon nap in the last rays of the sun as it swings round to the other side of the apartment and shines in on my bed. I’ve taken some time for grooming, to manicure, and to keep the rooms clean and tidy. Nesting.

I went to the Jean Talon Market and tried out my limited French while buying lots of inexpensive, mouth watering food. Then I made a huge batch of kimchi, way more than I need, but it felt very satisfying. It should be ready to sample by tomorrow. Inspired by a good deal on maple syrup, I made maple and walnut granola. I bought local apples and vegetables, and some exotic fruit.

I begin my days, as is my habit, in bed with a thermos of strong milky tea, and Facebook. Then I put on music, and dance while I prepare breakfast in the sunny kitchen. First fruit; grapefruit, and a couple of mornings papaya with lime. Then two farm eggs on bread; ‘pain de nois’ from a local bakery. I sit and think, about the day, about what I’m planning to write. Then I have a bowl of granola with bananas, blackberries, yogourt, milk and maple syrup. A bit more dancing and tidying, then a visit to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and I get to work in the studio.

Work these days mostly involves organizing for the Time 4 Rights campaign to get gender expression and gender identity included as acceptable grounds to file a complaint under the Saskatchewan Code of Human Rights. That, and writing for my online journal, as I am right now. I take breaks to record music from my absent host’s CD collection, and to dance, to shovel snow off the step and breathe the crisp morning air, and to make more tea and prepare a snack of nuts and dried fruit.

When I begin to feel stiff from writing, and dancing doesn’t seem to help, I take a break to do my gentle stretch routine, and some core strength exercises. I try to focus on my pelvis, the joints and the internal muscles, and do some kegels.  Around 2pm, I begin to prepare my lunch. I make a large, cooked meal. Potatoes, or pasta, or chickpeas with garlic or onions, chard or broccoli, beets, sauerkraut and protein such as feta cheese or canned mackerel. Stuffed, I turn on the light and clean up the kitchen in the afternoon twilight, and then lie down for my nap.

After a half hour or an hour’s sleep, I get up and if I’m going out dancing, I shower. I have a light supper, maybe grilled cheese and sauerkraut on bread, or some local cheese slices, with a salad of raw vegetables and an apple. I’m taking dance lessons every second day; contact improv dance, often followed by a contact improv jam. I could dance more. Here, as in Toronto, there’s lots on offer. I rather exhausted myself in Toronto, and now I’m trying to build up my strength. Dancing has been great. The contact dance community, like in most places, is very welcoming. Many ages and genders. The lessons are in French. I listen carefully, relax, watch the others, and seem to understand most of what I need.

I love the walk through the dark streets, often snowing this week, and the ride on the metro. I have a chip card which I touch to the turnstile, and it lets me pass. I like to watch the people on the platform and on the train. It’s a short walk from the metro to my house. The porch light, with its little bird ornament, welcomes me home. I pour maple syrup into a bowl of yogourt for my bedtime snack. I brush my teeth, and then snuggle under the quilt to warm up the bed, and go to sleep early.

The days are passing quickly. Soon this little in between time will be over. What a lovely transition.

My first entry in this series on my bureaucratic hobby was meant to be a meditation on moving along and dealing with the complications of the world one thing at a time. Prior to my gender transition I had been growing more and more stressed about getting things done, despairing at achieving my artistic goals, impatient with the time dedicated to my salaried job as a designer in a museum, and anxious about not being able to spend as much time with family as I saw the years slipping by. In my teens and young adulthood I was more relaxed, though my working method tended to involve intense bouts of getting things done, working as many hours as was needed and more, often fuelled by marihuana. My brother used to say I had a Rastafarian work ethic. So my post HRT life has been a big change for me. Having let go of striving for a career, becoming testosterone, pot and alcohol free and prioritizing my health, my friends and family, I have enjoyed an equanimity I was never able to achieve before.

It’s this equanimity that has allowed me to learn to appreciate life, even when dealing with bureaucracy. I find I can work gently and sporadically without worrying about achieving goals. But my tale of bureaucratic dealings has grown beyond being an illustration of this principle, and has itself become a huge task, that of describing some aspects of my gender transition during the last two and a half years. So, at the risk of being boring, I’ll continue to beaver away at this task, in the hope that some of my readers will find year two and the beginning of year three of my bureaucratic progress interesting in themselves.

In the previous post of this series I ended with the beginning of 2013, in a new home, sick in bed with an infection and a bad cold, which lasted for several weeks. Having finally had the orchiectomy operation, I had achieved a milestone in the medical part of my transition, though I did schedule an appointment with my endocrinologist in order to readjust my hormone levels, having lost my “little testosterone factories” as a friend put it. In the fall of 2012 I had, in addition to making enquiries about the Adam’s apple surgery, tried to get accepted for genital and facial surgery with the Brassard Clinic in Montreal, and asked my psychiatrist to apply for me to be assessed by the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto so I could get genital surgery partly subsidized by Sask Health. I was turned down by the Brassard Clinic because I hadn’t been taking HRT for long enough, and early in February I asked my psychiatrist to check with CAMH, and found out they hadn’t received my application, so during the spring of 2013 I made several reminders until my application was finally acknowledged. In August they finally sent me a letter saying I had been placed on a waiting list, 9 months after I had first applied. The approximate time I would have to wait was 14 months. I did send them a letter asking if my wait could be dated from when I had first applied, a year and a half before, but never received a response.

I had heard that with the right doctor’s letters, some government agencies would allow one to change the gender on official identification after having had the orchiectomy. So I began to investigate that process. I asked my doctors to prepare letters. After several inquiries I was told that in order to change the gender marker on my driver’s license, my health card, my passport and with Service Canada, I would need to have my birth certificate changed in addition to the doctors’ letters. However, I was born in South Africa, and this proved to be difficult. I did write to the South African Embassy, but my request was never acknowledged. So, returning to the previous government agencies, I was told that if I couldn’t get my birth certificate updated, they would accept an updated citizenship card.

In early January 2013 I applied for a new citizenship card, using the information I had been given by Agent Wilder the previous summer. I had some questions as the application form was not for a new citizenship card, but for a new landed immigrant card. That was the one he had told me to use, as it was the only one that had a section for change of gender. There was no information on the website, and I tried phoning the one national information number during several weeks while I got photos, prepared the various letters and photocopies and got everything notarized. As previously, my call was usually cut off, the few times I got on the automated waiting cue, I wasn’t able to wait the hours it seemed to require. So I finally altered the application, wrote a covering letter, included Mr. Wilder’s fax with the instructions he had given me, and mailed it all off.

In the meantime, my driver’s licence was coming due, so I tried approaching license issuing offices, phoning information numbers, and sending e-mails, explaining that I had the doctor’s letters, but couldn’t get my birth certificate and that there were difficulties with Immigration Canada. Simultaneously I did the same with Sask Health. Finally a clerk at the driver’s licence issuing office proved helpful, and made phone calls to various departments, who asked for more information and copies of my doctor’s letters, and she faxed it all for me. A supervisor at head office took an interest, and after she made some unsuccessful inquiries with Citizenship Canada, decided to issue me my driver’s licence with the correct gender, on the condition that I send a copy to her when I finally did receive my new citizenship card. Within a week my new driver’s license arrived, an event which gave me huge satisfaction. 

Apparently during this time someone at Sask Health had been working on the information I had sent to them. I had sent an e-mail to a supervisor, as I had to the motor licensing office, pointing out that their requirements probably needed to be revisited, considering that in Ontario everything had been changed after a successful challenge had been brought through the Human Rights Commission, arguing that the requirements, particularly those specifying the need for surgeries involving sterilization, were a violation. After a few weeks, without anyone having contacted me, Sask Health also sent me a new card with the ‘F’ for female! Two pieces of ID. A real milestone. So my feeling is that in both institutions some supervisors had meetings and perhaps consulted lawyers, and decided to quietly issue me my ID. I hope they are continuing with consultations to make some changes to their procedures.

In the meantime, not just satisfied with my own personal gains, I became involved with an initiative of Mikayla Schultz of TransSask Services in Regina. She had created a petition to ask the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission to include gender expression and gender identity as prohibited grounds under the Sask. Human Rights Code. When I had first been wondering about my seemingly inexplicable need to express myself as female, in 2010, I had seen mention in the news about an initiative to include gender expression and identity as grounds in the federal Canadian Human Rights Code; private member’s Bill 389 put forward by NDP Bill Siksay. The bill was finally passed by parliament, but before it could go through the Senate, the legislature was prorogued by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and all bills died. I remember thinking that surely in Canada we are protected against discrimination even if it isn’t specifically mentioned. The feeling of growing public acceptance helped give me courage when I made the decision to begin presenting full time as female at work early in 2011. Later that year, when I went to seek help from the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission because of harassment and bullying at work, and later firing from my ‘permanent’ job, they told me I had to file under one of the specified ‘grounds’ in the Code, such as discrimination based on Sex, or Sexual Orientation, or Illness, or Race etc. My harassment was clearly based on gender expression. I hadn’t at the time changed my sex, nor revealed any new information to my fellow employees about my sexual orientation, so I had no evidence to support a complaint under the existing categories. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission told me that therefore I could not submit a complaint.

I helped collect many signatures on the petition over the spring and summer of 2013. I helped to organize a demonstration in Saskatoon to protest the refusal of service to a young transwoman, Rohit Singh, by a local bridal shop, Jenny’s Bridal. Many signatures were collected on the petition, and much public awareness resulted from the media coverage of the protest. Rohit wanted to submit a complaint to the provincial Human Rights Commission, and I helped her with that process through the Summer, finding out in the process that thought the law had not changed, a new bureaucratic interpretation had come into effect and her complaint was accepted under the grounds of sex. She decided not to take the claim to the courts, because of the expense and time involved, and was pressured by the Commission into a mediated settlement. I accompanied her through the process and the media interviews, and she accepted an apology from the Bridal Shop and a financial contribution to the Avenue Community Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity (ACC) and Aids Saskatoon as settlement. It unfortunately didn’t set any legal precedent, being merely a mediated agreement. This made our arguments for the inclusion of the grounds of gender expression and gender identity much more difficult. Because the law still had not changed, only an interpretation which could be subject to the whims of appointed officials and the persuasion of expensive lawyers, we continued our campaign.

In the summer of 2013 I finally received a package from Citizenship Canada. They were returning my application, with a note indicating that I had used the wrong application form. No information about what might be the right one, or what I should do, nor any explanation of why they disagreed with the written advice their Agent Wilder had given me. It, of course, remained impossible to contact them. What to do?

Around that time I worked for three days as camera operator for the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities annual convention, a conservative ‘love fest’. I had the Premier and his Sask Party cabinet in my camera for hours Federal MP Kelly Block also spoke. She seemed intelligent and approachable, and I had noted that her constituency office was only blocks from my house. Why not ask her for help? Her executive assistant proved to be very kind and businesslike, and after an interview, she agreed to help me obtain information from Citizenship Canada. Apparently MPs have a special number they can call, where there is an actual person who answers the phone. In a couple of weeks I was given information on what form to use, and what documents to provide, and after a some more consultations to clarify some uncertainties, I was finally able to reapply. After a few weeks I received acknowledgement of  my application, and a request for one further document, which I sent. I’m told I may have to wait 6 months. As I write, it is now 7 months, and I have not yet heard anything.

By this point, it seemed that I had pretty well done everything I could, and now all I could do was wait, for Citizenship so I could proceed with changing the rest of my documentation, and for CAMH before I could proceed with the medical part of my transition. However, the thought of a 14 month waiting list for CAMH, followed by one or two trips to Toronto for assessment, followed by application to Sask Health for coverage, followed by the Brassard Clinic waiting list for surgery seemed a bit too much. I had enjoyed the process as much as I could, and managed not to be obsessed with achieving goals, but I have to admit I had begun to think I would like to be done with papers and doctors before I turned 60. It would have been nice to have had some years with a mostly female body when I was young, but I don’t regret it. Having had my two children is far more important to me. But I would like a few years with a mostly female body before I enter a nursing home!

I had decided to spend some of my retirement savings in 2014, perhaps to go travelling. My son had gone away to college, studying to be an actor in Toronto, 3000 km from me, and I missed him terribly. I decided to visit him in the new year and perhaps continue on to revisit my old friends and haunts in Barcelona. As I planned my trip, I began to find out that not all my friends and relatives were ready to welcome me into their homes as they would have in the past. Finally, after some anguish and much soul searching, I decided I wasn’t ready for a short, expensive trip with an uncertain reception. It would make more sense for me to return open to possible new opportunities, and to take the time to sort out the name and gender change paperwork for my Spanish citizenship. For this I would need to have sexual reassignment surgery, the orchiectomy wouldn’t be good enough for the Spanish authorities. Considering the minimum two year wait for surgery subsidized by Sask Health, with them covering less than a third of the surgery costs, plus the extra expense of trips to Toronto to visit CAMH, I decided to see if I could get a date for surgery to coincide with my already planned trip to Toronto, not far from the clinic in Montreal, and to try and cover the expense myself. So the second year in a row, I applied to the Brassard Clinic, and asked my psychiatrist to send a letter. They asked for more letters, but their requirements were confusing and contradictory, I think because of language issues as the staff at the clinic were French speakers. I sent a letter from my doctor and endocrinologist, and hoped that I had sent them all they asked for. In the meantime, I reserved a one way plane ticket to Toronto for the beginning of the spring break at my son’s school, February 20. I reserved a room in a gay run bed and breakfast. I inquired about accommodations in Montreal for March. And I waited.

On January 3 I received an e-mail from the Brassard Clinic, saying they could give me a surgery date on  March 12, but that they hadn’t received a letter from from a second psychiatrist. Oops. I replied, saying the letter was on its way, and phoned looking for appointments from a few psychiatrists and counsellors recommended by my psychiatrist. On January 8 I received a confirmation letter from the Brassard Clinic, with all the additional medical and legal documents I had to sign, and a timeline of requirements; medical tests, advance payments, and final payments. On January 10 I saw a psychiatric counsellor who was so fascinated by my story that we went a half-hour over the scheduled time, and she decided she didn’t need a second visit, drafted a letter right then, and gave me a discount on her fee.

I contacted my pension plan, who had assured me the previous fall that all I had to do was fill out a form, and I could have the money within days. They sent me the form, which I filled out and faxed. A few days later, they sent me a letter saying they needed legal documents filled out by my ex-spouse. I phoned, and complained that we had signed the documents and sent the required forms when we had made our legal separation, a year and a half before. They insisted, and I asked to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor began asking for even more legal documents, and I became angry, explaining all the circumstances, and expressing my outrage. He decided I only needed the two documents signed by my ex. My ex, however, was in Spain. I could ask her to sign the documents, notarize them, and fax them to the pension plan office, with the originals to follow. In the meantime the first payment deadline was due. I paid with my VISA card. After a few problems with PDF documents that wouldn’t print, my ex was finally able to do what was required. Within a week the money was deposited in my account. I reserved a bus ticket from Toronto to Montreal, made arrangements to rent a room from a young queer man in Montreal from March 1 to March 10, and reserved an airplane ticket home on March 20.

As I write, I’m on the bus to Montreal. I had a great visit with my son in Toronto, and took advantage of many dance opportunities. I still don’t know if Citizenship Canada has issued me a new card, but I have my correctly gendered Driver’s Licence and Sask Health card in my purse. In two weeks, if all continues according to plan, I will be recovering from surgery. When I began all this, a little over two years ago, I never dreamed I could accomplish so much.