Pleased to meet you.

I am excited to be here and try something new. I’ve been blogging a while, but it’s largely been locked content for an audience I control. I’m delighted and grateful to Shaun Proulx for giving me this opportunity to interact with a wider audience in a public space.

I have fretted a while over what to include in this first entry and what should be saved for later. I have opted to separate my introduction into two parts, one on my gender identity and the other on my dysphoria.

Yuppy Geek is my gender identity (part 1)

Nowadays, when asked to describe my gender identity I reply yuppy geek. This ruffles many feathers across the spectrum of those invested in asking positioning me. I consider a few other potentials because the way I dress, behave, interact and get perceived depends as much on who is part of the interaction as how I feel that day. To be frank, I don’t like the phrase “gender identity” because of its history and racism; I’ll address both amply in the future.

Shouldn’t I be answering man, woman, genderqueer, bigender or something along those lines?

Gender identity does not depend on a relationship to a body, it’s about how one dresses, behaves, interacts, is perceived, one’s hobbies and mannerism among other things. This of course, all depends on environment, culture and socioeconomic background, which brings me back to my first claim: I’m a yuppy geek. I’m a young urban professional who is often learning random things.

There was a time that I was defaulted to butch more because of my short hair and baggy jeans than toughness or meeting other masculine expectations. As the majority of transguys, the only way I passed back then was as significantly younger than I was, as in pre-puberty. This led to being treated as such and framed my first “male experiences” (for lack of better words.) Then, I began taking testosterone throwing my body back into puberty, complete with growing pain, mood swings, cracking voice and pimples galore. Man was intimidating in that context so I asserted that I was a boy. Slowly but surely, puberty gave way to menopause, my hairline receded and I abandoned boy in favour of embracing my manhood.