"What are you doing here?" said the doctor. He entered the exam room, strode across, sat in front of the computer station, and loudly began logging in a quickly as he could. "I'll tell you right now, it's not happening. Absolutely not. There's nothing I can do for you. I am shocked to see you of all people here. I can't believe anybody ever misgenders you." He then proceeded to break down my face piece by piece, top to bottom, explaining how the dimensions, curvature, proportions in relation to the rest of my face, all fell within what is normal and expected for a cisgender woman.
"Hello, Doctor, good to see you again," I said. This is the same surgeon I went to for my bottom surgery. He knows me very well at this point. "I just figured, with the election, that it's sort of now or never with any surgeries I'd ever want to get, so I thought a consultation wouldn't hurt. Just a consultation. Asking for your opinion."
"Well, my medical opinion is that I only recommend a surgery if it is medically necessary and this surgery is not medically necessary for you. Not a single part of your face reads as transgender," said the doctor.
"But people do misgender me quite often. I think it's because of my forehead and browbone?" and then he cut me off.
"Absolutely not. No. That is ridiculous. Plenty of cisgender women have the same forehead as you. They apply to makeup to achieve your brow bone. You do not need surgery. I will run through the required questions and send you on your way. It's good to see you but we have other patients who need this more than you." And so then we rushed through the questions, and I went home.
I left the gender clinic for probably the last time left with an odd set of information. I would not be getting facial feminization surgery because the surgeon believes I am unclockable. His medical opinion is that I am fishy. Somehow, people seem to know that I am trans and clock me all the time, but the surgeon whose specialty is changing faces to look more cisgender told me that there is nothing he could do to make me look more cisgender than I already do. I could get electrolysis still if I want, but otherwise this makes the medical portion of my transition more or less "complete."
And yet, looking in the mirror, I often notice all these little features that don't look feminine enough, or look ugly, or make me feel bad. I get my eyebrows waxed to reshape my browbone. I apply mascara to extend my eyelashes. I wear a push-up bra to create more cleavage. Dear G—d, it's quite simple isn't it. Everything I am doing is exactly what all women in our society do. Cisgender women do exactly the same things. The surgeon's job is not to make me beautiful, but to make me look cisgender. Well, cisgender women by and large do not look beautiful either. That is why the beauty industry eats so much of the lives of those who choose to present femininely. That is why so many women use complex shading and powered paints to create illusions that completely restructure their facial features.
The ideal woman, who "looks like a woman," is the impossible western beauty standard. All women, cisgender or transgender, are comparing ourselves to this ideal woman, with the perfect cheekbones, the perfect forehead, the perfect chin, the perfect nose, and so forth. The biological diversity of the female face is far more complex than can fit inside that beauty standard.
When a trans woman does it, feels it, it's gender dysphoria, and medical, and something corrected with surgery. Cis women also change their faces with surgery, to look more like women. It's the same. They feel dysphoria about looking "ugly" too. It's the most basic lessons that anyone learns.
But why was I really in that office that day? Because of the election. My fear is not being perceived as ugly, but being perceived as trans under the current political climate since the most recent general election. I want to pass to feel safe, not to feel pretty. Cisgender women may fear appearing ugly because they are afraid of being alone, and the financial difficulties that come with being a single woman. Cisgender women do not fear that appearing ugly will cause them to become the victims of violence spurred on by conspiracy theories.
Trans women often confused passing with beauty. A piece of advice I often give younger trans women is "if you want to pass, aim to look like an ugly cis woman." Chasing beauty is always futile. To be read as cisgender does not mean you are read as beautiful, or desirable. I, myself, conflated them. Because I did not feel amazing about my forehead, I assumed it made me look like a man.
When I told friends about how the doctor had not just denied me FFS, but was annoyed and shocked to even see me asking about it, they all had more or less the same response. My friends were also confused at why I had even been pursuing FFS, given how I look. My own perceptions of my face were completely misaligned with how everyone else saw it. It was dysmorphia, not dysphoria.
FFS is not something I had thought about for most of my life. It only started being on my mind when a friend had gotten it recently and I learned it was an outpatient procedure with a rather short recovery. I had read some web page about what features get changed, and started taking notice of those features on me, and began seeing my face differently. I began noticing things like if my forehead was flat or convex. I became more dysphoric because someone said that certain features were undesirable. This is exactly how cis women internalize beauty standards.
I only began earnestly pursuing it as we approached the election. In my mind, FFS was a way to keep myself safe. It would be a magic procedure that would make me pass as cisgender 100% of the time and no political violence targeting us would ever hit me. I would immediately become desirable to every man, despite being fat, and some wealthy STEM guy would wife me up and be my protective husband in our Handmaid's Tale future when I'm banned from being a librarian. This is, of course, a false representation of FFS. Lots of people who get FFS still get clocked from time to time. Passing does not guarantee safety. Passing does not guarantee desirability. Desirability does not guarantee happiness.
Truthfully, I have been very depressed and full of dread since the election. I am in a mode of keep my head down and try to survive the winter. I have been throwing myself into my work. I love my new position at work and it not only is low stress and very safe, it also involves a lot of engaging with my special interests. I am finding that I am happiest when I am in my office and when I return home I lose all motivation and pleasure. I have not been writing. I have been doing a little reading, mostly work related. I have done a lot of watching shallow youtube videos and trying not to think too much.
A lot of what has been happening in my life are things I cannot talk about. I cannot talk about my job in many spaces for privacy reasons, or because it is boring to people. I cannot talk about my life outside of work to coworkers for similar reasons. A lot of what I do outside of work is also not things that even regular friends want to hear about. I am left a tad severed. What do I do for fun? I work. There's more to it than that, but I can't say it, so that is where I am.
Perhaps it is just the time of year. A time of year where I withdraw into myself and hibernate. I still have the remnants of a concussion to deal with that renders me foggy and ditzy after five hours of activity. I made a dent tackling the black mold in my bathroom, but not enough to avoid triggering the allergies of those who visit.
I think depression makes itself most obvious in times like this. By all measurements, my life is fine. I have an interesting job that I enjoy and am succeeding at. I have friends. I have satisfying projects, albeit strange ones. I am successful in most things, and people even seem to call me beautiful. My transition is fine. I have money. Things are stable. And yet my apartment has become a health hazard, I feel dreadful and yet follow and cold, and my self-image was so negative I thought I should get surgery on my face, even though everyone else consistently perceives it as a pretty decent face.
I recently was watching a friend go through something similar from the outside. They had a perfectly lovely relationship, they were doing alright in school, they had a new job that paid well and they found satisfying, their health was improving, and yet they had a total breakdown obsessing over how they would lose all of it; and only because of that breakdown were they then creating the problems that would make loss a possibility. I just kept saying: If you can just chill out, and calm down, everything will be fine. But mental illness and trauma don't work that way. If they were always justified by current material conditions, then they wouldn't be mental illnesses. In that moment, we were both regarding each other as "having our lives together" and regarding ourselves as "being a mess." Our perceptions are distorted by so many things.
There are cisgender women who resent transgender women—and cisgender men who resent transgender men—not out of transphobia but out of envy. Wouldn't it be nice to know who you are? To feel confident in "living your truth?" Wouldn't it be nice to not have a period, to not have to worry about getting pregnant, to not have hormonal fluctuations, to look so young, to rarely have acne, and to have a community of people who celebrate your every avant-garde self-expression? Trans women also possess many of the beauty features that many cis women covet. Cis women wear high heels to look taller, while trans women are already tall. Cis women apply makeup to create stronger facial features, while trans women already have strong facial features. Cis women obsess over skincare to prevent pimples and blemishes caused by hormonal fluctuations, while trans women generally have much clearer skin since our hormones are more stable. The "second puberty effect" makes us look much younger than we are, while cis women spend thousands on anti-aging products. It's no wonder that so many trans women become supermodels, whether openly trans or stealth. Is it any wonder that so Laverne Cox and Janet Mock are so stunning and glamorous? It is because they are trans, not despite of it.
Many cisgender men wish that women were comfortable around them, and unafraid, the way that trans men seem to be able to make women feel comfortable. To the cisgender man, the transgender man appears gloriously liberated, able to express themselves unstifled. Trans men do many things that cis men fear they would face negative repercussions for participating in, or which they simply feel "unable to do" for reason they will not emotionally interrogate, they simply feel like it's acceptable for a trans man to be pretty and emotionally open, but not for a cis man to do it. Cisgender men often feel gross, scraggly, or ugly in comparison to trans men.
Yet, of course, us trans people are always coveting the things that we believe cisgender people to "innately" or "naturally" posses. I think "safety" is another one of those things. Cisgender women do not feel safer than we do. Sure, there is not a political witch hunt in the media targeting cisgender women, but ask a cisgender woman if she "feels safe" and a lot of them will say no. In fact, many cis women covet the stature and breadth of trans women because they (falsely) believe they will be safer walking down the street alone at night if they "look more masculine." Cisgender women of many stripes face so much violence for so many reasons. Passing for cisgender by no means would guarantee my safety.
I hope in 2025 to be writing more, for now, I will enter a hibernation. I think 2025 will feel more tangible when it is here.