So it took two years for me to get to my 100th post. Of course, a couple of my recent posts have been reposts so one could say this is cheating. On the other hand, if I count all the posts on my other blog, which I’m in the process of merging with this one, I’m probably at 115 or so. So there!
So here are some stats:
All this talk of dating has made me want to transfer another blast from the past over to this blog from my other blog that is on it’s way to cyber oblivion. I first wrote this as a note on Facebook in December 2007. I was still living as female but I had just decided to transition. So my experience of dating sites up until then had all been as female. Enjoy!
In my last post, I discussed some of the concerns that may arise for someone who is dating a trans guy. Lots of the points I dealt with are applicable to all relationships of course. But the point of the post was to respond to all of those people who find this blog by running a search for “dating a trans man.”
Since I posted though, it occurred to me that there are all these posts out there in the blogosphere full of people complaining about the lack of respect their non-trans partners show toward them. In many cases, I’ve wondered what kind of respect the trans person was showing their partner. I’ve read a lot of things that made me go “hmmmm.”
Another common way that people find this blog is through running searches such as “dating a transman” and variations thereof. Most of them wind up linking to my post “How to date a transman” which, in turn, linked to an article by Raven Kaldera. (The original link was no longer working so I just replaced it.)
Anyway, I thought I would say a few words on the topic. I appreciate that there are so many people out there who are willing to read up on things that they might need to consider when they are dating a trans person. I think that reading various perspectives of trans people on dating can help you consider things that the person in question might be hesitant to bring up, especially if they are in early transition and still discovering for themselves what it means to A) be in their chosen sex/gender and B) to experience love, lust and sexuality in this sex/gender.
Looking at my blog stats, I see that about every week or so, people find this blog after running a search online for “FTM sore throat” or “sore through testosterone” or other similar variations. Since I remember not finding much information out there on this topic back when this was a concern for me, I figured I’d clarify my experience here.
I started T on May 26, 2008. Less than 2 weeks later, I had this very strange sensation in my throat. It wasn’t sore in the same way that it is before or during a cold, or after the first day back teaching when one has spent a summer not talking and projecting so much. It wasn’t really painful as such, just this kind of . . . almost stretching sensation. I looked around and hardly found anything online about it. I asked my bio male friends if they had gone through this at adolescence but none of them recalled anything similar. I figured that it was the physical change to my vocal chords that I was experiencing. Soon thereafter, my voice took on a subtle huskiness and I often felt like I needed to clear my throat. When I discussed it here, a couple of brothers chimed in and shared their experience. In my case, it only lasted a few of months then my voice started to staiblise.
So, if you found this blog looking for info, I can’t give you any scientific explanation for it but I CAN reassure you that you’re not alone and, from comments I’ve had and the quantity of people who type that kind of search, it seems pretty much like stadard procedure. Best of luck to all my bros, old and new.
I’m beginning to transfer blog posts from my other more “general” blog over to here so that I can close down Jacky’s Place. This post was actually first written on my first blog ever on Friendster. I transferred it to Jacky’s Place, and now I’m transferring it here with the hopes that it will find a permanent home. I was still identifying as female when I wrote this, which explains some of my comments on heterosexuality in reference to attraction to men. I thought this would be appropriate to bring over hot on the heels of the post where I described last’s year’s identity crisis about my sexual orientation 
This post by Bond made me go YES YES YES! They describe how people often apologetically identify one way (butch or femme, for example) with the caveat that they don’t live up/down to the stereotypes that are commonly associated with said identity. They suggest that people, instead, claim the words they they feel they identify with and make no apologies. If someone identifies as butch, they shouldn’t have to apologise for liking things normally perceived as “girlie”. I can related to this big time. I sometimes do say, especially when I’m giving a presentation on being a trans guy, or talking about it casually to someone who knows nothing about the topic, that I choose to identify (mostly) as male even though I don’t choose to adopt all the masculine stereotypes. But when I do that, it’s usually with the purpose of educating rather than apologising, as in: “I’m a guy, I don’t have a cock, I drink herbal tea and I’m a feminist. Deal with it.”
Earlier today, I read this article on reconceptualising masculinity. Similarly, it encourages people who identify as “masculine” in any way to give up their reliance on outdated models of masculinity and to expand the term to include anything that masculine-identified people do. Most importantly, the author encourages us to explore the possibility of having a masculinity that does not include misogyny. As a male-identified feminist, I’m SO down with that.
Anyone who is on Fetlife should check out the site if they haven’t lately. I was just alerted to a mega-contest they are having. There are a bunch of kinky prizes and you get to pick your top three. If you plug the contest, they enter your name again, which is why I’m pimping it here ; )
Although a lot of my time was occupied with PhD studies this year, I did manage to read for pleasure. Almost all the non-academic stuff I read this year was awesome. Here is a quick recap.
