I hope it will be the first of many for me.
I attended the conference to conduct a session on my research study:
Transmasculine individuals’ experiences of pregnancy, birth and infant feeding
(funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research – Institute of Gender and
Health). After two years of work, 22 participant interviews (about one hour
each) and many, many hours spent transcribing, analyzing, coding and re-coding,
Dr. Joy Noel-Weiss and I presented our findings!
We had a well-attended session and received
many good questions from attendees. I had my nursing 7-month-old baby with me.
She played on a blanket on the floor with some toys and snacks. An amazingly
generous woman I’d never met before got down on the floor with my baby and
entertained her, without getting too close or picking her up (she would have
screamed!). She made it possible for me to speak! Once in a while when the baby
got fussy I picked her up and nursed her, handing the microphone over to Joy to
continue presenting. It all worked out beautifully.
Philly Trans Health refreshed my soul. Last
year there were about 3500 attendees, and friends told me that this year seemed
to be an even bigger gathering (we have to wait for the final tally). It is
hard to describe what it feels like to have spent my life up until now as the
only trans* person amongst cisgender people at all times, and then to be suddenly
surrounded by THOUSANDS of trans* and gender non-conforming people. I felt so
damn SAFE. I nursed the baby in the hallways, and didn’t avoid eye contact; I
smiled at people who walked by, knowing that they would return the friendly
gesture.
On the first day of the conference we went
to City Hall where the transgender pride flag was raised for the first time.
Children, and people with children were invited to participate in the ceremony,
so my baby and I both held the flag and then a group of kids pulled the rope to
lift it while the audience cheered.
There were so many trans* and non-binary
people in town for the conference that I could see others like me everywhere I
went – Reading Terminal Market, on the SEPTA train while commuting to my
friends’ place in the suburbs, and around the historic district, too. I nursed
my baby in all of those spaces, and felt safe everywhere.
It is only in experiencing this weekend of
mass transness that I am realizing how I have been affected by being the only.
This past winter was rough for my family to a point where I began to feel
stressed and fragile. My partner needed gallbladder surgery when our baby was
only two months old, and shortly after that, the baby developed bronchiolitis.
With all of the anxiety surrounding their illnesses, I had trouble coping with
parenting while trans in public. I became reluctant to go out on my own with my
two kids. This went on for months. When it was time to travel to Toronto and
Ottawa to speak at a regional conference, I desperately wanted to cancel. How
could I cope with all that? I had lost my usual resilience.
We went, and I did it. Getting out there and
just making it all happen helped me start to feel better, but arriving in
Philadelphia let me be whole again. In Philly, I stayed with a trans* friend I
knew only from the interwebs, and his partner and son. In their household, not
only was my trans* identity utterly normal, but we also shared an
attachment-minded style of parenting that includes nursing our kids beyond
toddlerhood. My friends helped entertain my baby in the most understanding and
patient of ways so that I could clean bottles and thaw milk, and pack. When I
wanted to attempt a shower, this friend said, “Oh, let me start the shower for
you so you don’t have to spend time figuring out how it works. Otherwise the
baby would be crying by the time you get in.” Yes, yes, yes.
I felt completely accepted and valued, and
I think I have brought at least some of this sense of well-being back home with
me. I am so grateful and privileged to have been able to enjoy this nourishing
experience. I know that many others cannot.
I also acknowledge that some had a very
hard time with the conference. I found flyers left out on the vendors’ tables explaining that trans women seem to be getting significantly less programming that
is specific to them. I’d like to know why that is happening, and what the
organizers plan to do about it for next year.