Avarice

TMA at the TMA

I now know why trans people go by many names each.

I've done a number of things with my HRT that any medical professional would call an unnecessary risk. I've poked myself multiple times with the same needle, looking for a spot with fewer nerve endings to do the injection. I've continued to draw estrogen from a bottle after pieces of the rubber stopper broke off and fell into it. I've used a needle that was shorter than recommended because the pharmacy gave me the wrong kind. Once, I fished a needle out of my sharps container while I was waiting for my next paycheck.

From a strictly scientific viewpoint, HRT is life-saving. We cannot find the harm that the opposition claims it does to a body, and we cannot prove the existence of the soul they claim is being tainted. The rational decision then, would be to ensure easy access to HRT and the methods of dosing them. Give trans people the option to live in the science-supported world, and to act squarely off of evidence and studies. These facts lie at odds with personally-held beliefs that are subjected onto the world. Trans people then have to navigate a world of truths and a world of lies in order to obtain whatever HRT is available to them.

The average trans person believes in the science surrounding HRT. Most also internalize the anti-trans beliefs of the world around them. When you swim in an ocean, the salt water sinks into your clothes and tries to work its way into your skin. Deny these beliefs, reject them entirely. Your skin is still wet. A better future for trans people would be to not make swimming necessary for transition. But until that day, we keep ourselves afloat.

Surrounded by water that wants to drown us, we begin relying on new beliefs, ones that are direct responses to the ocean below. Staying above water indefinitely is next to impossible; instead I found a way to breathe below the surface. The enemies of transgenderism mythologize HRT to restrict it from trans people. Trans people mythologize themselves to justify their right to access. We know the ocean exists and that we have to live in it. We fashion ourselves as sea serpents, or mermaids, or pirates cursed to continue navigating the seas long after they perished. Becoming the monsters that maps warn good honest sailors about.

And when you put this much effort into creating a self beyond the scope of documented indisputable fact, just for the ability to ask your therapist to recommend an endocrinologist or to make that grey market purchase. It's harder to follow every rule that medical experts suggest. I know my doctor's only concern is mitigating risks that have a small chance for terrible consequences. But regardless of the gills I have, I'm tired from swimming. I can't let errant , minor facts finish me off when I've gone this far fighting other people's opinions.