A visitor found this space by googling “the downside of white privilege.” I suspect they wanted to learn more about how racism harms white privilege, which it does, in insidious ways. Perhaps the most harmful aspect of white privilege for white people is its opacity. We have it but don’t realize we have it. At least that is how I have come to understand how white privilege operates in my life. And even knowing I have white privilege, I still struggle to see myself acting through it, without realizing it.

Of course, this cartoon isn’t so serious. I’ve chosen to create a character who persistently refuses to acknowledge any privileges. Let’s just say this person suffers from a terminal case of persistent denial.

Prospect on!

Like weeds, too, I might add. The sad reality is the plush head of hair I’ve dreamed of my entire life – think Pierce Brosnan, regardless of whether you liked him as James Bond – alas, will only come to pass if I can convince everyone to talk to my ass instead of my face.

Wish me luck.

Oh, the dreams I possessed in early transition. I was going to grow a full beard! No wait, a goatee! A mustache! All facial hair seemed possible in the early days of hormones back in 1996.

Despite scouring the AOL FtM boards for information – and that’s all there was back then, AOL – I found little information about life after the hormones had settled into our bodies. I’m talking after the horniness subsides and the acne and backne becomes manageable, that life post-transition. Nobody seemed to know much, or, if they did, they weren’t talking.

So my imagination was free to think whatever I wanted. No one was there to answer questions about life after transition.

What Happens After Transition, Really?

What I’ve come to realize about myself and my transition is that transition is something of a moving target. Transitions have happened for me throughout my life as a man:

• Transition after early hormones;
• Transition after sex in my preferred gender;
• Transition after marriage as a heterosexual man;
• Transition after top and bottom surgeries;
• Transition after increasing my hormone dosage;
• Transition after lifting weights somewhat regularly

There is no end to these transitions. They keep coming at me or I step through them or something like that. What I do know is that much of what I thought would happen to my body after initiating early hormones in the mid-90s did not nor has not happened.

That lush beard I was going to grow has proven impossible. My hair is too fine, too patchy in its growth pattern and well, just too darn light. Only if you are within two feet of me will you see any facial hair. But having not been blessed with the potential for full facial hair, I still must shave.

That is the one thing post-transition no FtM mentioned (again, I can write this off to the lack of interwebz access in the 19990s): how shaving becomes a drudgery. Plus, in addition to being a pain in my transsexual ass, my skin is very sensitive and I live in a post-apocalyptic snomaggedon in the winter. Dry skin? Check. Easily irritated skin? Check. Rashy skin if I shave too frequently – even in the summer? Check and check. There is also the ritual of patching up nicks with toilet paper and small band-aids, praying that the toilet paper will dry before I have to exit my home and enter the world.

I’ve managed to find a shaving cream that provides enough emollient moisturizing that I don’t hack my face into the next Jason movie, but it is very expensive. Even at 35.00 a jar, it’s still less expensive than all the cheaper crap I’ve purchased that I then must be rid of because the cream/foam/crap dries my face on contact.

What happens after transition? Well, I’ve learned that there are some very boring aspects to being a man. I ought to have realized this fact, but I had dull my perceptions on photos of GQ models and the fabulous looking gay guys I saw at the bars in Chicago. Having lived the first 32 years of my life without a compelling need to shave, doing it now can be rather dreary. I don’t do as often as I should, especially because Ms. H. LOVES my clean shaven face.

Were she not with me, I’d probably live with my patchy beard. That and the incredible stink I’ve come to understand is peculiar to metabolizing hormones on a regular basis. What happens after transition, besides that shaving is boring? Boy, can I really, really stink.

Cartoons will be featured prominently. Think of it as a autocartoonography.

For updates about 72 Things, including a release date, sign up for the newsletter. While I will make mention of my autocartoonography at Transgender Cartoon Gallery, 72 Things will only be available through the newsletter, ’cause that’s how I roll.

As always, thank you for your attention and support of my work. Together let’s squelch both inner and outer transphobes one good laugh at a time.

Yours truly,

Jay

This is one of the very first cartoons I drew. Can you tell? Me, too. White liberals, regardless of gender orientation, haven’t changed nearly as much as my drawing skills.

Such a thing could never happen, right?

In May I completed my first story for the Art House Coop, the virtual extension of the Brooklyn Art Library.

We were allowed to choose a topic for our story book. I chose “Things That Change Other Things” and titled the story, “A Day in the Life of a Transsexual.”

I’m grateful for the opportunity to have written this story and to include some of my cartoons. The entire book has been scanned here.

(If this story book moves you or you think you might want to forward a link to a friend, please do so! I no longer promote my work on Twitter or Facebook and so rely on readers like you to share my work, if you feel moved to do so. Thank you in advance for your support. ~ Jay)

You can’t buy your way into the workingclasses. No matter how much money you spend. “But what about the $300.00 1930s inspired work shirt I just bought?” Nope. No matter how hard you work, you can’t use clothing to pretend you’re something you’re not.

And the search for real masculinities will never be found in masculinities from times past, about which we may feel nostalgic. A quick reminder: in the 1930s a significant percentage of African-Americans – and some whites, too – could not vote in the South; gays could not comfortably be out and women of all ethnicities were routinely paid less than men.

Joe didn’t realize his oft repeated transition story elicited boredom.

Indeed, how many of don’t realize this until it’s too late?

It’s  a privilege to know that medical staff won’t refuse to treat you because your gender & genitalia match.

My packing dildo fell out of my pants. Do I pick it up, look at it and display mock disgust or walk away like I don’t even see it? And if I leave it, what if somebody returns it to me saying, “Hey! Did you lose this?”

The FtM Butt

Do You Like My Bulge?

The Real Reason Trannies Transition

The Real Reason Gays Want Marriage

The FtM Makes a Declaration

The FtM Receives a Compliment

Why I Became a Man

Unto Us a Son is Born (For a little holiday fun)

20 Years on Testosterone

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?

(I was asked by Gabe Javier, the fantastic editor of the Coming Out Magazine published by The Spectrum Center, to contribute to this year’s issue. The topic was “Talk About It.” I contributed the above cartoon and the following story.)

When I changed my gender thirteen years ago, I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I was moving from female to male.  I thought I understood how living as a man conferred upon me a bunch of male privilege, even though I did not want that privilege. But that was the deal: to live as a man meant I was treated better than women, and it also meant that women were sometimes quite afraid of me, simply because I was now a man.  I still remember dashing the hallway to the elevator and forcing the door back open as it was closing. As I stepped in, I saw a petite woman step away from me, pressing her back into the elevator wall, her eyes wide with fear. “No,” I wanted to say to her. “You don’t understand. I used to be a woman.” Instead, I muttered something about forgetting to check my mail and let the elevator go. This privilege thing, I thought then, was all because I had become a man.

In gender I am subject and object. When I changed my gender thirteen years ago, I thought I controlled my subjectivity. Master of my fate kind of thing. Then a close friend asked me to describe my transition in terms of my race. Despite all my women’s studies classes and anti-racist work, I had no story to tell about being transgender and white. My whiteness was hidden from me. But in finding the words for that story, the story of a white trans man, my gender story became more complex.

The typical FtM story of leaving femaleness for maleness, leaving behind my oppression filled days for a life of complete privilege, only rarely includes the troubled and troubling dynamics of whiteness. Typical transgender stories don’t mesh with whiteness. Typical transgender stories tell transgender origin stories almost exclusively in terms of gender. Yes, we add class or size or ability. But really gender is the cake and all those other identities are icing. At least that was true for this thin, upper-middle class, temporarily able-bodied trans/man.

Now, after living for a man for thirteen years, my gender is more complicated. My gender privilege is more complicated, too. You see, now I believe my white race enhances my privilege as much as my gender. I see my masculinity has enhanced my white privilege. Because, you see, I am a white man, and I get just about everything I want because my masculinity is white. My whiteness is also masculine. Who I am as a white transman is different from black butch friends who have transitioned.

We all have become men. But they are black men living in a society that simultaneously elects Barack Obama to the White House but arrests Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his own home. While many terrible things could happen to be as transsexual man (failure to receive proper medical care, for example) I know as sure as I will die that I will never, ever be arrested in my home by a police officer unless I brandish a weapon in her direction. I know that I will never pulled over for driving while white.

After living as a man for thirteen years, I see that gender and race are two troubling stories in my life, with different trajectories and end games. They conflict with each other.  They enhance each other. Who I am is no longer a typical transgender story. Who I am is contradictory and paradoxical. My privilege exists as a function of both my masculinity and my whiteness. This is the man I am today.

Forget the sex, the privilege, the clothes. I transitioned for the panel discussions.

Healthcare? I already have healthcare. I want to marry to pass on my assets for free. If you want healthcare, get a job.