Today we have a special guest in the clubhouse who's sharing his own story of transitioning later in life.
Why and How I Became a Man
Christopher Hawthorne Moss, author of A FINE BROMANCE
I have been a writer pretty much all my life, so more recently when I started to uncover my inner guy it was inevitable that I would write about the experience from the point of view of characters in my novels. I have written a few very short pieces, but most significantly I gave my novel BELOVED PILGRIM, about a lesbian Crusader knight, a sex change and made her transgender and now have my young adult novel A FINE BROMANCE being released on August 11. Now I am putting together several biographies of transgender people of the past for a book I will self-publish as TRANSGENDER PEOPLE IN HISTORY.
It was in fact all this reading I have been doing of MM romance that resulted in my figuring out I am transgender! The beginning was that all the sad events in the gay lovers’ lives was doing a number on my joie de vivre… I was getting more and more depressed. I would find something in my immediate surroundings that affected me so profoundly I couldn’t move. I had no real idea why I was so down. My neighbor expressed some horrible points of view about gay people and it got worse. I joined a PFLAG group to feel less isolated, and slowly it started to come to me. I saw transgender people who came to the group and heard what they said, and then one day in July 2012 I knew what was “wrong” with me. I knew I was really male.
The first thing I had to do about this is tell my husband. At first it seemed to come out of left field for him, but he has told me that my misery for months before that and my apparent contentment now must mean I was right. I mean, I could think of all the clues from my childhood, my love for swashbuckling characters in movies and books, my feeling of not fitting in as a girl, and many more moments when, if a transition to be a man had seemed possible, I would have gone for it. And I knew I was a gay man, which explained all the reasons those books with elemental tragedy or at least sadness got to me.
To make a long story short, I have since been living as a man, with my beloved’s support, but with the disadvantages of transitioning at sixty—a stroke caused by taking testosterone complicating, but not negating, my decision. So while I have no personal experience of transitioning at any other stage of life than “old,” I do know several younger transgender people, and as a novelist can imagine and describe how the experience at other ages can affect a person.
So how did I manage this? It has mostly been psychological. The basic act of choosing a masculine name and representing myself as that person, Christopher, to others has been the one action that has had the most success. The fact that I work online helped with this immensely. Like the cartoon implies that shows two dogs at a computer, “You know that on the Internet, no one knows we are dogs.” No one knows I am not in fact a man. I have been open online so pretty much everyone knows I am transgender, but it is very comfortable to rest in my identity as a man.
I did start taking testosterone to reshape my face and body to a man’s and to cause me to grow facial hair. After a short time on the hormone, however, I sustained a hemorrhagic stroke that some indications may be exacerbated by taking them, so in order to avoid another stroke and another month in the hospital I went off the hormone. As a result, I get to keep my lower voice but will never grow a beard.
I did the paperwork. I saw a gender transition counselor who has helped me not only deal with the confusing emotions but got me officially designated male. I changed my name legally. I am now working on changing my birth certificate. I simply started identifying myself with my new name and gender everywhere where my old status was registered.
For the most part people take me at my word, the time in Evergreen Hospital showing me for four weeks just how respectful people can be. I wear only men’s clothes now and have found that men give away their clothing far more readily than fat women do, to my benefit. I am using the men’s room in public and discovered that men don’t examine other men in the bathroom—also fortunate for me.
One of the most profound tools I have discovered is Gender Odyssey, a conference held in Seattle every August where I can meet and talk to other transmen, and some transwomen, which affirms my choice more than any other single thing. The workshops and meetings at this event are sources of information and support beyond my expectations.
I still don’t dream myself as a man, but then never dreamed myself as a woman. My psyche apparently was wiser than my conscious brain. I am happy with my gender, and as great as that is, my heterosexual male husband—now that men can marry each other—is content as well. That is as important as any other single truth.
You, as a reader, will understand, then, why I created Elias von Winterkirche and Andy Kahn from my books BELOVED PILGRIM and A FINE BROMANCE respectively. Through these characters I can be myself, a boy or man, and try out the situations that either challenge or affirm me. I try to create characters I can model myself after. Whether as a contemporary teenager or a young man in Byzantium, and all the other times and people I write about in the future, I hope I am giving myself and others models of the joys and frustrations of a non
binary experience of gender.
When Robby starts his senior year in high school, he meets the new boy, Andy. Although Robby has never been physically attracted to anyone, he instinctively feels comfortable around Andy. As they get to know each other better, Robby realizes Andy is an outsider just like him, and harassment at the hands of the school’s bad boys makes it clear that Andy is a transboy.
When Robby’s eccentric Aunt Ivy finds some of her sentimental treasures missing, the boys put on their sleuthing hats to solve the mystery.
Cover Artist: AngstyG
Releases: August 11th
Buy Links:
Harmony Ink
Amazon
About the author:
I am a gay transman chock full of stories from history, with a transgender knight, a gay riverboat gambler, you name it. I love how history can lend so many possibilities and at the same time give us a background for our own lives.
I grew up in California, Alaska and Chicago as Nanette Haas always a writer. I wrote my first short story at seven, and in my early teens began the stories with a friend that ultimately became AN INVOLUNTARY KING, my first novel. I married in my late twenties, but later discovered I am transgender. That's when I became Christopher Hawthorne Moss, otherwise known as Kit. Interestingly, my husband Jim stayed with me and we have now been together over thirty years.
I've written all my life, and I have always loved historical fiction, so you will find my stories take place in all eras and locations. I believe that gay and transgender people have always been among us and that it is up to me as an author to make their lives realistic and, where possible, positive and rewarding. It is my job to make it credible. I think with my characters you will find much to identify with. I hope you do.
See his Harmony Ink Books
