Me, overcompensate?

Most of the other transguys that I know personally are pretty mellow and don't seem overly aggressive or insecure about their masculinity. Online, I've encountered some FTMs who are just total jacked-up pricks and are very combatative and argumentative. Were they like that before transitioning and the testosterone just made it worse? Do they have a "short guy" Napoleon complex? (I'm 5'9", so I don't.) Maybe they're reveling in the fact that they simply *can* be a dick, and are no longer expected, as a woman, to be nice and avoid conflict. The most obvious and reductivist interpretation is that they're defensive about their masculinity and compensating for their lack of a standard issue phallus and cojones, and I don't believe it's that simple.

However, I have to admit that sometimes I find myself trying to prove my masculinity a little harder than I really need to. This weekend (appropos of my last post) I got in an online pissing match with a guy over an eBay item. Dumb, I know, but he challenged me and I felt like I had to defend myself. After it was resolved, I couldn't bring myself to say anything remotely apologetic to the guy because I didn't want to seem like I was backing down.

Then the other night I was at a party and some people started arm wrestling. At first the matches were all girls against girls, because the party was mostly queer women, with about a dozen trans guys and maybe two bio guys. I guess I wanted to show off, but it didn't seem right to challenge a woman. So I challenged the bigger of the bio guys. Yeah, smart move. We were deadlocked in the first round for several minutes until I called a draw. Then we switched to left arms and he flattened me and just about dislocated my shoulder in the process.

I don't think I impressed anybody with my studly display, although one woman looking on commented that she could feel her testosterone levels rising vicariously. And I've never gone in for that "Fight Club" mano-a-mano B.S. But it was kind of a rush. And I've been hitting the gym harder than ever since then, to the point of further injuring myself.

The thing is, you can build yourself up as much as you want, and you can puff your chest out as much as you want, but there's always going to be somebody who's bigger and stronger than you. And there's always going to be someone with a bigger dick, literally or figuratively. In either case, you've just got to try to do the best you can with what you've got.

Pissing match

OK, I'm just going to go with the urinary theme...this online poker commercial is my worst nightmare, or ultimate bathroom fantasy scenario, depending. No, that's not as gay as it sounds. Or it's only as gay as this video.

Seriously, though, do guys try to out-piss each other in public like this? I guess they do, because I just found this excellent and very revealing post on "urinal politics" by Roland Couture:

My theory here, is that the question of male dominance is being played out in those urinals. "Territorial pissing" and "pissing match" are no empty phrases. All sorts of animals piss to mark their territory. Why canst thou not relax and let fly thy mighty arcing stream of urine, when there's a guy standing at the next urinal? Because he is basically right there all up in your space, and perhaps, unconsciously, a threat to you. The sphincter muscle in your urethra is cinched-up tight! Meanwhile, why doth his urine fly strong and true to its porcelain vessel? Because he is relaxed, and this is because you are no threat to him. He gets to piss freely; you, on the other hand, cannot, and must wait. You just lost the struggle for dominance, buddy!

Well, I might be full of it, but it's fun to play it like a game that way. Ha ha, I pissed and you didn't! I win!

Well, I guess that puts my shy bladder problem into perspective. Actually, I have surreptitiously witnessed this phenomenon while washing my hands and other guys are using the urinals.

He doesn't even mention guys who use the stalls to piss. I guess we're so low that we're not even anywhere in the alpha male/beta male hierarchy. Probably just as well. I've never had much desire to prove myself in pissing matches, literal or otherwise.

Bad bathrooms, again

I hate to seem fixated on toilets, but what can I say? When you don't have standard plumbing for your gender and you have to use public facilities, it's always going to be an issue.

Previously I wrote about standing to pee in men's room stalls. Those of you who use men's rooms know that the condition of the toilets is often less than pristine. But given the difficulty and risks of using a urinal sans penis, I put up with the grossness so I can do my bidness in private. Tonight (on campus) I encountered a mess that even I couldn't face.

In this sort of situation, if you're lucky, there will be another, cleaner stall you can resort to. But in many men's rooms you don't have a choice; there's just the one stall. You can either clean it up, hunt down a more decent bathroom, or take your chances at a urinal, if you've got the right equipment with you.

I chose the latter option, which I rarely do. As I explained in my previous post, it's awkward and I don't want to take the chance of getting spotted with a length of rubber tubing hanging out of my fly. Usually I only piss in a urinal for kicks if the bathroom is one where I can lock the door. But the urinals in this bathroom had serious dividers between them - so high and wide that you would really have to crane your neck to see your neighbor's package.

Urinals are badly designed. Can I just say that? These were the kind that go all the way down to the floor and I don't see how guys piss in them without getting splashback all over their shoes and cuffs. Gross.

Anyway, because I was uncomfortable, it took forever for me to get a flow going, and during that interval I figured someone was sure to walk in. But I was undisturbed. Nevertheless, because of the awkwardness and not being able to drop my shorts, I had a little spillage inside my briefs (I hate it when that happens). Nothing major, fortunately, just a small wet spot I had to endure for a couple of hours.

Geez. Pissing shouldn't be such an ordeal. I really wish that someone would design a stand-to-pee device that actually works.

"Even women can have tiny dicks"

An update on the Hummer ad I commented on a few weeks ago: Slate also noticed the bizarreness of the message and weighed in with their ad report card. They also noted that the original tagline, "Restore your manhood," has now been toned down, apparently in response to (male) viewer complaints.

It's stunning how enthusiastically the ad embraces this idea. The entire plot is based on it: A guy feels wimpy because another guy saw him buying tofu, so he dashes out and buys a Hummer to feel better about himself. The original tag line of the ad was in fact "Restore your manhood." Hart says people called in to complain ("The whole idea of manhood and virility is a touchy subject," she points out, "especially for men"), so, after two weeks on the air, the ad was recut with the line changed to the slightly more ambiguous "Restore the balance."

There's also an ad aimed at women in this campaign.

Once again, our wounded protagonist races straight to a Hummer dealer and drives off with a truck seconds later. The tag line this time: "Get your girl on." Interestingly, no one seems to have complained about this take on femininity. But one of my readers suggests the message is this: "Even women can have tiny dicks, and the Hummer is the cure."

I guess we're an equal opportunity society when everyone can have a tiny dick.

Bathroom of doom

When I was about 6 years old, after I had announced to my mother that I wanted to be a boy, she had one of her feminist friends come to our house and try to talk me out of it. One of the things she said was, "Do you just want to be a boy so you can stand up to pee?" At the time I thought this was incredibly dense of her. But now I sometimes find myself wishing more than anything that I could just whip it out and take a whiz.

So, the other night I went to a new club for the first time. After a few pints of Stella, I encountered one of my worst bathroom nightmares: the men's room with no stall and no lock on the door.

Let me give you some background on this. Besides having my own personal privacy neuroses, like most transgendered people, I have some longstanding issues with bathrooms.

When I was a girl who looked like a boy, I would consistently get double-takes in the women's room, and the occasional (sometimes naive, sometimes snotty) "You're in the wrong restroom." Unlike some genderqueers I know, I was too well-mannered to flash my boobs as proof of "valid entry." I always got the feeling that my presence was alarming or disconcerting to the general population of ladies' rooms. And I wasn't too happy to be in there either, because a) being there meant acknowledging that I was a female, and b) I didn't like being stared at and feeling like a freak.

On top of that, I've always had a dread of public restrooms because I'm pee-shy. I just have trouble doing my business with other people around. So my ideal situation has always been the unisex, one-person, "go in and lock the door behind you" kind of bathroom.

When I first began transitioning and using men's bathrooms, I was scared to death. The first time I used a public men's room was in my gender therapist's building. I kept hoping no one would come in and I was so nervous I dropped a pen in the toilet. I was really self-conscious about having to sit to pee, and I was afraid someone would look at me and realize that I wasn't a "real" guy. But I was already passing well enough, and soon I figured out that these were both non-issues. The real issue was how disgusting most men's restrooms are, especially the stalls.

I still use the stalls when I have to take a piss, but I prefer to stand up, because of the aforementioned sanitary reasons, because it feels more "natural," and because it's part of passing as male (for me, anyway). I use a homemade STP (stand-to-pee device) made out of rubber tubing and an irrigation fitting and a flexible rubber funnel. I carry it in my pocket and wash it out after I use it. Yes, I know this is kind of gross, but whatever. It's how I deal.

I'm really curious about how other FTMs who stand to pee deal with this. A lot of guys on the forums talk about using modified medicine spoons or some variation, like the Mango or the Pissin' Packer. Personally, I've never been able to get the medicine spoon to work for me with any great success; I just end up spraying pee all over the place. I tried the Mango, which has a specially designed funnel. It worked a little better for me, but the tubing was way too short, and I can only use it reliably if I drop my pants to my knees, and it usually still leaks a little.

In theory, if you're using one of these things, you're supposed to be able to walk up to a urinal, whip out your packer (which you hope no one will be looking at too closely, because its fleshtone is completely unnatural), and piss through the tubing. I don't know how people do this, because it takes me a lot of futzing around to get everything lined up down there, and if I was doing this at a urinal it would look like I was playing with myself. Even after that, if you're wearing normal pants, the fly is going to be slightly above your crotch, so the tubing is going uphill. So that means you have to pull your pants down at least some to get the right angle. And you have to have one hand stuck down your pants the whole time to keep things in place. Meanwhile, you're still taking the risk of pissing down your leg in full view of other people. So basically I think the guys who say they use these things at urinals all the time with no problems are stretching the truth or incredibly lucky.

Back to the club, and the scary bathroom situation. So, I walk into the john and I'm confronted with a urinal, a freestanding toilet with no stall, and a round hole in the door where the doorknob should be. I'm guessing they had to take the lock off because guys were doing drugs and/or having sex in there (given this particular bar, probably both - at the same time). With some of the characters there that night, this was not a situation where I wanted to get caught with my pants and underwear pulled down to my knees and my ass bared, pissing through a funnel, which is what I usually do in the privacy of a stall. I didn't even want to get caught pissing through a few inches of rubber tubing hanging out of my pants, but there was no alternative. I'm still not comfortable at urinals, and there weren't any visual barriers on the sides, so I sort of hunched over the toilet with my back to the door and did my thing as quickly as possible, hoping no one would walk in. They didn't. I made it out with my bladder emptied and my dignity intact. Whew. No more beer for me that night.

This was one of those rare situations where I actually wish I could get my ladies' room privileges back. But there are some doors you can't reenter once you've exited.

Ball busting

Sometimes I've wondered how I should react if I ever get kicked in the balls...seeing as how I don't actually have balls. Should I just stand there and go, "Haha!" and let everyone think I have an iron crotch? Or should I feign the pain and distress of actually getting kicked in the nuts? Would I know how to pull that off? Probably not.

Sometimes I worry that I could out myself as being trans if I don't respond appropriately to a threat to my nuts. Like one time in a martial arts class, the teacher used me to demonstrate a move, and it culminated in him feigning a knee to my groin. Afterwards, I wondered, did I take that a little too nonchalantly?

It occurred to me again today as I was riding my bike while doing something stupid - talking on my cell phone. So I had the cell phone in one hand and I was riding down the street, and finally I figured that might not be such a good idea, so I pulled over onto the sidewalk. But that wasn't such a great idea either, because then I had to brake suddenly, with one hand, to avoid a pedestrian and a tree, while still talking on the phone. The result was that I lurched forward and what would be my scrotal area came into abrupt contact with the stem of my handlebars.

It didn't qualify as a real nut-crushing event. If in fact I did have testicles, they would have just brushed the frame, and I would have been like, "Damn, that was close!" In reality, I had an advantage, since my rubber packer would provide padding for my actual genital area in the event of an impact.

As it is, I have other problems...I've been biking so much I think I'm getting saddle sores on my labia majora. I guess if I did have balls I'd be getting numb nuts. If it's not one thing, it's another.