Gender Affirming Care

My journey to finding myself has been long, winding and often exhausting. It has also brought me more calm happiness than almost anything else in my life. And that is because as I feel more grounded, safe and comfortable in my body, every experience I have is improved automatically. I don’t have the same deep unsettling itch that cannot be scratched laying insidiously under every moment. And that is where the quiet joy comes from.

Growing up as an afab child in country Victoria, Australia, there were very few examples of gender diversity and transgendered people in media or my local community. Those who were out, were typically presenting as either male or female and androgyny was saved typically for creative powerhouses like David Bowie. None of those really helped me. I just didn’t see “me” in the world and as a result, I spent most of my life feeling lost and very alone.

As a young person, long before the pain of puberty, I was unable to express my deeply felt reality. I used to say “I’m not a girl but I am not a boy either. I don’t want a doodle!” I was able to acknowledge the jealousy I felt over friends and family who could stand to pee on long road trips that left me squatting behind a bush, yet I couldn’t explain why I was writhing in a pain that felt like it was everywhere. The envy was so intense. On reflection, those were my first clear signs of gender dysphoria but certainly not the last.

As a young teen I still didn’t know how to explain the feeling. I began to think of it as my “typically manly soul” living this life as a female so the aggressiveness of my “masculinity” would be tempered by a lived empathy for all that women go through. Perhaps I had been violent, uncaring or overly misogynistic in my past lives and I was paying for it with menstruation, SA and societal expectations. Of being told I am only worth what I look like and passing on “attractive” genes and caring for a husband.

At 29yrs of age, I read an interview with Ruby Rose who was experiencing a world obsessed with them through their role on Orange is the New Black. The article shared Ruby’s thoughts and feelings as a Gender Fluid person and for the first time something started to click. It wasn’t as easy as “this IS me” but for the first time I started to feel like the discord inside was beginning to shift and my world became a little brighter.
I came out to family and friends as Gender Fluid, asexual and not straight at that point. Some people were amazing and simply accepted it but others treated this as if I was attacking their own gender or sexuality, as if their reality was becoming an unwanted acid trip because I wasn’t a girl. Some started to get angry if I chose men’s pants over a frilly skirt and I learnt a new kind of fear from those I cared about. Still, I continued to live as myself and loved those jeans. (In case you didn’t already know…”men’s” jeans have real pockets, you can do pretty much anything and your phone won’t fall out! Highly recommend).

I choose to say thank you to all those who were loudly vocal and sometimes abusive about the labels they couldn’t understand, some people even choosing to misrepresent who I am to suit themselves better. Because of you, I began to feel the labels I had seen so far didn’t really fit me and I looked even deeper again. What I found was a self who understood that I didn’t really fit the Gender Fluid label. In reality, I did not feel any connection to the traditional representations of the feminine or the masculine either. What I found was that I didn’t actually feel any gender. And that led me to change my name and gender marker legally through Births, Deaths and Marriages.

I am…Harli Vi, Gender Outlaw.

And then I was the thing you feared. A transgender person.

As in, a person who does not feel a connection with the gender assigned them at birth. Someone who experiences transphobic words, actions, attitudes and discriminations toward them. I was finally just me. And me was finally experiencing a life that was worth all the crap, worth all the confusion, even worth an ongoing anxiety and fear of others potential to deliver pain in retaliation for what they don’t understand and seemingly have no ability to learn or express kindness.

Medically I began transitioning in 2021. It was a long time on wait lists with an awful lot going on in my own life, health etc but also the world. While Melbourne, Victoria learnt how to live within the confines of our homes and anything inside a 5km radius I learnt how to advocate better for myself.

So, a brief medical timeline…

13th February, 2024. I am so proud to be able to say that I received a full hysterectomy. Recovery has had highs and lows, including a decent dose of transphobia from those I had thought I was safe with. I’m not even 4wks post surgery so I will likely still have some healing to go.

24th April, 2023. I had top surgery. It proved to be an unfortunate experience. The surgeon, Dr Patrick Briggs unexpectedly retired with no warning before doing all necessary revisions so that my chest and excess tissues around the scars are an ongoing new source of concern. It was a very confusing time and Coco Ruby, the rooms he worked from did not handle it well. I will do a full post at a later date on this. I am currently speaking with another surgeon about the possibility of correcting what I can finally admit is a botched surgery. Regardless of how much anxiety, stress and pain I have experienced I am grateful to no longer have breasts (that word makes me feel ill to even type here in relation to myself). I do believe it’s wrong that they get away with such terrible behaviour that affects your health, relationships and self esteem. I hope no one else has to go through that.

8th September, 2021. I began testosterone. Nothing about “second puberty” has felt difficult like it did first time around. Perhaps it’s because these hormones were supposed to be the right ones all along. I am still waiting and hoping for a moustache, my beard is small and very localised under my chin, my body makes me feel like a Sasquatch sometimes…hairy and large but I am happier with this “Santa belly” as I call it than I ever was as a tiny size 6, masking as a woman for the worlds approval and my own safety.

In summary, gender affirming care has been life giving. As in, it gave me my life. The hope that someday everything would finally lead to being able to meet my true self in that mirror and in my life was all I could hold onto as I tried to fight the feeling that the only way out of abusive situations, severe depression and so much more was to simply stop breathing. All the overwhelming paperwork, hoops you have to jump through, the endless appointments where people question you over and over and continually point out all the permanent “side effects” of medically transitioning just in case the chance of getting leg hair might put you off the whole thing. That hope that someone would tick that last box and allow me to live as me was the only light at the end of the tunnel for so long. Is it a miracle cure for all the shit we go through? Gourd no. But, for me, it has made all the hard stuff in my life that little easier to get through.

I believe I would not be alive if it weren’t for the gender affirming healthcare I have received, both past, present and ongoing. And I have to thank the Monash Gender Clinic from the bottom of my heart for it.

The waitlists were long but I have only had good experiences with the people I have had direct contact with. They had a lot to process from lack of social and family supports to my confusing and overwhelming health conditions to homelessness. The network they have gathered together to treat so many aspects of their gender affirming care has been invaluable. To have gynaecology, endocrinology, psychology and more all under the same umbrella so they can consult eachother throughout means you get better care.

I am so grateful.

I am me…an ever evolving form, finally settling into my skin suit for the first time after taking it to a tailor to adjust all the bits that didn’t fit quite right.