Nat

I've been on and off work due to stress for the last month or so. For the last couple of weeks, I've been focusing a lot on self care and reducing stress. Yesterday was my first day of phased return to work with reduced hours and responsibilities, and it was a success, I'm going to work another 4 hours today and the plan is to try this 5 days a week until the xmas holidays then start ramping up in the new year.

I identified a while ago that posting here would be a nice way to get thoughts and feelings off my mind at a slower pace than Twitter and with a small audience of understanding people who I've known for a long time. However, there's been so much going on in my life that writing a first post with all the context for the rest just seemed too big and overwhelming. I decided that I'd try to write out the shortest possible 'elevator pitch' description of what's gone on, which has resulted, thanks to my tendency towards verbosity, in a reasonable length entry with a 'To Be Continued' ending...

( Getting diagnosed with ADHD and thinking I had all the answers at last )

And then I went to BiCon, Nine Worlds and Autscape...

Just to update those in the know but who don't follow me on Twitter:

Looking back at my 2012, I went through some pretty major life changes and made some significant achievements, despite the year mainly feeling like putting my life on hold.

( January, February and March: Activism, Fandom, Surgery and Stress... )

( April, May and June: Autism Acceptance and putting my life on hiatus... )

( July, August and September: Conferences, Gender Clinic Graduation and Diagnosis... )

( October, November and December: Introspection, Intersections and Reformatting... )

Having written and proofread the above, 2012 feels like a year where I purposely put everything on hold, 'reinstalled' my identity and hopefully set myself up with a freshly formatted stable home and social life on which to build sustainable new routines, projects and relationships from a position of greater self-knowledge.

The changes I've already made seem to have helped with problems like low level chronic fatigue, which I take as an extremely positive sign that I'm doing the right sorts of things. Next year I'm hoping to work productively with the specialists at Nottingham City Asperger Service on helping me to understand myself and develop better strategies for maximising my strengths and working around my difficulties. I'm also planning to take some of my existing projects out of hiatus and take them in a new, more authentic intersectional direction. I'm feeling optimistic.

Hopefully 2013 will be the year I take my life out of hiatus.

When I looked at my 'Neurodiversity' folder in my RSS reader yesterday I was greeted with two articles. The first seemed incredibly apt and well-timed because it perfectly summed up a lot of my recent thoughts and feelings:

catastraspie: My own neurodiversity fills me with wonder and excitement – does yours?

The second talked about being queer in both senses of the word and touched on the intersection and correlation of LGBT people on the spectrum:

Wrong Planet: A Rather Queer Year

This got me thinking about which are my favourite articles about the Autistic Spectrum and Asperger's Syndrome that best explain my experiences.

First of all Tony Attwood's Complete Guide To Asperger's Syndrome book was extremely helpful to me in brushing aside the stereotypes and talking about the wide diversity of ways that the traits can manifest depending on someone's personality, life experiences and coping strategies. However that's a bit long, so here's Tony talking about a number of different subjects from the book in a radio interview:

ABC Conversations: Tony Attwood February 2012

Next I remembered an article on the BBC News website I read a few years ago that helped me to see the difference between being on the Autistic Spectrum and having dyspraxia or NVLD. It essentially says that people on the spectrum use the same part of the brain to explain their own feelings as neurotypical people use only for others:

People with autism 'have problem with self-awareness'

I understand myself through intense observation rather than inherently knowing things so this rang very true to me. I also realised through reading other people's experiences that I couldn't explain how many emotions felt without explaining how they affect my body. Here's a personal experience post about that:

Post Cards From the Edge of the Spectrum: Asperger's and Emotions

In fact thinking of myself in terms of being on the spectrum immediately gave me access to things that explained some of the more chaotic aspects of my daily life and what I have to do to compensate for that. For example here's catastaspie again explaining the concept of prospective memory:

catastraspie: Context and the Non-transference of Behavioural Routines

As well as catastraspie's brilliant blog (all the articles are good!) my other favourite is The Third Glance which is written by a PhD student and talks a lot about the sensory aspects of being on the spectrum. This article was useful in helping me to realise how my reaction to senses is often quite mixed up, like I'll want to wrap myself in a duvet and block my eyes when I'm too hot:

The Third Glance: Processing a Sensory Overload

There are lots of other brilliant blogs and lots of other things I'd like to explain that I can't find the perfect article for (maybe I'll have to write my own!) but I think I'll finish with a good overview article intended to be a primer to people asking the obvious question:

Aspienaut: What is Asperger's? A Long Answer To A Short Question

Update: Oh and as someone who was obsessed with Doctor Who as a kid (although mainly the books), I found this article particularly awesome:

Pea Pilly Bean: The Lessons Doctor Who Is Teaching My ASD Kid

I'm just back from seeing the National Theatre Live version of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time projected at my local arts cinema. I very greatly enjoyed the play. It's an exceptionally well done adaptation, as innovative as the reviews said and seeing it filmed and projected in my local arts cinema didn't detract (although I'd love to see it performed in person).

( What follows is a semi-spoilery review, I'm mostly talking about the adaptation and the staging rather than the story which is close to the original novel... )

I saw the gender clinic for my surgery follow up today. That's going to be the last time I should ever need to see them!

After getting blocked by Canterbury PCT in 2002 and having started out in 1999, it feels good to have finally successfully got everything I needed out of the system. I was extremely nervous and felt very vulnerable when I submitted myself to Nottingham Gender Clinic as nonbinary in 2009, but my psych was friendly and cooperative, understanding and helpful right up to the last moment. I'm regretting not asking for a parting hug rather than a handshake! :)

It felt so good to have seen a gender psych for the last time that I celebrated with ice cream :D

Two weeks since surgery and visible bruising has gone completely, swelling is much reduced and the dissolvable stitches are starting to work their way out. It's more accurate to talk about 'scar tissue' rather than 'stitches' now. Right now I'm only on ibuprofen with paracetamol reserved from break out pain (usually when I've done something unwise).

Walking any distance becomes painful, I still can't sleep on my side or front, and I still can't sit upright in a chair for long periods (it gets uncomfortable after about an hour), especially if I have to lean forward. But things are getting noticeably better every day or two. I'll be going back to work on Monday.

I'm very happy to have apparently avoided all the possible complications I was told to expect! :)

I just wrote a variation of the following for a closed Facebook group, then decided it's a shame it wasn't public...

I'm Nat and I live in Nottingham, UK. I run http://PracticalAndrogyny.com/ and http://Nonbinary.org/ - I've been openly nonbinary and genderqueer since 2001 and involved in online genderqueer communities for a year or two before that, but I've recently ramped up my visibility by putting my face and legal name against my nonbinary visibility and education activism.

As for my gender, "it's complicated", but if pushed I tell people I'm gender neutral, which is my pronoun preference too, and tell people that I'm a person, not a gender. I don't attempt to 'pass' as anything but in practice I seem to be either highly androgynous or assumed to be a teenage boy, despite being 32. I'm interested in creating resources about the practical side of being 'ambiguous' to the gender binary.

I have a transsexual medical history, passing through the private system in the late 1990s. Despite having legally detransitioned in 2004 in protest over the Gender Recognition Act not recognising my gender (and for other practical reasons), I've just had the experience of successfully getting a change of meds and a transgender surgery funded by the local NHS Gender Clinic (my surgery's actually coming up on Thursday) while being completely open about my nonbinary gender. I'm interested in advocating for others who're trying to access transgender healthcare (of any kind) and I have my hands on those 'incriminating' G3 Gender Clinic group minutes you may have read about.

I'm heavily involved in my local mixed trans* group here in Nottingham, one of three nonbinary people on the committee and several nonbinary, genderqueer and gender nonconforming members. We run weekly meetings in the city centre, we have a 'Trans Zone' at this year's Pride and we're currently trying to overturn the decision of Nottingham PCT to 'red list' all gender dysphoria medications.

I believe in keeping transgender spaces welcoming to ALL people who transgress or transcend society's concepts of gender. A lot of my activism is focused on making sure other trans activists remember nonbinary people exist and that we don't all follow the same neat narratives of 'passing', 'transition' or even gender dysphoria. I recently advised META Magazine on nonbinary and genderqueer inclusivity and I'm happy with the results.

And now I should go pack my bag ready for that surgery...

This is the journal formerly known as '36', now renamed to quarridors to match my usernames on every other site I use :)

I've also set up a new deviantART profile and moved over the wildlife art and Doctor Who fan art digital paintings I'm happiest with.

It's good to have all my different accounts under the same handle now!

Last week I went to a formal ball. It was an LGBT Pride formal ball, so allowed some degree of alternative gender expression, but the dress code was still 'cocktail dress or suit and tie'. As you may be able to imagine, shopping for this made me somewhat gender dysphoric as my gender expression is usually firmly casual and in the overlap between clothing genders (think t-shirts, jeans and hoodies). Nonetheless I was determined to go and actually enjoy dressing formal and knowing that there would be queer women there dressed in suits helped me to be comfortable with the idea that I was still dressing in the overlap (especially once I'd applied eye makeup and nail varnish to bridge the void between suits and dresses a little further).

In order to defeat gendered space related anxiety, I went shopping with forthwritten, a nonbinary friend going to the same ball. We managed to turn anxiety inducing gendered shopping into a transgressive genderqueer jape as we raided every department in the shop. I can heartily recommend clothes shopping with a trans* buddy, it makes shop assistants arbitrarily (mis)gendering you a two-against-one situation :)

Trying to buy me a suit in the M&S mens section was an interesting experience. When measured, my neck size was 14", while their smallest suits were for 16" collar and cut assuming bulky shoulders and arms (despite being 'slim fit'). There was no way I was going to pay £99 for something that looked boxy and ill fitting on me. Meanwhile their 14.5" 'slim fit' shirts fit my top half reasonably well but were pretty tight around my waist and hips.

But while we were browsing the boys section finding forthwritten a rather dapper suit cut for '11 years', I couldn't help noticing that an awful lot of the clothes we were looking at (and sniggering at - M&S seem to be helping you dress your children as mini hipsters or baby lesbians) appeared to be in my size. Now I'm 32 years old, 5 foot 10 (178cm), weigh 10 stone 2 (about 64kg, 142lbs) and have a 31.5" waist (80cm), so I have never even vaguely considered going to look in the children's section for clothes, but this stuff looked like it was just my style and just my size. So I was tempted to try it on... And lo and behold some '13-14 years boys' jumpers from Marks and Spenser's fit me impressively well. If anything they were fitting me better than any clothes usually do.

In the end I supplemented mens shirt and trousers with a '13 year old boys' suit jacket that was slightly too tight on the chest to do up and slightly too short in the sleeves, but fit my shoulders perfectly, sat on me very well when open (albeit making me look like a hipster) and looked great combined with the 14.5" collar slim fit mens shirt I'd bought with the cuffs sticking out below the jacket sleeves (the 13-14 year old boys shirt fit me perfectly in collar, shoulders and chest but was also too short in sleeves). Having looked online, the same jacket is available one size larger on the M&S website (14 years), but I was shopping 2 days before the event so didn't have the option of that. I also ended up buying two of those impressively well fitting '13-14 years' jumpers in different colours.

So this was quite the revelation for me, that I could not only shop in the mens and women's sections of the shop but also in the children's section too, despite being quite a lot taller than a child and having a 20.5 'ideal' BMI. It's got me to thinking about why that is... Mainly it's because I have an unusual androgynous/transgender body shape. I have pretty much no muscle mass (in fact I have hypotonic muscles due to dyspraxia), a pretty much flat chest and body fat that goes on my waist and hips long long before it gets anywhere near my chest, arms and shoulders. Having gone home and measured based on size charts, my chest is 34.5" measured under the arms, my bust is 35" (yes, not much difference), my neck is 14", my waist is 31.5", my hips (aka 'seat') are 35.5" and my inside leg is 32" (I'm using imperial measures here because the clothes sizes do too). I *think* my sleeves should be about 32 to 33" from back of the neck to wrist (as suit/shirt size guides seem to go) although this is difficult to measure on yourself, about 20" armpit to wrist.

( Sizing table mainly for my own information... )
So it's really no surprise that I keep finding mens tops I buy bag up around my armpits or neck, or fit lopsidedly on my shoulders. Or that when I buy size XS or S (depending on the shop) t-shirts from 'young fashion' outlets like H&M or Topman, that are cut to fit my shoulders well, they tend to be tight around the hips and waist and so somehow manage to make me look like I have a potbelly even though I'm happily in the middle of BMI ideal (and frankly even when I was underweight they weren't very flattering for my fat distribution). Meanwhile women's tops assume that I have rather more of a bust than I do or have annoyingly short sleeves despite fitting my shoulders well.

Which leaves me in the odd situation of discovering that boys clothes from some shops that are designed for 34" chest 13 to 14 year olds fit my shoulders and arms really well, are cut to assume a relatively flat chest but seem to leave a lot more bagginess around the waist than mens clothes with that chest size do. Essentially boys clothes cut for my shoulders expect you to be a little bit chubby around the waist but have no muscle mass on your shoulders and arms, while mens clothes cut for my shoulders or neck expect you to be rake thin or have muscles you want to be showing off (which I *really* don't). As a friend said, "I've been enjoying shopping in the boys department since they started making 11 year olds in my size".

So ultimately this proves that everyone's body shapes are different, transgender people doubly so! It also means I'm more aware of my actual measurements, so I can approach shopping knowing my actual sizes (especially as each chain store has a sizing guide on their website), and I now have yet another department I can look in for clothes that suit my style and body shape, so more choice! ...and I could be saving a fortune in VAT ;)

Update: Having heard this story, my mum has amusedly related to me how my parents could never get me to wear M&S children's clothes when I was a kid because they were sized too big for me and I didn't want to wear 7-8 years clothes when I was 10 or 11. Clearly the tables are turned now and that oversizing is finally working to my advantage! ;)