Bridging the gap: Do men really have more ease? These transgender guys have found the truth more complex.

In the 1990s, the late Stanford neuroscientist, Ben Barres, went from woman to man. He was in his forties, mid-career, and then marveled at the brutal changes in his professional life. Now that society saw him as a man, his ideas were taken more seriously. He was able to complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man. A colleague who did not know that he was transgender even praised his job "much better than that of his sister".

Clinics have reported an increase in the number of people seeking sexual transitions in recent years, and research suggests the number of transgender people has increased over the past decade. Touchstones such as Caitlyn Jenner's transition, bathroom controversy, and the Amazon "Transparency" series have also made this subject a bigger part of the political and cultural conversation.

"Transgender men have a relatively simple process – we just add testosterone and we see their bodies change," said Joshua Safer, executive director of the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount. Sinai Health System and Icahn School of Medicine in New York. "Within six months to a year, they begin to virilize – getting facial hair, a rougher complexion, a change in body odor and a deepening of the voice."

Transgender women find it more difficult to "pass"; they tend to be bigger and more masculine, and these things are hard to reverse with hormonal treatments, Safer says. "But transgender men are going to look for work and the new boss does not even know that they are trans."

We spoke with four men who grew up on the bodies in which they feel more comfortable. Their experiences reveal that the gap between how society treats women and men is in many respects as wide as at the time of Barres' transition. But their diverse origins provide insight into how race and ethnicity influence the gender divide in subtle and sometimes surprising ways. Their words have been slightly edited for space and clarity.

"I Will Never Call the Police Again"

Trystan Cotten, 50, Berkeley, California: Professor of Gender Studies at Stanislaus, California State University and Publisher of Transgress. Press, which publishes books related to the transgender experience. Transitioned in 2008.

Life does not get any easier as an African-American man. The way the police deal with me, the way racism undermines my ability to feel safe around the world, affects my mobility, affects where I'm going. Other African American and Latin American Americans grew up as boys and learned to care for them sooner. I had to learn from my black and brown brothers how to stay alive in my new body and retain some dignity while being belittled by the cops.

One night, someone crushed a car in my neighbor's house and called 911 out to talk to the police officer, and he shoots a gun at me and says, "Stop, stop, save yourself! I turn around to see if there is anyone behind me, and he says, "You, you, go!" I'm in pajamas and barefoot. I'm on the floor and he checks me, and then I say, "What was it?" He said, "You were moving rather funny." Later, people said, "You're crazy, you never call the police."

I was shot a lot more now. In the first two years after my transition, I found myself more often than in the last 20 years that I was driving before. Before, when I was arrested, even for real offenses like driving 100 miles to the hour, I left. In fact, when it arrived in Atlanta, the officer and I had a great conversation about the Braves. Now, the first two questions they ask are: Do I have any weapons in the car, and am I on parole or on probation?

Race influences how people choose to make the transition. I did an ethnographic study of trans men and found that 96% of African American and Latin American men wanted to undergo surgery, while only 45% of white men surveyed did so. This is because a trans history can exacerbate racial profiling. When they pat you, if you do not have a penis, it will be obvious (or if you are a trans woman and you have a penis, it becomes obvious). If they've chosen to make tobacco or smoke grass, if they discover that you're trans, it can be worse for you.

There are also ways in which men treat sexism and gender oppression when I walk in a female body. A few years after my transition, I had a graduate student whom I had guided. She started coming to me, harassing me, sending me e-mails and texts. My advisor and the dean – the two women – laughed. It lasted a good part of the year, and it was the year that I went to the permanent. It was a very scary moment. I felt very worried that if the student felt that I was not paying her attention, she would claim that I had assaulted her. I felt like a guy, I was not taken seriously. I had been a victim of harassment as a woman at another university and they had reacted immediately by sending a police escort with me to the campus. I had the impression that if I had still been in my old body, I would have had a lot more support.

Being a black man changed my way of moving around the world. I had the habit of walking quickly or running to catch a bus. Now I'm walking at a slower pace, and if I'm late, I dare not rush. I am hyper-conscious to make sudden or sudden movements, especially at airports, railway stations and other public places. I avoid engaging with unfamiliar white people, especially white women. If they attract my attention, white women usually hold their purses and cross the street. While I love the urban aesthetic, I stopped wearing hoodies and swapped my baggy jeans, oversized jerseys and colorful caps for jeans, khakis and tight sweaters. These changes blunt assumptions that I will tear off the purses or merchandise, or skip the metro turnstile. The less I'm visible, the better my chances of survival

But this is not foolproof. I am an academic sitting at a desk so I do exercise where I can. I went to the post office to post books and I put this 40-pound weight vest in which I'm walking. It was about 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon and I came back suddenly. , got out of their car and stopped. I had my headphones, so I did not know that they were talking to me. I looked up and there is a helicopter overhead. And now I can see why people are running, because you could live if you run, even if you did not do anything. It was in Emeryville, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Northern California, where there is a lot of security. Someone had seen going to the post office and had called someone to tell him that he had seen a Muslim with an explosive jacket. A cop, a white man, picked him up and laughed saying, "Oh, I think I know what it is, it's a weight belt."

This is not only humiliating, but it creates anxiety. Previously, I felt safe until a police officer if I was lost or if I needed instructions. But I do not do that anymore. I do a lot of hiking, and if I'm hiking and I see a corpse, I will continue to walk. I will never call the police again.

"One has the impression now of being alone"

Zander Keig, 52, San Diego: veteran of the Coast Guard. Works at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego as a Clinical Social Work Case Manager. Editor of anthologies for transgender men. Beginning of the transition in 2005.

Before my transition, I was a radical feminist. I have spoken often, loudly and with confidence. I was encouraged to speak. I was given rewards for my efforts, literally – it was like, "Oh, yeah, talk, talk." When I speak now, I am often given the direct or indirect message that I am "mending", "taking up too much space" or "asserting my male heterosexual white privilege". It does not matter that I am a first generation American Mexican, a transsexual man and married to the same woman that I was before my transition.

I find the statement that I am now unable to talk about the problems that I find important offensive and I refuse to allow anyone to silence me. My ability to empathize has increased exponentially, because I now put men in my way of thinking and feeling the situations. Before my transition, I rarely considered how men lived life or what they thought, wanted or liked about their lives. I have learned a lot about the lives of men through my friendships with men, reading books and articles by and for men and through the men I serve as a person. registered social worker

", with women representing about 80% of the profession in the United States. Currently, I work exclusively with case nurse nurse clinicians, but in my previous position, as a medical social worker working with chronic homeless military veterans – mostly men – struggling with addiction disorders and Serious mental illnesses, I was one of the few among dozens of women

Many researches show that life events, medical conditions and family circumstances have a different impact on men and women. But when I suggest that patient behavior problems such as anger or violence may be a symptom of trauma or depression, they would often be dismissed or outright challenged. The main theme was "men are violent" and there was "no excuse" for their actions.

I notice that some women are waiting for me to acquiesce or concede them more now: Let them talk first, let them board the bus first, let them go ahead. To sit down first, and so on. I also notice that in public spaces, men are more collegial with me, that they express through verbal and nonverbal messages: lift your head by passing me on the sidewalk and use terms like "brother" and " boss' to recognize me. As a former lesbian feminist, I've been put off by the fact that some women want to be treated by me, now that I'm a man, because that violates a fundamental belief that I carry, namely that women are fully capable human beings. What continues to strike me is the significant reduction in the kindness and kindness that I now accorded in public spaces. It seems to me now that I am alone: ​​No one, apart from my family and close friends, pays attention to my well-being.

I remember one moment when this difference was striking at home. A few years after my sex transition, I was traveling on a public bus at the beginning of a weekend. There were six people on the bus, including me. One was a woman. She spoke very loudly on a mobile phone and noticed that "men are holes". I immediately looked up at her and then at the other men. Nobody had raised their heads to look at the woman or anyone else. The woman saw me look at her and then commented to the person she was talking to about "a hole in the bus looking at me right now". I was stunned, because I remember being in similar situations, but conversely, several times: A man would say or do something deemed odious or offensive, and I would find the solidarity with women around me. eyes and perhaps even commented aloud on the situation. I'm not sure why the men did not answer, but it made me a lasting impression

"I took control of my career"

Chris Edwards , 49, Boston: Advertising Creative Director, Lecturer and Essay Writer "Balls: You need to get some." Transitioned in the mid-twenties.

When I started my transition at the age of 26, a lot of my socialization came from guys at work. For example, as a woman, I walked down the hall and met some of my colleagues, and they said, "Hey, what's up? and I said, "Oh, I just got out of this meeting with the customers, they killed all my scripts and now I have to go back and rewrite everything, blah blah blah, and then they tell me their stories. that guy, I meet a guy in the hallway and he says to me, "What's up and I'm throwing a story about my day and he's already in the hallway, and I think, well, it's rude." So, I think, OK, well, I guess the guys do not really share, so next time I'll stay short.The third time, I realized that you were just nodding. [19659002] The creative department is largely male, and the guys have accepted me into the club.I have learned by example and modeled my professional behavior accordingly. </ P> I continued to notice that if the guys wanted an assignment, they would ask for it.If they wanted an increase or a no promotion, they would ask. It was a foreign concept for me. As a woman, I never felt it was polite to do it or that I had the power to do it. But after seeing it around me, I decided that if I felt that I deserved something, I would go ask for it too. By doing this, I took control of my career. It was very empowering.

Apparently, people only held the door for me because I was a woman rather than as courteous as I had supposed. Not only men, women too. I learned this the first time I left home as a man, when a woman came into a big shop in front of me and just let the door close behind me she. Chris Edwards relaxes at home in Boston, Massachusetts Photo / Evelyn Hockstein's Washington Post "src =" data: image / png; base64, R0lGODlhAQABAPAAAOrq6v /// yH5BAAAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw == "data-srcset =" // www. nzherald.co.nz/resizer/EOAKNP9B6XsB1dAGzn6IGsnL5xQ=/320×208/smart/filters:quality(70)/arc-anglerfish-syd-prod-nzme.s3.amazonaws.com/public/RLL22ITHINGY3PVPDIKRABSFBA.jpg 320w, // www.nzherald .co.nz / resizer / rBuISyhbSgQjKL8XpU9M_Dzg6I8 = / 375×244 / smart / filters: quality (70) /arc-anglerfish-syd-prod-nzme.s3.amazonaws.com/public/RLL22ITHINGY3PVPDIKRABSFBA.jpg 375w, // www.nzherald. co.nz/resizer/kLfc1BjyS7xyLFTWF-bK0xux3T4=/620×403/smart/filters:quality(70)/arc-anglerfish-syd-prod-nzme.s3.amazonaws.com/public/RLL22ITHINGY3PVPDIKRABSFBA.jpg 620w "/>