I met this guy named Sonny Nordmarken on the FTM International website last week. He was doing interviews of Trans men for a health study hes doing for University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I volunteered to be interviewed and we met this evening at Urban Harvest Market.
The whole interview went really well. I met Sonny and his partner, another Trans man, and found a private spot in the cafe to chat. He recorded our interview on his laptop and we used the pseudonym "Jim", to avoid using my real name and to keep our conversation anonymous.
A lot of Sonny's questions were about my own gender perceptions and experiences, including childhood experiences. I recounted stories of gender dysphoria from when I was about 6-8 years old and stories of recent issues of gender issues. He seemed surprised as I told him about numerous physical threats and homophobic or transphobic slurs that I've experienced as an adult. I guess I've had a lot of those experiences because I lived in the south east for so long but I've experienced transgender discrimination here in San Francisco as well. I've had people call me a "freak" in reference to my gender. I've been called all of the homophobic remarks, such as "butch", "dyke", "queer" and "bull-dagger. I've had people threaten to hit me based on my perceived gender. I even had a grade-school teacher who nicknamed me "Tomboy" as my pet name, which was used as both an endearment and a gay slur.
I understand that the interviews will be used to help health care and mental health care practitioners in working with transgendered men and women. I felt pretty good about participating in Sonny's survey and he was comfortable to talk with as well. I also felt validated that I was being seen and asked as a man, to comment about my own life experiences. I may also be interested in participating in the writing interviews that he's also conducting for Trans men. I asked him to send me the writing prompts so that I can check it out.
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