The Arrival Fallacy, Facial Feminisation and the Hope of Loving Who You Are.

So close yet so far...

I sat in the dark of a concert hall clutching the hand of my partner as the glorious Tim Minchin rambled on in his clearly-neurodiverse-but-doesn’t-realise-it way. He was talking about the Arrival Fallacy. The oft too-human way of constantly looking to the horizon, the search for the greener grass of the other side, the yearning for “just one more step”. He was talking about it in the context of material wealth and the pursuit of accolades. But it’s something I worry about.

Is this pursuit of womanhood misplaced? Can I ever “arrive” at a destination and be satisfied?

Sure, Tim was talking about that new car, new swimming pool, new fashion keep-cup aspirational suburban keeping-up-with-the-joneses lifestyle and not about the deep yearning of trans folk, but it still hit me. You see, my current spiral of self-loathing (I know, how could someone this cute loath themselves?) really kicked off when I went to Sydney to talk to a doctor about Facial Feminisation Surgery. I will use the common acronym FFS throughout this piece, which shouldn’t be confused with the internet slang “ffs” of “for fucks sake”. If I am saying that I will be fucking typing it the fuck out.

Anyway. Sydney. It was a day-trip to remember. 

Let’s skip past the airline that struggled to do the bare minimum of getting planes in the air. People scoffed when I booked a 7:15am flight for a 2pm sit down, but due to the frantic sticky-tape-the-wings-back-on efforts of the airline I literally made my appointment with 20 minutes to spare. Let’s jump instead to the audacity of Sydney men who didn’t even bother to hide the up-and-down gaze. Sure, eye-fuck to your heart’s delight but at least have the decency to be subtle about it. At what point did men in Sydney gain the confidence to be so conspicuous? Say what you like about Queensland men, sure many of them may be sporting mullets, sure they may be wearing thongs and their name might be Dane (27% of all men in Queensland are named Dane, don’t you know) but at least they have enough shame to break eye contact when you catch them looking. At least they look away and become intensely interested in the tinny they’re clutching or the winnie blue that’s threatening their knuckles.

Sorry Sydney. I don’t mean to be so rude. It isn’t lost on me, the irony of it. The irony of traveling so far for an appointment about appearing “more attractive” at the same time decrying being looked at and observed, or being messaged. Dozens of dicks flying into my inbox from men seeking specifically this while at the same time wishing people wouldn’t stare. Dear Sydney, I bet you have a delightful cohort of men who won’t eye fuck me as I drag my “action-trans” burly-I-wish-I-was-Linda-Hamilton-in-terminator-2-ass a thousand kilometres to talk to one of only a handful of plastic surgeons in this country that does FFS.

[sidebar: Oogle “Linda Hamilton Terminator 2” and you will be like, “Oh yeah she TOTALLY wishes she looked like that!”]

Anyways, I’m not considering FFS for the sake of anyone who gets to observe me. I’m considering it for myself. And it was not a bad meeting! The doctor was lovely. Very kind, very understanding. He’d done this sort of thing before (FFS that is). Turns out not many people do it here in Australia. In fact, there are, as of writing this, no cosmetic surgeons in my state who offer this (hence the trip to the eye-fuck capital of the country). Yes, overwhelmingly the surgeries are exactly the same as the surgeries middle-aged women with too much time and too much money on their hands do because of the mounting pressures to retain a youthful appearance (not being shady, oh how I long to be one of those women with too much time and too much money who can easily pay for someone to rearrange their face into a more pleasing shape). But, when those same surgeries are sought for FFS, it’s almost never available here.

When I first started exploring this path, I was turned away by local cosmetic clinics. A receptionist at one flatly told me, “we don’t do that here” and ended the call. Another half-hardheartedly listened to me try to explain that I wasn’t asking for miracles just some of the common garden-variety procedures they do every day. With a sigh so pronounced I was sure I could hear her eyes rolling in her head, she booked me a consultation. The whole encounter ate at me overnight and I cancelled it the next day. I couldn’t bring myself to consider even walking into a place where I had to beg to be seen, both for an appointment as a person worthy of consideration.

So when I took my little day trip to up-and-down-city it was a pleasant surprise to be treated with some dignity, the looks from passers-by notwithstanding. The surgeon ran me through all the details of my face that I felt self-conscious about and he was reassuring that they could have some improvement. Then I asked what he thought I should have done. Oh boy, I was not prepared for the laundry list of things a surgeon thought was wrong with my face. And suddenly the whole thing turned from a source of hope into an ordeal. The price list, the logistics, the fact that if I was to travel to Sydney for surgery I would need to stay for over a week, bundled up in some hotel room staring at the ceiling while the incisions from where my face had been sliced apart and knitted back together had healed to the doctor’s satisfaction. All for the slightest hope.

Back home in Brisbane I redoubled my efforts to find someone local. The nine month waiting list for one doctor was conditional on me sending photos so he could see it if was worth his time. Another sat me down and explained that I’d need to lose some weight before surgery was even considered. I am a muscular, just shy of six-foot, 95kg trans woman. According to the BMI calculator I’m overweight and not just a little bit. I’m a few scant kilos from being considered obese. I was furious and wanted to pick the man up and yeet him out the window. Something I’m actually capable of by the way owing to the fact that I’m a fucking 95kg fucking trans Amazon for fucks sake! Lose weight? From fucking where?

And now I am in the situation where I need to catalog photos of myself in decade increments of my life so doctors can see what the shape of my face was. So, they can check to see if the sag of flesh is hormones, or weight, or age. And I wonder to myself if this is something that can ever bring me joy? Is this just some losing battle against time and process and indignity where I’m hanging hopes on the impossible?

Which is pretty much what I told my psychologist in order to get my ‘Letter of Readiness’. Yet another hoop to jump through, yet another medical professional scrutinising my motivations. My psych is lovely and will support me to the hilt yet here I am again, sitting in a room explaining that I’m not looking for a miracle. Explaining that I understand that there is no single lever to pull that will change everything for me. Like all trans people, I wish there was a machine that I could step into that would give me the body that feels like “me”. Throw the lever and watch the chemicals bubble and hiss and out steps a magnificently unremarkable middle-aged ciswoman. But instead, I’m doing the thing that all trans people do… I am nudging a thousand tiny levers to shift the way I exist in the world. 

I make sure I keep up my brow and lash tint so the more pronounced light/dark contrast in facial tone reads as more feminine. I have changed how a walk, placing my feet on the ground to sway my hips, the turn of my wrists outward so that the beds of my elbows point forward, doing laps around shopping centres over and over, walking in public spaces trying to just look casual, normal. Voice coaching with a speech therapist. The avalanche of money on hair and skin treatments; the laser, my god the laser hair removal. From my face, my legs, my scrotum, my asshole. No more arms day at the gym for me, all legs all the time. Compression wear to minimise the bulge of my genitals so I can occasionally wear a slinky dress. The rush to emergency because of an inflamed testicle due to too much compression and the stony faced doctor leaning over me explaining how serious it is and that if the antibiotics don’t work I may lose it. Do me a fucking favour doctor and take it out now!

A thousand tiny levers trying to push and push and push the perception of this body away from one thing into another. I am tired sometimes. So tired of it that I wonder how much of this is even working. How much of it is just wishful thinking. How much of it is just the Arrival Fallacy? 

This is what they mean when they say, “It’s a process”. A process of whittling down. Sometimes I think about how it would be easier to not even try, to curl up and let this body be what it is. Just choose to let it look how it is going to look, move how it is going to move, live how it’s going to live. Let it be what it will be. Give up on the goal of loving it and settle for just accepting it.

I’m so very tired. 

Excuse me now. I gotta go. I have to pour through all the photos of me living as a man for the last forty years and catalogue them so another man, who thinks I’m overweight, can decide if my face is worthy of his expertise.

–S