Sissy Hypno

self care: 

         Is living every day like next week is the dentist. Be afraid. 

         Is putting your Facebook notifications to sleep.

         Is pain. Eyebrows...I’m getting electrolysis...My toes are growing into my pleasers. Change is painful. Every time you look around, someone new is dead.

         Is being by the water, a fleet of dude boats blasting Kid Rock, and I’m all the way down in Maryland, helping a real-life, a not-even-in-a-poem cicada. I’m sorry. I was too late for the other guy.

         Is remembering everyone needs porn too. Everyone freaks a little. 

         People will just read whatever they want into this piece.

...

Progesterone

My blood work is tomorrow again. I have to get my bloods drawn every time I want to tinker with my HRT. My latest thing is I want progesterone. 

         “Progesterone may add the following: (i) more rapid feminization, (ii) decreased endogenous testosterone production, (iii) optimal breast maturation to Tanner stages 4/5, (iv) increased bone formation, (v) improved sleep and vasomotor symptom control, and (vi) cardiovascular health benefits.”

Progesterone could take my tits from puffy to uppity. Electrolysis could fulfill my mistress’ wishes. On a DeviantArt post I remember: “No, Andy, you’re no girl yet. You need sweet, perfectly shaven sissy skin, don’t you? Yes, Andy, nice and smooth. From now on, no more rubbing when you towel dry, hun? Ok? Baby, self care is patting AND ONLY patting your perfect doll skin dry with those rough, mean towles.” And I never forgot that advice. 

Someday through my transition I hope to fulfil my mistress’ final wish: that I make milk. That I breastfeed her. Be her oasis. A good story. Remember, story is just another word for erasure.

While lusting after progesterone, I did some digging. Turns out, Galactorrhea--spontaneous milk flow--has been documented in men. Even cis ones.  Mistress is always right. Progesterone does not make this happen. Only love can make things spontaneous.

While Wikipedia says male lactation is commonly observed in mammals, specifically in fruit bats, they also say, "the term male lactation is not used in human medicine." 

Another lactation that also totally doesn’t count is neonatal milk. Or “witch's milk”. Which is when babys, newborns (of any sex or gender or creed) produce milk. As they don’t even need us. 

I produced that quote from Dr. Aster Gilbert because I found her and her work misappropriated on a TERF subreddit masquerading as a website. The authors also misappropriate this sensational, dense, lovely thought from trans author, activist, and icon Andrea Long Chu,

         “Sissy porn’s central conceit is that the women it depicts are in fact former men who have been feminized (‘sissified’) by being forced to wear makeup, wear lingerie, and perform acts of sexual submission. Captions further instruct viewers to understand that the very act of looking at sissy porn itself constitutes an act of sexual degradation, with the implication that, whether they like it or not, viewers will inevitably be transformed into females themselves. This makes sissy porn a kind of metapornography, that is, porn about what happens to you when you watch porn. At the center of sissy porn lies the asshole, a kind of universal vagina through which femaleness can always be accessed. Getting f*cked makes you female because f*cked is what a female is.”

And this is what a very acclaimed and very rational TERF would have to say to all three of us:

          “‘R*bin M*rgan, the keynote speaker, said: I will not call a male “she”; thirty-two years of suffering in this androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the title “woman”; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers’ names and in our own, we must not call him sister.’"

“Conclusions: Evidence has accrued that normal progesterone (and ovulation), as well as physiological estradiol levels, is necessary during ciswomen's premenopausal menstrual cycles for current fertility and long-term health; transgender women deserve progesterone therapy and similar potential physiological benefits.”

…

Auto-Errotic exSissyfication 

In the name of self-care, and to procrastinate writing this essay, I turned on a guided meditation software on Netflix. 

The option menu: Meditate, Relax, Sleep. I chose meditate. I chose the 10-minute breathing session for stress. The British guy’s voice came on the screen to talk over an MS Paint animation of loop-d-loops knotting into a dense orange ball. “We’re gonna start with our eyes open and a nice soft focus”. “Sometimes life is so chaotic and horrible, and we can’t help ourselves *pause* we lose our breath.” I imagine my lungs inflating like a frog--unconscious, pure survival.

“So we need to be reminded.” “Woody,” he calls me, hooking my chin up with his finger, slowly. “Notice how your lungs fill with air. Exhale. Notice how your body softens like laundry. Good. Now imagine scanning your body. From the top of your head, scanning slowly down to your toes.” My breath swims down my softened throat and back. “Make no judgements. Just scan your body like the thing it is.” 

Self-care is disassociating while a guy acts so sincerely British you know he’s never been funny in his life. Just peaceful and disarming. “Imagine you’re being scanned.” I imagine a photocopier beginning at the crown of my head and yoking down my face. I imagine a man scanning, watching me. Like the guy in the bathroom last night. “You’re feeling your gaze sniff down your spine. You feel your body sink into your seat.” 

I find I’m petite and doughy. So does the man (I can’t help but imagine) scanning me. He’s a pleasure beginning to rise just outside my breath. 26 years old and I pulse as my mind rolls over my pubescent curves. Arch oglegy. “That’s it, sissy” the British guy says. “Notice what breath does to your body.” I stumble into my dryer-burnt panties like cobwebs. His long pauses don’t sound like silence. They sound like he came out from behind the TV speakers with the chord in his hand. And my eyes are still closed. And I realize I could snap out of it at any time. Open my eyes, hit minimize, uninstall. But something stops me.

“Imagine someone to love you,” the British guy interrupts. “Imagine them as happy as they have ever been, ever could be.” Erk appears to me in the Greenfield River. Topless. The busy bridge above us tossing cars back and forth. “Normally, sissy.” He interrupts, sharpening something. “We don’t really take time to notice how the body feels.” Taking estrogen my body has returned to me. Piece by piece. In the soggy envelopes. “It’s really tempting to resist, sissy.” He says. “But this exercise is about putting down that resistance.” My baby picture is looking at me right now. I face it down. “Good sissy.” smiling at me.

He moans back to life, “and just for a moment, enjoy ,  sissy  , the feeling of having stopped. Of having nowhere to go, and nothing to do.”

“And sissy just take a moment. Is there a sense of restlessness? Or stillness? In the body?”

“Sissy don’t breathe in any special way, just let your body do its own thing. That’s it.” That matte silence comes again. “That’s it. You’re gonna breathe forever, but now you're gonna count. 1 on the inhale, 2 on the exhale. And you’ll go like that, sissy, until you hit 10. Then you’ll start again.” I transend 

I count until the numbers rush in and recede like flies. “And now sissy, this is the most important thing you’re going to do today, so listen up.” My cat ears perk while I unconsciously drag my fingers along a humming bowstring. “I want you to imagine a person you’re struggling with in some way right now, sissy. Someone from your past perhaps.” “Someone who is gone but unleavable. Know that person wants to be happy, just like you.” What I remember now is my business. “And now with each breath’s release, send them kindness. Give, sissy.” It’s what you’re made for.”

…

— p. 3/3