Ale:
I want to start by asking you what made you want to participate in this project?
Arlowe:
I really know and trust Sus and when they reached out to me about it, I was excited to meet you. I’ve worked a lot in reproductive healthcare arenas, I’m a trained doula, and I’ve assisted in several births throughout my life. I don’t do them as often as I would like, but that’s because the birth schedule is hard. When I was pursuing my undergrad, I worked and did an internship with a reproductive health organization. I did community engagement and education stuff for them.
I’ve been a sexual health educator and ran a youth advocacy board for a while. Working with both queer youth and elders is really important to me, I think so often those age ranges are without information on how to have good reproductive health. I’m excited to do this project because outside of the last sexual health-based job that I had before I came here, I haven’t done a lot of public storytelling about my experience since I’ve come out as trans and nonbinary. I’m excited to sort of think through some of these things.
Ale:
I would love to hear about your personal journey with reproductive health and your journey with transness and how they relate. Create a picture of how these two come together.
Arlowe:
The reproductive journey definitely came first. I have had reproductive health challenges for a very long time. I started menstruating very early and I had to deal with the medical system a lot. I was diagnosed with PCOS very early, and was told by a doctor that I was probably infertile with no actual care for it. A lot of my reproductive justice work is also connected to fat justice work and body justice work, because so often I was told things like “if you would lose weight, your periods would be easier” so I’ve had to do a lot of advocating for myself since I was very young. And as far as getting involved with sexual liberation education work, in High School I was trained to be a peer mentor for HIV education. I’m very interested in queer and trans history and organizing, and so much of that is embedded in reproductive health. We don’t call that all the time, but that is what it is.
Ale:
Sounds like you have been dealing with reproductive health since very early on. How did you feel about your gender during that time?
Arlowe:
I had a hard time thinking about gender growing up because I grew up evangelical and because I was in this fat body, I was de-gendered in very specific ways, and I’m also neurodivergent. I think that a lot of gender norms were not put upon me because it felt like I was a lost cause, but I was such a good caregiver. I was taught to be a caregiver to other people. I don’t think anyone thought I would be a mother, they thought that I would be a children’s minister or something like that. I felt like I was conditioned not as a girl or a boy, but as a vessel for the Lord.
It took me a lot longer to think about my own gender because I never really had the space for it, and I knew I could never do it right. I could do this [caretaking] right, but I would never get this other thing [transness] right. I connected with the maternal and those care realms, so I never questioned it. I think if I had the space as a young person, I probably would have identified as genderless.
Ale:
So your gender as transness wasn’t really a thing for you then because you just didn’t have the space or encouragement for it?
Arlowe:
The first time I really considered my gender was working with queer and trans youth. I was teaching kindergarten teachers how to think about gender differently, but had never internally asked myself about it. So I was sitting with a group of young people, and then this young person who I’d been in community with for literally four or five years turned to me, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever asked you what your preferred pronouns are,” and I had a full ass breakthrough. They were the first ones I tried it out with because I felt safe with them. I had created the space where we could talk about this, and they deserved to have that expression and reciprocity. So I did that, and then I slowly came out to more people.
Ale:
That’s what happens when you create safety! Let’s keep going through your reproductive health, what else happened?
Arlowe:
Right after that, I was having terrible periods, and I was really struggling with fatigue in very specific ways that seemed connected with having PCOS. I was dealing with cysts and going into debt by having to go to the ER to get immediate relief or to get care for something that no one was helping me with. They had put me on Metformin, and it was making me really sick. That’s something they give people with PCOS a lot, and it was really uncomfortable.
Ale:
How old were you when you first got diagnosed with PCOS?
Arlowe:
Probably 14 or so. I was having really bad period symptoms, and they tested me for endometriosis, but that wasn’t it. That would have been in the early 2000’s and they weren’t paying attention to that, especially in my small town. I wasn’t getting good care.
“I think that I was afraid of being someone who was going to be read as unsafe, but not from a spooky queer person, but that as a man I would need to move across the street because I could harm another person. I don’t think I could have articulated that then, but I can definitely now. I never wanted to be “sirred,” and I couldn’t really explain a whole lot of reasons why, other than my own feelings.”
Ale:
They still don’t. Trans and women’s healthcare is on the dumps. What were some of your symptoms?
Arlowe:
I had debilitating cramps and hair growth in places that were abnormal for feminine bodies, whatever that means. I started shaving my armpits and the underneath of my face at the same time as a young person. I grew up in a family that wanted me to diet and lose weight, and I couldn’t lose weight, but it was a rupture of a cyst in my body that caused an extreme amount of pain, which made it so they finally diagnosed it.
And that happened multiple times. I remember once having a lot of really terrible cramping, and I was working for Starbucks at the time in the Oklahoma City area, and I was unable to move, and I went into so much pain that I passed out, and it was pain from PCOS. By the time I got to the ER they said, “we’re gonna treat you for an infection, but there’s really nothing we can do for you.” It was not very helpful.
Ale:
That is very scary, and to also have been dealing with chronic pain since you were so young.
Arlowe:
Yes! I also had really bad migraines since I was a baby. One of the worst types of migraines that I got before starting HRT was a menstrual migraine the day that I started menstruating. I literally could not see, and it was really bad and really painful. Over my life, I’ve tried a lot of migraine medications, but my body does not respond well to them. They’re just really bad, and they have really horrible side effects. They put me on Topamax for a while, and I was having auditory hallucinations and things that made me question reality. I ended up just settling for having migraines, because it’s better than being up all the time and hearing things because of this medicine, which, if I quit cold turkey, could make me become a person who has seizures. I sort of did other things, but nothing helped.
Ale:
So you started on HRT to deal with the symptoms of PCOS? Tell me more about how that happened.
Arlowe:
I had been referring people in Tulsa to a doctor in Oklahoma City [Arlowe worked in reproductive health at the time] because at that point, to get gender-affirming care in Tulsa, there weren’t very many options. You either had to be insured or you had to use abortion clinics that always had a wait list, and depending on where you went, you were getting different levels of care. But there was this queer doctor who was running a queer diversity clinic who was doing informed consent versions of HRT and he had a ton of trans patients and was nerding out about the science of it in a way that we didn’t really have access to in Oklahoma. You’re constantly hearing horror stories of people being over-prescribed hormones, and that side effect, but he was dismantling that. So I had been referring people to this doctor for a while, and finally, I thought that maybe he could help me figure out my hormone stuff, and he is not going to be weird about it.
Ale:
So many don’t think about how somebody who’s literally dealing with trans patients and people’s hormones could talk to you about your own reproductive health stuff.
Arlowe:
Exactly. And just about a month before that, I went to Creating Change, which is a national conference, and I had met someone there who was micro-dosing testosterone and was trans masc, or masc-of-center. They had these sick ass chops and I was just like, damn, those are really cool. They were a redhead too, so we had this connection, and they told me the chops were because of the testosterone, and they mentioned that they were doing it because of PCOS. I also heard a conversation at that same conference, where folks were talking more about PCOS being on the intersex spectrum of things, and how they can’t talk about that because it would freak out so many people, but so many people have PCOS. So after that I was like, I’m gonna go see Ross [queer doctor in Oklahoma], I’m gonna have him draw my stuff, and then we’ll see what happens.
Ale:
So basically you thought about starting T because somebody else told you, another trans person at the conference, that you should ask about it.
Arlowe:
Yeah, word of mouth. And I knew a lot of trans people and worked with a lot of trans people in Oklahoma, but most of them were not on small doses; most of them were looking to pass and to do all of that. So when I met this person who was a sort of gender goblin — fat-bodied, red-headed — I saw a version of myself that could exist, that I wasn’t afraid of. There was some sort of connection there,
The next month, I went to see Ross and because I had to drive like an hour and a half to see him, I was maybe thinking about testosterone. He literally said, sign the informed consent form, I’m gonna give you a prescription for testosterone and you can choose not to use it. It’s gonna take a few days for your labs to get back, but that way you don’t have to come back if you want to fill it. He told me, we’re gonna put you on a baby dose, it’s a microdose, but it could help you. One of the things that I talked to him about was being really afraid of passing as a man. I wanted it to be very clear that I didn’t really care that much about gender, and I was identifying as nonbinary, but I knew for sure I wasn’t a man.
Ale:
What do you think you were afraid of back then or what were some of your concerns about being a man?
Arlowe:
That’s a good question. I think that I was afraid of being someone who was going to be read as unsafe, but not from a spooky queer person, but that as a man I would need to move across the street because I could harm another person. I don’t think I could have articulated that then, but I can definitely now. I never wanted to be “sirred,” and I couldn’t really explain a whole lot of reasons why, other than my own feelings. I also think the sorts of things that I did for a living, I was concerned about losing the connection to people. By that point, I had been a nanny for so many families, I had been at births, I was working with people from all age groups, and I was somebody who looked trustworthy. And some of that is my fatness too, there is this sort of thing that happens to fat bodies, where you’re kind of agendered or genderless. But I knew I didn’t want that [masculinity] to become a barrier to the work that I was doing. For the men in my family, their hair leaves them early, and I love my red hair. I still love my red hair, there’s just a whole lot less. I was afraid of losing my hair.
Ale:
You still wanted to remain a safe person for people to come to you, and you felt like masculinity wasn’t that.
Arlowe:
Especially at that point, I could not see a realm where that would work for me. And to be honest, I still don’t want to pass as male. I got aggressively sired and he/him at the dentist last week, and they were trying to be such allies, but they were just doing it wrong, haha. You could tell they were trying so hard and feeling so good that they were using what they thought my preferred pronouns were, because I’m finally at a place now where it’s more ambiguous and I have enough facial hair and my voice is deep enough that they think I’m trying to pass, which is new and interesting.
Ale:
What happened with your hormones after you started T?
Arlowe:
I started T in February of 2020, and my periods stopped. I think I had periods for four months after that, and I had one more since then because I forgot my T for too long. I had horrific stuff, and they were really irregular, but then they sort of whispered away. Not only does that mean that I don’t get menstrual-specific migraines anymore, but the amount of migraines that I was getting overall has dramatically dropped. I’m not migraine-free, but the fifth of what I was getting before testosterone.
I didn’t realize how much dysphoria I had around my body hair, because it was in this ambiguous place, but now I love my body hair. My chest hair is one of my favorite things about my body. But I had no idea how I was living a life full of dysphoria and never naming it that, so I’m just a lot more comfortable in my body overall. I had really large hips before, which made it impossible to wear pants, and for my hips to sort of narrow dramatically proved how I can walk around the world. I still love dresses. I still wear feminine clothes, but it’s awesome that I can find a pair of pants.
Ale:
In the subject of dresses, you mentioned earlier that there are parts of your femininity — motherhood and caring — that you always wanted to retain. How do you feel about it now, and has anything changed?
Arlowe:
It’s funny because I think my body has finally caught up to my brain, if that makes sense. While I was ultra feminine or maternal — is the word I would use a lot before — I’m also a neurodivergent Aries who is really blunt, and I push back on a lot of gendered roles in a very masculine way. I protect people in masculine ways. I’m just a flamboyant gay so it’s not just femininity. I feel like I’ve always been in touch with the spectrum.
So I don’t think much has changed, and I think that my body has just caught up with my presentation. The one thing about my body before HRT was that I would have described my style before coming out as a mixture of Miss Honey and Zooey Deschanel, but the fat version. It was very much kooky and bright colors and things like that. I still like that, but I’ve always sort of rebuked it as beautiful. I’ve been dressing more like Gonzo my whole life than the feminine version of those things. I feel more like a muppet haha.
Ale:
I’ve also felt like muppet who’s trying to be masc haha.
Arlowe:
I think I’ve been doing a lot of things in masculine ways, and some of my first obsessions were Elton John and Freddie Mercury — that’s the sort of masc that I am. I’ve always loved bears in the community because they look so tough, and they’re gonna protect their people, but they’re also so soft. They’re some of the softest men in the community, most cuddly, and that’s kind of how I feel more now, I connect with bears and butches. But I do feel like I have been put in situations where people think that I’m too kind or not strong enough because of my presentation, whereas now my presentation matches my personality.
Ale:
So you feel like the perception that people have now matches how you want to be perceived?
Arlowe:
Yeah. I’m not just soft, I’m also smart and bold and some of these other things that we don’t tie to femininity.
Ale:
Earlier, you mentioned that when you started T you didn’t want to be perceived as a man. How do you feel about masculinity now?
Arlowe:
I think that the longer that I sit and interrogate the entire binary, and the more that my body changes and is perceived as changed, the less afraid I am of the pendulum swinging because I can’t really control how the outside world perceives my gender.
Ale:
That’s the tricky thing about gender. It’s all about perception.
Arlowe:
Right. I was really afraid of being “he/him,” and I still don’t think that’s for me, but I do like when it occasionally happens because it is affirming in a weird way. Even though I’m not a man, there is something affirming and coded about somebody who doesn’t know my experience, but is seeing that I’m somebody who has leaned into what transness can do to a body. It’s very powerful and I think the people who do “he/him” me now are people who are trying to be allies and are trying to be like “I see what you’re doing here and I support it.” And I’m not trying to make this a PSA for allies haha. At the end, it doesn’t matter because there are real consequences for a lot of people who are gender variant and how they’re able to be perceived and treated.
“I think that the longer that I sit and interrogate the entire binary, and the more that my body changes and is perceived as changed, the less afraid I am of the pendulum swinging because I can’t really control how the outside world perceives my gender.”
Ale:
So, masculinity doesn’t always fit?
Arlowe:
I think for me, I’m never going to fit in a box because of other things about myself, because of my physical fat body and my aesthetic, which is very loud and maximalist. I’m less afraid of being uncertain about who I am now and the masculinity/femininity divide. I identify as a gender Goblin and how I identify changes all the time. I’m masculine-of-center and in certain things I present in a more masculine way, but I identify as agender, gender fluid, gender Goblin, sometimes I identify as a bearded lady.
Ale:
It sounds like you’re more in the gender fuckery spectrum haha.
Arlowe:
Yes, the fuckery is what I’m about. I think that even if I begin to get more masculine, I have the tools and the queer and trans aesthetic to keep fucking with it.
Ale:
What I’m gathering is that the more you lean into the transness of it all, the more you feel compelled to play with gender and engage with gender fuckery?
Arlowe:
A hundred percent. I hardly wore any makeup at all before HRT, now I love red lipstick. Now that my head is shaved, I love an earring. You know, I’m really interested in playing with juxtaposition. I have always loved being a safe and trusted person for a young person to talk to, and by my presentation changing, I might not get access to talk to folks who have more boundaries and barriers with their family. I may be less likely to be able to sneak under the radar and be a queer mentor for somebody who can’t be out. But I also can be a very visible person now so that some other queer or trans kid can see me and know they can look like that.
Ale:
You could be the person at the conference, and be the trans person with your own version of the chops.
Arlowe:
Exactly! What do you mean you can have a mustache and still not hate your breasts?
Ale:
To wrap it all up, how do you think your gender journey and your trans experience have influenced the work you do as a doula and in reproductive health?
Arlowe:
When thinking about specifically Doula and birth-related work, my experience made me a good person to hold space for people because I was able to comfort and understand and empathize with their body, but I also feel that we are not of the same sort and that is where the agender stuff came in. I think I’m able to be a warm person, but also talk about the things that were going to happen to somebody’s body during that process and the power that they held in it, without being like “Oh, you’re gonna be such a good mom.” I think because I was removed from the process — I was told from such a young age I wouldn’t be able to [conceive] — but I use my body to do work all the time, I think that allows me to understand and support how a body works outside of the expectations of whatever your body is supposed to do. I think because the social conditioning of femininity never worked on me, and I never saw myself with that gender, it allowed me to show people the holes of it in a way that wasn’t radical, but just obvious.
Ale:
Oh I almost forgot. Just for the record, can you tell me your name, pronouns, how old are you, and where you’re from?
Arlowe:
Arlowe Clementine, my pronouns are they/them or really anything as long as you’re respectful. I’m from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I’ll be 37 in three days.
