Ale:
Do you mind saying your name, your pronouns? How old are you, and where are you from?
Chiron:
I think I told you my name was Zaire, but in between that time, I changed my name to Chiron. I’m 37, living in El Cerrito right now, originally from North Carolina, and I use they/them pronouns.
Ale:
There have been a couple of people whom I’ve been talking to who also had a name changed since starting the project. Trans people and our name changes!
Chiron:
My birth name is gender neutral, but it just feels like time for something new, and an identity I get to pick, not pick and hand it to me.
Ale:
What do you think is going to be new with Chiron?
Chiron:
So it’s partially related to the chaplaincy stuff. I’m in school, I’m in seminary right now, and Chiron is the wounded healer. The longer I am in school for chaplaincy, the more I notice all my wounding. But also, I’m walking through this world as this incredibly wounded person, and I’m tasked with helping people make sense of their lives, especially towards the end of their lives or when they’re in crisis. It feels very fitting.
Ale:
Cool! So I know you agreed to participate in the project because we have a friend in common who asked you to, but if it hadn’t been because of that, what would make you want to participate in something like this?
Chiron:
I think I actually saw it a few days before Sol [friend in common] sent it. Since I was 17, anything having to do with my reproductive health has always been really fucked, but in the past few years, especially up to my hysterectomy, it was just very eye opening. Before my hysterectomy, I thought I wanted to push a little person out into this world, and that’s when I started to be more focused on Black maternal mortality rates, and when I started having really intense pain. I’ve always had pain with my periods, but then I started to have pain outside of my period, and I didn’t know what was going on. I wasn’t even supposed to be having periods, I’m on testosterone.
Ale:
The T never took them completely away?
Chiron:
It would make them come once every three months.
Ale:
For me, having gone off and on T, that’s the whole point — don’t give me periods anymore.
Chiron:
Yeah! I was talking to my doctor, asking why I’m having incredibly painful, two-week-long periods, and they just said it happens to some people on testosterone, but it didn’t make sense. I didn’t want to know what some people experience, I wanted to know what I’m experiencing and why. There’s a lot to unpack and definitely a lot of experiences with having my reproductive health ignored. Even now, when I go to the hospital and I tell them I don’t even have a uterus anymore, they still give me a pregnancy test.
Ale:
What is that about, you think?
Chiron:
Maybe they don’t know what a hysterectomy is. Maybe they don’t know what surgeries are haha
Ale:
Or maybe it’s racism and transphobia haha — the gaslighting of it all and treating you like you don’t know your own body.
Chiron:
It’s frustrating, to say the least.
“Everyone talks about trans guys getting the T rage and stuff, and I was fucking chilling. Even now in periods when I pause the testosterone, I feel so fucking crazy, like I feel so goddamn crazy, and then when I start it again, I’m just chilling again. I feel comfortable in myself, I feel calm.”
Ale:
It sounds like you’ve had plenty of experiences with your reproductive health throughout the years, but I want to start at the beginning. Do you want to walk me back to when you were 17?
Chiron:
When I was 17, I was diagnosed with PCOS, but honestly, since I was 12 or 13, which is when my period started, it was always very painful. I couldn’t get out of bed, I was passing massive blood clots, them being big enough for me to go to the doctor and the doctor being like “that’s normal, but if they get this big tell us,” and them getting that big and them telling me again “that’s normal.” How is everything fucking normal? You told me to come back when this happens.
So when I was 17, I officially got diagnosed with PCOS. At the time, they put me on Metformin, which is what they do to everyone when they first get diagnosed with PCOS. It didn’t do anything, it didn’t help, and it didn’t even out my periods.
Ale:
Do you know what’s on Metformin?
Chiron:
It’s usually a medication they give to people with diabetes, sometimes it’s used as a weight loss medication. It’s supposed to help balance out hormones, but I don’t really know how it works. The way that somebody explained it to me, is that the medication is supposed to teach your hormones to work in the way that they’re supposed to work. It’s crazy that they figured out a medication to do that, but a lot of people have a lot of side effects on it. It’s not the best medication to be putting people on, but it’s been around for a long time, and doctors like medications.
Ale:
Doctors really love to medicate the problem, but not solve it. It’s like putting a little band-aid because it’s been around forever.
Chiron:
That’s the thing with most doctors and the thing that pisses me off about healthcare in the U.S. in general. Let’s treat the symptoms, but what’s the point of treating a symptom if the cause is still there.
Ale:
Did you have any side effects?
Chiron:
At that time, it didn’t give me side effects, but in my early 20s, they started me on it again and I don’t know what the fuck happened. Maybe the dose was too high, but that shit fucked me up the first night I took it. Maybe it had been the second night that I took it that I started getting really sick. No one told me that it can make your blood sugar get too low and I woke up, and everything in the room was spinning and everything was hazy. I was trying to call my partner at the time, but I couldn’t remember their name.
Ale:
So, memory lost?
Chiron:
I was looking at them, and I was trying to say help, and the words wouldn’t come out. Then eventually my brain was just like, try harder, try harder, stay healthy, scream help. I finally yelled for help, they looked up some of the meds and said we had to get some food in me. I was trying to eat food, but I was puking the food back up because my body was already freaking the fuck out.
Once the medication kind of cleared off my system, my body was so traumatized that I started having night terrors again, which is really rare for adults, but I started having night terrors, and I couldn’t eat for a month. I couldn’t be alone because, not even mentally, but my body was convinced that at any moment I was going to die, and to feel that in my body from taking a medication for two days — I didn’t go back to that doctor. It took me like a month or two to finally mellow out and calm down and return to myself.
Ale:
It’s so scary to start taking meds and immediately have those kinds of side effects.
Chiron:
It was two days, and that would have been only the fourth dose, it wasn’t even that long. We lived in Maine at the time, so with the night terrors I would come back to myself and I would be standing butt ass naked in the alley, trying to run from whatever my dream was and my partner is at the door trying to get me inside and I’m just like “what happened?”
All this because I wanted to feel better in my body, and the reason I went back to that doctor is because of my periods. I was having a period every four months but it was the most painful shit of my fucking life. My period cramps used to be so bad that sometimes it felt like I needed to push.
Ale:
Kind of like to give birth to them, right?
Chiron:
Yeah! I would be walking around and, you know how you pass blood clots so big you can feel when they’re coming out, and the cramps are getting worse, and then suddenly it’s better once there’s a gush of blood. That’s kind of how I lived for a while.
Ale:
So you were in chronic pain every four months?
Chiron:
Yeah, and then at some point my partner was like “hey, you’re kind of evil” when my PMS was happening [both Chiron and Ale laughed loudly]. I’m pretty sure it was PMDD. I don’t know what was happening in my brain, but I needed to fight everyone close to me or to start arguments with strangers, I just had to be a cruel person. There would be times when they would say something to me, and I would snap. They started calling it my demon spawning.
Ale:
Haha so you gave it a name and everything?
Chiron:
Yeah, and I don’t know why I needed to fight. I would be super sad, the saddest I’ve ever been, and then argue, and then super sad again.
Ale:
And this all is happening right as you were PMSing that you were feeling possessed?
Chiron:
Yes exactly. And then the last day I would just be crying and then I was fine, but every single time I’d be like, why do I feel so violent? I know a lot of people with the sad version of PMDD, and part of me wished I had that, but I just wanted to fight everything. At that period of my life, I was going out to bars and hoped that a cis man would try to hit on me just so I could fight them. There were a few times when my partner had to be like, “hey, you can’t keep fighting strange men, you might lose one day,” and from the PMDD space I would be like “that’s crazy” but then once I would come out of it, I’d be like yes, it makes sense that I should probably stop trying to fight.
Ale:
Yeah, maybe it wasn’t the safest. You also mentioned that you’ve had a miscarriage?
Chiron:
When I was 17, I also had a miscarriage. At that time, I woke up and the bed was just covered in so much blood and I was like, this is not normal. I went to the emergency room and they didn’t do a pregnancy test for some reason. I think they’re excuse was that based on my timeline, I would have been really early, so the test wouldn’t have come out as positive.
Anyway, the experience was so fucking shitty because they were like “no, you don’t need a pad or anything” but there was blood running down my legs, and I’m like “Can I have a towel? Can I have anything?” And they said, well someone has to examine you first. I’m in this hospital bed, in the hospital gown, and everything’s getting soaked, that’s how much I was fucking bleeding, but they’re still telling me it’s fine. Finally, I stand up and ask, “can I just please get some help?” And everybody looked and saw the blood drip. It took them seeing the blood dripping on the floor, and the mattress covered to be like, yes.
Ale:
They could’ve just believed you.
Chiron:
Yeah, why did y’all think I came here? Like, y’all have me gowned up, clearly you think something’s fucking wrong, could you have just helped me the first fucking time? And then they got me cleaned up and gave me a bunch of towels, and that’s when they got the doctor to do some exams and labs and stuff.
Ale:
When this happened, did you know you were pregnant?
Chiron:
I had an idea. I don’t know, it feels really weird to say I’m glad I had that miscarriage. I’m not happy that I miscarried, but I’m so glad I did not have a baby.
Ale:
You were only 17!
Chiron:
For sure. That was a complicated dodging of a bullet.
Ale:
Since we’re going back through your reproductive health journey, I also want to ask about your gender journey. Were you out by then?
Chiron:
I came out as bisexual, but I was not bisexual. At that point and for a very long time, I was just having sex with men because it was the thing to do. It’s so messy because the person who got me pregnant, I actually fuck his sister, she was the first girl that I had ever had sex with, the first girl that I was ever in love with. That ended because my sister found out and called us both out on it. My brain at 17 was just so fucking stuck in trauma world that I didn’t understand the decisions that I made could actually impact people, I didn’t realize that people cared about me enough or that fucking her brother could hurt her feelings.
Ale:
Most people at 17 are not fully aware of themselves. The awareness of 17-year-olds is not exactly known for being great.
Chiron:
Yeah! At that time, I was just bisexual, and then maybe a year later, I remember watching MTV’s True Life, that show they used to have, and realizing I’m genderqueer. I watched that, and I was like, oh shit that’s what I am. That’s when the shift in my gender identity started happening. Everyone was very like, you can just be a lesbian, you don’t have to do anything to be different, people didn’t really appreciate it. And at the time, I wasn’t even asking to be called they/them, I didn’t care what they called me, I just knew this is what I am.
Ale:
So you had your first miscarriage, what happened then?
Chiron:
I was like 21 and I had just gotten to SF, and I was staying in a homeless youth shelter. I met this friend there, we used to fuck at night and that person got me pregnant, and that’s when I had my second miscarriage. That miscarriage was very, very painful, it was very clear that my body was pushing a baby out. And I remember I hadn’t had a period in so long and I thought it was just PCOS, it was fucking intense. That’s when I first started dating a person who became my partner, and I was at their house, and I didn’t know what was wrong. I was cold, sweating, and shivering and I was feeling these cramps on steroids, it was fucking awful. Then I felt this thing in my underwear, and I went to check on that, and then I had a three-week period after that.
Ale:
So you felt the mass, and you just took it to the bathroom?
Chiron:
I should probably have gone to the hospital, but at that time, I was very anti-doctor. It was out, the baby was out, and I didn’t do anything because I was just very not trusting the doctors. I was like, what are they gonna do? Now I know they need to check a lot of things, but obviously, I lived through it. A couple of periods after that, my periods were so bad, and I was just passing these massive clots. I’m not easily grossed out, so I would grab them and text my partner asking, “do you want to see how big my blood clot is today?”
Ale:
You could technically keep them in a mason jar hahaha. When did you start taking T, and did it have any effects on your period?
Chiron:
When I came back to SF, I started hormones, and the testosterone for a while did take my periods away, but I would get my periods randomly, and it would be a surprise. Sometimes there were clues, I would be evil and fighting people, but sometimes it really would just be like “I have my period now” and I would be bleeding out with no supplies, because I don’t know when this shit was coming. When I started T I knew that I wanted to eventually get rid of my tits, but I thought I do want kids one day, so I’m just gonna keep it [uterus] for now. Except for the random periods, my uterine health was pretty ok after I started T.
“My energy shifted a lot after the surgery and I think part of it was, what does it mean to have a part of your body removed that is the site of so much pain and trauma, and not even from the initial things that caused you trauma, which was the sexual trauma, but also from people ignoring your pain and people mistreating you and telling you that your pain is normal, and you just have to exist with that pain.”
Ale:
Did you know that was gonna happen at all? That T was going to regulate your health a bit?
Chiron:
I didn’t know it was gonna happen, and honestly, the T kind of mellowed out my mood too. Everyone talks about trans guys getting the T rage and stuff, and I was fucking chilling. Even now in periods when I pause the testosterone, I feel so fucking crazy, like I feel so goddamn crazy, and then when I start it again, I’m just chilling again. I feel comfortable in myself, I feel calm. My doctors are always like “testosterone can make you a little bit frustrated,” but I was frustrated off of it. Me off T, I don’t know that person.
Ale:
And then you later got a hysterectomy?
Chiron:
When did I get my hysterectomy? I think in March of 2023 I got my hysterectomy because for maybe about a year beforehand, when I was having the periods that I wasn’t supposed to be having, I started having testosterone periods again. I was getting these terrible fucking periods and even when I wasn’t having a period, it just felt like there was something sitting in there. I can’t describe the feeling. It felt like somebody put — at one point it was a baseball, and then it was a grapefruit, and then the object just kept feeling fucking bigger and bigger. Finally, I went to the doctor for it and they said “oh, you have adenomyosis.”
Ale:
I don’t think I know what that is.
Chiron:
The way I explain it is like if endometriosis had a sister. Instead of the lining of my uterus growing everywhere, it was growing within the uterine muscle itself, so it was making my uterus become this big, misshapen blob. It was hurting so much because when it was shedding it had nowhere to go except to get bigger, that’s why the object that I felt kept feeling bigger, is because every period it was getting bigger.
I dealt with that for almost a year, and I was like, this is crazy. I was talking to the surgeon throughout that time, and they told me we could try hormonal treatment, that it has helped some people, but I wasn’t going to be on T and also take birth control, that’s crazy. I know they were saying that it’s a low-risk profile, but there’s a part of my brain that very much still identifies as a Black woman, even though I also identify as trans masc. I just don’t feel like the U.S. medical system does right by women when it comes to Black women, when it comes to picking birth control with good safety profiles. So I was like “no, I’m not gonna do it.”
Ale:
Given the history of this country and the birth mortality rate for Black femmes, ofcourse you can’t trust the medical system.
Chiron:
I have a friend who is Latinx, and she was on birth control because she started fucking with this dude and watching her moods, I was like take that shit out. We had the conversation about how, I still have my ovaries, if at some point I wanted to have a baby and take the eggs out and put in someone else, that’s a possibility. But at that point there was so much trauma in this body from years of dealing with my reproductive organs.
Ale:
I relate to that so much.
Chiron:
To rewind a little bit, when I was 33, I wanted to have a baby, that was the year that I wanted to have a baby and that’s when I met my current partner.
Ale:
How long after you met your partner did you decide you wanted to have a baby?
Chiron:
Not even that long, but I had decided before I met them that I was gonna try to have a baby. It was like “hey, new relationship energy, you don’t know me, I don’t know you, but I want a baby” hahaha. It was so intense, I even had an appointment with someone who specializes in fertility stuff for trans masc people, and I was really leaning towards it. There was a moment when I was like I want a baby, I feel ready for a baby, spiritually and emotionally it feels right, but you’re poor, and you have a lot of health issues, could I realistically survive a pregnancy? I don’t know that San Francisco’s queer and trans clinic is the medical access I want to have while I’m trying to have a baby as a person who would be considered high risk.
Ale:
Knowing your health history, you need high quality fucking care if you’re gonna do that.
Chiron:
Yeah, I was absolutely not gonna get that care, so it seemed like a lot to take on, so I ended up not having a baby at the time. I just met my partner too, it’s not a good time to have a baby. When I got my hysterectomy, there was a part of me that was really, really sad, because even though this body might not be able to safely hold a baby, it feels really hard to just have that choice taken away. The adenomyosis would have made it an even higher risk pregnancy because you got this big, lumpy uterus that can’t stretch in the right places, and the fact that I already had two miscarriages beforehand.
Ale:
Even if you couldn’t carry a baby, you still wanted to have the option.
Chiron:
Yeah, it was hard. I was really sad after my hysterectomy, but I was also like “wow, I don’t have this site of pain anymore, and it’s great.” There was also this wonderful shift in my internal energy. I have a lot of sexual trauma, my pu**y was a site of so much pain and trauma. To get that part of me removed felt like somebody had just taken a giant energetic cinder block out of my body, and I felt more open to connection and more open to experiencing and sharing my emotions. There was just this huge shift in how I was energetically. And I don’t know if that’s other people’s experiences with hysterectomies, who also had a lot of sexual trauma, but it was definitely mine. I realized that I was crying more, and I felt safe to cry. When people were expressing interest in me, I wasn’t like, “oh no.”
Ale:
So before your hysto, all of these emotions felt hard to access?
Chiron:
Before the hysterectomy, the way that I was having sex was with only my partner, but I felt so internally muddled to be receiving. It just really fucked with my head, to be in this position where I’m letting someone in my body touch me this way. Literally the second, maybe the day after I was back home from the hospital, my brain was like you just got your shit taken out, but I’m horny. My body was horny and I wanted something in me, and I was like, that’s weird, it’s weird that you would say that, body, haha.
I remember my surgeon saying obviously you can’t do penetrative stuff for six to eight weeks, but after your surgery, if you’re horny, you can masturbate, and I was like, wow, she done that. I had asked a little bit about sex and my surgeon is this amazing trans woman who’s in community with me. When we were deciding which procedure to do, she was trying to find a professional way to tell me “I know that you’re a top, and usually we do this procedure on people who have receptive sex” but when I said “well, I get fisted” she was like “great, this is the way we’ll do it.”
Ale:
So talking about aftercare with your surgeon, it’s what started shifting things in your brain.
Chiron:
Yeah. I remember the day after surgery, my partner and their twin, who were the main people who took care of me, they were in their room and they thought that I was asleep and I wanted to try it [masturbating]. I came and then I wasn’t hurting crazy, and I was like “I can have sex without pain, this is great,” even though part of my brain was nervous to not have a cervix anymore.
My energy shifted a lot after the surgery and I think part of it was, what does it mean to have a part of your body removed that is the site of so much pain and trauma, and not even from the initial things that caused you trauma, which was the sexual trauma, but also from people ignoring your pain and people mistreating you and telling you that your pain is normal, and you just have to exist with that pain. To drastically shift from having that and holding that, in that being in your experience, and literally you wake up, and then your experience is that you don’t have to have that pain anymore. I don’t know how that wouldn’t shift shit for people.
Ale:
Even if it was purely psychological, it’s enough symbolism to take the pain away, to experience new things.
Chiron:
Leading up to the surgery, I was making a lot of art, and I was trying to visualize what it felt like to have this surgery. I made this drawing of me with my legs open and just a bunch of garbage spilling out of my pu**y. That’s kind of what it felt like once it happened, I was like, “oh, there’s not a fucking bag of trash in me.” The care that I had through the surgery was really nice. I remember there were certain moments when I was bleeding and I shouldn’t have been bleeding anymore, and people were so responsive, there was a number I could call 24 hours to be like “this thing is happening, is this normal?”
Ale:
Was this the first time you had a health practitioner be receptive to your experience?
Chiron:
It was the first time I had that happen for anything around reproductive health. When I had my top surgery that surgeon was available, but I never had anyone be like “hey, we care about what’s happening in this area of your body,” so it was a big shift, it was really different to have my pu**y cared for, to have somebody say “we see you, we hear you, we believe you, and this is what we can do.” It had been three months after my recovery, and I started working, and the first day at work I started bleeding. I called my surgeon, and they told me to go to the nearest UCSF emergency room, which happens to be a children’s hospital.
I get there and the people at the hospital know that I’m coming, they know why I’m coming, the Gyno in-call is meeting me there, everything is immediately taken care of. It’s not anything I’ve experienced as a Black person, or as a trans person, or as a poor person, or as a disabled person. It was really nice to have this weird thing happened, and feel scared and not have anyone played me in my fucking face about it. I was geared up to fight, but I didn’t have to do that.
Ale:
Did you have anyone else when this was happening to take care of you? Who was around, aside from the doctors?
Chiron:
It was just my partner and their twin. I wish that I had scheduled for people to come visit, and had opened up to people in that way, but mostly I was just tired and sleeping, but also I really didn’t know how to accept support, and I didn’t know how to ask for it. I think even now, I kind of struggle with that. I mentioned I have my spine surgery coming up. I’m good at saying I need funds for this thing, for this part of care, but it’s more emotional to be like hey, will you come see me when I’m in this very vulnerable state and I’m in pain and I might be emotional? If I go to the bathroom, I might need you to help me stand up. That’s so fucking intimate.
Ale:
You reach a new level of intimacy when that happens.
Chiron:
It was a very intimate time. My partner helped me shower and wash my hair. My partner has had to help me do those things through bouts of really, really intense pain but it’s still really hard. There are times when I feel guilty. I think a lot of disabled people experience that guilt of moments when you have to rely on your partner, but you just want to let them be your partner, and not this person who has to help you get through the day. I wish that I had asked people to come hang out, but I didn’t, so it was just the two of them. For my spine surgery, that is a change that I’m making. I’m like, please come watch scary movies with me, come hold my fucking hand.
Ale:
I love scary movies! In the previous times when you had miscarriages, who did you go to talk to? Who did you go to for care?
Chiron:
I didn’t tell anyone. The second time I had a miscarriage at my partner’s house, I just threw it away, they didn’t know. The first time I was in North Carolina, I woke up and there was blood everywhere, and I just washed the sheets. I cleaned up, tried to get as much blood as possible off the mattress, and I walked two miles to the hospital. It was summer in North Carolina, so it was like 90 degrees, fucking hot. North Carolina is one of those places where it feels like everything sticks, like you might just choke from the humidity. When I was 17, there was so much emotion behind it. I remember calling my sister and asking for a ride back from the hospital, and she said she couldn’t.
Ale:
How do you feel about receiving care now?
Chiron:
I don’t know. Last night I was talking to a friend, and they were like, I feel like there are a lot of people who want to support you and I was like you’re probably right, and I’m probably not opening myself to it. I have a lot of attachment trauma, and part of that is when my peers were learning how to connect with people, those were the years when I was hiding from the people that I knew so that I wouldn’t be abused. So when people approach me for connection, even if I say I want to connect, my brain gets terrified.
Ale:
I feel like a lot of people can relate to that. I want to go back to your reproductive health journey for a bit. Did it ever bring up any feelings about your gender or your sense of masculinity?
“When I am moving through the world, I’m holding all of me, this experience belongs to all of me. And there’s no way to separate my Black womanhood from my trans masculinity. I think that’s really confusing for some people, but for me, I’m just a whole person, I have a whole brain and a whole heart and a whole spirit and a whole identity that can’t just be contained.”
Chiron:
Honestly, I didn’t feel that complicated. As a kid, I learned that if I held an identity, or I was interested in something, that I could just hold it close to me and it could still be mine, and it didn’t need to be anyone else’s. Part of that was because my family was very critical, but I appreciated the process of learning that this can just be who I am, and it doesn’t have to matter to anyone else. There’s this part of me that’s always said I don’t identify as a woman, but identify as a Black woman. That’s a specific political identity that I hold. My brain was never like “you’re trans, but you’re a black woman and to which identity does this bitch belong to? It belongs to all of them.”
When I am moving through the world, I’m holding all of me, this experience belongs to all of me. And there’s no way to separate my Black womanhood from my trans masculinity. I think that’s really confusing for some people, but for me, I’m just a whole person, I have a whole brain and a whole heart and a whole spirit and a whole identity that can’t just be contained. I understand that people really do find safety in identities, but I think sometimes when you have to hold an identity so close to you, you deny yourself the death of your own personhood, and I don’t ever want to do that, because other people have done that for me. I don’t need to do it, too.
Even when I was trying to get pregnant, that was a moment when felt very deeply connected to my Black womanhood and my transness, and I’m doing this as a Black woman who is a trans man, and we’re gonna have a fucking baby, and this is going to be a wild ass experience. All of me is going to be there, because this baby deserves all of me to be present. It felt like such a spiritual process to be taking on, but it’s that same thing where I didn’t need to separate my identities, I actually needed them all to be present and for me to be like the whole of myself, to get through the process.
Ale:
In other words, would you say that you’re able to embody your Black womanhood and your transness because of each other?
Chiron:
Yeah. I want to blend them, because the Black woman me is like “yeah bitch, be cute” and my trans masculinity is like b”e cute but I don’t know what to wear, we have a T-shirt and a pair of pants.” I don’t know. Part of me, and I really hate that I’m saying this, but part of me likes the soft boy esthetic, because it says that I can wear the masc clothes and also the jewelry and I can be this cute thing out in the world where I don’t have to choose between boxes, but there’s a cute middle place.
