Getting My Joey

 

My blog was created as a means for me to open up to everyone and give honest accounts of my life and my experiences. Those who know me, know that my goal is to be an open book, especially for anyone who has questions about my transition, being transgender, or being an Anglican priest. This particular blog post is about something very private and personal, and goes into some details that not everyone might want to read. Specific body parts are mentioned and I am putting myself into a vulnerable position by allowing you into this part of my life. As well, it is written from my perspective as a transgender male. If you decide that you don’t want to read any further, I will not be insulted. My next church post will be up tomorrow and I have two book reviews that will be out soon. If you read on, thank you, and don’t be afraid to message me with any questions you might have.

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Being transgender is hard on the mind, the body, and the spirit. Feeling like you are living in the wrong body can be excruciatingly painful, and many struggle with having wrong, missing, or extra body parts. Visual reminders of our physical inadequacies completely and utterly sucks. This all can be summed up in a term called gender dysphoria.

Everyone has their own unique ways of dealing with their dysphoria. For transgender men, some will exercise in order to try and change their muscular structure to look more masculine, others will buy a binder that will hide their chest, a few will practice speaking with a lower voice, and the list goes on. There are many ways that people will change their appearance in order to make themselves look on the outside the way they feel on the inside.

Those who can afford to do so may also go on testosterone and put themselves through a second puberty in order to achieve physical changes such as a lower voice, more hair (hopefully on the face but you don’t always get what you hope for), muscle building, and fat redistribution. Name changes and requests to be referred to with male pronouns are extremely common and a fair majority of us will get a double mastectomy, otherwise known as top surgery, to remove our breasts, although not everyone has the funds to do that, either. In Manitoba, these surgeries are covered by Manitoba health if you are referred by a psychiatrist and if you submit to a psychiatric evaluation. You need to repeat this process for each surgery, further accentuating the fact that your body and your ‘self’ is “wrong”. Elsewhere in the world (including the United States), people are required to raise the funds privately for any medications, evaluations, and surgeries.

While it sounds like we are putting our bodies through hell, it is well worth it. To hear the changes in your voice and to feel the changes in your body, it increases your confidence tenfold. It is an amazing feeling to start seeing in the mirror what you have always seen in your mind’s eye.

One of the struggles that you hear most often from transgender men is the fact that we lack one of the most identifiable male body parts - a penis. There are a couple of surgeries that can help, but they are expensive, painful, and very few doctors are successfully able to perform these surgeries. Therefore, as with binders being used to hide the chest, packers are used to give the image of a bulge in the pants, with some packers being more functional than others.

A simple packer is basically silicone shaped into balls and a penis. It’s meant to be put into your underwear, thus providing a bulge in your pants. Simply having the feeling of something there can help, even if a bulge isn’t fully visible. (We all know that not all men’s packages can be seen through their pants.) Keeping this hunk of silicone in your underwear is not exactly the easiest thing to do. What do you do with your packer when you pull your underwear down to go to the bathroom? How do you keep it from moving around in your pants? What if it falls out??

I don’t remember how I got introduced to the company, but someone pointed me in the direction of Get Your Joey, a Winnipeg, Manitoba based company that has created a pouch for the packer that pins to your underwear. (www.getyourjoey.com)

Get Your Joey began through a friendship between a transgender man and an ally, Ro Walker Mills and Kalyn Falk, respectively. I sat down with Kalyn to discuss an issue I was having with their product, which I will bring up shortly, and I was fascinated to hear that the product began with a sock.

Whether it is because of the lack of funds or the lack of product, sometimes problems require creative solutions. When Ro wanted a way to hold his packer in his underwear and decided to put a hole in a sock and pin it to his waist band. When Kalyn discovered his holey sock and found out what it was for, she began to work with him on a better way than using a sock. And thus the Joey was born. Fun fact, Ro and Kalyn chose the name Joey because they wanted something that represents carrying a pouch and what else comes to mind than a kangaroo!

Being a local company, there is a small crew of employees who hand sew and create all of the Joeys being ordered. They have an amazing amount of patterns to choose from and there are various sizes available based on body and packer size.

As I mentioned, I have no idea how I found Get Your Joey, but I did and I ordered a couple of different patterns and sizes. They were shipped very discreetly, in an unmarked package. Get Your Joey prides itself on providing their product safely, especially taking into consideration that some people are living in areas or homes where it would not be safe for others to discover they are transgender. When Get Your Joey sends their product out, the only marking on the package is GYJ, which really is meaningless to anyone except the recipient.

I was very excited to be able to wear my packer in my really cool Joey! But I ran into quite a few problems. First, I couldn’t get the packer to sit where it should in my underwear, so instead of having a natural looking bulge, I had a giant lump in my abdomen. Not only that but the pin holding the Joey to my waistband kept popping, especially when I would go to pull up my underwear after using the bathroom. There’s nothing quite like sitting in a stall trying to put your packer and Joey back into place, knowing someone is waiting for you to get out!

I was discussing the matter with my partner, Cass, and we came to the realization is that I am just too big in the belly to use the Joey. (To be clear, that’s not what was said to me, but more that the Joey was designed by and for smaller men.) There is too much space along my abdomen for the Joey to sit in a natural spot. I tried pinning it lower below the waistband but the material of my underwear just wasn’t strong enough to hold the weight of the packer. So I gave up wearing my packer. For the most part, I am at peace with what I am lacking in my pants, but there are days where I would try again (with or without the Joey) because I wanted to feel and see that bulge, and would once again be disappointed that it wasn’t working for me. It was quite deflating.

I was heading to visit Kalyn for a separate reason but Cass convinced me to bring up the issue I was having with the Joey, giving voice to the placement, pin, and weight problems that I experienced. Kalyn explained to us that “Get Your Joey aims to be body positive and had worked on a few solutions for a variety of body types, but the designs were clumsy and unhelpful…We were frustrated at not being able to provide an elegant solution because the whole point of our company is to make transgender people feel seen and celebrated.”

While Kalyn explained how the Joeys were created, sewn, and put together, Cass asked the question that could change everything for bigger guys like me, “why can’t you add more material to the top so that the Joey is longer?”

Her suggestion “of a longer length and getting rid of the top fold opened up new possibilities for ease of wear,” said Kalyn and as I write this blog, she is excitedly working on a couple of prototypes for me to try out and take for a spin. I eagerly await for their arrival knowing that, finally, there is a chance that I can properly and confidently wear a packer.

I know this may seem like too much information for some people, and for others perhaps this answers questions that you’ve always wanted to know but would never ask. I have always been an open book about my life and this is no exception. I hope if nothing else that this post helps educate and inform people in a new way. Stay tuned for a follow-up blog once I test out the prototypes.