Trans

I learned that people can be insanely cruel for the most petty and stupid reasons, I also learned that a lot of people I considered friends were never really my friends because they consider me a woman and make fun of me for my pronouns.

I also learned that it's way more important to do what makes me happy than to try and please others. For those hateful people out there it'll never be enough. Even if I was dead it would never be enough. So I just live my life the way that makes me happy, trying to find happiness in the ways I can and don't bother trying to please bigoted people.

hmm. as a transfemme...

• girls are wonderful!!
• i must accept that i have emotions and hiding them is not so effective a strategy
• saying to yourself "i don't know how to do that, so i won't" is quite unproductive. you'll probably suck at whatever the thing (e.g. makeup) is at first, but so did everyone else who tried it, trans or not :)
  • also find others who are supportive and who you can ask for help with this stuff
• getting your eyebrows done can have a HUGE effect on how feminine or not you are perceived (or be like me and just have obnoxious bangs)
• even when not around others, being in affirming clothing feels great
• i love decorations
• when choosing clothing, i find it super helpful to ask myself "what are other gals wearing?"
• so much of my euphoria comes from affirming the gender identities of others, transfemme or otherwise
  • i love being trans and i adore others who are trans considerably
• after coming out i actually felt considerably more comfortable doing more "masculine" activities like weightlifting, i presume because now people knew i really was a girl
• i enjoy the field of medicine a surprising amount
• above all else, i love snuggling with plushies (and people) SO much

So, caveat, I transitioned 9 years ago, and the world is different now. When I transitioned, trans awareness was just starting to enter the mainstream. Caitlyn Jenner had just come out, the Wachowski's were both out, and Laverne Cox had been on the cover of Time. So people were starting to talk about trans people and awareness was increasing, yet, I was also the first openly out trans person that most people I interacted with had met at that point. Before I transitioned, I knew trans people existed, and I knew about surgical options, but I didn't know HRT was a thing. I had no connection with the queer community, and had done zero research on trans folk or transition outside of wishing I was trans so I could access "sex change" surgery.

There was a brief trans "golden age" from about 2015 to 2020, before the transphobia that grips the world today made itself so loud. I transitioned early in that positive wave, and I've seen it peak, and slide away to be replaced by transphobia.

So I learned a LOT.

I started finding and moving in online communities, and that was formative. Most communities were full of people early in their transitions (like me at the time) but also mostly full of people younger than me. My peers at the time, tended to meet in person, and those groups tended to be full of folk who had transitioned years ago and new folk influenced by them.

The difference between the two groups was night and day. The online groups were full of people that were excited, and confused, and joyous, and crucially, even at that point in time, they were full of people being trans in ways I didn't even know you could be trans. Gender fuckery was everywhere.

Then there were my in person peer groups. Very binary in their understanding of trans identity, and vaguely transmed, in a lowkey way. I felt uncomfortable in those spaces in a way I didn't understand at the time.

So what did I learn?

I learned that so much of what I was chasing was stuff that I thought I should want because I'm trans, rather than being what I actually want.

I discovered that I loved being queer. None of the people in my in person support groups were openly queer, or even used that word though. Yet once I identified my queernees, I never wanted to let it go.

I chased cis passing with surgeries, until I found it, and suddenly, my queerness was invisible to people, and other trans folks would look right past me. I hated losing those things. I wanted the world to see my queerness, and I wanted other trans folk to see me, so I could bring them the same joy they brought me when I saw them.

I thought I wanted to just blend in to cishet society and return to a "normal life" but on "the other side". But fuck that.

I thought that I had to be feminine and embrace femininity, because that's what trans women do. But femininity has never meant anything to me, and though it took me longer, I eventually learned and accepted that I don't need to chase femininity to be true to myself, that being fem and being trans aren't inherently tied together.

I learned that every single trans story is unique, but also the same. It doesn't matter who you talk to, or how divergent our experiences, our experiences are never the same, but there is always a common element too.

I learned that sexuality and romantic attraction can be complex. I learned that I don't like dating people who aren't visibly queer. I learned that moving through the world with a boyfriend who had previously moved in queer lesbian communities, but didn't miss that queerness, wasn't for me. When random people just saw us as a cishet couple, he was happy, and I felt invisible.

I learned that I love and value the queer community. My first pride was a transformative experience, the first time I had ever been somewhere and thought "Fuck, I've found my people".

I learned that despite not having "trans activist" on my transition goal list when I started, it's part of who I am.

And those last two are why the blahaj spaces exist. Community matters. People being able to live on their own terms and with their own truth matters.

I've gained sooo much perspective in sooo many areas of life, but I feel like one thing that has stood out is how inspiring we can be to the people around us and in our lives. I don't believe it's necessarily a transition thing as much as it is an authenticity thing.

Friends I've made during/after transitioning, along with friends I had prior, have all opened up to me about how much I've influenced their confidence to express and present themselves more openly and honestly. It was something I found super interesting because it's their precense in my life that gives me the feelings of safety and comfort to be me. I have very much noticed that all of them have been leaning into their unique styles and have been shining so bright. Some have opened up about how they've noticed a change in how they interact with people throughout the day- less code switching and greeting and interacting with people with more warmth and less reservation and distance.

It has not been limited to friends either. I've had people I've never interacted with, or had limited interactions with, approach me to share how just seeing me on different occasions has inspired them in different ways. I feel like so many people want to shine but are afraid to do so, and I think sometimes our precense can be very inspiring 🩷

A visceral understanding of the cruelty of some of my fellow humans.

The joy of the dinners and fellowship of the outcasts and the damned

A lot of random cis people's political views for better or worse when I'm just trying to go about my day

That passing for cis is a spectrum. I can have some people think it's obvious that I'm trans and on the same day have a coworker casually mention my period or say something about me getting pregnant on accident before apologizing upon remembering I'm a lesbian.

That my father's love was conditional

That my mom's wasn't and she'd already been an ally

How to be strong in the face of fear and that of all the traits I possess, cowardice isn't among them

That I can choose to shape how I live. I have power over my body and my future as well as those who I surround myself with.

The importance of just getting the hard thing over with if your life is going to suck until you do it

Also that I had been attracted to men. Specifically because it went away when I started hormones and comes back whenever my T is too high/E is too low (last time was prep for bottom surgery). So uh yeah, I don't think had I been cis I'd've ever figured out that my orientation shifts by a Kinsey point by hormone dominance and not in the direction most expect

everything is overgendered

I am not as introverted as I thought, I just hated existence before transitioning.

I learned what it is to truly be an enemy of the state while existing peacefully.

People listen to women less....

That no matter how much of an ally you try to be to women, you can never really understand the shit they're going through unless you're one yourself. Misogyny is EVERYWHERE. It's fucking crazy. It radiates from interactions with people, it's dripping from the ceiling, it's crawling at you from the roots at your feet. It is incomprehensibly everywhere.

so, first of all, yes - I completely affirm your point about how crucial trans community is (and I mean trans, i.e. other people who are in transition or planning to transition)

and though I'm stealth with most people where I live, I still connected with trans folks and made connections to the local trans community so I have that - I'm only out to other trans people, basically

transitioning has taught me so much:

• that biological sex really is plastic, not fixed, and that trans women are not just women but also biologically female (I really didn't think this was true, and it took me a long time to accept or see this as true - it was ultimately debates about what to tell hospital staff and digging into the scientific literature that made me realize my body is really female in most relevant ways now)
• I used to think that gender was pretty much just social and arbitrary (and that we should basically be hostile to gender and try to abolish gender, similar to race), but now I know that gender identity is fixed and biological - hence conversion therapy is not effective, you can't socially influence someone to become trans or to make someone not trans
• I learned that people care way less about being visibly trans than I thought - it's really a small minority of people who bothered me, for the most part I was shocked by the indifference and tolerance the average person projected; when I was "a man in a dress" - most people didn't bother me or threaten me, etc. - my fear was way overblown, and the risks were much less than I expected
• it was also shocking to learn what counts as passing to other people (both in terms of looks and voice), I was shocked by how genuinely clueless cis people are (esp. for how confident they are with their "we can always tell" mindset); it's especially ironic because of how easily other trans people can spot one another while cis people remain clueless ... this was all unexpected - I thought I would just forever be too "trans-looking" to ever pass
• how transphobic the trans community is - we have all internalized transphobia, and because I'm passing now, the most invalidating experiences I have now are with other trans people; I didn't really expect to experience dehumanizing / degendering and invalidation in trans communities, and I didn't expect to find the most validation and affirmation of my gender from mainstream cis society (through passing, ofc)
• getting a passing voice was both harder and easier than I thought: Zheanna Erose's timeline made me think it would take 5+ years of intense training I would never be able to do as well as her, etc. and that a passing voice was many years away - but I had a passing voice within 8 months, and habituated it enough to no longer need daily practice or weekly speech language pathologist sessions after 12 months.
• that passing is far more common and easier in general than I expected - I thought probably most people my age would never pass, and I was just wrong - probably most of us pass eventually; I know women much older than me who transitioned later and who still pass; I signed up for transition under the assumption I would forever be visibly trans, and did not at all plan for success

first i was afraid, (i was petrified)

Kept thinking I could never live as who I was inside
But then I spent so many nights afraid of doing something wrong
And I grew strong, and I learned how to get along
And now I'm out, on HRT,
A skater skirt and painted nails and socks pulled up above the knee
I should have thought about the clock, ticking on through puberty,
If I'd have known for just one second I could be the real me

... sorry, don't know what came over me ...

Agreed on all the above.

But above all, I think :

**I think I've become a better person. **

Meeting a lot of different personalities and other queer person opened my mind to other troubles and as well as my own flaws and bias.

Gender Roles are trash and need to go in the bin.

Just be yourself or selves.

Me? Learn? Pft!

bonus:

i learned that my parents are shittier than i hoped for.