“Gender?” they would say, “I hardly know ‘er!” /// I start to consider what I might be, if my girlness hasn’t counted simply because it wasn’t overtly confessed.

I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out. – Medium  

Imagine a cis-woman evenly saying:  “I wish I looked like that but I don’t and can’t. It sucks and it makes me feel really awful if I brood on it. That’s why I focus on my writing—I’d rather make things. Investing in and building things that aren’t my body helps me cope with the body issues I’ve been saddled with against my will.”

She doesn’t sound like she needs advice on how makeup will actually fix her core problem, does she? She seems like she’s doing alright. I’m her and I’m trans. That’s all.

I appreciate the encouragement I receive from trans friends, but I reject the implication that transitioning is my destiny. My brain is my brain — my body is my body. They don’t match, and I’ve chosen to devote my energy to coming to terms with that and focusing on other things, rather than trying to change my body. I am not advocating this position to other trans people or discouraging anyone from pursuing the path they feel is best for them.



The best I can do, for me, is divest—as best I can—my identity from my appearance and focus, mindfully, on other things. It’s not impossible! Look at those Dust Bowl folks—they were just trying to drive across the country in a jalopy! “Gender?” they would say, “I hardly know ‘er!”   // :)



I am eighteen years old.  I am in college. I learn that some people ask to be called by different pronouns. I see how this feels in my head. It doesn’t make much of a difference. I still want to sit in that chair and flip that switch. Pronouns are the least of my concerns.

I visit a women’s college. I am surrounded by new women and we feel instantly comfortable around each other. I attend a lecture. The speaker yells “who gets to be a woman?” and a crowd of cis women responds “anyone who wants to be!”

The sentiment is nice, but I think about the years I spent staring out the window at the stars and I feel suddenly uncomfortable.

Later during this trip I am having a conversation with my new friends about femininity. They are articulate and intelligent women. I’m grateful to be around them. Until I am told by one of them, angrily, that I am not really allowed to talk about femininity because I am a straight cis boy. It is not my place and it is not my territory. I should shut up and listen.

I start to consider what I might be, if my girlness hasn’t counted simply because it wasn’t overtly confessed. I think about my boyness—about my childhood and adolescence—how my experiences with boys deviated from what I was taught to expect.

I change my major and spend a year writing about non-gay-identifying male femininity from the Aesthetics of the late 1880’s to vaudeville radio stars. Eventually, as a love-hate letter to coming-of-age films of the 80’s, 90’s and early 00’s, I write my thesis on the friendship and sexuality of American males and its representation in television & film. One piece of feedback is “I am so sick of boys writing about boys.”

I think about being told I was not allowed to speak about femininity. I wonder what a person like me is allowed to speak about.

One of the boys from boarding school, who began to shower with me late at night, who told me through gritted teeth that he was too skinny and too fat, throws himself in front of a train.




I hate that the only effective response I can give to “boys are shit” is “well I’m not a boy.” I feel like I am selling out the boy in baseball pajamas that sat with me on the bed while I tried to figure out which one I was supposed to be, and the boys who I have met and loved from inside my boy suit—who believed they were talking to a boy. I feel like I am burning the history of the naked body that sits on the floor of my shower. The body that went to prom in a boxy tuxedo and coveted the gowns.
Because I am not a boy, but I am a woman who had a boyhood.
I was, and am, made to live as a boy and I cannot suspend the perspective that gave me..

((and join in when it’s time to fluster one of those clueless fuckers into anger .. so we can grab those solidarity faves. It’s fucked up. It has metastasized.))

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