Hi, I'm Transgender

Originally posted 3/31/2022 on Medium

tl;dr version available here. That page is part of FAQ/springboard site for further learning about transgender people and issues. If you choose not to read this, please at least read the postscript.

Today is March 31st: the Transgender Day of Visibility. Leading up to today, I’ve been asking myself some questions: What does visibility mean? What does it mean for a person to be visible? For me to be visible?

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the nature of stories. The thing about stories is that they are always approximations of truth. They’re strict subsets. They’re linearly ordered, even if they’re told out of order. They’re projections. They can obscure visibility, or at least one meaning of visibility, to me: authenticity.

Who am I to you? The answer is a story. It’s a narrative - a sequence of experiences that we’ve shared with one another. If our relationship has extended beyond this post, that story - no matter how full and rich or sparse and dispassionate it may be - is a lie. The person that I am to you is a carefully and purposefully constructed narrative. A story of who I am that I tell the world and that I’ve also told you.

When I say that person is a lie, I don’t mean a lie of fabrication. I mean a lie of omission - a projection. The story I’ve told you is incomplete. So, today, I’m going to try to fill in some of the omission. I’m going to tell a part of my story that has been my most closely guarded secret for 30+ years. I’m going to try being as honest as possible, because there is a second meaning of visibility that I want to talk about later.

Let’s start our story here: I have known that I am transgender since I was a very, very young child. Some of my earliest memories involve feelings of incongruence between my gender and my body. The word “transgender,” however, was inaccessible to me at that time. I had no language for these feelings. That would come much later.

When I was very young, I believed that there might be magic, and that maybe through magic, I could be a girl instead of a boy. Every time I had to make a wish, whether it blowing out candles, holding half a wishbone, or tossing a coin into a fountain-every opportunity - it was always the same wish. I would wish that I was a girl.

When I stopped believing in magic in the late 1980s, I would watch shuttle launches on TV. My family got a computer - an Apple IIe. Science was magical, and it was advancing quickly. I convinced myself that science would have the answer to my problem; I convinced myself that science could make me a girl. Every wish was still the same.

I say “my problem” because it was around this time that I learned that there was something wrong with me. This feeling that I had - that I was not a boy, that being a boy wasn’t right for me, that I could never really be a man - was wrong. Immoral. Aberrant. Shameful.

I didn’t know that there was a word for the feelings that I had - that I was transgender - or that they were nothing for me to be ashamed of. I don’t think many people in Ohio at that time had ever heard the word transgender. I certainly didn’t learn it in school, or the library, or anywhere else. People had, though, heard of transsexuals. But they, like me, only knew what they saw on TV, and in their mouths that word was used as if it were a slur.

The people I saw on TV and in movies made me feel both hopeful and shamed at the same time. I saw the way that I felt about myself reflected in them, and that let me feel like I was seen and not alone. But I also saw how the rest of the world saw them: as freaks, as deviants, as sexual objects. In my small world, I never saw a trans person depicted with any humanity. Trans people existed, but only for mockery.

For example, when I was 12 and squarely in its target demographic, the Jim Carey comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective was released. If you’ve never seen it, here’s a big spoiler (and the final reveal…). If you don’t recognize the allusion to The Crying Game - released two years prior - I didn’t either at the time. 10 year olds weren’t the target demographic. Ace Ventura captured a slice of how transgender people were represented in the media: we were repulsive. Even when sensitively treated (as in The Crying Game), we induced vomiting.

In the context of a world were trans people were the butt of Ace Ventura-like jokes or the subjects of scandalous episodes of Jerry, Geraldo, or Sally Jessy-existing only to be paraded about and laughed at - my shame grew into a deeply-held conviction: if anyone really ever knew me, they couldn’t love me. I was fundamentally unworthy of love.

As a result, I worked as hard as I possibly could to repress and ignore these feelings - feelings about who I was. I’m not going to say that this was a successful strategy, because it has caused me a great deal of pain. But, by ignoring who I am, I have made it pretty far. I have reaped a lot of benefit from living as a man - especially a white man - and the privilege and second chances this has afforded me.

[CW: suicidal ideation, suicide, anti-trans legislation, anti-LGBTQ rights]

If any of my story so far sounds familiar to you, like other stories you’ve heard from trans people, it is because it is not at all unique.

It is here that I’m going to inject a little politics for the sake of another notion of visibility: awareness.

I often think about the fact that I am incredibly lucky to be alive right now. I have thought about killing myself since I was about ten years old. I still do not quite believe that suicidal ideation is abnormal. I have never told anyone this, but it wasn’t until very recently that I thought that I could trust myself to own a gun (fwiw, I don’t own one). I am very lucky. If I was not fortunate to have a supportive and caring partner or to be graced with a loving family, I am one hundred percent certain that I would not be alive right now.

It is only through luck and privilege that I am here to tell you this story at all.

I say this because I think it is appropriate context for how terrifying it is to watch what is being done to children right now, only for the sake of gaining political capital.

If you are not watching the news closely or are not particularly interested in LGBTQ rights, you might not realize the extent to which children are under attack. As of March 20th, there were 238 anti-LGBTQ bills filed in 2022 alone.

When we take away the (absolutely not permanent or dangerous) affirmative health care that medical professionals have deemed necessary for trans kids, we are killing children. We are creating refugees within our own country. When we prevent children from seeing any positive representation of queer people, we are killing children. This is a fact. Children will die because of who they are. I almost did, several times. If you have valued my life, do something about this. The rhetoric around these children’s lives is inexcusable.

I am choosing to come out today because this is just too fucking much. There is too much hate against children. I am waking up every day to news stories that would have - quite literally - killed me when I was a child. This is not hyperbole.

If you are not paying attention to this, please start. I know that these stories rarely make the front page of the Times or the Post. But these kids deserve to be visible. They deserve your attention. At the end of this post, you’ll find a list of organizations you can support and follow to stay abreast of these issues.

Aside: it is impossible to try to decide what to link to or to decide any one specific issue to focus on. Every single day for the past couple years, there has some new development or legislative movement to restrict the lives of trans people and deprive them of civil rights. With the exception of a few incidents, these have mostly targeted children. Children, as a political strategy.

This is entirely separate from the daily discourse about the “threat” that transgender people are to the safety of others, especially women and children. A vulnerable and marginalized group of people that makes up ~1% of the population has become the latest wedge issue. And the bad-faith, fictionalized arguments about the legitimacy of and safety of trans identities have somehow made trans lives a part of our political dialog. And in doing so, made the human rights of people into an issue that has “both sides.”

To be clear: the only “agenda” trans people have is to be able to live and participate in society.

Sorry. I’m going to finish my story now.

In my 20s I stopped wishing to be a girl. I was an adult. So I wished to be able to be happy instead.

It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I saw any real positive representation of transgender people, or even met an out trans person. And when I did, I was jealous. I was jealous that there were people who felt like me, but were able to be themselves. I envied them for being transgender and for being able to be transgender. I saw their happiness and the lightness with which they were able to be present, and I ached for their freedom. I also saw the hate directed against them, and ached for their pain.

It took a few more years for me to be able to give myself the space to realize that who I am is not fundamentally wrong, something that I need to be ashamed of, or that I needed to hide. Coming out to my wife was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Two years later, I came out to my closest friends and family.

Unpacking and unwinding a lifetime of repression and self-hatred has not been easy, but it has brought into the light a lot of things about what I value and who I am. Through this work, I have realized that it is important to me to stop hiding who I am - to stop lying. I want to interact with the world as myself, not as a projection of myself.

So, I’m not ashamed: I am transgender. My name is Marion. I am a trans woman. I am gay and happily married to my wife. My pronouns are she/her.

What comes next? Well, that’s also part of this visibility. As much as I would like for this transition to not be a mess, it will be.

Unfortunately the world does not obey a two-phase commit protocol and the changes that are coming will not be atomic. It has taken me more than 2 months to get a court order allowing me to change my name (and I’m still waiting). It will take a lot longer to update every ID, account, and profile photograph that I have. Systems will still call me Matthew or Matt. You probably will, too.

And that’s ok! I have accumulated 40 years of life, friendships, memories, and database records.

Also, it’s going to be awkward. I’m bound to be awkward. I’m trying to figure out how to be myself when I’ve already perfected being someone I’m not. I’ve been going through a second puberty, as if the first wasn’t enough (disclaimer: any cringe here is a result of that, not me, who is super fucking cool).

The only things that I ask of you are as follows:

Try. (Okay, that’s just one thing.)

Try to use my name and my pronouns. It will be hard and you will make mistakes, and that’s ok. If she/her is just too much for you, please at least use they/them.
Try to understand that I am the same person. You already know me. The person that you know is still here, you just have a fuller story. These were lies of omission, remember? You are just going to get more of me. I’ll be more present, more available, and more authentic.
If this is hard for you, try to learn. I’m not going to ask you to change the way that you see the world or to change your beliefs, but at least try to understand what transgender people, scientists, and others are saying. My 101 page has some basics. We live in a transphobic society, and we are all socialized with some transphobia - even me. Education is an important part of deprogramming transphobia.
Try to talk to me if you have questions. I will try to be as open as I can be. And I won’t judge you for anything you want to talk about. I would only ask that you refrain from asking any questions that are only relevant in a medical setting.
Finally, if you see yourself as an ally, try to support the children who are in real and immediate danger. Try to support all of the trans people who are much less fortunate than a white person who had the luxury of being at the top of the social hierarchy for 40 years.
Try to understand that trans women are women and trans men are men. We aren’t women-who-were-men or men-who-were-women. Or men-who-act-as-women or women-who-act-as-men. We are women and men. Nonbinary identities are also valid; they are not alt-women or alt-men.
Don’t just try: believe trans kids.

That’s about it.

Thanks for listening to my story and letting me be more visible to you.

Postscript

The impetus for coming out now is the temporal alignment with the transgender day of visibility and the introduction of some of the worst pieces of legislation against trans kids.

I want you to know that I hesitated to tell my story to you like this, as I feel it reinforces the fetishization of trans suffering and the reductive narrative of trans lives that centers our pain. I decided to tell the story like this because I want to highlight exactly how important it is that we act right now to protect children. I know that if you are reading this, you probably know me. You might respect me. You might trust me. If you do, please, please, please support trans children. They are very much at risk.

Children will die if they are taught that they don’t deserve to love themselves, love others, or simply play a sport with their friends.

The centering of trans children in politics right now is vile. As the republican governor of Utah recently said: “Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few.”

(his veto was overridden, btw)

Finally, here are some organizations that you can support:

OutMemphis, supporting not only the Memphis area, but a large percent of the mid-south that is not served by any other LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.
Lambda Legal, supporting civil rights of LGBTQ+ people specifically.
ACLU, supporting the civil rights of Americans broadly.
The Trevor Project, supporting trans youth.
The Marsha P. Johnson Institute, supporting the rights of black trans people.
Trans Lifeline, also supporting trans youth.
National Center for Transgender Equality
Transgender Law Center
PFLAG, supporting trans people, parents, families, and allies.

Post-postscript: I realized, writing this, that I’ve only ever really wished for two things. That’s kinda weird. I have to find a new one.