Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (A Transgender Memoir)

by Jackson Bird

I was a guy who liked other guys, living the life of a teenage girl by some curse of fate.

Many gay trans people are asked why they bothered to transition when they could’ve just “stayed straight.” As the trans male character Coach Beiste astutely described it on Glee, being trans is not about who you want to go to bed with, it’s who you want to go to bed as.

“Straight with more steps” is an insult I have personally received and seen other transmasculine people and trans men receive online

The big mistake I had made was assuming that there was only one way to be trans.

I felt like buying a physical binder would make my transness real and official, instead of just a hypothetical thought inside the safe walls of my mind.

What you want and what feels right to you is perhaps the most important factor in sorting.

That was the moment I realized I couldn’t keep lying to myself. I’d been making excuses for years, but they were all played out. Transitioning was no longer a choice. It was a necessity. I couldn’t keep living the path of someone I wasn’t.

For so many years, my gender dysphoria had been an independent internal struggle.

Here’s the truth about coming out: we are not coming out—we are letting you in. —Jose Antonio Vargas

So much of existing as a trans person in this world feels like a fight that other things in life start paling in comparison.

The important thing to remember is that it’s very likely that, at least on some level, the trans person in question has always felt like the gender they are. It wasn’t something “new” that they “changed” once they came out and shared with everyone.