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If you try presenting yourself as something other than your birth-assigned gender, and it makes you feel euphoric, that’s just as valid a reason to claim your identity as escaping dysphoria. Gender euphoria is an equally valid reason to decide who you are.
this book will take you on a journey through how coming to terms with who you are can be about more than avoiding someone you don’t want to be.
Even if it seems like for ever, holding out for the time when you’re free to present as your genuine self is so worth the wait.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I was worrying over nothing.
In my young mind, happiness was just a luxury I wasn’t entitled to.
This fixation on fiction is something a lot of trans people experience. I didn’t want to engage with real life because it held nothing but disappointment for me. I just wanted to get lost in fantasy so I could forget who I was and live through the characters.
I didn’t need anyone’s permission to be my authentic self, and neither do you.
Gender is a figment of consciousness, and I’m free to conceive of my role however I want.
Kate Bornstein’s pioneering 1994 book Gender Outlaw breaks our experience of gender down into component parts. There are gender roles (the gendered social roles we perform), gender assignation (the gender people assume we are), gender expression (how we present through our clothing, hair, manner, body language and speech) and gender identity (how we feel inside).
Three decades of conditioning to be ‘pretty’ were too hard to overcome.
What was my summer style? Femme clothes put me on edge, but straight masculinity didn’t appeal. We have so few representations of androgyny in our culture, and they’re all white and skinny, or villainous and unattractive. Where are my curvy, size Large, non-binary role models?
At this age, gender-creative parenting means not worrying about what’s for ‘boys’ and what’s for ‘girls’. It means being careful in our language, praising their smiles and helpfulness as well as their strength and boldness. I try not to comment on their appearance too much, although it’s hard when they’re so darn cute. We dress them for comfort: leggings, T-shirts, hoodies with animal ears, dresses and patterned shorts. Their wardrobe is green, orange, yellow, red, purple, blue and pink. Their toy box contains blocks and stackers, soft animals, shape-sorters, trucks and diggers. Contrary to
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If they claim some neo-gender we’ve never heard of, we’ll thank them for expanding our horizons. If they change their mind every week, we’ll embrace the fluidity.
By not assigning a gender we’re not only disrupting the male/female binary, we’re disrupting the trans/cis binary. If trans is not being the gender you were assigned at birth, and cis is being the gender you were assigned at birth, by our current definitions Ember won’t be trans or cis. It feels healing and radical to change the rules of the game. I look forward to learning what Ember’s generation has to teach us about gender.
When I would speak, it felt like picking a dialogue option in a video game, and hearing someone else’s voice lines play.
We only live once, and since we are all in danger, I do not intend to take any regrets to my grave. I’m not going to live in fear and let that stop me living my life.
It is such a simple act to affirm someone’s gender but it brings so much positivity for all.
there’s no telling what impact a polite and respectful interaction might have in the future.
I didn’t know what it was like to move through the world without being so intensely aware of how you looked and who was watching.
That said, sex is just as much of a social construct based on gender norms and expectations as gender is.
There is no singular right way to exist as a living being. So as long as my body is safe and healthy and alive, I can try to be happy in my own skin.
I think it’s important to push people’s perceptions of gender.
The world had gone sepia.
It’s a metamorphosis from which we emerge iridescent.
In the end, I learned that for me gender euphoria isn’t an ocean of good feelings. It’s the little waves appearing against the horizon before crashing into nothingness. It shouldn’t be mourned, however temporary it is.
Euphoria is a part of the intricate tapestry that is my life, where the good and the bad have to co-exist because that’s what makes me, me.
and I didn’t really have a great grasp on how to socialise with other people in person, but I did know how to socialise in writing. Written communication had clear rules, a lack of ambiguity, and a lot fewer social rules attached to it.
Living as you in performative society is always demanding. Unmanaged expectations can chafe you. If there’s one takeaway I want people to understand, it’s to find the roads you want to travel. That’s it, that’s the message: find your own way. Labels are labels. Expectations don’t suit everyone.
In the grand scheme of things, the years I spent in that limbo were unpleasant and unnecessarily dragged out, but they passed. Looking back, they feel almost like a bad dream, washed away by breaking free and getting to get on with living my life.
You learn, the hard way, that however real a piece of media may feel, it exists in its own dream logic that bears only a passing resemblance to the embodied experience of what it portrays;
If indeed safety in a lover’s arms is the Goddess’s touch, a lover’s laughter is Her voice.
thought if I could be a low-maintenance friend I’d be more likely to be tolerated.
It means getting to be the living continuation of my dear, departed father. It means continuing his legacy and taking in waifs and strays and helping out where I can.
