![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
We came out in 2005. We were 13 years old, and we lived in a small suburb of 10,000 people, which was about 6 miles from the nearest city of 50,000. There certainly wasn't an active queer community where I lived, and if there was I'd have been too socially anxious/schizophrenic to access it, and to my knowledge my transition actually predates the widespread reclamation of "queer" (although terms like "genderqueer" were already in use). My support was entirely online.
I think that this webcomic arc from 2002, up to comic 135, is a good starting point for understanding my transition. This arc does a good job of detailing what I feel to be the two major factors that affected my position in trans groups, those being my age and my direction.
For the rest of this post I'm probably going to frame things in a binary of MTF and FTM, and there's a very good reason for that. To me, being trans was (and still is) a very different thing than it is on fumblr and most other places. I'm going to need anyone reading to be open to new (or old, as the case may be) ideas on the matter; I'm not posting this as an endorsement so much as sharing my experiences.
To me being trans was (and remains, really) mostly a matter of the logistical concerns of hormonal transition. Sorry, this is where we pull out the diagrams:
See, normatively, a person goes into puberty with one identity (boy or girl) and comes out with another (man or woman). The goal of a trans teenager my age, as I saw it, was just to cross the wires a little bit -- avoid the rather more unpleasant effects of male puberty, some of which are painful (electroalysis), expensive (facial feminization surgery), or impossible (height) to reverse. Go into puberty with one identity (boy) and come out with another (woman).
I didn't have time to ponder the finer points of theory about how this contributes to binarism or whatever. I was operating on a time limit, and once I did have hormones, my parents would use them to exert control over me. In fact, with the minimal privacy I had, and the fact that I had to continually prove and re-prove myself to my parents, and doctors, and the various other adults who had control of my life, as someone who wouldn't "regret it later" there was no opportunity for me to explore non-binary identities until I moved out. As well, many spaces to this day remain ignorant or in disbelief of the existence of non-binary identities.
If the words "I don't identify as a woman" ever escaped my mind, and my parents found it later on a livejournal entry, or forum thread, or an IM log, and they let that out to a doctor... well, I certainly didn't let that happen. Good thing, too; I learned during my hospitalization at age 15 that my parents had had access to my livejournal, and had been reading it for months without my knowledge.
I either had hormones, or I didn't. I dedicated a completely ridiculous amount of energy to ensuring that I did, and part of that precluded talking about certain subjects. My analysis of this particular point in my life is in binary terms because my experience was in binary terms.
It was not common back in 2005 for people to come out at 13 years old. I was banned from at least one online group on the grounds that the subject matter was not for kids. I'd say that something like 25 was considered ridiculously young, and therefore enviable.
Trans narrative at the time was (and remains) controlled almost entirely by older trans women. This is another point where I differ strongly from fumblr SJ -- it is my experience that it is completely okay in these spaces to exoticise and fetishize feminine body traits, and people who have them, which in these particular setting enables an entitlement to other peoples' bodies and makes the environment very unsafe for anyone read towards the female end of the spectrum. Sexual assault is very common in support type settings that are dominated by trans women. It's happened to friends of mine, it happens to the comic's FTM protagonist 3 times (twice by the MTF protagonist; thankfully she gets called the fuck out on it) in 30 comics.
Their analysis only really extended as far as how awesome traditionally feminine body parts are. I was never taken remotely seriously when I went there for support; they'd just give crappy advice that's completely inapplicable to someone in my situation. Bullshit like "he's a doctor, he's providing you a service, you can fire him." Like hell, no I couldn't! At one point I was suspended from school for using the womens' room, I didn't get so much as emotional support. Just fetishistic crap about how lucky I was to figure it out so young. FTM's were in the same shitty spot when it came to getting help from MTF's.
I didn't have school. I was bullied incessantly BEFORE coming out, and didn't wanna open that can of worms at all. After getting my middle school diploma, I ollied the fuck outie and nominally enrolled myself in an online school, which I completely ignored. I lived in a level of social isolation that most people have trouble comprehending. My parents had moved away from my extended family in Chicago when I was two years old, and cut off contact rather than tell them about my transition. I spent most of my time in escapist video game fantasies. I had some friends online, but most of them were abusive too.
So my social life consisted entirely of my abusive parents and doctors, sexually threatening older binary trans women on the internet, and message board trolls my own age.
Things wouldn't change until I moved out. That, I'm nowhere near ready to talk about yet.
I think that this webcomic arc from 2002, up to comic 135, is a good starting point for understanding my transition. This arc does a good job of detailing what I feel to be the two major factors that affected my position in trans groups, those being my age and my direction.
For the rest of this post I'm probably going to frame things in a binary of MTF and FTM, and there's a very good reason for that. To me, being trans was (and still is) a very different thing than it is on fumblr and most other places. I'm going to need anyone reading to be open to new (or old, as the case may be) ideas on the matter; I'm not posting this as an endorsement so much as sharing my experiences.
To me being trans was (and remains, really) mostly a matter of the logistical concerns of hormonal transition. Sorry, this is where we pull out the diagrams:
See, normatively, a person goes into puberty with one identity (boy or girl) and comes out with another (man or woman). The goal of a trans teenager my age, as I saw it, was just to cross the wires a little bit -- avoid the rather more unpleasant effects of male puberty, some of which are painful (electroalysis), expensive (facial feminization surgery), or impossible (height) to reverse. Go into puberty with one identity (boy) and come out with another (woman).
I didn't have time to ponder the finer points of theory about how this contributes to binarism or whatever. I was operating on a time limit, and once I did have hormones, my parents would use them to exert control over me. In fact, with the minimal privacy I had, and the fact that I had to continually prove and re-prove myself to my parents, and doctors, and the various other adults who had control of my life, as someone who wouldn't "regret it later" there was no opportunity for me to explore non-binary identities until I moved out. As well, many spaces to this day remain ignorant or in disbelief of the existence of non-binary identities.
If the words "I don't identify as a woman" ever escaped my mind, and my parents found it later on a livejournal entry, or forum thread, or an IM log, and they let that out to a doctor... well, I certainly didn't let that happen. Good thing, too; I learned during my hospitalization at age 15 that my parents had had access to my livejournal, and had been reading it for months without my knowledge.
I either had hormones, or I didn't. I dedicated a completely ridiculous amount of energy to ensuring that I did, and part of that precluded talking about certain subjects. My analysis of this particular point in my life is in binary terms because my experience was in binary terms.
It was not common back in 2005 for people to come out at 13 years old. I was banned from at least one online group on the grounds that the subject matter was not for kids. I'd say that something like 25 was considered ridiculously young, and therefore enviable.
Trans narrative at the time was (and remains) controlled almost entirely by older trans women. This is another point where I differ strongly from fumblr SJ -- it is my experience that it is completely okay in these spaces to exoticise and fetishize feminine body traits, and people who have them, which in these particular setting enables an entitlement to other peoples' bodies and makes the environment very unsafe for anyone read towards the female end of the spectrum. Sexual assault is very common in support type settings that are dominated by trans women. It's happened to friends of mine, it happens to the comic's FTM protagonist 3 times (twice by the MTF protagonist; thankfully she gets called the fuck out on it) in 30 comics.
Their analysis only really extended as far as how awesome traditionally feminine body parts are. I was never taken remotely seriously when I went there for support; they'd just give crappy advice that's completely inapplicable to someone in my situation. Bullshit like "he's a doctor, he's providing you a service, you can fire him." Like hell, no I couldn't! At one point I was suspended from school for using the womens' room, I didn't get so much as emotional support. Just fetishistic crap about how lucky I was to figure it out so young. FTM's were in the same shitty spot when it came to getting help from MTF's.
I didn't have school. I was bullied incessantly BEFORE coming out, and didn't wanna open that can of worms at all. After getting my middle school diploma, I ollied the fuck outie and nominally enrolled myself in an online school, which I completely ignored. I lived in a level of social isolation that most people have trouble comprehending. My parents had moved away from my extended family in Chicago when I was two years old, and cut off contact rather than tell them about my transition. I spent most of my time in escapist video game fantasies. I had some friends online, but most of them were abusive too.
So my social life consisted entirely of my abusive parents and doctors, sexually threatening older binary trans women on the internet, and message board trolls my own age.
Things wouldn't change until I moved out. That, I'm nowhere near ready to talk about yet.
