[CW: Menstruation, medical procedures, and underwear] I stopped taking testosterone in July. This isn’t the first time that I’ve gone off T since my transition—in late 2017, I had to stop T two weeks before my top surgery, and I had to stay off for two more weeks afterwards. I was so relieved when I […]
It’s been a while since the last time I wrote here. A lot has happened in my personal life, and also in my country, since my last blog post. In happy news, on June 4, 2016, I married my best friend and love of my life. I’ll write another time about how we planned our […]
Yesterday I received an email from a high school student working on a final project for her English class: a public service announcement. She chose transgender rights and public restrooms as her subject, and she wrote to me to ask if I could answer some questions for her. I was glad to help — and […]
Today I completed the US Trans Survey, a comprehensive study gathering information that will be used to inform public policy towards transgender people in the United States. Trans, genderqueer, and non-binary folks: if you haven’t taken the survey yet, please do so now! Our data is urgently needed. On paper, my answers to the survey […]
When you experience discrimination, it’s easy to feel like you’re alone. The very nature of discrimination is isolating: the minority is singled out for insults, ridicule, or poor treatment from the majority, and for transgender people, the numerical difference between majority and minority is huge. A 2011 study put the U.S. transgender population at an […]
A guy walked in on me today in the bathroom at work. It was entirely my own fault; I was sleepy, and I had forgotten to click the lock on the single-stall men’s room. He retreated at once, but I had to wonder what he saw. At a glance, I’m sure I looked no different from […]
When I finally realized my gender identity around my junior year of college, one of the first things I did was attend a meeting of the women’s group on campus. It did not go as planned. It was not my first encounter with feminism. I had been taught about women’s liberation all my life. I […]
There has never been a time in my life when I did not feel fat. I was never directly bullied for my weight when I was a kid, but I was always aware of it. There was an undercurrent of worry to my mother’s persistent efforts to teach me about nutrition. I remember having colored […]
Today is the sixth annual International Transgender Day of Visibility. The holiday, started in 2009 by Rachel Crandall of Transgender Michigan, acts as a happier counterpoint to the sobering Transgender Day of Remembrance, which mourns the lives that we have lost. TDoV is a celebration of trans* identities and an opportunity for trans* people to […]
As a transgender man, I am both older and younger than my age. I’m thirty-one years old, but I often feel like I’ve lived two lifetimes in the space of one. I don’t feel dissociated from my childhood in the way that some trans* people do, but when I look at photos from as little […]