Welcome to Trans Tuesday! This week I want to discuss a huge change I recently noticed, brought about by transition. But it happened so gradually that I didn’t even notice until it hit me like a cyborg assassin. Let’s talk CONFIDENCE 3: EMBRACING YOUR TRUE SELF.
I want to begin by saying, despite this being a follow up to CONFIDENCE and CONFIDENCE 2, it’s actually also very much a follow up to GENDER EUPHORIA and HALLOWEEN (and the fear of embracing your true self), but this isn’t releasing anywhere near Halloween and doesn’t really have anything to do with it. But thematically they are very connected, so do check that out.
I’ve said so many times that figuring out I’m trans, and transitioning, has been like “untangling the knot” because it connects to so many aspects of my life. Now, six years into Trans Tuesdays, you’re going to see a few more of these that are follow-ups to multiple previous essays at the same time, because truly it is all connected and things dovetail in fascinating ways.
In that Halloween essay, I talked about my incredible fear of letting anything like makeup or hair dye, or even costumes, anywhere near me, due to the gender feelings I subconsciously knew they’d cause but was in no way equipped to deal with.
And that obviously changed with transition, where I now put makeup on on purpose because I like it, and have even found costumes to wear for that delightful spoopy day.
But I guess I just didn’t realize exactly how much that had changed for me. It’s the whole frog in a pot of boiling water thing, where the temperature increases so gradually they don’t notice until it’s too late. Only this isn’t boiling water, it’s just a big pot of self-acceptance. Also frogs are cool, why is that metaphor even a thing? Leave the frogs alone!
Unless you’re brand new to Trans Tuesdays, you know I am a writer by both choice and profession, which is pretty cool. It should really pay a livable wage though, but our society doesn’t really respect artists, ha ha good times.
I’ve also mentioned that I’m primarily a fiction writer, which is true! Even though I’m somewhat more well-known for my nonfiction writing, like these essays and my book on The Matrix. If you finally get a copy I promise to stop bringing it up all the time!*
*No, I don’t.
In any case my lovely wife Susan and I write fiction as a team, across comics and television and animation and games and podcasts and film. A few years back we wrote a new original pilot script for a television series, Robo Waitress Assassins. It’s a cyberpunk action dramedy that’s very queer and very trans, and is about the way society keeps us financially insecure so we can’t rise up and fight back, and the way it pits us all against each other to protect the few ultra-rich at the top.
We’ve pitched it to people (and for a while it had a showrunner and producer attached, but it then fell apart as these things do), and it’s also used as a writing sample when our manager submits us for writing staff jobs for other shows (such as they are, given the state the industry is in).
In late 2025 we submitted a live reading/performance of it to the Joy Who Lived trans theater festival here in Los Angeles, which is a wonderful, amazing, beautiful breath of trans art completely devoid of any cis gatekeepers making us tone down our stories for their comfort.
It was accepted into the festival, we went through casting and rehearsals, and performed it live (and globally livestreamed) on April 5, 2026. It was professionally filmed, and we were given the video to do whatever we wanted with, and we’ve put it up free for everyone to see. You can watch it right now!
I’m only telling you this because I decided that I was going to be part of this performance, despite the very idea of being on stage petrifying me for the vast majority of my life. I’m not really an actor, I didn’t want to take any of the parts that an actual actor could breathe so much more life into than I could, but I decided I’d be the narrator, reading all the slug lines and action lines in the script. (Slug lines are little headers that tell you when and where the scene is set, “action” lines are everything else that’s not dialogue, regardless of if it’s an “action scene” or “Harper turns on the shower.”)
But I never had stage fright, not really. Like I talked about in HALLOWEEN, it was mostly about the pain and fear of being perceived by people, when I didn’t know how, or want to know how, to play the part of the man they told me I had to be.
I always interpreted it as stage fright, because that’s what I was told it was.
Turns out: nope!
I should mention that I am now at the point where PHOTOS, VOICE, and even video (as discussed in PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP) do not spike my GENDER DYSPHORIA. Those were not the things I was having an issue with. It was being perceived, by so many, all at once and then for all time.
This was the first time I was going to be on a stage in front of an audience since transitioning, and not even just a live audience, but people all over the world could watch the stream, and it was being recorded for posterity. Posterity. Just think of the posterity!
This had sort of happened before, the first time I was in a group of people I mostly didn’t know after transitioning. See CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING? aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD for how wild it was when that unexpectedly changed for me.
But this wasn’t quite the same. I wasn’t just in a group of people where I’d be talking to one or two at a time and nobody else was paying attention to me. This was a situation where, when I was speaking, all eyes would be on me (conceivably, I’m sure some people were still just watching our amazing actors instead, though I am very pretty and stunning to behold).
And the best way I can convey to you how I felt about that is to show you the costume I picked for myself (keeping in mind this is a sci-fi cyberpunk story that is dramatic but also funny and a little goofy at times, on purpose).
Wellllllll here it is.
Just so we’re clear on what I’m wearing here, that’s a shiny shimmery reflective holographic dress with matching holographic bows in my hair, white fishnet gloves, white fishnet stockings (that were sparkly, though that doesn’t show in the photos super well, you mostly saw the sparkles when I moved), and my buckley white platform boots with reflective hearts on them (which showed up back in FINDING OUR TRANS STYLE).
That is…
Listen.
It’s not a look you put together when you do not want to be perceived.
That is a look that screams here I am now give me my spotlight please.
Which, especially if you know me in person, is actually very much on brand for me. 😌
I was excited to do this, to be on stage and perform my art for everyone. And to be seen.
Because I’m not just comfortable with who I am, I don’t just like who I am, I love and have fully embraced who I am.
It’s not quite who I ever thought I’d be, but it’s the real me that was in there all along and I love her. I love me.
I had z e r o anxiety leading up to the day.
Even on the day of the show, my only nervousness came from the fact that I had so much to read, and sometimes I stumble over reading aloud due to my dyslexia (yes, I have dyslexia and dyscalculia, you can have those and still be a writer! I am living proof! The proof is in my living!). And I did trip up in some spots during rehearsals.
I tweaked the wording of some lines to make them less likely to cause me problems, but even still it happened. If you watch the video above (and I hope you do and hope you love it, we’d like to make it a real show someday!), you’ll find a small handful of spots where I stumbled over what I was saying. I’m mad that they’re there, in spite of all my rehearsing, but also I know I did my best and that’s okay.
In any case, I was completely taken aback by this total lack of worry or concern. If I had to give a presentation in front of fifteen kids in high school speech class, I was a wrecked shell of a human for two weeks leading up to it. Because I would be perceeeeeiiiived.
And what I realized in doing this show, in pulling together my outfit for it, in every aspect of it and the absolute rush of joy it gave me both during and right after, is that I really, truly, absolutely want to be perceived.
I’m here! I’m finally here, in all my real true glory (yes I am glorious, shut up!). And I want you to see me! Which is a bit of what happened in that first CONFIDENCE essay, and this is that, but more.
So much more!
Because I have, without realizing, so fully and truly embraced my true self and who I am, and spent so long closed off from the entire world, isolated and alone due to GENDER DYSPHORIA, that it feels so incredibly life-affirming to be seen and perceived in this way. It’s GENDER EUPHORIA on a whole new level, above and beyond what I thought was possible.
Give me that spotlight! Look, look, everyone look! See me. Let me show you this amazing person I really am, and how much I love me, because I want you to love who I am, too.
And maybe my being in such a ludicrously shining outfit will make that spotlight reflect back toward you. And if you can see that I can love myself this much, then you can love yourself this much, too.
Find out who you really are. Embrace that person with your whole heart, and truly live your one precious, fragile, fleeting life that you have to live.
And whenever you’re ready, step into that spotlight.
Because I can’t wait to share it with you.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com