Trans 101

GIVING YOURSELF PERMISSION TO EXPLORE GENDER

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re talking about a specific thing (literally, a thing) that helped me figure out I was trans: MY WATCH. Though more broadly what we’re really talking about is GIVING YOURSELF PERMISSION TO EXPLORE GENDER.

Righto, so… how the heck does a watch help you figure out you’re trans? Excellent question, and one I’ve asked myself multiple times. To start, we have to go back to how I feel about watches in general.

As a kid, I only wore watches if I was out with friends or roaming the neighborhood and had to be back home by a certain time.

I’d be out doing all kinds of things that, looking back, were horribly dangerous even if I didn’t know that at the time. One of those things I talked about in the Trans Tuesday on TRANS COURAGE.

I was terrified of breaking rules and getting in trouble, but that meant I was always finding loopholes and ways to push the line as far as I could. That doesn’t relate to watches any, I just want you to understand it’s not like I was a little miscreant.

But as a kid watches are kind of cool, right? You can get a Superman one or whatever. For a while I had one with a Yoda hologram on the face! Fun fact: I got that watch by betting my step-dad the Bulls would win their third straight championship. He thought it’d never happen.

Guess I showed him! I can’t actually find it now, and have no idea what happened to it. I have almost nothing in terms of physical items from my childhood though, so I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise. Thankfully the internet knows all. 

A black watch with a hologram of Yoda on the face

But eventually you grow up and the world says you can’t have things like that anymore. Which, of course, is bullshit. But I talked about how long it took me to even realize I could say screw you, I can I can like sci-fi AND sports, in the Trans Tuesday on THE FALSE DICHOTOMY.

I never liked “normal” men’s watches. Not even the cool ones. Well, let me rephrase. I thought some of them were actually remarkably cool, but I never ever wanted to wear one. It’s only now, looking back, I realize that’s because it was a thing for MEN.

Comparable women’s watches I would have loved to get, but wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing so because in our stupid society even WATCHES are GENDERED and how awful is that?

The answer you’re looking for is “very.”

I did have one men’s watch. On our honeymoon to Disney World (uh, we are nerds, you probably noticed) Susan and I got a matching set. I was able to tolerate this internally because Susan had a (smaller, women’s) matching one, and they had Mickey on them.

So in my head, all of that mitigated its “manliness” somewhat, even though it had a really big face and a metal link band and was incredibly heavy, all of which bothered me a lot. Also men can like and wear watches with cartoon characters on them, normalize that already.

So even though I had some wonderful memories associated with it, I still never loved it. Once we got our first smartphones, that was enough to push it off my arm forever.

I can’t find that one to show you a photo now either (way to prepare for this post, excellent job, Tills), and unfortunately googling for “Mickey Mouse watch” isn’t exactly helpful. But the smartphone was the end of my wearing it, and I never looked back.

I believed this was because I always had the time on my phone, right in my pocket, what did I need a watch for? Of course reducing it down to its most utilitarian function isn’t the only reason to get a watch, but it’s what I told myself.

Because all the watches I would have liked to have actually worn were women’s watches, and that made me uncomfortable for reasons I talked about in the Trans Tuesday on THE FEAR OF EMBRACING YOUR TRUE SELF (Halloween).

But also it wouldn’t have been socially acceptable for me to wear a women’s watch, living in the midwest and appearing to be a cisgender man… and again, screw that noise, but it definitely affected me at the time.

I spent a very long time with just a smartphone, never even thinking about watches at all, other than my self-satisfied, smug “WHO needs a watch anymore?” Ha. Girl, you were so dense.

So a few years back, in the process of catching up on movies we’d missed, we gave Terminator: Genisys a shot. (This post is not about the merits or faults of said movie, so take those somewhere else)

And we’re innocently watching this movie, when suddenly I’m hit like a ton of bricks by Sarah Connor. Why? On the poster and in the movie itself… she has a black leather cuff watch.

A Terminator: Genisys poster showing Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor. On her left wrist is a black leather cuff watch.

If you can’t quite spot it there, here’s a better look at it. She wears it through most of the movie. 

A closeup of the black leather cuff watch from Terminator: Genisys laid flat.

I actually tried to find that exact watch at first, because I loved it so much. And I did… but it was that EXACT watch. From the movie! In a prop auction. I think it went for over a grand, so now you know why I do not have that watch.

Now MY black leather cuff watch isn’t in any way meant as an homage to Sarah Connor, though I do love the character. But that’s not what struck me about it at all. Here was a woman, wearing a watch that didn’t necessarily LOOK like the “typical” gendered women’s watch.

And nobody commented on it, nobody said anything about it at all. In the movie or otherwise. It was just accepted, because it’s a tiny costuming detail and most people probably didn’t even notice. But I sure did.

You also have to understand at this time I was already knee-deep in thinking I was trans and trying to figure it out, so all the confusion and emotions were constantly swirling in my head.

And it occurred to me that I could get a watch like that, and it wouldn’t TECHNICALLY be a women’s watch… but it also wasn’t TECHNICALLY a men’s watch. It was a gender-neutral BADASS WATCH.

I had to have it. I HAD TO. It meant… a ton, and though I didn’t know why at the time, I do now. Because it was giving myself permission to start exploring that side of myself, VISIBLY. PUBLICLY. Even if nobody else knew what it meant.

Which is how the topic comes back around to PERMISSION, because this was one of the first ways I let myself really start to explore who I really was inside. It was a safe way for me to say… maybe I AM transgender, and maybe that’s okay. Let’s find out.

It was Susan who found the good folks at Rockstar Leatherworks when I was having difficulty finding a watch that I liked. She’s super, super great at internet research. Get yourself a Susan, I highly recommend it! (but get your OWN Susan, this one’s mine )

It’s a small company, might be just one guy doing it all himself. They’ve got great customer service and I couldn’t be happier with it, honestly. I love it, I love seeing it on my arm, I even love snapping it on and off. I’m weird.

It doesn’t fit as well as it used to. Leather loosens a bit over time. And I got it before I really committed to all of my running, which I talked about in the Trans Tuesday on BODY HACKING.

Incidentally, getting and wearing and being comfortable with and loving the watch is what led directly to getting the women’s running hoodie I mentioned in that Body Hacking post. Incremental baby steps got me through.

Anyway, as I fully committed to my regular runs, I dropped about fifty pounds, getting me away from that dad bod that bugged me so much. But that also contributed to how loose the watch is on my arm now.

I don’t think I’d pick the same design for my watch if I were to design another one now, to get one that fits better, but I can’t really afford to replace it anyway so it’s not something I’ve really explored.

But that’s okay. I’m so, so happy with it and grateful to have it. I love it with all my heart, because it’s a piece of the key that helped me unlock my true self. And that makes it priceless.

Give yourself permission to explore your own self expression, even if you have to do it in incremental baby steps. Find that truer you.

There’s nothing better than becoming that person with the entirety of your heart.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

GENDER EUPHORIA

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re going to talk about something I’ve mentioned in passing a few times, but it’s getting a thread of its own. It’s one of the best things about being trans for me, and it’s also something cis people can maybe experience: GENDER EUPHORIA.

I probably link to the below post more than any other, but if you haven’t seen it yet, be sure you’re familiar with the other side of the coin, GENDER DYSPHORIA.

Again, not all trans people experience gender dysphoria (though the vast majority do, I think), and you need not have gender dysphoria to be trans. But it’s certainly a major signifier.

Gender euphoria is quite literally the exact opposite, it’s a feeling not just of contentment, but absolute, unbridled, utter joy brought about by, of all things, your gender. Which might seem strange, so let’s talk about that a little.

I spent my entire life being told I was a boy/man, and was expected to behave/dress/live accordingly. And that gave me a massive amount of dysphoria, even beyond the physical issues of feeling like I was in the wrong body.

So when I began trying to figure out why I felt that way, and coming to terms with my transness, I started experimenting with doing things that weren’t necessarily even feminine, but were anti-masculine, if that makes any kind of sense.

This involved a lot of things I’ve talked about, like growing out my hair, experimenting with makeup, and changing my clothes. If you missed those, here’s the first trans tuesday on HAIR.

And HAIR 2, when I got my first ever haircut.

And the trans tuesday on HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE.

If you read through those, I think you can spot the parts where they caused gender euphoria (I may have even mentioned it by name, but I haven’t re-read them recently so I don’t remember, give a gal a break.)

And okay, I hear you say, but those ARE “feminine” or “girly” things, at least to some degree. And so I will now direct you to the essay on BODY HACKING, which includes discussion of the first women’s clothes I ever owned.

Again, yes, they were women’s clothes, but you likely wouldn’t know it if they weren’t sold in the women’s section. A running hoodie is a running hoodie. It’s cut a little different from a men’s hoodie, but honestly I don’t think you can tell if you’re not wearing it.

I don’t need to go back and reread talking about that hoodie there, because I will never, ever forget the way it made me feel. I said it “felt like I was FLYING.” And it did, and it still does! Only now basically all my clothes make me feel that way (to varying degrees).

That was the first time I EVER felt gender euphoria, and friends, the only better feeling than gender euphoria is love. And like, yes, I am aware of sex and pizza and the way it feels to clean an itchy ear with a q-tip.

GENDER EUPHORIA IS BETTER THAN ALL OF THEM.

And it feels like flying because, as I mentioned in the dysphoria thread, and multiple other times throughout all these Trans Tuesdays threads, dysphoria feels like a crushing weight that’s just destroying you.

When you remove that weight, you feel weightless. And that applies to almost everything in life. If you’re overloaded with work, clearing it off your plate can sometimes make you feel better than if you’d never had it stressing you in the first place.

If you carry something heavy, set it down and pick up something not as heavy, it feels even lighter than it should. It’s a thing.

It’s part of the reason baseball players put those weighted donuts on their bat while warming up. It makes it feel lighter when you’re actually batting! I played a ton of baseball as a kid, that might be the first time I ever experienced anything like that.

Incidentally, I believe this is why Neo flies in The Matrix franchise, which is something you can learn all about in my book, BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX.

He also has multiple “dress go spinny” moments, which is a phenomena in the trans woman community where, when wearing skirts or dresses, we feel compelled to twirl so we can feel them spin around us. We can see it spinning, we can feel it spinning, it reminds us that it’s there and of all we’ve achieved in getting to be our true selves. It’s total gender euphoria.

What does gender euphoria feel like to trans folks who don’t have dysphoria? I can’t say, I can only speak to my own experiences, and not having dysphoria is certainly not anything I’ve ever been familiar with.

But I suspect it’s much the same. Maybe a bit less intense? But maybe not. When gender euphoria really washes over me, it is POWERFUL. It *really* feels like I’m going to levitate right off the ground.

It’s this amazing confirmation that I AM ME, I am the me I always wanted to be, the me I always was, but now made real and here in the world AS MYSELF and there’s just no feeling like it.

So what gives me gender euphoria? Anyone saying my name gives me a little bit. Literally that’s all it takes! That’s not one of the huge ones that makes me feel like I’m flying, but it does make me tingly.

The knowledge that I’m being seen, after spending my life not, is heady stuff.

When Susan noticed my voice was changing after I’d been in voice therapy for a while, that was a big one.

Several weeks back, in that blessed short time before the delta variant, where it seemed like things were maybe going to turn a corner, we went out to lunch for the first time in like 18 months. We sat outside, and there was distancing.

And when the server brought our food, she set down my plate. Hold on, I need to take a breath, I’m getting light-headed just thinking about it. Hoo.

She set down my food, and said, “For the lady!”

That’s it. THAT IS FUCKING IT. It was the first time a stranger had really done that, just SEEN ME AS ME, and I thought I was gonna explode. Just thinking about it gives me a lot of residual tingles. Kind of astonishing.

I can only speak to this as a person who transitioned as an adult. If you got to transition as a kid in a loving environment that let you explore these things, would you still have it? I think so. Would it still be as intense? No idea.

I think this is something that cis folks out there can (and do) experience, though maybe less intensely. Although I’ve never been cis, so I don’t know! But I’m curious.

I think cis folks probably experience something similar when you… well, I don’t know. It’s more than just having a favorite shirt or something. Do you have a… suit? Dress? Top? Accessory? Something that you KNOW you look FUCKING GREAT in?

Something that makes you feel like FUCK YES THIS IS ME, I AM THIS AMAZING BEAUTIFUL PERSON, AND THE WORLD WILL SEE ME AS SUCH! I look good and I fuckin’ know it, stand back world I’m comin’ through!

That. It’s THAT, *turned up to eleven.* Do you experience that, cis folks? Is it ever so intense that you just have to sit down because you might pass out from the overwhelming feeling that you’re SO VERY YOU, the woman/man you were meant to be?

If not, does that mean… you’re not cis? I don’t know, probably not. But maybe! Try on something different, something from the opposite end of the spectrum (or even something very gender neutral).

See how it makes you feel. Pay attention to everything your head, heart, and body are telling you. Explore, see where it takes you. At the very least, you might find you’re REALLY cis and just love being that way!

Or maybe you’ll HATE the way dressing as a different gender makes you feel, and you’ll get the teeniest tiniest little window into what gender dysphoria is like. Who knows.

Gender euphoria is one of the most amazing and beautiful things about being trans, but even that might not be uniquely ours. I think it’s likely universal. Experiment and find out. Let me know how it goes. 💜

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

GENDER DYSPHORIA

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week’s topic is a big one, and kind of the reason for everything. That’s right, we’re talking about everyone’s least favorite thing, our not-so-friendly constant companion: GENDER DYSPHORIA.

Dypshoria’s remarkably difficult to talk about. Finding the right words to express it is beyond difficult, and I’m a damned writer. I’ve been trying to describe it in words for years, and it’s still a challenge.

VERY broadly, it means your gender does not match the one you were assigned at birth. There is SO much more to it than that, but I want you to have a base to start from. Somebody looked at your genitals and in two seconds laid out a lifetime of expectations for you.

There’s no easy way to explain to a cis person what it’s like, because it affects everyone in entirely different ways. I’ll try to explain what it’s like for me personally, because that’s the best I can give you.

What made my dysphoria spike more than anything was my face, and how much it didn’t look like me. At all. My face, and to a still strong but lesser extent, lack of breasts and feminine body shape were huge, huge issues for me.

Facial hair (and to a moderately lesser extent, body hair), are also problems. See the trans tuesday on BODY HAIR for more on that particular problem.

Facial hair especially drives me MAD. I want to sand it off my face forever. And there are medical procedures that can address this – laser hair removal and electrolysis. But despite what capitalism wants you to believe, covid-19 is actually still around.

My wife is immunocompromised, so me being maskless indoors with strangers in a place with a lot of people just isn’t possible. For more on the difficulties trans people face with regard to covid, see the trans tuesday on PANDEMIC TRANSITION.

I can’t wear a mask while someone zaps every hair on my face. It takes multiple sessions to permanently get that hair to stop growing. One trans woman told me she had multiple laser sessions followed by SEVENTY HOURS of electrolysis. And she’s still not done.

Guess what else spiked my dysphoria? SHAVING MY FACE, because in my head it’s another intrinsically male thing to do. So: having facial hair spikes my dysphoria, shaving it off spiked my dysphoria. Interestingly, as my transition progressed, this changed a little.

By changing the shaving cream I use, by changing the motions of my hand and the WAY I shave, I was able to divorce it from what I did pre-transition. So the act of shaving no longer causes dysphoria.

In fact, it actually gives me EUPHORIA because it’s getting rid of the facial hair that doesn’t belong on my body. Every morning I’m removing parts of me that shouldn’t be there so I can see the real me that’s always been there.

Early on in transition, my face was really sensitive, and I couldn’t shave that often. It took me months just to work up to being able to shave every other day. And do you realize what that meant? I got maybe an eight hour span, three days a week, where I could feel like me.

And the rest of the time, I just… didn’t. And replacing my wardrobe took a long time, and a lot of money, which I talked about in the trans tuesday on PRIVILEGE: TIME AND MONEY.

That was further exacerbated on how it just takes a lot of time and experimentation to find out what you actually want to wear and feel good in. See the trans tuesday on FINDING OUR TRANS STYLE for more on that.

But even as I got more women’s clothes, I couldn’t wear them every day, even if I had enough of them to do so. Why? WELL. Even if I was just in women’s jeans and a lady-styled t-shirt… if I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror like that, with stubble? Dysphoria spike.

If I FEEL the stubble on my face? Dysphoria spike. And what if I had to take out the trash, or get the mail, or step out of our apartment for any reason?

The world was literally going to see a bearded lady, and I had to decide if I had the energy in me to fend off any potential harassment that might come my way. And there’s NOTHING WRONG with bearded ladies! Women can be as hairy or hairless as they like.

But society says they should be ONE WAY ONLY, and doing anything outside of that opens you up to harassment. And, like, screw those bigots, I don’t care what they think.

But I still had to have the mental and emotional capacity to deal with it if I risked going outside with stubble. So the end result is I spent the days I couldn’t shave in old boy-cut t-shirts and jeans/shorts, the gender neutral way I dressed for all my life until recently.

And to be clear, gender-neutral clothes are RIGHT for some people which is TOTALLY fine. But it’s not right for me specifically, yet I felt somewhat forced to do it most of the time. Which caused, you guessed it, dysphoria spike.

That’s called BOYMODING (or GIRLMODING), and you bet there’s a trans tuesday on that too. And how much more painful it became to do as transition progressed.

So that’s just a small glimpse of some of the things I was dealing with early in my transition, and for all my life pre-transition. That’s NOT all there is to it, but it’s the easiest example I could show you of how it crops up everywhere and causes all kinds of problems.

Hopefully you cis folks reading can see how pervasive it is, because we get that from wearing the wrong clothing and being called by our deadnames and people using the wrong pronouns and societal expectations and a million other things. But what’s gender dysphoria LIKE?

Here’s where language kind fails us. I’m going to use several clunky and inadequate metaphors. Try to combine them all in your head, and maybe it will give you some idea that’s in the right ballpark. Ready? Buckle up. Here we go.

It’s like not being able to breathe. Like there’s a 400lb weight on your chest slowly crushing the life out of you. No matter how you struggle, you can’t get out from under it. No one will lift it off you. No one else can even see it. You have to live your life under it.

It’s like being underwater, being able to see everyone else around you swimming, while you’re eternally drowning. And no one helps. Because no one knows. Worse, some of the people you love so much ARE THE ONES HOLDING YOU UNDERWATER.

Imagine you’re at dinner with your friends, and you see them. Not with your eyes, but you SEE them. As people. You love them. They think they see you. But they don’t. They can’t. You’re buried behind a six foot thick concrete wall that separates you from the world.

EVERYWHERE you go. EVERY second of your life. Crushing weight, lack of breath, nobody knows or sees the real you. You see a person in the mirror and in photos that you know is yourself, because people tell you so. But it’s not you.

See the trans tuesday on PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS for more on the ways our very appearance betrays and wounds us.

It’s being buried somewhere deep inside a fleshy meat sack you’re steering around the world, piloting a robot you never asked for and don’t know how to operate. And, in most cases, the appearance and physical aspects of that robot repulse you.

And in my case, it’s not that I hate men. It’s that I hated people thinking I’M a man, because I’m not and never have been. While developing, my physical body went one way and my brain and gender went another. It’s a mismatch.

Even just talking about it I can feel the oppressive weight in my chest. So we do what we can to try to fix it… changing our clothes, our hair, our names. Trying medical options like hormone replacement therapy and gender confirmation surgeries.

Because living like this is PAINFUL. It’s AWFUL. It is literal TORTURE. You do not understand the sheer body horror of watching yourself go through the wrong puberty, and your body shifting and warping into a nightmare that you can’t escape.

Cis folks, there’s a chance you can experience small tastes of what it’s like. In our highly gendered society, women wearing “men’s” clothing is largely seen as great and wonderful, because men are so awesome and should be aspired to.

But cis fellas out there? Have you ever worn a dress? How did that make you FEEL? Did your skin crawl? Could you just not wait to get it off of your body? Was it gross and uncomfortable and weird and awful? You just got a .00001% taste of gender dysphoria.

BTW, if it DIDN’T feel weird and gross and awful, that’s super cool. You may be a cis dude who likes skirts and dresses, which is a totally legit thing to be. But, uh, y’know… you might also not be cis. See the trans tuesday on HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU’RE TRANS.

For ANY cis people reading, a thought exercise: seriously sit and imagine every day you must wear clothes for a gender that’s not yours. You see someone of a different gender in the mirror. You know it’s not you, but EVERYONE will act like it is.

And everyone expects you to play that part. And punishes you when you’re bad at it, all the while you’re dealing with just how terrible it makes you feel. Your pronouns are wrong, your name is wrong, YOUR ENTIRE LIFE IS WRONG.

It’s all day long. It’s EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE. FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS. It never ever stops. Until you finally realize what’s causing it. Imagine the relief you’d feel to know you’re not the only one who experiences it.

Imagine the relief you’d feel to know there are things you can do to correct it, to fix it, to not feel that misery anymore.

Now imagine so many people NOT like you want to punish you for seeking the things that would fix it. Want to, and in some cases do, make getting that care ILLEGAL.

Does that make you anxious? Does it make you panic? Does it make you feel like the walls are caving in and there’s no way out, nothing you can do, and no one who will help you?

You are, maybe, starting to get it.

I’m far enough into my transition, and have been lucky enough with the way my body has responded to hormone replacement therapy, and in a few other ways, to basically not have any dysphoria anymore. Though seeing my stubble each morning still causes it.

TO BE CLEAR: you do NOT have to have dysphoria to be transgender. But the vast majority of us do. But also! Gender dysphoria has largely been described and decided on by a field of entirely cisgender doctors. Which, yeah, is as messed up as you think.

I’m personally of the opinion that the definition of gender dysphoria should be opened up wide. Because we all experience it in different ways, caused by different things, and at different intensities.

So like, if you ask me, someone who was assigned male at birth simply saying “I’d be happier as a girl”… that’s gender dysphoria, to me. Even if it doesn’t come with all the anguish. Because cis people don’t feel that way.

In any case, I want to leave you with one final description of gender dysphoria that I surprised myself with. If you follow me on any of my social media accounts, you know I post daily pre-coffee thoughts as I sit around waiting for the caffeine to kick in.

Many are goofy or ludicrous, some are poignant, some are sad, some are just bad puns. I don’t plan them, I just go wherever my non-stop brain takes me that morning.

And a little while back I was just thinking about dysphoria one morning. I wasn’t lost in it, I wasn’t even feeling it. Again, I’m incredibly lucky in that my life is almost entirely dysphoria-free now. But I had dysphoria for my entire life. It was really, really bad.

And I’ll never ever ever be able to forget how it felt, no matter how I try. And so this poem about it just… came out. And afterward, I realized it may be the most accurate description of gender dysphoria I’ve ever managed to put to words. Here it is:

cries
from stygian depths
clawing
scraping
form without shaping
reverberating off bone
amplified by beating sinew
pleading for you
to see a light brighter
than a galaxy of suns
screaming
set me free

Cis folks, please understand what so many of us go through. Transitioning isn’t a whim, isn’t elective, it isn’t even really a choice… for so many of us it comes down to: try to be free, or spend life trapped in waking death.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Addendum 7/2/25

Another dysphoria poem popped up in my pre-coffee thoughts social media post.

when i was little
i thought when you died
you were left conscious
but alone
in an unending dark void
and i only now realized
that it so terrified me
because that’s what
every minute of my life
pre-transition
already was

THE FEAR OF EMBRACING YOUR TRUE SELF (Halloween)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! It’s that time of year again, of spooky spoops and costumes and candy. We’re gonna talk about TRANS HALLOWEEN, but what it’s really about is THE FEAR OF EMBRACING YOUR TRUE SELF WHEN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE IS A COSTUME.

Halloween was always a weird time for me. I love the holiday and the autumn (such as it is in Los Angeles) and the spooky stuff, and I love costumes. But there’s a caveat with that last one.

Because I also didn’t love them, and I never knew why. As a kid you (probably) love Halloween because people give you candy and you get to dress up as a monster or something scary or, as it’s now mostly morphed to, a character you love from popular media.

And there was certainly always media I loved. I don’t remember most of my costumes from childhood, sadly. And I have almost no photos of my life before I moved out to live on my own, so it’s not like I can go back and look.

I know I was Spider-Man one year. Another I was a ghost, the awful kind that’s just a sheet with eye holes cut in it. I always saw that in cartoons or comics and thought it must be fun since it appeared all the time. SPOILERS: it is not. It is in fact very bad (but easy to draw!).

The best costumes I ever had were Calvin (I even had a little stuffed Hobbes, though not as cool as the one Susan made for me last year), and Wakko Warner. I won a $75 prize from my local comic shop for that last one. It ruled. You’ll have to trust me (again, I have no photos).

I don’t know how familiar you are with Animaniacs, but the characters have black bodies and white faces, in that old-timey cartoon style. The black I handled with a simple black sweatsuit, and I had cartoony gloves from Disney World that worked great.

And I made the hat and the ears and tail and even feet. But I didn’t do anything to my face, which probably made it look incomplete (but I still won a prize for it, so who knows), and you’re probably wondering why I’d go to all that trouble and not complete it.

It’s because I was TERRIFIED to put makeup on. This is also partly what kept me as part of the tech crew in my high school drama club, rather than branching out and trying acting.

Feeling like I didn’t fit in my own body definitely made me hate being seen by people, so going on stage wasn’t a choice I made willingly. Then they’d all be LOOKING at me but not SEEING me, just seeing the shell of a boy costume I was wearing. And that was UNGOOD.

But in all honestly I was just as scared of having to put makeup on, which of course even high school actors need under all the lights in a stage play. I was just as terrified of any kind of hair dye, even including the temporary stuff that washes out.

Even the baby powder they’d put in a kid’s hair to make it look gray if they were playing an older character made me nope right out. I never, ever examined why this was, I just thought it wasn’t something I was interested in. Ha ha ha, it is to laugh.

As an adult I would try not to let Susan kiss me when she had lipstick (or even lip balm!) on, because some would invariably get on me, and it provided the EXACT feeling of fear I’ve been talking about. I couldn’t handle it! I had to get it off! NOW! AUGH! It made me panic.

Brief aside, I felt that panic and fear for so long that just remembering it and writing about it above makes me feel it all over again… even now after self-accepting and transitioning and liking and wearing lipstick all the time. I’m wearing it RIGHT NOW. It’s bonkers.

Anyway the lipstick fear was exactly the same with Halloween and costumes, where I never put any kind of makeup or hair dye on for ANYTHING. It was just NOT AN OPTION, no matter how much better it would have made my costume.

Looking back at all of it now, I can clearly identify it as fear. And it was INTENSE fear, the kind that if I felt I were going to be forced into one of those things I would have uttered a horrid quick excuse and RAN AWAY and never gone back.

Which seems kind of severe, until you realize I wasn’t afraid to do/wear/have those things, I was afraid I would LIKE it. And then what would that say about me? Therein lies the problem.

In high school in my podunk midwestern town, I still didn’t know that “transgender” was a thing people could be, much less what it meant. Boys who dyed their hair and wore makeup? Well we were told those were GAY and to be SHUNNED (even though I thought shunning was bullshit).

But! I wasn’t at all worried that if I liked the hair dye or makeup it would mean I was gay. Because I knew I wasn’t. Ladies ladies ladies, they’re the ones for me.

So if I liked wearing makeup, but I wasn’t gay, what the hell would that mean? In my ignorant, inexperienced, uneducated (in the ways of gender beyond the narrow societal binary) mind… something would have to be wrong with me.

Seriously wrong.

Because those were the only options ever presented to me. You liked makeup? You’re a woman, or a gay man, end of story. That’s it. It’s the horrid FALSE DICHOTOMY of our society rearing its head again. I did a Trans Tuesday all about it:

But just as much as the fear of what it would mean if I liked those things that were Not For Boys, I felt the fear of having to pretend to be someone else. Because you have to understand I was pretending to be someone else EVERY WAKING MOMENT OF MY LIFE.

That’s what being trans and not knowing it (or having to BOYMODE/GIRLMODE) is: acting the part of the cis person you were told you are and had no choice but to pretend to be.

And it’s not just that you don’t know how, or want to, but it REPULSES you on an atomic level. It HURTS. So the thought of dropping that facade, to replace it with another (like a character in a play), seemed… insurmountable. And uncomfortable.

Because I didn’t know how you’d adopt a fake persona on TOP of the fake persona you were already constantly stressed and worried about and had to wear for every damned moment of your entire damned life.

Which meant you’d have to DROP the original fake persona. Ideally a good thing, but it was also all I had. I’d be open. Exposed. More vulnerable and out as myself to the world, in acting the part of a character in a play, than I would be as “myself.” Does that make sense?

But unlike acting in a play, Halloween didn’t come with the “persona problem,” because everyone knew you weren’t who you were dressed up as. Nobody expected you to act like that character. You were just… you, in a costume.

That I could (mostly) do and enjoy. And my favorite part about it were masks.

I mean, how much more obvious could it be, right? Are you laughing? It’s okay. I am too. How trite! If this were a script I’d be working on a rewrite right now.

In a mask I didn’t have to pretend to be the boy people thought I was. I didn’t have to pretend to be anything. Masks were a shield. They protected me, kept me wrapped up safe inside, hid the true me from the world (and myself).

And would you believe this carried over into other parts of my life in ways I didn’t realize? It really does creep in all over when the true you is forcefully hidden from you for your entire life. Tying right in with Halloween and makeup and masks… are the toys I had as a kid.

As a (seeming) boy, the only toys I was really allowed were action figures. I had them for all sorts of cartoons and tv shows and movies I loved. And I still dig action figures even though they’re just small dolls, and yes it’s okay to say that. Get over yourself, dudes.

Screw the stupid gender binary, let kids play with what they want. ANYWAY, my favorites were always any character that came with a removable helmet or mask. I’d put it on them, take it off, put it back on.

I’d pretend while they had it on none of the other characters knew who they were. They’d later take it off and reveal their true identity and everyone would be surprised. LOOK I SAID IT WAS REALLY OBVIOUS ONCE I NOTICED IT, OKAY?

It was only in the years I spent examining myself and my life and trying to figure this out that I realized my affinity for masks and helmets tied into the feeling of safety they gave me.

And taking a mask or helmet off an action figure to reveal their true selves was pure subconscious wish fulfillment. I wanted to be able to do that to the people I cared about, but I also wanted to be able to do that to MYSELF.

But I couldn’t. Not in the environment I was in, and not for a long time after until I undid all the damage and anti-trans brainwashing society had done to me.

There’s also a sadness that comes with thinking of past Halloweens, especially in high school… because it was somewhat regular for some of the jocks to come to school in terrible wigs and their mom’s dresses.

That was, of course, played for laughs. Oh ho ho, you see they’re MEN but they’re dressed like WOMEN and it’s that SILLY because it’s so BAD AND WRONG.

Homophobia and transphobia are of course baked right into that. It’s terrible. AND YET.

I felt pangs in my chest. I didn’t want to look like THAT, I didn’t want to make fun of people, but at the same time… they got to wear dresses all day long, and nobody made fun of them for it.

And my god, what must that be like?

Younger me was… well, this is going to sound very self-aggrandizing, but I’m going to go ahead and aggrandize myself (it’s my thread and you can’t stop me). That kid was ALWAYS incredibly self-reflective, often to her own detriment.

Except in this area, because I had been so blinded to even the hint of the possibility of transgender people not only existing, but that it’s totally fine and normal and acceptable for us to exist.

So I never examined WHY I felt that way about burly football players stuffed into too-small dresses, lumbering down the school halls. I just figured it’s because I was… weird. I’ve always been weird. I’ll always be weird.

Guess that’s just part of it! Huh. Yep, makes sense. No need to examine that any further, you weirdo! Glad we settled that. AND SHE HOPED TO NEVER THINK ABOUT IT AGAIN.

I wish I’d grown up in a supportive environment where I’d have been encouraged to explore that side of myself, through Halloween, through the drama club, through all the untold stories and adventures I put my action figures through.

I’m sure the latter is a big part of what made me a writer. I was always creating stories for my toys to play out. If only I’d been able to imagine a story half as good for myself sooner than I did.

But we all go at our own pace, which is all we can do. Just… don’t run from what scares you.

One of the first things I did after being sure I was transgender but not knowing if I would transition was… book an appointment with a Hollywood makeup artist who specializes in makeovers for trans women.

I’d not talked to a doctor yet, not begun transitioning in any way. Nobody knew but Susan. And it took me MONTHS to work up the courage to do it, because that fear still remained. And now that I knew WHY I was scared, it made me even more scared.

But I had to know. I had to go and have her put makeup on me and see how it looked. And I did. And if you were ever wondering what this post was about…

A tweet I made at 1:09 pm on March 10, 2020: Today I did something I’d be terrified to do for most of my life (I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s not dangerous so do not worry). And all I can tell you is that we only live once and if you’re wondering if you should do that thing that scares you? Fuck yes. Go do it. [purple heart emoji]

I let her do whatever she wanted, because I had no idea what I liked or what I’d want. I was there for about three hours. The first time I looked in the mirror when she was done was… amazing and heartbreaking all at once. It was so great. And it HURT SO MUCH.

Because I knew. Even though the colors/style she used aren’t something I’d choose for myself now, I knew. I knew I knew I knew. That was ME. It was the first time I ever saw even a hint of ME (as close as was possible at the time). I almost cried.

Which of course was exhilarating! But it also meant… my entire life was going to change, because I HAD to transition. And it meant so much of my life, trapped in the wrong body with gender dysphoria, could have been so different.

I don’t know what it would be like to dress up for Halloween now. I’ve never had a WOMEN’S costume for it before. I’ve never had just ONE costume I WANTED to wear. I think it might be SUPER DAMN GREAT?? But I never get invited to Halloween parties so I have no reason to get one.

Dressing up in a costume and then sitting at home doing nothing would be too sad to deal with. But maybe someday! If someone invites me to one. Is this a hint YES OF COURSE THIS IS A HINT. But back to the point:

Don’t run from fear. Find the courage, no matter how long it takes. You can do it.

Embrace it. Run toward it. Experience that fear and see what you learn about yourself when you come out the other side. It might just be a revelation.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

CHASERS and THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today’s topic is a very real problem trans people, especially we trans women, have to deal with. CIS FOLKS, specifically cis men, please pay attention. Watch out, here comes CHASERS and THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN.

A “chaser” is someone (almost universally cis men) who fetishizes trans women. They flood our DMs and follow us around the internet and generally hound us as objects of desire, while simultaneously not seeing us as people, human beings, or supporting trans rights.

Before we go further let me make this clear: I am sex-positive and there is nothing wrong with anyone being attracted to trans people (you should be, we’re awesome). For that matter I also support sex workers who choose that line of work for themselves.

But there is a very real issue for trans women where many feel FORCED into sex work, because it’s one of the only ways our society has said it’s okay for trans women to exist. Well, a portion of our society anyway, as a large part of it still shuns sex work and porn entirely.

My point is this is not meant to be a discussion on the merits or drawbacks of porn or sex work. It’s about how trans women are routinely fetishized and so many feel forced to lean into that fetishization.

I’ve mentioned (so so so many times) how often trans people lose our family, friends, homes, and jobs when we come out. When you lose all that, and you face discrimination at every turn, and it’s tough to even get a new job due to people’s conscious (and unconscious) biases…

…where do you have left to turn to survive? Sex work. I personally know trans ladies who’ve felt forced into it because they had no other option. It’s the one thing one portion of society has decided it’s okay for us to do: exist as nothing more than sex objects for cis men.

We’re routinely one of the biggest and most popular porn categories. It’s getting marginally better in some places with them actually calling us trans women, but in many we’re not even that. We’re “shemales” or “dickgirls” or “chicks with dicks” or “girlyboys.”

There are so MANY terms they call us OTHER than trans women not even listed here, it’s kind of remarkable the lengths gone to to dehumanize us as nothing more than sex objects based on our genitalia and gender presentation.

And that’s extra harmful when you realize for a lot of trans women it’s that same external genitalia that is the biggest source of gender dysphoria for them. Can you imagine being valued ONLY for the part of your body you hate the most?

Some of the terms are actually even more harmful on their own. Trans ladies who can pass as cis are often called “traps,” aka “you think they’re a cis woman and then when they get naked they’re not! It’s a trap!”

This furthers the painting of us as deceptive manipulators and possible sex offenders, and increases the danger and violence we face. But who cares as long as cis dudes who fetishize us can get their rocks off, right?

I briefly talked about this in my threads on The Matrix Revolutions. You can’t really just dive into those without understanding what the previous Matrix movies meant in terms of their trans allegories, though. They’re now a book, BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX.

So let’s talk a bit about what it’s like being a trans lady on the internet. We’re not even going to talk about the bigotry we have to deal with on top of all this, mind you. We’re just gonna focus on the chasers and the way they fetishize us.

I mentioned in a previous thread how the WEEK I publicly came out as trans, the chasers found me and the DM flood started. They waste no time. Do they seek out newly out trans ladies thinking we’re not numb to it all already? Possibly.

It doesn’t matter what we post or where we post it, if we exist anywhere online the chasers will find us and make themselves known. I’ve mentioned multiple times how they hound me in SCRABBLE where I try to go for some downtime, but can’t even escape them there.

For a while I tried seeing what would happen if I pretended to be a bot. You can see how much of a deterrent that is to them.

Now I’m gonna give you a window into what my DMs, replies, and mentions look like. I’ve blocked a lot of the usernames and handles, but left some others. I’ll discuss why that is later in the thread. Also note these are not the sum total of everything I’ve received.

What you’re about to see is like 1% of what I get every single time I post a selfie (which I’m not gonna stop doing just to stop the chasers). You can read about why selfies are important in my post on PHOTOS 2 aka THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE.

So anytime I post a photo of myself, NO MATTER WHAT IT IS OR WHAT I AM DOING IN THE PHOTO OR WHAT CLOTHES I AM WEARING, the next time I log in my mentions look like this:

And then, multiple times a week, I will log on and discover chasers who’ve found my profile and gone through and liked EVERY PHOTO I HAVE POSTED:

This is not remotely uncommon:

They don’t even pay attention to what they’re liking because they’re in a blind lust frenzy. Look at this dude:

On a picture with my lovely wife Susan, in which the caption said we were married and it was our anniversary, he wrote: [DNA emoji] BFF sisters for life [100 emoji]… and then on another photo commented: [ring emoji] will make a good [bride emoji] wife some day [church emoji]

Creepy as hell, and also not remotely paying attention to what he’s liking as the flop sweat forms on his brow and he imagines I will see his ~amazing~ replies and, what… ask to meet up and have sex with him and eventually marry him?? It’s SO BAFFLING.

And it’s definitely what they all seem to want. Some of them don’t even try to hide it, and in fact just advertise it right in their usernames as if it’s somehow going to be a turn on to any living human being, and not as repulsive as thirteen week old cabbage?

Maybe they’re just interested and hoping to get a date, what’s wrong with that? Haaaahahaha. Just like the dudes on Scrabble who aren’t even deterred with me acting like a bot, they don’t take no for an answer.

It’s… constant. And absolutely none of them even have anything original to say.

So let’s take a peek into my DMs! Think it gets any better there? As you could see before from just the previews of my DMs, one of their favorite things to do is just say… hi. I guarantee you they’re all chasers, nobody sends a DM to someone they don’t know and says nothing but “hi”.

It’s a known chaser thing, believe it or not. And then there’s these dudes who I cannot even pretend to understand.

And then there’s the guys who just jump right in without even a hello, presuming I’m going to like this and… want more of it? Again, I cannot fathom what they’re hoping is going to happen by sending this to me. I’ve asked many of them but none will ever tell me.

And then there’s the ones who think we’re just here to answer every explicit sex question on their mind because, as nothing more than a sex object, surely we have the answers (never mind I’m not into dudes and have never and will never have sex with one).

And of course we can’t end this look at my DMs without a representative of everyone’s least favorite chaser, the dick pic-er.

“How do you know it was a dick pic, Tilly??” Come on. “Why don’t you just report it then??” To report it I have to know that’s what it was. So I looked. GUESS WHAT IT WAS? So I reported it.

Do you… do you think it worked?

I’ve got news for you.

A good deal of these dudes (on Instagram, anyway) likely would have a harder time finding me if I didn’t tag all my photos with trans, trans woman, trans girl, girls like us, etc etc. But I refuse to stop using those tags just to stop harassment that’s not my fault.

Because here’s the thing… those kinds of tags get used by eggs and people trying to figure out their own gender ALL. THE. TIME. I was one of them. I never went through someone’s entire profile liking all their photos because I was cognizant of how fucking creepy that is.

But I looked at photos with those tags all the time. Seeing other trans women that had transitioned and were happy and full of joy and life was so important to me. It played some small part in helping me think I could one day attain that, too.

And I’m not going to take that away from other eggs who need it as much as I did. And this kind of ties right into why most of the above usernames and handles were blocked out. I left the ones in for the blatant harassers, because if you’re gonna be gross people should know.

But the others? Remember how I said the one and only way a portion of our society makes existing as a trans woman “acceptable” is as nothing more than an object of fetishization?

That means that a lot of eggs who’ve been pretending to be cis find that’s the only acceptable way they can see us, learn more about us, and come to terms with their own gender. A non-zero number of those chasers ARE TRANS EGGS WHO MAYBE DON’T EVEN KNOW IT YET.

Do I wish they’d be less creepy about it? God yes. But I’m not going to block them because this world makes it INCREDIBLY difficult for a lot of people to even realize they’re trans, much less transition and self-actualize. My photos could help them like others’ photos helped me.

So it’s a weird line to walk, because I definitely don’t want the harassment and could certainly do without all the worthless trash messages from garbage people, but I know there are eggs out there doing the best with what they have and trying to learn… about themselves.

I won’t make it harder on them. It’s hard enough on us all as it is. Realize it’s FINE to be attracted to us, you can’t help who you’re attracted to. But you CANNOT forget that we are human beings first and foremost. If you can’t respect us, GTFO.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.

ADDENDUMS ON FOLLOWING PAGES.

great thing to wake up to

yep, there it is.

things have taken a turn (fess up if you had the twist figured out back in Act I)

ah yes, the old “it is your fault I am a creepy guy”

my birthday pics brought out a couple chaser varieties I’d not seen before. like this dude here, who I’m not even going to try to unpack.

and then what may be one of the creepiest chasers yet

maybe it’s all innocent, Tilly! maybe they’re nice guys who just don’t know! why don’t you explain and try to educate them?

Well.

I DON’T EVEN WANT TO KNOW

This is a remarkably good article on the topic, summing up a surprising increase in trans fetishization in 2022, with lots of good data. Check it out, and definitely read all the way to the end.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

BOYMODE and GIRLMODE

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re talking about an aspect of being transgender that I suspect most cis folks have never even thought about (which makes some degree of sense, because you’ve never needed to). Time to learn about: BOYMODE and GIRLMODE.

Basically boymode is simply when a trans woman, or nonbinary person, dresses in their old man-coded clothing after having begun transition. Girlmode is the same in the other direction, when trans men or nonbinary people dress in their old woman-coded clothing after having begun transition. I don’t actually boymode anymore, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

When I first began transitioning and slowly dipped my toes into getting and wearing women’s clothes, the sensation was almost completely overwhelming. After a lifetime of feeling awful and gross and hating my body, just changing my clothes had a massive effect on me.

I went into much greater detail about the importance of that in the trans tuesday on HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE.

Because dressing in the clothes I’d always wanted was SO overwhelming at first, I didn’t feel I could do it every day. I needed time to process and, for lack of a better term, feel my feelings. I needed to explore all the things that were happening and going on inside my head.

And so I ended up alternating for a few weeks… a day dressed as me, a day in boymode. Rinse and repeat until I became more comfortable and used to how women’s clothes made me feel and how it changed the way I moved.

Once that happened, boymode dropped out entirely because I didn’t need it, and certainly didn’t want it. Except the entire world is not like being at home, is it? But at the beginning, I was trapped at home as it was early on in the pandemic.

For a more in-depth discussion of a PANDEMIC TRANSITION, do see its Trans Tuesday.

Even though society was still largely shut down, I still had to make masked grocery runs, and at first I was terrified to even take out the trash dressed as myself. A lot of that is how scary it feels to possibly be PERCEIVED when you spent your whole life not.

But even worse is the very real concern we trans ladies face of harassment (or worse) when people think we’re “men in dresses.” The combo of the two was a new level of being overwhelmed that I had to acclimate to.

See the trans tuesday on CONFIDENCE for what it was like when that all changed for me, and I started to very much WANT to be perceived and seen, to rightfully take up the space that’s mine.

You can also see the changes confidence brought about, and the stark difference in being in a tux in boymode and in a dress as the real me in the trans tuesday on A TRANS RE-WEDDING.

But the bottom line is that before I was entirely comfortable being perceived as myself, I simply could NOT handle doing those grocery runs as myself.

So as I collected lady-cut t-shirts and tops and jeans and skirts and dresses, and slowly pruned the old male-coded clothing from my wardrobe… I held on to some of it. I mean a few have sentimental value, but those are a separate thing entirely.

I held on to the others as a costume, a shield I could wear just so it was one less thing I had to worry about. But it made me feel… awful. See the Trans Tuesday on GENDER DYSPHORIA for more on that.

And yes, wearing a dude t-shirt and jeans to get groceries was enough to hurt. It felt like 400 pounds of darkness just absolutely CRUSHING me. But for a while I felt I didn’t have any other choice.

Because there’s a much more important reason someone might boymode or girlmode, and that has to do with legal identification. During that time, I was still in the middle of trying to get legal ID I could carry with me that proved I am who I am. See the Trans Tuesday on LEGAL NAME AND GENDER MARKER CHANGES.

And for more on how that situation absolutely impacts tons of trans people, especially in states that make changing those things difficult (with many added layers of cis gatekeepers who have to approve of us), see the trans tuesdays on the 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS.

So if I was out dressed as me, and a cashier needed to see ID to check against the card I was using, or a cop pulled me over for something… I’d have to explain to this total stranger that I’m trans and don’t have a new ID yet.

Then, not only do I have to worry about whether or not they’ll believe me, but I have to worry about how they’re going to REACT. And unless you’ve been visiting another planet for the past fifty years, you’re aware of how many cis people treat us.

That is a forced outing of us as trans to whoever we’re talking to. And listen, I don’t hide my transness and have zero desire to, but I also don’t shout it at people who may very well harm me for it.

And sometimes all that felt like it’d be too much to bear. But the dysphoria of going boymode was ALSO too much to bear. It’s even worse, actually (at least for me, I don’t speak for all trans people). Imagine being stuck between those two options. IMAGINE IT.

I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t boymode at all anymore, and I haven’t in years. I just couldn’t.

Can’t.

Won’t.

It’s asking me to hide my truth, which I was forced to do for my entire life, and it would destroy me. Entirely. I cannot put myself through that again, not ever again. I don’t know how to explain to you how bad living a lie every moment of your life is. It’s misery.

But what was going to happen if a cop pulled me over or someone else needed to see my ID for some reason? A lot of uncomfortable shit. Because even back then, I looked almost NOTHING like the photo on my old ID anymore.

I found it hard to believe my old ID and early transition me were the same person (much less now, where I look like an entirely different human being), so how the hell would a total stranger, who may already be bigoted against trans people, react?

So, cis friends, maybe try to think about what that might be like for you, to have to put on a costume so that people won’t hassle you. So that bigots might not know to direct their hate at you.

But the costume weighs half a ton and has big blinking lights that only you can see, and they repeatedly flash I’M A LIAR in your face, and it stabs you in the heart all the while. We shouldn’t have to choose between that or possible harassment.

And to my trans siblings out there who still have to boymode or girlmode for safety, I know it’s hard. I know it hurts. But if it’s what you have to do to stay safe, know that it doesn’t make you any less trans. It doesn’t mean you’re a fraud or a fake or not trans enough.

Because this is something we’ve ALL had to deal with.

Even though we absolutely should not have to.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillystranstuesdays.com