Trans Life

COMPLETE TRANS HEALTHCARE (or lack thereof)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re talking about a little thing I’m going to call COMPLETE TRANS HEALTHCARE, or more pointedly, THE LACK THEREOF.

This was brought about by this image above, which you may think, HA that’s funny for I obvs do not have a cervix.

But the thing is, while this is funny, it’s not necessarily harmless as it’s a symptom of larger issues that are actually a problem for trans folks. Before proceeding you should check out this trans tuesday about my experience with our healthcare system, NO ESCAPE 2: SOME ESCAPE DUE TO CIS ALLYSHIP.

I will remind you that through all of this, that message in the image, and my entire transition, and the medical procedure in the thread above, I have been with the same health insurance and provider. I’ve been with them for a long time pre-transition too. For about a decade.

These folks have all kinds of things in place for trans healthcare. Psychologists, endocrinologists, people on staff who can and do perform gender confirmation surgeries (both top and bottom), facial surgeries, even my voice therapy.

They have my entire medical history, and again have been the only people seeing me for a decade. And they still sent me a reminder to get an exam for a body part that I do not possess.

As was evidenced in my thread linked above, despite providing all of these trans services they are completely at a loss as to how to handle trans people.

And I will point out that though my name and gender is legally changed and I gave a driver’s license to prove it, none of that has yet been updated with my healthcare provider due administrative issues I’m not getting into here.

Point being in their system I’m listed under my old male deadname, and it says right in the file I’m a transgender woman. AND YET THEY WANT TO EXAMINE MY NON-EXISTENT CERVIX.

So let’s look at the bigger picture it’s indicative of. Because if this can happen, you’ve got to wonder if they’re going to remember that, uh, I’m still going to need prostate exams?

All trans women will, even if they get the full “bottom surgery,” as the prostate isn’t usually removed. This is a thing they should (and I would presume, do) know, and yet they seem to be entirely unprepared to deal with this.

At least urologists perform prostate exams, and people of all genders see them for a variety of reasons. So it wouldn’t be weird for me to be sitting there.

But spare a moment to think of trans men who DO need cervical exams and cervical cancer screenings, and other OBGYN care. They may not even get notified, and if they do, when they go in the cis women present are going to see a man.

A man in the waiting room, a man being called in, a man walking around inside the office and going into an exam room. And I imagine that could be extremely uncomfortable for trans men, when being associated with things for women is likely a very dysphoric experience.

But what choice do they have? They need this medical care, it’s important stuff, but they have to go through something that’s awful for them, just to get that care. Because there’s no places that specialize in JUST trans medical care.

Or if there are, they’re so few and sparse that they certainly aren’t available to most people. I live in Los Angeles and don’t even know of any. There probably aren’t enough of us to make it “financially viable.”

But frankly it’s putting a lot of trans people at risk. We need (and deserve) the same care cis people get, and yet the entire system is just stymied by our existence at every turn.

Are they going to remember I need mammograms now? Or when I need to go in for my first one? It’s going to be on me to contact my doctors and remind them I have breasts now and so that will be kind of important.

But I also have a prostate and checking THAT is important! This would weirdly make more sense, in a horrible kind of way, if they weren’t set up at all for trans care.

If they didn’t provide any at all, that would be discriminatory bullshit, but at least it would make sense that they don’t know how to deal with us on an administrative level.

But if you’re going to offer trans services (and you SHOULD, every provider and insurance should!), you have to go ALL THE WAY.

And this isn’t just paranoid speculation on my part, I know trans people this has happened to. I hoped it wouldn’t happen to me, but then I got that notice it was time for my cervical cancer screening and it feels like it’s already starting.

It’s not just hormones and surgeries. Not even just mental health and voice therapy and electrolysis. We have other needs that cis people don’t (and some they they do!). It’s YOUR JOB to know that and to take care of us.

In a world that discriminates against us at every turn, where trans people often lose family, friends, jobs, and housing just for coming out as who they really are, where our governments routinely try to legislate us out of existence, we can’t even trust our doctors.

And I wish they didn’t put it on us to have to keep reminding them of who we are. We shouldn’t have to constantly say HEY I’M TRANS AND I NEED THIS CARE. It shouldn’t be on us. And it shouldn’t be awful to go through.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

TRANS PARENTS (Mother’s Day)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week’s topic is tough, and I’ve talked about it before and it was awkward, and I think it’s still gonna be awkward. So let’s just dive into the deep end with: TRANS PARENTS (Mother’s Day).

There are two parts of this that seem separate, but are invariably kind of linked together even in terms of being trans: my own parents and being a parent myself. I became a parent before I transitioned, or even realized or understood my own transness.

I’m sure this is very different for every trans person, and every trans parent. And for trans folks who transition before becoming parents, it’s also probably a very different experience. As always, I can only talk about my own experiences and don’t speak for everyone.

For a lot of trans people, relationships with our parents can be fraught. Obviously because a lot of us have parents who do not, and will not, accept us for who we are. My father died when I was very young and he never got to know the real me and who I really am.

I have almost no memories of him, and some of the few I do have are tainted by his death at a very young age, and the awfulness of the lies my mother made me believe about him. It’s a whole complex issue all its own, which you can read about in the trans tuesday on PARENTS WHO WILL NEVER KNOW THE REAL YOU (my dad).

Relatedly, wondering what it might be like if I somehow got to show him who I really am, and what I might hope to get out of that, is something my wife Susan and I explored in a short comic in the Color of Always anthology, available now!

My mom is an entirely different issue that’s painful in its own way. I’ve mentioned in several of these how my relationship with my mother was… fraught. I went into this a little in the Trans Tuesday on THE PAST, (and why it haunts us).

We did not get along, we did not see eye to eye on basically anything, including some major decisions she made regarding my (much younger) siblings that I strongly disagreed with, and I  made sure my feelings were known.

My mother and her mother were abandoned by my mom’s father when she was very young, and I’m sure that played heavily into how overly controlling and manipulative she became. She wanted to find a way to force everyone to stay near her for her entire life.

And of course that’s not the way it works. We all have our own hopes and desires for our lives and sometimes that takes us away from home. We all have to find our own path, but she was much more interested in picking a path for us and getting mad if we deviated from it at all.

She also had these “roles” she assigned all of us in her head, and deviation from that was also a problem. IE there was “the smart one” and “the sporty one” and on and on, and it led to all sorts of problems. As seems obvious! She was STRIDENTLY anti-gay.

I’m always hesitant to say things like this, because a person’s gender is their own business, but she was my mother and my life at home with her was very rough, and in only one way, I see in her so much of what I saw in myself: gender dysphoria.

I can’t diagnose her with that, obviously, but I see so many of the signs. She hated being thought of as a woman, several times she told me she wished she was a man (it’s a joke! ha ha how silly), she hated ANYTHING associated with femininity…

She hated photos of herself, never wanted to be in them, never felt they looked like her. I’m not saying she was trans (though she might have been)…

But even being a woman who just liked to be “butch” or what have you was so far outside the realm of things she could have ever accepted about herself, what I’m one hundred percent sure of is it made her life awful, and that manifested in a hundred different ways.

ANY deviation from the gender binaries in us kids was met with concern and ridicule and anger. Despite the fact that she herself dressed in the most gender-neutral way she could, every day of her life.

She also hated femininity so much she never really even let my sisters explore it, not while I lived at home with them, anyway. So femininity is bad for all of them, but don’t be a boy, and you are very much girls! There was a lot of cognitive dissonance.

A reminder that the gender binary is just part of our societal FALSE DICHOTOMY that messes us ALL up in countless ways. Here’s the Trans Tuesday on that:

I’m telling you all of this so you have the context for this one vital piece of information:

If my mother was alive when I came out as trans (and a gay trans woman at that), she never would have spoken to me again.

She barely spoke to me as it was. She ALREADY poisoned the very idea of me in the minds of my siblings from the moment I moved out, simply because I broke the mold she’d set for me.

She told them outright lies about me, just made shit up, and anything I ever did that broke her idea of the man I was “supposed” to be also got used as fodder against me. She also didn’t like Susan at ALL, because Susan helped me get out of the horrible situation I was in.

My brother told me that once he and I spent the entire day talking to each other in very bad British accents, calling each other by stuffy British women’s names. I have no memory of that, but it definitely sounds like something I would have done. I’m a goof.

But my mother hated it, of course, because we were BOYS. And afterward told my brother that SUSAN was disappointed in us for doing that! Like… what the actual hell? Again, she just made shit up to justify all the feelings she had, and that’s gonna really mess up your kids.

I was not given any room to explore my feelings around gender as a kid. It fucked me up for life. I lived with horrid dysphoria for most of my life because of it. I was MISERABLE, and ALONE, and TRAPPED. FOR LIFE.

If you need a refresher on GENDER DYSPHORIA, see its trans tuesday.

Or on the ways it impacted my ability to even exist in this world, see the Trans Tuesday on CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD when the LACK of dysphoria made life entirely brand new for me.

And if you want to see the hidden ways it muted my life, and kept all that this world has to offer from me, in ways I didn’t even realize and am still discovering, see the Trans Tuesday on FREEING UP MY BRAIN aka LUNCH WITH TILLY.

Can you imagine doing that to your kid? All because you won’t let them try different clothes or hairstyles or ANYTHING outside the false dichotomy of the gender binary, because it makes YOU ~uncomfortable~? Seems like the antithesis of parenting, to me.

I’ve talked to many parents of trans kids who’ve told me these threads have helped them understand their kids, and I ALWAYS make sure to tell him how VITALLY IMPORTANT it is that they’re learning and supporting their kids. I’m so glad some trans kids have parents like that.

It makes a literal world of difference. Something like 80% of trans kids attempt suicide, because dysphoria is awful and they exist in a society (and often in a home life) where they feel trapped with no way out. See the Trans Tuesday on TRANS KIDS AND THE INTAKE EXAM.

All of that being said, I have NO frame of reference for being a parent myself. ALL MY LIFE I have been fascinated and entirely mystified by friends who… like their parents? That’s a thing that can happen? It’s so alien to me.

To be clear I like my father very much, based on the things I’ve learned about him from his family. But again he was so poisoned in my mind by my mother, just as I have been in my siblings’ minds, that for a very long time I didn’t care about him at all.

Actually I actively hated him for abandoning me, when he actually did nothing of the sort! It was my mother who ripped me away from him and kept him out of my life. But our wonderful son was born before I learned who my father really was.

And even still, I don’t have that first-hand knowledge of what he was like as a parent. So I didn’t at all know how to be a parent once our kid was born. I mean I knew how to care for an infant or a child, my mother had me babysitting all seven of my siblings all the time.

In fact it was partly due to all my experience with kids that Susan and I decided I’d be the stay-at-home-parent while she returned to a day job, and oof did we get blowback on that from her parents. I was THE MAN and SHOULD GET A REAL JOB.

As if raising a kid isn’t a real job or harder than almost anything else, as if a man (which I’m not!) couldn’t do it right, as if a woman couldn’t work and provide for her family. Never mind I had the kid experience. Never mind Susan was making more money than I ever had.

None of that mattered. All they were concerned about was upholding the false dichotomy of the gender binary! How weird it is to be more concerned about THAT than the person with more experience being with the kid and the person with more earning potential making the money?

I didn’t understand it then, I still don’t understand it now. How utterly sexist and reductive and ultimately harmful to women AND men (and non-binary people!).

But though I had plenty of experience with kids, I didn’t know how to be a good PARENT, because it was just so foreign to me. I think I’ve done… okay? I know I’ve messed up at times. Hopefully I’ve been pretty good overall, though that’s for our kid to decide and not me.

Often I just thought about what I’d WISHED my own parents would have done for me in a given situation, and tried to do that, rather than repeat any of what they ACTUALLY did. But I know I’ve made mistakes, we all do. And some of them still pain me.

But we’ve always been supportive of him in every way we could. He tells us he’s a straight boy, and that’s fine, but if he ever discovers he isn’t that’s also fine. We let him explore the things he wants to explore, and be who he wants to be. Even when that’s something we can’t fathom.

He has no interest in creative pursuits, really, which is very weird as Susan and I basically never stop writing and creating! Different things just make him happy, and that’s okay. If he’s happy and safe, what else matters?

One of my absolute favorite things is when I came out to him. We were in the kitchen making dinner together, standing next to each other at the stove. And I was super nervous about it. Now we live in California and kids here actually learn about trans people in health class!

And we’d talked with him about trans people and gay people so he’d know it’s just another way some people are and there’s nothing wrong with it. So coming out to him SHOULD go well, right? But still you just never know.

So I worked up the courage and said hey, I know you’ve learned about trans people in school, and I just want you to know I am one. I’m actually a woman, and I’ll be transitioning. So I’ll be wearing women’s clothes, and will start growing breasts, and I’ll change my name…

And his reply? “…okay.” THAT WAS IT. Like UGH why are we even talking you’re my parent and thus deeply uncool, and I do not at all care if you’re trans or not. It was… well, it was HILARIOUS but also absolutely beautiful and perfect.

He accepted me without question, and even stood up for me to family members in a way that I know was very hard for him. But he did it. And just the thought of it still makes me teary. I have never been prouder of him. He’s such a wonderful kid.

But he doesn’t call me “mom.” To be fair, he doesn’t really call Susan “mom” either. He doesn’t call either of us anything, most of the time. We’ve had talks about it, but I’ve never been able to figure out what I’d LIKE him to call me.

I told him “dad” was still fine. I don’t like it, but it’s what he’s called me his entire life (again, on the rare instances he actually calls me anything), and I know he wouldn’t mean anything awful or be trying to misgender me with it.

But I don’t much like the word, as in our society it implies a male-ness that I’d rather not be associated with. But I also felt for a long, long time like he couldn’t call me “mom.” Part of that is because if that was Susan, how could it also be me?

I’m sure part of it was also my own internalized transphobia not believing that was a word that was “allowed” to apply to me. You can see the Trans Tuesday on that for a much deeper dive on all the ways INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA messes with our heads.

So how does one define motherhood? It’s not just cis women who give birth, because people adopt and can earn the title of “mom” in your life even if they never officially adopted you. And there are surrogates too. But how would our son differentiate between Susan and me?

He’s too old now for Susan to be “mom” and for me to be “mommy” or “mama,” so… what do we do? What do non-binary parents do? I don’t know. Why do our words for parents have to be so horribly gendered? Oh right, the false dichotomy.

And so Mother’s Day is a HORRIBLY complex, weird, and slightly awful day for me. My mother died over a decade ago and we had a fairly terrible relationship. My son doesn’t call me “mom,” I wasn’t sure I felt like a mom. Do I want to be a mom?

I don’t want to be a “dad,” but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be a parent. Being our son’s parent has been one of the most wonderful, difficult, challenging, special, beautiful things in my life. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

But is there a word for me and what I am to him? For him to call me? Or refer to me by? It’d be pretty damned weird for him to say something like, “My parent just texted me this terrible meme,” for example. So what do we do?

I have absolutely no idea. I’ve been out for nearly three years, it’s been over three years into my full transition, it’s been over eight years since my personal transition started. And I still don’t have an answer.

What I do know is I changed my twitter bio from saying I was a “parent,” to saying I am a “mom,” and it made me feel… good. It felt right. He doesn’t have to call me that. If he did it’d be great and wonderful, but also weird and complicated.

For now, calling myself a mom and knowing that I love my kid more than all the stars in the universe and want nothing more than for him to be who HE wants to be, and to be safe, happy, and loved, is enough.

And maybe that’s all it needs to be.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

UPDATE 10/6/23

Today’s my birthday, and while Susan and our kid were singing me happy birthday, without either of us talking to him about it and completely unbidden, he just called me “mom”.

The feeling is literally indescribable. I will never get a better birthday present.

My heart. 💜😭

A TRANS RE-WEDDING

Welcome to #TransTuesday! On March 23, 2024, my wife and I renewed our vows and got married all over again, so we could have one with the real me. It didn’t go to plan, it wasn’t perfect, and it was the best day of my entire life. Let’s dive into A TRANS RE-WEDDING!

A framed sign that says “Tilly & Susan’s Re-Wedding” with an arrow pointing right

This was something I’d thought about not too far into my transition. I didn’t know if it would be possible, and had no frame of reference for what it would be like, but I knew that one of the best days of my life had been entirely marred by my dysphoria, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to have a wedding without it muting everything into a painful gray paste.

I have almost no gender dysphoria anymore, though occasionally it pops up in unexpected ways, and I imagine it always will. Maybe it won’t! We can hope. But if you want to see what that struggle was like for me, see the GENDER DYSPHORIA trans tuesday.

And, like, even if you ARE familiar with dysphoria, but you haven’t absorbed my trans tuesday on it, definitely do that first. Because you need to know what I was dealing with.

So our original wedding was… look, I got to marry my best friend and the love of my entire life, and that was THE BEST THING. But it also sucked for a lot of reasons (entirely unrelated to my lovely wife Susan).

For one, I was in a goddamned tux, which I hated, Hated, H A T E D. I always always hated them, because suits of any kind are just about the most man-coded clothing there is. I felt gross and disgusting and it made me want to cry.

You can see the trans tuesday on HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE for a little more on my hate/hate relationship with tuxedoes, suits, and neckties.

But also, the wedding and reception were in two hotel ballrooms across from each other. They were… look, the rooms were ugly as shit. Just absolutely unpleasant to be in. I’m told the food was terrible, but I don’t remember it (I’ve lost a lot of memories from that day due to all the dissociating I did for my entire life, due to the aforementioned dysphoria).

See the trans tuesdays on TRANS GRIEF for a little more on the huge gaps in my memory from the dissociation I had to do to survive my dysphoria.

But also the entire thing wasn’t what WE wanted, it was what everyone else wanted and expected. Not just in terms of weddings of apparent cis and straight people, but of Susan and me specifically. So getting to fix all of those things, too, was super exciting.

We invited all the people we love and care about (and not people we were “expected” to), and while some sadly couldn’t make it for scheduling reasons, as always happens, we got to celebrate OUR love with the people WE love, and that made it even more special.

There were people at our original wedding that I didn’t even KNOW (and I don’t mean as plus-ones, that’s fine, I mean we invited people and I didn’t even know who they were), so even that change was amazing.

I got to wear a fancy dress (It’s officially now the most expensive clothing item I own), and I loved it so much. Susan looked even more beautiful in this dress than she did in her original one, again because this was one SHE liked and not what she was expected to wear.

But it was supposed to be outside in this beautiful courtyard, and Los Angeles (of! all! places!) rained us out.

A photo of a courtyard with a brick patio and white chairs, and round wooden tables turned on their sides. The ground and tables and everything else is wet, as it’s raining.

Thankfully the venue was able to move us into an adjacent ballroom, and we propped doors open on both ends and got a good crossbreeze to make it as covid-safe as possible, but that meant a worry about if it would be safe ENOUGH.

It meant a ton of last-minute decisions, because this is the spot where the ceremony was supposed to happen.

(Photo by Kim Newmoney)

Me in my fuchsia dress, kissing my wife Susan in a purple dress, under a white lattice arch, in front of green mountains and under a very blue but very cloudy sky. The ground is wet.

Look how wet the ground is. Look how cloudy that sky is. We were luckily able to snap some photos outside between bouts of rain, but we couldn’t have the ceremony and reception out there. You can see it was giving me feelings as soon as we’d gotten home.

A BlueSky post I made as soon as we were home from our re-wedding that reads:
We are home

It didn’t go to plan

It didn’t matter

It was the single greatest day of my life

@susanlbridges.bsky.social, you and me babe

Until the world blows up

It meant all the gorgeous flowers we paid a florist to decorate that lattice arch with had to go somewhere else… somehow. But they did a tremendous job making a little ceremony space out of them! (initially the purple ones that matched Susan’s dress and bouquet were to go on the left side of the lattice, where I’d stand, and the pink ones that matched my dress and bouquet would go on the right side of the lattice, where she’d stand).

A large grouping of purple/earth tone flowers on the floor of a ballroom, artfully arranged on the left, across from a large grouping of pink flowers on the right. Behind them in a very large window with a palm tree outside it, and behind that you can see green mountains and the valley behind it.

The DJ had to find a spot to fit into the new ballroom. All the food stations we had paid for had to somehow fit in there too, along with enough tables to seat everyone. And a space to do the ceremony. And a “dance floor,” that there really was no space for. And some of the food was… not what we’d been told it would be, which I’m less than thrilled about.

But like so many things in life, nothing’s perfect, right? I mean, it was and is the most perfect, best day of my life, but stuff still wasn’t exactly the way we wanted it. But then what is?

But it was filled with so much love, and joy, and it was so PERFECTLY US, I can’t be anything but thrilled with it. We even had a bouquet duel, and if that ain’t US I don’t know what is.

My wife Susan and me, in our re-wedding dresses, attacking each other with our bouquets as if they were weapons. (Photo by Kim Newmoney)

Okay Tilly, enough of that, let’s get on with it already. During our original wedding, from what memories I do have… it’s so hard to describe. Here was the most amazing woman in the world, and she was telling the world she loved me so much she wanted to be with me forever. And I was doing the same, and oh my god that was the most amazing thing.

But on top of the tux, I was now being called a “husband” and I’m pretty sure the officiant said to Susan, “do you take this man to be…” and it killed me. IT KILLED ME. It was so INCREDIBLY man-coded in every way, as “traditional” cishet weddings are.

So the best day of my life, to that point, was also completely horrible, and painful, and sent me into a twenty foot hole and covered me over with concrete.

I’ve talked before how PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS can be so tough for trans people, because we never see ourselves in them pre-transition. See that trans tuesday for more.

And if you want to see when, around two and half years into my transition, they suddenly got better when my face changed enough from hormone replacement therapy, see the trans tuesday on PHOTOS 2, aka THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE.

I’m to the point now where even photos other people take of me I often like, though not always. But they don’t usually spike my dysphoria, I just think they’re bad photos (and people should honestly only post the good photos of me they take, come on, that’s just science).

And I’m talking about photos here because I think the best way to show you the difference in ME, from original dysphoria wedding to post-transition euphoria wedding…. Is to actually SHOW you. So here we go.

I mentioned in the trans tuesday on PHOTOS how I had a wedding photo on my dresser, and I see it every day of my life, but that’s not ME in it, and it reminds me of our wedding (yay) but also how much pain I was in (boo). Well, here’s the “me” from that photo:

A very sad “man” in a tuxedo, with a plastered-on fake smile and very dead eyes.

Look at those dead eyes. That very obviously super fake smile. And this was the one photo from the entire day I LIKED ENOUGH TO PUT ON DISPLAY. It makes me feel terrible just looking at it. Is that photo fooling anyone? Would ANYONE look at that and say “that guy looks so happy?”

You can see where I cut myself shaving on my chin, because for that day, I shaved closer than I EVER had in my life (to that point). I didn’t want ANY stubble whatsoever anywhere on my face for this day, whereas usually I avoided shaving because the act gave me dysphoria (but so did having facial hair). It’s almost as if, subconsciously, I knew that any stubble or facial hair COMBINED with the tux would be so much dysphoria it’d do me in and I wouldn’t be able to handle it, huh?

I couldn’t have told you it was gender dysphoria at the time, but that’s what all of it was and I literally only made that connection to WHY I shaved so damned ultra-close that day RIGHT NOW. Ha ha, there were no signs, right?

Yes there were, of course there were… thousands. Yes, there’s a trans tuesday on THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE.

Okay so there’s a candid shot of me from our re-wedding that I love. I adore it with all my heart. It’s not the one where I look the prettiest, or super stunning or anything. It’s because I CAN SEE MY JOY. I can see the LIFE AND LIGHT in my eyes. And I’m looking at Susan, the love of my life, right after our first dance after the ceremony. Look at it. LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE.

A very, very happy Tilly, doing something strange with my arms (I have no idea what), but my face is SO full of love and joy it makes me wanna fly. (Photo by Kim Newmoney) (my makeup by Diana Mendoza)

We danced to ALL I KNOW SO FAR, by P!nk, which may be the most beautiful song ever written (this is my essay, I get to decide so SHUT UP OKAY). And i sang every word of it to her as I looked into her eyes, and did my best not to cry and ruin the expensive makeup I paid a very nice pro makeup artist to come and do for me.

And if you don’t know what P!nk has meant to me and my transition, oh yeah, there’s a trans tuesday about her and FINDING OUR OWN REPRESENTATION (P!nk).

The difference in those two photos blows my entire fluffy mind. That’s how I SHOULD have felt the first time we got married, and now I actually got to, and it was legit the best feeling in the world.

I was so happy, and so free, and so much MYSELF than I was at the first one. Like, I never used to dance. Ever. For anything. At our original wedding I did the first dance with Susan and nothing more, and I had not danced at all in public since. Not even once.

Because I didn’t want attention, I couldn’t stand the thought of people looking at me, seeing the false shell, forcing me to play the part I didn’t know how to play, didn’t want to play, and that wounded me to the core.

And yeah… I danced. Every second that I felt like it, which was often. There’s even photographic proof.

Me dancing, ALONE, at our re-wedding. (Photo by Kim Newmoney) (my makeup by Diana Mendoza)

Unfortunately, possibly due to there being no actual dance floor, basically nobody else danced at our re-wedding, and certainly nobody else danced with me. It was kinda sad! But I danced anyway.

We told the DJ to only play a custom playlist that I made myself, and it was filled with straight bangers (I was so surprised that a lot of people? Said they loved the music? Without even knowing it was all my doing? That’s so cool!)

If you’d like to see the custom playlist I made, here you go! The DJ asked us to divide it into MUST PLAY and PLAY IF POSSIBLE, and to include at least 140 songs (because they don’t play entire songs and mix between, as DJs do).

Also, look how good I look in this one. C’mon. C’MON! Eeeee!

A shot of me outside the venue, from a little below, waist-up, showing off my dress and matching glasses and flower in my hair and they even match the pink stars in my tattoo! (Photo by Kim Newmoney) (my makeup by Diana Mendoza)

There’s one other song I want to mention specifically by name, and it relates to my finally feeling free enough to dance in public, but we’ll come back to that in a bit.

One of our dearest life-long friends brought her husband, who we’d only met once before (we live far apart), and he asked her what I was like. She told me that she told him that I was incredibly quiet and reserved, until I really got to know you and would open up, but that took a very long time. And this was midway through our re-wedding, where I’d been dancing and smiling and having the time of my life, in public, in front of everyone I love (and I’m not REMOTELY quiet or “shy” anymore)… so she told me “it seems I was operating on old information.”

A clearer picture of the changes transition has brought to my life you may never find! See the trans tuesday on CONFIDENCE and how I’m now not only fine with being noticed and taking up space, I ACTUALLY LIKE IT. I’m done making myself small. For any reason.

If you didn’t know, Susan and I met online writing Star Trek fanfic when we were wee babies, because we are giant nerds and both love Trek the most and we’re writers, and honestly nothing could be more perfect or more us.

And we wanted to reflect that in our re-wedding. So our guestbook was a selection of over a hundred Star Trek postcards, spanning all the shows, people could write messages on and drop in our Subspace Communications box (which was decorated with laminated pics of Star Trek romances!)

A holo-foil box that says “subspace communications” with pictures of Mariner and Jennifer, Picard and Crusher, Dax and Worf, and Picard and Crusher

A holo-foil box with photos of Sisko and Yates, Adira and Gray, Culber and Stamets, Riker and Troi, and Bashir and Garak

A holo-foil box with pictures of Odo and Kira, Seven and Raffi, Miles and Keiko, Burnham and Book, and Torres and Paris

Our wedding favor bags were in the Star Trek division colors, and had Federation insignias on the back! (the inside had typewriter keys turned into magnets that spelled L O V E, italian wedding almonds, and a raffle ticket!)

An instructional plaque in the LCARS design that says:
GUESTBOOK: Please write a message on a postcard, sign it, and place it in the Subspace Communications box.

GUEST FAVORS
Choose your division! Red – Command, Yellow – Operations, Blue – Sciences
One per guest! Save your raffle ticket!

Red, Yellow, and Blue wedding favor bags with a sticker on them of a typewriter with flowers, and the text “thank you for being part of our story, Tilly & Susan”

Red, Yellow, and Blue wedding favor bags closed with a blue “Wax seal” with silver stars on it, resembling the blue and white Federation insignia from Star Trek

All the table centerpieces were made by us, and were small tvs with alien plants coming out the top, and a laminated photo of one Trek tv show crew in the front so it was “displayed” on the tv (we raffled these off to people who attended!). We even wrote ten jokes about plants to put on the back of each of them, because we are bananas masquerading as people.

A small plastic old-style television with a picture of the Next Generation crew on the “screen”, and multicolored alien-looking fake plants sticking out the top.

Do you wanna see the ten jokes we came up with for the backs? Sure you do! They were all in the LCARS style, like the plaque photo above, and opened with:

Sourced from across the Federation, and the deepest corners of the Delta and Gamma Quadrants, this selection of xenoflora includes the-

And then continued to a different joke on the back of each one:

Screaming Foliagmus of Abuemsic IV, which emits a high-frequency screech that renders humanoids unconscious whenever left alone (do not leave unattended).

Kelpien Abyssal Rhodohelix, which routinely opens microportals to feed on subspace particles. Storing near warp cores may result in deconstruction of humanoids and destruction of all life in the universe.

Andorian Dandy Violencia, which expels spores that burrow into a host’s epidermis and gestate, causing Violencia specimens to sprout at the impact site. These specimens may then be removed and potted in carbon-rich soil.

Iconian Leafhaver, which winks out of existence only to reappear elsewhere in the galaxy. It then immediately returns, faster than the eye can see. In fact it just did it now, but you missed it because you were reading this.

Mycelial Netspreader, which is attached to every other instance of itself throughout the galaxy via an interconnected network. Failure to tend to it will result in the death of the entire galaxy-wide being, making you one of history’s greatest monsters.

Vulcan Floating Razorleaf, whose leaves will detach with the slightest breeze and float about. The leaf edges are sharp enough to score tritantium, and if handled carefully, can also be used to give bowl-shaped haircuts (do not handle).

Denobulan Bringer of Darkness, which, when angry, can absorb all light within a 50-foot radius, from ultraviolet to infrared. This effect lasts for 4 – 12875 days, until the SBoD’s mood has improved, and has no known counter (do not anger).

Potent Endrunkifier of Orion, whose odor is known to cause intoxication-like effects in humanoids and felines. Do not inhale while operating heavy machinery or piloting a starship (failure to comply may result in court martial).

Klingon Death Spikiferonicus, known for its sharp and arresting appearance, is a very gentle plant that will sing to its owner if it enjoys your company. (but Klingons would have you believe otherwise, to keep all the singing for themselves).

Here’s another of the centerpieces with my bouquet (left) and Susan’s bouquet (right), along with a photo of my dad, who didn’t get to be part of our original wedding in any way for complicated and bad reasons. See the trans tuesday on PARENTS WHO WILL NEVER KNOW THE REAL YOU (my dad).

Two floral bouquets with a Star Trek Prodigy centerpiece between them, and a photo of my dad

We even had Star Trek reflected in our ceremony, oh yes we did, because we used the stunningly beautiful Klingon wedding ceremony from Deep Space Nine as the basis. And that worked out extra well, because that wedding was between Jadzia Dax and Worf, and Dax was so important to me for reasons I didn’t understand as a trans kid (there will be a trans tuesday on her at some point), and also I’m a LOT like her, and Susan is a LOT like Worf, and honestly it couldn’t have been more perfect.

Our officiant was a dear friend of ours named Jenn. Here’s the ceremony, and our vows, which we kept secret from each other and heard for the first time as we spoke them to each other.

JENN: Friends and family, honored guests, Federation citizens, and foolish mortals, I am Lady Jenn, and I thank you for joining us here today. I stand before you as a magnificent human who means the world to Tilly and Susan, and I have to say that out loud because they wrote this and I agreed to say it. So really, that’s on me.

JENN: Before we begin, I would like to remind you that there will be a drawing to determine who gets to take home those very cool and unique centerpieces that Susan and Tilly made. Wow, they really are creative and generous, aren’t they? Gosh. I’m so glad they wrote that for me to say. Your raffle tickets are in your wedding favor bags, hopefully you didn’t eat it along with the almonds.

JENN: I would also like to remind you that you’re all invited to the after-party, from 6 to 10 pm. There will be a food truck with, ostensibly, food, and plenty of booze and non-booze drinks available. But a quick reminder, Romulan Ale is strictly prohibited by the Federation charter, section 99, subsection 3, paragraph 27.

JENN: And now, let us get to the reason we’re here today, to talk of connection, and friendship, and family, and love.

JENN: With fire and steel did the gods forge the Klingon heart. So fiercely did it beat, so loud was the sound, that the gods cried out, ‘On this day we have brought forth the strongest heart in all the heavens. None can stand before it without trembling at its strength.’

JENN: But then the Klingon’s heart weakened, its steady rhythm faltered. And the gods said, ‘Why have you weakened so? We have made you the strongest in all of creation. And the heart said:

SUSAN: I am alone.

JENN: And the gods knew that they had erred. So they went back to their forge and brought forth another heart. And the heart said:

TILLY: If we join together, no force can stop us.

JENN: And the first heart said:

SUSAN: (Susan has asked that I not put her vows in here for the entire world to read, which is absolutely fine, but know they were beautiful and hilarious, they touched my heart AND she got the biggest laugh of the entire thing, which I am very jealous of).

JENN: And the second heart said:

TILLY:
I think I’ve written and re-written this twenty-seven times now, and I still don’t know if I got it right. At first I thought I did, and I was super proud of myself as I’d somehow forgotten what first drafts are actually like. And THEN I thought surely draft five is where it’s at, but then I wondered if it was funny enough.

SHOULD it be funnier? It should probably be funnier. We’re very funny people! As everyone here will confirm because this is our day and that’s the law otherwise you go to wedding jail, sorry I don’t make the rules.

Should there be actual vows in here? I vow to do this and I vow to do that? Gosh I don’t know. This is so hard. I wish I had a writing partner. Oh wait.

And this is what I figured out. This is so difficult to write because even though I’m a writer, I find words inadequate to express the depth of my love for you. But also because I’m writing them alone. And I don’t want to write them alone. I want to write them WITH YOU. I want to BE with you. I want to do EVERYTHING with you, because you are the air that gives me life and lifted me up so I could learn to fly.

So yes, let’s vow! I’m all in on earnestness, and maybe it’ll be good! Anything’s possible.

I vow to be the wife you deserve, which is nothing less than the best in all existence. But that should be fine, right? I AM amazing. No pressure.

I vow to continue to be your best friend, and your writing partner, your laughing, crying, living, breathing, struggling, failing, winning, succeeding, everything partner, every day until the end of time, and then at least a couple weeks beyond that.

But speaking of earnestness, let me really dig in, because when else will I ever get the chance to be uncomfortably vulnerable in front of all the people we love and care about?

I gotta seize the moment to thank you for giving me the space, time, and patience to find myself. You let me experiment, you let me discover, you let me uncover my truth, figure out who I am, become who I’ve always been but never thought I could actually be. And that could never have happened, I could have never happened, without you. I am here, in front of you all, in this amazing dress with THE most fabulous hair looking SO super hot (it’s okay if you’re too intimidated to tell me)… I am HERE, I am HAPPY, I am HOT, and I EXIST because of you.

We promised to keep these vows to a single page, and that’s supremely unfair to me because I don’t know how to shut up. I’m not sure why I’m saying this, except to let me complain about a thing I agreed to. Maybe to relieve some pressure? I should delete this in revisions. Whoops.

Anyway! Here we are, doing our wedding again, all these years later. As the real YOU and the real ME, two super queer and incredibly stunning ladies, doing it the way WE want, with all of the people that WE love, and it is the honor of my life to stand in front of them, and the magnificent and brilliant Lady Jenn, and our fantastic son who we love so much, and YOU, Susan, my princess, to say that you are my light and my warmth and my best friend and my breath and my heart and my life. You are my home. You are my everything.

I will be with you until the world blows up.

And I’ll love you longer than always, and farther than forever.

JENN: And when the two hearts began to beat together, they filled the heavens with a terrible sound. For the first time, the gods knew fear. They tried to flee, but it was too late. The Klingon hearts destroyed the gods who created them and turned the heavens to ashes. To this very day, no one can oppose the beating of two Klingon hearts. Susan, daughter of Italy and Germany of the planet Earth, challenger of repressives and regressives, does your heart beat only for this woman?

SUSAN: Yes.

JENN: And will you swear to join with her and stand with her against all who oppose you?

SUSAN: I swear.

JENN: Tilly, daughter of Wayne and parts unknown, champion of truth and imagination, does your heart beat only for this woman?

TILLY: Yes.

JENN: And do you swear to join with her and stand with her against all who would oppose you?

TILLY: I swear.

JENN: Then let all present here today know that these women are re-married.

JENN: And now there will be smooching!

And folks, if you’ve never heard nearly all of the people you love and care about in the entire world ROAR AND CHEER when you kiss your wife at your real true wedding as your real true self… god damn, there’s nothing else like it.

Also, what I said in my vows was absolutely true. I am who I am, I am ME, I was able to transition, because of the love and support Susan gave me. I talked about that in the trans tuesday on CIS SPOUSAL AND PARTNER SUPPORT.

I’m going to finally close this out with the one other song I wanted to mention. I talked about how some things went wrong with the day, but truly the only regret I have is this:

As our last song of the day, in which the DJ was to encourage everyone there to get up and dance with us (if able and comfortable), was P!nk’s NEVER GONNA NOT DANCE AGAIN.

Because it’s a song about exactly what I’m feeling. About never NOT dancing again. Because I won’t make myself small, I won’t hide. I’m not miserable, I’m full of love and life and joy and I want to SHARE IT with everyone I love in this world.

But also it’s very much kind of a “death before detransition” song, because it’s about not giving up your own joy to make someone else happy, about not being who someone ELSE wants you to be at the expense of your own joy. Because this is YOUR life, and you have to BE YOU and do what MAKES YOU HAPPY.

And since I first heard it, all I could think of was having a giant dance party to it with all of my friends. And so I wanted that to close out this day, and it would be magical.

But we haven’t thrown any kind of events or parties since our original wedding, and I’d forgotten that… nobody stays the entire time. The DJ had instructions to play it like ten minutes before the end of the reception, and by then… everyone had gone.

It played to an empty ballroom, with just me and Susan and our kid, and the photographer, and the aforementioned lifelong friend who stayed to help us carry things back out to our car.

And as this song I love, that was so important to me, echoed around the empty ballroom, I was so sad none of my friends were there to dance with me.

And so…

The only solution…

Is that we need to have another huge party for our anniversary in five years, and all of our friends will hopefully have read this, and know that WE WILL LISTEN TO THIS SONG EARLY, AND YOU WILL DANCE WITH ME AND IT WILL BE AMAZING.

Susan and me kissing in the ballroom, surrounded by all our guests, who are cheering. Outside the window behind us you can see the dark and gloomy skies.

I never knew a day like this was possible. I never knew someone could feel so good, so human and whole, and loved.

What a difference a life makes.

From a sad shell in a tux to a genuinely happy pretty lady in a dress, holy crap. (right photo by Kim Newmoney) (my makeup by Diana Mendoza)

Let’s do it again in five years, Susan. Every year. Every day. You’re my everything.

I will be with you until the world blows up.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Thank YOU (yes, YOU) for reading this, and all my trans tuesdays. You’re an important part of my life, too. 💜

A closeup photo of the sticker on a blue wedding favor back, with a typewriter and flowers, that says “thank you for being part of our story, Tilly & Susan”

TRANSMEDICALISM (and WPATH version 1)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re talking about a horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad concept that plagues the trans community, and you might be surprised to learn where it comes from: TRANSMEDICALISM, and WPATH version 1.

Trans Day of Visibility is coming up, so this is something I wanted to talk about as it’s related to TDoV in ways you might not realize. To begin with, see the trans tuesday on THIS IS NOT FOR YOU aka TRANS DAY OF VISIBILITY (yes, you are enough).

Let me just hit you with this: the REASON so many trans people feel like we might not be trans enough is BECAUSE OF TRANSMEDICALISM. This is what I mean when I say these things are related. Actually, they’re not just related, they’re sisters who share a bedroom.

So what exactly is transmedicalism? In the most GENEROUS of terms, it’s the belief that you cannot be trans if you do not experience GENDER DYSPHORIA.

But as I said in that trans tuesday, you don’t need to have dysphoria to be trans (though perhaps broadening that term to be more inclusive, as I discussed there, would change that). But as dysphoria is presently defined by the cis people in charge of our healthcare…

No, you absolutely DO NOT need to experience dysphoria in that exact way to be transgender. You do not, you Do Not, YOU DO NOT. YOU’RE TRANS IF YOU SAY YOU ARE.

But more realistically and truthfully, you will find transmedicalists believe that you’re only trans if you medically transition, and only if you basically get ALL the medical transition.

So, for example, you’re not “really” trans if you don’t have horrid gender dysphoria, go on hormone replacement therapy, and get basically every single gender-confirming surgery that exists.

Do you see the problems with this? I don’t know how you could miss them, they’re visible from orbit. If someone doesn’t want HRT but needs a gender confirmation surgery to feel right, that’s… fine. If someone wants HRT but no surgeries to feel right, that’s… fine.

If someone CAN’T medically transition, due to cost, or an unaccepting or dangerous home life, or for medical reasons… that doesn’t make them any less trans.

If someone chooses not to transition for whatever reason, that doesn’t make them any less trans!

Transitioning is NOT what makes you trans. What makes you trans is an incongruence between your gender and your body, AND THAT IS IT. You do not have to transition to be trans!

And if you stop and think for two seconds about transmedicalist beliefs, you instantly realize there is NO PLACE within it for nonbinary people. You either go from cis man to trans woman, or cis woman to trans man, with EVERY medical intervention possible. The end.

And I’m sorry, but that’s not the way it fucking works. YOU don’t get to tell other people who they are, who they can be, or what they HAVE to do with their bodies. That is EXACTLY WHAT CIS TRANSPHOBES DO TO TRANS PEOPLE!

This is horrid gatekeeping within the trans community, and that’s the LAST thing we need when the false cis binary of society, cis politicians, cis doctors, cis friends and relatives all gatekeep our transness. We can NOT be doing it to ourselves.

And now we’re getting to the heart of the matter, and why I said you’d be surprised at where this came from. Or maybe you won’t be surprised at all, because the answer is:

Cis people.

Let’s have a little history lesson! In the past… and in the not too far off past, mind you… this was the only way to transition. It was the only way cis doctors would LET trans people transition. Because they decided that was the only thing that made us actually transgender.

In 1979, WPATH (the World Professional Association for Transgender Health) was formed to try and standardize care for trans patients. It’s still being used today, with version 8 released in 2022. It’s… getting better. It’s still not perfect. It started off… awful.

I found a copy of the WPATH standards of care version one, from 1979. It’s kinda horrific. WPATH doesn’t have it on their website. And I’d be a bit less mad about it if WPATH just had it on their site for informational and educational purposes.

Just attach a note saying “we no longer agree with the recommendations in this, which were in many ways harmful, and are working to be better.” It took a lot of time and creative digging to find it. I don’t know if it’s intentionally trying to be hidden, but it feels like it.

Anyway, let’s have a look at some choice bits from the very first WPATH standards of care from 1979.

“4.1.1. Principle 1. Hormonal and surgical sex reassign­ment is extensive in its effects, is invasive to the integrity of the human body, has effects and consequences which are not, or are not readily, reversible…

“and may be requested by persons experiencing short-termed delusions or beliefs which may later be changed and reversed.”

Which is basically saying, “what trans people want is a horrible mutilation, and they may be just lying or not really mean it when they say they’re trans!” When you’re starting from this mindset, things aren’t gonna go great.

“4.1.4. …Hormonal and/or surgical sex-reassign­ment on demand (i.e. justified simply because the patient has requested such procedures) is contraindicated. It is herein declared to be professionally improper to conduct, offer, administer or perform hormonal sex reassignment…

“and/or surgical sex-reassignment without careful evaluation of the patient’s reasons for requesting such services and evaluation of the beliefs and attitudes upon which such reasons are based.”

You can’t BELIEVE a trans person! No no no! They can only get care if a cis person deems they need it. HOLY MOLY. To wit, see the trans tuesday on TRANS KIDS AND THE INTAKE EXAM to learn how I had to prove I was trans to a cis woman to get the care I needed.

“4.3.1. …The psychiatric/psychologic recom­mendation for hormonal and/or surgical sex-reassignment should, in part, be based upon an evaluation of how well the patient fits the diagnostic criteria for transsexualism as listed in the DSM-III…”

The DSM referenced is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. That’s right! They thought we all had mental disorders, isn’t that… fun? Let’s look at some of those criteria:

“Persistent wish to be rid of one’s own genitals and to live as a member of the other sex.”

aka “If you don’t want different genitals, you’re not trans!” Do you see the roots of transmedicalism? They’re right in front of you.

“The disturbance has been continuous (not limited to periods of stress) for at least two years.”

Did you only just discover why you felt so bad your whole life? Too bad! Wait two more years to do anything about it. Again see my trans tuesday on the intake exam and how I had to find instances from my life i could use as examples to “prove” my transness.

“Absence of physical intersex or genetic abnormality.”

aka “intersex people go home, we will not help you.”

“4.3.2. …requires that the psychia­trist or psychologist have knowledge, independent of the patient’s verbal claim, that the dysphoria, discomfort, sense of inappropriateness and wish to be rid of one’s own genitals, have existed for at least two years.

“This evidence may be obtained by interview of the patient’s appointed informant (friend or relative) or it may best be obtained by the fact that the psychiatrist or psychologist has personally known the patient for an extended period of time.”

Can’t trust trans people! You can only listen to CIS people you can independently confirm their transness with! AAAUUUUUGH

“The best indicator for hormonal and surgical sex-reassignment is how successfully the patient has been in living-out, full-time, vocationally and avocationally, in all social situations…

“the social role of the genetically other sex and how successful the patient has been in being accepted by others as a member of that genetically other sex.”

How GOOD are they at making you believe they’re the gender they say they are? How well do they conform? Do they not conform to gendered stereotypes? NOT TRANS!

I’m gonna scream. You HAD to uphold the false cis binary, in that if you were assigned male at birth but were a trans woman, to transition you had to be attracted to MEN. In fact, your doctor often had to think you could make an attractive woman before they’d let you!

Much worse but entirely related is that there was a whole lot of sexual abuse happening to those trans women, at the hands of their doctors, with the threat of losing access to medical care if they refused hanging over their heads.

“Genital sex-reassignment shall be preceded by a period of at least 12 months during which time the patient lives full-time in the social role of the genetically other sex.”

You were FORCED to live as your true gender for a year before you were ALLOWED access to the healthcare you needed! Do you understand what that entails, and how difficult and impossible that was for trans people? How dangerous?

Do you realize it wasn’t even living as your true gender for a year, it was living as your cis doctor’s ***IDEA*** idea of your true gender? If you didn’t hit every damned gendered stereotype THEY wanted to see, you couldn’t be you! My blood, it boils.

Do you cis folks reading know how impossible and horrible that would be for YOU to do? Live exactly as someone else dictates you should based on your gender? And if you don’t conform to their personal biases, goodbye any chance of being yourself ever again.

And, oh god this makes me so mad… often the only way forward was to leave your entire life behind, move somewhere new, and go stealth. A stealth trans person is someone who’s not out as trans, who passes for a cis person of their gender, and lets everyone think they’re cis.

This was known as “woodworking,” meaning you “disappear into the woodwork” and aren’t seen as trans, by anyone, ever. You were forced to HIDE YOUR TRANSNESS.

See the trans tuesday on MISGENDERING AND PASSING for more on what passing as cis really means.

Here’s one trans woman’s account of doing that very thing, and how it was expected as the natural outcome, as was compulsory cisgender-passing and compulsory heterosexuality, when she transitioned in the 1980s.

As you can see right there, and as I’ve said a million times, trans visibility is SO IMPORTANT. To see trans joy, to see other trans people out there living their lives, being happy and free, makes us think we can do it too.

And we were forced to hide it. All of it. It was basically that or no transition at all.

Trans people have always existed, despite this and everything else stacked against us. We’re not a fad, we’re not new, we’re not a phase. See the trans tuesday on TRANS HISTORY 1 for more.

But this is part of WHY it can be so hard to spot trans people in history. They didn’t have the terminology, they didn’t have the ability or the safety to be out, and when they DID… so many were FORCED TO HIDE IT FROM THE WORLD.

And this is where transmedicalism stems from. It was created by those cis doctors as a method of controlling trans people, forcing us into small little boxes that upheld the false cis binary matrix of society. Because open and out trans people prove that binary is a lie.

Trans people who DON’T need every single bit of medical transition prove it’s a lie. Nobinary people prove it’s a lie. Us being out and open helps more of us come out and be free and proves the cis binary is. Not. Real.

So for many trans people who HAD to go through that just to be able to transition, they’ve internalized that transmedicalism. And yeah, that’s INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA. One hundred percent.

Many trans people forced through that bought into it entirely, and told other trans people that was the ONLY way to be trans. And it spread from there, on down the line, to where it’s now a serious problem in the trans community.

It’s caused a split, where transmedicalists call those of us who know gender is more than a false binary TUCUTE, as a way of minimizing the importance of our beliefs, like we’re just some naive children who don’t understand.

And then the tucutes collectively call the transmeds TRUSCUM. But if it’s caused the kind of division where we’re making up nicknames to otherize those with opposing views… who do you think benefits from that?

Transmedicalists think passing is the goal, and if you don’t want to pass you’re either not trans or shouldn’t even bother. They think your gender expression has to conform to the rigid stereotypes of men and women, otherwise you’re not “really” a man or a woman.

And also, let me just say that transmedicalist beliefs are so OBVIOUSLY bullshit because when you boil them down you’re left with… women have vaginas and men have penises.

It’s reducing genders down to nothing more than their genitals, and WHAT ON ACTUAL GREEN EARTH has feminism been fighting against SINCE ITS INCEPTION?? Women, AND men, are MORE than just what is or isn’t between their legs!

It’s so blatantly obvious this is all just another method of control, of upholding the false binary, so that those in power can maintain their power and not have it challenged by the proof that it’s all made up nonsense, and cis men really AREN’T better at everything and more important.

It’s reductive, it’s harmful, it’s not even true! There is more than “man” and “woman”. Gender is a spectrum, with cis men at one end and cis women at the other, and the space between is filled with a million color variations.

As it was so difficult for me to find the horrific WPATH standards of care version 1, I’ve copied the entire text of it and included it at the end of this document.

We have to preserve these things, so we know our history, because it informs our present. We cannot forget what cis doctors put us through, or what it did to us as a community.

We have GOT to stop gatekeeping each other. We have GOT to stop spreading society’s transphobia and doing the work of our own oppression. We have GOT to help each other be whoever we truly are, and not what cis people OR OTHER TRANS PEOPLE want us to be.

YOU’RE TRANS IF YOU’RE OUT OR NOT.

YOU’RE TRANS IF YOU TRANSITION OR NOT.

YOU’RE TRANS IF YOU GET ALL THE MEDICAL TRANSITION, SOME, OR NONE.

YOU’RE TRANS IF YOU SAY YOU ARE.

AND YOU. ARE. ENOUGH.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

PS – If you’d like to enrage yourself with the full text of WPATH soc 1, you can read it here.

To preserve this, should the site linked above get taken down, here is the full text of WPATH standards of care version 1 from 1979

(warning: it will make you want to smash stuff)

1. Introduction

As of the beginning of 1979, an undocumentable estimate of the number of adult Americans hormonally and surgically sex-reassigned ranges from 3,000 to 6,000. Also undocumentable is the estimate that be­tween 30,000 and 60,000 persons, worldwide, consider themselves to be valid candidates for sex-reassignment. As of mid-1978, approximately 460 centers in the Western hemisphere offered surgical sex-reassignment to persons having a multiplicity of behavioral diag­noses applied under a multiplicity of criteria.

In recent decades, the demand for sex-reassignment has increased as have the number and variety of possible psychologic, hormonal and surgical treatments. The rationale upon which such treatments are offered have become more and more complex. Varied philosophies of appropriate care have been suggested by various pro­fessionals identified as experts on the topic of gender identity. However, until the present, no statement on the standard of care to be offered to gender dysphoric patients (sex reassignment applicants) has received official sanction by any identifiable professional group. The present document is designed to fill that void.

1. Statement of Purpose

The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association presents the following as its explicit state­ment on the appropriate standards of care to be offered to applicants for hormonal and surgical sex reassignment.

1. Definitions

3.1 Standard of care. The standards of care, as listed below, are minimal requirements and are not to be con­strued as optimal standards of care. It is recommended that professionals involved in the management of sex-re­assignment cases use the following as minimal criteria for the evaluation of their work. It should be noted that some experts on gender identity recommend that the time parameters listed below should be doubled, or tripled.

3.2 Hormonal sex-reassignment. Hormonal sex-reassign­ment refers to the administration of androgens to geno­typic and Phenotypic females, and the administration of estrogens and/or progesterones to genotypic and phenotypic males, for the purpose of effecting somatic changes in order for the patient to more closely approximate the physical appearance of the genotypically other sex. Hormonal sex-reassignment does not refer to the administra­tion of hormones for the purpose of medical care and/or research conducted for the treatment or study of non-gender dysphoric medical conditions (e.g., aolastic anemia, impotence, cancer, etc.).

3.3 Surgical sex-reassignment. Surgical sex-reassign­ment refers to surgery or the genitalia and/or breasts performed for the Purpose of altering the morphology in order to approximate the physical appearance of the genetically-other sex in persons diagnosed as gender dysphoric. Such surgical procedures as mastectomy, re­duction mammoplasty, augmentation mammopiasty, castration, orchidectomy, penectomy, vaginoplasty, hysterectomy, sal­pingectorsy, vaginectomy, cophorectomy and phalloplasty -­ in the absence of any diagnosable birth defect or other medically defined pathology, except gender dysphoria, are included in this category labeled surgical sex-reassign­ment.

Surgical sex reassignment also refers to any and all other surgical procedures of non-genital or non-breast sites (nose, throat, chin, cheeks, hips, etc.)conducted for the purpose of effecting a more masculine appearance in a genetic female or for the purpose of effecting a more feminine appearance in a genetic male, in the absence of identifiable pathology which would warrant such surgery regardless of the patients genetic sex (facial injuries, hermaphroditism, etc… )

3.4 Gender Dysphoria. Gender Dysphoria herein refers to that psychological state whereby a person demonstrates dissatisfaction with their sex of birth and the sex role, as socially defined, which applies to that sex, and who requests ‘hormonal and surgical sex-reassignment. Gender dysphoria, herein, does not refer to cases of infant sex-reassignment or re-announcement nor does it refer to those persons who, although dissatisfied with their geneti­cally and socially defined sex status (i.e., transvestites and transgenderists) usually do not request sex-reassignment. Gender dysphoria, therefore, is the primary working diagnosis applied to any and all persons requesting surgical and hormonal sex-reassignment.

4. Principles and standards

4.1.1. Principle 1. Hormonal and surgical sex reassign­ment is extensive in its effects, is invasive to the integrity of the human body, has effects and consequences which are not, or are not readily, reversible, and may be requested by persons experiencing short-termed delusions or beliefs which may later be changed and reversed.

4.1.2. Principle 2. Hormonal and surgical sex reassignment are procedures requiring medical justification and are not of such minor consequence as to be performed on an elective basis.

4.1.3. Principle 3. Published and unpublished case histories are know in which the decision to undergo hormonal and surgical sex-reassignment was, after the fact, regretted and the final result of such procedures proved to be psychologically dehabilitating to the patients.

4.1.4. Standard 1. Hormonal and/or surgical sex-reassign­ment on demand (i.e. justified simply because the patient has requested such procedures) is contraindicated. It is herein declared to be professionally improper to conduct, offer, administer or perform hormonal sex reassignment and/or surgical sex-reassignment without careful evaluation of the patient’s reasons for requesting such services and evaluation of the beliefs and attitudes upon which such reasons are based.

4.2.1. Principle 4. The analysis or evaluation of reasons, motives, attitudes, purposes, etc., requires skills not usually associated with the -professional training of persons other than psychiatrists and psychologists.

4.2.2. Principle 5. Hormonal and/or surgical sex reassign­ment is performed for the purpose of improving the quality of life as subsequently experienced and such experiences are most properly studied and evaluated by the behavioral scientist (psychiatrist or psychologist).

4.2.3. Principle 6. Hormonal and surgical sex-reassignment are usually offered to persons, in part, because a psychiatric/psychologic diagnosis of transsexualism (see DSM III, proposed, section 302.5X),^lor some related diagnosis, has been made. Such diagnoses are properly made only by psychiatrists or psychologists.

4.2.4. Standard 2. Hormonal and surgical (genital and non-genital) sex-reassignment must be preceded by a firm recommendation for such procedures made by a certified and licensed psychiatrist or psychologist who can justify making such a recommendation by appeal to training or professional experience in dealing with sexual disorders, especially the disorders of gender identity and role.

4.3.1. Principle 7. The psychiatric/psychologic recom­mendation for hormonal and/or surgical sex-reassignment should, in part, be based upon an evaluation of how well the patient fits the diagnostic criteria for transsexualism as listed in the DSM-III (proposed) category 302.5X to wit:^l

1. “Persistent sense of discomfort and inappropriateness about one’s anatomic sex.
2. Persistent wish to be rid of one’s own genitals and to live as a member of the other sex.
3. The disturbance has been continuous (not limited to periods of stress) for at least two years.
4. Absence of physical intersex or genetic abnormality.
5. The disturbance is not symptomatic of another mental disorder, such as Schizophrenia.”

This definition of transsexualism is herein interpreted not to exclude persons who meet the above criteria but who other­wise may, on the basis of their past behavioral histories, be conceptualized and classified as transvestites and/or effeminate male homosexuals or masculine female homosexuals.

4.3.2. Principle 8. The diagnostic evidence for “persistent” (see 4.3.1. A and 4.3.1 B, above) requires that the psychia­trist or psychologist have knowledge, independent of the patient’s verbal claim, that the dysphoria, discomfort, sense of inappropriateness and wish to be rid of one’s own genitals, have existed for at least two years. This evidence may be obtained by interview of the patient’s appointed informant (friend or relative) or it may best be obtained by the fact that the psychiatrist or psychologist has personally known the patient for an extended period of time.

4.3.3. Standard 3. The psychiatrist or psychologist making the recommendation in favor of hormonal and non-genital (surgical) sex-reassignment shall have known the patient in a psychotherapeutic relationship, for at least 3 months prior to making said recommendation. The psychiatrist or psychologist making the recommendation in favor of genital (surgical) sex-reassignment shall have known the patient, in a psychotherapeutic relationship for at least 6 months prior to making said recommendation. That psychiatrist or psychologist should have access to the results of psychometric testing (including IQ testing of the patient) when such testing is clinically indicated.

4.4.1. Principle 9. Hormonal sex-reassignment is both therapeutic and diagnostic in that the patient requesting such therapy either reports satisfaction or dissatisfaction regarding the results of such therapy.

4.4.2. Principle 10. Hormonal sex-reassignment may have some irreversible effects (infertility, hair growth, voice deepening and clitoral enlargement in the female-to-­male patient and infertility and breast growth in the male-­to-female patient) and, therefore, such therapy must be offered only under the guidelines proposed in the present standards.

4.4.3. Principle 11. Hormonal sex-reassignment should precede surgical sex-reassignment as its effects (patient satisfaction or dissatisfaction) may indicate or contra­indicate later surgical sex-reassignment.

4.4.4. Principle 12. The best indicator for hormonal and surgical sex-reassignment is how successfully the patient has been in living-out, full-time, vocationally and avocationally, in all social situations, the social role of the genetically other sex and how successful the patient has been in being accepted by others as a member of that genetically other sex.

4.4.5. Standard 4. The initiation of hormonal sex-reassignment shall be preceded by a period of at least 3 months during which time the patient lives full-time in the social role of the genetically other sex.

4.5.1. Standard 5. Non-genital sex-reassignment (facial, hip, limb, etc.) shall be preceded by a period of at least 6 months during which time the patient lives full-time in the social role of the genetically other sex.

4.6.1. Standard 6. Genital sex-reassignment shall be preceded by a period or at least 12 months during which time the patient lives full-time in the social role of the genetically other sex.

4.7.1. Principle 13. The intersexed patient (with a documented hormonal or genetic abnormality) should first be treated by procedures commonly accepted as appropriate for such medical conditions.

4.7.2. Principle 14. The patient having a psychiatric diagnosis (i.e. , schizophrenia) in addition to a diagnosis of transsexualism should first be treated by procedures commonly accepted as appropriate for such non-transsexual psychiatric diagnoses.

4.7.3. Standard 7. Hormonal and surgical sex-reassign­ment may be made available to intersexed patients and to patients having non-transsexual psychiatric/psychologic diagnoses if the patient and therapist have fulfilled the requirements of the herein listed standards; if the patient can be reasonably expected to be habilitated or rehabilitated, in part, by such hormonal and surgical sex-reassignment procedures; and if all other commonly accepted therapeutic approaches to such intersexed or non-transsexual psychiatrically/psychologically diagnosed patients have been either attempted, or considered for use prior to the decision not to use such alternative therapies. The diagnosis of schizophrenia, therefore, does not necessarily preclude surgical and hormonal sex-reassignment.

4.8.1. Principle 15. Peer review is a commonly accepted procedure in most branches of science and is used pri­marily to ensure maximal efficiency and correctness of scientific decisions and procedures.

4.8.2. Principle 16. Psychiatrists and psychologists must often rely on possibly unreliable or invalid sources of information (patients’ verbal reports or the verbal reports of the patients’ families and friends) in making clinical decisions and in judging whether or not a patient has fulfilled the requirements of the herein listed standards.

4.8.3. Principle 17. Psychiatrists and psychologists, given the burden of deciding who to recommend for hor­monal and surgical sex-reassignment and for whom to refuse such recommendations are subject to extreme social pressure and possible manipulation as to create an atmos­phere in which charges of laxity, favoritism, sexism, financial gain, etc., may be made.

4.8.4. Principle 18. Psychiatrists and psychologists, in deciding to make the recommendation in favor of hormonal and/or surgical sex-reassignment share the moral responsibility for that decision with the physician and/or surgeon who accepts that recommendation.

4.8.5. Principle 19. A plethora of theories exist re­garding the etiology of gender dysphoria and the pur­poses or goals of hormonal and/or surgical sex-reassign­ment such that the psychiatrist or psychologist making the decision to recommend such reassignment for a patient does not enjoy the comfort or security of knowing that his decision would be supported by the majority of his peers.

4.8.6. Standard 8. The psychiatrist or psychologist recommending that a patient applicant receive surgical (genital) sex-reassignment must obtain peer review, in the format of a psychiatrist or psychologist peer who will personally examine the patient applicant, on at least one occasion, and who will, in writing state that he or she concurs with the decision of the original psychiatrist or psychologist. Peer review (a second opinion) is not required for hormonal sex-reassignment nor for non-genital surgical sex-reassignment. At least one of the two behavioral scientists making the favorable recommendation for surgical sex reassignment must be a psychiatrist.

4.9.1. Standard 9. The physician administering or per­forming surgical (genital) sex-reassignment is guilty of professional misconduct if he or she does not receive written recommendations in favor of such procedures from at least two behavioral scientists; at least one of which is a psychiatrist and one of whom has known the patient in a professional relationship for at least 6 months.

4.10.1 Principle 20. The administration of androgens to females and of estrogens and progesterones to males may lead to mild or serious health-threatening complica­tions.

4.10.2 Principle 21. Persons who are in poor physical health, or who have identifiable abnormalities in blood chemistry, may be at above average risk to develop com­plications should they receive hormonal medication.

4.10.3. Standard 10. The physician prescribing hormonal medication to a person for the Purpose of effecting hormonal sex-reassignment must warn the patient of possible negative complications which may arise and that physician should also make available to the patient (or refer the patient to a facility offering) monitoring of relevant blood chemistries and routine physical examinations in­cluding, but not limited to, the measurement of SGPT in person receiving testosterone and the measurement of SGPT, Bilirubin, triglycerides and fasting glucose in persons receiving estrogens.

4.11.1. Principle 22. Genital surgical sex reassignment includes the invasion of, and the alteration of, the genito­urinary tract. Undiagnosed pre-existing genitourinary disorders may complicate later genital surgical sex re­assignment.

4.11.2. Standard 11. Prior to genital surgical sex re­assignment a urological examination should be conducted for the purpose of identifying and perhaps treating ab­normalities of the Benito-urinary tract.

4.12.1. Principle 23. The care and treatment of sex-re­assignment applicants or patients often causes special problems for the professionals offering such care and treatment. These special problems include, but are not limited to, the need for the professional to cooperate with education of the public to justify his or her work, the need to document the case history perhaps more com­pletely than is customary in general patient care, the need to respond to multiple, nonpaying, service applicants and the need to be receptive and responsive to the extra demands for services and assistance often made by sex-reassignment applicants as compared to other patient groups.

4.12.2.        Principle 24. Sex reassignment applicants often have need for post-therapy (psychologic, hormonal and surgical) follow-up care for which they are unable or unwilling to pay.

4.12.3. Principle 25. Sex reassignment applicants often are in a financial status which does not permit them to pay excessive professional fees.

4.12.4. Standard 12. It is unethical for professionals to charge sex-reassignment applicants “whatever the traffic will bear” or excessive fees far beyond the normal fees charged for similar services by the professional. It is permissible to charge sex reassignment applicants for services in advance of the tendering of such services even if such an advance fee arrangement is not typical of the professional’s practice. It is permissible to charge patients, in advance, for expected services such as post-therapy follow-up care and/or counseling. It is unethical to charge patients for services which are essentially research and which services do not directly benefit the patient.

4.13.1. Principle 26. Sex-reassignment applicants often experience social, legal and financial discrimination no known, at present, to be prohibited by federal or state law.

4.13.2. Principle 27. Sex-reassignment applicants often must conduct formal or semi-formal legal proceedings (i.e. in-court appearances against insurance companies or in pursuit of having legal documents changed to reflect their new sexual and genderal status, etc.).

4.13.3. Principle 28. Sex–reassignment applicants, in pursuit of what are assumed to be their civil rights as citizens, are often in need of assistance (in the forms of copies of records, letters of endorsement, court testimony, etc.) from the professionals involved in their case.

4.13.4. Standard 13. It is permissible for a professional to charge only the normal fee for services needed by a patient in pursuit of his or her civil rights. Fees should not be charged for services for which, for other patient groups, such fees are not normally charged.

4.14.1. Principle 29. Hormonal and surgical sex-reassign­ment has been demonstrated to be a rehabilitative, or habilitative, experience for properly selected adult patients.

4.14.2. Principle 30. Hormonal and surgical sex-reassign­ment are procedures which must be requested by, and per­formed only with the agreement of, the patient having informed consent. Sex-reannouncement or sex-reassignment procedures conducted on infantile or early-childhood intersexed patients are common medical practices and are not included in or affected by the present discussion.

4.14.3. Principle 31. Sex–reassignment applicants often, in their pursuit of sex–reassignment, believe that hormonal and surgical sex-reassignment have fewer risks than such procedures are known to have.

4.14.4. Standard 14. Hormonal and surgical sex-reassign­ment may be conducted or administered only to persons ob­taining their legal majority (as defined by state law) or to persons declared by the courts as legal adults (emanci­pated minors).

4.15.1. Standard 15. Hormor.al and surgical sex-reassign­ment may be conducted or administered only after the patient applicant has received full and complete ex­planations, preferably in writing, in words understood by the patient applicant, of all risks inherent in the requested procedures.

4.16.1. Principle 32. Gender dysphoric sex-reassignment   applicants and patients enjoy the same rights to medical privacy as does any other patient group.

4.16.2. Standard 16. The privacy of the medical record of the sex-reassignment patient shall be safeguarded according to procedures in use to safeguard the privacy of any other patient group.

Explication

5.1. Prior to the initiation of hormonal sex reassignment:

5.1.1. The patient must demonstrate that the sense of discomfort with the self and the urge to rid the self of the genitalia and the wish to live in the genetically opposite sex role have existed for at least 2 years.

5.1.2. The patient must be known to a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist for at least 3 months and that psychiatrist or psychologist must endorse the patient’s request for hormone therapy.

5.1.3. The patient must have been successfully living in the genetically other sex role for at least 3 months.

5.1.4. Prospective patients should receive a complete physical examination which includes, but is not limited to, the measurement of SGPT in persons to receive testosterone and the measurement of SGPT, Billirubin, tri­glycerides and fasting glucose in persons to receive estrogens.

5.2. Prior to the initiation of non-genital surgical sex-reassignment.

5.2.1.  See 5.1.1.

5.2.2.  See 5.1.2.

5.2.3. The patient must have been successfully living in the genetically other sex role for at least 6 months.

5.3 Prior to the initiation of genital sex-reassignment (penectomy, orchidectomy, castration, vaginoplasty, mastectomy, hysterectomy, oopho.rectomy, salpingectomy, vaginectomy, phalloplasty).

5.3.1.  See 5.1.1., above

5.3.2. The patient must be known to a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist for at least 6 months and that psychiatrist or psychologist must endorse the patient’s request for genital surgical sex-reassignment.

5.3.3. The patient must be evaluated at least once by a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist other than the psy­chiatrist or psychologist specified in 3.3.2. above and that second psychiatrist or psychologist must endorse the patient’s request for genital sex-reassignment. At least one of the behavioral scientists making the recommendation for genital sex-reassignment must be a psychiatrist.

5.3.4. The patient must have been successfully living in the genetically other sex role for at least one year.

5.3.5. An urological examination should be performed.

5.4. During and after services are provided

5.4.1. The patient’s right to privacy should be honored.

5.4.2. The patient must be charged only appropriate fees and these fees may be levied in advance of services.

¹DSM III (proposed) — Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (3rd edition, proposed) Washington, D. C. The American Psychiatric Association, 2nd printing 1/15/78.

Report prepared February 12, 1979

These Standards of Care were accepted by Majority vote by those persons attending the Sixth International Gender Dysphoria Symposium, held in San Diego, California February 21 – 25, 1979.

UNEXPECTED BONUSES OF TRANSITION

Trans Tuesday 193 – Unexpected Bonuses of Transition (revision of 32)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re talking about happy aspects of being trans that I was entirely unprepared for, little delightful side-effects that I never could have expected: UNEXPECTED BONUSES OF TRANSITION.

I suspect there are things like this for every trans person out there, though what they are undoubtedly varies. For people who transition as adults, realizing and accepting that we’re  trans requires a lot of introspection and self-examination.

I’ve mentioned many times in these that trans people probably know ourselves better than anyone else on earth, because we HAVE to in order to overcome the gatekeeping, lies, and gaslighting about our own identities that the cis binary matrix of society forces on us.

It’s something that’s maybe never really finished, because life’s a journey of discovery. But those of us who didn’t transition until adulthood, for a variety of reasons, have had to do incredible work to get to where we are.

And you spend so much time focused on that, on trying to figure things out, on trying to accept the truths of who you are, that you don’t always realize every little thing that can come with transitioning. At least I didn’t.

Guy clothes always made my dysphoria worse, and so I couldn’t wait to actually be able to wear women’s clothes. But I didn’t anticipate how much I’d really like wearing skirts and dresses.They make me feel… happy?

See the trans tuesday on HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE for more on that.

And like, this somehow surprised me. You’d think, okay sure, you wanted to wear those clothes and now you can, so it stands to reason that achieving that goal would bring you joy. But it’s more than that.

I guess it’s like an exterior sign that says… hey. HEY. The outside matches the inside! HOLY CRAP WHAT IS THIS LIKE. When you go your whole life without that, you don’t realize what a change that is.

And this, my friends, is GENDER EUPHORIA. See the trans tuesday on it (and learn how cis people can and do experience it too).

Maybe that’s something I should have seen coming, but I didn’t. Probably because I had zero frame of reference for what it was like. And what’s wild is that gender euphoria can be one of the best ways of discovering that you’re trans or nonbinary. And people who don’t have gender dysphoria can and do still experience gender euphoria!

But for me, I was so buried by my own dysphoria, my desire to transition was to just LESSEN it, to ease the stress and pressure and pain and burden and loneliness and isolation that it put on me. It somehow never even OCCURRED to me that I could be HAPPY and EXCITED and FEEL GOOD about so many things.

I was actively trying to fix the bad, and hoping that would be good, if that makes sense. Dysphoria got so bad all I could think about was escaping it, rather than focusing on what I might be able to feel and achieve without it.

You can read more about GENDER DYSPHORIA and my personal struggle with it in the trans tuesday on that very topic.

But for a lot of trans and nonbinary people, euphoria leads the way, and they transition to seek out more of it. We all have our own paths. And for me, like… it felt too much to even HOPE I could actually be HAPPY in a dress or a skirt, I thought it just WOULDN’T BE MISERABLE, y’know?

So my own euphoria, every damn day just seeing myself in the mirror, from my clothes, from my voice, from my BODY, totally caught me by surprise.

But there are other much smaller things I’d never considered that also blew my mind.

I really, really like pink. I mean I like most pinks (unless they get too salmon-y), but I LOOOOVE me some neon fuchsia with juuuust the right amount of purple in it. Love it. LOVE. IT!

Four photos of bright, neon purply-pink fuchsia things… flowers, a neon sign that says “to the moon and back,” bright bits of plastic, and a woman whose hair is a mix of purple and neon pink fuchsia

Pretty sure I don’t want my hair that color, but I love it nonetheless. I even got a dress as close to that color as I could for our re-wedding, when my wife Susan and I renewed our vows and had a wedding with the real me! It’s not as purply as I would have preferred, but it was fabulous and so very much me.

A shot of me dancing in my pink wedding dress at our re-wedding. The pink is warmer than the purply fuchsia I love the most, but is still super pretty. 🙂

If you missed the trans tuesday on A TRANS RE-WEDDING, please check it out and bask in the joy and love, won’t you?

Okay so at first I thought my love of fuchsia was maybe some weird overcorrection on my part. I was denied female-coded things my whole life, it’s only natural I’d dive into them as far as I could.

And then maybe pull back a bit as I discover what I really like. It’s a common thing that happens for a lot of trans folks because again, it’s all a process. But for me, that’s not what this is.

Because I can remember being a very little kid and LOVING this color, and loving the way it mixed with purple (like in the hair photo) even more.

And I remember telling my mom this during one of those times you ask a kid their favorite color,  because you don’t have a lot to talk about when they’re that age (or you have passive-aggressive midwestern parents who don’t want to talk about REAL things at any point ever, ahem ahem ahem).

And I was told, unequivocally, NO. That was NOT my favorite color. And could not be. Because it was for GIRLS and girls ONLY.

I was not allowed to like a god damned COLOR.

The gendering of our society is so horribly damaging. ESPECIALLY to kids. And if you don’t know just how insidious it is, see the trans tuesday on GENDERED CHILDHOODS and let it open your eyes to just how compulsory being cisgender and heterosexual is in our society.

In any case, little Tilly was told she COULD like purple… as long as it wasn’t too pink. And then little Tilly did some overcorrection of her own and threw herself into purple everything.

It even carried over to candy, where I claimed every grape variety as my favorite. And I mean that’s some delusion, because “grape” candy and drinks are… anything but. They’re so weird! How does anyone like that? It doesn’t taste like grapes! What even IS it?!

And yet I still kinda love it, probably because I formed some association with it being safe in my childhood, and that carries over still today. See, when I told you trans people do so much damned introspection, I wasn’t kidding. 😶

So realizing that now I “could” like this color was revelatory. I mean I certainly could have at any time, even when presenting as a man, because nobody can stop you from liking a color (except your parents when you are *ver smol*, apparently).

But again, our society programs these things into us without us even realizing, and it took me breaking out of those societal “norms” to declare my true gender before I realized I could even declare my true favorite color. Which is pretty fucked up.

For so much more on the ways society worms thoughts into us without our knowledge in MUCH more damaging ways, see the trans tuesdays on IMPLICIT QUEERPHOBIA…

And on INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA.

You know what else I wasn’t allowed to like? Matching. Like, in terms of clothes. If I got too matchy my mom would always make some comment and tell me I couldn’t dress like that. I guess matching colors on different pieces of clothing is… somehow… also gendered?!

Beau Brummel fucked us up so bad, friends. I went into more about that in the trans tuesday on gendered clothes linked above, so check it out if you want to hate Beau too.

Anyway! This manifested itself one night when I used a hair tie to put my hair up into a pineapple for bed (if you follow my socials, you’ve no doubt seen my pineapple selfies). I have a big bag of satin scrunchies in all different colors, because I’ve always always loved brightly colored anything.

But there’s so many varieties I could stand there for ten minutes and still not know which one I wanted to use (every decision is potentially life-altering, I guess? Welcome to my brain.) So I generally just grab one without looking.

And as soon as I put my hair up, I noticed that the hair tie I picked just happened to exactly match the color of my pajamas. And… I squealed with glee. What? WHAT?

I was so baffled. WHY DID SOMETHING SO MEANINGLESS BRING ME SO MUCH JOY??? Because it’s another thing that had been kept from me my whole life, and now here it is, for me. Mine. Anytime I want. I can match any hair accessory to my clothes anytime I want!?

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOM! (insert your favorite gif of someone cool yelling this, but not the famous one from that movie with the cis straight white man who’s a sexist racist).

In fact, I also love love love matching my glasses to my outfit (and sometimes even my lipstick), and people are always complimenting me on it! Which is, frankly, very cool and the correct thing that you should all be doing more of. 😌

And sometimes I even get all matchy WITH FUCHSIA and good golly dang it makes me so happy.

Me in an off the shoulder long-sleeved black top, with bright pink fuchsia bra straps showing… that match the color of my heart-shaped cat eye glasses and my lipstick.

And now I can also get “girly” gifts! Susan got me a little charm necklace with my name on it (which you can see in almost every single selfie I take). It’s very cute and I adore it.

A circular silver charm pendant hanging on a necklace. Engraved into it is “Tilly”

A lovely friend, after reading a past trans tuesday where I mentioned never getting to be a little girl, or a teen girl, etc. sent me a few gifts.

My Little Ponies! One of them is on my dresser, and there’s a big stuffed Rainbow Dash that sits right next to the bed and it’s the first thing I see every morning when I get up and it makes me smile. Every day.

A purple My Little Pony with a sticker of the pone on it that says her name is Tickle

A large stuffed Rainbow Dash My Little Pony

I don’t know if you can anticipate stuff like that, but it changes everything. Little tiny moments over and over, throughout your life, reminding you of how much better things are now.

Even just hearing someone call me Tilly sends me soaring to the clouds. Susan and I have had some calls and meetings where people start off by saying “hello, ladies” and it makes me want to scream every time (in extreme joy, I assure you), even now four years in to my transition. I hope it never stops.

If you’ve ever done this, by the way, and I continued talking to you like an adult, please realize it took all my self control to not scream OH MY GOD THANK YOU at you over and over again.

And I was even more surprised to discover… my handwriting changed. Not randomly or subconsciously, but because I decided I could change it.

As a kid, I loved the way some girls wrote, where the letters were rounded and flowy and pretty to look at. So I tried to write like that too, and you know exactly where this is going. Someone… my parents, my teachers, my friends, probably all of the above… said NO.

BOYS CAN’T WRITE PRETTY. It’s just so, so tiring, y’all.

So little me overcorrected there too. Fine, if I can’t write pretty, I’m not going to care how I write at all. My printing became rough, and scratchy, small and constrained. And I never gave it another thought my entire life. Until a couple years ago.

I keep a physical planner on my desk to write down all the shit I have to do, because for some reason my brain LOVES analog written lists with dates, but if I try to use a calendar app it’s just another computer program to ignore and it doesn’t work for me. At all.

And because the only real writing I do by hand is in my planners and I was paying attention, I can tell you exactly when this happened and what I was writing/thinking about.

February 3, 2021. I wrote down to email Susan’s and my manager about a new series pitch we’ve been working on, and it looked different from EVERYTHING ELSE up to that point. The letters were more spaced out. Open. Rounded.

It’s probably no surprise that it happened with a note about something creative we were doing, my brain was probably more open to experimenting and, well, being creative with my handwriting because it was already in creative mode.

February 4, 2021, most of everything written down was still the tightly constrained scratch… except for another note about this series pitch and our manager. By Friday February 5, 80% of what I’d written there was in the new open, rounded style.

The following week? ALL of it was in the new style. The messy scratch that looked like it’s waiting to explode is… gone. I could even see how I was experimenting with letters and words day to day, trying to see what I liked.

This was a conscious decision I made because I was looking at the horrible, tightly-wound, edgy, scratchy, messy print and it made me feel… bad.

Maybe because I associate it with the world telling me I was a gender I’m not, maybe because subconsciously I was remembering wanting to print differently and being told I couldn’t, or maybe because you should read my description of it again:

“Horrible, tightly-wound, edgy, scratchy, messy.” “Waiting to explode.” If that’s not a metaphor for how it felt living in the wrong body, thinking I was the wrong gender, for most of my life, I don’t know what is. It’s a very visual representation of the dysphoria I was feeling (again see the trans tuesday on it, linked above, for more).

I was writing like that because that’s how I FELT.

All. The. Time.

But I don’t feel that way anymore! I finally feel OPEN and RELAXED and at PEACE with myself.

All of which is to say that looking at every aspect of your own life, no matter what your gender is, can lead you to important revelations. Even if small, they could change your entire life for the better.

Look inward, examine yourself and your choices and your desires and the things you like and dislike, and discover why, and do what you need to make yourself happier.

I’m worth it, and so are you.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

UNEXPECTED CHANGES FROM TRANSITION

Welcome to #TransTuesday! We all hope for a whole host of changes to come with transition, but some of them are entirely surprising for a variety of reasons. So this week we dive into: UNEXPECTED CHANGES FROM TRANSITION (and a wild story from SDCC 2023)!

First let me say that if you’re reading this when it’s released, trans tuesdays will be off for a couple weeks as I prep for, attend, and then recover from San Diego Comic-Con, which is a monster wrapped in a demon wrapped in a party wrapped in a pop culture comic convention.

This week’s topic is actually one I wanted to write after 2023’s SDCC, but I didn’t get around to it until now. I needed to process it a bit, but also I had to write up the nine-part trans allegory of SILO, and then the year was almost over, and then I had to write up the eight-part trans allegory of BARBIE, and well here we are.

Before every trans or nonbinary person starts transition of any kind – medical or social or even mental and emotional, there are a whole lot of changes we hope we’ll get out of it. Experiencing more GENDER EUPHORIA is often one of them, and if you’re unfamiliar you can read about that here.

And for those of us with GENDER DYSPHORIA, the lessening or disappearance of it is also a big change we’re hoping for. See the trans tuesday on it for more info if you need it.

I personally was hoping that dressing in the clothes I’d wanted to wear for my entire life would make me happy. That growing my hair out would help me find myself. That my journey through gender-affirming speech therapy would help me find a voice that sounded like me to my own ears.

If you want to read more on my journey with clothing, see FINDING OUR TRANS STYLE.

And for more on just what my HAIR has meant to be, see its trans tuesday…

And its follow-up HAIR 2 when I had my first real visit to a hairstylist.

I was also hoping for more than even those things, though. I was hoping for the body developments that hormone replacement therapy might bring…  breast growth, hip and butt development, the slowing of body hair growth, facial and body shape changes, etc. For more on my struggles with BODY HAIR, here you go.

I’ve actually gotten so many of the changes I’ve wanted from HRT, which is kind of amazing. You can read about it in my annual HRT check-in retrospectives. Here’s the fourth.

For trans people who need gender confirmation surgeries, the outcome of those is also hoping we’ll see ourselves and feel like our true selves for the first time.

But to my surprise, there have been a whole lot of changes from transition that I never could have anticipated. You can read about some of the smaller of those, and the little ways they filled my life with joy, in the trans tuesday on UNEXPECTED BONUSES OF TRANSITION.

To be fair, there were also some changes that I might have anticipated if I’d been able to stop and think about it for a while. But I was dealing with pretty severe dysphoria, and it made pondering all the surprising nuances of transition difficult or impossible.

One of the things I couldn’t have anticipated, as I’d not seen or heard trans people talking about it before I started HRT (though I’ve seen a lot of it since) are the mental changes that HRT has brought along with it.

I have this remarkable… peace of mind now. And it’s not just from my body finally feeling like me, though that’s part of it. And it’s not just from my voice finally sounding like me, though that’s part of it. And it’s not just from my dysphoria being all but gone, though that’s part of it.

It’s so hard to describe, but the way you can maybe see it best illustrated is in the trans tuesday on TRANSITION SETBACKS, when my HRT stopped working for me and I was horrified to discover the mental backsliding it caused, and how it felt like my very identity was being stripped away.

My whole life pre-transition, my brain was a cloud of dysphoria and pain and misery and isolation and noise, like I was stuck in a feedback loop or something. Actually, when you consider how much our society tells you you’re cis and reinforces that you have to be, “feedback loop” is actually pretty apt.

But just being on the right hormones for me has stopped so much of that. It’s like it lifted this veil that not only kept me from experiencing the world, it kept me from experiencing myself.

You can see the external part of that reflected in the trans tuesday on CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD, aka WHAT IS HAPPENING.

I had no idea that just being could feel the way it does now, that I could know and love myself and who I am the way that I do. That this was the real me buried underneath all the dysphoria shit for my entire life. It never ever occurred to me that that would change, or even could change.

And here’s why this topic made it onto my mega-list of future trans tuesdays to write after SDCC in 2023. Due to coming out and transitioning during lockdown of the pandemic, attending that con was the first trip I’d ever taken as my true self. While out as a woman. And HOLY CRAP the difference could not have been more stark.

Before I get into it, if you want more on the difficulties of A PANDEMIC TRANSITION, you know I’ve got you covered.

I don’t know what it’s like to pack for a trip, or experience a trip, as a guy. But I know what those things were like while badly pretending to be a guy, which is all I can talk about.

As I mentioned in the trans tuesdays on hair and, I think, gender dysphoria, for most of my life I had a super short buzzcut. This necessitated no special products, no care, not even a comb or a certain shampoo.

I didn’t care about my clothes, at all. They were simply there to hide my awful body from view.

I rarely shaved, for dysphoria reasons (though facial hair also caused dysphoria, it was a real paradox).

So pre-transition, my packing for SDCC would be to toss a handful of geeky t-shirts, underwear, socks, and a couple pairs of cargo shorts into a bag, grab my deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, and… that was it. Like literally… THAT WAS IT.

Do you… do you know what I had to pack last year? It kept cracking me up because it just never ended.

So of course I had to bring clothes, and I picked cute tops and paired them with skirts or shorts that would look nice, and yeah sure socks and underwear. And I had to bring bras now, but that’s not that much more, right?

But hmm, I DO like to style my glasses to compliment my outfits (you MAY have noticed…) so I’d better bring multiple pairs of glasses too, just in case.

Oh wait, my hair requires special shampoo. And hair product. And a blow drier, with a diffuser. Not knowing if our hotel would have the latter, I had to bring that too.

And yeah, I still have to shave, daily. So I had to bring a razor, and replacement cartridges, and shaving cream. This one actually hit me twice, because SDCC last year was right in the middle of when my HRT stopped working, that I talked about in the transition setbacks trans tuesday, which meant my facial hair was growing a lot faster again.

Even my super-close against the grain shave wasn’t lasting all day, I had beard shadow at night. But a lot of SDCC events are parties and hangouts after the con late at night… so I had to do a touch-up shave every night just to keep my face clear. And it HURT. A LOT.

I had to bring makeup, because I like it, but also because you’re well aware of the expectations leveled on women and the way people may judge you (even subconsciously) if you’re not wearing it. But allllso if I’m wearing it I’m much more likely to get gendered correctly, especially when I was struggling to keep my face stubble-free. So it was non-negotiable.

But I’m very farsighted (my stylin’ glasses ain’t just for show), and I cannot see my own eyes in a mirror without glasses well enough to put eye makeup on, and obviously I can’t put eye makeup on while my glasses are on. I have to use a magnifying mirror. So now I had to bring that, too.

I have lotion for my arms, two different moisturizers for my face, and two different moisturizers for my eyes! And special gentle face soap! All of which I had to bring, too.

I also had to bring all of my hormones along (this year will be even more complicated, because I’m on injections now so I’ve got to bring vials and needles and all that junk, too).

And it just struck me what an entirely different experience it was… to go from “do as little as possible because I don’t give a shit about myself” to “I have to do so much to take care of myself because I care a LOT about myself.”

And sure, some of that is going from perceived man to perceived woman in this very sexist society, but a lot of it was also that I just care so much more about myself now than I ever thought possible.

Another weird thing that happened at SDCC last year was that I got recognized, a LOT.

At 5:57 pm on July 19, 2023 I posted:
Sitting outside waiting for dinner at the Hard Rock and already got recognized
We JUST GOT HERE
My magnificent mane cannot be denied

At 4:01 pm on July 20, 2023 I posted:

Heading to the convention center for an SDCC interview and got stopped on my way in by someone who recognized me with a “are you Tilly? You’re awesome!”
WHAT IS HAPPENING

And sure you can say that’s because of my book and tv and comics writing, I guess, but the only reason people recognized me is because of all the selfies I post, which means it’s directly due to my transition… because I almost never took selfies before, much less posted them (yay dysphoria).

See the trans tuesday on PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS for more on that.
Twitter, Facebook, Google doc

And PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE when it all finally changed.
Twitter, Facebook, Google doc

But then there was a guy who also thought I was doing a cosplay? Which I guess technically I was, maybe?

On july 22, 2023 I posted:
Just had an Only At ComicCon experience far stranger than fiction but I don’t have time to write it up atm
For now, I leave you with THIS Only At ComicCon experience that susanlbridges witnessed:
Guy stops me on the street: “who are you dressed as?!”
Me: “MYSELF!”

This is a photo of me on the day in question, in a blue cherry-print halter top with a red border, red lipstick, and white iridescent cat-eye glasses

A buncha people asked me about that other “only at ComicCon experience” I mentioned, and you’re in luck, because it’s finally time to tell that story!

There is so much going on at SDCC, ~~~SO MUCH~~~, that you will literally never see it all, much less even be aware of it all. It’s just not possible. The size and scope of this five day con will blow your mind if you’ve never been.

So on the Saturday of the con, my lovely wife Susan and I are resting in the hotel room before grabbing dinner and then heading to a panel I was on that evening. We’re checking social media, where you often find out more about what’s going on at the con than while you are AT the con, it’s wild.

And we find out there’s some kind of “Paramount experience” down in the Gaslamp Quarter… which is this area across from the convention center that extends a few blocks, filled with restaurants and shops and a bunch of them get taken over during the con for more convention stuff (the con also spreads to nearby hotels and even the San Diego library).

Apparently people are saying they got a SDCC-exclusive pin at this Paramount experience, and it’s from the “Ad Astra per Aspera” episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. (SDCC is filled with exclusive stuff like this, and it’s always a huge hassle and headache and nightmare to even attempt to get them, because they are small in number and a large amount of the hundred thousand attendees want them)

That episode is my favorite in all 800+ hours of Star Trek (all of which I’ve seen many multiple times), and it’s SO transy and amazing. The episode had just premiered about a month before the con, and you can see the effect it had on me:

At 7:03 pm on June 22, 2023, I posted:
Hello
STAR TREK SAID TRANS RIGHTS WITH ITS WHOLE DAMNED CHEST
Thank you, #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds #StarTrekSNW
Thank you, horgandee (the account of the show’s writer)
It means the world
One day may i fly among you
Together in the stars
All my love always
AD ASTRA PER ASPERA (live long and prosper emoji, trans flag emoji, purple heart emoji)

Truthfully, part of what took me so long to get to writing this trans tuesday was that I fully intend to do an entire trans tuesday or two on Ad Astra per Aspera, and I just haven’t had time yet. And now the SDCC 2024 is here, and welp! Onward we go. But I WILL be writing about that episode, so keep an eye out.

Anyway, the chance to get something commemorating my favorite episode, something that is SO important to me, was too good to pass up. But already despair set in, because we’d just found out about it and the Paramount experience thing apparently closed at 5 pm and people were saying the line was interminably long.

But I had nothing else to do until we were going to eat, so I decided to give it a shot. A little after 2 pm I went out and found the line in the Gaslamp Quarter, and my journey began. As I went, an absolutely bananas story unfolded, and I was texting with Susan the entire time. I saved screenshots so I have the entire thing for the historical record. Come along on for the ride!

This was the madness of the Gaslamp Quarter behind me early in line (it was even worse in front of me). You can see the actual convention center waaaaay in the background.

A shot of a long line and a very large crowd of nerds on a cute street, next to diners on a restaurant patio, with my curly bangs in the foreground

Saturday, July 22 2023, at 2:22 pm, text string begins.
Me: There’s this 11/12 year old in front of me playing Tetris on her phone and she’s just singing aaahAHHHHaaaaahhhhAHHHHHHHHahhhh randomly non stop

Susan: I hope you get a pin!!
Me: Well the line hasn’t moved in ten minutes

S: blurg

Me: I think it’s like the Picard museum was where you go in and just stay as long as you want and the don’t let people in until some leave

S: oh I see

Me: No idea what else is in there
Me: A Shaxs just walked by and it was like someone took his toon and made it human. A+
S: yay
Me: At this rate I am not sure if I will even be in there before we need to eat (side-eye emoji)
S: well okay if that happens I will come meet you

Me: I guess
Me: But I’ll have to give up
S: Jody houser just posted that someone who definitely has covid is at the con today in full Ahsoka cosplay so that’s fun

S: You don’t have to give up yet
Me: No but if you have to come meet me I will (sad emoji)
Me: Also why do people have to be the Fucking worst
S: I know but hopefully that won’t happen! You have some time!

Me: I dunno why my phone auto capitalizes Fucking today but I’m not mad about it

Me: The line moved more in the past two minutes than the past hour
Me: very weird

Me: Now the line hasn’t moved in 20 minutes

Me: This is aggravating
Susan: :/
Me: If the pins are gone I’m gonna be upset
S: I know
S: But at this rate it seems unlikely they could run out with so few people actually making it through the door?
Me: I have no idea
Me: They might not even have that many. The Picard pins were in short supply that year
S: yeah
S: We can check ebay later if you don’t get one
Me: I don’t wanna spend a hundred bucks for it either tho!

S: blurg
Me: There is apparently also a separate line for people with reservations which explains why this is so sporadic and weird
S: that is weird
Me: 25 minutes with no movement now
S: I will leave here around 4:30p if things do not go well
Me: Well they are already not going well 🙁
Me: Love to waste all my time. I mean not that I was doing anything anyway but
S: Not a waste! It’s a chance for greatness
S: In the form of a pin
Me: Y’know I was gonna have a Diet coke at 4! I had big plans!
Me: 🙂

S: I can bring you one
S: I can bring it to you now?
Me: Well I don’t wanna drink it in line?
Me: Way too many people I’m not taking my mask off
Me: So just wait
S: Ok
Me: The line for people with reservations has doubled. They must be for 4 pm maybe?
Me: lol I am never getting in
S: Hmm let me see
S: well there’s a bar in there and they kick people out after 50 min
S: that’s all I could find out
Me: swell
Me: I just want one pin and then I will leave! C’mon!

S: How close are you?
Me: Kinda but again the reservation line is really big
S: Hmm
Me: There’s maybe 30 people in front of me on standby? Can’t really see where it ends.

Me: Me too. And I’ve been here for an hour and 40 minutes and honestly I see no way I’m gonna be in there by 4:30
S: boo.

Me: They just let in a whole mess of people from the reservation line
Me: but nobody from here so
S: Fuck
S: Yeah it’s 4pm on the dot
Me: and they just let in another ton of people with reservations ha weee fun
S: .__________.

Me: YEP SO FUN
S: (melting smiley face emoji)
Me: STANDING IN A HUGE UNMASKED CROWD FOR TWO HOURS
S: (melting smiley face emoji)
S: If you wanna drop out that’s okay too. If you feel unsafe.
Me: I have been next to the same table of bros eating wings for like 45 minutes and I am very tired of them
S: Autocorrect though “unsafe” should be ”insane”
S: lol
Me: Haaaaaahaha
Me: Anyway I might as well wait the 25 more minutes, I waited this long

S: Ok
Me: Hopefully I won’t need to pee until we’re done eating
S: When I come over would you like me to bring a Diet Coke?
Me: Yeah
Me: Plz

Me: I will just need to pace myself with the diet coke
S: Right!
Me: OH MY GODBTHE LINE IS MOVING

Me: it goes up farther than I thought. There were probably 50+ people in front of me. I can see inside tho, there’s SpongeBob stuff all over. Sure.

S: Yeah there is also SpongeBob and other things in there and ughhhhhhhhh
Me: if I go inside I consent to filming
S: Put your sunglasses on and then no one will know who you are
Me: Why would they pass up the chance to get footage of randos walking around, buying pins and drinking?! Gold!
Me: Lol
Me: ……
Me: So they send people from standby… to the reservation line
S: um
Me: LOL LOL LOL they stopped the line
Me: at ME
S: WHAT
S: babe

S: this is
S: an injustice
Me: no it was a miscount
Me: they had room for three more
S: yay!
Me: So now I am in the reservation line
Me: They are putting armbands on us whut
S: um
Me: I have food and drink vouchers
S: The forecast for San Diego says 70 percent chance of rain in the next six minutes
S: Do you have to pay to go into this thing?
Me: There are purple cult members from Yellowjackets I can wait in line for Yellowjackets playing cards
Me: no it’s free

Me: before i wait for cards Imma find the pins
S: oh ok oh I saw those playing cards, I would be too superstitious to have that weird symbol in my home tho
S: you can sleep with the cursed stick person things
Me: Well I am not in line for those I am in line for some lower decks thing? I figure that must be it? But they are doing lower decks caricatures of people in there
Me: I see nothing else trek related in here
S: I saw the caricatures thing online, just ask someone about the pins
S: but it could be the same line yeah
Me: No on will hear me
Me: There is super loud music and a million people talking

Me: Lol some guy working here just said this far back in the lower decks line I won’t make it in time because they close at 459
Me: THIS IS ALL HILARIOUS
S: Crap I’m trying to find out about the pins
Me: 450 I meant
Me: Aaahh! Aahhhhh!
Me: The same guy came back
Me: Because I was still standing there
Me: And he asked if I was going to try to wait still
Me: And I yelled as loud as I could I was just looking for a pin
Me: And he said I got you
Me: And he took me to a corner
Me: And sneakily pulled one out of a fanny pack
Me: And gave it to me while looking to be sure no one was watching

Me: What is happening
S: Ahhhhhh!!!
Me: I could cry
S: I am getting ready to come to you
Me: What a story
S: I’m so happy for youuu
Me: They are tattooing people on here
Me: Wtf
Me: There are bathrooms I’m gonna go
S: Ok
S: I’m heading out!

And, my friends, here it is in all its glory:

A pin in the artwork style of Star Trek: Lower Decks, with Star Trek: Strange New World’s Number One in front of stylized streaking Constitution-class ships. On the top it says “Ad Astra per Aspera” and on the bottom it says “Join Starfleet”.

And if you don’t know what this pin means to me, from my favorite episode, from the transiest episode, from the franchise I love the most with my entire heart… Susan and I met writing Trek fanfic, we were sensitivity consultants for Star Trek Prodigy, and when we renewed our wedding vows with the real me, it was entirely Trek-themed. You can see that in the trans tuesday on A TRANS RE-WEDDING.
Facebook, Google doc, Podcast version

NONE of that would have happened if I hadn’t been ME on that trip. I’d have probably not bothered to wait in line, even though I still loved Trek in my pre-transition days. I’d have never actually talked to someone about it inside because I could not stand to talk to (or be perceived by) strangers.

And I’d have regretted it for my entire life.

And I think, maybe, that’s what all this is getting to… the biggest unexpected change of all.

Life, pre-transition, was nothing but a mountain of pain and awfulness. And regrets.

I never imagined a life with mental clarity and an actual sense of self and identity was possible.

And I never, ever imagined a life without regrets was possible, and look where I am now.

Through difficulties, to the stars – Ad Astra per Aspera.

Who knows what changes await you out there?

Go find them.

You won’t regret it.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

PS –

A post I made as we were checking out of our hotel at SDCC that reads:
Somehow I didn’t notice our hotel at SDCC had a fab full-length mirror I could have been using for selfies until we were checking out! I missed DAYS of full body shots, I have let myself down (I’m sure you’re all very disappointed, you def don’t get enough selfies of me (upside-down smile emoji))

A full-body show of me in our SDCC hotel room mirror, in a black Monster High tank top and jeans

TRANS VOICES 3: SCIENCE AND TIPS (interview with SLP Jein Yi) 

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we have an interview with the speech pathologist who helped change my life! We’re gonna talk all about trans voices and how to safely work on changing them! So let’s get into TRANS VOICES 3: SCIENCE AND TIPS.

This interview contains some of the science behind gender-affirming speech therapy, as well as discussion of sounds our voices make and how to manipulate them. Those are hard to explain in a transcript, so I highly recommend listening to the podcast version to get the most out of this.

What follows is a transcript of the interview!

Tilly: Hi! I’m Tilly Bridges, your host, and I’m joined by my writing partner, my best friend, my wife, our token cis representation, my partner in all things, because I keep dragging her along with me, Susan Bridges.

Susan: Hello!

Tilly: Hi! Our guest this week is Jein Yi, M.S., CCC-SLP (it sounds so fancy!), a Speech-Language Pathologist specializing in voice and swallowing disorders, with a particular passion for gender affirming voice training. Jein received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California San Diego, and her master’s degree in speech language pathology from Boston University. She holds a Certificate of Clinical Competence from the American Speech-Language Hearing Association and a license from the state of California.

AND she has the honor of being our first cisgender guest ever welcome, Jein! Hi!

Jein Yi: Thanks for having me!

Tilly: It’s so great to talk to you again. Because we spoke to each other for an hour every few weeks for 2 years. And honestly, that’s more than I get to speak to most of my friends sometimes. So I actually miss our little chats, you know, and you correcting me every time my voice slipped.

Susan: (laughs)

Jein Yi: (laughs) I miss our conversations, too. I… you know people don’t talk about it, but I feel like that’s definitely a thing. I think that’s a thing other speech pathologists probably go through too, where we think about our past clients and the conversations we’ve had. And you know, our clients touch our lives, too. And I don’t think that’s talked about enough either. So.

Tilly: yeah, because, you know, when we’re especially trying to get to using all of the techniques in conversation, we’re just talking. And so you’re asking me all these questions about what’s going on in my life, and you know, how was your Christmas, what are you and your wife up to with your writing careers? And so it was always just like it, was this personal discussion, you know? We talked about your vacation when you saw the turtles. It was so great. So

Jein Yi: (laughs) yeah, I’ve actually always been… kind of yeah, I’ve always asked you about your writing work. And-

Tilly: yeah.

Jein Yi: I’m just… I want to watch all those TV shows that, you know, that you’ve written, so…

Tilly: Hopefully!

Jein Yi: I’m so looking forward to – yeah.

Susan: But it’s funny though, because like… you know, in voice training…

Tilly: Yeah.

Susan: Like… speaking about things, it’s like thinking and talking. It’s like chewing gum and walking at the same time.

Tilly: That’s the hardest part.

Susan: So-

Tilly: Yeah.

Susan: It’s like an opportunity for you to mess up.

Tilly: Right, right.

Susan: Because you’re just thinking about-

Tilly: And she would always let me know when I did.

Susan: (laughs)

Tilly: It was very helpful.

Jein Yi: Very subtly!

Tilly: Yes, yes. Okay. So before we get any further, where can people find more about you online afterward if they would like more

Jein Yi: I have a private clinic, and I have an Instagram account that I’m working on with a few other colleagues, a couple of other colleagues, that has a little bit of information about trans voice training, gender forming voice training, and that is the account where I- once the book, whenever it gets published-

Tilly: Yeah yeah!

Jein Yi: -is where we’re planning to put it so I don’t know which one I should-

Tilly: I think- I think the Instagram is probably good, and people can just follow you there and… yeah.

Jein Yi: Okay, the Instagram handle is @affirmvoice. So A F F I R M V O I C E.

Tilly: Excellent, and yes, you have- you have a book coming out about trans voice training. Right?

Jein Yi: Mmhm, we do.

Tilly: That’s excellent.

Jein Yi: We don’t know which. Which way we’re gonna go with it yet, self publishing or through a publisher, so that’s still something we’re trying to figure out.

Tilly : Well, everyone should go follow you and keep an eye on that, because I think that’s gonna be very helpful. But I hope this episode will be really helpful for people, too. So I wanted to start off by asking how you got into speech pathology.

Jein Yi: You know I originally got into speech pathology thinking I was gonna work with children. I was in college. I was a psychology major. I was like, I’m not gonna be able to do much with this when I graduate, because that was back when we had our recession, (well we’re in another one), but back, when we had our recession. That was 2008, I think.

So I was like, yeah, no psychology degree isn’t gonna get me anywhere. What can I do that I’ll really enjoy? And I remembered in high school one of my friends’ moms was a speech pathologist. She came and spoke with our class, and I remember thinking it was interesting. So I volunteered at a private clinic near school, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

It was really amazing to watch these children come in so frustrated, you know, not having a voice, not being able to speak. And they were moving these little- they’re called pecs. They’re moving these little pictures around and communicating, they were having tantrums, and they were using these things to communicate. “Oh, this is what you wanted. Okay.” And you know, you can just see them calm down because they can communicate.

And I saw, like this mom was telling one of the speech pathologists at the clinic, you know, “For the first time my kid communicated with me. He told me he wanted to go to McDonald’s. We were driving by McDonald’s, and he communicated that with me. And I could not-” She’s like, “I was so excited that he communicated something to me. I pulled right in. I, you know, I got him McDonald’s. And now every time we go by a McDonald’s he communicates that, and I don’t  know what to do.” (laughs)

Susan: (laughs)

Jein Yi: But to me that was just so amazing, you know, giving- giving these, not even just the children, but the whole family, a way to communicate. You know they- just the amount it changes a person’s life. I just thought that was just so wonderful, so beautiful. So that’s how I got into speech pathology.

Tilly: That’s really cool that- that you’re able to do stuff like that for people, because you know, I’ve said multiple times on the show, and to you, that your help changed my life. But stuff like that is even bigger because it- you’re helping people in such an important way. So that’s- it’s really beautiful what you do. So I just want you to know that.

Jein Yi: Thank you.

Tilly: So what made you, after getting into speech pathology, what made you want to focus on gender affirming voice training?

Jein Yi: The hospital I work for…

Tilly: Yeah?

Yeah. They just told us one day. They announced to us, “We are going to start providing services for the transgender population.”

Tilly: Okay.

Jein Yi: “Speech therapy is going to be one of them. Have fun.” (laughs)

Susan: (laughs)

Tilly: Oh my gosh.

Susan: They’re just like, “Good luck with that.”

Jein Yi: Yeah, they’re like, “You’re a speech pathologist. You got- you know, you have your license. You should be able to figure it out,” sort of thing.

Susan: Wow. (laughs)

Jein Yi: Yeah, it was- and they gave us, like, a one day sensitivity training and that was it.

Tilly: Wow.

Jein Yi: And so, of course, me being the person that I am, you know I can’t just provide not-great care, right? Like I’m like, “No, I need to do better.” And so I did a lot of my own research. But truly, and I was always-  you know, I was happy to help, right? I was always happy to help, because as I said, I was a psychology major. And one of the courses was called “human sexuality.” And there was a panel in that class where they got people, all sorts of different people from the LGBT community, and they kind of had a Q and A session, I guess, is what it was.

Tilly: Sure.

Jein Yi: They were telling their story, and the people from the class could ask them questions. And I just remember being so moved by the- by what they were saying, you know. Again, I’ve never had any issues, you know? I’ve always- always was like, “They’re all people,” you know, whatever. Like, you know, we’re all we’re all the same humans, like, what does it matter?

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: But listening to their stories really moved me. So it was- you know, I’ve always been a supporter of LGBT rights and all of that. But yeah, once I was given the opportunity, I was like, okay, like, let’s do this. I’m going to do this properly.

So yeah, I did a lot of my own research, and then my first client, my first trans client… she was amazing. She was the best first client I could have ever asked for.

Tilly: Aww.

Jein Yi: I- I was very honest with her, and I told her, “Hey, this is my first time. Like I have never had any other experience with gender-affirming training. If you still want to work with me, I will try my best.”

And she was like, “Sure!” And she had done so much of her own research, she brought in so much. She gave me a lot of resources that I could check out on my own. She was the one that actually turned me onto Reddit, so that I could go through a lot of Reddit forums and see what the trans population- the trans community was, you know, was having access to, what they were thinking, you know. So that was really helpful.

And she brought in a lot of YouTube videos like, “Jein, what do you think about this? What do you think about this?” I was able to give her my kind of clinical point of view of, like, “I’m not sure this is a great idea, this I really like.”

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: And we’re able to put that together and do something for her. She ended up being happy with her voice, you know, so I’m glad. Now I feel like I know so much more than back then, and I wish I could contact her again and be like,”Hi, you know, I- I know a lot more now!”

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: But she’s happy with her voice, right? So that’s what matters.

Tilly: That’s what matters.

Jein Yi: Yeah, that’s all that matters. So I’m not gonna reach out for all of a sudden, you know, it’s- just as long as she’s happy I’m happy, so.

Tilly: That’s great. Okay, so I was wondering if you could get a little bit into the science of why the voices of people assigned male at birth, and people assigned female at birth differ. ‘cause I’ve talked about it a little bit in past episodes, but I am not an expert. So I was hoping that you could give, you know, people listening, a little bit of that- that information about why they’re different.

Jein Yi: Okay, so before puberty…

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: …there actually is not that big of a difference in the pitch range. It’s very similar. I’ve- I’ve looked up research and the range, like, they don’t even have a lot of research on it, because there really is not that much of a difference in the pitch range.

Tilly: Right.

Jein Yi: Now when puberty happens, life changes, right, everything changes.

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: And so during that time what happens to people who are assigned male at birth is that their vocal tracts- so it starts from the lips all the way down to our vocal cords. I wish I had a little picture to show you. (laughs)

Susan: (laughs)

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: All of that, it gets longer and wider. And then, of course, we also don’t know about the vocal chords kind of increasing in mass essentially… It gets bigger. Everything gets bigger. This is my where my whole cello and violin analogy always comes in. So if we look at a cello and a violin, same shape, or similar shape. But what’s the big difference? Cello is much larger. A violin is smaller. Violin has thinner strings. A cello has thicker strings, right? So you can think of the strings as the vocal chords. And you can think of the size of the actual instrument as your vocal tract.

The cello has a richer, deeper sound because of the thicker strings, and because the sound has a larger space to resonate in.

Tilly: Sure.

Jein Yi: The violin has thinner strings and a smaller space to resonate in, therefore creating a thinner, higher, pitch, a shriller sound. So for people who are assigned male at birth they go the route of the cello, people who are assigned female at birth- it doesn’t actually grow or anything, but you know it grows the normal progression. It doesn’t get especially bigger, especially thicker, or anything like that.

Tilly: Right. That’s fascinating stuff. I love it. It’s- I’m a science nerd, and so I think stuff like that is incredibly cool. And I think that understanding that, like where it’s all coming from, was really helpful to me, I think, just in understanding why my voice sounded the way I did, and- and you know you don’t really need to know that to work on changing your voice, but it definitely helped. It gave me a better sort of, I guess, mental picture? Not picture…”sound?” I don’t know- to shoot for. So anyway, I think that was really helpful.

Susan: So women’s also change, but not as much? Or-

Tilly: Cis women, you mean?

Susan: Yeah, because I’m thinking about, like, a kid’s voice and a woman’s voice, there’s not that much difference.

Tilly: It- I think it deepens a little bit?

Jein Yi: It does, it does deepen a little bit. Yeah, because as cis women get older, our voices do deepen a little bit. There actually- here’s an anecdotal thing, but when I first started working at my hospital and I recorded my voicemail greetings, I listened to that. And then when I switched hospitals a few years ago, it was like 9 years later, I listened to that recording ‘cause I had to reset it, and it sounded so different. It’s like, and then that’s like, (affects higher pitch) “Hi, you’ve reached Jein Yi,” and now it’s like (normal pitch) “Hi, you’ve reached Jein Yi.” you know- it does, it does change a little bit.

Susan: Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Tilly: Okay, so hormone replacement therapy doesn’t do anything for a trans woman’s voice. But it can deepen the voices of trans men or non-binary people who also take testosterone. And I was wondering if you get a lot of trans men or non-binary patients, or do you mostly see trans women?

Jein Yi: I also see lots of trans men, lots of non-binary people, yeah. All- everybody in the spectrum.

Tilly: That’s great. Because as one of the things that I learned, you know, going through the sessions with you is that it’s not just about pitch. There’s so much more involved to, you know, trying to use your voice to maybe alleviate dysphoria or get gendered correctly. There- there’s so much, you know, different things that go into it, which we’ll get into in just a minute. But-

Susa: Well I just wanted to say, like, that cello and the violin example. Also i takes more force and effort to play the larger instrument. And I’m thinking the voice is the same way, because, like an assigned male birth, like they talk more forcefully, like more effort.

Tilly: Right. Isn’t it- I think you told me that it’s the people who are assigned male at birth, their vocal folds close all the way, but assigned female at birth don’t. And so that’s why they sound breathier and- and assigned male voices sound a little more forceful.

Jein Yi: Yeah, it’s not 100% of the, you know, people who are assigned male at birth, or you know, it’s, I think, the number,

Susan: (sarcastically) You mean it’s a spectrum?! What?!

Tilly: (laughs)

Jein Yi: (laughs) But yeah, and- and research numbers vary. You know, it’s a range. But I think on average, it’s about like 70 to 80 percent. So yeah, the majority.

Tilly: So what are, or what do you think are, the most common pitfalls or struggles for people who are starting their voice training? Are there, like, similarities and things that people seem to always struggle with more than others?

Jein Yi: I think- I always, you know, start off by telling my clients, I don’t start with pitch. I know everybody wants to focus on pitch first, because that’s- you know, the most… how do I say… it’s most the- most in your face, right? The most obvious thing that you hear when you first start talking. So that’s, I think, for a lot of people like, I get a look (laughs)… until I explain that every other part of voice not only contributes, but also when we work on it, it will also indirect- not indirectly, but it does work on the pitch just that’s our goal. And then people kind of get on board. But that’s one of the one of the things.

Another one… let’s see what’s another common- common, I don’t know, pitfall- I’d say, I don’t know if this counts as a pitfall, but thinking or hoping that it’s, you know, once you go to speech therapy, it’s not something that you’re like- your voice isn’t something you’re gonna have to work on or think about anymore.

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: Yeah, that’s something that I always also have to kind of reiterate and emphasize throughout therapy. I feel like, you know, for voice training… I give you the tools. I give you the information. But the important thing, the most important thing, is for you to practice by yourself and to experiment by yourself. I’m really big on “you have to experiment.”

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: Because otherwise everyone’s gonna end up with the same voice, right? That’s not what we’re aiming for. We want you to find what feels most like you, and I can tell you that you know my goal is for you to change your resonance, or whatever. But even within changing the resonance, there’s so much flexibility, right?

Tilly: Yeah!

Jein Yi: So I want- I want my- my clients to find, in that space of changing resonance, what sounds- what to them feels like, “Oh, I like this. And this feels like me,” so.

Tilly: Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right on, absolutely, with- with the practice, because, you know, I practiced daily for a year after we were done. And it took me all of that time to where almost all of it is second nature now, but I always had to stop and think before I talked for years, you know. Because it- it just doesn’t come that easily. It’s really hard work. And-and I remember when we were going through the different techniques, and I record myself and listen back. And I would be like, “oh, that sounds really good,” or I’d be like, “that sounds- I think I did that right. But I don’t like that as much. Maybe if I pull that back just a little bit, I’ll like it better.”  So I think the experimentation is a really important thing, because, yeah, we don’t want everybody to sound the same. You just want to sound like what feels like you. So yeah.

Susan: I figure there’s probably a lot of people, too, who just want it to happen right away.

Tilly: Oh yeah.

Susan: Like, Oh, God, this is gonna take me! How long?

Jein Yi: Yeah.

Susan: So I’m sure that’s really common.

Jein Yi: Yes. It is.

Susan: I guess the depression sets in like, Oh, God! This is a lot of work.

Tilly: It’s so much work.

Susan: And you yelled a lot.

Tilly: I know!

Jein Yi: Aww (laughs).

Susan: She was like, “I don’t wanna practice!” But also I will say, you running role-playing games and having to talk for like 4 h at a time really helped get you…

Tilly: It did help my stamina.

Susan: It did.

Tilly: It was rough, though, for like the first year, because I would get so tired and my voice would sound so terrible.

Susan: And then you’d be all grumpy after they game me like, “I didn’t sound right. It’s so hard.”

Tilly: Yeah, yeah.

Susan: (laughs)

Jein Yi: Yeah, no that’s definitely a thing, too. And sometimes people- it doesn’t happen that frequently, but I have had people stop in the middle of- of voice training and be like, “Hey, I need a break from this for- for my mental health.”

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: And I totally understand. You know, it’s- it’s a process, and it’s a slow process, and it’s something you want so badly. But it’s not something you could rush. So yeah, I get that. It’s- it’s hard. And I feel for my clients, too, because I wish- you know, they asked me, “Jein, Is there anything that you can tell me, anything extra that I could, you know, make it go faster.” I’m like, I wish! I wish I could. I wish I knew. You know I’m always trying. I’m always adapting what I’m doing. I’m always trying to tweak it a little more to make it a little easier for my clients, a little, you know-

Tilly: Sure.

Jein Yi: But that part I haven’t been able to figure out yet, making it go faster,.

Tilly: Yeah, it was- you get this realization early on where you’re like, “I want to do this. Change my voice.” And you’re like, “Oh, God, it’s gonna take me forever.” And you have to really, you know, you have to really just be patient. The patience is really, really hard.

Susan: It’s like working out.

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: Yeah.

Tilly: Incremental gains. Tiny bits at a time.

Susan: Doing it over and over.

Tilly: Yup until you get better at it.

Susan: Yeah.

Jein Yi: My favorite Youtube video I always give all my clients, is the- the 5 year voice transition, trans voice lessons-

TIlly: Yes! I linked to it in one of my past ones, yeah.

Jein Yi: Ugh, I love that video, and I love her for putting up that video. (laughs) So yeah, it really does show her -her progression. And how, even after she got to a point where she was like, “Oh, yeah, my voice sounds feminine. Sounds good.” like she continued to work on it, and how it continued to change, and somehow it sounds more natural, even though it already sounded natural?

Tilly: Yeah yeah.

Jein Yi: I just think it’s such a great example. I’m so glad she has that video up in the world.

Tilly: So one of the hardest parts for me, with speech therapy ,was how much I had to remember before talking, and it took so long for it to become second nature. And I’ve mentioned this before, but I came up with my own little mnemonic device to help me remember all the different techniques and I wanted to go through them. And I was wondering if you could just give brief explanations to people on- on what those things are. So they know, like, all of the different things that you have to work on. So my mnemonic device was DISTERB, spelled with an E and not a U, and the D is for diaphragmatic breathing.

Jein Yi: So diaphragmatic breathing is, I mean it- the core idea behind it is the breath support. You want to make sure that you’re working with enough breath. Right? So-

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: You know, abdominal breathing. I say, you put your hands on your rib cages and try to breathe into your hands so that your hands, your- your rib, the cages expand into your hands. That is diaphragmatic/abdominal breathing. Most people, that doesn’t come easily to them. Most people are more used to a shallower kind of chest or shoulder-movement sort of breathing. So I usually tell people, lie down, put your hands on your rib cages and breathe in and out. And when you’re lying down most people will be using that sort of breathing, that diaphragmatic abdominal breathing. And then, once you get the feel for that, then try sitting up and see if you could replicate that, and then, you know, start incorporating other things that you normally do like brushing your teeth, or I’m taking a shower… something that you don’t have to think so hard about to do while you’re checking in with your breathing to see, “Am I still doing that? Yes, I am.” And you know eventually that turns into something that you do normally.

Tilly: Yeah. And it was really- see, that’s one of the things that I was so surprised by, because you don’t think about your breathing as being part of speech, but it gives you so much more air to work with when you’re talking. It made a really big difference, and it- it took me a while to figure out how to do it. Okay, so the I is for intonation.

Jein Yi: So intonation. What we mean by that is the- I just simply describe it as the ups and downs in your sentences. So for voice feminization, we look at increasing the intonation. So I always- My example is (flatly), “My name is Jein, and I’m a speech pathologist.” I could increase the intonation by saying (animatedly), “My name is Jein, and I’m a speech pathologist.” For masculinization, typical American English intonation tends to kind of start higher and go lower and flatten out is usually what I explain it as. So “My name is Jein, and I’m a speech pathologist.” That’s more of the masculine intonation, or the masculine-sounding, masculine-perceived intonation. And yeah. So we worked, Tilly and I worked on increasing that intonation ,having more bounce. I always tell people I don’t want you to sound like you’re talking to a 5 year old unless you want to. (laughter) But yeah, you know, we- in practice, that’s what we do initially, because your vocal cords aren’t used to stretching and moving so much. And we gotta teach your vocal chords how- you know, the feeling, and when when we kind of overdo it like that, then you learn the control so that you can fine-tune it to get it to the level that you feel comfortable with. Just you know, I always say… a little more animated, a little more bounce is what we’re aiming for usually.

Tilly: Yeah, you’re right, though, it was really funny, because at the beginning it- when I was recording and listening back, it sounds like you’re a kindergarten teacher or something, you know, the way you have to learn it. And so yeah, it’s really goofy.

Susan: And then you get to valley girl. (laughs)

Jein Yi: (laughs)

Tilly: Yeah. Right. Okay. So now, I don’t know if this one applies to other people as much as it did me. But the S was for slow down, because I was always going way too fast, and if you slow it down even further than normal speech. (speaks very slowly) If you go really slow, (back to normal speed) you can focus on all the different things as you’re speaking, which was really weird. So do- do you find a lot of people have that same issue?

Jein Yi: Yes, and you know, I understand why people do it, because they’re- they just want to speak naturally. They don’t want to sound- all the weird things that I make people do, they don’t want to sound like that.

Tilly and Susan: (laughter)

Jein Yi: So I get it. (laughs) But I’m always cuing my- my clients. “Okay, I want you to do that again. But I want you to slow it down so that you can really listen to yourself, or you can really feel for what we’re aiming for.”

Tilly: That was beautiful, by the way. I haven’t heard that from you in a long time. I’m all nostalgic for it, so.

Susan: (laughs)

Jein Yi: Aww! (laughs) Yes, that is a cue. That is a real cue that I give so yes, Tilly has heard that..

T: Many, many times! Okay, and the T is for tongue positioning.

Jein Yi: Yes, so, tongue positioning. I’m gonna be honest with you and say that this is a me thing. This is a Jein-method thing. (laughs)

Tilly: Okay.

Susan: Okay!

Jein Yi: I don’t think all, or if many teach a tongue positioning at all. But for me I found that- I have found that it works so-

Tilly: I was really helpful for me, yeah.

Jein Yi: Okay, good, I’m glad! So what we mean by tongue positioning is, you know, talking about the vocal tract, and- and resonance. The space that the sound resonates in, we want that to get a little bit smaller. And the space we’re really looking at is the oral cavity. So a lot- I think when you read online about any sort of resonance, they say “Oh bring it into your oral cavity. Bring it forward.” But the oral and nasal cavity tend to, in my opinion- it’s still pretty large, so to kind of make it a little bit smaller, I tell my clients to position their tongue a little bit higher. The back of your tongue should be pulled up so that it’s touching your upper molars. Now we’re not pushing it up so that you’re talking like (talks with tongue in the way) this. (speaking normally again) No, you’re not pushing it up. You’re just- it’s just resting up there. It just- you just want to feel the upper molars on the sides of your tongue.

Tilly: Yeah, it was really weird to get used to talking that way. But it really helpsDo you go the other way for voice masculinization? Do you try to get them to like, drop it any, or do- do most people already keep it dropped as sort of the default position?

Jein Yi: I think that most people, while the front of their tongue, the tongue tip rests… up? The back of their tongue doesn’t, it’s- it’s not completely down. That’s not completely up, but it’s not completely up either. I don’t usually tell people about tongue positioning when I’m working on voice masculinization. I usually- you know how we did ee-ifying?

Tilly: That’s the next one!

Jein Yi: Well I do aw-ifying for voice masculinization.

Susan: Ahh, okay.

Jein Yi: And in doing “aw” your tongue automatically has to drop. So yeah, I don’t target it specifically. It’s not somewhere- something where you have to tell yourself to hold it in a certain position. But it, you know- it’s indirectly talked about later on.

Tilly: Okay, yeah. And then, so the E is for ee-ifying vowels, or aw-ifying. So could you explain what that means?

Jein Yi: Yes, so. Consonants! We can’t really change the sound of consonants. (laughs) But vowels are where we can really change the sound,  and vowels are where we can really change the resonance. And again, the size and shape of where things are vibrating. So when we say “ee” versus “aw,” why doesn’t everybody try it right now? (laughs)

Susan: (laughs)

Tilly: (laughs) That’s right listeners, do it at home.

Jein Yi: (laughs)

Susan: So “ee” is like using less of the space inside your mouth?

Jein Yi: Mmhm. Because when you go-

Susan: So then “aw” is using more of it…

Jein Yi: Exactly.

Susan: …which would deepen, versus… I se e.

Jein Yi: Mmhm.

Tilly: You’re catching on!

Susan: I gettin’ it!

Jein Yi: When you say “ee,” everything gets smaller in your mouth.

Susan: Uh huh.

Jein Yi: Everything tightens, it’s smaller. Versus when you go “aw,” your jaw drops, you have all that space. So ee-ifying your vowels, I guess, as an example would be like, you know, if I saw-

what’s one of our sentences, Tilly? (laughs)

Susan: (laughs)

Tilly: Oh it’s been years now, I don’t remember! there were so many, I had all those sheets!

Jein Yi: What was one that my clients always like? “I adore the lore behind Al Gore” is one that everybody really likes. (laughs) So-

Susan: That’s hilarious. 

Jein Yi: Normally, it’s “I adore the lore behind Al Gore.” Now, when we ee-ify it you tighten your- you know, you put your mouth in the position of “ee,” “eeee”, (the vowels are shorter, lighter, and brighter and sound very different, but I don’t know how to make that clear in transcript, sorry!) “I adore the lore behind Al Gore.” It changes the sound, right? “I adore the lore, I adore the lore,” it’s lighter, it’s brighter. So that’s that resonance change. And then for aw-ifying, for our people who want to masculinize, for aw-ifying, (laughs) “sweet dreams are made of these” is what I like to use, so (normal vowels) “sweet dreams are made of these.” If I aw-ify it, “aw”, “awww”, (the vowels sound deeper and more resonant, again hard to explain!) “sweet dreams are made of these. ” in the video, you can see my mouth (higher and brighter) “these” instead of (lower and more resonant) “these.” I’m not closing my jaw as much. I’m leaving a little space in there, so that there’s more space to resonate.

Tilly: Excellent.

Susan: That is so cool.

Tilly: Isn’t it?

Susan: Yeah!

Tilly: The science with it is so amazing. Okay, so then R is resonance-

Susan: Which you already said. (laughs)

Tilly: Right, but if we could talk a little bit about that, because that was the hardest thing for me, and sometimes I feel like even now it still slips. You probably heard it slip in this call, and you’ve been very kind to not call me on it.

Susan: (laughs)

Jein Yi: (laughs) I’m not going to- you know, I’m not here to listen to your voice and judge, right?

Susan: No, that’s work.

Tilly: That’s right.

Jein Yi: (laughs) But also, I always say, right? It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about holding something perfectly for 100 percent, nobody does that. My own resonance changes as I’m talking, that’s not the point. So… in talking about pitfalls, that is something that I do see. You know, of course, it makes sense, right? It’s a goal you’re working towards. So people want to do it perfectly. 100% of the time. And I always tell my tell my clients like… it’s not about doing it perfectly 100% of the time. Nobody can do it 100%  of the time. You know, again, like, even when I’m talking, my resonance changes, and I’m not working on anything. So it’s just getting to a place where you feel like you’re doing it consistently enough where the sound of your voice is- it makes you happy. So… going back to resonance, right? Sorry. (laughs)

Tilly: Yes!

Jein Yi: Resonance, I always say, is the most important part of of changing your voice. And I break it up into stages, and resonance is a stage where it usually takes the longest to achieve but it makes the biggest changes in your voice. It’s where your voice can actually more permanently change. Now, “permanent” used loosely, because if you want it to be permanent, it will be permanent. If you don’t want it to be, it won’t be. But, yeah, resonance is, you know, it’s where your voice- or where it, where the sound, or of the space and the placing of where the sound is vibrating. It’s- it’s how we manipulate the size of our oral cavity to create the sound that we’re aiming for.

Tilly: Right. And in voice feminization like I went through, that’s trying to get that- feel that vibration sort of up by your lips, and that was really hard for me, because I don’t- even now I still don’t- I barely feel it. I don’t know. I think a lot of people can feel it better. It was really hard. I’m like, where is it? Am I doing it right?

Jein Yi: So, yeah, so yeah, that- the vibration part is really difficult for people to feel. And I think, for, like singers, you know, they’re trained, right? They’re trained to be able to put their voice out, and all different- like they have the chest voice, and head voice, and whatever. I’m not a singer, so I get-

Tilly: Me neither.

Jein Yi: I get why it’s hard. Because when I was learning it, when I was just learning oral resonance in grad school, me  trying to do it was just so difficult. But essentially, when we go “mmm” with an “m,” “mmm” we feel the vibrations on our lips, sometimes in our nose, like anywhere in that facial area, we say okay, we got that forward resonance. Now for voice feminization, I actually- again, I said oral cavity, still pretty large. I like to make it a little bit smaller. It’s the soft palate where I usually kind of tell people to try to get the vibrations.

So the soft palate, if you put your tongue up behind your teeth and run it all the way back, you’ll notice it goes from hard to soft, right? So hard palate, soft palate. The soft palate is kind of where I like to get people to get their vibrations for voice feminization, if they can feel it. It’s a very subtle…

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: …vibration. And then for a voice masculinization, I kind of try to bring it down a little more into the chest. So I usually tell people “put your hand right here,” and when I say chest, it’s not so far down, it’s actually just like right below your neck, and if you go “ee” versus “aw” I think you’ll really feel the chest vibrating more.

Tilly: And then the B was for breathiness.

Jein Yi: Ah, breathiness. (laughs)

Susan: (laughs)

Jein Yi: This is something that my voice feminization clients really struggle with, because most don’t want a breathy sounding voice, which I get. So I always kind of start off with a disclaimer like, this practice voice is absolutely not at all the voice I am aiming for for you, unless this is what you want. Breathiness, kind of like I mentioned with the intonation, you know, I start off with the breathiness because, like sounding really breathy, like- (super breathy voice) like talking like this-

Tilly: (super breathy voice) Yeah.

Jein Yi: (back to normal voice, laughs) Which, as you can see, Tilly does not sound like that right now, right? (laughs)

Tilly: No, I don’t!

Susan: But you would do it.-

Tilly: I did.

Susan: And I would not be able to hear you ever, it was very frustrating!

TIlly: When I was working on it, yeah.

Susan: When you were working on it.

Tilly: (super breathy quiet voice) And my voice was like this all the time-

Susan: Like, I can’t- okay.

Jein Yi: (laughs)

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: Yeah, so it’s another, you know, kind of training step. It’s to be able to control the breath and the air flow. I feel like most, not all, but most of my voice feminization clients come in not-not having enough air coming out when they’re speaking, and it’s just full vocal core closure. Well, again, I can’t really say this because I didn’t look inside, but like just simplifying things, just simplifying things, it sounds like there is not a lot of air coming through and it’s all voice.

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: And so we’re basically teaching how taking your vocal cords ,and your respiratory system, you know, just let out a little bit of that air while you’re voicing, and that’ll create some of that lighter kind of voice that we associate with a more feminine voice. So the example I give is, if- so, my voice tends to be actually pretty- mine’s more on the breathier side, just normally. But  if I were to do kind of like this like (affects more forceful voice) full, you know, I’m really trying to be forceful like this is how I’m talking (back to normal voice) versus (affects very light and breathy voice) like, yeah, really want to talk breathy. And I don’t know. This is my like, yoga teacher, voice or whatever…

Tilly and Susan: (laughter)

Jein Yi: (laughs, still breathy) Namaste, right? (back to normal voice) As someone who has never taken any of the classes. (laughs)

Susan: (laughs)

Jein Yi: And then there’s this middle ground where, the way I’m talking right now, where there is some of that lightness and that breath coming through, but it isn’t this like, pushed, forceful quality. And I think that’s that quality that people do want. They don’t want to do the breathiness part, which again I get. But I teach it as a way to teach you control, because I want you to be able you to choose how much breathiness you want- you can have in your voice, right? So I want you to be modulate instead of me getting you to a point where, yeah, we’re at, like, somewhere in between. And we’re good to go. I want you to be able to choose, and you to be able to experiment with it and see what you like the sound of the best.

Tilly: Yeah, the thing that breathiness helped me the most with was not hitting the vowels in the middle of words too hard because I was- I would always push to get the vowels out. And so the breathiness, I don’t want to talk like that, but it helped train me to hit the vowels softer and let more air out, so that it’s not so forceful on every vowel, which helps with the “not sounding so much like a man,” for me, so.

Okay, so I know speech therapy isn’t covered by insurance for a lot of trans folks that are out there. And for reasons that I’ve talked about in multiple episodes of this show, trans people are much more likely to be financially strained than cCis people are, and many of them can’t afford it. And I see a lot of them trying to work on their own, on their voices based on, like, Youtube tutorials. But I’ve seen some of those, and I’ve just cringed at what they were telling people to do. And I’m so afraid people watching are gonna end up hurting themselves. So I was hoping maybe you had some tips that you could give folks on how to safely practice on their own.

Susan: Although maybe we should start with the damage that people can do to them.

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: So I think now, it’s pretty widely known that the- you know the swallow-hold, you know, swallow and holding your larynx up, is something that can cause a lot of strain. But back when I started in the beginning, that was a very common thing that people taught.

Susan: Oh, that’s interesting.

Jein Yi: Yeah, to raise your larynx, and and then, therefore, hoping to raise the pitch as well. So you swallow, (ultra high and strained voice) hold, and, as you can see, like (normal voice)I’m trying, and you can see that- how it changed my vocal quality.

Susan: Yikes.

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: And that was some- I’m obviously not doing it as well as some people, because I have seen some trans women have- you know their voices sound very feminine, and they sound- I think it sounds great. But for a lot of people that does not work. That’s the thing it works for some, but it doesn’t work for others. And this is one that commonly, for the people it doesn’t work for, causes a lot of vocal strain. I have had people who have practiced on their own, and they and can tell it’s really, you know, it was hurting their voice. And so they ended up coming into speech therapy, and we had to do normal voice therapy. Not you know, gender-affirming voice training? But normal voice therapy in the beginning, so that I- we could, you know, get that strain out of- out of the throat. And then we started working on gender-affirming training.

So yeah, definitely strain or sometimes people will, you know, try to talk in a pitch that- you know, pitch we can raise. But it has to be gradual, and I feel like if that isn’t something that the person was aware of, they will kind of start at a pitch that’s a little too high for them, and that causes strain as well. Some people will just end up having a lot of throat pain. So my biggest kind of take home for anybody is when you’re doing these, you know, practices- practice things on your own, whether it be through podcasts, Youtube, Reddit, just trying things on your own… if it’s uncomfortable, you know, to the point of pain, stop! You’re either not- It’s either not for you- that method is not for you, or you’re not doing it the way that it was meant to be done. Because of probably lack of thorough instruction, most likely, because people, you know, they usually give instructions in a way that makes sense to them. But they, you know, they probably haven’t talked to a lot of people, and- and have seen, like the common issues, in a way, so that they could kind of reword their instructions, right? So if you’re feeling pain definitely- that’s just- stop that one and try to try to find something else.

And as it- when it comes to discomfort, I think, Tilly, you could probably speak a little better too but there are different types of discomfort right? Like there is a “I’m working hard,” and “I’m a little fatigued,” sort of like “my throat feels a little tired” sort of discomfort, and then there’s actual like, “ooh, this doesn’t feel right” discomfort when you’re practicing. So I think learning kind of the difference between the two is probably going to be really helpful in, like, self-practice. So I don’t know, Tilly, if you could kind of elaborate on the like- “this feels like I’m doing something, but it’s a little tired. So this is my sign rest,” sort of feeling, I don’t know.

Tilly: Yeah, I think-

Susan: Did you ever really screw up?

Tilly: What do you mean?

Susan: (laughs) Like, go back and she’s like, “No, you were doing that wrong.”

TIlly: Oh, sure, all the time.

Susan: Okay!

Jein Yi: (laughs)

Susan: See, that’s important to know.

Tilly: Yeah.

Susan: People should know that.

Tilly: Right. Yeah, you mess up and you-

Suan: You need feedback.

Tilly: You do. But yeah, I think the best way to describe it, probably- it’s like any other muscle in your body where, like, you can tell if you’re like- if you were working out, or you know, like, if you’re moving and your arms get super tired, you know, when they’re tired from use. And you know the difference between that and, “Oh, my god something’s wrong with my arm.”

Susan: Right.

Tilly: This really hurts, right.

Susan: It’s like working a muscle versus pulling a muscle.

Tilly: Right. And I found there were times when other stuff got in the way too. Like if I was really congested, I couldn’t do it, or it would hurt. It would feel like I was straining. There were a couple- I think there was even one time you stopped our session like 5 min in, because you said, your voice is strained. You’re- this is- you’re gonna hurt yourself if you keep going. So I think the most important thing is to just yeah, like you said, pay attention to that. And if you’re tired, if your voice is tired, your throat is tired… to rest it, not not keep pushing. Because then you just are gonna really mess things up.

Jein Yi: Yeah, I really always, you know, tell my clients I understand that this is something that is really important to you. And I understand that you want this to happen sooner than later. But pushing through the pain, and you know, trying to make it go faster is only going to lengthen the time of our sessions, and like the number of sessions, because then we’re gonna have to undo the strain, and whatever new habit that you learned. So always, always listen to your body.

Tilly: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for being here, Jein, and thank you again for helping make my life better and making-

Jein Yi: Aw.

Tilly: I couldn’t have made this podcast or my audio book, which is out now, the trans allegories of the matrix – begin transmission– I couldn’t have done any of those on my own without you. So I- you know, where my voice used to be, I could never have stood listening to myself for that long. So you made all of this possible. So thank you so much.

Jein Yi: Aww.

Susan: And I’m sure there’s people out there, too, who are scared about even looking into voice therapy. They have no idea. So I’m thinking this is going to help demystify it a little bit.

Tilly: I hope so, yeah.

Jein Yi: I hope so.

Susan: Because sometimes you don’t even know what you’re getting into, right? It’s like, it’s helpful to like at least like know, and to be like okay, let me sit with this a little bit and think about it.

Tilly: Yeah.

Jein Yi: No, no, Susan, that’s actually a great point. Because when my clients come in for an evaluation, this- I essentially this, what we talked about in our podcast today, like that’s- I give a quick like crash course of like this is what it’s gonna look like. It’s an up quick outline right? Like this is what it’s gonna look like. Do you have any questions? Or do you feel uncomfortable about about anything?Like that’s- yeah. But that’s definitely it. Like I want, I give my clients kind of like the big picture first, so that they know what they’re getting themselves into. And if it’s not something they wanted, then, like they don’t have to come back for the next session. You know, it’s their choice. So yeah, you’re right. It’s a- it’s yeah, I’m sure it’s demystified it for some people.

Tilly: Well, I never thought that my voice could sound the way that it does now, or that I would love it as much as I do. So thank you again, because you really you- really did change my life for the better.

Jein Yi: Aw, well thank you, Tilly. Those are very nice words, and it’s- and to me, you know, it’s just- it makes me happy, and it makes all the hard work, you know, always feel so worth it when I know that my client and the person in front of me is so happy with the voice that they have, so.

Tilly: Well, I’m so glad that there are wonderful people like you out there helping make things better for trans people.

Jein Yi: Thank you.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

TRANS VOICES 2: HEARING THE TRUE YOU

Trans Tuesday 163 – Voice 2, hearing the true you (discharged from therapy, voice timeline, constant work, DISTERB) (revision of 104)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This is the second part of our discussion of the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life! Welcome to TRANS VOICES 2: HEARING THE TRUE YOU aka I GRADUATED VOICE THERAPY OH NO WHAT DOES THAT MEAN.

Please see PART 1 of our discussion on voice, and voice therapy, and all the work I’ve been putting in for so very long. I began feminizing voice therapy in November of 2020!

Before we get into it, I need to talk about the response to Trans Voices 1: Gendering. Because what became readily apparent is that there are a whole lot of unqualified individuals offering “trans voice services” despite not remotely being qualified to do so.

I’ll also talk in a bit about the prevalence of YouTube tutorials on voice training, which are almost universally also from people not qualified to be providing that training. And listen, people want to help. I understand that. I do too.

But my method of helping was to talk about my own experiences with it, and you can see right in last week’s essay I made it abundantly clear: I am not a speech language pathologist. I’m not going to offer to coach you in it because I AM NOT REMOTELY QUALIFIED TO DO SO.

And almost nobody offering tips or classes or “coaching” is either, but they largely don’t bother to tell anyone that. And I don’t know if that’s because they’re being exploitative, or if they just genuinely don’t know.

Someone having degrees in music theory or who offer singing lessons are also not qualified to provide gender-affirming voice therapy. Nor are those who coach in how to do accents for voice acting.

Are you going to do that accent every time you speak for the rest of your life? NO. Are you going to sing everything you say for the rest of your life? NO. This is what I think people don’t understand.

In gender-affirming voice therapy, you are using muscles you’ve never used before (or used in this way before) and you have to build up strength in them and do it safely, because you are literally changing the way your muscles and parts of your body work.

When you need to do that for any other muscle or part of your body, do you go to someone who seems fit and sporty? Or do you go to a trained physical therapist? When you can’t see well, do you go to your friend with 20/20 vision or do you go to an optometrist?

When you have a cavity, do you go to your friend with good teeth and a drill at home? Or do you go to a dentist? When you need gender confirmation surgery, do you go to a friend who had it? Would you even go to someone who specializes in open heart surgery?

Of course not. You’d go to a surgeon who is trained and specializes in the care you need. VOICE IS NO DIFFERENT. You are changing the way your body functions, and you have got to be careful with what you do and who you listen to.

If you do the wrong things, you could end up damaging your voice. And then you’ll need voice therapy to try and fix the damage before you can even get to gender-affirming training.

Trans people don’t generally have much money, believe me I know. Gender-affirming voice training with a speech pathologist is not covered by all insurance and may be unaffordable without. So we have to do what we can on our own.

But you can get tips from speech pathologists. You can listen to the experts and not just someone who’s done it before or who knows a lot about music. Before you pay someone hundreds or thousands of dollars, PLEASE: check their credentials.

Find someone who is QUALIFIED to give you SAFE and effective care. Speech language pathologists are medical professionals. Find one trained in gender-affirming care if you can. Singing, accents, music theory are NOT the same thing.

This is your body, and you’d go to an expert to fix any other part of it. Voice is no different, so please please please be careful. Be safe. I don’t want you to get hurt. Okay, on with today’s topic.

In late August of 2022, I had my last session with my second voice therapist… ever! I received this follow-up report afterward:

8/30/2022

Total number of visits: 28
Subjective: Patient seen for speech therapy video visit follow up. Patient agreed to treatment.

Objective: Patient averaged G3 in conversation, but reports that during practice, she averages A3 more often than she does not. She presented with thin vocal quality while maintaining feminine resonance in 90% of trials.

Assessment (including progress towards goals): Goals met.
Plan: Patient discharged from therapy.

Some of the more musically-minded out there may understand this better than I, but A3 is the average note I was shooting for in terms of pitch. Not that I’m speaking in a monotone, but my voice goes above and below that and that’s hopefully the center line.

That’s where I was at when I was discharged, and now, over a year later, I find I’m at the high side of A3 on average, whereas before I was on the low side.

I was basically hitting that when I remember to do all the shit I have to do! DISCHARGED FROM THERAPY WHAAAAAAAAAAAT. And it wasn’t that I needed to hit that A3 average to get discharged or anything, it was all based on ME and what I’m happy with.

Pitch work was the very last thing I did with my voice therapist. Well, let me back up, because in the original thread I told you about “sirens” and the like, which are part of pitch work.

As I mentioned in the first Voice topic, I had two voice therapists. The first only for a few months, and she had me starting with pitch.

But the second, who I had for the vast bulk of my time in therapy (and who I’ll have an interview with next week), had me start with everything ELSE first, and then we did pitch last.

And frankly that was a much better way for me because while shifting pitch isn’t what I’d call “easy,” it’s nowhere near as difficult as everything else.

We spent the least amount of time on pitch, honestly. It came pretty quickly. I CAN get my voice to where I want it to be, where it makes me HAPPY to hear it. That’s something I never thought would even be possible, honestly. I owe my therapist so much, she helped me work a miracle.

In fact, if it weren’t for her I would have NEVER been able to turn trans tuesdays into a podcast, or to be able to record the audiobook of my book BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX! Available now!

If you listen to that audiobook, my second voice therapist gets a special thanks at the end because, truly, my ability to record my book in my own voice would not have existed without her. She made it all possible. She’s the one I’m interviewing next week!

Quick aside, but in my discharge note it says I had 28 therapy sessions (over a period of about two years). That doesn’t tell the whole story, but it doesn’t count the sessions with my first therapist.

But also, that’s just the time talking with the voice therapist in training sessions, and doesn’t at ALL show the hours upon hours upon HOURS I spent doing voice homework and practicing. Daily. Every every every damned day.

And I suspect those 28 sessions are something I wouldn’t have been able to afford if it wasn’t covered by my insurance. I know trans ladies whose insurance doesn’t cover it, and they can’t afford it and are just stuck. Or they use YouTube tutorials and do the best they can.

The danger with that is that it’s very easy to hurt or even permanently damage your voice if you do the wrong things, and most of those tutorials are not from actual voice therapists. And that’s not great! Voice therapy NEEDS to be covered by insurance for trans people.

But that’s part of why I’m doing that interview with her next week, because hopefully she can give you tips on how to safely practice until you can hopefully see a licensed expert of your own.

For many trans people, voice is a vital part of addressing/lessening our gender dysphoria, as much as HRT or anything else can be. My voice therapist is actually releasing a book on it with some of her colleagues, and you can bet I’ll share that everywhere once it’s out.

But back to ME, because this is my thread. 😌So what does it mean that I got to that point? I’m done and good and my voice will be perfect forever?

Oh my no. No no no no.

It means there’s not much else my voice therapist could do for me. She had taught me all the tools and techniques that she could. So it became a matter of me CONTINUALLY PRACTICING until it’s all second nature. I used to wonder if it would ever happen.

The good news is IT DID! I’m so amazed and excited by it, but it came after well over another YEAR of daily practice after being discharged. So you’re looking at over three years of constant, daily work to get there.

Stamina was the last thing to arrive, as even when it was mostly second nature I just couldn’t maintain it for a very long time. Now I mostly can! But it  still adds up and can falter, especially when I’ve talked an obscene amount.

You can hear this in action in the podcast versions of the nine-part discussion on the trans allegory of Silo season 1 (which begins HERE). We recorded all nine episodes in the span of two days, which took about three hours each day. But the day before we started recording?

I ran one of my tabletop role-playing game sessions, where I’m basically talking for something like four hours straight. Under that much strain I think ANYONE’S voice is going to falter and sound weird and tired, and mine certainly does and you can easily hear it.

BUT it caused me almost NO dysphoria even when so tired and strained! And I cannot tell you how HUGE that is. I don’t like how it sounds, it doesn’t sound like ME, but it doesn’t sound like HIM, y’know? It’s pretty amazing.

It’s SUCH A SLOW SLOW SLOW SLOW SLOW PROCESS. And through the entire thing you’re hearing every mistake you make and have to fix, because the best way to improve is to record yourself during practice and listen back.

It’s really hard to deal with, especially early on in the process when your voice still sounds mostly like your old deadvoice, and so recording and listening back to yourself exacerbates your dysphoria. But you NEED to do it to be able to hear and correct where you messed up.

So my forever homework was to record myself EVERY DAY, playing each one back and listening to how I did before I went on to the next one. Again and again and again, over and over and over.

Until I would MAYBE get to the day where I hit it right every time, all the time. A very big maybe. One of the hardest parts was not knowing if I’d ever get it to where it made me happy to hear all the time.

Because with the tools and techniques I have, my voice will KEEP CHANGING over time. I don’t know where it’ll be a year from now, or five years from now. Here’s a video with a transgender voice timeline my therapist shared with me. Listen to five years of difference!

So while I’m actually really happy with where my voice is now, I may like it even more in the future… which is pretty damned exciting. And while it’s all second nature now, for years it wasn’t. And it was a struggle to remember everything I needed to.

So I came up with a mnemonic to help me remember every part of it: DISTERB.

D – diaphragmatic breathing

I – intonation

S – slow down

T – tongue positioning

E – ee-ifying vowels

R – resonance

B – breathiness

I can’t really explain all of those to you here without making this thread so much longer than it already is, but the point is these are all different skills/techniques/issues I had to remember before talking.

Imagine having to remember ALL of those things before you speak, EVERY time you speak. It’s SO much it feels like your brain will melt. And then you’re also trying to think of what to say and HA HA OH IT IS SO FUN. Notice PITCH isn’t in there!

Those are the much more difficult things it took me years to get to the point where they’re second nature. Now, I probably couldn’t talk the way I used to if I tried. Actually though, I kind of did?

We’re big fans of What We Do In The Shadows over here, and before the show there’s a little title card and an announcer who, in a very deep and kind of hilariously “doesn’t this sound evil” voice says the title of the show and gives the content rating.

And it’s so weird and idiosyncratic, and… I don’t know why, but once I just blurted out a mimic of the way the announcer says it, in the same deep pitch. And not only did it emotionally feel TERRIBLE… it HURT. IT PHYSICALLY HURT.

My vocal folds and tongue and all those muscles that contribute to making sound have changed enough from my years of practice that now UNDOING it is as painful as trying to sound more feminine used to be when I was pushing things too hard. It’s a strange and fascinating thing.

I think most of you may know this, but in case you don’t: my wife and I run one of the oldest and biggest podcasting companies, Pendant Productions. We’ve been making scripted podcasts longer than just about anyone (and they’re freakin’ good too, but you don’t have to take my word for it).

I only mention that to say that there are tons of recordings of my voice through the years, and I can’t do anything about the old ones. They’re just going to be that way forever, even if I don’t listen to them again. BUT it led to a unique opportunity.

Ever since we started, way back before the flood of media that made it impossible to keep up with everything, I still felt that people choosing to spend their time listening to OUR shows meant something important. And so I‘d personally thank them at the end of every episode.

That means there are probably 500+ episodes across 20 shows out there right now that have a thanks from me at the end. And I’ve always said the exact same thing: “For more information, visit tillystranstuesdays.com. Thanks for listening.”

And for SOME reason (I honestly do not know why!?) I have kept every new version that I ever recorded. And as my voice began changing through voice therapy, I would record a new one because it sounded better than my old voice, even if it didn’t yet sound great.

I’ve stitched them all together. And so you can hear me saying the exact same thing over time as I progressed through voice therapy, which helps you really notice the different ways my voice changed and evolved as I learned and practiced more.

My voice therapist listened to this and said she could actually pinpoint exactly what techniques we were working on during each recording, because the sounds are that specific to the process.

Most of these spike my dysphoria really bad, ESPECIALLY the first one with my “normal” old deadvoice. If I never hear that again it’ll be too soon.

The voice timeline.

In order:
1. deadvoice
2. four months into therapy
3. eight months into therapy
4. eight and a half months into therapy
5. nine months into therapy
6. eighteen months into therapy
7. two years into therapy/Sept 2022
8. two and a half years after I began voice therapy/March 2023

That’s been my voice journey so far. Maybe I’ll do another update in a year or whenever I notice things have noticeably changed in some way again. I’m SO curious to know what I’m going to sound like a year, two years, five years from now.

Please be sure to see next week’s trans tuesday interview with my speech pathologist, who I hope can go more into the science behind it all and provide safe tips for people to practice and work on your own.

But I want to say to the trans folks out there who find this as daunting as I did…

Change. Is. Possible.

It may be the most difficult thing you’ve ever had to do (it was for me), but if you put in the time and the effort, remarkable things can happen.

It’s so hard to be patient, but you can’t rush voice changes or HRT or ANYTHING involved with transitioning, really. Every single part of it is an exercise in patience.

Be kind to yourself and don’t give up. You can get there. You’re worth it.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

PS – part 3 is here!