Trans Life

TRANS VOICES 1: Gendering

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re discussing something that can be a huge problem for a lot of trans people who transition as adults. It’s something that’s eaten up SO MUCH of  my time and energy and I bet you have no idea. We’re talking about TRANS VOICES: GENDERING.

I routinely see so many trans people struggling with this, so I wanted to do a series on my own experiences. I’m going to talk about my early experiences this week, where I finally ended up next week, and then we’ll culminate with an interview with my speech pathologist!

A reminder that I’m giving you MY experiences and perspective only, and I don’t speak for all trans people or all trans women. I’m also not a speech/language pathologist, so don’t expect a deep dive into the science of it all.

But I did work with a speech pathologist, for years. And all of that was to help me change my voice so I hopefully don’t sound like a cisgender man. The goal was twofold: make me feel more like ME AND reduce the gender dysphoria my voice gave me.

But it’s also to help me be gendered correctly as I move through this world that is often unkind (or worse) to trans people. It’s also something of a safety issue, because if you look like a woman but sound like a man, you can risk opening yourself up to even more abuse.

And here’s where it gets complex, because NO ONE should have to have any voice other than the one they WANT, just to feel safe and accepted for who they are. Plenty of cis women have voices with a lower pitch and may struggle in a similar way.

And it’s bullshit. All a trans person should have to worry about is sounding the way WE want to, and to hell with whatever anyone else thinks. But we don’t live in a world where that’s possible, which brings us to the an event I want to talk about.

I was on a Zoom call that was audio only. At the time I didn’t have an avatar or user photo, so on audio-only calls it just showed my name in the square where the video would otherwise be. Not that a photo would necessarily have helped anyway, as I do not “pass” as a cis person.

For more on how fraught that entire concept is, see the trans tuesday on MISGENDERING AND PASSING.

After an hour and a half of lively, interesting discussion, someone else on the call said something to the effect of, “we’re all men here,” and my heart sank to below the bottom of the ocean. I was dealing with the emotional fallout from that for the rest of the day.

It wasn’t malicious, it wasn’t intentional misgendering. And the host of the call, who is a very good friend of mine, immediately corrected the guy who said it and told him I’m a woman, so that I didn’t have to (which is PEAK allyship IMO).

It is, in fact, a small but simple demonstration of PROACTIVE ALLYSHIP (aka being an accomplice), which there’s a whole trans tuesday about.

At that point I’d been in voice therapy for at least six months. It involved long calls with a speech pathologist every few weeks and daily vocal exercises to try and train myself to speak differently than I have for my entire life.

It’s hard. It’s SO hard. And you sound so absurd when doing it. You do these “sirens” with your pitch going up and down in one tone, over and over again. You practice holding a tone at a certain pitch for different lengths of time.

OVER AND OVER AGAIN. You practice speaking like you’re sighing, and then practice speaking without the sigh but hopefully with your vocal folds in the same posture to change the sound of the words.

You go through word lists time and again, trying to change your inflection and intonation. And when your voice gets tired you blow raspberries. Lip trills relax the throat and vocal chords. You can also just talk with your tongue out! Ludicrous. But it helps.

And when you have to do this in front of other people, or talking to them on the phone like all my voice therapy sessions have been… if you had much of an ego before, this will shatter it into a million tiny shards, let me assure you.

The change is incremental. It’s slow. It’s climbing a mountain with one arm tied behind your back. It’s frustrating and feels like trying to change the immutable. Because hormone replacement therapy does NOTHING for a trans woman’s voice.

And on this call I’d talked to this guy for NINETY MINUTES, and he could see my name was TILLY, and the others on the call referred to me as Tilly, and HE STILL THOUGHT I WAS A DAMNED MAN.

All my work, all the hours, all the practice, and even when paired with my name his brain said, “nah, nope, that’s a dude.” And you get to feeling like… why do I bother? What’s the point? Will I EVER be seen and heard as who I am? What a horrid spiked pit to be thrown into.

So what’s the science behind voice therapy? Again I’m not a professional here, but some of it is incredibly fascinating to me. Cis men are generally taller than cis women, but if you think in terms of musical instruments…

…the bigger or longer the instrument, the deeper the sound. To say nothing of the way testosterone will also cause your voice to deepen (hey look, another reason it’s super important to let trans kids have access to puberty blockers).

I talked all about that in the trans tuesday on TRANS KIDS AND THE INTAKE EXAM.

But that’s not all! People who are assigned male at birth have vocal folds that close all the way. So when they speak, they have to force more air through the folds to make sound. Which makes AMAB voices sound stronger, more curt, maybe more forceful.

People who are assigned female at birth have vocal folds that DON’T close all the way. So when they speak, AFAB voices tend to be a little breathier and softer and maybe a little more drawn out, because more air gets through and they don’t have to force the folds open.

A lot of the work I did at the beginning of voice therapy, in addition to trying to learn to speak from the front of my face and not from deep in my chest, was trying to train my vocal chords so I could speak a little softer and breathier like people AFAB generally tend to.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a science nerd and I find that absolutely fascinating. But it can’t just be fun and cool science, oh no. Because we live in a society, and how that society treats us impacts every facet of our lives.

When I first talked to my first voice therapist (I only worked with the first for about six months, and then worked with the second for two years), she felt compelled to give me a disclaimer: a lot of this is sexist. A lot of it is very sexist. And she hated it.

AND YET some of those very things are a good way to help a trans woman be gendered correctly. Like the way cis women often pitch UP at the end of a sentence? So everything might sound like a question? Even when it’s not?

And if you do that fairly consistently, in a lot of people’s brains they’ll read that as a woman speaking?

And how much bullshit is that? HOW MUCH?

ALL OF IT (no question mark).

When I first began voice therapy, I was sent a huge packet. It’s got some scientific explanations for things, most of it is large and varied word lists I used for different exercises to practice, but when first going through it… a few pages made my head explode.

Like this one:

A worksheet titled “Highlighting Vocabulary Differences.” Text reads:
The following scene played out between a man and a woman. Read through the scenario and determine which character was the man and which character was the woman, based on the vocabulary used. Highlight the words that are stereotypically gender-specific.
Character A: Hi! How are you?
Character B: I’m doing good, you?
Character A: I’ve been fantastic! It seems like it has been so long since I’ve seen you. What have you been up to?
Character B: Eh, not much. Just the same ol’, same ol’. How about you? How was your weekend?
Character A: My weekend was great. I bought a new outfit on Saturday and got a brand new hairdo on Sunday! I was afraid my stylist wouldn’t cut it right, but he did.
Character B: Oh yeah, it looks good.
Character A: Thanks. Did you have a nice weekend?
Character B: It was pretty good. I went to this restaurant called “Umami.” I liked it. Character A: I’ve been there! Oh my goodness, their food is so yummy. I have to go back soon.
Character B: Yeah, I liked it a lot.
Character A: Well, it was great to see you. I have to go to class now.
Character B: Yeah, it was good to see you too. I hope to see you around sometime. Have a good one.
Character A: That would be wonderful. Bye!

And this one:

A worksheet titled “Highlighting Vocabulary Differences.” Text reads:

The following scene played out between a man and a woman. Read through the scenario and determine which character was the man and which character was the woman, based on the vocabulary used. Highlight the words that are stereotypically gender-specific.

Character A: What are you going to order?

Character B: I’m not sure yet. Have you decided?

Character A: Uh-huh.

Character B: Oh, what are you going to have?

Character A: I’m gonna have the number eight.

Character B: Ooooh, that looks good.

Character A: Yeah. I’ve never had it before.

Character B: Ewwww! There’s a hair in my water glass! Yuck!

Character A: That’s not cool. Tell the waiter.

Character B: I will, I just hope he doesn’t think I’m being rude.

Character A: Nah, you’re just pointin’ it out. No big deal.

Character B: Okay. Hmmmm, I think I will try the number six. That looks sooooo delicious!

Character A: Yeah, I saw that one. You’re gonna have to lemme try it.

Character B: Absolutely not! Hee-hee. I’m just teasing.

Character A: Hah. You better be.

Character B: Okay, where is our waiter? My tummy is rumbling and I want a new water glass!

But if you thought those were bad…

A worksheet titled “Highlighting Style Differences.” Text reads:

The following scene played out between a man and a woman. Read through the scenario and determine which character was the man and which character was the woman, based on their communication style. Read the entire script before making your decision.

Character A: I had a difficult day at work today. My boss was so grumpy. She really hurt my feelings.

Character B: You might need to talk to HR about her.

Character A: I don’t know if I need to do that. It’s just that she always makes me feel so inadequate. I feel like I try so hard but it’s never good enough for her.

Character B: Well, what does she tell you to improve upon? Why don’t you start working towards a new goal to improve upon each day?

Character A: I am constantly trying to improve myself. I feel like she doesn’t listen to me though. I wish she were just more sensitive to other people’s feelings when she talks to them.

Character B: You know you’re a hard worker. You should just focus on what you’re doing right when she’s being that way.

Character A: Yeah, I know. It’s hard though. I guess I’m too sensitive sometimes. I wish I could talk to my coworkers about this, but they all seem to love her.

Character B: Hmmm. I don’t know what to tell you.

Character A: I’m not looking for advice. I’m just telling you I had a rough day. I need someone to listen.

Character B: Okay. I’m listening.

Character A: Well, that was pretty much it. That’s all I wanted to say. I just feel like I’m trying so hard and I’m not appreciated.

So! What have we learned? Women are submissive, ask questions, complain, talk about superficial things. Men are assured, forceful, declarative, concerned only with “important” things. Yikes yikes yikes HOLY SHIT YIKES.

To my first AND second voice therapist’s credit, neither ever used or even referred to anything remotely close to what you see on those sheets. But the fact IT’S INCLUDED IN THE PACKET AT ALL IS ABHORRENT.

And this is what we’re up against. At times it feels like we can conform to every horrible, harmful, sexist belief about women and MAYBE be gendered correctly (but still maybe not!), or we can not even try and maybe NEVER be gendered correctly.

What a horrible spot to be put in. We just want to be ourselves, but here’s yet another aspect of our lives where society is telling us if we don’t do X exactly as they expect, we’ll never get there.

No person, trans or cis, should have to change their voice (or anything else about themselves) just to be seen as who we truly are.

I’ve always had trouble getting all my thoughts out when talking, because my brain moves so much faster than I can speak and I can’t keep up. And I’m always trying to find the best way to say what I want to say, probably because I’m a writer and value clarity.

So now on top of all that, I had to think about my breathing, and keeping my resonance in my face, and trying to not force air through my vocal folds, and where was my pitch, and I had to vary that pitch so it didn’t sound monotone…

…and I had to do it the right way so I don’t hurt myself. And then I had to try to keep my vocal folds relaxed so more air could get through and I’m not forcing words out and making harder sounds like a cis man would.

And it felt like when someone asked me a question, I’d need two minutes to do all of that first and then maybe I could try to reply. But you don’t get two minute gaps in conversations! So my brain and body were moving at light speed trying to do all of this at once.

Just speaking, at all, was exhausting. It DID get easier, which we’ll talk about next week. But it’s just so much work. It’s so hard. And it took YEARS. And I don’t think anybody even knows what it’s like if they haven’t had this experience themselves.

The only ill will I hold toward the person who misgendered me on that Zoom call is that he made a gender assumption he shouldn’t have. Well… he also didn’t bother to apologize. So, okay, I’m still mad about that and now I prefer to just never be around him.

And I would like to please caution ALL OF YOU out there to never make any assumption about someone’s gender. Not based on their hair, or their clothes, or their voice, or the way they walk, or any damned other thing.

What’s the benefit to you? Getting to skip a moment of uncomfortableness while you ask them their pronouns or wait for them to reveal it in passing as you talk? Oh no, how horrible!

The alternative is making someone, possibly trans, possibly cis, feel like they’re not being seen for who they are. And you don’t know how much work and time and energy they’re putting into trying so, so hard to be seen correctly.

Here’s a super lovely poem by Ari Drennen on this very topic. It was everything I needed right when I needed it.

A tweet from Ari Drennen that reads: Nearly every trans woman I know is self conscious about her voice. When I hear a trans woman speak I think about all the hours in the bathroom mirror or alone in the car, nudging the sounds we make closer to something that sounds like home.

There are two screenshots of a poem she wrote, which read:

When I hear a trans woman’s voice, Ari Drennen

Whenever I hear a trans woman’s voice

I think of the seed once buried deep

Below the winter snows, salt from the

Road, and dirt kicked up by the tires

of the cars it carries. Green new growth

Unfolding luxuriously towards the summer sun

One time in college, a kindly old

Professor took me aside after his

Lecture to let me know that the questions

At the ends of my sentences made me

Sound less bright, as though knowledge

Is a bristling martial march and not the

realization that most of what’s in our head

Would not survive first contact with

A question. I thanked him,

Shut myself in my room, practiced

Sounding certain. Boys are certain, Right?

Men are certain.

When I hear a trans woman’s voice

I think of a spring-loaded silver

Ballerina in my grandmother’s attic,

Twisted taut since some forgotten niece’s

Forgotten birthday, dancing by herself

For the pleasure of the moonlight.

I practice sounding uncertain.

I practice being uncertain.

I unfold my words from the space

Within my chest and let them flow

Through the tiny circles I form

With my mouth. I think of the soft

Chatter of spring songbirds and

The glow of chamomile tea sipped

Under plush blankets. I think of

Blooming dandelions and lips

Stained by wild raspberries.

Understand how difficult this can be for us. And stop assuming people’s gender, based on voice or appearance or anything else. It’s the kind thing to do.

And keep at it, trans friends. Over time you can move mountains.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

PS – part 2 is here!

CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This past weekend I got to do something as myself for the first time, something that used to give me a ton of anxiety and that I was very bad at. So here we go INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD.

A few primers so you can understand where I’m coming from. If you’re not familiar with GENDER DYSPHORIA, that’s the place to start.

It also ties in a lot with the first trans tuesday on CONFIDENCE, and why I never had any pre-transition, and then discovering that suddenly had some.

And it’s also part of A PANDEMIC TRANSITION, and the ways that has impacted me and the things I can or cannot do.

Okay, so what the heck happened? This past weekend a good friend who lives on the other side of the country was in town, and had a get together for all his friends who live in LA as he doesn’t get to see us very often.

We were meeting in an outdoor rooftop bar in Hollywood, and Susan and I felt safe enough, pandemic-wise, to attend (which is great, because we adore said friend and missed him last time he was in town).

But as the date approached I realized this was a place I’d never been before. And outside of our friend who was hosting, it was going to be entirely people I’d never met before. And I started to wonder… what the hell this was going to be like.

Because despite coming out publicly in the summer of 2020, I’ve not had this experience before. I’ve gone places as myself, obviously, but only to, like, the grocery store or the bank or the pharmacy or to pick up food from a restaurant.

Due to all the restrictions the panettone has placed on us, I have not gone somewhere I’ve never been before, that would basically be full of people I’d never met before, since actually becoming the real me.

Pre-transition, events like this filled me with dread. I was incredibly socially awkward, which in my naivete I’d chalked up to just being a super introverted nerd. In reality, though, just an absolutely massive portion of that was due to my dysphoria.

As mentioned in the Confidence thread, a lot of that dealt with not wanting to be perceived (even though deep down I always wanted to finally be seen as a real person), because I did not know how to properly act out the part of the cis man that society told me I was.

I was terrified I’d do something that would cause me to be spotted as a total fraud, and then I had no idea what would happen.

I mean, in reality, probably nothing, because who meets someone for the first time and comes away with the impression of “that person seems to be faking their gender?”

But that fear was the overriding thing pumping through my veins. And the kicker is I didn’t even know that’s what it was. I just knew I HATED new places, and new things, and new people, and the feeling was so awful I wanted to dig a hole to crawl into and never ever come out.

In just writing about it I can still feel that inside me now, the sense memory is so strong. Because it permeated every human interaction, every new place I went, FOR MY ENTIRE LIFE.

All while being in utter despair because deep down I wanted nothing more than to experience things as myself and be recognized AS MYSELF, even though I didn’t know who or what that was, and couldn’t have told you that was what I was feeling!

Gender dysphoria is an absolute butt.

So as the date of this get together drew closer, I started to get anxious. But I was surprised to discover that it was ENTIRELY DIFFERENT than all the anxiety I was familiar with in situations like these for my whole life.

This new anxiety was much more mild, and honestly maybe it wasn’t even anxiety. It was an intense curiosity, and okay there was maybe a little bit of fear mixed in, but this was… different. It was the opposite of what I’d felt every time before.

Because now I was afraid that someone there would clock me as trans (I don’t think I pass, I shouldn’t have to, and I can’t even figure out if I would want to outside of the safety of it). See the trans tuesday on MISGENDERING AND PASSING.

Not that I believed any of the people our friend had invited would be transphobic (though one never knows where/when/how these things will manifest), but it was a public location. There would be employees and other customers at the bar.

But mostly I just had zero idea what to expect. Everyone has these situations come up, but they’re probably for much bigger things, right? Starting a new job, traveling to a part of the country or world you’ve never been, things like that.

All I was doing was driving a few miles to meet a friend. But everything I’ve ever experienced in my life wasn’t me, it was me behind ten pounds of lead and buried under two tons of concrete, wearing a costume of a man that didn’t fit, playing a part I couldn’t (and didn’t want to) act.

And when all of that is removed, because I’m just there as… ME…

The world is entirely brand fucking new.

It helped to have Susan there with me, an anchor to the familiar and loved. It also doesn’t hurt I have no doubt she would completely fuck up anyone who gave me shit for being trans, because she’s amazing like that.

Related: cis folks, BE SURE the trans people in your life know you’ve always got their backs, and that you will not tolerate anyone fucking with them. It means the world just to know we’re not out there alone.

Anyway, I felt hyper-attuned to everything around me. The world was stunning in its beauty. The decorative lights wrapped around a tree. The vibrance of the sunset (which honestly was probably only a B- by Los Angeles standards) almost left me breathless.

Every color was deeper and more intricate, every sound and voice and feeling was amplified. I was seeing and hearing and feeling them all for the first time.

But unlike my first forays into the world as myself, where EVERYTHING felt overwhelming as I was still adjusting (I’ve talked about that before, but I’ve done so many of these I can’t remember in which one, so you’ll have to go digging if you want more on that)…

This wasn’t overwhelming at all. In fact, it was… hm, what’s the word. Life-affirming? Tantalizing? I wanted MORE. I still do. It’s like I have this little reservoir inside me that’s been mostly empty my whole life, and suddenly things started filling it up.

A very sweet and tipsy lady asked me to take a photo of her and her mom, who I think she was giving the full Hollywood tour to, and I didn’t feel like I wanted to run away screaming? I took several for them and we talked and it was… nice? How??

A waiter complimented my boots, and I thanked him and talked about how they were great if I needed to stomp someone’s ass in a sci-fi movie, and he laughed. We chatted a bit. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW REVOLUTIONARY THIS WAS.

I didn’t have to force myself to. I… didn’t feel like hiding?? WHAT?? I didn’t stumble for things to say or not know what the right thing to do was, I just… interacted with him like a fellow human being.

Pre-transition, my response to him would have been a slight smile and nothing else, or maybe a quiet “thanks” as I looked away or pretended to get a text or that something off to the side just caught my attention, in the hopes he’d leave and stop talking to me.

And not because he was horrible or awful, but because *I* felt horrible and awful due to all the aforementioned bullshit gender dysphoria saddled me with. I’m sure a lot of people thought I was a bit rude because of that, but if that was the cost, so be it.

I mean I hated the thought of people thinking that way about me, or that it might have hurt their feelings, but I felt trapped and like there was nothing else I could do. And now that’s just gone.

IT’S

JUST

G O N E

Another thing that’s bugged me is that I have so few photos of myself with Susan. I mean we have tons of photos from our life together, but none of them are ME. PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS were always tough for me, as they are for a lot of trans people.

And they’re part of how incredibly difficult and painful THE PAST can be, even the happiest memories I have.

So getting photos of ME with the woman I love most in this world is really important to me. But if we’re stuck at home because of the pantheon, that’s not really possible. Kinda weird to keep taking photos of us together on the couch, y’know?

Besides, we have so many old photos together from places we went and things we did, and I want more like those. I want REAL photos of that stuff. Of US.

I can’t get full-body shots at home because our apartment is too damned small, so Susan took this one. Someone ELSE took a photo of me. And while I don’t love it, I don’t hate it. It causes no dysphoria. It’s just an okay photo of ME out in the world! And I need those too.

Susan even made me lean over to get a photo with this owl. Why? Because it’s weird. And goofy. And so am I and I’m so glad she told me to, and I LOVE this photo. That someone ELSE took of me! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Well I’m a fully-realized, self-actualized human being living HER life in the world for the first time, and it’s fucking magical. *I* hugged my friend for the first time, and not as the shell of a person buried inside a mountain and trapped by societal expectations.

I made some new friends. We had great discussions and I had… fun? Is that why people do this? You can… ENJOY new experiences and meeting people?

The world can be tremendously beautiful once you’re finally in it for real, friends. I’ve missed so much for so long. Do whatever it takes to get there. It’s more worth it than you can possibly imagine.

I want to dive head-first into the world and soak it up. The sheer beauty of it all, the cosmic dance of light and matter forged in the heart of stars and congregated here for all of us to experience together.

Here I am. And here I’ll stay.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

CONFIDENCE

Welcome to #TransTuesday! There’s something that drastically changed for me, from pre-transition to now. And I think it holds true for the majority of trans people, if not all of us. So let’s talk about: CONFIDENCE.

All the way back when I was a wee little Tilly who did not yet know she was Tilly, I suffered from an incredibly strong and almost painful shyness. My mom always told me I was just shy and that’s all there was to it.

But then her preferred method of dealing with things was to never really probe beneath the surface, and being transgender is allllllllll about probing beneath the surface to find what’s really underneath, and why.

Now in addition to reminding you how I do not speak for all trans people or all trans women, I want to explicitly state that a lot of people ARE shy for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with being transgender.

I’m no psychologist, but it seems pretty clear it can be caused by any number of things, and some people are probably very happy and content to be shy and that’s all wonderful. But I’m trying to figure out why I specifically was shy, which ties into my trans-ness.

My earliest memory of being shy was being in my mom’s arms… I don’t know how old I was, but I must have been small for her to be carrying me still. We were outside, I think at a relative’s house, and she was talking to the lady who lived next door.

And this lady was just ENAMORED with my eyelashes, because they were so long and she kept saying how she wished she had eyelashes like that and jokingly asked if she could steal them. And lemme tell you yes, they ARE very long, and you should be jealous 😌

But I kept turning away from her, burying my head in my mom’s shoulder. I didn’t want to look at her. I have this intense memory of just wishing she’d stop talking to me and stop looking at me. And she wasn’t being mean or cruel, I just… could not stand the attention.

And that feeling followed me my entire life, and never left. Until it did. After I transitioned.

I’m much, MUCH more open and willing to talk and not just sit in silence. Because I’m more comfortable in my own body now, and don’t have that layer of having to pretend to be someone I’m not blocking me from the world.

Which is ironic, because now that some certain men are seeing me as a woman (hooray!) they’re instantly interrupting and talking over me and/or repeating something I just said as if it were their own idea (c’mon dudes, really?).

It’s good they actually see me as a woman… enough to treat me in the sexist way they treat all other women, I guess? A mixed bag!

If you want to see my newfound confidence in action, see this Trans Tuesday’s follow-up, CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD aka WHAT IS HAPPENING, when I got to truly experience the world as myself and was surprised to discover what a different experience it was.

What’s very important for you to understand at this point is how difficult it was for me to deal with not wanting to be seen for my entire life, pre-transition. High school speech class was a nightmare. Family parties were torturous. Even FRIENDS’ parties were torturous.

I WANTED to go. Because these are people I care about very much! And yet I’d get there and hide in a corner and feel mostly miserable, and I can feel it welling up inside me now, that exact same feeling. The sense memory is so strong.

As an aside, this is something that DIRECTLY shows up in The Matrix, and I wrote a whole book about those films’ trans allegories called BEGIN TRANSMISSION and you prolly already know that but I’m never gonna shut up about it. Get your copy today!

But I was constantly on edge. If someone I didn’t already know talked to me OH GOD I’d have to respond and I didn’t know how or what to say, and what if I gave something away (to both them and myself) about my true self and then I was exposed for the world to see?!

It was harrowing. And what I want you to take from this is if before I transitioned, we’ve ever met, worked together, had lunch, or even moreso, become actual friends… I had to work through ALL of that, constantly fighting dysphoria and myself because I thought you were worth it.

The first time I met Susan (in person), I drove 300 miles to where she was going to college… we met online writing Star Trek fanfiction and YES if you know us that’s probably not surprising.

When I got there, I drove around her dorm like two or three times. There was plenty of parking, mind you. But my heart was jumping out of my chest. I couldn’t even think clearly. And yes, part of this is that we’d already been talking for months and I knew I loved her.

It wasn’t even rejection I was worried about, she was very excited to see me. But I didn’t know if I could handle it in person, again because of the huge wall between me and the world around me. And I never wanted ANYONE to break through that wall as much as her.

For more on how GENDER DYSPHORIA kept me from people and the world for my entire life, see the trans tuesday thread on it.

And you can see FREEING UP MY BRAIN aka LUNCH WITH TILLY for more on how the entire world opened up to me once dysphoria dissipated.

But you can ALSO see the trans tuesday on TRANSPHOBIA IS ALWAYS WITH US (that old dysphoric feeling) for ways in which, even now, anything remotely similar to old dysphoric experiences can bring back the dysphoria sense memory and cause problems.

So after I parked at her dorm, I was shaking as I walked over. She was on her way down and I was just going to leap out of my own skin, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

But I fought through it, stabbed my flight response right in the face, because she was worth it to me. And to everyone out there I had any kind of relationship with prior to coming out, you were important enough for me to fight through the fear, too.

But there’s more to this whole not wanting to be seen thing. I had the remarkably bad luck my entire life to be the one who was always forgotten. It wasn’t really bad luck though, because that’d be a weird thing to follow me around all my life without some kind of concrete cause.

I was picked last for every game/sport/competition/ANYTHING through all of school. And listen, I certainly wasn’t the best at everything, but I was pretty damn good at a lot of things! Didn’t matter. Almost always last.

And a lot of times it wasn’t intentional, they’d just… forget I was there. Even in organized little league! (when my step-dad wasn’t the coach, anyway) “Oh, you didn’t get a team? Huh.”

When I was probably around 10 years old I went on a fishing trip with my friend’s church. The adults helped make sure every kid caught a fish. Except for one.

Guess who they forgot?

I’d be the person at restaurants that the server just forgot to ever bring food for. Once in high school I went to a fast food place with friends, and they all got their food, sat down, and finished eating before I’d even gotten mine.

I was just standing there at the counter, waiting. Everyone ignored me. EVERYONE.

Yes, I could have just spoken up and politely asked if my order was coming soon, but then the shyness would hit because THEN THEY’D BE LOOKING AT ME AND TALKING TO ME and I’d have to put the facade up and figure out how to navigate it.

And again, even something as simple as that terrified me and made me want to crawl into a hole and hide for the rest of my life.

But in my long journey of self-discovery, I realized that the reason I was always forgotten is because I’d learned to adapt to my inability to cope with being seen by finding ways to make myself as small as possible.

And I don’t mean only physically, though that was certainly part of it too. If I slouched and half-hid behind a wall, or sat alone in the corner, if I didn’t make eye contact… people would ignore me and I wouldn’t have to deal with it.

Usually I didn’t even realize I was doing it. It was a subconscious coping mechanism I’d developed to protect me from the awful feelings every interaction would bubble up inside me.

But the paradox is it KILLED me to not be seen. I WANTED to be seen, as myself, so very badly. But at the same time OH GOD DON’T LOOK AT ME OR TALK TO ME OR I HAVE TO PLAY CISGENDER MAN AGAIN.

And to not even know that that’s what the feeling was, or why I was feeling it, added an extra layer of confusion and awfulness on top of everything. I didn’t know why I was like that, and I wished so hard that I wasn’t. But had no idea what to do about it.

It was such an awful spot to find myself in, wanting people to get close but not knowing how to let them. I was actively keeping myself from forming close friendships (or making it exponentially harder on myself), and they were what I craved so much.

It’s such a lonely, isolating experience. Again, I did have friends as a kid, and I do now (and again, please know how important you are to me that I fought through all that for you). But that wall was always there, and I was alone on the inside.

It’s like there’s a void inside you, but also all around you! It’s so difficult to explain. It was horrible to experience, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

But I don’t feel afraid to talk to people anymore, because I don’t have to hide anything. I’m just… me. It actually EXCITES me. I look forward to it. A lot! And that is such a weird feeling that I don’t really know how to process.

And I noticed something else that ties in with all of this, too. It’s a small thing, but it is ABSOLUTELY a symptom of this entire thing with not wanting to be seen, and not having any confidence at all, and the ways that’s all changed now.

I never, ever signed my emails with my name if I could avoid it. I used a couple weird nicknames at first, and okay that probably makes sense, tying in to how my old name wasn’t me and gave me bad feelings.

But shortly thereafter it evolved into only this:

-j

That was it. I could live with that. ANY of you who received emails from me pre-transition, go look. 95% chance that’s at the bottom of them. I can see you nodding from here.

Once, someone asked me why I used j instead of J. Well hey, good question. Why WOULD I?

I didn’t have an answer, other than the J felt… pretentious. Why the HECK would the capitalized letter of my first name, which actually SHOULD be capitalized, feel pretentious for me to use?

Because I felt I didn’t deserve it. Because that wasn’t me. And again, not every way of making myself smaller and less noticeable in the world was physical.

So I went with the lower case version, because that felt closer to “me” than the capital.

But, uh… look, sometimes this stuff is so obvious it’s kind of embarrassing you never saw it before. And if you’d like to see an EXTRA embarrassing way this happened, check out the trans tuesday on THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE (that we were trans).

So hey friends, if you have recent emails from me, post-coming out, go see how I signed them. For the rest of you, here we go.

Are you ready? Sure you are. We all know what’s coming.

I immediately changed to signing them:

-T

That was entirely subconscious, I assure you. I didn’t INTEND to do it, it just happened. Almost immediately!

I’m taking up space in the world. You can see me.

PLEASE SEE ME.

It’s been so long alone. Hi, hello, I adore you and you mean the world to me. 💜

And I’m deserving of the space I take up in the world… and a capital first letter of my real name, just like everyone else.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

PART 2 is here!

COMPLIMENTS

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re discussing something I never anticipated but was absolutely delighted to discover after transition. It’s another way a whole new part of life opened up for me. So let’s talk about COMPLIMENTS.

There’s two sides to this, and both are actually an unexpected BENEFIT to being out as trans, that I’d never realized would be a thing. So for my entire life, I’ve dug ladies. I don’t mean that I’m attracted to them (though I am), but just… as a concept.

You can see the way this complicated discovering my own transness in the Trans Tuesday on DISENTANGLING SEXUALITY FROM TRANSNESS.

So! Ladies, am I right? The hair, the clothes, I love all of it. And yes, okay, sure, like I said there were maybe some… SIGNS that I was trans that I was missing my whole life. In fact, you can see the Trans Tuesday on THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE.

I also feel there is actual, real, important value in men being able to appreciate those things too. Well, without thinking that makes them gay or somehow weak, and all that horrid toxic masculinity bullshit, anyway.

But even before I had a name for toxic masculinity, all those years I spent presenting as (and thinking I was) a man, I thought there was nothing wrong with my appreciation of that stuff. And I was correct, there IS nothing wrong with men appreciating that stuff. AT ALL.

HOWEVER, I always felt… I don’t know, stymied? restrained? in expressing that appreciation. As a kid, it’s because your peers (and possibly parents) immediately labeled you gay and an outcast. And of course there’s nothing wrong with being gay, even if it were true.

I mean I AM gay, but I’m a gay woman. Not a gay man. But all kinds of gay are good! Increase the gayness in your life, Try Gay Today!

But for a very nerdy, awkward kid uncomfortable in her own body for her entire life, the last thing I wanted was to be MORE outcast than I already was. So I just kept my trap shut about girly stuff I liked. Repression and ostracization forces people into the closet, y’know.

As an adult, it didn’t take me long to learn that all too often (and the ladies out there can already see this coming), compliments on anything like clothing or hair or makeup or… ANYTHING coming from a (seemingly) cis man is something else entirely.

Because of course it usually means they’re sexually attracted to you or want something from you, or might soon harass you, or worse. I mean it’s basically the same thing as men whistling and yelling at women on the street. It’s awful and needs to stop.

And there was absolutely NO WAY I was going to be someone who contributed to that. Even if my intentions were just to say I really liked their dress or thought their hair looked amazing, I’d just keep it to myself (or talk about it with Susan).

Because there was no way for any woman I was talking to to be aware of my intentions. And if I tried to explain that it’d just come off weird and I’d seem like even more of a creeper.

And I don’t know if I realized that because I’m trans and always have been, or if I was just actually keenly aware of how a lot of cis men treat women (which, again, I suppose I could have been more aware of as I’m a woman, even when I didn’t consciously know it yet).

I’d like to think it’s because I try to be aware of people and their feelings, and the last thing I ever want to do is make someone uncomfortable or upset (am I kind or just… midwestern? I sincerely hope it’s the former but… you can’t take the midwest out of me, either. Ope!).

But I knew the comfort of the woman I wanted to compliment was more important than her knowing some random (apparent) guy thought her eye shadow looked amazing. So to the cis guys reading, if you haven’t figured that out yet, please heed these words:

A woman feeling safe is more important than your need to tell her how pretty you think she is, or how sexy her voice is, or how much you like her clothes or hair or anything else. Really. Don’t force your thoughts on random women. I promise you we don’t care.

This carried over for me even with my lady friends. I might venture to say I liked their shirt or something, but usually only if it had something geeky on it I was a fan of that we could then talk about. Outside of that, I just couldn’t. I was terrified of upsetting them.

ONCE while waiting to pick Susan up from work, I waved to a friend that walked by, and noticed her boots were just amazing. Just like fucking amazing, I’m telling you. And I dug them so much I texted to let her know that I thought they were great.

And then instantly chastised myself for it and was terrified it’d make her feel awkward or unsafe or any number of other things, despite us actually being very good friends. She replied and thanked me and all was well.

But that was enough to confirm for me I should never, ever do it again. It just wasn’t worth the risk. But now… now my friends know I’m not a dude, and don’t see me as one, and so… maybe it’s okay?

I still don’t think I’d compliment a total stranger on something, especially given I don’t exactly pass for a cis woman (passing is a whole other post for… another time), and you never know how someone’s going to react to trans folks.

But that’s entirely flipped the script, because now I’m worried for MY safety if I try to compliment them on something, especially given the (entirely bogus, made up, and completely unsubstantiated) view that the right wing peddles that trans women are all sex criminals.

Anyway eventually I felt comfortable enough to tell a lady I’ve been friends with for many years that she looked cute in a photo she posted. Another lady friend posted a pic from her wedding, and frankly she looked fucking amazing, and I told her so.

Neither of them felt uncomfortable with me doing so. It just seemed like it was maybe… fine? And an okay thing to do?

And honestly that’s something I never could have expected or even hoped for. And I’m thrilled. I love making other people happy, or being able to bring someone a smile, or letting people know I think they’re absolutely killing it at what they do.

And I’m not shy about that with their work, like art they create or stories they write or anything like that. But now I also feel I can maybe tell them if I think their hair looks amazing today or they look great in that photo they’re not sure about.

Annnnnd that’s a side-effect I never considered, but I’m so glad to find it’s happened. It feels like I can connect with friends who are ladies on a level I couldn’t before.

When you’ve spent most of your life feeling like you were drowning and cut off from everyone around you in the world, any level of connection feels extra special.

The other side of the compliment coin is that pre-transition, whenever *I* got complimented on anything having to do with my appearance or what have you… I couldn’t run away fast enough.

And it’s not just compliments in general, because if you compliment Susan’s and my writing, well, you are right to do so and I will thank you very much! (listen, we’ve worked very hard at it and have some level of confidence, don’t ruin it)

But any kind of comment at all on anything having to do with how I looked, even if it was just “hey, cool shirt!” made me want to run and hide. No no, don’t compliment that, it means you’re LOOKING at me and this weird man costume I don’t know how to wear!

I talked a bit about that, and how I always shrunk to make myself as unnoticeable as possible, and how allllll that changed after transition, in the Trans Tuesday on CONFIDENCE. At the time, though, you’ll see it was still mostly speculation on my part.

But I was right (because I’m very smart) and you can see that play out in the Trans Tuesday on CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD.

Anyway I never got a lot of compliments on my appearance or anything physical, I was an average looking dude at best. And I mean I put no effort into it because being a dude was everything I hated, soooo…

Now, not only is that feeling gone, it’s quite the opposite (which I’m pretty sure is how compliments are supposed to work?). And it’s not just that I’m happy a friend likes something I’m wearing or the curls in my hair or whatever…

But it’s because there’s the added layer of being seen. And not just physically, but SEEN as a woman. I know that they see me as I truly am, and that’s… beyond amazing. See the Trans Tuesday on WHAT REAL CIS ACCEPTANCE LOOKS LIKE for what that can do to a person.

I’m not fishing for your compliments, truly! But I am agog at the realization that I will now be happy to receive them? Instead of running away screaming in terror? It’s a brand new experience.

So, ladies! Your hair’s beautiful, you look stunning in that outfit, and that photo is super flattering! You’re amazing and I adore you!

And I’ve got a lifetime to make up for, so I’m gonna tell you every chance I get.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re going to talk about something unique, problematic, and wonderful for most trans people (and cis people too, if we’re being honest): HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE, AND WHY MUST IT ALL BE SO WEIRD.

Every person, trans or otherwise, has a unique relationship with clothing. I’ve had a really weird relationship with clothes, for reasons that probably already make sense to you just from knowing I’m a trans woman.

I always found them a bit odd outside of practical uses. Shoes protect your feet, and socks protect your feet from getting blisters inside the shoes, sure. Great! Layers and coats keep you warm in the cold, yes. All of that makes sense.

And they can protect you from getting too much sun or a sunburn, they can keep… stuff… in the spot you want it kept in. Plus: POCKETS. And all of that has a definite logic to it.

Beyond that, however, I just never got it. Why do we even wear them? Because we decided it was uncivilized for us to all walk around naked, I suppose, but that’s… I dunno, not a great reason? It always baffled me.

I always had favorite shirts or pants or whatever, like anyone. But that was almost exclusively based around comfort. I never understood using clothes as a means of self expression, or appreciated them for their artistic value.

So fashion always mystified me. Why would anyone care about it? It just didn’t make sense. And it’s weird because I always appreciated every other form of artistic expression I came across.

And I think the reason for that relates to some of what I talked about in the Trans Tuesday on THE FEAR OF EMBRACING YOUR TRUE SELF (makeup and hair dye and costumes and Halloween), because it all comes back to appearance.

I suppose because I felt like I was wearing a “cisgender straight boy” costume every second of my life, I didn’t put any real thought into, or even care about, what went on top of that costume. Except for… one thing.

I have always, always hated dressing up. HATED. IT. The thought of it actively repulsed me. My parents told me this just meant I preferred to dress more casual, but SURPRISE, that’s not it. And of course casual dress is not appropriate in all situations.

It’s suits I hate. Collared shirts. Ties. Because our society codes those as intrinsically MALE, and I’ve never felt like (or actually been) a man. And of course ladies and non-binary folks can wear suits, and look amazing in them!

I’ve never actually worn a suit, because you just could NOT get me into one. I’ve worn a tux exactly four times in my life… my senior prom, once to surprise Susan because she’d always wanted to see me in one, then again at our wedding, and in the one wedding I was best man for.

“Best man.” Ha. Hm. oof.

Anyway, thinking about those situations where I was going to be required to dress up… what if it would have been socially acceptable for me to wear a dress, and I didn’t feel scared out of my mind to do so?

My heart would have taken flight, left my body, and flitted up to the clouds, where it’d find a nice home for sale and would immediately move right in. I have no problem with occasions requiring “nicer” clothing, now that I know that doesn’t mean I have to wear a suit.

Part of my distaste for “guy clothes” stems from how horridly bland most of them are. For years and years I was so frustrated at how difficult it was to find anything that wasn’t black, gray, or blue (or sometimes brown, if you were a very lucky boy).

Beau Brummell was the bane of my existence. He’s the reason so much of men’s fashion sucks. Dark, drab colors! Suits! Ties! AUGH. Screw that guy. He was by all accounts also an unrepentant dick, so don’t feel too bad for him. This Esquire article on him is very good.

What the hell even IS a tie? A random useless bit of fabric you wrap around your neck? WHY? Nothing confused me like goddamned ties. Okay sure, you want some color in your suit… WHY NOT WEAR A DIFFERENT COLOR SUIT THEN MY DUDES?

There are so many colors in this world, and I love them. I love when they’re bright and vibrant and society tells us, no, those colors are not for cisgender men who want to be taken seriously. And that’s bullshit.

You can see the Trans Tuesday on UNEXPECTED BONUSES OF TRANSITION for more on how important color actually is to me, and how transitioning freed me up to like what I always liked but was told I wasn’t allowed to.

So the reason I hated suits and ties and dark colors is because they’re not ME, and that does come down to my self-expression. If they’re you, that’s GREAT. We should all express ourselves through our clothes however we want.

My rejection of those things, however, isn’t because I’m transgender or a woman… because again, I think ladies in suits can look AMAZING. But it’s because society codes those as “male” and that’s the absolute last thing I want to be.

But it’s also about how I feel. I don’t FEEL right in a tux. I own a lot of skirts and dresses, and HOOO let me tell you how polar opposite the feeling is when I wear it. This is undeniably GENDER EUPHORIA, which can be a key part of discovering how trans or cis you really are.

I’m still trying to figure out what my style is. It’s definitely girly, but it’s also kind of sporty at times, which probably tracks based on what I said in the discussion on THE FALSE DICHOTOMY.

There will be an upcoming Trans Tuesday all about figuring out my style, now that I’m (maybe) honing in on it some. The first women’s clothes I owned were for running, which I mentioned in the Trans Tuesday on BODY HACKING.

The actual first (non-running) women’s clothes I bought were underwear, because obviously nobody would see them when I was out running errands or whatever. And I’m not going to get too TMI here, don’t worry.

The last thing I want to do is put an image of me in underwear into your head (too late, isn’t it?). But, like… the first ladies underwear I bought had donuts on them. And pizza. And robots. And hearts. And cherries. And a DeLorean. And BABY YODA.

Because you don’t just jump into weird sexy lingerie or whatever. Being transgender is not remotely the same as cross-dressing, or drag, or anything else. And all those things are FINE, I am not casting aspersions.

But they’re not the same as being transgender. Though trans folks, including me, can also certainly wear underwear of the sexy variety if we want to (I just put that image in your head now too, I guess, so SORRY but maybe also YOU’RE WELCOME).

Outside of all that, though, I still can’t usually stand anything remotely baggy. Which is a shame because, again, looser clothing looks amazing on all kinds of people.

But for so, so long, I wore baggy everything because it hid my body. I didn’t want the world to see it, and didn’t want to see it myself, because it made me feel awful for reasons I didn’t understand.

Er… except for my jeans, which well into my early 20s were far too tight because I didn’t know how to find the right size. Susan thankfully helped me fix that because 😬

Anyway, the baggiest thing I have now is one sweater, and I love it because it was the first (non-running) piece of (outer) women’s clothing I ever bought.

Because although it has a big neckline, it’s otherwise kind of gender-neutral and I could wear it without (in my mind) giving away my true self. So I love it for that reason, but was still a struggle for a long time.

Because anything even remotely loose or baggy is associated in my head with hiding myself and the awful dysphoric feelings that came with it. Which is not to say all my clothes now are skin-tight, but they’re definitely form fitting.

I hoped that would lessen over time… and to my surprise, it has! See the Trans Tuesday on PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE and you can see it happen in real time.

For basically my entire life pre-transition, I was SUPER uncomfortable with tank tops and never wore them. Having my arms exposed somehow felt more feminine, which terrified me. I got more comfortable with them the more I came to accept I was transgender, though.

Which is weird and bonkers, anyone should and can wear them if they want to. But everything gets so mixed up in your head (or it did in mine, anyway) when trying to decode all of this that it took me forever to figure that out.

And now, trying to determine what my style is and what I prefer is difficult for a number of reasons, because (spoiler alert) women’s clothes vary in sizing so much that the sizes are almost useless. You guy-clothes wearing folks seriously don’t know how good you have it.

I can’t just say I’m a “medium” and be done with it. Everything has chest and bust and waist and hip sizes, and even then everything varies by manufacturer and store.

On top of that, hi and hello I am 6’ 1/2” and did you know not many cisgender ladies are this tall? So women’s clothes that actually fit me are a trick to find. (I’ve found some now, this isn’t a call for a flood of links, but I thank you for your thoughtfulness)

But EVEN STILL, when I find things I like and that fit me, they don’t always fit right. My jeans are all baggy in the butt, because I HAVE NO BUTT. It’s flat as a sheet of drywall back there.

I may yet get MORE BUTT from hormone replacement therapy, but if so it’s not remotely begun to start yet. ANY TIME IT WOULD LIKE TO, however, would be good with me, and throw in some damned hips while you’re at it (more fun images for your head, I am here to serve).

And let me tell you about pockets, friends. Pockets pockets pockets.

In dude jeans I carried my wallet and keys in my left front pocket. My right held my iphone and there was STILL ROOM. I could fit my entire hand in either of them, up to the wrist.

But the pockets on my women’s jeans can hold… half my wallet, or half my phone. I mean, I knew before having women’s jeans of my own that the pocket situation for ladies was horrid, but I didn’t realize HOW horrid.

Why don’t women’s clothes have real pockets? It’s for all kinds of sexist reasons… that are ACTUALLY sexist. The “slimmer silhouette” is one reason, which is all part of upholding the sexist, patriarchal ideal of how a woman “should” look.

Another is because it literally puts women at a disadvantage. Sure, many women carry purses. And this is why. But think about that for a second.

My wallet, keys, and phone are going from a pocket held next to my body that there’s no way anyone could get to without my noticing… to an external bag that anyone could just grab and run away with. It instantly puts women at a disadvantage.

It also means it takes us longer to get anything we need, including perhaps items for self-defense (like phones to call for help, or pepper spray, or whatever else).

This Vox article about it is pretty good, and explains how the entire thing was rooted in misogyny and controlling women.

Here’s a choice quote. “Women’s pockets were private spaces they carried into the public with increasing freedom, and during a revolutionary time, this freedom was very, very frightening. The less women could carry, the less freedom they had.

“Take away pockets happily hidden under garments, and you limit women’s ability to navigate public spaces, to carry seditious (or merely amorous) writing, or to travel unaccompanied.”

So fellas, the next time you make fun of ladies for not having pockets or for asking you to hold their damn purse, maybe… DON’T do that and instead understand the horrid power play the lack of pockets is and how that affects everything women do, everywhere we go.

Hell, even BUTTONS are likely sexist and classist. Didja ever notice buttons on women’s clothes are on the opposite side as buttons on men’s clothes? Learning how to button the opposite way it worked my whole life has been really hard!

A tweet I made on Feb 4, 2023 that reads: so much of your life changes when you transition, but nobody ever tells you that the buttons switching sides on your clothes will be your undoing

Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article on why buttons are the way they are, which ranges from men drawing swords to prove their manliness to rich white women having chamber maids who were dressing them.

All of which is to say… fashion and clothes are a form of self-expression, and that’s great. But don’t buy into whatever you’re “supposed” to wear because of your gender or body type or anything else.

Just be you, whoever that might be. And wear whatever the heck you want.

…except for neckties, which will forever be inherently bad and wrong, and should all be destroyed immediately. 😌

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

It’s me! In a black v-neck dress with white stars all over it! Yay!

BODY HAIR

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Today we’re gonna talk about BODY HAIR. What fun! …for some people, I guess? But not for me!

Your frame of reference for this is that body hair is one of the things that spikes my gender dysphoria. It’s probably best to read GENDER DYSPHORIA first so you understand why I do all of what I do to deal with it.

I had a fair amount of body hair pre-transition. I wasn’t like a bear or anything (not talking about the animals, and if you’re not familiar with that term… I wish you a very happy internet search!) but neither was I some spritely nymph with skin as smooth as butter.

Seeing my body hair always made me unhappy, and seeing it grow in now gives me a miserable dysphoria spike. So I’ve got to remove it. And I think a lot of cisgender folks, even cis women, don’t know what that entails.

The first time I shaved my legs was… an experience. It gave me a feeling I’d later identify as GENDER EUPHORIA, which is exactly what it sounds like, the polar opposite of gender dysphoria.

Shaving legs is something ladies do (generally, if they want, it’s up to them, but also some guys do and that’s cool). But if I do it, then… maybe… I’m a lady?!?!? 😀

It was also terrifying. I’m not sure how to accurately convey what it’s like to be doing something you think might make you feel better, but you’re not sure. And it can’t just be immediately undone.

So what if I hate it? What if it makes me feel no different at all? The latter was the biggest issue for me, because if it didn’t help then was I really trans? I mean yes, sure, you absolutely can be a trans woman and not want to shave your legs. But would I be? See YES YOU ARE TRANS ENOUGH for more on how what you do or do not do to transition does not determine your transness.

It’s all so confusing at every step, and there was an even bigger question that plagued me about this, but I’m saving that for the end. 

In any case, this advanced to shaving my armpits and then my arms and then my torso. Which is… a time-intensive process. Legs on their own have so much surface area, you don’t really realize until you have to cover all of it.

The problem with shaving my legs is that for some reason the top of my thighs were always a problem. Nicks and cuts and horrid razor burn all the time. It was very vexing. I’d also routinely get nicks and cuts on my arms, even with a brand new blade.

And early on in transition I’d have to do it twice a week. Because even though I was on HRT, which can possibly slow/thin body hair in trans women, it took a long time for that to happen for me. It finally did, but more on that in a bit.

So I gathered up my courage and got myself one of the nasty ladies you see in the header image of this essay.

If you’re too sweet and innocent to know what that instrument of pain and torture is, it’s an epilator. It has a drum that spins really fast, covered in tweezers, and it rips your hair out by the root.

If you’ve never used one… I envy you. Here’s a good way to picture the feeling in your mind: have you ever plucked an eyebrow hair? If not, seriously, grab a pair of tweezers and pull one out. Right now. I promise you no one will ever notice.

Okay, hurts like fuck, right? Now imagine about twenty of those at once, per second, sustained over a half an hour all over your body. Using an epilator gets you your certified badass card (it’s a great club to be a member of, we all wear sunglasses and are mysteriously stoic).

Epilators are generally designed, intended, and marketed for cisgender ladies, which I bring up only because the instructions that come with it tell you that you should need to do it every three to four weeks.

Oh? Oh? IT IS TO LAUGH.

Because you lucky cis ladies don’t have hair that’s super thick, or that grows all that fast… in general. I know that some of you do, and believe me, I feel your literal pain.

I had to epilate every. Single. week.

And did you know that you can’t just epilate? Oh no. Because if the hairs are too long, they’ll simply break, and then you end up still being hairy and with a lot of ingrown hairs knocking at the door and dropping off their bags for a long visit.

My epilator came with an electric razor head you could swap in, and I had to use that first (also once a week!) to trim all the hair down so the epilator can function properly.

The first time I used the epilator, my body looked like I’d fallen into a vat of starving mosquitoes and decided to just chill in there for a few hours. It was kind of horrific.

But your skin gets used to it, and eventually that only happened when I epilated over an area I somehow missed every single time before (which happened more than I care to admit).

Also! Mine was waterproof and it suggested you epilate in the shower under running water. Which I did, and cannot recommend enough. Hot water opens the pores and loosens things, so the hairs come out a little  easier and it hurts a bit less.

Over time I kind of became weirdly fond of the feeling. Probably because it hurt less after doing it so much, and also because I could feel it wiping out dysphoria as I went. Your mileage may vary.

So what exactly did I epilate? Keep in mind I had to cover all of this with the electric razor head first, and then the next day I’d cover the same areas with the epilator.

My toes. The tops of my feet. My ankles. All around my shins and calves. The top, front, sides, and back of my knees. And the latter is super sensitive because how often does anything touch you there? 

Every side of my thighs, all the way around. My hips. My lower abdomen. My stomach (why does my tummy gotta be hairy?!), and that’s not easy because it’s soft and there’s a belly button there (because I am a human person).

My torso, my boobs and cleavage (such as they were). The backs of my fingers. The back of my hand. My wrists. All sides of my forearms, inside/outside of my elbows, my upper arms, and the top of my shoulders.

Also I don’t know about anyone else because it would be a weird thing to ask, but my body hair seems to grow in all different directions! So I often had to epilate an area in four different directions to actually get as much of the hair out as possible.

The epilator has attachments it says make it less intense for “sensitive areas”, like armpits and even your face (and other adult places… like bars and night clubs?). I am sad to tell you I was never that brave. I shave those areas manually with a hand-held razor.

One interesting thing is that the feeling of epilation is so intense that shaving afterward with a razor and some soap literally felt like I was just rubbing a piece of silk on my body by comparison. It’s such a weird sensation!

It took 40-45 minutes to cover all of that, and again I did it twice – shaving and then epilating. So that was a good hour and a half of my week, every week, taken up with this. I was glad to do it, it made me feel much better, but it always pissed me off that it ate so much of my time.

And if you missed the essay on TIME AND MONEY, remember that I even had the ability to spend that time on shaving and epilating is a PRIVILEGE.

Quick aside. I’ve found that Tend Skin, an alcohol-based aftershave, worked wonders if I put it on right after epilating. Keeps any razor burn or ingrown hairs to a minimum. Highly recommended.

…but if you do have any tiny nicks or cuts or ingrown hairs, it’s gonna sting. But that’s fine, you just epilated! You’re a goddamned warrior.

I shaved one day, epilated the next. Then I had about two and a half days (sometimes a titch longer) of mostly hairless bliss.

By the next day I had stubble. Everywhere. Which just got longer as the week went on, until I shaved it again. I did all of that for not even three full days of peace per week.

Also when you have long hair, the loose ones that just normally fall out in the shower (or any other time) get stuck in your body hair stubble, which is just super fun to pick off of yourself all the time.

And I’m still privileged in other ways too, because imagine someone who also gets dysphoria from their body hair but can’t afford an epilator. Or who maybe has a hairy back and lives alone and has no way to remove it!

I’m very thankful my back is basically hairless. I’m sure Susan is too, because otherwise I’d have enlisted her into a one-woman back shaving army… and I suspect that’s not high on her list of things to experience.

Early on, I tried seeing if I could just shave with the electric razor head and not epilate… nope. The hair grew so fast I’d have to shave twice a week, but since it doesn’t shave all that close, I was eternally covered in stubble.

And that made epilation take longer, because there was more stubble than usual, and it was a disaster all around. Also, to note, even after epilating, I could feel the stubble. It was never all the way smooth and hairless. Never.

Thankfully, now basically five years into medical transition and being on estrogen injections and not pills, by body hair has thinned and slowed considerably. I stopped needing to epilate a couple years ago. Now I just shave all over (with an electric razor) once a week, and it takes me only about 25 minutes. And though I still get some stubble as it grows back in, it’s not nearly as bad as it was. 

But here’s the other question that’s plagued me about this since before I was even sure I was trans.

Why does body hair bother me?

I‘ve seen cis women with hair on their legs and arms. It’s fine. People can (and should) be as hairy or hairless as they like. So why does it bother me? Why do I not want to be hairy?

Is it because I associate it with being a man, because I had body hair when I presented as, and thought I was, a man? 

Or is it because our patriarchal, misogynistic, transphobic society says “hairy = manly!” and “hairless = being a ‘good’ woman?” We’ve all seen the shit a cis woman has to deal with if she just decides to not shave her legs for a while.

If you’re not familiar with that, cis fellas, ask some of the ladies in your life.

Anyway, if I feel this way because of society teaching us bad things, am I just confirming and feeding into that by shaving my legs and such? Is that bad? Should I just let it be and tell misogyny to go fuck itself?

I’d never ask that question of any other person, cisgender or transgender or agender or nonbinary or anything else. If they want to shave their legs or anything else, cool! They should! And if they don’t, also cool! 

I know a lot of trans masc folks for whom body hair is euphoric for them. And that makes me so happy! It’s all about each of us just finding what’s right for us.

But when it comes to me, I feel like that doesn’t apply for some reason. Is this some of my own INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA? Could be.

But I don’t want to do anything that can be used to hurt and harm other people. That’s been done to me enough in my life. See PARENTS WHO WILL NEVER KNOW THE REAL YOU aka MY DAD, for more on how my mom used me as a weapon to wound others.

So all I’m left with is knowing I still haven’t figured it out. I don’t know why body hair spikes my dysphoria. 

What I have figured out is that, regardless of the reason, my body hair being gone makes me happy and lessens my dysphoria.

That’s good enough for now.

And maybe that’s all that it needs to be.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

DISCRIMINATORY BUREAUCRACY

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re going to talk about something that pops up often in life after you transition, and for lack of a better term I’m gonna call it: DISCRIMINATORY BUREAUCRACY.

This sort of thing has cropped up so many times, and in every instance it has been unintentional (at least as far as I can tell). So just to be clear I don’t think I, or trans people in general, have been the target of policies that were designed to hurt us ~in these instances.~

There are ABSOLUTELY laws and programs and policies around the country that ARE designed to actively hurt us, and they’ve ramped up this year in an astonishing way. If you’re not aware, there are presently TWO HUNDRED EIGHTY discriminatory laws on the way!
https://www.themarysue.com/why-are-there-so-many-bills-targeting-trans-kids

These are horrible and disgusting and the goal is to make it impossible for us to exist in society, and WE NEED YOU to stop them. Please see last week’s trans tuesday on PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP, and all the linked threads within on how to be the REAL ALLY we need.

But today I want to show you how even when there AREN’T 280 bills from jackass bigots trying to hurt us and legislate us out of existence, the way our society has been set up by and for cisgender people can cause problems you likely never thought about.

For the entirety of my medical transition, we’ve been with Kaiser (who, if you’re not familiar, are both a health insurance company AND a medical care provider). On the whole, my experience with them during transition has been relatively good.

But it hasn’t been perfect. I really wish they’d do informed consent for trans people, rather than the incredibly long phone call I had to have with a therapist where I had to “prove” I was a woman. See the trans tuesday on TRANS KIDS AND THE INTAKE EXAM.

And you can see how some of their staff just have no idea how to handle trans people, and/or some of them can be actively horrible (but some are also actively wonderful, aka they are humans). See NO ESCAPE 2: SOME ESCAPE (due to cis allyship).

Now you may be reading those and thinking HOLY SHIT, THAT’S “RELATIVELY GOOD”?? To which I say yeah, it has been. Because the alternative is so much worse. Plus there have been some genuinely wonderful moments, as you can read about in the original trans tuesday on NO ESCAPE (from my deadname and reminders that I’m trans).

But my endocrinologist has been really wonderful in every way, I adore him and he is genuinely concerned with being sure that my hormone replacement therapy is going the way *I* want it to. He’s not holding me to some fake arbitrary standard of “you must do X to be trans.”

If you’re unaware, endocrinologists handle HRT, which you can learn more about in its trans tuesday.

Although the flip side of that is my GP, while a very nice lady, seems to not have tons of experience with trans folks. And while Kaiser covers laser/electrolysis hair removal (facial hair is the absolute worst source of my gender dysphoria)…

…they wouldn’t cover it until my testosterone levels dropped below an arbitrary level. I’ve mentioned this before, but I could have signed up for gender confirmation surgery on the DAY the therapist confirmed I’m trans if I wanted to.

Because cis people decided THAT was what was most important to trans people, I guess? Never mind for me it’s never ever having to shave my face again, and I didn’t get authorization to do something about it until 18 months into my medical transition.

I still haven’t been able to start it, btw, because you have to have a mask off for that and I live with someone who’s immune-compromised. You can read more on the joys of A PANDEMIC TRANSITION.

And they also keep reminding me to get a gynecological exam so… y’know, it’s give and take. See COMPLETE TRANS HEALTHCARE (or lack thereof).

Okay, so now that you’ve got the set up, let’s get into what I’m actually talking about in this particular instance. Some of the bureaucracy that just wasn’t designed to even take the existence of trans people into account.

Kaiser has digital medical records (one would hope, in 2022!) that all medical professionals there can access at any time, and which patients can also access at any time. It’s really nice, actually!

The problem is they have a… photo associated with your medical record. I suppose so no one else can say they’re you and surreptitiously get treated for a medical issue without paying? The horror.

I had honestly forgotten about this for a long time, because I hadn’t been going to appointments in person (due to the pandora’s box) and so I never saw it up on the computers in the exam room. All I’ve been doing in person are the required periodic lab visits for blood draws.

But during one of my voice therapy sessions, the speech therapist (who I ADORE, she’s just the absolute best) remarked that there was an “old” photo of me in there. And you know exactly what she meant by that.

And that obviously bugged me. I went into the Kaiser app, and there’s a spot where you can see your virtual insurance card, which you can use in place of the physical one when you need to show it for appointments and such. And there was that old photo.

Despite specifically going to see if it was there, I was somehow entirely unprepared for seeing that dude again, and it was… painful. Dysphoria exploded all over, and it just made me miserable. I needed it gone.

Because what if I needed to show it to someone? That is not REMOTELY what I look like now! They’d never believe it’s the same person (which is GREAT, yay HRT, I’ve come so far).

Plus every time *I* see it, it makes my dysphoria so, so, SO much worse. I cannot have that popping up in front of me all the time.

So I logged into the website, and I noticed there was a spot where I could upload a profile photo. I naively assumed uploading one there would change the one on my medical record/virtual insurance card, but nope.

I sent them an email and explained the problem. They said only the doctor who was my general practitioner could change the photo, contact her and ask her to do it. That seems a weird administrative thing to make a doctor do, but fine.

My doctor says… no, we don’t do that, you need to contact administration. So I do. I ask if they can just make my web profile photo my medical record/insurance card photo. Nope! Impossible.

And they NOW tell me there is no way whatsoever to do what I’m asking without me going in person and having someone at a Kaiser facility take my new photo.

Right in the middle of the delta wave of a horrid pancetta that’s killed a MILLION Americans, while living with an immunocompromised person, I had to go into a medical facility and remove my mask just so they could take a photo of me? And put my wife’s life at risk?

So sorry, they said, that’s company policy.

Well that company policy is BULLSHIT and it is DISCRIMINATORY TO TRANS PEOPLE, and I told them so. They’ve agreed my dysphoria is real and serious and needs medical treatment, but I have to be forced to have it WORSENED every time I open their app?

Or go to get labs? And then if one of their employees sees the old photo and thinks that’s not me, they could refuse to treat me? And then I have to explain to another stranger how I’m transgender?

All because you won’t change one fucking photo to not only be accurate to who I am, but to ALLEVIATE THE PROBLEM YOU ARE TREATING ME FOR?

Silence for a few days. Suddenly I find the profile photo I uploaded to the website has magically replaced the old photo (somehow! Goodness, I thought they couldn’t do that?), and they finally wrote me back and say I brought up valid concerns and they apologized.

They said they were internally addressing the policy, and I hope that’s true. I asked them to address it system-wide, so that no other trans people with Kaiser have to go through this. Maybe some extra good could come of it.

Sadly the EXACT same thing happened when I tried to update my name with them.

We had Kaiser via Covered California at the time, which is the state healthcare exchange set up as part of Obamacare. Kaiser told us to contact Covered California, Covered California told us only Kaiser could change it.

I got stuck in that loop FOR MONTHS, until our insurance CHANGED and we then got Kaiser through Susan’s employer. Then I was able to actually get it changed. Meanwhile, for 18 MONTHS of transition, I had to see my deadname on EVERY medication. Every day. Multiple times a day.

It’s like a dysphoria bomb in the medicine cabinet. And sure I could black it out with a marker or whatever, or turn the bottle so I don’t see it, but I would still know why both those things had been done. I’d still know it was there. Still reminded of it = still a problem.

So when it FINALLY changed with them and I got the first prescription with my real name on it, I cannot tell you the relief it brought. I STILL have many bottles with my deadname on them, and will until those medications run out and are refilled. But it’s progress, at least.

I say all of this just to show you how every little facet of life can change when you transition, and how so much of the world we live in just isn’t at all made to consider our existence. And it all adds up, and makes it much tougher for us to just live in this world.

Also, hey, look at that poor, miserable egg. That photo was taken before I even consciously knew, even though the subconscious signs were always there. But look who was inside all along. I wish the world made it easier for us to get from A to B.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

BODILY AUTONOMY (and my tattoo)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re talking about something a LOT of people have asked me about: MY TATTOO. And what may surprise you is that it’s 100% tied in with my transition, because what this is really about is: BODILY AUTONOMY.

Back in April of 2022, I went in two three-hour sessions to get my first tattoo. And it’s pretty big, it covers the entire outside of my right arm. And that only seems fitting because I have this trait of throwing my whole ass right into everything my first time.

No small one on my ankle, nothing hidden where you won’t see it. This is huge and highly visible. And that’s just kind of the way I am. When I first had the idea to make audio dramas, before “podcasts” were even a thing, did I start with just one? Okay, yes. BUT-

To do so I decided to just found an entire company, Pendant Productions, because from the very beginning I knew it wouldn’t be JUST one. One day it wasn’t a thing I did, and the next day it was a thing I did a LOT, all the time. This happened with writing. This happened when I met Susan!

It even happened when I picked my new, true name. Sure I thought about it for a while, considered different options, but then I hit on Tilly and I knew it. That was IT. And I never looked back. No need to try any others. I just threw my entire self at it.

You can read more about that in the trans tuesday on NAMES AND PRONOUNS.

And you can even see it in the pre-coffee thoughts I post across all my social media every morning while I’m waiting for the caffeine to hit me. One day I did it on a lark because I thought it was funny, and I’ve just… done it every single morning since. And I love it! But anyway.

All my life I thought tattoos were cool (because they are, and LADIES with tats are certified HAWT). But I never ever thought about getting one, never wanted one for myself, didn’t understand how anyone could want something on their body for the rest of their lives.

I didn’t know WHY I felt like that. And I didn’t know WHY that changed suddenly a few years before my coming out when I knew I really wanted one, even though I didn’t yet know exactly what it would be.

In fact, it wasn’t even until I’d set things in motion to obtain it… found an artist, discussed the design, had a consulting session, and booked the first appointment that I even really realized it was tied in with my transition.

But it is, in absolutely every way. To be clear, I don’t think I needed this tattoo to fully transition to the woman I’ve always wanted to be (and have always been on the inside), but I DID need it to fully transition to the real ME I’ve always been.

And this is why I say it’s complicated, because the ME I am IS a woman. Waaaay back when I first started trans tuesdays I mentioned figuring out I was trans was like untying a giant knot, because so many (likely EVERY) aspect of my life was intertwined with it.

So it’s all connected in ways I’ve tried to explain, ways I can’t explain, and ways I don’t even still fully understand myself. This is why I repeatedly tell you that trans people likely know themselves better than anyone else on earth knows themselves. Because we HAVE TO.

There’s no other way to shed the expectations and baggage of the cis binary matrix of society to become who we’ve always really been. But I digress (but only kind of, because again, it’s all connected).

If you want a little more on the things society saddles us with, which are so very often entirely untrue and restrict us in all kinds of ways you might not have realized, see the trans tuesday on THE FALSE DICHOTOMY.

Once I realized the tattoo was somehow, in some murky way I couldn’t identify, tied in with my transition, the ol’ Introspection Drive kicked into high warp and off I went, examining every facet of my life and choices as related to wanting some ink on my skin forever.

I’ve always thought they were cool, but why did I never want one? Why did that suddenly change? Once I hit upon the idea and design for it, why did I throw my whole ass at it and not even consider other ideas/designs? Why was THIS the one?

It’s… heavy stuff, even when it’s not life or death. But I want to figure these things out, I want to KNOW myself, know who I am, and WHY I am who I am. Because the truth of that was kept from me for my whole life by people with a vested interest in maintaining the cis status quo.

For seemingly innocuous ways that impacted my life, see the trans tuesday on SEARCHING FOR MEANING (when you’re trans and don’t know it).

And for incredibly heavy, life-altering ways it impacted my life, see the two part trans tuesday on TRANS GRIEF.

So what I realized is that the reason I never thought tattoos were for ME, never thought there was ANYTHING I’d want on my body for the rest of my life… is because:

my body

never

felt

like

mine.

I don’t know how to explain this to cis folks, who’ve always felt like your body was yours. And I’m not saying you’ve always been happy with your body or anything. Hell, our society doesn’t ever want that for anyone, does it?

But you’ve never felt like your entire body was the wrong gender and thus not yours (if you have, uhhhhh that’s what we call gender dysphoria and I have some big news for you).

Now I’m sure for some trans folks out there, they got tattoos before they transitioned (or even knew they weren’t cis) as a way of exercising bodily autonomy in what little ways they could. That’s completely valid, and honestly I wish I’d felt that way too.

But for me, my body never felt like mine, so I felt like… I don’t know. I wasn’t allowed to? Like I didn’t have the right to? And like it would only make me miserable somehow (because it would be a change I wanted, but not ALL the changes I wanted to my seemingly cis man body).

I honestly think having the tattoo before I knew I was trans, or once I knew but still had to wait years to start my transition, it would be a reminder of all that I DIDN’T have. That would add crushing sadness on top of the sadness and despair gender dysphoria already brought.

Again, see the trans tuesday on GENDER DYSPHORIA for more on that horrible monster.

What I do know is that once I was sure I was trans, but knew I had to wait to transition and I began slowly exploring my transness… it was then that I knew the tattoo was coming.

Because I had a photo of… well let’s call it a loose inspiration for my tattoo… as the lock screen on my phone for FOUR YEARS STRAIGHT. I went back and checked the date on it, because I knew that the day I downloaded it to my phone I made it my lock screen.

I wanted to see it there, every day, to remind me. To be sure it was something I still loved a year (then also, two, three, and four!) down the line, but also it was kind of inspirational, I guess. Because I knew something like that was going on MY body… someday.

I knew it wouldn’t be until after I’d transitioned, though. My transition may never really be over, it’s a process and not a goal with a fixed end, I think. Though some trans folks do get to a point where transition is “done” and they’re all set. I can only hope I find that day too.

But it was realizing that I knew, even back then, that I wouldn’t get the tattoo until AFTER I transitioned when it clicked into place for me. If it was going to be on MY body for the rest of my life, well:

it

needed

to

be

MY

body.

And note it wasn’t like I got this tattoo right after coming out to friends and family, or even after coming out to the world. In fact it was over two years after the day I knew I’d transition for sure, and nearly two years after I came out publicly.

But it took me until then to finally put things into motion. Because only then was I starting to REALLY feel like I was… me. I mean it’s still growing more and more every day, which is great. But around two and a half years in, I passed a point where it felt like I turned a corner.

And amazingly you can see this in three trans tuesdays that were released basically back to back. First, in CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD when gatherings of strangers turned from terrifying to electrifying.

And then in FREEING UP MY BRAIN aka LUNCH WITH TILLY, where lessened or absent dysphoria opened me up to an entire world of experiences that I’d missed out on for my entire life.

And then in PHOTOS 2 aka THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE, when photos of myself just… STOPPED giving me dysphoria, which I never ever ever thought could happen. All three of these things occurred in succession as I approached two years of social/medical transition.

So looking back now, it’s no surprise at all that this is also when I put things into motion to get my tattoo. I was finally ready for the “final” (ha) piece of completing the ME I want to be, and so off I went to do just that.

Another interesting thing happened in searching for the right artist, in that one I was talking to early on kind of insulted the mock-up of my design I had, and basically refused to do it. She wanted me to just TELL her what I wanted and let her create it from scratch.

Now look, I know tattoo artists are ARTISTS, but that seemed… extreme? That may work fine for some folks, but not for me. Not for THIS. Because it’s going on MY body, so it has to be what *I* want.

And a good friend helped crystallize it for me: I’d spent MY ENTIRE LIFE being told what I could and could not do with my body. “You are a man, and you must be tall and wide and show no emotions but anger and lust. You are NOT a woman, and cannot be one!” Well.

Fuck that noise.

We can be, and actually ARE, who we know we are on the inside. And this is why it’s really a BODILY AUTONOMY issue, because here was this tattoo artist again telling me I couldn’t do WHAT I WANTED WITH MY OWN BODY.

So I found another artist who was willing to work with me, who naturally had his own ideas and tweaks, but made sure every step of the way we were staying true to the vision of what I wanted. Anything that didn’t work for me went right out, without protest.

And through about seven hours of pain (it hurt way more than everyone told me it would, sorry to say, ESPECIALLY on the inside/outside of the elbow where it was all I could do to not run away screaming), and weeks of healing, it was done. It’s there. It’s part of me. It’s ME.

To folks who kept me distracted from the pain by peppering me with questions during both tattooing sessions, thank you. If you missed those, you may find them entertaining. Check the replies and quote tweets to the replies here.

And here’s more from session two.

Every time I see my arm I smile. It makes me SO HAPPY. It has NINE different, distinct meanings for me, and no I will not explain any of them to you.

Look, I bleed all over the page for you in these essays, I pour out my heart and my soul, I try to be as open about everything as I can possibly be. But this? This is just for me, which is why I will not explain it. But go ahead and guess if you want, that could prove highly entertaining. 😌

And if you’re not yet aware that all the legislative attacks on trans people AND the legislative attacks on abortion/birth control/the right to choose are THE SAME ISSUE, now you know. It ALL comes back to BODILY AUTONOMY and the cishet white men who want it only for themselves.

If you want more on how trans people are often ignored in the fight for bodily autonomy, please see the trans tuesday on TRANS RAGE aka STOP FORGETTING ABOUT US.

You get one life in this world. One body. Make it your own, make it your home, make it YOU in whatever way that means. If I can do it, so can you. It’s true!

I believe in you.

Nine meanings. Seven hours. One body. One life.

Make it yours.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillystranstuesdays.com

My right arm showing a tattoo: an old banner with the words LADY VICTORY on it, surrounded by a skull with a pink bow, five pink stars, and many sharp, curving lines. Full arm view.

My right arm showing a tattoo: an old banner with the words LADY VICTORY on it, surrounded by a skull with a pink bow, five pink stars, and many sharp, curving lines. Bicep view.

My right arm showing a tattoo: an old banner with the words LADY VICTORY on it, surrounded by a skull with a pink bow, five pink stars, and many sharp, curving lines. Forearm view.

FREEING UP MY BRAIN (aka lunch with Tilly)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! WARNING: this thread is gonna make you hungry. It’s a necessary evil. Maybe it’ll inspire you? The weirdest thing is you might not expect that given the actual topic: FREEING UP MY BRAIN (aka LUNCH WITH TILLY).

This is very much related to CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD, and in fact I had planned to do this one first, but then I decided to do last week’s thread while it was still fresh in my mind, so I swapped them. If you missed it, please check it out.

You also cannot understand this thread, not really, if you don’t have a basic understanding of GENDER DYSPHORIA.

Please pay special attention in both of those essays to my attempts to describe the feeling of gender dysphoria, of trying to exist and move through the world while dealing with everything dysphoria causes and brings with it.

This thread is one I couldn’t have done early on in my transition, when I first started Trans Tuesdays. And there’s two reasons for that. One, I honestly had no idea this was even a thing, so it wasn’t even on my radar. No hint of it anywhere on my giant list of topics to cover.

But the second reason is it wasn’t something that happened to me until I was well into my transition, and I only realized what was behind it and that it was even related to my transition at all a short while ago.

See the trans tuesday on BODILY AUTONOMY (and my tattoo) for another instance of not knowing at first that something in my life was connected to my transition at all, and how I slowly figured out that it was almost ENTIRELY connected to my transition.

So what in the sparkly pink heck am I talking about when I say FREEING UP MY BRAIN? Okay, so here’s the thing that you might not have realized, and that I only discovered rather recently.

Dysphoria is so awful, and so intense (and again, remember I don’t have it nearly as bad as some other people do) that it OCCUPIED SO MUCH OF MY BRAIN POWER there wasn’t a whole lot left over for other things.

I’m not saying it made me less intelligent, or made me less capable of doing the things that I wanted to… except that actually it DID, but in ways I didn’t realize. I shall endeavor to explain, but this is another one of those topics that’s really hard to put into words.

Okay so if you’ve been reading these for a while you know I’m a writer, and I write as part of a team with my lovely, smart, funny, beautiful, charming, extremely talented wife Susan, and have for a long time (if you’re new, first off: Hi! Glad you’re here! And also: now you know.).

And while we’ve gotten better and better as time goes on, as any writer would hope to be the case, I don’t really feel like just because I’ve transitioned it’s made me a better writer personally. I was able to save enough brain power and creativity for that.

But we only have so much mental and emotional energy to go around, right? So between that and everything dysphoria saddled me with, and being a parent, what I’ve discovered is I didn’t have any reserves for much of anything else.

Again going back to the previous threads on dysphoria and going into an entirely new situation with entirely new people as myself for the first time, you can see how difficult social interactions and situations were for me.

You can see where I thought this was starting to change somewhat in the trans tuesday on CONFIDENCE, which originally came roughly eight months into my transition, even though it was largely speculation due to still being trapped in a pandemic.

I actually started my physical transition long ago, in 2015, years before even officially choosing to transition, when I was just slowly exploring things and decided to start making my body more like the one I wanted, since I knew I had to wait until 2020 to fully being transition anyway. See my the trans tuesday on BODY HACKING.

As part of what I needed to motivate myself to actually DO all the exercising I wanted to do, and not weasel out of it, I began rewarding myself with cheat days. I try to eat fairly well, but if you read my thread on my tattoo you know I tend to go overboard with things.

Years back my doctor told me I needed more fiber, and the next day I changed to a super high fiber diet and the result was uhhhhh recently I discovered I overdid it and had been getting way too much and had to cut back. Why am I like this? Goodness.

ANYWAY, I’ve always been incredibly food motivated. I have a SUPER metabolism, and I’ve been dismayed at its slowing as I’ve aged, even though it’s still probably much faster than most people’s. I got it from my dad! I talked about that in the trans tuesday on PARENTS WHO WILL NEVER KNOW THE REAL YOU.

Because I miss being able to eat like I did when I was a kid on the track and cross country teams, and because it’s one of the only connections to my dad that I have, all my exercise is also a way of maintaining that metabolism as best I can.

It’s weird to feel that how quickly I can process foods I eat, a biological process I have minimal control over, is an emotional connection to someone long lost, but life is weird and funky, my friends.

So my reward system became: if I did ALL my exercising for the week (not counting things I missed that were not my fault, like not being able to run if it’s pouring rain), Friday became my cheat day, and I’d allow myself to eat anything I wanted. Like I did in high school.

It worked. It SUPER worked. So much so it’s STILL working for me something like six or seven years later. Whatever it is that you find sparks that motivation in you, folks, grab onto it and don’t let go. It can be so effective.

But for the longest time, my Friday lunches would be a mix of just a handful of things… places I’d been going for years, things I always liked, things I knew. Things that were FAMILIAR.

As a kid you’re subject to your parents’ whims when it comes to food. I wasn’t raised with much of a varied food selection. If it didn’t come from a box or a can, it wasn’t something my parents really ever made. Though we had spices, I don’t think they ever got used.

As an example, our sloppy joes were: ground beef, sugar, and ketchup. That’s, uh… well. It’s something.

Most of it was generally bland, processed “American” food. And on the rare occasions we ate out, it was places that also kind of fit that bill. McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendys, Taco Bell. Rarely it might be Arbys! So exotic. (listen I still love the Bell, but authentic it is not)

And then during this pandemonium (last fall, I think?) I realized that my Friday lunches brought me so much joy, I wanted to share that with others. Maybe it would bring a bright spot into your week, too. And we all need that.

So I started posting photos of my Friday lunches, and encouraging you to treat yourself to a nice lunch too, and trying to provide a little positivity because I’m so happy you made it through another week with me. It’s hard out here, and I really genuinely care about all of you.

And that started with mozzarella sticks, and mac and cheese (albeit a fancier, not boxed kind), and an AUTHENTIC Mexican burrito from a local place we love that was familiar to me… that I only ever tried because a friend said they were going there and would get me something.

Then we went to authentic Mediterranean kebabs and falafel that was familiar to me… that I only ever tried because Susan really wanted to go there. Then it was Chinese food… from Panda Express (which I love, no lie). And fab onion rings.

And homemade Christmas cookies my grandma used to make, and pizza, and pasta with Susan’s mind-blowing homemade Italian sausage sauce, and donuts.

Now HOLD UP. What is this? This is… pad thai? From an authentic Thai food restaurant near us? I had NEVER had Thai food before. EVER. In my entire life. I never thought about it. I never considered going there. But this day I did. Why?

I didn’t want to keep repeating the same stuff, because I wanted more variety for YOU. But… I also wanted more variety for ME? I always, ALWAYS had. BUT I DIDN’T KNOW IT. Because here’s the kicker:

Dealing with dysphoria, and trying to pretend to be a man I didn’t know how to be, and the way it kept me separate from the world, and then being overwhelmed being myself for the first time in my life and not knowing how to be the REAL me in the world for a long time…

TOOK UP SO MUCH OF MY BRAIN POWER I ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT HANDLE NEW EXPERIENCES. I had nothing left over for them. This is why I HATED going to new places and meeting new people and trying new things.

For all the reasons mentioned in the previous threads (how awful it made me feel, how miserable it made me, how scared I was), but ALSO because I just did not have anything (not ANYTHING!) left over to process new things that I did not know how to react to.

This is another way dysphoria was keeping me from truly living and experiencing this world, experiencing LIFE, that I didn’t even realize was a thing until a few months ago.

Because I started wondering WHY I was suddenly trying Thai food and didn’t feel overwhelmed by it at all. It was EXCITING. And I LOVED IT.

And the reason was that I hit a point in my transition where my dysphoria lessened enough that I suddenly had the energy to deal with new things!

I don’t know what the turning point was, or why. I haven’t figured that out yet. Maybe it’s as simple as finally, FINALLY feeling (mostly) at home in my body for the first time in my entire life. Maybe enough changes happened that it all added up to something substantial.

Whatever the cause, I discovered I had SO MUCH MORE ENERGY to handle things! And I wanted to know all the things I’d been missing out on. SO VERY BADLY. I love pad thai?? I didn’t know that about myself! What else do I love??

Hawaiian barbecue! Authentic Mexican tacos! Ribs from that place that cooks them outside that I was always afraid to go to because I didn’t know where/how you bought them and having to ask someone terrified me! Authentic tikka masala!

Authentic ramen! Authentic pho!

And okay yes I still love stuff I’ve always loved, like more pizza and big sandwiches (but the sandwich was from a place I’d never been, and old me would have considered it “weird” and been afraid to try it) and hash browns and patty melts!

But I’m also still trying stuff I’ve never ever had before but want to. Like bibimbap!

And this is why it ties in so strongly with last week’s thread on going out into the world, to new places with new people, and HAVING NEW EXPERIENCES (which is what all these new foods are).

When you remove (well I don’t know if it’s “removed,” but it’s DRAMATICALLY lessened) gender dysphoria from the equation, there is

SO

MUCH

MORE.

So much more to life, so much more that we’re capable of, so much more happiness and joy to be found JUST FROM EXISTING. Entirely unrelated to my gender at all!

YES being the woman I am makes me ecstatic, GENDER EUPHORIA is very very real. And you cis folks can, and DO, experience it too.

But the not-so-simple fact of gender dysphoria occupying SO MUCH LESS of my every waking moment means I’m living, TRULY LIVING, for the first time in SO MANY NEW WAYS.

I want that for you. For ALL of you, trans or not. I would LOVE to have lunch with you. ANY TIME. Please! Let’s! And if we can’t do that in person, let’s do that here.

Let’s try new things, and celebrate life, and celebrate LIVING.

Together.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com