Trans Life

TRANS VOICES 2: HEARING THE TRUE YOU

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8/30/2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh my no. No no no no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D – diaphragmatic breathing

I – intonation

S – slow down

T – tongue positioning

E – ee-ifying vowels

R – resonance

B – breathiness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The voice timeline.

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

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

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

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

Change. Is. Possible.

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

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

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

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

PS – part 3 is here!

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 Trans Tuesday! This week we 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 actively designed to intentionally hurt us, with seven hundred and twenty-five anti-trans bills introduced so far in 2026, and we’re only a quarter of the way through the year.

These are horrible and disgusting, and the goal is to make it impossible for us to exist in society, and we need you, cis friends, to stop them. There aren’t enough trans people to stop this on our own. See PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP, PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP 2: FALSE ALLYSHIP, PROACTIVE ALLYSHIP (be an accomplice), TRANS POLITICS 1: STOP TOLERATING TRANSPHOBIA, and TRANS POLITICS 2: YOU MUST VOTE TO PROTECT US for more on the right and wrong ways to truly help trans people.

But today I want to show you how even when there aren’t 725 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 (if this all leaves a bad taste in your mouth, INCLUSIVE BUREAUCRACY will help mend your heart).

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… okay. There have definitely been bumps, but also some bright spots. See NO ESCAPE (from reminders I’m trans) and NO ESCAPE 2: SOME ESCAPE for some of the ways in which they haven’t been super great, but how individuals within the organization have made a huge positive impact on my experience.

I really wish they’d do informed consent for trans people, but they most certainly do not. See TRANS KIDS 2: TRANS FLIGHT AND THE INTAKE EXAM to learn about the incredibly long phone call I had to have with a therapist where I had to “prove” I was a woman, just to access medical transition care.

I’m now on my third endocrinologist with them, because the first was working on thirty year old information and refused to look at modern studies. When I was worried about losing access to my HRT during a second Trump term, the second gave me a lecture on federalism and then said “…if you were female…” and that was the end of my talking with her. She lasted all of one appointment. The third, and youngest (and only non-white) of the three, has been as good an endo as he can be, within the restrictions Kaiser puts on them. 

Although the flip side of that is my primary care physician, while a very nice lady, seems to not have tons of experience with trans folks. And while Kaiser covers laser and electrolysis hair removal… they wouldn’t cover it until my testosterone levels dropped below an arbitrary level.  Facial hair was one of the worst sources of my GENDER DYSPHORIA, see that essay if you need more on what that is and how awful it can be.

I could sign up to start the long prep and waiting list for gender confirmation surgery on the day the therapist confirmed I’m trans, because cis people decided that was what was most important to trans people, I guess? Never mind that for me, never ever having to shave my face again is a huge priority, and I didn’t get authorization to do something about it until 18 months into my medical transition. This is TRANSMEDICALISM. Read up on that if you need to, because we can’t fight it if you don’t know what it is.

And though my T is now well below their arbitrary nonsense, I still haven’t been able to be free of my facial hair forever for reasons outlined in A PANDEMIC TRANSITION.

And they also keep reminding me to get a gynecological exam, because while they do have me now listed as a woman in their system, they have no way to denote that I’m a trans woman. Despite the fact, again, that they have provided all of my medical transition care, including my gender-affirming speech therapy! (See TRANS VOICES for more)

And there’s even more of their bureaucracy that just wasn’t designed to take the existence of trans people into account.

Kaiser has digital medical records (one would hope, in 2026!) 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 for a while when I began medical transition early on during the pandemic, and so I never saw  my file and photo  up on the computers in the exam room. 

But during one of my voice therapy sessions, the speech therapist (who I adore, she’s just the absolute best, see my interview with her in TRANS VOICES 3) remarked that there was an “old” photo of me in there. And we all know exactly what she meant by that.

So 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 sure enough, 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.

While seeing that dude gives me zero dysphoria now, because I am so far into my transition that I feel no connection to ever looking like that at all, at the time that was not the case. It took years for that to happen for me. For some trans people, it might never happen. See PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS and PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE for more on that.

But what would have happened if I needed to show that virtual insurance card to someone? That was not remotely what I looked like, even then! I’d been socially transitioning for almost six months longer than I’d been medically transitioning, and by this time I was over two years into my medical transition. If you haven’t seen my transition timeline photo, here it is again… HRT grew me a whole new face!

Even at two years in, in the 2022 pic, I looked like an almost entirely different person!

They’d never believe that old pre-transition photo of me was the same person… which is actually a great feeling, let me tell you. Even if it was causing problems here.

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. 

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

And my doctor said… no, we don’t do that, you need to contact administration. So I go and contact them. I ask if they can just make my web profile photo my medical record insurance card photo. Nope! Impossible, they say. Can’t be done.

And now they 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 pandemic that killed a million Americans, while I’m living with an immunocompromised person, they wanted me 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? Bullshit.

So sorry, they said. Company policy.

Well that company policy is discriminatory toward trans people, and I told them so. They had agreed my dysphoria is real and serious and needed medical treatment, but I had to be forced to have said dysphoria worsened every time I opened their app to get care for that very thing?!

And what if I did have to go in person, like to get labs to monitor my hormone levels? One of their employees could see the old photo and think that’s not me, and they could refuse to treat me. And then I have to out myself to a stranger and explain 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??

After calling them out, all I got was silence for a few days. Then suddenly I found that the profile photo I’d uploaded to the website had magically replaced the old photo somehow! Oh dang, what? I thought you couldn’t do that? Then they finally wrote me back and said I brought up valid concerns, and they apologized.

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

Sadly the exact same nonsense 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 literal months, until it was finally fixed. Meanwhile, for 18 months of transition, I had to see my deadname on every medication. Every day. Multiple times a day. 

It was 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. And still being reminded of it means it’s 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. 

All of this is 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 trans existence. 

It all adds up, and makes it much tougher for us to just live in this world. For more on how hundreds of little things can become a mountain and a death by a thousand cuts, see TRANS MICROAGGRESSIONS.

Here’s my pre-transition insurance card, and the new one it was updated to.

And do note how, compared to my most recent photo in the above timeline, I don’t exactly look like the person pictured even on the updated card anymore! My face continues to change.

Also, hey, look at that poor, miserable egg. That photo was taken before my egg cracked fully and I accepted I was trans (back in 2014), 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. And made it easier to exist after we do all the work to get to point B.

We deserve to not be othered by systems that are not designed to account for our existence.

You know we’re here. Set up your systems to act like it.

We’re human beings, and deserve to be treated with the same respect you show to all cis people.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

INCLUSIVE BUREAUCRACY

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! In a lot of these I talk about things that are rough, or upsetting, or downright awful, because so much of our society is set up to treat trans people that way. But I also like to talk about the good stuff, so let’s discuss: INCLUSIVE BUREAUCRACY.

That is an exceptionally weird thing to call it, and probably doesn’t sound all that interesting, but stick with me because there’s something very important going on here! I wouldn’t lie to you! I’m good and cool.

Also! This is very much a companion piece to DISCRIMINATORY BUREAUCRACY, so be sure you’re aware of how rough things can be for us when parts of our society simply do not account for the fact that we exist… even when they’re the ones providing our transition care!

Getting your name and gender updated everywhere, in every facet of life where it needs to be, is… a lot. It’s a lengthy and time consuming process. It’s all kinds of things you maybe never even considered if you’ve never changed your name.

I talked about that a bit in LEGAL NAME AND GENDER MARKER CHANGE.

Of course I don’t want to see my deadname or be listed as the wrong gender anywhere, but there’s so much there’s just no way I could do it all at once. If you need more on the ways our NAMES AND PRONOUNS affect us, read up.

If you’ve read DISCRIMINATORY BUREAUCRACY, you know what a frustrating, long process just getting this information changed in one place can be. And again, that was the very place providing my transition healthcare, and they still couldn’t handle it.

So you have to space these things out. Or I did, at least, because there’s only so much of that I can go through at once. I don’t have infinite energy, and I have a lot of other things to do (writing, being a wife and parent, more writing, did I mention writing, sometimes directing, and then still more writing).

But it’s not just that my to-do list is long. You have to understand how difficult it is to notify someone that your name and gender have changed, and you’d like that change reflected in whatever their service is.

In a lot of these cases you have to make phone calls (why? I have no idea), which makes it even worse because you call and give them your account number or whatever, and they address you by your deadname and they call you “sir.”

Then I have to tell them “I’m not a sir, I’m a woman and that’s no longer my name,” and when I was doing some of this my VOICE still wasn’t where I wanted it to be after a year and a half of voice therapy. So they thought they heard a man and got confused.

Also, y’know, there are too many bigots in this world, and did you know those bigots have jobs? And some of them are in customer service and administration at companies where you have to get this stuff changed.

There’s always a chance that in COMING OUT AS TRANS to this complete stranger, things are gonna get awful. And to have to face that over and over and over and over and over again… like I said, there’s only so much of it I can take at once.

So you do the most important stuff first and work your way through the list. Social Security, driver’s license, bank, credit card, birth certificate, health insurance, medical provider, passport all take precedence. Some went fairly smoothly, some were agonizing. You get through them as best you can.

But every time you have to work up the nerve, and brace yourself for the chance it could be awful, and have all the emotional energy it’ll take to deal with that. Each time you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop and have it entirely fuck up your day.

And so it can be such a welcome surprise when things… could not possibly go better. I want to talk about what happened in a couple of my experiences with this, and how great they were, because there’s enough bad in the world. We also need to celebrate the good.

Working my way down the list of stuff I still had to change my name and gender with, I got to our AAA membership. My first step with things like this was to look online for info on how to do it, because for the aforementioned reasons, the last thing I want to do is call.

My one snag with this was that I couldn’t find information, on the AAA SoCal site or anywhere else, on how to do this. There was no easy link or form, and what info I did find for other US locations said you had to call. But again, that’s the last resort.

So I logged into the AAA website and sent a message, just one sentence that said my name and gender have been legally changed and I would like to reflect this change on my AAA account.

This wasn’t a dedicated place for changing this info in their system or anything like that. It was just a general query to their customer support. I had zero hopes it would get me anywhere good, but it was worth a shot.

Here’s the email I got back two days later:

Uh… what? Could it actually be that easy? Four hours later I replied with a copy of the court order showing my legal name and gender marker change, said thanks, and off it went. And twenty minutes later another reply came in:

What what what? Twenty minutes from when I sent them legal proof of my change of name and gender, it was done. Done done. Not just changed in their system but oh my old name is still in the online account, and then I have to figure out how to get a replacement card.

They just took care of everything they knew I’d need, and again somehow did it in the span of twenty minutes. I was flabbergasted. This had never happened before.

Why it’s almost like they know trans people exist and have procedures in place to make updates to their accounts!

The other example is even easier to explain. We’ve had a Costco membership for a long time (Costco I love you, and I would like to marry your food court pizza, thank you and sorry to my wife Susan, I am not taking questions at this time.)

If you don’t have a membership and aren’t aware, there’s a photo of you that accompanies your account, and is printed on your card along with your name. They don’t have an online system where you can change those things, or at least they didn’t six years ago, so I knew I’d have to go in person.

We’re there every week buying groceries, not a huge deal. So I go up to the customer service desk, Susan riding as my cis backup even though I’ve just said I want to marry a pizza, because she’s the best, and you never know how these things are gonna go.

Costco has been great but individuals are individuals, and some are bigots. And honestly I had no idea what Costo’s policy on changing stuff like this was. It’s so helpful to have a trusted cis person with you who can stand up for you if things get bad, because cis people will always be listened to and respected more than trans people will. Sad, but true.

Anyway, I walk up to the counter and one of the ladies working there asks if she can help me. I told her my legal name had changed and I wanted to update my card. She scanned my old card, pulled up our account… and asked me what my new name was. She updated it, took my new photo, handed me a new card (and destroyed the old one for me), and that was it.

She didn’t even ask why, because it was obviously clear when she saw the old photo compared to the very visibly-coded woman standing in front of her, especially when coupled with the name change. She just… did it. And wasn’t weird or awkward about it, or even uncomfortable. She just treated me like any other customer and handled it quickly and pleasantly, and I was so relieved.

This is as quick and easy as it should be! And all it takes is being aware that trans people not only exist, but we’re also your neighbors, your constituents, your fellow citizens, and your customers. 

If everything were that easy and painless I could have updated everything across the board in the span of a week, rather than still slowly be working through everything nine months after everything was actually legally changed.

So thank you, to Karen W. and AAA, and to Costco, for the tremendous customer service and for making everything so quick and smooth. 

Please, cis friends, be part of the change at your organization in making sure this stuff goes as easily for us as it can.

So few places make it easy on trans people.

In a world that is so often out to get us, these kinds of inclusive procedures matter.

Every little bit goes a long way in changing the way trans people are treated in our society.

And we need you to be part of that change.

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.