Trans Life

HALLOWEEN (and the fear of embracing your true self)

Welcome to Trans Tuesday!  It’s time for spooky spoops, costumes, and candy. So we’re gonna talk about HALLOWEEN, but what this is really about is THE FEAR OF EMBRACING YOUR TRUE SELF (when your entire life has been a costume).

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t know how familiar you are with Animaniacs, but the characters have black bodies and white faces, in that old-timey cartoon style. The black I handled with a simple black sweatsuit, and I had cartoony gloves from a Disney World trip as a kid. Those all worked great. I had a light blue t-shirt to put over the black sweatshirt, and the red cap. And even a red clown nose!

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

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

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

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

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

Even as a pre-transition adult, I would try not to let my wife Susan kiss me when she had lipstick (or even lip balm!) on, because some would invariably get on me, and it provided the exact feeling of fear I’ve been talking about. I couldn’t handle it! I had to get it off! Now now now! AAAHH! It made me panic.

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

In fact, you can, uh… see some of that in action in THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE (that we’re trans).

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seriously wrong.

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

But just as much as the fear of what it would mean if I liked those things that were Not For Boys, I felt the fear of having to pretend to be someone else. Because you have to understand:

I was pretending to be someone else every waking moment of my entire life.

That’s what being trans and not knowing it is: acting the part of the cis person you were told you are and had no choice but to be. Sometimes we have to do that even after knowing who we really are (see BOYMODING/GIRLMODING).

And it’s not just that you don’t know how to be the person you’re told you have to be. I mean… it’s hard to explain. I didn’t want to be that person, but I was told that’s who I was, and I believed what I was told (see TRANS TRAUMA 2: SOCIETAL GASLIGHTING to learn about that particular poop nugget).

I tried so damned hard, for my entire life, to be that person.

Even though it repulsed me on an atomic level. 

So the thought of dropping that cis boy facade, to replace it with another (like a character in a play), seemed… insurmountable. And uncomfortable. 

Because I didn’t know how you’d adopt a fake persona on top of the fake persona you were already using all your energy to try to project. I was constantly stressed and worried about it, and had to wear it for every damned moment of my entire life.

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

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

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

I mean, how much more obvious could it be, right? Are you laughing? It’s okay. I am too. How trite! If this were a script I’d be working on a rewrite right now. (anyway, see THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE (that we’re trans) for more)

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

And myself.

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

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

Screw the stupid gender binary, let kids play with what they want (see GENDERED CHILDHOODS). Anyway, my favorites were always any character that came with a removable helmet or mask. 

I’d put it on them, take it off, put it back on.

I’d pretend while they had it on that none of the other characters knew who they were. They’d later take it off and reveal their true identity and everyone would be surprised. 

LOOK I SAID IT WAS REALLY OBVIOUS ONCE I NOTICED IT, OKAY?!?

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

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

But I couldn’t. Not in the environment I was in, and not for a long time after until I undid all the damage and INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA society had wormed into me.

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

That was, of course, played for laughs. Oh ho ho, you see they’re men but they’re dressed like women and isn’t that silly because it’s so bad and wrong?? (this still permeates our media to no end, mind you, see my 2022, 2023, and 2024 TRANS REP IN MEDIA reports)

Homophobia and transphobia are of course baked right into all of that. It’s terrible. And yet.

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

And my god, what must that be like? I was already fantasizing about this, in a “socially acceptable” way, without even consciously realizing that’s what I was doing, mind you… see TRANS TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES.

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

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

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

Guess that’s just part of it! Huh. Yep, makes sense. No need to examine that any further, you weirdo! Glad we settled that. And she hoped to never think about it again.

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

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

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

One of the first things I did after being sure I was transgender but not knowing if I would transition was… book an appointment with a Hollywood makeup artist who specializes in makeovers for trans women. I’ve mentioned that in multiple essays, and even fairly recently in the one on COMING OUT (as it was a big part of my push to do it).

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

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

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

Because I knew. Even though the colors and style she used aren’t something I’d choose for myself now, I knew. I knew I knew I knew. That was me. Not all of me, not wholly me… but she was in there. I was in there.

It was the first time I ever saw even a hint of me. I almost cried, but I didn’t want to ruin the makeup!

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

For the first couple Halloweens after coming out, I didn’t have a costume. I didn’t have anywhere to wear one to regardless, but even if I did I was still too unsure of putting a facade on top of the old facade I was still working on fully breaking out of.

A couple years back I threw together an “80s chick” just based on stuff I already owned (yes I owned those things, including hot pink legwarmers, because they’re totally rad).

The year after that, I really wanted to dress up, but I put all this pressure on myself because if it was going to be my first real costume, I wanted it to be something that was important to me.

But that resulted in me being too indecisive until I was basically out of time, so I just bought this cute Halloween dress and headband.

But last year… I finally settled on something. On a character that was really important to me, even though basically nobody recognized it when they saw me! But it’s from a forty year old movie so I guess that makes sense. But it’s a great movie, okay? And one of my favorites of all time.

My first real costume was… Sarah Connor. And not the badass Sarah Connor from T2, but the in-over-her-head Sarah Connor from The Terminator.

Because this is where Sarah Connor becomes a badass. 

Where fate stares her in the eye and she says no.

NO.

There is no fate but what we make.

And that’s such a trans affirmation of life. Fate made us trans, but we decide what to do about it. We decide, when it’s safe for us to do so, that we can change everything and live a better life.

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

Embrace it. Run toward it. Experience that fear and see what you learn about yourself when you come out the other side.

It might just be a revelation.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

THE ERASURE OF TRANS MEN

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re discussing a big problem that’s cropped up in our society that you might not have noticed, but it’s high time you did. We’re talking THE ERASURE OF TRANS MEN.

So, hey, obviously trans men exist, and this is a thing you’re aware of. But in so much of the discourse around transness, both good and bad, trans men are left out of the conversation. So let’s discuss the ways they’re left out and why that is.

The most recent and likely biggest way they’ve been left out is in the discussions over abortion rights and Roe falling. Everyone who actually cares about rights and bodily autonomy was outraged, but… almost universally it was about WOMEN.

WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN. Now listen, I am a woman! I love women. We’re just super in every way. BUT NOT ALL WOMEN CAN GET PREGNANT (be they cis or trans), but also SOME TRANS MEN CAN GET PREGNANT AND THIS AFFECTS THEM TOO.

I wrote about this right after Roe fell, in the Trans Tuesday on TRANS RAGE, aka Stop Forgetting About Us.

A reminder that the fight for abortion rights AND the fight for trans rights (and disability rights) are the exact same fight. It all boils down to bodily autonomy, and how everyone deserves it and the EXACT same group of people, led by cishet white men, don’t want us to have it.

There’s a trans tuesday all about BODILY AUTONOMY, and how I never felt like I had it before transitioning, and how that’s all tied in with my tattoo.

Trans men are at the intersection of the fight for abortion rights and trans rights, and if you need a reminder of what TRANS INTERSECTIONALITY is all about (and you absolutely DO if you’re leaving trans men out of the fight for abortion rights), here’s the Trans Tuesday on that.

But trans men are often left out of so, so much more than that. Look at trans rep in the media, such as it is. Paltry in the best of terms, and still often harmful. It’s anecdotal, but see the Trans Tuesday on TRANS REP IN MEDIA 2022 for a snapshot of what it’s like.

And you’ll even see right in that, there was a horribly transphobic joke in one show that was one hundred percent based on ignoring the very idea of trans men. They’re forgotten or discarded, often in service of hurting other trans people.

They’re often also completely ignored in a lot of the legislative transphobia making its way through courthouses all across the country. And I don’t mean that those horrid laws don’t affect them, because they ABSOLUTELY do. As much as any trans person.

But their existence is completely forgotten about in the arguments in favor of those bigoted laws… BECAUSE THEY DISPROVE AND DISMANTLE TRANSPHOBIC ARGUMENTS.

These laws are almost wholly focused on trans women and girls, and we’ll get to why in a minute. But let’s look at two of the biggest bigoted issues used to justify legislating and legalizing bigotry against us: trans people in sports, and bathroom bills.

As a basis, you need to know how the entire TRANS SPORTS hullaballoo is COMPLETE AND UTTER NONSENSE on every scientific level. Here’s the Trans Tuesday on it, which will show you how there’s not a lick of science or fact behind it.

But their entire, faulty, bigoted argument is that trans women competing against cis women have an unfair advantage because we may (I stress, MAY) have higher levels of testosterone. I’m not going to re-debunk that here, so DO check out that Trans Tuesday I just linked you to.

But if that WERE the case (it’s not, but even if it were), why do you never hear a PEEP from them about trans men competing against cis men? Especially when many trans men ARE TAKING TESTOSTERONE AS PART OF HRT?

I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will clarify again so nobody misconstrues: I do not want trans men to be discriminated against or for these laws to focus more on them, goodness no.

But if the bigots’ argument is that it’s the TESTOSTERONE that gives trans women an unfair advantage, why don’t they ever complain about the people who are actually adding it to their bodies?

Because trans men HAVE been competing against cis men (just like trans women HAVE been competing against cis women) for decades and guessssss what? THEY DO NOT HAVE ANY UNFAIR ADVANTAGE WHATSOEVER.

And if people who are willfully injecting testosterone to make their bodies align with their gender don’t have an unfair advantage, how the entire hell could people who are SUPPRESSING their testosterone have an unfair advantage? Ignoring trans men here is willful ignorance.

In terms of the bathroom bills, all you ever hear about is the “danger” of we trans women being in women’s bathrooms, because society continues to paint us as nothing more than sexual predators who are “men in dresses” and that we only do it to assault women.

Never mind that cis men assault women all the time, right in public, and don’t need to be dressed as women to do it. Never mind that no cis man who wanted to sexually assault women would go through everything we trans women go through just to perpetrate an assault.

Never mind that most sexual assaults happen with someone the victim already knows. Never mind that even the most cursory search of news stories will show you it’s something that NEVER happens, yet trans women are ROUTINELY the victims of sexual assault ourselves.

Have you ever heard ANY of those bigots talk about trans men in men’s bathrooms? Nope. Why? Why would they just ignore that? Why the hell do you think?

Because what their bigoted laws are suggesting is that if you send trans women into men’s bathrooms (where we’re very likely to be assaulted), then you must also send TRANS MEN into women’s bathrooms.

This is who bigots think should be using women’s bathrooms.

Aydian Dowling, the first trans man on the cover of Men’s Health magazine

Laith Ashley, model and actor

Brian Michael Smith, actor

Elliot Fletcher, actor

Do you see? Do you understand? The only reason bigots ignore trans men is because their very existence disproves the ENTIRE line of attack against trans people that is almost exclusively targeted at trans women.

And why is that? Well if you haven’t figured it out already, it’s misogyny. Specifically transmisogyny, but also it’s just the hatred of women in general. Because trans men rejected womanhood to be their true selves, and society is perfectly okay with that.

Well, in general. There’s still definitely a portion of transphobes who think trans men are “confused lesbians” which is complete and utter nonsense but also ignores all the gay trans men and look, how can you not see how transparent this all is?

But misogyny permeates every corner of our society. It’s why “tomboys” are accepted and even celebrated, but a man who’s even slightly effeminate is ridiculed and mocked and often attacked. Masculinity is celebrated, femininity is ridiculed.

And we trans woman, who society “gifted” with manhood, REJECTED IT. We said NAH and threw it away. And in the false cis binary matrix of society, there is no greater threat to rich, able-bodied, cishet white men’s power than rejecting masculinity.

And that trans men want masculinity, but not THAT masculinity, and DON’T wield it like a weapon of oppression as society dictates, and have by and large completely rejected toxic masculinity… also disproves absolutely EVERYTHING society wants you to believe about men.

Trans men aren’t out there assaulting women, CIS men are. And it’s not the victim blaming refrain of how women dress (UGH) because guess what, trans men see the same women. They don’t have impulse control problems. They don’t use their masculinity to hurt others.

Trans men are a shining beacon that disprove absolutely everything the false binary of society wants you to believe. So the only way bigots can perpetrate their hate is by ignoring their existence altogether. But those of us who aren’t bigots MUST do better.

We NEED to be allies to trans men. They’re an important and vital part of this fight, they show us everything beautiful a man can be, and they are our brothers who deserve respect.

And it’s high time we started showing it.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

CHASERS AND THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN 1: EXPLANATION AND EXAMPLES

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Today’s topic is a very real problem trans women have to deal with. Cis folks, specifically cis men, especially white men, especially heterosexual men, super especially cishet white men, please pay attention. Here comes CHASERS AND THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN 1: EXPLANATION AND EXAMPLES.

This is a serious and really important topic, but before we get into it I have a warning for you. In order for you to truly understand what we trans women go through, I’m going to show you what it’s like for us. Every day, everywhere we go, no matter what we do. Especially online, but it happens in person, too. A bit less so, though, because the perpetrators don’t want to out themselves as attracted to trans women (because heaven forbid).

I’m splitting this into two parts, because to accurately hit you with the reality of this, you need to experience the flood, which makes this installment rather long. 

So this week we’re going to talk about what chasers are and what they do, and next week we’re going to talk about the origin of the entire chaser movement, and how people react when you call chasers out.

There will be many horrible, uncomfortable, and sometimes explicit things discussed. 

I’ll be talking about them in a purely non-explicit way, but I’m not censoring the examples themselves (beyond hiding some of the screennames, for reasons I will explain).

This is your official and only warning. Mountains of horribleness follow.

And it’s important for you to get a taste of what it is we go through.

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

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

But there is a very real issue for trans women where many feel forced into sex work, because it’s one of the only ways our society has said it’s okay for trans women to exist. See the essays on THE 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS part 1, 2, 3, and 4, to see exactly how many trans people lose homes and jobs after coming out, how many of us live beneath the poverty line (so many), and how many of us have been unhoused (thirty percent!).

With transphobic laws somehow at a new all-time high every year, with discrimination against us legalized in ever more horrible ways, for many trans women sex work is all that’s left open to them to survive. And nobody should be forced into sex work for any reason, much less just to be able to eat!

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

Feeling forced into sex work as the only way to survive and be “accepted” (by certain awful parts of society), and what that does to a person, and how it can only ever be a temporary solution at best (because the patriarchy values youth over age and many will invariably age out of being able to support themselves via sex work), is examined in stunning depth in The Matrix films. Yes, really. It’s what The Merovingian is all about. See my book Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix for more.

I personally know trans ladies who’ve felt forced into sex work because they had no other option. It’s the one thing one very bad portion of our society has decided it’s okay for us to do: exist as nothing more than sex objects for cis white men.

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

There are so many terms they call us anything other than “trans women” that I’ve not even listed here. It’s remarkable the lengths that have been gone to in order to dehumanize us as nothing more than sex objects, based on our genitalia and gender.

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

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

The “trans women are tricksters and deceivers!” trope still pops up in our media a lot, sadly, and it’s still perpetuating this horrible nonsense. See 2025 TRANS REP IN MEDIA parts 1-4 for a particularly egregious example of this from season two of Poker Face.

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

So let’s talk about what it’s like being a trans woman on the internet. We’re not even going to talk about the bigotry we have to deal with on top of all this right now (though we will next week, for reasons you may be surprised to learn).

The week I publicly came out as trans, the chasers found me and the DM flood started. They waste no time. Do they seek out newly out trans ladies thinking we’re not numb to it all already? Or that we’re more vulnerable to anyone suddenly using our correct pronouns? You bet they do.

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

For a while I tried seeing what would happen if I pretended to be a bot. You can see how even that didn’t deter them. Can’t stop because maybe I’m not a bot and am a trans woman they can harass!

These may look innocent to you, but babes, we’re only getting started. I know those guys are chasers because I know chaser behavior, because I cannot ever escape it. I’ve got years of experience to drown in. Keep reading.

I’ll now give you a window into what my DMs, replies, and mentions across social media look like. Most examples will be from Instagram, because the user base there is particularly awful and they have some of the worst controls to moderate your experience. But know that it truly happens everywhere. I mean, they do it in the Scrabble app, so.

I’ve blocked some usernames and handles, but left some others. Again, I’ll discuss why that is later on.

What you’re about to see is like one percent of what I get every single time I post a selfie (which I’m not gonna stop doing just to stop the chasers). You can read about why selfies are actually important for trans people in PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS and PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE.

So anytime I post a photo of myself, no matter what it is, or what I am doing in the photo, or the clothes I am wearing, the next time I log in my DM notifications look like this. All of these accounts are strangers:

And then, multiple times a week, I will log on and discover chasers who’ve found my profile and gone through and liked every photo I have ever posted, often within the same hour, also often within the same minute.

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

Do note that on a picture with my lovely wife Susan, in which the caption said we were married and it was our anniversary, he wrote:

[DNA emoji] BFF sisters for life [100 emoji]… and then on another photo commented: [ring emoji] will make a good [bride emoji] wife some day [church emoji].

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

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

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

I want you to know, for all these following examples where I replied to the chaser: I usually don’t. I specifically replied to these guys to show you what they’re like. Because I know some other cishet white guys out there will claim it was all innocent, or I’m just imagining things.

Yeah sure. So let’s see about that, why don’t we?

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

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

The “hi” over and over again is a known chaser thing, believe it or not. 

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

And then there’s the ones who think trans women are here to answer every explicit sex question on their mind. Because, as nothing more than a sex object to them, surely we have the answers and are happy to talk to strangers about sex.

Never mind that I’m not even into dudes and have never, and will never, have sex with one.

And of course, everyone’s least favorite chaser, the dick pic-er.

“How do you know it was a dick pic, Tilly?? It only says it’s a photo, it could be anything!” 

Come on. 

“Why don’t you just report it then??” 

To report it I have to know it’s actually a dick pic. So I looked. Guess what it was? So I reported it.

Do you… do you think it worked?

I’ve got news for you.

This is also your reminder that Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads) have recently changed their terms of service to explicitly allow slurs and hate speech against trans people, while not allowing it for any other group.

And then there’s the scammers. 

If you think these dudes don’t specifically target trans women, who often have no money, I don’t know what to tell you.

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

Annnnnnd then I got what may be one of the creepiest chasers yet.

“I still think it’s somehow all innocent, Tilly, because I am dim and have bad opinions! Maybe they’re nice guys who just don’t know they’re being creepy! Why don’t you explain and try to educate them?”

Like, that is not my job, but also:

And the denial? It runs deeeeeep.

I don’t even want to know what the hell this one is about.

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

Because here’s the thing… those kinds of tags get used by eggs (trans people who don’t know they’re trans yet), and people trying to figure out their own gender, all the time. I was one of them. I never went through someone’s entire profile liking all their photos because I was cognizant of how fucking creepy that is.

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

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

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

That means that a lot of eggs, who’ve been pretending to be cis, find sexualizing and fetishizing trans women is the only way they can see us, learn more about us, and come to terms with their own gender. 

A non-zero number of those chasers are eggs who don’t even know it yet.

If you make it so people can only see trans women when we’re fetishized in porn, then fetishizing us in porn is the only way trans women eggs can see people like themselves.

If that’s the only option, where else are they to go?

Again, see my 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 TRANS REP IN MEDIA reports from the past four years to see how nearly non-existent good representation for us in media really is.

And the insidiousness is that then teaches those trans women eggs that being a fetishized sex object is the only way they can exist in society, and it reinforces the horror. It works an implicit bias into them (and also into cis people who only ever know us through that fetishized exposure) that that is all we can be, and all we are.

See IMPLICIT QUEERPHOBIA if you don’t understand how society does this to all of us, about people from every marginalized community.

Do I wish these eggs would be less creepy about my photos? Fuck yes. 

But I’m not going to block them because this world makes it so incredibly difficult for us to even realize we’re trans, much less transition and self-actualize. My photos could help them, like other trans women’s photos helped me.

It’s an awful line to walk, because I definitely don’t want harassment, and could certainly do without all the worthless trash messages from cis men who are as lovely as gas station hot dogs. But I know there are eggs out there doing the best with what they have and trying to learn… about themselves.

I won’t make it harder on them. It’s way too hard on us all as it is. 

Please come back next week, as we look at the way people react when you call out chasers, and the origin of the entire movement to fetishize and sexualize trans women in our society. It’s gonna sound wild, but I’ve got receipts.

But please, you have to realize it’s fine to be attracted to us, you can and should be! We are hot! And you can’t help who you’re attracted to. 

But you cannot forget that we are human beings first and foremost. 

If you can’t respect us, please fling yourself into the sea forthwith.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 2 is here.

ADDENDUM 4/30/26

Literally one day after this was posted, I saw the below on BlueSky. No. Stop. What the hell are you doing. There are so many trans women programmers, if this was a thing we wanted, we would have made it by now.

And he clearly didn’t “know how this lands,” given the way he was absolutely roasted in the comments and quote posts.

Cis men take the “I should not act like I know what’s best for trans women” challenge (impossible).

Because it’s certainly not building an app that functions as Chaser Central.

THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE (that we’re trans)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re going to take a personal look into my past to look at THE SIGNS THAT WERE ALWAYS THERE EVEN WHEN WE REFUSED TO SEE THEM. There’s no other way to say this than… this is gonna be embarrassing. For me.

Actually it’s making me a little uncomfortable, because I feel like this is going to expose me a little more than I’d like. Expose me as what? A trans woman? OH NO. Obviously this is not a surprise to anyone at this point. I talk about it a lot and am proud to be trans.

And it’s not like I don’t get personal in these. I get detailed about my past in many of them, like you can see in my thread on The Past, and Why it Haunts Us.

And also my thread on Parents Who Will Never Know the Real You, aka My Dad.

There are certainly more, I try to be as open and transparent as possible because I know that can help people. But this is something extra personal that was never intended to be seen by anyone but my amazing wife Susan, but that’s only part of it.

I guess what’s most embarrassing about it is that you’re going to see just how very blind to my own transness I was. And I know that’s not unique to me… in fact, it’s so common there are entire memes about it. See How Do You Know if You’re Trans (Still Cis Tho).

For some background, I’m going to suggest you read the thread on Fear of Embracing Your True Self as I explain in there how very terrified I was of things like makeup… and why. To get the full impact of what you’re about to see, truly… read this first.

Okay enough context, which is probably in some small way me stalling because… well, let’s just get on with it. A while back, Susan made me a scrapbook of things from our life together, and it’s beautiful and sweet and delightful.

Some of what she included were letters and notes I’d written her, and one of them included this:

A photo of part of a note I’d written to my wife, in my horrible, uncomfortable, tight, pre-transition handwriting. It reads: I wanted you to have something to have with you… for those times when I’m not there and you can’t call me, but you need some reassurance and love and hugs and… kisses!

Okay, a brief pause for full disclosure… just seeing my old HANDWRITING gives me dysphoria. It’s as cramped and tight and uncomfortable and awful as I felt all the time pre-transition, and I didn’t expect that to spike my dysphoria! How incredibly weird.

I talked about how my handwriting has changed post-transition, and why, along with a whole host of other things I never anticipated in my thread on Unexpected Bonuses of Transition.

And though I link to this one most often, I never know when new folks are coming in to their first one of these, so if you need more info on Gender Dysphoria.

Okay, right, so… Tilly, what the heck? I hear you. You look at that snippet of a note and think… that’s some uggo handwriting, but what of it? You wanted your wife to know you loved her when you couldn’t be with her and couldn’t talk, what’s wrong with that?

Nothing at all! Except that I cropped out the truly incriminating part. How do you think I was sending her kisses to keep while we were apart? HOW?  

A larger snippet of the same note as before, only below the writing there is… a red lipstick kiss mark.

Okay listen-

No, it’s fine, get your laughs out now, go ahead. You’re not laughing at me, it’s okay, because I assure you I’m laughing too.

I couldn’t yet consciously give myself permission to explore, to find myself, to play with gender and see what I really was inside. And so… I found a way… to do that anyway… without even consciously realizing it.

I did a whole thread about finding ways to giving yourself Permission to Experiment and find your true self.

Okay, but as you read in my thread on the Fear of Embracing Your True Self, I HATED lipstick and lip balm (because of the terrifying feelings they gave me, even though I didn’t know that was why). And I’m not kidding about that. Look:

More of that horrid handwriting from the note. It reads: OH MY. THAT WAS REALLY WEIRD. SO MUCH SO I’M NOW WRITING IN CAPS?? That was… minty. WTF? How do you wear that stuff? Blech. Um… yeah.

Siiiiiigh. See, this is why I feel exposed and embarrassed. It’s SO CLEAR TO ME, looking at that, exactly what I was going through, and why I had those feelings. And I’d done it to myself by concocting a “reason” I could put lipstick on when I was home by myself.

I’ve said so, so, SO many times how looking back at my life, there were signs everywhere that I was trans. Signs that I willfully ignored, pretended I didn’t see, pretended they didn’t mean EXACTLY what they actually meant. And this is abso 100% one of them.

I’m not saying if you’re a cis man and you do this one thing that you’re trans, BUT y’know if there’s DOZENS of these, HUNDREDS… maybe you’re not as cis as you think.

Anyway it gets worse (better?), because this is how I closed out the letter:

It’s that same old awful handwriting. It reads: PS – I think I ruined your lipstick. Sorry! At least you know I haven’t been wearing it while you’re at work.

Tilly. Girl.

GIRL.

WHY WOULD ANYONE THINK YOU WERE WEARING YOUR WIFE’S MAKEUP WHILE SHE WAS AT WORK? WHAT A SUUUUUPER RANDOM THING TO THINK PEOPLE MIGHT BE WONDERING ABOUT YOU…

As you’ve no doubt seen in plenty of my selfies, I now love wearing makeup and lipstick, because I gave myself that permission to explore, pushed through the fear of embracing my true self, and figured out who I really am.

When I said the signs were always there, I did not remember this note. I had no idea it existed. So when Susan found it and put it in that scrapbook, it was an embarrassing and somewhat hilarious slap to the face.

It said “damn RIGHT the signs were always there, just LOOK, you fool!” Yeah yeah, okay, sure. My Morpheus was always there hammering away, trying to break through my shell and get me to see what was really inside. And if you don’t get the reference:
Twitter, Facebook

Push through the fear. Do it scared. Give yourself permission. The signs have always been there… and it’s okay to recognize and accept them. You may be surprised at the joy you find waiting for you on the other side. (lipstick!!)

Me with curly bangs and two curly pigtails held with light blue hair ties, eyeliner, pink-framed glasses, a dark pinkish-purple lipstick in a v-neck top with light blue, dark green, orange, dark red, and pink horizontal stripes.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com