I only have two things, first, I think you're awesome and wish you success, second, how can one know if it's or not an egg? How know if it cracks?
Thank you!
My definition of an egg is someone who is not cis but doesn't quite know it yet, but I could be completely wrong. That third bit for me was just finally accepting myself and stop denying my trans self.
Story time!
(my transition timeline under the cut)
I loved watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a teen, it was so incredibly rewarding to watch a show that openly acknowledged: "Yes, high school does, in fact, suck." I loved all the characters and their foibles, but the one I identified with the most (though I couldn't articulate it at the time) was... Willow Rosenberg.
I loved how she was a character who was a social pariah, with no sense of fashion other than that which had been foisted upon her, I loved the metaphor of her character growth through learning magic and the realization that through it she could become indispensable to others, and I loved how it was her learning to become more confident in herself that allowed her to bag a very cool opposite-sex romantic partner. She just like me fr!
Now as far as egg warning signs go, you'd think 'Identifying with a fictional female character' would be pretty far down the list. And you'd be right.
But then Willow got a girlfriend.
As much as I enjoyed Willow's confidence leading to her relationship with her first boyfriend, I never really cared about that relationship in and of itself. But I became INVESTED in Willow/Tara. They were the first ship that I ever sought out fanfic for. Part of it was just because I had a big crush on Amber Benson's performance (she's so pretty! 😭), but I also still really identified with Willow. So Willow getting a girlfriend was at once really radicalizing (gay people! on mainstream TV!!) and slotting something important into place (she just like me fr).
Fast forward five years, to my 20th birthday. I was working a shitty minimum wage job and wasn't particularly enthused about the event, but my coworker and his GF insisted on taking me out to Denny's (This was the height of fine dining for us) a week before in celebration. While there, and out of the blue, my coworker's GF sized me up and said "You know what? I think we should take you to Rocky Horror Picture Show. You'd look cute in a dress."
Yes, I am now fully aware that RHPS is a complicated and problematic entry in queer cinema, the straightest gay movie possible, but at the time in mid-20-aughts Texas? Again, just the thought of it was radicalizing. I had never cross-dressed before nor thought about doing so, but when confronted with someone who wanted to help me do it? I dived in head-first.
So the GF and I set about getting the SLUTTIEST outfit we could possibly assemble from all the highest-class sex shops in the metro area: Playboy bunny halter top (over a padded double-D bra), black micro-skirt, pigtails, fishnet stockings, and the coup-de-gras: A pair of vinyl, knee-high, 15cm platform, stiletto heel boots. A picture of me in that getup might still exist, but certainly buried in a computer hard drive somewhere back at my parent's place.
Thusly outfitted, I attended my first Rocky Horror screening. It was great! They had local actors in costume mouth along to the parts of the film on stage while the movie was playing in the background, the crowd MST3K'd the film in real time, all kinds of stuff that I'd never encountered before. And people loved how outrageous my getup was! One of the best birthdays I'd ever had.
And then I kept coming back.
Little by little, I assembled more dresses, less extreme but no less feminine, and I kept going out to RHPS showings on Saturday nights dressed up in girl mode. I couldn't fully articulate it at the time, but I wanted badly to recapture the magic of that first night.
Soon enough, I started doing research on being transgender. But always in the back of my mind was something that I'd encountered years earlier: Porn.
I had found one of my dad's early 90s porn mags, one of the seedier ones that had at the back an entire bank of models offering different phone sex options at insanely high prices per minute. Among the models were a number of trans women (though they were NOT named as such), with small penises and hard jaws and hemi-spherical breast implants. That image was forever burned into my brain, as the limit to what being sexy while trans could be, and it wasn't particularly inspiring.
My research into transition options quickly became grim. Surgeries costing tens of thousands of dollars which only yielded partial results, painfully limited opportunities even after transition (never mind during), and a lifetime of being paranoid about being Clocked and subsequently murdered. As scary as things are today, it was worse back then.
I eventually attended a psych eval session at a regional trans healthcare clinic, but with none of the trans women I'd encountered up to that point being particularly pleased with their lot in life, I ultimately decided not to come back. I was just a femme boy! I could live like that. It was fine.
Fast forward another 18 years and one metric Social Media Explosion, and even through the dire years of the Tr*mp admin, I got to see increasing numbers of trans women go on hormones and come out the other side completely joyful about their new bodies. That was something that I'd never encountered during all my research: Trans Joy. I'd only ever approached the problem through the lens of dysphoria, of being tormented by a body that would always cruelly deny any attempts at being recognized for the true self beneath.
But it wasn't until this year that I read a story that fully and finally cracked my egg.
I spent most of this year reading almost every story on Ao3 I could find with the tag "internalized transphobia" for reasons that at this point should be blindingly obvious. The breaking point was "A Sour Peach", an original rom-com story about a trans girl from rural Georgia going to her state uni as the correct gender but with a LOT of baggage, meeting her hot butch roommate and falling hard for her despite her best efforts to be a normal straight girl. The story is great, and you should go read it, but for me the most impactful scene is in the third act breakdown, when the protagonist is at her lowest point.
She's alone, self-isolated from all the friends she's made, and quietly eating take out on the porch of a cold and otherwise empty street, contemplating how badly she'd fucked up to get to that point. And then a pair of queer women walk down the street, hand in hand, laughing with each other and sharing little acts of affection. One of them spots the protagonist and waves at her, who waves back. The protagonist watches them leave, and then breaks down into tears as she lets herself realize that -more than a life of quietly passing- she wants what they have.
I want what they have.
From the jump, I've wanted to be in a relationship like Willow and Tara, or Xena and Gabrielle, or Catra and Adora. I've wanted to be seen and heard as a woman, and to also be in love with another woman. And now I want to actually pursue that more than I'm afraid of failing.
I still have a long way to go. Hormones will take years to really run their course, I still have a lot to learn about how best to transition, I still have a lot of hangups that I need to overcome, and there's also the pesky fact of learning how to date other women as a woman, something for which my severely limited prior experience isn't particularly useful.
But I WANT to. I have to, because the only alternative is being alone on a porch and eating take out, silently watching other people live their lives the way that I forlornly wish I could.
