I've been working on a project to collect trans people's stories about how they came to understand themselves as trans. Please consider adding your story and sharing this around as far as you can.
www.becominganarrative.org
Here's why I'm helping make this possible:
'Growing up I had barely heard about trans people, they simply weren't something I was conscious of at the time. There are so many points in my life where I feel like something would've clicked if I had only know that was a thing you could be. And even when I became aware of trans people, it was under the understanding that they were 'born this way', that they had inherently know about this feeling since they were four or something. So when I began questioning anything about myself my conclusion about transness was that it simply couldn't be that because I hadn't 'always' felt this way. I'm sure some people who transitioned later in life may understand this feeling. If i knew then what I know now, I would have started down this road a lot sooner.
So that's how I came up with this idea. A repository of trans stories of becoming, stories of how people came to find themselves, readily available, to help anyone who could need it. While I think the idea of being 'born this way' does hold some weight, I don't think it's the be all and end all of being transgender, nonbinary, Takatāpui, gender-queer, transsexual, fluid, or any other label that someone could use to describe themself. Thinking about things in such a rigid paradigm is what held me back from understanding myself better and being happier with who I am. So its my hope that this project can be long running and spread awareness about just how diverse the way people can be are.'
The most frequent slur im called going from faggot to tranny to dyke is a solid indicator of how society at its nastiest sees me, it recognises the gay man, something attempting to do something with its gender and then the gay women. The reason This to me is a good indicator of how gender is implicit is that the change shows that even at their most vitriolic, people act with gendered notions and a conformity to those notions in mind.
It's not often that I'll just post something from my Twitter but.... this little interaction has me in some sort of way:
It feels like every 5 years or so someone opens a gay bar here and we all celebrate and it's nice but then it always goes through this cycle. Always. And it sucks, lgbtq people are very tolerated and loved where I lived so it's not like we can't go to all the other clubs and bars and spots and dives. But it's just really nice to have a place where you implicitly feel safe to be you, even if it didn't feel unsafe elsewhere.
I don't know a great way to change this either, the joke name I came up with was what I would hope would be enough but I know it's not. How do you keep a spot in that teir 2? (To be clear I mean for spots that are more explicitly meetup/hookup orientated, very happy with cis straight women coming in to just feel safe and happy in general queer spaces)
Had a weird taste come up when I was having a coffee today. It was my normal hazelnut soy latte, it tasted meh but had a distinct aftertaste of:
That time you were 18 at a 21st party and you were hanging out with this hot but much older woman and things are cool and at some point you let her put her cigarette out on your arm and it hurts so so good and she smiles at you wrylie and you can't remember how that word goes because your standing there trying to pretend that you're not absolutely soaked and then things move on a bit but the burn is still hot and you really wanna lick -h-e-r- the burn to cool it down but you don't want to look dumb infront of her and you hold on and she offers to get you a drink and you instinctively ask for a strawberry sunrise and she's confused because she's at a house party without a bar obviously but she says sure and guest yo get drinks and you finally lick it and it still had some ash there
Like the aftertaste was that and I think that is very poor quality for a batista made coffee.
Where your talking to someone who you broke up with because they hurt you alot and you kinda can't be with them in that way but you still love them and you need something from them but they can't make time for you and it's fair but it hurts bu you need something of yours they have and then the radio decided to spit out 5 new edm breakup songs and a remix of somebody I used to know.
