Have you asked yourself “Am I trans enough?” This is a particularly significant question for transgender people who waited until later in life to transition, or are only just now exploring their gender as adults. The standard narrative of “I knew since I was a child” and “I transitioned young” certainly is a feel good narrative. However, the alternative that turns out to be true for many, many people is that we knew something was wrong, but couldn’t understand what that something was. We went many years thinking that we were somehow wrong, and begrudgingly accepting that we were broken.
Tag Archives: Trans experience
My Experience with TSA
14 AprAs I mentioned previously, I recently flew through Atlanta Hartsfield (ATL) to O’Hare (ORD), and back. I didn’t have any difficulty at either airport. I was presenting full femme, with ID that didn’t agree with my presentation. I didn’t even get a side glance. Both times, due possibly to my wheelchair use, I was directed to the full body scanner. Given the cold weather in Chicago at the time, I was wearing leggings under my skirt. I had to have a pat down of my lower legs, both times, possibly because of how the leggings appeared on the scanner. That was administered by a female agent, without any need for me to specifically request such.
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Traveling While Trans and Disabled
22 MarAs I’ve mentioned here, I am traveling to Chicago next weekend, to attend the Trans 100 Live Event. This will be my first time flying in a significant number of years. Enough years that both traveling while trans, and traveling disabled are new to me. As I am prone to do, I have been actively researching what to expect at the TSA Checkpoints.
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A heart daughter wrote this today. I couldn’t be more proud.
21 DecWith the widespread idiocy in the last few days regarding the LGBT community at large, and specifically the Trans community, let me explain the Trans experience in the most succinct way I know: Your brain, not your body is the seat, source, and home of your identity. If you, as you are now, with all your likes, dislikes, hates, loves, preferences, tastes, and all those things that define you as you, woke up tomorrow with the opposite gender’s genitals, you would be living in the Trans experience. Now, try for just 10 seconds to imagine not only the internal, “This is wrong!” but also having the entire world tell you that you CAN’T (not shouldn’t) but CANNOT be who you are at the very core of your soul. THAT is what it means to be Transgender.
Whether you understand why a transgender person is transgender or not; whether that is a choice you would make or not; whether you are comfortable around them or not; they deserve tolerance, understanding, support, love, and to be championed. No matter who the person was “before transition” they are still, at the core of their being, the same person “after transition”. If you loved them “before” why can’t you love them “after”. A “sister” doesn’t “become a brother”, they always were one, it’s just that you couldn’t SEE that they were a brother and not a sister. Transition is nothing more than making a physical change so that others can see what’s inside. In many ways, transition is on the same level as dying one’s hair, losing weight, having plastic surgery, or any other form of body modification done to make us feel more comfortable in our own skins. Yes, Transition is an extremely difficult process. Yes, it is far more extreme than dying one’s hair, and I have yet to meet a Trans person who didn’t take their choices with every ounce of the gravity that those choices deserve. Until you have personally had to choose between living a lie, dying a truthful suicide, or going through one of the world’s most humiliating processes of change, do not presume to assume that you “know what those people are really after.” I can tell you, from deep, direct, constant contact with not just one, but many Trans people, what they are really after is love, acceptance, and their own truth of identity. None of that should threaten or frighten you. If seeing them around does either of those things to you, that is ignorance, intolerance, and unacceptable. Get over yourself.
PS: This is not directed at anyone I know personally, but rather some things happening in the society.
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HRT has begun!
28 JulQuoted from a private FB post:
Well, once again I have proven that I worry for nothing more often than not. Doctor appt today was perfect, and I have officially begun my HRT!
https://www.facebook.com/janetannelogan/posts/227552387285904
Adventures Of An Aging Trans Woman 