This interview series intends to provide supplementary trans-related perspectives across identity boundaries. The voices included in these sections have established themselves as gender activists, leaders, and/or qualified professionals.
After I came out in high school, building a supportive community took time and a lot of self-education. I worked hard to use the resources available to me, whether it was the Internet, a support group, or a therapist. I remember the Google-storm of my first week with the word “trans” and being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of conflicting and incomplete information.
Understanding the complex issues trans people face, the inconsistencies of the medical system, and the sheer variety of sex and gender expression out there brings necessary context to my own experiences. I wouldn’t have made it without friends, mentors, and good health-care professionals to guide me.
Central to each of these interviews is the issue of “family” support. Some of the people interviewed faced (and still face) strained or negative relationships with their parents and other relatives. While others may come out on better terms, no family dynamic is perfect, and other forms of prejudice and discrimination are not erased by a happy home.
These interviews also seek to provide anchorage for families who don’t know what to expect or who feel unprepared. If you are concerned for the future of your trans child, sometimes it helps to see trans people living and working in the world. If you are unable to see your child as trans, then maybe hearing from someone else’s trans child will adjust your vision. If you are confused about new terminology, maybe seeing these words in context will better impress their meanings.
Many LGBTQ people lead full and loving lives without any connection with their family. Some families leverage trans children financially or emotionally to keep them in the closet. Trans people may cut themselves off by choice to protect themselves, while others may be iced out, kicked out, or both. There are those who have positive relationships with one parent but not the other, or with a sibling but not their parents. There are those like me who experienced rough patches but maintain contact.
It’s clear that we are reaching a turning point in trans education and advocacy. We recognize that family and home life can provide a substantial source of stress for trans people coming out at any age. According to the findings of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, around 57 percent of the more than six thousand trans respondents experienced some level of family rejection. Among those who reported rejection, homelessness was nearly three times higher, and other negative factors, like suicide risk and substance abuse, also increased.
As the attorney I spoke to put it, “Human rights is a better framework for trans rights, because it’s about basic survival. It’s about things that you deserve as a human being. You deserve to be loved, you deserve to be safe, you deserve to have food and shelter.” I’d like to think all parents can agree with that.
The NTDS’s recommendations for family-life issues demand a collective commitment to overhauling outdated legal and medical policies, and widening the availability of educational resources. Parents need to communicate and self-educate; social workers and family courts need specific training on the risks facing trans youth; families need access to qualified therapists and counselors.
There isn’t a quick fix. I don’t think my situation is representative of most trans people’s, insofar as my reconnection with my mother goes. I don’t think it would be fair to say, “We did it; so can you!” That’s not what this book is about.
A fairer summary would go something like, “We barely did it; here’s what we learned.”
ASK A LAWYER: DRU
Dru Levasseur is a white trans guy in his early forties who is a trans activist and attorney. He grew up in New England and is now based in New York City.
The following are select excerpts from our conversation, which covered his coming-out, the beginnings of his activism, and his leadership on the LGBTQ legal front.
What is your personal conception of “gender”?
DRU: One of the things that I’ve realized is truly important is that most people are raised with this idea of “binary gender.” That you hold up the baby, you look at their genitals, you pick one of two boxes. In my work as a transgender rights attorney, I’ve realized that there’s this gap in understanding. There’s this idea that there’s this so-called “real” or “biological” sex that is what you really are, and that any other identity is intangible, that it’s “in your head.”
I, myself, needed to expand my understanding that sex is actually more complicated than that moment at birth, or just genitals and chromosomes. It’s very helpful to our legal work to bring in actual experts to show that “here are all of the different factors that go into a determination of sex.”
When I’m talking to a room of people, most folks in the room assume that they know what gender they are, and they think that all of those different categories line up. But everybody might have variations, like some people have different levels of hormones than other people. The bottom line is, the one thing that medical science shows, is that the one determining factor out of all of those things is the self-identity. Self-identity is actually rooted in biology. It is who people are; it is rooted in their brains.
Dru and I spoke at length about House Bill 2, a controversial North Carolina bill signed into law in March 2016. Like many anti-trans laws, the bill’s logic claims to be rooted in an immutable understanding of male/female biology.
HB-2, also called the “bathroom bill,” stipulates that people must use the bathroom that corresponds with their “biological sex” or the gender marker on their birth certificate. The bill passed quickly—within a single day—and divisive reactions reared just as quickly. Democratic legislators walked out in protest during the vote and soon filed for repeal. Opponents picketed the legislative building and decried the bill on Twitter, while celebrities and businesses canceled events and plans in the state.
So why did it pass in the first place?
Supporters argued that HB-2 prevents “men in dresses” from preying on women and children, falling back on the concept that trans women are really men in disguise. And not just men but pedophiles and criminals. Far from serving as a safety precaution, HB-2 instead discriminates openly against those who may not fit its poorly defined notion of “sex” and who already face harassment and violence in public spaces.
“Violence statistics are very real against all women, especially trans women of color,” Dru said. “And, you know, targeting trans people and combining those two ideas is extremely harmful and inaccurate.”
Why are we so adamant about having people “look” two specific ways [male or female]?
DRU: I think it gets back to HB-2 and all of these anti-trans bills. This hysteria that’s happening is really tapping into and taking advantage of the lack of public education around who transgender people are. And I think that our culture, our society, understands gender in very simple terms. When somebody’s born, they have to fit in a box, one box or the other.
So out of that ignorance and power struggle over gender control come these laws that mandate using the restroom based on “biological sex.” [Legislators] don’t even know what they’re talking about because, as I said earlier, gender identity is, in fact, “biological” and the most important factor in determining someone’s sex!
Dru pointed out that those who face the most distress in bathrooms are people who are read as gender-variant or non-conforming. So, HB-2 specifically targets members of the trans or queer community who look different, including those who don’t easily fit into those gender boxes or who don’t have the resources to transition medically. It affects anyone who doesn’t meet the strict standards of masculine/feminine gender stereotypes, regardless of whether they are trans.
Both Dru and I recognize that we no longer read as gender-ambiguous, though we shared stories of bad bathroom experiences from earlier in our transitions.
Dru recalled that the last time he was accosted in a bathroom, he was trying to use the women’s room in an airport and still legally had an “F” on his driver’s license. He was “arm-barred” on his neck from entering by a woman who said, “This is the ladies’ room!”
In high school, I went to use the boys’ bathroom shortly after my coming-out senior year. A teacher deliberately followed me inside the otherwise empty restroom to yell, “Is there a girl in here?”
After speaking about bathrooms for a while, Dru summed up: “Just use the f-king restroom and leave each other alone!”
It’s one thing to experience discrimination or anxiety firsthand, but communicating it to others can be difficult.
In an April 2016 study published in the journal Science, authors David Broockman and Joshua Kalla found that having canvassers go door-to-door in Miami and speaking with random constituents for ten to fifteen minutes noticeably reduced anti-trans prejudice for a period of time. Canvassers were both cis and trans people, which suggests another important factor: this kind of advocacy doesn’t necessarily have to be the burden of queer people alone.
In Dru’s work, whether litigating or speaking, he is often people’s first point of contact with an openly trans person. He possesses a potent combination of professional training and personal experience.
Do you find that the effectiveness of this kind of person-to-person communication really holds true in your work?
DRU: The reality is that when people have a human connection to any community, they realize [the other person is also] a person, just like them, and it really makes a difference. And I think that’s the gap. We saw that with the success of Harvey Milk encouraging gay people to come out, because once people started coming out, people realized, “Oh, my next-door neighbor, someone we know, is gay; they’re not these predators.” There’s still that gap with trans people.
The problem is that when you ask people to come out, what is that gonna mean for people? Does it mean that they’re gonna put their safety at risk? It’s a burden for people, including myself. I know that every time I go up to speak, however many people are in the room now officially know a trans person. I’m likeable; I’m somebody they can connect to. It’s a service for me to go out there in the world and put myself out there and say, “I’m a trans guy.”
I have my own fears for safety for a very good reason. And so does my family. But I’m this white, educated, male lawyer. So I make my own choices around what privileges I have and what I want to do for the community.
How do you protect yourself?
DRU: It’s severely stressful. You’re pioneering wherever you go. You don’t have support; you don’t have proper mentorship. You have to trust your own gut. So it’s a very difficult pioneering position to be in.
But on the flip side, I know that I have saved lives. I literally change people’s lives. I’ve been doing LGBT activism for twenty years. I’ve been doing transgender-rights legal work for ten. And I literally know that I inspire people; there’s a ripple effect. I think that’s something to feel really good about.
Turning forty for me was realizing that you really need to prioritize yourself so that you can really be of more use to others in the world. I think that’s not really taught. [M]y advice is that, as a trans person, taking care of yourself and staying alive is doing enough for the community. You don’t owe anybody anything. Being alive would be really great. That is an act of self-care.
Dru expressed frustration that many major LGBTQ organizations have historically undermined trans concerns in favor of winning majority appeal with more “palatable” issues. And since marriage equality has been legalized in the United States, conservatives are looking for a new target in their war against the queer “agenda.” The lack of education surrounding trans issues has left the community in a vulnerable position. The inevitable result, Dru concludes, is a law like HB-2.
Dru has been a role model for me as long as I’ve been in contact with him, which is a few years now. In addition to growing my understanding of trans rights, he showed me that trans people could have good lives, cool careers, and full relationships. He showed me you could have terrible ups and downs and still make it through.
What was your own coming-out like?
DRU: My first coming-out as gay was in my teens. And it was like, oh my gosh, it’s not what my family was expecting; it goes against my religious upbringing, and everyone will be really disappointed with me, and I’m gonna face all kinds of hardships.
But there’s, you know, community. There are gay bars. This was before the Internet and pre-Ellen. I realized that there was some kind of positive.
The second coming-out, though, ten years later when I was twenty-seven, was very much the opposite of that. I didn’t know any trans people. I didn’t know of any community. I was extremely alone, and then I realized that, when I looked into it, I would have to cover all of any medical care I needed out-of-pocket, and the world thinks I’m crazy; there’s literally a mental health diagnosis for this, and you’re gonna be alone and probably kill yourself. It was a very dark time. I did not have any resources and can imagine that people have it way worse than I did, even now.
Do you have a relationship with your family today?
DRU: I do and it’s amazing now. The very difficult years were when I first came out as gay. My family has a religious background, and it was a very big deal for them, not only for what they were expecting of me but also for everything that they knew and believed. It took them many years for their own process.
The times when you need your family the most are often the times when they’re doing their own processing and having their own struggle and, therefore, the most unavailable. And that is just a horrible combination that I know a lot of people face. I absolutely faced that.
And my coming out as trans was obviously very challenging, but I think there was some groundwork laid from those pretty dark years of my first coming-out. So my family really messed up with pronouns for about a year, and my name was “old name—sorry!—new name.” But it was really great because they were trying.
Dru explained he didn’t enter law school intending to specialize in trans rights. “I think going to law school in part was a survival tactic because I felt so unsafe in the world,” he reflected. “Being queer, being trans, you need all the tools you can to protect yourself.”
He laughed as he recalled the e-mail he sent his extended family upon finishing his last year: “graduation & gender update.”
We expanded on the idea of bad timing. I expressed that while being away from my family was terrible and not preferable, it was absolutely necessary for me while I was in college. I wouldn’t have been able to maintain my emotional health otherwise; neither would my mother.
But while I had the resources of a decent insurance policy, a strong network of friends, and an LGBTQ-friendly college environment, many trans folk find themselves financially cut off, uninsured, un-housed, and floating.
DRU: Family acceptance is one of the keys to ending the suicide epidemic that we’re seeing in the transgender community. And I think that families play a deeper role than people realize. What does that mean? We need to get families resources. We need to have visibility so that families have somewhere to turn to when somebody comes out.
That is such a critical and vulnerable time. We’re losing people during that time period, and that is devastating not only to the movement but also to those families who couldn’t turn that around, and figure that out, and be there in the way that the person might have needed them to be. I’m really glad that people survive that time period, but a lot of people don’t. And I think that’s really where we need to focus our energy.
I asked Dru what other avenues of support he used in his transition. He described therapy as being key, though he recalled that he “survived in spite of a bad therapist” who had no idea how to react to his coming-out.
Dru says he found a second therapist, one who claimed to be knowledgeable on gender issues, and worked with her for three years. He wasn’t sure he wanted a medical transition, and for a time was very against the idea. Eventually the time was right for him to start testosterone, but when he asked for a recommendation letter from his therapist, she refused.
This “gatekeeping,” a practice that controls or restricts access to resources, was very traumatic for Dru. He tried again.
DRU: So then I found a different therapist a few months later, and the first thing she said to me was, “You’re in the driver’s seat; I’m in the back seat. And if you need a letter, you got it, but that’s not what this is about.”
She took away the gatekeeping experience for me and said that it was my decision, and she just wanted to support me. And that is why I became who I am in the community, because I had that one person who believed in me when I didn’t have anybody else. I felt empowered and supported.
He also credits an FTM (female-to-male) support group that his therapist pushed him to attend in adulthood. “I really didn’t want to meet any other trans people,” he recalls. “I was terrified of all trans people and all things trans. I really didn’t want to be trans. And I forced myself to go to one of these groups to have some peer support, and it was life changing, because I realized that a lot of my experience was universal and there was absolutely nothing wrong with me.”
There’s a remarkable cycle of support that people like Dru’s therapist set in motion. Support begets support. And now that Dru is helping and advocating for people, the cycle continues.
What would you say to younger trans people, who are just figuring themselves out and figuring things out, about protecting themselves?
DRU: First of all, I’m so glad that you exist. I’m glad if you have avoided any percentage of the damage that I experienced, just as all the people who came before me helped me to avoid. I also really know that it’s still extremely challenging to be queer and/or trans in this world.
I just really want to do anything possible to keep people alive, keep people safe and happy and healthy. I think that leaning on each other and finding community and doing it better than the generation before is all key to that. I think there’s gonna be things that you know about that I won’t understand, and that you do have the answers to.
The one thing I always tell people at schools is [that] the bottom line is just trust yourself, because the world around you is telling you lots of different things, and you can’t take that shit in.
ASK A TRANS PERSON: OSCAR
Oscar is a white, nonbinary transmasculine person who uses they/them/their pronouns. Oscar grew up in Massachusetts and now attends college in Ohio.
The following are select excerpts from our conversation, which covered Oscar’s experiences as a nonbinary person, their coming-out, and changing notions of “self-care.”
You may notice in my discussions with peers, we use words that may seem new or difficult to some readers. While context often illuminates meaning, you can always check back through the word banks between essays, where many of these words are simply defined.
If you were to explain to someone what gender is, how would you go about that?
OSCAR: I think pretty much anyone will probably agree that gender is very subjective to the culture in which it’s defined. Masculinity is not as solidly defined as femininity. And that’s because femininity is defined as what’s lesser, and masculinity is defined as anything that’s not lesser, which is supposed to be normal. Which is why privilege, in terms of gender at least, is so hard to acknowledge for many people who don’t want to actively look at it.
The ways in which [gender] plays out, at least in our Euro-American culture [in the United States] is very different across racial lines. And I think that equating white feminism to black feminism, or even the experience of being a white woman to being a black woman, is entirely different. Whenever you talk about gender, you absolutely have to acknowledge race.
How would you describe “cisgender privilege”?
OSCAR: First of all it’s important to define what “trans” is. And I have a little rant about this. I’m not trying to be exclusionary or anything, but “trans” heavily suggests moving in some direction. So that doesn’t necessitate medical transitioning, but it does mean social transitioning, or the need to, or the compulsion to. And so I think a lot of people use “trans” as an umbrella term to include all nonbinary people as well. And we can be trans and nonbinary. But just because you are nonbinary does not make you trans.
I’m going to break that down a little.
Nonbinary people are exactly that: they identify outside or apart from the gender binary of men and women.
Oscar is trans because they moved away from their “starting place,” their gender assignment at birth, and they are nonbinary because they don’t strictly relate to the male or female gender. Furthermore, when Oscar uses the term “transmasculine,” they are referring to a tendency toward identifying more along the masculine spectrum.
For context, I am also trans and I do identify within the binary. I identify as male, and use the pronouns we stereotypically associate with men, he/him/his.
Oscar’s analysis of the nonbinary is important because it showcases the variety in people we often lump together as the “trans community.”
“Cis-privilege,” as Oscar explained, is not feeling the need to socially, medically, or otherwise move away from your starting point, your assigned gender.
OSCAR: So like one of the visceral ways that I feel my lack of cis privilege is in the medical industry. It’s set up to entirely profit off of people who have illnesses both mental and physical and also disabilities. And it also is set up not only to profit off of but also to silence trans people. And not just silence but exclude trans people.
And I think “privilege” is such a sticky word because often people will be like, “Cis privilege is not having to transition,” but there’s nothing inherently privileged about not having to take hormones, you know? There’s nothing inherently marginalized about having to take hormones. The issue comes when you look at who’s allowed to get those hormones, who’s able to get those hormones, and who has the resources. So the medical industry is one very strong aspect of cis privilege.
Also, cis privilege is not having to prove your gender.
This line of thought segued into our next subject: the objectification and hypersexualization of trans bodies. Earlier in this book I discussed the grossness of the moment when someone learns I’m trans. Oftentimes people give me a once-over, as if they are looking for the zipper.
Oscar admitted that for their first half-year on testosterone, they only told close friends and family. “Because,” they explained, “I knew that the second I told people publicly, the first thing they would think about was my genitals.”
Oscar is indeed the same Oscar mentioned earlier in connection with my surgery recovery. They are my second cousin through my stepfather. We played together during the summer as kids and later reconnected as trans adults. The experience of having a family member who is also trans has added so much to my life, and I’m incredibly grateful.
In addition to doting on their pet rats and cultivating plants, Oscar is also a gender advocate and student of queer studies. At the time of our speaking, they were entering the finals period of freshman year and had also just lost “Z.,” a close trans friend, to suicide.
OSCAR: No cis person I know wants to sit down and have this conversation with me, you know, because it doesn’t affect their life; at least they don’t think it does. But really it informs entirely how they affect other people’s lives. Because we’re so individualized in our culture, nobody cares deeply about how we affect the lives of other people. Well, not nobody, but so many people. We’re conditioned not to.
Oscar commented that many trans people are also not interested in these kinds of discussions or in examining or challenging their own gendered experiences within a larger context. For years, I myself wasn’t interested. I resented having the burden of proof placed on me because I was trans.
“And, it’s like, that’s fine,” they explained regarding such attitudes. “It’s fine that you’re uncomfortable about this. Cis privilege is not having to think about these things. I get it.”
At the same time, Oscar expressed that we have an obligation to tackle these issues. “It’s not about being ‘right,’” they emphasized. “It’s about constantly growing and questioning.”
What was your coming-out like?
OSCAR: I think that oftentimes when people ask that question, what they’re looking for is one story that entirely defines what “coming-out” is for that person. But it was a process that is comprised of many different experiences.
My initial thought when someone asks me that, the story that I pull out of my ass or whatever, is when I definitively came out to my parents. But even that wasn’t the beginning of it, because I had told them I think three or four times before that. And every time they had shut me down and thought they had taken care of the problem. Each time it got harder, and each time I had to rev myself up for it and be like, “Okay, I’m ready to do it for real this time.” And then I would back out.
And then I realized at one point, this is a matter of life or death. I absolutely cannot live like this anymore. And I have done it for years. At that point it was giving up, really, and acknowledging there are visceral and literal truths that are apparent in my body and my experience with it that are not there for everyone, and that I’m going to have to accept [those truths].
Oscar expressed that it didn’t really occur to them that, as lesbians, their parents would react negatively to having a trans child.
OSCAR: That day I sat them down and I rationalized it as “Okay, I have two moms. They have met trans people before.”
I had this really optimistic view of the LGBT community. I thought we were all in it together because I thought it should be obvious that we’re all in it together, because so many of our identities are not mutually exclusive.
And so I told my parents, and they got really mad. And they thought that it was my way of separating myself from my femininity, and as second-wave lesbian feminists, they were very much connected to their womanhood. And they thought that it was me hating myself and me hating them; they thought they fucked up; they thought I was fucking up. They wanted to protect me from my own identity.
And where they were coming from was a well-meaning, but really damaging, misperception of what it means to be trans but also what it means to be a woman.
Oscar established their immediate needs as being called their new name and referred to with they/them/theirs pronouns. They also told their parents “that at some point I would need to go on hormones. And at some point I would need to legally change my name. And at some point I may need surgery, but that’s in the future.”
One of Oscar’s moms, “A.,” immediately expressed that she did not feel comfortable sharing a house with them. Their other mom, “B.,” wanted to know that, if some trans people don’t medically transition, why did Oscar have to?
Oscar was deeply hurt by B.’s question. They felt B. was inappropriately using the experiences of other trans people to invalidate the experiences, thoughts, and feelings Oscar was trying hard to convey.
Later, Oscar related the stress of this coming-out situation to the LGBTQ student group at their school, only to be shut down by their peers and the group’s advisor. These people, who knew Oscar’s family, dismissed their story on the grounds that it didn’t seem characteristic of Oscar’s liberal, queer parents.
OSCAR: And I was like, “Okay, well you’ve successfully shut me up.” And then I don’t think I ever went back to [the LGBTQ group].
That’s another example of how cis non-straight people just really don’t like trans people. They really don’t like us. And it blows my mind every time I’m reminded. But they just don’t.
Oscar’s relationship with their parents has evolved and improved significantly over the years. Their family put me up during my hysto recovery and now takes a more active role in Oscar’s trans experience.
OSCAR: So there is this really cute quote I read a while ago, and it was like this parent thing, like “I was very homophobic, so God gave me three gay kids.” And then there was some quote about “My kids are gay, and my church didn’t accept them, so we found another church.” And I think that religion can be used as a metaphor for all the very fundamental frameworks that people use to look at their lives and understand the world around them.
And I think that you have to be able to adapt your frameworks to fit the world instead of trying to fit the world into your framework.
I was scared, I was very worried, I was very lonely, I felt like a stranger in my own house. I was uncomfortable talking or looking at [my parents] for a while. But, like, I knew at the end of the day—you know, maybe I have to wait ten years—but I know at some point they will accept me. It is going to be a process.
Coming out doesn’t necessarily begin and end with family. Once at college, Oscar struggled to get the administration to put their correct name on the e-mail and attendance lists. And every time they interview for a job, gender is salient.
Oscar summarized: “My entire life is coming out to people. Or, I will be coming out to people for my entire life. Coming out is a very lived reality for me.”
What are sources of support for you, and what are ways that you take care of yourself specifically?
OSCAR: If I had to pick one thing that is the most damaging aspect of our culture across the board—and how it plays into capitalism and different marginalizations—it’s how individualized we are. We are not allowed to be vulnerable. It’s not even that we’re not allowed to; we cannot want to be vulnerable. We are not supposed to be okay with being vulnerable.
And part of that has a lot to do with gender, and vulnerability and emotion are seen as feminine traits and thus devalued. And I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg, so to speak, but I know that these two things are inherently linked, and this thing is inherently gendered. And I think that learning to overcome that is incredibly crucial to survival.
I know Z. [Oscar’s trans friend who committed suicide] could not tell people things. She was not very open. But even then there’s a difference between not being open and not being able to reach out. And she was both. And the only way that I know I can be happy is if I surround myself with people who love and care about me. And not just that, but if I am also someone who loves and cares about other people.
So I think that something that is so crucial to survival is interconnectedness and community. And I know in Massachusetts I worked very, very hard. Because I never found a friend group at school, I was forced to look for friends in other places. And because of that, and because I’m pretty decent at social skills to say the least, I worked very hard to—and was able to build—a network of people who cared about me.
Here [in college] I’ve done the same thing. I have fucking friends all over campus, and I’m very loved, and even that sometimes isn’t enough. Because Z. was very, very loved. She was a fucking campus celebrity. And so there are internal components to that. But for me that is one of the most important things for healing and growth.
I think one thing that is easy to get caught up in is this idea that healing means you’re happy. And that being fulfilled means happy. But those are entirely not the same thing.
So I started thinking of my life in terms of fulfillment. And so that’s when I . . . really dedicated myself to doing work that I was proud of, and not just work in organizations but also work like interpersonally, like caring for my friends, caring for myself.
I started getting plants around then. I started growing plants. I have rats now. There are things that fulfill me but do not make me “happy.”
So, yeah. That’s how I take care of myself.
ASK A TRANS PERSON: ALYSSANDRA
Alyssandra “Aly” Taylor is a trans woman who sometimes identifies as a trans feminine nonbinary person. She uses she/her/hers and they/them/theirs pronouns.
Aly is an actress and artist who aims to further trans visibility and create more opportunities for queer people to tell their stories. At the time of our speaking, she had just wrapped Charm at Minneapolis’s Mixed Blood Theatre and moved back to Boston to prepare for Company One’s summer 2016 production of T Party.
The following are select excerpts from our conversation, which engaged the life-saving effects of representation and Aly’s commitment to a conception of “trans” that is not defined by medical procedures.
How did you get interested in performing and acting? And why do you think theater is a good medium for advocacy?
ALY: When I was in eighth grade I discovered that I really liked to read out loud in class. And people liked me to read out loud in class because I would give people different voices and make it kinda funny or really dramatic. And when I got to high school I was in drama club, and in tenth grade I was the lead male role. I really just liked acting and being able to connect with an audience and tell a story and have them “vibe.”
If an actor is good you should be able to connect to their story, and connect with their emotions and how real the character is. If you put your all into a character, people will feel that, whether it’s onstage or onscreen. And that’s what I want to do.
Aly joined the True Colors troupe in Boston, a theater program that engages and trains LGBTQ youth as artists and leaders. They write and put on plays based on their lives, stories that no one else is telling. Aly credits her time with True Colors as solidifying her passion for writing and acting.
For her, art and activism are a natural combination. Not only can theater and film depict a variety of human perspectives, but they also can provide role models or, in Laverne Cox’s words, “possibility models.” In Cordelia Fine’s 2010 book Delusions of Gender, she contends, “People’s self-evaluations, aspirations, and performance are all enhanced by encountering the success of similar role models—and the more similar, the better.”
ALY: I realize how important it is to see yourself, and to imagine yourself in any role, any position, anything you want to do in life.
As her own possibility models, Aly brought up prime-time TV actresses who are also black women: Angela Bassett (American Horror Story), Viola Davis (How to Get Away with Murder), Kerry Washington (Scandal), and prolific writer and TV showrunner Shonda Rhimes. Aly pointed out that many actors of color spend years in smaller parts and have a far more limited number of big-break opportunities than white people.
Media representation is shifting to include a more diverse (real) spread of human beings, yet our screens and stages are still dominated by white actors, particularly white male actors. If you just look at boxoffice statistics, you get a strong picture of the current gender disparity.
The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film’s survey of the top one hundred films of 2015 found that women accounted for 34 percent of major characters; only 13 percent of those were black, with Latina and Asian women coming in at 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively.
Another survey of women’s involvement behind the scenes was even more dire, finding that, in 2015, women made up 19 percent of “all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films.” The second study doesn’t even factor in race, and neither includes queer identities. And as Aly herself proves, lack of talent isn’t the issue; opportunity is.
ALY: Laverne Cox won an award for being on Orange Is the New Black, but she’s barely on that show. I like the fact that she’s gonna be Dr. Frank-N-Furter [in the Rocky Horror Picture Show reboot], and the fact that she’ll be on the CBS show Doubt. Amiyah [Scott, a trans actress and model] got cast on Star, which is gonna be on Fox in January.
That trans actresses are getting roles is important—Alexandra Billings is gonna be on Transparent—but I want to create more roles for people of color. Especially trans kids.
Anyone who’s on that spectrum, whether they’re trans, genderqueer, gender nonconforming, agender, bigender, there’s still not a lot of visibility. There’s not a lot of roles out there. And if they’re not gonna give them to us, we just have to create them.
How do you look at gender and how do you define “trans”?
ALY: I think gender is a spectrum. I don’t believe in it just being two genders, but I think some people really adhere to being one gender or the other. I don’t think that’s a problem. I think that’s fine. But I also believe people exist within that, and we have to make space for the people who live in between.
For me, personally, trans is being assigned a gender/sex at birth and not feeling completely comfortable with that label.
I think the important thing to remember about being trans is you don’t actually have to transition. Like that’s never a thing. It’s just not being completely comfortable with the gender identity and/or sex assigned at birth.
What was your coming-out like?
ALY: It was very stressful. I feel like a lot of my friends and people outside of my family [and] some of my relatives supported me, and then a lot of people in my family were not okay with it. Some people were.
[When] I finally did say, “I’m transitioning; I’m doing this,” I was nineteen, and I got kicked out. And it was my senior year of high school, and I was getting accepted to colleges and starting hormones and sleeping on my aunt’s couch and living with [one of my sisters] and trying to work to support myself. That was stressful, and I actually stopped talking to my mom for a long time. We got into a lot of arguments that were mostly about me being trans and me feeling disrespected. And I was definitely disrespectful in return, something that I’m not completely proud of. But I think I was just trying to survive.
My coming-out—it was a mixed bag. But overall I don’t think it was the worst coming-out, and I’m glad that I had support.
Aly lived with her sisters and an aunt for periods of time. “I didn’t know where I was going a lot of times in college when we would be on breaks,” she explained. “I would be figuring that shit out a few days before I would have to.”
I asked how her relationship with her family has progressed. She said it varies. While two of her brothers see her as their sister and have even gotten a little too “overprotective,” Aly and another of her brothers don’t talk at all.
ALY: My sisters are still very supportive. I don’t know; I don’t really talk to my dad, but he does tell me that he loves me and wishes me a happy birthday and [isn’t] disrespectful. So, like, you know, that’s good. And my mother and I are working on things.
She hasn’t come around to calling me “she,” but I think I’ve gotten her to stop calling me “he,” so that’s good.
Whether it was other family members or friends, or school or organizations, what was the most helpful support network for you?
ALY: All of that. All of that was needed to help me survive. I don’t think I would have gotten through [my coming-out] because I was so trapped in my head a lot of the time and angry and sad when I first transitioned. Happy for me but also angry that I was losing so much and for such a dumb reason.
Aly cited Boston’s Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth (BAGLY) and the city’s renowned LGBTQ wellness center, Fenway Health, as havens. She counted GLAAD, trans-positive doctors, and her friends and their families, as well as her aunts, sisters, and cousins as necessary support. She also joined a performance collective at her college, a group called “Flawless Brown,” which aims to tell the stories of women of color. Whether it was knowing she had to get up for rehearsal or having a validating exchange with another queer student, Aly found seemingly small measures of community added up to great effect.
In one instance during her freshman year, Aly showed up to her assigned dorm room to find the wrong nametag on the door. She told her RA and he had it changed in a matter of hours.
What would you say to someone younger who’s trans and dealing with these questions, the anger, the sadness, for the first time?
ALY: The first thing is, remember that you’re not alone. You are not the only person dealing with this. Things do actually get better. Sometimes they get worse—a lot worse—before they get better.
Something else to keep in mind is when people get your pronouns wrong and you’re younger and you’re in that angry-sensitive mode when you start to transition, lots of people aren’t doing it on purpose. Sometimes people slip up. Allow for that, just because it will be easier on you and your anger, and it will be easier on your relationships with people.
A lot of times you don’t think people are trying, but they are. Make space for them.
But also keep in mind that you know who you are, and even if who you are changes, that’s okay because we make who we are. You kind of “find” yourself, but for the most part you make yourself. Be who you wanna be and don’t let anyone else tell you differently, even if you hear a bunch of people calling you a boy and you know you’re a girl. Keep that. You keep that. Hold onto that and don’t let anyone take that from you.
And also if you’re okay with your body, don’t let any other trans person tell you that you need to do work or be on hormones or any of that. None of that makes you trans. If you know in your heart and your mind that you are who you are, don’t let anyone change that; don’t let anybody push you into anything you don’t want to do.
Aly then mentioned that she didn’t endorse the word “passing.” As discussed in other sections, “passing” refers to the ability of a trans person to assimilate into the binary, to be undetectable as trans.
Can you elaborate a little bit about why the term “passing” can be damaging?
ALY: Because it implies that, one, if you “pass,” that you’re lying about something or you’re “getting one over.” I hate that. And it also implies that women and men are only supposed to look one sort of way.
You shouldn’t have to look a certain way to be regarded by the pronouns you want to use or have people look at you and respect you for who you are.
“Passing” is a complex issue that is often very personal for trans folk. It is also the basis for many gender compliments, such as “You look great; no one would ever know you were trans!”
While statements like this can seem like a real self-esteem boost, they’re also creepy and invasive. An outsider is evaluating your body and literally judging if you “pass” the test of looking. And while many trans people “pass” both with and without medical intervention, there are those who don’t and won’t ever blend in. As Aly argued, “passing” also demands adherence to strict cultural beauty standards for men and women, standards that are impossible for anyone to meet.
What is self-care for you?
ALY: Definitely being onstage. I have to act. I have to either be acting or creating. I need to be working on my art, because that is my self-care.
Also, taking time away from social media or from the news and watching sometimes mindless television, or just reading a book, something that’s not so depressing. I can’t handle all the news about black people being killed or trans women and trans men constantly being attacked or harassed. I just can’t. I can’t handle that. Being woke is a lot for me.
But, also, treat youself. You know? Like, do what you wanna do. Have fun, go out with friends, spend time alone if you need to, listen to music, write.
Aly listed therapy as another important means of support. As a survivor of sexual abuse and a trans person, she says it can be incredibly helpful to vent “to somebody who isn’t going to judge you and who you know isn’t going to tell anybody.”
ALY: It’s important to just be able to be like “ugh!” and talk about all the shit that’s bothering you, and get it off your chest so it’s not trapped up inside of you. Don’t let that anger and that sadness just sit in you and take over.
ASK A TRANS PERSON: MAL
Mal M. is a genderqueer transmasculine person who uses they/them/their pronouns. They grew up in the Midwest and now work as a broadcast journalist in Minnesota. Over the years, Mal has volunteered for many LGBTQ organizations, coordinating educational outreach, public events, and support groups. At the time of our interview, they lived in San Francisco and worked for a marketing company.
The following are select excerpts from our conversation, which covered Mal’s experiences working in such organizations, their journey to selfhood, and their relationship to the various expectations associated with transitioning.
How has your understanding of your gender, and your gender identity, changed in the last few years?
MAL: So I first heard of “trans” in high school. I don’t think it was really anything I ever contemplated. I came out as bisexual in middle school, which would have been like ten years ago.
Mal expressed that they never really knew of many other LGBTQ people in their Midwestern hometown. Coming out openly in middle school, as they did, was not the norm. Then, in high school, Mal came out as a lesbian.
MAL: But it wasn’t until my senior year that things about gender got complicated.
I think I started just contemplating transitioning. And heard more about it. And saw a lot of masculine traits within myself that I wanted more [of] through transitioning. I cut my hair short; I started just wearing men’s clothes. I think this was very hard on my parents, and it was hard on me too because, you know, you want support from your parents and your family more than you want acceptance from others.
Even going back to elementary school, I was always such a “tomboy.” I played on the boys’ baseball team for years. And, so, I think a lot of people understood, even before I did, why I was having such “masculine” tendencies.
And I think my parents didn’t want to see this, and other people who were close to me didn’t want to see this, didn’t want to accept it.
When I came to college I had a female roommate. It felt like I was being shoved back in the closet again. And I didn’t know if I was ready to fully come out, if I was ready to fully transition yet.
And so then I started coming out in select places. I joined an outside LGBT group besides just the one at my college, so I could try out a new name and stuff like that. And it felt affirming, so I decided to come out in between my freshman and sophomore year as trans male.
As Mal entered college, anxiety surrounding their transition grew. They didn’t feel comfortable speaking to family about it, and meanwhile, their body dissatisfaction intensified. Mal edited their broadcast journalism footage with dismay, dreading watching and listening to themselves.
MAL: I was very depressed and suicidal in between my sophomore and junior year. So I decided to see a therapist to talk about it, to talk about transitioning. That winter, I started testosterone. And it was great; I was excited about it.
But through my transition, things like voice changes and stuff, that also became overwhelming. And so I started to think deeper about how I fit in with other people around me. And for a long time I was on the wrong dose of T, so I kind of went through . . . not transition but not reversal. I actually went through like menopause for a few months.
Their doctor, a practitioner within a major medical organization that championed LGBTQ health care, did not make it clear to Mal how often they were supposed take the hormone dose. It was supposed to be every week; Mal took it every other week. If that sounds odd to readers, understand that many endocrinologists prescribe biweekly doses.
Essentially, Mal’s body didn’t have enough testosterone to take over as the dominant hormone but still had enough to interfere with estrogen production. For someone experiencing gender dissonance, the dose mix-up was anything but harmless. Mal called it the worst time of their life.
MAL: I felt really sick. It was horrible. So the anxiety of that forced me to think more deeply about gender and what I wanted from transitioning. I definitely had this moment where I was like, “I need to just stop. I don’t know if I want to move forward. I don’t know if I really necessarily want to move backward. I think I just need to take this time to reassess all these things that I thought I knew about myself.”
And that was a huge journey to go on. I kind of took time to reassess. At first I told all my friends, “I think I want to de-transition.” But then I was like, “No, that’s stupid. I don’t want to de-transition. I don’t want to be going back to female. And I don’t know if I necessarily want to keep moving forward as just male identified. I think I’m just me. I think I’m just Mal. I think I need to just move forward, just as myself.”
I think that’s just how I’ve kind of approached gender since. That’s why I use they/them/theirs. Just because I still don’t see myself as necessarily female or male. I think I definitely am more towards the more male or masculine side. But I don’t think I see myself as necessarily male.
Do you feel there is a pressure to transition medically and to “pass”?
MAL: Yeah. I think there [are] three main components to why people medically transition. One, what you want for yourself. Two, what others want for you, aka society. And three, I think there’s also pressure from the trans community.
I hated my body, I hated myself, I hated my voice, I hated my hairline. I hated that when I put on men’s clothing that it always fit wrong. There was a lot of pressure that I put on myself, of just all these different things that I was not.
And I thought that by medically transitioning, I could fit better into men’s clothing, that I could like my body more. So there was a lot of pressure that I put on myself.
And then I think, while support groups really helped me, a lot of the people that surrounded me were very binary identified. I didn’t know a lot of genderqueer people. So I think that also put pressure on me.
The phrase binary identified, as used above, refers to trans folk like myself who identify within the binary of male/female, men/women.
Trans people who “pass” or fit more seamlessly within this binary, are able to exercise their rights with a degree of safety and comfort other trans and gender-variant people do not have. The idea of “passing” as a goal or way of validating gender is further discussed and critiqued in Alyssandra’s interview.
Mal repeatedly acknowledged a severe pressure to meet other people’s expectations of a transition. Even when Mal looked to other trans peers for support, having binary images reflected back only reinforced the aim of looking “like that.”
They explained that by creating a trans-life narrative, wherein someone has to have surgery and “pass,” we are just creating another unfair standard, another gender box. This goes back to Mal’s assertion that cis people are always looking to hear the same familiar “coming out” story, to be assured, for example, that a person has always felt like a boy since birth.
MAL: The truth is that I have not always felt this way. And I think for a long time I had to be firm in saying that, even though I didn’t necessarily feel that way. I have definitely always felt different than my peers, but I don’t think that’s necessarily because I’m trans. I think it has to do with a lot of different factors with my identity: of being Hispanic, of being queer identified, of just not falling into norms within my community.
I think once you’re able to realize you can go on your own path and go on your own journey, it’s extremely liberating.
As a student, you were involved in many LGBTQ groups and organizations. What were some of the institutional problems you ran up against?
MAL: I think that when you think you’re on the top, that there’s no way to go further. And that’s the biggest problem that I see even with LGBT groups, with colleges that get ranked among the top for LGBT issues, with cities that are known as queer utopias. And I think when it comes down to it, they’re really not. They themselves have a lot of work to continue to press on with.
You expressed how much stress and anxiety you had around speaking to your family about gender. What is your relationship to your family like now?
MAL: So, I haven’t formally come out to my family, though I know that they know that I was on testosterone. I found out through my sister that my dad had asked her about it, because I guess it came up on my insurance bill. So I know it’s out there, and I know that at any time they could ask me. But I think that they’re just waiting at this point for me to talk about it. And even though I’ve come to terms with myself being trans for the last six years or more, it’s still something that I’m not ready to talk about.
Mal worries about being unable to meet their family’s “expectations of a transition,” that their parents will have too many questions. They worry their family won’t understand their gender identity or be able to envision a healthy relationship with a genderqueer child.
MAL: I think that’s why I’ve held off. My sister knows. But even as a lesbian, she hasn’t always been perfect, I would say. When I did first come out to her, when I first came out my senior year of high school, she didn’t understand and she just wasn’t ready for that. And I, looking back, don’t blame her.
And now she’s great. She’s more educated about trans issues, about trans identities, and through college has met other genderqueer and agender and gender-nonconforming people. I think that, over time, she realized she needed to “read up” on this.
My friends in college were great, and I think that’s why I’ve been so open and honest with them through everything, because they said, “I don’t know, but that’s okay because you’re my friend, and I don’t care what I call you or how you look as long as, at the end of the day, we can still watch scary movies together and do crazy shenanigans.”
I think that my family, when I was first coming out and first started wearing men’s clothing and stuff like that, they didn’t show me immediate unconditional love. And that was the hardest part. So I’ve still just been reserved because of those moments that I needed my family and they weren’t there exactly how I needed them to be. So I think that’s why I’ve been holding out, waiting for a perfect moment. There have been moments that I certainly could have said something and chose not to, and I regret those.
How do you take care of yourself?
MAL: I never really had that great of friends in high school, so having amazing friends in college was my self-care. I had different groups, like my best friends that I could go to when I just needed to get out of my head and play video games or go outside. And then I also had a great support group through the LGBT groups that I was involved in. I was able to connect with other people to feel a deeper sense of community.
Now that I’m out of college, I’m struggling to find a community. Especially in San Francisco, where it feels very gay-male heavy, and I’m not a gay male. I think it’s hard for me to find a community. I don’t necessarily want a group of just trans friends; I want a group of different LGBT identities, and I haven’t quite found that yet.
And I think I just keep searching for others who have a similar identity to me. Or to have some divine sign of what I should do for my transition, but so far it hasn’t come, so I think I’m still looking out for it.
But in the meantime, my self-care is just surrounding myself with my friends and my partner and people who deeply care about me.