It’s Never Been Easy to be A Trans Kid

A Facebook friend recommended watching First Day on Hulu. It’s an Australian series with just 8 episodes, about a young trans girl navigating a new school.

The main character is played by young trans actress Evie MacDonald, the first transgender actor to star in an Australian tv show. She was thoroughly terrific in the role, and I binged all of it yesterday.

There’s a trigger warning at the top of each episode, along with information on the Trevor Project, which I quite appreciate. I didn’t expect this series to resonate so hard with me. And to feel so much while watching it. But damn if it didn’t take me back to that age.

Even as I was happy for the character, and feeling her pain, fear, and triumphs, I was deeply sad sitting here with little girl me who had very different experiences at 12.

Trans kids with supportive and affirming families fair far better than those of us who never have that. The ability to facilitate a child going through the correct puberty (and only One puberty) is amazing and life-altering in the best way possible.

To my mind, one of the best uses of modern medicine is to stave off an unwanted puberty and nurture the correct one.

I’ve come to a place of reasonable peace where my own journey is concerned. It was what it was. There was no avoiding a male puberty for me.

But what I saw in this series was the life I had Longed for – the chance to be known as the girl I was and not have to keep enduring the bullying and open hostility that comes along with being a girl everyone insists is a boy who won’t measure up.

Knowing there are parents who affirm their children’s gender identity and expression is heartwarming, and seeing it well portrayed makes me so happy. Even as there may still be a period of time where parents want it to be a phase, and put up rules around “dressing up” and the like, the child’s insistence, more and more, is allowing them a much better life from a younger age.

I’ve heard all the arguments, all the folks who say, “but my child is just seeking attention” and “my child will grow out of this” and “tons of them de transition” (not accurate) -heard it all. There’s a big difference between exploring all the toys and accessories and having fun and insisting I am a girl. Or I am a boy. Or I am neither or both.

They tried hard to convince me I was delusional, I didn’t know my own mind, my self-identity wasn’t a real thing, and all I really needed was “toughening up.” Today, I’m a pretty tough old broad, so maybe they were onto…something.

I would have given anything to not grow quite so tall, to have smaller feet and hands, not such broad shoulders, and no beard or chest hair.

I think it was second grade when I insisted on wearing a witch costume because it came with a skirt! It was the standard boxed costume of the day; plastic sweat mask with elastic string, and the cheapest synthetic “fabric” known. But it had a cape and a skirt. And since it was mostly grass green and yellow, it wasn’t too feminine to consider. There was gnashing of teeth, but I won out. I loved it even though I was scared to death to wear it. Just the once. I can’t remember if they even let me trick or treat in it, but I know I wore it to school. My one little triumph in all those years of grade school. I knew I was a girl before I could read or write and at least for that one Halloween party in the second grade, I had a proper costume.

So much of the conflict between me and everyone else was centered around them trying to break me of my delusions. What they broke was not my identity, it was my spirit. Navigating the world for the next 45 years as the male person they insisted I obviously was, desperate to please everyone and be accepted by anyone (except myself) was exhausting.

I confess I do not have the energy to deal with even one human who feels I somehow “lied” to them about my identity. I have no time or energy to fuss around with your hypotheticals. I didn’t feel safe, ok? I was told thousands of times in thousands of ways that I had a “secret” best forgotten and locked away forever.

I was not given the tools to stand up for myself. All that was reinforced was how to lie down and play dead. They tried hard to get me to stand and fight as a boy, but they could never tell me what I was fighting for. When I said I wasn’t a faggot, I didn’t have the air to say, “actually I’m a girl they won’t let be a girl.” So I didn’t fight. I took what was coming when I couldn’t run, and when I could run, I did. Fast.

How in the hell are you supposed to build self-esteem when you aren’t allowed to show your Self?

There was actually nothing weird about me at all if you ever looked at me through even a slightly different lens. I liked the girl things. I played like a girl. I was collaborative and noncombative. I was funny and loved to have fun. I was vibrant. But I didn’t do any of it as a boy, because I wasn’t one. But the boys had carte blanche to beat on a trans girl, and they did. With gusto.

So seeing a young Australian trans girl, allowed the right puberty, hang out with the girls, make friends, and do all the silly girly stuff I was denied made me remember what I wanted and couldn’t ever have. Oh, how hard I prayed to just have that normalcy, that simplicity, that connection. It never came. I never “changed” and I kept getting bigger and hairier.

In my adult life, most of my close friends have always been women. I have girlfriends. Some trans, most cis, but close girlfriends. We are who we are.

When TERFs lambast the likes of me for how I was “socialized” I find it -first of all- cruel. Terribly cruel. I never passed as a little straight boy. Didn’t exactly pass as a gay boy, either. I found camaraderie among the gays, but we were always different even in our similarities. I had no fucking say in how I was “socialized” and I rejected it every step of the way. Doesn’t matter a lick to the TERFs who want to exclude me by defining me as I have been defined by everyone but me my entire childhood and most of my life.

What I wanted was to hang with the girls. My mother was a strong woman who bowed to no one – no fear of me being turned into Donna Thorazine Reed. But maybe we’d have been better friends if she’d have just let me be me. It’s the one thing I wanted more than anything – and the one thing I couldn’t ever have. They did their best to beat it out of me with word and deed. Crushing. It was all just crushing that the people I loved, the people I depended on to exist indoors, betrayed me so harshly and so often. And then expected my gratitude once I was an adult. And I gave it to them. Gratitude. Obligation. Responsibility for them when they failed their responsibility to me at every opportunity.

The character in the series has an older brother who simply accepts her. I had two far older siblings, one now dead and one not speaking to me over “politics.” He, the eldest, never liked me through one full day of his miserable life. I tried hard and to no avail to have a relationship. He never wanted one.

She, the middle, is almost worse. At least the elder kept his cards on the table. The middle plays bait-and-switch with acceptance and affection like they’re trading cards.

I have her to thank for the exorcism. That was a fun afternoon. Still this, even after that, plus a little more humiliation for the road. As the only other living being from my family of origin I have tried desperately to have a relationship. But in the end, I can never seem to afford it. The currency keeps changing without warning, and I frankly can’t keep up. I’m done chasing love.

The agreement between a handful of feminists and the far right is chilling and nonsensical, but when folks get to “Other” the trans folk with impunity, it must be irresistible no matter the political persuasion. I guess it just feels too good to call us subhuman. I am not a man in a dress. I wasn’t a man in a three piece suit, either.

As a child, I wanted music lessons desperately. Piano, preferably, but I’d have also loved playing the sax. I wanted it so bad. To learn to read music, to understand it, and recreate it.

But apparently, my sister lost interest in school band years before I ever drew breath, so that meant I would, too. So no lessons. It’s possible we just couldn’t afford the small rental fee and mother’s gambling habits, but that wasn’t the reason given -even as my mother never had a problem crying poor-mouth. No, the prediction that I would lose interest was the stated reason. (Incidentally, both of my children had music lessons until high school, and the older is a musician to this day.)

Dance lessons were OUT of the question for me as well. I don’t remember any exposure to gymnastics, and I was never joining a sportsball team of any kind. I had one summer of art and tennis lessons at the local community college I will never forget, courtesy of my Aunt. I adored those lessons. But they never happened again.

I can’t say what might have been offered in our well-regarded public high school, because I got out after barely surviving 8th grade. So I don’t know if I’d have thrived in the theater program – or found a place on the tennis team, or excelled in high school art. My survival required me to get OUT. Like so many other trans folk, my education suffered greatly because of other people’s reactions to my trans-ness. Pointedly, it was the bullying, torment, and constant threat of violence that walked the halls with me and sat in every class.

Perhaps if I were 12 today, it would all be very different. Perhaps today I could have pointed to all the information now available on trans people -now available for early intervention and support- and won my mother’s acquiescence. Gotten puberty blockers. Started the correct puberty. And stayed in a school where maybe I could have thrived. Just like Hannah, in the tv show.

I can’t go back. But knowing its even possible for kids like me today, I’ll do whatever I can in every way I can, to support these kids. I know they aren’t delusional. I know they know themselves. I know their cries are authentic. And maybe I’ve lived this life the way I have to be here for them now, when they are being hideously mistreated by republican politicians and pundits for simply existing.

I’ll never be 5’7’ or weigh 120lbs. And I’ll always have trouble with bra straps on broad shoulders. But I can use my voice to support these young ones, to affirm their parents, and to tell my story. At least I’m still here to tell it. Too many of my trans siblings, who should be my age, aren’t even here anymore.

But I am. And I’m not a frightened kid anymore. I’m a tough old broad with a keyboard.

Peace, Lovelies

-MM