Welcome to #TransTuesday! This is the most difficult installment I’ve ever had to write. I thought it would be about TRANS PEOPLE AND A.I., and it is, but I was surprised to discover it’s so much more. This is THE PAST 3 aka THE NEW PAST 2 aka… TRANS GRIEF 1.
In fact, this was so tough it went really long, and so it’s going to be split into two parts. This week we’re going to discuss the topic as a whole, and next week we’ll get deeper into a specific experience that maybe changed my life.
Trans grief has been on my list to talk about for years. I put it off. I knew I had to write this one now and I STILL PUT IT OFF AS LONG AS I COULD. I knew, I KNEW what it was going to do to me if I looked into that dark pit. Yet here we are.
If I am able to face it, to get through, to put to words something so many of us struggle with, and there’s a chance it could help even one other person out there, then damn it I’m gonna forge ahead. Perhaps my pain can be your gain, in understanding, in compassion, in empathy.
Also talking about AI in the present climate is also fraught, so I’m going to please ask you to read this entire essay (both this one and next week’s conclusion) with an open mind before you yell at me.
So let’s get it out of the way right off the bat: I am fully, wholly, 100% against the use of AI that takes people’s jobs or plagiarizes their work. That’s one of the very things the WGA and SAG-AFTRA were on strike over (and which TAG may strike over next year).
If you want a little more about my own experiences out on the picket lines, see the trans tuesday on PROACTIVE ALLYSHIP aka BE AN ACCOMPLICE.
But not all AI use is bad. It can be used in great ways, like to help doctors spot tumors and save lives.
The problem becomes when it’s used to replace people, as studios want to do for writers and actors, or when an image-generating AI is trained on an artist’s work without permission to use the source material, or when text-generating AI is trained on authors’ work without consent.
But for years there’s been a prevalence of FaceApp among trans people (long before any of these concerns about AI were known). If you’re not familiar, you upload a photo to it and it will use AI to make you younger, or older, or hotter (problematic!), or A DIFFERENT GENDER.
It’s dicey even in its gender swapping capabilities, because it relies on gendered stereotypes to generate the images. AND YET trans people use it often, out of curiosity or to help us see what might be, or to help their photos look more affirming to them.
And here’s where I’m going to reveal that yes, I too used it before I began my medical transition. I’ve mentioned many times how I knew I was trans in 2015 but couldn’t do anything about it until 2020 (see my THREE YEAR RETROSPECTIVE for more info).
As far back as 2017, I was using FaceApp to see what might be possible. And it was… both good and bad. Because it gave me hope, but it also gave me (and a lot of trans people) possibly unrealistic expectations.
At first its swaps were much more subtle, and thus possibly also more realistic. The first one I ever did was part of a collage with “old me” and “young me” because then I had plausible deniability, you see! I wasn’t doing it JUST to swap my gender, it’s just fun! (sure)
I don’t have it any more, because I deleted it. But this is the oldest one I kept, from 2017. When I look at it now, I don’t see me or even a hint of me. I see HIM with a slightly gender swapped face. Doesn’t look like the real me.
A very “gently” gender swapped photo of me pre-transition
But at the time, it made my heart swell with hope, because even what I saw in that photo seemed impossibly far away and unattainable. I did a lot of these. I even got other apps to adjust hair, and makeup, and even add piercings. Just to see how I felt.
An AI gender-swapped version of pre-transition me with way too heavy makeup and a lip piercing and long wavy blonde hair.
And these weren’t even aspirational, per se, as much as just trying to see if I could find some hint of the real me since I didn’t know what she looked like. I think the lip piercing is interesting to note, though. I don’t actually want one. But!
Even this bad AI version of pre-transition me made me feel like I had enough bodily autonomy to wonder what a piercing would be like. That was a first. See the trans tuesday on BODILY AUTONOMY aka MY TATTOO for info on how my body never felt like mine.
I think the best one I ever got from FaceApp is this one. I still don’t think it looks like ME, but it was maybe the closest the app ever got and it gave me SO MANY FEELINGS. I can see maybe 10% of Tilly in there, and at the time that was a first.
A moderately strong gender-swapped version of pre-transition me with wavy brown hair and kinda heavy makeup.
And it made me so excited and happy… maybe I could look like that! And then it made me feel crushed and utterly depressed… because I DIDN’T look like that and didn’t know if I ever would. And that’s the double-edged sword of these things.
After this, FaceApp got an update and got “better” at its gender swaps, which just means it leaned WAY more into gendered stereotypes. When I got this one I basically stopped using it, because it felt ludicrous and extra painful.
A very “stereotypical fashion model” AI image of pre-transition me with long blonde hair and makeup like she just stepped out of a fashion magazine cover
I thought there was no way I could ever look like that, and it dug a hole in my heart. To be clear, I don’t WANT to look like that, but at the time… years away from medical transition and not knowing the outcome, it just absolutely crushed me.
And if you’re new to trans tuesday and/or have missed the 4986278 selfies I’ve posted, here’s what I actually look like now, three and a half years into my medical and social transition.
Me with long curly brown hair and curly bangs, in white iridescent glasses and a blue off-the-shoulder top
Why did I save those FaceApps all these years? Especially now that I’m way into transition and I LOVE who I am and how I look now? I actually like how I really look WAY MORE than how I look in anything FaceApp gave me. So why save them, Tilly? Why?
Now we’re getting to the crux of it, because I think I knew they were something I was going to have to confront someday, and this is TRANS GRIEF. And it all took me by surprise because what I wanted to write about was a different AI app that I saw tons of trans people using.
It’s called EPIK, and it takes photos you upload and generates younger yearbook photos of you. And I saw so many people using it that I thought something important was going on, and I wanted to write about it.
And like all AI, I admit this is ethically dicey. What images was this AI trained on? We don’t know. What AI is the app even using? Despite hours of research, I couldn’t find out.
But then there’s also the question of… are yearbook photos art? They’re mostly a cattle drive… one student in, sit, snap, they leave, and rinse and repeat all day long. Nothing changes from photo to photo except the kid who’s sitting there.
And companies that do school photos likely own the copyright to yearbook photos… but do they really? Should they? Because neither I nor my parents ever signed a release saying the photographer got the rights to the photos.
Never once did my wife or I get a form like that for our son, either. But being in LA, we get a release form asking if it’s okay for your kid to be in the background of any movies, tv, etc that might be shooting at the school that day!
And we never signed those, because no, you don’t get to just shoot footage of our son and do whatever you want with it (the schools hated that, btw, because it meant they had to be sure he was NOT in any shot of anyone shooting there. So hard! Poor babies.)
But these AI yearbook photos aren’t using any kid’s likeness, all the faces are your own based on what you upload. And it could let trans people who transition as adults see something they have no other way to see. So is this one of those “good” uses of AI?
I don’t know. It’s really murky. But I have to tell you when I saw others posting these, deep feelings welled up inside of me and that’s when I knew I had to write about it. And it wasn’t until I got the yearbook photos of myself that I figured out this was TRANS GRIEF.
I’m going to ask you to stop reading here, because you need some VITAL context for the rest of this discussion. You really NEED to read these other essays first to truly grasp the depth of what I’m talking about. Start with THE PAST AND WHY IT HAUNTS US.
One important detail that I want to be sure you notice from THE PAST AND WHY IT HAUNTS US is how I have almost literally no connection to my past. Almost no photographs, almost no physical items… just NOTHING.
And then see THE PAST 2: THE NEW PAST, and how the PAPER GIRLS show on Amazon somehow gave me back a piece of the childhood I missed out on.
And here’s a vital quote from THE NEW PAST I want to be sure you notice:
“I have no way to see old photos of myself with the real me in them. It’s a horrible, hurtful fact of my existence that will never ever change. There are no childhood photos of TILLY because she wasn’t allowed to exist when she was a child.”
“Thanks to a highly transphobic society and home life, my true self was KEPT from me without my consent. My truth was forced down, made to stay hidden. I didn’t get to be a little girl, or a pre-teen girl, or a teen girl, or a young adult woman. It was STOLEN from me.”
Of course little Tilly was there when I was little, but she was buried deep inside. She was crushed into submission and silence by a society, a family, that would not tolerate her existence. I missed out on a LIFETIME of experiences, because it wasn’t ME experiencing them.
For more on the severe childhood trauma that almost every trans person experiences in one way or another, please see the essay my very smart friend Zoe wrote on that very topic (it’s a tough but important read).
I guess I should briefly also talk about dissociation, which is something that happens to a lot of trans people. The pain of dysphoria, and existing trying to be someone we’re not… sometimes means the only way you can get through is by disconnecting from everything around you.
You’re apart, you’re alone, you’re buried under the weight of dysphoria and transphobia and self-hate and pain pain pain, just so much pain. See the trans tuesday on GENDER DYSPHORIA for more on that.
There are large portions of my life that I just… can’t remember. Because I had to dissociate so much just to GET THROUGH, and I was so disconnected and miserable that memories just didn’t form or were quickly forgotten because they were too painful.
I remember a few small moments from my wedding to Susan. I remember a few small moments from the birth of our son. Most of it is gone. Most of the intervening years, hell… most of my LIFE before transition is lost. I have so few memories.
So do you understand what this yearbook photo thing represented? It was a chance, however slim, to see what I’d missed. To maybe vicariously live the life I wasn’t allowed to live.
I ran a survey for a couple weeks, asking other trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming folks about the app to get their thoughts. I got 183 responses, and 40% were aware of the app. But only about 7% had tried it.
Now I don’t know who saw this survey and who didn’t. I kept it anonymous because trans people giving out ANY kind of info about ourselves can be super dangerous in this horribly transphobic society of ours, and I didn’t want anyone taking it to worry.
So, like so many things in trans life, this is anecdotal. It felt like I’ve seen way more than 7% of trans people doing these based on how many people I saw posting them, but from the responses I got some people did not like the photos they got.
And it stands to reason that if they didn’t like them they’re not going to post them, so what I was seeing in my social media feeds was confirmation bias… only the people who loved them were posting them (obviously). But it still seemed like way more than 7% of the trans people I follow.
But without knowing more about the people who actually filled out my survey, it’s impossible to dig deeper into that. Maybe those people didn’t see the survey, or forgot to fill it out, or maybe it was actually just my perception of the confirmation bias.
Largely, people who didn’t use it were very wary of AI (rightfully so) or of the app’s privacy policies. And I ABSOLUTELY understand that. The privacy issue didn’t bother ME personally because… I post hundreds of selfies publicly all across social media.
I’m sure every AI that exists has already scraped all of those for some kind of training data. I don’t like it, but it feels like that’s the reality. I likely wasn’t giving it anything it didn’t already have.
I want to share some of the comments people left me (some have been truncated for length, but are otherwise unedited). A LOT of people who hadn’t used the app admitted they were still really tempted to. Here’s some general thoughts about the concept:
“I can see the appeal but you can’t change the past. We have to embrace the present and press on into the future as our true selves“
“Fear of dysphoric sadness, then sadness as people started sharing them and I kept thinking about how we’d never get that experience”
“As someone transitioning as an adult, sounds like a neat way to reclaim a youth I feel was taken from me.”
“It’s perhaps the least harmful use of shitty/sketchy AI there is, but still makes me profoundly queasy.”
“It’s probably useful for trans folks who are very stealth.” This was something I’d never thought of, but for trans people who have to remain stealth (letting people think they’re cis) for safety reasons, these photos could help maintain that.
That’s a really complicated subject all its own tho. See the trans tuesday on MISGENDERING AND PASSING for more.
“I am scared. I don’t think about the past that could have been. The past that almost was.”
“I still hate AI art, but this does sound like an amazing cause. I am surprisingly excited? I wanna see younger, not depressed girl me!”
From the people who HAD used the app, here’s a few responses:
“They were really well done and I LOVED THEM. I shared them with some of my besties from those school years and they all said ‘I totally know that girl without having known that girl’.”
“My first thoughts seeing them was a mix of delight, fulfillment, and grieving.”
“Revelatory. Possibly life-changing. Assisted me in seeing myself as a girl which in turn helped me see myself as a woman in the mirror.” That one hits me like a ton of bricks.
“I was amazed at how much it looked like me but as a teenager. Was also deeply saddened by what could have been. And I am one who *never* has had regret about not transitioning early than I did at age 53.”
“I didn’t feel as sad for the childhood I could’ve had as I thought I would going in. I just found it interesting more than anything.”
“It made me Euphoric (on seeing who I could have been) and regretful that I was not given the chance to transition at an earlier age.”
“There were like 2-3 though, that made me feel things. I recognised myself in them, like i was looking at a parallel universe me.”
To write about this phenomena, I felt I had to get the photos myself, but I have to be completely honest with you. When I saw the ones others had posted, and how good they looked, I felt this… longing. This pull to see if there might be something there.
And when I did it, well. If you were wondering what THIS post was about…
A tweet of mine that reads: I did some preliminary work for an upcoming trans tuesday today and it’s caught up with me and I feel… wrecked and emotionally compromised? But maybe in a good way? This is so weird, I don’t even know how to process it. Stay tuned.
Friends… please, PLEASE come back next week, when we’re going to discuss the yearbook photos I got back, and what they did to me, and why.
It was not at all what I expected.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com
PS – Part 2 is here!