PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE!

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re talking about a change nearly every trans person hopes for but never knows if it’ll arrive… seeing ourselves in photos. Here comes PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE! 😱

This is, like, a 300-level trans class, so be sure you’ve taken the prerequisite classes like GENDER DYSPHORIA.

And another prerequisite, PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS.

And ANOTHER prerequisite, GENDER EUPHORIA.

Before we get into things, I want to reiterate something I’ve mentioned many times before, both in these threads and just in general: trans people often take a lot of selfies. After a lifetime of not seeing ourselves, we have a lot to catch up on.

And seeing OURSELVES is euphoric. Also, in this society that wants us to not exist, that tries to legislate us out of public life by excluding us from sports and bathrooms, that wants to take our health care away and force-detransition us (see the Trans Tuesdays on TRANS POLITICS 1 and TRANS POLITICS 2 for more on that)…

EVERY SELFIE A TRANS PERSON POSTS IS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE. 

It is us standing up against the system and saying YOU CAN NOT SILENCE ME. 

YOU CAN NOT MAKE ME DISAPPEAR. 

I. EXIST. 

And fuck you if you think I shouldn’t.

Just wanted to be real clear about that.

Okay, now that you’ve done the homework and are prepped, let’s dig in. About two and a half years into my social and medical transition, something happened. 

I don’t know exactly what caused it. I surmise it’s a combo of changes from HRT and VOICE training, see their Trans Tuesdays for more.

I don’t know exactly when it happened, though the rough time frame will become apparent as we go.

But part of my transition… changed.

Actually it wasn’t my transition that changed, but my response to it? I guess? Not on a conscious level, but somewhere deep inside my core my Morpheus was like… hey, this isn’t the same anymore, did you notice that, Tills? DID YOU? 

I dunno how you could have missed it, but if you haven’t seen my super lengthy Matrix trans allegory deep dives and thus do not get my reference, once again I beseech you to check out my book BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX. (will she ever stop plugging it? all signs point to no).

Photos of me pre-transition used to spike my dysphoria something awful. It was really, really bad. I hated seeing them. I couldn’t find the date the following one was taken, but it’s immaterial because this is EXACTLY what I looked like for all of my adult life.

This is what I looked like in the wedding photos I have with Susan (though I was clean-shaven there), which I talked about in PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS. It’s what I looked like in all photos from then until I transitioned. It’s what I looked like in all photos I took with our kid, until I transitioned.

It’s still incredibly painful to know I will never have any of those photos with ME in them, but there’s nothing I can do about that since we humans stubbornly refuse to experience time in anything other than a forward linear fashion. We’re the worst.

Well, almost. Because:

For a reminder on all the ways our past forever screws with trans people who transition as adults, see the Trans Tuesday on THE PAST AND WHY IT HAUNTS US.

And then see THE PAST 3 aka TRANS GRIEF when I kinda did get to see photos from the young me that never got to exist and what a wild, amazing, beautiful, sad, complicated, rough situation it was.

But let’s get back to this big change that happened. I have a frame over my desk that I see every day, and in it are 16 different photos of our family life together. Susan gave it to me as a gift pre-transition and I love it dearly… despite the fact that the true me does not appear in any of them.

I mention this only so you understand I have daily, constant reminders of what I used to look like. And in a way I’m glad I do, because otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed that over time… photos of myself from pre-transition spiked my dysphoria less and less.

I didn’t know why that was, but I eventually figured it out and we’ll get there in a bit. Now to be clear, pre-transition photos of me aren’t great. I don’t like them or anything, and I’d be fine if I never saw them again. But they no longer give me dysphoria! And that’s amazing? I never ever thought that could happen.

And it’s because early in my transition, I still saw the person in those photos as ME. But that’s NOT ME, and thus it caused the dysphoria spike. But now? Now I… do not identify with the person in those photos at all.

My brain, my heart, my soul all know that’s not me. I don’t know who that is. It’s just some guy I’m completely disconnected from, standing in for me in photos of MY past, where he does not belong.

And this is why I don’t like them, because those are MY memories and he shouldn’t be there, I should. But the dysphoria they always brought me is gone, because my connection to that person has been severed entirely. That was never me.

A photo of one of my friends who’s a man, or even a photo of a random man, don’t spike my dysphoria, so why would photos of that man who was never who I was? This is what I’m trying to get at. I have apparently gotten far enough into my transition that I’ve completely dissociated from that dude.

Which I guess is on-brand, because when I was forced to live as him all I did was dissociate from my entire life so I didn’t have to deal with the horrible pain. Being trans is wild, yo. If you want to learn a lot more about what dissociating from yourself and not knowing what’s real and time being weird and seemingly losing years of your life, see the Trans Tuesdays on THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW.

It is SUCH a joy to find myself disconnected from the false me in old photos. BUT – there’s always a “but” – I encountered a new problem, and a new source of dysphoria I could never have anticipated… photos of me early in transition! 

Photos I LOVED at the time, because they were the first hints of the true me coming to the surface, started to give me dysphoria something awful because they’d become what old pre-transition photos used to be: me-but-not-me.

The absolute worst is the one I posted when I came out publicly on July 5 2020. It’s just… well, I hate it. I HATE IT. I could go back and delete it, but that would feel disingenuous. 

It’s part of my journey, and I also think it’s important for other trans people just starting their transitions to know it’s not necessarily a quick process to seeing yourself. You don’t just decide to transition and POOF, selfies you love, you know?

So whereas pre-transition photos of me used to look like a bad costume of a man, now early transition photos of me look like a bad costume of the real me on top of a bad costume of a man, if that makes any sense?

I always try to be as open and honest as I can in these essays, sharing things that maybe make me uncomfortable, but I do it anyway because it helps people. I know because you’ve told me. And trans folks being open helped ME when I was figuring it out.

That photo became JUST as bad as pre-transition photos were all my life and early on in my transition. Maybe somehow even worse, because it’s the slightest move closer to the real me, yet still SO far away that it hurts (not just emotionally, but physically, because dysphoria sucks).

Just as bad is this next photo, which was the closest I could find to when I started HRT, from July 17 2020, and so I have been using it as the base to track changes over time. See the HRT Trans Tuesday if you need more on that.

If you’d like to see my transition timeline photos, and learn more about the amazing things hormone replacement therapy has done for me over time, see my ONE YEAR, TWO YEARS, THREE YEARS, and FOUR YEARS OUT AND ON HRT retrospectives.

What’s interesting is just a few days after (!) that “Day One HRT” photo, I noticed a significant drop in the dysphoria my photos gave me. Mind you I think this selfie is still bad, but it’s noticeably less so than the previous two. And it’s from July 21 2020.

There’s not much difference in my reaction to any of them after that, until we get to December 11 2020. It was by far the best photo I’d ever had in my life up to that point. Looking back at it a couple of years in it was still dysphoric, though not quite as bad as the previous one. NOW, however, this brings me no dysphoria. I see only Tilly, even though she doesn’t look quite right.

Unfortunately we then hop to May 2 2021, in my first photo wearing the bow from my childhood as talked about in the Trans Tuesday on THE PAST AND WHY IT HAUNTS US. This was a step BACKWARD, for reasons I cannot explain. It causes more dysphoria than the previous pic, but not as bad as my coming-out pic.

But then I got my bangs, and they helped a ton. I discovered I like them longer than they are in these next two photos, but they still helped a lot (and the one where I’m wearing makeup helped even more). These are still mildly dysphoric for me now. From May 23 and June 19 2021, respectively.

Then we get to my one year retrospective check-in from August 7 2021, and it backpedals again. I’m not sure why, but this one’s really dysphoric. Which is weird, because next to the one from the year prior, I can see so much positive change. But it bugs me. I think it’s because I see it getting SO much closer to the real me, but it’s still not quite there and so even though it’s closer it feels miles further away.

On November 20 2021, things got better again. I don’t LOVE this one, but the dysphoria dropped back down to a lower level.

Now here’s where things start to turn. December 11 2021. This pic still gives me a bit of dysphoria, but at the time it was the least amount I’ve EVER experienced in a photo of myself for my entire life. Is it the combo of longer bangs, bow, and makeup? HRT magic? I don’t know.

By the way, if you missed why bows became important to me and are actually tied into my transition, and my sexuality, and extricating the two from each other, see the Trans Tuesday on SEXUALITY IS NOT GENDER.

December 28 2021 is a milestone. It was the first time I was able to wear a unisex-style hoodie and not feel dysphoric. It’s loose and baggy and hides my form, and those are all things that I used to wear all the time to hide the body I never wanted to see and be reminded of.

It caused mild dysphoria at the time of that photo, but that I could wear it, and tolerate a photo of myself in it, was extraordinary. I’ve since progressed even further to where wearing things like that no longer give me any dysphoria at all.

Jumping a little out of sequence to March 6 2022, here’s another selfie in a hoodie with no makeup that causes STILL LESS dysphoria. It was really sticking.

Going back to the linear timeline (because we’re humans and are forced to experience life this way, ugh), January 7, January 14, January 16, January 22, 2022, were four of the best photos I’d seen of myself ever. I was agog. I loved them. All in the span of a couple weeks, all with very minimal dysphoria. I never thought that would be possible.

January 29, February 6, February 9, February 20, 2022, continue the trend. Minimal dysphoria, photos I love a LOT that caused me almost no discomfort. It felt like a gift.

And then April 14 2022. I didn’t know it at the time, but I can now tell you this is the EXACT photo where, for the first time in my entire life, there was NO GENDER DYSPHORIA. NONE. I look at it and all I see, ALL I saw… is me.

The trend somehow continued only two days later on April 16 2022.

And April 19 2022. You can already see me kind of freaking out and not knowing what’s happening to me.

April 23 2022. The confidence is growing. I’m starting to think this might be a real thing.

April 30 2022 and it’s just celebratory at this point.

May 7 2022 is my least favorite of this streak, but it still causes? No?? DYSPHORIA???

May 8 2022, just one day later, no makeup, no effort, taken right after I ripped my heart out writing the first draft of the TRANS PARENTS (Mother’s Day) Trans Tuesday. The trend still marches on.

May 11 2022, a totally spur of the moment, unplanned photo because I liked the lighting in the car, no makeup, hair screwed by the wind… No. Dysphoria.

May 13 2022, the no-dysphoria streak still somehow continues.

Culminating on May 14 2022, the first time I’d ever looked at a photo of myself and not only felt zero dysphoria, but thought I might actually be a… cute/attractive woman? Somehow?? At the time it was my favorite photo in my entire life.

August 12, 2022. New most favorite photo of my entire life. The most ME that’s ever been captured in a photo. In fact, I loved this photo so much that I used it as my author photo on the back of my book.

I liked it so much I was okay with everyone who ever bought my book having this photo of me in their homes!

What the entire damn fuck, fam. Unfathomable.

And then July 30, 2023… my next new favorite photo of me ever. I love it so much.

And then! June 2, 2024! My next new favorite selfie (actually I saved like seven or eight shots from that set, I love them all so much. It’s now my profile pic on every social media account I have, and is on every page of this site with my contact info.

Even in the throes of those ten selfies I loved in a row, I could only hope new favorite-photo-ever selections were to come. I held no illusions that photos would remain non-dysphoric forever. I was sure the streak would end at some point, and there’d be times where I’d struggle to find myself in them again.

Two and a half years later? 

IT STILL HASN’T HAPPENED!!!?!?!

Don’t get me wrong, I have bad photos. Photos I dislike. Photos I hate, even. But it’s only because I think they’re bad photos. They do not give me dysphoria!

That is absolutely WILD. I never never never never never never never thought that was something that would or even could happen.

I couldn’t have ever anticipated this when my transition began, and certainly not at any point pre-transition. It’s got me on the verge of tears, but they’re tears of JOY. And I don’t know how to react.

I barely dared to even hope this day would ever come. That it ever got even a LITTLE better at all felt like a miracle. To be where I am now? It feels unreal. Surreal. Anti-real. An impossibility made possible… because I refused to let my fear stop me.

And very much to my surprise, people have complimented my selfies? A lot? And continually asked me for tips? And even asked if I’d put together a guide on how to get good ones?! It’s wild.

So come back next week when I finally do that in PHOTOS 3: TILLY’S GUIDE TO SELFIES.

I’m sure at some point I’ll have a new favorite photo, because I take new selfies I absolutely love all the time now. And the wildest thing about that is that I am actually, legit SURE it will happen?? Dang.

I hope down to the atoms of my heart every trans person gets to this place. Actually, I wish that for ALL of you, trans or otherwise, wherever you are. 

Everything you want is on the other side of fear. Don’t let that stop you. 

The fight is worth it.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com