Welcome to Trans Tuesday! To continue celebrating 100 episodes of this podcast, you asked me stuff and I answered stuff! So here’s the stuff: ASK TILLY ANYTHING! …part 4!
You may want to check out ASK TILLY ANYTHING part 1, part 2, and part 3 first! Or not. I’m not the boss of you. (What if I were, tho? What if I were.)
Okay, you asked so many questions it’s taking me three essays to answer, to let’s just get right to it.
“Silly Bridges?” Mm, I see how it is.
Listen, I’m an incredibly silly person by nature (my social media “pre-coffee thoughts with Tilly” every morning should’ve clued you in), so… breathing, I guess? I’m almost never not silly.
One particular goofy thing I do all the time is sing little nonsense songs to Susan, though. Like:
Susan yeah, you’re so good, you’re the hottest chick in the neighborhood
Or
Doin’ the dishes is what I do, even though I don’t want tooooooooooooooooo
Go ahead and imagine hearing that shit all the time for your entire life and you’ll understand what a saint my wife is.
Milly? I- okay, uh, well I don’t actually… know… what the different molds look like or are called. Do they have specific names? They probably do.
But I do not know them.
Ohh this is a whole bit, huh? Aren’t you clever! (no, you are, I am legit amused)
I’m not actually super up on horror movies. Us creeped me out in a delightful way, and The Substance wasn’t really “scary” to me, as much as just… The Most. And if at any point you think it is being less The Most, it will immediately become The Moster.
But you know what? I SAW THE TV GLOW, even with its hopeful ending, still scares the shit out me for very trans reasons.
I grew up in Chicago with horrid winters and black ice and having to wear a heavy winter coat over my damned halloween costume every year, and then nobody could even see it!
And now I live in Los Angeles and I’m madly in love with it.
And while weather is only part of that story (another part of it is in TRANS TRAUMA 2: SOCIETAL GASLIGHTING, and there are still more components to it beyond that), I feel like that answers the question pretty well.
Also I was always cold pre-transition, and now that I’m on estrogen (see HRT), I’m even colder all the time-r.
SOMEONE TURN UP THE TEMP IN MY CRYOTUBE DAMN IT.
Daffodils aka buttercups. They were everywhere when Susan and I were first together, so they always remind me of those heady early days of love, and of spring, and of joy, and of life. (why do they gotta smell like condoms when they start wilting tho?!)
Roses are also great because they’re the badasses of flowers. They grow great in blood.
Okay I must give you a standing ovation for this one, truly the pinnacle of the form.
As I talked about in FINDING OUR OWN REPRESENTATION (P!nk), All I Know so Far is my entire heart given musical form, and it’s what Susan and I danced to at our re-wedding (see A TRANS RE-WEDDING for more).
And as I mentioned in the re-wedding discussion, Never Gonna Not Dance Again is very much a “death before detransition” song, and my dream of a giant dance party to it with all of my friends will happen god damn it.
Outside of that, What About Us? is my favorite because it speaks so much to the times we find ourselves in… as good, wonderful people, so lost at how much of the world could be so evil, and how we deserve better than that.
Outside of that, look… it’s like asking me to pick a favorite kid (or so I hear people say, we only have the one kid ourselves so). So many of them mean so much to me, but…
I think I’d have to go with Raise Your Glass.
Because:
- It’s a total banger
- It’s about “misfits” sticking together and loving each other
- It doesn’t take itself too seriously
- It’s fun as heck
- IT’S A TOTAL BANGER
- It’s about how not being a conformo is good actually
- It makes me feel alive
- It’s about how she loves all the weirdos who dare to be different, just like me
- Did I mention it’s a total banger?
So funny story, I’ve been writing fiction for basically my whole life, and Susan was actually a journalist that I convinced to give fiction a try. The reasons she did are her story and not mine to tell, but suffice to say she did and then we started writing together, found we complimented each other really well, and never looked back.
And I think all of that worked because… I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here before or not, but… we met each other writing Star Trek fanfic.
IT
IS
TRUE
And I think when you meet doing something so specific in a little niche, maybe a lot of your interests are bound to line up. Ours do. We tend to like and dislike the same things (in stories, tv, movies, etc). We have different hobbies and stuff, but we agree on everything important and she’s my best friend in the entire world.
Being around her all day and writing with her is a literal joy, and I wish for something so amazing for all of you out there. Marry your best friend who’s also super smart and funny and creative and totally hot and just looking at them makes you wanna make out with them.
Highly recommended.
I don’t think I could have done anything else. It’s in my blood, as cliche as that sounds. It’s my heart, it’s my life, it’s just who I am.
The only other thing I would have wanted to be is a singer. But that was never in the cards for me.
When I was little I had chicken pox and I missed weeks of school because of it, and that was the time that like… basic music theory or whatever was being taught? Like basic, basic stuff. And when I came back they just expected me to know it? And I didn’t? And I didn’t understand, and nobody bothered to teach me.
On top of that, my mother helpfully told me for my entire life that I was tone deaf. So with her constant discouragement and my mountains of frustration with not understanding notes and pitch and whatever else, I kind of gave up on it.
I leaned into purposefully bad singing (with all my goofy little songs).
But guuuuuessssss what? After the gender-affirming speech therapy I had, I CAN NOW SOMEHOW CARRY A TUNE. I mean, I think. I don’t really know what that means. And I’m still off a lot. But now sometimes I’m not?
I ain’t never gonna be a pro (lolz no), but now I can actually kind of sing the things I try to sing, and that means a whole lot to me.
So maybe don’t discourage people from their interests and make sure kids don’t fall behind after an illness!
Uh, yeah, didn’t mean to get into a rant there. But writing is it for me.
I have no other marketable skills! (other than being remarkably good-looking)
I don’t have an easy answer for this one! I didn’t have the “oh shit” moment most of us do.
I always felt drawn to girls and “girly things” and “wished I was a girl” and “prayed that I’d wake up a girl” (there were no signs… yes there were, see THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE), but I was never ever told that was a thing I could be. I was, in fact, actively discouraged and punished anytime I displayed any interest in those things.
So if you’d told me as a kid “oh that just means you are a girl, you’re trans and that’s okay” I’d have screamed in joy and gotten girly clothes and never ever looked back. But I didn’t have that option open to me, or even the knowledge that such an option existed. Which led to a lifetime of pain and GENDER DYSPHORIA, yaaaaaaaaaaay.
It was something that’d always been in the back of my mind, but I thought there was something wrong with me or, somehow also simultaneously, that’s just how all boys felt. Of course we’d all rather be girls, I mean… duh.
Somewhere around 2013 – 2015ish (I mentioned in ASK TILLY ANYTHING PART 3 that my full acceptance was possibly earlier than I thought from new evidence I found), I accepted that I was trans. It’s all hazy because it was so slow for me, and because, again, I knew that even if I was trans (spoiler: I sure am!) I couldn’t transition until mid-2020, I took my time exploring it and figuring things out. See the BODY HACKING essay for more on some of the earliest transition-related stuff I did.
It was horrifically hard to wait all those years, but wait I did. It’s a reason I don’t talk about publicly, though I’ve told a few friends who’ve asked (and please understand how much I trust you if you’re one of the people I’ve told).
So where, in all of that, do you define my egg crack? I honestly don’t know. I kind of feel like my entire life up until that 2013 – 2015ish hazy area was my egg slowly but continually cracking, until enough light finally got through and I had a name to put to this thing I’d always felt and known.
Which is a long-winded way to say “I don’t really know!”, I guess. Sorry I don’t have a clearer answer there!
Ha! Heck no. I’m still learning, but then I think most of us probably are. There’s always more to learn about how to get better at what you do.
You can learn about three-act (or my personal face, five-act) structure, character arcs, writing natural, organic dialogue… but you’re also just as likely to pick up a lot of that by just writing. A lot.
As a wee babe, before I even knew what three-act structure was, I was writing in three-act structure! You pick it up from reading novels and watching movies and tv, comics, and so much more. You absorb an understanding of how story and character work, sometimes without even knowing you have.
There are already so many books on the topic, some good, many terrible. The thing is, again like I talked about a little back in PART 3… everyone is different, and writes in a different way.
Writer/producer John Rogers (who I’ve quoted in Trans Tuesdays before, specifically TRANS POLITICS 2: YOU MUST VOTE TO PROTECT US) has a lovely saying about this.
That’s just how artistic pursuits are!
I have no desire to write a book on screenwriting, but I’m always happy to answer specific questions if you have them! Hit me up.
Just please don’t ask me to read your script (unless we’re actual friends, in which case I am always happy to read and give notes as needed).
Yeah this one is tough, because I’m not new to writing Trans Tuesdays, nor am I new to making podcasts (my wife and I have been doing it longer than most via our production company, Pendant Productions, which produces and releases the Tilly’s Trans Tuesdays podcast).
I’m not sure I’ve learned anything about myself in the course of continuing to do these two things I was already doing for years when the podcast started. Other than I really love writing and talking about gender and transness, and especially its intersection with art and media, and I think I’m really, really good at it.
Maybe I have also just learned I’m not as humble as I could be, but ehhhhhh I’m confident in the things I should be confident in, I think.
Fascinating question. For me… no. That’d be an incredibly serious surgery, and while it’d absolutely be worth it for the trans women who want that… I just don’t. I feel perfectly like a mom already, even though I wasn’t the one who carried our son before his birth.
I mean, we’re also very happy having only one kid and don’t want any more, but even leaving that aside, that’s just never something I’ve wanted or desired. I know trans women who’d do almost anything for that chance, but that’s never been me.
I don’t know that I associate it all that closely with motherhood, really. Which may sound weird but some trans men and nonbinary people can get pregnant, and that doesn’t make them mothers, you know? They may prefer other terms. And adoptive mothers, and chosen mothers, and step-mothers… all are absolutely real varieties of “mother.”
It also probably doesn’t help that I have an incredibly complex and difficult relationship with my own mother. She was technically and legally my mother, but I don’t feel like she was really much of a mom. Or rather, she was, but not what I’d call a kind, welcoming, parental kind of mom. I suspect that undoubtedly plays into my own feelings on the topic, because if she could carry me and give birth to me and not really be much of a good mom, that probably primed me to accept “just because you carried and birthed a baby doesn’t make you a mom,” if that makes sense. See TRANS PARENTS (Mother’s Day) for more.
I’m one of our son’s biological moms, but I’m not the one who carried him or gave birth to him.
And that’s okay with me.
Here’s an audio question I received from my fabulous friend Zoe:
TRANSCRIPTION: Hi Tilly, this is Zoe with my question for the 100th podcast episode, and it is as follows: do you have any tattoos related to The Matrix? And if you don’t and you were hypothetically going to get one, what would it be? Love you, bye!
So, at present, I do not! The only tattoo I have is the one on my right arm… does it count as more than one? It’s kind of a sleeve, but only on the outside of my arm and a little bit of the inside of my arm? You can see it in the Trans Tuesday on BODILY AUTONOMY (and my tattoo).
I’ve seen trans folks who’ve gotten the base-of-the-skull port that humans use to jack into the matrix tattooed on the back of their necks, and given that those ports all over the bodies of humans freed from the matrix represent the body changes from the wrong puberty trans people are forced to go through by a society that denies our existence (see my book BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX for more!), I find that such an incredibly powerful thing. To take ownership of that. To choose to put on your body this representation of what society does to us, to claim it, to say we have power over it… that’s… damn. It’s something I’ve thought about.
Buuuuut that’s also the spot that The Pink Opaque tattoo shows up in I Saw the TV Glow, where it’s a positive sign and signifier of the truth in our souls (see the Trans Tuesdays on THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW). And so I’ve thought about that, too. But they can’t both go in the same spot! Argh.
I also don’t know if I want a tattoo on the back of my neck, so these are things I’ve not thought a whole lot about. Hmm, I could maybe get the arm-ports on their bodies in The Matrix down my left arm… that’d be cool. But do I really want those there? I don’t know!
I’ve been too busy to really put enough thought into it, especially making it part of my body forever. Maybe that’ll change in the future! Right now I’m too busy to even think about what to have for lunch, so…
Well, I love this.
And while I am very enticed about the idea of punting duck-sized transphobes into trash cans, I think I’d have to go with one transphobe-sized duck. Why? Aha, it’s a trick question.
It’s because ducks are great and we wouldn’t fight, we’d be besties and now I have a human-sized duck I can ride around on.
Checkmate Tilly!
Come back next week before my cryotube thaws, as we wrap up all your questions, both sensical and non!
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com