Welcome to Trans Tuesday! This week we wrap up our 100th episode celebration in episode 102, because I’m mad with power and do what I want! So here comes ASK TILLY ANYTHING! …part 5!
Do see ASK TILLY ANYTHING part 1 and part 2 from years ago, and then the new part 3 and part 4 first, if you know what’s good for you. You do know what’s good for you, don’t you?
On with your questions!
Oh I am SO glad you asked. Okay, so, first:
You can’t tell if someone is trans just by looking at them. You can’t tell if someone is trans just by looking at them. You can’t tell if someone is trans just by looking at them.
That’s the stuff all those bullshit “transvestigators” do and they universally seem to be trying to prove that any cis woman who doesn’t conform to the “gender ideal”, either in presentation or physically, is trans. It’s an awful way of policing gender conformity.
I don’t think that’s what the person asking this question was doing, but I wanted to make that bit clear to everyone else out there first. Just do not make assumptions about people’s gender and the world will be a kinder, better place for us all.
And definitely, absolutely, unequivocally do not ask someone if they’re trans. That could put us in incredible danger, and it’s also asking us to out ourselves to you (or anyone else who may be listening). It is, frankly, none of anyone else’s business if someone is trans or cis.
BUT, if you think this new coworker might be trans and you want to show solidarity and support… wear a trans pride pin. Not only when you talk to them, just… wear it. Always. When something comes up in meetings or whatever that might affect trans people, stand up for us. It is, of course, the right thing to do and SO much safer for cis people to do. You also then spare the person who may be the only trans person present from having to do it and out themselves if they’re not ready to and risk reprisals from transphobes.
In short, just be an accomplice. Stand close enough so that the bricks thrown at us hit you too, and use your privilege as a cis person to stand up for her and all of us. Which is, ideally, what you’re doing even when you think all of your coworkers are cis, right?
Check if your health insurance plan covers trans healthcare. If it doesn’t, fight to ensure that it changes and does.
These are the things we need. We don’t need people to ask if we’re trans and then tell us you support us, we need you to support us with all of the things I just mentioned.
Just keep doing those things. That is the support and solidarity we need.
My friend, my person, my fellow human, I kind of love you for asking this. Because if you’re worried you might be a chaser, that is the first step to not being an actual chaser.
Chasers, for those unaware, are (almost universally) cis men who fetishize trans women and literally chase us around trying to have sex with us. For more on them and how awful that all is, see CHASERS AND THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN. (Warning: it includes screenshots of chasers in my DMs and some of the content is incredibly awful)
See the thing about chasers is that they never think about the feelings of the women they fetishize. That’s literally what fetishizing us is, right? Thinking of us only as objects you can use to get your rocks off.
Chasers don’t support trans rights, they turn on you the second you don’t fawn over their attention, they’re very often bigots who think we’re “naughty” or some “safe” way to explore their own feelings about their sexuality.
It is okay to be attracted to trans women! We’re great! Trans women are hot (just ask me). What’s not okay is to treat us as if we’re not human beings with feelings, wants, and needs of our own.
If you think you’d like to approach her about being more than friends… just do that the way you would with a cis woman. It’s literally no different. We’re just women!
As long as you respect us and don’t hound our DMs, as long as you’re not preying on the newly-out looking for someone to finally see them as the women they are, as long as you’re treating us like human beings, you’re not a chaser.
Just don’t be a creep! Not being a chaser is the easiest thing in the world to do (which makes it remarkable that so very many cis men entirely fail at it).
Yeah this one is really complicated, because cross-dressing isn’t the same as being trans. But some cross dressers are absolutely trans! But some also aren’t.
I think the important thing to remember here is that it’s not cross dressing that makes someone trans, because a whole lot of cis people do it. If you’re trans or nonbinary and a cross dresser, that’s cool, you’re trans. Cross dressing doesn’t negate your transness.
But cis people who are cross dressers do not get to call themselves trans, because by the very definition they’re cis. Or… presumably.
Because invariably some of those cis cross dressers discover they’re actually trans through cross dressing.
So I think we need to be inclusive of the cross dressing community, but I think the cross dressers who know they’re cis need to not take advantage of that. And I think that’s where the hesitance comes in, because there are so few places for trans people that don’t get invaded and taken over by cis people.
I mean I can’t speak for the trans people you mentioned who aren’t accepting of cross dressers, but my gut says that’s where it comes from. Fear over another potential cis invasion of space and privacy.
I think it’s on cis cross dressers to know that things for trans people, that are inclusive for cross dressers, are inclusive of trans cross dressers and are not intended for cis folks.
I mean drag queens technically fall under the cross dressing umbrella, but they’re almost all cis men. And conflating drag queens with trans women is a big problem, because it perpetuates seeing trans women as “men in dresses,” which we are not.
I love drag queens! But outside of the few that are trans, the vast majority are not trans people. They’re cis men dressing up as (often heightened versions of) a different gender.
Do you cross dress for sexual gratification? Not trans. Do you cross dress for fun? Or work? Not trans. Do you want to be/feel or believe you are a different gender than the one assigned at birth? Trans.
It’s not the clothes you wear that make you trans, it’s about who you are.
I haven’t fully examined my thoughts on the topic before, so I’m not sure how well I’m explaining it and these might not be my final thoughts on it. Maybe it needs an essay of its own one day, I dunno. But that’s where I’m at right now.
Cis cross dressers gotta know what is and is not for them, and trans cross dressers are trans.
Well this is a, sadly, very short answer. I can only read and speak English, and that’s it. I had two years of French in high school, and my first teacher was great but the second absolutely killed my desire to continue learning it. So I never went any further beyond that, and I don’t remember much of it, and I haven’t had the time to try and pick up another one.
At its most basic, to just be able to make a living writing and telling stories. For my wife and I to get staffed on a tv show, move up, and become showrunners that get to run shows we created someday. And to work on as much Star Trek as possible.
And if you wanna get really wild, if we somehow ever got incredibly successful financially, I’d love to start a studio specifically to produce movies and tv shows written and created by trans people.
Oh shit. This is going to require some explanation.
So of the aforementioned podcast production company my wife and I run, our first show (that I created) was Umket Industries Presents: The Dixie Stenberg and Brassy Battalion Adventure Theater.
It’s an homage/spoof of old time radio audio drama, about a group of pilots with sci-fi planes and rayguns fighting nazis in WWII. It’s very silly, a nazi gets punched for comedic value in nearly every episode, and there’s a robot that goes through a “Servo reassignment surgery” ah ha ha ha there were no signs.
Anyway, as part of the show there were entirely fake commercials in the middle, all for products from the show’s fictional sponsor, that were also spoof of old radio commercials from the 30s and 40s (they. Were. a. TRIP.). And I played the commercial announcer in all fifty episodes of the show, in what can only be described as an ill-suited, warbling voice of discombobulated bewilderment. I honestly don’t think I could even do it anymore, after speech therapy!
And so to answer your question: I would describe that guy as perpetually confused but happy to read whatever is in front of him and support the employer who signed his paychecks.
So first, no, I don’t take any supplements or anything. I just eat a lot of protein and a lot of fiber (and let’s be honest, a lot of carbs). I do keep protein bars on hand for when I get snackish though, because you need a lot of protein to build muscle. My faves are TruBar, because they actually almost taste like candy bars. Best tasting ones I’ve had. I’m particularly fond of their Daydreaming About Donuts, Whipped for Key Lime, and Saltylicious Almond Love varieties. They’re also really high in fiber, which helps because when you eat a lot of protein, uh, you need that extra fiber. I am not paid to say any of this! I just legit love them.
But what supplements you take or don’t take, and what you eat or don’t eat, is going to vary for everyone because every body is different. I eat a PB&J for lunch every day with (rotating flavors of) a sugar-free and high fiber jelly and high-fiber bread, along with a pound of grapes and like three to four bananas. And every other day for dinner I have a salad so big we had to buy an extra big bowl for it, and it’s got an entire head of romaine lettuce and a ton of tomatoes and almost a pound of deli meat in it.
And whatever meals are left I eat “normally”, except for my Friday cheat lunches (see FREEING UP MY BRAIN (lunch with Tilly).
And, like… that is not gonna work for most people. But it works great for me! I talked about that in PARENTS WHO WILL NEVER KNOW THE REAL YOU, I have an unreal alien metabolism, one of the things my dad gifted me with.
Also working out didn’t affect my transition mindset, it was actually the other way around! All the exercise I do was the first thing I ever did to start my transition, years before I could medically or socially transition. I talked all about that in BODY HACKING.
Also also, if you wanna see the latest of where all my exercise is at, check out my FOUR YEAR RETROSPECTIVE as it includes the most recent photo of where I’m at physically with my workouts.
Dr. Pulaski is no more cranky or racist than Bones, and in fact learns and grows beyond her bigotry in her one and only season of The Next Generation. Yet she’s universally derided for it, while Bones is celebrated for it (he’s really unrepentantly racist toward Spock through all of The Original Series, and it’s always played for laughs). That’s some sexism at work.
Chris Pine is a far better Kirk than William Shatner was. Pine’s Kirk is overconfident and compassionate and charismatic. Shatner’s Kirk is smarmy and compassionate and charismatic. And the flip from smarmy to overconfident makes all the difference for me. I can love an overconfident character, but I find myself extra repulsed by smarmy cis white men these days. To be clear I don’t hate Shatner’s Kirk, he’s still compassionate. But sometimes the smarm is too much and it icks me out, and I don’t get that from Pine at all, so I’ll take Pine first every time. (I feel like I haven’t seen enough of Paul Wesley’s Kirk on Strange New Worlds yet to make a determination about where he falls in the Kirk hierarchy.)
Also there is no bad Star Trek. There are some highly problematic episodes, and movies and series that succeeded at what they were trying to do more than others, but… there is no bad Star Trek.
The best thing is how it’s founded on the ideals of inclusion and equality, of hope and wonder.
The worst thing is that it’s made by fallible humans and is always a product of its time. So it’s had sexist episodes, and racist episodes, and homophobic episodes, and transphobic episodes. It, and the people who work on it, are not exempt from the implicit biases of our society.
But it posits a world that is exempt from those, because we’ve recognized and addressed them, and over time it grows more and more into being as inclusive as its ideals have always been. And there’s no other mass media franchise you can really say that about, and that is a huge reason why I love it as much as I do.
It says we can be better if we choose to be better, and look at the wonders we can accomplish together when that happens.
And that’s fucking beautiful.
Oof, there’s no easy answer to that. Internalized and implicit biases are nightmares to root out and get rid of.
For INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA, the most important thing is, again, community. We can often see it in others when we can’t see it in ourselves. So we need other trans people to be like, hey babe…. That thing you just said about yourself? That’s internalized transphobia. We have to recognize it before we can fight it. And fighting it is about realizing that it’s transphobic society that wants us to feel that way, and they do NOT get to tell us how to feel about ourselves (especially when society wants us to feel embarrassed, or ashamed, or like we’re not enough, or like we’re freaks, or like there’s something wrong with us, or-). Nobody gets to tell us how to feel about ourselves.
For cis folks with implicit transphobia (see IMPLICIT QUEERPHOBIA for more), it’s the same as it is with other implicit biases. You have to recognize that they’re there and that society put those biases in you, and you have to actively work to change your way of thinking about it. And that can best happen by listening to and believing and learning from the people you want to change your biases about.
Because biases and phobias can crumble when the unknown is replaced with knowledge, because then you’ve no longer got anything to be scared of.
This is why representation in media is so fucking important, by the way. It’s the way most of the people in our country first learn about people who are different from them. And so if marginalized communities like trans people aren’t getting that rep (see 2024 TRANS REP IN MEDIA), or worse, have all the propaganda about us confirmed for them (see BAD REPRESENTATION: EMILIA PEREZ), that has real world consequences for us and the way we’re treated, thought about, and think about ourselves.
First I’d say you absolutely need to check out CIS SPOUSAL AND PARTNER SUPPORT for how very, very badly we need you to support us when we come out, and what can happen when you don’t.
Second, I’d say that you may have complicated feelings about it (even if you’re fully supportive!) and that’s okay, because you’re human. But what you cannot do is make your complicated feelings your trans spouse or partner’s problem. Our coming out isn’t about YOU, it’s about us, and it’s already such a complicated and complex and often difficult thing to do.
The last thing we need is you trying to work through your weird feelings about “losing a version of us” or what have you, because that’s not what’s actually happening. This doesn’t mean you don’t have real feelings to work through! It just means your own internalized confusion over it, and possible internalized transphobia and/or homophobia) cannot be our problem, not then. See CIS GRIEF (over trans people when we come out) for more.
So my advice to you is, whatever it is you’re feeling, know that your spouse wasn’t lying to you about who they were. It doesn’t mean your marriage is a lie, it doesn’t mean staying married to them after transition is somehow breaking your vow because you vowed you were “marrying a man” and not a trans woman, or whatever other nonsense.
Your spouse was trying to be the person that society and all of their friends and family and possibly even you told them they were and had to be. And that hurt them, and it wounded them, and they want to be free of trying to be someone they’re not.
You care about them, you love them, you should want them to be happy and to be whoever they truly are. So when they’re on the path to doing that, and they trust you enough to tell you, you have got to support them all the way through it. You’re their spouse, that’s the job. It’s what you signed up for. That’s love, baby.
If you don’t know what they need, ask. If they don’t yet know, that’s okay. Tell them whenever they do, you’re there to help. It’s a scary as fuck time to come out, so just make it unequivocally clear you love them and support them and will be with them every step of the way.
Learn what you need to support them (there are lots of resources… like Tilly’s Trans Tuesdays, oh what?!). Learn as they learn. Follow where they lead. Just as you would with literally anything else in their life, because they’re your spouse, right?
You’re partners. So just… be a partner. Be a spouse. And love them.
Y’know, I’ve never really gotten to have my Progesterone Dream Theater as part of Tilly’s Trans Tuesdays, so it’s about time to change that! Let’s get some immortalized in digital ink.
I should add, for those not in the know, progesterone is a hormone some trans women on HRT take, and it’s got some wild side effects, like increased sex drive, making you sleep really well (I’ve never slept better)… AND WILD-ASS DREAMS.
I never had dreams like these before being on progesterone. And the benefit of posting them to social media for hilarity, is that I now have them all gathered together here. For you.
And now I present to you….
Tilly’s Progesterone Dream Theater!
PROGESTERONE DREAM 1
so Guns N Roses was putting on a concert inside a deli
and Slash told me he couldn’t play for reasons, and so I had to play with the band instead
but… I don’t know how!
he doesn’t care, it has to be me
so he takes me to a case with his guitar, and I open it
and inside
is a tiny guitar half the size of normal
made out of rubber
and I pick it up and it bends all over, it’s very noodley
and I say “but the strings are so tiny!”
and they are, even tinier than the rest of this mini bendy rubber guitar
cut to the end of Welcome to the Jungle and I’m somehow playing it and things are going okay, but I’m struggling with the tiny strings and it keeps wobbling and bending and is hard to hold
and I can’t believe I am somehow holding it and plucking the right strings and somehow playing the song when I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT MUSIC (this is a true fact)
and then it cuts right into the intro to Sweet Child O’ Mine
and I don’t just manage it, I NAIL it
and I look to the crowd, and Slash is there in his hat, and he smiles and gives me a thumbs up
PROGESTERONE DREAM 2
things were REALLY weird and i KNEW they were weird but not that i was dreaming
so i kept asking every person in my dream why things were so weird and they all got mad at me for not knowing i was dreaming
PROGESTERONE DREAM 3
I was in an infinite white void
running through it was a hallway with no ceiling
the walls were covered in Lego plates, so you could build on them
there was a bearded burly lumberjack guy in a harness dangling from a rope between the walls, swinging back and forth between them rapidly, sticking legos on to build stuff
and there was a flying drone with a bucket attached that had to zoom around and catch any legos he dropped
because if any hit the floor
WE WOULD ALL DIE
PROGESTERONE DREAM 4
a woman was talking to me, pointed a finger at me and said: “Well I can tell you one weird thing, you’re going to wake up right now.”
AND OUR ALARM IMMEDIATELY WENT OFF
PROGESTERONE DREAM 5
I’m on the Walking Dead set and discover over 12 seasons only 240 hours passed for the characters (I was SO mad about it), and then Tom Petty had squirrel teeth and couldn’t sing and demanded I fix them for him
PROGESTERONE DREAM 6
I was being chased by a bundle of dry spaghetti, running through a grid in which, at every intersection, there was a singe dried spaghetti noodle that rose up to the infinite sky. I escaped my pursuer by… climbing a mountain made of one pound bags of baby carrots.
PROGESTERONE DREAM 7
We got a brand new apartment for the first time, and it was big and wonderful, but it was also a huge building up on stilts and the only way down was to ride an invisible cloth hammock conveyor UP 20 STORIES to a tower a couple miles across town and take its elevator down.
Also we had a tiny multicolored translucent gelatin cat with a moose head (complete with antlers) that followed us everywhere and liked to play inside sink drains
PROGESTERONE DREAM 8
real me and a cartoon version of Timothy Olyphant are private detectives
tracking down a real rabbit who worked at an ice cream shop,
and the rabbit wore a shirt that said “are you a creamer?”
(creamers were anyone who likes ice cream)
PROGESTERONE DREAM 9
Woke up with the phrase “uh oh, dinosaurs!” in my head
PROGESTERONE DREAM 10
Dreamed I had a heart attack and instead of calling the hospital, people called the Soulful Wellness Center. A van from there arrived five minutes later, and a woman got out and said I was now booked for a six night stay in June. But I’m having a heart attack NOW, I told her.
She shrugged and then misgendered me, so I forced the heart attack away, picked her up and threw her all the way across the street.
PROGESTERONE DREAM 11
I was helping Hayley Atwell learn ballroom dancing (to Total Eclipse of the Heart)
and she wasn’t sure if she should keep doing MCU movies
I said yes “because they’re running out of bankable stars”
she was tooootally into me but respected that I was married and we would just be friends
then she asked me to put the eggs (that were on the floor in the corner of the room) away…
but only the brown ones
And now, for the installment of Progesterone Dream Theater that I think exemplifies them all:
PROGESTERONE DREAM 12
I know I had three dreams one night, and while I didn’t remember the first two dreams, I did remember everything faded to white between
and I was like what is this am I in a void?
no
there was a TITLE CARD between each of my dreams, and it looked just like this
Thank you all for coming along with me on this ride of, now, two hundred nineteen Trans Tuesdays and one hundred and two podcast episodes.
I do these for you, and I hope I hope I hope they’ve been of some help to you.
Okay, I’m gonna vamoose. My cryotube needs maintenance, but my brain’s too scrambled to do it.
Somebody help a chick out?
Love you, babes.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com