Trans 101

Cis Allyship Trans 101 Trans Life

THE FALSE DICHOTOMY

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re talking about something that permeates ALL of our society in all kinds of ways you probably never realized. It’s also part of what took me far too long to untangle in figuring out I was transgender, and that’s: THE FALSE DICHOTOMY.

So what is a false dichotomy? Well a dichotomy is any two things presented as opposites (left and right, up and down). A FALSE dichotomy is a situation where those two options are presented as the ONLY options, or as being mutually exclusive, when that’s not remotely the truth.

It’s like going to your favorite Mexican restaurant and your friend telling you they only have tacos and burritos, maybe because that’s all they like or all they’ve ever tried. But the actual menu has enchiladas and quesadillas and tamales and tostadas and more.

That is, of course, a pretty benign (if culinarily cruel!) example. And this may seem obvious to a lot of you, and it is to me now, but our society LOVES false dichotomies.

Because it’s shorthand, it provides for quick reference, and everything is much easier for you to think about if there’s only two options. But also because our entire society is predicated on the notion of the false cis binary matrix. There is A or Z and nothing in between.

You can see in my thread on TERFs that even biological sex isn’t remotely confined to only two options. Not by a long shot. There’s a lot of great science linked in that thread, so definitely have a look if you missed it.

But today’s post isn’t about sex or gender, at least not on the surface. I’m a woman, so some might see that as part of a binary choice, but I’m a TRANS woman which is certainly not the same as a cis woman. Thus I am outside the cisgender binary matrix of society.

The earliest I can remember society’s preference for false dichotomies happened pretty young, when I was in grade school. And if any place is about trying to put every kid into some neat little box, that’s sadly a lot of our public schools.

So let’s just get it out there: I’m a nerd. I am a giant, shining, sparkling, unrepentant nerd (you may have noticed!). From the first time I understood what science fiction was, I was in IN. LOVE.

I spent my time wrapped in Star Trek and Star Wars and every bit of sci-fi I could find. Fantasy, too. I was DEEP into Dungeons & Dragons and a lot of other tabletop role-playing games (and still am!) and even as a KID, invented my own ttrgps on multiple occasions.

I went to two different high schools, and at the first I was on the competitive chess team and I was pretty damned good. I even have Unbelievable Chess Tournament Stories (I told you I was a nerd). At my second high school, I was on the Academic Team.

THE ACADEMIC TEAM. The very name reeks of nerdiness, damn. If you’re unfamiliar with that, it’s basically schools playing Jeopardy against each other. I was never good enough to make it to the main team rotation, my memory wasn’t good or fast enough, but I loved it anyway.

I love video games and comic books (long before they reached the mainstream cultural saturation they have today) and board games, and if there was anything kids thought of as nerdy, I was probably a big fan.

Now that I’ve painted you a stunning picture of the depth of my geekitude, I’m gonna throw a whole bucket of paint all over it, because: I also loved sports. A LOT. Especially baseball.

Not just in the nerdy aspect, either, which baseball admittedly lends itself to with all of its entirely ludicrous and deep statistical tracking… which is maybe the only part of baseball that hardly interests me. Beyond batting average and ERA, sorry, I just. Don’t. Care.

But the sport itself I LOVED. I played it every summer as a kid in little league and couldn’t wait for it to start up every year. I honestly can’t remember if I was very good or not. I remember a couple amazing plays I made, those stuck with me, but that doesn’t tell you much.

I also played soccer, and this one I know I was pretty good at. I played tennis and volleyball (I LOVED volleyball, maybe the sport I was the best at) and I was on the track and cross country teams.

I was SO DISMAYED to find out my first high school, which was HUGE… did not have a volleyball team. Or rather, they did. FOR GIRLS. But not for boys. That definitely didn’t help my pining to be a girl, by the way! 👀

My second high school had a boy’s volleyball team, I think? I can’t remember now. Because by then I was already giving up on sports, and I’ll tell you why.

I was never, EVER a jock. The jocks never thought I was, and they were all basically jerks so I never wanted to be one anyway. They knew I was into nerdy stuff, because I never hid it, and they made me suffer for it.

So in my first high school, freshman year, I went to baseball tryouts! I was SO EXCITED. I was number 66, we had to have it on our shirts somehow, and I ruined a perfectly good shirt by drawing the number on it in sharpie all fancy-like.

I’d never really been attached to any numbers like a lot of other athletes were, but now maybe I would be! This was MY number! The one that got me into high school baseball and then maybe college baseball and who knows maybe I’d be good enough to go pro someday!

The day of the tryouts came… and it rained. No big deal, they’d just shift it to another day, right? No. Again, the school was HUGE. I don’t know if it was logistical or the baseball program was just run by dickheads, but they went ahead with it… INDOOR.

They moved it into the huge gymnasium. We did stretches and got warmed up, and then… what? What the hell were they going to do? We were in a gym! You can’t play baseball in a high school gym, even a pretty big one.

Well, they lined us up and… hit us some ground balls, and judged us on how well we fielded them.

Now I don’t know about you, but I played baseball on dirt and grass. I was… a kid. I’d never played on an artificial surface before, much less A HARD WOODEN FLOOR THAT NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD EVER PLAY BASEBALL ON (yes, I’m still sensitive about it. apparently.)

So the coach hit the ball, and… I missed it. Entirely. Wasn’t even close. Because I had NO IDEA how a baseball would bounce off a polished wooden floor, and it went a way I didn’t expect.

That was it! Failed that test, off you went. Done. That was my ENTIRE tryout for the team. There were probably hundreds of kids there, I know they had to cut the field down somehow, but COME ON.

To say I was heartbroken is an understatement. The jocks all laughed. They somehow did fine! How? What dark magic did they use to get their ground balls to bounce right toward them while mine skewed left at a 75 degree angle?

Maybe I wasn’t actually good enough to make the team, and that’d be fine, but I never even got to find out. Everyone said it was because I was a nerd and just not cut out for sports… despite my love for them and having played baseball all my life.

And the awful sickening thing is I BELIEVED THEM. Because it wasn’t just the jocks telling me that, was it? SOCIETY says you’re a jock or a nerd (or maybe just someone who’s neither), but nobody is BOTH. That’s not how it works.

I was WELL into adulthood before I got fed up and re-embraced my love of sports right alongside my nerdiness. That happened long before I figured out I was trans, yet it feels like it was a big part of it.

Because I had to get to a point where I believed society was wrong and could go screw itself, and I was going to like whatever I liked. Relatedly, there’s no such thing as a “guilty pleasure.” Don’t believe that crap. Like what you like. Who cares what anyone else thinks!

Unless your guilty pleasure is, like… bigotry or murder. In that case, no, maybe don’t embrace those.

But once you notice false dichotomies, you begin seeing them everywhere. Men are muscular, women are soft! Except no, men can be soft and women can be muscular. I’M a muscular woman! I’ve always dug ladies with muscles, but society isn’t often kind to them, is it?

For more on that, see the Trans Tuesday on BODY HACKING and all the ways every human does it, and how for me a big part of that was using exercise to reshape my body.

So I bucked the trend there, too. I do the same with my taste in music! Well wait, you can like “real” rock or you can like “fluffy” pop, not both right? Nah, screw that.

I like Journey, The Rolling Stones, Guns ‘n Roses, Fall Out Boy, All Time Low. I LOVE Muse and The Pretty Reckless and AC/DC. But I also like Taylor Swift, Lizzo, Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Carly Rae Jepsen. I LOVE Ariana Grande and The Chicks…

In thinking about it, I’ve wondered if this is also why my favorite artists are P!nk and Queen… because both can ROCK THE HELL OUT, and both can go light and poppy, and both often experiment with all kinds of styles in between.

They defy convention. They won’t be put into neat little boxes. That speaks to me a lot. P!nk specifically, as a woman, has had to deal with a music industry that tried to change her, that didn’t understand her.

She had an extended moment in her recent Beautiful Trauma tour, a video package during an extensive costume change, that covered her talking to her young daughter about this and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

The first time I saw that bit, in 2018, it was like a jolt that shook me awake. I think it was that concert, and possibly that exact moment, where I first truly felt everything would be okay if I transitioned. There’s a Trans Tuesday all about that coming up.

P!nk’s and Queen’s songs and voices speak to me most, but I don’t think I can discount how important it is to see part of myself reflected in the ways they value their own creative expression, and the way they will be whoever the hell they want to be.

All of this is to say you can like sports AND sci-fi. You can like rock AND pop. You can like buff ladies and soft bois and every type of human in between. You can like leather AND lace. Hot AND cold. Indoors AND outdoors. The sky AND the sea.

Don’t buy into the false dichotomy, it’s all bullshit. Don’t let society tell you who you are or what you can or cannot like.

Be YOU, whoever that might be. Even if that means casting off every single label society has saddled you with, INCLUDING THE GENDER YOU WERE ASSIGNED AT BIRTH.

Rock on, friends. 🤘


Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

me with long curly brown hair and curly bangs, with a pink bow in my hair, in dark eyeliner and light pink lipstick, wearing pink-framed cat-eye glasses and a blue off-the-shoulder top… and I’m throwin’ up the horns!

Trans 101 Trans Life

THE ERASURE OF TRANS MEN

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re discussing a big problem that’s cropped up in our society that you might not have noticed, but it’s high time you did. We’re talking THE ERASURE OF TRANS MEN.

So, hey, obviously trans men exist, and this is a thing you’re aware of. But in so much of the discourse around transness, both good and bad, trans men are left out of the conversation. So let’s discuss the ways they’re left out and why that is.

The most recent and likely biggest way they’ve been left out is in the discussions over abortion rights and Roe falling. Everyone who actually cares about rights and bodily autonomy was outraged, but… almost universally it was about WOMEN.

WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN. Now listen, I am a woman! I love women. We’re just super in every way. BUT NOT ALL WOMEN CAN GET PREGNANT (be they cis or trans), but also SOME TRANS MEN CAN GET PREGNANT AND THIS AFFECTS THEM TOO.

I wrote about this right after Roe fell, in the Trans Tuesday on TRANS RAGE, aka Stop Forgetting About Us.

A reminder that the fight for abortion rights AND the fight for trans rights (and disability rights) are the exact same fight. It all boils down to bodily autonomy, and how everyone deserves it and the EXACT same group of people, led by cishet white men, don’t want us to have it.

There’s a trans tuesday all about BODILY AUTONOMY, and how I never felt like I had it before transitioning, and how that’s all tied in with my tattoo.

Trans men are at the intersection of the fight for abortion rights and trans rights, and if you need a reminder of what TRANS INTERSECTIONALITY is all about (and you absolutely DO if you’re leaving trans men out of the fight for abortion rights), here’s the Trans Tuesday on that.

But trans men are often left out of so, so much more than that. Look at trans rep in the media, such as it is. Paltry in the best of terms, and still often harmful. It’s anecdotal, but see the Trans Tuesday on TRANS REP IN MEDIA 2022 for a snapshot of what it’s like.

And you’ll even see right in that, there was a horribly transphobic joke in one show that was one hundred percent based on ignoring the very idea of trans men. They’re forgotten or discarded, often in service of hurting other trans people.

They’re often also completely ignored in a lot of the legislative transphobia making its way through courthouses all across the country. And I don’t mean that those horrid laws don’t affect them, because they ABSOLUTELY do. As much as any trans person.

But their existence is completely forgotten about in the arguments in favor of those bigoted laws… BECAUSE THEY DISPROVE AND DISMANTLE TRANSPHOBIC ARGUMENTS.

These laws are almost wholly focused on trans women and girls, and we’ll get to why in a minute. But let’s look at two of the biggest bigoted issues used to justify legislating and legalizing bigotry against us: trans people in sports, and bathroom bills.

As a basis, you need to know how the entire TRANS SPORTS hullaballoo is COMPLETE AND UTTER NONSENSE on every scientific level. Here’s the Trans Tuesday on it, which will show you how there’s not a lick of science or fact behind it.

But their entire, faulty, bigoted argument is that trans women competing against cis women have an unfair advantage because we may (I stress, MAY) have higher levels of testosterone. I’m not going to re-debunk that here, so DO check out that Trans Tuesday I just linked you to.

But if that WERE the case (it’s not, but even if it were), why do you never hear a PEEP from them about trans men competing against cis men? Especially when many trans men ARE TAKING TESTOSTERONE AS PART OF HRT?

I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will clarify again so nobody misconstrues: I do not want trans men to be discriminated against or for these laws to focus more on them, goodness no.

But if the bigots’ argument is that it’s the TESTOSTERONE that gives trans women an unfair advantage, why don’t they ever complain about the people who are actually adding it to their bodies?

Because trans men HAVE been competing against cis men (just like trans women HAVE been competing against cis women) for decades and guessssss what? THEY DO NOT HAVE ANY UNFAIR ADVANTAGE WHATSOEVER.

And if people who are willfully injecting testosterone to make their bodies align with their gender don’t have an unfair advantage, how the entire hell could people who are SUPPRESSING their testosterone have an unfair advantage? Ignoring trans men here is willful ignorance.

In terms of the bathroom bills, all you ever hear about is the “danger” of we trans women being in women’s bathrooms, because society continues to paint us as nothing more than sexual predators who are “men in dresses” and that we only do it to assault women.

Never mind that cis men assault women all the time, right in public, and don’t need to be dressed as women to do it. Never mind that no cis man who wanted to sexually assault women would go through everything we trans women go through just to perpetrate an assault.

Never mind that most sexual assaults happen with someone the victim already knows. Never mind that even the most cursory search of news stories will show you it’s something that NEVER happens, yet trans women are ROUTINELY the victims of sexual assault ourselves.

Have you ever heard ANY of those bigots talk about trans men in men’s bathrooms? Nope. Why? Why would they just ignore that? Why the hell do you think?

Because what their bigoted laws are suggesting is that if you send trans women into men’s bathrooms (where we’re very likely to be assaulted), then you must also send TRANS MEN into women’s bathrooms.

This is who bigots think should be using women’s bathrooms.

Aydian Dowling, the first trans man on the cover of Men’s Health magazine

Laith Ashley, model and actor

Brian Michael Smith, actor

Elliot Fletcher, actor

Do you see? Do you understand? The only reason bigots ignore trans men is because their very existence disproves the ENTIRE line of attack against trans people that is almost exclusively targeted at trans women.

And why is that? Well if you haven’t figured it out already, it’s misogyny. Specifically transmisogyny, but also it’s just the hatred of women in general. Because trans men rejected womanhood to be their true selves, and society is perfectly okay with that.

Well, in general. There’s still definitely a portion of transphobes who think trans men are “confused lesbians” which is complete and utter nonsense but also ignores all the gay trans men and look, how can you not see how transparent this all is?

But misogyny permeates every corner of our society. It’s why “tomboys” are accepted and even celebrated, but a man who’s even slightly effeminate is ridiculed and mocked and often attacked. Masculinity is celebrated, femininity is ridiculed.

And we trans woman, who society “gifted” with manhood, REJECTED IT. We said NAH and threw it away. And in the false cis binary matrix of society, there is no greater threat to rich, able-bodied, cishet white men’s power than rejecting masculinity.

And that trans men want masculinity, but not THAT masculinity, and DON’T wield it like a weapon of oppression as society dictates, and have by and large completely rejected toxic masculinity… also disproves absolutely EVERYTHING society wants you to believe about men.

Trans men aren’t out there assaulting women, CIS men are. And it’s not the victim blaming refrain of how women dress (UGH) because guess what, trans men see the same women. They don’t have impulse control problems. They don’t use their masculinity to hurt others.

Trans men are a shining beacon that disprove absolutely everything the false binary of society wants you to believe. So the only way bigots can perpetrate their hate is by ignoring their existence altogether. But those of us who aren’t bigots MUST do better.

We NEED to be allies to trans men. They’re an important and vital part of this fight, they show us everything beautiful a man can be, and they are our brothers who deserve respect.

And it’s high time we started showing it.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Cis Allyship Trans 101 Trans Life

THE CONSTANT FIGHT

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re talking about one very small, very specific part of our society that speaks to the larger way trans people are treated (or more to the point, are often entirely ignored) by society: FLYING. But it’s also about: THE CONSTANT FIGHT.

I think most folks are familiar with the “security theater” we have at airports in the United States, and the way things have gone way off the rails since September 11, 2001. But what you probably don’t know is how much WORSE it got for trans people.

When you’re going through security at an airport now, one of two things happens. You can go through the scanner, or you can get a security pat down. Sometimes you get both. So what’s the issue?

First let me say there are BIG ethical concerns with the scanners, they’re discriminatory in a lot of ways against some ethnicities and cultures, and if you’re not familiar with that please do some research. But today I’m just talking about it in relation to us trans people.

Did you know those TSA scanners have different options the operator must select when scanning someone? Yep. MALE or FEMALE.

So let’s use me as an example. I am a trans woman on HRT who has not had gender confirmation surgery. I present as female. My ID says female. So if I’m going through the scanner, let’s say the operator indicates FEMALE.

It scans me, and registers an anomaly at my crotch. Not only am I now possibly out to all the TSA agents present (which brings its own dangers), they have to resolve the situation. Two options: pat me down, or flip the switch and indicate to scan MALE.

This misgenders me and hurts to even type out, but play out the situation. It scans me, and it registers my bra and breasts as an anomaly. The only option left: pat down.

So now a stranger is going to manhandle my breasts to be sure I’m not smuggling weapons in my bra and be sure that they’re “really” breasts, or a stranger is going to manhandle my crotch to see what’s down there. Or maybe both.

Either way, again, you’re suddenly out as trans to (or registered as trans by) all the TSA employees present, and everyone else in line who are now wondering what the hold up is.

Knowing the awful violence trans women face, you maybe see extra dangers here. You maybe also see the potential for sexual assault. We have to go through all of this because we want to fly somewhere. The nerve of us.

And it’s even worse than that. Here’s a story about a trans girl who was ordered to a STRIP SEARCH when trying to pass through security. She even told them she was trans, but it didn’t make a bit of difference.
https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2021/09/city-rdu-tsa-transgender-strip-search-lawsuit

“detected an anomaly on her groin”

We are not anomalies, we’re human beings.

“They wanted her to take down her pants and underwear for visual inspection.”

NO ONE should have to do that, especially not a kid.

“(she) has continued to experience symptoms of emotional distress including anxiety, shortness of breath, uncontrollable shaking and nausea when reminded of the incident.”

Yeah, it’s fucking traumatic.

“It’s only a binary option. It’s based basically on the operator’s assumption based on a person’s appearance.”

Do you see how this even hurts CIS PEOPLE?

Are you a cis lady with broad shoulders? Or a strong jawline? Maybe they’ll just hit that male button. Are you a cis man with a rounded face? Or are you shorter with narrower shoulders? Maybe they’ll hit that female button.

A stranger just gets to take one glance at you and decide if you’re “male or female enough.” Does that not completely enrage you? The gender binary, THE FALSE DICHOTOMY, hurts cis people too.

“Trans men and trans women and nonbinary people often get flagged because they don’t meet the societally defined definitions of what male and female bodies should look like.”

Neither do a lot of cis people. Why, it’s almost as if those definitions are part of the problem!

“The stereotypical definition of what should or shouldn’t be on a male or female body is problematic, and it doesn’t reflect the reality of real bodies in society.”

Corrrrrrrrrrrrrrrect.

“Nearly one in five transgender travelers have reported being harassed or disrespected by airport security screeners or other airport workers, according to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey.”

Not even just flagged as an “anomaly,” but HARASSED OR DISRESPECTED.

“It just felt very invasive because I was a child, and he was an adult, and I didn’t really feel like I had the choice to advocate for not wanting to be touched inappropriately.” How is it okay to do this to anyone? Especially children?? WHY IS IT OKAY?

Ah, but there’s a way around it, I hear some dense and defensive cis people shout. The TSA Pre-check. Uh huh, sure. But that costs $85.

And uh… do you know how much transitioning costs? And how trans people often lose employment when coming out? see the trans tuesday on PRIVILEGE (time and money).

So one of the smallest minority groups, who often experience money problems due to the way our society is set up… a lot of them aren’t going to be able to afford that. Too bad! Just announce yourself to strangers and let them touch you.

Can I get a Roy Kent “FUCCCCCK” please?

There’s no easy way out of this for trans people, not until the TSA fixes it. But it’s been a problem for like, what, fifteen years or so? More? They still haven’t done anything about it.

Can you imagine how horrible this situation is? I have tons of places I’d love to visit someday… people I’d love to see. Oh but wait, in a lot of places it’s okay to say you panicked at finding out I was trans and it made you kill me. see the trans tuesday on TRANS PANIC.

And if I want to go, I have to pay money I may not have or accept that I’m going to be misgendered, humiliated, have my genitals discussed in public and possibly groped… or worse.

I could go boymode, sure… but the scanner would likely still flag my breasts as an anomaly, and I’d have to emotionally wound myself just to do it. Nobody should have to pretend to be someone else to ride on a fucking airplane! See the trans tuesday on BOYMODE/GIRLMODE.

Now remember what a small, specific part of our society this is… and realize this TSA bullshit is a symptom of the larger issue that society doesn’t treat us like we exist. At all. There are bathroom problems… see the trans tuesday on CIS PRIVILEGE.

The media cis people make normally excludes us, but when it DOES include us we’re usually the butt of the joke or a victim of violence… see the trans tuesday on BED REPRESENTATION.

We have our stories ripped from us and told by people who don’t even understand us. see the trans tuesday on TRANS ROLES AND STORIES.

We’re under assault by people who refuse to accept us as who we are. see the trans tuesday on TERFs.

In many cases we can’t even transition without the explicit permission of cis people. See the trans tuesday on TRANS KIDS AND THE INTAKE EXAM.

We’re excluded from things because of who we are, even though SCIENCE IS ON OUR SIDE. see the trans tuesday on TRANS SPORTS.

We have to keep fighting for the same things all cis people have. see the trans tuesday on TRANS RIGHTS.

Over and over and over again. See the trans tuesday on TRANS RIGHTS 2 aka HELP US aka 35 FUCKS.

We have to be uncomfortable, or in pain, just to fit in with cis society. see the trans tuesday on TUCKING AND BINDING.

The things we DO get to make, by, for, and about us… we’re told we cannot have, and that they’re not ours. See the trans tuesday on THIS IS NOT FOR YOU 2 (let trans people have things).

We can’t even get healthcare right. Be it related to our gender… see the trans tuesday on COMPLETE TRANS HEALTHCARE (or lack thereof).

Or not. see the trans tuesday on NO ESCAPE 2 aka SOME ESCAPE (due to cis allyship).

Do you see? DO YOU SEE?? WE NEED YOU TO HELP. see the trans tuesday on TRANS POLITICS.

Every facet of our society fights us everywhere we turn, it never ends, and we can’t change it on our own.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Cis Allyship Trans 101

CIS IS NOT A SLUR

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re talking about something that’s become a hot-button topic… for no good reason. It’s simply whiny bigots getting mad that the world isn’t the way they want it to be. Cis folks, your friends and family need to see this: CIS IS NOT A SLUR.

If you’ve somehow missed the chaotic nonsense surrounding this, it has to do with some notable bigots (I’m not mentioning their names to keep their bigoted supporters from flooding my mentions, but you know who they are) crying that “cis” is offensive to them.

Like, I can’t even believe that I have to explain this, but whaddayagonnado. If you’d like more info on exactly what happened, this Rolling Stone article has a pretty good rundown.

What’s interesting is that article uncovered evidence of the feelings of poor bigots being hurt by these three letters going back to 2014. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but with the drastic uptick in transphobia and terf-iness going on right now, it’s come back around.

If you need more info on TERFs, literally some of the worst people in the world, here’s the Trans Tuesday on them.

I know exactly why this uproar over letters 3, 9, and 19 of the english alphabet have hit such a nerve, but before I tell you why that is, let’s talk about what cis actually means.

“Cis” and “trans” are both Latin prefixes that have existed for as long as the language has, which means they’re some 2700 years old. They were not initially created in relation to gender, but in relation to EVERYTHING.

“Cis” means “on this side of” and “trans” means “across, on the other side of, or beyond.” That’s IT. It’s absolutely that simple. If we call something “transatlantic,” you know that means ACROSS or ON THE OTHER SIDE of or BEYOND the Atlantic Ocean.

And “cisatlantic” would mean ON THIS SIDE of the Atlantic Ocean. Literally that’s it! That’s all it is! This has been the definition of these prefixes for THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

When you apply these to gender, “cisgender” means “on the side of the gender you were assigned at birth” and “transgender” means “across, on the other side of, or beyond the gender you were assigned at birth.” Again, THAT IS IT. THAT IS ALL THEY MEAN.

Cis and trans are actually also used a lot in chemistry, to note whether atoms or compounds are on the same or opposing sides of a molecule. They’re actually super handy words that simply TELL YOU WHERE THINGS ARE IN RELATION TO EACH OTHER.

So how did these get applied to gender? Well… LET DANA DEFOSSE WHO COINED THE TERM “CISGENDER” IN 1994 tell you! She wrote an article about it for Huffington Post!

Here are some choice quotes: “I was struggling because there did not seem to be a way to describe people who were not transgender without inescapably couching them in normalcy and making transgender identity automatically the ‘other.’”

“I never believed that adding the word to the lexicon caused problems ― it only revealed them. Whatever the fate of the word, I feel compelled to speak out against the idea that it is hateful.”

“It saddens me to hear that people feel harmed by the word cisgender. Is the creation of the word to blame? No. Cisgender is just a straw man. It is easier to attack a word than to address the reasons people feel intimidated by discussions of gender identity.”

“The word is a threat because it linguistically separates biological sex from socially constructed categories of “woman” and “man.” That gender is a social construction undermines heteronormativity, critical to defending patriarchal sex roles and procreation.”

“It is not surprising that those who have garnered dominance and privilege from traditional gender roles feel threatened and compelled to lash out. These ideas are not new. But the word cisgender repackages them in a way that is more potent and visceral.”

And right there she gets at the heart of the matter and the reason for all of this. These transphobic bigots ARE MAD THEY DON’T GET TO THINK OF THEMSELVES AS THE DEFAULT HUMAN ANYMORE.

Annnnnd did you know this isn’t new? It’s right out of the bigot playbook. They did it when the word “straight” was applied to people who aren’t queer! As gay people felt safer to come out (albeit only a little more than before) decades ago, we needed a way to differentiate sexualities.

“Queer” used to be an ACTUAL slur, I’ll remind you, used by cisgender straight people to apply to ANYONE who wasn’t like them in a derogatory way. The LGBTQIA2S+ community reclaimed it and made it our own, but that is what an actual slur is.

Cis isn’t a slur, it’s an accurate descriptor, just like trans is. The only people who THINK it’s a slur are the ones who see and use trans as a slur. They think “trans” otherizes us, BECAUSE THAT IS HOW *THEY* USE IT.

And so to them, us using “cis” otherizes THEM in their minds. And if there is one thing the majority of white cishet people cannot stand, it is to feel even SLIGHTLY like the entire world is not set up for (and revolves around) them.

This is why many of the same people don’t even like being called “white” and see that as derogatory, too. THEY BELIEVE THEY ARE AND SHOULD BE THE DEFAULT HUMAN, and A N Y T H I N G contrary to that sets them off.

But listen to me right now:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A DEFAULT HUMAN.

Our society and media suuuuuuuuuuuuure treats cishet white men like they’re exactly that, but they’re not. They’re not even the majority type of human on the planet! But in many countries, and certainly here in the US, they’re the ones with the most money and power.

White is not the default. Cis is not the default. Man is not the default. Straight is not the default. Non-disabled is not the default. Thin is not the default. THERE. IS. NO. DEFAULT. HUMAN.

There are, sadly, people who think “straight white male” is a slur. AGAIN, simply because they don’t want to have to even THINK about THEIR SPECIFIC IDENTITY NOT BEING “DEFAULT.”

As an avid and lifelong Trekkie, it saddens me to tell you even William Shatner has fallen victim to this (though by all accounts of the people who worked with him, he’s apparently never been a great dude).

A tweet from William Shatner from August 8, 2020, that reads: “No, ‘straight cis white man’ is the slur. That’s how it’s used most commonly in harassment. The fact they want to further call me ‘rich’ if that is a point of jealousy; let it be that. No putting straight white cis:

Imagine… imagine being SO INCREDIBLY PRIVILEGED that ACCURATE DESCRIPTORS of who you are feel offensive to you, as if you should simply get to be a human while eeeeveryone else has to have modifying descriptors based on how they’re not you.

SCREW THAT NOISE.

Our language is constantly growing and evolving, and it’s becoming MORE descriptive as we learn more about humanity and what it means to be human. And that’s a good thing.

The only people who disagree are bigots, and their opinions don’t mean anything anyway.


Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Trans 101

CHASERS and THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today’s topic is a very real problem trans people, especially we trans women, have to deal with. CIS FOLKS, specifically cis men, please pay attention. Watch out, here comes CHASERS and THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN.

A “chaser” is someone (almost universally cis men) who fetishizes trans women. They flood our DMs and follow us around the internet and generally hound us as objects of desire, while simultaneously not seeing us as people, human beings, or supporting trans rights.

Before we go further let me make this clear: I am sex-positive and there is nothing wrong with anyone being attracted to trans people (you should be, we’re awesome). For that matter I also support sex workers who choose that line of work for themselves.

But there is a very real issue for trans women where many feel FORCED into sex work, because it’s one of the only ways our society has said it’s okay for trans women to exist. Well, a portion of our society anyway, as a large part of it still shuns sex work and porn entirely.

My point is this is not meant to be a discussion on the merits or drawbacks of porn or sex work. It’s about how trans women are routinely fetishized and so many feel forced to lean into that fetishization.

I’ve mentioned (so so so many times) how often trans people lose our family, friends, homes, and jobs when we come out. When you lose all that, and you face discrimination at every turn, and it’s tough to even get a new job due to people’s conscious (and unconscious) biases…

…where do you have left to turn to survive? Sex work. I personally know trans ladies who’ve felt forced into it because they had no other option. It’s the one thing one portion of society has decided it’s okay for us to do: exist as nothing more than sex objects for cis men.

We’re routinely one of the biggest and most popular porn categories. It’s getting marginally better in some places with them actually calling us trans women, but in many we’re not even that. We’re “shemales” or “dickgirls” or “chicks with dicks” or “girlyboys.”

There are so MANY terms they call us OTHER than trans women not even listed here, it’s kind of remarkable the lengths gone to to dehumanize us as nothing more than sex objects based on our genitalia and gender presentation.

And that’s extra harmful when you realize for a lot of trans women it’s that same external genitalia that is the biggest source of gender dysphoria for them. Can you imagine being valued ONLY for the part of your body you hate the most?

Some of the terms are actually even more harmful on their own. Trans ladies who can pass as cis are often called “traps,” aka “you think they’re a cis woman and then when they get naked they’re not! It’s a trap!”

This furthers the painting of us as deceptive manipulators and possible sex offenders, and increases the danger and violence we face. But who cares as long as cis dudes who fetishize us can get their rocks off, right?

I briefly talked about this in my threads on The Matrix Revolutions. You can’t really just dive into those without understanding what the previous Matrix movies meant in terms of their trans allegories, though. They’re now a book, BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX.

So let’s talk a bit about what it’s like being a trans lady on the internet. We’re not even going to talk about the bigotry we have to deal with on top of all this, mind you. We’re just gonna focus on the chasers and the way they fetishize us.

I mentioned in a previous thread how the WEEK I publicly came out as trans, the chasers found me and the DM flood started. They waste no time. Do they seek out newly out trans ladies thinking we’re not numb to it all already? Possibly.

It doesn’t matter what we post or where we post it, if we exist anywhere online the chasers will find us and make themselves known. I’ve mentioned multiple times how they hound me in SCRABBLE where I try to go for some downtime, but can’t even escape them there.

For a while I tried seeing what would happen if I pretended to be a bot. You can see how much of a deterrent that is to them.

Now I’m gonna give you a window into what my DMs, replies, and mentions look like. I’ve blocked a lot of the usernames and handles, but left some others. I’ll discuss why that is later in the thread. Also note these are not the sum total of everything I’ve received.

What you’re about to see is like 1% of what I get every single time I post a selfie (which I’m not gonna stop doing just to stop the chasers). You can read about why selfies are important in my post on PHOTOS 2 aka THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE.

So anytime I post a photo of myself, NO MATTER WHAT IT IS OR WHAT I AM DOING IN THE PHOTO OR WHAT CLOTHES I AM WEARING, the next time I log in my mentions look like this:

And then, multiple times a week, I will log on and discover chasers who’ve found my profile and gone through and liked EVERY PHOTO I HAVE POSTED:

This is not remotely uncommon:


They don’t even pay attention to what they’re liking because they’re in a blind lust frenzy. Look at this dude:

On a picture with my lovely wife Susan, in which the caption said we were married and it was our anniversary, he wrote: [DNA emoji] BFF sisters for life [100 emoji]… and then on another photo commented: [ring emoji] will make a good [bride emoji] wife some day [church emoji]

Creepy as hell, and also not remotely paying attention to what he’s liking as the flop sweat forms on his brow and he imagines I will see his ~amazing~ replies and, what… ask to meet up and have sex with him and eventually marry him?? It’s SO BAFFLING.

And it’s definitely what they all seem to want. Some of them don’t even try to hide it, and in fact just advertise it right in their usernames as if it’s somehow going to be a turn on to any living human being, and not as repulsive as thirteen week old cabbage?

Maybe they’re just interested and hoping to get a date, what’s wrong with that? Haaaahahaha. Just like the dudes on Scrabble who aren’t even deterred with me acting like a bot, they don’t take no for an answer.


It’s… constant. And absolutely none of them even have anything original to say.


So let’s take a peek into my DMs! Think it gets any better there? As you could see before from just the previews of my DMs, one of their favorite things to do is just say… hi. I guarantee you they’re all chasers, nobody sends a DM to someone they don’t know and says nothing but “hi”.


It’s a known chaser thing, believe it or not. And then there’s these dudes who I cannot even pretend to understand.

And then there’s the guys who just jump right in without even a hello, presuming I’m going to like this and… want more of it? Again, I cannot fathom what they’re hoping is going to happen by sending this to me. I’ve asked many of them but none will ever tell me.

And then there’s the ones who think we’re just here to answer every explicit sex question on their mind because, as nothing more than a sex object, surely we have the answers (never mind I’m not into dudes and have never and will never have sex with one).

And of course we can’t end this look at my DMs without a representative of everyone’s least favorite chaser, the dick pic-er.

“How do you know it was a dick pic, Tilly??” Come on. “Why don’t you just report it then??” To report it I have to know that’s what it was. So I looked. GUESS WHAT IT WAS? So I reported it.

Do you… do you think it worked?

I’ve got news for you.

A good deal of these dudes (on Instagram, anyway) likely would have a harder time finding me if I didn’t tag all my photos with trans, trans woman, trans girl, girls like us, etc etc. But I refuse to stop using those tags just to stop harassment that’s not my fault.

Because here’s the thing… those kinds of tags get used by eggs and people trying to figure out their own gender ALL. THE. TIME. I was one of them. I never went through someone’s entire profile liking all their photos because I was cognizant of how fucking creepy that is.

But I looked at photos with those tags all the time. Seeing other trans women that had transitioned and were happy and full of joy and life was so important to me. It played some small part in helping me think I could one day attain that, too.

And I’m not going to take that away from other eggs who need it as much as I did. And this kind of ties right into why most of the above usernames and handles were blocked out. I left the ones in for the blatant harassers, because if you’re gonna be gross people should know.

But the others? Remember how I said the one and only way a portion of our society makes existing as a trans woman “acceptable” is as nothing more than an object of fetishization?

That means that a lot of eggs who’ve been pretending to be cis find that’s the only acceptable way they can see us, learn more about us, and come to terms with their own gender. A non-zero number of those chasers ARE TRANS EGGS WHO MAYBE DON’T EVEN KNOW IT YET.

Do I wish they’d be less creepy about it? God yes. But I’m not going to block them because this world makes it INCREDIBLY difficult for a lot of people to even realize they’re trans, much less transition and self-actualize. My photos could help them like others’ photos helped me.

So it’s a weird line to walk, because I definitely don’t want the harassment and could certainly do without all the worthless trash messages from garbage people, but I know there are eggs out there doing the best with what they have and trying to learn… about themselves.

I won’t make it harder on them. It’s hard enough on us all as it is. Realize it’s FINE to be attracted to us, you can’t help who you’re attracted to. But you CANNOT forget that we are human beings first and foremost. If you can’t respect us, GTFO.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.

ADDENDUMS ON FOLLOWING PAGES.

great thing to wake up to

yep, there it is.

things have taken a turn (fess up if you had the twist figured out back in Act I)


ah yes, the old “it is your fault I am a creepy guy”


my birthday pics brought out a couple chaser varieties I’d not seen before. like this dude here, who I’m not even going to try to unpack.


and then what may be one of the creepiest chasers yet

maybe it’s all innocent, Tilly! maybe they’re nice guys who just don’t know! why don’t you explain and try to educate them?

Well.

I DON’T EVEN WANT TO KNOW

This is a remarkably good article on the topic, summing up a surprising increase in trans fetishization in 2022, with lots of good data. Check it out, and definitely read all the way to the end.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Trans 101

BOYMODE and GIRLMODE

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re talking about an aspect of being transgender that I suspect most cis folks have never even thought about (which makes some degree of sense, because you’ve never needed to). Time to learn about: BOYMODE and GIRLMODE.

Basically boymode is simply when a trans woman, or nonbinary person, dresses in their old man-coded clothing after having begun transition. Girlmode is the same in the other direction, when trans men or nonbinary people dress in their old woman-coded clothing after having begun transition. I don’t actually boymode anymore, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

When I first began transitioning and slowly dipped my toes into getting and wearing women’s clothes, the sensation was almost completely overwhelming. After a lifetime of feeling awful and gross and hating my body, just changing my clothes had a massive effect on me.

I went into much greater detail about the importance of that in the trans tuesday on HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE.

Because dressing in the clothes I’d always wanted was SO overwhelming at first, I didn’t feel I could do it every day. I needed time to process and, for lack of a better term, feel my feelings. I needed to explore all the things that were happening and going on inside my head.

And so I ended up alternating for a few weeks… a day dressed as me, a day in boymode. Rinse and repeat until I became more comfortable and used to how women’s clothes made me feel and how it changed the way I moved.

Once that happened, boymode dropped out entirely because I didn’t need it, and certainly didn’t want it. Except the entire world is not like being at home, is it? But at the beginning, I was trapped at home as it was early on in the pandemic.

For a more in-depth discussion of a PANDEMIC TRANSITION, do see its Trans Tuesday.

Even though society was still largely shut down, I still had to make masked grocery runs, and at first I was terrified to even take out the trash dressed as myself. A lot of that is how scary it feels to possibly be PERCEIVED when you spent your whole life not.

But even worse is the very real concern we trans ladies face of harassment (or worse) when people think we’re “men in dresses.” The combo of the two was a new level of being overwhelmed that I had to acclimate to.

See the trans tuesday on CONFIDENCE for what it was like when that all changed for me, and I started to very much WANT to be perceived and seen, to rightfully take up the space that’s mine.

You can also see the changes confidence brought about, and the stark difference in being in a tux in boymode and in a dress as the real me in the trans tuesday on A TRANS RE-WEDDING.

But the bottom line is that before I was entirely comfortable being perceived as myself, I simply could NOT handle doing those grocery runs as myself.

So as I collected lady-cut t-shirts and tops and jeans and skirts and dresses, and slowly pruned the old male-coded clothing from my wardrobe… I held on to some of it. I mean a few have sentimental value, but those are a separate thing entirely.

I held on to the others as a costume, a shield I could wear just so it was one less thing I had to worry about. But it made me feel… awful. See the Trans Tuesday on GENDER DYSPHORIA for more on that.

And yes, wearing a dude t-shirt and jeans to get groceries was enough to hurt. It felt like 400 pounds of darkness just absolutely CRUSHING me. But for a while I felt I didn’t have any other choice.

Because there’s a much more important reason someone might boymode or girlmode, and that has to do with legal identification. During that time, I was still in the middle of trying to get legal ID I could carry with me that proved I am who I am. See the Trans Tuesday on LEGAL NAME AND GENDER MARKER CHANGES.

And for more on how that situation absolutely impacts tons of trans people, especially in states that make changing those things difficult (with many added layers of cis gatekeepers who have to approve of us), see the trans tuesdays on the 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS.

So if I was out dressed as me, and a cashier needed to see ID to check against the card I was using, or a cop pulled me over for something… I’d have to explain to this total stranger that I’m trans and don’t have a new ID yet.

Then, not only do I have to worry about whether or not they’ll believe me, but I have to worry about how they’re going to REACT. And unless you’ve been visiting another planet for the past fifty years, you’re aware of how many cis people treat us.

That is a forced outing of us as trans to whoever we’re talking to. And listen, I don’t hide my transness and have zero desire to, but I also don’t shout it at people who may very well harm me for it.

And sometimes all that felt like it’d be too much to bear. But the dysphoria of going boymode was ALSO too much to bear. It’s even worse, actually (at least for me, I don’t speak for all trans people). Imagine being stuck between those two options. IMAGINE IT.

I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t boymode at all anymore, and I haven’t in years. I just couldn’t.

Can’t.

Won’t.

It’s asking me to hide my truth, which I was forced to do for my entire life, and it would destroy me. Entirely. I cannot put myself through that again, not ever again. I don’t know how to explain to you how bad living a lie every moment of your life is. It’s misery.

But what was going to happen if a cop pulled me over or someone else needed to see my ID for some reason? A lot of uncomfortable shit. Because even back then, I looked almost NOTHING like the photo on my old ID anymore.

I found it hard to believe my old ID and early transition me were the same person (much less now, where I look like an entirely different human being), so how the hell would a total stranger, who may already be bigoted against trans people, react?

So, cis friends, maybe try to think about what that might be like for you, to have to put on a costume so that people won’t hassle you. So that bigots might not know to direct their hate at you.

But the costume weighs half a ton and has big blinking lights that only you can see, and they repeatedly flash I’M A LIAR in your face, and it stabs you in the heart all the while. We shouldn’t have to choose between that or possible harassment.

And to my trans siblings out there who still have to boymode or girlmode for safety, I know it’s hard. I know it hurts. But if it’s what you have to do to stay safe, know that it doesn’t make you any less trans. It doesn’t mean you’re a fraud or a fake or not trans enough.

Because this is something we’ve ALL had to deal with.

Even though we absolutely should not have to.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillystranstuesdays.com

Cis Allyship Trans 101 Trans Life

TRANS POLITICS 1: STOP TOLERATING TRANSPHOBIA

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This is part 1 of a 2-part series that are some of the most important Trans Tuesdays ever. Cis friends, I need you to read this, share it, talk about it. Here comes TRANS POLITICS 1: STOP TOLERATING TRANSPHOBIA.

Before we begin, I want to say that after next week’s essay, Trans Politics 2, Trans Tuesdays will be off for a week. Because that’ll be Nov. 5, 2024, which is election day. And that’s why Trans Politics 1 and 2 are leading right up to it.

But as trans rights, our very right to exist in the US, is up in the air pending the election results, I’m going to spend the day being a nervous, anxious wreck hiding under a blanket. Trans Tuesdays will return on Nov. 12.

Okay, so let’s start with a seemingly innocuous meme that was posted by a family member we’ll call Buddy. It spurred a long, drawn out discussion. It’s so, SO wrong, and harmful, but the very idea of that was something he could not (or would not) grasp. (I added the superimposed red NOPE)

A meme of white text on a black background that reads, “If you are my friend and you support Trump, you are my friend. If you are my friend and you support Biden, you are my friend. If you feel the need to degrade those who feel differently than you… Maybe we are not friends.” And I’ve superimposed a large red “NOPE” over the top of it.

Buddy says he fully supports me and my right to be who I am, and “has no problem” with me. Buuuut y’know what? That’s bullshit.

Since he doesn’t automatically consider candidates with anti-trans policies not worth voting for… he also thinks it’s fine to be friends with people who actively hate me for existing. Buddy doesn’t see why he can’t be friends with both me and the bigots. In his mind, “we can have a difference of opinion, there’s nothing wrong with that!”

Except this isn’t a difference of opinion, is it?

That meme treats “degrading” someone for their support of Trump as the same as degrading trans people for who we are and our very right to exist. Those two things are not the same! Fighting back against someone who wants me dead is not the same as being the person who wants me dead!

One of those is objectively wrong.

My life is literally in danger if Republicans take power, my right to EXIST is apparently up for debate (NO human’s right to exist should ever be up for debate).

That’s not a difference of opinion. 

Favorite pizza toppings or singers or tv shows are a difference of opinion. People who think I should have no rights IS NOT A VALID OPINION.

By continuing to be friends with the bigot, Buddy upholds the system of oppression that harms trans people. 

For more on how if you’re not actively helping trans people (which includes not being friends with transphobes) you are, in fact, part of the systems that oppress us, see my book BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX. Because those movies have a WHOLE LOT to say about the topic.

If there are no consequences for bigots supporting hate and violence, why would they ever stop doing it? 

When I point this out, Buddy is very mad at me. He supports me (so he says)! How could I be so intolerant of a bigot’s intolerance of ME? Meanwhile he completely misses the point that bigotry SHOULD NEVER BE TOLERATED FOR ANY REASON.

Tolerating bigotry leads only to violence and fascism. Does that remind you of… our state of existence? This is the paradox of tolerance.

“In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.”

This image distills it down pretty well.

A meme done as a comic page, of Karl Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance,” source “THe Open Society and Its Enemies,” Karl R. Popper, from pictoline.com. Panel 1: Should a tolerant society tolerate intolerance? Two people are speaking against nazis, and a nazi skinhead with a torch (ala the Charlottesville march) says, “You want more tolerance? Respect my ideas.” The answer is NO. It’s a paradox, but unlimited tolerance can lead to the extinction of tolerance. Panel 2: When we extend tolerance to those who are openly intolerant… A German man (perhaps Kaiser?) stands next to Hitler and says “let’s give them a chance!” There is a swastika and an image of Hitler saluting at a nazi rally. …the tolerant ones end up being destroyed. AND TOLERANCE WITH THEM. Panel 3: A large foot is kicking Hitler. Any movement that preaches intolerance and persecution MUST BE OUTSIDE THE LAW. There is an image of philosopher Karl Popper shrugging. As paradoxical as it may seem, DEFENDING TOLERANCE… …requires to NOT TOLERATE THE INTOLERANT.

For more on this, see the excellent article, Tolerance is Not a Moral Precept.

A few choice quotes:

“Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.”

“This is a variation on the old saw that “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.” We often forget (or ignore) that no right is absolute, because one person’s rights can conflict with another’s. This is why freedom of speech doesn’t protect extortion, and the right to bear arms doesn’t license armed robbery. Nor is this limited to rights involving the state; people can interfere with each other’s rights with no government involved, as when people use harassment to suppress other people’s speech. While both sides of that example say they are “exercising their free speech,” one of them is using their speech to prevent the other’s: these are not equivalent. The balance of rights has the structure of a peace treaty.”

Buddy asks how I could ask him to cut a friend or someone he loves out of their life? I didn’t actually ask him to do that, but his choice to NOT do so sends a message to everyone he CLAIMS to support. He will tolerate transphobia. Hating me for existing is not a deal-breaker for him, which sends a message about exactly what he really thinks of me and my human rights.

And that message is: Buddy’s friendship with bigots is more important to him than my right to exist and have equal rights. 

Meanwhile I’m over here wondering why anyone would want to be friends with a bigot. Who wants someone with that kind of hate in their life? Why? Why would you want that person around?

Let me give you another example from another former friend, let’s call him Dominic.

Dominic and I were pretty good friends in high school. I hung out at his house a lot, and I was a couple years older than him and he looked up to me a lot, even though I was a very weird and awkward kid buried in dysphoria.

Dominic and his entire family are Mormon. At the time, as a seemingly cishet white boy who was entirely unaware of the Mormon church’s stance on queer people (who I did not know I was one of), I was unconcerned with his religion.

Not long after my wife and I got married, Dominic sent me a message. And it said that he knew I loved my wife a lot, and the only way I could be assured of being with her forever, after death and in heaven, was if we converted to the LDS church.

Kinda appalling, ain’t it?

That was the last time we talked, I had no interest in being friends with someone who could say something so hurtful and try to convert me (when he knew full well I wasn’t even Christian and had no intentions of ever becoming one).

Earlier this year, Dominic sent me a message, apologizing for what he said and trying to convert me. I was surprised he even remembered, and thanked him for the apology. He wanted to rekindle our friendship (knowing full well that I’m a trans woman), and I asked him if he was still Mormon and supported the LDS church.

Why would I ask? Oh, because the LDS church is not only bigoted toward its queer members, but used its money and influence to try and spread its bigotry by getting marriage equality banned IN CALIFORNIA, when their home state is Utah!

And you’ll note we’re right back to the paradox of tolerance, as quotes from LDS officials in that article whine about being held accountable for spreading their hate, as if that is not only equal to but more damaging than the hate and bigotry they were trying to legislate into law!

Appalling.

But that was 2008, Tilly! Surely the LDS church is more accepting now.

No, I assure you they are fucking not. Especially to their trans members.

“Individuals who have transitioned in any way — whether surgically, medically or socially — cannot work with children, serve as teachers in their congregation or fill any gender-specific assignments, such as president of the women’s Relief Society.”

EXCUSE ME??

“These same church members should use a single-occupancy restroom when available. If unavailable, they can counsel with leaders to find an alternative solution. Examples suggested include people using the restroom that aligns with their assigned sex at birth or one that corresponds to the individual’s “feeling of their inner sense of gender, with a trusted person ensuring that others are not using the restroom at the same time.”

FUCKING WHAT?

“Also unchanged was the instruction that all soul-saving rituals, including baptism and temple rites, must be received according to a person’s assigned sex at birth.

Only those who have not transitioned in any way can be baptized and confirmed, although possible exceptions can be made by the governing First Presidency. Individuals who transition in any way cannot receive the recommend needed to enter the church’s temples, where the faith’s highest ordinances are performed.”

Do I even have to tell you that for some trans Mormons, preventing them from transitioning is a literal death sentence? The LDS church would rather their trans members DIE before they transition.

Laurie Lee Hall said she hadn’t been to church in some time but grew emotional when she thought of the impact these new policies could have on those she knows within the trans community, including young people, who continue to make the church their spiritual home.

“It’s dehumanizing and degrading to have to have a chaperone clear a restroom before you can use it,” she said, explaining that few Latter-day Saint meetinghouses have unisex restrooms — a fact she gleaned during her years designing the buildings.

Hall, author of the forthcoming “Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman,” also pointed out that preventing transgender members from working with children and youth puts them in a category with sex offenders.”

So, y’know, maaaaaaaybe you can see why I was concerned that this was an organization he still was a member of, supported, and still gave a 10% tithe on his income to (money that the church has readily demonstrated it will use to spread its bigotry and influence laws, entirely ignoring the supposed separation of church and state).

I’m going to share my response to him, because it’s something more people need to see and understand.

I know we don’t talk much anymore, and we’re both very different people than we were in high school. This is going to get awkward though, because there’s no other way to say this than to say it plainly. If you’re still an LDS member, as presume you are as I know your faith has always been important to you, I don’t see how we can really have any kind of relationship.
Your church holds horrible, harmful views about trans people, filled with factual misinformation, that are tantamount to asking someone to go through a lifetime of torture and pain. The kind of torture and pain that makes trans suicide rates so very high. Some 80% of trans kids contemplate suicide, and over 40% attempt it. And it’s not being trans that causes that, because being trans is no different than being left-handed or having red hair. It’s just a way some people are. It’s the response from highly transphobic society and institutions, including your church, that contribute to how difficult it is just to exist as a trans person in this world. 
If you’re still a member, I cannot in good conscience have a friendship with someone who’d be a member of a group that does not believe people like me deserve equal rights or treatment for our condition that is recognized by literally every major medical association in this country. it’s like telling people with cancer to just live with it and not seek chemo. It’s horrific and unconscionable, and it’s killing people like me all over the world. I’d ask you how you’d feel if the church said left-handed people couldn’t be full members, or campaigned to take away rights of left-handed people. Only, you know, this is much worse, because life with gender dysphoria is a misery and pain you cannot imagine.
If you’re somehow no longer a member of that church, I’d be happy to talk with you further. If you are, however, and they have your support… I’m afraid I just can’t have any kind of relationship with someone who doesn’t believe I deserve equal rights. I deserve better than that. So does everyone. And so I’d ask you to not contact me again, because knowing a high school friend I cherished doesn’t consider me an equal human being in all rights is honestly too painful to bear. I wish you and your family nothing but the best, may safety and happiness and love be in abundance. And I hope you never know what it’s like to have half the country see you as less than human. Be well.

He replied and said he’s watched my journey from afar, “admired my courage” (I shouldn’t have to be courageous to exist! See the Trans Tuesday on TRANS COURAGE for more on that), and stated that he still is a member and supports his church, but also “sees me as a fully equal human being deserving of love, compassion, and peace.”

And I’m sorry, but no.

NO.

You don’t get to say I deserve love, compassion, and peace and that you “see” me as equal while you support and give ten percent of your income to an organization that treats trans people as second-class citizens, discriminates against us, and uses the money YOU give them to try and take our rights away.

YOU CANNOT DO BOTH OF THOSE THINGS. THEY ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.

And so I replied.

Hi   I’m heartened by your reply, and that it shows you to still be the kind, wonderful person I wanted to be friends with. The part I have trouble reconciling is your continued membership in and support of an organization that’s doing so much harm. We don’t share the same spirituality, and I’m not even Christian, but to me that seems to go against everything you actually believe. Continued membership and tithing condones and supports their actions, even if you personally don’t. It’s tacit endorsement of what they’re doing, and the trans lives they’re destroying. I know so many trans people. Trans kids. I *was* a trans kid and didn’t even know it, because my family and society told me that was impossible and shameful and forced me to bury it and caused severe trauma I may never fully recover from. I’ve seen the same struggle in so many other people forced to repress themselves for their entire lives for the same reason.
I see kids with accepting families who have a chance to avoid a lifetime of pain and the ungodly body horror of going through the wrong puberty, and states (with the support of organizations like your church) telling them no, they must suffer. I don’t see how that can be reconciled. People who donate and support those who want to take my rights away aren’t really my friends, because what friend would do that to another? That’s not friendship. That’s not love. That’s not kindness. and I’m not sure how anyone could expect someone to be friends with someone supporting the guy with his boot on my neck. I don’t remember much of my past due to the dissociation that comes from the horrors of gender dysphoria, but I actually do remember the event you mention. If not in specifics, at least in how it made me feel. And I appreciate the apology. Thank you.

I’d hoped perhaps he was working within the church to try and get them to change their policies, but he wasn’t. I hoped I could help him see the harm he’s doing in supporting the people who oppress trans folks. 

I don’t know if I did, he did not respond after that.

Listen, THIS IS A ZERO-SUM GAME. 

You cannot support my right to exist and be who I am AND support the bigots who want trans people to not exist.

Friends don’t do things like that. If someone wants to take my rights away, they are obviously not my friend. And if you give money to that person, tolerate that person, vote for that person, you’re supporting that. 

Further: if you don’t try to STOP them, YOU ARE AIDING THEM.

If YOU remain friends with them, knowing that they want to take my rights away, you are supporting me losing my rights. 

That’s a hard pill to swallow. It means confronting friends and loved ones about the harm they’re doing.

It may mean those relationships are going to change, if you have the INTEGRITY to be an ACTUAL TRANS ALLY. SAYING you support us is wonderful, but without ACTIONS that support us, it’s nothing more than platitudes to make yourself feel better.

See the Trans Tuesday on PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP (about a much less serious situation, but it illustrates the point very well), which is allyship in name only.

See the Trans Tuesday on PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP 2: FALSE ALLYSHIP, which is when people who consider themselves “allies” are in fact part of the systems that oppress us and refuse to see it.

See the Trans Tuesday (and the MULTITUDE of Trans Tuesdays linked within) about TRANS RAGE, and how cis people keep forgetting about trans people, and how ABSOLUTELY FUCKING VITAL REAL CIS ALLYSHIP IS.

And for an example of how even the smallest gesture can show you really do have our backs, see PROACTIVE ALLYSHIP aka BE AN ACCOMPLICE.

What will you do to stop this? Do you care? 

Too often, it seems you do not. See the Trans Tuesday on TRANS RAGE 2: CIS APATHY.

Think about what might happen if your MAGA/Trump supporter friends and family lost their friends and family over their horrible support of hatred. Can you think of a stronger message to send that might wake someone up? THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR ACTIONS.

Please come back next week for TRANS POLITICS 2, and two of the MOST IMPORTANT things you can do to make life better for trans people.

And let me close by asking you to again look at that meme that opened the essay.

A meme of white text on a black background that reads, “If you are my friend and you support Trump, you are my friend. If you are my friend and you support Biden, you are my friend. If you feel the need to degrade those who feel differently than you… Maybe we are not friends.” And I’ve superimposed a large red “NOPE” over the top of it.

Do you see it for what it is?

Do you see that it was designed to help make bigots feel better about their bigotry?

Do you see that it was designed to help make friends of bigots feel like it’s okay to be friends with bigots?

But it’s not. 

It can’t be.

Our literal lives are on the line.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 2 is here!

Trans 101 Trans Life

THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE (that we’re trans)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re going to take a personal look into my past to look at THE SIGNS THAT WERE ALWAYS THERE EVEN WHEN WE REFUSED TO SEE THEM. There’s no other way to say this than… this is gonna be embarrassing. For me.

Actually it’s making me a little uncomfortable, because I feel like this is going to expose me a little more than I’d like. Expose me as what? A trans woman? OH NO. Obviously this is not a surprise to anyone at this point. I talk about it a lot and am proud to be trans.

And it’s not like I don’t get personal in these. I get detailed about my past in many of them, like you can see in my thread on The Past, and Why it Haunts Us.

And also my thread on Parents Who Will Never Know the Real You, aka My Dad.

There are certainly more, I try to be as open and transparent as possible because I know that can help people. But this is something extra personal that was never intended to be seen by anyone but my amazing wife Susan, but that’s only part of it.

I guess what’s most embarrassing about it is that you’re going to see just how very blind to my own transness I was. And I know that’s not unique to me… in fact, it’s so common there are entire memes about it. See How Do You Know if You’re Trans (Still Cis Tho).

For some background, I’m going to suggest you read the thread on Fear of Embracing Your True Self as I explain in there how very terrified I was of things like makeup… and why. To get the full impact of what you’re about to see, truly… read this first.

Okay enough context, which is probably in some small way me stalling because… well, let’s just get on with it. A while back, Susan made me a scrapbook of things from our life together, and it’s beautiful and sweet and delightful.

Some of what she included were letters and notes I’d written her, and one of them included this:

A photo of part of a note I’d written to my wife, in my horrible, uncomfortable, tight, pre-transition handwriting. It reads: I wanted you to have something to have with you… for those times when I’m not there and you can’t call me, but you need some reassurance and love and hugs and… kisses!

Okay, a brief pause for full disclosure… just seeing my old HANDWRITING gives me dysphoria. It’s as cramped and tight and uncomfortable and awful as I felt all the time pre-transition, and I didn’t expect that to spike my dysphoria! How incredibly weird.

I talked about how my handwriting has changed post-transition, and why, along with a whole host of other things I never anticipated in my thread on Unexpected Bonuses of Transition.

And though I link to this one most often, I never know when new folks are coming in to their first one of these, so if you need more info on Gender Dysphoria.

Okay, right, so… Tilly, what the heck? I hear you. You look at that snippet of a note and think… that’s some uggo handwriting, but what of it? You wanted your wife to know you loved her when you couldn’t be with her and couldn’t talk, what’s wrong with that?

Nothing at all! Except that I cropped out the truly incriminating part. How do you think I was sending her kisses to keep while we were apart? HOW?  👀

A larger snippet of the same note as before, only below the writing there is… a red lipstick kiss mark.

Okay listen-

No, it’s fine, get your laughs out now, go ahead. You’re not laughing at me, it’s okay, because I assure you I’m laughing too.

I couldn’t yet consciously give myself permission to explore, to find myself, to play with gender and see what I really was inside. And so… I found a way… to do that anyway… without even consciously realizing it.

I did a whole thread about finding ways to giving yourself Permission to Experiment and find your true self.

Okay, but as you read in my thread on the Fear of Embracing Your True Self, I HATED lipstick and lip balm (because of the terrifying feelings they gave me, even though I didn’t know that was why). And I’m not kidding about that. Look:

More of that horrid handwriting from the note. It reads: OH MY. THAT WAS REALLY WEIRD. SO MUCH SO I’M NOW WRITING IN CAPS?? That was… minty. WTF? How do you wear that stuff? Blech. Um… yeah.

Siiiiiigh. See, this is why I feel exposed and embarrassed. It’s SO CLEAR TO ME, looking at that, exactly what I was going through, and why I had those feelings. And I’d done it to myself by concocting a “reason” I could put lipstick on when I was home by myself.

I’ve said so, so, SO many times how looking back at my life, there were signs everywhere that I was trans. Signs that I willfully ignored, pretended I didn’t see, pretended they didn’t mean EXACTLY what they actually meant. And this is abso 100% one of them.

I’m not saying if you’re a cis man and you do this one thing that you’re trans, BUT y’know if there’s DOZENS of these, HUNDREDS… maybe you’re not as cis as you think.

Anyway it gets worse (better?), because this is how I closed out the letter:

It’s that same old awful handwriting. It reads: PS – I think I ruined your lipstick. Sorry! At least you know I haven’t been wearing it while you’re at work.

Tilly. Girl.

GIRL.

WHY WOULD ANYONE THINK YOU WERE WEARING YOUR WIFE’S MAKEUP WHILE SHE WAS AT WORK? WHAT A SUUUUUPER RANDOM THING TO THINK PEOPLE MIGHT BE WONDERING ABOUT YOU…

🙄

As you’ve no doubt seen in plenty of my selfies, I now love wearing makeup and lipstick, because I gave myself that permission to explore, pushed through the fear of embracing my true self, and figured out who I really am.

When I said the signs were always there, I did not remember this note. I had no idea it existed. So when Susan found it and put it in that scrapbook, it was an embarrassing and somewhat hilarious slap to the face.

It said “damn RIGHT the signs were always there, just LOOK, you fool!” Yeah yeah, okay, sure. My Morpheus was always there hammering away, trying to break through my shell and get me to see what was really inside. And if you don’t get the reference:
Twitter, Facebook

Push through the fear. Do it scared. Give yourself permission. The signs have always been there… and it’s okay to recognize and accept them. You may be surprised at the joy you find waiting for you on the other side. (lipstick!!)

Me with curly bangs and two curly pigtails held with light blue hair ties, eyeliner, pink-framed glasses, a dark pinkish-purple lipstick in a v-neck top with light blue, dark green, orange, dark red, and pink horizontal stripes.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Trans 101

WHAT IS TRANS TUESDAY?

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! This week’s thread is a first (and probably only) of its kind, as we’re talking EXPANSION and THE FUTURE OF TRANS TUESDAYS – a WEBSITE AND PODCAST! (but fear not, they’re staying as threads too)

I’ve talked about where my Trans Tuesday threads came from before, but briefly they all stemmed from me realizing how much privilege I was giving up in transitioning from a white (seemingly) cis man to a white trans woman.

But I was also very much aware of how much privilege I still had. Which is not to say femme white trans ladies have a lot of privilege in our society, but we certainly have more than every trans woman of color.

On top of that, so many trans people lose spouses, family, friends, homes, and jobs when we come out, and I basically lost none of that. So I remain remarkably more privileged than most trans women, and I recognize that and I wanted to USE it to help people.

I’m a writer, it’s what I do. So I had the thought that I would chronicle my transition, and talk about things cis people might never realize about society, and do what I could to take as much pressure off of other trans people as I could.

I had no idea how long I’d be writing them, I thought I’d just talk until I ran out of things to talk about. But that never happened, because so many more things keep getting added to the list. Things I myself never even realized (and couldn’t have) until well into my transition.

So here we are, two and a half years after they started, and there’ve been over one hundred installments (this is 119!) and my mega 24-thread deep dive into the intentional trans allegories of the Matrix movies will be released as a book in the summer of 2023.

And it’s that book that actually got me thinking about my Trans Tuesdays as a whole. I was a little hesitant to turn the Matrix threads into a book at first, even though many people who’ve read them have asked for exactly that.

But a very small percentage of the population is on social media, and a book could reach an entirely new audience of people. And so many people have told me how those Matrix threads, and these threads in general, have helped them.

And that’s the whole reason I started these. I just want to help people. To be as much of a resource as I can. And that led me to the realization that these threads could reach a lot more people if they were also in another medium.

I also realized that while I link to relevant past threads where applicable, they’re otherwise not easy to locate on social media. I’ve had people ask if I had them available in another format, so they could send them to friends and family who aren’t on social media.

So what this has morphed to is where I want to take these threads going forward. First and foremost, I want you to know these social media versions aren’t going anywhere. I’ll keep doing them here for as long as I’m writing them and there’s a “here” to post them to.

But you can now also find them, ALL OF THEM, at tillystranstuesdays.com. They’re categorized and alphabetized, and link to the Twitter and Facebook versions of each. Additionally I’ve turned every single one of them into a Google doc.

You can read each thread in whole right in that doc, and easily share the links to them with anyone you want. I’ve broken them down into four categories, though there’s some overlap so you will find some topics listed in multiple categories:

THE TRANS 101 PACK – everything you need to know about the basics of being trans. Ideal for eggs, for people wondering if they’re trans, for people who have literally no idea what being transgender actually means, or who want to brush up on the big stuff.

THE TRANS LIFE PACK – all the threads about what it’s like to exist as a trans person in this world. These are of course from my personal experience as a (white) trans woman, but they apply to most trans people in varying ways.

THE CIS ALLYSHIP PACK – the info every cis person needs to understand what it means to be a true ally, HOW to be a true ally, and why YOUR allyship is absolutely VITAL for trans people to live, thrive, and gain any sort of equality in this world.

THE TRANS MEDIA PACK – this includes my Matrix, Barbie, Silo, and Real Genius trans allegory threads, talk about representation (good and bad), and everything related to the intersection of media and trans people.

And now each Trans Tuesday will be available as a podcast as well, which you can find on all your favorite podcast services and can download directly from the show’s website.

New episodes will go up on Tuesdays, and be ON THE SAME TOPIC AS THAT WEEK’S SOCIAL MEDIA THREAD. They will contain the same information and thoughts I present in the text threads, but will have added discussion.

I’ll be hosting it with my wife, who will be our token cis representation (turnabout! oh!), and my hope is to have a different trans guest on every few episodes to discuss the topic with us, and to give everyone listening a window into the width and breadth of trans existence.

We’re everywhere, we’re all kinds of different people, we do all kinds of different jobs, have all kinds of different personalities – just like cis people. And I think helping both cis people and other trans people see that there’s a million different ways to be trans can only be beneficial.

But to have a text thread and a podcast version ready at the same time means I’ve had to change the process a little. I can no longer write them on Sunday and release them on Tuesday. Podcasts take time to schedule and record and edit, after all.

As such I imagine there will be some growing pains as I figure the new schedule out, so please be patient if things get a little (extra) weird for a bit while I settle into the new routine of bringing these Trans Tuesdays to you.

There will continue to be entirely new topics, and revisions of previous ones, and I’m sure some will be on topics I haven’t even realized are a thing I should talk about yet.

I don’t speak for all trans people. All I can give you is my own perspective. But with the podcast, now I can also give other trans people a platform to talk about these same issues, to share their thoughts on what being trans means to them.

I want to celebrate us, to share the beauty and complexity of our existence with the world. And whether you read on social media, read them from the website, or listen to the podcast (or all three!), thank you for joining me on this journey.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.