Trans Life

THE 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS, part 2

Welcome to #TransTuesday! We’ve got lots more data to discuss this week in part 2 of THE 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS!

If you missed last week, definitely start there and learn about why this survey was so vital, and the importance of it being conducted by trans people.

Only 36% of adult respondents said all of their immediate family knew they were trans and were supportive, 31% said they were “very supportive,” and 28% were neither supportive or unsupportive. While that last category isn’t great, it’s not awful.

And it backs up what I’ve been saying for years… the transphobes are just a (very loud) tiny minority. However, things get a lot more grim when you look at minors, where coming out means they’re still legally under parental control.

Among 16-17 year olds who took the survey, only 44% had supportive immediate families, and 29% had unsupportive or very unsupportive environments. The propaganda war on transition care for trans kids is obviously taking its toll. Those kids deserve so much better.

And if you don’t understand how safe, tested, and needed that care is for kids (there’s no surgeries, damn it), see the trans tuesday on TRANS KIDS AND THE INTAKE EXAM.

11% of adults who took the survey who grew up in a home with family, guardians, or foster parents said that a family member was violent towards them because they were trans, and 8% were kicked out because they were trans.

5% of 16- and 17-year-olds who took the survey and grew up in home with family, guardians, or foster parents said that a family member was violent towards them because they were trans, and 8% were kicked out because they were trans.

Those numbers are slightly better than for the adults, but many of the adults who took the survey could have been 16 or 17 just a year or two ago, too, and the difference in percentages isn’t exactly huge.

34% of respondents were experiencing poverty. Over A THIRD. 18% were unemployed. 11% said they were fired, forced to resign, lost a job, or were forced to resign due to being trans. THIRTY PERCENT had experienced homelessness at some point.

When we tell you trans people lose our jobs, when some feel forced into sex work because they have no other options, when we tell you trans people have no money, this is what we’re talking about. Basically A THIRD OF US have been through this.

In the prior year, 4% had been denied access to a public bathroom and 6% had been verbally harassed, physically attacked, or experienced unwanted sexual contact in public bathrooms.

Compare that 6% with the amount of assaults cis legislators claim trans women make in bathrooms (0%) and you can empirically see they’re fighting a made-up problem to drum up bigoted support, instead of protecting the people who are actually assaulted in there.

Here’s an article about how entirely fictional the entire “bathroom debate” is.

9% said they were denied treatment or service in the past year due to being trans. 30% said they were verbally harassed in the last 12 months because of their gender identity or expression. 39% said that they were harassed online.

3% said that they were physically attacked in the last 12 months because of their gender identity or expression. Keep in mind those stats are for the year prior to filling out the survey, and things change.

When I filled out the survey, I reported that I’d not been verbally harassed in the year prior. But I was in the year following, when I ran into a horrible bigot on my way to one of the WGA strike pickets. It was horrible.

A tweet I made at 9:28 am on July 31, 2023 that reads: going to the WGA picket at Universal and just experienced a horrid, really loud, vocal bout of transphobia from someone passing by (not part of the picket). Super start to the day. Love to be hated for existing.

I talked about the (otherwise largely positive) experience of being out on those strike lines in the summer of 2023 in the trans tuesday on PROACTIVE ALLYSHIP.

70% said they’d feel varying degrees of “uncomfortable” asking police for help (count me among them), and 62% said that was because of being trans (again, count me among them).

Trans Equality has a paper on, in their words, the “epidemic of anti-trans violence” trans people experience at the hands of police. You should maybe give it a read if those numbers were surprising to you.

48% said none of their identification (driver’s license, birth certificate, passport) had the name they wanted on it, and 20% said they only had the name they wanted on at least one ID. only a third had the name they wanted on all identification.

59% said none of their ID had the gender they wanted! 23% said only some ID had the gender they wanted (which means some of their ID has the right gender, and some has the wrong one, and just imagine what that’s like).

Almost HALF of us have ZERO identification with our true names on it, and even more have the wrong gender. Cis folks, just try to imagine for a second what it’d be like to go through life with NO identification that actually matched who you are.

Because if you think it’s not a problem…22% of all respondents reported being verbally harassed, assaulted, asked to leave, or were denied services when they showed an ID with a name or gender that didn’t match what people expected to see.

Having the wrong ID, when you HAVE to show it, FORCEFULLY OUTS YOU to whoever is looking at it. And that opens you up to all kinds of problems.

80% of adults and 60% of 16- and 17-year-olds who were out or were simply PERCEIVED as trans experienced mistreatment in school. That includes: verbal harassment, physical attacks, online bullying, not being allowed to dress in the clothes they want… teachers or staff refusing to use chosen names or pronouns, or being denied the use of restrooms or locker rooms matching their gender identity. Again, the propaganda war being waged on trans kids is having real consequences. We need representatives who will fight it.

47% thought about moving to another state because their state government considered or passed laws that target transgender people for unequal treatment (such as banning access to bathrooms, health care, or sports). 5% had actually moved.

The top 10 states trans people left due to discriminatory laws were Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Sadly I think there’s no surprises there.

That’s the end of the Early Insights from the 2022 US Trans Survey. I hope it’s given you a window, with proof, into the kinds of things trans people are dealing with and begging cis folks to help fix.

These results are pretty sobering, but give us the kind of data we need to push for policy changes and fight for equal rights for trans people. Trans rights are human rights. But we CANNOT get them IF CIS PEOPLE DON’T MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Cis people who live in those top ten worst states, or who are appalled by what you see in this report… what are YOU doing to make it better for trans people?

There aren’t enough trans people to stop these laws on our own. We cannot affect political change on our own, there aren’t enough of us. We’re too small a part of the population.

WE NEED YOU OR NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

THE 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS, part 1

Welcome to #TransTuesday! You may not know this, but in 2022 the largest survey of transgender Americans happened, and in February of 2024 the early report was released, so let’s take a look at THE 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS, part 1 (of 2)!

In 2022, the National Center for Transgender Equality ran the largest-ever survey of transgender Americans, in an attempt to better see what life was like for us, and to have hard data to use in policy decisions and fighting for our rights.

It was a survey of trans people, BY trans people, for trans people. And that it was being done BY trans people is vital, because as we’ve seen all too often, cis people don’t know what to look for, what to ask about, and often don’t care (or worse) about helping us.

For some examples of this in action, within a medical context, see the trans tuesday on COMPLETE TRANS HEALTHCARE (or lack thereof).

And see it again in the trans tuesday on TRANSMEDICALISM (and WPATH soc 1).

As a reminder, it’s CIS people taking away our healthcare, it’s CIS people gatekeeping our healthcare, and legal name and gender marker changes, it’s CIS people trying to legislate us out of existence.

So that this survey is being done BY trans people is HUGE. Because nobody knows our existence better than we do, and we’re almost never consulted at all about laws, medical standards, or anything else that affects ONLY US.

It’s the reason things like ANECDOTAL TRANS HEALTHCARE is a thing, because cis doctors often don’t care enough to (or outright refuse to) consult trans people on our own care. My own endocrinologist overseeing my HRT is operating on 30 year old information!

It’s so huge that, if you follow me on social media, you probably saw how I wouldn’t shut up about trying to get trans people to take the survey. Because it’s SO important.

A tweet from me on Nov 4, 2022 that reads: “trans friends! This is SUPER important. It’s the best way for us to get a picture of trans life in the US, and is cited in lawmaking/policy decisions. IF YOU ARE NOT CIS IT’S FOR YOU. it’s long. It’ll ask about discrimination & acceptance and so much more. Please take the time!

And that was a quote tweet of the National Center for Transgender Equality which tweeted, on Oct 25, 2022: “For the first time in 7 years, you have a chance to be part of the largest survey of trans people, by trans people, in the US. Take 60 minutes to share your story and be a part of history.

Note that the survey took about SIXTY MINUTES to complete. It was absolutely huge and incredibly thorough. Though I fear its length (and questions about difficult topics) kept participation numbers lower than they could have been, it was necessary.

Because the only way to truly find out what we transgender Americans are facing is to ask these questions. They had to ask about everything, in-depth, to gather what information they could. Even still, 92,329 trans people took the survey! That’s a huge data set!

But there are far more trans Americans than that, and how many were even aware of the survey? How many of you cis folks out there were aware of it? So I’m going to go through the entire thing and report on its findings, because I suspect most folks just haven’t seen it at all.

Keep in mind that the survey was so extensive that it took over a year to tabulate these results, and these are still just the EARLY INSIGHTS. Presumably more in-depth results will be forthcoming. Even still, there’s a ton of good data here.

If you want to learn more about the survey, you can go to ustranssurvey.org. And if you’d just like to look over the results yourself, which includes information on the goals, methodology, outreach, who conducted the survey, and so much more, you can find them here.

38% of respondents were nonbinary, 35% were transgender women, 25% were transgender men, and 2% identified as crossdressers. It’s fascinating to me that crossdressers were even covered here, honestly. It can often absolutely be a gateway to transitioning…

But it’s also something entirely cisgender people do for reasons not related to being trans. But given many trans folks “ease into” transition that way, I suppose it makes sense. Still surprised me though. But here’s something interesting…

When considering sex assigned at birth, the numbers shift. 35% of respondents were trans women (I guess this makes sense, as a group we are Very Online), 30% were nonbinary AFAB, 25% were transgender men, 8% were nonbinary AMAB, and 2% were crossdressers.

But also! 5% of respondents reported they were born with a variation in physical sex characteristics or had an intersex variation, 72% reported they were not intersex, and 23% reported that they did not know.

I’m glad intersex folks were accounted for though, they’re too often left out of everything involving gender and transness, and they shouldn’t be. This shows you, perhaps, how trans people can be more thorough and understanding of our own issues than cis folks might be.

There’s more data on the breakdown of age and race of respondents that I’m not going to get into all the details of here, but 56% of respondents were white, and ages 18-24 (43%), and 25-44 (36%). So the respondents were largely white and young.

Which sadly makes sense when you think about who has the easiest access to, and time to fill out, a very large online survey. Not that young, white trans people have it easy in this world, but as a group they face fewer barriers than every other trans person.

For more on that, see the trans tuesday on TRANS INTERSECTIONALITY.

Here’s a stat that shocked me: 41% of respondents were in the south (as based on US Census regions), and those are generally the states with the most oppressive anti-trans laws.

I don’t know if that’s from the survey targeting them more to get a better idea of what they’re facing, or from people living under the worst oppression working harder to be sure their voices are heard, or both. But it’s a super interesting statistic.

28% did not see a doctor when they needed to in the last 12 months due to cost. I’ve talked many times about how trans people often face poverty due to losing our homes and jobs when we come out, but the survey has more info on that in a bit.

More than a quarter of the people who took this survey couldn’t afford to see a doctor when they were sick, which is horrible. And almost the same number, 24%, didn’t see a doctor DUE TO FEAR OF MISTREATMENT.

Read the link to COMPLETE TRANS HEALTHCARE (or lack thereof) I posted above to learn about my own experiences with that, and realize I HAVE IT GOOD. What I’ve experienced is but a shadow of what many others go through.

WE SHOULDN’T FEAR HOW CIS DOCTORS WILL TREAT US WHEN WE NEED MEDICAL CARE. I shouldn’t even have to say that, much less shout it.

44% experienced SERIOUS PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS within the 30 days prior to filling out the survey. A clearer picture of what living in a highly transphobic society does to us.

Of the people who did see a doctor in the prior 12 months, FORTY-EIGHT PERCENT reported having a negative experience BECAUSE THEY WERE TRANS. This includes:

“…being refused health care, being misgendered, having a provider use harsh or abusive language when treating them, or having a provider be physically rough or abusive when treating them.” HOLY SHIT. This is unconscionable.

26% had at least one issue with their insurance company in the last year, for things like being denied coverage for HRT and/or gender confirmation surgeries, but some were also denied coverage of ROUTINE healthcare BECAUSE THEY WERE TRANS.

94% reported they lived at least part of the time as a gender other than the one assigned at birth, and 79% were “a lot more satisfied” and 15% were “a little more satisfied” with their life. That’s a combined 94% positivity rate when living as ourselves!

NINETY-EIGHT PERCENT of respondents on HRT reported they were more satisfied with their life after! That is WILD. How many other medical interventions do you know of that have that kind of positivity rate from people receiving it?!

NINETY-SEVEN PERCENT of respondents who’d had at least one gender confirmation surgery were more satisfied with their life after! These numbers are UNPRECEDENTED. The regret rate for gender confirmation surgeries for trans people is ONE (O N E!) PERCENT!

According to the World Journal of Surgery, the average regret rate for ALL surgeries for ALL people is 14.4%!

We’re going to wrap here for now, but come back next week as we finish discussing the rest of the report, there’re still so many more important bits of info that reveal a whole lot about trans life.

Cis people still treat gender confirmation surgeries as some horrible thing that we don’t know that we really want. BUT CLEARLY, WE KNOW WHAT WE NEED.

If you’d just listen, things would be better for all of us.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

PART 2 is here!

PARENTS WHO WILL NEVER KNOW THE REAL YOU (my dad)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re going small and personal, yet is still entirely related to my transness in ways I will never be able to escape. So let’s talk about: PARENTS WHO WILL NEVER KNOW THE REAL YOU. And for me, that means: MY DAD.

His birthday is not too far from when this thread is going up, same for Father’s Day, which means he’s on my mind now even more than usual. And every year I struggle with this and every year it haunts me, and it probably always will.

This is pretty tied in with how THE PAST can be difficult and complicated for trans people who transition as adults, so see the Trans Tuesday on that for more info.

My dad died in an accident when I was five. I… wrote out the details, but no, it’s better without them. It’s too horrible to talk about, or even think about. It was… well, it was really bad.

Suffice to say the method of his death made me terrified of some things as a kid, and I still feel some of the lingering effects of that today. He was really young, only 25 or 26 at the time.

I’ve mentioned before how my mother, who died over a decade ago, lied to me about him for my entire life. She used me as a weapon to hurt him, and convinced me he abandoned us. She had me hating him for a good portion of my life.

You can learn more about my incredibly complicated relationship with my mom, and the ways it affected my own motherhood, in the Trans Tuesday on BEING A TRANS PARENT aka MOTHER’S DAY.

A ways back, Susan and I found his family. I got to know my grandparents in the few years they had left, and my step-mom is one of the kindest and sweetest people I’ve ever met, and I have a great relationship with her that I cherish.

Once I reconnected with them, well into adulthood, I learned who he really was. It was an extra knife in my heart knowing the ways I’d been used to wound him, and the awful things I’d been led to believe about him.

All I have left of him are a scant few photos. I remember some small things… very few of them good. One of the most visceral memories is screaming to get away from him, because if I went with him for the weekend my mother told me I “wouldn’t be her special little [girl] anymore.”

The one thing I remember better than anything is him lying in his casket at the wake, right down to the pattern on the shirt he was wearing. It’s seared into my brain forever. I can see it right now. He’s laying there so still.

I remember not understanding what death meant, or why he wouldn’t wake up. How awful for that to be almost all I can remember of him. I only have a couple happy memories I can think of, one of which is playing hockey with him in the winter.

No skates or anything, I think we were on a driveway. I’ve never really liked hockey much, but maybe he did? I remember he had a pipe (a guy in his early 20s with a pipe is kind of hilarious to me, sorry dad) and he set it in the snow while we played and it melted a little hole.

And so he forgot it was there because he couldn’t see it and then couldn’t find it. Why do I remember that? I don’t know. The only other memory I have is this: I don’t remember why, but he asked me if I thought I looked like him.

And I said no, and he asked why. And I told him it was because he had a beard and I didn’t. So… so he went into the bathroom and HE SHAVED OFF HIS ENTIRE BEARD. Oh goodness. What a kind and remarkable thing to do for your kid.

I never got to apologize to him for what my mother did, how she used me like a weapon to hurt him. If I hope for anything for those of you reading (and I do hope for a lot, for all of you), it’s that nobody ever uses you like that.

I still struggle with it. My step-mom tells me that he knew I didn’t actually hate him, that it was all the things my mom told me, and that he never blamed me for those things. But it still happened, and I was still part of it.

A confused little kid who didn’t understand what was happening, weaponized to hurt someone who never, ever deserved it. The cruelty of that is very difficult for me to live with. I hope none of you ever have to experience it.

I never got to talk to him about how I unknowingly helped those things happen. I never got to be sure MYSELF that he knew I would have never done or said the things my mom told me to if I’d understood.

I don’t remember him hugging me. And I’ll never, ever know what it felt like. My step-mom said I get my kindness and curiosity from him. I have this photo of him inside a hobby shop where he worked… and I wonder how much of my love of miniatures and gaming is rooted in him.

For that matter, he apparently had little me convinced he was Superman for a while (he told me he just moved so fast I never saw him changing), and my bottomless love of Superman… probably also began with him.

I’m going to share this little story my grandmother told me before she passed, because this is my thread and I can do what I want (I’m mad with power). When he was little, she’d give him breakfast at home, and pack a lunch for him to take to school.

She later got a call from a neighbor, asking why they never gave him breakfast. What? She was so confused. He was apparently stopping at a friend’s house on the way and eating another entire breakfast.

And then he’d also eat the lunch she packed, AND THE BREAD THEY’D LEAVE OUTSIDE FOR THE BIRDS. I never did those things, exactly, but knowing that my astounding and much-envied mega metabolism comes from him? That’s good stuff.

Even better is that our son has it, too. Although his is already slowing and when I tell you he’s SUPER grumpy about it in the exact same way I was when it happened to me… well that makes my heart a bit happy. I wonder how my dad dealt with it? I’ll never know.

In any case, my feelings about him are so extra complex. Because not only did I not get to know him… he never even really knew ME. The real me. And that has never gotten any easier. What I wouldn’t give for just a moment to tell him.

If you’d like to know how I hoped that’d go, Susan and I wrote a short comic about it that appears in the Color of Always queer love anthology. It’s out now from A Wave Blue World, you can get it at Barnes & Noble and any comic shop.

I keep a photo of him over my dresser, look at it every day, and wonder. I don’t know what he’d think… of believing he had a son who turned out to be a daughter.

Every account I’ve heard about him, from everyone who was not my mother, is that he was smart, and funny, and most of all kind and compassionate. So that’s what I take with me, hoping that he’d have accepted me for who I am without question.

I do have one other thing from him, though. His middle name. I talked about that a bit in the Trans Tuesday on my LEGAL NAME AND GENDER MARKER CHANGE.

I made NO decision about my middle name up until the night before I filed the paperwork. And I thought it was because I was too busy (I am), but it’s not like that’s stopped me from doing other important transition-related things when I needed to.

But I kept putting it off, over and over again. I think I felt… bad? Guilty? Awful? At the thought of changing my middle name.

I don’t really like the name. And I definitely don’t like that it’s pretty masculine. I don’t feel it fits me. But it was HIS too, and it’s all I’ve got from him, and I had to hold onto it even though having it associated with me is somewhat dysphoric.

I just don’t know. It’s all so complicated. I suppose I could change it later if I wanted, but it was such a headache to just go through it ONCE, I don’t see myself doing it again just to remove the last thing of his that still belongs to me.

Although now that I look at his photos, I think our hair color is the same. I never noticed that before. Oh goodness. My heart.

A photo of my dad, with short wavy brown hair and a brown beard, leaning on the railing of a bridge over a river, looking at the camera and smiling.

He would have been 25ish in this photo, so it was just a couple years before he died. I’m gonna try to remember him like this, and imagine he gave me that hug I can’t remember.

And that he’d love the real me just as much.

I miss you, Daddy.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

THE PAST 4 aka THE NEW PAST 3 aka TRANS GRIEF 2

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This is the second part of the most difficult trans tuesday I’ve written. I’m gonna rip my heart out for you as we conclude our talk on TRANS PEOPLE AND A.I. in THE PAST 4 aka THE NEW PAST 2 aka TRANS GRIEF 2.

It’s vital you read the first part of this before continuing on to see how the AI-generated yearbook photos affected me, and all the things they brought up. And read all of that one AND this one BEFORE YOU YELL AT ME. Please. The first one is here.

And just to reiterate before we dive in, I DO NOT SUPPORT AI being used to do creative jobs humans should be doing. AT ALL. I mean it’s not even real AI, actually, but that’s an entirely different discussion. So what did getting these yearbook photos do to me?

Seeing them was a COMPLETE jumble of emotions. Because it’s AI, some are hilarious and awful, but a lot were surprisingly very good. And it seemed to lean less into stereotypes than FaceApp… I got nerdy and sporty and girly and butch photos. It was a trip.

Lots didn’t look like me. But lots did. And it was this heady feeling of… I could have been her. I always WAS her, but I was forced to bury her. But she was in there, with me for my whole life, and this might have been me if I was allowed to let her out.

If you’ve followed me on social media for any length of time, you know I’m a writer and my brain never stops. You can see it in my daily pre-coffee thoughts. You can see it in the thread of screenshots I’ve been posting as I play through Starfield:
Twitter version, Mastodon version

And what I want to make clear is I’m not sitting down and writing a story based on my screenshots. I’m just writing out what’s GOING ON IN MY HEAD as I play. It happens with every video game ever. Truly: my. Brain. Never. Stops.

So as I sorted through every yearbook photo the app gave me, tossed the ones that were bad or not me or whatever, something formed. A history. An alt but not quite alt, a real but not quite real, history of the me I didn’t get to be. Events I went through, but as if I got to be ME.

And I’m not the only one. I have a friend who turned theirs into an actual printed, physical yearbook they could hold. And my friend Miriam even turned hers into a video!

I do NOT see mine as me being born a cis girl. They are me, and by that I mean *ME*. She’s trans. But she was born into a much more accepting home life, with family who encouraged her to be whoever she really was. This is Tilly who got to transition as a kid.

This is alt-Tilly’s seventh grade class photo. The curls were definitely coming in and she realized being able to see would be somewhat helpful, so got glasses. She hated the tie, but was talked into it by her friends in the chess club (yes, I was in the chess club. Shut up.)

A young Tilly with brown and moderately curly hair, in glasses and wearing a suitcoat, collared shirt and tie.

Eighth grade alt-Tilly found confidence, being with the oldest kids in middle school and one step from high school, and discovered how to enhance her curls. She also discovered sports were cool, and was able to deal with contacts (unlike me). She also… got crushes on girls.

A younger Tilly in a t-shirt and winter cap, with very curly brown hair.

This was alt-Tilly’s high school freshman photo. She leaned into her nerdery. Physical science class was her favorite, and she got into running track and joined the volleyball team. She had her first girlfriend, and it didn’t end well because she fell really hard. Too hard.

A young teen Tilly in a gray pleated skirt and navy blue sweater, with long brown wavy hair and bangs.

As part of leaning into her nerdery, alt-Tilly joined the high school chess team and was the best player despite being a freshman (true). Her growing confidence convinced her to join the drama club, and she fell for the arts HARD. Creating collaborative art was MAGIC.

A young teen tilly with brown curly hair and bangs, in a light blue polo and white glasses.

Sophomore year was a strange one. No longer the youngest in the school, trying to figure out what becoming a woman meant, and a horrible crush on her english teacher that made her get flushed every day in class. She said it was because she just came from PE. (true???)

A young Tilly with long brown curly hair and bangs, in glasses, wearing a sweater vest over a long-sleeved white shirt.

She was still the best player on the chess club, but tradition said board 1 (of 8) always went to a senior so she had to settle for board 2. She felt this was a grave injustice, and somehow let herself be talked into yet another tie for the team photos.

A young teen Tilly with long brown curly hair and bangs, in large glasses, wearing a navy blue suit coat over a powder blue dress shirt, with a blue bow tie.

By the time drama club photos rolled around, she thought losing the bangs would help her look “more mature” and would help her land a big part in Bye Bye Birdie. But alt-Tilly also could not act, so she ended up on the crew (and loved it).

A young teen Tilly with long brown curly hair and NO bangs, in a gray sweater.

Junior year, alt-Tilly sprouted forth into adulthood in ways she wasn’t ready for. She got another girlfriend. And despite knowing better… she fell just as hard, because she only feels with the entirety of her heart (true). Also she welcomed the bangs back, so she wouldn’t look TOO old.

Older teen Tilly with long brown wavy hair and bangs, in a white t-shirt.

Alt-Tilly was still in the drama club, and got to thinking… someone writes these plays. Who? How? Could… could I write one? Would the drama club perform it? She spent hours in her room writing plays she was sure would make her famous (they were terrible).

Older teen Tilly with long brown curly hair and bangs, in a striped t-shirt and jeans

Still angry about not getting to be Board 1 on the chess team, and having finite time, she dropped chess club for the softball team, because she’d always loved baseball and she was a hell of a good second basewoman. Hated what it did to her hair, tho.

Older teen Tilly in a blue and white softball uniform, holding much less wavy brown hair off to one side with a look of disdain, as if to say “look I love this game but it WRECKS MY CURLS.”

Alt-Tilly once again trimmed her bangs before Senior year, because the sweat dripping from them into her eyes during softball games was too much to bear. She and her girlfriend broke up, only for her to get back together with her first girlfriend. Feelings were so confusing.

Older teen Tilly with long brown curly hair and no bangs, in a white v-neck t-shirt

Her girlfriend talked her into joining the cheerleading team, and while she loved the athleticism, she absolutely hated that she was forced to cheer for boys (ugh) and they wouldn’t let her cheer for girls’ sports. She didn’t last long (looked fab in the uniform tho).

Older teen Tilly with long brown curly hair and NO bangs, in a midriff-baring navy blue cheerleader uniform

She and her girlfriend broke up AGAIN (girl, it didn’t work with her the first time, why would it go any better now?), let her bangs grow back in, and discovered she LOVED seeing her biceps grow and started boxing (not competitively). Buff ladies were hot, why not be one? (true)

Older teen Tilly in a green tank top and black shorts, wearing red boxing gloves. Her brown hair is back in a ponytail (bangs are back tho).

Alt-Tilly got asked to prom by another girl she was crushing on, and they had a lovely time, but they figured out mid-dance they were really better off as friends. And that’s okay, she wasn’t too heartbroken about it (but WAS heartbroken to look back at her prom dress, ugh so ugly).

Older teen Tilly in a red… velvet??… dress and a sparkly tiara, with long brown curly hair and bangs

Freshman year of college, alt-Tilly discovered fanfiction and her play writing morphed into writing stories in her favorite universe with her favorite characters… to the detriment of her grades. She didn’t care. The writing bug HAD her. And it had her GOOD.

Young woman Tilly with long brown curly hair and bangs, in a white t-shirt and olive green skirt

College sophomore alt-Tilly met Susan, and fell for her harder than she’d ever fallen for anyone. Only now did she learn what actual love was, and those past crushes felt silly. She changed her major to screenwriting. She had no idea what this life was, but it excited her.

A young woman Tilly with long brown curly hair and bangs, in a white dress shirt and high-waisted light yellow pants (an admittedly odd choice, Tills)

College junior alt-Tilly, well… she looks back on this time with embarrassment, because she fell into the trap of thinking she needed to be harder and tougher than she was, and thought she needed to dress the part. She discovered it was… very much not her thing.

Young woman Tilly with long brown wavy hair and NO bangs, in a leather tank top and leather vest with leather pants. Oh girl, no, this ain’t you.

College senior Tilly discovered that what she didn’t want… helped her find what she did. She didn’t grow the bangs out tho, wanted to be taken seriously in Hollywood after she graduated. She married Susan. It was small but beautiful. They left for LA full of unstoppable energy.

Young woman Tilly with long curly brown hair and NO bangs, in a black tank top.

But she shortly realized that she missed her bangs, and they were part of the truest expression of herself. And so she grew them back out, and who did she become? The writer lady you all know and love (yes, you do so love me, because this is my essay and I said so).

One of my selfies, me with long brown curly hair and curly bangs, with white iridescent cat eye glasses, dark eyeliner, sparkly pink lipstick, and a blue off-the-shoulder top

So there’s my experience with these AI-generated yearbook photos. These aren’t taking jobs from anyone and aren’t stealing art, but does that mean they’re ethical? Is this one of the rare okay uses for AI? Maybe? I don’t know.

I don’t have childhood photos of myself that could be somehow gender-swapped. Without this app I wouldn’t have them. I couldn’t have gotten them any other way. And I find they’re… incredibly meaningful to me.

I’ve never even been able to look at photos of myself through the years before, watch myself grow and evolve. Do you know what it’s like to not have that? I can watch myself age and change and become who I am and it’s remarkable. I can see the lifetime that I lost.

A collage of ten of the previous AI-generated yearbook photos of me, which somehow show me aging through the years

They fucked me up, I’m not gonna lie. There is… definite pain at what could have been, what might have been. But then I realize that in some ways, somehow, it’s also what was.

Because a lot of trans people like to go back and re-imagine their memories (what few they may have if they struggled with dissociation) with the real them. Some even try to remember them ONLY that way. There’s something healing in that, believe it or not.

Because that version of us WAS there. They were with us our whole lives. Maybe we didn’t know it, or knew but couldn’t do anything about it. Either way, transphobic society STOLE that from us. It stole our childhoods and our lives.

A quick note before we continue… after the first draft of this essay, I was emotionally distraught and really messed up, but also felt somehow good at the same time. It’s so hard to explain. But the night after writing this… I had a dream.

As part of my HRT I’m on Progesterone, which is known to cause wild dreams and I definitely get that. I’ve posted several of them, calling them Progesterone Dream Theater. Look them up if you want to read some of the most bonkers stuff ever.

No P dreams have been bad or nightmares, but they’re all VERY INTENSE. Every feeling in them is amplified by a thousand. And my dream that night was about me, as I am now. And I was standing in front of two kids, a boy and a girl. And I was filled with an overwhelming sadness.

And I wrapped them both up in my arms and I hugged them so tight, and I was sobbing, and so were they. And they were me. Both of them. The me I was forced to be, and the me I really was. They were both there, and are both still part of me.

And it’s not lost on me that this was my own SUPERtext (if you’ve missed any of my trans allegory essays, it’s the opposite of subtext). Likely because I avoided dealing with this grief for so long my Morpheus sat up and slapped me in the face with it. PAY. ATTENTION. LADY.

I woke up crying, which is a first. And I can still feel the depth of that sadness, but it’s also… I guess the best thing to call it is catharsis. Release. All this grief and anger and pain and what was stolen got OUT of me.

And to think that’s not related to confronting my own trans grief that I put off addressing for so long would be folly. Confronting my grief, working through it… these yearbook photos helped me get there. I don’t know how I could have approached dealing with this without them.

The day after I had the dream, I wrote this to some friends, and I came back to add it in to this essay because I think it’s really important.

~After the heavy emotional toil of those trans Tuesdays that will be the last for this year, I was… emotionally numb. raw. and last night I had a super intense dream where I felt depths of sadness I’d never known, and woke up crying which has never ever happened before.~

~but it was this… cathartic release. I am changed. I haven’t felt this different between one day and the next since the day before I accepted my transness and the day after, or the day before I told my wife and the day after, or the day I came out publicly and the day after…~

~or the day I started HRT and the day after. I didn’t think I had any more of these. a mountain of weight I didn’t want to acknowledge was dealt with and gone. I am fifty pounds lighter. I can fly.~

This finally allowed me to deal with my grief, and fill a black pit of despair that was still there.

I am changed.

I’m not telling you to go use this app. I’m not saying if you did it would help you as much as me, or help you at all. It might be too painful. And again, the ethics of this are murky. I don’t think anyone’s being hurt by this, but the bottom line is we don’t know.

But for me? Yeah it hurt, it hurt SO BAD, but these photos HEALED ME. In ways I’m finding it difficult to describe. Because it lets me see how the real me would have handled the things I went through.

How it might have gone, who I might have been. When you see these AI-generated yearbook photos, or FaceApp photos, please try not to hold judgment against the trans people who use them. We’re just searching for a way to ease the pain of a life taken from us.

For me, this has brought a sense of peace. A sense of reclaiming what was mine, IT WAS MINE, and it was ripped away without my consent. This was, and is, MY life to live. And yet it wasn’t. But now, well… if only.

If only the world wasn’t transphobic, if only who we really are was allowed to show, to grow, to BE. When I look at these, I feel somewhere in the multiverse… it happened. I smile. And I’m fulfilled.

And I weep for “if only.”

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

UPDATE: 1/18/24

I’ve been social media friends with Charlie Hutchinson for a while, and she recently sent me the following DM (shared with permission). I wanted to include it here as I’d never heard of narrative therapy before, and I find it remarkably fascinating. Please read the interview with Dr. Nylund if you’d like to learn more about it.

And I’m also incredibly touched that Dr. Nyulnd thinks what I went through in this process may be able to help other trans folks who are struggling with some of the same things. I hope it does.

We are all in this together. 💜

Charlie Hutchinson

Tilly I’ve been following you for a while, and we’ve exchanged a few comments. I’m working on my MSW and am an intern therapist at the Sacramento region Gender Health Center. My supervisor is Dr. David Nylund, the clinical director and co-founder of the GHC. Dr. Nylund is a leading Narrative Therapist and has been working to help bring awareness and access to transgender individuals for 20 years now, both at the Gender Health Center and through his private practice.

https://www.psychotherapy.net/interview/nylund-interview

Today, during my supervision, we were talking about how trans individuals often have dissociated their childhood and have trouble recalling events of their youth. I brought up your Trans Tuesday with the Al-generated yearbook photos. He found them amazing and was really captivated by how you used it to create a narrative of your life that was stolen. He has several ideas on how to use them to help conduct narrative therapy with trans community members. Your work has been seen and inspired others. Thank you for all that you do.

 -Charlie

THE PAST 3 aka THE NEW PAST 2 aka TRANS GRIEF 1

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This is the most difficult installment I’ve ever had to write. I thought it would be about TRANS PEOPLE AND A.I., and it is, but I was surprised to discover it’s so much more. This is THE PAST 3 aka THE NEW PAST 2 aka… TRANS GRIEF 1.

In fact, this was so tough it went really long, and so it’s going to be split into two parts. This week we’re going to discuss the topic as a whole, and next week we’ll get deeper into a specific experience that maybe changed my life.

Trans grief has been on my list to talk about for years. I put it off. I knew I had to write this one now and I STILL PUT IT OFF AS LONG AS I COULD. I knew, I KNEW what it was going to do to me if I looked into that dark pit. Yet here we are.

If I am able to face it, to get through, to put to words something so many of us struggle with, and there’s a chance it could help even one other person out there, then damn it I’m gonna forge ahead. Perhaps my pain can be your gain, in understanding, in compassion, in empathy.

Also talking about AI in the present climate is also fraught, so I’m going to please ask you to read this entire essay (both this one and next week’s conclusion) with an open mind before you yell at me.

So let’s get it out of the way right off the bat: I am fully, wholly, 100% against the use of AI that takes people’s jobs or plagiarizes their work. That’s one of the very things the WGA and SAG-AFTRA were on strike over (and which TAG may strike over next year).

If you want a little more about my own experiences out on the picket lines, see the trans tuesday on PROACTIVE ALLYSHIP aka BE AN ACCOMPLICE.

But not all AI use is bad. It can be used in great ways, like to help doctors spot tumors and save lives.

The problem becomes when it’s used to replace people, as studios want to do for writers and actors, or when an image-generating AI is trained on an artist’s work without permission to use the source material, or when text-generating AI is trained on authors’ work without consent.

But for years there’s been a prevalence of FaceApp among trans people (long before any of these concerns about AI were known). If you’re not familiar, you upload a photo to it and it will use AI to make you younger, or older, or hotter (problematic!), or A DIFFERENT GENDER.

It’s dicey even in its gender swapping capabilities, because it relies on gendered stereotypes to generate the images. AND YET trans people use it often, out of curiosity or to help us see what might be, or to help their photos look more affirming to them.

And here’s where I’m going to reveal that yes, I too used it before I began my medical transition. I’ve mentioned many times how I knew I was trans in 2015 but couldn’t do anything about it until 2020 (see my THREE YEAR RETROSPECTIVE for more info).

As far back as 2017, I was using FaceApp to see what might be possible. And it was… both good and bad. Because it gave me hope, but it also gave me (and a lot of trans people) possibly unrealistic expectations.

At first its swaps were much more subtle, and thus possibly also more realistic. The first one I ever did was part of a collage with “old me” and “young me” because then I had plausible deniability, you see! I wasn’t doing it JUST to swap my gender, it’s just fun! (sure)

I don’t have it any more, because I deleted it. But this is the oldest one I kept, from 2017. When I look at it now, I don’t see me or even a hint of me. I see HIM with a slightly gender swapped face. Doesn’t look like the real me.

A very “gently” gender swapped photo of me pre-transition

But at the time, it made my heart swell with hope, because even what I saw in that photo seemed impossibly far away and unattainable. I did a lot of these. I even got other apps to adjust hair, and makeup, and even add piercings. Just to see how I felt.

An AI gender-swapped version of pre-transition me with way too heavy makeup and a lip piercing and long wavy blonde hair.

And these weren’t even aspirational, per se, as much as just trying to see if I could find some hint of the real me since I didn’t know what she looked like. I think the lip piercing is interesting to note, though. I don’t actually want one. But!

Even this bad AI version of pre-transition me made me feel like I had enough bodily autonomy to wonder what a piercing would be like. That was a first. See the trans tuesday on BODILY AUTONOMY aka MY TATTOO for info on how my body never felt like mine.

I think the best one I ever got from FaceApp is this one. I still don’t think it looks like ME, but it was maybe the closest the app ever got and it gave me SO MANY FEELINGS. I can see maybe 10% of Tilly in there, and at the time that was a first.

A moderately strong gender-swapped version of pre-transition me with wavy brown hair and kinda heavy makeup.

And it made me so excited and happy… maybe I could look like that! And then it made me feel crushed and utterly depressed… because I DIDN’T look like that and didn’t know if I ever would. And that’s the double-edged sword of these things.

After this, FaceApp got an update and got “better” at its gender swaps, which just means it leaned WAY more into gendered stereotypes. When I got this one I basically stopped using it, because it felt ludicrous and extra painful.

A very “stereotypical fashion model” AI image of pre-transition me with long blonde hair and makeup like she just stepped out of a fashion magazine cover

I thought there was no way I could ever look like that, and it dug a hole in my heart. To be clear, I don’t WANT to look like that, but at the time… years away from medical transition and not knowing the outcome, it just absolutely crushed me.

And if you’re new to trans tuesday and/or have missed the 4986278 selfies I’ve posted, here’s what I actually look like now, three and a half years into my medical and social transition.

Me with long curly brown hair and curly bangs, in white iridescent glasses and a blue off-the-shoulder top

Why did I save those FaceApps all these years? Especially now that I’m way into transition and I LOVE who I am and how I look now? I actually like how I really look WAY MORE than how I look in anything FaceApp gave me. So why save them, Tilly? Why?

Now we’re getting to the crux of it, because I think I knew they were something I was going to have to confront someday, and this is TRANS GRIEF. And it all took me by surprise because what I wanted to write about was a different AI app that I saw tons of trans people using.

It’s called EPIK, and it takes photos you upload and generates younger yearbook photos of you. And I saw so many people using it that I thought something important was going on, and I wanted to write about it.

And like all AI, I admit this is ethically dicey. What images was this AI trained on? We don’t know. What AI is the app even using? Despite hours of research, I couldn’t find out.

But then there’s also the question of… are yearbook photos art? They’re mostly a cattle drive… one student in, sit, snap, they leave, and rinse and repeat all day long. Nothing changes from photo to photo except the kid who’s sitting there.

And companies that do school photos likely own the copyright to yearbook photos… but do they really? Should they? Because neither I nor my parents ever signed a release saying the photographer got the rights to the photos.

Never once did my wife or I get a form like that for our son, either. But being in LA, we get a release form asking if it’s okay for your kid to be in the background of any movies, tv, etc that might be shooting at the school that day!

And we never signed those, because no, you don’t get to just shoot footage of our son and do whatever you want with it (the schools hated that, btw, because it meant they had to be sure he was NOT in any shot of anyone shooting there. So hard! Poor babies.)

But these AI yearbook photos aren’t using any kid’s likeness, all the faces are your own based on what you upload. And it could let trans people who transition as adults see something they have no other way to see. So is this one of those “good” uses of AI?

I don’t know. It’s really murky. But I have to tell you when I saw others posting these, deep feelings welled up inside of me and that’s when I knew I had to write about it. And it wasn’t until I got the yearbook photos of myself that I figured out this was TRANS GRIEF.

I’m going to ask you to stop reading here, because you need some VITAL context for the rest of this discussion. You really NEED to read these other essays first to truly grasp the depth of what I’m talking about. Start with THE PAST AND WHY IT HAUNTS US.

One important detail that I want to be sure you notice from THE PAST AND WHY IT HAUNTS US is how I have almost literally no connection to my past. Almost no photographs, almost no physical items… just NOTHING.

And then see THE PAST 2: THE NEW PAST, and how the PAPER GIRLS show on Amazon somehow gave me back a piece of the childhood I missed out on.

And here’s a vital quote from THE NEW PAST I want to be sure you notice:

“I have no way to see old photos of myself with the real me in them. It’s a horrible, hurtful fact of my existence that will never ever change. There are no childhood photos of TILLY because she wasn’t allowed to exist when she was a child.”

“Thanks to a highly transphobic society and home life, my true self was KEPT from me without my consent. My truth was forced down, made to stay hidden. I didn’t get to be a little girl, or a pre-teen girl, or a teen girl, or a young adult woman. It was STOLEN from me.”

Of course little Tilly was there when I was little, but she was buried deep inside. She was crushed into submission and silence by a society, a family, that would not tolerate her existence. I missed out on a LIFETIME of experiences, because it wasn’t ME experiencing them.

For more on the severe childhood trauma that almost every trans person experiences in one way or another, please see the essay my very smart friend Zoe wrote on that very topic (it’s a tough but important read).

I guess I should briefly also talk about dissociation, which is something that happens to a lot of trans people. The pain of dysphoria, and existing trying to be someone we’re not… sometimes means the only way you can get through is by disconnecting from everything around you.

You’re apart, you’re alone, you’re buried under the weight of dysphoria and transphobia and self-hate and pain pain pain, just so much pain. See the trans tuesday on GENDER DYSPHORIA for more on that.

There are large portions of my life that I just… can’t remember. Because I had to dissociate so much just to GET THROUGH, and I was so disconnected and miserable that memories just didn’t form or were quickly forgotten because they were too painful.

I remember a few small moments from my wedding to Susan. I remember a few small moments from the birth of our son. Most of it is gone. Most of the intervening years, hell… most of my LIFE before transition is lost. I have so few memories.

So do you understand what this yearbook photo thing represented? It was a chance, however slim, to see what I’d missed. To maybe vicariously live the life I wasn’t allowed to live.

I ran a survey for a couple weeks, asking other trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming folks about the app to get their thoughts. I got 183 responses, and 40% were aware of the app. But only about 7% had tried it.

Now I don’t know who saw this survey and who didn’t. I kept it anonymous because trans people giving out ANY kind of info about ourselves can be super dangerous in this horribly transphobic society of ours, and I didn’t want anyone taking it to worry.

So, like so many things in trans life, this is anecdotal. It felt like I’ve seen way more than 7% of trans people doing these based on how many people I saw posting them, but from the responses I got some people did not like the photos they got.

And it stands to reason that if they didn’t like them they’re not going to post them, so what I was seeing in my social media feeds was confirmation bias… only the people who loved them were posting them (obviously). But it still seemed like way more than 7% of the trans people I follow.

But without knowing more about the people who actually filled out my survey, it’s impossible to dig deeper into that. Maybe those people didn’t see the survey, or forgot to fill it out, or maybe it was actually just my perception of the confirmation bias.

Largely, people who didn’t use it were very wary of AI (rightfully so) or of the app’s privacy policies. And I ABSOLUTELY understand that. The privacy issue didn’t bother ME personally because… I post hundreds of selfies publicly all across social media.

I’m sure every AI that exists has already scraped all of those for some kind of training data. I don’t like it, but it feels like that’s the reality. I likely wasn’t giving it anything it didn’t already have.

I want to share some of the comments people left me (some have been truncated for length, but are otherwise unedited). A LOT of people who hadn’t used the app admitted they were still really tempted to. Here’s some general thoughts about the concept:

“I can see the appeal but you can’t change the past. We have to embrace the present and press on into the future as our true selves“

“Fear of dysphoric sadness, then sadness as people started sharing them and I kept thinking about how we’d never get that experience”

“As someone transitioning as an adult, sounds like a neat way to reclaim a youth I feel was taken from me.”

“It’s perhaps the least harmful use of shitty/sketchy AI there is, but still makes me profoundly queasy.”

“It’s probably useful for trans folks who are very stealth.” This was something I’d never thought of, but for trans people who have to remain stealth (letting people think they’re cis) for safety reasons, these photos could help maintain that.

That’s a really complicated subject all its own tho. See the trans tuesday on MISGENDERING AND PASSING for more.

“I am scared. I don’t think about the past that could have been. The past that almost was.”

“I still hate AI art, but this does sound like an amazing cause. I am surprisingly excited? I wanna see younger, not depressed girl me!”

From the people who HAD used the app, here’s a few responses:

“They were really well done and I LOVED THEM. I shared them with some of my besties from those school years and they all said ‘I totally know that girl without having known that girl’.”

“My first thoughts seeing them was a mix of delight, fulfillment, and grieving.”

“Revelatory. Possibly life-changing. Assisted me in seeing myself as a girl which in turn helped me see myself as a woman in the mirror.” That one hits me like a ton of bricks.

“I was amazed at how much it looked like me but as a teenager. Was also deeply saddened by what could have been. And I am one who *never* has had regret about not transitioning early than I did at age 53.”

“I didn’t feel as sad for the childhood I could’ve had as I thought I would going in. I just found it interesting more than anything.”

“It made me Euphoric (on seeing who I could have been) and regretful that I was not given the chance to transition at an earlier age.”

“There were like 2-3 though, that made me feel things. I recognised myself in them, like i was looking at a parallel universe me.”

To write about this phenomena, I felt I had to get the photos myself, but I have to be completely honest with you. When I saw the ones others had posted, and how good they looked, I felt this… longing. This pull to see if there might be something there.

And when I did it, well. If you were wondering what THIS post was about…

A tweet of mine that reads: I did some preliminary work for an upcoming trans tuesday today and it’s caught up with me and I feel… wrecked and emotionally compromised? But maybe in a good way? This is so weird, I don’t even know how to process it. Stay tuned.

Friends… please, PLEASE come back next week, when we’re going to discuss the yearbook photos I got back, and what they did to me, and why.

It was not at all what I expected.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

PS – Part 2 is here!

PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE!

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

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

And another prerequisite, PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS.

And ANOTHER prerequisite, GENDER EUPHORIA.

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

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

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

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

YOU CAN NOT MAKE ME DISAPPEAR. 

I. EXIST. 

And fuck you if you think I shouldn’t.

Just wanted to be real clear about that.

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

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

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

But part of my transition… changed.

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

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

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

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

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

Well, almost. Because:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the entire damn fuck, fam. Unfathomable.

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

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

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

Two and a half years later? 

IT STILL HASN’T HAPPENED!!!?!?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fight is worth it.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

THE PAST (and why it haunts us)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re discussing something that can be difficult for some trans people who transition as adults. Hop in your chair and initiate splinter sequence, because it’s time to talk about: THE PAST, AND WHY IT HAUNTS US.

Each person in the world (or frankly, universe, I don’t discriminate), cis or otherwise, has their own unique relationship to the past. That’s frustratingly just how linear time works for us mortals. But for trans people who transition as adults, it’s a little different.

Every memory I have from before I transitioned is tinged with sadness, a longing for things to have been different. It’s really hard to explain to cisgender people. Can you imagine your past, your memories, feeling like they’re not really your own?

Even my happiest memories pre-transition… the day @susanlbridges and I got married, the day our son was born, when we hit amazing moments in our writing career that felt like they’d never arrive… they’re beautiful, happy moments that I cherish.

Buuuuuut they’re not ENTIRELY happy memories. I don’t have a single 100% happy pre-transition memory, because I was never able to be 100% myself before transitioning. When I revisit them, they’re all from behind the wall keeping me out, from underwater as I struggled for breath.

The wall, being underwater… these are metaphors I’ve used before to try and convey what it’s like to have GENDER DYSPHORIA and move through the world, trying to get close to the people you care about.

I’ve had gender dysphoria my entire life, even if I didn’t know what it was or have a name for it for a really long time. And once you can spot it and name it, you see it was always there and all your memories (or mine, anyway) are refocused through that lens.

The most important day of my life was when Susan and I were married, and I just love her so much, she’s my entire world. But I married her in a tux, feeling extra horrible and dysphoric because that’s what suits did to me.

See my essay on CLOTHES, and how terribly gendered (and sexist) they are for more info:

And I also had a buzz cut, which I talked about in my first thread on HAIR and how important it was to me and my sense of identity.

For further reading on the importance of hair, see the follow-up HAIR 2 when I got my first haircut and started to actually find myself through my hair.

To top it off, after the wedding people called me her new “husband” and hoo, what a mixed bag that was. On the one hand, it’s a distinctly male descriptor so I hated it and it made me feel bad. On the other hand, it meant Susan was my wife and that ELATED me.

And of course I have reminders of this everywhere, because of our wedding photos, which I talked about (also specifically mentioning one of our wedding photos) in my first thread on PHOTOS (and reflections).

If you’re curious when/how photos finally changed for me post-transition, see PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE.

Related, you know those memes that ask you to post a photo of yourself as a kid and also now? Or from ten years ago and now? Yeah can be awful and painful for some trans people, myself included. We don’t have that. We never got that. It’s… rough.

I’m now okay posting photos of myself from ten years ago and now, finally, because (as referenced in PHOTOS 2 above) I no longer associate that dude with me anymore. But it’s still rough to NOT have photos of ME from ten years ago, you know?

some scruffy dude in glasses and a Disneyland baseball cap on the left, in poor lighting, looking miserable, and me over on the right, in great lighting and a red halter top and my hair up in a pineapple in blue-framed glasses, dark eyeliner, and red lipstick with a much rounder and less angular face. these do not seem to be the same person!

And there’s no escaping it, there’s no getting around it, there’s no trying to pretend I was fully ME back then. I dunno if cis people can understand what it’s like to have that with EVERY SINGLE THING associated with the best day of your life?

Now just multiply it by EVERY MEMORY FROM YOUR ENTIRE EXISTENCE. The well of melancholy that is my memory is dark and infinitely deep. I didn’t get to be a little girl, or a teen girl, or a young adult woman.

I didn’t get those experiences, I didn’t get those memories, I didn’t even get the memories of things I DID experience from the perspective of my true self. So every single bit of it is just… I don’t know. Sitting there waiting to cast me into the pit of despair if I let it.

So follow me on a little sojourn, a little dalliance, a trip down memory lane that will tie into everything soon, I promise.

Back when I lived with my parents, I had a very difficult relationship with my mom and step-dad. They didn’t know I was trans at the time, because neither did I. But I can tell you if my mother HAD known, it would not have gone well.

Regardless, the result of that difficult relationship is that when I moved out on my own, all I could bring with me is whatever I could fit into the car I booked a one-way rental for, to drive to the first place of my own near where Susan lived, some 400 miles away.

I couldn’t bring much with me, and a lot of what I DID bring I no longer have… guy clothes, shoes, bedding, etc. I’ve spent most of my adult life having absolutely NOTHING from my childhood. Not even photos. It’s almost like it was all wiped from existence.

Just about the only thing I have from my childhood, and it may actually be the ONLY thing I have, is this (I come by my Superman fandom organically, since I was but a wee Tilly).

a small red Matchbox-style truck that has an advertisement for the Daily Planet on the side. it shows the front page of the paper with the headline “Superman Saves the World” with a photo of superman in black and white. but next to that is a color picture of clark kent ripping open his shirt to reveal his superman costume underneath.

Sidebar: yes, as an adult, I wonder why Clark Kent is revealing that he is Superman on the side of a truck selling copies of the newspaper he works for. Seems like a poor choice! I expect better from you, Clark. C’mon, man.

Anyway, if you think I treasure this little truck maybe a bit more than I should, you’re absolutely correct. It’s my only tangible connection to my past. I don’t really remember playing with it, but I remember pulling it out of my toys and saving it as I got older.

I know it’s mine, and was always mine. I know I always loved it. But in this instance my not being able to remember playing with it is weirdly beneficial. Since I don’t have specific memories attached to it (only vague, general ones), they’re not there to be tainted by dysphoria.

It’s clear. Pure. Genuine. Real. It’s a thing I can love and remember always loving, and there’s NO BAD FEELINGS associated with it whatsoever. It’s a red die cast metal unicorn. Or so I thought!

One of the worst things to happen after I moved out, which I only learned about a short while ago, is that my mother basically poisoned all of my siblings with distortions and outright lies about me and things I said, did, and felt.

There’s a big age gap between me and the next oldest, eight years. And the other six of them (yes, there were a lot of us, 8 in total) were all even further from me in age. The youngest and I are sixteen years apart.

So when I moved out, most of them didn’t know me much yet. I loved them all dearly, I took care of them ALL the time. But most of them have not spent much time with me, and had no reason to not believe the things my mother told them about me.

I only learned about these things after reconnecting with my brother @joshuasbridges, the oldest of them. I learned I was so poisoned in their minds that he used to tell people he was the “oldest of seven kids.” To say that’s a knife through my heart is an understatement.

To be clear, I do not blame him. It’s not his fault. No kid thinks their parents would lie to them, especially about their own siblings. And yet.

Reconnecting with him has been a complete joy. I adore him and tell him so every chance I get. He’s tried to tell my other siblings I’m not who they think I am, but most have shown little interest in trying to reconnect with me.

That’s got to be their choice, I can’t force it. But I send them a message here and there, letting them know the door’s open. A couple of my sisters have talked to me a little.

So here’s where this tangent of my messed up childhood and sibling relationships dovetails with the past and all my tainted memories. I guess my step-dad was cleaning some things out, and found a bunch of my old stuff I didn’t take with me when I moved out.

One of my sisters asked if I wanted them to throw it out or would I like her to mail it to me. I had no idea what it was, she said it was mostly papers and some clothes. But for someone with no connection at all to her past, it was a lifeline.

It was agony waiting for the box to arrive. It was all at once filled with hope AND despair. What wondrous, or horrific, things did it hold? I had no way to know.

When it finally arrived, I found some things I remembered from my childhood… a Christmas card holder my grandmother made for me was a particularly nice find.

But even that’s tainted because my deadname is stitched right into it. I could rip it out, but I’ll always know it was there before, so I’m not sure that’s much help.

There were old school papers and art I’d done and… stories! Little Tilly wrote some stories and finding THOSE was just… well I can’t even tell you. One of them is actually going to get further discussion in a thread of its own, so keep your eyes open for that.

Most of it was abstract ephemera and didn’t mean anything to me. Except. EXCEPT. There was one baby outfit my mother had saved for some reason. It was a bright red pair of overalls and a dress shirt, which seems like an odd thing to dress a baby in?

Anyway, included with this outfit was a matching fire engine-red bow tie, meant to clip to the collar of the shirt.

a large, bright red bow sitting in sunlight on the edge of a folding chair

If you don’t understand the potential significance of this, let me direct you to the thread on SEXUALITY IS NOT GENDER (and bows, Bows, BOWS).

Do you… do you understand what happened to me?

This is mine.

It has ALWAYS been mine.

It’s as old as I am.

IT IS A BOW. AND IT IS MINE.

I have NO girly things from my childhood. No connection from the me of now to the me of then. Except now… I do? Because a bow is a bow, buddy. And this one IS MINE.

Out of nowhere, falling in my lap out of the clear blue sky… is a sudden connection from my present to my past. A little sign that says sure, maybe your mom put this on your collar and not in your hair, but it was there. It was with you.

It’s a piece of you, a piece of your past, a tangible connection that says not only do you exist finally as your true self… but you’ve existed that way your entire life, even if all the parts weren’t in the right places.

This instantly became the single most important physical object in my life. And if you think I’m not going to wear it every chance I get, then you’ve not been paying attention (come on, I telegraph my personality in these things).

THIS IS MY BOW! 🥰

Me with long curly brown hair and curly bangs, wearing dark eyeliner and red lipstick, blue-framed glasses, and a light blue dress with rainbows, unicorns, and hearts on it. My childhood red bow is in my hair.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com