Dearest babies,
Two and a half years ago I sat in support group feeling raw and new and wondered why almost no one there had been transitioning for over a year. I started to ask: where are the trans elders? I thought that maybe there was an end to transition, when suddenly everything would become easy, and vanishing into the background would become a possibility. Or maybe the elders were hiding, forced by transphobia and standards of a different time to go stealth. Maybe they just didn’t care about us, and all we had was ourselves to build the future we wanted. I worried that I - and the clutch of recently hatched eggs that I belonged to - was alone.
Babies, after every group meeting we huddled like estrogen lizards under the heat lamps of the nearby bar and schemed. We traded doctor experiences, stories of the transphobia and misogyny we began to encounter, tips for shoplifting from JCPenney. We looked at 90’s crossdresser manuals on how to be a woman, and laughed and laughed. We took bad photos of each other in the dim light, and dreamed of a Polly Pocket that, when opened, would reclaim our lost girlhoods. We started calling each other “tranny,” and “faggot,” and all sorts of other slurs, as signs of love for each other. And we started to fall in love with each other. We started to fall in love with ourselves.
After a while the support group got to be a drag, and what became more important was the socializing. Emerging from under the heat lamps, the clutch found better ways to exist with each other: dancing, live music, book groups and reading discussions, picnic lunches, MDMA-fueled cuddle puddles at birthday parties, and of course: endless bullshitting on the internet. Babies, we gradually found that we needed community more than we needed support. The support came naturally, from friendships, romances, and everything in between.
Slowly, as we swam in these new waters of being real people in the world, we started to bump into them. Other people’s transsexuals. They carried that same love that we did for each other, and all had walked paths different from us. We discovered that each encounter with a new transsexual was loaded with potential. A run-in at a pizza place could land a tgirl her own well-attended DJ night at a local bar. An online flirt could send girls UHauling across the country to form a GRS-recovery-based polycule. A chance outing to a rock show could open up a world of queer friends, all making music and incestuously swapping bandmates via Instagram group chats. Each person we met in our journeys had their own origin stories to tell, opinions on HRT, and takes on that one trans movie that came out recently.
We found ourselves welcomed by all these people into the unfolding dimensions of a trans world that we hadn't been able to see before. It turned out that we weren't alone after all, and that "elders" was a misnomer - we were surrounded by peers who were growing along with us.
Darling babies, you too will have your moment when you turn to the girl in line next to you for a beer at the taproom, the girl who you’re pretty sure you flirted with on a lex shitpost that one time, and say, “you wanna get out of here?” You’ll make out with her in the backseat of her car at 2am, finally touch a body like your own with love and lust, and realize how your body is all of you and not a meat suit like the anime told you. You’ll glimpse for a second the beautiful paradox that is feeling both monstrous and like a divine lightning being who scoffs at the gates of the underworld. You’ll find out that the girl’s ex used to date Seattle-based trans author Katherine Cross, whose book you were just reading, before the distance got too hard and they had to deescalate.
After that you’ll get cancelled over supposedly kink shaming someone on your local Discord server, and as you turn to seek support from your friends who know about kink on the other Discord server your eyes will open and you’ll see that you’re there. You’re on the great plateau that is the rest of your life, the long but finite Rest of Transition. You’ll look to either side and see yourself surrounded by those who went before you and those who have been beside you the whole time. And they will look back at you like someone who is not looking at a baby.
Babies, we are all feeling pretty alone right now, because times are rough and looking to get rougher. I don’t want to give you empty platitudes like the movie theater that emailed me last week, so I’ll say this: hang on to your clutch. Learn to be vulnerable with each other, and sharpen each other like a pair of knives. Take chances peeking out from under the lamps now and then, because you never know what opportunities you might find.
And above all learn to be kind, starting with yourself. It’s important to start with yourself because actions aren’t objectively kind and the safest place for learning that lesson is your own experience. You will try to be kind to yourself and you will fail and feel bad about it. You will try to be kind to others and you will fail and do the same. What matters then is what you decide to do with that failure. If you turn it into shame you will never become more kind. Listen closely to those you hurt, and own up to your mistakes. You’re a baby, you’re going to fall down and hurt yourself. It’s how you pick yourself up that counts. In time, you’ll be walking with the rest of us.