At the Broken Places

by Mary Collins

  We expanded on the idea of bad timing. I expressed that while being away from my family was terrible and not preferable, it was absolutely necessary for me while I was in college. I wouldn’t have been able to maintain my emotional health otherwise; neither would my mother.

  But while I had the resources of a decent insurance policy, a strong network of friends, and an LGBTQ-friendly college environment, many trans folk find themselves financially cut off, uninsured, un-housed, and floating.

  DRU: Family acceptance is one of the keys to ending the suicide epidemic that we’re seeing in the transgender community. And I think that families play a deeper role than people realize. What does that mean? We need to get families resources. We need to have visibility so that families have somewhere to turn to when somebody comes out.

  That is such a critical and vulnerable time. We’re losing people during that time period, and that is devastating not only to the movement but also to those families who couldn’t turn that around, and figure that out, and be there in the way that the person might have needed them to be. I’m really glad that people survive that time period, but a lot of people don’t. And I think that’s really where we need to focus our energy.

  I asked Dru what other avenues of support he used in his transition. He described therapy as being key, though he recalled that he “survived in spite of a bad therapist” who had no idea how to react to his coming-out.

  Dru says he found a second therapist, one who claimed to be knowledgeable on gender issues, and worked with her for three years. He wasn’t sure he wanted a medical transition, and for a time was very against the idea. Eventually the time was right for him to start testosterone, but when he asked for a recommendation letter from his therapist, she refused.

  This “gatekeeping,” a practice that controls or restricts access to resources, was very traumatic for Dru. He tried again.

  DRU: So then I found a different therapist a few months later, and the first thing she said to me was, “You’re in the driver’s seat; I’m in the back seat. And if you need a letter, you got it, but that’s not what this is about.”

  She took away the gatekeeping experience for me and said that it was my decision, and she just wanted to support me. And that is why I became who I am in the community, because I had that one person who believed in me when I didn’t have anybody else. I felt empowered and supported.

  He also credits an FTM (female-to-male) support group that his therapist pushed him to attend in adulthood. “I really didn’t want to meet any other trans people,” he recalls. “I was terrified of all trans people and all things trans. I really didn’t want to be trans. And I forced myself to go to one of these groups to have some peer support, and it was life changing, because I realized that a lot of my experience was universal and there was absolutely nothing wrong with me.”

  There’s a remarkable cycle of support that people like Dru’s therapist set in motion. Support begets support. And now that Dru is helping and advocating for people, the cycle continues.

  What would you say to younger trans people, who are just figuring themselves out and figuring things out, about protecting themselves?

  DRU: First of all, I’m so glad that you exist. I’m glad if you have avoided any percentage of the damage that I experienced, just as all the people who came before me helped me to avoid. I also really know that it’s still extremely challenging to be queer and/or trans in this world.

  I just really want to do anything possible to keep people alive, keep people safe and happy and healthy. I think that leaning on each other and finding community and doing it better than the generation before is all key to that. I think there’s gonna be things that you know about that I won’t understand, and that you do have the answers to.

  The one thing I always tell people at schools is [that] the bottom line is just trust yourself, because the world around you is telling you lots of different things, and you can’t take that shit in.

  ASK A TRANS PERSON: OSCAR

  Oscar is a white, nonbinary transmasculine person who uses they/them/their pronouns. Oscar grew up in Massachusetts and now attends college in Ohio.

  The following are select excerpts from our conversation, which covered Oscar’s experiences as a nonbinary person, their coming-out, and changing notions of “self-care.”

  You may notice in my discussions with peers, we use words that may seem new or difficult to some readers. While context often illuminates meaning, you can always check back through the word banks between essays, where many of these words are simply defined.

  If you were to explain to someone what gender is, how would you go about that?

  OSCAR: I think pretty much anyone will probably agree that gender is very subjective to the culture in which it’s defined. Masculinity is not as solidly defined as femininity. And that’s because femininity is defined as what’s lesser, and masculinity is defined as anything that’s not lesser, which is supposed to be normal. Which is why privilege, in terms of gender at least, is so hard to acknowledge for many people who don’t want to actively look at it.

  The ways in which [gender] plays out, at least in our Euro-American culture [in the United States] is very different across racial lines. And I think that equating white feminism to black feminism, or even the experience of being a white woman to being a black woman, is entirely different. Whenever you talk about gender, you absolutely have to acknowledge race.

  How would you describe “cisgender privilege”?

  OSCAR: First of all it’s important to define what “trans” is. And I have a little rant about this. I’m not trying to be exclusionary or anything, but “trans” heavily suggests moving in some direction. So that doesn’t necessitate medical transitioning, but it does mean social transitioning, or the need to, or the compulsion to. And so I think a lot of people use “trans” as an umbrella term to include all nonbinary people as well. And we can be trans and nonbinary. But just because you are nonbinary does not make you trans.

  I’m going to break that down a little.

  Nonbinary people are exactly that: they identify outside or apart from the gender binary of men and women.

  Oscar is trans because they moved away from their “starting place,” their gender assignment at birth, and they are nonbinary because they don’t strictly relate to the male or female gender. Furthermore, when Oscar uses the term “transmasculine,” they are referring to a tendency toward identifying more along the masculine spectrum.

  For context, I am also trans and I do identify within the binary. I identify as male, and use the pronouns we stereotypically associate with men, he/him/his.

  Oscar’s analysis of the nonbinary is important because it showcases the variety in people we often lump together as the “trans community.”

  “Cis-privilege,” as Oscar explained, is not feeling the need to socially, medically, or otherwise move away from your starting point, your assigned gender.

  OSCAR: So like one of the visceral ways that I feel my lack of cis privilege is in the medical industry. It’s set up to entirely profit off of people who have illnesses both mental and physical and also disabilities. And it also is set up not only to profit off of but also to silence trans people. And not just silence but exclude trans people.

  And I think “privilege” is such a sticky word because often people will be like, “Cis privilege is not having to transition,” but there’s nothing inherently privileged about not having to take hormones, you know? There’s nothing inherently marginalized about having to take hormones. The issue comes when you look at who’s allowed to get those hormones, who’s able to get those hormones, and who has the resources. So the medical industry is one very strong aspect of cis privilege.

  Also, cis privilege is not having to prove your gender.

  This line of thought segued into our next subject: the objectification and hypersexualization of trans bodies. Earlier in this book I discussed the grossness of the moment when someone learns I’m trans. Oftentim
es people give me a once-over, as if they are looking for the zipper.

  Oscar admitted that for their first half-year on testosterone, they only told close friends and family. “Because,” they explained, “I knew that the second I told people publicly, the first thing they would think about was my genitals.”

  Oscar is indeed the same Oscar mentioned earlier in connection with my surgery recovery. They are my second cousin through my stepfather. We played together during the summer as kids and later reconnected as trans adults. The experience of having a family member who is also trans has added so much to my life, and I’m incredibly grateful.

  In addition to doting on their pet rats and cultivating plants, Oscar is also a gender advocate and student of queer studies. At the time of our speaking, they were entering the finals period of freshman year and had also just lost “Z.,” a close trans friend, to suicide.

  OSCAR: No cis person I know wants to sit down and have this conversation with me, you know, because it doesn’t affect their life; at least they don’t think it does. But really it informs entirely how they affect other people’s lives. Because we’re so individualized in our culture, nobody cares deeply about how we affect the lives of other people. Well, not nobody, but so many people. We’re conditioned not to.

  Oscar commented that many trans people are also not interested in these kinds of discussions or in examining or challenging their own gendered experiences within a larger context. For years, I myself wasn’t interested. I resented having the burden of proof placed on me because I was trans.

  “And, it’s like, that’s fine,” they explained regarding such attitudes. “It’s fine that you’re uncomfortable about this. Cis privilege is not having to think about these things. I get it.”

  At the same time, Oscar expressed that we have an obligation to tackle these issues. “It’s not about being ‘right,’” they emphasized. “It’s about constantly growing and questioning.”

  What was your coming-out like?

  OSCAR: I think that oftentimes when people ask that question, what they’re looking for is one story that entirely defines what “coming-out” is for that person. But it was a process that is comprised of many different experiences.

  My initial thought when someone asks me that, the story that I pull out of my ass or whatever, is when I definitively came out to my parents. But even that wasn’t the beginning of it, because I had told them I think three or four times before that. And every time they had shut me down and thought they had taken care of the problem. Each time it got harder, and each time I had to rev myself up for it and be like, “Okay, I’m ready to do it for real this time.” And then I would back out.

  And then I realized at one point, this is a matter of life or death. I absolutely cannot live like this anymore. And I have done it for years. At that point it was giving up, really, and acknowledging there are visceral and literal truths that are apparent in my body and my experience with it that are not there for everyone, and that I’m going to have to accept [those truths].

  Oscar expressed that it didn’t really occur to them that, as lesbians, their parents would react negatively to having a trans child.

  OSCAR: That day I sat them down and I rationalized it as “Okay, I have two moms. They have met trans people before.”

  I had this really optimistic view of the LGBT community. I thought we were all in it together because I thought it should be obvious that we’re all in it together, because so many of our identities are not mutually exclusive.

  And so I told my parents, and they got really mad. And they thought that it was my way of separating myself from my femininity, and as second-wave lesbian feminists, they were very much connected to their womanhood. And they thought that it was me hating myself and me hating them; they thought they fucked up; they thought I was fucking up. They wanted to protect me from my own identity.

  And where they were coming from was a well-meaning, but really damaging, misperception of what it means to be trans but also what it means to be a woman.

  Oscar established their immediate needs as being called their new name and referred to with they/them/theirs pronouns. They also told their parents “that at some point I would need to go on hormones. And at some point I would need to legally change my name. And at some point I may need surgery, but that’s in the future.”

  One of Oscar’s moms, “A.,” immediately expressed that she did not feel comfortable sharing a house with them. Their other mom, “B.,” wanted to know that, if some trans people don’t medically transition, why did Oscar have to?

  Oscar was deeply hurt by B.’s question. They felt B. was inappropriately using the experiences of other trans people to invalidate the experiences, thoughts, and feelings Oscar was trying hard to convey.

  Later, Oscar related the stress of this coming-out situation to the LGBTQ student group at their school, only to be shut down by their peers and the group’s advisor. These people, who knew Oscar’s family, dismissed their story on the grounds that it didn’t seem characteristic of Oscar’s liberal, queer parents.

  OSCAR: And I was like, “Okay, well you’ve successfully shut me up.” And then I don’t think I ever went back to [the LGBTQ group].

  That’s another example of how cis non-straight people just really don’t like trans people. They really don’t like us. And it blows my mind every time I’m reminded. But they just don’t.

  Oscar’s relationship with their parents has evolved and improved significantly over the years. Their family put me up during my hysto recovery and now takes a more active role in Oscar’s trans experience.

  OSCAR: So there is this really cute quote I read a while ago, and it was like this parent thing, like “I was very homophobic, so God gave me three gay kids.” And then there was some quote about “My kids are gay, and my church didn’t accept them, so we found another church.” And I think that religion can be used as a metaphor for all the very fundamental frameworks that people use to look at their lives and understand the world around them.

  And I think that you have to be able to adapt your frameworks to fit the world instead of trying to fit the world into your framework.

  I was scared, I was very worried, I was very lonely, I felt like a stranger in my own house. I was uncomfortable talking or looking at [my parents] for a while. But, like, I knew at the end of the day—you know, maybe I have to wait ten years—but I know at some point they will accept me. It is going to be a process.

  Coming out doesn’t necessarily begin and end with family. Once at college, Oscar struggled to get the administration to put their correct name on the e-mail and attendance lists. And every time they interview for a job, gender is salient.

  Oscar summarized: “My entire life is coming out to people. Or, I will be coming out to people for my entire life. Coming out is a very lived reality for me.”

  What are sources of support for you, and what are ways that you take care of yourself specifically?

  OSCAR: If I had to pick one thing that is the most damaging aspect of our culture across the board—and how it plays into capitalism and different marginalizations—it’s how individualized we are. We are not allowed to be vulnerable. It’s not even that we’re not allowed to; we cannot want to be vulnerable. We are not supposed to be okay with being vulnerable.

  And part of that has a lot to do with gender, and vulnerability and emotion are seen as feminine traits and thus devalued. And I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg, so to speak, but I know that these two things are inherently linked, and this thing is inherently gendered. And I think that learning to overcome that is incredibly crucial to survival.

  I know Z. [Oscar’s trans friend who committed suicide] could not tell people things. She was not very open. But even then there’s a difference between not being open and not being able to reach out. And she was both. And the only way that I know I can be happy is if I surround myself with people who love and care about me. And not just that, but if I am also someone who
loves and cares about other people.

  So I think that something that is so crucial to survival is interconnectedness and community. And I know in Massachusetts I worked very, very hard. Because I never found a friend group at school, I was forced to look for friends in other places. And because of that, and because I’m pretty decent at social skills to say the least, I worked very hard to—and was able to build—a network of people who cared about me.

  Here [in college] I’ve done the same thing. I have fucking friends all over campus, and I’m very loved, and even that sometimes isn’t enough. Because Z. was very, very loved. She was a fucking campus celebrity. And so there are internal components to that. But for me that is one of the most important things for healing and growth.

  I think one thing that is easy to get caught up in is this idea that healing means you’re happy. And that being fulfilled means happy. But those are entirely not the same thing.

  So I started thinking of my life in terms of fulfillment. And so that’s when I . . . really dedicated myself to doing work that I was proud of, and not just work in organizations but also work like interpersonally, like caring for my friends, caring for myself.

  I started getting plants around then. I started growing plants. I have rats now. There are things that fulfill me but do not make me “happy.”

  So, yeah. That’s how I take care of myself.

  ASK A TRANS PERSON: ALYSSANDRA

  Alyssandra “Aly” Taylor is a trans woman who sometimes identifies as a trans feminine nonbinary person. She uses she/her/hers and they/them/theirs pronouns.

  Aly is an actress and artist who aims to further trans visibility and create more opportunities for queer people to tell their stories. At the time of our speaking, she had just wrapped Charm at Minneapolis’s Mixed Blood Theatre and moved back to Boston to prepare for Company One’s summer 2016 production of T Party.