QUEERLY TRANS

Today is Like My Birthday, Only More Gay and More Trans

I honestly had mixed feelings about celebrating this day

As of today, I’ve been on Testosterone for exactly one year!

I’m celebrating this day in large part because, in a way of life so shaped by those who hate us that one of our most important cultural days acknowledges trans deaths (Trans Day of Remembrance), I need more days to celebrate just being alive.

I do have mixed feelings about celebrating my T-Day though. I don’t want to send the message that being on Testosterone makes me more trans than anyone else. This is just one of many gender transition milestones I could have remembered and celebrated. In some ways, it feels arbitrary to consider this the most important day to celebrate.

I could have celebrated the day I realized I wasn’t cis: February 23, 2020. The Pandemic hadn’t hit the South of the United States yet, so I was at a book club I was leading for a book called Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity. My wife was complaining that in a discussion about a non-binary book, a “cis person” was monopolizing the conversation. Without thinking, I responded, “But what if I’m not cis! No one would believe me to look at me, so it probably doesn’t matter, but I’m all dude on the inside.” That was a hell of a way to come out to my wife, but there you go! I was talking a lot because I related so heavily to so many of those stories. I felt seen for the first time.

Unfortunately, I keep forgetting that date and keep having to dig it out of cyberspace through a texted reminder that we were meeting that day at our favorite queer-friendly coffee shop that has since closed down forever because of the Pandemic. A little discussed cultural consequence of this historic event is how it hit queer and queer-friendly culture hard by closing so many of the places that supported us in little towns like the one we live in.

There are lots of other days I could celebrate as my “Re-Birthday”, if I could remember them all.

• I could have celebrated the first time I put on a suit, looked in the mirror, and glowed from seeing myself for the first time.
• I could celebrate the day I cut my hair, ran my fingers through the absence of it, and felt so good. That was sometime in late February of 2020.
• I could celebrate the day at a poetry open mic late in February of 2020 that I was asked to give my pronouns. With sweaty palms, I said, “I’ll accept any and all pronouns that you feel apply to me.”
• I could celebrate the day I first wore masculine clothes out to dinner with friends that same week.
• I could celebrate the first time someone called me “Sir” unexpectedly on the phone in April of 2020 and misheard my name to randomly call me “Josh”, which sounded nothing like my actual name at the time.
• I could celebrate the day in August of 2020, when I changed my email signature to the first name I ever answered to as a child: a gender neutral name that everyone who has ever loved me has always called me by. I added “They/Them” pronouns to the automatic signature. That was the day I quietly came out at work, shortly after the landmark legal decision that it was illegal to fire me for being trans. I didn’t need to worry though; despite having a conservative boss, I wouldn’t be fired in that job. I left that place with a glowing review and lots of nice gifts from coworkers. The next job I worked at would be another story. At that place, I truly believe I would neither have been hired nor fired, had I been cis.
• I could celebrate the day I chose my real name, or the day it chose me. That happened in June of 2021, a couple of months after starting Testosterone.
• I could celebrate the days I changed my automatic email signature again to add “He/Him” pronouns or the moment I changed it yet again to delete the “They/Them” pronouns.

Those are just a few examples. I have many more milestones coming in the future as well. Changing my legal name will be another big step!

I guess I’m celebrating this day for little other reason than because I can remember it very easily. I waited, all anxious and excited, for a month to be able to give myself my first injection under a nurse’s supervision, having no idea what it would do to me. After signing the rather terrifying informed consent papers, my doctor had made me wait for a month to verify yet again that I was sure.

Mountains of research had revealed that it would either make my mental health better or worse, make me happier or angrier, make me more confident or cringy, make me more hairy or bald or both, cause me to live longer or die earlier, and a host of other contradictory things. The main message I received was that I was taking a massive gamble on my genetic background.

I rolled the dice and feel pretty happy about it. I just wish I had not done so because I was getting misgendered and deadnamed so much. I did this for all of the wrong reasons, but found the right ones for me somewhere along the way.

So what is a Re-Birthday like for me?

Well, it began as a pretty relaxed day. I put on some delightfully gay trans masculine music and shaved my face and throat. I love the way aftershave smells and the tingly feeling it gives me. I touched the Adam’s apple I’ve finally (mostly) grown, still amazed at the physical changes that have been possible. It’s a little higher on my throat than I expected, but it’s there and I’m super excited about it!

Muscle memory has finally re-taught me to pat my chest with my towel like a dude and wrap it around my waist. Looking at myself in the mirror, I thought, “I don’t know if I am beautiful, but I feel beautiful, and that’s so much more important.” Everyone should get to feel beautiful. Everyone should get to feel like they belong in their skin, whatever that looks like for them.

I put on the sort of shirt my father would have worn at my age. I wish I could show him what I look like without thoroughly freaking him out. The resemblance is uncanny. I wish I had biological family to follow me on this incredible journey through genetics. Instead, I’m parenting myself through a lot of this. I’m not without support though. I sent a picture of myself to some cis and trans people I care about and got some lovely responses.

I made myself tea and listened to about 15 seconds of a song I recorded myself singing to my wife on my phone a few days before I started Testosterone, cringed, and decided that was not going to be part of my Re-Birthday ritual. I’m not going to share that old voice with you here, but will just say that it’s unrecognizably different from how I sound today.

Now, I’m off to celebrate with my wife!

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