Transgender

Fiddlehead fern. ©Skyler Lemay 2024 I remember being in a High School youth group, almost always more comfortable talking with the other girls. Then we would break up into gender segregated discussion groups for whatever the topic was at the time. We were reading some religious treatise around gender norms. It was written by a wife and her husband, each writing their own book. Supposedly, it was a call to action of how best to model our gender the “way god intended.” I didn’t get any of the discussions of how to be a man. I remember going up to the leader and asking if I could hang out with the girls, and being told that it wasn’t a possibility. They were my friends. We talked about life. I didn’t like being stuck in a group of boys. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. ...

I look in the mirror and wonder How can so little be done Such chaotic discord shifting my gaze At every chance it can Government proposes rule to strip away care From me and my community Reducing to acknowledge that gender affirming care Applies to them just as much as it does to me But work calls the next dayOne must contribute to the machine to survive You can focus on this right?! Collapse one hits the stage ...

Tesseract at Portland Winter Lights Festival ©Skyler Lemay 2024 To become is to be part of a process by which the stable identities—the majorities—are dissolved in creative acts in which more fluid ‘identities’ are created, but only as the by-products of the process itself. ~ Todd May Milestones are an interesting concept, but I remain captivated by the impact of reflecting on the growth that has happened over the years. 3 years ago from today, I started HRT. I had finally started working through the chest of gender feelings that I had tried for so long to escape from. I could no longer avoid their haunting reminders of a truth that I had long known, but had repressed for far too long. I had just come out at work, and shared my name with my team. I was about to meet them for the first time, and it felt like a better time than any to share this news. ...

Pain by iProzac. Creative Commons License This tragedy isn’t played out on stage or on screen. It’s about a human who finds themself relying on substances to exist in the world. That doesn’t sound healthy. Yet they’re scared that if they don’t numb themselves sufficiently, they won’t be able to sustain existence. They constantly reflect on the balance of self compassion and allowing their mind to breathe while not repressing emotions entirely. They can’t go back to that level of depersonalization. Their physical world continues to shrink. Wondering—dreading—what happens next. Wondering what kind of hellish life is this to live. Wondering when the suffering will come to some terminal state. ...

Portion of the exhibit “Crossing Boundaries: Portraits of a Transgender West” I recently experienced an exhibit highlighting the history of transgender people on the West Coast from 1860-1940 at the Oregon Historical Society. It captured details of people moving out West to be themselves, the instability they experienced wondering when they would be discovered, the beauty of a gender affirming surgery happening in 1918, and the persistent cycles of trans erasure and sensationalization. ...