I came out to my parents in a long letter

At some point prior to that, I was talking to my therapist about it, and he said, “it sounds like you’re trying to answer questions that no one is asking,” and he was right. I was trying to answer every question that anyone could possibly think of. I was aping Natalie Wynn, in different chairs, up till 8am, speaking truth to imaginary versions of myself who I know won’t listen.

So I shortened my letter to just answer questions that I knew my parents would ask, like, “when did this happen?” and, “what about God?” and, “does this mean you’re gay?” I was planning on tailoring a separate letter to my oldest brother so that I could preemptively answer his questions too, but I ran out of energy and called him crying instead. My parents still act like they don’t know my answers sometimes, and my brother doesn’t think it's important to ask anything except, “did you pray God would take this away from you?”

Now that I’m sharing things publicly I’m feeling beholden to the voices again. It’s dumb because I’m mostly around supportive people—so the questions still aren’t being asked—and I couldn’t effectively answer them anyway because I still get scared talking to people who I’m mostly sure are supportive. I hear myself couching my experiences in qualifiers and nervously skipping past unsavoury bits, hoping they won’t ask. There’s an impulse to take it all back the second that I feel like it might make someone more comfortable.

This is all very fucked up and I hate it. More than feeling frustrated for myself, I feel afraid of being a person who bigots can point at as an example of something insidious, or being a fraud who harms queer people by being a bad representative, or, possibly worst of all, being a person who could’ve been something meaningful to someone who could be persuaded to be an ally.

And I have always been unsavoury. I have always made penis jokes, and enjoyed talking about sex, and swore a lot, and been a little kinky—and it’s fine to be these things when you’re a cis male, but when you’re trans this stuff gets easily spun as evidence of the incredibly dangerous belief that trans people are actually all just perverts.

My therapist said to me, “I just think you should know that how someone is told won’t usually change the way that they feel.” He is always right. And it’s not my obligation to convince my gender critical cousin that I’m not trying to trans her kids, or demonstrate to my mom that I’m not currently inhabited by a demon, or to persuade someone to be an ally.

But I wish I could, right? Like if I were perfect. Spotless. Chaste until marriage—or better yet a eunuch, because what even is sexuality when you fuck with gender. If I were beautiful—if I could pass without trying but embodied not needing to. If I never got mad, or hurt. If I had endless capacity for questions and I answered them happily, in good faith, without a hint of disdain, while citing only the most credible resources.

I cannot do those things because I, personally, am an average looking pervert with massive emotions who literally could not pass to save my life. And I’ve never even had my life threatened but I can’t go one blog post without invoking the fear of it. How dramatic. What performative woke-ness.

Anyway, this is one thing Imogen Binnie said in her afterward to Nevada:

“If you find yourself interacting with someone who is “critical” of “the transgender movement” or whatever, ask them what they think trans people should do. If the only thing they can come up with is “not be trans,” point out that the vast majority of trans people have already tried that, and it tends to make us suicidal. If they can’t come up with anything better than “don’t be trans,” please understand that they very literally want me and at least 1.4 million other Americans—not to mention way, way more people outside the US—to die.

Don’t let them equivocate. “What should trans people do?”

All they’ve got is “die.” 

It’s kind of intense.”