A few things that might surprise you about a trans man

(Besides the fact that we exist)

Or, more accurately, “things that might surprise you about this trans man,” because it shouldn’t be a surprise that, like anyone else, we are human beings with vastly varied experiences on top of an obviously shared one.

That said, would you have guessed that-

I wasn’t “one of the boys” growing up, and I didn’t “always know”

I can’t say I was spiritually one with the gals, either (just a happily introverted, imaginative kid who preferred drawing alone to playdates), but I definitely don’t remember any acute distress about not being seen as a boy. I was not particularly tomboyish or sporty. My little Catholic self did not pray every night to grow a dick or become a dad one day.

I just…went along with things, for the most part. I would make up male characters for myself that usually weren’t even human and existed in unobtrusive, compartmentalized fantasy worlds that I drew and/or dragged my younger siblings into, but I also loved a good game of Barbies or Bratz (for anyone that remembers them, Dana was my go-to and I would pretend she was the Crocodile Hunter’s daughter).

I’ve always been into men.

The whole ‘former lesbian’ thing wasn’t my story. Boys have made me feel ✨warm and fuzzy✨ since I was about 12, and I have been in a monogamous relationship with another man for over 8 years now.

Gay men exist. Trans men exist. It follows that gay (or bisexual or pansexual or asexual or any other kind of non-straight) trans men exist.

It still surprises me sometimes that this has to be said, but who you are and who you are into are two different things.

I started medically transitioning before I came out.

I am extremely lucky to have access to informed consent, which allowed me to access transitional care on my own terms.

I grew up in suburban Texas, and by the time I hit college, I only knew a few superficial things about the L, G, and B in “LGBTQ+”. There were zero examples of openly or visibly trans people around me, and even the relatives and friends I later found out were gay just had ‘roommates’ in normal conversation.

I was introduced to the existence and experiences of trans people in my early 20s, and I started to connect the lifelong dots on a private emotional rollercoaster that spanned my mid 20s and became harder and harder to push away via dissociation, workaholism, and on-and-off disordered eating (in fact, my eating disorder started at 15 and comforted me as a way to suppress periods and breast growth, despite me not knowing exactly why I so badly wanted to do that).

At 28, I put myself through 6 months of intensive therapy before nervously, carefully, intricately, and intentionally taking the plunge to follow my gut instinct.

I started a low dose of testosterone in private — low enough to stop in a few weeks or a month if things didn’t feel quite right. I did this with the painstakingly-researched and completely accepted knowledge that permanent effects were still possible if it wasn’t right for me (spoiler alert: it was. Feeling tethered to this earth and like I have an actual soul due to my brain getting the chemical it was built for all along is pretty great).

In fact, via the classical/stereotypical model of

“Come out socially and live as your ‘preferred’ gender for a while first, THEN you can have access to hormones if a mental health professional (or a few) writes a letter that deems you fit!”

…I would have never had the courage to act on my needs.

Feeling utterly incongruent and like a fish out of water, without the needful physical changes to at least begin feeling like myself first, would have been a horrifyingly anxious nightmare for someone with a passive and sensitive personality like mine. Speaking for myself at least, I would have felt embarrassed, endangered, and even humiliated. That isn’t a ‘real-life’ experience of any kind.

Being transgender is not about gender roles, despite them coming along for the ride sometimes, and despite trans people often making said roles appear much more arbitrary and fragile than many folks are comfortable with (as we should!). The problem wasn’t my love of flowers or my favorite stud earrings — the problem was that I wasn’t enjoying those things as me — a flower and earring-loving guy.

Which brings me right to…

I don’t think gender is a social construct.

Yep, you heard that right.

Well, to clarify, I do think gender roles are social constructs.

But gender identity — that deep, default image wired into your brain when you close your eyes, and often the body and particular hormone profile and mutually-shared and understood types of words that people use to refer to you— that stuff comes from within. It’s a fundamental piece of your humanity, and not something you can will away or make into an ideology or, heavens forbid, a political issue.

(I mean, if you think about it, why on earth would I pay out-of-pocket to have my chest reconstructed, make myself dependent on a hormonal medication for the rest of my life, do the outrageously intricate work of changing my name and sex in every legal and social context under the sun, and deal with dangerous, hateful, and/or merely dismissive people who will never take me seriously again and may threaten my safety or, at very least, my employment prospects

…for the sake of a political issue?!

It’s almost as if this whole trans thing didn’t start off with a choice)