Birthdays, Castration Movie, and Transgenderism

Or: How I Learned to Love Myself in a Theater Full of Transsexuals

Tomorrow, July 13th, I’ll be turning 19 years old. It’s probably going to be the loneliest birthday of my life up until now. There’s a very obvious reason for that; it’ll be the first year that I can really describe myself as fully out at the time of my birthday. For a while, my transition had been a bit of an open secret in a few friend groups I was in at the time, but having an open secret and actually confronting people with a new name and identity, one which you’re hoping to God that they’ll keep their opinions to themselves on, are a lot different. The last people that really still matter in my life who I came out to were my siblings, whom I put off actually having the conversation with until just before Christmas time last year. I did it over text. This was mostly out of my own cowardice, plus I think I was away at school at the time. Regardless, it went about as well as I would have hoped, and at least my brother is already far better about the whole thing than my parents have been. My sister has been a bit of a surprise, as she’s not as supportive as I thought she would be, but she has also moved out and has been dealing with a lot of stuff in her personal life so I don’t really hold it against her, and of course I still love her very much. Which I think, I hope, is mutual. Your younger brother turning out to be a freak of nature that most people only hear about in the news or laugh at online isn’t something most people have much experience in, so I haven’t ended up holding any ill will towards her over it.

Anyways, I guess what I’m trying to say is that transitioning has lost me more than a few friends. In fact, I don’t really have any way of reliably contacting most people who were in my life prior to the end of senior year of high school. I still keep in touch with 2 high school friends and 1 other friend I had before regularly, and my immediate family and I talk occasionally, but other than that I’ve kind of given myself a clean slate.

There’s a weird grief to finally making decisions for your own benefit for the first time since you learned to talk. Even though you’re doing things that can greatly improve your social, work, romantic, sexual, and personal life, there’s often a part of you that yearns for those old connections back. The ones that were formed out of necessity, the ones that were unhealthy, but also the ones who talked you off the edge. The ones that were there for you at your lowest are often left behind, and you become the friend who dresses the wound, or calls the ambulance. Regardless, those earlier lives fade into the background. Lost to the funhouse mirror that is our memories, unable to keep any line straight or proportion intact.

I don’t remember much of my childhood, to be frank. I don’t know if I simply have a bad memory, or have blocked it out due to trauma, or was too emotionally repressed to even think to create memories, because it’s simply not there. My life before around age 14 is a chasm that I have yet to see more than 5 feet into, despite climbing out of it not even 5 years ago. I know that I had some friends, a fraction of which I still interact with today. I know that I was severely depressed for most of it, I attempted suicide a few times extremely unsuccessfully, but didn’t really turn to traditional self harm tactics. Instead, I nursed a binge eating disorder that got me on stimulants for being overweight that still affects my relationship with food today in ways that I don’t really enjoy. In the last two semesters of college I have lost 25 and gained about 80 lbs respectively, each without trying to do so, or even realizing it was happening. Despite everything, my body looks largely the same as it did at the start of the year, save the changes one would expect from 11 months of exogenous hormone replacement therapy.

Baby Mabel. Babel.

Medical transition has been an extremely weird process for me. I started DIYing using birth control pills from overseas in December of 2023 with the help of a friend of mine who was also working through the start of their transition at the time. I started cypro a few months earlier and was seeing middling results, as one would expect from DIY oral birth control. When I tried to come out to my parents in mid March of 2024, my mom had already found and recognized my cypro when looking through my room at some point, since her father had taken the same medication at some point for what I believe was prostate cancer. My father especially was furious about me going outside the medical system, in what he believed was ‘an act of blatant disrespect’ (I’m paraphrasing). At one point he screamed at me that I was confused and that all of this was moving way too fast and I occasionally still think about that. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to forget those words, and our relationship will likely forever be sullied by them. My mom wasn’t much better despite being more passive aggressive and less scream-at-you-aggressive, but that’s besides the point I suppose.

After the initial shock of their perfect youngest son turning out to be a sexual deviant had worn off for them, they had me get bloodwork done for the first time, which was a horrific experience. I’ve been bad (severe understatement) with needles ever since a traumatic experience I had had with them after I told my mom about one of my suicide attempts. After a couple days on house arrest they wanted to know the cause of my depression, so they needed to poke my arm. Ironic that years down the line and with the benefit of hindsight I would get to see the reason for those suicide attempts and that depressive spiral quantified on a lab results form. I was, regrettably, a transsexual.

I know that word carries some negative stigma to some people, and some cannot separate it from elitism and 4chan delusions, but to me it’s a truly beautiful word. Up there with dyke, cunnilingus, fellatio, I digress. But really, it only has positive connotations for me. I have in fact, and still remain in the process of changing my sex. I don’t think I need to be ashamed of that, though God knows I’ve tried. As much as I try to escape from it, it’s who I am. And I think I need to start to accept that.

Being transgender is the only way I want to be alive. I’ve tried the other ways, and as much as I joke about detransitioning, it’s rarely a serious thought in my mind. Transgender people are the most beautiful, resilient, hilarious, caring, LOVING people I have ever met in my life. Every single one that I have interacted with in person has a heart and soul in their eyes that, even if they’re cringe or unethical or stupid or whatever, always has me giving them the benefit of the doubt. I say transgender people, but that last part about good faith mostly applies to other transgender women. If someone says a transgender woman is an awful evil person, chances are they’re talking about one of the kindest human beings you will ever have the pleasure of interacting with. I am so grateful for every single one that I meet. All of them have my heart.

Last night, I saw Castration Movie Pt. 1 for the first time ever (for me!) in a smallish theater full of some of the loveliest people I’ve ever been around. From the moment I walked in, all nervous with my customer service voice fully on, I was put at ease by the atmosphere created by the people around me. It was clear that every single woman who was in that theater could be the life of any party they went to, and just being around them got me into a much better mood. I had just finished hanging out with some of the friends of the friend letting me crash with her for the night (also a transgender woman, although he/she may resent being put under that label, I bestow it with great honor) and it was a fairly good but largely impersonal affair. The two friends were both, at the time of writing, cisgender heterosexual(?) men, and although I enjoyed spending time with them enough, they weren’t really what I came to New York for.

The morning leading up to getting on that train to Grand Central (cardinal sin I know but I’m from CT so allow me) was kind of a mess, and the day before I didn’t even know about the event, let alone know that I was going to be granted the pleasure of attending. I had just scheduled bloodwork for 1:15 that afternoon, hoping that it would be the last I ever had to do on patches. I was kind of expecting a lazy day at home, but I’m oh so glad that that wasn’t what happened. A friend of mine reminded me how close New York was to me when I sent her a poster for the film screening (accidentally, in fact), and I coordinated to find a place to sleep for the night and then bought my ticket. I stayed up too late making an outfit (which i was fairly proud of in the end) and watching youtube on my computer before setting my alarm and falling asleep, to wake up about 2 hours before my appointment tomorrow morning. I had enough time to shower, and could have shaved but didn’t really feel like it, since my main outfit for the night involved long pants anyways. I’ve gotten a lot worse about shaving consistently in recent months — maybe it’s me truly growing into my dykehood, who knows. Regardless, I fussed about for a few hours, trying my best not to eat anything or smoke any weed before they drew my blood (though I won’t say I wasn’t very nearly seduced a few times) and then drove over to the local hospital’s lab. It was the first time I went alone, and perhaps this would be the start of a pattern in my life moving forward. I had been here about a half dozen times before, all for the same purpose, at different times, on different drugs. One when I remained taking the DIY pills I had, one about a month later with no exogenous hormones or blockers, one about 2 months after that on only spiro, one a little later on spiro and patches, another with spiro and patches around Christmas of 2024, and now one with a higher dose patch and spiro, before I (fingers crossed) move over to injections or sublingual and some sort of prog regimen.

The blood draw went poorly, but was over eventually, although they did have to stab both of my arms. I went right down to the train station and smoked a couple bowls out of my pipe, which is affectionately called “The Crack Pipe” by my friends, despite only being used for weed. I was on FaceTime with my girlfriend, without whom I doubt I would have survived the blood draw despite her being 4,000 miles away. Yes you all have permission to make fun of me for being in a long distance relationship. Let’s all laugh at the stupid lesbo who fell for a girl who lives in Finland while in a Massachusetts Goodwill. Very funny. When I hung up the call on my train, I was so, so excited. The train ride felt like it took forever, but that probably wasn’t helped by the aforementioned bowls I had smoked. I didn’t wanna be sober for a like 3 and a half hour train ride. Sue me. Once I got to New York everything felt right again.

The friend that I was staying with and I have a very strange relationship. I love her to pieces, but we just haven’t had much time to get to know each other one on one. He’s usually caught up with schemes to better the friend group and push out any buzzkills, while I’m almost always in my room watching a YouTube video. I was kind of depressed last year, to be honest. I was in a relationship and briefly a throuple in the first semester, and the breakups for those, which happened separately in February and December respectively, had affected me pretty strongly in ways that I mostly tried to dissociate from at the time of occurrence. A bit of a reversion to my old ways perhaps. This was of course before my most recent breakup which forced me to replan my entire summer, in a chain of events that despite the short term pain, I believe was probably for the best. Lesbian breakups fucking blow.

My primary friend group at the end of the school year was the same throuple with which I had had a breakup with each member at different points of the year, and although there were certainly still some tender subjects and fresh scar tissue, we got along pretty well. The other two people in said friend group were having a weird situationship of their own, with signs of a more committed relationship once the next school year started, which I desperately hope goes well for both of them, but if not I’m sure we’ll recover. This may sound insane to you unless you’ve had your own friend group of transgender lesbians, then I’m sure this just sounds like Tuesday to you. In that case, I pray your sanity has remained and will remain relatively whole.

Me and my group of friends after a Jane Remover show back in May!!

This is all to say that I’ve found community. In my own way, maybe it’s not grand or expansive, but it’s there, and it’s important. I think this is an experience that many other trans women have gone through, and many envy, but at the end of the day I have it in the form it’s been provided for me in. Strange thing about communities as tight knit as these, is that you kind of forget about all the ones that came before. All the relationships you had with cis people where you had to find common ground or pretend to care about Harry Styles just seem so… meaningless, in the face of all this.

This is all to say that when I was in that theater, I could tell that I was being welcomed in as a guest to other people’s version of the same community that I’ve built back at school. It was a wonderful experience. I happened to choose my seat in the row where all the nichely famous people and friends of the production crew were sitting, so I ended up literally rubbing elbows with a lot of the people who worked on the movie I was watching. A few of them I already either vaguely or less vaguely knew about through twitter, and one of them I had met at a Sarah Bonito DJ set a couple weeks back (she was lovely both times I interacted with her!) It was kind of strange to see people whose tweets I had sent to my friends in texts or discord and instagram DMs countless times in the flesh and occasionally laugh at each other’s jokes or well timed “pause”s, but it was so so nice. It was an emotional experience that left me walking away with one core message at the end of the night.

I am proud to be a transgender woman. Sometimes I may think I’m ugly, or hate my penis, but really, transgender women are the greatest people in the world. The best artists, cultural critics, comedians, models, literally anything you name a transgender woman has done with more soul than anyone who came before her. And I think that’s a wonderful legacy to never live up to.