Meet Cash (He/Him)

What follows is a transcript from Cash's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/r7WsU450a0g

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So, my name is Cash and I am 28 years old from Northern Ontario. I’m currently a student at Algoma University and I’m completing my fourth year Bachelor of Honors in - sorry Bachelor of Arts, Honors in Sociology and Law and Justice combined. After graduation I’m hoping to pursue a master's degree in criminology. 

So, I identify as a transgender man. I lean a little bit more towards more of a non-binary kind of presentation. I go by the pronouns he/him. I’m okay with they/them as well. Like I don't really kind of plan around my identity too much, with the exception of, you know, I do prefer to present more masculine. That's always been something that I’ve been most comfortable with, kind of my whole life growing up, I always found that anything that was overly feminine presentation wise was uncomfortable to me. But in terms of interest it's anywhere from sports to crafting and kind of everything in between basically. 

Where I feel stuck is, like feeling like there has to be a binary. Like I have to be - I have to pick a category, kind of in order to be recognized. And that's definitely something I’m still working on because when someone says they/them, I love it, because I’m like yes! Like you've got it! Like no. When they say he/him, like that's fine too. Like I’m fine with either one, but sometimes I’ll be like, you know, I’m going to tell someone, like, I’m a man and it's like, that doesn't feel right either. Like you know,I want to present, I want to do you know, everything that makes me comfortable, masculinity wise kind of presentation wise. But, like, when it comes to, you know, people talking about men or talking about what it means to be kind of CIS men, CIS male, I think there's so much work to be done in that area that, you know, if I can try to help kind of shape that differently I would like to but I also think that what makes me more comfortable is non-binary, you know, claiming that. Claiming non-binary. And being allowed to claim that even though I want to present masculine because I think that's where a lot of people struggle. It's like well I can't be non-binary if I’m more feminine, or more masculine. I think that's kind of what we have to get away from, is the labeling of kind of what you have to do, what you can do, or what you should not do in terms of your gender and being transgender or and what not. I think that's that's where we do a lot of damage. 

So when it came to kind of discovering or learning to basically understand my gender I would say I was really young when I knew that, you know, female presentation and description wasn't for me but at the same time I didn't really have the words to express that. Growing up there was never any familiarity, there was never any like awareness essentially of what transgender meant. And definitely not what non-binary meant, so to me it never really made sense. But as I was growing up my mom was very, you know, she had the one daughter so she definitely wanted me to be you know her daughter, her princess. You know because of her occupation, she's in the beauty industry, so she liked me to do my makeup and my hair and you know, have the pretty feminine kind of clothing happening. I was never comfortable with that. I did express it but you know my mom did the best she can with what she knew right? I don't think that she had any kind of understanding or you know familiarity either no exposure to what transgender really meant. 

It wasn't until I kind of got into my I would say early 20s that I was really... there was more representation in general, but especially in the media, for transgender individuals. So I know that initially I came out as bisexual. That kind of made sense to me that's kind of still how I would I would say I identify. It's either you know bisexual or queer basically. I find queer be a little bit more all-encompassing. But yeah so from there I had actually, I was watching... I think I was just watching something on MTV. I think it was catfish or something like that and I was introduced to IO Tillett Wright, and he now has come out and identifies as transgender and at the time I believe that his pronouns were they/them. It kind of made sense to me kind of in that moment. I was like oh there's there's someone else out there who identifies kind of in the middle, for lack of a better word. I still didn't know what it meant to be non-binary. At that time I was, I want to say 20, 23 around there, so from there I kind of just started looking more into like the queer community in general and kind of what it meant. I started with Instagram. I slowly kind of you know started with the stereotypical lesbian Instagram, and from there I was introduced to transgender men and that was the first time in my entire life that I had heard of a transgender man that I had you know seen right in front of me that another transgender man existed.

So I started following those accounts and kind of as I seen those individuals be comfortable with themselves and you know the before and after pictures were a really big thing. You know because how I always felt was that I didn't present I guess masculine enough that maybe I was too feminine prior that maybe I can't possibly be a transgender man. You know if I was that binary I guess, that bound to femininity. So being able to see that you know so many other transgender men had had that same kind of level of femininity and still you know realized who they were authentically, like their authentic selves, move forward with the transition. And that's kind of how I became comfortable with it and realized that it fit me. You know it was there all along just that you know I didn't have the words to express it. My parents definitely didn't.

So I came out kind of to the first person I would say more more privately would have been summer of 2016. And then by early 2017 I was you know more out to more people and I had come out at my college. You know I still hadn't gone through like a haircut or anything like that. I was going by Cash at that time. My pronouns were still she/her and so yeah like reflecting back on that time, that was a really difficult time. There was a lot of mistakes made that I definitely wish that I could go back on differently and definitely there was a lot of emotional pain that I caused other people that you know was not intentional at the time. Reflecting back those decisions absolutely should have been different, but it was a really difficult time when you're trying to figure out who you are and how you integrate into society as who you want to be. And then kind of casually as I just you know lived my life and moved forward, I was able to you know... the college situation didn't work out, so I went to to the university and that's where I really thrived. That's where I definitely grew. So yeah I credit a lot of it to that and being able to be who I am and learn more about gender and sexuality, what it means, you know how to construct it differently, how to deconstruct what I already knew, what I had already learned. 

So I was able to grow grow in that manner so that's definitely been definitely a positive for me and I was able you know through that experience you know with those individuals supporting me and helping me through that process that I was able to realize you know hormones are what I wanted, top surgery was not only what I wanted, but definitely what I needed and I was able to pursue those avenues, not easily, so yeah that was kind of my navigation through the actual transition part of it, from social transition moving into physical transition. 

I think the biggest thing that stands out to me right now that I’m still struggling with is how to feel comfortable in the body that I have, because unfortunately you can't change everything, right? So I’m not sure if it's entirely possible, I hope it is, but I’m not sure it's entirely possible to get your body to a point where every single thing fits the narrative that you've been taught, that you've been socialized to understand as masculine. So you know I look in the mirror and I still see my hips and I’m like you know those are not man hips. And I look at my hands and I think, okay those are too feminine. And so it's kind of working through not necessarily how to always change all of that to fit my idea, but kind of how to construct my knowledge today, my current knowledge, with the idea that it's okay that not every single part of my body fits some sort of predetermined criteria for masculinity. And that it's okay to still you know perform my gender you know, live my authentic self in a way that head to toe doesn't have to match just for every single aspect of my body. And also at the same time learning to understand for myself but also when it comes to representation and when you're having you know when there's dialogue about what it means to be transgender is that you don't have to undergo surgery or take hormones to qualify for lack of a better word as a category within transgender right you don't have to have top surgery, to have you know your chest tissue removed in order to be considered a valid trans man or someone who is able to navigate their life in a way that they want to use he/him pronouns and you know they don't want facial hair. Whatever body part or aspect of their body they're still comfortable with they are still transgender man. They are still he/him. They are masculine. 

I do think what we need a little bit more work on is kind of making sure that we're validating people's gender the way that they think that it fits them rather than how we see it based on what we've been taught and how we've been socialized into that. Because I think that puts a lot of pressure on people to kind of meet some sort of standard that can be really damaging, I think, if they don't have the means or even just the you know internal comfort level to pursue that. 

So when it comes to coming out, I think the concept of coming out is a difficult one because I think a lot of people are under the impression that you come out once and then you're done, and I wish it were that easy. Unfortunately it's not, so I would say that being able to you know come out initially there was that huge weight that was kind of off my chest, off my shoulders. It was like, okay, I can do this now. People know. You feel like it kind of gives you the room internally, emotionally, mentally, to process what it means to do something different gender wise. We like to think that we all have the same experience growing up, that we all have the same encounters and the same you know just general living environments but the world is a big place and and you know, different countries have different challenges and you know different hurdles, so coming out is definitely complex. It sometimes feels like a goal for people feeling that way it's like I have to come out. And how it changes your life I think is what you have to consider. There's undoubtedly good. I don't have any regrets with coming out. You know it's kind of an if I could go back thing, of course I would do things differently along the way, I would make better choices, I would you know factor in the people around me and how my choices and my words and the things that I say and do, what will impact them. But I think I kept myself at the forefront, and that was what I had to do and I think to some extent that's what I still have to do, by being cognizant of the fact that there are different people in my life with different needs and I try to manage that. 

So I was diagnosed with depression, kind of clinically, at 12. You know I look at a 12 year old right now and I can't fathom that. That is just so young. So I grew up you know I went through my teen years, my first puberty as I call it, very depressed and angry a lot of despair, and not not knowing why. In hindsight I know why, but not really understanding that. 

So there came a point where I didn't think I was gonna graduate elementary school, and then that happened. And I didn't think I was gonna make it to the other side of high school, and then that happened. And I would always reflect forward. and people would you know they kind of ask where do you think he'll be in five years, and I could never really come to terms that I would really survive.

You know, that's kind of the reality of deep depression I think, is that you don't really see your future the way that you would like to think that people should be able to see into their future. So yeah, before I came out there was definitely no comprehending a successful future, better yet like a happy one. So there's that kind of freedom that comes with coming out. And like I said, there's definitely loss. I can't say that I would undo what I’ve lost in order to go back to who I was. Like I wouldn't go and back and say well you know if I could just go back and have all these people back... definitely not, because that just undoes the work that I’ve done to myself to to get somewhere in my life where I can move forward and be successful and happy, and with my goals at least to help other people also feel happy and comfortable in themselves.

The depression doesn't go away. It's not that easy, that takes a lot of work. A lot of things to work through. But it's definitely to a point where you can for me at least I can visualize a future that exists basically. 

The future that I envisioned for myself now is someone who is confident enough and comfortable enough with themselves that they can go forward and make meaningful change even just on a small scale. You know, I’m not out to change the world. I don't think any one human being is you know... it's not possible for one human being to do that. I think that takes a very large collective. You know, collective societies are what make change possible. 

So I think my goal is just to be part of a collective society that moves forward making meaningful, positive change that doesn't result in anyone's further oppression. 

It's important to kind of take your own experiences and at least, you know, you have your hardships and everything that I’ve gone through, to get to this point, that I kind of want to do something with it, that I can get at least one other person feeling, you know, confident in themselves and happy and like they can have their own future. 

You know social research is an area that I become really interested in through my university, through my education. As I was going through my own research project that I need to obtain my honors degree bachelor of arts and honors, I love it. And I think that it can, you know, all it can do is kind of build one more stepping stone that we have towards getting some sort of change, even on a... again like I said on a small scale, especially, you know, I grew up in Northern Ontario. I’m still here. So my research was with local law enforcement how, we can do better training with the LGBTQ+ community, and ensuring that you know institutions that were kind of built on oppression and founded in the nature of marginalization and othering, that were holding them accountable by saying, hey you know what this our experience this is what we need from you. This is how you can work with us. How we can work together to do it. So my research kind of helped highlight the areas that we need some work, and the next step is kind of how do we do that, and how do we move forward with that so that it becomes kind of standard, so that we don't ever have to you know look at institutions such as policing and think well I wonder if they even know what transgender is? Or will they even understand when I tell them these are my pronouns? That's something that I think like, kind of those basics is where we need to start. So the research that I’ve done personally kind of revealed a starting point. 

I do think that's that's based on location, definitely for sure. Again, Northern Ontario is so kind of secluded, not the most secluded in Canada, but definitely away from a lot of resources and representation in general. You know you go down to Toronto, even Ottawa and there's so much more visibility in general, and I think with visibility comes knowledge. So being kind of out of the way like we are down here is, well up here I guess, is difficult. And that's right from you know Sudbury to Sault Ste Marie. I think Thunder Bay is working on stuff but again they're still quite north, so they're you know... They have a larger population so they can move forward a little bit but there's a lot of barriers to that when everything is so central in the core and our core is Toronto, so... 

Sometimes it just feels like it's so big because again I think sometimes we come into it thinking that we have to reach some sort of milestone or you know there's some sort of end to the journey kind of transgender and I don't think there is, because I think society changes too fast. Things change too fast. You know a journey is just that. There's not often a destination. I don't know if I would want there to be a destination because I think that would be boring. I think we would stop growing I think, in you know becoming better as a society if there was some sort of you know "you've reached it" type of destination. So I think that's the same with gender. I mean we want to evolve it in a way that everyone feels valid and feels like they can be who they are. So I think we just have to be open to and willing to kind of guide people on their journey without making them feel like you know they have to reach a destination to be successful to be happy and authentic.

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Meet Dimitria (she/her)

What follows is a transcript from Dimitria's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/eOBob6u_A88

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My name is Dimitria Sparrow. I go by she/her pronouns and I am currently 22. I live in Barrie Ontario Canada. I work in a corrugate factory and I work on one of the press machines there, so I spend most of my time there. Not at all having the opportunity to be, you know, glammed up like I want to, but it pays the bills and makes me happy, so...

The way I came to understand my identity, something I did not tell my family, for one thing I wasn't in a very good state when I transitioned to be able to like explain a lot of this stuff to them, because the truth is I didn't have a very feminine childhood. I didn't have a lot of gender expression until the time I was 19 when I transitioned. I mean I cross-dressed when I was 11, so there's kind of that going. The main sort of spurt of like where the gender thoughts sort of came in, the dysphoria and all that, was during puberty.

It happens with apparently quite a few people. There were a few instances before that, like I just have like a fascination with certain things, but it was very much like puberty was like this is you this is what's happening.

So in high school there was an art project and my idea for it was, it was having two twins in like one frame and so it was a male and female twin. And so my idea was like, okay I could possibly get maybe like a twin from like twins from like high school to do it. But then my brain is immediately going to maybe I could just fill in for this part. Maybe I could just do that, and so yeah, I got my stepmom to basically do drag on me. So I was about like 16 when that happened so there was that.

And also, I come from like a more creative background and when I was talking about like it these feelings kind of insert themselves in private places where people won't put two and two together, there is a certain character I wrote about that at first I was like oh this is just this beautiful character and she's like my one true love, but now that I look back I’m like that character is me! Like that is a b c d e f g it's like I predicted my personality throughout my childhood. Like the anti-social behavior, the loneliness, the kind of narcissism, I’m not gonna lie, and also like you kind of think like you're crazy and then you try to figure out like certain instances where you know what could have made me think like this. And so that was really weird.

And so like now that I look at it it's like okay I tried to put my personality, put my identity into this female character, and any story I write, it's like all the male characters are often like really boring. And it always ends up being like a mono-e-mono with like two women, so there was that too.

What kind of made me transition was, it's basically when the feelings can't be hidden anymore and they need to be expressed in some sort of better way, in some sort of healthier way. So for a while there it was like, you know, do I always feel this way? Is this something that I always want to be? That was a big question since I was like 15.

When I was 16, 17, I was actually like borderline authoritarian. Like I was a very right-wing young boy, and what happened was I bottled up a ton of emotions in my head because when you're very right leaning you tend to be very like; look after your own lane, don't think about it. It's like a lot of right-wing stuff is like toxic masculinity in a lot of ways, and a lot of family issues, a lot of gender identity issues were kind of bottled up and you don't really know who you are. And then, you know, when I broke out of that, when I broke down, all these emotions just came out.

I mean at that time I was a borderline like authoritarian like a fascist. Not like Nazi, but like fascist and that is a mindset where you look after your own lane, you don't think about anything, you just do what you're supposed to do no matter what the cost. And the costs for me we're bottling up a ton of emotions so there was a ton of that. I was actually a deep depression at the time. I was actually not financially secure. I was actually spending a lot more money than it should be. And yeah, I just had a lot of really bad habits. There were some drinking habits for a little bit. There were some eating habits, and anything concerning finance was really bad and I didn't talk to anybody. And you're kind of under this idea that like you can solve everything yourself.

Basically by the time I was 19 and I was able to have a glass of wine, beer, whatever, I basically got drunk a few times and every time that happened I was super emotional and I knew I was like I want to be a woman like so bad. And it ended up with like, I like bawled my eyes out after like every time I drank and at that point I was like okay something has to change, And yeah I gotta basically process this stuff. And it's like okay where can this identity manifest and it'll be healthy.

The first six months are probably the hardest and the thing you have to understand, in your first six months to like a year you're kind of like a big kid again. Because you're going through like an adolescence again it's almost like let me have the tea party I never got to have when I was five, and it's like kind of like puerile behavior, but also it's like then you know everyone is kind of like looking at you weird and then like society is like you know you're not good enough for us. And then you know, family stuff where you think everyone's accepting but it takes a lot longer actually for people to understand it and deal with it, Now that I mean is obviously very hard and takes a while to kind of come to grips with that and kind of build a thicker skin once again when you've gone through that second adolescence.

I started hormone therapy I suppose about six months in. I was on Spiro which dries you out, so then we moved to cyproterone and I started at estrogen I think in like the seventh month and yeah, I’ve been taking that ever since. It kind of depends on the person in terms of what their sort of journey is going to be. It's not the same for every single person.

For me I was very self-conscious about my voice so that was one thing I wanted to work on quite a lot in order to alleviate that particular dysphoria. And a lot of the thing was trying to figure out how to pass well and how to like you know, feel good in the gender identity you identify as. And for me it was learning about you know, makeup, learning about hair and skin care, and dressing well. And you just have to like pace yourself and not be too hard on yourself as well in terms of your appearance because it's... as much of a difficult time it can be, it's also a very rewarding time. It's new experiences. You're finally you know seeing the side of yourself for the first time so there's a lot of stuff to sort of deal with.

The difficulties I faced in my journey, I’m not gonna lie, I feel like I’d be kind of conceited in saying I’ve had it the worst, because I really haven't. Pretty much all of my family members are talking to me and I’m the more emotional one so like I’m more cut off others, so there is that. So I mean I’m actually very fortunate in that regard and I’m actually working full-time in a union so I think that's probably more rare for trans people, so I’m very fortunate in that regard. I would say the big difficulty for me is kind of coming to grips with, I guess it's just how people view you it can be very shocking and weird. Because I think it's kind of understandable to know that like if you're a straight white dude, you know, you're kind of doing okay, you know, it's not like you enter a room and someone's gonna poke fun at who you are. It's like you kind of gotta say something first, right? But now it's like when you become, you know, basically a minority, there are times where you walk in a room and already people have made assumptions about you. You didn't even have to talk about your opinion on something. So that can be very difficult.

And it's weird because one thing is we like to make sort of labels and sort of identify... put people in groups basically, and one of the most important things I learned was that transphobia doesn't know a face. It's not more a thing for men, that's definitely not true. It's not for you know older people, there are a lot of younger people who are transphobic. And there are people of different races. But all these people could have the exact opposite opinion. So it's very important to not make assumptions in your head when you see someone coming up to you and make assumptions on how they're going to feel about you. Because there are times where you'll make a little bit of an ass of yourself in public and yeah, like, just treat people how you want to be treated right? You know, don't make assumptions about people.

I think the big issue for me at least this is more of a... in my opinion what was really tough for me was finding employment, because I made some decisions in my life that led me from one point to another and wasn't the best decisions. And I found there was a long period where I wanted to go to a job that I was proud of and I could go, you know, I work here, I can make this amount of money and I can support myself. And for a while I was working retail part-time and I hated it. And it felt so humiliating to be honest, and then you have so many doubts about yourself like should I have done this should I have done that. And eventually I went to a corrugate factory as a temp and been working there ever since. And it has been unbelievably rewarding to be at a place where I don't have to deal with a whole lot of scrutiny. Everyone is really sweet and really nice. But what I will say is as sweet as everybody is, there is always a thought in my head that perhaps in my first year of trans transition, if I came to work there, would have been treated the same if they knew me before as male and then I came out in the middle of being employed there, which a lot of trans people have to deal with is really tough. And I think I did have an advantage there in a lot of ways I was very lucky and fortunate that I was kind of in the right place at the right time. This place was hiring and I became a little bit more passable to where I didn't have to deal with all of that drama that could have been there. So yeah, again, not saying I have the absolute worst experience, actually pretty fortunate, very thankful.

The problem with my expectation of coming out is a lot of naivete in that everyone is okay with it, everything is great. And the thing is again you go through that second adolescence where you're kind of just like on top of the world. You feel like no one can challenge you. You know, you are you and you're gonna show the world.

It's like that one time where I saw like this like pretty obviously like gay boy like dancing across the street when we were like at the stop lights. I’m like that's the first time this guy's come out. So it's like you're high on life. And then people start having problems with you and sometimes you experience very personal rejection. And you feel like when you're in that second adolescence when your hormones literally are going crazy, it's like a big stab in the back. So be aware of that that you got to be prepared for how people are gonna look at you and don't expect the worst of people but don't expect that everything is gonna go absolutely smoothly.

I live in Ontario, so I mean that's pretty good. One of the other things that was very tough for me to deal with, but I should have seen it coming, was the trans community can be a little bit difficult.

That word transgender. What does it mean to people? And you know, when you finally are with a community that can understand you and have a similar experience with you, you feel like you can just pour your life out to them and all the emotions that you've bent up inside for years to them. And on top of that if you're a trans woman it's kind of like the first time you feel like you can be in a group and like talk about your emotions, like fully, because you know when you're a boy you're kind of taught not to do that. And like you're not. You kind of just don't know how to do that. So there's all of that and then you start to find that some people have certain standards of what makes someone valid, what makes someone not valid. And you feel like you have to now validate your identity based on what the community is suggesting that you have to be, instead of you just plainly saying this is me and I am valid. One of the other issues is there's a lot of pre-rejection there's tons of sort of in-group embarrassment, sort of distancing yourself from someone who's a little more, you know, whatever, more cringy, a little bit and there are people who like to distance themselves from those people and it's just weird because it's like we're all the same you know and it's really weird and it creates like really toxic atmosphere. And it's all about like going after your own personal interests right? You know if you can distance yourself from someone who's a little a little crazy on that one end but it can up you and make you look good in front of everybody else then the selfish part of you is gonna go for it. But it's not good. It's not cool. And I just think it seems there's just a little bit more of that than I think people like to think. Like how many times have if you're trans have you heard like these particular types of queer or trans people are making us look bad and I just don't like that entire thing because I feel like queer should just be queer.

Tons of people have these like weird standards of what makes you like trans and what validates you and I honestly don't think the community kind of helps that, where it's kind of like you don't need to validate yourself because the group is going to validate you. And that can be very toxic because you don't know how to really validate yourself. And the problem is, you have to kind of figure out how to distance yourself from a lot of that, like the political sphere. Because you start to freak yourself out and you feel like you have to live up to some sort of standard, and try to validate your feelings. Like one of the feelings I sometimes discourage myself to have where I’m like oh I can't have these feelings; if I watch a movie with say like a daughter with like a father figure something like The Glass Castle for instance, or if you watch something like AI where it's like a mother-son relationship kind of throughout the movie, I’m gonna identify with the latter and the thing is it's weird because you'll find that you're like, okay I can't... I’m like... but that doesn't make sense. Like, but if I’m a girl then I should be sympathizing with like the girl character, but it could just be that's what my experience is, right? So those are instances of stuff where I’m not going to deny what I can relate to more.

I’m hoping that every time I go to bed that I wake up, I feel good in knowing that last night or yesterday I got you know just one step further in whatever thing I pursue. Planning financially for the future is like a really big thing for me so if I can do that, if I put a certain amount away every month, that I can feel good about that and I just don't want to be feeling like I’m going backwards or I’m wasting this time in my life so there it is. My dream for the future is to be healthy and to succeed and hopefully be at a point where I am kind of good at something and in this case like beauty wise so I’m looking to be really good at that.

Since I’m 22 and I’m a little bit of a young and I still got a little a little bit of angst in me, I’d say what really gets me out of bed in the morning is honestly just proving everyone I don't like wrong, that I can be good at something. So I mean I do a YouTube channel that helps trans women and cross-dressers present themselves and stuff like that and that is one of the projects that can help me like go like, I can be good at this thing. I’ve always wanted to be good at like a particular sort of skill because I mean blue collar jobs are great and I respect everyone in it, but the thing is it's not like something you could go to school for, right? So I mean if I can go to like a mini school in my head and like be good at like these things and be able to help people at these things, then that'd be really cool. And honestly, just going to bed knowing that like I didn't waste time because I don't want... everyone tells me like you know, 21, 22, it's like the best time of your life and stuff and I just want to make sure I don't screw it up.

It really helps at least in my experience that basically the outside matches the inside and that is like one of the big things for a lot of trans people that can cause a ton of mental and social anguish so I’m fairly happy with where I am I always want to see what I can do better. The most liberating thing about coming out is you're finally who you are you.

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The Space Between

Life has a way of finding balance. 

You have heard it said that Nature abhors a vacuum.

In the space between male and female, there are those who would have us believe there is nothing; that these are only the binary ends. There are those who would have us believe there is only a vacuum in between, but, as Voyager is showing us, even where we think there is nothing, there is something. Those of us who are non-binary are living proof that there is definitely something in the space between the binary.

In fact, there are many genders that fill the space between the binary ends of the gender spectrum. We are the LGBTQ+ community, and we have been around for as long as there have been the binary poles. 

Those who do not believe we have always been here are actually part of the reason we have remained unseen - a self fulfilling prophecy if you will. The stigma placed upon being queer has made it a difficult place in which to live. So, as a matter of safety and social acceptance, many choose not to disclose their identity, making us all more invisible. 

It is no surprise, then, that in this time of growing understanding and protection of LGBTQ+ people, we are seeing more people “coming out”, because they feel safer to do so. 

This is not a trend. There are not suddenly more LGBTQ people being somehow "created". We have always been here. We have always existed. Many just chose not to see us, and many of us chose not to be seen. Now, however, we are feeling more comfortable with sharing who we really are, and so you are starting to see more of us.

Living in the space between gives those of us in the non-binary universe a unique perspective on those living at the poles; one that I believe can benefit all of humanity, helping us find balance and beauty in the entire spectrum and bridging the gap between. In fact, to silence our voices actually hurts all of us. Non-binary people have been forced to listen to the cis-normative narrative their entire lives, and many of the struggles we face are deeply rooted in the shame of not being what people think we should be. The vast range of identities in the spectrum of LGBTQ persons can actually bring balance to the views of cis-binary individuals who are deeply divided by their own gender, creating issues such like hyper radical feminism and misogyny. The narratives and views of the LGBTQ+ community can actually help us bridge the gap and ease the tension that exists between those binary poles.

By learning about, accepting and including those in the space between, we now have a means to unite humanity - and keep us united. We become less polarized and more unified because the bridge between demonstrates that we are all essentially connected. Diversity is no longer seen as diluting the whole, but rather our diversity COMPRISES the whole.

If you find yourself strongly defending the binary, take a moment to ask yourself why? What is it about making sure everyone conforms to the binary that is so important? You are perfectly happy being binary, but what about those in between? Should they be less content? Ask yourself, what can I learn from someone who is gender non-conforming?

And if you yourself are gender non-conforming, love yourself! You are important! You are special, and you have a place of honour in this world. You are the glue that can bind the binary together and make us whole again. Ask yourself, how can I contribute to a better world? How can I help others see through my eyes?

You are all special, binary and non-binary alike. You are valued and needed.

Love you all!

Cary

Meet Dyann (she/her)

What follows is a transcript from Dyann's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/DemcP-5GeDM

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So my name is Diane Jackson. My father was in the military, so I’ve traveled across the world. I’ve been in Europe, all across Canada, and throughout the United States.

Pronouns: I struggle with that one.  I mean my name and my visual appearance is very feminine so I identify with the feminine. I’m not going to go upon somebody and force them to use a certain set of pronouns. I want them to be comfortable to be to work with me and be happy with working with me, so I think the idea of a social acceptance is what works best for me as opposed to going in and saying, you know, that you have to call me ze, or you have to call me zur, or whatever the case may be. I think my presentation is fairly self evident.

So I would say that prior to coming out, when I was in school, because I’m on a military base, because the military is so conservative, I was petrified to come out. I was worried about being ostracized from my family, my community, the people around me. And a lot of the Canadian military bases are not... like they're not in the middle of a big city like Toronto. They're not in a big city. Not even a hamilton-sized city like... well, okay, CFB Winnipeg was a fairly large city but I was very young at that time.

When I truly came to the point of recognizing who I am, I was in a very small town in New Brunswick the base was CFB Chatham, the town is now known as Miramichi, and I saw the way the community at large was dealing with people who came out as homosexual. And I was petrified of that. I was scared of that. So I was very low-key. I was very quiet. I didn't draw any attention to myself. I was the person that people could forget was in the room, and it was intentionally so. 

When we moved to Toronto, which was the next base my father moved to, I felt a little bit more confident because I wasn't staying on the base itself. I was associating more with people off the base, and you start to see a lot more liberated people. More the LGBT community, although back in the early 90s I wouldn't say LGBT. I don't think we used that term back then, but a lot more lesbians a lot more gays. And the terminology they did use back then was probably a bit more crude, but, for lack of better words, the "Trannies", and it gave me a little bit more confidence to at least explore who I was at least give it a shot. But again in that time frame we were a very conservative society. We weren't ready to embrace people like that. So a little bit of exploration. I was still a little bit quite conservative, not ready to move on. But probably the first time I actually went out outside my home cross-dressed, was with my second partner, Karen. And you know, we went down to the value village and got a whole bunch of things that we thought would work, and you know, they were reasonably flattering and not too overly "overt" shall we say and that started me down the path. 

In the early stages it was very traumatic. It was very hard. I knew what I was feeling at the core. I knew what I was feeling about myself. So that would probably be entering puberty at the time. I just felt a disconnect with myself and my body and my anatomy. But I was slowly exploring, you know, male attire, female attire, trying to figure out what worked best for me. 

Then I saw an episode, I think it was a Maury Povich. I saw an episode of that. And they were talking about what was... the terms they used in the 80s was transvestite and transsexual, and I watched an episode of that, and I thought, well, okay. I identify with some of those things, I get some of those features. But then I saw the way the audience was reacting to these people and that was kind of like, well I don't know if I really want to make that public that I identify that way. It was also hard and traumatic because I’m typically a very conservative person. I mean the only thing that really is flamboyant about me is my hair (and there's a little bit of psychology behind that when the hair gives that kind of a shape so it looks like there's a feminine jawline) whereas  everything about me is very conservative. I wear black cardigans, I wear beige clothing. If you met me in public you probably would just overlook me because I just look so passive and conservative. Because that's my nature. And I saw these people acting flamboyant. It was very off-putting. To me those people always appear to be the ones that are looking to draw attention to themselves. So that part of the discovery was hard. That was difficult. 

When I got to the point where I was like, you know, this is really starting to affect my life, it's starting to affect my relationships, it's started to affect my careers. Well, I was very at the time, I don't know if I’d say career, let's say just jobs. I went to my doctor and asked to see a psychologist and I explained my situation and my psychologist went nope you need to go over to the Clark Institute. So I went to the Clark Institute and went through, oh my gosh, it must been a barrage of tests over like a four day period. I was in and out of that place while they were doing all that. That part was kind of comforting because what I was going through, I wasn't unique in it. There was other people that were going through that. So I felt a little bit of comfort. But what I did find was like a proverbial punch in the butt -- gut.

When I came home and I talked to my mother about it my mother was very opposed to the situation which was perplexing to me. Just a side note, my mother has always been the passive person in the relationship and my father has always been... well he's military right? So you see your father as a stoic type of person. And my mother looked me in the eye and said I don't want any fucking part of this. I don't want to do any of this. I don't want it. And that kind of ended the relationship for about 10 years. I just stopped talking to my parents. That was that was devastating. That was heartbreaking.

And I could see person people who didn't have as much strength as me being very traumatized if not suicidal by such a comment. To me it was just a comment of okay let's double down. I’m gonna move forward with my life whether you like it or not.

My second partner when I first met her, I was head over heels for her when we first met, and I told her openly, this is who I am, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to go; the path I want to pursue. And she's like okay, I can handle that we can move forward. And ironically she found out about the surgeries being relisted in Ontario before I did. And she's like, did you hear about this? Did you? And I was like, no I didn't. Are you serious? Like the government's really paying for the surgery again? So I did the process all over again went back to my family physician who sent me to the psychologist. They already had a file on me so they sent me to what was now known as CAMH, and CAMH pulled out all the files and dusted off all the cobwebs on them and they're like okay, well, you've already gone through all this part of it. We already said that you were a candidate for this. So we want you to do two years of lived experience and we want to make sure you're on hormones for that period of time as well. And I was blessed because I was able to you now go underneath her wing, so when we were going out I was by her side and she helped me build up my confidence to be more public. And that was to me that was important because before I met Karen I was a bus driver, so I’m in the public eye all the time. And then I was scared to be in the public eye, as a woman. And then when I met Karen, was kind of like, no let's build up your confidence. Let's do this. Everything works out fine. And I went back into being a bus driver. 

And as a driver I’ve been all the way up to Winnipeg all the way down to Florida. I’ve been to Quebec more times than I can count, and you know, New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia. You're very much in the public eye when you're a bus driver. Everybody wants to talk to the bus driver. That was 2012 and this is 2021 so obviously things are working out.

I definitely would say that in the very beginning, definitely family was a little bit of a challenge. My mother not being totally accepting, my younger brother being very frustrated was, about this, he couldn't understand why I wanted to do this. 

Other challenges, again, I think it's part and parcel of the journey you know when you are accepted as a woman completely and wholly and unconditionally, then you start receiving the prejudices that come along with being a woman. 

But there's a lot of psychological challenges too, like, I know I’m getting acceptance from what I would call the cisgender community. And that's to be anticipated. There will be some challenges that come along with that. But then I get a lot of pushback from the GLBT community as well. Like in my early stages, I walked into a meeting, it was supposed to be a support group, and you know, when I walked in the meeting and everybody's all eyes on me, and I sit down, and they're kind of like, okay, let's start the meeting. And I’m looking at them, I’m going, I’m not the talk, I’m not the presenter here. I’m here just like you guys. And the jaw dropping by about, I think it was like 12 of us inside this room, was like, really? Are you serious?

On my day of surgery I walked into the... we were all sitting down there, six of us. We were sitting down having dinner. And this one here, yeah I’m here for my gender reassignment surgery. And another lady over here, oh I’m here for this dude. And they went around the table and then it came back to me and they're like, so what are you doing? You're getting your breasts done or some of that. I said no, I’m here for gender reassignment surgery as well. And again, everybody just jaw dropped. So that can be a challenge because people think you know more or you are more than what you really are.

And I find myself going whoa, let's rein in, let's slow this down a little bit. Let's try and be a little bit more slow on this, because I’m on the same boat, in the same path as you guys. You know, I’m not doing anything more special. Maybe I have some innate gifts given to me, but I’m not, my path is not much different than anybody else's. So that's, to me that's a challenge. That's an issue that comes up a lot.

I think all of us struggle with, even when we've started our transition, you know, are we feminine enough, are we masculine enough? Or whatever the case may be. And I was blown away how quickly the community at large, as in society at large, was ready to accept me as a woman. I was not expecting that. And that has been a double-edged sword for me. On the one hand I’m being really accepted. I’m, you know, I’m making progress, I’m doing a job. But because... I have one employer who didn't know, didn't ask, and just saw me as a woman. But that worked against me in my job because, you know, discrimination against women. Oh you can't drive a bus. You can't drive a truck. You can't do any of those things, and then, you know, like, then you show it to them and they're kind of like, well I don't understand. I’m confused by that. And so little things like that. And to me... so you have the double-edged sword on that perspective of things, and then you have the double-edged sword on the other perspectives like, oh my god, I passed so well that you can't think... you don't see it's possible or it's not even in your mindset that this person was a male. But then you get all the other stuff that comes along with that, you know, that women can't do this, and women can't do that. And you know, it's yeah. I don't... It's hard to say. Some things are better and some things are worse. But it's part and parcel of the journey right? 

It's very fascinating because I would say since 2015, when I tell people I’m trans now, they're kind of like, oh, I wouldn't have known that. Oh well, okay. And then the conversation moves forward.

The last the last five years there's been a big shift. Like even my last employer, the one I just applied to, I said listen, you've asked for my school records and I need to give you advanced notice that my school records say David. They don't say Diane. And she's like, oh, okay, well, that makes you the third trans person at our facility and it makes you the, you know, we have three lesbians and four gay people and we're only a small team of about 60 employees. So you know, carry on. 

So like, and I guess partly because Ontario Northland is a government agency; it's a crown corporation. So I think they're already on board with stuff like that. But I’ve had the other way around, where I felt like I was being punished for it. 

I worked for a bus company called Batter and you know there was a big hoop law that happened on the bus and I had to divulge my gender identity because of the situation. And my manager openly like, I’m stunned even repeating this, I’m stunned that this actually happened, but she's like well you know you're just gonna have to deal with the male chauvinism just like the rest of the women in here. And it's kind of like, this is 2014. You're really saying that you're really behaving that way?

I’m happier. I’m smiling. I’m interacting with the community and the community is interacting with me the way that resonates with me. My soul is just happy all the time, you know, instead of being judged on a level over here, I’m being judged on the level over here. 

When you're in a work environment and someone looks at you and they say well, you know, if you can't handle it, you know, your two choices; you either man up or quit . You know, that's the only two ways of moving forward. Now in an employment situation people are so much less likely to say things like that. I’m getting a lot of, well how do I help you? How do we move forward with this? What works best for you? And that's what I was looking for before and now it just flows. It just happens in our society. And it's just I love it. It blows me away. You know, to degrade somebody because they don't have the skills and you're not willing to teach them, why don't you just say you don't want to teach that? Why do you degrade me as an individual?

The other thing that I find is exciting is that my friendships and relationships, they don't feel superficial anymore. They don't feel kind of just surface. I get to know people and people are very...  people are very supportive and polite and respectful. And people are turning to me and I love it. It's just, it has been so much better since not only just coming out, but having the surgeries and you know being accepted as the true person that I feel I am. 

I love meeting people I enjoy interacting with people. I just have fun, and it makes life so much more enjoyable. And you know, the job I just had as an instructor, I’m teaching people... Keep it in context, these are people who are coming to me who have worked at Tim Horton’s or Walmart or you know, some little minimum wage job, and I’m teaching them how to drive a vehicle where their income is going to jump from 20,000 a year to 70 grand a year, you know, that's motivating. That's exciting. And I get to go, I’m the person that did that I help that person get there. I helped them have success, you know? 

My new job, I’m going to be going back to driving a bus myself, and the areas that these companies service are usually very small towns. Like sometimes there's only one gas station. Sometimes there's not even a restaurant and they come to these bus stops and they're waiting for someone to take them to Winnipeg, to Ottawa, to Toronto, wherever it may be. And you know, like, again, I am one of 50 drivers that help these people to get to their destination. It could be for medical reasons. It could be because of changing their life. That is exciting to me. I participated in that person's life. Maybe not incredibly directly, but you know. 

When I was doing tour bus, I’m picking up people that come to from China or Hong Kong, or you know Korea, Vietnam. I’m bringing them to Canada and I get to be the ambassador for North America. When they come in the winter time, I get to bring them up to Algonquin park and you should see their eyes pop out of their head because you know the red and gold and yellow leaves and you know, as we're coming into Algonquin park you hear the cameras going tick, tick, and by the time we're not even 500 meters into the park the cameras are all ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, and it's just, I’m the ambassador. I’m the one that gets these people to see that, and it's just awesome.

I get to have these little moments that are incredibly... it's like an adrenaline rush, it's like euphoria, it's like all these things all put into one little package. And I influence all these people. It's the endorphin rush of being the center of attention.

What I’d like to see happen in the future is more about what society can do as a whole as opposed to me as an individual. You know, I see that our we're polluting this environment, I see that we have these huge plastic garbage patches in the ocean. I see that we have the technology and the ability to make ourselves a very sustainable, a very productive society, and I really want our society to reflect on those things and try to act on those things so we can make our lives, our society, our people, live a lot longer. But there's also got to be a balance, and I worry that there is this extreme rhetoric right now. It's a balance act. We've got to find the act. Yes we need to do better with our environment, but not go to extremes. And I think that's typical of our human nature. We see something we jump on it and we want to go to an extreme. I want our society to live in a healthier balanced environment.

I’m going up north to North Bay and I’ve never lived there. I’ve visited a couple of times but this is my first move, major move, as in, you know, more than five hours away from Toronto. I’m doing it on my own. I don't have any supports around me. I don't have any friends up there. This is purely about getting the job up there. So the challenge is, you know, go up there, get the training, keep the job, make friends, meet new people, create a new community, get exposure to a much smaller town (there's only 50 000 people there as opposed to the almost 200 000 in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, as opposed to the 4 million in the Toronto area). 

Challenges are probably going to be very much like most people. I feel like life has kind of reached a level of normalcy and now I’m going to be dealing with what everybody else deals with; bills, car payments, insurance, you know, the things that everybody else complains about. Guess what? I got that too! 

I don't meet a lot of people who, what I would say have successfully transitioned, and they get frustrated, and they get upset and they get angry, and I would love to pull them under my wing and help them, show them what I’ve done and how to move forward, but they're not, a lot of them are not ready for that. And there are people who are so stuck in certain parts of their life, and they're stuck on the government support systems that they'll never appreciate or see the benefits of having such an income. You know, being able to travel to Mexico or being able to travel to the Dominican. Those people will never ever see that and I’m excited about that. I’ve fallen back on skills that I have, which is, I know how to drive a vehicle, and I do it very well. I don't know anybody in my field that can say that they've driven 22 years without an accident. 

I would like to see the trans community get a little bit of help by the average person just by being patient. Just by relaxing, giving them a chance. You know, we all have our, you know, some of us wear glasses, some of us have hearing aids, some of us have other issues, you know. And someone who's trying to find out what their gender identity is; it's not much different really. Like we're all trying to do a self-discovery of some sort. We're all trying to find out how we can best function in society and we just need a society that can be patient. Stop demonizing us. Stop making us look like we're bad. Stop making us look like we're hysterical, crazy, off the wall people. Just give us some room to breathe and be patient with us.

But I think that level of respect has to be coming from both sides, you know? If we are going to sit here and scream at the cisgender community about you know you're not giving us a chance, well we have to give them a chance to grow as individuals to learn how to be patient.

It comes together. It does work itself out. It does make a difference in the end. But having the life experience that I’ve had, I probably would have told myself to push a little bit more. Not aggressively, but to pursue it. Because I really do feel like, had I not chosen to wait, I probably could have started this path a lot sooner. And I think that leads into another kind of ideology, don't put your life on hold. Don't put your life on hold and wait 20 or 30 years, because when you do that and you put yourself on hold, you're hoping that in 20 years or five years that everything is going to be in place. And what I’ve learned is, society changes so quickly. And so that when you put yourself on hold you're just putting your whole body and your mind and your soul on hold. And you don't move forward. You stagnate. 

Don't forget about the struggles there have been a lot of things that I’ve gone through that have made me the person, made me the character that I am today. And it would be very easy to become cocky and arrogant and forget about that. It would be very easy to be cocky and arrogant to think that every single trans person had the same experience as me and why can't they do it. Yeah, I could see myself doing that and I need that little - I will need that reminder in a few years from now. 

It does get better if you're persistent and you're polite and you're respectful and you treat your community with the same level of decency that you expect for yourself it does get better. It does.

My thoughts actually stem from my historical background. My father is Blackfoot Indian also known as the Siksika Nation. And not all first nations people, but there is a large portion of first nations people that believe in something that's called two-spirited. And I believe that's part of my heritage and part of my soul as well, that you know, I was born with male anatomy, but I have the male and the female spirit within my body. And that allows me to, you know, work with people. I’m able to, you know... people who have masculine spirits and feminine spirits, sometimes they have a hard time communicating with each other and for some reason, when I look at the conversation it's just obvious; okay, this is what you're trying to say, this is how you want to say to this person, vice versa, if this is what you're trying to say, this is what you're trying to... And I’ve met people and it's the weirdest thing that they're a couple and they don't understand each other and yet when I get in the conversation the light bulbs go off, it's like, oh yeah, that's exactly what you're trying to say, that's exactly... so I think that as I said before that comes from my background. It comes from my heritage, and I believe that's part of it. I believe there is such thing as having a combined male and female spirit.

I think we as trans people get so caught up in ourselves we become very selfish. We become very self-centered. And we forget about what gifts we can bring to our society. We need to remember that and we need to participate in that, because I think it's incredibly fascinating that from a spiritual level, I think it's fascinating that at a time that we are seeing the male/female at its most divergent, even though society wants it to be at its most closest, so women's liberation, the feminist movement, stuff like that, yet it's actually causing more of a wedge between the male and the female. It's funny that at the same time that that's happening we are seeing a greater amount of trans people come out. 

In the community from a spiritual perspective, from a holistic perspective, I think it's not a coincidence. I think it's a necessity. I think it's time for us to actually get out there and speak, and bring the two sides - bridge the two sides - together. Otherwise we're just... we're gonna watch our society fall apart.

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Meet Elladan (They/Them)

What follows is a transcript from Elladan's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/XRfDsCblt80

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My name is Elladon, and I use they/them pronouns.

My gender identity is complex. I don't fully understand what it is, and I don't expect other people to understand it if I don't. So, for the most part I identify as non-binary, because while non-binary is accurate it doesn't necessarily do justice to describe what's different about me from other non-binary people, because non-binary isn't just the third gender. Now, it's a little different. I don't know if I’m maybe gender fluid maybe agender. Because my relationship with gender it definitely changes day to day.

For me understanding my feelings and understanding how that related to my identity took a painfully long time. I think it was only feels painfully long because of how obvious it should have been. When I was young, I had thoughts like: transgender individuals can have gender confirming or gender affirming surgery, and I can't have that because I’m not transgender. And that was really upsetting. I n my head at maybe 13 years old, I wished I could get gender affirming surgery but knew I never could because it was only for transgender people. I didn't realize that maybe wanting that could have been a clue.

I would always present a certain way and when strangers would "misgender" me, I found it really exciting and thrilling I had a list I had a physical list every time someone "misgendered" me with the opposing gender to um my assigned one at birth. I would go home and write it in my journal because I was so thrilled about it.

And there there's a lot of other signs. I know I always wanted to shop in different sections and my moms like you can't shop there those clothes aren't for you.

Those thoughts never left. I just adjusted my presentation to fit them. But for me growing up anything related to LGBT was very taboo, very negative, Like I knew in my head, if... I was afraid. I had friends who were part of positive space and different groups at school, and while I personally didn't have anything against it, I was like afraid to openly support it because I knew I would get in trouble. Like there would be negative consequences for me and also, I could pass as just straight and not interested. So that's what I did.

At one point in high school, I had gone to my friends and said, I’m not transgender but, could we try using this new nickname I’ve picked out and these pronouns? Which they didn't do, but the fact that I was thinking hey let's switch up my pronouns and not use my birth name again could have been a good sign.

I became more and more aware that these were identities that existed, but I wouldn't connect them to myself, but I was also not "the other." I didn't feel the need to do a binary transition so I couldn't be trans, and it wasn't until quarantined, I moved out from my family home and I was living with a roommate and I started watching just YouTube videos. They were on my recommended, and a lot of them were transgender TikToks, or memes, just like relatable transgender content. So, I would start watching it thinking, this isn't supposed to be relatable to me but all of it was. So, I kind of got the idea in my head. And then I found out about non-binary.

Pretty much the moment I found out about non-binary, I went, oh! Okay. This is what I am. It makes sense. And pretty much the moment I figured that out, I started making phone calls to my doctor first, before my family. I was like I want to get this train rolling. So probably within the same week of me learning what non-binary was, and that it existed, I was making phone calls to get hooked up at the gender clinic, to get a gender therapist, so I could start getting surgery and just doing all these things I’d dreamed of since being a kid. I was like, okay this is on the table for me. It's happening, and it's happening as soon as possible. The phone calls to family came later.

Life before learning that I was non-binary and that there was something I could do about it was difficult, because I knew I was unhappy. I had not even really hit puberty yet and there were things about my body that I knew I couldn't live with. So, I remember thinking, the medical field today, they could change someone from a man into a woman, or from a woman into a man, but they can't help me. Because like I said I didn't realize there were options for people. I didn't realize people like me even existed, and that made me so mad. I would sit in my room and cry. They were angry tears, because I felt like forgotten, ignored. I felt frustrated with my family, but they didn't know... actually they did know. My family knew I wanted to do this these medical procedures and they always kind of wrote it off as just a phase. I didn't care if I wasn't allowed to dress a certain way or if I had to keep my hair a certain way. But thinking that I couldn't choose what to do with my body and that it had to stay a certain way, it was unbearable.

So, for me coming out happened pretty much the same way that calling my doctors for medical transition did which is within probably a few days of discovering what non-binary was, I was telling people about it.

So, I called my dad first and his reaction was more or less, I’m so glad you finally felt comfortable telling me. Apparently, he'd figured it out a while before. And then I told my brother. After that... He didn't understand at first, because we'd actually had some conversations in the past, like he struggled to understand transgender, but he didn't understand like, neo-pronouns, and all these other genders, because I remember growing up, I just seen a lot of genders on Tumblr, and I will say, I was one of the people who was confused by them. I thought like, there can't possibly be this many. Like why are people doing this? But when I told him I was kind of, I’ve done research now. I’ve watched YouTube videos. I got on Facebook with a more open mind. And so, I was able to talk to him about it and he came around pretty quickly. So, I remember when I first asked him to use a nickname when I was in high school, he was not on board with that. None of my friends were. None of my family was. So I thought, I'll tell him that, you know, I’m non-binary, and that I’m gonna medically transition. But he probably won't be cool with changing my name and pronouns, because that doesn't seem like him. But within a week he... well within a few days, he was making an effort and I’d say within a week, he'd probably stopped getting it wrong altogether. So, after that I told my other siblings, and well, yeah, and they were all on board. They were really supportive. They didn't screw up at all.

My mom found out last. I was really stressed. I didn't want to tell her. I was kind of hoping I could just fly under the radar and see how long it took her to notice. But I knew that if I got surgeries or started hormone therapies, she'd clue in and she had the type of personality where she felt I was deliberately hiding something from her, which I would have been. Then it would be a worse reaction than if I just came out and told her.

So the initial conversation with my mom went very poorly. We got into a big argument, and she told me I was not thinking things through and making a bad decision, and that it was very spontaneous. There was definitely a lot of painful conversations and emotions and discussions that happened between us. And there was definitely more than a few times where I thought like, this is it. She's gonna cut me off. I’m gonna cut her off. Like this relationship is not going to continue.

She got over it quickly. She called me within a few weeks and started talking about it, and then after that, she started doing her own research independent of me. And she was sending me videos by non-binary YouTubers, asking me questions like, is this you? Does this describe you? Is this your experience? And so, we started being able to have a conversation about it. From then on, it's like, every week she does something that surprises me.

I know as a kid growing up, I’d always wanted to use nicknames and it made her really upset. She felt like she put a lot of thought into my name, and I was also named after someone who had been very important to her. So, the most significant thing for me was when she started calling me a name that I preferred. And then even more shocking was when she started using my gender-neutral pronouns.

So, I didn't expect her to ever accept me but honestly within a month she was giving her best effort. And her best effort has turned into genuine support.

Things did eventually go well with everyone.

I’d say coming out to the world, like coming out publicly, has not inherently made things harder, but if anything, it's made things a little bit easier. But coming out to myself has made a lot of my dysphoria worse and it's given me a lot of regret. Which is just funny because like I said I’m pretty young and I know a lot of people take much longer to kind of discover this, but I’ve always had this feeling that I’m wasting my life. Because I took a few extra years for high school, I took a few extra years for college, and all this time, I feel this immense pressure of time, thinking I’m wasting my life, I’m running out of time to accomplish anything. I look at the accomplishments of like teenagers and kids in their young 20s and I think, look at all they've done, and I’m so much older, and I’ve done nothing. So, I have a lot of impending doom hanging over me feeling like my life is almost over.

So, I do know that I’m sitting here looking back going, this isn't a surprise, this isn't new, everyone saw it coming, all the signs were there, I should have put pieces together. Like, so I think a lot, how would my life have been different If I’d gone on hormone blockers? What if I tried to get surgery years ago? What if I’d known this about myself?

I had teachers at school pulled me aside and asked me what pronouns do you prefer, and I was like, why are you asking me that? Like, don't ask me those questions! And yeah, I had a lot of visceral pushing it away for so long, but now that I am accepting it, I’m mad that I didn't do it sooner. Which retrospectively is a bit of a privileged thing to say that, like, the most upsetting thing about coming out is that I didn't do it sooner? But it's true. The most upsetting thing about coming out is that I didn't do it sooner.

it's hard to pinpoint any one way that coming out has made things better. It's more of an overall feeling. It's like, my life has somehow changed, which it has but... it's difficult to really say how or why.

I got a legal name changed. I got my gender markers changed. And I remember thinking when I got my name changed, I didn't think it would be a big deal, because I’ve been going by, you know, a different name my whole life. And when I got the paperwork, I got so scared. I was like did they say no? Did I spend weeks stressing? I was like, how long's it supposed to take to get it back? What are they gonna say? And when I sat down on my bed and opened it, I just started crying.

There were hard parts where I know after coming out to myself, I somehow felt that I see myself this way now. It's so obvious. Of course, the rest of the world will. It didn't occur to me that the entire world wouldn't be on the same page. So, I remember, I got a new job at one point, and I went in there like, fully presenting as non-binary. I had a pronoun pin. I used my new name on my application. And I just immediately got misgendered the whole time. And I did not have the confidence to tell them. I just sat there, and I was like oh... oh... the world doesn't know? Why did I think they would know? So that was kind of a wake-up call.

It's like, just because you and your family know, the world's not going to see you differently right away. Like they don't care how you feel. They just care how you look, and that's what they're going to go off of. So that was hard.

One thing that changed is how I look. I used to present very firmly the opposite gender of what I was, because I did not like being gendered and I thought, well, if people are going to do it anyway, I want them to do it this way. And now that I kind of understand myself better, I don't feel the need to do that. I’m happy to just wear whatever I want to. Do what makes me happy. To look how I want to look.

So, growing up, like as a teenager, a lot of everything I did was to put on a front and to look a certain way to the rest of the world. And it's like all of that is gone now. I’m so comfortable just being me.

I’ve stopped taking medication for anxiety and depression and I felt better than I ever have. I heard all these anecdotes about people who suffered from anxiety and depression their whole life, and then they started transitioning and it got a lot better. Because a lot of that unacknowledged feelings was what was causing... that was the root of the anxiety and the depression. And I remember thinking, well, that won't happen to me because this isn't why... I mean I’ve been anxious and depressed since I was a tiny kid. Like I don't like my gender, but I don't think it's killing me. Turns out it kind of was killing me.

And since coming out and starting to do all these social and physical changes, I feel better. I feel healthier even. My family says I smile more. There are days where I wake up and I think, I’m happy! I’m doing well. One day I was cleaning my kitchen and I stopped and in my head, I thought, I’m thriving! And I’ve never thought that before in my life. But almost every day I can sit there and go, I’m thriving. So.

I grew up very afraid of taking risks and very afraid of changes. So I had very little confidence in myself. I had a lot of body image issues, which led to other confidence issues. But overall, I was not a confident little child. And ever since making this one major decision, it's like, everything about myself has opened up. I have made a lot of decisions I would have never made in the past. I feel like my life has just begun. I feel like, before, I was waiting for my life to end, which is literally true. I had no plans to end it myself, but every day I woke up and thought, if, you know, if I get hit by a car today, there's nothing that I'll regret about it. Whereas now I realize... I had a severe depressive episode just a few days or weeks back, and even in the midst of it, I thought to myself, I have to get out of this because I have things to look forward to!

I’m getting my driver's license, which... I did my written test at 16 and let it expire because I was afraid to set foot inside a car, and now I plan on living in a van and traveling all over North and South America, because I’ve always wanted to see the world. So.

One of the most important things I think people can do, is, not just let people experiment but encourage it. When I was a kid um one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't know this about myself sooner. And as a kid, all the signs were there. But I didn't recognize them. And the people around me didn't recognize them. And the people around me were very invested in the community, but it feels like when I was amongst them, I got overlooked. And I think it's so important that we just normalize these things, because even if something is just a phase or if something is just someone experimenting, there's no harm in that. If I’d had this information sooner, if I’d known about these possibilities, they don't teach it in school, most parents don't talk about it unless you have a friend or a family member who's openly part of the LGBTQ community, it's generally swept under the rug, and you grow up not knowing what options exist.

I think this information should just be available for people. Because having the information doesn't make you a certain way, it just gives you possibilities to pursue if that's what you want to do. I’m really excited about my future which I never thought I would say.

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