Selected Correspondence and Commentary by Allison Washington

4 min readJan 27, 2017

[Last updated February 2017. I just can’t keep up, sorry.]

Allison loves it when readers write to her, and usually responds, sometimes at absurd length. Indeed, she corresponds a lot, and here is a selection of the (hopefully) more interesting bits from Medium (there are scads more on Facebook and Twitter, but alas, those aren’t curated).

(In reverse chronological order. Initial words are links.
Her favourites have an *asterisk.)

Allison Washington on…

…how to multiply your minority intersections. 2017.02.25

…the fatigue of explaining trans to cis, and the necessity and her obligation to keep doing so. 2017.02.25

…a troll! I finally have a troll!!! :-D 2017.02.23

*…transactional sex during her teen years. 2017.02.21

…her writing process, and discovering what she’s written only after the fact. 2017.02.20

…ThunderPuff! (She is so damned funny…) 2017.02.16

…how she built her following on Medium. 2017.02.16

*…precisely what it means to ‘show up’ as an ally to marginalised people. 2017.02.15

…what causes the ‘flip’ in sexuality experienced by many trans women. 2017.02.14

…intersex and trans and why chromosomes do not equal either sex or gender. 2017.02.13

…the ‘flip’ in sexuality experienced by many trans women. 2017.02.13

*…what she would look like as Katharine Hepburn. 2017.02.13

…angry-trans, cis-splaining, (non)forgiveness, and the pink vs the blue pill. 2017.02.12

…being a marginalised woman who did not march, and why. 2017.02.12

…‘understanding’ vs appreciating and making space for trans. 2017.02.11

…how TERFs, the Christian Right, and the Reagan administration colluded to try to exterminate trans women. 2017.02.11

*…being grateful for being born transgender. 2017.02.11

…her first fan art! 2017.02.10

…liking and hating being called ‘hot’. 2017.02.04

*…how women in the rural ‘Developing World’ are not impoverished. 2017.02.04

*…why cis-passing and stealth are legitimate goals, and no-longer-trans is a legitimate identity. 2017.02.03

…trans visibility and why she remains woodworked. 2017.02.03

*…appreciating a transmasculine enby experience, as a transfeminine binary person. 2017.02.03

…that fake ‘book jacket’. 2017.02.01

*…being a Trans Person of Colour…(or not). 2017.01.31

…the effects sexual assault has on female brain structure. 2017.01.30

…her work suddenly going viral-ish. 2017.01.28

…dyadic and cisgender people speaking for intersex and transgender people. 2017.01.28

…facing regret for lost opportunity. 2017.01.27

…writing ‘boy mode’ (living as-male) material. 2017.01.25

*…fear and ‘gender confusion’ going into reassignment surgery. 2017.01.25

…humorous replies to those awkward trans questions. 2017.01.25

…writing about the ‘man years’, her relationship with her ex, and her daughter. 2017.01.25

…why she doesn’t usually write on ‘culture war’ topics. 2017.01.25

…childhood idols. 2017.01.23

…the value of trauma memories. 2017.01.23

…why you keep seeing the same couple old photos over and over. 2017.01.21

…her body’s pubescent peculiarities. 2017.01.21

*…knowing one is trans at a very young age…or not. 2017.01.21

*…minority intersections and (not) being a Person of Colour. 2017.01.15

…Ginger vs Maryann and the double-standard applied to women when it comes to having sex. 2017.01.07

…her wardrobe and appearance. 2017.01.06

*…life as a child in a Spanish fishing village, upon returning 51 years later. 2017.01.04

…the consequences of her rape, decades later (2). 2016.12.12

*…the consequences of her rape, decades later (1). 2016.12.12

*…why women don’t report sexual assault (2). 2016.12.09

…why women don’t report sexual assault (1). 2016.11.30

…the double-bind trans women face regarding ‘disclosure’. 2016.12.09

*…mansplaining, gaslighting, and male privilege. 2016.12.07

…needing to provide emotional support for men. 2016.12.05

…being ‘called’ by readers to write about her trans experience. 2016.12.04

*…why ‘being woodworked’ is better than ‘being stealth’. 2016.12.03

…being raised as a girl by her mother. 2016.12.03

…why she never reported her sexual assaults. 2016.11.30

…escaping from her abusive marriage. 2016.11.27

…racism within her French family c. 1980s. 2016.11.23

…publishing trans stories after 27 years in deep stealth. 2016.11.23

*…the subjective experience of living in stealth and publishing from the woodwork. 2016.11.21

*…’stealth’, ‘deep stealth’, trans visibility, and being a woodworked woman. 2016.11.20

…writing on ‘culture war’ issues. 2016.11.20

*…how socialisation as girls positions trans women for sexual assault. 2016.11.06

…men occupying space in women’s spaces. 2016.11.01

*…the complexities of dating as a trans woman, and disclosing to cis men. 2016.10.31

…female socialisation of trans girls. 2016.10.31

…the inherent conflict and instability of living ‘deep stealth’. 2016.10.28

*…being helpless in the face of sexual harassment/assault. 2016.10.28

…the crippling necessity of ‘passing’, and having to ‘win the beauty contest’ to ‘deserve’ surgery. 2016.10.24

…Kate Bornstein on the Geraldo Rivera Show regarding orgasm. 2016.09.15

*…non-disclosure of the ‘closed narrative’ and the lie created by ‘the truth’. 2016.09.15

…the loss of ‘thee/thou’ from English and the eminent loss of ‘vous’ from French. 2016.08.30

…her gratitude for reader correspondence. 2016.08.25

*…readers’ reaction to seeing her portrait photo. 2016.08.25

…how we hold our bodies to cultural standards. 2016.08.12

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Selected Correspondence and Commentary by Allison Washington

Written by Allison Washington