Transition as Science Fiction: Playing with the (Un)gendered Possible

Some notes as I enter my 3rd solar return of journeying towards self.

I have been on testosterone for 3 years now, I have realised that in T years I am a Taurus and that makes a lot of sense. My transition has been frustratingly slow at times (still waiting for this beard to fully connect), but it has always sustained. Rooted and grounded deep within the soil, allowing me to blossom and expand into self in beautifully paced good time.

Nothing has taught me about what is possible in life like transitioning.

In my academic work, and my work with the Free Black University, I am concerned with dancing with the possible. Stretching my mind and opening my world to deeper philosophies that may move us closer to liberation. To breach the realm of what we are taught is impossible and climb over the proverbial walls into liberation.

Transition is truly a marvel. What do you mean I can rub 2 pumps of gel on to my shoulders each day and become a truer reflection of myself? That my voice can grow deeper, my facial hair longer, my muscles denser.

Transition is honestly the most beautiful science fiction novel I have ever read, and one that I continue to write each day. It has taught me change is possible.

That in this single lifetime I can transform myself into the being I am today, then I have no doubt that the world can change just as much.

Transition has taught me to play with the possible. To take what we are each taught at the opening of our lives is fixed and unchangeable. We transform.

Being trans is by its very nature a demonstration to the world that nothing is impossible. I live my life abiding by this truth each day. Nothing is impossible. If I can imagine it in the eye of my mind, I can bring it into form.

I imagined myself in a meditation with a spiritual therapist about 3 years ago when I had just started on testosterone. We were doing inner child work and she asked me to imagine my younger self and then my present self and my older self all entering into a circle with each other. When I started my transition, I could only imagine the next step, nothing beyond a few months on testosterone.

Fear was incredibly present in the early stages of my transition, consistently feeling it arising as a concern that I was making the wrong decision and that I might just regret it all. Now looking back I realise that this is completely normal, that making any big life decisions comes with doubt but we are taught as trans people that doubt means wrong and I really feared that I was just that, wrong.

For me, in this meditation when I saw my older self enter the room, he was majestic. A solid, beautiful, divine Black male presenting masculine person. It was with this; I knew where my transition was heading. Whilst I wasn’t ready in that moment to be that person, a lot of healing of the masculine and the feminine within myself had to take place, we don’t have to be ready for the end of our journey at the start of it.

We live in a world where we are taught to question ourselves constantly. Specifically, for the trans community, we are taught that our very existence is shameful and wrong. So, if we have the chance to not be trans, it feels preferable to take it at times.

But this questioning extends into every aspect of life, we are taught to question our ideas, our hopes, our worthiness, our power, our divinity for fear of either failure or being misunderstood as arrogant or some other reprehensible quality.

But my transition taught me that I had to believe in myself, listen to my inner voice above any other voice in this world. To trust myself. To love myself so much that I risk losing everything and everyone if it means gaining myself.

Transition means to dance with the possible.

To embrace liminal spaces.

To experience our bodies as a canvas of liberation.

To write love letters to the universe of change, possibility, self-love, and actualisation.

I am writing this piece whilst sat on the veranda of my beautiful villa in Bali, on a trip I have wanted to take for as long as I can remember. A perfect butterfly has been circling the pool since I sat down to write. Butterflies are one of nature’s most stunning reflections of transformation, for the caterpillar to the vibrant winged creatures that fly freely across the skies. I am a trans-masculine butterfly, I have referred to myself as that since the start of my transition, but I am now at that stage where the winged creature gets to actually fly and fully embrace its beauty and leave the cocoon behind. Shedding fear-based skins like my resistance to embracing he/him pronouns because of my personal fears around masculinity and the extended projections I felt would covet my identity.

But now I’m in the era of fuck it! I tell myself — people will misunderstand you, project on to you, fear you because of their own relationship to Black masculinity. But Melz, that is none of your business! Let them beautiful butterfly wings flyyyy sweet sacred boy! (My pronouns are they/ he now)

If I can transform this much within three years, then I believe the world can transform is ways beyond my comprehension within my lifetime.

I am resolutely committed to social justice, and liberation for all. It is what I have committed myself to in this lifetime on both a Divine and material level. My transition teaches me each day that if I am a reflection of the universe, and the universe is a reflection of me, then every freedom dream I have ever wistfully contemplated is possible. This is true for each of us, we are all reflections of the universe and each other and so the challenge is to navigate through the fear to enter into the realm of divine possibility.

Another world is possible, and we are all here to create it.

As Octavia Butler reminds us, the only lasting truth is change. So rather than fearing change, it is time to lean in to shaping it.

What change do you wish to see within yourself?

What change do you wish to see within the world?

I am here to remind you that not only is it possible, but it is also deeply necessary.