I have big announcement to make, I’m trans. And I am writing this to explain two things: How I got here, and what will happen now.
First how I got here.
Last year, this day, I publicly came out as bisexual, on a morning talk show I had at my local radio station. I had semi-privately been calling myself that anyway, so it didn’t even feel like that big a deal it still doesn’t feel like a big deal (even though it definitely was/is).
After that, the following semester I joined the PRIDE club at my school, and ended up performing in the spring drag ball. A female friend of mine helped me with makeup and my outfit, and it ended up being one of the most fun nights I ever had. I ended up thinking about that night the entire next summer.
In the fall I dropped the ball (pardon the pun) and didn’t sign up in time to perform again for the fall drag show. I instead opted to simply go in a pseudo-half drag, wearing makeup (thanks to different female friend!) but still wore regular clothes. This was not enough to satisfy me, even if I looked great!
There was something I was missing at the fall drag show, but I couldn’t quite place it. It was more than just looking good, I wasn’t getting treated like a woman.
I would like to say that after the fall drag show is when I had a moment of realization, and decided right then and there that I was trans, but I didn’t. I chalked it up to me not getting the attention I wanted (which was wrong on many levels!) and decided that next time I should just wear a dress.
It wasn’t until only a few months ago that I really started to peel back some of the layers on why I have been feeling the way I did. And the reason had nothing to with gender at all.
I had gotten back to my mom’s house after spending the weekend with some friends from college and was thinking about my nickname, which I had been using since I left to go to college, and how I wanted to go back to old when I got out of college; as well as all of the hassle it was going to be to update it on all of my social media.
Now the trip had left me in an introspective mood anyway, so when I started thinking about why I cared so much about having the perfect name, and why nothing fit, and why I was insecure, and why I had so much trouble relating to women, and why I was so insecure! Do you see where I’m going with this?
I eventually came to the only conclusion, that I was acting like this because I wasn’t secure in my masculinity, because I wasn’t masculine. And I came to the conclusion that I was non-binary.
I spent the rest of my brake doing research about the topic. I looked all over the internet to try to figure out what it meant to ‘be’ a gender identity how that relates to society, and whether or not gender identity even exists.
I read socialist feminist articles, researched socialist definitions of gender, re-watched old feminist PBS Idea channel videos (gotta have at least some post-structuralism in there!), I even got to the point where I pestered a trans author I followed on twitter with a series of questions, (sorry about that Emma Caterine!), because I just needed understand it.
My sexuality hadn’t been hard to connect the dots on, I was watching a documentary about the gay male experience, and at one point I was significantly turned on by the thought of two guys having sex. Not exactly something too difficult to get your head around.
Now on further reflection, I probably would use the term pansexual, as I feel like it would be a better reflection of my actual preferences (I have had attraction to individuals who were androgynous before). Besides that, not much has changed, still into women, still into men, just also into people that are neither/both.
But this felt different, this felt like it might be way bigger than that.
Eventually it became time to go to the women's march, yet another female friend (this marks the third if you are keeping track) had helped me buy my first set of make (does makeup come in sets?) and on the morning of, I tried to look as androgynous as I could. It felt great! But I knew something was still missing.
I spent the following time since than and now continuing to dress androgynous, but something still felt off. Eventually a video came out that changed everything.
A trans YouTuber I follow, called Contrapoints, released a 45 minute video on “autogynephilia”. In it she gives a detailed account of her live and experience as a trans woman. It was probably one of the most resonate things I’ve ever experienced. Watching that video (which I have seen twice now, even though it only came out 5 days ago) was what finally caused everything to start to click. I started to think that I wasn’t just non-binary anymore.
After that I only got more sure the next day hen I stumbled upon an article by Dr. Eleanor A. Lockhart about the matrix. And next day, stumbling into a variety of trans subreddits where I looked at memes and read about other trans women’s experiences being MTF, which all finally gave the confidence I needed to write this. (Also some sick memes!)
Since the start of this year, I have gone through one of the most introspective journeys of my life. Talking about stuff like this can be difficult for someone like me, I get a lot of anxiety around things I don’t understand, (especially in areas I thought I did understand), so not being able to know exactly why I feel the way I do is kind of a night mare.
The realization that I might not be a man is kinda frighting, it basically re-frames my entire life story up until now. But I know it is what I want, because the idea of having to live another minute as the way I was would be way more painful for me.
In the Contrapoints video I mentioned earlier, she introduced a concept called a “Cluster B trans woman”, for trans woman who had masculine childhoods but who come out later in life. This is something I feel describes me pretty accurately because growing up I definitely thought I was suppose to be a guy, even if a lot of the times I didn’t want to be a guy.
It is going to take some time to unlearn a lot of what I had always been told about myself, and even more time to unlearn what I had been telling myself. But the best way to think about it is this (even if this is going to sound corning) this essay isn’t the end of my journey, it is just the beginning.
Which brings me to my other question.
What is going to happen now?
To start off my name, it is getting changed again. I picked the name Jacey because when I was a kid, my older sister would call me by that name because it was my initials, and even though I thought it was embarrassing at the time, I secretly loved it.
Now pronouns, I’m going to ask that people in my life to start using she/her pronouns. It will feel weird at first, and I won’t get mad if you mess it up at first. A neat trick I came up with which helps me is to say my old pronouns and my new ones in the same sentence like: “He, or should I say she now? bla bla bla” (this trick works with names as well) the idea is to get your brain to associate the old with the new.
Lastly, and this is the most important part, don’t expect to understand this right away, because I don’t even understand it myself. The only thing I can say which has helped me is a quote from David Hume: “The identity that we ascribe to things is only a fictitious one, established by the mind, not a peculiar nature belonging to what we’re talking about.” I like this quote because it reminds me that a lot of how I see myself is under my control, and for someone like me that can be a comforting thought.
I hope you read this far and that you understand a little about what has going in my life. I plan on writing more about my experiences about this on here, because I know this isn’t everything I wanted to say. Thank you for reading!
