I’m trans! Call me Amy.
It took me a lifetime, but I’ve recently accepted that I’m trans. Surprised? Read on for my story. But if you just want the key details, I identify as a woman, I prefer she/her/hers pronouns, and I’d like to be called Amy. If you cite my research, please use my new name Amy J. Ko. While I’m increasingly secure in my gender identity, I’m pretty clueless about my gender expression, so expect some clumsy experimentation. Please refrain from policing my appearance or voice (or anybody’s for that matter). If you’d like to reach out to me, I’d most appreciate affirmations and expressions of support like, “Congratulations!”, “I’m here for you!”, and “You’re safe here!” but please no condolences like “That must be hard” or “I’m so sorry” — it is hard, but not having to hide my identity out of shame is a good thing. And if you’re trans yourself, especially in academia, please write me. I’d love to learn from your experiences, and help if I can. Thanks!
When we move about our social worlds, we all rely on social cues to make sense of who’s around us. Someone’s accent suggests their language and culture. Someone’s face suggests their age. Someone’s clothing suggests their class. Someone’s accessories suggest their wealth.
This process by which we make social inferences is a powerful social lubricant: it allows us to reason about and structure our relationships to strangers non-verbally and without interaction; it allows us to make predictions about how the strangers, coworkers, friends, and family see the world, without having to engage in potentially high-conflict conversations about their views. We can just look, listen, infer, and assume. It frees us from having to really know people, which can sometimes be a way to keep the peace in a divided world.
Of course, these shortcuts to understanding the people around us are often wrong, because they’re based on assumptions. And these assumptions, to the extent that we use them to guide our interactions with other people, can be harmful. For example, I’ve always had a younger face than people my age. This has always led strangers to treat me 10-15 years younger than I am. That’s hard, because at the time of writing this, I’m 39, and I have a bit more knowledge and wisdom than most twenty somethings. My youthful looks have led people I meet to dwell for far too long about how young I look; some even insist that I couldn’t possibly be a professor, or be the age I am. Meanwhile, I just want to share my ideas, network, or get information. It leads to surprise when people discover that I have a college-bound daughter, which itself leads to assumptions about why I was a young father. Sometimes it seems that all of these inferences people make from my face lead people in my professional worlds to discount my ideas or authority (even after they learn my age and position).
But there are more deeply harmful consequences of assumptions. People make some assumptions about others so consistently that they leave little room for difference, creating stigma. For example, because most casually assume that everyone can read, that no one is depressed, that no one has invisible disabilities, and that everyone has food, shelter, and safety, we stigmatize people who cannot read, people who are depressed, people who have disabilities, and people who struggle to meet their basic needs. When we erase difference, we shame difference.
I’ve been victim to such shaming my whole life. Since I was young enough to learn the 1980’s conceptions of girls and boys, I knew that I was not a boy. On most days, my brain told me that I was a girl, that I wanted friends that were girls, that I wanted to do what girls did, and I wanted to be seen as a girl. For a brief time in primary school, that felt entirely natural. But awash in those feelings, I also quickly became aware that feelings like mine were something that no one in my life discussed, and so that probably meant it was bad. And as I absorbed more pop culture, I learned that people with penises who dressed, acted, or felt like girls were something to be ridiculed and laughed at; moreover, pop culture taught me that girls were to be diminished and disrespected too. My feelings were hard to ignore, but fear of being laughed at and disrespected was stronger. I pushed those everyday feelings about being a girl deep down, where no one could ever find them, not even me.
I learned to play boy well enough to only be bullied occasionally for my feminine traits. I assumed every other boy was doing the same. This was a functional delusion; its only real harm was that I couldn’t play with whom I wanted to play, I couldn’t play with the toys I wanted, I couldn’t dress how I wanted, and I couldn’t be in the spaces I wanted. But I knew that all kids had limits on their lives. I accepted this social prison as normal, and suspected other kids had prisons of their own. (And of course, as I learned in adulthood, we all do, especially gender ones).
This worked fine until I reached puberty. Then, not only was it crystal clear that most people with male anatomy did not see themselves as a girl, but that the consequence of hiding this fact meant that I would have the body of a man instead of a woman. This was terrifying. Because I didn’t know there was a way to stop it, and I was certain that if I shared my fears about my body I would be derided and punished, I felt powerless to stop it. Instead, I felt my only option was to ignore my feelings, ignore my body, and focus only on my mind and other people in my life.
And so I did. I spent my young adulthood learning, doing, and achieving. I devoted myself to serving others rather than myself. I distracted myself with video games, programming, reading, and other forms of escape from my self. I reacted to my parents’ divorce by being caregiver to my brother and my parents. I went to college and immersed myself in learning and research. I fell in love and became a parent. I survived the turbulence of my partner’s unmanaged bipolar disorder and got divorced. I did a startup while I managed my daughter’s bumpy adolescence. I earned tenure. Along the way, I fell deeply in love with my beautiful, funny, and giving life partner DeAnn. Filling my life with love, learning, and distraction was the only strategy I had to repress the growing self-loathing that society had forced upon me with its rigid conceptions of gender.
And despite the pain this caused for 30 years, it turns out being egoless can lead to some good things. By ignoring my gender identity, I created a space in which I could focus on the things around me instead of myself: my daughter, my partners, my work. In a strange way, by ignoring a core aspect of my identity, I learned a powerful form of resilience. Failure couldn’t hurt me because there was no me to hurt. I couldn’t suffer emotionally because I’d suppressed all emotions. And my every effort to hide from my feelings was rewarded: I earned professional success, financial stability, respect, and love.
My gender identity leaked out in small ways. I secretly bought clothing I liked online wore it when I was alone, then hated myself. I bought small doses of hormones online, so I could feel I was doing something about my dissatisfaction with my male body. I read trans fiction online when I was alone. I lurked on forums and learned about the seemingly distant and impossible lives of trans people, refusing to accept that I was trans myself. And I did all of these things unconsciously, impulsively, and in terror of being found. I purged my clothing, tried to be more manly, and tried to make friends with men, and only hated myself more for it. I once bravely mentioned my feelings to a therapist and she told me I was an abomination, proving all of my fears right.
But the hiding couldn’t last forever. After sabbatical and my second marriage in 2017, my life felt stable enough and I had enough love in my life that I finally let myself feel what was always there since childhood: an inescapable sense that I was a woman, the self-loathing about my gender that the world had passively taught me, and the emotional numbness I’d learned to keep these secrets. Thirty years after first having these feelings, I started to really listen to them. I glimpsed the collapse to come and was suddenly in crisis.
It took every bit of resilience I had to keep my life at home and work stable. I spent several months building the courage to email a therapist. It took me six months of therapy to gather the courage to accept myself as a woman and come out to my wife. It took another year of therapy to come out to my family. And since coming out to family, it’s been another year of learning to love myself. It’s been isolating, affirming, and terrifying.
Along the way, there are many things that gave me courage and many things that diminished my courage. Knowing I was in a progressive city full of LGBTQ people and allies gave me courage. Knowing I was in a country rapidly eroding my civil rights (e.g., safely and legally peeing) did not. Being in the UW Information School, where race and gender equality are on most faculty meeting agendas, gave me courage. Watching my aunts, uncles, cousins, and occasionally professional colleagues deny the existence, humanity, and morality of LGBTQ people on Facebook did not. Watching pop culture accept trans people as valid, visible, and human gave me courage. Thinking about the lack of women, people of color, and out LGBTQ people in my academic communities, did not.
But on the whole, I’ve gained more courage than I’ve lost, and I’m ready to come out. Why so publicly? First, it’s not really possible to transition in private in such a public role. It’s part of my job to be known. I also recognize how being out in my academic communities might give others courage to be their authentic selves. But most importantly to me, I’ve also learned that no person can accept themselves fully without also having some small forms of validation from those around them. I hope coming out means that you might affirm my identity, so I can more fully accept myself.
So here’s what I need you to affirm:
- I am a woman. Not all trans people use binary identities. Some identify as somewhere between man and woman, others as neither man or woman, and others still as both. My identity is sufficiently binary, and has been sufficiently binary over my lifetime, that I’m using a binary word. Please don’t generalize from my experience or identity to other trans people’s; you’d just be erasing their experiences, doing the same harm to them as the world did to me.
- I prefer she/her pronouns. Again, pronouns are an approximation of gender identity. When people use she/her with me, I feel happy, affirmed, and seen. They’re more comfortable to me than they/them and definitely more comfortable than he/him, which makes me feel invisible.
- My new name is Amy. I love the name, it kind of looks like Andy, and it makes the minimalist in me so happy!
- I’m primarily attracted to women and therefore, as a woman, I identify as lesbian.
- I’ll be searching for a gender expression that’s comfortable for me. Gender expression is about how we appear and behave, whereas gender identity is what our mind tells us about our gender. While I know my gender identity, I haven’t had much freedom to explore my gender expression. Excuse me while I learn (or learn to ignore) the complex system of socially constructed gender norms that police clothing, hair, and voice, etc.
- I’m the same person I’ve always been. You just know more about who I am now. That said, I’ll probably stop trying so hard to exhibit all those masculine forms of gender expression I used to hide my gender identity, so I will probably change in some ways.
Here’s how you can affirm these facts about me:
- Use my new name. Don’t call me Andy or Andrew, even when you cite my older published work. And help others remember if you hear or see them use my old names. I’m not trying to erase it from history (that’s nearly impossible in academia, and I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t my name), but seeing and hearing my old name now does hurt, because it signals that you don’t see me as I see me.
- Always use my preferred pronouns when referring to me, just like you would do for anyone who isn’t trans. I know this might take some time for those who’ve always known me as a man. Try some of the great tips for practicing pronouns—it’s better than me correcting you over and over, and feeling terrible and unseen.
- Don’t avoid me because I’m different. I know that’s hard, because unfamiliar things are scary, but push past that fear.
I recognize that some of you might not understand or “agree” with this. I don’t fault you entirely; western civilization hasn’t done much to make trans people of all kinds very visible, so most people are ignorant of natural variation in gender identity and its ubiquity across human civilizations and history. Growing up in the 80's, I certainly was, and that ignorance kept me in the closet. The world has done a lot more to educate in the past decade, however, so there are lots of easy ways for you to learn and to be a trans ally. And if you want me to educate you, I’m fine with that: I’m an educator after all. Ask me anything you want, I’m happy to answer most questions. But don’t expect every trans person to feel responsible for teaching you or willing to talk about their experiences. It can be incredibly hard to be a subject of curiosity, because it means you’re being seen as a curiosity rather than just being seen. But I’m opting in to this role because I feel like I have the resilience to advocate for myself and others by educating you.
I will explain one thing here though, which I think is important for everyone to know: I am about as privileged as a trans person can be. I have wealth, trans-inclusive health insurance, and security of employment through tenure. I live in one of the most trans-friendly cities and states in the world. I work in relatively diverse, LGBTQ-friendly, diversity-oriented academic communities; I work at a university that’s recently been ranked as one of the most LGBTQ-safe campuses in America. As someone of Danish and Chinese ethnic background, I don’t appear to be a person of color. I’ve also lived 39 years with some forms of male privilege and socialization, which has given me extra opportunity, stability, and professional success. I’ve been in what people have perceived as a heterosexual marriage. I’ve had nearly everything that a trans person needs to survive, transition, and thrive — aside from space to come out as a child — and yet accepting myself and transitioning has still been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Now imagine I didn’t have any of these privileges. No love, no support, no job, no insurance, no male privilege, no racial privilege, no money, no progressive city, no legal protections against discrimination, and no emotional resilience. That’s the life of many trans people in the world, especially trans youth, trans people of color, and trans people who live in intolerant places (i.e., most of Earth). For every out trans person you meet, there are countless others hiding, justifiably terrified of losing everything, including their jobs, their family, and their lives, just to be themselves. These fears, and the despair that comes with them, are partly what’s behind the staggering rates of suicide attempts among trans people. Ultimately, you shouldn’t think of my experiences as representative of trans experiences; no one trans person’s experiences are, and my privileged experiences definitely aren’t.
And yet, as I’ve transitioned medically and been seen as a woman more often, I’ve felt some of my male and cis privileges slip away. TSA agents grope my “anomalous” chest and crotch nearly every time I go through security (like countless other gender non-conforming people). I’ve been called transphobic names by people on the street. Men rudely stare at me in men’s restrooms, and women rudely stare at me in women’s restrooms. A lot of people won’t look me in the eyes, presumably out of some fear of not knowing my gender. And as I transition further into a body and expression that feels more like me, I know I’ll face more sexism; more homophobia; and more transphobia, even by some “feminists”. And of course, I’ll continue to deal with being asked “What are you?” or “Where are you from?” because of my Danish/Chinese ancestry, and people will continue to call me “young” because of my face.
But I don’t really have a choice. I can’t keep lying to myself and everyone else about who I am. And since I’ve come out to myself, I’ve been happier, healthier, and more loving a person than ever. And most importantly, I’ve begun to let people in to what has always been an acutely private life. And I hope that despite any additional oppression I might face in the world, coming out in public now and every day for the rest of my life will make me an even better, more emotionally stable person.
Soon, I’ll want to use all that stability and the privileges I retain to help prevent the same kind of suffering I’ve experienced in the closet. This doesn’t just mean fighting injustice against trans folk, but fighting any injustice that derives from the assumptions that create shame and stigma about difference, whether it concerns race, gender, sexuality, ability, poverty, or mental health. Human diversity on all dimensions is a fact, and I want the world to acknowledge that fact, and build systems, community, law, infrastructure, and yes, software, that makes room for that fact. I don’t know how I’ll pursue this work yet, but you can be sure I’ll write about it when I do.
Until then, I will keep transitioning, I will heal from a life of self-loathing, and I will continue to pursue the myriad passions I have in my professional and personal life. And while I do, I encourage you to go on a similar journey as the ally of trans people like me. I challenge you to see and accept the incredible human diversity in the world, and make space for the many people hiding their differences from you in fear of your judgement. Recognize that your conceptions of “normal” are not only fictions you create to simplify nature’s infinite complexities, but cause harm, even through your silence. And if you’re afraid of these differences, don’t run from that fear, but towards it. All you’ll find is that the only normal in nature is difference, and that difference is beautiful, powerful, natural, and necessary.
Thank you to my wife DeAnn, my daughter Ellen, my brother Bryan, and my parents for all loving me unconditionally. I wouldn’t be here without their support. And thanks to the amazingly inclusive community at the University of Washington, which has made me feel so incredibly safe to come out. Everyone deserves such an inclusive, affirming workplace.
