Month: July 2020

One of my brothers asked me to cover this next topic, and it’s something that I think about frequently. I came out as trans later in life; I chose my name when I was sixteen and started transitioning medically at twenty two. I have a lot of trans friends who also came out/started transitioning later in life, and the questions posed to me were: how do we talk about them from before they began transitioning? How do I refer to myself from before my transition? What’s the most respectful way to approach this? Obviously I am writing this from my own perspective first and foremost, but I will do my best to be as concise as possible. I will also be writing this essay in two parts. The first part will be advice for cis people on how to be respectful towards trans people and their personal histories, while the second part will be more discussion based and aimed towards other trans people. I felt that this approach would have the most cohesive result for the points I will try to make.

I want to talk about my own experiences first. As stated above, I initially came out at sixteen, and the one word that best sums up this period of my life is “confusing”. It was during this time that I began to experiment with my own idea of gender, and also when I first started to ask my close friends and family to call me “Finn”. It took a long time for me to reach a stage where I was comfortable with myself, but one of the biggest influences on that comfort was the acceptance of my friends and family. One of my brothers stopped using my deadname entirely, my cis friends would regularly check in and confirm they were using the pronouns that made me feel the most comfortable, things like that. Their initial support in these formative years of my life gave me more comfort and joy than I think they will ever realise, and I’m ever grateful for them.

Continue reading “personal history”

An introduction is a good place to start. My name is Finn, I’m trans masculine and the majority of the time I am a man. Recently I went into hospital with pancreatitis and experienced the worst pain of my life. In the subsequent days of recovery, I got to thinking. I was thinking about my experiences as a trans man in needing medical care, being a trans man in general, eventually trailing towards the overarching “what does it all mean” that I assume everyone comes to. I was thinking so much and I thought, “why not start writing it down?” Surely, I am not alone in these thoughts, and if I can open a conversation with other people about my experiences, that’s a good thing.

I’d like to talk about emotional labour as a trans person, especially when interacting online. I have made the unfortunate decision to have a presence on Twitter, which can be a hub for vitriol, especially towards the marginalised. Usually, I tailor my experience to one that suits me. I follow friends, musicians, actors, like we all do. I also follow a large amount of trans-related charities, activists and voices in the community, and the majority of what I see is trans-positive. I just have the bad habit of going into a trans-inclusive tweet and scrolling down to read the comments. This doesn’t tend to go anywhere, as I simply don’t want to expend the emotional labour that would be required to even acknowledge transphobes, but I wouldn’t be writing an essay about emotional labour if I hadn’t done something. On a trans-inclusive tweet about cervical healthcare, someone had simply commented “Women” in response to “everyone with a cervix”. I, rather foolishly, decided to engage and state the facts, that I am a man with a cervix.

Continue reading “emotional labour”