My Story: An Inconvenient Truth About Rutgers And Social Justice Communities

I associate New Year’s Eve with noise. Every year when I was growing up, my mother would bring us outside at midnight with pots, pans, and noisemakers. Our own private pandemonium would be echoed all around us by the singing and wild cheering of neighbors as they enthusiastically greeted the new year to booming speakers.

I’m not a child anymore, but I’m bringing a noisemaker with me to tonight’s celebration. It’s clamorous and it’s inconvenient, but enough parties have silenced me, and I have made it my new year’s resolution to trounce on every violation to my person.

This is the truth about how I have been treated so far as a student with a psychiatric history who is living in Rainbow Perspectives at Rutgers University.

I do not owe anyone protection and I refuse to be ashamed for anything that I am about to say.

All semester, I grew close with someone who lives with me in Rainbow Perspectives, which is queer housing. He confided in me his mental health issues, so I confided back. On various occasions, he confessed to me suicidal thoughts, so again, I confessed back. He ended up reporting me right after the Thanksgiving break out of nowhere.

There were cops and ambulances at my door. Let me just say that for a group that made such a big deal about preserving confidentiality when I asked them if I could have my best friend with me (who not only was two doors down but ALSO my emergency/medical contact), they sure do a shit job of maintaining it themselves. Six cops standing in front of someone’s door isn’t exactly inconspicuous. My friends later told me that they were able to hear everything that was being said. At an even later date, I was told by the Director of Res Life that I actually did have the right to request that we meet in a private room in a different building. I had never been informed of these rights at the scene when I actually needed them.

Oh yeah, I ended up being victim blamed by a cop about rape. That was fun.

I also had a mandatory CAPS evaluation, the results of which would decide whether or not I would be kicked out of the dorms. I had to literally beg the woman who was conducting the interview to take into account that without the dorms, I would be homeless and, by extension, bereft of other vital resources, such as mental health and medical services, including but not limited to testosterone and psychiatric medication. Completing my degree would have been out of the question. I simply couldn't go home.

I did wonder why their first instinct was to kick me out instead of supplying me with resources. All year, I've been requesting to see the trauma specialist at CAPS, after I found out that there wouldn't be a trauma psychotherapy group open to all genders until the spring semester. I guess Rutgers just can't admit that its resources are being stretched thin, so instead, they take it out on the students.

I was allowed to stay, but was told by the Director of Res Life that there was still an investigation being conducted about me and that my housing status might still hang in the balance (I later learned this was false. There was simply a time lag between parties as they relayed information to each other). But at the time, I was confused and wanted to know what exactly had been said about me and what I was up against.

I went to knock on the door of my ex-friend to inquire a) if he was the one who reported me and b) if so, what had he said that would warrant an extended investigation?

What happened next requires that I preface by saying that the impact of the experience and diagnosis of mental health issues on my identity has been profound. I will gladly make the bold statement that these experiences have been more central to my identity and vital to my voice and sense of self than being queer or trans*.

The person who screamed at me was someone who I had never seen before in my life. He was unrecognizable as he screamed at me, over and over again, that I was fucked up in the head, that there was something seriously wrong with me, that I was a nutcase, that I was fucking crazy, that I was selfish, and weak, that I was a burden on my friends and a drain to everyone around me, that no one should have to be friends with someone like me. He kept screaming these things. I told him if I was kicked out of the dorms, I would be homeless; he said he didn’t give a shit.

Finally, he told me that the director of the Rainbow Perspectives program related to him when he reported me that if a student kills themselves, whether it is on the premises or completely off campus, the program has to shut down.

And he told (screamed at) me that I was a hazard, I was a threat to the safe space, and he was going to personally make sure that I wasn’t going to be there or do anything to fuck everything up for everyone else.

I told him the policy was the stupidest thing I had ever heard, and I asked him where all of the trans* students were supposed to go in the event that Rainbow shut down. He said he didn’t give a shit about the trans* people in Rainbow and that it wasn’t his problem. And he continued to demonize me and claim that I was a hazard and he was going to prevent me from fucking the place up.

God, there are no words to describe the impact his words had on me. It was life changing in that it permanently stole a piece of my ability to love myself. To me, it was worse than being called a faggot or derogatory terms for trans* people.

Most people have legal and psychological tunnel vision in that they are unable to see a hate crime when the offense is motivated by someone's psychiatric history and/or status.

I know that when you think of crimes inspired by hate or bias, you conjure images of queer people, trans* people, people of color, or people wearing hijabs, or yarmulkes.

Few of you are aware of the vulnerability to abuse, assault, and intimidation that accompanies mental health issues.

We have no voice.

We might be in a position of dependence on a system that is capable of concealing sadism in the high credibility of institutional power.

Other times, we are simply viewed as undeserving of being taken seriously. And that fucking hurts!

The slurs, pejoratives, and violence that we endure are just as devastating as their anti-queer, racial, and religious counterparts, but they are not recognized to nearly the same extent, because our culture reinforces these practices on a quotidian basis.

But he shattered my sense of self-worth and made me feel violated. I FELT ASSAULTED. The term came to my mind as soon as I left his room for a reason! Furthermore, he basically threatened me. I felt disgusting, like a criminal, something that needed to be expunged. More than anything, I felt worthless. So worthless. Instinctively, I concluded that if he felt this way about me, so must everyone else. It’s a vicious cycle; his words enable attitudes and practices that marginalize me, and, in turn, those practices and attitudes endorse his words.

***note: from this point on, I am going to refer to members of staff and administration, both students and non-students, as POP (person of power) rather than their actual titles, in an effort to preserve their anonymity.

I left his room shaking uncontrollably. By now, I was legitimately afraid. Up until this point, I had never seen this side of my friend before. Clearly, he couldn't be counted on for predictability. I was terrified that if I told someone what he said, he was in a position of power where he could retaliate out of anger by using my psychiatric history against me-and I was already in a precarious situation with my housing status as it was. Furthermore, I found out that his good friend, a POP, had actually spread my private, confidential psychiatric information around Rainbow Perspectives. That is, the content related to the reason why I had been reported was disseminated around my dorm, by someone who works for Rutgers.

So at this point, I had no fucking idea what to do. If people were talking about me, and someone else decided to report it, not knowing that it had already been reported, CAPS would be called, it would be considered another incident, and I could get kicked out or hospitalized. I knew from experience that no one was going to take my word, the word of the accused, over his. I also had no idea anymore if my very presence or the sight of me could prompt this person to retaliate out of anger-again, I couldn't put it past him to be unpredictable and volatile.

Finally, he verbally attacked me and threatened me. If Rainbow Perspectives was as committed to upholding a safe space as it purported to, surely, that would be seen as unacceptable, right?

Apparently not. I know for a fact that if I had been attacked on the basis of a queer, trans*, or racial identity, there would be a zero tolerance policy. There is no question in my mind! I’m not going to list the titles of all of the people who I have approached because I still desire to preserve their anonymity, but they are in positions of power and are closely related in some way to either Rainbow Perspectives, Res Life, or student affairs. And so far, no one has done anything.

One person didn't respond. I never heard back from them. Big surprise.

I was shocked when no one outright expressed outrage that I had been threatened by their own policy. And no one assured me that they would at least try to protect me in the event that this person retaliated.

One of the POP I spoke to finally told me that while it was outside of her jurisdiction to get directly involved, she would file a request that the situation be examined further.

But this was only after I expressed my consternation at her suggestion that we set up a meeting between her and other administrators/people from res life so that they could figure out how to find me support when things like this happen. This was even after I had told her that, according to another POP who I confided in, this was not the first time the person who did this to me had hurt someone else, nor was it the first time someone had complained about the staff member who was spreading my psychiatric information.

It felt like an implicit form of victim blaming.

Instead of claiming that the actions of these parties were unacceptable, she decided to put the focus on me. And only me. She even implied that what happened upset me so much because my history made me “emotionally fragile.” And while she did supposedly issue a request so that Res Life would investigate the situation, her first reaction was not to do something about this individual.

And while we’re on the topic of victim blaming, let’s talk about that Rainbow Perspectives policy (for the record, when I related this part of the story to the same POP who my case was originally reported to, the one who told my friend about it, she did not deny that it exists).

If a Rainbow Perspectives student kills themselves, even if it's off-campus and not in any way affiliated with university property, the entire program has to shut down.

This means that every student-including the trans* students-must surrender their access to a safe space because of the actions of one individual.

This means that in spite of our community's ardent emphasis on recognizing intersectional identities, we are going to make the dangerous assumption that the queer identity alone was the impetus to suicide.

All over this university, people are assaulted and raped. Assailants have a ubiquitous presence. But of course, the burden ALWAYS rests on the victim, and the victim alone, to provide a safe haven for everyone else.

And yet, the person who envisioned, fought for, and ultimately established Rainbow Perspectives killed herself. You cannot evade this topic by demonizing it. Suicide is already entrenched in our program's history.

And it is STILL an invaluable program. I have no idea what I would do or where I would be without it.

What shakes the program to its core are not its roots but rather, where it can potentially go.

If you provide someone with a safe space, that is a right, not a privilege. They should not be forced to benefit from that space in a purely conditional way.

And by creating a policy that attributes survival solely to the adherence of these community standards that we have, the antithesis of survival can be viewed not only as a violation of these standards, but also as a character defect, a failure on the part of those who did not survive to fully exercise the program's instrumental value.

You cannot cultivate sensitivity toward a behavior that beleaguers our community by, essentially, criminalizing it. If anything, a punitive stance in relation to this person's actions becomes a defamatory statement. It becomes victim blaming.

It’s ironic, because no one’s dead, and I was victimized by the policy anyway.

Victim blaming takes so many forms...and so does victimization. To be completely honest, because this person attacked a part of me that is so fundamental to who I am, it hurts more than when I was raped in the beginning of my college career. Yes. Yes, it hurts that much, the things that he said and HOW he said them, in a way that was meant to demean me. He made me fear for my safety. He made me feel worthless.

At this point, I am exhausted. These past few weeks have been agony. I failed a final because of everything that was going on. I don't sleep and when I do, I have nightmares about the things he screamed at me, and how awful he made me feel about myself, and how the burden of an entire community rested on my shoulders, and how my mind could actually be unclean and awful enough to sentence a housing program to closure. I don't fall asleep until 7 am anymore because I am wracked with the guilt of being a criminal, or at least, someone who has been treated as such.

I consider myself a fugitive, but not in a legal sense. The de facto criminalization of my social reality has exposed me to abuse, intimidation, harassment, and exploitation at the hands of mental health professionals and leaders in social justice communities, my whole life. My grievances are systematically placed outside the realm of surveillance. And all too often, clinicians and administrators have demonstrated their lack of understanding of the causal direction and institutional practices of marginalization that deter individuals from seeking care. Indeed, it is the structure and procedures of the psychiatric system-and the school administrators that implement them-that deny people access to assistance and thereby perpetuates their invisibility. The abuse that is inflicted by the administrative aspect of psychiatric practice within the educational system is not a unilateral occurrence that can be caught by a security camera. It is an all-pervasive condition.

It is this silent endorsement of our predicament that has stolen a piece of my ability to love myself.

And that is exactly why I brought my noise maker tonight.

Dismantling the Gender Binary in the Domain of Rape

Four days ago, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, I said nothing. After all, as an ardent feminist, I wholeheartedly support any initiative that is aimed at empowering women and eradicating gender inequality.

More than anything, my backbone had been derailed by the admonishing attitudes of fellow male survivors who saw speaking out and making claims such as, "Men can be victims of violence, too," as out of place and undermining the extent to which their female counterparts faced violence on a global and systematic scale.

But with the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence underway, I thought it was imperative to discuss the dangers in using a gender essentialist approach to orchestrating attempts at curtailing the incidence of rape and sexual violence.

For starters, these negative reactions to male survivors serve a silencing function that has several consequences. In addition to reinforcing self-blame in the survivor, it also leads male survivors to question whether future disclosures will be effective. Furthermore, it reinforces the uncertainty about whether their experiences qualify as rape-an issue that is compounded by the fact that it wasn't until 2012 when the federal definition of rape stopped excluding anatomically male bodies from the statistical reporting of rape nationwide.

Most importantly, this model of sexual violence portrays female survivors as constituents in a societal imbalance of power that subjugates female body autonomy-which is, indisputably, usually the case. However, this same model portrays male survivors as isolated victims of sick and twisted perpetrators, extricated of political context, as far beyond the scope of our comprehension as lightning striking twice in the same spot.

The implications are such that when male survivors encounter dissent to voicing their experiences in spaces that have been traditionally designed for women, and they are offered no alternative space, patriarchy is allowed to perpetuate and safe-guard the injustices that all bodies, regardless of gender, experience on a structural and systematic basis.

Because patriarchy hurts everyone.

Furthermore, by emphasizing gender socialization as the primary determinant of violence, we are allowed to ignore concomitant factors such as socioeconomic status and race. For example, native American women are more likely to be assaulted than their white counterparts, as rape has historically been used as an agent of colonial domination.

Surely, we need to have much more sharply nuanced conversations about rape. As one internet author (Jos) puts it,

"Rape is absolutely a gendered crime. This is true of how it plays out in the real world, and of our concept of rape – both the act and idea of rape are used to perpetuate a patriarchal gender hierarchy. Violence in general is function and gendered, as Eesha Pandit made clear in her powerful theory of violence. We know sexual violence is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women. But we don’t actually know how strong the gender disparity is largely because of how gendered our concept of rape is...Because our idea of sexual violence is gendered in such an essentialist way, we don’t actually have a broad picture of the gendered ways these crimes play out in the real world (feministing.com)"

Absolutely. My intention as a trans* identified male survivor of gender based violence is not to steal the show, but rather, to remind others that the world and its stage-and all of the players in it-are both potential aggressors and victims, regardless of gender.

All too often, the very mention of rape reinforces the dreaded gender binary.

I feel that the binary pits my unique gender framework against me. I am disregarded and denied access to the representation that I so badly need on two fronts: my designation as male, and my designation as a trans* male. Both play pivotal roles in shaping my experiences with gender based violence.

Rarely is this intersection of identities considered in discussions of gender based violence. As someone who is readily perceived as a cisgender male, I receive little to no support for my extensive history of emotional, physical, and sexual trauma that has accumulated both as a product of my own lived experiences, as well as those of people who are close to me. It is extraordinarily difficult to find resources that are dedicated to men, or that serve men at all. To put things into perspective, the psychotherapy groups at Rutgers that serve survivors of sexual abuse are female exclusive. Consequently, male identified people with raging cases of PTSD are left to fend for themselves.

Additionally, the fact that I am, quite specifically, a trans* identified man means that I am going to disproportionately experience and be impacted by violence in my immediate community. This violence, intensely personal, visceral, and sexually charged, has been inflicted against me, as well as those close to me, in the form of rape, beatings, harassment, and verbal assault. As a male identified person, I lack access to the support groups and services that would allow me to cope effectively with such traumas. Keep in mind that the eating disorder awareness and advocacy movement, a force that shapes the additional care we might need in the aftermath of sexual trauma, is geared towards cisgender women as well.

However, I am still capable of being denied my male privilege, even during my most vulnerable moments. I'll never forget the outrage that I felt when I was kicked out of an online support group for male survivors of sexual violence after I had divulged my trans* identity.

As a trans* individual, I am subjected to a very specific form of rape culture, as prevalent attitudes and practices condone, excuse, and normalize the invasion and objectification of trans* bodies in everyday conversation. We are seen as something to be examined, critiqued, or deemed valid or invalid by a cis person's decision. Our bodies are appraised, regarded as public domain, and viewed in terms of secondary sex characteristics. The subjugation of our bodies is amplified by the fact that psycho-medical community is literally the gatekeeper of our care. They own our bodies. We are at their mercy.

This mercy is implicated in a unique situation that is often faced by transgender survivors of sexual trauma; we fear that disclosing this abuse to our therapists will lead them to rescind their services as they pertain to our transition related care, as a history of sexual abuse can be used by mental health professionals in order to rationalize our "non-normative" gender identities.

And finally, as a trans* man, I have been actively harmed by misogyny, some of which has certainly constituted abuse. Yet in feminist spaces, I feel as though my male privilege does not entitle me to speak about this deep history, even though it is indeed vital to my voice and life experiences. I always fear that I will be usurping more "authentic" female voices, even while that same female-assignedness and socialization is used to invalidate my gender identity and to strip me of my humanity, never mind my experiences of oppression.

This is the effect of a binaried representation of rape, one that broadly portrays (cisgendered) women as victims and (cisgendered) men as perpetrators. First, the binary strips anyone who doesn't fit this model of their personhood. Then, it strips us of our intimate and deeply personal relationship with violence, sometimes by using that same damning status against us. Being trans* taught me to feel powerless, and being male taught me that I am supposed to be inherently gratification-oriented. It's why I just sat there like a stone castle and said nothing while my female friend persistently stroked my inner thigh in jest even though it made my face break out in a heat of humiliation and triggered my flashbacks of rape.

The point is that while radical feminists and men's rights groups put forth these bellicose circus acts in which they reject the suffering of the other in an effort to promote their own visibility, everyone is hurt. Women are demonized, discredited, knocked off of their pedestals, and accused of false rape allegations. Men are still deprived of resources and support. The most marginalized members in both camps-and that includes individuals who do not fall into either-such as queer people, non-binary individuals, and people of color, fail to be addressed at all.

I will conclude by inserting a quote from the same internet author as before:

"Rape is absolutely a gendered crime, but the act of rape itself doesn’t necessarily follow those rules. We need to be able to hold an understanding of rape as a genderless act at the same time that we recognize it as embedded in a gendered culture of violence. No one said feminism was easy (Jos, feministing.com)"

What the Murder of Eyricka Morgan Means To Me As a Trans* Person

Let’s not talk about Tyler Clementi.

Twenty-six-year-old Eyricka Morgan died earlier this week at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital after she was stabbed to death by a man living in her boarding house on Baldwin Street.

There are many among us who would like to know why the murder of a former Rutgers student in the town that we have come to call home is not enough to galvanize a national response to the violence that many transgender people, and especially transgender women of color, face on a daily basis.

But I don’t think that the trans* community needs to draw parallels to the struggles of a gay student in order to humanize our own experiences or make them more palpable to the masses. I want us to be defined by our own citizens.

This is why people who want to help should be asking what the murder of Eyricka Morgan means to us, and how this incident stymies our efforts to create a safe space.

Ask us how it feels to wait in line for food at the dining hall or ride the bus as our bodies are scrutinized by passerby, our secondary sex characteristics are subjected to appraisal, and our identities are invalidated by a lingering gaze.

Ask us how it feels when a file drawer full of death threats is not enough to mobilize university administrators to protect our trans* brothers and sisters in other states.

Ask us how it feels to know that our rapists were attacking a fundamental facet of who we are and why, consequently, opportunistic or random acts of violence mean nothing to us.

Ask us why random acts of kindness also mean nothing, and we will tell you that it is because the condition by which the kindness of a stranger is extended to us is our silence about our life experiences and who we actually are.

Do not further obfuscate the voice of Eyricka Morgan by publishing a name that she did not choose in local media outlets or by making claims that she faced constant “homophobia.”

Transgender people face “transphobia.” The speech and actions of the majority of people on this earth, including some who identify with the LGB community, serve to objectify and demean us. I frame my approaching graduation not in terms of my same-sex attraction, but in terms of my unique marginalized framework. When a recent Rutgers graduate is murdered a few streets away from where I had previously felt safer than anywhere else in the world, graduation can be seen as a catalyst for destruction at the hands of others and a safe space antagonist.

The perennial violence makes me feel dispensable, like a paper airplane, something that can be brought into this world only to be devalued and thrown away. I feel this way not because I am queer, but rather, because I am trans*. The number of faces that we can place to the malice aforethought and self-slaughter is unprecedented.

As I write this, I ask a close trans* friend of mine who is sitting next to me if it is a terrible thing to admit that there are times when I view myself, as well as other trans* people, as less than human. His chilling empathy is a reminder that the internalization of salient public stigma transfers the ownership of our bodies to the spirit of the times.

This pervasive attitude has profound repercussions, as fifty percent of us will have attempted suicide by our twentieth birthdays. I often ask myself if this means that the trans* community is half full, or half empty.

This is why when, in an attempt to bridge that gap between our lives and deaths, I don’t want to talk about Tyler Clementi, homophobia, or gay rights. Let us not launch these discussions under the LGB banner.

Instead, recognize what the murder of Eyricka Morgan means to us as trans* people.

Letter To My Doctor Regarding the Treatment of Trans* Patients

Dear Dr. **********,


It is my duty to preface by saying that the services you provide trans* patients are indispensable. I am deeply aware of this. I see you as an advocate on our behalf, and it is precisely because I value you in this capacity that I must discuss the manner in which these services are provided.

To be completely honest, I walked away from my most recent appointment with you deeply upset. When you said that you knew a good therapist who could completely eliminate my female speech patterns, tears automatically sprung to my eyes, not because I felt emasculated (since I transitioned to become closer to myself and not closer to the emulation of male stereotypes), but because I felt so pressured by the expectations of a cisgendered person.

You said that you felt you were only doing your job, but it is not your place to establish how someone should express their gender, nor to suggest that some element of their gender expression should be "corrected."

I identify as male but my gender expression is fluid. One day I want to dress like a British school boy; the next, I wear my old girl jeans and belly shirts. I adore makeup and love wearing eyeliner. I'm in a queer fraternity whose members venerate drag artists and collect heels.

Throughout my transition, I have had to censor from several doctors the elements of my gender identity that society does not categorize as male out of fear that they would rescind their necessary support. The medical community is not kind to people whose gender experiences do not fit into binary concepts. Unfortunately, we are forced to assimilate in order to access the care that we so desperately need. For example, I made sure I saw one of the best endocrinologists in Manhattan not because I needed an approval letter from him, but solely because I didn't want to start taking testosterone until I knew that I was completely healthy, and I wanted a second opinion. All I wanted was for him to do things like check my thyroid, and he proceeded to asking me really intrusive and unnecessary questions about things like my sex life/sexual preferences and what role I adopted or saw myself assuming in bed.

So please understand that the current paradigm of transgender health oppresses trans* people. When medical and mental health practitioners police our gender expression, our bodies cease to belong to us. When my (stereotypically) male business casual attire elicited your approval or when you told my friend that his haircut was "appropriate" and insinuated that his clothing choice satisfied the supposed requirements of his gender, I felt as though we were being appraised rather than complimented. Understand that on a daily basis, we are subjected not only to these institutionalized methods of observation, but also to the scrutiny of society. For example, I am used to hearing from a lot of people that I am "convincing" or being asked if I had "the surgery." The constant barrage of intrusive questions and unsolicited praise creates a cultural context in which a trans* person feels as though his or her body constitutes public domain.

At the end of the day, what makes a person who is assigned female at birth male or a person who is assigned male at birth female is our word. Our interests are secondary. Our behaviors are secondary. The way we dress or style our hair is secondary. I do not agree that these things are important or even worth addressing. I think that the medical community needs to accommodate our core sense of self, rather than the other way around. After all, cisgendered women don't have to justify to their doctors why they want a breast augmentation. We are the only group of people whose medical autonomy has little instrumental value on its own.

Also, I am empathetic to the fact that pronouns can be difficult to master, especially when you are juggling many trans* people in your head at once. Even I have slipped when addressing fellow trans* friends. All the same, I have to inform you that the way in which you handled the situation in my friend's case should not be repeated. In the future, if you use the wrong pronoun, an apology will suffice. When you turned to me and said that I am easier to work with because of where I am visually, your use of words implied that my friend looks less biologically male, which is the opposite of what he would want to hear. It is not acceptable to justify your instance of misgendering by using my friend's appearance as a scapegoat.

Finally, over the course of my transition, you have consistently reminded me of how bad my acne is and how greatly the testosterone had exacerbated it, even though I have been very clear about not wanting to focus on my face. On several occasions, I have firmly rejected the offer for acne medication and made my aversion to the topic clear. There is a reason why I insist on keeping the conversations medically relevant and less focused on my appearance. The eating disorder that flared up this summer was certainly not the first one I have struggled with. When you told me that my skin looked a lot better, in spite of there still being a little bit of acne on the right side of my face...which you pointed out...it made me feel uglier when I looked in the mirror. Eating disorder histories, as well as patient requests to abstain from topics surrounding body image, should be appreciated and taken into account when dispensing advice. Because honestly, every time you fixate on what is wrong with me, or even on my appearance in general, I don't want to eat. I never want to talk about my acne again.

There is something that is uniquely scathing about being subjected to the judgments and values of people in positions of authority; please recognize that because you are the one who decides upon the provision of hormonal treatment and who gives the diagnosis, someone else is at your mercy. I know that you are try so hard to be helpful, and that effort is greatly, truly, appreciated. We need advocates like you and we do not take that for granted. But please be aware at every moment that the practices and protocols under which you operate are the product of a system that was assembled for trans* people, and not by trans* people.


Sincerely,


Jordan Pollak

My Fight Against (Psychiatric) Ableism

Every night, I slip my fingers into a prison jumpsuit. The undertone of duty is flimsy and revealing and dispenses hard slabs that will improve my character.

Orange, the color of the bottle, the color of being corrected, sends the signal that I am off-limits. It communicates that I am stable but no longer desirable. The only "package" that I have is a set of behaviors that are associated with prudes and prohibitionists, neither of which I identify even remotely as.

Prescriptions are not flattering, and neither are the lifestyle changes that accompany them. I believe that I now have the complexion of a cobblestone path, bumpy and full of imperfections. There isn't a lot of makeup available in this institutional setting, so I do not have the luxury of looking my absolute best each day.

I thought that the stigma inherent in being bipolar with psychotic features, in addition to having PTSD from verbal/physical/sexual abuse, was something that I could turn my back on. Instead, I feel nearly as devalued for my current state of well being because this status is conditional.

For seven years, I was chronically suicidal and couldn't even walk down the street or perform day-to-day activities without great difficulty because a much more terrifying reality was constantly being superimposed on me. Ironically, it is only by experiencing optimal mental health (thanks to medication) and engaging in the practices that are necessary in order to maintain it that I have come to realize how ablest our culture actually is.

As a sopping hippie, I have absolutely no objectives to participating in a society that fully celebrates sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. Those are actually some of my favorite things in the world, at least, conceptually. But I cannot embrace them with open arms as my contemporary counterparts might, and as much as I would love to.

Everything serves as a potential trigger. When you possess brain chemistry that is being held up by stilts, or when you have an extensive history of abuse, eating disorders, drug abuse/dependency, and self-harm, the Roaring Twenties can come crashing down in the blink of an eye.

I feel alienated from the conversations that I cannot partake in, lest they be triggering. I cannot go to parties or even small gatherings because the overwhelming majority involve alcohol and put me at risk of either relapsing or re-experiencing trauma. The one and only drug that has actually been highly beneficial to me (marijuana) and offers a cornucopia of therapeutic application potential for enhancing my mental health is demonized by society and invites even more stigma. I fear the ubiquitous displays of sexuality because they symbolize what happened in my past, even though I desperately crave safe intimacy with another human being.

I can't enjoy the cornerstones of college life, such as caffeine and late night excursions, or other things that either make my medication less effective or make me more susceptible to relapse. I sometimes feel as though companionship will be rescinded as a result. It is lonely.

I cannot, under any circumstances, pull all-nighters unless I want to run the risk of being hospitalized or having a huge breakdown. Being excessively sleep deprived is enough to plunge me into despondency and crippling paranoia.

And in spite of how well my treatment is working, I cannot help but feel like compliance bars me from the rest of my community. It's like having a curfew on the most important New Year's Eve of the decade. Everything is on ice-champagne, vodka, dancing, and one night stands. It is a culture in which everything with a...spin is critically acclaimed.

I know in my heart that I am much better off taking care of myself.

But also in my heart, I want to be culturally attuned. I do not want to miss out on history. I want to be one of the writers.

So what can be done to overcome this sense of inferiority, this sense of being estranged from your own chronological age?

It is difficult when you are up against cultural staples. I will be working to neutralize the corrosive effects of the media and the messages that it promulgates until the day I die. Every school shooting rains acid on my parade. I wake up in the aftermath of a tragedy to find social media outlets facilitating the derogatory statements that are made about all people with mental health issues-namely, those who experience either psychosis or elements of it. It is a phenomenon that is highly misunderstood by the general public.

Laypeople frantically view you through the lens of LSD. You are seen as a caricature of the brain, a mockery of an organ.

Legislation approaches you as an archaeological find instead of a living, breathing member of an ecosystem. Your body can be understood and tolerated, but it is never meant to participate in contemporary, earthly matters.

I still don't have an answer. I am still fighting to assert an identity that defies the Hedonist/Puritanical dichotomy. I am lost in a world of synonyms and antonyms. All I know is that it will take more than a crossword puzzle clue to figure out what label I have an affinity for, and into which spaces I can fit.

Mental Health Privilege Checklist

-My mind is my own. I do not share it with anyone. I am not beleaguered by relentless and intrusive thoughts, delusions, or voices. My agency is not usurped. I conjure ideas of my own conscious volition. I am not forced to share a space in my head with a vicious, self-deprecating presence. I alone plant ideas in my head, and the consequences of their germination are within my control. My version of reality is not twisted, warped, or horrific.

-I have to use drugs in order to feel like I am under the influence of a mind-altering substance. It is my choice as to whether or not I will bug out, experience paranoia, or be out of touch with reality.

-I will not react to mundane events as though they have posed a crisis situation. My moods will not be so incapacitating that I am unable to get out of bed every day or perform basic self-care.

-If I am unable to attend work or class due to illness, I will not be accused of laziness or lack of willpower.

-Schools become less safe for me because somebody else has brought a gun to one of them, not because people will connect the atrocity that has occurred with who I am. I don't lay awake at night terrified about the implications that one person's actions can have on peoples' attitudes towards me or my ability to access care. I don't have to witness an acrimonious presence on social media sites completely accosting people who might have shared struggles that are similar to mine while simultaneously fearing that I will be lumped into the same category as them. I don't have to worry that one incident is going to reinforce damaging stereotypes about me or that the social and political climate is going to become even more hostile to my existence, through no fault of my own.

-I can interact with people and not feel like I am going to die, that they want to kill me, or that I want to kill myself. I do not perceive my mistakes or accidents as grounds for persecution. I do not view social interaction as a breeding ground for a highly orchestrated plot to attack me, and thus, I do not roam the world withdrawn and terrified.

-No one will blame me for not being well, and providing me with care will not be seen as burdensome. My medical needs will not be viewed as a character defect, a sign of laziness, or a personal fault. When I am unwell, my loved ones will be kind to me. Paying for what I need in order to live and function will be seen as a no-brainer.

-There is a greater chance that disability services will recognize my struggles and provide resources and services that accommodate them adequately.

-When I reach out for help, I am encouraged to tell my doctors everything they need to know so that I receive the best and most tailored form of care possible. I don't have to censor pivotal pieces of information so that my right to self-determination and direct involvement in the treatment process won't be curtailed. When I lay everything out on the table, I can say with a degree of certainty what is going to happen to me or what the consequences will be. And I will never, ever regret asking for help. I won't be kicked out of school, subjected to a mandatory evaluation, involuntarily hospitalized, or forced to undergo electrocution or chemical/medical regimens that I am adamantly opposed to. I will never have to choose between getting better and getting thrown into a cage.

-I can divulge a fundamental facet of who I am without worrying that people are going to be afraid of being around me, being alone with me, leaving their children with me, or being driven places by me.

-If I am fully conscious and a legal adult, it is highly improbable that my medical autonomy will be rescinded or that my desires will be blatantly disrespected.

-Clinical terms that pertain to my state of being will not be used with levity or worse, interchangeably with terms that carry damning connotations, such as when people substitute the word "psychosis" for "psychopath."

-I will only be subjected to imprisonment and treated like an inmate if I hurt another living soul.

-I don't have to take extra precautionary steps or excessively sugarcoat my demeanor in order to prove that I am not a threat to anyone else. If I hurt myself and no one else, people aren't going to automatically assume that I am just as capable of doing the exact opposite. I do not cease from raising my voice even when my anger is justified in order to dispel the myths that I will raise my hand, as well.

-If I am hospitalized, I don't have to look into the eyes of the nurses and feel like I am wasting their precious time or resources...and I can count on them to not share those sentiments.

-If I inflict bodily harm upon myself by tanning, smoking cigarettes, eating poorly, playing sports, or speeding in a car, no one is going to call me selfish or label me as an attention seeker. No one is going to suggest that I am not worth helping because I brought my predicament upon myself. If I am hospitalized due to my injuries, people will visit me and give a damn. If I die due to my injuries, my funeral and the ensuing dialogues concerning the manner in which I died will not become breeding grounds for victim blaming.

-The most important people in my life will not feel like my everyday problems exceed the scope of their friendship and the capacity to deal with them, the abilities of ordinary individuals.

-If I need medical care, I will not be deterred from seeking it due to stigma. Health care packages are more likely to consider my needs basic and quintessential. I can openly discuss my medical ailments in social spaces without having to worry that I am shooting myself in the foot.

-I do not have to think twice about riding the bus, going to the dining hall, attending class, walking down the street, or ordering food from a venue because I do not struggle with these basic tasks.

-I can navigate the public domain on my own because I won't become so crippled by my emotions or thoughts that I need help filling out forms, answering questions, talking to people, or traveling.

-When I am forced to be in crowded, busy locations and potentially stressful situations, I don't legitimately fear for my life or struggle to maintain tenuous contact with reality.

-My ability to study or absorb basic sentences is not compromised by racing or intrusive thoughts.

-I have the luxury of going without sleep or altering my sleeping schedule if I have work to do or want to stay out with friends, because the state of sleep deprivation is not going to send me spiraling into a state of despondency, suicidality, mania, self-destructiveness, or psychosis.

-I will never have to worry about the episodic abolition of the most often cited requisites for humanity-rationality, stability, and capacity for higher thought-and thus, I will never be demoted to sub-human citizenry in either my own eyes or the eyes of others.

What Do Grown Children Owe Parents Who Have Hurt Them?

They enter our world. They could be anyone. Murderers. Child molesters. Drug addicts. People with psychopathic tendencies. Full blown psychopaths. The works.

Why is it, then, that parents always try to tell us that we entered their world instead...that they were kind enough to put us up, and consequently, we owe them everything we have acquired and achieved? They can fuck up royally when they raise us, but we are obligated to at least feel indebted to their efforts. The band Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young reminds us that even when what they do is extremely hurtful, parents have our best interest at heart. (Well thank god they meant well. The insurance companies inquire about that when we're sitting on a couch with a tissue box for 50 minutes a week, every week, for the rest of our lives.)

In a similar fashion, many people want us to focus on what lies underneath this facade of uncaring and fucking up royally. But my focus is on why the facade is there to begin with.

When my friends say-with good intentions-that I should reconcile things with my parents, one of the first conclusions they jump to is that my parents love me; they just don’t always show it.

Well, no shit. Most parents genuinely love their children.

But if someone hurts you consistently, is that love useful anymore? Does it remain relevant? Is it something you can build a life around?

The answer to all of that is, “No.” This love fails us, much as a recommended course of treatment that sustains our lives but causes much pain and suffering along the way.

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me to mend familial bonds, I still wouldn’t be able to do anything that I had not been able to do when nickel-less, because let’s face it. Nickels are a useless currency nowadays.

Imagine the lack of utility that is inherent in a stack of nickels. Hell, you wouldn’t even be able to buy Advil from a vending machine or do your laundry in the Rutgers dorms.

You might end up going to the gas station twenty-five times in order to afford the former in nickels, and fifty to afford the latter. And when you finally get there, the automated coin machine only takes quarters.

Those nickels are my parents. Their love is useless to me relative to how much money I am going to have to spend in order to fix the amount of damage that they have inflicted.

They enter our world, and then they take over our lives. They are the antecedent that we did not ask for, but are obligated to enforce and uphold. They intrude upon our existence.

If a partner or significant were to invade our personal space, issue threats, and deal blows, our friends would order us to leave them instantly. There is no such thing as that kind of abuser having redeeming qualities.

But an abuser of the parental variety is always given a second chance. Why is that? Why do those same friends and even some therapists push survivors to patch things up with the people who destroyed our lives? Is it because these very people have bequeathed us with that life in the first place?

My question is this: if you administer the CPR that saves someone from drowning after you push them into a freezing lake, should you be still be convicted of trying to kill them? Hopefully, the answer will always be yes.

This is no different. Just because someone has conceived you does not mean that they are entitled to destroy you.

When you are robbed of something during childhood, your entire life will be spent grieving the loss of what could have been. The mourning process will never cease.

Those who have robbed you will always owe you something.

The question is whether or not what they took from you is worth pursuing once it has already been taken.

Your relationship with them will be tantamount to the power struggle implicit in a perennial lawsuit. By pursuing damages, the victim becomes even more damaged in the process.

Undoubtedly, you decide to stick around into adulthood because on some level, you still feel as though you require their approval in order to carry on. Before long, you become possessed by the need to be approved.

But love, like any other emotion, is primordial. We can never allow it to get the best of us. Our willingness to be devoted to another life unconditionally should arise out of relevance and because it is applicable, not because a cesspool of phylogenetically ancient emotions has started to leak into our higher seat of thought.

The moment they extend ownership instead of guidance, families make slaves out of free human beings and turn ancestry into a chain.

Those who have a greater proclivity for guilt are less likely to walk away from situations that cause them to be broken. I have no way of knowing if I will be one of those people. What I do know for now is that the love I feel for my friends is a deliberate love, one born to conscious volition and effort, not the transient passions that dictate the puppy love between school children or the obligatory devotion that the birth canal drills into a child.

Please Support My Important Personal Decision

Today, I picked up a Kurt Vonnegut novel and read leisurely for the first time in ages. Omnivorously, I absorbed the ideas, and all the while, I could feel my neurons generating useful abstractions. The cobwebs, no longer silent, extolled what I had to say. In that instant, a being of intellectual merit emerged from the wreckage of phylogenetically ancient needs that had threatened for months to consume me with their nothingness.

A semester's worth of irremediable and agonizing mental health issues has made me grow weary of echoing evolutionary sentiments. I want to be human again, not a hominid with impulses.

No longer can I allow the incremental nature of the civil right’s movement to pile up on my shoulders. Tetris is a terminal illness from which I must abdicate responsibility.

Consequently, I have decided to step down from my internship with HRC, an action that completely contradicts my character in every way. It is scary when you partake in a life that you did not envision for yourself. But it is also comforting to know that you are capable of initiating action that is conducive to your health and ultimately, your happiness.

As soon as I walked out of that building, I experienced a growing inclination to make it in this world. The misery dissipated with each step that I took in the opposite direction. The snowball effect that had been accelerating my deterioration halted in its tracks.

I wrote the bulk of this sitting at a table in Bryant Park on 40th. As I wrote, a woman-presumably homeless-babbled incoherently about how we are all victims of brainwashing and mind control.

The harrowing realization that we share so much overlap in terms of statistical vulnerability-bouts spent with nowhere to live, battling mental health issues-served as a reminder that losing our rational elements is an event so very austere.

I must take care of my perspective, for it is all that we have in this world. It is our sole means of self-defense.

Right now, I must fix my perspective so that I can make a toast to wonderful things without alcohol and heal without being a victim. I want to spent this summer feeling inspired rather than insipid, dangerously sleep deprived, and useless.

Which is why I plan on doing something completely unpredictable and wonderful this summer. In addition to obtaining professional help, I think I am going to volunteer on a Native American reservation and go on a Spirit Journey. I am going to travel the country, explore, learn, and create a self that I am capable of finding later when times grow dark again.

It is time to reestablish the roots that my parents snapped like guitar strings and tap into the intravenous potential of my own path.

There are very few things in my life that I have quit; then again, my life has never really asked for much. All it asks for at this point is the feeling of safety, a reminder that no matter what happens, perspective will save you. How you choose to view things is more important than what actually occurs. You can alter your own universe instead of creating an alternative one.

I have decided to alter my universe. For once, I am going to take care of myself and devote a significant portion of my effort to healing.

There are so many options for caged birds that now can at least sing. No longer do I operate under the illusion that I am trapped. After all, even a bar can be bent in half by an unassuming body of water.

The Life of the Activist

In theory, civil rights are unalienable, or something to that effect. So long as you slide out of a cervix onto U.S. soil-and your parents have done the same-then the lofty ideals of the Constitution will present themselves to you.

In practice, it's a bit more like chutes and ladders. And you slide into more sliding.

The bottom of the chute resembles the very groups that you are fighting for; it looks invisible, much like them.

There is no end in sight when you are always standing. You stand outside, rain or shine. You stand up to the slurs that are thrown not in your general direction, but at yourself. And then you must stand, all day long, until the pavement upon which you perch has been incorporated into your very ankles.

Civil rights movements are so very incremental. As I have previously stated, "I see now how unbelievably hard people at HRC work to garner support so that they can pay for lawyers, lobbyists, and advertising, simply so that they aren't outnumbered by right wing organizations 5:1. It thoroughly disgusts me that ENDA has been introduced in every Congress since 1994 (with the exception of the 109th) and that similar legislation has been introduced since 1974, and it's STILL legal to fire someone in 29 states for being LGB and 34 to fire someone for being trans. I can't even wrap my mind around how many people must have come before me, working their asses off, pouring hours, days, weeks, months, and years into this effort, and we still don't have these fucking basic rights. It's so demoralizing."

And so, I am quickly learning that only certain types of people can be activists. For starters, they absolutely must be passionate about the cause. My two directors each work seventy-six hours a week, and literally don't have lives. I can't even imagine how dedicated they must be. It is a humbling realization.

If they are as disillusioned and jaded as I already am, they do an impeccable job of concealing it. That alone would be impressive.

I wonder how the activist manages to convert tedium, borderline poverty, and dejection into romanticism. How are they capable of adjusting their attitudes so that they are able to survive the opposition they face daily? What frequency do they tap into that sustains their longevity?

At first, I thought that it might be possible to find empowerment through humor. So in my head, I attempted to turn every negative interaction with a stranger into an opportunity for stand up.

"Gay need Jesus."
Gay smash.

"Oh. I'm self-employed. And I don't discriminate against myself."
Haha. Very funny. Actually, wait, no. You should keep your day job, you talentless soul.

"Do you have a minute for gay rights?"
"Uh-oh."
Spaghettios. Anyone ever notice how they look like assholes? Now I see this guy's point. Gay rights do elicit an "uh-oh." And we can't be serving our five-year-olds anal sex in a can. It's just not right.

"Fuck you, faggot."
Fuck you too! But only if we can invite David Bowie, Mick Jagger, and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Because gay people are into all of that at the same time. The rumors are true.

"I'm not gay!"
Not even for James Dean? It's not a bad place to start. And he probably wouldn't complain.

"We're working to end discrimination against gay and transgender people in the workplace."
"What? Why would you want to do that?"
Same reason you're allowed to have a face, even though you shouldn't be.

"HRC partners give a small monthly contribution."
"Wait. I'm straight. I'm not a member."
"You don't have to be gay to be a member!"

It's a five star club and we will give you free towels with Meryl Streep's face stitched onto the front. Aren't you thrilled about being able to bask in the exclusivity?

And then, I saw that there were some positive encounters interspersed with all of the daunting effort. There was the guy who looked like a broey straight douche fuck, but was actually only straight, and thought it was ridiculous that anyone should be denied rights simply based on who they are. There was the young woman who, in spite of being soaked, exhausted, and broke, said that she would at least stop to hear hear what I had to say because her background in social work had made her sensitive to the plight of disadvantaged groups. There was the adorable old man whose progressive views completely defied what I was (erroneously) expecting from someone his age. There was a young man in a yellow sweater who did not know much about LGBT issues but was completely on board with all human beings having basic rights. And then there was the man with a thick Scottish accent, a shirt that said "Blow Me" above an image of bagpipes, and an affinity for the cause that was so infectious, it must have paralleled my own. He gave me $20 and ardently thanked me for what I was doing.


This is why I kind of feel like I'm in the LGBT military. I'm miserable without detesting what I am doing. Never in a million years could I use the word "hate" in reference to the type of work that I must engage in. This is why that, in spite of how taxing this effort is on every nerve in my body, I will never stop being a part of it. I honestly believe that what I am doing is important, and-in a sense of the word that artificially inflates the value of my own opinion-right.

I also know that what I am doing is the only path to legislative success. Much like when I experienced major trepidation prior to taking testosterone, I realize that the only way out is through.

And the activists that get the job done can only make it with the help of ordinary, average people. Many of the services that we take for granted, such as those that are provided by Planned Parenthood, are only available to us because activists are willing to do the grunt work that makes it possible for them to exist at all.

Whenever you are out on the streets of the city and make the decision that the gym you are headed to takes precedence over what the binder-equipped activist has to say, you undermine the urgency of legislative action and make it that much more difficult for us to overcome the opposition of groups like Focus on the Family and Christian Coalition, organizations that contribute on a weekly basis to discrimination. Freedom-unfortunately-is a marketplace, and it is only by treating ideas as commodities and exchangeable assets that must leave the lips of one and enter the ears of another that our liberty will have any value.

However, we don't only need the finances that give us the sustained and ongoing grassroots support that are required in order for every single campaign to be a success. We desperately need your time of day.

When you stare straight ahead as if the activist is not there, and walk right on by, our intrinsic motivation to do what it is that we do on a daily basis becomes ghostly, as well.

All it takes is one positive interaction to boost the morale of someone who has been standing up, against, and out, all day long.

That basic kindness goes a long way...the entire length of the Statue of Liberty's cervix, actually, just to be clear, in no uncertain terms.

Why Marriage Equality Is No Longer My Cause

Yesterday, I posted the following status:

"Dear Civil Rights Movement,

Please. Guide me in the right direction this summer while I work for HRC. Help me to reconcile my disillusionment with the neoliberal/albelist/classist/racially unjust/trans exclusive LGB"T" movement and its emphasis on assimilation as a determinant of respectability and equal protection with my faith that the same pragmatic approaches and principles that worked so many years ago will once again motivate genuine social reform. I am torn between promoting change from the inside slowly but surely and the knowledge that I will be enabling an agenda which focuses on the privileged majority and ignores those whose very existence obfuscates its image to the masses..."

That status was triggered by my escalating resentment with a nearly seven year long career in queer activism that has seen one issue beaten to death, and, well...to be perfectly blunt, queer (mostly trans friends) actually beaten and their access to justice occluded by the lack of visibility that is perpetuated by the umbrella LGB movement.

A few weeks ago, one of my closest friends attempted suicide. A lot of his distress resulted from his status as a trans person. To receive the news was nothing short of devastating. I realized to my chagrin not long after that he had joined what I like to call the "How The Other Half Lives" club. Since 50% of trans individuals attempt suicide by their 20th birthday, I use this term to denote those of us who incredulously ask our trans brothers and sisters who do not try to take their lives, "Really? How does the other half actually live? How do they do it when this world is so inhospitable to our existence?!"

Today, I received a Facebook message that did it for me. This message was sent by a trans friend who has already been severely taken advantage of by the system in regards to his trans related health care. He is commenting about Rainbow Perspectives at Rutgers and how invaluable it is, since he faced many difficulties at his old school due to his trans status:

"I would have had a much higher chance of being able to graduate living in that situation. I feel like such a failure dropping out but I just can't live like this anymore. I'm really happy that situations like your exist and I really hope that more students are given that option. I'm so happy that you are where you are. I'm sure you'll use your education to do great things and I hope to see you this weekend."

It made me cry. It still makes me cry that HRC employees made trans activists remove the trans flag from the view of cameras at a protest in Washington D.C. that had been organized by those who wanted to see DOMA and Prop 8 rescinded.

What moves me so much about the Freedom Rides of 1961 is that both black and white people were willing to die so that all Americans could have rights.

But it is 2013 and I feel like I am watching my trans family drop like flies around me. I am sick of feeling as though there is something so egregiously wrong with our identity that those in power are ashamed to expand legislation in our name.

They hone in on our protection-worthy status without even bothering to know us as people, and by focusing only on our vulnerability, and not the damaging perceptions that cause others to target us in the first place, we become this burden, a Scarlet Letter facing a situation so grave that the LGB group begrudgingly adopts our cause in the name of purported fairness.

But they are not really willing to die for us, and with us, as I undoubtedly would have been willing to do for my black brothers and sisters, provided that I had been born in the 1960's and able to participate in the Freedom Rides.

At this point, we remain a knob of disenfranchised and severely disadvantaged nerve endings that are easier for those in power to amputate than repair.

This post is for every trans person I have met who has has attempted suicide (nearly all of them), who has been homeless for who they are, who has been physically or sexually injured because of who they are, who has turned to sex work or lives in poverty due to employment discrimination, and who has cried in despondency before Google search results that yield no promise of conditions improving for trans individuals anytime soon.

And this is why I have pretty much stopped giving a shit about marriage equality.

What Changing My Name Means To Me

I always thought that being transgender was such a hindrance to my humanity. It seemed that all of the time, money, energy, and emotional faculties that I invested in the tenets of survival reduced me to nothing more than needs and a contempt that turned every act of improvement into a hybrid of new beginnings and an abyss that would never be filled.

Over time, the extra steps that I had to take in order to assert who I really was became infused with a skepticism that dampened my passionate response to existence. The Dionysian spirit of self-empowerment decomposed as the methodical certainty which I so desperately sought receded with the distance of a repeating decimal. I knew exactly what I needed to do in order to live. But every fiancial barrier, primary care protocol, and suggested guideline (note how they are promulgated by cisgendered people, never trans folk) which demanded that I be soluble in someone else's standards and more palpable to the masses only served to reduce me to a set of criteria that could be used by others in order to discern the authenticity of my identity.

Within the constraints of the contemporary Trans Rights movement, I was always made to feel as though my gender identity and the perennial struggle to achieve the secondary sex characteristics that my brain mandated I develop at all costs was a burden. The great lengths, the hurdles, and the leaps and bounds seemed to detract from who I was-or rather, who I could have been-and necessitated that I be a pioneer before I was a person, a patient and a diagnostic category before an individual.

My feelings have changed entirely. Today, after assuming a name that I paid for with my own hard earned money and imbued with rich personal significance and history, I realize more than ever that being transgender is a source of pride and a uniqueness so profound that I cannot help but rejoice at having been...well, born this way.

While many people spring out of Zeus's forehead, their gender identity fully-formed and intact, I had to work ten times as hard simply to be recognized as male. I realize now that I am a stronger person, a more resilient person, and a more empathetic person precisely because my armor germinated as a product of hard work and sacrifice.

Every dollar of my own money that I put towards transitioning and every doctor's appointment, counseling session, and support group that I attended by myself enriched, rather than poisioned, my character.

This journey forced me to be dependent on other sources of identity, ones that decorated a previously untrodden path, and I am so much better for it.

My unique journey has afforded me the opportunity to earn, and I mean REALLY EARN a title, an affirmation, a symbolic gesture. I call myself "Jordan" after "Jordan Todessey," the person who plays the transgender character "Adam" on the show Degrassi. He was introduced to the show during the summer when I realized that the term "transgender" applied to me. I decided to assume the middle name "Wayne" after my grandmother's brother, a beautiful human being who founded the first gay synnagouge in Manhattan and whose humor, charm, and kindness radiates our familial history with the light of his life in spite of the darkness and inner turmoil that emanated from his closeted status. Enamored by the type of man that he was and firm in my conviction that this was the type of man that I aspired to be, I chose to assume his name as part of my own so that I could carry him in my heart, always.

By choosing a name, I am able to disseminate a fundamental facet of myself to the world.

While others are fixated on finding the self, I, and countless other trans folk, are at liberty to CREATE a self, from scratch, devoid of even the most trivial of preconceived notions.

In a previous blog entry that I posted the night before I started using testosterone, I evaluated my transition through the lens of The Overman, a figure who, according to Friedrich Nietzsche, overcomes his humanity by creating a new set of morals under which he decides to live. The Overman is a self-creating figure, one who derives power through self-empowerment.

This is what I wrote:

"For a split second, I curse the scientific method, and that avenue in which we are analytic at every turn, because it has become more of an alleyway than an asset. It is a scene that incriminates, deprives us of blood, bruises us when we rebel, infringes risk upon us, and paves our road with regret instead of who we really are.


I am afraid, but I am also the Overman. I am, not less than a biological male, but something more than, something in addition to, and that in-addition-to is the implication of strength, courage, and empathy that I would not possess, had I not been born something other than a biological male.

The Overman. I have decided to challenge the gender binary. We are taught to leave the world a better place than when we found it, to venerate those who live in a manner that is consistent with altruism. But I venerate those who live in a manner that is consistent with entropy, those who leave the world in an increasingly chaotic state. It would be a privilege to add disorder to the universe, to expend from the system every iota of wisdom that we take for granted, to compel other people to mark up and annotate the nuanced gender spectrum, and ask that they leave it acronym-laden."


I spoke so highly of these ideals without fully believing that their weight resounded inside of me. I now understand that it was only by experiencing life in a transgendered body that their true value could be actualized.

I wrote,
"My beliefs will rub their decibels against each other like diamonds that don't have the heart to tarnish the surface of something that they can sympathize with. Everything that is important enough to define me will endure."

I wrote that. I wrote about being so steadfast in who I was that inner conflict could only make me stronger.

Now, I BELIEVE that.

Satire of Steubenville Rape Coverage

(Disclaimer: This is a SATIRICAL news article clipping that I wrote. As a survivor of sexual violence, my contempt is directed at victim-blamers and rape apologists, NOT the person who is raped. This is an issue that I feel very strongly about.)


Two days ago, Steubenville High School football player Trent Mays expressed regrets for the consequences of his actions after hearing his guilty verdict read aloud in court:

”I would truly like to apologize to [the girl], her family, my family, and community. Those pictures shouldn’t have been sent around, let alone taken.”

The crime of photography beyond a reasonable doubt in Ohio is punishable by imprisonment for up to two years in juvenile jail, five tops if the camera is stolen. Seeing as this was the only crime that the boys were on trial for, and nothing else, the sentence is expected to remain this way.

However, the outcome of the trial, as well as the content of the plaintive (which almost makes things about the plaintiff, but not quite) apology uttered by the defendant through gut-wrenching sobs, elicited outrage from hundreds, possibly thousands of Americans, who thought that Mays and Richmond were guilty of something else entirely.

Said one anonymous forum user, "Those pictures should NOT have been taken. It should not have happened. It defied the laws of physics, as it is impossible to take pictures while one's fingers are inserted inside a vagina. And yet it happened. Which is why he should ALSO be convicted of...lying."

Coming Out and Mental Illness

***Edit: This is a different kind of coming out. I have OCD and PTSD. After spending the past week feeling like someone who is less than human and convinced that no one would ever love me or want to be my friend anymore if they knew, I have decided to adopt a "Take me or leave me" attitude. You accept every part of me, or none of me at all. Don't pity me. Pity the people who are cruel and ignorant...because they will be harder to change. And hopefully, by living our lives visibly and without shame...they will one day. ***

And now for the original post:

Stigma is a black market emblem.

It is an antecedent that denotes us as a set of all integers rather than as individuals.

It is a de facto law that disqualifies our souls from participation in society...but not our skeletons.

Deinstutionalization has replaced hospital stays with the immutable mark of remissions on patient charts.

We are supervised not by hospital staff, but by the insidious glances of those who judge from a privileged distance.

We are the North, and the needles in their eyes-the daggers in their stare-respond to our weaknesses with an absolute magnetism. Our gestures become egregious and unforgivable, the by-products of a seedy bar on the wrong side of the bell curve.

On days when we feel as though we are dying, our screaming bodies-in the tradition of Socrates-attempt to transcend and ignore our nature because it is what we are expected to do.

When we stand up for ourselves, whether it be in the form of asking for an extension on an assignment or calling out of work because we cannot even get out of bed, our actions are the epitome of sacrifice. We dispel the order of the universe by coming across the exceptions to its rules and in the process, we bear the burden of harboring the variance that occurs within a species.

We stand by and witness the misrepresentation of what is a fundamental facet of our being, a recessive trait expressed only through the consternation of others in the wake of tragedies such as those that occurred in Aurora and Newtown.

We are a morbid curiosity bestowed upon others by the light spectrum, and not by purpose.

Enough is enough.

We cannot abdicate the responsibility to discuss these issues in a mature and dignified manner.

I know that They do not understand. Their ideals are less damaging than mine, less threatening to the stability of the world as we know it.

But we must disrupt the balance between all beings like ideas that were first espoused in the 1800's and the world hasn't been the same since.

This is simply a part of who we are. I would rather live in a world where corsets are loosened and morals follow suit than one where my mind is viewed as an abomination. If this confession carries the same weight as the bathtub gin that undoubtedly launched a thousand court dates, then so be it.

Sidewalks should be paved with gold, and not history books. They must be composed not by the winners, but by the common man and every ailment that is spewed-as Wilfred Owen would say-from his froth corrupted lung.

What It Means To Be a Real Man, God Fucking Dammit

On Sunday, I attended an orientation for students who are planning on being involved in Greek Life. A man on a podium spoke of standards of excellence that we are to abide by. He demanded dedication to the highest ideals of manhood, ideals that resonate deeply with someone who has always dreamed of embodying a man.

I grew up hearing my grandmother tell stories about her brother, Wayne Bardy, a person that I am honored to call a relative. Before he was killed in a motorcycle accident at the age of fifty, he came out as gay to all of his loved ones at a time when homosexuality was considered a disease. He founded the first gay synagogue in Manhattan. He would don a tuxedo and fool everyone at celebrity parties into thinking that he belonged there-and with his charm and exceptionally good looks, he probably did. He worked an honest living on a cruise ship and consequently had lovers and friends all over the world. On freezing cold winter days, he would stock up on peanut butter, jelly, and bread so that he could give sandwiches out to the homeless, even though he struggled with his own living expenses. He designed original clothing, including a pair of jeans with an embroidered pattern so exquisite, I want to showcase it somewhere at Rutgers.

Everyone loved him not only because he approached life with an affinity for adventure and an unflappable sense of humor, but because he always, always, always treated other people with respect and kindness...

Right before I started taking testosterone, I swore to my grandmother that I would adopt the middle name "Wayne" when I have it changed legally because he is the kind of man that I want to become.

I carry every day in my heart not only his legacy, but the legacy of anyone who has ever called himself a man.

And every day, I strive to be worthy of the highest precepts of manhood, because that is not a title I take lightly.

Unfortunately, it means nothing to the majority of people in this world that I will always treat a woman better than I would treat myself. It means nothing to my doctors, my professors who accidentally call out my wrong name in class, and the people who don't understand what trans is that I will never hook up with a woman who is wasted or that I will give up a seat for her on the subway.

It means nothing to them that my transition was as much about getting to be a gentleman as it was about getting to be a guy.

And still, it means nothing to them that when my mom abused me my entire life, I never raised a hand to her, because I firmly believe that someone who calls himself a man should never hit a woman, ever.

I have to fight so hard just to be perceived as male from an aesthetic standpoint. It has cost me hundreds of dollars and hours of travel time. I'm risking cancer and all kinds of unknown and untested effects from the long-term use of a highly controlled and potentially dangerous substance. I'm destabilizing myself and exacerbating my mental health issues by throwing my body into a chemically imbalanced state of chaos, and seriously jeopardizing my own sanity and well-being, just to be able to call myself a man.

So when I hear nearly an entire room of people who have been designated male at birth laughing when the person on stage makes light of girls losing their right to say no if they are at a frat party late at night, I just want to fucking scream at the world. They do not deserve their chromosomes. They are not real men...and yet, their legal documents purport authentic maleness. And mine don't.

Why I Vehemently Deny That Gender Is a Social Construct-And Why It Is a Beautiful Thing That Women and Men Are Inherently Different

I feel just as threatened by theories that posit gender is completely social as I do by the transphobic individual. Both insinuate that my very architecture is not authentic, that the elementary particles of my identity are in the eye of the beholder, and not my own body.

My body is my body, and not a cultural category.

Social constructs might be human conceptions, but humans are not.

Even in the most enlightened of societies where gender stereotypes have been eradicated, the 10th grade me still would have cringed when adults told me knowingly that I would want to have kids when I was older. To them, pregnancy would always be a potential life, a protagonist, a gift that gentrifies the empty nests we all come to build following a secondary education.

To me, the conceptualized child that I would be expected to carry to term would still join the ranks of the monstrous, like the dead deer lying on the highway divider as my parents' car drove down Rt. 9.

The diagrams of vaginas and fallopian tubes in our health class textbooks still would not apply to me. The female-oriented support groups that were listed when I Googled "eating disorder" in high school still would not apply to me. Efforts on behalf of the staff at my Jewish sleep away camp to promote healthy body images among the female population still would not apply to me.

To imply that gender is purely social is to imply that the temple in which I spend every waking and sleeping second is at the mercy of whatever some postmodern philosophical quack decides to preach from the pages of the same insipid publication that proposes quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct (yes, that actually happened).

Would you call schizophrenia a "problem of living?" I would hope that, given its universal distribution across cultures with varying degrees of westernization and the enormous progress that has been made in identifying the biological basis of schizophrenia, this assumption would never leave your mouth, let alone cross your mind.

Certainly, strong interpersonal support acts as a buffer against the worst symptoms, while lack of these same resources is associated with higher relapse and hospital admissions rates. But at the end of the day, if you are hallucinating, it is not solely because you lost your job. It is because a pre-existing genetic vulnerability to the manifestation of schizophrenic symptoms has been activated.

The point is that biology fucking matters. First, I am going to provide additional evidence to support my argument. Then, I am going to explain why I don't think it is a bad thing to say that men and women are qualitatively different.

In preparation for my own hormonal shift, I spent months consuming volumes of literature that described in detail the biological differences between the sexes and how this translated into behavioral differences.

For example, I read in one book that researchers from Cambridge University found that gender differences in what babies prefer to look at are present the day they are born. In their experiment, male babies fresh from the delivery room were more than twice as likely to look at a dangling mobile, while female babies were more likely to look at a young women smiling at them. Sex differences in the anatomy of the eye may suggest that boys are pre-wired to be interested in motion and girls are pre-wired to be interested in faces. The retinas of almost every male animal is significantly thicker because they contain a much higher concentration of "M" (magnocellular) cells, which receive input from the color-blind rods and detect motion.

On the contrary, female retinas are dominated by "P" (parvocellular) cells, which receive input from photosensitive cones and detect information about texture and color. They are more involved in object identification than "M" cells. At very young ages, even before they have any conception of gender, studies show that on average (although obviously, there is major variation within both groups), girls tend to voluntarily seek out dolls and boys tend to voluntarily seek out trucks or cars to play with. When they reach school age, girls tend to draw people and use warm colors. Boys tend to portray verbs, such as vehicles in motion, and use very little color. Given these discoveries, it might offer a possible explanation as to why more women receive degrees in fields that center around people and feelings, such as psychology and English (although social factors are also important to consider).

Now came time for the real test. Taking testosterone was going to teach me first-hand whether these differences actually mattered. Would they be profound, like the unmistakable effects of a prescription sleeping pill on the central nervous system, or barely discernible, like the tendrils of fatigue brought on by drinking a cup of chamomile tea?

The answer was delivered rather quickly. Within the course of a month, I found that some of the most enduring and defining characteristics of my psychological life had been dismantled and constructed into something entirely different. The manner in which I had experienced emotion and thought for nearly two decades was altered profoundly in a relatively minuscule period of time.

My meticulous documentation of the "new me" (which is still sitting in my Gmail drive to this very day) makes it clear that I am not the same person I was before taking testosterone. Fundamentally, I am the same. Qualitatively, I am so very not the same.

I changed so fucking much. To deny this is the name of political correctness would require turning my back on a nearly eight month roller coaster ride.

I went from being the kind of person who cried every day and was moved so easily by any remote vestige of sadness in the world to someone who was largely unable to cry (unless shit got real) and was no longer physiologically engulfed by emotion. Now, my body exhibited greater selectively when reacting to sadness or fear. My anxiety attacks became more centered around a cognitive appraisal of stress, and not the recurring autonomic arousal that I had learned to live with for years.

I had always approached problems logically, but prior to T, I felt my way around the world as much as I thought it through. Now, the ability to detach entirely from the emotional aspect of a conflict became possible, even habitual.

To say that my emotions were no longer expressed in a manner that was consistent with venting is not to say that they disappeared entirely. It was quite the opposite, actually. They were not destroyed-they simply changed form.
Now, I felt things deeply inside of me, and not on my face. Everything was so heavily internalized, in spite of my new outwardly reserved nature.

There were things about being male that just clicked once I started T that I never would have been able to understand prior to taking it. It suddenly made sense why women saturated the couches of therapists all across the country. It wasn't because society discouraged men from talking openly about their feelings. It was because something about testosterone made it impossible to discuss emotions and that much easier to act on them.

I remember telling a close friend, during a particularly dark moment, that it suddenly made so much sense to me why men completed suicide at a rate that was four to five times that of women. There was something about this inhibited male darkness that could be detrimental to one's survival.

All of a sudden, I really and truly preferred social isolation during my worst moments, and wasn't just saying that I wanted to be alone. For years, my first instinct during times of stress would be to talk to someone or surround myself with friends. I'll never forget the first time I experienced this foreign male practice called repression. After an intensely stressful night at work (I was a waiter at the time), I went to reach for the phone while I was waiting to hand in my tips so that I could call my best friend, as I had countless times before in similar situations.

Suddenly, talking about my feelings seemed like the most futile thing in the entire world. I could feel the unspoken sentiment being sucked back into my chest as I lowered my hand and marveled, honestly marveled, at how easy it was to swallow up the significance, bury it, and wait for it to build up.

Which leads me to the build up part. I had a lot of anger in the beginning, and while it died down, it continues to be the intrinsic motivation behind everything that I do, whereas my previous-and, up until this point, unchallenged-muse had been sadness. For me, this was huge. It was like a fucking paradigm shift. Instead of running into the bathroom and crying at work every time I was misgendered, I felt flashes of rage being internally directed towards the customer that had addressed me improperly. I began to hate my parents for everything they did to me over the years, and not just myself. The burden of blame became more evenly and fairly distributed. The tone of my writing changed as the pervading theme morphed from despondency into fiery passion.

I remember the stark understanding that registered in my head while watching the crime show Numb3rs on t.v. When a character whose daughter had been kidnapped knocked down all of the book shelves in his study as the time that he had to find her ran out, it clicked for the first time that this was a rendition of male sadness. Contrary to what a first glance might suggest, this man was not full of rage. Rather, he was full of despair. That never would have made sense to me prior to taking T. This is merely one of many ways in which I came to understand what it means to experience emotion as a male.

I continued to be affectionate with my close friends, but found it increasingly difficult to be indiscriminately nurturing. I simply was no longer comfortable with saccharine displays of affection unless I knew somebody really well. I went from being a big ball of love all of the time to someone who could no longer find the right comforting words unless it was a true crisis. Otherwise, on a day to day basis, I found that it required much more work on my part to sustain the quality of my interpersonal relationships. Emotional intuition became something that I had to exercise daily, or I would lose it.

I refuse to believe that the development of what would be deemed by society as male- typical behaviors progressed as a result of being socialized as male. This is due to the fact that although these tumultuous changes were erupting inside of me, it was a good two months before my customers (who, as complete strangers, serve as a valuable reference of progress) at work started addressing me as "he." In fact, apart from my customers and coworkers, who didn't even really understand what was going on and continued to treat me as a female, I barely interacted with anyone, as I had confined myself to self-imposed isolation until I could emerge from my chrysalis like the Butterfly Man that I was. Everything else in my life remained constant. The only variable that was being manipulated was the hormonal balance in my body.

This is why I believe that men and women are different. And you know what? That's a fucking great thing. People are special and have unique talents! We claim to live in a society that cherishes diversity, when in reality, there is an uproar any time a new scientific finding suggests that we all diverge just a bit from the basic biological template that underlies us all. This standard deviation is something to be celebrated, not suppressed.

While I absolutely prefer to experience emotion and thought as a male, simply because this is who I was supposed to be all along and I needed hormones to fix the awful disease that stunted my true development, my experiences have made me able to appreciate the sheer beauty that is exuded by women and all that they are capable of.

I spent my entire life resenting the womanhood that had been imposed upon me. Now that I am healthy, and my body is moving in the direction of where it should be moving, I am viewing femininity with fresh eyes. It seems paradoxical, but it is precisely because I have been imbued with male biology that I can start to see how my curse is someone else's greatest gift.

I suddenly have this insane respect for women and a deep reverence for everything that they do. I absolutely love women like I can't even begin to express. I even consider myself a feminist now.

I think that it is amazing, all that women have to offer the world, as women, and not as men. Because even though I was not meant to be female, I can still acknowledge the merits of femininity. It saddens me when I hear radical feminists vehemently denying all that makes them unique and special. They denounce traits that I used to possess-traits that I coveted highly and struggled to part with on the eve of my transition-and speak of them as though they are deplorable.

I haven't a single regret about how things turned out for me, but I can still acknowledge that a loss was sustained.

It saddens me when women deny all that makes them valuable assets to society and truly magnificent members of our species. It saddens me that our idea of praising women is glorifying men, and that the only way a woman won't be seen as a traitor to her chromosomal tribe is by emulating a traditionally male role.

I think that women are fucking wonderful and I refuse to demean them by saying that they are the same as men and that there is nothing, nothing that sets them apart in the most positive of ways.

You are doing everyone a disservice when you deny that gender is biological. You undermine the deeply painful existences of trans people whose lives are centered around trying to fix what nature fucked up.


You undermine the experiences of anyone who is a gender non-conforming individual by insinuating that who they are is deeply societal rather than deeply personal and fixed. Males and females are exposed to vastly different sex hormones prenatally as well as during puberty, when secondary sex characteristics emerge. Because the brain has numerous receptors for these hormones, development may diverge based on which chemical is being secreted. In fact, studies have shown that girls who are exposed to abnormally high levels of androgens before birth tend to have male-typical toy preferences, play patterns, levels of competitiveness, occupational preferences, facial perception skills, and mental rotation abilities.

You deny the beauty in every woman that blesses this earth with her presence.

You hurt men, too. There also exists a stereotype that boys don’t like to read when actually, they are alienated by English assignments that focus on role-playing, analyzing character motivations, and discussing feelings. This does not appeal to most boys. One reason for this is that in men, the amygdala, which plays key roles in emotion regulation, has fewer connections to the prefrontal cortex, which is the epicenter of articulation. Women have many more connections between their amygdala and cerebral cortex, so they are equipped to verbalize what they are feeling. Generally, men are less capable of coherently addressing emotion. In school, boys score significantly better in all areas of comprehension when they are assigned nonfiction reading, newspaper articles, and assignments that play on their strengths. Literacy and the ability to communicate effectively are lifelong skills that are more important than ever, regardless of profession. By ignoring innate gender differences, men are subjected to disadvantages, too.

Basically, everyone is hurt when you say that gender is entirely a social construct, and nothing else.

Biology allows us to breathe a sigh of relief. It lets us know that we are born this way. And that there is nothing wrong with that.

How To Date When You Are A Trans Guy

For my creative writing class, we had to write a short piece in the same style as the author of an assigned reading. It has to be a two page "How-To" guide about something personal, and it needs to be written in the second-person. The original work was "How to date a brown girl black girl white girl or halfie" by Junot Diaz. This is my version. I poured my heart into this, so enjoy!



Sneak it surreptitiously into small-talk all week when acquaintances inquire about your Friday night plans, because the chance to do so does not arise often. Ideally, you'd be a man whore, or better yet, a devoted lover, but your carefully planned aspirations to be the eclectic blend of British, metrosexual, and G.Q. model that is so highly coveted by straight women and gay men clash with your incongruous anatomical ensemble. And so, you embrace this blue moon with every inch of your biology, or lack thereof.

If the date is with a girl, brace yourself for the high fives and one-dimensional dialogue of straight men as they vicariously channel their voyeuristic lust into your dinner reservations-even though your involuntary participation in the female role for seventeen years of your life has primed you to view their misogynistic comments with repugnance.

If the date is with a guy, brace yourself for the furrowing of brows from the same people who have just been cajoled into tentative acceptance by your heartfelt rendition of what it means to be a man in spite of what it says on your birth certificate, only to have their conception of masculinity challenged even further as an additional tier is cemented onto your irrevocably queer identity.

While you debate on what to wear, be sure to disassociate every time you look down, or your dysphoria will trigger an inconveniently timed panic attack. Luckily, the psychological saran-wrap that your eyes utilize as they glaze over reminds you to grab a condom on your way out the door. At the last minute, you stick a knife into your coat pocket, not only because it offers the illusion of security from belligerent drunk people on Easton Avenue when they take note of your effeminate features, but because you might need to seek refuge with the blade in a bathroom stall when your date inevitably makes some remark that reminds you of the components that are covalently bonded below your belt.

When you arrive at the restaurant, give your date a hug and pull out their chair for them because it has taken you a lifetime to earn your unalienable right to be the chivalrous one. There is a 95% chance that they too are a member of the LGBTQIA community, so there is never a dearth of conversation topics and the sexual innuendos flow as freely as international trade.

However, you are well aware that-ironically enough-participating in acts of sodomy does not mean that someone has been enlightened with original plumbing etiquette or that their vocabulary has been enriched with “nice-t words.” If it is a first or second date, you try not to feel completely violated when they inevitably ask you about the sordid details of surgery or menstruation and instead steer the conversation in the direction of a mutual intellectual interest or favorite movie. It is not a matter of whether or not they will disappoint you and end up being like everyone else; it is a matter of when.

You bristle as an incendiary circuit sends a powerful charge coursing through your entire system when they use language that, in no uncertain terms, elucidates the feminine etiology of your past. The stormy sky inside of you invokes a simile involving idiots and electrical outlets. They might even ask you when you decided to be trans. You have to remember that this isn’t Facebook and you can’t sardonically call people out on their ignorance by responding with a string of song lyrics such as, “Oh what a night/Late December back in ‘63.”

The two of you head back to either your place or their place. All you want to do is hook up while watching a Mel Brook’s movie on a used sofa that has been mottled by mystery liquids and the asses of savory characters from Craig’s List like every other person your age. You are not some radical queer who feels the need to point out that the binary is perpetuated by the use of black-and-white film screening techniques in Young Frankenstein.

Your lust for their body overpowers your disgust for your own, and the clothes are peeled off in rapid succession. The clamorous course of your heart as it races towards satisfaction is intercepted by the pain of being perceived by someone other than a bathtub. Every antecedent is exposed between the sheets. The necessary truth ex nihilo nihil fit-out of nothing comes nothing- makes it inevitable that you will end up having to educate him or her while you are naked.

That testosterone has transformed you into the more reticent of the sexes in a matter of mere months is hardly evident as tears automatically spring to your eyes like a reflex. If you are with a girl, recover quickly from the divisive slice as she separates you from other men by saying that you are different and not like other guys. If you are with another dude, ignore the stab of envy as your pupils widen to accommodate the girth of his manhood.

Try not to feel like your body parts have been outsourced from basements and that your skin was constructed from the second-hand upholstery used by Coach bag vendors in China Town. You have needs and are determined to form an interpersonal union in the absence of dulled senses, partly because you cannot emotionally afford to grow dependent on masking the pain and partially because you have been advised to abstain from drinking due to the hormonal therapy.

You pray that they refer to your junk with gender-appropriate language and cringe when they don’t. It requires your most sincere efforts to feign confidence and take them on the ride of their life without falling off the edge of the earth in the process.

You are just getting acquainted with your erection when they use the word “woman” in reference to your former self. It takes everything in your power to not pull a hysterical Gene Wilder and cry during sex, even though this cruel conjugation is enough to deploy the air from your lungs and consolidate your chest into a neatly crushed soda can. If you are horny enough, it is possible to undergo a hot-blooded rebirth and achieve a born-again boner. Despite the lump that has formed in the back of your throat, you fight to reclaim the intimacy of the moment the way you would muster five more minutes of reading as the sun goes down in the summer because you don't want to go inside just yet.

After an unsatisfying fuck, you roll over and try to make light of the situation. Indeed, even authentic copies of Leonardo da Vinci's greatly detailed, highly accurate anatomical depictions had wine stains.