Posts tagged “trans* issues”

  1. On Friday afternoons, we do our best to meet up somewhere in the city. Sometimes it’s my apartment, sometimes his; maybe the park if it’s nice out and we can find a space with some privacy. Privacy is important. We lay out a patchwork of blankets and sit in silence for a while, taking in the day or letting go of the week behind us, depending on what kind of week it’s been. After

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  2. The Toast's previous coverage of trans* issues can be found here. I'd never thought about being genderqueer until I had to: instead, I tried to think about my gender (a confusing, uncomfortable thing) as little as possible, like a student loan I couldn’t pay yet, or a dentist appointment I’d yet to have scheduled. The first time I’d really considered how genderqueerness might matter to me was while picking a fight at a nonprofit…

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  3. Being a feminist is a struggle. It is a Sisyphean push to gain new, cutting-edge knowledge about oppressed groups that is never completed, all toward the noble goal of shoving your liberal cred in the face of other feminists to assert your superior un-oppressiveness. But have no fear, my fellow feminists, for I have claimed the title as best feminist ever for once and for all. You, my new subjects, can stop clawing at each…

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  4. Notes On Surgery

    The Toast's previous coverage of trans* issues can be found here.  Author's note: My husband has read, corrected, commented on, and supported this piece. I can't write his story, only my experiences. My husband and I didn't have a honeymoon. The closest we got was a trip to the southwest, ten months after our wedding, to a rented condo and a private hospital where he would have his second round of female-to-male surgery: hysterectomy, oophorectomy,…

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  5. The Toast's previous coverage of trans* issues can be found here. Let me start this off by saying that I am a woman and that is how I identify 95% of the time. Female is how I present myself to the world and it is usually nobody's business what kind of business I have in my panties. Even my driver's license says “female” and those things don't lie about anything except my weight. Unfortunately,…

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  6. The first time I ever used the ladies’ room was absolutely nervewracking. I had just started presenting myself in public as a woman, and I was slowly becoming more confident in where I would go. Starting transition in the American south does not leave a trans girl with a lot of confidence about her right to exist, let alone using the pisser without being hassled. I was at a bar in downtown Dallas, and as…

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  7. This post was brought to you by A Reader. The Toast's previous coverage of trans* issues can be found here. Most recently: Being Visible Online.

    I am not the kind of trans person who has conflicting feelings on the subject of her penis. In fact, it would be fair to say I have a very clear concept of how I feel about my penis, free of uncertainty or doubt - I hate…

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  8. Nothing makes you feel quite as old (at 26, no less) as realizing your students—all university freshmen—don’t recognize a basic aspect of your internet childhood. In this case, it was the idea that pre-search engine, websites had to be manually connected via webrings. And though they laughed at the clip I showed of “classic” internet explainer material, Moms on the Net (which we also mined for gender stereotypes), they protested any characterization of themselves…

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  9. This post was brought to you by a reader in memory of Katharine Hepburn but NOT Spencer Tracy. The Toast's previous coverage of trans* issues can be found here. New Year’s Eve was the first gathering of all my mom’s siblings and their children in over ten years, to celebrate my grandma’s 90th anniversary and my grandparent’s 60th wedding anniversary. In addition to his love for ordering outdated cocktails then lambasting bartenders who…

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  10. The Toast's previous coverage of trans* issues can be found here. This installment was brought to you by a reader. At the time of this writing, I have been transitioning for three years almost to the day. I say “transitioning” as though I mean it in the active sense, but there definitely came a point along the way when I stopped trying to conform to the ideal of womanhood and just started living…

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  11. I'm not comfortable with the word 'transgendered'. That might potentially make you think I am a self-hating transgendered person, but that is not the case; I don't hate transgendered people at all, and I only hate myself some of the time for things completely unrelated to my condition. I just don't like using the word, because it's a word that comes with with a history and expectations and a sense of identity attached. When I…

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  12. The Toast's previous coverage of trans* issues can be found here. This post brought to you by figwiggin. Last year, my girlfriend and I spent our first Christmas vacation together in my hometown of Dallas, TX. We’d been together for only a few months at the time, but she was excited to see the town I grew up in, so we boarded a flight after finals and landed a miserable 10 hours…

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  13. When I was in seventh grade I got cast as a chorus nun in our middle school production of The Sound of Music. In the cast with me was an eighth grade boy, Wayne, playing Franz, the Von Trapp's butler. He was in a bowtie and I was in a habit, but backstage, out of costume in rehearsals, we were talking about different roles for the future: we were going to go to prom

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  14. The Toast's previous coverage of trans* issues can be found here.

    “Life’s not worth a damn ‘til you say hey, world I am what I am!”- I Am What I Am from the musical “La Cage Aux Folles”

    I was twenty-six when I realized I was a woman. I was deemed male at birth and raised as such in a devout Southern Baptist family. In family, sex and gender was never discussed…

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