Should we discuss politics at work? | LinkedIn

It’s easy to have an opinion on this. The question leads you there itself, begging you to read: should obviously non-work things be allowed at work? Open and shut.

But it’s a study in the power of defining terms.

In the naming of the workplace — The Workplace, such a powerful abstraction — as a territory which even CAN, much less SHOULD, be “free” of anything which exists abundantly in the world, we contrive to frame it as a thing apart from our lives.

The emotional logic is sound: who would light a cigarette in a crowded elevator? Between the lines, it says: we’re forced to exist together in the service of sustaining ourselves and our families. We cannot easily leave this arrangement, so the environment should strive to limit unnecessary challenge.

Here is the second term, one whose definition is invitingly vague, in contrast to the rivets and girders of The Workplace: politics.

We hear the word and imagine blue and red, pennants waving, rabbles rousing. But so much is made political in today’s world, through no desire of the politicized: experiences. Existences. Bodies. Mine, and maybe yours, too.

In the over-naming of The Workplace, and the under-naming of politics, we create a system which perverts the emotional logic mentioned previously: inexorable forces act as waves and tides on people’s lives, but the naming of our labored breaths is made verboten to our livelihoods, which we require to properly weather those forces.

It creates a play where the actors must rehearse for the part of audience, and whose success is based on the audience never being aware a play has occurred. It creates a world where those whose communities are ravaged by attacks may take time off to recenter, but must not say why, even if their competence is called into question for it.

And those for whom that burden is untenable are encouraged to follow the Free Market, and work elsewhere. And The Workplace is lauded for remaining free from challenge. And questions such as these ripple throughout The Workplace, inviting easy answers. Open and shut.

Prompts taken from this Tumblr post. Inspiration to participate from my friend Alex, who has a habit of making me write things.

This is mainly an excuse for me to create a canonical chronicle (god, what a DJ name) of my transition, but that’s mainly an excuse for this being disgustingly, self-indulgently long.

March 1

Day 1: Make yourself known. Tell the world your name, age, and how you identify. Post a picture of yourself.

My name’s Adam, and I’m a native Southern Californian living in San Diego for the past 7 years. I’m 31, at least for another week. I identify as transfeminine, queer, and gay. (That means I’m a queer lady who likes queer ladies.) My pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘her’.

March 2

Day 2: Talk about your process of discovery and realization. How did you come to understand yourself to be trans?

“You’re not a boy, you’re an Adam!” — every girl I was ever friends with

I was 28, most of the way through a summer trip to Europe and the first time I’d ever traveled alone for more than a few days.

I spent most of the time in Aachen, a small city in western Germany, where a professor friend had generously helped me establish a home base at the local university. I rented a flat, spent my days inside the department with a grad student whose research I was interested in, went drinking with the locals at night, and backpacked to different countries on the weekends. It was The Life.

I ultimately credit traveling for my realization. I firmly believe that unbeknownst to us, the people and places in our lives silently and benignly emanate patterns of their perceptions, residual representations shaped by ideas of who we are and thus, who we should be. It’s why we often feel like we have to change towns to make a fresh start, even as people make the same trip in reverse for the same reason. And it’s why travel can make us feel like our cutting-edge selves, at least as far as the limitations of living out of a backpack allow.

I honestly can’t tell you the exact series of thoughts, or their wording, that made me acknowledge my own gender variance. It felt like it just happened one day, in one moment. Thinking back, and most likely inserting many convenient falsehoods, this is my best guess:

Near the end of the trip, from this place of both freedom and stability, I was reflecting on the life I was about to return to. I was almost a year out of a long relationship, which I had jumped into right after an even longer relationship. I was affirmably single for the first time in my life, and determined to stay that way for at least a while. I wanted a chance to unpack my baggage before hopping on another flight. I wanted to throw myself against every wall and see what stuck.

It was a non-stop adventure. I had gotten heavily into music festivals, finding them the perfect venue for my loves of socializing, of nature, of psychedelics, and my new focus on self-discovery and expression. I had started dressing up as what I called a “dappercat”: blending a cat mask with a vest and tie, partially to subvert the anything-but-normativity culture at such gatherings, but also creating a fun character that could roam freely, drop silently into groups, wander out of conversations at a moment’s notice, or stick around and quip sarcastically.

Why do I like doing that? I thought. Well, the cat mask provided me with both a way to instigate shenanigans, and a safe buffer from them. (Masks are empowering in that regard.) The formal attire was less a declaration of maleness, and more a way to look both above and in control of my surroundings, coolly removed from the grungy kids in Baja pullovers and fuzzy coats. Despite the gendered aspects of the clothing, the playful trickster-spirit it allowed me to evoke was something much more androgynous.

Androgynous.

It’s not like I didn’t know about gender variance. I had been jerking off to trans porn for over a decade, the unfavorable reactions of my girlfriends over the years making me sure it was a shameful paraphilia. Trans was something other people were, transitioning was something other people did. I just had a weird fetish thing, probably.

It’s really funny how long we can go without questioning something.

But once I had provided myself with the thought that maaaybe gender was a slider, and maaaybe that slider was something I could control for me, the last keystone crumbled and the straining dam collapsed.

That would explain…

Pieces of long-forgotten errata started clicking into place, like a magic door assembling itself from scraps of rubbish.

Always sitting to pee as a kid, because I didn’t like touching my genitals. That time as a teen I found a box of old stockings and bras in the closet, put them on, and got off, robotically replacing them afterwards with no clue why I did it. The overtly feminine gestures that I only reigned in after bullying from the neighborhood kids. How every best friend I’d ever had save for one had been a girl. All the goddamn shemale* porn.

Each of these things, individually, meant next to nothing, despite bothering me for years, but here was suddenly a unified theory that made a disturbing amount of sense.

Do I want to be a feminine boy… or a masculine girl?

Ironically, I had just started to love my body. I finally looked good, after being a pudgy, pale homeschooled kid, then a young adult fat from depression in an abusive relationship, then a college kid on a slacker diet of food-court lunches, Monster and all-nighters.

But in my year of freedom, I had been running, dancing, hiking, climbing, walking — and it showed. Part of that self-love process was accepting that I was never going to be like other men, whose heads and hands seemed incomprehensibly larger than mine and whose values diverged from mine on almost every axis, save for the few sensitive guys I befriended in college. Sensitivity was strength, I’d decided, especially after my lifelong comfort around women started paying dividends in the dating world. Beta male, indeed.

And that was the crux of it: my masculine form, I realized later, was only valuable to me insomuch as it allowed me to possess femininity, to have access to soft skin and breasts, to become entwined with a woman until our individual selves disappeared in a blur of codependency. Making myself stay single had inadvertently prevented me from doing that anymore, though I still spent way more time going on dates than doing most other things.

I never let myself be alone. I existed only in relation to others. I derived no sense of power from my body that felt intrinsic.

I went home that night and shaved off my beard, without fully understanding why. I spent the next day on /r/asktransgender, typing up my life story.

But it would still be over a year before I started calling myself trans.

* Shemale, tranny, and similar terms are highly offensive slurs, and used only by other trans people in the context of reclamation, or referring to the industries and cultures that market us as sensationalized and expendable commodities.

March 3 and 4

I hope to get caught up after one more twofer, and start doing one a day like I should, unless this length isn’t too back-breaking to read. Sorry if it is.

Day 3: Talk about coming out. Are you out? Who did you come out to first? How did people in your life react?

I feel as if I’m constantly in the process of coming out. For all the ways life kicks me like a tin can down a country road, I have a tremendous number of privileges: I’m extraverted, well-spoken, and white, and I see part of my responsibility to be a spokesperson for my vulnerable intersections whenever I have the emotional capacity for it.

Sometimes it’s explicit: naming myself as trans to share an aspect of my lived experience, or ripping the bandaid off with a new acquaintance to collapse the queer quantum waveform and observe how close we can be, how much I can trust them in the future.

Sometimes it’s implicit: choosing to present as femme while I’m still male-passing, wearing makeup, compensating for a layer or two with a padded bra, or foregoing a layer knowing it’ll make my chest more noticeable (theoretically, at least; most people are oblivious).

Sometimes it’s minor: answering a few questions from a curious Lyft driver or networking contact, doing my part to demystify our existence and become The One Trans Person that person can put an actual face to.

Sometimes it’s major: catching up with a friend from the past, or starting a new relationship, and having to tell the story again from the beginning.

At one point it all felt major. When I first got (as I call it) walloped by the gender trout, I still had a few weeks left in Europe, and at least a week left in Aachen. In my time there, I’d developed an amorous friendship with a local; our relationship had developed slow by traveler standards, but fast by most others, and I was staying over several nights a week.

The first time I saw her sans beard, she raised an eyebrow, and I offered no real explanation. But it was clear that something bigger had changed by the pall of awkwardness that descended over our physical interactions.

For two nights straight, each time we attempted any sort of intimacy, my head became clouded by a visceral sense of dishonesty. I felt like I was somehow misrepresenting myself, though I couldn’t begin to describe in what way. I became hyper-aware of all of our movements, and began to detect a glimmer of scripted scaffold about them: you put your hand there because of who they are to you, and you to them. They put their hand there because of who you are to them, and they to you. You, as you, position yourself just so; they, as them, respond.

And the script felt wrong, not only in that there was one, but how it was cast, and that was as far as I could wrap my head around it at the time.

(As might be clear: I did not, at the time, identify as a feminist.)

She eventually asked me what was wrong, and became, as I spilled my guts in shame, the first person to whom I confided in full detail my sudden distrust in my physicality, and the revelations I had been considering.

We’re friends still, and she has a wonderful long-term partner now, and I love her dearly for not only just, but especially, this moment:

True to her character, and counter to my fear-twisted expectations, she listened compassionately. Then she assured me that not only was it understandable to question your gender identity, it was a thing she thought everyone should do, just to be certain. It blew my mind.

(As might be clear: she’s a lot smarter than I am.)

I somehow made it through the rest of Europe, background-processing all the while. I came out to my best friend from the States when we met up in Amsterdam, but kept details light, and he was supportive, if not also mildly befuddled. (I love you; thank you.)

We then both headed to Edinburgh, to see my other best friend — and the original impetus for the whole trip — but my extreme admiration for her (and the same fear that kicked up before, but times a hundred) made me hold my tongue for at least another year. (I love you; I’m sorry.)

At the end of it all, I wound up in Copenhagen, my port of entry and exit; my trip come full circle. I had one day left, a couchsurf lined up for the evening, and a lot on my mind.

So I did what anyone reasonable would do: canceled the couchsurf, ate three tabs of acid and decided to walk until my flight in the morning.

A lot of things happened that night. But a moment stands out, long after everything had closed, lost in churning thought as I completed mile who-knows-what down one of the city’s many lengthy shopping streets.

Is this even something I could do? How?

Staring into the windows along the expanse of dark storefronts, I could almost see my blurry reflection transfigured into the form of a punk-ish young woman, with dark clothes and short purple hair, matching my stride step for step, head down, hands in pockets. I felt a sense of power and confidence from her; a template for what I could be if we somehow just decided to switch places.

Acid’s a really strong drug, kids.

In one of the first coffee shops to open with the sunrise, as I regained my bearings and wits, I scribbled in a notebook:

I can’t believe I’m about to write this: I think I may be transgender.

Day 4: Talk about transition. Do you want to? What kind of progress have you made? How has the process affected your day to day life? Do you feel your transition is complete?

As soon as I got back to the States, I did a few things:

• I told my therapist what had been going on.
• I dyed my hair purple.
• I ordered hormones off the internet.

I also made a new Facebook, for reasons I couldn’t fully articulate. I had an inkling that I might want to experiment with my name or gender, and I didn’t feel comfortable doing so on an account that had 1,300 friends with varying degrees of closeness, and varying likelihoods of acceptance.

I initially added only the 80 or so folks I was most comfortable with, and decided only to add people going forward if they met some criteria that equated to “chill”, until I was confident my networks were already growing organically in the ways I wanted. (If you’re friends with me on Facebook, it’s likely on that account.)

I also stopped doing all substances, because I knew I was about to ask my body some really tough questions, and I wanted to hear its responses.

I then began the closest thing I could approximate to a scientific process, proceeding cautiously in steps:

• I shaved my body hair.
• I painted my nails.
• I bought some women’s clothes.

After each step, I’d stare in the mirror and ask myself, does this feel right? — usually to silence — and then, does it feel not-wrong?, to which I often felt a silent stirring.

Do I want to keep going? — Yes, I think so.

I became surer and surer, even as I remained scared shitless of walking outside with nail polish on, that I was on the right track.

A few things happened next:

• I started taking hormones.
• My therapist told me to hold off.
• I hated my therapist for a little bit.

He was right, of course; I’d experienced some life upheaval directly prior to coming back, and didn’t have the housing or financial stability required to seriously figure out if I wanted to medically transition. Probably. I guess.

Actually, you know what? I wound up being right, and regardless of what would have been safest, I’m angry at myself for not getting that kind of a head start. And that’s just my thing to deal with.

A few things happened next:

• I got a new therapist.
• He told me to hold off on hormones too, but encouraged me to keep experimenting.
• I started using ‘queer’ as a kind of shield identity to hold me while I figured out something better.

We now interrupt this transition to inform you that the author has fallen in love with a straight girl, and wants to be her boyfriend really really bad. So he stays a boy, learning in the process that he’s polyamorous, and when they break up, ten months later, he’s hell-bent on getting this figured out once and for all.

My new therapist was a gender specialist, and we had a wonderful repartee. Under his counsel, I kept expanding what I considered to be my feminine expression, while considering hormones a last resort.

Someone has since pointed out to me that this was a form of gatekeeping — who says one needs to express in feminine ways to want to transition? — and while I don’t disagree, I still think the process was helpful. After awhile, I had done everything but take hormones, and when I stared into the mirror I saw the effeminate, emotionally liberated queer guy that part of me had always wanted to be.

And it still wasn’t enough. I got that doubt out of the way forever. So I told my therapist that I was starting estrogen now, thank you, and I hoped for his support. And he gave it.

A few things happened next:

• I started dating two wonderful people who wanted relationships completely unlike my former primary.
• They were into my queerness, not into me in spite of it. This makes every difference in the world.

We now interrupt this transition to inform you that the author has gotten called away to Germany for the summer to care for a sick woman as a favor to the friend who enabled them to visit Germany the previous summer. Coincidentally, Germany has among the strongest laws against receiving gray market prescription drugs, and no internet site will ship there. They return a few months later, keenly aware of how much they had been looking forward to taking those pills.

Nothing can stop me at this point. In October ’15, I started hormone therapy full-time, at a dose of 6mg estrogen and 200mg spironolactone per day. Within a couple weeks, I started to feel tender buds under my nipples, and my skin started to soften. It was finally happening.

I eventually realized that ‘queer’ was far more than a shield; it was a coat of arms. I wasn’t just a girl, I was a queer girl, and it added all the missing pieces to my self-perception.

2016 started as the best year of my life. I had a stable home, a semi-stable job, fantastic partners, and a growing community. My boobs started exploding, I could see physical changes daily, and I got prescribed all my hormones legally and for free via Medi-Cal. I switched to injections, and also started on Wellbutrin, which relieved chronic fatigue I’d been unknowingly dealing with my entire life, and enabling me to take on increased responsibility at work.

I could honestly not remember ever having been so happy.

A few things happened next:

• I started to go sterile, as happens between 6–10 months on estrogen. No big.
• My Wellbutrin stopped working, without warning.

We now interrupt this transition to inform you that the author has made the very difficult decision to bank sperm for the potential of having a child in the future, before her reproductive system shuts down entirely. This will require her to stop taking hormones for at least three months, and perhaps longer while she saves up the storage fees. In the meantime, her body will slowly start to de-transition.

• Fascism happened.

Goddamnit.

March 5

Day 5: Talk about dysphoria. Do you experience dysphoria? How does it affect you? What things do you do to cope with it?

Imagine, for a moment, that you were born with a migraine. There hasn’t been a single moment of your life where your head didn’t throb, lividly, with dazzling hot starbursts of pain — and thus, quite reasonably, you assume this simply to be part and parcel of the human experience.

Now, you know what headaches are; you even have some friends who experience them, and you feel bad that they suffer so. It seems like a really debilitating thing. And maybe sometimes your head doesn’t feel so great, but really, most of the time it feels pretty normal. You’re lucky like that.

And then one day, in a place you’re housesitting for a friend, while you’re looking for something unrelated, you stumble across a bottle of Advil. You’re alone, and this might be the first time you’ve held a bottle like this particular one with no one else around. And before you really know what’s going on or why it’s happening, you’ve stripped off the cap and tipped two pills into your hand, into your mouth, washed them down.

And suddenly, in your head, there is silence.

You slowly approach a mirror, gliding like a demigod, feet only barely grazing the ground.

There is lightness.

You trace the outlines of your temples with your fingers. You run your hand over your forehead. You lie your palm flat against the back of your skull, and press your fingernails into your scalp, the half-moon indentations finally isolated enough to be felt. It’s like you’re seeing yourself, feeling yourself, for the first time. And while you don’t know the nature of this sensation, you feel it clearly to be, not a thing descended, but a thing lifted.

There is…. absence.

And time passes, lost in the vortex of the mirror.

And slowly, the migraine returns.

This time, the first shockwave behind your eyes brings you to your knees. Your hungry, selfish, greedy body has already decided that, now that it knows another way, only absence will do from here on out; and every nuance of the old familiar pain — when did you start calling it pain? — is now visceral, as stark and novel as its relief was a moment ago.

As you pull yourself to your feet, questions arise in your mind before being scattered like sand (was it always this hard to think?):

How long has this been holding you back?

Is that why you’ve been such a big drinker?

…Dear God, what could you have accomplished?

* * *

I feel my dysphoria like a hive of angry bees, living between my sternum and solar plexus. Not stinging, just… being angry. Tight. It’s less the cause, and more the symptom of being in a damaging or damaged headspace. Seeing myself as I’m supposed to be (whatever that means) — whether in my head, in my heart, or in a mirror — makes them dissipate.

Hormones help, obviously, by making it easier to do all those things. When I was on estrogen the first time, when everything was sparkly and nothing was bad, I could check that area and find it miraculously clear as a bell. And then after I decided to take a break, to regain my damn gametes, it crept back in, along with everything else I had worked so hard to get rid of. And now that I’m back on — it’s been a few months — a stray few bees still catch in my throat on occasion, but by and large things are better again.

It’s clear to me now how much of my self-medicating behavior before, during, and after college was due to unconscious attempts to silence that sensation, as was my complete inability to be by myself for longer than a few hours. People, things, sensations all got stuffed into its gaping maw. And once it quieted down, the rest of me could start to eat, too.

I wouldn’t say the mirror and I are quite friends yet, especially depending on my mood, but we’re very close frenemies. More than perhaps some trans people, I think I enjoy both the comings and goings of my transition, appreciating many parts of me that were shaped by testosterone as well as the ones that are giving way to estrogen. Yet, had I half a chance, I’d rub the former away with an eraser and nary a second thought.

We just put the best spin on things we can.

March 6–16 (condensed)

Catching up on each question in a few paragraphs each:

Day 6: Talk about relationships. Do you have anyone special in your life? Have your relationships been affected by your being trans?

I’ve identified as polyamorous for over two years now, prior to which I was mostly just doing serial monogamy very poorly. I currently have five partnerships of varying commitment levels and geographic proximities, a consistent and lovely FWB, some flirtationships, and a few comets who swing by every once in awhile. I also consider two of my best friends to be something akin to queerplatonic partners.

Besides my amazingly supportive friendships, my relationships have been absolutely essential to my transition. Very little makes more of a positive difference than people who celebrate your body’s uniqueness with you, patiently help you explore its changing nature, hold your hand through the rough rides of medication and bureaucracy, assuage and allay your fears and anxieties, and — most importantly — let you steal shit from their closets.

Day 7: Talk about children. Do you have any? Do you want to be a parent? Do you face any challenges to your desire or lack of desire for children? How have you worked against those challenges?

Being a parent was a thing I had just assumed I’d be, the same way so many of us assumed we’d get married and buy houses and make median income. When I started to shed other normative expectations, I thought that had fallen away with them, but once I started to go sterile (as starts to happen 6–8 months into testosterone blockers) a voice bubbled up from deep inside to inform me how devastated I’d be if I lost the chance to reproduce forever.

So, as I mentioned previously, I took a time-out from transitioning (and suffered a bit of detransition) to save up for fertility banking, which I completed last October. Nothing is certain in this life, absolutely nothing, but I find myself contemplating a biological child with a partner in the next two years. I’d say it scares me, but what really scares me is how little it scares me.

Day 8: Talk about support. Who in your life has helped you? Have medical and mental health providers served your needs? Have lawmakers in your jurisdiction worked to protect you?

While I’m sure it’s screwed many people over, Medi-Cal has been very, very good to me, and I’ve been getting all my hormones for free for over a year. Prior to that, I was ordering them out-of-pocket off the gray pharmaceutical market, and I suspect my barging into the doctors office already on the stuff I was asking for (in addition, you know, to copious amounts of privilege) made acquiring official prescriptions a good deal easier.

It took me several tries at the Family Health Centers clinic to find a doctor who knew more than me — it sounds arrogant, but when you’ve been very invested in research about hormones for a year and a half straight, you pick up a few things — but I eventually did, and he’s been my best biomedical ally to date. If you need a doctor who understands and cares about the trans population, go see Dr. Michael Schmerber at FHC Hillcrest. I mean it.

Day 9: Talk about community. How are you treated by your local community? Do you participate in any online communities? How have they reacted to you being trans?

I have several community intersections: tech, design, and entrepreneurship are all spheres I’ve found myself in over the past couple years, and for the most part they’ve been pretty understanding. It’s only recent that I’ve gotten confidence to present femme on a more consistent basis, and with few exceptions, no one’s batted an eye. They still may not always gender me correctly, but I can be patient with it. I want to give a special shoutout to folks from sandiego.js and Startup San Diego for being more awesome than I’d hoped for.

Other than that, the communities I spend the most time in are the local polyamory communities I’ve helped build, and I’m exceedingly fortunate that they turned out very queer-friendly. When I host a meetup or attend events by other community members, I feel comfortable being my cutting-edge self in terms of presentation and pronouns, and I could count the hiccups on one hand. I’m really, really blessed.

Day 10: Talk about employment and your career. What do you do to support yourself? Are you in a traditionally gendered field or occupation? How have your co-workers reacted to your being trans?

Skipping this question! Talking about work/career makes me anxious.

Day 11: Talk about expression and presentation. Do you present as your identified gender? Do you use cosmetics? Do you use scented products? Do you wear jewelry or other accessories? Which rack do most of your clothes come off of? Do you take any special measures with regard to body, facial, or head hair? Have you faced any particular challenges related to your gender expression or presentation?

Once I learned how to check, I realized I feel about 70–80% femme, and 20–30% masc or non-binary. That is to say, even were I born a cis girl, I’d probably spend a good amount of time in t-shirts, jeans, vests, ties, and flannels. (I’m a lesbian too, let me remind you.) The funny thing about presenting is that when you’re trying to hit what you perceive as some gendered energy ratio, and your body makes up most of that proportion to society, your clothing and other affectations have to adjust to fill the difference.

That is to say, I wear less makeup these days, because I feel less “need” for it. When I do, I just throw on lipstick and foundation. I shave my chest, belly, neck, and face daily, and let my leg hair wax and wane as I see fit. I’m more likely to wear a t-shirt with lipstick and a dress without, unless I’m hosting, in which case I often go full femme. I’ve also been dressing in more black. I shop from every rack in the thrift store these days, and it feels freeing to wander between worlds with nary a care, though the majority of the time I get something from ladies section.

Day 12: Talk about other trans people in your life. Have you met any other trans people? Do you have any trans friends? How have you helped each other?

Oh, goodness, I feel like the majority of my friends are gender-non-conforming in some way — and I know there was a time when that was untrue, but I don’t really care to think of it. We constantly affirm and validate one another, defend each others’ pronouns to the public, and trade tips on hormones, legal matters, and just staying alive and healthy.

Some trans people have had more of an impact and influence on me than others. Mickey, Kara, Alex, Claire, Kat, EJ, and Invictus: thank you.

Day 13: Talk about music, art, writing, and other forms of creativity. What do you create? Do you include trans themes in your creations? Does your creativity help you with any trans issues?

Um, hi! I’ve been trying to take my writing more seriously lately — entirely non-fiction essays, though I’d be interested in changing that soon — and I feel like it’s hard to not write about trans topics. I’m not much of a creator of other forms of art, unless you count designing community events an art (I do), and in that case it’s still hella queer.

I don’t write poetry often, but when I do, it’s almost all about gender. It’s been remarkably cathartic, to know you’ve captured a complex feeling as well as you could at the time. What I have written is on this Medium publication, along with some other works I found compelling.

Day 14: Talk about traditional media. Have you been influenced by trans themes in the media? Have you had to correct misinformation about trans people that others got from the media?

To be honest, I don’t watch many shows about/with trans people. I haven’t seen an episode of Transparent, I Am Cait, I Am Jazz, or even Sense8 (though the last one I’m actually interested in remedying). I applaud Orange is the New Black for featuring a trans character and not having her be a laughing stock, but there are enough other problematic parts of that show to keep it from feeling like a full-on win. (Black trans women are among the very most brutally victimized by society, and if you’re not doing right by Black folks, you are contributing to the persecution of trans folks, in my book.)

If I’m ever influenced by a trans theme in the media, it’s most likely to say something against it. I think it’s getting better, but I don’t think it’s there yet.

Day 15: Talk about social media and online gaming. How have people reacted to your being trans online?

Again, more positively than I could possibly have imagined. Part of this is because I ruthlessly cull my friend lists to exclude transphobes, with whom I interact only on the odd blog comments section or friend’s Facebook wall. I don’t really do online gaming these days.

Day 16: Be a voice of encouragement. Let’s take a moment to encourage people who are suffering in the closet to take steps to improve their life. Fight fear with love!

Look: you can do this. If you think you might be trans, talk to a doctor and get the ball started. Don’t hem and haw about hormones; start a low dose for two months and see if you like it. You can spend years in indecisive limbo. Starting the process, even if you’re not 100% certain, will tell you everything you need to know about whether or not you want this.

Simply having doubts isn’t a reason not to move forward. For me, it often felt like dragging myself, kicking and screaming. And even now, I sometimes have to snap myself out of some extremely unhelpful thoughts. The thoughts may never stop, but you get way better at shutting them up over time.

Oh, and, cis people don’t fret about their gender all that much. They just don’t. The best ones do question themselves, especially if they have lots of queer friends, but not like we do. Trust your instincts.

My PMs are always open. Please, come to me if you want to talk.

I love you. ❤

March 17

Day 17: Talk with pride. Why are you proud to be trans? How do you show the world your pride?

Oh, lovely, a chance to be positive!

Yes, it’s true that being trans is something I’d never wish on my worst enemy. But, for me, at least, it’s also something I wouldn’t trade for the world.

8 Things I Love About Being Trans

8. How incredible is it to experience the world from two wildly different societal perspectives, when the vast majority of the world only gets to do it from one? Books, movies, and entire relationship advice empires have been predicated on “the two genders” being essential, opposite, and inscrutable to one another, and yet here we are, doing cartwheels over the boundary lines. It’s no wonder the trans community secretly calls cis people muggles. (Whoops, I wasn’t s’pose’d to say tha’…)

7. You get to learn which perceived gender differences are accountable to hormones, and which are mostly socialized. For comparison, for me, T makes me randomly horny, makes orgasming seem like a big deal, makes it easier to gain muscle and lose weight, and makes it quite a bit harder to cry. (Like, tears physically don’t want to come out.) E, on the other hand, makes my sex drive much more voluntary, makes me enjoy the “journey” more than the “destination”, makes it harder to gain muscle and lose weight, opens the floodgates on crying, and cranks emotional intensity up to 11. That’s a lot, but that’s about it. The rest, as far as I can tell, is up to nurture.*

6. Second Puberty — while admittedly tough to handle along with an adult’s usual stressors — is a pretty magical process that a part of yourself can’t help but admire. It’s wild to think that buried in your genetic code is a recipe to turn you into a different-looking, different-feeling version of yourself — and the hormones you’re taking are whispering its secrets to the surface, quietly competent body remaking its own form even while limited by the previous round of construction. Puberty is wasted on adolescents.

5. Science fiction and popular science frequently posit and explore A Future Where Humans Transform Themselves, where an advanced understanding of technology precipitates a Cambrian explosion of bodily autonomy writ through customized physical forms. Techno-fetishism and hyper-individualistic libertarianism of the modern transhumanist movement aside, medically-transitioning transgender people are living in that future today — except our process reshapes not just our bodies, but our brains, emotions, and senses. Pretty fucking cyberpunk.

4. Seeing just how flimsily gender is constructed feels like pulling the curtain up on a huge charade, and can give you a certain fearlessness when it comes to gendered norms. I wander between racks in clothing stores now, idly cherry-picking between gendered items as suits my fancy, where before I used to furtively scurry through the dress section, face red, and squirrel away my finds to a register without making eye contact. While I admire folks who’ve obtained a laissez-faire attitude towards gender without being trans, for me, the process was essential.

3. Specific to myself, putting down male gender roles has felt really really good. I often pay on dates, but I don’t have to; nor do I have to feel like shit when a lady pays for me. At fairs, I don’t have to embarrass myself at rigged games of skill to win giant stuffed toys, or get on rides that I hate, to prove my masculinity and uphold my worth as a boyfriend. I don’t have to be the first person to message on dating apps, and I don’t have to take the lead during sex. Again, it’s not a thing one needs to be trans to discover, but it’s what it did for me.

2. Multiple orgasms.

1. Most importantly, I just… like myself now. When someone asks me how I am, “good!” escapes my lips more often than not, when I used to think that such a feeling was a thing reserved for special occasions, and that most of the time, it was normal to feel just kind of okay. When I check my chest for those buzzing bees of dysphoria, all that responds is the ring of a bell, clear and filled with emptiness, and I know that I’m capable at that moment of being my best self. I may not be the bravest, but I’m brave; I’m not cutting-edge, but I’m still a pioneer; and I may not literally be magical, but damned if I won’t shine bright enough that I might as well be.

* My views don’t represent every trans person. I’m just me, and while I try to speak from a place of universality as often as possible, no two people’s gendered experience is the same.

March 18–31 (semi-condensed)

(Day 30 asks you not to post, and Day 31 asks you to simply make yourself visible.)

Day 18: Talk about privilege. What privileges do you benefit from? What special challenges do you struggle against? Has your experience of privilege changed as a result of your being trans or transitioning?

Even though I’m answering this question late, this feels somewhat timely, given the recent and fervent discourse in both trans and mainstream circles surrounding the concept of male privilege as applied to trans women.

Let’s get something out of the way now: I AM privileged. Very. I’m white; I’m able bodied; English is my first language; I was born in a liberal state, with a good social support net; I was raised by parents who loved me; I had a computer as a child; I’m extroverted, and find networking easy; I have a very American name; and despite my self-sabotaging tendencies, I’ve leveraged my millennial entitlement into an uncompromising attitude regarding my own self-worth. All this has benefited me greatly when seeking therapy, medication, validation, and support.

The question of male privilege is harder to answer. Again, make no mistake: I’ve never claimed, nor will I claim, that trans women and cis women are exactly the same. Equals, absolutely, both deserving of liberation and empowerment. But equal does not have to mean equivalent. I generally subscribe to the arguments of people much smarter than myself, who invoke concepts of pseudoprivilege, of passing privilege, and point out how the concept of gendered privilege itself does not map well onto the experiences of trans folks.

There was a period of time, in the interminable stretch between waking up and coming out, that I considered not transitioning solely so I could retain my privilege. Not because of the personal benefits, mind you — though I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a concern — but out of a hope that maybe if I took one for the team and stayed a dude, my feminist activism and patriarchy-smashing would be all the more effective. There’s a part of me that wants to feel guilty for transitioning anyway, but it’s mostly drowned out by the part of me that knows that a) you can’t be a very effective activist if you’re dead and b) living this experience has taught me what to fight for.

All I can really say about myself in regards to maleness is that I spent a lifetime feeling inadequate next to most men, small, alien, a Jane Goodall somewhat bemused that the primates under her study have adopted her as one of their own, somehow. Yet, while I eventually determined that I was different from most men, and while my close friendships with women afforded me an understanding of their nature that was lacking from many men, my societally gendered perspective did in fact limit me from fully grasping the complexities of their lived experience.

I don’t think I need to have an answer here, because the whole matter is still a thing I’m sorting through. More than most of these responses, I look forward to revisiting this one in a year and seeing how my experiences have since colored my ideas.

Day 19: Talk about the future. How are you planning to spend TDOV? How about the rest of the year? Do you have long term plans?

I’m sitting on a plane flying over parts of North America I’ve never touched, heading for a week in Mexico City with my partner Mariyama. We have only the loosest outline of our trip thus far, besides a network of friendly couches and the perennial list of museums, restaurants, day hikes: the most you can ever truly prepare to experience a city you’ve never been to. Most will undoubtedly go unvisited; we will undoubtedly make memories nonetheless.

Part of my travel prep these days, as essential as packing, is research. Last night I googled: mexico city homophobia. I could try to look up specifically how trans-friendly the city is, but what I’m really wanting to know is how I’ll fare being perceived as a feminine male, as I am most places. It looks like they recently passed some gay marriage laws, which is rad, but it also looks like there was some opposition protest, which is to be expected. How much of the population feels that way? It’s a huge city, and I’ll probably be fine. Probably.

(POSTSCRIPT: I feel silly; everyone has been fantastic, and in fact I think I’ve gotten gendered female here more than I do in the States. I don’t think this precludes the need for caution, however.)

Traveling While Queer has been part of my life for a solid couple years now, and it’s comprised of a myriad of questions, each of which must be accounted for. How do I want to present on this trip? How welcoming of gender variance is the culture? Will I have the energy to hold up an emotional shield if I present femme? Will I have the energy to refrain from presenting femme for extended periods? Will I be spending time with anyone very conservative? Will I be spending any time in queer-friendly spaces? Do I have room to pack boy clothes AND girl clothes? Is the weight of this makeup bag worth the comfort of having it with me? And where do I put these damn heels?

This is a microcosm of the decision tree that must be navigated most times I go outside, though the energy required by certain things decreases with time and practice. Once upon a time, I was barely able to circle my block wearing nail polish; once upon a time, lipstick took everything I had; once upon a time, I clung to my partner Jenny when I broke new ground by wearing a dress to the mall. (And squealed when a Chipotle employee indulged me with a ‘have a good night, ladies.’) As my body changes, so does my style, and I’m continually finding new things that stretch my comfort zone. (She writes, looking down at her chest, lace edges of a bra peeking out from under the scooped neck of a camisole. When did I become okay with this?)

Oh, right, long-term plans. Honestly, I’m happy considering this year a re-do of 2016, when I felt like I had everything lined up for success. I mean, I’d prefer it without the whole ‘plunging into a dystopia’ thing this time, but I’ll settle for not having to detransition over the summer again. We’ll see how that goes.

Day 20: Talk about deadnaming and misgendering. Has this ever happened to you? How did you deal with it? How did it affect you?

It’s a part of daily life, and reckoning with it is one of the largest determinants of success among the contradiction in terms called polite society. Strangely, it helps sometimes if you never tell people your pronouns in the first place: it’s harder to really be upset that way. Negligence hurts more than ignorance, 10 times out of 10. But increasingly, tiny amounts of strength have been finding their way into my interactions these days, and I’ve been gently correcting people I intend to work with long-term. I’m still not going to feel truly comfortable with someone until I don’t have to anymore, but I get that it’s (usually) not intentional.

I would describe being misgendered like being hit in the face with an invisible, weightless snowball. It doesn’t hurt, per se — unless it’s from someone really close — but it’s also impossible to ignore. Immediately, a series of emergent mental mechanisms leap in to triage: it’s fine, they know, they care, unlearning gender socialization is hard. If I’m in a good place, it stops there. If I’m not, it keeps going: of course it’s hard, you scarcely believe what you’re doing is legitimate yourself, it’s a wonder anyone at all agrees with this circus you’re dragging the world into. And so on, and so forth.

Really, it’s the reason engaging with trans-hostile feminists pains us so: most everyone struggles to silence their looping mental litany of dryly condescending invalidation, but not everyone has it plucked from the deepest recesses of their minds and given names, voices, platforms, books, spaces. It drains me in an instant, and Jesus, I’m not even a person of color.

As regards names: I’m fortunate(?) that my name still feels solidly my name, and no attempts to rename myself have stuck or resonated for more than a few days. I’m aware that a masculine-gendered name like Adam sets people up to view me as male, and I’m trying to decide how much I care about that. Idealism and pragmatism forever at war. I think I’ve found a way to provide a feminine-sounding name to society while keeping my current identity, but I don’t feel like sharing quite as yet.

Day 21: Talk about transphobia. Have you experienced discrimination? Have you been the target of hate speech or slurs? Have you been a victim of abuse or violence?

I received my first real dose of street harassment about a week ago, walking the 30 minutes from my neighborhood to downtown, which takes one solidly through the ring of tents and carts that represents the city’s cutting-edge efforts to truly and impressively mismanage homelessness.

I have made this walk many times. But that day, within a span of ten minutes, I was verbally assaulted by at least three distinct groups of people, and arrived at my destination severely shaken. It says something that my first thoughts were, “what do you expect, you chose to go outside wearing…” before I stopped that train HARD. (For what it’s worth: “what I was wearing” involved a cami, jacket, shorts, and sandals. Hardly scandalous.)

My second feeling was anger, not at any of the folks involved — I’ll kick the ass of anyone who tries to invoke any kind of essentialism here — but at a world that has now decided to make me choose between crossing streets early to put me out of reach of groups of people, or striding forward with confidence in my beliefs against pre-judgement. Looking rude, sexist, maybe racist, or potentially stupidly putting myself at risk. Idealism and pragmatism forever at war.

No woman I’ve told this story to has done anything but nod knowingly.

Day 22: Talk about something funny. Has anything humorous or ironic ever happened to you because you were trans? Have you used humor to help make people more comfortable with your being trans?

I think humor is essential. Not only in a “if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry” sense (actually, you’ll do both, often) but also as a way of normalizing our experiences. So much of our mainstream exposure is very hand-to-forehead, what-miserable-wretches-are-we, and pointing out all the lighthearted and silly bits of being trans draws our community closer and adds dimensionality to how the world perceives us. Plus, for our own mental health, trying to get your head out of the subjective angst a little and acknowledge how hilariously absurd this whole process is can help a lot in recontextualizing our struggle.

What lighthearted bits? I mean, they’re different for everyone, but for me most of it comes from encountering just how mile-high yet paper-thin societal gender norms tend to be. This can lead to amusing interactions (at least, amusing under certain perspectives), like the double-takes at the door sign when someone walks into the men’s room to see me putting on makeup, or the looks of pure bewilderment when someone is trying to figure out what the fuck I am, like the gender equivalent of the blue-and-white dress.

This isn’t a very funny essay, I’ll give you that, but follow me on social media and you’ll see how much I consider this all just one big joke.

Day 23: Talk about gender roles. Do you feel that you conform to a gender role? Do you feel that your conformity or lack of conformity to gender roles helps you or hurts you?

One thing that delayed my transition a little — and indeed, something that stymies many would-be transes — is that while somewhat feminine for a guy, I’m not all that feminine as a girl. While I can’t tell until I get there, I have a feeling that my end-game for transition is a very queer girl who’s thought a bit about transitioning to a guy and decided nah, that’s okay.

While this was something of an impediment to understanding that I wanted to transition at all, I think it’s been a huge help during the process itself. I frequently display both servitude and leadership, arrogance and submissiveness, snark and sass and sunshine and sparkles, and enjoy being difficult to quantify from the perspective of any traditional gender role.

I’ve been jokingly calling this “queer privilege”, but there’s an aspect of truth to it: it’s harder to be disappointed with being complicated if your goal is merely to be a somewhat different kind of complicated.

Day 24: Talk about misogyny and toxic masculinity. Do these affect you in your daily life? Are the social pressures you experience typical for your identified gender?

I think in some ways I currently benefit more from continuing to be gendered male than I suffer from asserting my femininity. That is to say, I don’t think I experience significant amounts of toxic masculinity OR misogyny, though I’m sure that’s about to change. An old friend recently noted that compared to my old Facebook profile, where I was exclusively known as male, compliments on pictures posted on my newer one focus far more on my body and features than pictures on the older. I’m sure a small part of this is due to the validation it’s known I receive from those physical compliments, but I hadn’t considered it through a feminist lens until she brought it up, and I think she’s probably right.

I’ve never been particularly career-focused, and I’m not used to being taken seriously in business pretty much ever, so I haven’t noticed the “suddenly my ideas were less valuable” switch yet. I’m sure when it happens I’ll be aware.

And overall, I’m willing to hazard a guess that my fantastic community buffers me from all this shit to a great degree.

Day 25: Talk about symbols. Do you ever fly the colors of any LGBT+ or gender identity flag in a symbolic way? Do you wear jewelry, buttons, patches, or other accessories that telegraph your being trans? Do you have any LGBT or gender identity related tattoos? Are they usually visible or hidden under clothing?

The back of my laptop has a number of queer and trans stickers, and that’s my little way of putting myself out into the world in a way that’s both somewhat socially acceptable and also visible to the people in my work-related spheres. Regardless, I’m sure they mostly slide off people’s eyeballs without making a dent.

Other than that, uh, I don’t really do a damn thing to hide my boobs these days, and I’m also using a masculine-gendered name and my natural voice. I consider that a constant ambient state of coming out.

Day 26: Talk about role models. Who are your role models? How have they influenced you?

In a broad sense, the multitude of strong women in my life have served as the biggest inspiration and source of strength and comfort. No matter what aspect of self I want to embody, somewhere in my life, there’s a woman modeling it tremendously.

Specific to being trans, however, there are a few people I have in mind. I won’t name them, but I’ll say that I’ve received the most profound assurance from folks who are playing with gender like I am, who own their bodies and selves without letting societal expectations ruin their fun.

The queer gals, the futas, the Amazons, the women who don’t hate their boy selves, the boys in dresses, the men who are robots, the ladies in tuxes, the bunnies and kitties who are having such a goddamn blast being girls. My life has been a continual search for kindred spirits, each group fulfilling and disappointing in its own ways, but I’ve never felt so known and understood in all my complexities as I have in the company of those people. You know who you are, and thank you.

Day 27: Talk about politics and activism. Has being trans influenced your stance on any political issues or candidates? Are you active in your local trans and/or LGBT+ community?

Being trans has influenced literally all of my stances and views. It’s really hard to go from “mostly cis, mostly het, mostly dude” to “queer trans girl” and NOT improve your understanding of just how deeply and profoundly systemic marginalization affects people.

I’d consider myself a trans activist before anything else, in that my writing, social media posting, and awareness-building has so far focused on that aspect of my identity more than any other, though admittedly I don’t participate much in the trans-specific political world in San Diego. I would say I’m active in “the community”, but it’s more the large number of queer and trans folks in the inclusive polyamory community I’ve built myself, rather than the trans community that revolves around organizations like the Center.

I’m pretty okay with that, actually, but as I gain energy to do more in the world than just type, I’d like to get involved with bigger advocacy platforms.

Day 28: Talk about religion and spirituality. Has being trans influenced your spirituality? Have you joined or left a church because of their stance on trans related issues? Have you found acceptance in your religious community?

While I had a very interfaith upbringing, I made the leap to atheism in my very early twenties, and it’s just a background part of me at this point. I consider myself a secular humanist, more than anything else — I don’t hate religion, and while I don’t consider myself spiritual per se, I tend not to judge or even disbelieve most people’s spiritual experiences unless they appear to be doing a marked disservice to themselves or others.

Strangely, I seem to have fallen into the close company of a rather large number of rather amazing queer Jews, and it’s strongly influenced my views on the benefit of ritual in one’s daily life. I think secular society throws the baby out with the bath water, to some degree, as we dispose of preconfigured and judgmental notions of morality and ideology, but also many well-honed mechanisms by which meaning can be imparted to a (beautifully, optimistically) meaningless existence.

None of that is specific to being trans, mind you, though I’ll say that seeing the intersection between queerness and faith has been a remarkably beautiful thing, and I don’t think I’d be able to bear witness to it were I not a part of at least one of those communities.

Day 29: Let’s be positive. Post a message of loving kindness. If you can’t honestly open your heart to the whole world, narrow it down to one special person if you have to. But try to put some positivity out there in a public way.

It may be weird to start this section with acknowledging that we currently live in something rapidly approaching a political dystopia, but honestly, I’ve been utterly amazed at how much solidarity, consideration, empathy, and yes, kindness I’ve seen come out of this. More than ever, I feel like a part of something larger than myself; more than ever, I have shining examples of behavior to aspire to. More than ever, I see my kin all around me, and more than ever, I feel confident that we’re on the right side of history.

So much of this sucks — sure it sucks, it sucks hard, it sucks on so many levels they can’t be counted — but I’ve also never been more confident in my life, at the height of my knowledge of exactly how shitty the world is, that a better world is not only possible, but in some ways seems imminent. And if you’re reading this, it’s thanks to you.

I want to make something clear up front: Jason Fried’s recent [as of 2017] piece, If you’re reading this, you probably don’t do hard work — which this is a response to — is part of an important conversation. You should read it.

The thesis of Jason’s piece is simple: the kind of creative output and problem-solving that the folks in white collars call a day’s work may not be easy, but that’s not the same as it being hard. Hard work, he says, is “doing the work other people don’t want to do,” as do migrant farmers, day laborers, single parents making ends meet on minimum wage, and blue-collar workers who risk life and limb on construction sites and in factories.

And it’s very hard to disagree with that! There’s a lot of truth to it. And the kinds of people likely to be reading a publication called “Signal v. Noise” definitely need to hear it. I needed to hear it.

But it misses much. And in doing so, risks establishing overly simplistic criteria through which we misjudge the worth of labor, and by extension (because capitalism), the worth of laborers.

Or, to put it in the tone set by the piece itself:

Hard work is fighting your crushing depression just to get out of bed, showering with your suicidal thoughts, and practically crawling to your desk in the morning. Every morning. For years.

Hard work is being continually terrified of losing your job because you might die without insurance.

Hard work is performing, in addition to your usual duties, the emotional labor for an entire company, taking up an unpaid position somewhere between “office manager” and “office mom”.

Hard work is having just enough opportunity to get into environments you haven’t been given enough opportunity to succeed in.

Hard work is dealing with sexual aggressions from people who can fire you without recourse.

Hard work is transitioning genders at the office.

Hard work is being the butt of racist jokes at the same time you’re being touted as the company’s solution to diversity.

Hard work is doing everything your colleagues who are men do, and still being responsible for the majority of parenting duties when you get home.

Hard work is being expected to smile through all of this.

Casting the efforts of all office workers as categorically different from those of physical laborers may make an important point, but uses it to ignore another: that dichotomies like these are, in many ways, already encoded in the culture of office work, and used to selectively devalue the efforts of individuals who should otherwise be peers.

The visible trumps the invisible; the clicky-clacky trumps the touchy-feely.

Even in a purely white-collar context, what disparities in value do we assign to jobs perceived as more effortful (coding, engineering) and jobs perceived as more creative (design, writing)? What even of back-end (logic) vs. front-end (creative) engineers? What value do we assign to navigating the feelings of others, even and especially those who do not consider yours in return? What value do we assign to bearing the burdens of a fiercely unfair society while we earn our daily bread alongside everyone else?

However much corporate America needs a reality check, it’s dangerous to let CEOs define the boundaries between leisure and labor. By the standards set in Jason’s piece, a laborer who finds her work to be creatively rewarding or intellectually stimulating is not laboring. And seemingly, a creative whose invisible labor pushes her to the brink of exhaustion every day isn’t laboring, either.

And what of the service jobs, sometimes called pink-collar (wonder why?) that are arguably neither white- nor blue-collar, requiring both effort and intellect? What of teachers, or nurses, or bartenders? What of mothers who are wives who are caretakers, keeping multigenerational families intact?

None of this is an indictment of Jason’s excellent writing, or his choice (if it was in fact a choice) to strip some of the nuance from an issue to make it palatable to his nearly 200,000 followers—many of whom would probably be rolling their eyes at most of the sentiments in this piece. They need someone they trust and respect to change their thinking in incremental fashion.

But programming is forgetting, and simplifying anything begets not only an obligation to consider what (and who) you’re leaving out, but the unintended effects of what you’re leaving in.

We need respect for labor, alright. But we also need to acknowledge what labor really is.

Tremendous thanks to Kara, Laura, Patrick, and Alison for the Facebook thread that directly inspired these ideas. As always, I am beholden to my friends for keeping me on the narrow, even if never on the straight.

So, I’m a lesbian.

I’m also transgender. See? Complicated already.

I mean, I don’t think it is. It makes the most sense out of anything in the world, in fact. You see, when you’re in a straight relationship, everything you do is performed under the specter of these unwritten, silently enforced, normative gender roles. Everything you do either occurs in accordance to, or in violation of, those roles.

Believing, as I did for nearly 30 years, that I was a straight guy—a soft, empathetic, somewhat ditzy, non-confrontational straight guy—put me in conflict with those roles nearly every day. The partners I attracted at that time in my life were either quite bossy, or quite passive, and in either case all found something about how I inhabited my gender that wasn’t to their liking.

On my end, all I really wanted was an equal. I didn’t want to have to take care of anyone, but nor did I want to be taken care of. I didn’t want to stoop down, or have to look up. I wanted an egalitarian relationship, but in a way that simply the words themselves couldn’t suffice to describe. There was always something missing.

And then the whole trans thing happened. I had just come out of a relationship that I put my gender exploration on the back burner for, and as soon as it went up in flames, I knew I was done wasting time on people who expected me to be a guy at all, much less any particular kind of guy.

This was around the same time I discovered non-monogamy, and my coming-outs as polyamorous and trans are highly interwoven in that regard. Shortly after I stated to myself as loudly as I could that I didn’t want to be anyone’s everything, anyone’s savior, anyone’s anything that could let them down, I fell into two wonderful relationships with women who felt the same way.

And that was much, much better. But it wasn’t until a little later that the full import of the realization hit me.

If I’m actually a girl… but I still like girls… I guess that makes me gay. Shit.

Oh, shit.

And really, that was what had been missing. Because—at least from a gendered perspective—when two women stare into each other’s eyes, it’s inherently as equals. Sure, one may be more masc and the other femme, Domme-y and subby, aggressive and passive, or whatever other gendered attributes you want to throw into the pot. But inescapable from any of that is the inherent queering of those traits by virtue of existing in a same-gender relationship. And by the same virtue, they’re free to be more nuanced, more complex, more layered and recursive than they could ever be in a heterosexual pairing.

Which spoon is the fork, indeed?

So, I consider myself a dyke. It captures elements of my gender well: for all the dysphoria I do experience, I’m really not that opposed to my masculine features, and I’ve joked many a time that I’m transitioning to a girl who’s thought really hard about becoming a boy. That same queering of dynamic I mentioned has occurred no less inside of me: free from the burden of a masculine identity I cared nothing for, all the aspects of myself that might normally be considered masculine are free to come to the fore.

And for the record, in case I haven’t made it clear: it’s okay to be both trans and queer. Believing otherwise can hold a transition way, way back: if you don’t aspire to a stereotypical, binary caricature of your target gender, there’s no shortage of folks who so lovingly suggest that you’re merely confused, and you’ll come out before long as “merely gay.”

Well, here I am.

Inspiration to participate from my friend Alex, who has a habit of making me write things.

March 1

Make yourself known. Tell the world your name, age, and how you identify. Post a picture of yourself.

My name’s Adam, and I’m a native Southern Californian living in San Diego for the past 7 years. I’m 31, at least for another week. I identify as transfeminine, queer, and gay. (That means I’m a queer lady who likes queer ladies.) My pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘her’.

March 2

Talk about your process of discovery and realization. How did you come to understand yourself to be trans?

“You’re not a boy, you’re an Adam!”

—every girl I was ever friends with

I was 28, most of the way through a summer trip to Europe and the first time I’d ever traveled alone for more than a few days.

I spent most of the time in Aachen, a small city in western Germany, where a professor friend had generously helped me establish a home base at the local university. I rented a flat, spent my days inside the department with a grad student whose research I was interested in, went drinking with the locals at night, and backpacked to different countries on the weekends. It was The Life.

I ultimately credit traveling for my realization. I firmly believe that unbeknownst to us, the people and places in our lives silently and benignly emanate patterns of their perceptions, residual representations shaped by ideas of who we are and thus, who we should be. It’s why we often feel like we have to change towns to make a fresh start, even as people make the same trip in reverse for the same reason. And it’s why travel can make us feel like our cutting-edge selves, at least as far as the limitations of living out of a backpack allow.

I honestly can’t tell you the exact series of thoughts, or their wording, that made me acknowledge my own gender variance. It felt like it just happened one day, in one moment. Thinking back, and most likely inserting many convenient falsehoods, this is my best guess:

Near the end of the trip, from this place of both freedom and stability, I was reflecting on the life I was about to return to. I was almost a year out of a long relationship, which I had jumped into right after an even longer relationship. I was affirmably single for the first time in my life, and determined to stay that way for at least a while. I wanted a chance to unpack my baggage before hopping on another flight. I wanted to throw myself against every wall and see what stuck.

It was a non-stop adventure. I had gotten heavily into music festivals, finding them the perfect venue for my loves of socializing, of nature, of psychedelics, and my new focus on self-discovery and expression. I had started dressing up as what I called a “dappercat”: blending a cat mask with a vest and tie, partially to subvert the anything-but-normativity culture at such gatherings, but also creating a fun character that could roam freely, drop silently into groups, wander out of conversations at a moment’s notice, or stick around and quip sarcastically.

Why do I like doing that? I thought. Well, the cat mask provided me with both a way to instigate shenanigans, and a safe buffer from them. (Masks are empowering in that regard.) The formal attire was less a declaration of maleness, and more a way to look both above and in control of my surroundings, coolly removed from the grungy kids in Baja pullovers and fuzzy coats. Despite the gendered aspects of the clothing, the playful trickster-spirit it allowed me to evoke was something much more androgynous.

Androgynous.

It’s not like I didn’t know about gender variance. I had been jerking off to trans porn for over a decade, the unfavorable reactions of my girlfriends over the years making me sure it was a shameful paraphilia. Trans was something other people were, transitioning was something other people did. I just had a weird fetish thing, probably.

It’s really funny how long we can go without questioning something.

But once I had provided myself with the thought that maaaybe gender was a slider, and maaaybe that slider was something I could control for me, the last keystone crumbled and the straining dam collapsed.

That would explain…

Pieces of long-forgotten errata started clicking into place, like a magic door assembling itself from scraps of rubbish.

Always sitting to pee as a kid, because I didn’t like touching my genitals. That time as a teen I found a box of old stockings and bras in the closet, put them on, and got off, robotically replacing them afterwards with no clue why I did it. The overtly feminine gestures that I only reigned in after bullying from the neighborhood kids. How every best friend I’d ever had save for one had been a girl. All of the goddamn shemale* porn.

Each of these things, individually, meant next to nothing, despite bothering me for years, but here was suddenly a unified theory that made a disturbing amount of sense.

Do I want to be a feminine boy… or a masculine girl?

Ironically, I had just started to love my body. I finally looked good, after being a pudgy, pale homeschooled kid, then a young adult fat from depression in an abusive relationship, then a college kid on a slacker diet of food-court lunches, Monster and all-nighters.

But in my year of freedom, I had been running, dancing, hiking, climbing, walking—and it showed. Part of that self-love process was accepting that I was never going to be like other men, whose heads and hands seemed incomprehensibly larger than mine and whose values diverged from mine on almost every axis, save for the few more sensitive guys I befriended in college. Sensitivity was strength, I’d decided, especially after my lifelong comfort around women started paying dividends in the dating world. Beta male, indeed.

And that was the crux of it: my masculine form, I realized later, was only valuable to me insomuch as it allowed me to possess femininity, to have access to soft skin and breasts, to become entwined with a woman until our individual selves disappeared in a blur of codependency. Making myself stay single had inadvertently prevented me from doing that anymore, though I still spent way more time going on dates than doing most other things.

I never let myself be alone. I existed only in relation to others. I derived no sense of power from my body that felt intrinsic.

I went home that night and shaved off my beard, without fully understanding why. I spent the next day on /r/asktransgender, typing up my life story.

But it would still be over a year before I started calling myself trans.

* Shemale, tranny, and similar terms are highly offensive slurs, and used only by other trans people in the context of reclamation, or referring to the industries and cultures that market us as sensationalized and expendable commodities

March 3

Talk about coming out. Are you out? Who did you come out to first? How did people in your life react?

I feel as if I’m constantly in the process of coming out. For all the ways life kicks me like a tin can down a country road, I have a tremendous number of privileges: I’m extraverted, well-spoken, and white, and I see part of my responsibility to be a spokesperson for my vulnerable intersections whenever I have the emotional capacity for it.

Sometimes it’s explicit: naming myself as trans to share an aspect of my lived experience, or ripping the bandaid off with a new acquaintance to collapse the queer quantum waveform and observe how close we can be, how much I can trust them in the future.

Sometimes it’s implicit: choosing to present as femme while I’m still male-passing, wearing makeup, compensating for a layer or two with a padded bra, or foregoing a layer knowing it’ll make my chest more noticeable (theoretically, at least; most people are oblivious).

Sometimes it’s minor: answering a few questions from a curious Lyft driver or networking contact, doing my part to demystify our existence and become The One Trans Person that person can put an actual face to.

Sometimes it’s major: catching up with a friend from the past, or starting a new relationship, and having to tell the story again from the beginning.

At one point it all felt major. When I first got (as I call it) walloped by the gender trout, I still had a few weeks left in Europe, and at least a week left in Aachen. In my time there, I’d developed an amorous friendship with a local; our relationship had developed slow by traveler standards, but fast by most others, and I was staying over several nights a week.

The first time I saw her sans beard, she raised an eyebrow, and I offered no real explanation. But it was clear that something bigger had changed by the pall of awkwardness that descended over our physical interactions.

For two nights straight, each time we attempted any sort of intimacy, my head became clouded by a visceral sense of dishonesty. I felt like I was somehow misrepresenting myself, though I couldn’t begin to describe in what way. I became hyper-aware of all of our movements, and began to detect a glimmer of scripted scaffold about them: you put your hand there because of who they are to you, and you to them. They put their hand there because of who you are to them, and they to you. You, as you, position yourself just so; they, as them, respond.

And the script felt wrong, not only in that there was one, but how it was cast, and that was as far as I could wrap my head around it at the time.

(As might be clear: I did not, at the time, identify as a feminist.)

She eventually asked me what was wrong, and became, as I spilled my guts in shame, the first person to whom I confided in full detail my sudden distrust in my physicality, and the revelations I had been considering.

We’re friends still, and she has a wonderful long-term partner now, and I love her dearly for not only just, but especially, this moment:

True to her character, and counter to my fear-twisted expectations, she listened compassionately. Then she assured me that not only was it understandable to question your gender identity, it was a thing she thought everyone should do, just to be certain. It blew my mind.

(As might be clear: she’s a lot smarter than I am.)

I somehow made it through the rest of Europe, background-processing all the while. I came out to my best friend from the States when we met up in Amsterdam, but kept details light, and he was supportive, if not also mildly befuddled. (I love you; thank you.)

We then both headed to Edinburgh, to see my other best friend — and the original impetus for the whole trip — but my extreme admiration for her (and the same fear that kicked up before, but times a hundred) made me hold my tongue for at least another year. (I love you; I’m sorry.)

At the end of it all, I wound up in Copenhagen, my port of entry and exit; my trip come full circle. I had one day left, a couchsurf lined up for the evening, and a lot on my mind.

So I did what anyone reasonable would do: canceled the couchsurf, ate three tabs of acid and decided to walk until my flight in the morning.

A lot of things happened that night. But a moment stands out, long after everything had closed, lost in churning thought as I completed mile who-knows-what down one of the city’s many lengthy shopping streets.

Is this even something I could do? How?

Staring into the windows along the expanse of dark storefronts, I could almost see my blurry reflection transfigured into the form of a punk-ish young woman, with dark clothes and short purple hair, matching my stride step for step, head down, hands in pockets. I felt a sense of power and confidence from her; a template for what I could be if we somehow just decided to switch places.

Acid’s a really strong drug, kids.

In one of the first coffee shops to open with the sunrise, as I regained my bearings and wits, I scribbled in a notebook:

I can’t believe I’m about to write this: I think I may be transgender.

March 4

Talk about transition. Do you want to? What kind of progress have you made? How has the process affected your day to day life? Do you feel your transition is complete?

As soon as I got back to the States, I did a few things:

• I told my therapist what had been going on.
• I dyed my hair purple.
• I ordered hormones off the internet.

I also made a new Facebook, for reasons I couldn’t fully articulate. I had an inkling that I might want to experiment with my name or gender, and I didn’t feel comfortable doing so on an account that had 1,300 friends with varying degrees of closeness, and varying likelihoods of acceptance.

I initially added only the 80 or so folks I was most comfortable with, and decided only to add people going forward if they met some criteria that equated to “chill”, until I was confident my networks were already growing organically in the ways I wanted. (If you’re friends with me on Facebook, it’s likely on that account.)

I also stopped doing all substances, because I knew I was about to ask my body some really tough questions, and I wanted to hear its responses.

I then began the closest thing I could approximate to a scientific process, proceeding cautiously in steps:

• I shaved my body hair.
• I painted my nails.
• I bought some women’s clothes.

After each step, I’d stare in the mirror and ask myself, does this feel right?—usually to silence—and then, does it feel not-wrong?, to which I felt a silent stirring.

Do I want to keep going?—Yes, I think so.

I became surer and surer, even as I remained scared shitless of walking outside with nail polish on, that I was on the right track.

A few things happened next:

• I started taking hormones.
• My therapist told me to hold off.
• I hated my therapist for a little bit.

He was right, of course; I’d experienced some life upheaval directly prior to coming back, and didn’t have the housing or financial stability required to seriously figure out if I wanted to medically transition. Probably. I guess.

Actually, you know what? I wound up being right, and regardless of what would have been safest, I’m angry at myself for not getting that kind of a head start. And that’s just my thing to deal with.

A few things happened next:

• I got a new therapist.
• He told me to hold off on hormones too, but encouraged me to keep experimenting.
• I started using ‘queer’ as a kind of shield identity to hold me while I figured out something better.

We now interrupt this transition to inform you that the author has fallen in love with a straight girl, and wants to be her boyfriend really really bad. So he stays a boy, learning in the process that he’s polyamorous, and when they break up, ten months later, he’s hell-bent on getting this figured out once and for all.

My new therapist was a gender specialist, and we had a wonderful repartee. Under his counsel, I kept expanding what I considered to be my feminine expression, while considering hormones a last resort.

Someone has since pointed out to me that this was a form of gatekeeping — who says one needs to express in feminine ways to want to transition? — and while I don’t disagree, I still think the process was helpful. After awhile, I had done everything but take hormones, and when I stared into the mirror I saw the effeminate, emotionally liberated queer guy that part of me had always wanted to be.

And it still wasn’t enough. I got that doubt out of the way forever. So I told my therapist that I was starting estrogen now, thank you, and I hoped for his support. And he gave it.

A few things happened next:

• I started dating two wonderful people who wanted relationships completely unlike my former primary.
• They were into my queerness, not into me in spite of it. This makes every difference in the world.

We now interrupt this transition to inform you that the author has gotten called away to Germany for the summer to care for a sick woman as a favor to the friend who enabled them to visit Germany the previous summer. Coincidentally, Germany has among the strongest laws against receiving gray market prescription drugs, and no internet site will ship there. They return a few months later, keenly aware of how much they had been looking forward to taking those pills.

Nothing can stop me at this point. In October ’15, I started hormone therapy full-time, at a dose of 6mg estrogen and 200mg spironolactone per day. Within a couple weeks, I started to feel tender buds under my nipples, and my skin started to soften. It was finally happening.

I eventually realized that ‘queer’ was far more than a shield; it was a coat of arms. I wasn’t just a girl, I was a queer girl, and it added all the missing pieces to my self-perception.

2016 started as the best year of my life. I had a stable home, a semi-stable job, fantastic partners, and a growing community. My boobs started exploding, I could see physical changes daily, and I got prescribed all my hormones legally and for free via Medi-Cal. I switched to injections, and also started on Wellbutrin, which relieved chronic fatigue I’d been unknowingly dealing with my entire life, and enabling me to take on increased responsibility at work.

I could honestly not remember ever having been so happy.

A few things happened next:

• I started to go sterile, as happens between 6–10 months on estrogen. No big.
• My Wellbutrin stopped working, without warning.

We now interrupt this transition to inform you that the author has made the very difficult decision to bank sperm for the potential of having a child in the future, before her reproductive system shuts down entirely. This will require her to stop taking hormones for at least three months, and perhaps longer while she saves up the storage fees. In the meantime, her body will slowly start to de-transition.

Goddamnit.

March 5

Talk about dysphoria. Do you experience dysphoria? How does it affect you? What things do you do to cope with it?

Imagine, for a moment, that you were born with a migraine. There hasn’t been a single moment of your life where your head didn’t throb, lividly, with dazzling hot starbursts of pain — and thus, quite reasonably, you assume this simply to be part and parcel of the human experience.

Now, you know what headaches are; you even have some friends who experience them, and you feel bad that they suffer so. It seems like a really debilitating thing. And maybe sometimes your head doesn’t feel so great, but really, most of the time it feels pretty normal. You’re lucky like that.

And then one day, in a place you’re housesitting for a friend, while you’re looking for something unrelated, you stumble across a bottle of Advil. You’re alone, and this might be the first time you’ve held a bottle like this particular one with no one else around. And before you really know what’s going on or why it’s happening, you’ve stripped off the cap and tipped two pills into your hand, into your mouth, washed them down.

And suddenly, in your head, there is silence.

You slowly approach a mirror, gliding like a demigod, feet only barely grazing the ground.

There is lightness.

You trace the outlines of your temples with your fingers. You run your hand over your forehead. You lie your palm flat against the back of your skull, and press your fingernails into your scalp, the half-moon indentations finally isolated enough to be felt. It’s like you’re seeing yourself, feeling yourself, for the first time. And while you don’t know the nature of this sensation, you feel it clearly to be, not a thing descended, but a thing lifted.

There is…. absence.

And time passes, lost in the vortex of the mirror.

And slowly, the migraine returns.

This time, the first shockwave behind your eyes brings you to your knees. Your hungry, selfish, greedy body has already decided that, now that it knows another way, only absence will do from here on out; and every nuance of the old familiar pain — when did you start calling it pain? — is now visceral, as stark and novel as its relief was a moment ago.

As you pull yourself to your feet, questions arise in your mind before being scattered like sand (was it always this hard to think?):

How long has this been holding you back?

Is that why you’ve been such a big drinker?

…Dear God, what could you have accomplished?

* * *

I feel my dysphoria like a hive of angry bees, living between my sternum and solar plexus. Not stinging, just… being angry. Tight. It’s less the cause, and more the symptom of being in a damaging or damaged headspace. Seeing myself as I’m supposed to be (whatever that means) — whether in my head, in my heart, or in a mirror — makes them dissipate.

Hormones help, obviously, by making it easier to do all those things. When I was on estrogen the first time, when everything was sparkly and nothing was bad, I could check that area and find it miraculously clear as a bell. And then after I decided to take a break, to regain my damn gametes, it crept back in, along with everything else I had worked so hard to get rid of. And now that I’m back on — it’s been a few months — a stray few bees still catch in my throat on occasion, but by and large things are better again.

It’s clear to me now how much of my self-medicating behavior before, during, and after college was due to unconscious attempts to silence that sensation, as was my complete inability to be by myself for longer than a few hours. People, things, sensations all got stuffed into its gaping maw. And once it quieted down, the rest of me could start to eat too.

I wouldn’t say the mirror and I are quite friends yet, especially depending on my mood, but we’re very close frenemies. More than perhaps some trans people, I think I enjoy both the comings and goings of my transition, appreciating many parts of me that were shaped by testosterone as well as the ones that are giving way to estrogen. Yet, had I half a chance, I’d rub the former away with an eraser and nary a second thought.

We just put the best spin on things we can.

March 6

Talk about relationships. Do you have anyone special in your life? Have your relationships been affected by your being trans?

I’ve identified as polyamorous for over two years now, prior to which I was mostly just doing serial monogamy very poorly. I currently have five partnerships of varying commitment levels and geographic proximities, a consistent and lovely FWB, some flirtationships, and a few comets who swing by every once in awhile. I also consider two of my best friends to be something akin to queerplatonic partners.

Besides my amazingly supportive friendships, my relationships have been absolutely essential to my transition. Very little makes more of a positive difference than people who celebrate your body’s uniqueness with you, patiently help you explore its changing nature, hold your hand through the rough rides of medication and bureaucracy, assuage and allay your fears and anxieties, and — most importantly — let you steal shit from their closets.

March 7

Talk about children. Do you have any? Do you want to be a parent? Do you face any challenges to your desire or lack of desire for children? How have you worked against those challenges?

Being a parent was a thing I had just assumed I’d be, the same way so many of us assumed we’d get married and buy houses and make median income. When I started to shed other normative expectations, I thought that had fallen away with them, but once I started to go sterile (as starts to happen 6–8 months into testosterone blockers) a voice bubbled up from deep inside to inform me how devastated I’d be if I lost the chance to reproduce forever.

So, as I mentioned previously, I took a time-out from transitioning (and suffered a bit of detransition) to save up for fertility banking, which I completed last October. Nothing is certain in this life, absolutely nothing, but I find myself contemplating a biological child with a partner in the next two years. I’d say it scares me, but what really scares me is how little it scares me.

March 8

Talk about support. Who in your life has helped you? Have medical and mental health providers served your needs? Have lawmakers in your jurisdiction worked to protect you?

While I’m sure it’s screwed many people over, Medi-Cal has been very, very good to me, and I’ve been getting all my hormones for free for over a year. Prior to that, I was ordering them out-of-pocket off the gray pharmaceutical market, and I suspect my barging into the doctors office already on the stuff I was asking for (in addition, you know, to copious amounts of privilege) made acquiring official prescriptions a good deal easier.

It took me several tries at the Family Health Centers clinic to find a doctor who knew more than me — it sounds arrogant, but when you’ve been very invested in research about hormones for a year and a half straight, you pick up a few things — but I eventually did, and he’s been my best biomedical ally to date. If you’re in San Diego, and need a doctor who understands and cares about the trans population, go see Dr. Michael Schmerber at FHC Hillcrest. I mean it.

March 9

Talk about community. How are you treated by your local community? Do you participate in any online communities? How have they reacted to you being trans?

I have several community intersections: tech, design, and entrepreneurship are all spheres I’ve found myself in over the past couple years, and for the most part they’ve been pretty understanding. It’s only recent that I’ve gotten confidence to present femme on a more consistent basis, and with few exceptions, no one’s batted an eye.

They still may not always gender me correctly, but I can be patient with it. I want to give a special shoutout to folks from sandiego.js and Startup San Diego for being more awesome than I’d hoped for.

Other than that, the communities I spend the most time in are the local polyamory communities I’ve helped build, and I’m exceedingly fortunate that they turned out very queer-friendly. When I host a meetup or attend events by other community members, I feel comfortable being my cutting-edge self in terms of presentation and pronouns, and I could count the hiccups on one hand. I’m really, really blessed.

March 10

Talk about employment and your career. What do you do to support yourself? Are you in a traditionally gendered field or occupation? How have your co-workers reacted to your being trans?

Skipping this question! Talking about work/career makes me anxious.

March 11

Talk about expression and presentation. Do you present as your identified gender? Do you use cosmetics? Do you use scented products? Do you wear jewelry or other accessories? Which rack do most of your clothes come off of? Do you take any special measures with regard to body, facial, or head hair? Have you faced any particular challenges related to your gender expression or presentation?

Once I learned how to check, I realized I feel about 70–80% femme, and 20–30% masc or non-binary. That is to say, even were I born a cis girl, I’d probably spend a good amount of time in t-shirts, jeans, vests, ties, and flannels. (I’m a lesbian too, let me remind you.)

The funny thing about presenting is that when you’re trying to hit what you perceive as some gendered energy ratio, and your body makes up most of that proportion to society, your clothing and other affectations have to adjust to fill the difference.

That is to say, I wear less makeup these days, because I feel less “need” for it. When I do, I just throw on lipstick and foundation. I shave my chest, belly, neck, and face daily, and let my leg hair wax and wane as I see fit. I’m more likely to wear a t-shirt with lipstick and a dress without, unless I’m hosting, in which case I often go full femme.

I’ve also been dressing in more black.

I shop from every rack in the thrift store these days, and it feels freeing to wander between worlds with nary a care, though the majority of the time I get something from ladies section.

March 12

Talk about other trans people in your life. Have you met any other trans people? Do you have any trans friends? How have you helped each other?

Oh, goodness, I feel like the majority of my friends are gender-non-conforming in some way — and I know there was a time when that was untrue, but I don’t really care to think of it. We constantly affirm and validate one another, defend each others’ pronouns to the public, and trade tips on hormones, legal matters, and just staying alive and healthy.

Some trans people have had more of an impact and influence on me than others. Mickey, Kara, Alex, Claire, Kat, EJ, and Invictus: thank you.

March 13

Talk about music, art, writing, and other forms of creativity. What do you create? Do you include trans themes in your creations? Does your creativity help you with any trans issues?

Um, hi! I’ve been trying to take my writing more seriously lately — entirely non-fiction essays, though I’d be interested in changing that soon — and I feel like it’s hard to not write about trans topics. I’m not much of a creator of other forms of art, unless you count designing community events an art (I do), and in that case it’s still hella queer.

I don’t write poetry often, but when I do, it’s almost all about gender. It’s been remarkably cathartic, to know you’ve captured a complex feeling as well as you could at the time. What I have written is on this Medium publication, along with some other works I found compelling.

March 14

Talk about traditional media. Have you been influenced by trans themes in the media? Have you had to correct misinformation about trans people that others got from the media?

To be honest, I don’t watch many shows about/with trans people. I haven’t seen an episode of Transparent, I Am Cait, I Am Jazz, or even Sense8 (though the last one I’m actually interested in remedying). I applaud Orange is the New Black for featuring a trans character and not having her be a laughing stock, but there are enough other problematic parts of that show to keep it from feeling like a full-on win. (Black trans women are among the very most brutally victimized by society, and if you’re not doing right by Black folks of any gender, you are contributing to the persecution of trans folks, in my book.)

If I’m ever influenced by a trans theme in the media, it’s most likely to say something against it. I think it’s getting better, but I don’t think it’s there yet.

March 15

Talk about social media and online gaming. How have people reacted to your being trans online?

Again, more positively than I could possibly have imagined. Part of this is because I ruthlessly cull my friend lists to exclude transphobes, with whom I interact only on the odd blog comments section or friend’s Facebook wall. I don’t really do online gaming these days.

March 16

Be a voice of encouragement. Let’s take a moment to encourage people who are suffering in the closet to take steps to improve their life. Fight fear with love!

Look: you can do this. If you think you might be trans, talk to a doctor and get the ball started. Don’t hem and haw about hormones; start a low dose for two months and see if you like it. You can spend years in indecisive limbo. Starting the process, even if you’re not 100% certain, will tell you everything you need to know about whether or not you want this.

Simply having doubts isn’t a reason not to move forward. For me, it often felt like dragging myself, kicking and screaming. And even now, I sometimes have to snap myself out of some extremely unhelpful thoughts. The thoughts may never stop, but you get way better at shutting them up over time.

Oh, and, cis people don’t fret about their gender all that much. They just don’t. The best ones do question themselves, especially if they have lots of queer friends, but not like we do. Trust your instincts.

My PMs and DMs are always open. Please, come to me if you want to talk.

I love you.

March 17

Talk with pride. Why are you proud to be trans? How do you show the world your pride?

Oh, lovely, a chance to be positive!

Yes, it’s true that being trans is something I’d never wish on my worst enemy. But, for me, at least, it’s also something I wouldn’t trade for the world.

8 Things I Love About Being Trans

8. How incredible is it to experience the world from two wildly different societal perspectives, when the vast majority of the world only gets to do it from one? Books, movies, and entire relationship advice empires have been predicated on “the two genders” being essential, opposite, and inscrutable to one another, and yet here we are, doing cartwheels over the boundary lines. It’s no wonder the trans community secretly calls cis people muggles. (Whoops, I wasn’t s’pose’d to say tha’…)

7. You get to learn which perceived gender differences are accountable to hormones, and which are mostly socialized. For comparison, for me, T makes me randomly horny, makes orgasming seem like a big deal, makes it easier to gain muscle and lose weight, and makes it quite a bit harder to cry. (Like, tears physically don’t want to come out.)

E, on the other hand, makes my sex drive much more voluntary, makes me enjoy the “journey” more than the “destination”, makes it harder to gain muscle and lose weight, opens the floodgates on crying, and cranks emotional intensity up to 11. That’s a lot, but that’s about it. The rest, as far as I can tell, is up to nurture. *

6. Second Puberty — while admittedly tough to handle along with an adult’s usual stressors — is a pretty magical process that a part of yourself can’t help but admire. It’s wild to think that buried in your genetic code is a recipe to turn you into a different-looking, different-feeling version of yourself — and the hormones you’re taking are whispering its secrets to the surface, quietly competent body remaking its own form even while limited by the previous round of construction. Puberty is wasted on adolescents.

5. Science fiction and popular science frequently posit and explore A Future Where Humans Transform Themselves, where an advanced understanding of technology precipitates a Cambrian explosion of bodily autonomy writ through customized physical forms.

Techno-fetishism and hyper-individualistic libertarianism of the modern transhumanist movement aside, medically-transitioning transgender people are living in that future today — except our process reshapes not just our bodies, but our brains, emotions, and senses. Pretty fucking cyberpunk.

4. Seeing just how flimsily gender is constructed feels like pulling the curtain up on a huge charade, and can give you a certain fearlessness when it comes to gendered norms. I wander between racks in clothing stores now, idly cherry-picking between gendered items as suits my fancy, where before I used to furtively scurry through the dress section, face red, and squirrel away my finds to a register without making eye contact. While I admire folks who’ve obtained a laissez-faire attitude towards gender without being trans, for me, the process was essential.

3. Specific to myself, putting down male gender roles has felt really really good. I often pay on dates, but I don’t have to; nor do I have to feel like shit when a lady pays for me. At fairs, I don’t have to embarrass myself at rigged games of skill to win giant stuffed toys, or get on rides that I hate, to prove my masculinity and uphold my worth as a boyfriend. I don’t have to be the first person to message on dating apps, and I don’t have to take the lead during sex. Again, it’s not a thing one needs to be trans to discover, but it’s what it did for me.

2. Multiple orgasms.

1. Most importantly, I just… like myself now. When someone asks me how I am, “good!” escapes my lips more often than not, when I used to think that such a feeling was a thing reserved for special occasions, and that most of the time, it was normal to feel just kind of okay. When I check my chest for those buzzing bees of dysphoria, all that responds is the ring of a bell, clear and filled with emptiness, and I know that I’m capable at that moment of being my best self.

I may not be the bravest, but I’m brave; I’m not cutting-edge, but I’m still a pioneer; and I may not literally be magical, but damned if I won’t shine bright enough that I might as well be.

* My views don’t represent every trans person. I’m just me, and while I try to speak from a place of universality as often as possible, no two people’s gendered experience is the same.

March 18

Talk about privilege. What privileges do you benefit from? What special challenges do you struggle against? Has your experience of privilege changed as a result of your being trans or transitioning?

Even though I’m answering this question late, this feels somewhat timely, given the recent and fervent discourse in both trans and mainstream circles surrounding the concept of male privilege as applied to trans women.

Let’s get something out of the way now: I AM privileged. Very. I’m white; I’m able bodied; English is my first language; I was born in a liberal state, with a good social support net; I was raised by parents who loved me; I had a computer as a child; I’m extroverted, and find networking easy; I have a very American name; and despite my self-sabotaging tendencies, I’ve leveraged my millennial entitlement into an uncompromising attitude regarding my own self-worth. All this has benefited me greatly when seeking therapy, medication, validation, and support.

The question of male privilege is harder to answer. Again, make no mistake: I’ve never claimed, nor will I claim, that trans women and cis women are exactly the same. Equals, absolutely, both deserving of liberation and empowerment. But equal does not have to mean equivalent.

I generally subscribe to the arguments of people much smarter than myself, who invoke concepts of pseudoprivilege, of passing privilege, and point out how the concept of gendered privilege itself does not map well onto the experiences of trans folks.

There was a period of time, in the interminable stretch between waking up and coming out, that I considered not transitioning solely so I could retain my privilege. Not because of the personal benefits, mind you — though I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a concern — but out of a hope that maybe if I took one for the team and stayed a dude, my feminist activism and patriarchy-smashing would be all the more effective.

There’s a part of me that wants to feel guilty for transitioning anyway, but it’s mostly drowned out by the part of me that knows that a) you can’t be a very effective activist if you’re dead and b) living this experience has taught me what to fight for.

All I can really say about myself in regards to maleness is that I spent a lifetime feeling inadequate next to most men, small, alien, a Jane Goodall somewhat bemused that the primates under her study have adopted her as one of their own, somehow.

Yet, while I eventually determined that I was different from most men, and while my close friendships with women afforded me an understanding of their nature that was lacking from many men, my societally gendered perspective did in fact limit me from fully grasping the complexities of their lived experience.

I don’t think I need to have an answer here, because the whole matter is still a thing I’m sorting through. More than most of these responses, I look forward to revisiting this one in a year and seeing how my experiences have since colored my ideas.

March 19

Talk about the future. How are you planning to spend TDOV? How about the rest of the year? Do you have long term plans?

I’m sitting on a plane flying over parts of North America I’ve never touched, heading for a week in Mexico City with my partner Mariyama. We have only the loosest outline of our trip thus far, besides a network of friendly couches and the perennial list of museums, restaurants, day hikes: the most you can ever truly prepare to experience a city you’ve never been to. Most will undoubtedly go unvisited; we will undoubtedly make memories nonetheless.

Part of my travel prep these days, as essential as packing, is research. Last night I googled: mexico city homophobia. I could try to look up specifically how trans-friendly the city is, but what I’m really wanting to know is how I’ll fare being perceived as a feminine male, as I am most places. It looks like they recently passed some gay marriage laws, which is rad, but it also looks like there was some opposition protest, which is to be expected. How much of the population feels that way? It’s a huge city, and I’ll probably be fine. Probably.

(POSTSCRIPT: I feel silly; everyone has been fantastic, and in fact I think I’ve gotten gendered female here more than I do in the States. I don’t think this precludes the need for caution, however.)

Traveling While Queer has been part of my life for a solid couple years now, and it’s comprised of a myriad of questions, each of which must be accounted for. How do I want to present on this trip? How welcoming of gender variance is the culture? Will I have the energy to hold up an emotional shield if I present femme? Will I have the energy to refrain from presenting femme for extended periods? Will I be spending time with anyone very conservative? Will I be spending any time in queer-friendly spaces? Do I have room to pack boy clothes AND girl clothes? Is the weight of this makeup bag worth the comfort of having it with me? And where do I put these damn heels?

This is a microcosm of the decision tree that must be navigated most times I go outside, though the energy required by certain things decreases with time and practice.

Once upon a time, I was barely able to circle my block wearing nail polish; once upon a time, lipstick took everything I had; once upon a time, I clung to my partner Jenny when I broke new ground by wearing a dress to the mall. (And squealed when a Chipotle employee indulged me with a ‘have a good night, ladies.’)

As my body changes, so does my style, and I’m continually finding new things that stretch my comfort zone. (She writes, looking down at her chest, lace edges of a bra peeking out from under the scooped neck of a camisole. When did I become okay with this?)

Oh, right, long-term plans. Honestly, I’m happy considering this year a re-do of 2016, when I felt like I had everything lined up for success. I mean, I’d prefer it without the whole ‘plunging into a dystopia’ thing this time, but I’ll settle for not having to detransition over the summer again. We’ll see how that goes.

March 20

Talk about deadnaming and misgendering. Has this ever happened to you? How did you deal with it? How did it affect you?

It’s a part of daily life, and reckoning with it is one of the largest determinants of success among the contradiction in terms called polite society. Strangely, it helps sometimes if you never tell people your pronouns in the first place: it’s harder to really be upset that way. Negligence hurts more than ignorance, 10 times out of 10.

But increasingly, tiny amounts of strength have been finding their way into my interactions these days, and I’ve been gently correcting people I intend to work with long-term. I’m still not going to feel truly comfortable with someone until I don’t have to anymore, but I get that it’s (usually) not intentional.

I would describe being misgendered like being hit in the face with an invisible, weightless snowball. It doesn’t hurt, per se — unless it’s from someone really close — but it’s also impossible to ignore.

Immediately, a series of emergent mental mechanisms leap in to triage: it’s fine, they know, they care, unlearning gender socialization is hard. If I’m in a good place, it stops there. If I’m not, it keeps going: of course it’s hard, you scarcely believe what you’re doing is legitimate yourself, it’s a wonder anyone at all agrees with this circus you’re dragging the world into. And so on, and so forth.

Really, it’s the reason engaging with trans-hostile feminists pains us so: most everyone struggles to silence their looping mental litany of dryly condescending invalidation, but not everyone has it plucked from the deepest recesses of their minds and given names, voices, platforms, books, spaces. It drains me in an instant, and Jesus, I’m not even a person of color.

As regards names: I’m fortunate(?) that my name still feels solidly my name, and no attempts to rename myself have stuck or resonated for more than a few days. I’m aware that a masculine-gendered name like Adam sets people up to view me as male, and I’m trying to decide how much I care about that.

Idealism and pragmatism forever at war.

I think I’ve found a way to provide a feminine-sounding name to society while keeping my current identity, but I don’t feel like sharing quite as yet.

March 21

Talk about transphobia. Have you experienced discrimination? Have you been the target of hate speech or slurs? Have you been a victim of abuse or violence?

I received my first real dose of street harassment about a week ago, walking the 30 minutes from my neighborhood to downtown, which takes one solidly through the ring of tents and carts that represents the city’s cutting-edge efforts to truly and impressively mismanage homelessness.

I have made this walk many times. But that day, within a span of ten minutes, I was verbally assaulted by at least three distinct groups of people, and arrived at my destination severely shaken. It says something that my first thoughts were, “what do you expect, you chose to go outside wearing…” before I stopped that train HARD. (For what it’s worth: “what I was wearing” involved a cami, jacket, shorts, and sandals. Hardly scandalous.)

My second feeling was anger, not at any of the folks involved — I’ll kick the ass of anyone who tries to invoke any kind of essentialism here — but at a world that has now decided to make me choose between crossing streets early to put me out of reach of groups of people, or striding forward with confidence in my beliefs against pre-judgement. Looking rude, sexist, maybe racist, or potentially stupidly putting myself at risk.

Idealism and pragmatism forever at war.

No woman I’ve told this story to has done anything but nod knowingly.

March 22

Talk about something funny. Has anything humorous or ironic ever happened to you because you were trans? Have you used humor to help make people more comfortable with your being trans?

I think humor is essential. Not only in a “if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry” sense (actually, you’ll do both, often) but also as a way of normalizing our experiences. So much of our mainstream exposure is very hand-to-forehead, what-miserable-wretches-are-we, and pointing out all the lighthearted and silly bits of being trans draws our community closer and adds dimensionality to how the world perceives us.

Plus, for our own mental health, trying to get your head out of the subjective angst a little and acknowledge how hilariously absurd this whole process is can help a lot in recontextualizing our struggle.

What lighthearted bits? I mean, they’re different for everyone, but for me most of it comes from encountering just how mile-high yet paper-thin societal gender norms tend to be. This can lead to amusing interactions (at least, amusing under certain perspectives), like the double-takes at the door sign when someone walks into the men’s room to see me putting on makeup, or the looks of pure bewilderment when someone is trying to figure out what the fuck I am, like the gender equivalent of the blue-and-white dress.

This isn’t a very funny essay, I’ll give you that, but follow me on social media and you’ll see how much I consider this all just one big joke.

March 23

Talk about gender roles. Do you feel that you conform to a gender role? Do you feel that your conformity or lack of conformity to gender roles helps you or hurts you?

One thing that delayed my transition a little — and indeed, something that stymies many would-be transes — is that while I was somewhat feminine for a guy, I’m not all that feminine as a girl. While I can’t tell until I get there, I have a feeling that my end-game for transition is a very queer girl who’s thought a bit about transitioning to a guy and decided nah, that’s okay.

While this was something of an impediment to understanding that I wanted to transition at all, I think it’s been a huge help during the process itself. I frequently display both servitude and leadership, arrogance and submissiveness, snark and sass and sunshine and sparkles, and enjoy being difficult to quantify from the perspective of any traditional gender role.

I’ve been jokingly calling this “queer privilege”, but there’s an aspect of truth to it: it’s harder to be disappointed with being complicated if your goal is merely to be a somewhat different kind of complicated.

March 24

Talk about misogyny and toxic masculinity. Do these affect you in your daily life? Are the social pressures you experience typical for your identified gender?

I think in some ways I currently benefit more from continuing to be gendered male than I suffer from asserting my femininity. That is to say, I don’t think I experience significant amounts of toxic masculinity OR misogyny, though I’m sure that’s about to change.

An old friend recently noted that compared to my old Facebook profile, where I was exclusively known as male, compliments on pictures posted on my newer one focus far more on my body and features than pictures on the older. I’m sure a small part of this is due to the validation it’s known I receive from those physical compliments, but I hadn’t considered it through a feminist lens until she brought it up, and I think she’s probably right.

I’ve never been particularly career-focused, and I’m not used to being taken seriously in business pretty much ever, so I haven’t noticed the “suddenly my ideas were less valuable” switch yet. I’m sure when it happens I’ll be aware.

And overall, I’m willing to hazard a guess that my fantastic community buffers me from all this shit to a great degree.

March 25

Talk about symbols. Do you ever fly the colors of any LGBT+ or gender identity flag in a symbolic way? Do you wear jewelry, buttons, patches, or other accessories that telegraph your being trans? Do you have any LGBT or gender identity related tattoos? Are they usually visible or hidden under clothing?

The back of my laptop has a number of queer and trans stickers, and that’s my little way of putting myself out into the world in a way that’s both somewhat socially acceptable and also visible to the people in my work-related spheres. Regardless, I’m sure they mostly slide off people’s eyeballs without making a dent.

Other than that, uh, I don’t really do a damn thing to hide my boobs these days, and I’m also using a masculine-gendered name and my natural voice. I consider that a constant ambient state of coming out.

March 26

Talk about role models. Who are your role models? How have they influenced you?

In a broad sense, the multitude of strong women in my life have served as the biggest inspiration and source of strength and comfort. No matter what aspect of self I want to embody, somewhere in my life, there’s a woman modeling it tremendously.

Specific to being trans, however, there are a few people I have in mind. I won’t name them, but I’ll say that I’ve received the most profound assurance from folks who are playing with gender like I am, who own their bodies and selves without letting societal expectations ruin their fun.

The queer gals, the futas, the Amazons, the women who don’t hate their boy selves, the boys in dresses, the men who are robots, the ladies in tuxes, the bunnies and kitties who are having such a goddamn blast being girls.

My life has been a continual search for kindred spirits, each group fulfilling and disappointing in its own ways, but I’ve never felt so known and understood in all my complexities as I have in the company of those people. You know who you are, and thank you.

March 27

Talk about politics and activism. Has being trans influenced your stance on any political issues or candidates? Are you active in your local trans and/or LGBT+ community?

Being trans has influenced literally all of my stances and views. It’s really hard to go from “mostly cis, mostly het, mostly dude” to “queer trans girl” and NOT improve your understanding of just how deeply and profoundly systemic marginalization affects people.

I’d consider myself a trans activist before anything else, in that my writing, social media posting, and awareness-building has so far focused on that aspect of my identity more than any other, though admittedly I don’t participate much in the trans-specific political world in San Diego.

I would say I’m active in “the community”, but it’s more the large number of queer and trans folks in the inclusive polyamory community I’ve built myself, rather than the trans community that revolves around organizations like the Center.

I’m pretty okay with that, actually, but as I gain energy to do more in the world than just type, I’d like to get involved with bigger advocacy platforms.

March 28

Talk about religion and spirituality. Has being trans influenced your spirituality? Have you joined or left a church because of their stance on trans related issues? Have you found acceptance in your religious community?

While I had a very interfaith upbringing, I made the leap to atheism in my very early twenties, and it’s just a background part of me at this point. I consider myself a secular humanist, more than anything else — I don’t hate religion, and while I don’t consider myself spiritual per se, I tend not to judge or even disbelieve most people’s spiritual experiences unless they appear to be doing a marked disservice to themselves or others.

Strangely, I seem to have fallen into the close company of a rather large number of rather amazing queer Jews, and it’s strongly influenced my views on the benefit of ritual in one’s daily life. I think secular society throws the baby out with the bath water, to some degree, as we dispose of preconfigured and judgmental notions of morality and ideology, but also many well-honed mechanisms by which meaning can be imparted to a (beautifully, optimistically) meaningless existence.

None of that is specific to being trans, mind you, though I’ll say that seeing the intersection between queerness and faith has been a remarkably beautiful thing, and I don’t think I’d be able to bear witness to it were I not a part of at least one of those communities.

March 29

Let’s be positive. Post a message of loving kindness. If you can’t honestly open your heart to the whole world, narrow it down to one special person if you have to. But try to put some positivity out there in a public way.

It may be weird to start this section with acknowledging that we currently live in something rapidly approaching a political dystopia, but honestly, I’ve been utterly amazed at how much solidarity, consideration, empathy, and yes, kindness I’ve seen come out of this. More than ever, I feel like a part of something larger than myself; more than ever, I have shining examples of behavior to aspire to. More than ever, I see my kin all around me, and more than ever, I feel confident that we’re on the right side of history.

So much of this sucks — sure it sucks, it sucks hard, it sucks on so many levels they can’t be counted — but I’ve also never been more confident in my life, at the height of my knowledge of exactly how shitty the world is, that a better world is not only possible, but in some ways seems imminent. And if you’re reading this, it’s thanks to you.

March 30

Quiet before the storm. Let’s just take a minute to calmly and privately reflect on how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go, individually and together. Don’t post.

March 31

It’s TDOV! Let’s be visible! Post selfies of you being your wonderful self as far and wide as you can, proudly tagging your pics as #TransDayOfVisibility and #TDOV.

This is the most recent picture of me I’ve taken. Why it’s special: today is also the first time I’ve ever been kicked *out* of the men’s room and pointed towards the women’s room. Feeling pretty fucking valid right now.

“Before we start focusing on what’s going on overseas, maybe we should work on our many problems here at home”

“How can you get so worked up about this domestic issue, when there are people in other countries suffering horribly under oppressive dictators?”

“Why protest, when you could do something that actually makes a difference?”

“Why stay inside, when you could do something that actually makes a difference?”

“They want you to be outraged about that, it’s just a distraction”

“This thing won’t even matter unless we address this other thing first”

And so on. There are no shortage of people, of every ideology, in every scene, waiting to tell you that you’re worrying about the wrong thing, working on the wrong thing, or otherwise wasting your time.

I hate this, for the following reasons:

1. We are beings of limited capability and motivation. No matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to hold the world in your head and do justice to its every facet. Whatever you have the energy for right now is what matters.
2. Injustice is everywhere, and it takes every single one of us working hard to fix it. It’s understandable to want everyone to combine their efforts behind the things we think are the most important, but that’s not always realistic, or arguably, beneficial.
3. We’re all experts in different things, and it’s a given that any time spent learning about one issue is time not spent learning about another. If someone is drawn to a certain domain of impact, that’s probably where they’ll be the most effective.

All that said: I think we do, in fact, have an obligation to expand our awareness of issues when offered the opportunity, especially when they’re highly intersectional. (Hint: most things are highly intersectional.) And I am distinctly not suggesting that we shouldn’t work to influence other people’s ideologies, advocate for the things we feel are urgent, or recruit for causes.

But let’s also try to be more mindful of when we tell people not to care about something.

They’re probably among the first poly people you’ll meet — at the sacred tantric cuddle gatherings, the Burner parties, the tantric Burner cuddle parties — singlehandedly upending your entire understanding of the human life span. Free as birds and wise as owls, bright eyes belying their years, they live with vibrant abandon; singing, dancing, traveling, constantly engaged in new journeys of self-discovery. They accept and love comfortably their body, with all its stories, for it is a temple. A temple that is often used for sex. Lots of sex. Passionate, expert, grounded, kinky, mindful, vigorous sex.

They were poly before poly was a thing; to them, the “free love” dream never died, it only got a bunch of words made up for it — mostly by folks living in communes in the 70s, one of which they lived in too, and had sex with everyone inside it. When they’re not completely buck-ass naked, making morning-after-orgy breakfast like God equipped Eden with induction cooktops, they’re in something airy and flowing, and otherwise completely indistinguishable from someone you might run into at Costco. They also singlehandedly upend your entire understanding of the people you run into at Costco.

You’re not likely to date them in the classical sense — they definitely form loving attachments, but mostly organically, from members of their community they grow close to over time. But if you keep clicking ‘Going’ on Meetup, you just might make it into that circle — and find out what sex is like with 40 years of practice behind it.

The Manic Poly Dream Girlfriend

She has a membership at the local circus gym, a corgi named Bowser, a half-sleeve she got while living in Berlin, and roller derby scars. You can’t physically imagine her hair being anything but purple. You’ll run into her on OKCupid, where she has a 97% match with everyone, and six months after you message her, she’ll hit you up out of the blue to grab a drink.

Poly, for her, is the only lifestyle possible, due to the fact that she falls in love with approximately everyone she meets and nearly everyone reciprocates. As a result, she’s a whiz at scheduling dates, popping open her Google Calendar (or her trusty and completely incomprehensible paper planner) to inform you of the next three times she’s available, at least one of them more than a week out. She won’t flake, but she will be both late and highly apologetic. Regardless, you’ll have a ridiculously engaging conversation that touches on everything from cyborgs to dirty haikus to childhood fears. She’ll suggest you add her on Snapchat, since it allows her to maintain connections with lots of people at once.

Ultimately, your relationship will proceed in one of two directions: either you’ll manage to gel with her undiagnosed ADHD and become one of the partners she somehow manages to regularly make time for, or the strange internal algorithm she uses to allocate attention, obtuse even to her, will flag you as no longer interesting; at which point, her text responses will become slowly spaced further and further apart, and her schedule harder and harder to get on, until she’s gently — she thinks — faded from your life.

The Relationship, and Actual, Anarchist

“I just think”, they’ll tell you, over Fair Trade coffee, on your first date, which may or may not but will definitely involve bicycles, “that ownership of a person’s heart is about as inherently unjust as the ownership of any property whatsoever.” When they pay for said coffee, it will be with the slightly pained look of someone contributing to the downfall of civilization. You’ll want to be dismissive of them and their worldview, but the fact that they know more about the government’s role in overseas conflict than your political science thesis advisor and are the only person in your memory who’s ever asked before touching you makes it hard to.

Your second and third dates, and in fact, your entire relationship, will be an even split of completely unexciting and really exciting, like a vegan potluck where nobody drinks but suddenly everyone starts playing music on their own instruments, or a peaceful demonstration in the Civic Center but suddenly everyone starts blocking all southbound traffic.

If it doesn’t work out, it’ll be because their ideas are slowly becoming infectious, and you’re just not ready to start wondering if OitNB is really all that progressive, or why “up-and-coming” is only used to describe neighborhoods that are getting whiter. That, and dumpster diving is super totally gross.

The Pansexual Trans Girl

If you’ve managed to find yourself in the vast minority of humans who have the slightest clue how to respectfully talk to a transgender person, you might even find yourself dating one. Your dynamic will develop organically but intensely, satisfying in a way you can’t quite explain. Certainly you’re smitten: blunt, sarcastic, and disarmingly intelligent, she’s resolved forevermore against a life of repression, and is coming into a personal renaissance marked by complete freedom from limitation — expressed through her gender identity, sexuality, relationship style, and the number of striped knee socks she feels is reasonable to own.

And if you’ve managed not to be a complete dingus on your first few dates, in the bedroom, or fitting into her ecology of other partners, you’ll find yourself in a genuinely great, comfortable relationship — coming over after work to hang out while she streams on Twitch, snuggling while watching reruns of Battlestar Galactica, and lightheartedly debating the merits of your respective favorite programming languages.

Your love affair will dwindle to a close when you discover — in a slow, creeping fashion, suddenly blooming unbidden into a full-blown epiphany — that you’re transgender yourself. All her partners, in their own time, will come to the same realization. You’ll attempt to hold it together, but you have your own journey as a pansexual trans girl now, and it will take you different directions, and towards different styles of cat ear headphones.

Having successfully passed on the cis vaccine to the next unwitting cohort, she’ll return again to the dating realm — heart heavy, but with important work to do.

The Uncomfortably Hierarchical Couple

She’ll check her phone, fidgeting, as you leave the restaurant and start meandering towards a bar. “I agreed to check in with her after 10pm, unless it’s past the third date, but this is our first, so… hold on a second.” The screen lights up her face as she dashes off a text. Ten minutes later, a series of replies stream in, and she quickly checks each one before finally relaxing, clearly relieved, and goes back to enjoying the evening. This will continue with each successive milestone in your relationship, as both of you navigate a labyrinthine set of agreements designed, presumably, to keep everyone comfortable.

At no point will you be under any illusions as to your place in her life — she’ll make clear, with admirable honesty, that her primary comes before everyone else. And the relationship will be just fine, even if you can’t sleep in a shared bed, go off on vacations for more than two days, or do certain sex acts together. After a few too many dates get cut short, however, due to circumstances instigated by her other partner, you might feel it’s time to mosey onwards. This is when you run into…

The Uncomfortably Open-Relationship Couple

They send each other encouraging texts when one of them’s on a date, high five each other after sex with other people, and they’re in front of you now, hitting on you. At least, you’re pretty sure one of them is, and you’re not at all sure whether the other one’s enthusiasm is the world’s best jealousy management, an equal desire to participate, or somewhere in-between. “He’s fantastic in bed,” one of them will say with an entreating look, and you’ll suddenly wonder whether you’re at a bar or have somehow wound up at a dimly-lit livestock auction. In actuality, they’re simply really great at poly, with strong confidence in their relationship and unashamedness of who they are; but where you’re at right now, it feels a little overwhelming.

If you actually proceed to a date — which will, it turns out, be with just one of them — you’ll be greeted on pickup by their significant other, who lightheartedly shoos you both on your way like a couple of teens off to a drive-in movie. When it becomes clear that dating one very much means having the other in your life all the time, you’ll decide you’re just not there yet, and graciously withdraw from forward motion. They’ll understand, a little hurt but unsurprised, and continue being awesome together.

The Vaguely Gothic Geeky Feminist

For some, once the golden apple of “normalcy” has been stowed beyond their grasp at a tender age — for thinking different, for looking different, for being, different— they decide it’s far better off staying there, and happily grow up in a state of continual subversion. Whether through a keen awareness of how flippantly society marginalizes entire identities, or simply decent parenting, they become compassionate allies and thoughtful consumers and tremendous nerds.

Their geekery and their feminism exist in perfect harmony. They stopped watching Sherlock because of its abysmal POC representation, and instead binge seasons of Elementary for its fantastic intersectionality. They read comic books, but mostly by queer artists, grappling with serious issues, who picked up brushes because they couldn’t find any representation of themselves in contemporary media. They lose themselves in science fiction novels, written by women, with strong protagonists who don’t need chiseled jaws. They do not like Steven Moffat.

You’ll reach out on OKCupid based almost solely on the strength of their “books, movies, shows, music” section, and if your message has more than five syllables in it and (and none of them are “babe”), you might get a reply. You’ll find out that for them, polyamory is just another sensible option among many; when one is used to breaking down defaults and constructs, societal programming holds far less sway. And also, screw structures that treat women like property.

You’ll meet at a coffee shop, or other public space, and the first thing you’ll notice will be their abundance of dark clothing with a lack of cohesive statement, like they casually selected an outfit from a closet that just happened to be mostly black. They’ve fully internalized and transcended their goth years, and are solely in it for the aesthetic now.

Your conversation will go remarkably deep and be chock-full of references, and you’ll try hard to avoid being intimidated, or at least letting it show. You probably won’t get a second date, unless you’re already a feminist, and don’t need to be onboarded into 21st century thinking. Which so very few are. But that’s okay; they expected as much.

The Queer Academic

You’ll meet through the friend of a friend, when two adjacent social circles commingle for birthday drinks or an eminently tweetable art show, and strike up a conversation that starts with discussing a book and ends with exchanging phone numbers. You’ll find out, somewhere in the middle, that they’re a Ph.D. student, making the best of their interminable limbo by getting to know the city they’re confined to for the remainder of the decade.

You’ll be proud to not be completely lost when they talk about their thesis, though that’s not the same as being remotely able to understand it. They won’t mind — the life of such an intellectual pursuit is marked by an unearthly depth of focus, and the resulting loneliness in the asteroid fields at the outer perimeter of human knowledge is expected — and will gladly discuss it with you anyway. Your ability to enjoy this will be one of the sole determinants of your relationship success.

Their poly is an extension of their feminist ideology, informed as much by principle as identity, regardless of their actual day-to-day success in navigating the business of human feelings. They socialize and primarily date within queer lesbian circles, whether or not they exclusively date women, and whether or not they identify as a woman — because fuck identity policing.

You will probably get married. Unless they don’t believe in marriage, in which case, you will probably get cats.

The Respectable Poly Parent

No three new flings a week. No all-night benders. No sex parties — at least, not until the kids are tucked in. They’re still putting themselves out there, and may already have a partner or two, but this isn’t a game: there are other lives at stake.

Cautious and somewhat cynical about many people’s knee-jerk reactions to their having children, they’ll bring it up in the first few minutes of a date, even if it was already plastered on their profile. They may or may not expect, and in fact, may expressly not desire, your participation in their childrearing — but historically, most they’ve encountered don’t understand or believe that.

They’re part of a larger poly community, in need of support and a balm for the isolation of parenting with a marginalized identity, but it’s balanced with a background fear of being outed in spaces that might endanger their family. They message the admins of events and groups on social media, inquiring about privacy settings, and don’t care if it makes them appear paranoid.

If you’re a long-term fit, not just with them, but their tiny primaries, you’ll be privy to the beautiful experience of poly parenting. It takes a village, after all. Just don’t cause any drama.

The Poly Blogosphere Celebrity

It takes you awhile to figure it out: the way they casually drop words and names you’ve never heard before, how they can draw out their sixteen-person relationship diagram in seconds, that their Twitter notification is going off literally all of the time. This person is famous. Not famous famous, but like, poly famous. You’ll Google their name later, finding a collection of articles, and feel a mix of flattered and nervous, clearly getting the hang enough of poly to make it here, but also under pressure to do well.

Three months later, you’ll accidentally transgress one of their boundaries, and having both very high standards and a plethora of other options, they’ll kindly and expertly de-escalate the relationship. You’ll be glad for the experience, but leave with the vague sense that you might have inspired a blog post in the process.

Tremendous thanks to Alex Temple, Kara Raphaeli, and our mutual friends for the Facebook discussion that led to this atrocity, and the LGBTQ in Tech Slack for the initial wave of popularity. P.S., if it helps, I’m trans (they/she please), have ADHD, and host vegan potlucks.

If you want less funny and more poly, I wrote a thorough and concise primer on polyamory. If you want less poly and more trans, I wax emo about gender sometimes. If you want less queer, I’m sorry, I can’t help you.

Read folks’ wonderful submissions in the comments!

it’s privilege, truly
to take matters into your own hands
and force an institution to
support all your endeavors

but what happens when that well runs dry,
or caution stays your steady hand
or you decide that maybe a life which does not exist
is worth the smallest interruption to your own?

maybe then you look around
at the leagues of those much stronger than you
and you wonder if perhaps it’s not your fate
to learn to be strong like them, too
whose daily forays are without the luxury
of coal to shovel into their engines

dig deep
there’s a reason you started this, you know
some believe they’re becoming
and some others know they already are
and you thought you knew in which camp you laid your head
but did you know that sometimes things are not very simple?

so, how do you go without moving?
or, how do you redefine what movement even means?
you’ll get there, assuredly,
and someday all of you will be in rocking chairs
with tapestries to tell

but for now the molten core of self
must learn how to raise its whisper to a roar
so you can look into a pool
and see yourself staring back
not later
not someday
but now

what parts of you
i ask
scream out
in pink and blue
and purple and orange
and gray and red

what parts hold flags
that rely not on promises
or the quietness of knowing
but have a banner which is ready to be held aloft
loudly and without fear?

because if you’re there,
please show yourself

i need you

damn gametes was originally published in Gender Shrug on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from the mean streets,
my smirk and silver tongue bely
how nakedly i lie with you
in far more than just skin

i shaved my tits for this,
you know,
against the grain
for décolletage a touch more
pleasant to kiss
but also know that i care not
if stubbled cleavage graze your lips
because that is what you signed up for
the moment we set ourselves in parallel

you could stare,
oh, you could stare at my face
and my angular curves and my
absences and abundances
to work out the puzzle that
matches the box in your head that
contains all your
sexual preferences

or, you could relish
the joys of a body
that’s fully embraced as a playground,
a lab, an ever-changing work of art
where the signature is
just beneath the bandaid on
this thigh

the real secret
(are you ready? lean closer)
is that for the first time in my life
this body is my own, owned truly
and these walls are being painted
and these renovations made
because i just moved in, and
decided it’s finally time to invest

and when that dress
or vest
or costume hits the floor
in that moment my smirk
which is normally so firm
is held in place
by the smallest piece of mounting tape

so if when we lock eyes
the skies that they reflect suggest
fear and hope and desire all at once
it’s just the vulnerability
of a teenager inviting you to listen
to their new favorite band

and we all know how people get
when they’re going through puberty

on bodies, specifically ours was originally published in Gender Shrug on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The author and her community run a number of meetups and discussion groups for the non-monogamous, and we’ve identified the need for a simple guide to bring folks up to speed on the concepts, terms, and common wisdom we sometimes take for granted. This is our best attempt to compile such a guide, with a mind for accessibility and breadth over depth. Feedback is always and greatly appreciated.

Hi! We’re assuming you’re here because you want to learn more about non-monogamy.

We’re also assuming you don’t have all day.

Frankly, making your way through even the best available resources on the matter can be fairly overwhelming, which is why your author wanted to compile this primer as a friendly (but opinionated) overview with jumping-off points to more detailed information, curated for your convenience.

So, whether you’re learning how to support (or even just understand) a loved one who’s come out as polyamorous, doing research before you take the open relationship plunge with a partner, or finding yourself in the midst of a revelation about how you relate to others—this is for you. Read at your leisure, dip into the suggested reading on topics that pique your interest, and most importantly: have fun.

A working definition

Polyamory (“many loves”) means intimate connection with more than one person, ethically and with consent from all involved. That’s it, really—a simpler concept than some make it out to be, though like many things, it’s often easier said than done.

You might see the terms non-monogamy, polyamory, and open relating sometimes used interchangeably. They certainly can be synonymous at times, but when a distinction is made, it tends to be that polyamory specifically refers to multiple romantic relationships, whereas other types of open relationship (swinging, monogamish, etc.) might preclude romance. All are considered forms of non-monogamy.

Further reading: Franklin Veaux’s ridiculously comprehensive map of non-monogamous relationships.

What polyamory is not

A license to cheat. “Cheating” may seem like an odd concept in a multiple partner paradigm, but being intentionally deceitful and violating your relationship agreements, whatever they are, is a universal jerk move.

A way to fix an unhealthy relationship. Patterns of abuse, neglect, disrespect, and codependency don’t magically disappear once you make the decision to open up. If anything, the process can exacerbate those issues, and saddle new partners with the unfair emotional labor of dealing with it. In general, it’s a good idea to make sure all the holes in the boat are patched up before you take on more crew.

Further reading: Abuse in Polyamorous Relationships from Everyday Feminism, and Opening Up’s directory of poly-friendly therapists and relationship counselors.

A way to avoid commitment. Polyamory (or multiamory, if you’re a classical languages pedant) does mean “many loves”, after all. This doesn’t mean all polyamorous relationships have to be “going somewhere” (see: relationship escalator), but neither should you assume that “no strings” is the default, either. In fact, it’s best to avoid any default assumptions, and make sure all relationship configurations are discussed and agreed upon by everyone involved.

Polygamy. They may share a Greek root, but the two are not at all the same, despite common misconceptions. While some might argue that polygamy could be considered a subculture under the polyamorous umbrella, for the purposes of our discussion, we’ll be treating them as entirely separate practices, and emphasize that inequality or sexism in relationship practice has no place in ethical non-monogamy.

Further reading: Polygamy vs Polyamory vs Polygyny vs Polyandry.

Swinging. The swinging lifestyle, as it’s commonly practiced, discourages play partners from forming romantic relationships with one another. Which, as long as everyone’s on board, is totally fine — it’s just not polyamory.

Further reading: Swinging and Polyamory from Loving More

All about sex. Polyamory is about relationships. “Polyamorous people don’t have sex,” the joke goes; “they only talk about it.” While not entirely true, navigating your partners’ boundaries and processing feelings together is really important, and can take more time and energy than you might expect. And when it comes down to it, sexual energy is not even remotely a prerequisite for attachment, intimacy, or commitment: just ask the many asexual people who find a universe of fulfilling connections without the need to wade in those waters.

Further reading: Asexuality and Polyamory from The Body Is Not An Apology.

What polyamory can be

A master course in working on your shit. Put simply, relating to more than one person (and, some would argue, relating to even one person with full authenticity) is nigh impossible without learning deep things about yourself. Your desires and requirements for emotional and physical intimacy, your fears and feelings about your self-worth, your time management skills — all will come to the fore and be tested. (Not to scare you or anything.)

Emotionally and sexually liberating. For some, placing the burden of satisfying the entirety of their romantic and physical needs on a single other person can be a daunting, disappointing, and occasionally exhausting proposition. People are complex, multifaceted creatures, and non-monogamy enables the experience of intimate connections with a variety of personality types too contradictory to exist in any one human.

A life philosophy. The same values that are required to succeed at polyamory — good communication, self-awareness, and mindful relating — are applicable in every kind of relationship, whether with friends, family, coworkers, or monogamous partners.

Politically subversive. You may not think you’re signing up to be a revolutionary or a pioneer, but in a world where the nuclear family is rapidly becoming less relevant, modern polyamory has the potential to move the needle on how people live in groups, raise children, and consume goods and services. (This isn’t to say polyamory is inherently radical — because it’s not — though it can certainly be practiced that way.)

Further reading: Radical Non-Monogamy from Everyday Feminism.

Important concepts

These are the terms and ideas that are used most frequently and with particular importance within the polyamory community.

The principles, in a nutshell

There’s no official guidebook, but this is a valiant attempt to summarize the values at the heart of polyamory. Unsurprisingly, a lot of them are interrelated.

Honesty. With yourself, and with everyone else in your relationship network. The stability and trust necessary to make polyamory really work requires, above all else, a firm commitment to the truth, no matter how challenging or scary it may be.

Self awareness. Our bodies and inner selves speak to us constantly of their fears and desires, requiring only for us to listen. The sometimes mysterious motivations that govern our actions, especially in times of crisis, are almost always discernible with time and practice.

Communication. If honesty is the heart of things, communication is the nervous system. Nearly all manner of conflict can be defused by talking. (While also respecting, of course, that some people need time to organize their thoughts before such discussions.)

Compassion. Putting empathy into action when it’s needed the most, and approaching ourselves, our lovers, and our lovers’ lovers with the intent to build bridges towards understanding and greater intimacy.

Vulnerability. Being willing to share your true self, including your needs and desires, and overcoming the fears of rejection, of criticism, and of pain that arise whenever we wish to be bare before others — literally or metaphorically.

Consent. Asking, rather than taking; offering and listening, rather than giving with assumption. Honoring the autonomy and respecting the vulnerability of others through honesty and compassionate communication.

If these sound like values which can be applied to any relationship, romantic or not, well—you’re right.

Types of non-monogamy

This is a brief overview of some common styles of open relating. Far from exhaustive or mutually exclusive, these labels are merely descriptive, rather than prescriptive — a sampler platter to show the variety of what’s possible.

Hierarchical polyamory. This is the form of polyamory most commonly (and poorly) represented in media, with partners sorted into tiers— “primary”, “secondary”, and so on — and often with privileges and decision-making power concentrated in the higher tiers.

In this model, one’s spouse might have the ability to veto new partners, and their concerns given foremost priority. Moreso than some other types of polyamory, its success depends greatly on how responsibly and kindly it’s practiced. (See: couple privilege.)

Egalitarian polyamory. As a counterpoint to hierarchy, some people prefer all of their partners — regardless of how enmeshed their lives might be — to be on even footing in terms of privilege and power.

In this model, one’s spouse would not necessarily come before another partner, though they may well share important responsibilities with their spouse (such as a mortgage or childrearing) that they don’t with other partners. It’s also less likely for partners using this model to be granted privileged influence over each other’s relationships.

Solo polyamory. Practitioners of solo polyamory find autonomy, independence, and freedom to be an utmost priority in their dating lives (and often their lives in general). They’re usually not looking for nesting or reproductive partners, though they may easily form committed and loving attachments which last a lifetime. Solo polyamory can be considered dating yourself first and foremost, regardless of the other relationships you choose to create.

Relationship anarchy. Despite the radical-sounding name, RA is simply the practice of considering every connection with another person as a unique relationship—one which may or may not defy the assignment of labels, may or may not include intimacy or commitment, and which has the ability to define itself on its own terms. The “maybe friends, maybe lovers” gray area relationships people sometimes find themselves in are no problem to RA, and in fact may be celebrated for exactly the qualities which make them difficult to define.

Further reading: the short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy by Andie Nordgren.

Open relationship. This approach is the most variable, because it’s the most co-created. Typically, it takes the form of an established couple who have agreed to non-monogamy as an aspect of their partnership, but are “rolling their own” agreements as they go without adopting any formal practices. People who find themselves drawn to this model often prefer the strong interdependence of being deeply partnered with someone, while still having freedom in who they choose to love.

Freeform network. A group of friends or extended community that regularly forms sensual-loving connections within itself, usually without partnership labels or explicit commitment. It’s one of the most common ways polyamory is practiced — often without being recognized as such — and could be seen as a form of communal relationship anarchy, though the individuals in the group may or may not identify as relationship anarchists or even non-monogamous.

No relationships. Active practice of polyamory is not required to hold a polyamorous identity — whether you’re single, in a monogamous or mono-passing relationship, or simply not looking at all.

Relationshapes

These are some common types of partnership units. It’s worth mentioning that this list is not even remotely comprehensive.

Triads and quads. A simple extension of the dyad, the science-y term for a couple. It’s a way to recognize the existence of a multi-partner relationship as a unit. Egalitarian status between all partners is strongly assumed.

Vees. Just because two people are dating the same person doesn’t mean they also have to be dating each other. The letter “V” is often used to describe two (or more) people who are connected by a common partner, but not directly connected to each other.

Polyfidelity. Even in non-monogamy, some people choose to close their relationships—be they with three, four, or more—to outside partners. Reasons for doing so certainly vary, though it’s most often to drastically reduce the risk of STIs. In this kind of arrangement, the concept of infidelity is still relevant; it would simply be cheating on a larger number of people.

The relationship escalator

Much like an escalator conveys you upwards without any effort on your part, this concept references the default assumption for courtships to “progress” simply as a factor of time spent together. This is because mainstream society bakes in a lot of expectations about appropriate levels of entanglement within relationships, along with the idea that partnerships which aren’t “going somewhere” (exclusivity, cohabitation, procreation, etc.) are ultimately a waste of everyone’s time.

The alternative? Detaching your relationships from societal expectations about how they’re “supposed” to look allows everyone to show up as themselves, and craft authentic connections, rather than trying to fulfill externally-imposed narratives — even if those narratives suit some people just fine. Commitment, cohabitation, childrearing, physical intimacy, and interdependency are all variables which may be negotiated separately, rather than coming necessarily as part of a package.

In other words, who says that a casual fling going on two years isn’t a successful and committed relationship?

Further reading: Riding the Relationship Escalator by Aggie Sez of Solo Poly.

Monogamous programming

While monogamy works very well for much of society, the fact that it’s practiced so widely compared to other possible forms of relating is less likely due to an inherent superiority, and much more likely due to its near-exclusive representation in practically all forms of media and advertising. This conditioning, present from childhood, greatly affects mainstream societal values around relationships: the kinds of connections it’s possible to form with others, the role of romantic partners, what constitutes appropriate or inappropriate relationship conduct, and so on.

When coming into a polyamorous identity, operating outside of those internalized norms (such as the relationship escalator) can create anxiety, and make one feel lost and unstructured. Fortunately, with time, practice, self-love, and understanding partners, that conditioning can be engaged with mindfully, and unlearned or otherwise managed.

Jealousy

In the polyamorous worldview, jealousy is not considered a single emotion, nor a fixed personality attribute (“I’m just a jealous person”), but an amalgam composed of deeper emotions, like fear — of loneliness, of abandonment, of inattention — as well as situational reactions to instability caused by mistrust or mistreatment.

Addressing jealousy is thus seen as the ultimate self-improvement exercise: learning to integrate a deeply-felt sense of your own intrinsic worth, showing up to your relationships with mindful awareness, and loving yourself enough to break away from the ones that are doing you a disservice.

Freedom from jealousy may be considered an aspiration, but should not be considered an expectation in a relationship, polyamorous or otherwise — and those who manage to relate without jealousy are not “more” polyamorous or “better” at polyamory than others.

Jealousy (and compersion, for that matter) can be contextual, situational, and partner-dependent, and is, more than anything, an opportunity to develop the skill of listening to your body and loving what it has to teach you.

Further reading: Jealousy and Abandonment from Polyamorous Misanthrope and More Than Two’s entire portal on jealousy and insecurity, especially the refrigerator metaphor.

Compersion

A feeling which could be described as splash-zone happiness: joy felt at your partner intimately connecting with another, for no reason other than seeing them happy. Rather than being defined as the opposite of jealousy, it’s more helpful to view it simply as one of many reactions one could have in response to your partner’s other relationships. It’s an aspiration even for a lot of people who are affirmably poly, and jealousy and compersion can (and often do) easily co-exist in the same moment.

Further reading: Jealousy and Compersion in Multiple Relationships, and Why Compersion Should Not Be the Base Value of Polyamory.

Scarcity and abundance

Perhaps the single biggest thing those who come to polyamory from a monogamous perspective struggle with, understandably, is the prospect of sharing their partner with someone else.

It’s easy to think of a heart like a well, with a limited amount of love inside, and what’s given to others diminishes the total supply. A zero-sum game, in other words. In polyamory, this is often called a scarcity mindset, the surge of fear whenever you dip your bucket into the well of another’s love—because what if (your brain asks) this is the time it comes up dry?

But while it’s true that some people’s hearts seem predisposed to only focus on a certain number of people—nature or nurture, one asks?—the understanding of love itself as practiced in polyamory is as a thing that only grows, rather than shrinks, with use. This concept is called an abundance mindset, the idea that the only thing giving love results in is more hearts being filled with love, and thus able to love more themselves.

However, focusing on one’s capacity to love as the only resource of concern, and then waving that away as a fiction, does all involved a great disservice. Just like jealousy can be a box containing various other complex feelings, what most people consider that capacity is in reality a great many things which are truly limited, and dismissing or underestimating those limits is what actually comprises the majority of friction and conflict in non-monogamy.

Energy, attention, capacity for sex and touch, money, and most of all, time are all very real factors that profoundly impact how people relate. It’s vitally important for everyone involved in a relationship ecosystem to have honest conversations about those topics, with themselves and others, and adjust expectations, set healthy boundaries, and negotiate relationship agreements based on knowledge of those needs and limits.

Further reading: Pokemon Polyamory from Polysingleish, More Than Two’s sections on time management and abundance, and Lifehacker’s article on Love Languages.

Metamours

A metamour, simply put, is your partner’s partner. Different love styles have different approaches to metamour relations, from intentional ignorance of their existence (“don’t ask don’t tell”) to close friendships (sharing childrearing duties and doing brunch on the weekends). Since metamours are their own people and all, it’s considered uncouth to dictate how they should interact, though personal boundaries may certainly be set and hopes may be expressed around said interactions.

Further reading: What’s a metamour? from Solo Poly.

Comets

A new-ish term that has recently become popular in some non-monogamy communities. A comet refers to individuals who, due to geographical distance or other factors, have an infrequent presence in your life, but with whom you share a fulfilling connection on the occasions fate happens to bring you together.

New Relationship Energy

Often abbreviated NRE, this refers to the overwhelming “crush” feeling that often marks the start of a new relationship. This period is considered an especially vulnerable time for established partnerships, since few can live up to the temporary pedestal enjoyed by the “new shiny”, and it can be easier to de-prioritize (even unintentionally) your existing commitments in favor of spending a large amount of time and energy getting your new partner established in your life.

This is not to downplay the wonderful feeling of discovering a kindred spirit, or suggest that such a thing can’t be thoroughly enjoyed — it’s merely an opportunity to remain mindful of your other fulfilling relationships.

Couple privilege

Whether or not it’s obvious, mainstream society elevates the dyad to a position of legitimacy not shared with other kinds of relationships. Workplace social functions, visitation and custody rights, and, well, all of our society makes moving around in the world much easier in a couple than in most other types of partnership (including, sometimes, not having a partner at all).

This often trickles down, even unintentionally, into expectations about how a “third” partner should “behave” when entering a marriage or deeply-partnered relationship. The risk is treating the new partner(s) like they’re emotionally disposable, as a “secret” which may threaten the social standing of the couple—and thus asked to forego recognition and autonomy—or as less deserving of say-so during relationship negotiations.

Many issues people think they have with polyamory are actually issues with couple privilege, and being treated poorly in the context of a pre-existing power structure.

Further reading: Solo Poly’s article on treating non-primary partners well, and the More Than Two section on couple privilege.

Unicorns and unicorn hunting

“Unicorn” is a term thrown around non-monogamy circles with a variety of sentiments behind it. In its most benign, abstract form, a unicorn is a person who “fits nicely” into an existing relationship, has a sexual orientation which includes everyone involved, and forms a relationship with all partners equally.

This would (and could) simply be considered a triad, but the recognition of an additional relationship structure (“you are dating us, we are dating you”) often affects the dynamic, whether intentionally or not. At best, it’s a beautiful experience for all involved; at worst, it’s couple privilege in action.

The term “unicorn hunting” has a negative connotation, which refers to couples looking for a third like they’re casting for singers in a 90s boy band. The role comes first — almost certainly with a lot of unspoken expectations attached — and the person who actually fills it is both literally and figuratively secondary.

The use of a mythical term for this person implies their rarity: idealized as magic fairy dust for a relationship, they run the risk of playing unpaid therapist, sex puppet, or both.

This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with being an individual who wants to date a couple, that such relationships can’t be successful, or that one can’t set intentions about the kinds of partners they’re looking for. Really, it all comes down to treating people like people.

Further reading: Poly Living’s breakdown on unicorns.

The ugly

An honest discussion of open relating would be incomplete without even a brief look at some of the problems that currently exist in the community and among its practitioners. Just as divorce and infidelity shouldn’t be barriers to considering monogamy, these criticisms aren’t reasons against considering polyamory — but going into things with open eyes is usually a good idea.

A diversity issue. Most primers and texts about open relating (including this one) don’t go nearly far enough in discussing the pioneering roles queers and people of color play in fights for diversity of love styles and acceptance for a variety of family structures. Instead, when it even gets coverage, mainstream media depicts polyamory as a white professional’s pastime, yet another game of croquet for existentially bored and pretty 30-somethings to dabble in. (See: the TV show Poly: Married & Dating. Actually, don’t.)

Further reading: Love, QPOC style from Black Girl Dangerous, and Aida Manduley’s controversial and important article on the word “poly”.

An exercise of privilege. Similar to the issue above — and while noting that having privilege is not necessarily the fault of the privileged — the very ability to engage in identity discovery, attend meetups and play parties, and devote time to balancing multiple relationships is much more difficult and less accessible to those supporting families, working multiple jobs, and making lengthy commutes while trying to survive near the poverty line.

Cherry-picking. Some new practitioners of polyamory are fully on board with the “seeing multiple people” and “working on jealousy” thing, without catching all the other stuff about respecting vulnerability and garnering consent. The risk can be strong-arming partners into an open relationship, and being too afraid to mention the person you’ve had your eye on for six months — and by the way, you’ve got a date with them tonight. And if you’re upset, hey… we’re supposed to be compersive, right?
Don’t be that person. Acting out of fear — in this case, of not getting what you want if you give the other person agency in the decision — goes against the entire philosophy of polyamory.

Final thoughts

We’ve just scratched the surface on a lifetime of experiences. If you take one thing away, it should be that every human being is different — and that’s something that should be reckoned with, and also wholeheartedly celebrated. If you take one more thing away, we recommend: be gentle with yourself.

Further reading: Desiderata.

Other Resources

Kimchi Cuddles. The author’s #1 recommended resource. It’s all well and good to read essays and articles, but Tikva Wolf’s lighthearted webcomic series, featuring a cast with a rainbow of love styles, gender expressions, and sexualities, delves into nearly every aspect of open relating in an accessible and humorous fashion.

More Than Two. Franklin Veaux’s best-selling book More Than Two is one of the widely-recommended bibles of polyamory, and the companion website dives into nearly every topic covered in this primer, but in far greater detail. If your goal is to absorb absolutely everything you can about the subject (and you have reading stamina), this should be your next stop.

Everyday Feminism’s articles on polyamory. Seriously, like, all of them. A good start would be their wonderful primer So You Want To Try Polyamory, as well as their articles on abuse in polyamory and coming out to your monogamous partner.

Solo Poly. Aggie Sez’s excellent blog about “life and dating as a free agent” is full of great articles applicable to all sorts of relationship styles, but is a fantastic resource especially for practitioners of solo polyamory.

OKCupid for the Non-Mainstream User. This Chrome extension makes navigating the popular dating site easier for polyamorous folk by putting people’s answers to the non-monogamy questions front-and-center on their profiles. Between this and specifying “strictly non-monogamous” in your profile details, your matches are more likely to be with open relaters.

Tremendous thanks to Amanda, Bridget, Kara, Mari, and Aggie for the edits, advice, and support that made this article possible.

Cover image credit: “Astronaut”, by Joseba Elorza.