Socio-political Consciousness
Transphobia, Fear, and My Year in Transition
It’s the second to last week of practices for Grease. I’m sitting on a staircase onstage, manspreading and pretending to mock a cheerleader in my best impression of a 1950’s greaser. Beside me is O, the other trans kid in the guy ensemble (and the first person I asked to call me Mars five months ago.) I lean over and tell him that the director is one of the few teachers I haven’t told about my name yet.“You’re telling her today,” O says, smiling.
“What? No.”
“Come on. What do you think she’s gonna say? No?”
“...No.”
“It's fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Sure,” I reply, although I don’t know if I mean it.
He looks at me. “So what are you afraid of?”
I look away from him. I’m not really sure.
~ * ~
It took me two years to convince my mom to let me cut my hair. By the last time I begged, I was willing to offer up anything. A year of dish duty. A promise to clean my room every day forever. When she finally said yes, I knew I would never go back. I remember going home after the appointment, restyling my curls, and smiling at my reflection for hours. I didn’t feel prettier. I felt like I was seeing myself in the mirror for the first time.
I spent a year toeing the line between butch and trans and trying not to cross it. I took the padding out of my bras, searched for jeans that could hide my hips, started wearing skirts, stopped wearing skirts, and tried very hard to not think about what I looked like at all.
When I considered trying out new pronouns, I turned to the internet to look for people who felt like me. I watched Youtube videos about how people figured out they were trans, read about different gender identities, and followed trans influencers on Tik Tok and instagram. In my search, I came across transphobia. A lot of it.
There were the hate commenters who accused nonbinary people of being delusional, sensitive, attention-seeking snowflakes, those that called supportive parents child abusers and pointed to detransitioners’ stories as proof that increasing access to gender-affirming care was dangerous. There were the TERFS who raged about how trans women, trans men, and nonbinary people alike were a threat to feminism. I even saw trans people who shunned other trans people for dressing in a way associated with their assigned gender or not experiencing body dysphoria. No corner of the internet was safe; whether I was watching a top surgery vlog or a random outfit-of-the-day reel, I would encounter a new kind of critique. And these views didn’t just come from random, anonymous users. They came from J.K. Rowling, the author of my favorite childhood series. I crawled out of my social media rabbit hole and decided I was definitely a butch lesbian and should never think about my gender again.
A month later, in July before my senior year, I made my first attempt to bind my chest. I used a compression top, which looking back, didn’t do much more than a too-tight sports bra. But in the moment, I felt like I did the day I cut my hair. I looked a little more like me. That evening, I allowed myself to write it down. I think I am nonbinary.
It took me two years to convince my mom to let me cut my hair. By the last time I begged, I was willing to offer up anything. A year of dish duty. A promise to clean my room every day forever. When she finally said yes, I knew I would never go back. I remember going home after the appointment, restyling my curls, and smiling at my reflection for hours. I didn’t feel prettier. I felt like I was seeing myself in the mirror for the first time.
I spent a year toeing the line between butch and trans and trying not to cross it. I took the padding out of my bras, searched for jeans that could hide my hips, started wearing skirts, stopped wearing skirts, and tried very hard to not think about what I looked like at all.
When I considered trying out new pronouns, I turned to the internet to look for people who felt like me. I watched Youtube videos about how people figured out they were trans, read about different gender identities, and followed trans influencers on Tik Tok and instagram. In my search, I came across transphobia. A lot of it.
There were the hate commenters who accused nonbinary people of being delusional, sensitive, attention-seeking snowflakes, those that called supportive parents child abusers and pointed to detransitioners’ stories as proof that increasing access to gender-affirming care was dangerous. There were the TERFS who raged about how trans women, trans men, and nonbinary people alike were a threat to feminism. I even saw trans people who shunned other trans people for dressing in a way associated with their assigned gender or not experiencing body dysphoria. No corner of the internet was safe; whether I was watching a top surgery vlog or a random outfit-of-the-day reel, I would encounter a new kind of critique. And these views didn’t just come from random, anonymous users. They came from J.K. Rowling, the author of my favorite childhood series. I crawled out of my social media rabbit hole and decided I was definitely a butch lesbian and should never think about my gender again.
A month later, in July before my senior year, I made my first attempt to bind my chest. I used a compression top, which looking back, didn’t do much more than a too-tight sports bra. But in the moment, I felt like I did the day I cut my hair. I looked a little more like me. That evening, I allowed myself to write it down. I think I am nonbinary.
~ * ~
According to a 2022 national survey by the Trevor Project, fewer than 1 in 3 transgender and nonbinary youth felt their home was gender-affirming (“2022 National Survey”).
~ * ~
I grew up in two homes with two families. The first was my mom’s, and the second was the house she dropped me off at every weekday for the first fourteen years of my life. There, I ate my grandma’s cooking from breakfast to dinner, fought with my two cousins like we were siblings, and studied for exams with my aunt.
They were a Christian family and they sent me to a Catholic school. I’m not sure which one to blame, if either, for my fourth grade memory of laughing at a picture of Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of a magazine, or my fifth grade memory of being scared that God would punish me for singing “Girl Crush” by Little Big Town.
What I do remember is that in sixth grade, my little cousin said something about gay people being weird. I disagreed with him, he tattled (as baby brothers do), and my grandma and aunt sat me down to explain how God created man and woman and marriage between them. They believed homosexuality was a lifestyle choice, or perhaps a mental illness caused by childhood trauma. I tried to argue with them, but the conversation ended with me crying on the carpet floor.
Later, I asked my mom what I could’ve said that would make a difference. She taught me that some minds could not be changed, and around those people, it was best to stay quiet.
So I never told my second family that I liked girls, but I did tell my mom. It was two weeks after I figured it out, actually. That may sound soon, but with my mom, there was no hate or religious zeal to fear. She was scared for me at first. But she accepted me, and in time, she was teasing me for my crushes.
Flash forward to January 2023, and an order of trans tape arrived in the mail while I was at school. When I got home, my mom handed me the contents of the package in a ziploc bag and asked me if I wanted to be a boy. I told her I was nonbinary, and a few days later, I gave her a powerpoint presentation on what that means. She listened quietly, and once I finished, she said she loved me no matter what.
Around the rest of our family, my mom still had to call me she. So, of course I understood when she did it in front of store employees and restaurant staff too. She had no one to practice with, after all. I understood when she continued to use the feminine ending for my Spanish nickname, or when she tickled our dog and teased, “You miss your hermana, don’t you?” There’s no neutral word for sibling in Spanish.
I gave her the benefit of the doubt when I corrected her and she asked, "Why does it matter how other people see you?" Three months later, she had me proofread an email to a coworker that read: “My daughter appreciates your advice. She plans to…” I fixed her grammar and moved on.
Four months later, my patience was wearing thin. I blew up on my mom in a dog park and called her out for not trying to respect me. “But you are a she,” she said, before catching herself and arguing instead: “Well, I’ve been telling you to keep your room clean for years, and you haven’t respected me.”
I started walking the other way, out of the dog park. A lump formed in my throat. I wasn’t upset about the pronouns, really. I was overwhelmed by how much she couldn’t understand: who I was, the support I needed, why I needed it, why her comments would get her canceled on Twitter…
My fear was no longer rejection. It was that lack of understanding I started to expect from most people, that gap between acceptance and support that I never knew existed before.
~ * ~
LGBTQ youth who felt their school was affirming reported lower rates of suicide attempts (“2022 National Survey”).
~ * ~
When I started senior year, I had no intentions of coming out. Then one of my teachers asked her students to write our pronouns on an introduction worksheet. Another apologized for forgetting to change “he/she” to “they” in a slideshow presentation. I bit the bullet and introduced myself with my pronouns at the first SING rehearsal. The next thing I knew, I was being called a king in the cast group chat.
I have a lot of happy memories from this year, both big and small. There was one time I came out to a friend after she called me a dancing queen, and after that she called me a “dancing monarch.” A teacher used they/them pronouns for me in a Twitter post. O gave me the courage to ask to be in the boys’ ensemble for Grease, and the director gave me the chance to play a guy for the first time. I handed in the final edit of my last SERP paper with my new name on the cover. Faced with this easy acceptance, I wondered: Which is the real world and which is the bubble? The Instagram comment sections or Staten Island Tech?
The bubble could very well be Tech, or maybe the state of New York. As of April 3, 417 anti-LGBT bills have been introduced in state legislatures, compared with 180 in 2022 (Choi). 60 of the educational-related bills fall into a new category: forced outing, in which teachers would have to notify the parents of kids who changed their name or pronouns. One Arkansas bill would even require parental consent before teachers use a student’s preferred name and pronouns (“What anti-trans bills passed”). Out of the 417 bills proposed, 24 have been passed in 11 states. These laws include restrictions on gender-affirming healthcare and school bathroom access and bans on transgender athletes in youth sports and classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation (Choi). As of May 8, the Human Rights Campaign estimated that 17.2% of transgender youth are at risk of losing access to gender-affirming care (“Map: Attacks on Gender-Affirming Care”).
In a survey from the Trevor Project, 86% of trans and nonbinary youth reported that the rise in anti-trans legislation negatively impacted their mental health (“New poll emphasizes negative impacts”). Despite my sympathy for trans youth in red states, I thought it hadn’t impacted mine. As I gained a sense of security at school, I started to block out the transphobia of the outside world.
But after reflecting on my senior year, I know now that it affected me in little ways every day. The first time I wore my binder to school, I noticed every pair of eyes that flicked down to my chest and imagined those people thinking, delusional. Whenever I was faced with the decision to correct someone on my pronouns or name, a voice in the back of my mind would whisper, they’ll think you’re sensitive, a snowflake. When I considered coming out to teachers who hadn’t made their support or lack of clear, I thought of the many Staten Islanders who vote Republican. I thought of my mom.
The part that hurt me was not my fear of what other people would think. It was my own self-doubt. I don’t want to admit it, but there are times when I’ve been embarrassed to come out. I guess I internalized all those “I identity as an attack helicopter” jokes. It affected the way I dealt with gender dysphoria. I looked in the mirror on days I knew what I saw was going to bother me. I ruminated on the discomfort I felt when someone called me the wrong thing. I scratched at my wounds rather than try to heal them because my pain was proof of who I was. Pain is a trans person’s bargaining chip in a transphobic world. If I feel enough of it, maybe I can convince people I deserve their effort to relearn the English language.
My internal confidence and pride in my identity grew naturally with time, but being affirmed at school is what made the most difference in helping me overcome my fears. Learning a lesson in AP Psych about the difference between gender and sex made me feel more validated than any self-affirmation could. Seeing teachers I’ve known for four years change the language they use for me in a day gave me permission to expect the same treatment from other Gen Xers in my life. Hearing my friends call me by my chosen name and getting to know other trans students like O simply brings me joy every single day.
I feel lucky that Tech is the place that I got to spend this year in transition, lucky I was born in New York and not in Texas or Florida. I can’t say that I’m not afraid anymore, but I can say that a lot of the less rational worries I came into senior year with have been replaced with hope.
~ * ~
“Okay. I’ll tell her.”
“Really?” O asks. He’s more surprised than I expect him to be. Perhaps he didn’t think he’d actually convince me.
We wait until the end of rehearsal, and then wait some more. A few people have last minute questions for the director that day, and I get more and more nervous as they talk. I complain about this to O.
“You’ve got this, king,” he says. “Is there a gender neutral word? My ruler…my liege.”
The director starts to walk away, and I call her back. She turns to us.
“What’s up?” she asks. O nudges me encouragingly.
“I wanted to let you know I changed my name, and I go by Mars now,” I say.
“Okay,” she responds, and her only concern is that my old name had already been submitted for the playbill.
It’s a weight lifted off my shoulders. As O and I walk out of the auditorium, he smiles and says, “See? That was easy.”
I smile back.
Works Cited
“2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health.” The Trevor Project, 2022. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/.
Choi, Annette. “Record Number of anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced this year.” CNN, 6 April, 2023. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/politics/anti-lgbtq-plus-state-bill-rights-dg/index.html.
“New Poll Emphasizes Negative Impacts of Anti-LGBTQ Policies on LGBTQ Youth.” The Trevor Project, 19 Jan, 2022. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/new-poll-emphasizes-negative-impacts-of-anti-lgbtq-policies-on-lgbtq-youth/
“Map: Attacks on Gender-Affirming Care by State.” Human Rights Campaign, 8 May, 2023. https://www.hrc.org/resources/attacks-on-gender-affirming-care-by-state-map utm_medium=ads&utm_source=GoogleSearch&utm_content=GACMap-General&utm_campaign=GoogleGrant&utm_source=GS&utm_medium=AD&utm_campaign=BPI-HRC-Grant&utm_content=657195962805&utm_term=anti%20trans%20bills&gclid=CjwKCAjw3ueiBhB
According to a 2022 national survey by the Trevor Project, fewer than 1 in 3 transgender and nonbinary youth felt their home was gender-affirming (“2022 National Survey”).
~ * ~
I grew up in two homes with two families. The first was my mom’s, and the second was the house she dropped me off at every weekday for the first fourteen years of my life. There, I ate my grandma’s cooking from breakfast to dinner, fought with my two cousins like we were siblings, and studied for exams with my aunt.
They were a Christian family and they sent me to a Catholic school. I’m not sure which one to blame, if either, for my fourth grade memory of laughing at a picture of Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of a magazine, or my fifth grade memory of being scared that God would punish me for singing “Girl Crush” by Little Big Town.
What I do remember is that in sixth grade, my little cousin said something about gay people being weird. I disagreed with him, he tattled (as baby brothers do), and my grandma and aunt sat me down to explain how God created man and woman and marriage between them. They believed homosexuality was a lifestyle choice, or perhaps a mental illness caused by childhood trauma. I tried to argue with them, but the conversation ended with me crying on the carpet floor.
Later, I asked my mom what I could’ve said that would make a difference. She taught me that some minds could not be changed, and around those people, it was best to stay quiet.
So I never told my second family that I liked girls, but I did tell my mom. It was two weeks after I figured it out, actually. That may sound soon, but with my mom, there was no hate or religious zeal to fear. She was scared for me at first. But she accepted me, and in time, she was teasing me for my crushes.
Flash forward to January 2023, and an order of trans tape arrived in the mail while I was at school. When I got home, my mom handed me the contents of the package in a ziploc bag and asked me if I wanted to be a boy. I told her I was nonbinary, and a few days later, I gave her a powerpoint presentation on what that means. She listened quietly, and once I finished, she said she loved me no matter what.
Around the rest of our family, my mom still had to call me she. So, of course I understood when she did it in front of store employees and restaurant staff too. She had no one to practice with, after all. I understood when she continued to use the feminine ending for my Spanish nickname, or when she tickled our dog and teased, “You miss your hermana, don’t you?” There’s no neutral word for sibling in Spanish.
I gave her the benefit of the doubt when I corrected her and she asked, "Why does it matter how other people see you?" Three months later, she had me proofread an email to a coworker that read: “My daughter appreciates your advice. She plans to…” I fixed her grammar and moved on.
Four months later, my patience was wearing thin. I blew up on my mom in a dog park and called her out for not trying to respect me. “But you are a she,” she said, before catching herself and arguing instead: “Well, I’ve been telling you to keep your room clean for years, and you haven’t respected me.”
I started walking the other way, out of the dog park. A lump formed in my throat. I wasn’t upset about the pronouns, really. I was overwhelmed by how much she couldn’t understand: who I was, the support I needed, why I needed it, why her comments would get her canceled on Twitter…
My fear was no longer rejection. It was that lack of understanding I started to expect from most people, that gap between acceptance and support that I never knew existed before.
~ * ~
LGBTQ youth who felt their school was affirming reported lower rates of suicide attempts (“2022 National Survey”).
~ * ~
When I started senior year, I had no intentions of coming out. Then one of my teachers asked her students to write our pronouns on an introduction worksheet. Another apologized for forgetting to change “he/she” to “they” in a slideshow presentation. I bit the bullet and introduced myself with my pronouns at the first SING rehearsal. The next thing I knew, I was being called a king in the cast group chat.
I have a lot of happy memories from this year, both big and small. There was one time I came out to a friend after she called me a dancing queen, and after that she called me a “dancing monarch.” A teacher used they/them pronouns for me in a Twitter post. O gave me the courage to ask to be in the boys’ ensemble for Grease, and the director gave me the chance to play a guy for the first time. I handed in the final edit of my last SERP paper with my new name on the cover. Faced with this easy acceptance, I wondered: Which is the real world and which is the bubble? The Instagram comment sections or Staten Island Tech?
The bubble could very well be Tech, or maybe the state of New York. As of April 3, 417 anti-LGBT bills have been introduced in state legislatures, compared with 180 in 2022 (Choi). 60 of the educational-related bills fall into a new category: forced outing, in which teachers would have to notify the parents of kids who changed their name or pronouns. One Arkansas bill would even require parental consent before teachers use a student’s preferred name and pronouns (“What anti-trans bills passed”). Out of the 417 bills proposed, 24 have been passed in 11 states. These laws include restrictions on gender-affirming healthcare and school bathroom access and bans on transgender athletes in youth sports and classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation (Choi). As of May 8, the Human Rights Campaign estimated that 17.2% of transgender youth are at risk of losing access to gender-affirming care (“Map: Attacks on Gender-Affirming Care”).
In a survey from the Trevor Project, 86% of trans and nonbinary youth reported that the rise in anti-trans legislation negatively impacted their mental health (“New poll emphasizes negative impacts”). Despite my sympathy for trans youth in red states, I thought it hadn’t impacted mine. As I gained a sense of security at school, I started to block out the transphobia of the outside world.
But after reflecting on my senior year, I know now that it affected me in little ways every day. The first time I wore my binder to school, I noticed every pair of eyes that flicked down to my chest and imagined those people thinking, delusional. Whenever I was faced with the decision to correct someone on my pronouns or name, a voice in the back of my mind would whisper, they’ll think you’re sensitive, a snowflake. When I considered coming out to teachers who hadn’t made their support or lack of clear, I thought of the many Staten Islanders who vote Republican. I thought of my mom.
The part that hurt me was not my fear of what other people would think. It was my own self-doubt. I don’t want to admit it, but there are times when I’ve been embarrassed to come out. I guess I internalized all those “I identity as an attack helicopter” jokes. It affected the way I dealt with gender dysphoria. I looked in the mirror on days I knew what I saw was going to bother me. I ruminated on the discomfort I felt when someone called me the wrong thing. I scratched at my wounds rather than try to heal them because my pain was proof of who I was. Pain is a trans person’s bargaining chip in a transphobic world. If I feel enough of it, maybe I can convince people I deserve their effort to relearn the English language.
My internal confidence and pride in my identity grew naturally with time, but being affirmed at school is what made the most difference in helping me overcome my fears. Learning a lesson in AP Psych about the difference between gender and sex made me feel more validated than any self-affirmation could. Seeing teachers I’ve known for four years change the language they use for me in a day gave me permission to expect the same treatment from other Gen Xers in my life. Hearing my friends call me by my chosen name and getting to know other trans students like O simply brings me joy every single day.
I feel lucky that Tech is the place that I got to spend this year in transition, lucky I was born in New York and not in Texas or Florida. I can’t say that I’m not afraid anymore, but I can say that a lot of the less rational worries I came into senior year with have been replaced with hope.
~ * ~
“Okay. I’ll tell her.”
“Really?” O asks. He’s more surprised than I expect him to be. Perhaps he didn’t think he’d actually convince me.
We wait until the end of rehearsal, and then wait some more. A few people have last minute questions for the director that day, and I get more and more nervous as they talk. I complain about this to O.
“You’ve got this, king,” he says. “Is there a gender neutral word? My ruler…my liege.”
The director starts to walk away, and I call her back. She turns to us.
“What’s up?” she asks. O nudges me encouragingly.
“I wanted to let you know I changed my name, and I go by Mars now,” I say.
“Okay,” she responds, and her only concern is that my old name had already been submitted for the playbill.
It’s a weight lifted off my shoulders. As O and I walk out of the auditorium, he smiles and says, “See? That was easy.”
I smile back.
Works Cited
“2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health.” The Trevor Project, 2022. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/.
Choi, Annette. “Record Number of anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced this year.” CNN, 6 April, 2023. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/politics/anti-lgbtq-plus-state-bill-rights-dg/index.html.
“New Poll Emphasizes Negative Impacts of Anti-LGBTQ Policies on LGBTQ Youth.” The Trevor Project, 19 Jan, 2022. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/new-poll-emphasizes-negative-impacts-of-anti-lgbtq-policies-on-lgbtq-youth/
“Map: Attacks on Gender-Affirming Care by State.” Human Rights Campaign, 8 May, 2023. https://www.hrc.org/resources/attacks-on-gender-affirming-care-by-state-map utm_medium=ads&utm_source=GoogleSearch&utm_content=GACMap-General&utm_campaign=GoogleGrant&utm_source=GS&utm_medium=AD&utm_campaign=BPI-HRC-Grant&utm_content=657195962805&utm_term=anti%20trans%20bills&gclid=CjwKCAjw3ueiBhB
mEiwA4BhspPQPHmQs0JlY8R3fL2rq2FL6_kTvhFrFb9BGWzsmHgwAR_9ZmQGRvhoChAwQAvD_BwE.
“What anti-trans bills passed in 2023?” Trans Legislation Tracker, 2023. https://translegislation.com/bills/2023/passed.
“What anti-trans bills passed in 2023?” Trans Legislation Tracker, 2023. https://translegislation.com/bills/2023/passed.
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