Celebrating My Trans Body and the Joy of Transition: While lawmakers attempt to strip away my identity, I respond with radical acts of self-love for myself and my community.

• Date: 01 August 2022
• Author: Brinks, L.
• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Author: Brinks, L.

As a child of the Midwest, summer was always my favorite time to exist outdoors--when the grass was green and the air was hot, just before the late summer humidity made it too thick to breathe. Growing up, I did not have the vocabulary to describe how I felt about my gender. I knew I struggled to connect with many other girls my age and felt safest in striped T-shirts and cutoff jeans. I did not know any genderqueer adults or that gender diversity existed. I struggled to feel a sense of belonging and carried a lot of fear and anxiety about my body and how I was perceived.

I often tried to hide my body under baggier shirts and sweatshirts. All this effort and anxiety was because I did not want to give people a reason to see me as a girl. I daydreamed about becoming a question mark, something liminal and undefined in existence--just myself. I was dreaming about being genderqueer, but I had no one to share this with.

I grew up kissing frogs and catching turtles by ponds, but never expected them to transform magically into a prince or princess. Instead, I always dreamed of being transformed into the prince, or being the husband when playing house. I was afraid of the changes happening to my body--puberty terrified me. But because I had no one to explain gender dysphoria, I had yet to understand why it bothered me. In particular, no adults in my life talked to me about gender and feelings, and I was left to figure out many things on my own, unsuccessfully.

How can I...