My Egg Shattering Moment
So there’s no great way to say this but, when I got to the segment of the video where she changed into her Lady Foppington costume, I clocked her.
There’s a few times she’s done jokes about the comments people send when they suddenly figure out she is trans. I wish my own reaction was less ridiculous and over-dramatic. I was struck.
I immediately paused the video. Checked her YouTube homepage, checked her Twitter bio. I was looking for confirmation along the lines of “Trans YouTuber” This is where I was at.
Because I didn’t find anything like that, I checked the titles of all her videos and started watching them in erratic order. I didn’t return to the incel video until several videos later.
So why was this such a big deal to me?
My process of discovering I was trans was a spiraling mess. It can be very challenging to remember the chronology of what I knew because I nothing I saw took trans people seriously. Everything was framed from a cis perspective in a way oriented to produce shame. Most of what I encountered was by accident or from terrible sources. (porn) For most of this time the only words I knew for trans people were slurs.
Because I cross-dressed in private for most of this period of my life I would often wonder if I could be trans but I couldn’t possibly be trans enough. Immediately after I would forget the whole thing until I inevitably returned to the question once again.
When I was younger found information on a sexual health site about intersex people. Because I had no other reference I couldn’t help have conflicted thoughts wondering if I some how could be without knowing, wishing I could be or wanting to meet someone so I could learn more. Without knowing more I concluded this was probably weird and would come across as fetishizing them.
My next big learning moment came from trans women pornstar, Sarina Valentina. Yes, from that old FaceBook meme. I had no idea transitioning could change so much. I still didn’t know very much about HRT. I was especially amazed by her voice. I somehow managed to find a video (porn) which started off with an interview of her where she explained that she transitioned very young. This when I started internalizing you are too old to transition.
my personal Buck Angel I guess?
Completely by accident, I encountered another YouTube video where a young women revealed she was trans and how she was able to transition very young because she was extremely suicidal as a child. This further contributed to my beliefs that I was not “trans enough” and that I was too old for a “complete” transition. I sadly didn’t remember her name. I was committed to being pessimistic. I still had no real understanding of gender dysphoria.
All of this was interspersed with cycles of excuses and denial.
I thought I couldn’t be trans because I was into women (common misconception) and because I didn’t have a strong desire for GRS.
Other trans women have gone into depth about the types of excuses you tell yourself.
At around this time where I lived you needed to be out and living as a woman for a whole year to get a prescription for hormones. That seemed absolutely impossible to me, so I felt I must not be trans.
By the time we got to the Trans Tipping Point year, I had already amassed so much internalized transphobia that the new positive attention I was seeing was inspiring and depressing all at once. The narratives in Orange is the New Black continued to be misleading about transition and hormones. My take away from the show was that the Laverne Cox’s character, Sophie Burset was only able to afford to transition by stealing credit cards and going to jail. I basically convinced myself I transitioning would only be possible if I won the lottery, and I didn’t play lottery.
About a year before I saw Natalie’s video, I did finally accept that being trans made the most sense for what I was experiencing. It explained a lot of recurring narratives in my life. Unfortunately, I was still convinced that I would never transition. And I would go through cycles where I would completely forget this acceptance. I wasn’t sure how I would make it past 35 (my current age) without falling apart.
At an extreme vulnerable moment for me, while I was watching a subject painfully close to home, Natalie surprised me and her videos finally gave me the perspective I desperately needed.
Basically my egg had cracked numerous times only for me to tape it back together. Then Natalie came along and completely shattered it.
The whole thing was a complete fluke.
