Like any of that shit is scarier than the inevitability of suicide.
Before T, it did scare me. TERF propaganda is highly effective. I didn’t want to become more of a freak.
But when that first dose hit my bloodstream and I felt the spreading calm, the sense of self-possession suffusing my body, I knew how wrong they were.
Self-possession—that’s a strange term to a transgender person. We go years without understanding what it means, viscerally. How it feels to truly embody yourself. To love the feeling of your own skin, the breath in your lungs, the blood pumping through your heart.
Self-possession is mental, too. It’s the confidence and assertiveness you’ve always felt should be yours. It’s the sense of rightness when someone says “sir.” It’s seeing yourself reflected accurately in the eyes of others, as the person you really are.
I could never give these things up. This is what it means to be human.
[Jump cut.]
So many of you have asked me if I know anyone who’s detransitioned, and why. I do know some, and each had their own reason: family rejection, medical costs, lost their job, feared for their life.
Not one detransitioned because they were wrong about the whole gender thing. It was society, family, and friends who failed them.
The world failed them.
If you ask what I think about all of this, I’ll tell you:
Transition isn’t a trap.
It’s not a life sentence. It’s a process that you can start and stop as much as you want.
You may find, down the line, that it doesn’t work for you. You can stop taking hormones. Grow your hair out or cut it short. Shave or stop shaving. All the million little ways we signify gender to each other, to ourselves.
But there’s one thing you can’t know until you try it, and that’s how hormones will affect you on the inside. In all the ways that you think, feel, perceive the world.
Before T, I thought I could detransition if I had to.
Now I know I could never do it willingly.
I’m myself on T, in a way I’ve never been. I’m happy. I’m confident. I’m alive.
There’s no going back for me.
———
Sun streamed through the windows, soaking into the wood floor like honey. I pulled at my cuffs, cleared my throat, watched a galaxy of dust revolve in a sunbeam. This was probably hopeless, but once upon a time I’d thought transition was hopeless, too. Till I reached the point where I told myself: I will undoubtedly fail, but I have to at least try. I have to earn that failure.
“Renard Grant?”
I stood.
A woman in a business suit smiled at me.
“We’re ready for you now.”
———
Meet me in the bar, I texted.
This late, the hotel was dead. My wing tips glided silently over the plush carpet. The melodic ding of the elevator was a musical heartbeat. All the bright lights seemed to shimmer in time with my own pulse. Everything, everything orchestrated itself for this night, for us.
She sat in the bar, overlooking the lake. Candles spilled shivering gold pools on the floor. Tamsin gazed into the snowy night, and when I saw her my body slowed, my heart accelerating.
I had never seen her in a dress.
Her slender arms splayed across the linen tablecloth, legs tucked elegantly beneath the chair, so poised and perfect. The black dress cut off at her shoulders, leaving her brown skin bare. At her ears, two small pearls, liquid drops of moonlight.
She felt me looking, turned.
Neither of us spoke. Her eyes ran over me, lingering on my shoulders, hands. The gold stromata in her irises burned like fuses.
I unbuttoned my suit coat and sat.
Tam raised a hand and the bartender brought our usual rum. Candlelight refracted in the rich amber, marbling it with fire.
“You’re wearing the suit,” she finally said, excitement rising in her voice.
“You’re wearing a dress.”
“Where have you been all day?”
“You know where.” I raised my glass. “Toast?”
She lifted.
“To being yourself,” I said. “No matter how hard the world tries to stop you.”
Clink. We drank without taking our eyes off each other.
“You’re killing me, Mr. Grant. How did it go?”
“They offered me the job.”
She broke into a smile. “I bloody knew it.”
“I haven’t accepted yet. If Armin’s involved—”
“Your friends haven’t turned against you.” Her fingers brushed mine on the tumbler. “They want you to be happy, too. We all do. Don’t you see that?” She pressed harder. “Don’t you see who really wants your happiness, Renard?”
Quietly, I said, “We’re all trapped by something, right? Love is my cage.”
Her expression turned savvy, guarded. She released.
We drank.
“What do you think of the dress?” she said.
“It’s stunning. Almost a shame I’m going to tear it off.”
“I was thinking the same about your suit.”