When I first started transitioning, I was absorbing everything I could find online about being transgender. I looked at countless timeline videos showing how people changed over time on hormones, wondering what my own timeline would look like. I started tracking my transition with videos, photos, and journal entries, but soon I started to realize that I wasn’t really interested in sharing any of these things the way that I’d seen them shared. We need timelines and montages and careful documentation of the process for greater awareness and education, but I wanted to share something else. My desire was to share how significant it was for me to trust myself to know what was best for me--the internal transformation. 

You can’t be certain of anything in life, and there’s risk involved in almost anything you’d want to do, even driving a car down the street. But one thing you can know is what you want. It’s often buried underneath other people’s ideas or expectations, but your true desires are there.

In this year of hormone therapy my voice has gotten deeper, my body has gotten hairier, and I have started to feel so normal that for the first time I wondered, “is this how everyone else feels?” My girlfriend told me that I no longer stay quiet around new people or try to make myself invisible in social settings. I speak up more now, and I don’t hunch my shoulders as much.

Strangers address me as a man consistently now, (which feels great), and experiencing the extent of male privilege first-hand has been eye-opening. People are quicker to help me than ever before in my life. If I’m holding hands with my girlfriend in a crowd, they will move aside for me but not for her. I’ve also started feeling like my eyes are a weapon--people look visibly uncomfortable if they feel like I’m looking at them too closely. When I’m talking to someone, I’m aware of how tall I am and whether the other person feels like I’m towering over them or talking down to them. 

I am feeling more comfortable and free to express myself than I ever have before in my life, and I am more aware than ever of different levels of privilege that exist in our society. And truly, we all find ourselves at some intersection of self-expression and privilege. Issues that arise in our society, like the ongoing conversations about the experience of black people in america, are deeply intertwined with our identities. When news of the coronavirus first broke in the United States but there still hadn’t been any cases in America, I went for sushi with a coworker and overheard some blue collar workers making racist comments… even while they ate at the restaurant. 

Never align yourself so firmly with something that it cuts off your ability to empathize and extend compassion to others. Nothing in this life is worth causing pain to other humans directly or indirectly through judgement and rejection. Getting stuck in an “us vs them” mentality is the basest form of existence.

Trust yourself to know who you are, and never feel like you have to justify that. I can identify as a man while recognizing male privilege exists and using that privilege to amplify others. I can be drawn to aspects of the heroic masculine without using that to justify actions that discriminate or put down others.

Always keep your mind and heart open, but most importantly trust your gut. The world may expect coldness from you, but give them tenderness instead. 

These are some of the things I’ve learned after one year on testosterone.

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