AutHAMn Leaves

The Pride Chorus, now the Queer Joy Chorus, has been life-changing for me and so many others I know. I wouldn't be on T right now if I hadn't found a musical space that is so welcoming and supportive of trans voices. If you have any support you can give us to help grow into the next phase as an independent non-profit community org, please consider donating

its wild, after being out as trans and non-binary for 14ish years, to suddenly have the exact sensation for the first time of like, realizing with such fucking clarity that i am a queer man, and that i can go back as far as i can remember and see over and over again moments when i was clearly identifying with/as a queer man, just absent the context to understand what that means. The classic "wrong body" trans narrative has always felt not right to me but, while still not totally accurate, it has never felt closer to the truth. since i was a really little kid and met my mom's friend David, which i think was probably my first awareness of queer/non-traditional versions of masculinity, i have felt that compass pointing true north over and over pointing towards queer male identity.

i maybe did figure this out in my early 20s but for some reason i let myself be convinced that this was a false narrative. i have a post in drafts i didnt post for drafts jubilee (i dont think i posted it?) that was just like, how many of the people who are sneered at for their obsession over MLM ships, BL shows, and gay media, bc "yr just a straight/bi woman sexualizing gay men"....like how many of them are like me and actually queer transmascs? it cant be all of them, or even most of them. but i cannot find a functional difference between the dominant perception of those experiences and my actual experience. i was fixated on queer men and queer men's stories, and also sexually attracted to queer men, bc i was and am a fucking queer man.

anyways my appt for getting my T rx is the 18th. my doctor is very chill and experienced prescribing hormones so i am not worried about being able to get exactly what i want, which is HRT to onset a dimorphic male puberty. sometime between now and then i do have to tell my parents that im going T again so that will be fun. im never expecting a poor reaction but i am expecting a clumsy one lmao

that i can go back as far as i can remember and see over and over again moments when i was clearly identifying with/as a queer man, just absent the context to understand what that means.

i let myself be convinced that this was a false narrative.

ok yeah i think that my very fixation on queer men and queer masculinity was somehow perversely twisted to be evidence against that being my ultimate end goal of transition. like, the fact that i was so so obsessed somehow proved that my relationship to this desire to be a queer man was impure, tainted, deviant, as opposed to some theoretical transmasculinity which was purely the desire to be a Man™️.

its wild, after being out as trans and non-binary for 14ish years, to suddenly have the exact sensation for the first time of like, realizing with such fucking clarity that i am a queer man, and that i can go back as far as i can remember and see over and over again moments when i was clearly identifying with/as a queer man, just absent the context to understand what that means. The classic "wrong body" trans narrative has always felt not right to me but, while still not totally accurate, it has never felt closer to the truth. since i was a really little kid and met my mom's friend David, which i think was probably my first awareness of queer/non-traditional versions of masculinity, i have felt that compass pointing true north over and over pointing towards queer male identity.

i maybe did figure this out in my early 20s but for some reason i let myself be convinced that this was a false narrative. i have a post in drafts i didnt post for drafts jubilee (i dont think i posted it?) that was just like, how many of the people who are sneered at for their obsession over MLM ships, BL shows, and gay media, bc "yr just a straight/bi woman sexualizing gay men"....like how many of them are like me and actually queer transmascs? it cant be all of them, or even most of them. but i cannot find a functional difference between the dominant perception of those experiences and my actual experience. i was fixated on queer men and queer men's stories, and also sexually attracted to queer men, bc i was and am a fucking queer man.

anyways my appt for getting my T rx is the 18th. my doctor is very chill and experienced prescribing hormones so i am not worried about being able to get exactly what i want, which is HRT to onset a dimorphic male puberty. sometime between now and then i do have to tell my parents that im going T again so that will be fun. im never expecting a poor reaction but i am expecting a clumsy one lmao

yall, it is in retrospect (and also after watching I Saw the TV Glow and thinking about what stories and characters i was fixated on as a child and teen) so unbelievably obvious that i am a queer man. i was fucking obsessed with anything that had a queer man or a queer actor in it. it flooded my brain with happy chemicals. fuck, i think i watched every episode of Will and Grace with my mom for at least its first season or 2. I was 6.

Queer masculinities are a whole ass thing that is sufficiently different from straight masculinity that the idea that i could "be a boy" never crossed my mind, bc boy= the straight male gender and that did not resonate with me. it did not spark joy. but when i watched representation of queer masculinity it was just slamming the THATS ME button in my brain.

and i felt so ashamed for it! i thought i was like, a bad person, a woman who was fetishizing and obsessing over gay men. like i was worried i was gonna appropriate something that wasnt mine. when i figured out i was non-binary that shame did not go away like you would think it would. i dont know why i treated my gender and body like a single slider from feminine to masculine, where the farther over i moved the slider towards the masculine side the farther away i felt from my self, but also i did not want the "female body" i had. i think i got some messaging somewhere at some point that medical transitioning as a transmasc required me to act "masc" on some level, and that, and this is extremely stupid so prepare yourself, not doing so was somehow taking something away from trans women???

This bullshit remained in my head long after i had met plenty of trans people who colored outside those lines, so to speak. I continued to fixate on queer men's stories, but still felt like i was getting away with something by doing it. I dont know what to tell you except that 2010s tumblr, and to an extent my college queer community, was a fucking dumpster fire of toxic gender policing discourse. Even stuff I consciously disagreed with obviously got lodged in my brain so thoroughly that it took 10 years to work itself out.

So now i am jumping out of my skin ready to start T again and im a little worried going too too fast will just wreck my singing voice entirely, but also i want to go as fast as possible i am so so SO over this era of trying to be content with my body and voice the way they are!!