Coming Out – Page 2 – Purple and Green and the Life in Between

Let’s Talk Gender S1E4: Social Transition: Coming Out To Family

OVERVIEW

Coming out to friends and family is a long process that involves lots of uncertainty, strategy, and a bit of luck. We discuss Jake’s process of coming out as a trans man and Meaghan Ray’s experience of that process as his partner, including how this process went for us, what methods we used to come out to people, what emotions we experienced, and what responses we got.

We also discuss Meaghan Ray’s experiences of coming out as non-binary so far (still early on in the process), Jake’s experience of being their partner, and how their two experiences are similar or different.

You can find the audio for the episode at the bottom of the page or subscribe to Let’s Talk Gender in your favourite podcast app.

SHOW NOTES

The following is Jake’s coming out process and Meaghan Ray’s experience as his partner.

Who to come out to first?

Friends, then close family, then work, then extended /more questionable family, then strangers
Everyone’s process will be different
- Start with the people that will be most likely to be supportive and work your way up to the least supportive people

Partner Experience during closeted and early coming out phase

Various pronouns depending on the situation and who was present – female, male, neutral, avoiding pronouns altogether
Still trying to get used to his new identity so using female pronouns made that harder
Lasted about 4 months
Didn’t realize the toll that this took until about 8 months later (caused fairly severe burnout)
Got used to doing a quick check in before each social situation of who’s going to be there, who are you out to, is it worth going out, which name and pronouns are we using?

Coming out to family

Thought it would be similar to coming out as gay but it really wasn’t
- Being trans is about who you are and requires them to do a lot more work – change how they think of you and how they refer to you
Started with the first few people who were most likely to have a positive to neutral response and who had less direct impact
- Didn’t judge all of those correctly but overall it went ok
- Be open to any response they have
- Keep safety in mind
First part felt like it went really slow
- Few people know and if they’re hanging out with people who don’t know it gets very stressful
- Asking people to hold back on gendering you correctly which slows down their process of coming to terms with it
Eventually there is a tipping point where it’s easier just to have everyone know

Coming out to partner’s family/long distance family

Multiple conversations
Expecting close family to come out to other members of the family for you does not work – you end up having to do it yourself
Mostly done through email with generally positive, supportive responses
Follow up conversations at face-to-face gatherings
Took them longer to adjust but generally had less impact on us
Partner can do more of the work, especially with the follow up conversations

Methods for coming out

Face-to-face is the hardest, tended to avoid that if possible
Sent lots of emails in the early stages
Wrote a letter and read it out face-to-face
Sent lots of shorter emails to the more extended family
Facebook/social media for general public, past friends, far extended family

Responses to coming out conversations

Told close family early on that he was thinking about it/working on it as a warning that transition might be coming
Told them a while later that he for sure was trans but they didn’t seem to understand that there was much difference from the first convo
No change in pronouns or name
Had a family wedding coming up that necessitated telling Jake’s brother
- First person to appropriately change pronouns, name, and referents (brother) and introduced him that way at the wedding
His family realized that they were the only ones referring to him with female name and pronouns and suddenly was making it more unsafe for him
- Kick started their use of proper name and pronouns in an unexpected way
- Positive effect of strangers getting name/pronouns correct around family that is getting it incorrect
Was a high risk, high reward situation
Realized afterwards that family had been reluctant to change likely out of fear for his safety (when he wasn’t passing yet)
- What they didn’t realize (and what we didn’t understand early enough to explain to them) was that the toll on his psychological safety was worse than the physical safety risk that they perceived

Partner experience during early stages of being out to family

At the beginning, tried to hang out with them and refer to Jake in third person as much as possible to set a good example
- Complete opposite from previous stage where we tried to use second person or no pronouns as much as possible
Really enjoyed being able to refer to Jake correctly, felt good about setting a good example and trying to help
When they were not getting it at all, it got very difficult to hang out with them
- Jake wanted them to figure it out at their own pace and didn’t want to correct them
- Started getting angry with them too easily and had to not hang out with them as much (until they suddenly figured it out at the wedding)
Once they figured it out, it was much easier to hang out with them again
- Started correcting themselves, correcting each other

Correcting others when you get misgendered

Often happens in larger groups or in the middle of a conversation
Don’t want to derail a conversation or become the center of attention
Will remind them via text message later if they do it repeatedly without correcting themselves
Much better if someone else corrects them for you because you automatically have an ally and don’t have to make yourself vulnerable in order to stand up for yourself
Always takes emotional energy so it’s a balance of how much pain it’s causing you vs how much energy you have to spend to correct them

Emotions during coming out to family

Transition from questioning stage to coming out stage was the hardest
Fear, nervousness, what if someone becomes vengeful, actively negative
Questions about which family would chose to never talk to me again
Can’t base people’s reactions to you being trans on how they reacted to you being gay
Eventually reached a tipping point of it is more difficult to live in the closet than the fear of how people would react
Realization of how many people you actually have in your family
- Exhaustion, frustration, unending
False urgency to tell everyone as soon as he started hormones because changes would be happening and people would notice
- Didn’t happen nearly as fast as he felt like it would
- Wanted changes to happen faster to help people have an external reference for changing name and pronouns

Mental vs physical image and adjusting to new identity

Lots of detailed conversations between us where Jake explained how he saw himself and would feel most comfortable which helped Meaghan Ray change their mental image of him earlier than anyone else would be able to
- Made it easy for me to use correct pronouns well before any physical changes
Other people don’t get to have those detailed conversations and therefore can’t change their mental image because they don’t know what to change it to
- Often do much better after physical changes start happening
Family have known you longest and will have the strongest mental image of you pre-transition
5% rule: people will take up to 5% of the time they have known you to get used to new name and pronouns

Partner emotions during coming out to family

Fear, mostly for psychological well-being as he was having lots of difficult conversations
- Kept my phone on me at all times
Tried to provide lots of validation and support so he had at least one positive influence
Offered to go with him when he would be having those conversations
Still didn’t really understand how hard those conversations were and how things were going
- Had to ask really specific questions in order to find out because he didn’t want to make it harder for me and did not have any more energy to spend on another gender based conversation

Burnout lasts a long time

Still nervous about talking about gender and transition because there is a conditioned response that those conversations will lead to something huge and exhausting
Reviewing past experiences is much easier than talking about current ones
If you are the second person to transition in your immediate family or even within your relationship, those around you might have a hard time as a result of the residual burnout from past experiences with it

Meaghan Ray’s experience of coming out as non-binary

Even harder than coming out as binary trans
- The person you are coming out to already has an idea of what you mean by ‘male’ or ‘female’
- Most people do not have that reference for ‘nonbinary’
- Requires a lot more sex and gender 101 education to work up to getting them to understand which puts them in information overload
Really, all I’d be asking is for them to use they/them pronouns and maybe a different name and even that seems to be extremely hard for people to do
- We use they/them automatically all the time but when people are asked to do it consciously, apparently it messes with their brain and they can’t do it
Takes so much energy that I haven’t done a lot of coming out to family yet
- Something else always seems more important to talk about when visiting with family
- Sent an email with an explanation but haven’t talked about it since
- Good sibling support, will likely help my family come around but want to have those conversations with my parents first
Will likely have those conversations with close family once I’m pregnant/having a kid and have more extended visits with them and potentially more gender-based discomfort

Jake’s experience as Meaghan Ray’s partner

Trying to avoid pronouns at all costs
- Awkward pauses, reorganizing sentences
Being supportive while Meaghan Ray is slowly working up to coming out
- Spending a long time in limbo
Can’t be fully invested because limbo causes burnout and limbo will last much longer

The coming out equation

Deciding when you’re ready to come out will be different for everyone
How uncomfortable it is to be misgendered vs how hard it will be to come out and how much benefit you will get
- Very different answers to this equation for each of us

Every coming out process is different and personal but inevitably affects and involves the people around you.

Join us next week when we talk about coming out at work.

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Gay vs Trans

There are lots of ways that being gay and trans are similar but there are also a lot of differences. I have found that when I initially start talking about gender with someone new who has minimal queer literacy, they often get confused between sexuality and gender and conflate being trans with being gay.

Below are a lists of similarities and differences between being gay and being trans based on my experiences of being gay and non-binary and my husband’s experiences of being gay and trans. We both identified as gay first, and later discovered and expressed our non-cis gender identities.

SIMILARITIES

Incorrectly assumed to be the default (cis or straight)
Living with confusion and feeling like you don’t fit in before you know why
Have to figure out your identity
Have to ‘come out of the closet’ ie tell other people
Dealing with fear of rejection, prejudice, loss of housing or work as a result of coming out
Excitement and comfort of finding people that have the same/similar identity/experiences as you
Culture, experiences, and history specific to queer community
Lots of different terminology, language, and labels
Different interaction with people in your community than people outside of it
Risk to physical and psychological safety by living authentically
Pride parades, pride month, pride flags and symbols
Being labeled by strangers (often incorrectly) based on how you look or who you’re with
Often become parents via alternative fertility methods, surrogacy, or adoption
Prejudice in health care and legal systems (significantly worse for trans identities but present for both)
Lack of appropriate/relevant sex education

DIFFERENCES

Who you like vs who you are ie sexuality vs gender
Gender based experiences and identities are much less understood and accepted by the general public than sexuality based ones (though this wasn’t always the case and we hope to get to the same place with acceptance of gender identities)
- Significant energy has to be put towards educating the people around you when you come out as trans that isn’t necessary when coming out as gay
Coming out as gay requires the other person to change how they refer to your partner (if you have one) whereas coming out as trans requires them to change how they refer to you (which takes a lot more work on their part)
Dysphoria with trans identities that doesn’t relate to gay identities
Possibility of medical intervention and changes to legal documents with transition
Difficulty accessing appropriate/competent medical care as a trans person when it wasn’t a problem as a gay person
Gay community is readily available and easy to find while trans community is much smaller and harder to find
Extreme shift in privilege with transition that is much less pronounced with coming out as gay
Most trans people pick a new name, gay people don’t

If you have anything you’d like to add to these lists, leave me a comment below!

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Let’s Talk Gender S1E3: Personal Transition: Gender Exploration

OVERVIEW

The first stage of transition is the personal exploration of your gender. We discuss what the process of exploring your gender feels like, how each of us figured it out in different ways, and what it’s like to be the partner of someone going through the gender exploration process.

Sorry for the variable sound quality. We are still trying out different set ups to find something that works for us.

SHOW NOTES

Exposure to a concept or identity that resonated with us
- Looking up other people’s experiences on YouTube
- Being fascinated by people’s experiences without knowing why until later
Finding language to express ourselves and define our identities
- Other people’s labels don’t necessary feel right for you
- The labels that feel right shift throughout the exploration process
- The trans label comes with a lot of weight
- Takes a while to find your own meanings for labels that fit
Exploration is often driven by the feeling of not fitting with the gender you were assigned at birth and how people relate to you as a result (dysphoria)
- Trying to minimize it guides us in a direction towards our actual gender
- Often have been experiencing dysphoria for a while but didn’t know what it was called and once we have the word for it it feels huge and way more painful than it did before
- Physical dysphoria, social dysphoria, mental dysphoria
- Fairly easy to tell what you are dyphoric about
Sometimes we encounter gender euphoria and exploration is driven by finding that experience again
- Trying on different clothes when playing dress-up or secretly raiding a family member’s closet

Jake’s Experience

Minimal physical dysphoria, mostly social dysphoria
Voice causing people to gender him as female
Explorations
- Cutting hair short
- Wearing a binder
- Trying a packer
- More masculine style
Very nervous that people would notice immediately
Very scared of what the implications were of this feeling good, progressed very slowly
Looking for a new name
- Flipping through baby books
- Making a short list
- Ordering different things online with a different name each time
- Kept coming back to Jake and eventually it stuck
Eventually decided that he definitely did not feel comfortable being female
- Even if he didn’t do any medical transition, he still felt more male than anything else
Exploration doesn’t end
- Now that he is more comfortable in his maleness he is exploring some of the female things that he would never have done before
  - Longer hair
  - Nail polish
  - Earings back in

Meaghan Ray’s Experience

Exploration was a lot easier because they already new their identity but needed strategies to manage dysphoria, especially at work
- Similar strategies as Jake
Had a very clear gender related experience in Grade 10 where they were a boy named Ray for a few days, then back to Meaghan, then back to Ray
- Kept up for 2-3 months
- Was very confusing and frustrating and destabilizing
- Ended up making a list of personality traits for Meaghan and a list of personality traits for Ray, drew lines between the ones that matched, and from then on lived as that person
- Buried the whole experience very deep until Jake started talking about gender and they found language and space to explore it in a positive way
Needed something more concrete to follow for exploration than Jake
- You and Your Gender Identity: A Guide to Discovery by Dara Hoffman-Fox
- Created a gender tracker to see how much their gender fluctuated between male and female for both physical and social sense of gender
- Learned that their period affects their gender and that their physical and social sense of gender can shift separately which they will use different strategies to manage
Trying on a dress privately
- Thought it would feel wrong but it felt like a non-binary person wearing a dress
- It did not erase their sense of identity which was encouraging
At the end of exploration, they now have many more strategies that help and a much better understanding of who they are and how to express it to people

Partner Experience

Seeing Jake with a flat chest in a binder helped change Meaghan Ray’s mental image of him
If the partner is cis it can be very difficult to understand what’s happening
- Some trans people are not willing to include the partner in their exploration process and just show up as their new self which is very threatening and sudden for the partner
- Instead, Jake included Meaghan Ray in the process and they helped look stuff up, break things down into smaller steps so it was less scary, tested things out during a camping trip, provide encouragement and support
Your experience is your own
Need to find your own sources of support as a partner
Don’t know how to talk about it yet because everyone is still just figuring it out
The more open we are with each other the easier it is to keep our relationship strong
We happen to both be AFAB and heading in the male direction
- Some strategies worked very well for both of us
- Some things worked very differently for each of us
- Some things worked for one of us but not at all for the other

Resources

FTM
- YouTube Channels: Chase Ross at uppercasechase1, Ty Turner, Jammiedodger
- Books: This One Looks Like a Boy
NB
- Podcasts: Gender Rebels, They/Them/Theirs
- YouTube Channels: Ashley Wilde, Ash Hardell
- Instagram hashtags to create a community for yourself

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Let’s Talk Gender S1E2: Transition Timelines

OVERVIEW

Transitioning is a slow, often frustrating, ongoing process. It can roughly be broken down into four phases: personal, social, medical, and legal. We discuss the general timeline of each phase and how they overlapped for Jake’s transition from female to male. At the end, Meaghan Ray shares what their transition has included so far.

SHOW NOTES

General Thoughts on Transitioning

Typical FTM trans narrative
- Binary transition from one to the other
- Medical system sees it as a treatment to change from one to the other
In reality, it’s a slow frustrating process
- No sudden tipping point or specific end point
Non-binary transition is even more vague
- Often have to fake a binary identity to get the medical care you need
- Wide variety of social, medical, and legal changes
Generally made up of four stages
- Personal transition: an exploration of your own identity
- Social transition: the coming out process
- Medical transition: any medical interventions that help ease dysphoria or increase gender euphoria (HRT, surgery, electrolysis, voice therapy)
- Legal transition: changing name and gender marker on legal documents and with various institutions
Stages can overlap or blend into each other
Trans people do not need to go through all of these stages in order to transition or be considered trans.

Jake’s transition process:

Personal Transition

Longest stage
Began in 2015 until late 2016
Self-questioning, self-doubt, internal conflict
Talking to friends, looking things up on youtube
Found a therapist that was trans friendly that was familiar with the referral process
- Referral to gender psychiatrist
Felt like the therapist and Meaghan Ray were much more convinced that it made sense and he would be going through with it than he was
Finally determined that he would be more comfortable living as a man
Personal exploration continues throughout transition
- Getting used to body changes
- Learning how to communicate your identity
- Learning how to navigate new social status and changes in privilege

Social Transition

Came out to parents with a message of ‘I’ve been thinking about this, I’m exploring this’
Different approaches to coming out
- Emails, letters, face to face
You realize how many people you have in your life
- Very overwhelming and exhausting
Started with the people who would be most likely to be supportive
- Didn’t always work out as planned but generally helped build support
We were hoping that some people we told would pass on the information to others but it never actually worked out
- Ended up having to tell them ourselves
Reactions
- Some people changed name and pronouns right away
- Some people needed to be told multiple times and are still misgendering Jake (in late 2019)

Medical Transition

Lots of gatekeepers
Gender psychologist – referral to gender psychiatrist in summer 2016
Gender psychiatrist in summer 2017 on a cancellation
- Referrals for endocrine and surgery consult
Family doctor who was willing to write prescriptions for HRT – started Testosterone in May 2017
- Turned out to be an easy process once he built up the courage to ask the affirming doctor
Top surgery consult in fall 2017, didn’t feel good about the two year wait or the type of surgery offered
Had top surgery done at a private clinic (paying out of pocket) in April 2018
Hysterectomy in October 2018
Potential for bottom surgery in future – would require another visit to gender psychiatrist to get referrals to surgery and separate referral for funding
Got most of the information about who is allowed to make referrals, who is willing to make referrals, who is accepting referrals, and what the wait times are through the trans community
- Connections to community are very important

Legal Transition

Different process in each province or local area
First item was a piece of paper stating that [previous legal name] is transitioning from F to M that officially explains why you don’t look like the picture on your ID
- Important during the stage when you’re already on hormones and presenting differently but haven’t yet changed any ID
Name and gender marker change document that requires fingerprinting
- Submitted in Aug 2017, received it in October 2017
Immediately got driver’s license changed
- Felt safer in general but now had conflicting documentation with national documents
So many different documents that needed changing
- SIN card
- Banking information, loans, mortgages, credit score
- Marriage certificate
- School records, work ID, email addresses
National documents were the hardest
- Birth certificate took the longest due to waiting for laws to change – finally done in summer 2018
Took over a year
- No international travel
- Lots of stress, confusion, frustration

Transition is never completely finished

Will always be people to come out to or correct, medical history to explain, and documents that pop up that don’t match

Meaghan Ray’s Process:

No medical or legal transition yet
Personal transition started with a genderqueer experience back in grade 10
- Ignored it, put it away until Jake’s transition provided more language, strategies, and community to give myself space to explore it
Tracked my gender and explored it for a bit
Have just started coming out to friends and family and coworkers one at a time, very carefully
- Limited understanding of what non-binary means so coming out requires a lot of educating
Will be an even longer, slower, more careful process than Jake’s
May be interested in some form of top surgery or legal gender marker or name change in the future

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Let’s Talk Gender S1E1: Language and Labels

OVERVIEW

Language and labels are used to communicate our identities to others but for trans people, the first step of this process is finding language and labels to understand and define our own identities.

There is a ton of language that is specific to the trans community and trans experiences and identities. As the partner of a trans person, finding this language can be helpful but also overwhelming.

The social context and definitions of labels change over time. Labels should be tools for self-definition, not boxes that we force people in to. Having a variety of labels can help you communicate your identity in a variety of contexts and still feel authentic.

Our identities change over the course of our lives and we need to give ourselves permission to re-evaluate our labels and explore new labels as needed.

To listen to the full podcast episode, scroll down to the bottom of the page for the audio player or search for Let’s Talk Gender and subscribe in your favourite podcast app.

SHOW NOTES

Language

Finding language to understand your own identity
- Talking to people from the queer community
- Looking things up online, YouTube
Having a lack of language makes it very difficult to understand your own identity
Feeling overwhelmed as a partner with all the new language and information
- Often feel one step behind the trans person
- Find your own resources and look up your own language and then ask the trans person if this matches their experience
Finding new language to refer to yourself and your body to make yourself more comfortable
The internal tension of referring to someone incorrectly to protect their identity/for their own safety
So much gendered language that we have to change beyond just pronouns when someone transitions
Communicating our identities to others requires bridging the gap between our understanding of language and terms and theirs
- Can go along with the terms/narrative that others understand to achieve the goal of the conversation
- Often takes a lot of energy to correct their use of language and explain the nuances
- Very difficult to explain non-binary experience or request neutral terminology and pronouns (hopefully this will get better in the future)

Labels

Generational gap
- Labels seen as negative from when they were used as slurs
- Too much language, that it’s evolving too fast
- Reclaimed language used in a positive way by younger people but still viewed as negative by older people
Labels being put on you can feel negative
- It tells you how they are seeing you but doesn’t change who you are
Labels are terms for self-definition
- Allow communication of your identity
- Helps you find community
- Helps you connect with people who have similar experiences
The more labels you have that you are comfortable with that have different connotations or definitions the more flexible you can be
- Specificity vs generality
- Widely understood vs newer or less well known terms
The interconnection of labels for sexuality and gender can make some labels easier to use than others
Feeling like you have to justify the labels you use can be frustrating and make you feel defensive
The labels we use
- Trans, non-binary, co-gender
- Queer, gay, neutrosexual, pansexual
- Trans vs transgender vs transexual
Not everyone feels the need to have lots of labels or any at all and instead, prefer the more general terms
Our identities evolve over the course of our lives and we need to give ourselves permission to re-evaluate our labels and explore new labels as needed

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The Coming Out Equation

Coming out is not a one time thing. The closet metaphor may be accurate for how it feels with each instance but it is not a good metaphor for the lifelong process and constant decisions.

Coming out is a matter of degrees. You can be completely open about your identity or experience or just hint at one part of it. You can also be out to a different extent to different people.

Deciding how ‘out’ to be can be a complicated process. How ‘out’ is it safe to be in this situation? How much energy do you have for the questions that will follow? Is it worth the risk? How much benefit will all the effort give you?

The way I see it, it is a matter of need and benefit on the ‘pro’ side vs cost and risk on the ‘con’ side. For me, this equation usually tips to the con side at the moment. But I’ve been working on being more aware of the balance and, when it does tip to the pro side, taking the opportunity to come out to more people.

PROS

Need

Because my gender shifts between male and female so I am comfortable being seen as female about 30% of the time. When I am uncomfortable it is a moderate discomfort so my need to come out is at a low to moderate level at the moment.

Benefit

The benefit of coming out is always hard to determine accurately. It is hard to predict the future. Some things that can help is seeing out people respond to hypothetical conversations or how they respond to a mutual friend or family member coming out before you do.

As a nonbinary person, the benefit of people accepting me for who I am 100% of the time would be just as strong as for any binary trans person but the likelihood of that happening is significantly less. This is simply due to the lack of awareness and the reliance on the binary for so many aspects of western society (see my posts on passing as non-binary and how to explain your fluid gender identity for more discussion on this). So, while the benefit would be huge, I would generally rate it as low likelihood of receiving that benefit.

CONS

Cost

I think of the cost of coming out as an emotional cost. How much effort will it take to get people to understand and eventually lead to the benefits? For similar reasons to the benefit being low, the cost of coming out for me is generally high. I am often the first nonbinary person they have met so I have to start at gender 101 for them to understand why it’s important what I’m saying and why it’s important that they make an effort to use they/them pronouns.

The other thing to take into account in terms of emotional cost is how it feels to be misgendered after coming out to someone vs before. When someone is unaware of my identity, being misgendered feels uncomfortable. When I have come out to someone and still get misgendered it feels terrible. Given the high likelihood of being misgendered as a nonbinary person, this also contributes to the cost being high.

Risk

I think of the risk of coming out as the physical or safety risk. I am lucky to live in an area where being visibly queer does not inherently put me at high safety risk. I would not likely lose my job, my family support, housing, or access to medical care. So the risk of coming out for me is low.

FTM VS NONBINARY

The stage at which this coming out equation is most relevant is the time between when you come out to yourself and the time when you are fully out to everyone in your life (or as out as you ever want to be). I call this stage ‘limbo’. My husband’s limbo stage lasted about about 9 months. Mine has so far been going for about a year and a half with no end in sight.

So what makes such a huge difference? On the pro side, his need was much higher than my own. He was not at all comfortable being identified as female and it only got worse the longer it went on. His benefit was high but had much higher likelihood of paying off. On the con side, his cost was still pretty high but not as high as mine as it is generally easier for people to understand identities that fall within the binary. And, since he has a similar situation to me, his risk was fairly low. So his equation balanced in the ‘come out’ direction much faster than mine has.

SHIFTING THE EQUATION

So what shifts my equation to create those situations where it is worth it for me to come out?

The biggest one is the cost going down. If I am talking to someone who is queer or someone with previous trans knowledge, I have to do a lot less educating. In this situation the likelihood of experiencing the benefits also goes up.

The other time I am likely to come out is when my need is significantly higher (usually as a result of a triggering situation or bad dysphoria).

I will often try opening up about other ‘difficult’ topics to see what kind of response/support I get from someone as a way of testing the waters. If their interaction with me changes for the worse, my likelihood of coming out to them as nonbinary goes down significantly. So don’t take less important seeming conversations any less lightly.

Maybe some day, when the general population is more knowledgeable about nonbinary identities or if my gender shifts more consistently in the male direction, I will come out publicly. Until then, I will be paying attention to this equation situation by situation, person by person and take it one decision at a time.

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Talking About Your Gender Identity: When, Why, and How

Talking about your gender identity can be hard, draining, scary, and even jeopardize your safety. But it can also be hugely rewarding, allowing you to be open, honest, more comfortable, find the support you need, as well as educate others.

So how do you decide if it’s worth having those conversations? How do you know when the right time is? And how do you actually start the conversation or respond to a probing question?

The first and most important factor is safety. What risk is there to your safety, stability, and well-being, either physical, emotional, or financial, if the other person’s response is poor? Have you taken steps to protect yourself, provide alternatives, or ensure time to heal afterwards if their support is withdrawn or they become a threat? Are there other people around who might overhear that you would prefer not to tell?

You will always have fear with big conversations. We all do, no matter what the difficult topic is. But when you no longer want fear to stop you, that doesn’t mean you should simply ignore it and forge ahead. Fear is there for a reason and listening to it and taking steps to mitigate the risks as much as possible before opening that door is always a good idea. You will never feel 100% safe or be free of fear so at some point you have to decide you have taken as many steps to protect yourself as you can and press on.

The next thing that you might want to think about is your expectations for having the conversation. What do you want the result to be? What toll will it take on you? Is the outcome worth the cost? Do you expect an immediate response or are you planning to provide information for the other person/people to think about before responding? Knowing what you want the outcome to be and combining that with a realistic view of what is likely, given what you know about the people you are talking to, will help you steer the conversation in the direction you want and know when to back out.

The emotional cost of these conversations will be highest when you are talking to someone who is close to you and has high emotional impact or someone who has control over an area of your life where a negative response could have disastrous consequences. Something that might help you weather the hardest conversations is practicing with less intense versions. Tell friends or more distant family members first. This will give you a chance to find the right words, respond to questions and reactions, and learn how much of a toll it takes on you.

You can support yourself emotionally in a few different ways:

Make sure you feel as comfortable as possible in your own skin at the time of the conversation.
- The more confidence you have the better so do whatever it takes to feel your best.
Have a friend or support system on standby to spend time with or be in touch with after the conversation.
- Having the opportunity to debrief with someone you trust can help you process the outcome and implications of the conversation.
Build in some self-care time in the 24 hours after the conversation.
- Journaling, creating, exercising, being in nature, doing something you enjoy can all help you regain a sense of balance and get back in touch with the core of who you are if you feel overwhelmed or thrown off kilter by the conversation.

These conversations are never easy. You can have them face to face right from the start or break the ice with an email or letter before following up face to face. You can figure out exactly who you are and what you want to say before talking to anyone or you can start having difficult conversations while you are still figuring things out (just be sure to be clear that it is an ongoing process and things might change). You can set a specific time with the person to talk about ‘something important’ or you can play it by ear and bring it up if there’s an easy segue. Leaving it to chance means the conversation has a high likelihood of not happening so if you’ve built yourself up to it and feel as prepared as you can be, setting a specific time or coming right out with it might be a better option.

If the topic comes up and presents you with a useful opening, always take a moment to consciously decide if you do want to talk about anything personal. How much do you want to disclose? Who is around? Is it a safe environment? Do you have the emotional reserve for this conversation right now? Will you have the opportunity to recover later? Would you decide to tell this person even if the opportunity didn’t present itself?

Because the conversations are so hard to initiate, we can sometimes feel like if the opportunity presents itself we should take it. But you should never feel pressured to disclose anything about your gender identity, even if the pressure is as mild as a good segue.

I promise these conversations get easier with time and practice. They are never without some risk and some cost to you but don’t let that stop you! I believe in you. I know you can do it.

I’d love to hear from you so leave a comment below or sign up with your email to get my posts in your inbox.

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Explaining Dysphoria to Cis People

Explaining what dysphoria feels like to cis people is always difficult. In order to try to understand they relate it to their own experiences of discomfort with body image or not fitting the stereotypes for their gender. While these experiences are generally in the right ballpark, they are still not the same as dysphoria.

Here are some of the phrases I have found that help:

Wearing an ill-fitting piece of clothing that you can’t take off
Constantly having an itch that you can’t scratch or that gets worse when you try
Having pins and needles that range from annoying to distracting to uncomfortable to painful
Not recognizing yourself when you look in the mirror
Feeling queasy when you see/touch/pay attention to a particular area of your body
Feeling like a part of your body does not really belong to you
Feeling like ants are crawling all over your skin
Feeling like you want to peel your skin off

When trying to describe the impact of dysphoria:

Constantly having part of your mind focused on something uncomfortable that is out of your control
Feeling like you’ve been pinched every time you are misgendered by someone who doesn’t know any better (someone who you are not out to)
Feeling like you’ve been punched every time you are misgendered by someone who you’ve told to use other pronouns
Feeling invisible or like the only parts of you that people see are the ones that don’t feel right to you
Feeling like you have to pull yourself inwards so that you take up even less space than your physical body does
Wishing you could escape your body or other people’s view of you for a few minutes, or an hour, or a day
Causing you to hyper-focus on the areas of your body that do not fit with your gender identity/are the cause of other’s misgendering you
Obsessing over ways to alleviate the dysphoria either temporarily or permanently

It can be very difficult to understand an experience that you yourself have never had and likely will never have. But the important thing to remember is you don’t need to fully understand it to believe that what the person is describing is true to their experience or respect their identity by using their correct name and pronouns.

We often need help to fight the thoughts that arise from dysphoria. This does not mean we need someone to tell us that our body is fine, that they don’t think of us as ‘a girl’ or ‘a boy’, or that we shouldn’t feel the need to make permanent changes. The fact often is that our body or the way we are addressed socially DOES feel wrong and we do want to make changes. What we don’t need to be thinking is that we are somehow lesser or incomplete or unworthy of love because we don’t fit with society’s expectations of our gender.

The most harmful effects of dysphoria are the thoughts that we are wrong or broken or gross or incomplete and that the only way to fix ourselves or find love (either from ourselves or others) is to conform to society’s expectations. What we need is the space to figure out and pursue the treatment and support we need to change or adjust our bodies and the way we are addressed in society to diminish the dysphoria and feel as much congruity as possible.

I hope this helps you find the words you need to explain dysphoria to the cis people in your life or, if you are a cis person, helps you understand the experiences of the trans people in your life.

What phrases have you found that help you describe dysphoria to cis people? Leave me a comment below and I will add them to the list above!

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Misgendering is More Than Name and Pronouns

The most basic way to respect a trans person is by using their preferred name and pronouns whenever and wherever they have requested you do so. But there is much more to respecting someone’s gender than simply using the correct name and pronouns.

Most of the time, when we are talking directly to someone, we don’t use their name and pronouns. It’s only when we refer to them in third person or talk about something that happened in the past, and often this is when the person isn’t present. But there are other gendered terms that we often use directly to a person or a group of people that can either be damaging or affirming. This includes ladies, gentlemen, ma’am, sir, girl, dude, bro, etc.

In general, it is a good idea to avoid gendered language as much as possible. You cannot assume someone’s gender based on how they look, what they were assigned at birth, or what someone else may have told you. So using gender neutral or inclusive language is a good habit to get into.

As someone who works in a female dominated work environment, I hear these terms a lot. It is more likely that I will be hanging out with a woman. This makes it particularly easy for people to say ‘hey ladies’ or ‘thanks ladies’.

For me, having people use my birth name and she/her pronouns when I’m feeling more neutral or male is not nearly as uncomfortable as hearing other types of gendered language. The words that are the most uncomfortable when applied to me are things like girl, ladies, and ma’am.

Despite being genderfluid, there are no days that those specifically female terms feel good to me. Conversely, male-gendered language almost always feels good to me. At the same time, female pronouns generally feel ok where male pronouns would feel weird. So if I use female pronouns and all other gendered terms are male, it would be a way that both aspects of my gender could be recognized without changing my name and pronouns.

Since they/them pronouns feel good 100% of the time, that would be ideal. But I recognize that using they/them is difficult for many people and impossible as an expectation for strangers. So instead, I’ve been asking people to focus on avoiding the rest of the female gendered language that they typically would use.

So far, those conversations have been going well. I provide them with alternatives such as folks, friend, guys, everyone, or even some more masculine terms such as bro, dude, man, etc. When they slip up, I find it much easier to correct this type of gendered language than name and pronouns (at times when I’ve specified other ones). And since it feels consistently worse to hear those terms, I feel like I am having a much stronger impact on my day to day comfort with this strategy.

Does being misgendered by gendered language feel different to you than being misgedered by your name and pronouns? Did people have an easier time with adjusting these other terms or using a different name and pronouns after you came out? Let me know in the comments below!

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The Egocentricity of Dysphoria

Having dysphoria can be an all-consuming experience. Especially when it first starts, when you first identify it as dysphoria, or when it shifts. If the dysphoria is stable over a longer period of time, it is somewhat easier to ignore and manage but even then, there are days when it is all-consuming.

Dysphoria causes obsession about little things that no one else would care about. You might brush off their concern or minimize it but this doesn’t give them the validation they need and can result in more obsessing.

Dysphoria can make it difficult to communicate their identity, needs, and wishes to others in a way that will be understood. It is so all-consuming that it makes it difficult to step out of their current experience and see things from another person’s perspective. So they end up using language that other people don’t understand or skipping over basic concepts that others haven’t grasped yet. This leads to more confusion and frustration and leaves them with even less energy and motivation to try to communicate the next time.

Because of the level of obsession on new areas of their body and new behaviours, it can seem like there has been a big change in their personality with the onset of dysphoria. This isn’t necessarily true, it’s just that the dysphoria is taking up all the person’s attention and focus and they aren’t able to express the parts of themself that you are used to seeing or engage in the activities they used to enjoy with as much ease.

The dysphoria induced self-obsession can come across as lack of caring for others or a lack of awareness of others. This is something that should be communicated in a caring and understanding way that acknowledges the impact of dysphoria but looks for ways to help the person cope by focusing their attention outside their body and strengthening supportive relationships.

The onset of dysphoria can seem sudden to those around them. They have been obsessing about it internally for a long time and have a lot of internal pressure built up. Coming out gives them permission to talk about dysphoria and the obsessions that it causes for the first time. This can seem like a sudden onset of dysphoria and a sudden shift to being egocentric to the people around them.

Sometimes, people have a tendency to refer everything back to dysphoria or use dysphoria as an excuse – ‘if you only knew how it felt you wouldn’t say that’ or ‘oh I can’t do that because the dysphoria is so bad’. Dysphoria can be so all-consuming that it can be hard to tell when something else might actually be at fault – burnout from work, relationship stress, financial stress, fatigue from not enough sleep, changes in meds, having a cold, etc. Sometimes it takes an outside view from a supportive person that is close to them to help them differentiate what is dysphoria and what is something else that should be addressed differently.

You might have difficulty getting along with someone who experiences dysphoria because they may be more emotionally volatile or have unknown or shifting triggers. They may have a lack of interest in things they used to enjoy including things you used to do together because of the new focus on ‘solving’ the dysphoria. Try to be understanding and supportive but take care of your own needs and emotional well being too.

TIPS FOR DYSPHORIC PEOPLE

Use self talk to combat the skewed perspective that the hyper awareness creates.
Find activities to do that don’t trigger dysphoria that will help you get out of your head.
Remember that people who do not experience dysphoria will not remember that you do or understand how much it can effect you. Try to be understanding of their ignorance and explain gently. Getting angry with them when they do not automatically realize when you are feeling dysphoric will not help to keep your relationship with them as a source of support.
Make sure to express your appreciation and caring for the supportive people around you.
Find a therapist. Your support people cannot support you and be your therapist. They will get burned out and no longer be able to support you appropriately.
Find concrete ways to manage your dysphoria that require the least amount of time and effort so that you have more time to spend with those you care about.
If your dysphoria shifts, try tracking it to give you a better idea of what causes the shifts and help you predict when it will happen.

TIPS FOR SUPPORTING DYSPHORIC PEOPLE

Build a list of words, activities, and situations that trigger the trans person’s dysphoria so you are more likely to understand when they react negatively at those times.
Understand that getting the dysphoric person to explain their dysphoria to you, especially at times when they are dysphoric, will be hard and often makes their dysphoria worse. Look for other resources to learn what dysphoria can feel like and how to recognize it.
Help the trans person focus on something external that is less likely to trigger dysphoria or encourage them to engage in their self-care activities. They won’t always remember to use self-care strategies at times when they need them the most so external reminders can help.
Find sources of support for yourself other than the dysphoric person – a therapist, friends that might understand, community groups and support such as PFLaG, or online resources.

Living with dysphoria is an ongoing struggle and is different for everyone. Talk to each other, be as open and honest as you can, and find the support you need.

What is your experience of dysphoria or supporting someone with dysphoria? What other tips do you have that I should add to the list?

Let me know in the comments below!

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