#trans thriving

Wow, it’s been another eventful year!

At the start of last year I was certain I was gonna be stealth all through uni and generally in my life, but something changed? Dunno what, but I started telling people in my uni’s Queer Collective (QC) and then gradually just got more comfortable being out and so now everyone knows! I don’t actively come out to people outside of the QC but I don’t pretend I’m not trans if it comes up. I can’t believe this time last year I was only out to one person at uni!

On the topic of that one person, he’s a gay cis guy and we dated for a while, which was a Big Thing last year. I never thought I’d find cis gays who would be comfortable dating me, but he’s awesome and, even though we’re not together anymore, he’s still one of my best friends and he’s made the last year really special for me. Having a romantic and sexual relationship with a cis person who is only attracted to men was unbelievably validating.

I’m not gonna talk too much about medical transition this year because that hasn’t really been relevant. Nothing new has happened; I think it’s predominantly been more hair, both facially and bodily. I finally have hair on my arms lmao. Fat distribution is also getting better, but I’m thinking about looking into some kind of medical procedure to help that along a bit, because my hips/thighs/butt are still very big points of dysphoria. There’s liposuction which would be very expensive and painful, but I think my top surgeon does something non-surgical? Not sure about that, but I’ll probably look into it. Maybe I’ll have news this time next year :P

I got a new packer! Moved from the $20 Mr Limpy to the $400 (including add-ons and shipping) PeeCock Gen3S. It’s an STP, but I don’t use it too much for that (how do you clean it when you’re out of the house????? idk, that makes me feel kinda weird). It’s helpful when I’m somewhere with a really gross toilet, though, because I don’t actually have to sit down, ew. It’s a lot better for dysphoria and it actually comes in an uncircumcised version, which is Awesome!

But the biggest thing has been that I’ve taken a really big interest in helping out with things in the QC and generally helping with trans visibility at uni. Particularly this year, I’ve written a few articles for the uni magazine that have been published in print, including: a piece about medical transition for trans men (The XX Men); and a film review for It’s Not Just Me, a documentary about some trans men, for which I got to interview the director and one of the men in the film. The latter isn’t online yet because the magazine only came out this week. I’ve also written an online-only piece about trans visibility for today (link will be up later). The response I’ve had from these pieces has been incredible and I feel really good about getting to share my story and more information about trans people, particularly about trans men.

This year, the QC is putting more of a focus on trans people (last year was about marriage equality, which was finally passed in Australia in December!!!!!). This week we’ve had a real focus because of TDoV and I got to be on a panel that was open to anyone at uni where me and some other trans people got to talk about our experiences and answer questions from the audience.