Middle school (2002-2005)

Sixth grade-ish

I entered middle school just before my twelfth birthday.

I want to place myself back there, for a moment. The love seat was moved nearer to the kitchen, in this sort of nook. And I’m laying on the love seat, bundled up with a heavy blanket or two. The second TV is in the distance in front of me, toward the back of the house. The main TV is in the living room around the corner. I’m not sure that either one is doing anything, but there could be a little background noise. There’s a seemingly military-grade Thinkpad brick plugged into the wall somewhere, and the other end of the cord is dangling in the couch somewhere with me, probably. There’s a copy of Lord of the Rings I’m reading for 6^th grade English class on the floor beside me, and I’m hacking away on the laptop. Figuring out vi for the first time with some docs I printed out on the other computer… probably trying to get XFree86 to work or something. I haven’t heard of emacs yet, by the way.

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An ancient thought experiment poses the question: if grains of sand are removed from a heap, one at a time, at what point does the collection of sand cease to remain a heap?

When Homo Sapiens begin puberty, it typically initiates a process of psycho-sexual maturation. This generality is one rare instance in which my puberty was not exceptional.

I don’t remember exactly when I first experienced sexual arousal, or how. But, it certainly happened by the end of elementary school. And certainly by the end of elementary school, a couple of things had become obvious.

You might (or might not) be wondering if I ever experienced sexual arousal while crossdressing. And while the answer is yes, especially in middle and early high school, that wasn’t really the most profound pattern to emerge. One of my first and strongest urges was actually that I really wanted to be tied up. I was really into bondage, ropes, cages… and always as a bottom. The universe just sort of delivered that to me at that age, along with my mustache.

When I was younger, I always enjoyed playing games that involved the aforementioned elements, as one often does with cops-and-robbers style roleplay. But by the fourth or fifth grade, I found that I enjoyed them a little too much, and that they had become “private” activities. I distinctly remember escaping after being tied to a basketball goal around age 10 or 11, frantically yet begrudgingly, because I really didn’t want to explain to Aaron why I had a raging hard-on.

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In sixth grade, I started attending Clarkton School of Discovery. I grew up in what some might call a rural backwater; the county generally lacked magnet schools, or even more than one or two AP classes at the high school level. The one exception to this was Clarkton, which had a sort of “magnet hallway” for AIG students. The AIG students took their core classes together in the morning, and afternoon electives were mixed between AIG and general education students. The general education students either lived in southern Bladen county (which wasn’t exactly “in town” for most people), or managed to get in through a lottery system. Clarkton had by far the best reputation and resources of middle schools in the county, and hosted a band, drama, tech lab, and AV program; at least the latter two were the only of their kind in the county.

I started getting bullied regularly for the first time in sixth grade. This was almost exclusively a problem during my afternoon electives, when the AIG kids were mixed with the regular students. One of the first electives I took was Christine White’s Greek mythology class, and one of the kids did shit like putting thumb tacks in my seat when I wasn’t looking. I think that guy might’ve eased up a bit as the nine weeks went on, but he still had an attitude with me.

The worse problem was this group of guys I sat beside in keyboarding class. The main issue with this class was that the assignments were designed for people who barely knew how to type, and eventually worked up to using one of those rubber pads that covered the keys. The assignments invariably consisted of merely typing in something on a hand-out and saving it on a network drive. So, I’d finish in the first ten to fifteen minutes of the period. And, I’d wait for the troublemakers surrounding me to finish. At which point they’d find various ways around the content filter to play flash games or look at porn. I was the one white boy from AIG, in between this group of black boys who all knew each other and wanted to do shady shit in the plethora of time even kids who weren’t Linux users would have after completing the assignments. And, I didn’t share their taste in porn.

After one of the boys had made a long-standing habit of popping me with a rubber band whenever the teacher wasn’t looking, I eventually lost it and took a swing at him as we were leaving class. I missed, and he gave me a black eye. We both got suspended for ten days. My mother wanted me to turn the other cheek. My father wanted me to fight like a man; his wisdom is something I’ve always agreed with since with respect to bullies, though I’ve unilaterally failed to carry it out in practice.

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I was getting older, and starting to have feelings I didn’t understand about mom’s lingerie. And, I increasingly had the urge to tie myself up for fun, with little bits of shoestring or lanyard cord that I could find lying around. I really wished I was born a girl, and was starting to think all adolescent boys must. Why would they want to be made out of snapes and snails and puppy dog tails? We all just drew the short straw, right? We have to be the men.

I remember first learning of the tradition of collegiate panty raids. “Is that what I’m doing?”, I wondered. I figured I’d understand when I was older.

I think it was in sixth grade when my parents announced their separation. By this point my dad wasn’t really around much anyway, so it didn’t really feel like a big deal to me. That’s not to say he wasn’t a part of my life and didn’t remain so - he was just out of town for work most of the time.

I remember being asked which parent I wanted to live with: the mentally unstable mom who already takes care of me, or my, at least well-intentioned, dad who’s never really cooked or cleaned much before. The choice felt more obvious at the time, though as I’ve grown older I have wondered what could’ve been if I chose the other way.

My mother and I moved into a house in town, beside the Methodist church that we attended. The house had a little bit less space, but still had three bedrooms and was plenty adequate for the two of us. That’s not to say my mother wasn’t a class I or II hoarder.

That same summer, I went on a trip to Iowa to spend time with my dad’s family. While I generally enjoyed myself, my grandfather (who I only remembered meeting once before) kept giving me a hard time. My dad eventually explained that I hurt his feelings when I last saw him as a young child, because I was very surprised when I learned he didn’t know how to read, and I wouldn’t drop the subject. I had completely forgotten that my grandfather was illiterate by this age, and didn’t even remember the incident.

#snipThere was a sort of tragic story underlying my dad’s family, and I’m afraid I could have a couple details wrong. My dad’s parents separated during his adolescence or later childhood. He went to live with his dad, but often saw his mom for holidays. The family was at his mom’s house (for Christmas, I think), when his mom’s previously-institutionalized mentally ill former lover opened fire on the family with a shotgun. My biological grandmother was killed, and my father, grandfather, and uncle were wounded. My dad would occasionally set off metal detectors with a couple shotgun pellets lodged in his neck and side, that had been deemed too dangerous to remove.

#snipAnyway, after the incident my grandfather quickly remarried a woman named Joan, who is the person I actually knew as my paternal grandmother.

Grandma Joan was not my mother’s favorite person. I never really knew her well enough to form my own opinion about her.

So, my dad’s family has this sort of underlying base level of trauma, I’m in bum-fuck small town Iowa spending time with grandpa Francis and grandma Joan, and if I didn’t know any better I’d say illiterate career-electrician grandpa Francis feels threatened by me. He dropped the skin effect, as if it’s relevant at 60 Hz, and kept calling me Sioux City Sue; which I guess is supposed to be an insult, but I secretly kind of liked it.

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Around the time of the move, my mother had gotten me this sort of birds and bees, going through puberty book. Actually, I think she might’ve gotten it for me a few years ago, but I was weirded out by it at the time. Anyway, it was around the time of this move when I first looked through it; perhaps because I had burning questions about my now obviously-divergent puberty experience.

Half of the book was devoted to male puberty, and half to female puberty. And, it was in this book that I first learned the role of androgens and estrogens in the development of secondary sex characteristics. And sure, it used more childish language, but I’m too pretentious for that now.

Upon learning this, a slew of related questions and biological conjectures flooded my brain, in what might as well have been the same instant.

• If I were to somehow “take” estrogen, would I start developing breasts?
• Is it even possible to “take” estrogen? Is it available as a medicine? Would I need to get a job working at a lab somewhere to even get access to self-administerable estrogen, or could it somehow be a common medication?
• What would it look like? Is it a pill? Do you have to inject it?
• I would also need something to block my testosterone, right?
• Do they even make that?
• Or, would they just have to cut off my testicles first?
• Could I even find a doctor who’d cut off my testicles if that’s what I needed to do?
• What if I became a pharmacist when I grew up, like Mr. Terry. Could I give myself estrogen then? Does Mr. Terry have estrogen in his store?
• Or, maybe I’d have to become a doctor. Can doctors write themselves prescriptions, or do they have to see another doctor? Jeez, I really wouldn’t want to explain this to another doctor…

At this point, I’m ready to switch my career path from computer-something to medicine if it means I could somehow take estrogen and grow breasts.

It was right around this point, perhaps even exactly at this point, when I had enough information to take to the internet. I was already teaching myself Unix and shit, so to me the internet was the obvious end to figuring out what was wrong with me. There were two things holding me back:

1. A lack of vocabulary to even explain the problem, despite an abundance of, generally unfavorable, allusions to the phenomenon in pop culture (My daddy disowned me ’cause I wear my sister’s clothes…)
2. An utterly irrational fear of the subject matter

This changed after I heard one particular word in passing: crossdresser. I’d learned how to use context clues years ago, and I knew exactly what that word meant, just knowing that it existed. Because, I was a crossdresser. I’d been searching for that noun for years! Good, bad, ugly… at least I know what the fuck I am now. I’m a crossdresser.

I’m transsexual

Now that I had a word to Google, I could learn about what it meant to be a young crossdresser. Although, I was actually partial to dmoz back in those days. Maybe it’s because I wanted to whoops-uh-daisically click through the lifestyle section and find myself scrolling through the LGBT pages, whatever that’s about, instead of very purposefully and incriminatingly typing the ‘c’ character, followed by the ‘r’ character…

For a month or two, I privately identified as a crossdresser. I’d nervously nibble away at the information at first, a page or two at a time, just like when I started sneaking into mom’s room. My nerves eventually settled, and I began properly learning about this stuff; feeling confident in knowing that I had my own room with a private computer, and a mom who could barely use her own without my help.

The acronym ‘LGBT’ stands for ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’, and… something else. I bet you think you know what the fourth letter meant; but unless you were there, I bet you don’t fucking get it.

Not long after I learned the term ‘crossdresser’ and took to the internet, I also learned the term ‘transgender’. Transgender was defined as an “umbrella term”, encompassing the entire range of gender-variant human behavior. “Transgender people” included crossdressers or transvestites, transsexuals, drag queens, and people who were generally averse to the concept of binary gender itself, for either personal or socio-political reasons; the latter group tended to identify as simply “transgender” in absence of a more precise label, and would likely be described as “non-binary” today.

Because ‘transgender’ has taken on a meaning that largely overlaps what ‘transsexual’ meant in 2003, I feel I have no choice but to present to you a pedantic little list of what all the different types of transgender people were in the mid 2000s; a list you’d struggle to reproduce without either an old-timer like myself, or lots of time spent on Wayback Machine.

Crossdressers and Transvestites (CD/TV)

Transvestites are (mostly) men who enjoy wearing women’s clothing in a recreational and non-performative capacity. The underlying motivation for the behavior may or may not be sexual. Contrary to what one might expect, transvestites are often straight men; but could also be gay or bisexual.

Transsexuals (TS)

Transsexuals suffer from an understudied congenital medical condition in which one’s cognitive gender differs from their physical sex. Although no obvious cause has been identified, the symptomatology reported by transsexuals overlaps significantly with that of intersex people who had their ambiguous genitalia surgically corrected at birth, only to suffer from gender identity problems later in life.

Transsexuals are divided between male to female (MTF) and female to male (FTM); the transsexual community was by far the most balanced between the two sexes, while transvestites and drag queens were comprised almost exclusively of men with male gender identities. While it wasn’t always the case with other flavors of transgender people, target gender was always used when speaking of transsexuals; thus MTFs were trans women and FTMs were trans men.

Drag Queens

Are amateur or professional actors who perform, typically exaggerated or burlesque, roles as women, for fun or profit. Drag queens are often gay men who otherwise have no connection to the greater transgender community; though they could be hetero transvestites, or even transsexual women. You… probably know what a drag queen is.

Transgender (TG)

People who identified as blanket transgender often rejected the concept of traditional gender entirely; either because they didn’t strongly identify with the idea of being either a man or a woman, or because they had social or political motivations for breaking down the gender binary. However, it bears reiterating that ‘transgender’ was also used as an umbrella term that included CD/TV/TS and other niches under its banner, without denying the individual identity of any particular group.

Intersex (IS)

While not generally included under the transgender umbrella, intersex people suffer from a range of different medical conditions that result in an ambiguity of their physical sex. Despite what one might expect, intersex conditions are actually fairly common, and typically don’t produce obvious disfigurement. The intersection between the IS and TS communities exists where intersex people do have associated gender identity problems, often in conjunction with corrective surgery they may not have asked for.

From around 2010 to 2015, a major shift in language took place within the transgender community. The term ‘transsexual’ fell out of favor, becoming associated with outdated information and conservative transmedicalism. Usage of shorthand like ‘GG’ (genetic girl) was replaced with newer vocabulary like ‘AFAB’ (assigned female at birth; a phrase loaned from the intersex community). MTF and FTM became adjectives instead of nouns, and new words emerged, like ‘cisgender’ for a non-trans person. Additionally, I recall minor shifts in idioms otherwise still present in the transgender community (read like a clock: “the barista ‘read’ me” would have been more idiomatic 20 years ago, whereas “the barista ‘clocked’ me” is more recognizable today).

I remember my initial shock after learning that crossdressers didn’t actually want to be women. Because, I really wanted to be a girl. And, as unusual as my problem appeared to be, there seemed to be an unexpected plethora of reasons why a boy might want to wear women’s clothing. I thought for sure I was good enough at context clues to know that I was a crossdresser.

At the time, it felt like the resources for the CD/TV community were both flashier and more numerous. It seemed like a lot of crossdressers were into the thrill and excitement of, wearing women’s panties under their boy clothes, for example. And, that wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I do remember that I was looking for advice on making DIY breast forms.

I wrestled with the concepts in my head for a while. Looked at transsexual resources a bit. Went through the CD/TV pages some more. Took all the silly little quizzes that probably didn’t mean anything. The conclusion I kept coming back to, was that I was transsexual. I was so certain I was a crossdresser, until I learned what transsexuals were. Now, I couldn’t get it out of my head that that’s what I was.

One of the earlier resources I found was Antijen. Whether or not it was ever stated publicly, Antijen was a pun on creator Jennifer “Aunty” Lynn’s name. Aunty ran a humble website and associated mailing list for transsexual youth aged 26 and younger, during an era when listservs were still the primary method of organizing semi-private group discussions over the internet. While there was also a Yahoo group or two devoted to the same niche, I have little doubt Aunty ran the largest forum for transsexual youth in the early 2000s and probably until large sites like Reddit and Tumblr finally took over.

It was now, in the year 2003 and just after my thirteenth birthday, when I decided to join Aunty’s list. I made a new email account for the purpose, and sent a message that probably had something like “Join” in the subject line with an empty body; thoroughly expecting an automated system to respond and add me to the mailing list, as was often the norm back in those days.

As I started wondering if the machine was broken, I found a message in my inbox 24 to 48 hours later:

Hello,

Could you tell me a little about yourself?

I immediately decided I’m not going to answer. Things are happening pretty fast, and I kinda just wanted to lurk for a while. Maybe I’ll try joining the list again in a few months or years, now that I know human interaction is involved.

A day or two later, I got a variation of the same message. “Could you tell me a little bit about yourself?”

I was home from newly entering the seventh grade at the time, waiting for hurricane whatever to pass on September something. I thought more about writing back, and eventually started putting something together.

I needed a name for myself, and I went with Elizabeth; imaginative as it might not be. I went through a lot of names. Elizabeth, Sarah, Morgan… I go by Rachael now. It’s actually my legal name.

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I returned to find, probably, a few messages in my inbox. It’s been too long to remember exactly what was replied to my talking about the weather; though, it undoubtedly ended with

Hugs,
Aunty

I quickly learned that what Cheech and Chong were singing about wasn’t a joke; disownment, homelessness, familial abuse and runaway youth were all rampant problems in the transsexual community. There was an active member of Antijen who was pretty open about having ran away from home to work as an underage prostitute.

I soon observed a common thread between all of these bad family experiences trans folk often had; they were mostly Christian, with religion often playing a central role in the conflict.

There was enough apologeticism to be found for those who wanted to reconcile their faith with their gender identity. I ate that up, for a while. I began to resent my southern Methodist upbringing, and found myself wanting to run away to San Francisco to join a Unitarian-Universalist church or something. I also recognized that a “Methodist upbringing” is about as good as it gets in the south.

This was similarly instrumental in forming my earliest political opinions. There was a lot of peer pressure in Bladen county to be anything other than a Democrat; which often led to me adopting more outwardly-libertarian views in my youth to fit in than I probably would’ve professed otherwise.

I could tell one side might be summarized as saying “Yall’s lifestyle is sinful and unnatural and immoral!”; while the other was defensively claiming that “We were just born this way!”.

And then there’s, uh… me. I’m just… this. Whatever this is.

Drugs for trans kids

One of many things I didn’t understand about my unique situation, was that not every young transsexual got their start by sneaking into their parent’s rooms like I had. Then again, it isn’t exactly unheard of either.

Now that I’m older, I actually feel pretty weird, and pretty bad, about the extent to which I did this. This feeling is balanced out by the understanding that I was clearly just born with some sort of abnormality, and that I really needed help knowing what I was at that age.

I experienced my first orgasm right around this time. I had taken to tying myself up while wearing my mom’s clothes, because it felt good I guess, and pulled the vibrating motor out of a massage pillow, because it seemed like a good idea at the time. One thing led to another, and the rest is history. The feeling took me completely by surprise after I’d haphazardly tied my hands behind my back with a bit of string.

This quickly became a habit. About as quickly as I formed this habit, I hatched a sort of laundering scheme; both literally and metaphorically.

It probably started with one pair of panties or something, that just really needed to be washed; despite layers of protection that were, again, both literal and metaphorical. They can’t go back in the drawer. Somebody needs to wash them eventually. I suppose you could just fuck around and find out with the regular hamper. Not even I was so adventurous. Mom comes home in an hour. You don’t exactly have time do to a special load of laundry before then.

So it starts with, maybe, one pair of panties. At first you’re freaking out that she’s gonna notice one pair missing out of, probably more than a dozen or something. But the thing about it is, she’s probably not. Or if she does, she’ll probably think she’s just imagining things at first. Because, where else would they have gone to? The gnomes?

So, now you have a pair of panties under your bed. And, thus far, you probably have good intentions of simply washing them next time mom’s at work and returning them to their rightful place in mom’s drawer. But, as you think about it more, you realize you got away with it. You just took a single pair of underpants, and she didn’t notice. It’s just one grain of sand, and she has a whole pile over there. What’s more, I might actually raise suspicion by returning them, now that she thinks everything’s normal. So, maybe I should just keep this pair for myself. Because, this is clearly becoming a habit anyway.

I can’t help but laugh inside, when I remember that finding advice on making breast forms was what was at the forefront of my mind when I first discovered Antijen. Don’t get me wrong; breast forms have very much always been a subject of discussion in transsexual forums. But, I totally missed the point at first.

That stuff is like heroin for gender dysphoria, what I did as a kid. And, it’s great. But, you never catch the dragon. What you can do, is make a plan and stick with it. Grow your hair out, it takes a few years anyway. No, nobody is going to think you’re trying to be a girl. This stuff is actually really, really rare. I know it feels like a really long time at your age, but… you’ll be eighteen in five years. Maybe trust a guidance counselor or another queer kid or something, but you really shouldn’t talk to normal people about it. They won’t understand. It’s actually disturbingly easy to order prescription medications from overseas pharmacies without a prescription. And when do you turn eighteen anyway, the start of your senior year? What do you mean you can’t take hormones in high school? It doesn’t. Get. Easier. Just. Fucking. Do it.

That’s what I would tell myself, anyway. I did get reasonably far through this list the first time without my future self’s help, considering the calamity that followed.

Seventh grade-ish

So, I entered seventh grade thinking I was a closet crossdresser, unless I already knew I was transsexual by then. I had a new home, a new bus route, and a different outlook on life.

This was the first year I was actually able to take CSD-TV, which was the school’s AV elective. I had been eyeing it since I first saw their studio and control room as a middle school prefrosh or whatever. I soon proved myself to be one of the more knowledgeable students in the class, along with my friend Noah; who by now I was beginning to suspect was a closet homosexual. The future of the program was in question after the recent retirement of Mr. Jameson, who had a history both with the school and the local television station. Mrs. Fletcher had been recruited to teach the elective in the interim; she had no prior experience, but she was friendly, and we all did what we could with the resources we had.

I don’t remember having so many bullies in my electives at this point, but I now had a different problem: my new bus route. The crux of the problem, was that my new bus stopped at the middle school in town, where the parents of (mostly AIG) kids would often pick up their kids halfway so that they didn’t have to drive all the way to Clarkton.

So, this was a particularly busy bus stop, where about half the kids on the bus got off, and the remaining half got off at various stops around town; mostly on the black side of town, possibly contributing to racial tensions. The final matter that made the situation untenable was that ridership was inconsistent; lots of families would make runtime decisions about where to pick up their child, aided by the newly-ubiquitous nature of cell phones; by the time I graduated from middle school, even my broke ass had one.

Some days, there would just be way too many people riding this bus. It was an absolute madhouse, trying to get a seat; and, I usually had to make the bus from the tech lab because of CSD-TV, which was at the absolute furthest reaches of the school. The problem was compounded by a number of “tough” guys and girls, who would insist on sitting in their seat, with their boyfriend or girlfriend, or maybe just their regular friends. I could never manage to keep up with whom these people were, and what their absurd pecking order was. But, they were mostly black students from the general education side of the school; and I mean that in the least racist way possible.

Sometimes I could get a head start, or I’d get lucky and manage to find a seat. Other times, I’d find myself walking up and down the aisle, over and over again. The bus driver is yelling. “Sit down! Slide over!” She can’t legally move until everyone’s butt is in a seat. The other kids are starting to get mad at me for not finding somewhere to sit. They all want to go home. But, there isn’t anywhere. Most of the seats have three, maybe even four people in them. There are maybe a couple seats remaining with only two people, but they’re for Rayshawn and Shanequa or some shit, and they usually push my cracker ass out by force if I try to sit there. I seem to be the only kid who keeps pissing off Rayshawn, too. I guess all the other kids just know who the fuck he is. Or, maybe they’re friends with him.

(I’m sorry if these fictionalized names come across as a wee bit racist. But I mean, they were black…)

On these days, it would feel like the whole world was mad at me in particular. I know it’s nothing personal, but the bus driver is mad at me for not sitting down. The kids are mad at me for not sitting down. That kid is mad at me for trying to sit down. I keep walking up and down the aisle. “No.” “Nope.” “Aww, hell naw!”, I’d hear as I moved toward the only obvious remaining sliver of bus seat. I often had to fight with the worst of the assholes for the only remaining space, as they guarded it for extra legroom like a bunch of wild hyenas. Sometimes, I’d eventually get Rayshawn to move over after he pushed me around a bit. In fact, I usually had to. Because, none of us can go home until I do. “Tsk, maaaaaan…”

I had at least one or two mini-meltdowns over this before I eventually had the big one. One day, I just lost it. “There’s NO FUCKING SEATS on the FUCKING BUS” I screamed, punctuating my words by banging my trumpet case against the roof. Some other kids tried to restrain me, as I kicked and bit at anyone who tried to hold me back. The SRO was called over to escort me off the bus, and I was taken to the principal’s office. The principal called my mom, and the SRO drove me to the mental health center in the cop car. I got to sit in the front seat though, and he was nice about it.

My mother was quick to label this a resurgence of my “anger management” problems; I think this was the incident that ultimately lead to my first being prescribed Zoloft. It never really helped me, and in retrospect it was a total miss to think it would help with any of my problems. I stopped taking it by the end of middle school. I didn’t get to go on the field trip to the state fair because of my little “outburst”.

It was probably also around this time when I started seeing a therapist regularly. I was too nervous to talk about any of my actual problems, and thus the sessions were unproductive.

The tran who would be queen

It was in this same year that J. Michael Bailey published the now-infamous pop science book, “The Man Who Would Be Queen”. The book promotes the theories of researcher Ray Blanchard, who argues that there are actually two types of male-to-female transsexual.

Homosexual transsexuals (HSTS), he argues, are essentially just gay men who’ve (perhaps unconsciously) adopted a female gender identity as a sort of mating strategy.

Autogynephiles (AGP), on the other hand, are basically men who fetishize the idea of themselves as women. The affliction has been described as an “erotic target location error”, in which otherwise heterosexual male lust is directed inward instead of outward.

The main finding in support of Blanchard’s theory is the presence of what would appear to be two correlation clusters in demographic studies of male-to-female transsexuals:

Blanchardianism is… not very popular among the general transgender community; which overwhelmingly views transsexualism as a sort of neurological intersex condition. As evidence of this, the mainstream position looks to the similarities between MTF and FTM transsexuals, as well as intersex individuals, arguing that all of these phenomena can be explained by the presence of a neurological gender that can become uncoupled from one’s physical sex.

Blanchardians are accused of jumping to conclusions and implying causation from correlation, as well as hand-waving away inconsistencies by accusing trans women of simply not being honest. In turn, Blanchardians pan mainstream trans advocates as hysterical, or perhaps even “protesting too much”. Though it’s considerably off-topic from this text, I’d recommend the Contrapoints video on the subject for an, admittedly biased, but more modern take on a debate that is no less resolved today than it was twenty years ago.

Church

It was right around my seventh or eighth grade year when we had confirmation. This is a sort of class for adolescents, so that they can learn all the little details about Christianity and the Protestant and Methodist traditions, and decide for themselves what they believe in. We didn’t actually hold this class on a regular schedule, and it was the first one we’d done in recent memory; certainly since getting Tommy as our new preacher a few years ago.

I’d rather end anyone’s suspense now and tell you that I’m an atheist today. I don’t generally look back on my church youth experience with disdain, though. This wasn’t really a fire and brimstone church, and I still have a lot of respect for Tommy.

We’d go over to the activity building every week or two, I don’t remember. And we’d learn about early Christian history, all of these different creeds, the persecution of early Christians followed by the rise of the Catholic Church, and beyond and so forth. There was often a focus on having us think about what our individual belief or preference was out of a range of possibilities, and there was rarely if ever a right answer.

During one of the classes, we discussed emperor Constantine; and, after listening to a biographical sketch of the fellow, were asked to give our thoughts about him. I held the, somewhat contrarian, position that I wasn’t so keen on the guy; sure, he spread Christianity throughout the land, but he spread his version of it. It seemed like most of the other kids saw what he did as at least an improvement. But, I wasn’t even convinced this guy was sincere. He worshiped the Roman pantheon until midlife, until suddenly he converted to Christianity, then started killing everyone who didn’t follow his weird new version of the religion he probably didn’t really understand himself. I saw his actions as a, rather transparent, variation of the axiom “if you can’t beat them, join them”.

I’m probably recovering from a psychotic break or something.

There are a few points in this story, where recent events suggest my memory has short circuited. While I understand some of these things probably didn’t actually happen, I can only write from my own memory. I’ve never read Slaughterhouse-Five; however, I’ve read the Wikipedia page, and I probably sound a lot like its narrator.

It was at this point that Tommy made it clear he wanted to speak with me after class. And no, I wasn’t in trouble.

This was the first instance of Tommy trying to get me interested in the Freemasons. “The Freemasons think like you do,” he said. He made it sound like they had a closely-guarded early form of Christianity, like the early Gnostics had or something. He had something he wanted me to read. And, it wasn’t a physical copy of anything. He wrote the name of this introductory masonic text he wanted me to look at on the smallest slip of paper, along with a URL where I could find it. And, he made it clear that this was for my eyes only.

At the time, I took everything this man told me at face value. Now that I’ve grown older, and have heard a lot of, often contradictory, things about the Freemasons, I think Tommy was taking me for a ride. But, the question is why. Why would my childhood preacher feed me misinformation about the Freemasons? It only gets weirder from here. Let’s keep going.

As I left the activity building, Josh was standing outside the door, and asked what Tommy and I talked about. “Oh… he just wanted me to read something when I got home…” It seemed harmless enough. Josh and I are on the same level, right? Why can’t I talk to him about it?

---

Several days later, I had a follow-up conversation with Tommy about what I’d read. My memory’s a bit hazy, but here are some of the things that I recall from our talk.

• All sorts of things or entities are real that can’t be seen or touched. Like angels and demons and spirits and stuff.
• The Freemasons know about things that are basically indistinguishable from magic. There seemed to be some understanding between us, regarding the “crazy Christians” who didn’t believe in science and wouldn’t let their kids watch Harry Potter.
• Demonic possession is actually real. Freemasons study that sort of thing.
• His wife doesn’t know anything about this. I can talk to Terry, though.

I didn’t know what to do with this information. I think I was some combination of fascinated, skeptical, and spooked out. I didn’t like that the information I’d learned seemed unfalsifiable, and that I seemingly had no real way to independently research the subject matter.

While he seemed serious, I couldn’t help but wonder whether Tommy was both sincere and correct in his assertions.

Ultimately, I figured I’d file this away as something to maybe learn about when I’m older. I was obviously too young to join the Freemasons at this age.

Sex ed

Sometime in the seventh or eighth grade, a friend walked up to me in the hallway between classes and cracked a joke about masturbation.

Careful, Ethan! If you jack off too much your palms’ll turn green!

I laughed like you’re supposed to, and maybe even looked at my hands. It was a sort of made-you-look joke, after all. But, it took me a couple minutes to really get it. Why would jacking off make your palms green? Sam doesn’t… know what I do in private… does he?

It eventually occurred to me that normal boys do it by gripping their penis with their dominant hand and rubbing one out. Because, they’re normal. Right. So, Sam just thinks I’m a normal boy. That’s cool! I think…

Touching my genitals never felt particularly natural to me, even when there were otherwise no ill feelings associated with it. Even when using the bathroom for example, I’ve always managed my situation with toilet paper, and have avoided urinals throughout my life without exception. (Not that this makes me more trans than anyone else; I’m pretty sure this is highly unusual, even for trans women.) But suffice it to say, I had no urges to “turn my palms green”.

Barring nocturnal emission, the aforementioned vibrating massage pillow motor in my underpants was my first time doing it. And no, my sexuality didn’t get any more vanilla over time.

There were pros and cons to the little motor.

I continued using this little thing for a surprisingly long time, but even after discovering it I kept looking for something… else. I was probably driven by a similarly powerful impulse as my friend Sam, when he did the deed he psychologically projected onto me. I wanted to… stimulate… that area. And, I seemingly had zero desire to “jerk off” like a normal adolescent boy is apparently supposed to do.

I don’t know how I came up with this idea, but it worked surprisingly well. I pulled the fan out of an old Sun server and connected it to a 12 V bench supply; then, very carefully and through my underpants, held it at an angle to vibrate the head of my penis. The fan was relatively low power, but could cause discomfort or minor nicks to the peen if you managed to stall the blades.

A less creative, but still effective way I’d found to do it was to wrap this (non-massaging) neck pillow around my junk, and use a combination of moving my hips and grabbing the edge of the pillow. I could sort of forget I had a dick this way.

Anyway; the title of this subchapter is “Sex ed”. We’re a little past this point now, but it was in mid-to-late elementary school when my mom decided my dad should have the sex talk with me. He mostly just explained that the penis goes in the vagina on the way back from boy scouts, and that’s how babies are made; and I supposed the rest would make sense once I’m older. When we got back home I was visibly weirded out by it all, and I remember my mom being upset with my dad over how he explained it, for some reason. Maybe because he didn’t talk about how you aren’t supposed to have sex until marriage? Ugh, anyway…

The point is, neither of my parents really had much useful advice to offer me about sex or relationships. I’m pretty sure their marriage was a disaster, and neither of them appeared to have a successful post-divorce dating life.

However, my mother is particularly weird about sex. And, not necessarily in the way you might expect from someone whose religious. For example, she’s never suggested I outright shouldn’t be masturbating. She mentioned to me once that she had talked to her friend Gail, and wanted me to know that it was normal for boys my age to masturbate. They’re always the most awkward, abbreviated conversations, and she never quite seemed comfortable with the subject matter; though maybe I’m simply projecting my own feelings. She’s also very creeped out by porn, and is quick to label men she doesn’t like “perverts”; sometimes even disdainfully accusing them of looking as if they “watch porn in their basement!”

So, I’m learning that I’m just a little different from normal kids. I seem to be transsexual, first of all. And, tying yourself up for fun is called “BDSM”. My name is Ethan Alexandre Brown, for now, I’m in the seventh grade, I’m a male-to-female transsexual, and I’m into BDSM. This is fine.

We had sex ed in seventh grade. And we didn’t talk about transsexuals, or BDSM, or even masturbating without your palms. But, I’m starting to get it through my head that I’m just really, really weird. It felt like I’d always been the exception, like I’d always had to over-explain myself, for as long as I could remember. Football or baseball? Ham radio! Windows or Mac? Linux! Gay or straight? Transsexual! Blondes or brunettes? Whips and chains! I can’t even masturbate without two AA batteries.

I didn’t need batteries anymore once I came upon a more powerful “personal massager”. I didn’t know what a Hitachi was yet.

This was probably the first point in my life, when I really just wanted to be normal. I wanted to have normal kid problems, whatever they were. I wanted to get in trouble for sneaking out late, or smoking my dad’s cigarettes, or getting a bad grade on my report card. I felt a growing sense of incredulousness from my inner self, that I could really be this fucking weird. It must be at least partially my fault, right? Or, might there be an unexpected common cause that would satisfy Occam’s Razor? I doubt this will create any cognitive dissonance, trying to find a single root cause that would appear to make me a transgender sex pervert…

Mommy’s alright

My mother returned to the mental hospital again when I was in seventh or eighth grade. During that time, I stayed with my friend Cameron, who I went to school and church with.

My little habit was beginning to spiral out of control. I’m afraid I’m unable to resolve the original paradox at the beginning of this chapter; however, I can tell you that there were now two piles of sand in this house.

It started with a large shoebox. Then I needed a fucking Avon box. In which I could nest the smaller shoebox full of stuff. At first. I started crossdressing (for lack of a better word) every chance I got. I became increasingly more careless. I used to tiptoe around. Now I just chain lock the door when mom goes away on short errands. Sometimes Susan would come home early and bang on the door, screaming at me in that panicked voice of hers. It rattled me, at first. It was better than the alternative.

My mother found my¹ stash of clothes for the first time in middle school, probably eighth grade.

In my growing carelessness, I had taken to keeping the Avon box in the space between my bed and the wall. This was a spot chosen out of convenience rather than safety; I’d begun taking to my pursuits at night after Susan had gone to bed, and so I’d often move the box there from its more discreet hiding place to avoid making noise retrieving it on weeknights. I wouldn’t keep the box there if I was away for long periods or thought there was a chance Susan would clean my room;² she worked during the day and had a long commute, so there wasn’t really much time for her to even go through my room on school nights.

You probably see where this is going. One night, she got a wild hair to clean my room in a way that involved moving the bed, and I couldn’t get to the box in time. I hid under an afghan in the living room; listening to my mom doing… something, in my room.

… Oh my god…

…

… Oh my god…

It felt like an eternity had passed. I think she called a friend on the phone, but I couldn’t hear what they were talking about; which was more telling than anything.

After this eternity had passed, my mother came into the living room; where I was still hiding under the afghan. “What ‘cha doin’ under there?!”, she said. In the most saccharine tone imaginable.

That is all. We’ve never addressed this, and she’s never acknowledged that it happened. The box had clearly been disturbed, but all of its contents remained intact. In fact, she later denied she ever found it. It’s a good example of Susan’s bizarre gaslight-y behavior.