Everyone knows it’s scary out there. At protests, online, scrawled on subway station walls, I see solidarity. And I know they’re addressing those of us who are still kids, but when I look at these signs, I feel like I’m looking, not with my eyes as a trans adult, but with the eyes of the trans kid I was.
I can’t stop thinking of my years as a trans teenager in Houston, Texas—being alone and trying to explain to parents and teachers and kids at school with little success the pain I was feeling.
At that time, I was lucky to find HATCH, a support group for queer & trans youth that, helped cut through that loneliness and despair. Once a week, we assembled under the fluorescent lights and picture of Lady Gaga atop a Christmas tree to talk about trans news, our weeks—to laugh with each other.
We fought for ourselves, and we fought for each other. I remember going to a younger trans guy’s house to talk to his mother about my experience on testosterone. This is something I, like other members of the group, did a lot. Unflinching, we looked adults in the eye like looking down a barrel, and repeated our stump speeches about how hormones saved us, dodging their usual barrage of questions. A lot of us went to the same clinic to get our hormones or blockers, so we helped each other navigate the ups and downs of the system.
Recently I was at a rally at Stonewall where they brought some trans kids up to talk.
“I’m in middle school.”
I paused. Middle school? I came out in middle school. I looked at them. Was I really that young? Were we really that young?
We really were. That night I laid down thinking a mess of conflicting thoughts:
“They shouldn’t have to do this. We shouldn’t have had to do that. Trans kids don’t need to be patronized; they know themselves. I was so young. We were so vulnerable.”
But we had to.
A few years ago, that clinic I went to was subpoenaed for patient records while another clinic for trans minors in Houston ended its programs entirely. I fear for my community, for the lonely trans kid I used to be, for the lonely trans kids who still need each other.
I wonder how we can protect ourselves while advocating for ourselves.
I want to reach out to myself, to that young trans kid, and show them my life now. I want to tell them it’s okay. I have trans friends, trans love, trans fun. I want to tell them it was all worth it. That it’s better now.
But that’s not the truth. It’s worse. It’s getting worse. I’m reaching out to my teenage self and asking, “what are we going to do about it?”
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