the woman who would be emperor
'peter (a young english girl)' - romaine brooks, 1924
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the girl who could not be a boy
the girl who did not want to be a woman
another personal post - this one is inspired by the latest book i read, 'the man who would be queen' by michael bailey. it's a sexology book, and concerns transsexuals - the homosexual and non-homosexual ones. i happen to belong to the homosexual kind, and i was a transkid of the kind he describes.
it was a unique, bittersweet, nuanced experience, very specific in nature, which gives me certain unique perspectives. these perspectives impact my opinions and insight on topics concerning gay and transsexual/transgender people, as well as impact me personally. i know i have a bit of an audience here; i don't know how many would be interested in my story, but i will let myself assume some are willing to listen.
the girl who could not be a boy
it's thereabouts 2000, maybe 2001. i am 2 or 3 years old. i am an isolated child in an unstable, abusive household. i am an only child, and i don't really get other kids to play with. i own several toys from 'bob the builder' series, and various puzzles - mostly. i prefer toy cars, and i don't have any dolls. i wear short hair. i've seen pictures of myself from that era; i don't rememember it. i live with my maternal grandparents, and grandpa is only adult i feel safe around. we watch football together, and i enjoy the games, although i drive everyone insane by cheering for whoever has the coolest names. my native language is a gendered one, and when i play with grandpa or - on rare opportunities - my mother, i tend to pretend to be a fireman, pirate or something like that, so i use masculine forms for myself. that becomes a habit my grandmother eventually catches on.
'you're a girl' - she says - 'we don't say it like that'. i don't understand why would i be a girl; in my eyes i'm a lot like grandpa, who is a man, as far as i know; i don't know there is an anatomic difference yet. i accept it, but the habit returns. she corrects me repeatedly until i stop. i haven't really met other girls or boys for that matter, so i don't argue with her.
it's 2004 and i am 6 years old. grandpa is dead now, and things get worse. i stop watching football. i am now mostly interested in science; i own multiple books about - especially - natural sciences, like chemistry and biology. i am an ambitious, intelligent kid; many note that i talk just like an adult person - what i later will learn is typical of autistic children - and i am aware of my intelligence. i read adventure books, and i dream of leading scientific expeditions and also finding a 'cure for cancer'. i still don't own any dolls, but my mother wants to grow out my hair now, as i'll be going to school, and kids could bully me. i don't oppose it.
i am excited to go to school; i haven't really meet other kids so far, and i imagine we would be doing fun, adventure things - like pranking teachers, building a treehouse or doing contests in rolling down the hill or throwing tomatoes at a target. for the most part, none of that happens.
it's 2007, and i'm 9. i had been very disappointed with school and other kids - turned out other kids really hated me, for some reason, and were overwhelmingly stupid. on top of that, they didn't really want to do the fun things i wanted to do; the boys did sometimes, and we played 'hare and hounds' and went racing on our bikes ocassionally, but now they feel less like playing with me; it's lame to play with a girl. girls do boring things, like playing pretend house or shop. on top of that, the girls like me even less than the boys do - which will be a persistent thing in my life later on. what i still enjoy the most is reading. i sit alone with my books a lot of the time.
what is surprising is that adults don't like me either. i'm competitive and ambitious, sarcastic, emotionally inexpressive, with low empathy and no motherly instincts (although i really love kittens), and i talk back a lot. i'm not orderly or neat, i don't care about mess and i keep losing and accidentally destroying things, and my handwriting is awful. all that would be tolerated in a boy, but isn't in me. i regularly get painted as malicious. 'i don't like children like you' - a caretaker at the summer camp tells me. at the same camp, a little boy my age follows me around and it makes me uncomfortable. one day, he walks up to me and tells me he has a crush on me, and asks if i want to be his girlfriend. this is kind of surprising - that someone has a 'crush' on a freak like me - but it weirds me out and i don't want to deal with it. i say i'm too young for this kind of thing, and start avoiding him.
i get teased about my future husband and kids now, and i am now aware what having a family as a girl means - it means having to do a lot of things at home, and not getting to do the things you like. i notice, as i haven't before, that men get to do fun things in books, but girls only get to do so as children; then they get a husband and family and it's all over. the vision of being a mom puts me off anyways, even if it wasn't for that. i say i don't want a husband or kids, because i want to be a scientist. adults laugh. some 'helpfully' point to very brave women who manage to do both and tell me that i can be a scientist and have a family. but i don't want to. i want to just do one. a future marriage and family feels more and more like an inevitable nightmare i can't escape. with time, i start getting angry and saying i would murder any baby i am forced to bear. the adults clutch their pearls at that and my image of a horrible, evil child is cemented.
the bullying at school gets worse and i develop depression. i end up being referred further by the school psychologist, and seeing a psychiatrist who diagnoses me as autistic - i'm about 10 then. the diagnosis doesn't make anything better - if anything, for adults such as the teachers it makes the bullying more understandable and less of something one can blame the bullies for.
but the equivalent of r word isn't all the kids call me by this point. i hear other things too. 'lesbo' is one word i hear very often. i know what it means. it means a woman who is attracted to other women, but i don't know if i am. most of the other kids have had crushes already, but i hadn't. i think i'm a late bloomer, so i don't know what i 'would be' yet. i don't know if i'll be a lesbian or straight, so i think it's very unfair to asusme. my lack of crushes is starting to worry me, though.
i get into fights sometimes, and end up pretty seriously beaten two times. once my mother finds me unconscious in the locker rooms after being hit on the head with a metal door. when a boy insults my mother, i punch him on the face. i'm not great at fighting, but at least i try, so the boys mostly leave me alone. girls do not. they send me fake valentine cards and kick me out of my own bed at a school trip.
the girl who did not want to be a woman
it's 2009, and i am 11 years old. i have now experienced sexual abuse from both adults and other kids. my life sucks on multiple levels. but i engage in various escapisms; for one, i get very into horror. i read masterton, which i absolutely shouldn't read at that age, but i do, and enjoy it a lot. i look at gore websites and develop an interest in everything morbid. on top of that, i'm of course still obsessed with science, although my ideas change. i undergo a period of fascination with chemistry, and i can't wait to start learning it for real. 'silence of the lambs' is my favourite book now.
i find a book about julius caesar at the library, and i get into the roman empire. i read biographies while sitting alone in recess. i become fascinated with military history and geopolitics. i also rather violently break off with religion, and enter a nu-atheism phase. my recent interests include bad metal music (i love lordi and iron maiden), horror, science and the romans, and arguing with christians online.
i begin to seek out communities online, and join various forums. i troll the christians there, and end up reading the bible specifically for that purpose. i set cardinal ximenez from monty python's flying circus 'spanish inquisition' episode as my icon, as british humour has become another new interest, along with a cringefail fascination with the uk and episodic monarchism, which fortunately quickly passed.
while i engage in these activities, i routinely get assumed male; it's my typing style, my icons and also what i say. i argue about politics a lot - by which i don't mean minority discourse, but rather reddit style politics (i even ended up having a libertarian phase at some point... a lot to cringe back on). i often pretend to be older than i really am, and it tends to fly. i find myself hesitating to correct strangers who constantly think i'm male; it feels pleasant, more natural, and i know if i say i'm a girl, the men i'm debating would respect me less - so i don't. i develop a persona of a 21 year old man, which i will use for a longer while - it's just what i got assumed to be, and went with it.
i get teased about having, allegedly, crushes on random boys from my class - later i will learn that it's a weird form of wishful thinking done to very gender non-conforming gay children. i find it nauseating every single time. i get unsolicited advice from wellmeaning adults on how i have to change, or else i won't find a husband. once again, i get angry and tell them i don't want to date someone who has a need to feel better than me, and anyways, i don't want a damn husband, because i want to be a scientist - and i definitely don't want kids. i know about pregnancy and childbirth, and breastfeeding, and it's all repulsive to me. thinking of my body changing that way makes me want to end myself.
yet, i hear that my body will somehow make me change my mind - this makes me even more terrified of my body - when the right time comes, or that the husband will abandon me if i don't want kids, and if i don't have a husband i will be lonely and miserable. i know there's no escape now. i get comforted about my ambitions, still, told that a lot of women work and still find time for their families. but i don't want time for my family! i want to not have one! they don't want to hear me. other kids hate me, so i try to be more feminine and 'normal', but the closest i get to having a feminine ambition is wanting to do makeup on corpses to make them look alive again. i wish i could work with the dead and avoid people.
it's 2010, when i - now 12 years old - finally get my first crush. it's on an older, 17 year old girl. i get obsessed with her, and now that hormones started working their course, also attracted to my english teacher - a tall, dark haried woman around 30. i now know that i am really a 'lesbian', and i accept it. perhaps as a result of csa, my first crushes are already pretty sexual, so there's no use denying it. i don't know any other lesbian, and in my country these things aren't really talked a lot yet. i don't know what being a lesbian will be like when i'm an adult. i feel bad that the kids were right, and it makes me think maybe they were right about other bad things they said about me, too. maybe i was ugly and gross, and hairy, and unlikeable, after all, if i was a lesbian like they said. it worries me.
i'm 12 and i'm a stupid centrist and nu-atheist, and i wish i was born in ancient rome, as a man, of course, so i could become a great general and then an emperor. i still love horror, but now i also take to dystopia novels. i think reading orwell would be very intellectual of me, so i read '1984' and become obsessed with it - hence why now i tend to say i had that phase at 12, whenever i see adults compare everything to it. iron maiden's 'brave new world' is my favourite album. there's no way i could find female friends.
other kids continue not to like me, and girls hate me in particular. i ignore puberty. i don't like looking at my body, though i also don't experience deep distress; i just dissociate. also as a result of trauma, i feel that i'm just a stream of consciousness attached to random data such as sex and age. i become deeply misanthropic, and develop violent fantasies about hurting strangers and other kids (some of them discussed in other essays of mine). i escape, frequently, into my internet adult male persona and participate in friendgroups with older people as such; it's also the peak of my forum activity.
it's 2011, and i'm still 12, although i would turn 13 soon. i don't remember how, but i find out about transsexuality. i visit the 'blue forum' - local resource about it; it was established in the early 00s, and contains a lot of beliefs currently considered archaic, such as that testosterone increases intelligence. i had never met a trans person before. i start thinking about it; so it means i could be male in reality. perhaps even that i have always been, and i can just tell people that. i know that year i would be going to a new school; it opens some opportunities.
i turn 13 in may, and in summer that year i have my hair cut again. i convince my mother to let me order some clothes online, and now i wear men's tshirts constantly. i was a tomboy before, but now i do it on purpose. i want to pass when i start my new life, otherwise it would be very silly. i am 5'7, slim with small breasts, and wide hips appear to be my only issue. i read the blue forum every day. i know i would be more comfortable having a male body, and i relate to described experiences of dysphoria. by the point i go to the new school, i'm certain that i am in fact transsexual.
i know my family would not accept my new lifestyle, so i decide to introduce them to fait accompli. i 'come out' to my new classmates, and then arrange conversations with the teachers. i get mixed responses; some teachers presumably assumed that a conversation with the parents happened prior and they were accepting, judging from the certainty in my message to them. i don't ask for help because i 'might' be transsexual, i declare that i am, and that i want to transition.
the kids consider me a freak at first - as expected - but i manage to befriend three nerdy boys, two of whom are liked and popular, so i get left alone. the other boys avoid me now. the girls are often unkind - once again, worse. after a few weeks of slapfights with some classmates and some teachers - the less accepting ones - i arrange a conversation with my mother, and tell her that i am transsexual, and have been living as a boy for a while. later people would admire my courage in arranging a social transition on my own.
my mother says she doesn't want me to transition and doesn't want a son, and that i should be grateful she's not kicking me out over it. i don't care, we have bad relations anyway. i am happy because she agrees to take me to a specialist - though she hopes i'll be diagnosed as not transsexual. my other family threaten me and call me slurs. i don't care. i now have a male name i've chosen prior - for my internet persona - and i buy a cupless sports bra to flatten my chest. at 13 a half i am living 'full time' in reality.
the boy who used to be a girl
if i am to be honest, my life gets better here. yesterday i was looking at my pictures from that era; taken at a school trip when i was 13. i have a masculine haircut, and i'm wearing men's clothes, i appear flat and i 'pass' for the most part, though i haven't learnt to conceal my hips that well yet. i've shown these pictures to people i was 'stealth' to, and they didn't seem to look twice. it was easy with my mannersims and the way i spoke, and what i lacked i've learnt from the friends i have now found. it is the first time i actually have friends at school; it's great.
my male friends are nerds who - just like me - like horror, crappy dark comedy, military history, politics and debating. at 13 i get into nietzsche and i am the best company for their kind imaginable. we're a bunch of edgelords who sit and argue on the judgement of caesar or napoleon bonaparte (my another obsession a bit later, alongisde the russian general alexander suvorov and various philosophers) as a character, or whatever dumb stuff like that, prank teachers - finally i get the opportunity - and make numerous attempts at obtaining narcotic substances, more or less successful. i get excused from the pe class - which was gendered - and my depression partly subsides. naturally confrontational and often read as arrogant, i find boyhood easier to adjust to; i am now found 'charismatic' rather than 'a smartass' like i had been before.
i see several specialists, who - much to my mother's despair - state that i am probably transsexual, and - much to my despair - refuse to take responsibility for treating a 13 year old, particularly one with a diagnosis of autism. eventually, one agrees to diagnose me and conduct the process, though he warns that i couldn't go hormones until 17 - that was the rule here, at least then. i agree out of lack of other options.
here i have to explain - the gatekeeping process, at least then, used to be very long and meticulous. names are gendered in my country, and in order to have an opposite sex name on any documents, one has to change their legal sex. legal sex change is a court process, includes a background check - that is, interviewing one's family to verify what they said about their past - providing extensive medical documentation, and having irreversible physical changes. one has to be 18 to start that process. going on hormones and obtaining the 'irreversible changes', meanwhile, warranted a two year test - 'real life experience', which in short means it required two years of living in chosen 'role' and experiencing the life of a transsexual. he suggested that we do all the tests and document everything so i that i can apply to the court when i'm newly 18, and don't end up wasting time. diagnostic categories, too, included 'transsexualism' rather than 'gender identity disorder' or whatever it is in the west nowadays, so it was less broad, and more final.
it's 2011, i'm 13 and he says to me: 'i'm diagnosing you as an ftm transsexual now. i'm putting this in your papers. i can still not write it, are you sure?'. why yes, i am sure, and i say so. i'm anxious, but only afraid he would back off in the last moment. later he would tell me he was going to diagnose me anyway, based on how persistant i was in the process of carrying out the social transition alone, but wanted to see if i hesitate. i didn't, so he knew he made the right decision. testing potential transsexuals like that and playing mind games with them was then common. i get diagnosed, and from then on, doctor j. starts to register my real life experience.
it's 2012. on my 14th birthday, i get drunk for the first time, and kiss a girl consensually for the first time - my classmate, who talks about kissing a female friend and so i boldly ask if i could kiss her too (to my surprise she agrees). it is a day of many things happening.
my life gets better than ever, despite constant troubles at home. my household is hell during this period though, and i still seek company online. i don't want to vent to my irl friends and have them think i was less cool. online, i befriend a young adult (19-20) woman, who becomes my confidante. later, she confesses a crush on me. we meet irl and i lose my virginity to her - or what i perceive as such. at 25, when i read bailey, i would learn losing one's virginity early to an adult or much older adolescent is the 'normal' experience for homosexual transsexuals - his model 'hsts', 'teresa', has lost hers at 13 to 'an older boy'. well, i was 14. homo- and bisexual predators target transkids overwhelmingly.
it's still 2012, and 14 year old me is undergoing the gatekeeping. dr j. demands to see me every few months - my mother takes me there, although she's mad at me and also consults me with some psychologists who oppose transsexuality and transitioning, mostly conservative ones. i get into spats with them and refuse to see them again. dr j. asks me various questions concerning my sexual fantasies and masturbation habits. i have to answer in excruciating detail. it's especially important if i ever penetrate myself or allow someone else to do so - and i do not, i have vaginismus and i haven't found myself capable of that. he sends me to get various tests done. i have to undergo a pelvic exam (very difficult due to vaginismus - i scream in pain).
periods are a big problem to me and i beg to be at least given something to stop them if he refuses to give me hrt yet. i use the men's restroom, and my periods aren't even regular. i often cruise the school to throw out a pad somewhere no one will see. a bunch of older boys accuse me of being a perv and demand that i don't use their toilet. i get called slurs. a bunch of adult men returning from a football match assault me physically - but fortunately not sexually - when they find me waiting for my bus, and i refuse to answer the 'are you a faggot or a dyke' question. i don't even know how to answer that.
it's 2013. i am a 15 year old metalhead, i still pass in my band tshirts and middle length hair, particularly now that i've learnt to conceal my hips properly; with my male friends, we go to bars where they don't check ids, drink beer, argue and talk about music or scifi media. i develop an interest in world war two; i'm ethnically jewish, and my family were holocaust survivors, so i have a curiosity and i explore it. it suits my prior military history interests. i'm pretty problematic, but my male friends are centrist edgelords like myself, and they do not care. we get drunk and run into fountains.
i participate in many sausage fests (sans me); my three friends know i'm female, but others do not. i'm afraid of being found out, and become borderline paranoid. especially periods and dealing with them don't help whatsoever. my household is still hell, and i still sleep with women who are way too old for me. i get into philosophy pretty seriously, i read kant and aristotle, and - being an autistic 'facts over feelings' type - develop a reputation for being great at debates. i also develop a fascination in nuclear disasters. my life is bittersweet and weird.
soon after, i go to a new school; two of my friends go with me, although they aren't in the same class anymore. my mother agrees to talk to the principal with me, and i attempt to 'stealth' from the beginning there, though of course gossip lives on. doctor j. documents my progress. the school says they were happy to have me with my exam results, and would accommodate me for transsexuality, though they never had a trans student. i become the only transkid in a school of over 800.
my female classmates (who still don't like me) had been browbeaten into shaving their legs, wearing bras and makeup. i never get involved in these things, which i suppose is an upside.
the boy who had to be a man
it's 2015. 17 years old, i am in the most intense phase of gatekeeping; i have to undergo another pelvic exam, various psychotests - which have apparently shown that my personality and processing are mostly masculine - and i see doctor j. more regularly now. i am approved for testosterone, and he promises to give me the prescription in january, but in october 2015 a new, conservative populist (a'la trumpists) government is elected, and he chickens out and moves it to april. we get into a spat, as i bring up he promised me something, and he threatens me saying i should be happy he's counting my time lived as a minor as 'real life experience' and isn't making me wait until i'm 20.
every single months matters, because i have to both be a legal adult and half a year on hormones to apply to court, and i want to do it as soon as possible; i would like to be done with the data before i graduate. hiding my legal data is a struggle, and so is hiding periods. now that i'm always stealth and not on hormones yet, i am continously unsafe.
it's 2016. eventually, my goal is achieved, and i get on testosterone. i don't write the date down. i feel my body is becoming 'normal', and i want to forget it was ever different, not to document it. i feel more at ease. i stop avoiding taking pictures of myself, and start to enjoy it - by hell, it's difficult to find any pictures of me from the pre-hrt era - and i feel more comfortable about recording my voice. for the last year or so, it had been difficult to keep passing - boys that age grow facial hair and their voices deepen; it's easier to pass as a younger child, when there's fewer sex differences.
i agree to wait with surgeries, given as my chest is easy to hide, but i do plan on having them. i manage to apply to court in time; as i, newly 18 year old, see doctor j. for the last time, he talks to my mother. 'he's autistic, and his personality is as is. as a woman, he would be judged very harshly. people understand it more when a man acts this way. i think it's the better option for him' - he says, attempting to comfort her. he is probably right, and is being honest.
the court arranges me an appointment with experts who make me undress and show them my body, including the genitalia, to document hrt changes. they note everything about my body. they interview my mother on my childhood, to confirm what i said in the medical interviews. it's all invasive and traumatic, but i mostly worry about time. i don't have a lot of it left.
i barely manage, but do manage, and the court proclaims me male around the time i graduate. i leave for university - away from home, both to hide my past and to get away from my family. i pursue a prestigous degree that may give me opportunities for scientific work in future. i still have good grades.
it's 2017 and i experience a psychotic break, and end up seeing a psychiatrist. i take up therapy, which would last for several years, and i try to heal after the time i was mostly concerned with surviving. i moderate a transsexual forum - as the youngest mod in its history - and also look up anglophone sources. i make an account on tumblr, and get exposed to queer politics. i'm enthusiastic at first - it seems way nicer than the conservatism i was constantly battling in my country - but i feel disappointed soon. i find it shallow, performative and ignorant of material realities often, on top of all the other issues.
the man who could have been a woman
it's 2018 and i am 20 years old. i notice i've been bleeding, though my periods had been gone for a longer while. i seek contact with doctor j., but learn that he has retired recently. i've been getting my hormones from a gp after completing my legal transition, so we haven't talked. concerned, i pursue local healthcare. turns out i've developed pretty serious health issues - complications from hrt - which i can attempt to treat, or can decide on a radical surgery. i choose the second option. meanwhile, i take pretty strong medications which make me feel like a menopausal 60 year old. i don't feel well, but i don't regret my decisions - i see the way women are treated in my stem degree, assumed to need 'time for family'. i think 'time for family' is a curse.
i am naturally drawn to leadership, and i do well with agency and respnsibility; in fact, i enjoy having impact on reality quite a lot. i want to achieve successs, win a high status and reputation in my field, and have attractive female lovers. i mostly share the desires of straight men, but i don't quite relate to them when they talk about women, their type and the ways they desire them. above all, though, i'm glad no one assumes i need 'family time'. i don't envy my female colleagues.
it's 2019. i am still 20 years old, and i'm sitting on the hospital bed, being prepared for the surgery. i think back to the people who told me i would end up a mother whether i liked it or not when i was a child. i am delighted with satisfaction and spite. i am aware of potential complications, but also happy and relieved at the idea no man will be able to make me a mother and wife, or want me as one. i feel i'm winning on some level. as i close my eyes, my mind is at peace.
it's 2019, still, but i am now 21. i come into contact with some feminists, who convince me to become more open to a lesbian identity again. i become interested in radical feminism. the women i meet claim to care about young gnc and dysphoric lesbians, young butches, and ftm transkids. i assume they would be interested in my story, but they aren't. they don't like my attitudes. they believe i owe them regret; they dislike that i don't seem to wish i didn't make the decisions i made, and they don't like it when i mention positives, nuance or complexity of transchildhood.
it's 2020, i am 22 and i meet constant hostility in my feminist circles on account of not considering myself ruined like the women on r/detrans. i think some of them actually envy me for not having undergone teenage girlhood, even as worrying i may be raped and killed if someone realises my voice is too high or being groped in bars by people who wonder what's in my pants isn't ideal for a teenager.
i soon notice that they don't care about the happiness and wellbeing of gay kids - they care about gay kids not transitioning, while refusing to tend to the actual causes. they lack nuance and they don't want to hear me, even the parts where my story would support their points - even tough my relief over the surgery means a lesbian being convinced getting her reproductive organs removed and rendering herself 'unusable' is the only escape route, their official narrative is that the surgery makes women miserable and they regret it, so they don't want to hear what i say. they want me as a token, a cautionary tale, and i refuse to be one, so i am not welcome. i leave these circles.
it seems like i had made a mistake in assuming that they would want to hear me in order to understand the processing and mechanisms behind young gay kids transitioning - that they would want to understand what it feels like to be a transkid, and what makes one become a transkid, if they were concerned about their safety. i was wrong. i leave internet slapfights behind; after all, i've grown out of it by this point. i do regret, though, that none of the people who claimed to advocate for me wanted to hear what i actually had to say.
the woman who would be emperor
it's 2023, and i had recently turned 25. i have a degree now, and i'm about to start working my first job in the field. i have short hair again, i work out, and i have partly detransitioned socially - i now tell the people i spend a lot of time with that i am a lesbian. i've become comfortable with words such as 'woman' and 'girl'. i still have taken no steps to change my day to day life, though. i don't have a gender identity; i consider myself a genderless homosexual.
i remain an annoying transhumanist, and i'm creating my own philosophy. i know there's a market for women like me among lesbians, so i don't really worry, and my lack of uterus doesn't bother me whatsoever. i've 'outed' myself to some people who thought i was a biological man for years. i've surrounded myself with intelligent people who want to hear me, but i still find most refuse, so i stay within my circle.
it's 2024, and i'll be 26 in a while, and i have this website. i read bailey - 'the man who would be queen', and i realise all the similarities between male and female homosexual gender nonconformity, and male and female transsexuality, particularly in transkids. i feel seen.
of course, he's a man who focuses on biological males, which is unsurprising, but i still feel seen - it's probably the best women like me get. i still don't regret my choices - i do agree with doctor j. ultimately, i do think it was the best option for me - but i find myself overcome with melancholy when i think back to some moments, including that conversation between him and my mother, and when i realise all the other options i could have been, perhaps in a world that's less hostile to girls who want to be emperors.
if bailey met child-me who wanted to be a roman emperor, and talked to her, he could likely figure adult me would be a masculine or androgynous woman with a stem degree and bitterness towards the world at large, and maybe predict that i would transition at some point, in pursuit of leadership, success, accomplishment and getting people off my back.
i don't know if anyone reading this is interested in actually 'protecting gay kids', but i find the main mistake is perceiving 'protecting gay kids' and 'protecting trans kids' as somehow contradictory - these are mostly the same kids; like myself, most transkids are homosexual, and although not all homosexual kids are transkids, the same kids can move between these groups, both in becoming transkids and in - though that is rare - desisting. in case the reader happens to care...
how to actually protect gay kids:
- protect them from blackpill - by which i mean all suggestions that they have no future; all the jokes about having to find a husband, lines about inevitably getting baby fever, all the suggestions that they should tone themselves down or they'll get bullied or whatever else, even if it's wellmeaning. stand up for them - in a way they see and notice. yell at these people around them, in their sight, so they know you don't consider it acceptable.
- protect them from homophobia (and misogyny) - again, be loud and overt about it, and do it in their presence, so that they can see you really side with them rather than think you diplomatically made a deal with the homophobe and now they have to shut up about it.
- let them know they have a future - introduce them to older gay people, talk to them about gay people being a thing. this isn't sexualising them - there is such a thing as gay kids; even if they don't have attraction yet, in some - the ones like me, who would be the most likely to become transsexual - it's visible early in their behaviour.
- don't imply it's better if they transition or not - don't try to 'prevent them from transitioning', if your goal is that they're not trans rather that they are happy, you're acting on transphobia, not concern for gay kids. don't suggest that they can be transgender just because they aren't gender conforming either. don't 'test them' for it.
- don't abandon them if they do become transkids - they're still gay kids. they aren't 'gone' or 'lost', they still do and certainly will face homophobic violence. they can grow into people of various relations to gender. they may desist, but even if they don't, they may retain a connection to gay identity and culture.
- don't make them hide to appease others - don't make a feminine gay boy wear a suit to see grandma. don't tell them they'll be bullied. they will either way, straight kids are good at clocking - just respond to bullying and remove them from unsafe environments if possible. don't make them shut up to make other people happy, even if you think you're protecting them. don't install shame in them.
- protect them from predators - predators target visibly gay kids, as one can know from many stories of transkids like myself; make sure they have opportunities to meet other gay kids their age, especially as teenagers, and maintain a relation of trust so they would come to you if an adult is acting weird. teach them it's not ok for an adult to pursue a child or teenager, or for a teenager to pursue a much younger child. keep them away from pornography.
it's not easy. it has never been, and will never be easy. the society as is, is a space hostile to gay gender non-conforming people. but if the adults around homosexual kids followed these, there would be much fewer homosexual transkids, and the ones who would be there would be much happier and living in a more fulfilling way. that's what the concern should be, after all - not to avoid them being 'troons', but to make sure they are safe and enjoying their childhood like a child should be.
for me, it's 'too late' now - i've had my story, and although it will continue - hopefully - many years into the future, i am now an adult past my most formative era, and i have a defined experience i operate on. it wasn't a happy experience; but you can save other girls from that. not the transsexuality, but the misery. sometimes lack of misery may mean also not being transsexual, but that's not what you should focus on. meanwhile i will continue my pursuit of the goals i set for myself, even if i almost certainly won't become a roman emperor.
this is basically what i have to say as a former gay child and trans child, to these who want to protect gay and/or trans children, and who at least claim to advocate for the kind of kids i used to be.