The Trans Experience

Joy
216

Okay, Polaris only works if the list is hosted on our library’s website where it can access our catalog, so can’t share a list that way. However this gave me the opportunity to explore a different tool I’ve been meaning to learn!

I’ve read most of these, but even the ones that I haven’t personally read are recommended by one or more of my partners. It’s not a huge list, since I restricted the search to just what’s in our catalog, but I think it’s a decent start. (Behind a cut because it includes pictures.)

A selection of books with positive trans characters!

Cemetery boys (Jun 2020)
By: Thomas, Aiden
Yadriel, a trans boy, summons the angry spirit of his high school’s bad boy, and agrees to help him learn how he died, thereby proving himself a brujo, not a bruja, to his conservative family.

Ciel (Sep 2020)
By: Labelle, Sophie, 1988-
Ciel, a gender non-conforming transgender kid with a popular YouTube channel, navigates high school, friendship and a long-distance relationship.

Ciel in all directions (Sep 2021)
By: Labelle, Sophie, 1988-
Non-binary trans kid Ciel has settled into high school with their friends, and between an important science project and their popular YouTube channel, they find themselves in a campaign to represent the LGBT Alliance.

Compound fracture (Sep 2024)
By: White, Andrew Joseph
After being nearly beaten to death for evidence he holds against the corrupt sheriff, sixteen-year-old transgender Miles joins his fellow townsfolk to end the blood feud and oppressive politics that plague his town.

Dreadnought (Jan 2017)
By: Daniels, April, (Young adult author)
After inheriting the powers of Dreadnought, Danny Tozer’s hidden transgender identity is brought into the open when her body assumes the gender she identifies with, bringing personal complications just as she is forced to face the original Dreadnought’s killer.

Sovereign (Jul 2017)
By: Daniels, April, (Young adult author)
As the superhero Dreadnought, Danny Tozer is protecting the city of New Port on her own, but after the emergence of a billionaire supervillain, she finds herself attacked on all sides, while she deals with her troubled family life.

The (un)popular vote (Jun 2021)
By: Sanchez, Jasper
Optics can make or break an election. Everything Mark knows about politics, he learned from his father, the Congressman who still pretends he has a daughter and not a son. Mark has promised to keep his past hidden and pretend to be the cis guy everyone assumes he is. But when he sees a manipulatively charming candidate for student body president inflame dangerous rhetoric, Mark risks his low profile to become a political challenger. The problem? No one really knows Mark. He didn’t grow up in this town, and his few friends are all nerds. Still, thanks to Scandal and The West Wing, they know where to start: from campaign stops to voter polling to a fashion makeover. Soon Mark feels emboldened to engage with voters–and even start a new romance. But with aninvestigative journalist digging into his past, a father trying to silence him, and the bully frontrunner standing in his way, Mark will have to decide which matters most: perception or truth, when both are just as dangerous.

The broken halo (May 2023)
By: Steele, Hamish
“It’s been weeks since Dead End was destroyed and as it reopens as a hotel, resident tour guide turned hotel manager Norma is determined to leave the ghosts of the past where they belong. But with her friendship with Barney up in the air and angels and demons using the hotel as their literal wrestling ring, Norma soon finds that unwanted ghosts can appear at any moment, especially when they’re your own.”-- Provided by publisher.

The divine order (Apr 2024)
By: Steele, Hamish
The battle between angels and demons rages on, and Courtney finds themselves restored to former glory in the realm of the angels with a new mission: bring about a new Divine Order and create a fourteenth plane of existence to keep the demons at bay. On the seventh plane, known to us as Earth, Norma Khan and Barney Guttman have allied with the demons in a search for both freedom and peace. There’s just one thing standing in their way: the Guttman family reunion. Badyah has joined the resistance as well, honing her martial arts skills and getting ready to protect Norma in battle.

The no-girlfriend rule (Mar 2024)
By: Randall, Christen
Julie Murphy meets Casey McQuiston in this unforgettable queer romance about a teen girl whose foray into fantasy tabletop roleplaying brings her new confidence, true friends, and a shot at real, swoon-worthy love.

The Sunbearer Trials (Sep 2022)
By: Thomas, Aiden
Chosen to participate in The Sunbearer Trials, where the loser is sacrificed to refuel the Sun Stones, Teo, the 17-year-old trans son of the goddess of birds, must compete against more powerful and better trained opponents for fame, glory and his own survival.

The watcher’s test (May 2023)
By: Steele, Hamish
Barney and his best friend Norma are just trying to get by and keep their jobs, but working at the Dead End theme park also means battling demonic forces, time traveling wizards, and scariest of all–their love lives!

Victories greater than death (Apr 2021)
By: Anders, Charlie Jane
Tired of hiding in obscurity on Earth, Tina, the human clone of a brilliant alien tactician, pursues her destiny in space, but success is elusive until Tina and her best friend Rachel assemble a ragtag crew of humans and set out to save all the worlds.

Ah! Cool, I forgot the series was called Nemesis.

12 Likes
217

I am part of LGBQT+, and while i don’t purport to know the trans experience i have struggled with other parts of my identity to the point of being anguished and frustrated with myself for many years. And thankfully have grown to accept myself and be comfortable with who i am and who i’ve become. So in some way small i can relate, and i am very thankful to have trans folks in the community here. I may not know you but at least know i see you :smiling_face:

With that out of the way i read this just now and found it touching. I haven’t seen any of The Rings of Power but i did like the author’s message, as it pertains with (trans) identity:

14 Likes
218

Alright! I’ve caught myself up with the thread mostly, i did skim some posts but i read a goodly portion so now i feel more equipped to share about myself. Mind you, i am still learning terms, dynamics, and more. TLDR; It’s complicated.

I am a 40yo, Latino, male omnisexual (i just learned this term), and ENM poly. My pronouns are he/him. My background is that i was born in the US, raised in Venezuela so i have always had a difficult relationship with identity and labels from a young age. I never felt like i fit in as a Latino living in Venezuela, and being in the US as an adult i didn’t feel quite like an American either.

Beyond that while i recognize and feel like my gender is male, i don’t feel like i can relate to most guys. In particular the more “traditional” and “normal” a guy is the less and less i feel like i could relate to them, so male bonds tend to be quite difficult for me to sustain. I do present myself and feel comfortable as a male, but might occasionally flirt with feminine or androgynous things. I think had i been born later i would’ve likely landed on being androgynous but at this point in my life i’m comfortable being male.

My attraction to others is quite varied, and i’m sure as others’ journey in the 90’s and 00’s was i first landed on being bi and it has evolved to pan and now omnisexual :sweat_smile: There’s way more i could share about myself but i hope this is enough for others to get a sense of who i am :slight_smile:

I hope to learn more about other’s journey and my self! If y’all have any questions for me i’d be happy to talk.

20 Likes
219

Due to where I live, I have to be very closeted and present as cis but I decided I don’t want to hide who I am here. Things are about to be a lot more difficult and the reason I love being here is that I feel safe to be who I am without judgment, I want to proudly share who I am.

So, I’m Myx, my username comes from something I read on Twitter years ago about a potential nonbinary form for Mr. and Ms.: Mx.; it’s a small thing that lets me feel like I am presenting as I want the world to see me. I’m in my early 30’s and have been on a gradual journey of self-discovery for 4 or 5 years now. I’ve had times all through my life of things not feeling quite right, but didn’t have the words or experience to know what was wrong. I am genderfluid, but I would best describe myself as agender or nongender; it’s what fits most often. I’m ace/demi, (or as I recently learned the term earlier in this thread, graysexual) and I use they/them, but I feel like I’ve not found what pronouns fit me best, yet.

I’ve thought about physical transition before, but my circumstances wouldn’t really allow for it, so I’m happy to be who I am here and unashamed of it. I feel that I’m still early in my journey so I feel like I will have more questions for others than I can offer up answers, but I would be happy to talk to anyone about it, too!

25 Likes
220

200

The way you describe yourself is a good reminder of how limited, and limiting, English, and maybe other languages, can be. I’m glad this is a safe space for you.

Also adding to the books discussion I can’t vouch for this since I haven’t read it, and could only offer a cis guy’s perspective anyway, but this looks like a fun read.

14 Likes
221

Not sure if this is the proper thread for this, but…

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/red-hot/traиƨa-casts-a-potent-holistic-light-on-transgender-awareness

LAURA JANE GRACE JAYNE COUNTY LEE RENALDO!!! FUCK YEAH!!!

More from this album here:

12 Likes
222
14 Likes
223

The Latin in the second one is

hoc modo sensi, me libentius sub puella concubuisse et penem meum com cunno mutatum maluisse.

My translation:

I felt this way; that I would have been more eager to have slept under the girl, and to have preferred that my penis would change into a c*nt

(And of course, as I get to the bottom of the thread, the translation is already there waiting. That’ll teach me not to read ahead.)

9 Likes
224

New Sade, a tribute to her trans son. :face_holding_back_tears:

21 Likes
225

When people say that trans people only arrived on the scene in 2015 (or whatever), share this with them…

Eight genders in the Talmud!

25 Likes
226
16 Likes
227

This is a tidy bit of genius.
Thanks, I have thieved that for future use.

23 Likes
228

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/11/this-trans-woman-was-forced-into-electroshock-therapy-she-just-won-a-settlement/

20 Likes
229

I go through phases where I don’t feel much need to express my gender. I always know I’m not really “a man” in some ways but not a woman either, that duality is an aspect of it, and I have some aspects of dysphoria but not others (my organs are acceptable but I’d like to be smaller in build, have more feminine or at least less masculine features, and not all this body hair). But a lot of the time, I just feel like gender’s kind of irrelevant to most things.

I’m also in the 85%+ of nonbinary folks (according to a poll I saw while I was reading some stuff last night), who just does not want to explain themselves to a society that still doesn’t really believe nonbinary is a thing. Some of my experiments with expression in the past left me feeling really uncomfortable and self-conscious.

Lately I’ve been cycling back to wanting to express it. I think part of this is spite and resistance to the MAGA/Project 2025/general transphobia shit lately. Part of it is also due to getting back to my (oversimplifying here) pagan stuff, which always makes me feel more fluid. (There are a lot of different traditions around the world of shamans/magicians being outside their birth-assigned gender and I sympathize with that pretty hard.)

Several years ago I used to paint my toenails. Mostly mermaid colors – silver, blue, green, purple. (Red never seemed right, nor black.) I usually wear socks and shoes in public anyway (except in summer rarely, and also at the time I was in a taiko group and we practiced barefoot). I stopped due to some damage to one of the toenails, and just never got back in. But I feel like it’s time to restart. (The Dr’s Remedy brand, though it is lacking in a lot of the colors and fun chrome/glitter stuff that I like from other brands, is supposed to be more healthy if you have issues with psoriasis, fungal nail, diabetes, other damage etc. so I’ll start there.)

Will I be bold enough to also do my fingernails? Eh… I know this is not just a gender expression thing, there’s also emo/goth/other people identifying as men claiming it. I don’t know if I can rock that or not though. We’ll see.

Also grabbed myself some enby pride jewelry on Etsy. A black ceramic ring with fluorescent opals, a pin, a sort of subtle pendant.

I may lean more into floral and colorful print shirts (I do wear a couple of subtle ones) for days that I go to work. Maybe look for a hoodie that’s not just the plain dark green that I have now. Small steps!

23 Likes
230

I can relate to this. I mentioned in a previous post here, were I younger I’m sure I would see myself as non-binary. The me now doesn’t care about labels and gender but my self-expression and identity is male because at this point it’s quite ingrained. I’d say it’s more cultural than anything, same how I consider myself Catholic by culture even though I’m agnostic because so much of Latin culture is derived from Catholicism.

I do hope that you can get to a point where you can express yourself more freely. Paint those nails! I’m sure it’ll look great on you, don’t worry about male goths and such.

21 Likes
231
9 Likes
232

The other day I happened to notice the number of images I have saved to my devices had grown quite large. I decided to slowly start deleting things I no longer want. I started that process yesterday and came across pictures of myself from 2015. I look much different now, sure, but what stood out the most was how joyless I appear. I was smiling, but it was easy to tell how fake that smile was. It was in my eyes. There was a dullness there. Even though I’ve been struggling with my mental health since the election (the last several days I’ve gotten a little better), when I looked in a mirror, I saw a brightness in my eyes. It was just a nice reminder of how much transitioning has helped me.

31 Likes
233

I’ve noticed that too. In old pics, I look kind of dead-eyed, which makes sense. I was numb inside. Everything was a mask to project normalcy, but it was all fake. My life has been immeasurably harder since I came out, but I’m happier than I’ve been since I first became aware of gender.

And as for pictures, I have my photos archived going back to like 2014 and there’s a clear inflection point where I went from no pictures of myself except an occasional pic with my kids/family to the majority being selfies. The inflection point is a picture of myself I ran through the FaceApp gender changing filter :sweat_smile:

26 Likes
234

I came across my senior class picture during our move. I don’t know if I looked joyless. I looked pained. Everyone in the picture did. It’s pretty obvious the sun was shining brightly right in our faces.

21 Likes
235

I didn’t like taking pictures of myself or even being in pictures. Any old pictures I took of myself were because I needed to for some reason.

That is literally what caused me to transition. I had learned to manage my dysphoria by my late 20’s/early 30’s. I had told myself I was too old to transition. Then I decided to try FaceApp one day. I had a breakdown after seeing the picture because in a way it was like seeing myself for the first time.

25 Likes