3w ago

"I took a certain pleasure in informing the gender clinic that even though their program told me I could not live as a Gay man, it looks like I'm going to die like one."

If you haven’t read about Lou Sullivan, you are missing out. Getting access to HRT and surgery was historically contingent on you presenting as heterosexual and conforming to rigid gender expectations. Lou fought against that, he fought for gay trans men, and really trans men in general.

I have a copy of his diaries, which inspire me when I read. It’s transness as desire rather than rejection. That above all the want to be a man, rather than the movement away from being a “woman.”

2 comments

This was an absolutely great book from Lou and I carry it personally because of how impactful his words were to me as a young gay trans man. There are other FtM authors but he always stuck out to me especially in him trying to establish an early 1990s FtM community in San Francisco (and also being the first to do so successfully).
It’s transness as desire rather than rejection.
I like this framing as it underscores naturally that much of the suffocating gender norms we live under are composed almost entirely of rejection and denial of desire (men don't wear this, women don't do that, men don't walk like that, women don't say things like that etc...) which is precisely what creates the violent force to conform.
I love this perspective because it underlines what makes transness so beautiful, it is a process of fierce desire among the deluge of rejection and denial we are all drowning in.