Mx. T *Chaotic Reader*’s Reviews > A Trans Man Walks into a Gay Bar > Status Update

It’s difficult to see or plan for a long future when you couldn’t see any future for yourself when growing up.

From its inception, trans healthcare has been an ideological battleground. Medical transition, contraception and abortion care should be about body autonomy. We should have the right to choose what is the best option for our own bodies and mental health. But instead, when we try to access vital healthcare, we are met by gatekeepers who think they know better than we do about our bodies.

We are forced to live childhoods alien to us and become girl to woman, boy to man. We are told not to ask, not to question, that this is just a phase, to push ourselves down, to damage, bend and break ourselves until we fit. To be trans is to face violence while others ‘yaaas queen’ and ‘sashay away’ using the language of our ancestors while ignoring our struggle.

"And so the question that took up the most space as I was entering this gay new world was: if gay culture is seemingly so phallo-centric, where do I fit, if indeed I fit at all?"

Saying that ‘I exist as’ rather than the commonly used phrase ‘I identify as’ is important to me. ‘I identify as’ suggests that there is something to debate or there is something to uncover – that there is an untruth. As though it is something we believe about ourselves but others don’t have to see, acknowledge or respect.


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