Hi 👋 I’m Kyle.
I’m Kyle Ranson-Walsh, a writer, designer, filmmaker, producer, strategist, knitter, biker, etc. etc. etc. and dad.
Welcome to my weekly newsletter—Being Alive—an exploration into transmasculine lives. (Mine, others’.)
I was born and raised in the South, came of age in the Bay, and now live in Brooklyn with my kid.
What is Being Alive? ✨
Being Alive is a weekly newsletter, yes. It generally publishes on Sundays.
Being Alive is also a practice of documenting my ongoing engagement with what it means to be alive in a transmasculine body, in an America that debates and dissects one’s existence.
Trans people live with a paradox of visibility. The more open we are, the more we subject ourselves to criticism and violence. On the flip side, when we pass and our gender slips by unremarked, we don’t appear to exist at all.
The frustrating by-product of using invisibility as a survival tactic is that we leave little trace of ourselves for other people to find, which adds to the mistaken belief that we’re a relatively new and phenomenon.
— Oliver Radclyffe in Adult Human Male
Why “transmasculine”? 🏳️⚧️
In the thirty years I have been in the LGBTQ+ community the terms have constantly shifted and expanded. For now, “transmasculine” feels like the best way to represent my identity and the community of people who decades ago would find each other by searching for mentions of “female-to-male” stories.
What’s up with these subscription options?
Do you have to pay? No. Everything within the past 12-months is freely available, as are sections of earlier posts.
Paid subscription options are available for those who are able and want to support this project.
Who else should I read?
There are a number of trans writers on Substack including:
, , , ,Also recommend browsing my ever-expanding library of books by, for, and about transmasc people. Please, add your recommended additions to the comments!
