Thank you for the flood of recs to keep expanding my transmasc library. In the past week, I’ve ordered or picked up another dozen titles by transmasc authors and/or covering transmasc experiences. Now, can all of you find me extra hours in the day for me to read them? (Raise your hand if I should publish this list or if you have another resource list to link to…)
It’s cold and snowy here in Brooklyn. Perfect excuse to spend time curled up with James Frankie Thomas’ new novel, Idlewild. Two dear friends, both published authors with books included in last week’s library list, effusively recommended. I’m not even a quarter into the story, but I can tell they are right already. I am so smitten with the two millennial AFAB queers navigating the last 18 months of their Manhattan prep school. And Thomas’ writing is warm, at times laugh-out-loud funny, and delightfully specific.
I never did let her know that But I’m a Cheerleader had forever changed the way I rinsed out my mouth after brushing my teeth. Ever since my first viewing of the film, instead of using a glass, I cupped my hand under the faucet and slurped the water straight from my palm, the way Clea DuVall does in the montage where Natasha Lyonne is watching her and falling in love. I still rinse out my mouth this way. I did it that very night, washing white dust off my face in Nell’s unfamiliar bathroom, half-hoping Nell was watching me through the open door.
The details are so spot-on, so relatable—down to the weather. When the two protagonists meet for the first time it is September in New York City and gorgeous. The first sentence one character ever says to the other: “It’s such a beautiful day.” Fifteen years later, the other (serving as narrator) reminisces: “It was a beautiful day.” The day is September 11, 2001.
When I moved to NYC in 2013, the sense memory of that day was still very much on the surface. Whenever the air turned crisp, when summer faded into fall, at least one new friend would remark that the stunning, blue-sky day felt like “Sept 11 weather.” I grew accustomed to the callbacks. After all, the weather in NYC was similar to where I was that day in Charlottesville, Virginia.
This week, as the snow fell here in Brooklyn—our first real accumulation in years, a fact that contains its own terror—I thought about my father dying almost exactly eight years ago in a hospital bed in Washington, D.C. He was meant to be released the next morning to hospice at home; my brother, stepfather, and I had planned to drive home to get prepared, and hopefully get some rest. Nature intervened with a volume of snow that made leaving the hospital out of the question. Stranded, grief-stricken, and helpless, we ate dinner in the almost-empty cafeteria and somehow secured a bottle of whisky. We fell asleep in hospital furniture. He passed away in the night. Is this when I started loathing snow?
This past Monday, while I tracked the flakes outside my bedroom window, Trump won the Iowa caucus. We all knew it was coming; we’d seen the weather report. And yet.
The night my father died, I tried to convince him to turn off the TV news. I was annoyed our last hours together, I thought we had days, were being underscored by the banter of the ruffled junior anchor reporting from the storm. I was also bothered by the political interjections. A just-outside-the-Beltway kid, I was raised on a steady diet of political news, but I had already fatigued of this campaign cycle. And Iowa was still two weeks away. Trump would go on to lose that caucus, but we all know what ultimately unfolded. And somehow, my Dad knew it then. I hate that one of my last memories with my gay, liberal father was him telling me with certainty that Trump would win.
I don’t want to write about Trump. I’m guessing you don’t want to read about him, either. And yet.
These past eight years, I’ve put a lot of distance between myself and the headlines. I can only process so much. We can all only process so much. Everything is hotter. I feel profound gratitude for the activists and journalists who tap themselves directly into the sources so that the attacks on trans people are documented. (Along with countless other heartbreaking issues.)
I don’t want to read about anti-trans legislation, but I also can’t bury my head anymore either. I spent this morning pouring over
‘s reporting on the bill that the Utah House just passed deceptively titled “Sex-Based Designations for Privacy, Anti-Bullying, and Womens’ Opportunities.” It sounds reasonable from a distance until you parse the actual text and learn that it is designed, amongst other things, to restrict transgender folks from using the bathroom corresponding to their identity in any publicly funded building. This means schools, convention centers, park buildings, and the Salt Lake City airport. If this passes and is enforced, it would mean that a trans person with a connecting flight through SLC would be required to have an amended birth certificate or proof of “primary sex characteristic surgical procedure”. Imagine carrying your birth certificate to pee. (Remember when Urinetown was satire?)True story: I, like many trans folks, carry multiple government IDs at all times. I feel grateful to now live in a state that has passed proactive protective legislation for transgender people, but I do not feel safe. My birth certificate was issued in Georgia. Last year, Tennessee passed a bill prohibiting any changes to birth certificates. These policies act like dominoes; one restriction explicitly or implicitly creates another. When I legally transitioned I needed to amend my birth certificate in order to change my US passport. Due to processing lag times and bureaucracy, for a time my state ID had one gender marker, my federal ID listed another. Even before these new bans, these ID inconsistencies were (are) common for trans folks. It’s annoying, burdensome, and now it’s getting scary. We’re used to showing IDs to bank, or while signing in to visit our kids in school, but to pee?
And yet.
It’s snowing in Park City, Utah, right now. It’s the opening weekend of the 40th annual Sundance Film Festival, where multiple trans filmmakers are premiering new work. 35 miles away, those manipulative legislators might be using our bodies as political fundraising tools, but we are telling our stories. And celebrating each other.
If you can—consider supporting
. Her work is necessary and impactful. Erin did the emotional, thankless job of reading all 550 anti-trans bills proposed in 2023 so that you and I didn’t have to. Her Anti-Trans Risk Map is a powerful visualization of the right-wing political machinery that is using trans people as a wedge issue to mobilize voters leading into November.More next week,
xx Kyle
I remember that snowstorm and knowing you all were at the hospital. Your dad always had TV news on while we were in the timeshare in Maui. He told me I looked like Madeline in my sun hat and spontaneiously created haikus in his head and, then waited to see if anyone else noticed it was a haiku. Of course he knew Trump would win. Glad you're using your media literacy skills to take good care of yourself. If there isn't already a library for trans literature, there should be...at least one. I miss Lambda Rising and Lammas. Thank you for your beautifully written blog.